Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  Ay’r had already picked up much of what P’al now told him from clues around him: the people at the inn, the peat cutters’ conversations, the status of Dr. Seppi. Now he asked, “Then the Gods – whoever they are – haven’t been as instrumental on Pelagia as we had thought before?”

  “Except,” P’al said, “that no calendars which reach beyond ten generations exist among the Boglanders. Recall, Ser Kerry, how when ’Dward first told us the Myth of the Seven Brothers, how he said it happened ten generations ago. That would mean only about three hundred Pelagian years ago. We took that to be an inability to count years beyond a certain point. Yet nowhere on this continent, among any of the peoples, are there calendars predating those ten generations.”

  “How can that be?” Ay’r asked. “We know this bowl must have been formed thousands of local years ago.”

  “I think the Gods brought calendars, perhaps even the current language. The market traders write a sort of primitive hieroglyphics, but their numbers are completely developed and are close indeed to the Metro.-Terran ‘Asian’ system of numbering. One horizontal line equals one, two equal two, et cetera.”

  “You’re suggesting,” Ay’r said, “that the catastrophe occurred as recently as three hundred years ago!”

  “No, I’m suggesting that there has been more than one catastrophe, and they have become historically confused. Remember how during her ocean floor survey, Mer Clark found indications of drowned river valleys and mountain ranges, and that she reported sonar readings which suggested that beneath the ocean’s silt lay even more deeply buried but similar ecological formations? The prevalence of enormous peat bogs here suggests that this bowl we are in was scooped out in one ancient catastrophe and eventually seeded. It filled with grasses, which sank slowly over centuries to form the bog. A second catastrophe burned the surrounding plain, charred the surface of the bog, and allowed an entire new growth of grasses and grains. Perhaps it was only then that the exiled people arrived to settle here. Or perhaps not until after a third catastrophe.”

  P’al continued, “When the Aldebaran Five seeded this planet, they could never have known this, nor how difficult it would be for their Seedlings to survive here. Yet look at them! Their cities, their culture! This might be one of the strongest Hume races to ever exist. The Metro.-Terrans upon which our entire galactic civilization is based required twenty times as many years to reach this level of civilization.”

  “And as soon as they did,” Ay’r said, “it was only a few centuries until they burst into the stars.”

  “Then think how quickly this race will move,” P’al said. “I wonder if the Matriarchy is ready for Pelagia.”

  Ay’r wanted to say to him, “The Matriarchy is already dead, according to Alli Clark,” but he held his tongue. He would watch the two of them together, make certain that someone – ’Harles, possibly – was always at Alli’s side, to keep them from confabbing until he knew more about this mission and what it really meant.

  Once again, Ay’r was awakened in the middle of the night. This time he was sure that it was P’al and that he was leaving his single bed. Slowly, Ay’r disentangled ’Dward’s limbs, which once more had been thrown over his body. Up, he pulled on boots and garments and crept out the door. The corridor was lighted by one guttering lamp, and through the upper slits, what passed for the depth of night almost blackened the sky.

  Earlier that evening, at dinner, with P’al, Oudma, and, for a change, ’Harles, the innkeeper’s wife had come by their table and once more sashayed around. Once more P’al had been the object of her attempts at seductiveness. Ay’r hadn’t been the only one to notice his usually rigid companion talking back to her, as though expressing willingness to flirt or, who knew, even more. Ay’r had to admit he didn’t know enough about P’al’s personal life to be able to say whether or not he had been at all serious with the Boglander woman. After all, while P’al was clearly an MC Official of some rank, that rank was, after all this time, still in question. Or rather newly called into question. Since Alli Clark had left the Fast, P’al was clearly running things. In fact, he might have been running things all along. That fact and the opacity of their dialogue on any substantial issue so far made P’al far suspect to Ay’r.

  Even so, he was prepared to follow P’al down the corridor, even if it meant that P’al was merely meeting the innkeeper’s wife for an prearranged tryst.

  If so, it was out of doors. A pet beetle that guarded the entry skittered away at Ay’r’s approach. So quickly, it must clearly be awake; P’al must have already gone out the door.

  The night air was unusually thick, and Ay’r quickly put on his upper garment to ward off the dampness. He saw what he thought was P’al or his shadow moving along a far wall of the street and quickly, quietly followed him. After passing several dwellings, P’al dropped out of sight.

  The spot where he’d vanished turned out to be the embankment of one of the narrow canals that riddled the entire area. Ay’r dropped over the side and along the slippery furze, seeing his companion’s dark figure out beyond the dwellings, moving toward grain fields.

  When P’al finally stopped at the nearest stand of small-leaved hedges, Ay’r also stopped, although still a good distance away. When P’al pushed his way into the hedge, Ay’r sped as quietly as he could until he reached the hedge. Although close to the village, this area seemed already far away because of its isolation in the fields. Overhead the canopy of the sky now seemed brighter at some points, and Ay’r wondered if the light might be from the larger moon they had seen from orbit inside the Fast. Nowhere else on Pelagia had moonlight been visible, and the Drylanders seemed to know nothing of their astronomical surroundings. A line from some forgotten Metro.-Terran poet went through Ay’r’s mind: “Ill-met by moonlight, fair Titania,” but he couldn’t identify it. He thought, this is the perfect place for an assignation.

  He moved aside a few hedge leaves gently, half expecting to see P’al and the innkeeper’s wife coupling within the hedge’s protection, but instead he made out the dull shine of a T-pod. One of their own T-pods. Closed. And within it, P’al, leaning back in the netting, his eyes closed, his wrist connection secured.

  Ay’r pulled back, letting the leaves close on the scene. In the travails and many incidents of their journey, Ay’r had completely forgotten about the T-pods. Or at least he had forgotten the fact that they could be called. He should have known that P’al would stay in contact with the Fast, have the T-pod follow him. He might have been calling it every night – every night he could get away.

  Anger welled up inside Ay’r and he quickly pushed it down again. Yes, P’al had made a mockery of all they had undergone so far. It was natural to be irate about that. But, more important, what was P’al actually doing here? He hadn’t merely returned to the pod for more comfortable sleeping. No sense having the wrist connection on if that were the case. Was he reporting in on what he had seen during the day? Perhaps. He wouldn’t be able to report directly back to the MC due to the time distortion they had encountered by coming to the Far Outer Arm. Yes, that must be it.

  Even so, as Ay’r trod back along the embankment, trying to keep his physical balance, he could feel his emotional imbalance. He was still angry at P’al, probably had been for days without being aware of it. An impractical emotion. He would do best to rid himself of it, if only P’al didn’t seem to be obviously going out of his way to induce it. His twisted evasions, his obvious prevarications. That little speech today as though saying, “Look, I can be as good a Species Ethnologist as you are.” The constant infuriating things P’al always did and said. The way he would silence Ay’r as though what he was about to say was some MC secret, instead of a simple statement of biological or geographic fact anyone with eyes could see for himself. His entire air of mystery. Coming and going without a word to anyone, almost as though he were doing it on purpose. Better the irritating Alli Clark than all this tomfoolery. At least Ay’r knew where she had been at every moment.r />
  He made his way back to the inn and only upon arriving wondered if the door was open or if it locked from within. The latter, it turned out. He should have known. It was ridiculous to remain out here. He was soaked through to his skin already; even under the best cover he could find from the inn’s narrow overhead, he would be a huddled freezing mess by morning.

  He found his and ’Dward’s room and threw a handful of wet gravel into the high windows. Naturally, ’Dward didn’t answer. He slept so deeply. Perhaps ’Harles, in the next room.

  Ay’r’s tossed gravel brought someone to the door that gave onto the bedroom corridor – not ’Harles, but Oudma.

  “What are you doing out there?” she asked as he stepped in.

  “I thought I heard someone lurking about and locked myself out.”

  She insisted he come into the inn’s main room and sit near the dying peat fire. Insisted he take off his soaked shirt, too, and hang it up to dry. Oudma had noticed her surroundings and found her way about the inn easily, even in the very limited light. She obtained a drink of mead for him. In a few minutes, he was snug and comfortable once more. Oudma joined him at the fire.

  “Father finally sleeps at the inn,” she said in a quiet voice. “So your companion must be a great deal recovered. You noticed that I had a laugh at my brother’s expense about it. You don’t think I was being cruel to ’Dward, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Monosilla youths call me cruel. Cold. Indifferent,” she went on.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Ay’r said.

  “Perhaps because you, fair stranger, are even colder and more indifferent than I am. Around you, I feel like an Arach which has stung itself.”

  The sudden tremor and hollowness in her voice made Ay’r turn to look more closely at Oudma, half hidden in the fire’s glow.

  “I mean nothing by it,” he said by way of apology.

  “You mean nothing by anything,” she retorted quietly. “Nothing to me. Nothing to any of us. At first I thought it was ’Dward you wanted. Though you sleep at his side at night, I know now that’s not so.”

  “Early on, you warned me to respect his virtue.”

  “As long as he withheld it. Or as long I did. Alli is not your bond-mate. You told me so. But I’ve seen it for myself. Nor is P’al. You told me you didn’t know your companions very well yourself before your travels. I now believe that. I didn’t need the Truth-Sayer’s omens to know you were important where you came from, and I didn’t need to hear your attempts at lies to know that you come from very far away. Yet one thing surprises me, Ay’r, and I’m not easily surprised: the fact that instead of becoming more familiar, you are grown stranger to us now than you were the day you arrived.”

  Ay’r felt chastened by her words, all of them true.

  “You want to know who I am?” he asked.

  “I would like to know, but not in the way you think. Not where you come from or what purpose you have or why these people serve you. No! I want to know … well, for instance, that night when you told me you were an orphan. That I believed. And I who have been so well loved by mother, father, brothers, I felt compassion for you then. And I felt close to you. But now …”

  Her words touched him.

  “What you ask for, Oudma, I can’t give you. Not because I won’t. I can’t! Until a short time ago, I thought I knew myself and what my life was. Now, I find everything about myself a mystery to myself. Hints and clues surround me, but I can make no sense of them. Especially since they suggest that, for some reason I cannot for the life of me fathom, I am somehow more than I ever thought I was, that I have some larger purpose, that I fit as the key piece into a puzzle whose design I can’t even see fully. Lately I am forced to question everything. That keeps me occupied all the time. That’s why I seem cold and indifferent. That’s also why I’m searching for my father, hoping that should I find him he will tell me, or somehow through him I’ll discover the meaning of all this.” Ay’r hesitated, then thought: Why not say it all? “I have no bond-mate. Male or female. Once … a long time ago … but that was being children together.”

  “You have again opened your heart to me, Ay’r, which I realize is difficult for you. Now I’ll open mine. Let it lead where it may. No longer can I restrain it. Another of the infant’s omens has come to pass. I care for you like no other I’ve met. I want to be wife, mother, lover, sister, everyone to you, Ay’r. I know it should not be, and in my deepest being, I know that should it come to pass that we were bonded, it would not last.”

  Ay’r was glad for the dull firelight. He felt his face flush deep red. His entire body seem to lift and glow. Only once before had he received a declaration of love, and that, as he had told her before, was from another child.

  “I won’t pretend to understand all you’ve said, although I feel its sincerity,” Ay’r said finally, when silence would no longer do. “But I will say this equally truly: You are unlike any woman I’ve ever met, Oudma, and of all women I’ve ever met, the one most easy to be with, to talk to – you are most congenial to me.”

  It was her turn to be surprised.

  “Under circumstances other than these, I would be honored to be your bond-mate,” he added.

  She was about to reply when they heard sounds at the inn’s entry – P’al returning. He mustn’t see Ay’r awake or suspect anything. But it was too late to return to the sleep chamber. And if P’al and Oudma saw each other now, he might ask her and untangle Ay’r’s obvious lie about why he had been locked out.

  “Hush!” Ay’r said, then moved out of the dull firelight. “Get down!” He half pulled, half pushed Oudma down next to him, out of the line of sight from the entry.

  She lay inches away from him, listening to P’al enter, look about the inn, evidently not see them among the pillows, then go on through the corridor to his chamber.

  “Are you so concerned for my reputation?” she asked, amused.

  “Aren’t you?”

  All amusement was gone from her face. “I already told you, Ay’r.”

  They faced each other now. Very close, her hair was upon his bare skin.

  “If you’d like, you may kiss me now,” he said.

  “May I indeed!” Oudma began to get up, but he held her down.

  “I don’t know your ways of courting,” he said. “Where I come from, women take what they want of males. Once you begin, I’ll know what to do.”

  “I suppose I should be grateful for that,” she said, amused again, but she brushed her hair back from her face and kissed him lightly.

  “Touch my body,” he insisted. “Here” – showing her – “like that. And” – sliding off his lower garment – “yes, like that. Go on. Don’t hesitate. Consider my body yours to do with as you wish.”

  As they continued to embrace and Oudma’s hands became more confident, more probing, Ay’r kept up this talk: “Where I’m from, women brag about their male conquests. They boast of their finesse and thoroughness in lovemaking, and how they leave males weak and yet pleading for more.”

  At first shy, hesitant, unsure, Oudma followed his words, letting him guide her hands and mouth, released now by her revelation and the ease with which he allowed her to fulfill some of her desires, aroused too that they were hidden, possibly discoverable by others, and, Ay’r could tell, even more aroused that although they lay side by side, equals, yet he was naked and she was not, he was passive, she active.

  As he’d predicted, with her fascination in him, his own excitement slowly began to gather force. Finally Ay’r turned toward Oudma and lifted her head and pulled her face to face again, and pushed off her night garment.

  Only once in their lovemaking did he stop for a second to ponder how and if this also fit into the great pattern that had begun to reveal itself so ambiguously yet so omnipresently in his life, but Oudma instantly pulled him back into the complete oblivion of their mutually constructed sensual world, and all questions were forgotten, all doubts gone.

&nb
sp; On the second day of the caravan’s trek, the land began to soften. Toward night, as they gathered in a caravansary, the baked earth had given way to loose soil and even scrubby, sere-looking lichen growth.

  They followed the New River, which never regained its depth or strength of current after leaving Bogland. By the following morning, the river had spread across a greater, flatter area and was so shallow at points that Ay’r could see rocks and silt beneath its waters. A primitive agriculture had grown up alongside its banks, farmers using basic leverage irrigation that lifted both water and wet soil to form a narrow strip of fertility on both sides of the river.

  The New River had begun to silt up considerably, and when they stopped for their afternoon meal, their camping spot was upon a hillock below which could be seen the confluence of the Old and New Rivers, the yellow current of the former and the brown stream of the latter moving alongside each other at different speeds for a kilometer before merging.

  River traffic increased considerably, most of it flatboats of some girth, which they were told came from the Old River cities.

  By nightfall, when they once again gathered for sleep and talk, more than half the guests wore the distinctive woven cloth and metal-edged garments of the Old River lands, and though Boglanders and they traded, they kept their distance and slept apart.

  The Delta itself began unexpectedly, a narrow triangle of indistinguishable farmland dividing the now wide and coursing current. But it soon subdivided so often that the travelers were forced to move their wagons and Colleys onto great flatbed boats, and their direction was thereafter placed in the hands of a steersman. The landscape around them had already become thick with vegetation, most of it varieties of what Ay’r had seen in Monosilla Valley and in Bogland. But the grasses were shorter and sturdier here, the irrigation terraces neatly triangular, and instead of small-leaved hedges, a stunted version of the tall funguslike trees and succulent bushes and even of the lichenlike grass they’d seen in the mountains reappeared in abundance.