Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  What was he looking at, Ay’r wondered. He turned from the old male in his oddly constructed chair and looked out the solid sheet of utterly clear wall. Perhaps not utterly clear. Even without the visor, it seemed to highlight and magnify certain aspects of what he was seeing. True, the ocean stretched away in all directions, endless, Ay’r knew, from this point on south and, save for the relatively small bulk of continental Pelagia, east and west and north too. Yet from here it almost seemed as though the water itself was broken into separate blocks. There! That line surely meant a change of current, or of temperature, or of topography in the land that lay beneath. And over there, the waves seemed to be running so high in one section, with a darker color and high whitecaps. Yet surrounding it on either side, the water was flat and clear, the froth steady and even.

  “Identify!” he heard someone say. Ay’r turned to note the Recorder’s chair had moved closer to him and changed its position slightly: angled a bit toward Ay’r. The visor was still up, covering the old Hume’s eyes.

  “Ocean,” Ay’r said. “Age: uncertain. Size: approximately nine-tenths of the planet surface.” He was recalling what he had leaned from the prelanding conference with P’al and Alli Clark. “Salinity: variable, but no more than three percent. Biota: eighty-one percent vegetable, nineteen percent animal. No mollusks or coelenterates. Species severely limited.”

  He turned away from the Recorder to look outside again, as though to be able to recall more. Now he stared at the old Hume and said, “It is unlike any other ocean we’ve ever seen. As Pelagia itself is unlike any other world.”

  “Identify,” the Recorder said again, then added, “self.”

  “Species: Hume. Gender: male. Parents: Ferrex Baldwin Sanqq’, father. Mother unknown. Name: Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’. Age: in Pelagian years, approximately twenty-four. Avocation: Species Ethnologist.” The Recorder had removed the visor and did have pale blue eyes, which were staring at him.

  “Is the Consolidation at hand?” the Recorder asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then it may never occur. Who are those with you?”

  Ay’r identified his companions: first Alli Clark and P’al, then the Ib’r family.

  “You make little distinction between onworlder and offworlder,” the Recorder commented.

  “We are all Humes. Two of us are bonded,” Ay’r added, and in the silence that followed, he found himself once more wondering if Oudma was already with his child. If so, what did that signify? Could Ay’r possibly leave Oudma here on Pelagia and continue the tradition of the Sanqq’ – to abandon their young? No, he would never do that. He would take her with him. But what would life in the Matriarchy, as spouse to a Species Ethnologist, be like to a woman like Oudma who knew so little outside Dryland that he would have to explain everything – not only how things worked, but what they meant, separately and together? That might prove difficult, perhaps impossible, and not entirely for the best. What was Alli Clark planning for ’Harles Ib’r? If ever a sudden and completely bonded relationship existed, it was theirs. Perhaps Ay’r would speak with Alli Clark tonight about Oudma, and ’Harles, try to discover her plans. Surely that would given him some hint of what to do himself.

  “Will you speak with us?” Ay’r asked the Recorder. “We’ve come a long distance, on foot and upon the backs of animals. We’ve seen much of Dryland and have experienced many things. We have been to the high mountain valleys to the East; to the great plain of the New River Valley; we have rested in Bogland and traveled through the Delta and been received by the Voice and Eyes as more than equals at the Great Temple there.”

  “Gather your companions,” the Recorder said, “I will speak with you for precisely” – glancing at his screen – “thirty-two minutes Sol Rad.”

  “First, tell me, what do you observe here?”

  “Everything that passes,” the Recorder said.

  “And what do you record?”

  “Everything that passes.”

  Ay’r pointed outside to the spot of ocean – now an irregular triangle – that seemed different from the rest. He pointed out the different lines and colors and tides he saw.

  “Did you record that?” Ay’r asked.

  “You would make a fine Recorder.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “That isn’t for the Recorder to know.”

  “Does it mean anything?”

  “Perhaps. Gather your companions.” The Recorder began sliding along the floor in his chair, and Ay’r saw that he had been right before: the chair did run along a slot on the upper level, although it could turn and swivel in other directions. As the old Hume, with Ay’r striding alongside him, approached where the others had made themselves comfortable, Ay’r now noticed at least ten young Mycophages had joined Oo-lol-oo inside the observatory. They were hunkered down on their lichen-covered knees behind the console seats, looking up anxiously.

  “I was expecting visitors,” the Recorder said. “Although I couldn’t know who would arrive nor where they would come from.”

  “Why were you expecting visitors?” Alli Clark asked.

  “Because this day is a momentous one. And tonight is even more momentous for Pelagia – it is the Night of the Four Moons,” the Recorder said. “As I told your companion, I will speak with you for thirty-two minutes, but then I must return to observation and recording. Be aware that I live in this chair and that you may remain as my guests tonight within the observatory. But one night only; otherwise you might disturb me.”

  “What is the Night of the Four Moons, and why is it so momentous?” Ay’r asked what all of the others must have been thinking.

  “The Night of the Four Moons comes but once!” the Recorder exclaimed. “And after it has come, nothing is as it was before.”

  “Explain what you mean,” P’al said.

  “I mean that all four moons come together in a grand conjunction in the sky above Pelagia. I mean that their light together is so strong it burns through the canopy and the fog and the treetops alike for this one night, so that all below may see them, though few below the canopy will wish to look. Catastrophe is sure to follow their conjunction.”

  “Has this grand conjunction ever occurred before?” Ay’r asked.

  “Never.”

  “This is the first time in all your recorded history?” P’al asked.

  “There have been grand conjunctions before. The last conjunction was of five moons. Not long afterward, one moon was destroyed. That is why the people call the space where that moon was ‘Maspiei, the Murdered One,’ to honor it.”

  “You mean the asteroid belt between the third and fourth moons?” Alli Clark asked.

  “Do you have records of the conjunction of five moons?” P’al asked.

  “Early ones, yes. Barely decipherable,” the Recorder said. “Many of the early Cyber-guardians were destroyed in the Great Falling Inward that followed. And in the great fires that followed, and after that in the floods of destruction, which is called the Weeping of Old Dryland in Sympathy.

  “And before the destruction of the fifth moon?” Ay’r probed. “Are there any records of that olden time?”

  “No records. Only suppositions. Guesses, made by the guardians and the first Recorder, which became legends and songs.”

  “Do they sing of other moons before this conjunction of five moons?”

  The old Recorder looked surprised. “You strangers know much. They sing of a sixth moon, yes. Some songs say this moon was the Father of Maspiei, others not. The songs and legends speak of this moon’s also partaking in a grand conjunction.”

  “And of a Great Falling Inward? And of destruction of even more ancient lowlands?” Alli Clark asked.

  “Some. But other songs – the true songs, my own Master at Observing and Recording opined – sing of the moon vanishing, running off in company with” – here he paused and motioned to the Mycophages to close off their ears – “of being seduced by the Bright Evil One. Seduced and ru
nning off in His company.”

  “Has this Bright Evil One a name?”

  “It is forbidden.”

  “We strangers may hear the name,” P’al assured him.

  “But not the others!” the old Recorder insisted, and gestured for Oo-lol-oo and his agemates not to listen.

  “His name is ... Suel! Long-Hair!”

  The name uttered, the others might once again listen.

  “He destroyed Maspiei, too!” P’al said.

  “True. You strangers know much. Maspiei would not be seduced, and so he destroyed him.”

  “The other moons. What are their names?”

  “Capin, first, and largest. White. Pure. He is the Herder. The leader. Then comes Trilufu, the Follower, the Henchman of Capin, some believe, smaller and darker. Third is Jatoto, the Moderator of Quarrels. Also small, and spotted and colored like the Swamp Snail. Far distant from all, beyond the place of the Murdered One, lies Filoscop, the Solitary. Some ancients believed that he is large and strong as Capin, yet he seems smaller because he has taken his distance from the others. Some sing of an argument over leadership with Capin, others that he never left off grieving after the murder of his brother Maspiei, still others that he outwitted the one of which we do not speak.”

  Ay’r looked at ’Dward and ’Harles and Oudma, who were nodding in agreement. What the Recorder was now saying perfectly matched legends they had learned in childhood.

  “But in each case,” P’al said, trying to make it clear, “this first moon and Maspiei and possibly even Filoscop and the Bright Evil One of which you speak were involved?”

  “So it is recorded.”

  “Do the ancient texts prophesy which moon will next become victim?”

  The old Recorder stared, bug-eyed.

  “You said each lunar event follows a grand conjunction. Surely you expect another.”

  The Myco.-folk were muttering.

  “It is unlucky to speak it.”

  “Yet it shall occur,” P’al insisted.

  “It is evil, and Dryland shall never again be the same,” the Recorder spoke bitterly.

  “Yet you cannot stop it,” P’al argued.

  The old Recorder hung his head. “This is my bane, to live in the days of the conjunction of the four moons. Send out all who fear the future,” he ordered.

  The young Mycophages all remained, Ay’r noticed.

  “Another moon shall be destroyed,” the Recorder intoned. “Another Great Falling Inward shall occur. Dryland shall once again weep. And once again the lowlands shall be doomed.”

  Having spoken, the Recorder sighed.

  “And it will be the Henchman, this time!” P’al said. “The second moon.”

  “Yes, It is the Henchman’s time,” the Recorder admitted. “And afterward Dryland shall vanish beneath the ocean, and the great plains shall be flooded, and the tundras and the ice sheets. The archipelagoes shall sink. The Bogland shall vanish. Nothing of Dryland shall remain but where now mountains rise.”

  The Myco.-folk drew back in horror.

  “Can this be true?” ’Harles asked.

  “True! All true!” the Recorder insisted.

  “When will this happen?” Ay’r asked.

  “The date is not known. Perhaps weeks or months or years Sol Rad. All I know is that the grand conjunction releases the pin of destruction. I cannot say when it will happen.”

  “But all this explains why you, as Recorder, reside here at the observatory,” Ay’r said. “So when it does occur, the records will not be lost.”

  “It’s unclear whether this Recorder will survive! But I will remain and continue to record no matter what catastrophes occur,” the old Hume said and folded over slowly in exhaustion and grief.

  “Perhaps in the old texts recorded, there is knowledge of when it will happen,” Alli Clark said. “When was the last conjunction? That of five moons?”

  The Recorder was tapping out his question.

  “The last grand conjunction was one thousand, five hundred and seven of Pelagia’s years ago.”

  “And how soon afterward was the disaster?”

  “Four hundred days. Less than one Pelagian year.”

  “And the hypotheses about the previous grand conjunction? The one involving six moons?” Alli Clark probed. “When was that?”

  “The Cyber-guardians supposed that it occurred four thousand and sixteen years before that of the five moons. With no proof, as no Hume nor Cyber was present then.”

  “And if the Recorder and parts of Dryland survive this catastrophe,” Alli Clark went on, “when will the next grand conjunction – that of the three moons – occur?”

  “Within a much shorter time. Less than three hundred years.”

  All of them were silent, and Ay’r noticed that Alli Clark had taken ’Harles’s hand in hers and that none of the Humes, Drylander or Mycophage, could look away from the ground beneath them, which now seemed so fleeting and ephemeral.

  After a while, Ay’r pulled out the smooth object he had gotten from the Great Temple of the Delta. Explaining quietly how he had obtained it and letting the old Hume inspect it, Ay’r asked the Recorder if he knew what it was, and what it was for.

  “I’ve never seen the object before. It wasn’t made by the guardians who built the observatory. It is of a different material. It comes from somewhere else.”

  “Could it have been made by the other visitors Oo-lol-oo told us of?” Ay’r asked. “Those whom the Drylanders call ‘the Gods’? Were you Recorder when they arrived? Can you tell us about them?”

  “I was not Recorder then, and He who preceded me as Recorder was but an apprentice. Yet their visit was recorded, and so I know of it. They were like yourselves, from somewhere else. Unlike you, their coloring was dark – dark skin, dark hair. The guardians had long expected their coming and had warned even the earliest Recorders that their coming would presage the Consolidation. Yet when these visitors arrived, it was not because of the Consolidation. Instead, they said they were seeking a place to live and work, free of contact with the Dryland peoples. They said they meant no harm to any of the folk and promised they would not interfere.”

  “But they did interfere!” Alli Clark said. “Culturally!”

  “And now they’ve begun to kidnap Dryland’s youth.” Ay’r added. “’Harles’s son was only one of the many they took. No one knows why.”

  “Then they are forsworn,” the Recorder declared bitterly.

  “Do the records give their names? Or where they came from?” Ay’r thought he might discover if his father was among them.

  “Only one name was ever recorded: Lars’son, Creed. This Lars’son is recorded as having spoken of a place, Sobieski Delta IX. But I don’t know where it is.”

  P’al explained, “It’s a moon circling the ninth planet of a G-class star in Sector Twelve of the Central Sagittarius Arm.”

  “I know nothing of this,” the Recorder admitted.

  “Where on Pelagia did the visitors end up?” Alli Clark got right to the point.

  “It is recorded that they were sent to the Far Eastern Archipelago. Near the Sunken City of Dy’r. They’re still there. At least, that’s the direction they come from and return to whenever I see their bubbles flying over the ocean. Your time is up,” the Recorder said, spun the chair around, and began moving away from them.

  “That’s where we must go,” Ay’r said for all of them.

  Later on, as they rested, Ay’r and P’al and Alli Clark spoke together, away from the Drylanders, attempting to put together what the Recorder had said with what they had learned from the Fast when they had entered Pelagia’s system weeks ago.

  “The mechanism of water increase is clear,” P’al said.

  “Is it? Because of a few myths?” Ay’r asked.

  “Those myths explain actual physical occurrences over the centuries since this world was seeded with Humes. We had already heard enough about these moons in the ordinary speech of the Drylanders to su
spect their importance. The fact that no one actually laid eyes on them meant they must be crucial. But the Recorder provided as detailed a scenario as we could have asked for. This Suel must be one of the large icesteroids we noted in the heavy hydrogen ring surrounding this system. Or one icesteroid pulled from it.”

  “Bright and long-haired. Yes, certainly,” Ay’r agreed. “Cometlike – that’s how it would look.

  P’al remarked, “The grand conjunctions of the moons must set up a traumatic gravitational imbalance, tugging large icesteroids loose from the ring.”

  “Could it have something to do with temperature?” Ay’r asked. “If all the moons are lined up in front of Pelagia, which is in front of its sun, wouldn’t that provide an almost laserlike focus at a certain point somewhere on the ring.”

  “It could, but it would take both that and gravitational pull to do it.”

  “How did you guess it would be the second moon this time?” Alli Clark asked.

  “No guess. The first conjunction of six moons was followed by an icesteroid which either smashed the farthest moon or came between it and the fifth moon, Filoscop. Remember what the Recorder said. ‘He has taken his distance.’ In other words, moved. Possibly both moons were disturbed from their natural orbit – the sixth so badly it was spun into a wide, erratic elliptical orbit.”

  “Or so far that it fell into the sun.”

  “In any case, the imbalance would raise the tides on Pelagia.”

  “But that’s only a temporary effect,” she protested.

  “Not so. Any inward-moving heavy hydrogen would be heated by the sun. Its melted ice would fall as drenching rainfall upon the first large warm gravitational object it encountered: Pelagia itself.”