People! How I yearned for them, now that there were none!
"Oh Hasso, where are you? You who were gentle and witty!" I cried out, silencing the idiot jungle noise; then I stifled my cries in panic lest some savage Son of Adam heard me.
Many were the times I raved and rambled on to myself, and started imaginary dialogues—abortive ones which rarely got far beyond the opening gambits; whilst I ploughed through the puree, and subsequent jungle. Surviving. Surviving!
I guess in such a situation you either go mad, or else you grow up. You become yourself at last, your true self. Because there's no one else available—and "yourself" had better be big enough to bail you out of this scrape!
I grew up—I thought. At other times I wasn't so sure; and regarding this whole period I can't really guarantee the validity of my feelings or supposed discoveries about myself.
Sometimes when I stopped to camp—in the crook of a tree or under a bush—and when I'd been lucky enough to grab a bellyful of crab, worm meat and tubers, I loosened my breeches belt. I masturbated. And I thought hectically: not of insouciant Hasso or of my happy dalliance with sweet Tam in Aladalia in the days of what seemed my youth. But of the wearing of black robes. Of the private lives of humiliated women. Of a great grim Son of Adam who owned me, and was noble, but a brute. Black hateful fantasies, these!
Was this adult behaviour? Perhaps in a perverse way it strengthened my spirit. With my playful, clever fingers I embraced a hateful future. Coming to terms: you could call it that. I think I was sick with loneliness, and this was the only way I could discharge the accumulating poison. I think that to survive such an ordeal—one which just goes on and on remorselessly—you need something to hone you, to enflame you, to make you into a weapon, a mad thing. I could hardly revenge myself on the trees. I could hardly promise myself vengeance against any known individual. So instead I imagined humiliators and enslavers; and thus I advanced to meet them, day by day. I embraced what I most feared, to screw up the courage to continue.
By now I had somewhat discarded the bright idea that I was going to stand opposite Verrino Spire waving my tom blouse till some miraculous rescue party wafted across to me. . . .
My first menstmation of the journey I coped with, using wads of moss. My second flow was thinner; hunger and exhaustion were drying me up.
An heroic slog through wild jungles for weeks on end . . . Do you expect battles against giant reptiles with crystalline eyes (me armed with my pocket knife)—instead of a tale of what I did in my pants?
Well, there were incidents. Not many, but some.
There was the day when I stepped on what seemed to be a bed of moss. It was thick green scum, instead. I plunged through into a shaft of water. My flailing left arm was seized by teeth like needles. I never saw what was trying to eat me. Terrified, choking on the scummy water, I battered my free fist against the source of pain. Which let go. I wallowed and thrashed my way back on to dry land.
Blood welled from inflamed stab marks. But I spotted one of those dripping moss-mats which Lalo had assured me would staunch and disinfect. Leaping, I tore handfuls loose, to bind round the wound with my piece of string.
The remedy must have worked. My arm ached, but it didn't swell up or turn purple or throb with pus and poison.
Then there was the day I met a monster. It must have been the great-grandma of all croakers. It squatted in my path like a huge leathery boulder, high as my chest. Its eyes bulged at me unblinkingly. Its throat membrane pulsed.
"Arrkl Arrk!" I heard from directly behind. Naturally I turned to look. At the last moment I recalled the ventriloquist trickery of croakers and hastily converted my turn into a leap aside, and a roll and scramble through undergrowth.
Crash! Where I'd been a few seconds earlier, now the great- grandma croaker sat slumped, a-quiver. Its eyes rotated. It shuffled about.
"Urrk! Urrk!"—again from behind. Scrambling up, I fled.
Nor must I forget the day of the piranha-mice.
A sudden hush came over the jungle, stilling the usual modest anarchic racket. In place of this, a moment later, I heard a rustling as of wind-blown autumn leaves down north in Aladalia or Firelight. A surging.
Ahead, undergrowth rippled. A grey living mass was advancing at speed, replacing the green. A million tiny creatures were gobbling everything in their path. Leaping, scuttling, climbing, dropping back —and chewing, always chewing. Leaves, flowers and moss became raggy in a trice, and vanished. Some thrashings and brief squeals marked where more mobile items of dinner took exception to being eaten. Something the size of a cat scrabbled for a tree. I couldn't identify it—it wore a second coat of squirming grey. The unlucky victim clawed bark, then fell back into the mass beneath. It seemed to deflate in an instant as if it had only been filled with air.
This happened very rapidly. In another few seconds I would have become hapless prey myself. The wavefront of hunger was nearly at my feet. I too scrambled up a tree, with a few grey scouts already hanging on to my boots. I crushed the ravenous little bodies against the trunk. I clawed and climbed higher. Obviously the things would eat anything. Even in my half-starved state I was a great prize of meat and guts.
I was terrified. How high would they climb? The grey mass heaped up around the base of my refuge. Parts of it made tentative leaps and forays. Tiny teeth darted. Hanging on precariously, I stamped and punched as best I could, bruising one fist then the other. A thin eager whistling rose from below.
But then—as though clouds had obscured some inner sun which fit up all their vicious little lives—the scouts stopped climbing. The mass subsided. The whole grey carpet ceased its flexing and writhing. It settled. It lay still.
Quickly comatose. Asleep.
The food-run was over. I was of no further interest. Nothing was, but slumberous digestion.
If I slid down the trunk right away, crushing little bodies by the score as I broke out of the cordon, mightn't they rouse again as one creature?
And if I waited . . . Tiny bodies, huge appetites! Mightn't they wake up just as hungry in another hour or so?
I brooded a bit then worked my way up even higher, to where a neighbouring tree tangled with my own sanctuary. I transferred. From there I moved with difficulty to a third tree. After about half an hour of awkward manoeuvres I descended on the far side of the sleeping pack.
For the next league or so I found a convenient roadway through the jungle waiting for me, stripped bare by the beasts. Marking their last few dozen food-sprints and mass snoozes. Presumably the total slumber that overcame the mice fooled other creatures into forgetting their peril. The impromptu road swung this way and that, and latterly vegetation had begun to reassert itself. I had to leave my tunnel when suddenly it veered off at a right angle.
Lalo had said nothing to me about these hungry hordes. Maybe they only lived in western jungles. In which case, what else lurked hereabouts? After quitting the corridor I was nervous and wary for a while, but no further animal prodigies crossed my path. The jungle cackled at me as if planning dirty deeds. Yet I never saw the owners of these voices; they did not follow me.
On the umpteenth day at last I came upon a trail—one which hadn't been made by piranha-mice. This was much narrower and had been hacked, not nibbled. Nor did it run nearly as straight as the rodents' single-minded tunnel spasmodically did. It took the line of least resistance amidst tree-trunks and tangles. Generally it ran east to west. I followed this trail inland, hoping that it would connect with some north-south route.
I could never see very far ahead because of the constant twists and turns. After marching along for a league or so I suddenly heard voices, coming from around the next comer or the one after.
Hastily thrusting aside, I concealed myself behind a mass of dinner-plate-leaves full of peepholes.
Only moments after, three men came along the path. Large boxes were strapped to their shoulders. All of the men sported untidy beards. They were dressed in baggy linen trousers tucke
d into boots, and coarse cloth shirts. Two wore floppy hats, one a white-spotted bandanna. All were armed, with knives and tarnished machetes. I didn't like the look of them one bit. These were wild men.
And I could have safely gone on not liking their looks—but for where I had chosen to hide.
A burning needle stabbed my hand as it rested on the soil; then another. I didn't cry out. I only gasped involuntarily and snatched my hand away—to tear two insects loose: red things the size of a fingernail. That was enough: the intake of breath, the rustle of leaves.
Boxes were shed. A knife came out. A machete was brandished. Boots crashed towards me; and I was hauled out upon the trail.
"What do we have here?" the hatless one said in wonder. "A girl?" His hair was a wild bush of bright ginger, as was his beard. He said "gairl".
"Obviously!" The black-bearded second man ruffled the tatters of my blouse. "In men's raiment. Mostly."
"Stop it," I squeaked.
"Runaway?" asked the third man, a rangy blond individual. "Witch?" He said "roonaway" and "weetch".
I was released, and Gingerbush put his knife away. "You a witch?"
"No, no." But of course in their eyes I supposed I was. I was a woman of the river.
"Do you think she'd tell?" snapped Rangy Blond. "What are you?" he shouted at me.
"If you don't think I'll tell, why ask me?"
"Ho, spirited!" from Gingerbush.
"Queer accent," remarked Blackbeard. "Audibly."
Rangy Blond gripped me by the shoulders, and I thought he was going to tear off the remains of my blouse. Maybe all my dark fantasies of the past few weeks had come home to roost. He shook me instead. "What—are—you?"
I stared into this wild man's eyes, suddenly inspired. "You're upset. Scared. I shouldn't be here. But neither should you!"
"Perceptive," said Blackbeard.
Rangy Blond seemed incensed. "Shouldn't be here? Why not? Who says? We're prospecting for jemralds." Presumably those were precious stones.
"Why shouldn't she be here?" mused Blackbeard. "A deaf man could tell you she ain't one of us. So where's she from? 'Tis obvious. She's from over the river. Ain't you?" He grinned—though not a cruel grin. "Shipwrecked, eh? You all use ships."
"Boats," I corrected him unthinkingly. And he chuckled in triumph. After all those weeks of isolation this was a game too fast for me. Blackbeard might look thuggish, but he was nimble-witted.
He turned to his companions. "Brothers, we've found us treasure."
"Okay," I admitted. "I'm from the other shore. I'm a riverwoman. Do you want to know about it?"
Blackbeard laughed uproariously. "Do we, Brothers? Do we just!" He calmed. "So she came across the Satan-channel . . . Doesn't mean as how she was wrecked, though. . . ." Abruptly he caught hold of my hand and twisted it. "Sting bites, eh? You need ointment." Letting go, he unlatched his box and burrowed. Producing a glass jar, he salved my skin with something that stank. "Nasty buggers, those. So which is it? Boatwreck? Or sacrifice? Tossed overboard into Satan's black lips? Or a spy? Found a way over, set up a camp down south?"
Why had they hacked this trail towards the river? Simply to search for jewels? No . . . that was only their cover story—to hide what they were up to, from the eyes of other men. I felt sure of it.
After the comparative monotony of the past week, a lot happened in a little while.
The three men cached their burdens beside the trail and escorted me back to their camp a league to the west, which a couple more men guarded. They gave me a new coarse shirt to replace my blouse, and fed me to bursting point on a stew of meat and veg poured over tapioca; then questioned me.
The camp consisted of a crude log cabin and a pair of tents, in a clearing with a stream nearby. Another narrow trail ran away northwest.
The "Brothers" didn't exactly introduce themselves, but it soon became evident that Blackbeard's name was Andri. Rangy Blond was Harld, and Gingerbush was Jothan. They weren't actual brothers, except perhaps in roguery. The two men who had been left to guard the camp were less savoury specimens: one with teeth missing, the other with a badly scarred left cheek. This pair eyed me but kept their distance, and weren't included in our discussions.
Andri paid intense attention to what I said, questioning me where he didn't understand and demanding the meaning of words he didn't know. I must have been interrogated for two hours. I even told about Capsi and Verrino. Yet Andri never went into unnecessary detail; he blocked in the general picture.
"Right," he said at last. "Yaleen of the River, I believe you. Mainly because no one could be such a thoroughgoing liar, except maybe Jothan here. Lucky you fell in with the likes of us. Saved your life, doubtless. Certainly saved you much pain. Wised up to our ways by those Watchers of yours you may have been. But not enough. Never enough."
"Was it entirely luck?" I asked. "That I fell in with you?"
He wagged a finger. "A story for a story, you won't get. Don't expect it."
"Because you're danger," said Harld.
"Potentially," agreed Andri. "S'posing she fell into the wrong hands. S'posing she blabbed her mouth, when those hands started twisting her."
"But I'm treasure to you, aren't I? More precious than jemralds." I'd decided to stop being a lost waif, and to capitalize on my assets.
"Jemralds to one man: dung to most others, only fit for burning. After you'd shat yourself, in the cellars. S'posing you tried to hold back, like a costive. The Brotherhood would always think you was holding back."
"You don't have to try and frighten me."
"Spunky words, girl. But foolish. I simply touch on the truesoil."
"Do you. And which one man might I be jemralds to? The person you work for?"
Andri picked his teeth a bit. "Truesoil is," he said, "you won't be learning no names till you meet their owners. What you know not, you can't babble."
"What's all this 'truesoil' business?"
"Eh, don't know the word? Happen you wouldn't, either! Truesoil is the gritty, the down to earth. It's the permitted land. Near the river is all falsesoil. A lot I'll have to tell you. Evidently."
Which is what he proceeded to do, commencing as night was falling—until I found myself being borne in his arms into one of the tents, lantem-lit by Jothan. I'd flaked out.
Andri slid me into the luxury of a sleeping-bag. That night I dreamed I was in an honest bunk aboard a friendly boat.
My education continued the next morning, after I'd crammed down a huge breakfast. Harld seemed edgy and restless, but Andri insisted on wising me up adequately about life in the west before he would contemplate our setting off (for destination undisclosed).
"She has to know what not to say," he impressed on Harld. "What not to do. We'll get her a robe as soon as we can. Right now we have to robe her mind."
And learn I did: ten-thousandfold what anyone else in the east had ever guessed of the western world. . . .
Men had come to this world, said Andri, from another one called Eeden, a name unknown to me. And when people died here, their minds returned again to Eeden. The westerners were convinced that their physical bodies were artificial dummies or puppets; and these dummies were animated from a distance. This idea seemed a wholly lunatic one, but it did become more plausible—or at least self-consistent—the more Andri explained.
According to their "Deotheorists" real people couldn't live on any world except Eeden, for a hundred reasons which had to do with differences in air and water, foodstuffs, diseases, whatever. Consequently the "God-Mind" had sent forth to a hundred worlds artificial bodies capable of breeding and reproducing. A "psylink" existed between Eeden and our own world, such that babies were bom back in Eeden yet they lived out their lives—their mental lives—in puppet flesh here. Meanwhile their original bodies lay entranced in cold caverns underneath Eeden, their growth halted at the infant stage, each to be "revived" when the corresponding puppet body died—as fully-experienced "cherubs" whose "afterlives" in Eeden would enri
ch the tapestry of that world gloriously, complexly, subtly. The cherubs would bring home to Eeden a hundred different histories, a hundred strange and varied ways of life, from all over the universe.
Yet here on this particular world of ours, Man had encountered the Snake of the River, an evil infiltrating creature intent on subverting the "psycolonists" and invading Eeden, only true Home of Humanity. The Snake worked its wiles especially through women, due to subtle differences in glands and blood and brain—which made all females potential agents of the Snake, Satan. Once infested, people could only be purged by pain and fire; which of course tended to kill them.
Naturally, I was puzzled about the nature of this God-Mind, who had created human life here, and whose all-powerful will could cross the cosmos, only to be thwarted.
It appeared that "God" was a higher intelligence of "an ineffable nature". Inexpressible, beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. One day he would rule the whole universe, and create it. (Which meant that he both did rule, already, and didn't—the Deotheorists' ideas of time were really weird.) The arrival of dummy-people in the demesne of the Snake had awakened that other divine (or devilish) force to similar ambitions. Now there was a second contender for captaincy of the ship of stars.
What's more, the supreme God-Mind, the Lord of Creation, had himself somehow been produced out of the mind of Man; created, given birth to.
So.
This was both crazier, and more rational, than I'd expected. It wasn't simply that the Sons of Adam lorded it over women. They did—with a vengeance. But they actually had a reason. True, as far as I could make out, the average tenor of western life was cruelty, superstition and oppression pure and simple. Self-interest and rabid prejudice—coupled with distinctly backward circumstances. I noted how Jothan and Harld ogled greedily at some of the items I related of life in the east, ordinary items we took for granted. Still, there was a rationale behind their wretched system. The God-Mind, versus the Vile Snake.
I feared it might make me spew to play host to such a hostile concept of the black current; I who had drunk of it. To my surprise, it didn't. I was far from any eastern town or boat, far from the river, far from the community of women. I felt as if a persuasive influence had withdrawn from me; or perhaps it was just lying low, keeping watch.
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