The Wave and the Flame

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Susannah giggled. Why are all indescribable tastes said to be just like chicken?

  The guildsmen in the mushroom caves had warmed to her interest in their craft. Her new wicker sample basket overflowed with multicolored fungi. She chose a morel-like cone, fished a scalpel out of her medikit and sliced the fungus neatly in half. She laid the rough-skinned sections out on her sketchbook and settled in to draw.

  Meanwhile, she let her mind sift through possible explanations for the amazing variety. There was no such range of dark-growing edible fungi on Earth or any planet that she knew of. It could be an evolutionary response to the long Fiixian night, or it could be that the Sawls were unsurpassed hybridists. The same questions could be asked about the several dozen breeds of fowl, or the various small mammals that were raised for food in the Caves, or the schools of pale slow-moving fish bred in unlit pools at the back of the stable level.

  Astonishing, really, she thought, as she outlined a warty cone shape on the page.

  A soft cough came from somewhere near the entryway. Susannah’s hand jerked, marring the precision of her curve. Though he carried no light, his gentle stoop identified him. She wondered how long he had been standing there in the shadows.

  “Please come in,” she said, laying aside her pencil.

  The healer nodded, and like a teacher observing a pupil’s homework, he came to look over her shoulder at her sketchbook. He murmured something that sounded like approval, then picked up her pencil, studied it, set it down, felt the texture of the paper, tested its thickness between a slim thumb and forefinger. Then he reached for the scalpel.

  This he held up to the lamplight, let the high flame flash on the mirrored stainless steel. As Susannah watched anxiously, he laid his thumb to the blade with professional caution. She saw knowledge in his eyes, and interest, but nothing like envy. He clearly understood what he held in his hand.

  He kept the scalpel with him as he settled on the matting a few paces in front of her. He held it up delicately by both ends, his elbows propped up on his knees, and regarded her over its shining length.

  “Kho jeu Ogo Dul-ni, Ghirra min,” he offered gravely.

  An introduction. Susannah knew enough Sawlish to understand that. His name was Ghirra, then, and there was an unusual prefix, “Ogo Dul.” The Sawls called their cave city DulElesi, and each took the name as an accepted prefix to their own. Ghirra then either followed a different custom or was from somewhere else.

  Somewhere else? The thought of other settlements hadn’t yet occurred to her. But why not? Of course there must be other settlements.

  Thinking about it, she decided “Ogo Dul” had a familiar ring to it after all. She was sure the Master Ranger Aguidran used a prefix something like that. She had just never thought to wonder about it before.

  “Kho jeu James-ni, Susannah, min.” she returned. It didn’t quite correspond but she felt she couldn’t very well give her last name as “Earth.” She knew her accent was atrocious, but Ghirra’s polite nod showed that he had understood perfectly.

  “Zuzhanna.” he repeated with satisfaction.

  Susannah had judged her own assessment of the Sawls to be the most generous of all her colleagues, even Stavros, who she thought tended to glorify their primitive purity way beyond what was flattering. But now she sensed that she had better do some quick reassessing, or this intelligent Sawl was going to be two steps ahead of her all the way and would tire eventually of the insult of waiting for her lower expectations to catch up with the reality. She wished they could somehow dispense with the usual introductory formalities, which would be awkward anyway, without a common language between them. She wished Stavros there and then was glad he was not.

  Because maybe this Ghirra and I do have a language in common…

  On impulse, she grabbed up her medikit and set it open on the floor in front of him. Ghirra looked at it, looked at her, then began to lift instruments out one by one and lay them in a careful row along the matting.

  How badly will this sit with Stav’s noninterference policies? Susannah mused, with only mild regret.

  19

  The WeaverHall was low and wide and divided into corridors by four rows of sturdy wooden looms. Megan counted ten in each row. Their workings and construction were similar to old Terran looms, though not as refined (she was obscurely happy to note) as the great bronze looms her friends the Min Kodeh had developed.

  Large bowled lamps hung between each work station. As they followed Tyril between the rows, Weng pointed out that every single loom was in use. The weavers chatted and sang, trading jokes and gossip across the rows. The looms clacked and eighty small hands flew back and forth among the colored threads. The noise was deafening, though Megan thought the chatter had dulled just slightly as they entered the cavern.

  Wooden racks along the outside walls sprouted endless fat spools and long looping skeins of fine yam. Bolts of finished cloth lay piled according to color and the weight of the weave. Tyril urged them to feel the smooth texture of the fabric and admire the tight regularity of the threads. She showed them her own loom, where she was working on a length of yellow wool as soft as cashmere. An apprentice in the next station wove with a thicker thread, like a heavy reddish cotton. He glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the Terran women, and the patient journeyman who was showing him how to introduce a second color into the weave rapped his head lightly to return his attention to the work.

  “Did you notice,” Megan whispered to Weng rhetorically, “that they’re only using Lagri’s colors, or am I seeing signs now where there are none?”

  Beyond the ranks of looms, intricately colored hangings curtained off a portion of the hall. Narrow strips of every possible weave, material and color had been sewn together in a giant sampler of the guild’s craft. Tyril led them through a slit in the drape. A long wooden table sat crosswise in the space. Behind it, taut rope netting slung between thick posts supported the several hundred volumes of guild records.

  Tyril gestured the women to a bench at the table, then chose a volume at random. She hauled it down from its woven shelf and laid it open on the table. It looked old but not ancient. Its parchment leaves were caught between stiff leather covers and sewn with a waxed string. The pages were crowded with spiky Sawlish lettering written in many differing hands: names, numbers, unintelligible notations. Tyril flipped over the leaf. The next two pages looked the same. She ran a finger down the lines and stopped near the bottom.

  “Na,” she announced proudly. “O kemma-ip khe.”

  “Her eight-mother,” Megan explained to Weng. “We’ve been working on generational terminologies. All the guilds keep very exact membership records, you see.” She leaned over the page myopically. “DulElesegar-ni-Suri-min,” she read haltingly. Tyril clapped her hands in delighted approval.

  “Suri,” she repeated, nodding. “O kemma-ip.”

  “DulElesegar is an older form of the cave name DulElesi. Eight-mother is a grandmother seven generations removed,” said Megan. “Great-great-great, etc. They record matrilineally within the guilds. The women are encouraged, though not forced, to carry on the mother’s craft. The sons are encouraged to train out in a craft of their choice. Marriages are required to cross guild lines, however. There aren’t many sexual taboos here, but that one is strictly enforced. I guess it helps prevent inbreeding.”

  “Two hundred years,” Weng calculated, then added, “Earth years.”

  “And Earth generations. A generation seems to be a little longer here, in real time.”

  Tyril flipped two more pages, searched and pointed out another entry. The ink on this page had browned slightly but still read strong and clear.

  “O kemma-seph,” she said.

  “Fifteen-mother,” said Megan.

  “Three hundred twenty-five,” offered Weng. “More or less.”

  Tyril left the book open on the table and returned to the shelves for another, older volume. This one was bound between thin planks of dry wood. Its lea
ther lashings creaked as she slowly levered it open. She turned several yellowed pages with extreme care. Her finger hovered over but did not touch an entry that preceded a short list. “O kemma-lef seph-ip khe.”

  “No…” Megan’s eyes widened.

  Tyril nodded emphatically.

  “It seems she’s saying her forty-eighth.”

  “That’s over twelve hundred years,” said Weng with admiration.

  “Not possible. I must be getting the numbers wrong.”

  “Of course its possible,” Weng replied sternly. “I can follow my lineage back nearly that far.”

  Megan stared at her.

  “Well, nine hundred years,” Weng conceded. “Nearly that far.”

  Megan gestured abruptly at the crowded shelves. “But look how many still older books there are!”

  “Yes,” smiled Weng. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  20

  The lantern clinked too loudly as Stavros set it down on the sleeping platform. Am I going to regret this? he wondered.

  He bent low. “Susannah!” he whispered urgently. He leaned closer to her ear. “Susannah!”

  She stirred, deep in sleep. In the lamplight, with dark hair framing her lucent skin, she reminded him of a Caravaggio madonna, at rest but not yet at peace, her lidded eyes mobile with waiting energy. The suddenness of his desire confused him. He nearly reached to smooth a wisp of hair from her cheek, then caught himself abruptly and shook her arm instead. “Susannah!”

  She jolted upright in her sleeping cocoon and blinked at him. “You are in my bedroom,” she remarked with convincing clarity.

  He pulled back on his heels awkwardly. “Hey, mine too. I mean…” He realized with relief that she was not really seeing him. “Susannah, wake up! You have to come with me!”

  Belatedly, her reflexes activated. “Is someone hurt?” she demanded shrilly.

  “Shhh! No. There’s something you’ve got to see, right now! Wake Meg while I get my stuff together.”

  “Stav, it’s… what time is it?”

  “Doesn’t matter-you won’t want to miss this! And it’s important for us to be there.”

  Susannah slumped groggily.

  “Look, Susannah, I know you…” His voice trailed off as she finally came awake enough to really look at him.

  “I what?” He was trying to apologize, she could see that much, but he was too impatient to really work at it. Susannah considered his contagious excitement reward enough, but was interested to see if he could actually make it to the end of his sentence. “I what, Stav?”

  “Never mind. Meet you by the fire.”

  He shot away, leaving her in blackness. Susannah peered sleepily around the canvas partition to watch his lantern bob from sink to firepit. “I hope he’s putting on coffee,” she muttered.

  She unzipped her cocoon and dragged herself across the dark platform as quietly as she could to jostle the sleeping huddle that was usually Megan. She hoped there hadn’t been any unannounced changes in sleeping areas.

  Megan woke quickly. “What is it now?” she grumbled worriedly.

  Susannah tried to look awake. “It’s Stavros. He’s having an event.”

  When they joined him at the firepit, he held out hot mugs to both of them. Susannah smelled shipboard Nescaf. Normally he would have made the bitter Sawlian equivalent and looked down his nose when they refused to share it. She nudged Megan. “He’s trying to be nice to us.”

  “Watch out,” Megan agreed, but she grasped the mug gratefully. “I’ve been looking for you, Ibiá,” she complained after downing a third of her coffee in one long gulp. “Need you to take a look at some of this stuff from the WeaverGuild archives.” She glanced at her chronometer. “I hadn’t counted on five a.m. to be the time for it, but the implications are amazing, really.”

  “Later, later,” he replied.

  “So what’s so all-fired important?”

  Stavros looked smug. “Only the Dance of Origins, that’s all. What you might call the Sawl Genesis.” He kept his voice low but his whole body danced with excitement. “The key to their entire racial history might be found in this one tale-chant!”

  “Whoa, slow down,” said Megan. “Who and where? When is patently obvious.”

  Fidgeting, he leaned on the white plastic cases stacked at his side. “The who is Kav Daven, the Ritual Master. Where is somewhere near the FriezeHall. Liphar’s coming to take us there. The old priest suddenly decided to perform this chant, out of the blue. Liphar’s been working on him for me and finally got him to agree to let me record it.”

  “Behind Ashimmel’s back?” Megan noted. “Congratulations.”

  “And I need both of you there.” Stavros allowed Megan one of his rare half-grins. “To preserve my objectivity, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” returned Megan dryly. “If only to make sure you don’t interpret this ‘Sawl Genesis’ as literally as the Old Testament version has been in the past.”

  “Good. Oh, and there’s another thing,” he added casually. “Our being there will be seen as a sign of support for Lagri.”

  “Is that good?” asked Susannah.

  “At this point, I’d say it was necessary.”

  “Certainly couldn’t hurt,” Megan agreed. “What about Weng and McPherson?”

  “The Kav is a very old man,” said Stavros quickly. “I didn’t want to throw too much at him all at once.”

  Megan nodded speculatively. “Unh-huh.”

  Stavros knelt and busied himself with his cases. “Liphar should be here any minute.”

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” Susannah yawned. “Eight hundred and ninety-nine hours in their day and they still manage to be on time.”

  The slap of leather on stone announced Liphar at the entryway. He trotted up to the firepit. “Khem, Ibi,” he murmured to Stavros. He patted the plastic cases with a proprietary air, then crouched beside Susannah. “Rho khem, Suzhannah.”

  “Khem rho,” she replied, completing the ritual greeting.

  “Not see, you,” he complained. “Keep you alla time uplevel.”

  “That’s for sure,” agreed Megan. “Lucky if we see you for meals the last few days.”

  Susannah smiled. “Doctor’s hours. The Physicians’ Hall is only one level up, Meg. You should come visit sometime.”

  “One level up but all the way at the other end of the cliff.”

  “Nice hot water in Physicians’. Ghirra’s got his own supply somehow.” Susannah sipped her coffee, not noticing the look that Stavros gave her. “You know, I’d forgotten how much I love plain old-fashioned doctoring. Working with Ghirra may turn me into an herbalist yet.”

  “I be alla time with ’Tavros now, you know?” said Liphar proudly.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Like you be with Ghirra.” He let out a huge chuckle. “Easy work. I talk, maybe sing. He listen, Ibi.” The young Sawl’s tongue clicked and his fingers danced through a passable imitation of Stavros intent at his keypad. “Later, maybe, he talk, I listen, ah?”

  “How does Kav Ashimmel feel about this? Aren’t you missing your training?” Susannah studied him carefully for a clue to what he had given up by removing himself from the apparently profitable weather racket. Perhaps he’s still taking bets on the side? But Liphar looked puzzled and Stavros translated for him in a quiet aside. Liphar grinned and waved a dismissive hand. Susannah thought it an oddly Terran gesture.

  “Kav Ashimmel has released him from his guild duties,” Stavros explained. “She’s finally decided she needs someone fluent in Terran as badly as we need to be fluent in Sawl.”

  If the other women heard this as a reproof, neither allowed him the satisfaction of a response. He stood and grasped the handle of the largest case. “Is Kav Daven ready for us, Lifa? Are you sure he understands”—he patted the aggressively white plastic—“about all this?”

  “Ready, yes.” Liphar scooted over to heft the smallest of the equipment cases. With his
arm extended under the weight, the case bumped along the ground, but he refused to be relieved of it.

  Stavros picked up the third and nodded toward the entryway. “Shall we?”

  The MarketHall was quiet. In the lighted shop doorways, Sawls gathered in murmured conversations that fell silent as the Terrans passed and then picked up again with a louder, more directed grumble. For the first time, Susannah began to believe Stavros’s warning about the tenuousness of their welcome in the Caves. The Physicians’ Hall was its own little kingdom, a protected environment isolated by people’s natural aversion to illness, and Ghirra had an apparently inexhaustible curiosity for things Terran.

  What would the Sawls do to us, she wondered, if they finally decided they didn’t want us around?

  Crossing the open plaza, passing by the groups around the well, she felt too many eyes on her. They were not hostile, but the friendly curiosity she had grown used to was definitely gone. She was glad to ascend the long ramp to the FriezeHall, leaving the restless crowd behind.

  Liphar set his case down at the top of the ramp. Gazing about, he let out a peaceful sigh, just as Tyril had done on Susannah’s first visit to the FriezeHall. He let the quiet settle around them for a bit.

  “This is the reverence that draws him to the priesthood,” Susannah murmured to Megan.

  Megan scoffed quietly. “PriestGuild,” she reminded. “Around here, it’s a craft, like weaving or glassmaking or anything else.”

  Liphar picked up the case again. He looked to Stavros. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” nodded the linguist.

  They proceeded down the hall in silence, but for the whisper of their footsteps echoing from wall to wall. The wreckage of the fallen scaffold had been cleared without a trace. The marble floor gleamed.