"Upstairs," he ordered. "Bolt the door, Andri." Picking up an oil lamp, he preceded us.
And so I first made the acquaintance of Doctor Edrick.
I was to spend three weeks in his house being questioned every afternoon and evening while Doctor Edrick made notes in spidery handwriting in a black ledger. At first Andri assisted in the interrogation; and where he had established general outlines, now Edrick filled in the minutest particulars.
I must have spilled out the whole of my life and of all our eastern lives. And why not? Why should I have held back? Was I betraying our way of life, our river-way? Hardly! I felt more like an ambassador of sanity, showing these westerners how life could be conducted more satisfactorily than they obviously conducted it. Was I in any way their enemy? How could I be, when these two had helped and sheltered me? Had there been no Andri and Edrick doubtless I would have spilled out all the same details under much less comfortable circumstances, with a bonfire awaiting what was left of me at the end of it.
Besides, Edrick in particular had a nose for any pussyfooting on my part.
So I told; and told. Trying to put to the back of my mind the fact that I was trading my treasure of information, all for a hope and a song.
It transpired that Edrick was a Doctor of Deotheory: an influential man. He must be leading a double life, it seemed to me, if he was also mucking about with the river and was willing to protect me. Each Firstday that I was there he dressed in white robes, to proclaim in the prayerhouse by the Theodral. Though when I begged to go there, out of curiosity, he flatly refused; I knew none of the responses. Every weekday morning, wearing a less formal version of these same robes, he departed for the Theodral itself. While he was out of the house I browsed through a number of treatises from his small library. That was when I had finished cleaning the house, scrubbing clothes and platters, cooking, and feeding the hound. . . .
For those were my duties. Doctor Edrick had a "housekeeper" apparently devoted to him and thoroughly loyal. But he had sent her away on the morning after my arrival to visit her family in Adamopolis, something which she had been hinting at for many weeks. I was to be her temporary replacement. My presence was more explicable this way.
All in all, this was rather like being aboard the Spry Goose again—as an impoverished passenger, who had been set to work cleaning the bilges for my keep!
Edrick's library: it was small mainly because paper was scarce—a fact I had noticed in the night-soil shack out back, where a bundle of rags was spitted on a nail. What books there were, were crudely printed in very small editions—each with the permit of the worthy Brotherhood stamped in them. Maybe that was why paper was scarce, too. The censors restricted the supply.
From Edrick's books I didn't learn much beyond what Andri had already told me on the journey. Or rather, I learned more but I wasn't much more enlightened by all the casuistical hypotheses and dogmas about the motives of the God-Mind, or the nature of the Snake, a topic with which I felt better acquainted than any westerner could possibly be. Nor did I gain an inkling of what Doctor Edrick's private river project was about.
He came back home one day to find me—with some cleaning chore suspended midway—perusing a yellowing old tract entitled The Truesoil of Manhood. Taking this from me, he tossed it carelessly on a table.
"You'll wear your eyes out, girl."
I was about to mention that his own peepers could well benefit by replacing those crude spectacles of his with some decent lenses ground in Verrino; however, he frowned as if anticipating some such impertinence. Though actually other matters were on his mind.
"Things are boiling up," he said. "Few know it yet, but it's so. That fine brother of yours set the cat among the chicks a year ago."
"Did he? He was more like a chick among the cats."
"I know, and I'm sorry. That was the decision of the local Sons in Minestead. Understandably."
"Did I hear you—?"
"My dear girl, those folk have to live close to the river, on account of the ore deposits. So they're specially sensitive to river-witchery. When the Theodral at Manhome North heard about the incident, they would far rather have talked to Mr Capsi in a lot more detail."
"Maybe Capsi was lucky they didn't get the chance!"
"At least they had his gear to study, at the Academy. The underwater garment wasn't destroyed. Of course, there's still the problem of men only being able to use the river once. . . ."
So that was where Capsi's diving suit had ended up!
"Manhome North: where's that?"
He looked amused. "Four week's walk and more. It's the other great centre. Anyway, since the Capsi episode there have been two schools of thought . . . I'll rephrase that: two schools have existed for a while. Now events are honing the intellectual conflict between Conservers and Crusaders. The latter being in the minority as yet."
"These Conservers want to keep things as they are?"
'They intend to keep our Truesoil secure and pure."
"Whereas Crusaders want to make contact with the East?"
"Contact?" He smiled grimly. "In a manner of speaking."
"And where do you stand, Doctor?"
"What a busybody you are, girl! Still, your family appear to have a history of poking their noses in." He hesitated. 7 view myself as a sort of mediator between the two schools. The Crusaders, should they prevail, have it in them to provide us with much more exact knowledge of our enemy, the Satan-current, and its minions. All the better to safeguard our human way of life—not by crude fire and torment but by refined skills, by techniques."
"Hence your secret river project in the south?"
"My project? Not so! A project on behalf of the Crusaders! One from which I had high hopes of squeezing juicy knowledge. . . ."
"To feed back to the Conservers!" I was guessing, but this seemed unlikely.
"You make me sound . . . cynical. I would rather describe myself as a pragmatic idealist." He debated with himself. "That project was only in its first stages. Maybe now it's stillborn."
"Because I turned up?"
"And maybe it only needs twisting askew of its original aim. One item of great interest stands out from your narrative, Yaleen." Doctor Edrick adjusted his spectacles. "To wit, the existence of a certain fungus drug in the southern jungles."
"Oh no," said I.
"Ah yes," said he. "What a shame you never saw the plant itself!"
"It may not grow on this side of the river."
"You already told me that you survived our southern jungles because of your knowledge of similar jungles on the other bank. Therefore by and large the vegetation corresponds. Most likely that fungus grows in our jungles, too—further south than explorers have ventured recently. Though you have."
"I'm not going back there!"
"Could it be that you're going to Minestead? Opposite Verrino?" Edrick chuckled. "There to stand on the shore and wave a kerchief? In Minestead, where they bum people so impulsively."
"You could tramp around those jungles for ages collecting hordes of different fungi, and none of them the right one!"
"That, Yaleen, rather depends on the effort put into an expedition. The investment, the number of personnel. We'll need rabbits to screen out what's poisonous; and human volunteers to test what isn't."
"I'm not volunteering."
"Goes without saying. You're too valuable as a source of different information. Oh, we'll need lots of other women to cater for such a party, who can act as volunteers."
"So you see women as a superior form of rabbit?"
He wagged his finger astutely. "Point one: you've said that the drug is used in erotic orgies. Presumably involving men and women, though not provenly so. I can imagine many perversions of natural behaviour on your east bank.
"Point two: it's the women of your Port Barbra who orchestrate these lecherous rites; and the only time you saw the drug in action was in the case of a woman, your boatmistress.
"Point three: the female brain must have diff
erent gland-juices in it than a man's. Hence the woman's vulnerability to the Snake. The effect of the drug on women may be more noticeable than the effect on men. And the effect on the Snake. . . ." He looked pleased at his lucid grasp of the situation.
I could only feel an abject horror. I'd thought I had reached a sort of sanctuary. I'd imagined that somehow this might lead me back to my homeland. I'd fancied that I understood Doctor Edrick—the mediator who stood between me and the cruel Brotherhood.
I hadn't understood a thing. Instead, I was simply a traitor.
"Black current," I whispered silently within me, "help me. Help us all." I prayed in the prayerhouse of my skull as a witch might pray to the Satan-snake.
No response. Alas.
Doctor Edrick fiddled pedantically with his glasses. "One adjusts to new circumstances, Yaleen. One adjusts. Have I not adjusted to your arrival here from the land of Satan? I trust I've conveyed my position well enough to help you adjust your own—to what must be."
One thing was obvious. I would have to escape from Edrick's house. I would have to get away from Manhome South. To flee, alone, to somewhere else. Probably with Sons and Crusaders hunting for me.
Where could I go?
I believe the black current may have heard my plea for help, across all those leagues of male land. . . .
That night I dreamed. I dreamed I was at Spanglestream with Jambi. We were standing together on the esplanade. Her husband was loitering some way off. Fishing smacks rode on the water, their emblazoned eyes lit by the shimmer of phosphorescence. Streamers snaked across the river like slow lightning flashes—silver arrows pointing the way from west to east. Pointing towards Spanglestream.
And Jambi said to me, in an offhand way, "Whatever the little beauties are, they seem to keep stingers away."
I woke with a start. Her words echoed in me. I repeated them aloud, over and over.
Had she really said that when we were on the waterfront together? Had I forgotten, or not noticed at the time, because I'd been tipsy? Had I not heard consciously—yet some part of my mind heard and recorded what she uttered?
I rose and paced the room in the darkness, thinking hard.
Was this wishful thinking? Dream fantasy? Or was it a sign? A response from the black current? Which? Why didn't The Book of the River mention that the waters of Spanglestream were free of stingers? If it were true.
Maybe the fisherwomen of Spanglestream—Jambi's old school chums—knew this but didn't make a big deal out of it, except that they felt less leery of sorting their nets by hand without using gauntlets. . . .
Maybe the waters as such weren't free of stingers? Maybe it was only the streamers that were safe? These streamers waxed and waned; so the water would indeed be infested sometimes. But not on the most splendid occasions. When the streamers seemed to stretch clear across the river in great swathes, only interrupted by the midway current, would there be a clear path all the way?
If I were to dive into such a silver swathe from this shore, and swim with it until I reached the current. . . .
Ah, the current. Problem.
It had let me pass once. Why not twice?
Thence onward to the east bank, safe in another luminous swathe. . . .
A long swim, even so!
Yet if I wasn't threatened with being stung to death, I could take my time. Vary my strokes. Even float awhile to recoup my strength.
I tried to taste and savour my dream again. It had been so vivid, so lucid. But was it true?
Maybe Jambi herself hadn't spoken that sentence. Maybe I'd overheard one of her fisherfolk friends say it at the party. And maybe the current itself had spoken to me, through Jambi's dream- lips.
Maybe. Maybe. I could go round like this in circles forever. I decided to treat the dream as true.
I considered. Guineamoy must lie roughly north-east of Man- home South, if that tiny pall of smoke-polluted air I'd spotted from the heights of Lookout Gibbet had indeed been our grimy factory town. So Spanglestream lay to the south-east.
How many leagues away from Manhome South was it? Ten? Twelve? Perhaps no more. I could assume with some confidence that the Sons must shun that part of the shore even more fiercely: there where those bright emanations from the Snake coursed across to touch the very bank. All the country opposite Spanglestream ought to be deserted for a long way inland. Once again my dream pointed in the right direction.
I made a mental note to avoid asking Edrick's opinion of the streamers, or show any special interest should he raise the subject. Then I climbed back into bed.
The next morning I began to steal food and store it in my room. Discreetly but busily.
As it turned out, it was lucky that I'd had to feed Edrick's hound. By now the beast thought of me as a friend. Or as something familiar, at any rate.
Otherwise, when I slipped out at midnight a few days later, the wretched creature would have barked everyone awake, in between tearing me to shreds. . . .
In the interim Doctor Edrick had said no more to me about his grand new project. But he had been absent longer than usual each day. On returning he had twice closeted himself in his study for ages with Andri and Jothan. Jothan departed the house a few hours after the second occasion, equipped for the high road. I had no idea whether he was heading back to the south—or northwards, as a courier to the Ka-Theodral in Manhome North. Ka-Theodral was the formal name for the building, "ka" being some old word for the essence of a person, which rode the psylink back to Eeden when he died.) Whichever direction Gingerbush had taken, he was well out of the way. That same night I crept downstairs and unbolted the kitchen door.
I tossed meat to the dog, which appeared as if by magic. Before I had gone half a dozen steps it had bolted all the raw chunks down, and bounded after me. All the way to the gate, I had to soothe it and thump it in the manner which dogs seem to find friendly. When I shut the gate on it, pushing it back, the hound began to whine noisily. 1 tore a stick off a bush and hurled it far into the dark garden. Away 1 sprinted on tiptoe, hoping that when the animal came back, slavering on the piece of wood and thrashing its tail, and did not find me, amnesia would overtake it.
It must have forgotten. No barking rent the night.
Onwards through Manhome South I slipped. I'd gathered that a woman out alone at night could only be a "whore" or a witch. But I was conveniently dressed in the colour of darkness, and there was nothing in the way of civic illuminations.
Three hours later, with the town well behind me, I was toiling up a forest trail leading out of the valley.
Getting across town and out through the shanties hadn't been too difficult. The grid layout proved invaluable. Even the fouler, rougher areas were arranged north by south and east by west.
I only had to hide once; and run another time, when I set a dog a-raving—but it must have been chained. I hope it choked. I tripped and filthied myself twice, out in the vegetable fields beyond the shanties.
On the far side of the fields was tangle. Finding a trail through all the bushes and trees took a long time. I had to backtrack. I had to circle to the north. Eventually I found a rutted road heading in the right direction—that direction being eastwards, riverwards.
Just as the sky was starting to grey with imminent light the road reached its destination: a timber camp. Ahead were long huts, felled trees, carts—with yokes and very long traces laid out for teams of men to haul. (Or teams of huge hounds. Or women.)
I debated my chance of racing through the camp, but it was too near dawn to run the risk of being spotted by early risers. And there might be dogs about. Instead I worked my way all around the slope, which had been thinned by felling. By the time the sun did rise, I was beyond.
And a clanging alarm sounded from the camp. My heart stopped for a moment—till I realized that this was the signal to rise and shine; and toil.
I journeyed on for perhaps half a league more till I finally had to stop, exhausted. The undergrowth was thick but not impenetrable. No
paths were evident other than minor runs trodden by small creatures unknown. I burrowed into a dense brake, squirmed round several times like a dog to make my bed, and slept.
When I woke in the afternoon, insects were zizzing about me, settling on my scratches and my sweat to feed. I fairly itched with their attentions, but I didn't immediately slap these pests away. Holding quite still, I listened: for any distant shouts, the baying of hounds, whatever. Nothing. I only heard the noises of the forest: a babbling murmur, occasional cackles. So I fed, then I emptied my bowels, burying the evidence with the aid of a stone. I forged onwards. Downhill, now. Away from the heights that lay inland. I navigated by the brightness of the sun.
It took eight days to reach the waters of Spanglestream. I didn't hurry unduly—often I couldn't. I avoided easy, exposed routes, though after the first day or so I didn't expect to be overtaken by pursuing Sons. Doctor Edrick must surely decide that I had struck off north in the direction of Verrino. Or perhaps less likely, that I might have fled due east straight towards the enchanted river to have my witch's limbs in it as soon as possible.
Instead I slipped south-east diagonally across the land.
This was no mean journey. Yet with ample food on hand, and compared with those weeks of travel up in the far south, at times it almost seemed a stroll.
At last one evening as the world was darkening I pushed through brush and creepers for the last time, to stand upon the river bank once more. I beheld silver streamers snaking upon the waters, and my heart rejoiced. As night fell, the phosphorescence glowed ever more brightly.
Dream and reality seemed to merge. Once again the myriads of beasties were putting on a show for me, and this was such a show as seemed more allied to my dream than to my memory. As far as I could see in both directions liquid silver floated, hardly broken at all by straits of black water. Even if I drifted downstream I should still be safe.
One tongue of white fire lay particularly close to the shore. It was as wide as could be: three hundred spans, or four. It angled down from the south-east. Faint twinklings of light visible far off in the north-east were perhaps the harbour lanterns of Spanglestream itself.
Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 Page 13
