A good thing that the four days’ travel had rested Alli Clark because the humidity returned, and while it was not yet as oppressive as in the Bogland bowl, it gave every indication of becoming so. If Alli noticed it, she didn’t say a word – she seemed so, well, “abstracted” was the only word Ay’r could think of. During the early days of their trek, she rode atop Colley, her petite body fitted loosely in front of and within ’Harles’s larger one, as he pointed out one thing after another, explaining, answering her questions. Only once did Alli ride with P’al, and once with Ay’r. When he attempted to sound her out about ’Harles – who was clearly “wooing” her – she said merely, “These Seedlings seem far less primitive than we had assumed. Almost Matriarchal in fact.” Then quickly added, “With some glaring lapses, of course.”
Oudma didn’t monopolize Ay’r’s mount; she divided her time equally between him and ’Dward. And while she and Ay’r now spent nights together at each caravansary, by day their relationship was not as obvious, as though each tacitly knew that to do so might cause problems with the others – especially Alli Clark, who seldom kept criticism to herself. But Ay’r found himself thinking she still must be recovering from the Arach poison, as she didn’t say a single snide word, whatever she was thinking, didn’t once snap at ’Harles in the fashion Ay’r and P’al had grown accustomed to, and only once or twice looked at her new companion as though wondering who, exactly, he could be.
As they awakened on board the flatbed boat the fifth morning since leaving Peat Cutters’ Village, they were handed and shown how to use curiously constructed leather nozzles attached by long tubes to leathern tanks of watered air. The purpose of the nozzles became obvious soon enough. Not only was the surrounding landscape far more overgrown, with wild tangles of enormous fungal trees, some connecting high across the waters, and not only did the miasma released from their spores thicken the air so it was difficult to breathe, but it also seemed that their steersman had selected a Delta stream used by refuse scows. Before, behind, and several times on either side of them, giant flatbeds filled to great peaks with rotting vegetable life floated by, and the stench was astonishing.
Ay’r was told that after a day or two, they would be become inured to the odor. Look at the staff on the boats, look at those on either bank of the river, who seemed to be heaping even more of the newly chopped-down stuff upon rafts! It didn’t help that the steersman assured them that every other stream and rivulet of the Delta was also used by the garbage scows or that all of them were headed toward a single destination – the Great Temple itself, which somehow absorbed it all.
But if the travelers’ olfactory senses were disrupted, some of the sights they passed were equally disturbing. An entire Deltan industry had grown up devoted to the cultivation of certain larvae of an insect similar to Eris, or silkworms. The larvae were just large enough to be comfortably held in the gloved hands of Deltan Humes, who used the gluey substance emitted by any sudden motion upon the larvae, sweeping them across wooden frames as though sewing, the gluey substance quickly hardening to make a shimmering, partly transparent material that the travelers were told would become moisture-proof cloth. Manipulated in another way, the larvae released their glue as a liquid which remained more or less liquid and which was used as a sealant and caulking. And when Ay’r heard of and was shown even more uses for the stuff, he looked closely at his own air nozzle and tube and realized that those, too, were composed of it. He didn’t tell the others of his discovery, nor did he remove it from his nose whenever he was above quarters, although he was aware that the odor had become so all-pervasive that it had begun to seep into his clothing, his hair – even the surface of his skin.
That afternoon, the garbage scows vanished suddenly, and the odor abated, although their surroundings remained those of a greatly aged and fetid swamp – trunks of the by now towering fungal trees all but knitted together not far overhead, as though to capture the sheets of miasmic yellow-green mist. Soon the travelers were testing the air and finding it not quite so bad; the nozzles were taken off and slung over their shoulders. When at evening the flatbed stopped at a quay, they were told that the remainder of their trip was overland: they had landed on Trapezoid Isle, the largest and most populated in the Delta.
’Harles had been here before, and he guided the loading of their Colleys and led them along the outskirts of what seemed to be nothing more than an enormously spread-out village, its architecture similar, yet far more basic than what they had seen in Lake Edge, nothing but extended – and Ay’r assumed well-caulked – U-shaped huts.
After about an hour of what seemed to Ay’r like endless meandering along a road no better than any in Monosilla, ’Harles signaled and gestured ahead to a structure. Also in the U-shape hut style, but seemingly quite long, and accompanied by several other similar long huts, all of them with doors and windows, the entire compound dominated by a domed central hut. When the travelers drew closer, Ay’r saw that it was a single structure in the shape of arms radiating from the center. It proved to be their guest residence.
’Harles and Alli went into the circular dome and emerged several minutes later with a small Hume lad who led them to their rooms in one of the spoke huts farthest from the river. The boy wore an outfit made out of the larval cloth, including foot pads and a single-piece hood. He most nearly resembled a comfortably swathed and quite active young mummy. Oddly enough, it looked terribly comfortable, and he raved about its advantages of waterproofing and yet “breathability” to the travelers and told them where they might buy their own. He chattered on about the inn being crowded because of the many travelers who had come for initiation at the Great Temple and how slowly they were being admitted there. He suggested they go at once to reserve their time. He doubted that it would be the following day. After hearing the dialects of the Mountain and Bogland peoples, the boy’s variation of the language wasn’t at all difficult for Ay’r to understand or pick up: sibilants and plosives were stressed in his speech, probably to ensure comprehension of vowel sounds that might otherwise be lost in the sound-deadening humid air of the Delta.
’Harles said he knew attendants at the temple. He would go there immediately and try to use whatever influence they might offer. P’al went with him, avid for a look at the temple. The other four went immediately to their chambers, which proved to be small, almost cell-like in their size and furnishings – wall hooks for clothing, a single cot – and in the way they all opened out to a single large multipurpose room, which was furnished more luxuriously for sitting and dining. Despite their size, the tiny rooms were clean and well sealed against the miasmas, moisture, and odors outside that tended to waft across Trapezoid Isle.
“It is required that we sleep apart,” Oudma told Ay’r and Alli, although they might have figured that out themselves. “Initiation requires it.”
Since they had begun wearing the air nozzles two days before, none of the party had been very communicative with one another, so Ay’r wasn’t surprised that none of them gathered to speak. Alli and Oudma said they were tired and went to their rooms to rest.
’Dward immediately left to go to the domed central section, and to try out the Deltan wrapsuits.
Despite their having been so idle of late, Ay’r also slept. He awakened several hours later, hearing the others talking and eating quietly in the larger room. P’al was describing the Great Temple to the others, although he and ’Harles had gotten only as far as entering the so-called gatehouse there. P’al had seen enough to recognize that the enormous surrounding heaps of rotted garbage provided methane gases that were being collected and used as an energy source.
“For this lighting, for example!” P’al pointed to the thin opaque tubing that completely lined the joints of the chamber’s side walls to its ceiling. “And for outside lighting, as well as stoves and even refrigeration.” He was clearly impressed by this technology, and thought that once it could be contained safely, methane gas and its uses would soon travel to the Bo
gland, to the Old River cities, even up to the Mountains, providing cleaner and superior heating and lighting for all Drylanders.
’Harles had used his connections at the Great Temple to obtain an initiation the following morning. He had also secured visiting time with the Voice & Eyes for the strangers – evidently Alli Clark had suggested it, or P’al.
After the six travelers had dined and drank and talked for hours, comparing sights and other less savory experiences along the way as travelers always do, the others went to sleep, leaving Ay’r and ’Harles in the large room. On purpose, it turned out. Although ’Harles began by stifling a yawn, once he began to pursue his theme, he was his usual alert and intense self.
“My daughter said she would announce no bonding tomorrow. Why?” A blunt-enough question.
“Are all your affairs recorded at the temple?” Ay’r stalled.
“Birth, initiation, bonding, death. Yes. And journeys sometimes, too.”
“Probably because I’m a stranger,” Ay’r said, although he found himself unaccountably upset by hearing it.
“Yet Oudma said she will follow you as though you two were officially bonded,” ’Harles added.
Ay’r was pleased to hear it. “She told you that?”
“Yes.”
Before Ay’r could begin to think what that would entail, how Oudma could begin to fit into his life moving from star system to star system in his avocation as a Species Ethnologist, ’Harles added, “Yet if we are to believe the Truth-Sayer whose several predictions have already come to pass, you have a greater business at the temple than we do, and perhaps all this bonding and initiation will mean little once that is accomplished.”
“I … I have nothing …” Ay’r began.
But ’Harles reached forward and tapped the tiny object the infant Se’er’s nurse had placed around Ay’r’s neck as a reminder. “This binds you to the task.”
Perhaps this object would be useful in getting the Voice & Eyes to tell Ay’r the whereabouts of his father somewhere on Pelagia. However, after hearing what Alli Clark had said about his father, Ay’r had come to nurture even more mixed emotions than before about this possible future encounter. Not only had his father abandoned him, but if the Matriarchy was to be believed, Ay’r hadn’t even been a normal son, but merely an experiment in mammalian reproduction! He could only believe that his father had taken one look at him as an infant and decided the experiment had been a failure – and that, above all, was why Ay’r had been abandoned, and why Ferrex Sanqq’ had vanished from sight, to go into hiding and try again.
“Suddenly I feel bound all about,” Ay’r said candidly, thinking not only of the tiny object, not even of Oudma, but of the importance of their mission.
“Tell me of your companion,” ’Harles said, even more intensely than usual. “She seems very …” He searched for the word.
“Independent?” Ay’r tried, after eliminating the words “arrogant, inflexible, and demanding.”
“Bewildering,” ’Harles said instead. “She told me she is not bonded, yet when I pay her especial attentions, sometimes she appears amused, and at other times she merely stares at me, as though I were a – I don’t know – a Colley!”
“Believe me, ’Harles, she has been more courteous and less abusive to you than to any other male I’ve ever seen her with.”
“Then I will continue to hope!”
“Hope for nothing, ’Harles. Where we come from, Alli Clark is an important woman. She is used to being treated with the greatest respect and to giving little in return.”
’Harles protested, “I know that isn’t completely so, although she has already told me of her great work back home. Still, she rides with me. And though I have presumed little upon her, still she hasn’t rebuffed me.”
Ay’r wanted to know exactly what Alli had told ’Harles about her “home.” She and Ay’r had never decided upon what story of their origin they would tell the Ib’rs as he and P’al had done, but then despite what the two strangers had said, neither ’Dward nor Oudma had believed they came from the North of Dryland. Was it safe to assume that ’Harles didn’t either, and that Alli had – naively, perhaps playfully – told him the truth?
Afore important now, however, was ’Harles’s problem.
“My friend” – Ay’r touched ’Harles’s arm – “in these matters, I can be of no help. Follow your feelings.”
“I’ve already decided upon that course,” ’Harles said. Then he, too, went to bed. Ay’r would spend many hours alone thinking as the others dreamed.
No one had prepared Ay’r for what the Great Temple would actually look like, so he laughed when he first saw it looming through the substantially thick miasmas of methane gas that surrounded it. Laughed and then half choked. Because of the methane, they had all been told to wear the air nozzles with backpacks of more or less fresh air for their visit, and some of it got into Ay’r’s tube.
Architecturally, the Great Temple resembled nothing so much as an ancient, if by now venerable, Metro.-Terran utilities shed: cement-block construction with a granite rock facing. Quite unlike any other edifice on the continent, all of which were far more ecologically designed, and so it was obviously uninhabitable. Over the centuries since the Great Temple had been built, the cement blocks had decayed and crumbled and had been plastered rather hastily and sloppily. The granite facing had been chipped away by time or the acidic atmosphere of the Delta so that it had a great deal more character than originally intended. More so now that multihued lichen had taken over much of its surface, growing so deeply within its pitted interior that it could no longer be removed. Mosses and fungal tree spores had found crannies and niches within the plastered cement blocks where they, too, might take hold. As a result, the simply designed edifice had taken on a sort of accidental deep-jungle glamour.
It might have been more imposing if it hadn’t been built on level ground and remained there, while over time the surrounding Deltan isles had risen with the annual deposits of silt. As a result, pathways had to be scooped out to clear its now belowground-level front and side entrances. The main avenue dipped at first gently past the gatehouse – another dome-shaped hut – then more steeply past embankments on either side of huge fields of rotten refuse dumped there and left to decay to produce the methane gas. Even from the avenue, Ay’r made out transparent panels of what he assumed to be more of the larval material covering the rotting stuff, which he guessed was then collected by tubes and fed into the Great Temple’s core, doubtless to replace its original energy source.
Their appointment had been postponed from morning to afternoon, and the Ib’r family went a half hour before the three strangers for their initiation. But ’Harles, Oudma, and ’Dward awaited them inside the temple itself, at the top of the broad, slow-moving conveyance stairway up to the main room. All three Ib’rs seemed subdued, as befitted the place, and Ay’r wondered whether they oughtn’t wait outside while he and his companions faced the Voice and Eyes.
“You might find that I’m being disrespectful,” Ay’r explained.
“We three are your sponsors,” ’Harles said. “We have to join you.”
The bare, solid, institutional – and very well-sealed – interior of the building doubtless was kept up by the score of acolytes and priests, all clad in variations of the larval-cloth mummy-wrap costume, one of whom led them through a pair of high stone doors (doubtless meant to be blastproof) and into the inner sanctum. There, the three were asked to sit upon a stone bench while their sponsors stood beside them. The scrubbed stone walls were bare of any object except what looked to Ay’r like a carved insignia that reminded him of the manufacturer’s logo found on the side of the most common working Cybers in the Matriarchy. Who had carved it, and when?
The priest went to the wall in front of them and touched a panel, then drew back quickly.
“Three travelers from distant climes seek an audience and counsel of the Voice and Eyes,” he said in hushed tones.
&
nbsp; “Have these travelers sponsors?” a rather mellifluous male voice asked. Evidently the speaker system was threaded through the stone panels.
“The Ib’r family, who were here for initiation and counsel,” the priest said.
“Have them step forward for recognition,” the Voice & Eyes said, and when ’Harles, Oudma, and ’Dward had stepped behind Alli Clark, Ay’r, and P’al, it said, “They are recognized.”
The priest gestured for them to step back. Then he turned to the three on the bench and said, “You each may pose one question.”
As none of the others moved, Ay’r began, but before he had gotten his first word out, he was told by the priest to identify himself.
“Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’.”
One second while the Voice & Eyes sorted through its memory banks and concluded, “The name is unknown to me. Has it derivations or alternative pronunciations?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ay’r said, drawing a sharp look from the priest. Before the priest could chastise him, Ay’r said quickly, “I noticed coming here that you’re using methane gas for fuel. What happened to your original generator? And the fuel packs you were carrying?”
There was a long silence during which the priest tried to think whether or not he was scandalized. The question was so completely beyond anything he had heard before.
Finally the Voice & Eyes said, “Are you a Repairer?”
“Unfortunately not,” Ay’r replied.
“Yet you knew about the original fuel?”
“We have seen the original plans of the Aldebaran Five,” P’al answered.
After what seemed like a longish time, it replied, “I understand.”
“Well?” Ay’r probed. “What happened to them?”
“Destroyed beyond repair. Long ago during the catastrophes, much was lost and rendered useless. This system is admittedly primitive, yet it’s the best that could be devised, given the site, the situation, and a variety of other factors.”
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