Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  Leena raised her hand in a wave, and Hieronymus snapped off a little salute, but Balam just nodded thoughtfully.

  “Good-bye.” Benu reached out, and touched the surface of the gate with his fingertips.

  For a split second, Leena thought that they'd been wrong, thought that nothing would happen. But then Benu seemed to shrink before their eyes, as though he were receding quickly without moving any farther away, and then he was gone.

  By the time they reached the surface, it was morning, and Leena felt the sun on her face for the first time in days.

  “I'd almost forgotten what fresh air smells like,” Hieronymus said, breathing deeply through his nostrils. “After a few days down in that pit, I no longer noticed the smell.”

  “I don't think air quality is high on the Heleans' list of concerns,” Leena answered absently, glancing around her.

  They were standing on a treacherous scree, a slope of gravel that ran at a steep grade for more than half a kilometer, ending at a wide plateau below. The bulk of the Lathe Mountains rose above them, while to the south ambled rolling foothills, sparsely forested. Somewhere far beyond, over the curve of the horizon, lay the final destination in Leena's journey, the last place on Paragaea in which they might find the answers she sought.

  Leena could not help but wonder whether she'd made a mistake. Had she gone through the gate with Benu, down in the cavern, she'd at least be back on Earth, though whenever and wherever she might find herself remained a mystery. Now, having passed up that opportunity, she ran the risk that her quest would prove fruitless, should the Atlans prove either to be entirely extinct, or failed to measure up to their mythic reputation. If she were to return here, to the Helean caverns beneath the Lathe Mountains, she might find that gate now closed, and another might not open again in her lifetime. At this stage, her only hope to return to Earth lay atop Mount Ignis to the south, in the citadel city of Atla.

  A short distance away, Menchit struggled to regain consciousness, stretched out on the gravelly slope. Balam checked the dressing on her head wound, his expression that of concerned fathers in all times and places.

  “Well,” Hieronymus said, taking a drink of water from a flask in his pack, and handing it to Leena. “Shall we be away? We've a long day's travel before nightfall, and I, for one, would like to be miles and miles away from here before we sleep.”

  Leena took a deep draught of the water, and handed it back to Hieronymus, wiping her mouth dry on her sleeve. “Lead on, Hero,” she said, hitching her pack up on her shoulders.

  Balam carefully picked Menchit up in his arms, and the company started down the mountain.

  At midday, passing through rolling hills, they were forced to stop when Menchit regained consciousness. Her last memories those of leading a crowd of the faithful against the oppressive Helean guard, she was less than pleased to discover her present circumstances.

  “Unhand me!” she shouted, clawing at Balam's face, writhing in his arms.

  “Daughter!” Balam cried, yanking his head back, the black fur of his cheek bloodied.

  The young Sinaa fell to the ground snarling. She was on her feet in an instant, but wavered unsteadily, her eyes rolling.

  “You've got a nasty head wound, Daughter,” Balam said, his tone calm as he reached out his hands to steady her. “No one is going to do you any further harm. You're safe now.”

  “Where am I?” Menchit said, baring her fangs, and then collapsed to the ground, her eyes rolling up in her head.

  Balam rushed to her side, and Leena and Hieronymus came back to offer what assistance they could.

  Hieronymus dug the water flask from his pack, and when Balam had helped his daughter into a sitting position, forced her to drink a few sips from it.

  “You lost a fair amount of blood in the night, Menchit,” Balam said calmly, “but your wound appears to be healing as well as could be expected, and so long as you don't make any more sudden or violent movements—say, viciously attacking your father, unprovoked—then you should be fine.”

  “I said, where am I?” Menchit demanded, knocking away the water flask, her amber eyes flashing. “I had business in Hele, freeing my imprisoned brethren, and now a crystal-blue sky stretches above my head. Where have you brought me?!”

  “The Helean guards knocked you unconscious, and quickly broke the back of your protest. If I had not brought you with us when we fled the city, you'd be imprisoned, or worse.”

  “If I was to die, it was because it was fated,” Menchit said. “The Holy Per tells us that the universe has a design for each of us, and that it is importunate for us to attempt to circumvent our destinies. Just as our fates are mapped out by the demiurges of Atla, whom the ignorant call wizard-kings, so too are the skeins of their destinies woven by the universe itself. None of us should attempt to disrupt the natural order, or the whole world suffers thereby.”

  “So the world suffers now that you did not die needlessly in a Helean gaol?” Balam snapped.

  “If that was the will of Atla,” Menchit said defiantly, “then yes, it does.”

  “Well,” Balam answered, climbing to his feet. “Our journeys carry us to Atla, so perhaps you'll have a chance to ask your demiurges what they think about your continued existence, yourself.”

  The young Sinaa's eyes widened. “You travel to Atla? But even if you could cross the burned steppes of Eschar, none can pass the sacred barrier.”

  “Oh,” Leena said with a smile, tightening her grip on her pack's shoulder straps, “I don't think we'll have a problem on that count.”

  “Atla?” Menchit said, shaking her head in disbelief. “But it is blasphemy to think that mortals can approach the abode of the demiurges.”

  Hieronymus smiled, and helped Balam to his feet. “You'll find, I think, that blasphemy comes easily to such as we.”

  The company continued to the south. The rolling hills slowly gave way to broad steppes, and the farther they traveled, the colder and drier the air grew.

  Menchit proved to be a very reluctant addition to their band. It became clear very early that if she had the opportunity, she would attempt to return straightaway to Hele, to complete her holy mission. Balam would have none of it, and in short order bound her hands to a length of stout cord, which he carried like a leash. As the company marched to the south, then, Menchit would be dragged behind her father like a stubborn pet, hands bound all day, and then fixed to a tree or the like by night. Leena felt that this treatment was degrading, even for one as recalcitrant as Menchit, but Balam refused to release his daughter until he had made her see reason. Balam felt, understandably, that she had been poisoned against him by his sisters—her aunts—and by his cousin, Gerjis. Menchit remained silent, for the most part, and when she did speak, it was to throw the words of “Holy” Per in Balam's face. In her eyes, he was a heretic, one who had heard the good word but refused to listen, and for that he was damned.

  Menchit was most vocal in the hours after sunset. All during the evening meal, she hailed abuse down on her father, pelting him with quotations from scripture, damning him as a disgrace to his people and to all the races of metamankind, hurling invective in a steady torrent. Balam took her abuse with a quiet stoicism while preparing the evening meal, and when he had finished eating and cleared things away, he sat down just beyond Menchit's reach, and tried calmly to reason with her. He tried to explain that her perceptions of events and individuals had been distorted by the lens of Per's Black Sun Genesis, and that her memories of childhood did not correspond with reality. Menchit accused Balam of abandoning her and her mother, preferring to carouse and drink and whore his way across Paragaea, and said that when her mother had died, she had been fortunate that her cousin and aunts were there to look after her. With the patience of a saint, Balam told Menchit again and again how her account of events differed in nearly every particular from reality, and that they were both the victims of her Uncle Gerjis's conniving, not Menchit the victim of her father's philandering. But Mench
it would have none of it, rained further abuse on him, and the cycle continued.

  By the second night of this theater, Hieronymus and Leena decided to make camp farther up the path from Balam and Menchit, leaving the two Sinaa to work out their familial difficulties in private. They journeyed a farther kilometer due south, found a suitable spot to set up camp, and then enjoyed their simple evening meal in glorious, uninterrupted silence.

  When the meal was through, Leena and Hieronymus sat side by side, looking up at the stars above. The southern skies differed somewhat from those they'd watched wheeling above the deck of the Acoetes Zephyrus, and it felt, too, as if they themselves had changed in the interim.

  “I always find,” Hieronymus said, breaking the silence that had lingered over their little camp since the evening meal, “that the more I am around the devoutly religious, the less tolerant of religion I become.” He smiled wanly and glanced over at Leena. “In the absence of the devout, I tend to feel that anyone can believe whatever they bloody well like, and what business is it of mine? But after a few hours spent in the company of one who lives and breathes nothing but dogma, I find my palms itching for my saber's hilt.”

  “She is difficult to take for long stretches, isn't she?” Leena looked over her shoulder to the north, and shuddered slightly.

  “That is putting it mildly.”

  “Still,” Leena said, lying back on the soft grass, pillowing her head on her hands, “it is not only the religious who become so enamored of dogma that they do nothing but regurgitate platitudes.” Leena closed her eyes, lost in memory for a moment. “I was the second woman of my country to launch into space. The first was Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, a woman from the Yaroslavl region, born just a few months before me. But by all rights, the first should have been Valentina Leonidovna Ponomaryova, a woman from Ukraine. Ponomaryova is the most technically astute of any in the Female Cosmonaut Group, and truth be told, could fly rings around any of us. But Ponomaryova is not ‘ideologically pure.' She says that a woman can smoke cigarettes and still be a decent person; she took unescorted trips into Feodosiya while the rest of us were busy training. She is a free spirit. But, sadly for her, the Soviet Union does not much care for free spirits. When it came time to give our final interviews to the board, to determine who would be the first woman into space, we were asked, ‘What do you want from life?' When I answered, I said simply, ‘I want to fly.' Ponomaryova, for her part, smiled and said, ‘I want to take everything it can offer.' This was not the answer the board wished to hear. It was no surprise that they picked Tereshkova. Do you know what she answered, to that same question? She said, ‘I want to support irrevocably the Komsomol and Communist Party.' Can you believe that? As though she were a handbook of proper behavior for party membership. I placed third, in the end, not quite as technically astute as Ponomaryova and not quite as ideologically pure as Tereshkova. Tereshkova, though, the only one of us who did not receive the highest marks in the academic tests, was selected to be the first woman in space.”

  Leena sighed deeply, and stared in silence for a moment up at the stars.

  “They told Ponomaryova that she was next, that Tereshkova was the most political choice for the first launch, but that her chance would come. When the crew for Vostok 7 was announced, though, it was my name on the list, and not hers. I am not the pilot she is, but I suppose I am more ideologically pure, for all of that, and so it was me in the module and not her.”

  Leena shook her head, and her eyes moistened.

  “Poor Ponomaryova. In a more honest culture, it would have been her.”

  “You know,” Hieronymus said, leaning in close, “I think that may be the first criticism I've heard you utter about your native land.”

  Leena dried her eyes on her sleeve, and looked at him.

  “I am honest,” she said. “My nation is not perfect, I'm the first to admit, but I maintain that our system is better for the largest percentage of the population than any other history has yet produced.”

  Hieronymus smiled. “That's exactly what I used to say, in my school days, about the British system, too.”

  “Well, that's what sets us apart from the zealots, I suppose. We recognize the dogma for what it is.”

  “Yes,” Hieronymus said, and inched closer.

  They were bare centimeters apart, now.

  “You know,” Leena said, her voice low, “this may be the first time in all our journeys together that you and I are actually alone.”

  Hieronymus pursed his lips, thinking back. “I believe you're right. Even on the dhow, there was always someone within a few meters' distance.”

  Leena had not been with another man since Sergei had died, all those years ago, and though she'd never before realized it, she may have abstained since then out of respect for his memory. Even his shade, though, should it still linger, could find no fault in two people seeking warmth and comfort in one another's arms.

  “Alone,” Leena said, their noses nearly touching. “Interesting.”

  “Hmmm. Isn't it?”

  Hieronymus's mouth was on hers, and her arms were snaked around his back before Leena quite knew what was happening. There, beneath the stars, they shed their clothes and their inhibitions, and found something like peace in one another's arms, if only for a brief span.

  They traveled on, the steppes changing, become permafrost, with a light hoar of frosted grass growing atop a deep level of frozen ground. They had reached Eschar, the boundary between the southern peninsula and the rest of the Paragaean continent. Strange objects and machines jutted out of the landscape, rusted steel and viridescent bronze and alloys Leena could not name.

  “These are the remnants of the Genos Wars, millennia ago,” Hieronymus explained as they passed beneath the shadow of a towering spire whose purpose they could not begin to guess. “When the races of metamen rose up against the Black Sun Empire.”

  “When I was a child,” Balam said, “my tutors told me that there were…things buried beneath the frozen steppes of Eschar—men, metamen, machines, and monsters. It is said that, in ancient days, the races of metamankind were the servitors of the wizard-kings of Atla, and that tiring of their oppression, they rose up, and did battle against their former masters.”

  Menchit laughed mirthlessly. She walked freely now, too far distant from Hele or any other settlement for the leash to be of any need, and stared up at the towering structures with reverential awe. “Ignorant fool. We did not rebel against our masters. We were cast out, for our weaknesses. The Holy Per writes that the demiurges of Atla came to believe that the races of metamankind had become enfeebled, overly dependent on the good graces of their creators, and to strengthen us, the metamen were cast out. The demiurges of Atla burned the steppes of Eschar with cold fire, leaving the dead landscape a sign for future generations, and sealed themselves behind the sacred barrier. One day, when we have purified ourselves, we will be welcomed back into the loving arms of our creators, joining them once more in the paradise of Atla.”

  Leena and Hieronymus exchanged meaningful glances, while Balam sighed a long-suffering sigh.

  Several days across the burned, lifeless steppes, as they prepared to make camp, they saw a glow up ahead, far over the southern horizon.

  “Is that Mount Ignis?” Leena asked. “Isn't the citadel city of Atla built atop a volcano?”

  Hieronymus consulted his maps by firelight, noting the additions and corrections Benu had made to his cartography while they sailed aboard the dhow.

  “No,” he said at length, shaking his head. “It is far too close to be Atla. Besides, we should be able to see Mount Ignis by day long before we could see its lights by night.”

  “There is someone out on the burned steppes ahead of us,” Balam said simply.

  Menchit, who seemed to have become more of a reluctant fellow traveler than a prisoner, for all of her vocal disagreements with her father, looked nervously to the southern skies, and drifted unconsciously nearer her father.
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br />   Leena shivered.

  That night, she and Hieronymus kept camp close by Balam and his daughter, suffering through their row, rather than separating and risking discovery by beings unknown out in the darkness. She ached to be at his side, this the first night in many long days that they did not lie together under the stars, but she clutched her blankets close around her in the cold air, and shivered until dawn.

  The next day, in late afternoon, they came upon a large encampment. Not a fraction the size of Roam, there was still to this tent city something of that flavor. Thousands of temporary dwellings gathered together, forming a metropolis out on the bare permafrost. They decided to exercise caution, and kept hidden behind a towering spar of oxidized steel until nightfall.

  Under cover of darkness, they stole into the encampment.

  “Take care,” Hieronymus whispered as they slipped between the pickets into the confusion of tents. Overhead, clouds drifted across a moonless sky, and the night was nearly as dim as the caves of Hele. “I would prefer to avoid discovery, if possible, until we learn with whom we are dealing.”

  “Agreed,” Balam said in a quiet voice, and at his side Menchit seemed as worried as any about what they might find.

  Leena kept a hand near the hilt of her short sword, her other hovering over her holstered Makarov.

  Keeping out of sight behind tents and tarpaulins, the company made their silent way into the makeshift metropolis. Unlike Roam, with its ordered rows and avenues, this assemblage of tents was arranged in no discernible pattern, clustered haphazardly across the flat plains of the steppes.