In the Distance, and Ahead in Time

by George Zebrowski

  I

  In rooms a third of the way up from the vegetation of the hillside, six people slept, derelicts in need of a dawn to stir them from their troubled sleep …

  He opened his eyes suddenly and saw the light flashing through the windows, flooding the world with a blue-white wash. In a moment the drops were beating against the windows, running like tears down the inclines. The rain would make things grow; summer would last just a little longer. Sadness welled up within him. He started to repeat his name in the way his mother had once spoken it.

  Call him Ishbok, his father had said a long time ago, but his mother had made it sound special. Ishbok, he whispered softly to himself, trying to catch the musical quality of his mother’s voice.

  The others did not waken, and the storm seemed to rage over their stillness. The water washed downward in a river; the thunder walked with the footsteps of a giant. The full force of the storm rode over the valley, holding back the light of sunrise.

  Ishbok looked around at his sleeping companions, at Foler, who also wanted Anneka; at Foler’s younger brother, Thessan, who would never be well; at Anneka sleeping next to her dying parents. The old couple were fading fast, sleeping away most of each day; there was nothing to be done except make them comfortable and bring them what little food they were able to eat. Why could we not have been trees, Ishbok thought, or the stones, which seem able to keep their pride. We are so soft and filled with blood, and a dried sarissa bamboo point is enough to kill us. …

  Foler already spoke as if Anneka belonged to him. His every glance was a challenge. Ishbok was avoiding a fight, hoping that Anneka would say how she felt. Sometimes he felt shamed and angry at her silence. He did not want to fight Foler, even if a fair fight were possible; Thessan would join in like a stupid dog defending his master. The dark-haired older brother’s friendly smile hid the truth—he was always ready to let things happen, as long as they served his wants.

  After Anneka’s mother and father died, Foler would take the daughter. If Ishbok tried to stop it, he would die; if he did nothing, he would live. It was as simple as that. He’s afraid to take her while the old live, Ishbok thought. He’s afraid of their curses. He fears unseen things more than me. He controls Thessan with his own fears. …

  For a moment Ishbok imagined what it would be like to be Thessan. Without Foler, nothing was certain. Foler knew where all the food was to be hunted or found; he kept evil things away at night. Foler had to be obeyed; there was no other way. Foler made him feel good; Foler made him feel safe.

  Thessan was like a faber, except fabers were much more alert; fabers had pride. Ishbok felt sorry for Thessan; but being sorry would not help him, as hatred would not make his brother better.

  Across the room Foler stirred and sat up while prodding Thessan awake. His eyes were watchful, suspicious; but in a moment his gaze became uncaring as he realized that Ishbok would not have waited for wakefulness to kill him. Slowly Foler got to his feet. He knows I couldn’t do it, he’s sure of it.

  “Coward!” Foler threw the word like a stone.

  Anneka woke up, pulling the blanket around her for protection. She sat up and looked at Ishbok. He thought he saw reproach in her expression, but the light was too faint to be sure. There would be no smile or look of sympathy, only the look of resignation. Anneka … Anneka, he said silently, I made none of this, but I love you.

  “Unwind your stringy muscles,” Foler said to him, “we have food to find.”

  The thunder exploded again and water ran in noisy rivulets on the windows. Foler’s face was a grinning skull with caves for eyes.

  Anneka began to braid her long brown hair, her eyes cast downward. She looked up only to glance at the storm outside.

  Ishbok watched her from where he sat on his blanket. His stomach was cold and empty. He shivered, longing for the warm sun and hoping the storm would pass soon; it would make food searching a little easier …

  Anneka’s father woke up, breathing badly and coughing.

  “The old fool should be dead,” Foler said, stretching. Then he held out a hand and helped Thessan stand up.

  Anneka’s mother woke up, wailing about her blindness.

  “Keep her quiet,” Foler said. Ishbok saw a fearful look take hold of Foler’s face. “They should both be dead.”

  “They’ll die, they’ll die,” Thessan chanted, hoping to please his brother. Foler grinned and patted him on the back.

  Suddenly Thessan lumbered across the large room to a window and placed his large palms against the moisture-laden interior surface. He washed his face, chuckling to himself.

  “It’s a dark rainy morning,” Anneka said to her mother, stroking her forehead. Her husband reached over and held her bony hand. The old woman cleared her throat.

  Foler went over to the window and slapped some moisture on his face. Ishbok stumbled to his feet and walked over to a fresh window. He cupped some wetness and put it to his face.

  Foler laughed. “Not much hair to wash on him.”

  Ishbok looked up to see Thessan standing next to him, grinning and running his fingers through his dirty beard.

  Ishbok turned away from him and took a few steps toward the door.

  Anneka tied her braids off with two bits of leather and stood up. “I’m ready,” she said.

  Foler went past Ishbok and turned around in the door. “A strong woman—not for you. With that soft hide of yours, you’d bleed to death from her scratches.”

  Ishbok felt the anger swell in himself, but he looked away from Foler’s eyes.

  “You’re not worth killing,” Foler continued. “One day you’ll break your own neck and save me the trouble. You’re good for picking roots, berries and nuts. Even Anneka can kill an animal for food.” He paused. “Ah, let’s get going!” He turned and went out into the hall and toward the stairs. Ishbok followed, thinking suddenly that he might run up behind Foler and push him to his death; but in the next moment he was flat on his face as Thessan pulled his feet out from behind. Ishbok’s jaw hurt from the impact. Thessan stumbled across him and ran after his brother, laughing.

  Anneka helped him to his feet and walked toward the stairs without a word. Slowly Ishbok followed, feeling no hatred now, only shame and sadness, the coldness in his stomach a heavy weight slowing his steps.

  Foler led them upstream through the center of the valley. Thessan followed close behind him. Anneka walked a dozen paces behind Thessan. Ishbok was last.

  The clouds of morning passed. Anneka’s hair turned a bright red in the sun rising at their back. Ishbok walked slowly, watching her. Despite her clothing from the oldtime, the patched trousers, leather belt, sweater and boots, she seemed gentle marching across the mossy turf next to the stream.

  Morning mists rose from the valley as the sun warmed the Earth. The silence of his own breathing and the steadiness of the stream at his right calmed him. Far ahead to his left the red-coned evergreens sat on the mountainside; around them nestled sugarroot bushes, their leaves and pulpy twigs laden with the sweetness of late summer.

  Slowly Foler was making a circle, which would lead them up into the hills. They would eat the sugarroot, and then there would be enough strength to bring down some game and carry it home. Ishbok licked his lips at the thought of the sugarroot.

  Maybe today they would bring down a hipposaur when it came to drink the stream water and graze on the green moss; maybe today luck would give them enough food for a week’s rest in the city.

  But quickly he remembered that full stomachs and rested muscles would help them forget the need they all had of one another. Foler would want Anneka again; Thessan would be bored and hard to control.

  A jumpingtom raced across Foler’s path. Foler raised his boomerang and let fly, cursing as it missed. He went to get it back. Ishbok heard more cursing.

  “Ishbok, come here!” Foler shouted.

>   Ishbok hurried.

  “It broke on the stone—you’ll have to make a new one. Better make two.”

  Foler was almost friendly.

  If I make too many spares, Ishbok thought, you won’t need me. “I can only work so fast,” he said softly, “and not at all when I’m hungry and afraid.”

  Foler’s dark eyes were scornful. His eyebrows went up and he grinned through his beard. “I’m the best thrower.”

  Foler turned away and continued on the path to the sugarroots. Ishbok followed. Thessan came up behind him and pushed him out of the way to get back near his brother. Ishbok turned his head to see Anneka walking steadily behind him. She did not look up and he turned away to fix his gaze on the red cones ahead.

  As he walked he thought of the stories about the old sicknesses, the war plagues, the fireballs that left heaps of dead, the skeletons in the cities. He had never seen any of these things, but his mother’s vivid tellings lived in his mind. He remembered his father’s look of reproach when he would find her giving such life to the past.

  Those who lived had found each other among the dead, in cities, which stood unharmed, yet were gutted. The survivors knew the value of human life, acting out of necessity, clinging to each other in resignation and acceptance. So it had been for more than two generations. Ishbok’s father and mother had met in the great empty city by the northern lake. From there they had travelled down to the southern ocean, in time for Ishbok to be born in a small stone house near the water. His father had complained that there were few old-time libraries in the smaller southern cities, and that Ishbok would not survive as well in a colder climate.

  But life will be easier here, his mother had said, and we don’t have to go back.

  He’ll have to go back to learn, his father had answered.

  When he is older, he’ll go back well enough …

  One day dark men had come out of the swamp to spear his father to a gnarly dwarf tree and carry his mother away like a four-footed animal hanging from a stick, her long black hair dragging on the ground …

  Ishbok remembered the sick feeling in his stomach as he had been picked up and hurled down from a cliff into the sea. But his small body had missed the rocks. His cheek touched bottom gently and he pushed himself upward with his hands. He swam as he had been taught and the waves washed him ashore with only a few cuts from the rocks. He remembered his own blood on the sand when he had gotten up hours later, his tears burned away by the hot sun.

  The little house was empty when he returned. In the silence of sea and memory he heard again his father’s wish that he should learn about the world before life came to an end. When he looked at the body pinned to the tree, he imagined that his father’s life had become joined to the twisted trunk, his flesh drinking now the moisture brought up by the tree’s deeply searching roots.

  Traveling north, he had searched for the libraries, which held the books he knew how to read. He could not read all the languages brought to his world, Cleopatra, by the colonists from Earth, but he could always understand his own, and much of two others. The libraries spoke about one another, sending him amongst themselves as would jealous guardians who share a favorite child. The old buildings gave him shelter and knowledge—the knowledge of stored foods and where to find them. In winter the food enabled him to stay in one place as he studied. Once he had been forced to burn a few of the books he could not read to keep warm, telling himself that he would never find anyone who could tell him what they were about. Besides, the books spoke of other kinds of books, known things stored in machines, which gave knowledge for the asking; he was sure there was more than one copy of the volumes he had burned.

  In the empty cities he had come upon small bands of men and women. Sometimes they would accept him, with suspicion; he would stay for a time, to leave or to be driven off sooner or later.

  He had come into Anneka’s group five summers ago. Her parents could still walk then. Foler and Thessan had been friendly, especially after finding out he could make knives, spear points and boomerangs—and keep the weapons sharper than they had ever known. But no matter how long Foler watched him work the old metal on the stream stones, he could not match Ishbok’s skill. One day Thessan had tried sharpening to please his brother. Foler had beaten him for ruining two knives, but Ishbok had saved the edges.

  So little of what he had learned in the libraries could be turned into useful things. Knowledge had made him feel pity, and the need for another kind of learning, barely glimpsed, one which might again create the realities of the old time.

  Ishbok turned to look back at the city, set like a blue gem in the mossy mountain, entranceways hidden in foliage. The towering place was always a reminder of exile from a better past. The structure soared upward, a relic of powers he could not summon; the sight gave him hope, at the same time making him feel small. He felt anger in his humiliation, and turned quickly to follow Foler and Thessan before Anneka caught up to him.

  Foler and Thessan were on their knees eating leaves from the sugarroot bushes. Ishbok sat down under a red-coned evergreen and picked a leaf from the nearest bush. Anneka was only a few paces behind him. She came up past him and sat down near the brothers without looking at him.

  Ishbok swallowed the sweet juice and spit out the pulp. His stomach rumbled.

  “Fabers!” Foler whispered loudly.

  They all stood up and turned to look where he was pointing. On the angle of the mountainside, shapes stood among the evergreens, scaly manlike forms with long necks and slender tails.

  Receding clouds let sunlight fall between the trees, scattering patches of bluish yellow on mossy rocks and soft Earth. Somewhere a tree spook cried out and was still, reminding Ishbok of the colorfully plumed jack-dandies he had known as a child. In the silence of sun and shadow, the fabers began to move, stepping softly, surely, as if the evergreens had sprouted legs.

  As the saurians moved in and out of sunlight, Ishbok saw the v-shaped mouths of the closest ones, set in the familiar grin; the golden eyes were wide under ridges, the skullcap crests suggesting the helmets of old time warriors from other times, other worlds.

  But these fabers would not fight; they moved too slowly. These were not like the changed ones who had once fought for men. These were the dying ones, easy to kill and eat, yet they seemed to mock their destroyers.

  Foler loosed his remaining good boomerang. It flew between the trees like a diving cinnamon bat and felled the forward faber. The creature tumbled down the incline while its companions stopped and switched their tails in agitation.

  “Better than pig,” Thessan said as he stopped the body’s roll with his foot.

  “We can cut it up and go home,” Foler said.

  Ishbok watched the single slit nostril of the dying faber as it drew in air in hungry rasps. The mouth was open, revealing the nearly human teeth set in a delicate jaw.

  Thessan picked up a large rock and caved in the skull. When he stepped back the golden eyes were closed. The claw-tipped hands unclenched.

  Ishbok looked up the mountainside, but the rest of the fabers were gone, leaving a mournful silence for the one who had died.

  “Lucky it was not a killer pack,” Foler said. He knelt down with Anneka and his brother. Together they began to cut up the body with their knives, selecting the best portions.

  “We’ll cut some hide to carry the meat in,” Foler said.

  Ishbok’s stomach rumbled again, loudly enough to be heard. Foler laughed at the sound and continued cutting.

  My knives, Ishbok thought. For Anneka the flesh meant a few days of life for her parents, and a more comfortable dying. Ishbok turned away as Thessan started to chew a piece of uncooked flesh.

  “Here,” Foler said. Ishbok turned to receive a wrapped cut of meat. “You carry one if you want to eat.” For Anneka’s sake, he told himself. “One day we’ll find their eggs,” Foler added
.

  A wind came up as the sun neared noon. It rushed through the trees like an angry thing. Red cones fell as if they were solid drops of blood. Ishbok thought that at any moment the wind would cry out in a shriek above its own fearful whispering.

  As they marched back toward the city, Ishbok knew that he would eat the faber’s meat with the others. His portion was not very heavy, but they were all weak from the morning’s march; the meat held them together with its promise of rest. He would eat the meat as long as it was cooked, however badly.

  Across the valley the city was a mirrored sheet of golden sunlight set against the hills, rising upward to a spear point in a blue sky. Ishbok wondered as he walked behind Foler and Thessan and Anneka. He tried to imagine all the things that he would never know—the skills which enabled men to live longer, heal their wounds, reach beyond the world.

  He remembered reading about the giant city, which sat on Charmian, Moon-sister of the world; beings like himself had made a place for themselves there also. Others had travelled through the space between worlds, perhaps even to other stars.

  Behind the city’s spear point there was a large flat place where flying machines had once come to land, leaving off travellers and picking up new ones. He had seen a picture in a book. Long ago he had promised himself that he would climb up there, if he ever found the city. From that place, he had imagined, he would see more than anyone had seen in a long time.

  Ishbok lay on his blankets in the corner of the room. Thessan was urinating on the small fire near the open window. The smell of burnt meat was still strong, despite the cool evening air drafting from the window through the door into the corridor. Anneka was with her parents, speaking softly to them. Foler lay on his blankets in the corner opposite from Ishbok. Anneka’s parents had not been able to eat much. Half of the carcass was still uncooked.

  “Fire’s out,” Thessan said.

  The shadows of sunset seemed almost purple; the windows were panels of airy blue. Ishbok closed his eyes and saw the faber’s face in the moment before the wise golden eyes had closed.