Watson, Ian - Black Current 01

by The Book Of The River (v1. 1)

  1 admit that I was curious and a little tipsy, therefore bold. But with all the racket going on around us I didn't really expect to hear anything. However, there must have been something of a whispering gallery effect in that nook. Also, the din was so incoherent that paradoxically this made it easier rather than harder to pick out snatches of two familiar voices—the way that a mother can hear her own particular offspring cry out amidst fifty other bawling babies.

  Snatches was all that I did hear, but they were interesting enough.

  "But suppose you doped the black current with enough of the time-drug. . . ." That was Credence.

  A mumble from Marcialla.

  ". . . slow down its response, wouldn't it?"

  "That fungus is a poison of the mind. . . ."

  ". . . test it by mixing some in a phial of the black current. . . ."

  ". . . and who'll drink it? You?"

  ". . . might do."

  ". . . to prove what?"

  ". . . achieve more rapport, Marcialla! Somehow to be able to speak to it, and it to us. Maybe our time-scales are too different."

  ". . . contradicting yourself. Slow it down? Slow us down, you mean. Anyway, it reacts fast enough when it's rejecting someone."

  "Reflexes and thoughts are two different things. If I stuck my hand in a fire. . . ."

  "Your trouble is, you're a true believer. Like your Mother; and so she named you Credence. You believe in the godly spirit of the river . . ." A surge in the level of the din cut off the rest of this.

  "Besides," was the next thing I heard, from Marcialla, "take this notion one stage further. It's all very well to talk blithely of doping one phial with this wretched fungus powder. But suppose somebody then thought of dumping a few barrels of the stuff into the midstream, eh? Slow down its, ah, reflexes long enough to take a boat through, perhaps? Over to the other side . . . Where does that lead to in the long run? I'll tell you where: it leads to poisoning the current. It leads to making the river safe for men. What price your goddess, then? The whole thing falls apart. A whole, good way of life goes with it. Always assuming that the black current didn't react horrendously to being poisoned! What you're saying is sheer madness."

  "Sorry, Guildmistress," said Credence unctuously.

  "You know those people, don't you?"

  "Which people?"

  "The Port Barbra ones over there. Do you think I'm blind? You've arranged something. Now you want a phial of the black current. Or is it a bucketful? They want it. In exchange. Do they appreciate the dangers? Any more of this, and we'll be having to flash word to every boatmistress on the river to keep the stuff under double lock. Don't you think that would be sad? Is there no trust? No sense any more?"

  Then the noise really did get out of hand. Some musicians had arrived, to do terrible things to my head—although they played pipes and flutes and banjos rather than bashing on drums. Jambi was growing restive about my noncommittal grunts and yes-noes as I sat with my head cocked, intent on other things.

  "You in a trance or something?" she shouted.

  "Hmm . . . ? No. Sorry! Cheers."

  After a long lie-in the next morning, I was up and leaning against the rail at the head of the gangplank waiting for Jambi to join me— when along came Marcialla.

  "Yaleen," she said thoughtfully, "saw you in the Jingle-Jangle last night." She waited for me to volunteer something.

  "Quite a place," I said. "Oof. My head." I rubbed my tender skull.

  "You meet all sorts in a place like that."

  "All sorts are in town for the festival, I suppose."

  "Even women from Port Barbra."

  "Oh yes, Jambi pointed some out to me. They wear hoods and scarves."

  And so we continued to fence for a while (or at least that's what I thought), and I was feeling fairly pleased with myself, though also praying that Jambi would hurry along and break it up.

  "Weird place, Port Barbra," said Marcialla. "Odd people there, some of them."

  "So I've heard. Strange jungly rites."

  "People sometimes get attracted by strange things." When I said nothing, Marcialla went on, "Of course, you can't judge a place by its oddballs. Its extremists. After all, look at Verrino."

  Did she know? Had word got out of what I had done, and passed along the river? I was talking—I remembered—to a guildmistress, no less. I'd heard that much last night.

  "And equally," she mused, "people can get mixed up in queer things quite innocently, even the best of them." My heart was thumping. But then, so was my head. That was when Marcialla glanced up at the rigging and furled sails, her boatswain's special province, and sighed; and I realized that she had been thinking all along in a sad and lonely way of Credence, and simply associating me with her because I too had been in the Jingle-Jangle.

  "Maybe," I said—I was trying to be helpful, without at the same time betraying myself as an eavesdropper—"maybe people who believe deeply in things are all innocents, but it's a dangerous kind of innocence. . . ." And maybe I only said this to impress, in the hope that Marcialla would be amazed at my youthful perspicacity. What I'd said certainly wasn't true of the Observers at Verrino. Hasso hadn't been an innocent. On the contrary! Nor Yosef, either. Nor Capsi. Dedicated men, but by no means naive. If I had overheard that conversation aright the previous night, though, Credence was both dedicated and naive, deep down.

  Marcialla obviously regarded me as the innocent, here. She smiled in a kindly way.

  "You've done good painting work. Quite commendable. And if I hadn't kept you at it back then, there wouldn't have been time for a holiday now, would there? Don't let me keep you from enjoying yourself."

  "I'm just waiting for Jambi." (Where was she, damn it?)

  "Take care ashore," Marcialla added softly. More to herself than to me.

  "Care, Boatmistress?" And I realized that I was echoing Credence's suave tone, of not so many hours earlier.

  Marcialla stared at me, puzzled. "The booze, I mean, girl. Watch the booze; it's lethal." And she patted me on the arm.

  "Don't I know it!"

  Which was when Jambi turned up at long last.

  So we sought out Lalo's home in the new town. We followed her directions scrupulously; but, as directions have a way of being, these ones were perfect so long as you had already been there once.

  As we walked, the stone of the old town transmuted itself into the timber of the new. Homes were nuzzling against living trees, or were arranged around them in conical skirts so that the tree itself seemed like a huge, out-of-proportion chimney. Other houses climbed the largest giants in cantilevered or buttressed tiers—stepping around the great trunks like flights of steps by which some wood spirit could descend at night from the leafy crowns. Sometimes a walkway ran from one tree to the next, along a branch.

  As yet, this was all jungle which had been thinned out and tamed. In the old town the sun was aggressively hot and glary; further inland the unbroken umbrella of foliage would surely blank it off except for vagrant shafts like spears of molten metal. Here then, in the new town, was the ideal compromise: the sunlight dappled down. Unfamiliar flower bushes hugged the roadways and paths, but there was no riot of undergrowth as such. Vegetable gardens were planted here and there, plump with tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, sweetgourds, meatmelons, pumpkins. Familiar fruits mostly, though their size was something else.

  And of course we got lost. Or more exactly, we arrived just where we wanted to be not that day, but a couple of days later: at the festival site. I suppose this was because quite a number of people involved in the preparations were heading that way too. Like two stray fish caught up in a school of busier fish, unconsciously we went with them.

  We came to a very large clearing, on one side of which workers were hammering, fixing and strengthening the terraces of a grandstand.

  And at once I felt at home, for the area before the grandstand was like the deck of an enormous boat. Sparred masts soared up to the sky from the flat, stripped gr
ound. Rope ladders ran up some of these; single knotted ropes up others. I spied trapezes, aerial platforms and crow's nests—with more ropes stretched taut from each to the other; while behind this array stood a dead, though still mighty tree. All the minor and lower branches had been lopped, but the surviving high arms were hung with more acrobatic gear. A few junglejacks dressed in tough baggy trousers, scarlet jerkins and flexible fork-toed boots hung from harnesses, checking belays and loops, wood-pitons and snaplinks; one man was abseiling down a rope.

  After watching all this activity for a while, we made enquiries and were on our way again—this time in the right direction. My hangover had died away nicely by now.

  As promised, the Lalo family home was a tree-house—one of those which "stepped up" around a jungle giant. We reached it by way of a covered stairway bolted to the trunk which mounted the roofs of the houses below.

  Yet scarcely had we arrived at the door, let alone met any parents, than Lalo declared that a picnic was in order "out in the real jungle". Kish popped out in her wake, bearing a hamper, and within what seemed like seconds we were descending the stairs again.

  Perhaps Lalo's parents had hinted strongly that it wasn't good form to invite a friend from Spanglestream so very soon after Kish had left the place. Next thing, all his female relatives and friends might be descending on Jangali, to snap the house right off its moorings!

  Or maybe it was Lalo, restored to her home and habits after her long wander-weeks, who had decided of her own accord that she had committed a faux pas by casually inviting two boating acquaintances. Kish himself seemed perfectly happy and at ease.

  Whatever the reason, off we went into the jungle along a trail of perhaps half a league, which grew increasingly wild and noisy with hidden wildlife.

  A jungle seen from afar, from the deck of a boat, can be utterly monotonous. At close quarters the same jungle becomes magical. There seemed to be a hundred shades of green: a whole spectrum composed entirely of that colour, as though the sun shed green light, not a bluish white. And in competition with this first, green spectrum was a second one consisting of flowers and flutterbyes radiating reds and oranges and azures, shocking pink and sapphire, like coloured lamps, the better to be noticed. Wings and petals seemed crystalline, glassy, iridescent, with an inner light of their own.

  "Why, the flowers are shining!" I exclaimed. "Aren't they? And that flutterbye there!"

  "They are—and you should see them after dusk," said Lalo.

  Apparently when all the green leaves grew dim there lingered for an hour or two a parade of floral and insect firelight.

  Lalo pointed out the occasional dangerous spinetree, and a squat "boiler" out of which a burning liquid could gush, and oozing gum- sponges. She flushed out a whistle-snake which would shriek to scare you if you trod on it; but it wasn't dangerous except perhaps to your ear-drums. She sent a couple of land-crabs scuttling. These could take your finger off, though only if you stuck it in the wrong place.

  She named for us the mammoths of the jungle: the jacktrees, hogannies and teakwoods. She showed us where honeygourds and blue-pears hung up high almost out of sight. We passed a miniature forest of white antlered fungi crowding on a fallen, rotten trunk. These, she said, were edible; whereas the tiny crimson buttons sprouting beneath were instant poison. They looked it. I'm glad I paid attention. I little knew it at the time, but this guided tour was a lesson in survival which I would be very glad of during the early weeks of the next year . . .

  Vines dangled down as if to loop and strangle you. Indeed there was one variety known as stranglevine; but you had to allow it a good half-hour to tie itself round you. Moss-mats hung in greenly dripping masses, as though secreting some slime-venom—yet these could staunch blood and disinfect wounds. And webvines wove what looked suspiciously like enormous webs where surely something fat and hairy with lots of legs and eyes lurked; but didn't.

  We finally came to Lalo's chosen picnic spot. Deep rock erupted upwards here in the form of a ziggurat rising a hundred spans above the jungle floor. As we neared this stone mass, it took on the appearance of an abandoned, overgrown temple. Briefly I imagined that Lalo was about to reveal an ancient secret to us: the work of some long-dead race, dating from before human beings ever came to this world, from somewhere else.

  But no; it was a natural formation. Crude steps, now mossed over, had been cut up one side of it; though perhaps the steps were natural too, due to fracturing and crumbling. We climbed up these to the top, which was flat and almost bald of vegetation except for a cushion of moss. Lalo uprooted a few plants and a shrub which had established themselves, and tossed them over the side—just as hill climbers elsewhere add an extra stone to a cairn. So, high above the jungle floor in this gap squeezed open by the ziggurat, we sat down. Kish unpacked a bottle of wine wrapped in wet leaves to keep it cool; and blue-pears, spiced rolls, smoked snake and a jar of pickled purple fungi.

  We chatted idly, and ate and drank and admired the view, mainly of aerial webs and mats of moss—the brighter aspects of the jungle were below these middle levels, mostly. After a while I picked up the half-empty pickle jar and peered at the remaining contents.

  "I was meaning to ask you, Lalo. You were saying that people at Port Barbra use some fungus or other as a drug to mix their minds up."

  Lalo laughed. "And here in Jangali we always poison visitors with purple mushrooms. To keep them in our thrall for a hundred years."

  "No, seriously."

  "Why?"

  "No special reason. It just seems weird. Interesting, you know?"

  "And poor Jangali has nothing half as interesting on offer, alas."

  "Oh, I didn't mean to imply . . . ! Why, this is fabulous." I swept my hand around. "I feel like a real junglejack perched up here."

  Kish grinned. "I don't think junglejacks enjoy quite as much support as this."

  "Anyhow," I persisted, "what is the story?"

  Lalo considered, while she bit into a blue-pear.

  "I don't know all that much about it. We hear bits of gossip now and then. About orgies in the interior. They use this fungus powder to make sex last a long time. To spin out the, um, sensations, so that they seem to last for hours and hours."

  "So it's a drug which slows time down?"

  "The trouble is, time gets its own back. So I've heard. You speed up afterwards. You run all over the place like a loony. You talk too fast for anyone to understand you. You gobble down heaps of food because you're burning it all up. If you go on using the stuff, you age before your time. You're old at thirty. Worn out, I suppose."

  This business about rushing around and chattering nineteen to the dozen didn't quite seem to square with what I'd heard of the "furtive" conduct of people in Port Barbra and environs. But maybe the members of the drug cult kept themselves apart in secret places while they were liable to race about and gabble on. In any case this might just be a tall tale which the drug users fostered, to frighten people off.

  "So it's mainly a sex thing with them? It's all just to make sex more thrilling?"

  "I don't know that it makes it any more thrilling/,, said Lalo. "It certainly makes it last longer."

  In her emphatic voice, this sounded like some ultimate statement. Kish blinked several times and shook his head as though he hadn't heard correctly. Jambi convulsed with silent laughter.

  Lalo pulled a doleful face. "Oh dear! I think I said the wrong thing." And we all began to laugh; after which I couldn't reasonably get back to the topic without seeming obsessed. As if I wanted some of the fungus drug for myself.

  Two days later Jambi and I were part of a huge crowd out at the festival ground. Lalo and Kish had promised to see us there, but of course we didn't meet up. There must have been ten thousand people. The grandstand was packed to bursting and the sides of the clearing were thronged. Certainly there were more people than I had ever seen in one place before. It struck me immediately that anything could happen in such a crowd while the acrobatic display
s were in progress, and nobody would be any the wiser. Alas, despite the presence of at least a score of jungle-guild marshals patrolling and supposedly keeping an eye on things, I was right.

  The clearing had been transformed with banners and bunting, with bright little tents and stalls beneath awnings selling snacks and drinks. There were side shows for the children; giant flutterbyes in twig cages to be won; wrestlers, clowns, conjurors, even a fortune teller.

  A fortune teller. I had never had my fortune told. The tent was decorated with golden stars and comets; and when we came upon it there was no one waiting outside.

  "Shall we?"

  "No thanks," said Jambi. A conjuror was tossing a stream of shiny silver balls nearby. By some sleight of hand he seemed to be making them travel in figure-eights. "I'll watch him. You go ahead."

  A fortune teller. Would the person read my palm? Or slit open a fish and examine its guts for auspices? How ancient, how quaint.

  Inside, the tent was dim. So until I was already inside and committed, I didn't realize that the fortune teller was a Port Barbra woman. Her hood was pulled well over her head, and her scarf covered her nose and mouth so that of her face there were only two eyes staring out intently—observing the whole of me, while I saw precious little of her.

  She spoke softly. "Please sit." On a stool, before a little table.

  Which I did. By now I was wishing to flee from the tent, instead. But I was determined to be polite. Or was I too cowardly to rush out? Sometimes rudeness is the better part of courage. . . .

  However, I placed upon the table a coin of the value stipulated on the notice outside, 50 scales, or half a fin. Not much, though not entirely negligible.

  Cards: it was cards. She was a cartomancer—though maybe she could also turn a trick with fish-guts or palm-lines. Cards were probably faster and took fewer powers of invention.

  She handed me a pack, face down. "Don't look. Cut and shuffle three times. Each time you cut, turn half the pack around." I did so, and gave it back.