The Last Legends of Earth

by A. A. Attanasio

  “I am not. I’m old enough for all the rites.”

  “Sure. But you’re twenty years too young to be talking to me.”

  “Are you married, Ned O’Tennis?”

  He gave a sleepy laugh. So she did not know everything about him. “No. I’m not married. The times are too parlous for families. Goodbye, Chan-ti Beppu.”

  “Wait,” she called, striding after him. “Don’t leave yet.” She beckoned with a hand callused and capable. “Before you go, tell me why you’ve come here.”

  Ned opened his arms to the broken city under the galaxy. “It’s beautiful.”

  She stepped toward him. “Beautiful enough to risk your life—” He had already turned away and was hurrying through the crystal-stemmed bramble to his ship. “Come back,” she called after him. “I want to see you again.”

  Ned did not look back. This sudden encounter had charged him with concern for his remiss behavior. Perhaps he would return again—but officially next time. If there were a group up here monitoring Aesirai patrols and tactics, they had to be identified. Yet—they obviously knew he had been shirking his duties, and if they were discovered, whoever they were, they would reveal his passive treason.

  Ned resolved to do some research on his own. When he returned to N’ym, he went directly to the map registry and reviewed hundreds of satellite photos of the Eyelands. He found no sign of any people inhabiting the ruins of Caer or the surrounding area.

  Ned reported sighting group movement in the ruins. After subsequent patrols returned without spotting anything unusual, he determined to go again himself. He had to find out more about these mysterious Foke who watched the Aesirai’s struggles from above as though gods. But before he could gather and enter into his ship’s computer all the photo-maps of the region, the feral woman from the Eyelands found him.

  When the houseguard announced a visitor, Ned at first thought his forays to the Eyelands had been found out and security had come for him. He opened the door braced for uniforms. Chan-ti mistook the relief in his face for joy, and she hugged him, startling him with the iron of her grip.

  “What are you doing here?” He quickly shut the door behind her.

  “I’ve come to see you. I need to talk with you.”

  Ned closed the curtains. His spare suite of empty polished wood floors, a few simple pieces of furniture and a sleeping roll for a bed seemed unused. “I don’t spend much time here.” He gestured for her to sit in the room’s one canvas-seat chair. “You’re lucky to have found me in.”

  “Luck alone introduced us.” She accepted the chair. “I’m glad it’s still holding.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To marry you.”

  Ned snorted, picked up his beer, and settled onto the open bedroll. “I could be your father.” He took a long swig.

  “It’s a Foke custom to marry early. I must marry or be excluded from the rites. Only the most grotesque don’t find a mate. Your age means nothing to me.”

  Ned tossed off a silent laugh. His goldfaced friends would howl to see this heathen proposing to him. “Beer?” he offered.

  She refused with a tight shake of her head, eyes glittering with interest to see him in his austere environs.

  He drained what remained in the bottle and stood it on the floor. “Why me?”

  “Only you.” Chan-ti pale and intent stared. The elegant proposal she had crafted for this moment fled before the heat of her emotion. She spoke off the top of her head, “I never expected to marry anyone. I’m odd-looking among the Foke. But then I saw you—saw something of your story. You had come up to the Eyelands and risked your life for the vista of stars—for beauty.”

  “It’s not like that. You don’t understand.”

  “I think I do.” The certainty in her voice silenced him. “I’ve watched you in your ship. You alone of the dozens that fly their missions each day do not kill your enemy when they are before you. You are a reluctant warrior. Yet not cowardly. When you come to the Eyelands, you don’t care about the bonelight or the distorts. You could hide anywhere less dangerously. But you’re not hiding from yourself. You come for the beauty, for what is eternal in a world of temporary lives.”

  Ned’s heart tripped at what she had said. “How do you know so much about me? How did you find me?”

  “The Foke are an old people. They came through the timeshafts long ago. Over the years, they’ve borrowed languages, ideas, technology, everything from those around them. We watch you with monitors that patch into your own high-orbit scanners. Some of the Foke know how to use refractions from the black sun to hide our signals. We see and yet we are not seen.”

  “But why don’t our scanners see you?” Ned asked. “I’ve studied the satellite photos of the Eyelands. There’s nothing that shows any of the technology you’re talking about.”

  “That’s because it’s not there. The Foke watch you from the Overworld.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then marry me and come see for yourself.”

  “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t know you.”

  Chan-ti lowered her gaze. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I came here to give you the chance to know me.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you came here. Who sponsored your visa?”

  “I came down the cliffs and in through the Back Gates.”

  “N’ym has no gates. People are ferried in and out.”

  “The Back Gates are in the Overworld. They timeshaft into the city.”

  Ned frowned.

  “I keep forgetting,” Chan-ti said, curling tighter in her seat. “You don’t believe people can live in the Overworld.” She mulled a moment. “I live there. We all do, in a way, since the worlds are connected to each other through the Overworld. That’s the way these worlds were built.”

  “Built?” Ned rolled his eyes. “I should’ve known. You’re a creationist.”

  “How do you think these worlds got here?”

  “The same way as everything else. They evolved out of dust and gravity.”

  “Have you looked at these planets? No natural gravitational system could exist so compactly.”

  Ned’s eyebrows rose. This woman looked as mongrel as any of the workers from the hamlets, while utterly lacking their surly ignorance. “And how do the Foke say the worlds were made?”

  “The World Eater made them to trap the spiders—the zōtl—who are her natural enemies. When she has trapped enough spiders, she will devour the worlds.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. And stop looking so smug. The Aesirai aren’t so smart. You don’t even know that the World Eater is an alien intelligence, like the zōtl. She makes everything. Where do you think the people come from who are not born?”

  Ned regarded her narrowly for a moment. Perhaps she was right, he thought. He had read about that in some of the science journals he occasionally peeked at while waiting for routine medical clearance at the airfield clinic. On some planets, lifeforms spontaneously generated. Most researchers attributed that phenomenon to zōtl experimentation.

  “Well?” Chan-ti pressed. “The worlds themselves are machines, Ned O’Tennis. The machines are remembering the lives of Earth.”

  “Urth? Is that a Foke spirit world?”

  Chan-ti sighed. “We have a lot to talk about. You’ve been too secluded among the Aesirai. Your Emir knows that if you saw the truth, you’d revolt. Come away with me. Let me show you the Overworld, where you say people cannot live.”

  Ned rose, faced away from her, trying to feel his way clear of his amazement. He sensed this woman’s sincerity, but he did not know what to make of it. He turned a puzzled frown on her. “Are you real? I mean—do you know what you’re doing to me? I have a life here.”

  “No, you don’t,” Chan-ti insisted. “And anyway, it’s over. All you have left in N’ym is death. I am offering you life.”

  Ned laughed and rocked his jaw. “If I marry you.” He noticed that his insides
felt bright. He could not free himself from his astonishment that the world he thought he knew well enough to be trapped by could again become secret and offer its mystery to him. For the first time in over two years, he warmed with genuine interest. He decided to be frank: “Don’t want me. Desire is fear. Don’t you see that, Chan-ti Beppu? We never desire what we’re sure of having. More often, we desire what we can’t have. Go back to your secret world. Forget me. Desire is all about doubt and fear.”

  “Is that why you never married?”

  Ned met her avid stare. “You’re right about N’ym. All that’s left here is death. Fate has chosen against N’ym. I saw that young. I won’t bring children into this doomful time.”

  “All the more reason to come with me, Ned. I can show you a life you don’t even know exists. Come.”

  “I want to go with you,” he admitted and sat down again. “I want you to be real. I want the stupid inevitability of this war to be over and forgotten. But how can I go with you? We are at war. I can be called to battle at any time.”

  “Ah, duty. You talk of battle, but it’s not your war, Ned. I know. I’ve watched you avoid the enemy on your patrols. Don’t let an accident of birth kill you. Come to the Eyelands with me. Let me show you my world and me. You can see the Back Gates and the Overworld for yourself.”

  “That’s desertion. I could never return.”

  “Take me in your ship, then—on your next patrol.” When she read the possibility of that in his earnest stare, she added, “If you do not recognize what I show you as your home, then you can return here without me—and I will not bother you again.”

  “No.” Desire, mixed with curiosity, carried its own rigors. He would not let it run away with him. “I won’t go with you, Chan-ti. I don’t know you. But you can stay here if you want. It may cure you of me.”

  Her face lit up with a passion that almost made him regret his offer. But before that night was over, all remorse evaporated from Ned O’Tennis. Apart from being a worthy lover—which she was, her astute and athletic body surprising him not only with her conjugal mischief but by the virtuosity she inspired in him—she was also, he discovered, good counsel. He recognized that at once, when she showed him new ways of seeing his problem: “Death is too particular,” she told him. “You would waste your life giving it over to generalities like race and culture, even family, when death demands everything from you.” She spoke consolingly. “I would have done the same as you. Patrol and not fight, I mean. And I’d be just as wary of a stranger from the Eyelands, too. We should learn something from the insects that couple and then eat each other.”

  She baffled his suspicions and cosseted his longings. Most vital of all, she shared his passion for beauty. Before sunrise, they were already on the streets, and with her at his side, he met the world anew. Beneath the raucous ivy of garden walls, they discovered graven murals of fauns and dryads in their rootwoven snuggeries; they caught glimpses of real elves in the smoky violets of a slovenly yard. Suspended by the charm of a dark wood flecked with fireflies, they stood hand in hand on the crest of a hill staring beyond the city, while the galaxy set and several comets feathered the purple zenith.

  Impulsively, Ned wanted to buy her a souvenir—some clothes, maybe a pearl-trimmed silk gown fashionable then in N’ym, so that they could eat at the elegant twilit cafes on the rooftops of centercity. But Chan-ti wanted only Ned. So they picnicked in vest-pocket parks, by flower-cirqued fountains, and on the Rambles among the blue pines at the top of the city, near the rim of a crater lake. It hardly mattered where they went, for, as the days passed, they found themselves in each other. To Ned, who at nearly twice her age had long ago become cynical about love, the sensation felt both new and comfortable. All pretense fled. It was as if Chan-ti could see through his soul better than he could see through himself, and she would love him for it anyway. When his other lovers called, they seemed suddenly more alien to him than this stranger who had come to him out of nowhere.

  During his routine patrols, alone in his strohlkraft, Ned wondered what had happened to him. Had the Foke-girl somehow drugged or enchanted him? He felt like an adolescent, splendidly giddy, yet weirdly more sober and caring. Had he known that such an exquisite feeling was possible before this, he would have pined in its absence. Even his carefree ferry-years seemed hollow now, a conflagration of twilights wedged by frolics with sportive friends. The deaths of his parents and brothers had been enough of careworn feelings for him. Even the strife of the laborers he had transported for twelve years had only troubled him superficially, never enough to spoil his capers with his lovers and friends. But now, he could not be apart from his Chan-ti at all without fearing for her well-being. His Chan-ti. Like his arms or eyes. Her presence empowered him—and the thought of her loss, though he had known her for only a few days, threatened devastation.

  To keep Chan-ti at his side and to relieve the anguish of seeing the war-wounded, ever more prevalent on N’ym’s streets of runic beauty, Ned decided to meet the Foke. He took advantage of horde sightings in the forests to the north to file a three-day stalk-and-kill flight plan with his superiors. Routinely approved, Ned drove to the airbase with Chan-ti Beppu hidden in the trunk of his electric sedan. He got her aboard his strohlkraft inside a munitions caisson. Once airborne, she clambered out of the chest and into the sling beside him, reeling with the vertigo of her first flight.

  Lod, an amber star, had risen high among the sky’s teeming planetoids when they flew into the Eyelands. Ned soared over Caer, scrutinizing the jumbled terrain of brambly tumuli and the checkerboard tracery of ghost streets and toppled buildings. The nearby crags looked empty but for whispers of grass and mist. Far away, beyond the steely curve of the planet, night loomed. Stardust and a few planetesimals glinted against the anonymous black of Saor.

  He landed on the wide sward of the city’s concourse where he had put down before. From there, they could see past the trillium-sprouted barrows at the cliff’s edge to the amethyst gulf, the plateaus, and N’ym, liquescent and diffuse with distance. Ned strapped on one of the two laserbolt pistols he kept fitted to the bulwark by the ship’s portal, set the strohlkraft’s lock-alarm, and lifted the gull-wing hatch, admitting the balsam coolness of the Eyelands.

  “You won’t need your gun,” Chan-ti said.

  “It’s not for me. It’s my gift to the Foke.” Though, in fact, he carried it for what there was in him of his father: If he had been a fool of love, he would at least not be caught entirely naked.

  Chan-ti put both her hands on his chest and let her happiness show. “No harm will come to you here. You’re with me.” She stepped out into the haze of galactic light and led him among abstract shapes in the dead city. They came to a crumbled tower purpled with thick grass and wild verbena. She glanced back at Ned, thumbed her spidery-gold spectacles farther up along her nose, and dropped into the dark.

  Ned peered after her and saw a shaft under a lintel of blistered roots. Chan-ti hung from a handhold of rimed rock and waved for him to follow.

  Ned shook his head with amazement and followed. He climbed down among voluted roots and rockgrips, through crimped light and impatient odors seething from below. The blue smell of a storm thickened as he descended. At the bottom, the shaft slid sideways, gritty with quartz. He spilled into a grotto ablaze under a geodesic of lux-tubes. Python cables looped densely along the raw rock ceiling above the geodesic, which housed a platform deck of prismatic switch controls, bubble screens crawling with phosphor codes, and blackbox power units stacked atop each other. Squat, sturdy people in blue fatigues clustered around the platform and waved and smiled at Chan-ti Beppu.

  “This is one of our mobile sentinels,” Chan-ti said and signaled to the grinning crew to keep her entry quiet. “From here we monitor all aircraft on the planet and in near space, especially fighter ships like your ramstat flyer. I watched most of your patrols at that console.”

  The thunderstorm smell roiled from here, ozone seeping out of the nex
us of power units. Ned openly gawked at the patchwork of hardware cramming the grotto. Chan-ti made no effort to introduce him to the operators on the platform deck and strode past them to a frosted glass screen on rollers. Behind the screen extended a long, battered wood bench cluttered with unspooled coils of iridescent magnetic tape and a disemboweled tracking probe. A holocube in a nest of fiber cables displayed Ned and Chan-ti in staticky colors.

  A trollish old man tinkering with the scanner stared at the image with an open mouth, then looked up with surprise. “Beppu!” The gnome took her in a sudden hug and gazed up brightly into her face. “You found your way! Beppu-Beppu! You have returned joy to my days!” He hugged her again, then faced Ned with an appraising look masked by a grin. “So this is the gentle warrior.”

  “Ned O’Tennis,” Chan-ti said, “this is my father, Nappy Groff.”

  With two big hands of almost metallic strength, Nappy seized Ned’s right arm and bowed his head. “Never has an Aesirai visited the Foke. We are honored.”

  “I’m the honored one,” Ned responded, awkwardly, “that your daughter would seek me out.”

  Nappy beamed with pleasure, winked at Chan-ti. “No great wit, this Aesirai—but worthy. Have you truly made him yours? Tell me everything.”

  Chan-ti expansively recounted her trek down the eaglebrow cliffs and across the haunted plateau to N’ym, and breezed over her courtship of Ned. When she finished, Ned presented the laserbolt pistol to Nappy. Chan-ti had told him the Foke took their weapons and all their technology from wherever they could.

  Nappy accepted the pistol with a deep bow. “You’ll see more of me than you like if you grace us long enough.” The gnome shooed Ned and Chan-ti into a narrow, vaulted corridor illuminated with lux-tubes. “Show him the Overworld he’s heard too much about.”

  Chan-ti took Ned’s hand in her strong grip and led him into a pondy breeze that thickened as the corridor opened to a gentle green rain. Through thin sheets of a sunset shower, a sylvan terrain appeared. Blossoms splashed color off hanging vines among giant, tumultuous trees. Emerald sierras rambled above the forest. Sunset clouds sprawled like kelp. Beyond the mountains, the black sun filled the sky—a starless night that mantled the horizon as far as could be seen.