Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  As the bridge reached the ground, they entered a courtyard surrounded by spiral turrets rimmed with gold. The walls were full of chipped stone and moldering ornaments, but their stature remained impressive. At one end of the courtyard stood a large fountain walled in by weathered blocks of stone, some of which had tumbled out of place. The fountain was carved into a giant snake which reared its head and bared its fangs. Water trickled below, marking a muddy trail.

  “The inscriptions,” Raincloud remembered.

  Iras looked over. “The what?”

  “Inside the temple, it’s full of inscriptions. I want to see them.” She might never get another chance.

  Zheron overheard her, and he needed little convincing to herd the group into the temple.

  Inside, there was little heat, and the stone walls threw back their voices cheerlessly. But the colored inscriptions brought the walls to life. They depicted a vastly more complex version of the myth of Azhragh and Mirhiah than the one Raincloud had seen on the screen at Zheron’s legation the year before. Mirhiah, the goddess of earth and sky, was a giant figure whose breasts were mountains and whose breath was the south wind. The figure of Azhragh was smaller, almost childlike, for all that he stood upon her carving the planet out of her belly.

  “What’s it about?” asked Iras wonderingly.

  “It’s their creation myth, the early version,” Raincloud explained. “The goddess Mirhiah was a giant at first; but in later retellings, she dwindles down to nothing, while her child-consort Azhragh becomes a towering warrior.” Such a common pattern, in non-Clicker mythologies. A young people valued fertile women, whereas older, crowded societies needed warriors to kill off each other’s excess progeny. That was what Rhun had taught; Rhun the Fool…A wave of sadness overcame her, and tears brimmed in her eyes.

  “Does it tell it all, here?” asked Iras, pointing to the columns of script.

  “Yes; let’s see, here it starts.” Tracing the wall with her hand, Raincloud translated the ancient script haltingly, oblivious to the rest of the party who were following Zheron’s rather standard tour-guide lecture. She and Iras were completely absorbed, when Dhesra cleared his throat, just by her shoulder. “Time to move on,” he muttered.

  “Yes, just a minute.” Raincloud was determined to puzzle out this one part about the people-seeds, how their roots burrowed into the entrails of Mirhiah.

  “Zheron says, ‘Move on,’” Dhesra insisted. “There are plenty of other monuments to look at.”

  Reluctantly she tore herself away. The others were just disappearing outside, and she hurried to catch up. Fortunately Blueskywind remained fast asleep in her snug leather cocoon, bound securely below her mother’s chest; she slept all the better for Raincloud’s jostling.

  As they emerged, the sun caught their eyes and they blinked, readjusting to the light. They seemed to have come out a different way than they had gone in, for they faced a narrow street that wound tortuously between walls of blackened stone. The paving stones at her feet were large and rounded, and Raincloud’s feet slipped in between them. Dhesra and another man strode ahead briskly, their watchful eyes darting to the sides, their gaze lingering occasionally at the dark slit of a window above in the jagged wall.

  It was then that her head turned to water, as if she had been stunned. She felt her knees buckle under, and she slipped to the street where the hard stones sent pain shooting up her arms. With her head lowered, she began to recover her wits.

  Someone grabbed her arms from behind and jerked her up to stand, muttering something unintelligible in Urulite. She felt the sting of a blade jabbing up her lower back from the right, and her assailant’s left arm locked across her neck, his elbow brushing above her baby’s head.

  “Goddess,” she whispered hoarsely. With a bend at the knees, her left foot stepped forward. Simultaneously her left arm reached behind her back, caught the knife-wielding hand and continued its thrust—into thin air, as her body was no longer there.

  The attacker’s left arm fell away from her neck. Raincloud swung his knife hand wide to her right, hoping to throw him, but he slipped away. Her back stung with pain; the knife must have done some damage.

  As she rose, another man came running at her, his knife thrusting down to her face. Prepared this time, she raised her left arm to meet him, shunting his stroke to the left at the precise moment for her to grasp his wrist in her right hand. He pulled the knife back; she obliged him by stepping forward into his side, pushing on his elbow and twisting the knife hand down. At the moment she sensed his balance was lost, she swung him down, releasing him in the direction of his companion. The man cried out as he took a hard fall on the stones, while his companion cursed as he stumbled over him.

  From behind Raincloud heard the steps of a third man running toward her. But now her back was throbbing, as blood trickled beneath her trousers, and it was all she could do to stand; she doubted she could manage another throw.

  Rousing her last strength, she took a few steps forward as if to outrun him, encouraging him to build momentum. Then with a sharp turn to the right, she sank to her knees and fell on her side in a hunched position, her head bent in till her chin touched the baby.

  The man’s foot caught her side, grinding her painfully into the cobblestones, but his upper body rushed onward above her back. There was a thump on the stones and a loud curse.

  The deserted street came alive, as onlookers rushed to see. Two market women helped her up with keening cries, exclaiming over the blood, and the baby, who had woken at last and began to wail.

  “Raincloud?” Iras bent to reach her. They caught each other’s arms and held close.

  “You’re all right?”

  “I think so,” said Iras. “I gave one the ‘Tumbling Rock’ and threw off another one; it happened so fast. We need a servo medic…”

  Zheron’s soldiers were finally hurrying back in force. Two octopods lay sprawled across the cobblestones.

  Then at last Raincloud caught sight of Lord Dhesra, lying in the street. His arm lay back, limp and white, his eyes staring, a pool of blood seeping beneath his head. Rhun had looked like that, the day she found him, his eyes fixed and forever empty…

  For a moment she blacked out. She found herself on her side while one of the women bound her wound with strips of cloth. Somehow she managed to extract Blueskywind from the pouch and put her to her breast. She nursed her there in the street, her gaze fixed on the dead man, a man who only moments before had been vibrant, alert, a member of the living. Now, as Sharers would say, he had sunk to the ocean floor. And, but for the Dark One’s help, Raincloud might have followed.

  Chapter 14

  IN THE LABORATORY ONE OF BLACKBEAR’S MUTANT embryos was completing its third month. All the others had already developed defects and been terminated. But this one still looked normal. He could observe it by low-intensity light scanning, which generated a monochrome holographic image upon the console.

  The embryo, which he would now consider a fetus, had arms and legs and fully distinct digits; its hands extended as if to play a musical instrument. Its eyes faced forward, and its nose was turned up, fully human. In fact, there was little other than human about it that Blackbear could see. Its percentage of chimp and gorilla genetic material, he suspected, was less than half. But it would never reach term.

  As a doctor, Blackbear had seen his share of dead fetuses. He performed terminations routinely at the request of the goddess; it was considered a sign of self-indulgence to bear children less than three years apart. He always felt a certain philosophic sadness about it, although with so many children around it was hard to feel sad for long. He had felt secretly glad when Lynxtail gave her child over to Falcon Soaring; only a year and a half since her previous one, Lynxtail might otherwise not have carried it to term.

  But this was the first time he had actually watched an embryo grow before his eyes from a cell under a microscope into a miniature human a couple of centimeters long, expanded to baby size
on the holostage. And for all its perfection, this one had no future. A “monstrosity,” Pirin would call it. Yet if it were so monstrous, why did they use it to test their longevity genes?

  Around the doorway came Sunflower, leaning in a moping sort of way, his thumb in his mouth.

  “Hi, Sunny. What’s the toybox doing?”

  “No toybox,” Sunflower answered, his voice muffled by his thumb. “I hate the toybox.”

  Blackbear sighed. “What’s the matter?”

  “When is Mother coming home?”

  He wished he could say for sure. Raincloud’s three-day mission would take nearly three weeks local time, and only the first week had gone by. Citizens grumbled that it was irresponsible of Hyen to let all his top Foreign Affairs people go off conferencing for so long. Blackbear missed Raincloud acutely, and wished he had shown less annoyance before she left. He hoped the baby was getting enough milk and attention and was not left to cry just because those foolish Elysians were too busy negotiating. “Mother is coming home in another two weeks, Sunny,” he told him for the fifth or sixth time.

  The child seemed to consider this. Then, as his first question had not received a satisfactory response, he modified it and tried again. “When is Mother coming home today?”

  Blackbear sighed again. “Image out, please,” he called to the console. The fetal image winked out. “Let’s find your sister and go off to the butterfly garden.” It was an hour earlier than they usually met Kal, but he could let the children run. His experiment had reached a point where it could use a bit of stirring around in the subconscious.

  “Hawktalon’s gone visiting with Doggie,” Sunflower told him.

  “Very well, she’ll find us in the garden.”

  So they set off, Sunflower tiptoeing this way and that to collect tumbleweeds from the street. The tumbleweeds had lessened somewhat, since a herbicide had been applied. But with Verid out of town, Sharer negotiations made little progress.

  The anaean garden always had an otherworldly feel to it, with all the little green leaves that magically fluttered off as leafwings. Light filtered cheerily through the trees, and the mooncurved benches gleamed like mother of pearl. There were few visitors, mainly Anaeans, for other Elysians tended to prefer brighter colors.

  They came upon Kal after all, amidst a group of students whose short trains marked their youth. It must be his class, Blackbear guessed. He stopped so as not to interfere, but Sunflower ran ahead. “There he is, Daddy,” Sunflower called. “The teddy bear man is here.”

  Blackbear hurried to catch up and quiet the child. But Kal beckoned with his arm. “Come join us,” he said. “We’re just finishing up anyway.”

  He sat on a mooncurve next to a young man with fine-boned features who grinned appreciatively at Sunflower. This one wore yellow anaeans on his train, instead of the brilliant blue heliconians. Still embarrassed, Blackbear tried to look away from the other students. He had not met their mates, after all. Sunflower was poking the ground with a stick, where something had caught his interest.

  Kal explained, “We have just been considering the nature of the greatest good. Over the last decade we’ve shared a number of texts by authors who touch on this point, most recently a commentator on the third century period essays about The Web. You were saying, Ilian?”

  Blackbear tried to imagine a university course lasting as long as a decade; the medical students could barely stand a semester. Meanwhile Ilian, a young Heliconian goddess, resumed her answer. “This commentator says that our souls are like birds which can find ‘the good’ only as birds fly, that is, by instinct. But what if different souls have different instincts? Some may seek strength, others joy, others mastery.” Ilian had a full head of black hair, which Blackbear would have loved to braid. He missed Raincloud so badly.

  The young Anaean next to Blackbear smiled. “We spent a year on mastery, as I recall. We concluded that all souls seek to be mastered by the good.”

  “Some of us concluded that,” corrected Ilian, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. “I think it’s self-evident that different souls seek different things.”

  Kal asked, “Is the greatest good always that which we seek?”

  A short silence followed. “In the end, yes,” said the young Anaean. “Like a compass needle, it always comes to rest the same; but it may spin around a good deal first.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ilian objected. “If different souls seek different things, yet only one thing is good, then logically, we don’t always seek what is good.”

  A second woman spoke up. “The commentator follows The Web in saying that love is the greatest good. But love has many aspects, some of which are evil.”

  “Yes,” said Kal, “for at times love seems but a cruel diversion from the main business of the universe, which is hatred.”

  “No,” said the young Anaean, “love is the main business of the universe. Love is like the air itself, the place where all butterflies belong. And yet, so few of us have sprouted wings…”

  “All butterflies have wings,” objected Ilian. “The problem is, not all that emerge learn to fly. Most of them get eaten up first. That’s our trouble: so many of us get eaten up by love before we grasp its power.”

  The second woman said, “Perhaps love is a new invention yet, only about a million years old. It requires evolution.”

  Nonsense, thought Blackbear. Even dogs knew enough to long for their masters. But he knew better than to speak.

  Kal said, “Perhaps it would help to define the aspects of love, and distinguish which are good or evil. There is love of one’s family; and love of the Web. There is love between man and woman—”

  Another student exclaimed lightly, “There’s the greatest good; ‘to be a man.’”

  The others laughed as if this were an old joke.

  “Of course,” said Kal, “we are no longer men nor women, only servos of flesh and blood. The question is, What does it mean to be a servo? Whom do we serve?”

  A waiter approached the group and came to Blackbear. “Your house just took a call from Bronze Sky,” it said. “The transfer failed to take, but your caller will try again in half an hour.”

  Blackbear’s heart pounded as he got up. He hoped it was good news; he tried to remember who else was expecting a baby. “Come on, Sunny,” he called. Then he made for the nearest holostage to summon Hawktalon, who appeared as usual with Doggie and their waiter friend Chocolate. Whatever did they spend so much time on, he wondered, although he guessed the waiter’s name gave a clue.

  Hawktalon got home before he did. “Nobody’s called yet, Daddy.”

  “Your caller said half an hour,” the house reminded him. “So sorry the transfer failed; please report my defect. But you know how these interstellar calls are. Why the other day a house down the street took a call from Solaria—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Blackbear impatiently. This house was getting more chatty than ever. In fact, it was more than two hours before the call came through; two hours of restless waiting, while the children scrapped at each other and tossed their toys around the room.

  At last the light filled the holostage, and Nightstorm appeared, her eldest daughter beside her. They both wore plain white trousers, the color of mourning. Someone in the clan must have died.

  “Hello, Blackbear,” said Nightstorm quietly. “I have sad news. You’d better have Raincloud here,” she added.

  “Well,” said Blackbear awkwardly, “she’s not available just now. I’ll let her know.”

  Nightstorm frowned. “Then you’d better fetch your firstborn.”

  The two children were still carrying on back in the bedrooms. Puzzled, Blackbear called Hawktalon to come out to the holostage. They stood together, arm in arm.

  “What happened is that last night Crater Lake turned over.”

  Crater Lake had long been known to harbor deep pockets of saturated carbon dioxide, from a combination of volcanic seepage and spring water. These pockets, trapped beneat
h the cold deep waters, could be released if the warmer upper layers “turned over” with the cooling of autumn. When the gas came up, its density would cause it to flow down the mountain, asphyxiating any creature that breathed. Blackbear’s home village lay just downhill of Crater Lake.

  “Didn’t they keep it monitored?” he said unsteadily.

  “Yes, but their minds were on the forest fires,” Nightstorm told him. “Someone did sound an alarm, but those who awoke of course ran toward the lake.” She paused, then added, “Your brother Three Deer survived.” Three Deer, like Blackbear, had married out of the village.

  He felt unsteady; the room seemed to be turning around. He heard Hawktalon say, “I think you need to sit down, Daddy.”

  Chapter 15

  SOMEHOW BLACKBEAR MANAGED TO GET HIMSELF AND HIS children out of the house and onto a jumpship for Bronze Sky. Their savings did not quite cover the tickets, but Nightstorm promised to send the rest. He had to get home for the funeral of his mother and father, his six brothers and sisters, their goddesses and consorts and children, and more aunts and uncles than he was prepared to count. Over two thousand people had died, nearly all the inhabitants of Crater Town, most of them related to him one way or another.

  The express Fold connections on this well-traveled route cut the trip down to two days local time. He watched the globe of their home world grow out of the void, like a suspended dandelion, its stratosphere tinted permanently by volcanic dust. The dust suspension, plus the planet’s distance from its sun, compensated for the high atmospheric content of carbon dioxide, which otherwise would have trapped enough heat to boil off all life.

  The magnetic tunnel train from Founders City pulled into Caldera Station at midmorning. As the car slowed to a halt, Blackbear still sat in his seat, staring ahead.