Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  “To be fair,” Balam said, in a dark humor, “Vorin hired us to ensure that no one removed the case from his wrist.” He paused, and then added with a mournful chuckle, “That, at least, we accomplished.”

  Hero shot him a black look, and kept walking.

  “What happened?” Leena asked, exasperated. “How did you escape?”

  “Well,” Hieronymus answered, “once you'd shimmied down the line, the platform had dipped too near the trees for me to safely descend, and I had the remaining handful of Raiders to contend with.”

  “And the escort flying in from the west,” Leena added.

  “Did I? I don't think I noticed them. In any case, my sword was quick enough to keep the Raiders off me, but not enough to give me room to breathe, so in the end I had to wait until the Rukh was about to crash into the forest's canopy, and then I just jumped overboard onto a tree. It was touch and go, but I managed it, and climbed down to safety without breaking any important bones. Of the passengers and crew, I know nothing.”

  Leena gaped, and looked over to Balam, who only treated her with a knowing and weary smile.

  “You mean that you leapt from a crashing airship and caught hold of a tree on the way down?” she asked, disbelieving.

  “Yes,” Hieronymus answered impatiently. “I said I didn't like heights. That doesn't mean I'm going to curl into a ball and whimper. Now come along, both of you. We're still bound for Lisbia in the north, and thanks to these damnable dragon-riders we're so far west that we've nearly twice as far to travel. Whatever Vorin carried, I damn well hope it was worth it to him.”

  Leena glanced back towards the Rim Mountains, hidden by the thick forests, and the hideaway of the Sky Raiders beyond.

  “There are those who perhaps should not choose to travel. Vorin seemed the sort to be happier in his own home than he ever could be anywhere else.”

  “And there are those of us whose homes are denied us,” Hieronymus answered, thoughtful. “So let's get to Lisbia, and see what we can do about that, too.”

  Leena took a deep breath, and sighed. She followed Hieronymus towards the east, Balam at her heels. In the forests behind them were strewn the remains of the Cloud Cutter Rukh, and they had long kilometers ahead before they slept.

  Hieronymus, Leena, and Balam made their way through the rain forest of Altrusia. They headed roughly east, trending north, making for Lisbia, though it was now farther from them than ever before. And as far distant as they were, that the going was so slow and ponderous was all the more noisome. Leena had thought that the trees of the Western Jungle into the midst of which the Vostok 7 module had crashed were enormous, but compared to the towering giants of the Altrusian rain forest they were little more than scrub and bush.

  There was very little light on the ground level. The canopy of the top branches of the massive trees, dozens of meters off the ground, blocked out virtually all sunlight, so that even at midday the trio found themselves in a gloomy, twilight world. Birds called from overhead, raucous, near-deafening calls, and monkeys chattered and hooted from the lower branches. Strange predators prowled the dark underbrush, just out of sight, rumbling low.

  Some of the trees were so large that their diameter was wider than Balam was tall. Others were so encased in constricting vines, each as wide as a man's leg, that no sign of the tree itself could be seen.

  Having little else to do but walk, Leena insisted that Hieronymus and Balam drill her on the Sakrian dialect. She'd very nearly come to a bad end on the Rukh because she could not communicate effectively with Vorin, and since she could not reasonably expect all the sentient beings of Paragaea to learn English—or, better yet, Russian, though she longed to hear again her native tongue—she would have to learn the lingua franca.

  So, as they walked, Hieronymus and Balam would point out items that they passed, asking Leena to repeat the name for each in Sakrian. After the first day of traveling, Leena had said the words “barad” and “sedet” and “kenet”—or tree and plant and rock—more times than she could count; and while she sorely wished that she'd had occasion to say “kones”—sky—they'd had no hint of blue above them since the Rukh went down.

  Several days into the Altrusian forest, they came upon a small dinosaur lying at the top of a slight rise, its brains dashed out. It was no bigger than a large dog, with small grasping hands and a long neck, and from its relatively diminutive size and its physiology, Leena assumed it was some sort of plant eater. It was laid out on the forest floor, arms and legs splayed, neck stretched out before it, pointing downwards on the slight slope. But where the head should have been, the neck instead flattened out and terminated in a large, spreading pool of red and gray gore, dotted with tiny flakes of bone fragments. Otherwise, the body was untouched.

  The company was immediately put on the defensive. From the looks of the red ruin that had once been the dinosaur's head, they could see the kill was very fresh. It didn't look like the work of another animal. A predator would not have left a kill uneaten, if it could somehow contrive to demolish its prey's skull in this fashion; moreover, the trees were too closely placed for an animal large enough to crush the dinosaur's head underfoot to pass by, and there was no sign that a beast of sufficient size to cause the damage had come this way.

  Without warning, they heard a crashing, branches snapping, followed quickly by a sudden thunderous thud from a few meters away, as though a cannonball had been fired directly at the ground. Leaving the ruined form of the dinosaur behind, they rushed towards the sound. Lying in a slight cavity in the leafy mold underfoot was a large, spherical shape, the size of a cannonball but made of wood or some other type of vegetable matter.

  “Another airship?” Leena said, looking up with trepidation. “Some kind of bombardment?”

  “No airship could possibly detect our presence, or that of any other target,” Hieronymus said, shaking his head. “Not this far beneath the thick canopy overhead.”

  Balam prodded the round object with an outstretched claw, and then straightened up, bristling. “It is a seedpod.”

  Hieronymus and Leena looked up at the towering treetops overhead.

  “Another like it must have fallen from the tree back there,” Hieronymus said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “and struck the dinosaur. Because of the slight rise, the seedpod must have rolled downhill and out of sight by the time we arrived.”

  From a short distance off came the sound of more crashing, more branches snapping and breaking, and the thunderous sound of another seedpod cannoning into the ground.

  Leena shivered, her hands tightening into fists. “I don't want to be beneath the next one of those to fall.”

  “I agree,” Hieronymus said hurriedly, as Balam nodded his assent.

  Doubling their speed, they hurried their way through the forest, heading always north and east, Lisbia somewhere in the far, unthinkable distance.

  A week further on, having luckily moved out of the zone of the seeding giants into another region of the forest, Leena's command of Sakrian language improving by leaps and bounds, they finally came to the edge of the twilit world.

  The company approached a break in the rain forest, clear sky visible overhead, and the tallest trees in the near vicinity a much more manageable height, no more than a dozen meters. Leena luxuriated in the warm sunlight, glad to leave behind the twilight, if only for a short while.

  After walking between the copses of trees for the better part of an hour, through the sun-dappled clearings, they came upon a small stream, a tributary of one of the greater rivers that divided the Altrusian forests. When fording the stream, Leena was surprised to discover that it was paved, the streambed lined with ancient cobblestones.

  “What culture would have paved such a thing?” Leena asked, pointing out the neatly fitted stones to Hieronymus and Balam. “And for what purpose?”

  “Paragaea is a much more ancient world than Earth,” Hieronymus reminded her, regarding the paved stream. “And its landscape is littered
with things of unbelievable antiquity, whose origins no man can guess. What is more, the very ground beneath our feet often holds hidden secrets: the ruins of civilizations, peoples, and cities long forgotten.” Hieronymus looked up and down the course of the stream, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. “I doubt there is any untrammeled wilderness on the face of Paragaea. Every stretch of jungle and forest is just what the wilderness has been able to reclaim from civilization.”

  “The struggle is not yet through.” Balam pointed ahead, to the far side of the narrow stream. “It would appear the wilderness has not yet swallowed whole whatever culture once thrived here.”

  A few hundred meters from the far bank of the stream, its edges and details obscured by centuries' growth of vine and lichens, stood the ruined sculpture of a coiled serpent. It was easily hundreds of meters from side to side, standing a dozen meters tall, and before closer examination Leena had initially taken it for a hill rising before them, not something fashioned by hands.

  “It must have been the same culture that paved the stream,” Leena said as they approached the sculpture. “But why make such a thing, and how?”

  “Well,” Hieronymus said, a philosophical tone creeping into his voice, “it could well be that the beings who constructed this enormous snake idol were all dead and gone when the world was new, before man ever trod a foot upon Paragaea.”

  “No, perhaps not,” Balam objected. They were now within arm's reach of the sculpture, standing entirely within its sharp-edged shadow. “There is every chance the idol-makers are very much alive.”

  Balam directed their attention to the figures emerging from the shadows all around them. There were nearly a dozen beings in all, looking like the products of a union between man and snake, scaled and hairless, with large round eyes, double slits for noses, and only abbreviated holes on either side of their head for ears. Their scaly skins were ranged from hues of deep russet-gold to red to green, iridescent and shimmering slightly like oil on water. Each stood nearly two and a half meters tall, but walked hunched over, the two massive fingers and thumb of each hand reaching out and grasping, a kind of hissing sounding deep in their chests.

  Leena didn't waste a single thought, but immediately reached for her short sword, falling into a martial stance.

  “Peace, little sister,” Hieronymus said, laying a hand on her arm. “These are Nagas.”

  “Despite their sometimes fearsome mien,” Balam said, “the snake men are by and large peaceful creatures.”

  Reluctantly, Leena let the blade slide back into its sheath, but her hand remained near the hilt.

  One of the snake men stepped forward, and bowed slightly from the waist, his large round eyes glistening in the shadows like polished glass.

  “I am Oshunmare,” the Naga said, in perfectly accented Sakrian. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “I am Hieronymus Bonaventure, and these are my companions, Balam, prince of the Sinaa, and Akilina Mikhailovna Chirikova.”

  “You are most welcome to the lands of the Nagas, Hieronymus Bonaventure.” Oshunmare bowed again, dipping more deeply, and his fellow snake men followed suit.

  Hieronymus and Balam bowed in return. Leena felt awkward, but had been raised to bow to no man, and so instead snapped off a crisp salute. She hoped it would not give offense.

  “You are invited to be our guests in the temple-city of Patala”—Oshunmare pointed towards the east—“if you are willing only to be interrogated by the interlocutors, to help us increase our conception of the All. In return for this courtesy, you will be provided housing and sustenance for as long as you might require.”

  Leena bridled at the mention of “interrogation,” thinking back on her Red Army training in anti-interrogation techniques, but from the responses of Hieronymus and Bonaventure, she assumed the meaning carried different connotations in Sakrian.

  “We would be delighted,” Hieronymus said, answering for the group.

  “This way, then, to Patala.” Oshunmare turned and, without further ceremony, led the party on a path to the east, around the massive carved serpent and back into the forests.

  As they walked, with the dozen snake men a short distance ahead of them, Leena spoke in low tones to her companions, asking them what they knew of this strange race. Were they another race of metamen, like the jaguarlike Sinaa and the birdlike Struthio, or something else besides?

  “They are not among the kingdoms of metamankind,” Balam answered in a quiet voice. “Not so far as I have always been told. As children, my sisters and I were taught that the culture of the snake men is one of the most ancient in all of Paragaea. I'm not sure anyone knows their origins, perhaps not even the Nagas themselves.”

  “If that is the case,” Leena said, “and they are so ancient a culture, perhaps they will have some arcane knowledge of Earth lost to the rest of the world.”

  “Perhaps,” Hieronymus said, rubbing his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “I can't admit to much knowledge of the Nagas. I've seen snake men in the streets of the Sakrian cities, of course, and in the port towns of the Inner Sea, but those are typically snake men who have left their own ways behind, to better assimilate, their cultural traditions reduced to mummery performed on street corners for coins from passersby.”

  Leena, whose mother's people had been Russian gypsies, knew what it meant to have traditions degraded to the level of street performance.

  After a short journey through the forests, they reached the city of Patala. Though not large for a city or township, as the whole city was one large complex of buildings and temples, in terms of single standing structures it was enormous. The temple-city first impressed itself on the senses as being unimaginably ancient. Its high, gray stone walls were in places completely obscured by climbing vines, in other places stained by mosses a deep greenish black. The temple-city rose in seven tiers, like a layered cake or step pyramid. As they climbed the wide, deep steps carved into the stone structures, they passed open-air plazas and pavilions, dotting the upper reaches of the complex, where Nagas young and old gathered to recite strange poetry, or dance, or debate, or produce haunting tones from vibrating crystals.

  Oshunmare led the trio to the third tier of the temple-city, where waited for them three Nagas, each wearing a simple copper-colored tunic and, around their necks like a sort of badge of office, a crystal pendant.

  “These three,” the snake man explained, pointing to each in turn, “Kalseru, Vasuki, and Manasa, are the designated interlocutors for this cycle, selected from all the population of Patala for this honor. They will have the rare opportunity to interview all outsiders who visit our temple-city until the next turn of the seasons, when the honor will fall on other fortunate Nagas.”

  The three Nagas stepped forward, each extending a two-fingered hand to one of the trio.

  “If you would each follow one of the interlocutors,” Oshunmare said, “the interrogations should be complete in short order.”

  Leena was anxious at the notion of being separated from her companions in a strange place, surrounded by inhuman beings, however placid or unthreatening they might initially seem. Hieronymus saw the concern etched across her face, and turned to address the interlocutors.

  “We will be allowed to keep our weapons, of course.”

  “Of course,” Oshunmare answered. “And no doors will bar your way. You may leave at any time during the interrogation, though in doing so, you would perforce be refusing our continued hospitality.”

  “Understood,” Hieronymus said, and cast a glance at Leena.

  Reluctantly, her hand staying near the hilt of her short sword, Leena nodded.

  “I am Kalseru,” one of the interlocutors said in perfect Sakrian, stepping towards Lena and bowing reverently. From the tenor of Kalseru's voice, she was evidently a female of the Naga species. “If you would accompany me, please, we may begin.”

  In a private interview chamber, little more than a semicircular room open to the plaza, Kals
eru explained to Leena that it was the custom of the Nagas to welcome outsiders with reverence and respect, seeing each encounter as a possible opportunity to expand their understanding of Ananta, a concept that most easily translates into other tongues as “the All.” Kalseru would ask Leena a series of questions about her people's views on religion, cosmology, and existence, and Leena should answer as truthfully as she was able, with as much or as little detail as she felt comfortable providing.

  Leena responded to all of Kalseru's questions—somewhat surprised her Sakrian had improved sufficient to the purpose—explaining about Marxist dialects, historical imperatives, and the inevitable rise of the proletariat. Leena explained in no uncertain terms that any belief in the supernatural, whether the occult or the divine, is simply a sop for the masses in decadent capitalist countries, to keep the workers' thoughts on the illusory rewards of the hereafter, and not on their miserable condition in the here and now.

  “So,” Kalseru asked, lazily drawing symbols in the sands of the chamber's floor, legs folded beneath her, “can we then assume that your conception of the All does not allow for the possibility of other planes of existence, of other realms of being?”

  Leena was brought up short. Until a few weeks ago, her answer to that question would have come as easily and unbidden as her other answers, but now she wasn't so sure. Did the superstitions and fairy tales of the unenlightened have their origins in the other-dimensional realm of Paragaea? Was this the Fairyland of her grandmother's stories?

  Leena began now to question Kalseru, asking her what knowledge the Nagas had of other worlds.

  Kalseru was unable to answer her questions, and excusing herself for a moment, called in Oshunmare. The older Naga joined them, but after listening to Leena's inquiries about Earth, he, too, was unable to answer her questions. A number of other interlocutors, debaters, poets, and thinkers were brought into the chamber in the hours that followed, all of them listening respectfully to Leena's questions, and then disagreeing one with another over how little the Nagas' conception of the All was able to account for her questions.