I slipped off my women's black weeds—they were certainly the worse for wear. I discarded my undershorts. I kicked off my frayed rope sandals. I cleansed myself of the West. I was determined to plunge into the stream quite nude. If any Son of Adam could have seen me, he would have known that a witch was going home, and would have covered his eyes. Or else he would have stared, and lusted for fire.
I plodged out to where the mud fell sharply away—and launched myself upon the luminous highway.
When a light wind stirs even the gentlest of waves, on so wide a river after a while you lose sight of the bank entirely. Stars spread above me in a second river; mainly of silver, with several sapphires and rubies scattered through that setting. I took the constellation of the Axe for my guide, remembering how it would turn about the Pole as time went by.
No stingers attacked. If great shoals of pollfish, ajil and hoke were grazing upon the streamer, I felt no mouths bump or nibble at me. My arms were haloed in a warm white fire. My head, too, I suppose —though I never dunked my face as I swam.
I don't know how many times I varied my stroke—breast, butterfly, crawl—or whether an hour had gone by or longer, when blackness loomed immediately ahead. The ever-splashing silver had begun to blind me to the stars of the Axe; that blackness gave me back my sight.
I didn't tread water or hesitate.
But I did think fiercely in my head: Worm of the World, it's me: Yaleen! Let me pass!
If I'd expected it to drink me deep, then spew me out again with a giant fish to bear me senseless to the eastern shore, I was wrong.
I swam through the current sluggishly, breasting what felt like soft butter or congealing lard. And while I swam, it explored me. Dreams rolled around inside my skull, examining the contents once again, laying out the wares. I never sank into the depths, of the current or of unconsciousness. In the midst of my "hallucinations" I remained aware of where I was. Thus I was swimming briefly through the southern jungles—then along the high road in company of Andri and Jothan. Next I was floating in Doctor Edrick's house. Here, the current seemed to shudder, to wobble. . . .
As before, it drained me. It didn't speak, though. Maybe it was too busy with what it was learning from me of the western land to spare time for my immediate problems. For little me, lost in the middle of the river. Maybe it had already communicated enough by sending me that dream. Perhaps I had to be truly unconscious, before it could connect on the personal level.
Or did it communicate? Not in words as such?
Somehow I sensed that it was satisfied with me. Somehow I suspected that I might be able to pass through it in future whenever I wished, or needed to. This was nothing vouchsafed to me directly; no more than an intuition.
Certainly this second passage was far more smoother than my first brain-crunching, suffocating inadvertent one.
Then I was through.
And flailing about in ordinary river water. Phosphorescence dazzled me once more. The invisible shore lay another three-quarters of a league away. I was as far from land as could be. And quite wrung out.
I felt dreadfully, absurdly let down and abandoned. All of a sudden my relief at passing through was replaced by rage. In retrospect I think this was a necessary rage—like my screwed-up emotions on the jungle trek weeks earlier—which gave me the strength to carry on.
"Help me, damn you!" I cried. The current ignored my appeal. I was of no further interest.
"You heap of shit!" I howled.
Then I gathered myself, and struck out again along the quicksilver road, not so quick for me.
Eventually—on the hundredth or thousandth occasion when I craned my neck—I saw lanterns distinctly, tiny pools of light, irregular dark humps of buildings lightly rimed by starlight.
Suddenly: masts spoking the stars, a fishing smack lolling on my left by a moored buoy, another on my right.
Quite unexpectedly I was there.
I stroked along that last lapping shining tongue. I sidled along the base of the wharf. I touched a stone step. I hauled myself out.
Dripping silver, I crawled painfully up the flight. I weighed a ton. Each separate step was unbelievably solid and unmoving.
At the top I slid forward and spread out like a boneless jelly. But before I passed out I decided maybe I was wrong about the imperviousness of stone. Spanglestream quayside suddenly felt more comforting, more tenderly cradling, than any other place where I had lain my head to rest for a very long while.
I'm hazy about the exact sequence of events thereafter—I was discovered presently, still lying there—however the night certainly ended with me wrapped in a blanket on a spare bunk aboard a brig, the Cornucopia.
Next day was confession day.
After I'd been lent new togs, and had devoured a huge plateful of good fried river fish, I confessed to the boatmistress of the Cornucopia. That afternoon I repeated my story to an emergency mini-meeting of the river guild—consisting of the quaymistress, Halassa, and two guildmistresses who happened to be in port. One of these had been present at the conclave held on board the Santamaria at Tambimatu, prior to my New Year's Eve departure. She was able to vouch that I was the person I said I was.
To these three women I told my whole story, Verrino included. And how I had informed Doctor Edrick about the fungus drug. And how men of the west believed that all of us on this world were made of artificial flesh; and when people died, their minds returned to Eeden—home of the God-Mind which originally sent us forth to populate strange planets, and multiply. All of it, all.
Many were the urgent coded signals flashing up- and downstream during the next few days; you can be sure of it!
And me?
I was quartered at the quaymistress's own home in town till a full guild meeting could be convened. Halassa wavered between regarding me as a miracle, and a miscreant. Or perhaps as somebody who had contracted a lethal disease and survived it uniquely, to carry its seeds around henceforth in my veins. I was a prodigy—and a bit of a pariah. Heroine, and renegade.
The mini-conclave had sworn me to keep mum about the bulk of my tale. (Though what exactly my oaths were worth when the black current itself had twice allowed me passage, was another matter. . . .) The bulk of it; but not all. That was impossible. Word had spread around the Cornucopia; and had leaked ashore, as well as to other boats. Nor did Halassa try to keep me penned in her house. If she had tried, she wouldn't have succeeded. Halassa's home wasn't —couldn’t be—another Edrick's. After my months of exile, I had to rub shoulders with real life again: streets, taverns, cafes, waterfront. I was on a leash, but not too short a one.
As I wandered about, I attracted a certain amount of attention. To those in the know, I was a bit of a wonder, to point the finger at. Look: there's the first riverwoman ever to cross the current—and cross it twice! She's the first of us who knows all about the west! Does she not have horns on her head now, or a jet-black tongue, or some other mark of strangeness? Maybe she can read the current's mind and foretell the future! That sort of thing. Some women would try to pump me for information, either back-slappingly or unctuously.
I enjoyed this for a while; then it began to oppress me. Presently —and none too soon—life settled down again. People stopped staring and asking silly questions—or not-so-silly questions, which I dared not answer. Six weeks after I'd swum ashore, a full conclave of eight guildmistresses was held aboard a schooner out of Gate of the South; and I confessed in full all over again.
This conclave spanned four full days. The guildmistresses were not so much sitting in judgement, but more as a tribunal of enquiry: to delve into all available facts about the other half of our world, facts which might cast a new light on what we thought of as the certainties of our existence.
They always conducted their deliberations with me present, and free to contribute. Until near the very end I was never sent out of the elegant cabin, with its silver wall-sconces, gildenwood furniture, and its tapestry of the Obelisk at Port Firsthome. Stil
l, I fancied there was a certain whiff of trial about the proceedings.
On the last day the youngest mistress present—a handsome blonde woman of Sarjoy named Tamath—raised the matter of that obelisk.
The monument rose from a rocky butte overlooking the town. A popular picnic spot, that, commanding a fine view down meadows towards Port Firsthome and the river. Whoever had woven the tapestry had included several family parties. Scarlet and orange rugs were spread, to contrast with the rumpling background grass that rose (in the tapestry at least) to meet the grey conical roofs of Sarjoy, and the blue of river and sky—the heavens wearing a few fluffy clouds for contrast. Some naked children skipped in the foreground, a young couple kissed, and an old man capered curiously, brandishing a flask of wine. The seated mothers and fathers were mostly squat, as though their threads had sagged or the weaver couldn't manage figures at rest. An open hamper spilled fruit and fishes and strings of sausages on to the rug. It looked as though the antic patriarch had kicked the hamper open, in pique of their having forgotten to cook most of the food.
The Obelisk of the Ship was a basalt shaft a hundred spans high, shaped like a sleek fish with tail fins to support it. Really, it ought to have dwarfed the picnickers more than it did. An attempt at perspective had been made—unsuccessfully. The column was leaning, about to topple and crush the people below.
I suppose the tapestry was charming.
Inscribed on one of the black base fins in tiny letters was a simple legend:
HERE PEOPLE FIRST CAME
INTO THIS WORLD
Into it they came, with rugs and a hamper, arses like barrels, no clothes on the kids, and a drunken grandad. . . . That was, I recalled from my own visit, the actual inscription carved in time-worn letters on the obelisk. Verbatim.
Tamath rose, crossed to the tapestry, touched the legend.
"Isn't that an odd way of phrasing it?" she asked. "Not landed upon' or 'arrived at'—but 'came into'. Almost as though people first came into existence on that spot . . ." She eyed Nelliam, a senior guildmistress of Gangee, an ancient wrinkled woman with the face of a prune. She eyed her hopefully. "Doesn't our guild agree?"
"Language changes with time," suggested Nelliam. "The sense of words."
Tamath pressed on. "How do we really imagine we got here? Were thousands of human beings crammed into a ship of space? What would they eat? Consider the cargo problems! Consider, too, what Yaleen has said: a foreign world may not be immediately hospitable."
I looked attentively at Tamath, careful not to grin in gratitude or stupid pride that she valued my report.
"To be sure, it must have air and water and life on it already, or else it's no use whatever. But why should the life be life that people can live with? Why should the air be air they can breathe? Why should the plants and fish be edible at all?"
The more I looked, though, the more I began to suspect that
Tamath was, well, speaking out of fright. As people will babble pointlessly when they don't know the answer; yet they're compelled to speak for the sake of it, to keep up their presence. That sort of fright.
She had raised the matter because she had to raise something— vigorously. The tapestry was on hand to suggest the very thing; as well as providing the pretext for her to parade elegantly across the cabin.
She was only repeating what I had said. She continued repeating it forcefully, as though it was her own idea.
Nelliam shrugged. "Life's life. Air's air."
"Is it? Are they? Maybe we did have to be 'made'—or 'remade'— for this world of ours?" And now Tamath had to conjure something new out of the hat. I could almost see her reaching, straining herself. "If so, then the only place to make us was right here."
Oh well. I supposed some people had to psych themselves up to excel.
But now Sharia, a senior guildmistress, spoke up. She was of late middle age, and if any ultimate secrets were in possession of the guild, surely she should know them. Obviously she didn't; obviously there weren't any. . . .
"You know," drawled Sharia, "that obelisk has always puzzled me on another score. It's a symbol of a ship of space, right? So where's the hulk of the ship itself? Something tough enough to travel between the stars ought to last for lifetimes after it lands—even with rain and rust attacking. Yet there's nothing at all."
Tamath crossed quietly back and resumed her seat. During the next several minutes while Sharia expounded, Tamath nodded sagely, to convince everyone (except perhaps Nelliam) that she had made a valuable contribution by midwifing a truly original idea. . . .
"1 wonder about the nature of this ship," mused Sharia. "Need it have been built of metal or anything similar? Imagine for a moment that we could harness a giant fish. Suppose we built a deckhouse on its back and planted masts and dug holes in its body. Imagine that boats were like that—not of wood, with a bit of metal.
"Could this ship of space somehow have been built from living tissue? Could it have manufactured our bodies out of itself, and so consumed itself?"
"You have an over-active imagination," remarked Nelliam.
"Yet the black current is a great living being—of a nature we can't understand. Subtle and immense! Why not the Ship? Imagine that a ship could be a living being, which carried no crew or passengers— because it was its own crew and passengers. Something godlike, beyond our comprehension." Sharia had whipped up her own enthusiasm now; her voice was awed, ringing with sincerity.
"Yet it was manufactured by people?"
"Maybe people made something greater than themselves—which then produced something even greater: something alive, superbly wise; and it was this which built the ship. Or gave birth to it, even. The people who started the process wouldn't be equal to the end result."
"And how could this be, Sharia?"
"A baby grows into a girl—who grows into a woman. The woman is entirely changed from the baby she once was."
Nelliam sniffed. "Whereupon the woman gives birth to another baby. Back we are where we began."
"It's just a comparison."
"Perhaps it's a good one," said Tamath. "Or perhaps: like a leaf- worm changing into a flutterbye?"
"I vote we should concentrate on what is sure," Nelliam said. "Such as the likely capers of the Observer-men at Verrino, when Yaleen decides to favour them with an account of her recent travels."
"I wouldn't!" I protested. "Honestly! Why should I? My brother isn't there any longer."
"No, but your lover is. And other acquaintances." Nelliam tutted impatiently. "That's beside the point. I think we should consider enlisting the support of those Observers. If the westerners are so sure that we're the Devil's daughters, maybe they'll try to build bigger pistols to shoot right across the river. Or they may try to take to the air. I suggest an approach in confidence to the Observers, so that they'll report any unusual sightings across the water. I'll go further. We should build observation towers ourselves. Convert the present signal stations. Erect more, and taller. It'll help communications. I can name several blind spots where a message can get held up for hours, if a boat isn't in the right position to relay. A year ago I'd have said no message could be that urgent. . . ." She brooded.
"Yes, but what about the women in the west?" I wanted to know. "The vile lives they lead. The burnings."
"Nothing we can do, Yaleen. Not without wrecking our own world."
"But—"
"What would you suggest?"
"We could take to the air!"
"We don't wish to. For reasons which I'm sure even you must appreciate."
"Besides," drawled Sharia, now on the "Conserving" side, "supposing we crossed the river on a wind, how could we be sure of getting back? If we did cross over, what then? Do we land, and make speeches about freedom and happiness? Till they put us on a bonfire. . . ." Sharia, I realized, was one of those who would argue both sides of a case with enough flair to convince you that she was deeply committed ... to deciding nothing.
Nelliam tapped he
r finger lightly on the table. "I see a more basic objection against intervening. Something Yaleen appears not to have realized, despite her experiences over there. A vital difference between us and them. One which the Sons should surely work out, given all that Yaleen fed them—if they aren't utterly pigheaded." She looked around the conclave. "Well?"
"The forms of social organization?" It was Marti, the dusky veteran quaymistress of Guineamoy, who answered. Judging by her tone and her raised eyebrows she was telling us, not asking. An ally of Nelliam's, then.
"Exactly," said Nelliam.
"How do you mean?" I asked. "What did I miss?"
It was Marti who told me, briskly. "It's like this, Yaleen. Technically those Sons are more primitive than us. But they possess centralized authority: this 'secular arm', the Brotherhood. That isn't in the least like our own guild system. Their two Manhomes, North and South, are obviously twin capitals, ruling towns. Here, no town rules any other. Over there they have what might be called a 'government'."
"Two, surely? If there are two . . . capitals."
"They will need twin capitals because of the slower communications. That doesn't imply two separate countries. On the contrary— judging by the names."
"Oh."
"Our way of ordering society is invisible and unobtrusive. Theirs is visible and brutal. Harsh circumstances lead to harsh solutions. The circumstances of those Sons are tough because they've denied themselves the river—"
"Which itself orders affairs invisibly and unobtrusively?" I hazarded.
"You have more knowledge of that than us, girl!"
Nelliam raised her hand, though rather limply. "Whatever mumbo-jumbo's in the Chapbook, our guild isn't founded on mystic wisdom. We're rooted in tradition: practical tradition. That Brotherhood is dogmatic. It is rooted in mumbo-jumbo—with practicalities playing second fiddle."
"The Chapbook is mumbo-jumbo?" I echoed incredulously. Two or three of the other women, notably Tamath, looked quite shocked.
"Obviously I'm exaggerating. I do so to make my point. We pay lip-service to what's in the Chapbook, because it works. If you're to ply the river for your livelihood, the river must accept you. We drink of the current. We obey certain codes. Then basically we forget about it. We don't grovel on our knees on deck every morning and pray to the river-spirit. We don't make a big deal of the black current, always and ever, remorselessly. But they do over there. They're obsessed—with denying it. The current is our background; that's where it belongs. It's their foreground, even though they cower away from it."
Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 Page 14
