The Wave and the Flame

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “No. Interestingly enough, the Sawls proved more successful in preventing that than I did. She has gone with the RangerGuild search party.”

  Susannah groaned, remembering.

  “One of us should be out there with them, Weng,” said Megan reasonably.

  “I had planned, as soon as we were settled in here…” Weng fell silent. Then she said, “Of course, you’re right, Dr. Levy. Ship’s regulations are not always appropriate to the situation.”

  Susannah drew up her knees and hugged them. “What do the Sawls say about the weather? Has anyone asked?”

  Megan made a wry face. “Sure, but it’s like the old joke, you know? Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”

  “But what do they say?”

  “What do they say?” Megan exchanged a glance with Weng. “At the moment, they won’t say. When questioned on the weather, mostly they just look at you, and shake their heads.”

  13

  “These folk are obsessed with weather,” Megan muttered to herself as she settled to observe a group of Sawl priests. She was only mildly surprised at how resentful she sounded. She had decided the only defense against slipping back into her recent lethargic depression was to invoke a strict schedule of study. That she had done and was the better for it, as it also reinforced the fading distinctions of her Terran day and night, morning and afternoon, concepts that had no physical reality in the depths of the rock. It did not help that the Sawls lived around the clock, in three revolving shifts dividing what approximated a thirty-hour day. Thus, the Caves were never quiet, and there was always something going on that would not find a place on Megan’s schedule if she wanted to leave time for sleep. And with each further day spent in humid darkness, though it was yet barely midnight by the Fiixian clock, the oblivion of sleep became more and more alluring.

  So far Megan had resisted bravely. But as she constantly consoled herself, it was nowhere written that she had to be cheerful about the discomforts her schedule of study might place her in. She derived a certain energy from the very act of complaining.

  This particular moment, afternoon by her schedule, the priests had chosen to gather at the narrowest of the cave mouths. But the storm was at a singularly vicious peak. Despite the protected entry, cold rain and wind hammered in from the darkness. The stone floor was drenched and the gutters roaring. Megan tucked her foil blanket higher on her neck. The very thought of exposed skin set her shivering. She draped the foil in a silver tent around her lap to keep her borrowed sketchbook from the blowing mist. This normally wise move blocked the light from the oil lamp above her head. She adjusted one side of the tent, but then the winds swept in to chill her ribs through the scant protection of her unpowered therm-suit. Megan let out an exasperated sigh and tried to concentrate on her drawing. The lamp flame swayed in its niche above and made her crude stick figures leap and stutter like an antique film. She thought with longing of the inner caverns and the warmth of her bedroll, but bent back to her sketch like a proper student.

  The eight priests stood in a shivering circle several paces inside the overhang of the cliff face. There they would usually have been in the lee of the wind, but the wind was blowing in all directions at once. They drew their circle tighter to shield the oldest and frailest as best they could. Megan thought them a ragtag bunch in their damp layers of brown knits and woolens. The two of the eight who seemed to have given some thought to dressing as might befit a priest had thrown sleeveless embroidered robes over their warm clothing. One wore hers open, the other had laced his casually at the neck. The embroidery on front and back resembled a guild seal in design: a red-and-orange flame suspended over blue-lavender waves, encircled in green and brown.

  In fact, Megan suspected that what kept the’ priests from being just another of the many guilds was that matters of weather seemed to fall particularly under their jurisdiction. This, more than any presumption of authority, gave them their central focus in Sawl society, for as Megan was fond of noting, the Sawls were obsessed with the weather.

  For this, she could not blame them. She was becoming obsessed with it herself, as were the other Terrans, when they were not hiding ostrich-like in their work. Stavros never left the inner caves but was compulsively collecting a weather language and mythology. McPherson faced the weather daily with the RangerGuild’s search parties, keeping Danforth alive in her mind long after the others had given up hope. Megan did not feel guilty for staying behind. In such fearsome storms, she would be a liability to the searchers and probably kill or maim herself in the bargain. But it had required the efforts of both Susannah and Stavros to convince Weng similarly. Megan thought the situation particularly hard on Weng, who felt the greatest responsibility and could do the least about it. The Commander had finally given up on her attempts to reestablish the communications link with the Orbiter, left the homing beacon running and buried herself in her music.

  Megan’s attention was drawn abruptly back to the priests. The gathering, which had begun as a discussion, was evolving into a heated debate. The young apprentices hovered about, listening in avidly. One held a lamp suspended from a supple pole to light the center of the circle. Megan sketched the gentle curve of the pole, held the pad up to assess the result. She had borrowed the sketchbook from Susannah, who often put aside the camera to do her own drawings. The front half was filled with botanical details shaped with intimidating skill, but even her own inexpert hand was convincing Megan that at times, the pad is mightier than the screen. Though she missed her computer terminal, she was becoming fond of the editorial quality of line that a human hand could produce. She erased the curve and drew it again.

  Tyril, her faithful shadow, sat beside her, absorbed in her perpetual knitting, Megan had wanted to sit closer to the priestly huddle, for a better view of the mysteries inside, but Tyril had persuaded her to leave them some private distance. Tyril never ordered or insisted, but somehow always got her way where Megan was concerned. Now, as Megan sketched, Tyril looked over her shoulder occasionally to nod and smile encouragingly as the work on the page progressed.

  Megan drew in the lamp at the end of its pole, and began on the circle of backs bent in earnest consultation. Their curl inward toward the lamp was softened by the layers of knitted shawls and scarves and heavy cloaks and overtunics. The nodding, murmuring heads were rounded by woolen caps, some with long flaps that hung down like hound’s ears.

  Megan heard nothing ritualistic emanating from that huddle, nothing like prayer, no chanting or singing. The debate rose and fell. Every few minutes, one of the younger priests pulled herself away from the group to venture out onto the ledge, attended by two soaked and worried apprentices. The wind threatened to topple her into the abyss as it tore at her garments and she, heedless, strained her ears and eyes outward. Megan wondered what the woman could possibly hope to see in such total blackness. She was relieved when the apprentices succeeded in urging their distracted mistress to retreat to the comparative shelter of the overhang. The young priest returned to the circle frowning and thoughtful, her long curls swinging as heavily as the rain-weighted hem of her cloak. But then, a few moments later, she was away again, pacing toward the edge.

  As she pulled away, a space was left in the circle. Megan’s mental ears pricked up as she spotted fat books changing hands inside the huddle. She caught tantalizing glimpses of yellowed sheets pressed between slats of wood, of sewn bindings in cloth and cracked leather, of parchment and vellum pages. To one side, an apprentice waited with an additional armload swathed in a triangular drape of pale suede. The drape was embroidered with the same circular design, the flame and the wave, but nothing further. Megan had decided already that the Sawls had little taste for meaningless decoration.

  Megan eyed the books hungrily. Her interpretation of Sawl society had taken a new turn the day she had learned about the guild libraries. The Sawl literature was still oral, but like proto-bureaucrats, they were compulsive record keepers. Megan longe
d to hold just one of those books in her own hands. One did not even have to be able to read a book to glean a depth of information from it. But the Sawls were protective of their records, and Tyril had made it quite clear through sign and scattered word that these were sacred books of a very great age: surely Megan would not wish to assume the risk of harming such treasures. Megan had not noticed the priests handling the books with much more than the normal care, but when Tyril offered a trip to her own guildhall, where books pertaining to the proud craft of weaving would be found to be (she implied) of equal interest, Megan acquiesced. Such an offer had not been made before. It indicated, she thought, a relaxing of at least one Sawl’s attitude toward the Terran visitors.

  The Min Kodeh, she recalled, were miraculous weavers as well. Maybe I should forget this weather-prediction stuff and concentrate on the Sawls as craftsmen. A nice artsy book. Lots of pictures. It would certainly be easier…

  She wrenched her concentration back to the priests. Observing body language and the cadence of voices, she tried to determine a hierarchy within the group. But they were all speaking at once, and flipping through the pages of several books at a time (with no great reverence, she noted) to point out this reference or that. It reminded Megan of a meeting of the trustees of a Terran university, anyone of the several she had taught at during her lengthy academic career. If one voice occasionally soared over the others to be heard above the roar of the wind, its owner won a moment’s domination over the discussion. But fast talking was also necessary to get the point across before the voice was lost again among the rest.

  As she squinted to see the nearest book in greater detail, Megan noticed that the palms of the priest holding it were utterly smooth, almost shiny, as if layered with scar tissue. She glanced to another for comparison and found those palms similarly smooth. Curious, she leaned over to peer at Tyril’s hands and found nothing unusual beyond her weaver’s calluses. Megan took a note in a corner of her drawing to remind herself to look into this further.

  Still the debate raged on. The apprentices without a specific responsibility to the circle stood about in twos and threes, chatting or listening, their ears open for a summons to duty. A few clustered around an older boy who was counting out a pocketful of thin stone disks, dividing them equally among his companions. Megan had a few of those disks in her own pocket. They represented one of at least three unofficial currencies employed in the Caves. The official currency was Trade and Barter. Megan had traded a resealable plastic bag for her handful of disks, and noticed that the trader seemed inordinately pleased with the deal.

  If Emil can go around handing out pens, one little plastic bag won’t hurt anybody. At least my trade was for the purpose of study, not merely to pamper my palate.

  The memory of Clausen made her shoulders sag in sudden exhaustion. She supposed it was inevitable that a prospector would lose his life to one of the planets he was bent on raping. Men like Clausen did not die in bed, In the abstract, Megan could appreciate the poetic justice of it, but the actuality saddened her. For once, she permitted herself to contemplate the question that always lurked, no matter how hard, with insistent busyness, she might try to keep it at bay.

  Is this it, then? Are we really to be stranded on this cold and dreary world?

  Until the night and the storm ended, the answer could not be known. The Lander might be functional, and if it was not, it might be repaired in time. According to the mission plan, there were still seven earthmonths before the Orbiter must leave Fiixian space to rendezvous with the mother ship Hawking for the return jumps to Earth.

  Worlds have been won and lost in seven months.

  But if the Lander was dead, so was the possibility of the landing party’s return to Earth.

  Away, such thoughts!

  The priests were stirring. The huddle had fallen silent. As if by mutual consent, or simply through mutual fatigue, the priests ended their debate. With a series of hollow thuds that rang the closest thing to a formal coda Megan had yet heard from this clergy, the books were closed and passed to the apprentices to be rewrapped in their protective finery for safe passage back to the priestly library. The group stood about for a moment, aimless, their brown faces sharing an expression of frustration and deep foreboding.

  Megan folded up the sketchbook and stuck her pencil behind her ear. It’s almost suppertime, anyway, she concluded hopefully. Whatever purpose this gathering had served, it had not satisfied its participants. As the priests passed by her on their way toward the inner stairs, they allowed her pleasant but distracted nods.

  If anything, she decided, they look less happy than when they came down here an hour ago.

  She stood up with some effort and stretched her stiffened legs. The wind invaded the folds of her blanket and set her shivering again. Tyril stowed her knitting in a pouch at her waist and wrapped her own thick shawl more tightly around herself.

  “Coold,” she ventured.

  “Cold,” Megan agreed, and led the way up the stairs.

  14

  Susannah ducked her head and squeezed the heavy water bag into the narrow entry corridor. Warm air and a little light from the cavern inside strayed along the rock walls. She sniffed, analyzing the separate odors.

  All right, nose. Tell me who’s home.

  She could not scent out each individual, as the Sawls claimed was possible, but the smells generated by specific personal activities were easy enough to identify. She paused and set down the bulbous leather sack to sniff with greater concentration. She smelled lamp oil and burning dung, both uninformative for her purposes, as they were ever-present background odors of the Caves, as was the barn smell of the woven straw matting that softened the stone floors in the domestic spaces. There were cooking smells as well: the flat odor of soy stew, the metallic tang of instant coffee.

  And there!

  The slight hot-paper scent of photographs being studied too close to the fire.

  Megan’s home.

  Susannah struggled with the waterskin in the near dark and emerged into the cavern slightly breathless. She lugged it across the matting to the newly bricked-in firepit and lowered it with a sigh.

  “Just think what great shape we’re going to be in when we get out of here,” remarked Megan from the comfort of the fire’s circle of warmth.

  “Yeah.” Susannah knelt beside the waterskin. It gurgled as she leaned against it to use it as a pillow. “Any word from the Outside?”

  Megan drew a red circle on the top photo in her lap, then set the whole pile and her notebook aside. “Ronnie’s not back yet.” She reached over the fire to stir a large pot with a long-handled wooden spoon. “Every day for a week, she’s out there in this! She comes back looking worse than you did.”

  Susannah touched the pink healing skin on her wrists and chin. “At least one of us hasn’t given up on them.”

  Megan tapped the miniterminal she still wore on her wrist. “Six and a half days, to be exact, by the ship’s clock. My chronometer still works, even if the rest is a piece of junk. So. How goes the search for the witch doctors?” She laughed at Susannah’s reflex frown. “I call them that mostly to annoy Stavros. Actually, I thought they patched you up just fine. I’ve always had a secret faith in homespun medicines.”

  Susannah’s frown deepened. “It’s frustrating. I’m beginning to think going through Stav is not the way to send a message around here.”

  “Even yours? I know he stonewalls me at every turn, but I’d have thought you’d get better treatment.”

  “He’s too preoccupied with his own quest to help with someone else’s.”

  Megan pursed her lips. “You could read it that way. But don’t you think he’s been even more secretive than usual since we moved into the Caves?”

  Susannah gave an uneasy shrug. “I’ve hardly seen him since then. Except to ask what the words for ‘doctor’ and ‘hospital’ are. He says he doesn’t know.”

  “I’m sure your request has been conveyed. They’ll com
e to you when they’re ready. It’s often like this with a First Contact—takes time for things to open up.”

  Susannah wrapped her arms around her knees, hardly consoled, and sighed again. “What are you up to?”

  Megan sorted through a handful of photos, laid a few out on the notebook and moved her oil lamp in closer. “Been trying to put these pix of the entry friezes into some kind of order.”

  “Chronological?”

  Megan shook her head. “Don’t know enough yet to do that. I’m trying to sort according to reappearing themes and characters. It’s unenlightening so far, but I figure you gotta start somewhere.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, look who’s here.”

  Stavros slipped in at the entrance and padded barefoot across the mats to crouch by the fire. He gave Susannah a quick smile that tried to look offhand, then blinked darkly at Megan. He held a metal ship’s wrench in one hand and a complication of ceramic tubing in the other. He wore a ship’s-issue shirt over his Sawl tunic and baggy Sawl pants. The shirt and his fingers were black with grease. “Any sign of McPherson?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” replied Megan as she ladled stew into a clay bowl. “You better not let the Commander see you using that shirt as a rag.”

  Stavros gathered his shirttail and wiped at the threaded end of the tubing. “Ron promised she’d heIp me with this.”

  “What is it?” Susannah asked.

  “Faucet.” He pointed into the darkness by the doorway. Thick ceramic pipes hung by new leather fittings bolted to the rock wall. “That’s what that stuffs all about. The guildsmen don’t like to set plumbing before a living space is finished, but they’re making an exception in our case.” Stavros had kept the secret of the Baths as he had promised, but had managed to obtain for his colleagues the same more primitive gravity-fed cold-water system that served every Sawl domestic space. He held his handful up to the lamplight. “See how clean the cast is’? Virtually seamless. The Sawls have a genius for ceramics. You couldn’t find workmanship like this anywhere on Earth! The pipes along the wall are sealed off now, but when I attach this, it’ll break the seal and we’ll have running water!”