by James Morrow
“Lapca beat me for the first time last week. A Queen’s Indian Defense.”
“They’ll be back for Legend Eve?”
“Yes. We’re hoping to make it a real family time.” Aras pressed his ancient nose against the kitchen’s solitary window. Outside, an early morning sun hopped across the sharp mountains.
They were a tough breed, Aras and his wife, and without doubt the oldest Quetzalians to merit the prestigious epithet of “Cuz year-rounder.” While the majority fled south, the Cieses stayed behind and plied their trade—cutting and selling the long-burning fuel called firemoss, the only thing that made a Cuzian winter survivable.
Minnix tested his tea—too hot. “I don’t want to miss it, Father. I love to see the Light City, and the twins’ eyes.” Suddenly he jumped. “Here’s the solution! You can all come with me to Aca.”
“You know that’s unreasonable.” He placed a great spindly hand on the isinglass. “Cuz is counting on us.”
“Let them find their own goddam fuel.”
“Maybe next year we’ll retire.” There was no conviction in Aras’s voice. “Meanwhile, it keeps us on our feet, and we’re rather fond of snow.”
“One day those feet will collapse, and we won’t find you till spring thaw.”
“Maybe next year,” Aras repeated, same voice.
“Then it’s a stalemate. The first debates will be the most important. If I’m not in Aca by next week, Nazra won’t know Minnix Cies from the man in the moon. Where does that come from? ‘The man in the moon.’”
“Earth had a moon, I think. I don’t know who the man was. Luta should have one. After you’ve got Nazra in your palm, tell him to arrange a moon.”
“It’s no joke. Aca’s postwar policies are unbelievably important—the most pivotal Nazra will ever formulate. If we don’t start claiming the desert right away, building a city, a road, something—a hotel—the psychological consequences will be dire.”
“Always the Antistasist, aren’t you? I should have raised a firemoss cutter. Then we’d get you home for Legend Eve.”
Minnix struck a debater’s pose. “The priests will say: Let’s pretend it never happened. Raise the bridges. Ban all commemoration of this war. But what that really says is: Forty-three Quetzalians died for no reason. A tradition of peace was ended for no reason. Then, in fifty or thirty or only fifteen years some visionary country boy, my own child perhaps, will say: Listen to me. This time I’ve found a reason to eat noctus. If we can bring ourselves to bury this hoary religion and build spaceships and forge hypodermic needles, why, there’s a whole goddam galaxy to conquer.”
“Practice your speeches if you want, Minnix, but it’s certainly not politics we’re disagreeing about, not today. To tell you the truth, we were afraid you’d come back convinced that Zolmec is obsolete.”
Minnix dropped into the chair and sipped tea. “No,” he said wearily, “Zolmec is strong. If I had it to do over again, I’m not sure I’d go.”
“What was it like?” Aras said slowly, easing away from the window.
Minnix sniffed down steam. “I murdered four at least, maybe five or six—I didn’t watch where my arrows went. I saw people fall and scream. And it’s not enough that they hit the ground. You must make them die. I had a sword for that. More efficient than an ax. It’s especially good with children—like a dog.” He laughed, stopped abruptly. “You don’t want me home for Legend Eve, Father.” He was almost sobbing.
Aras rushed forward and threw both arms around his son, as if holding a pile of firemoss together. “Nonsense. We civilians are tarnished too. In the Temple of Tolca everyone is a soldier. I’ve beaten your brothers to death.” He released his grip and headed for the stove. “The point is, how do you feel now?”
“I feel…human. As if I’d never been dosed.”
“Good.” He slopped tea into a ceramic mug. “Evidence?”
“Coming home my lipoca lost a shoe. The blacksmith kept me waiting. Not only that—I’m sure the bill was too high. I took him to the tavern and bought him a drink.”
“Good. Everything is as usual.”
“Yes. In seven days the opoch changes.”
“You’ll go to the temple again.”
“And take him to the tavern again. I’ll drown him in beer. After that I leave for Aca.”
Whistling across his tea, Aras retraced his steps to the window. “What about the other soldiers? Has the noctus worn off completely?”
“No evidence for believing otherwise.”
“I’m asking because your mother, who as you know is something of a witch, had a dream last night. To be blunt, she thinks there’s to be more violence—murder. Minnix, could a neurovore have escaped the massacre?”
“Possibly. But we’re still a fortified nation. I was one of the last to cross the Northern Drawbridge, and I saw them raise it again.”
“It’s probably nothing. But promise me you’ll be wary on the road to Aca.”
“I’ll avoid all strangers who say they intend to kill me.”
Aras took a big swallow of tea. “It might be wise, son, to avoid your own kind as well.”
FOUR HAD ENTERED. That much he could tell. One, a tall female, was almost certainly Vaxcala. Beyond, a second visitor stood muted by shadows. The sad heap in the chair hinted of Huaca Yon. Near the window a round man waited.
Francis stirred. An empty bottle sprouted in silhouette from the windowsill. The gray pounding in his head told where the wine had recently been; the pressure in his bladder told where it was. Forcing an arm up through the blanket, he beheld his coat sleeve. At least I’ll greet them dressed, he thought.
The fatness at the window moved. “Would you object to some sun?”
Francis recognized Nazra’s earthquake voice. “Bring it on,” he said, yawning.
The governor drew back the curtain, and Iztac’s jade rays soared into the bedroom. Mid-morning, Francis decided. I must go to Tez. “Is that Mool back there?”
Vaxcala stepped aside. “Your friend woke up three hours ago,” said Mool, a sling-cradled arm bulging beneath his robe. “He alternates severe depression with brave talk about prosthetics.”
Francis’s memory got to work. Happy pictures flooded back. Spending the previous day at the Hospital of Chimec, hearing from Dr. Zoco that the ablation had gone perfectly, seeing Burne in peaceful one-legged sleep, returning to Olo and its wine cellar.
“On Nearth it’s an advanced art.”
“Depression?”
“Prosthetics. Depression, too.”
“We’re not here to discuss Burne,” said Huaca huffily. The bandage was off. Scabs swarmed like insects upon his face.
“I didn’t think so. An impressive delegation. Science, politics, religion…and talk.”
“Philosophy,” Huaca corrected.
Vaxcala approached, entwining her beetle-leg fingers. She spoke in low, getting-to-the-point tones. “Last night two people were murdered. One of my own priests. Then, at the Oltac farm, a little girl. I notified the governor.”
As Francis sat up in bed, the most terrifying of Vaxcala’s words acquired a monstrous tangibility, so that people and murdered were now crawling, rapacious, worm-furrowed life-forms, set free in the room, seeking him out…people…God of the sun, my name will be for Quetzalians the darkest of profanities. To Lostwax someone will mean to ablate his colon without anesthesia…murdered!
His tongue thickened and sagged forward, and he wondered whether he would succumb first to nausea or to fainting, but somehow he worked his way back into awareness.
Nazra was saying, “We entered your ship at sunrise.”
“It was locked,” Francis protested feebly.
“We used a porthole. Its viewbubble was sawed away.”
“How did this happen, Francis Lostwax?”
Before Vaxcala finished posing her mystery, the solution had knifed into Francis. He could see the thing vividly: a sharp organic helix affixed to a large sun-green insect. He had compl
etely forgotten about Ollie—what utter insanity, he thought, to have left the beetle with her!
“The Cortexclavus can drill through solid rock,” he said. “Solid macroplastic too, evidently.”
“Tez is smarter than you, Nearthling,” Huaca sneered. “She got out of your stupid jail. What will you do now?”
“I assume from this visit that the four of you have an answer to that question.” He peeled back the blankets and stumbled toward the center of the room.
Vaxcala resumed in a raspy voice. “This morning on Tranquility Road a zookeeper was found crushed by his own lipoca wagon.”
“Is this sinking in, doctor?” asked Mool. “She has become a germ to which we have no resistance. All Quetzalia is at her mercy.”
“Tez is not a germ.”
A sulfurous glow encircled Mool’s eyes. “She is a germ—a loathsome plague that could obliterate this world.”
Nazra cut in: “You’re the only one who can save us.”
“I’ll go find her,” said Francis, wincing. “It’s the damn drug. You understand that, right? It’s not Tez.”
“Ride north,” said Nazra. “It won’t be hard to track her, except for the cold. Tonight she’ll be in the suburbs. In four days, Hostya. In fifteen—Cuz. Cuz is a city.”
“I’ll recapture her. I’ll take her back to Nearth. She’s still…everything.” The words came surely, spontaneously, and despite his despair he experienced great satisfaction in speaking his heart.
“I doubt that she’ll go willingly,” said Huaca. “You may have to hurt her.”
“Hurt her? I love her.”
Huaca placed his delicate hands on an oil lantern. “Damn it, Nearthling, so do I!” With an angry flourish he hurled the lantern through the window, spraying isinglass into the morning.
Silence shrouded the room. Eventually Francis made a wild, incomprehensible gesture and spoke. “Why don’t we simply inject a Quetzalian volunteer with noctus?”
“How?” asked Mool. “You saw the syringe get smashed.”
“Yes, but there’s a second, the one Burne took into the desert.”
Vaxcala sighed. “This is a foul business. The injections were supposed to end with the war.” Her sorry eyes fell on Nazra. “What do you suggest?”
The governor lifted the wine bottle and crunched it into the isinglass fragments on the window sill. “I want Dr. Lostwax to get us that syringe,” he said hoarsely.
“THERE IS NO SYRINGE.” Burne’s voice suggested a Cortexclavus drilling through slate. “Is the diabetes back?”
“No, it’s not for insulin.” The window lured Francis’s eye away from his friend. Outside, the hospital gardens slept under gathering snowdrifts.
“It got destroyed.”
“Totally?”
Burne said nothing.
Destroyed! Moaning in disappointment, Francis walked past walls that contained no paintings. The whole room, in fact, was notably unadorned, like a crown pitted of its jewels. By putting Burne here, was the staff expressing its contempt? “I wanted to inject someone with noctus.”
“Your girlfriend?”
A lie would be best now. “Yes.” For an instant he looked straight at where the bedsheet should have swelled but didn’t.
“I thought she was missing,” said Burne, likewise eyeing his asymmetry.
“She was found.”
“Any other news? What do the locals think of my campaign?”
Yes—lies were best. “Burne, you’re the hero of Quetzalia. There’s talk of a statue.”
“A statue, that’s perfect. I wonder if they’ll—”
Francis cut him off. “Burne, how did it get destroyed?”
“It was in a lipoca. The poor jackass fell over and crushed it.”
“I don’t suppose anyone saved the needle?”
“There was a war on, Lostwax.”
Francis poked at his chitzal scar. The matter was settled, then, horribly settled. “I’ll be traveling for a few weeks, north, perhaps as far as Cuz. When I get back you’ll be well enough to fly us home.”
“Will she be coming?”
“I hope so.”
“Your relationship is not exactly simple, is it?”
“Maybe I’d be happier with a Nearthling.”
Burne groped for a pot of cuiclo tea. “Why this trip to Cuz?”
Francis explained that “a predator” was headed there.
“A neurovore?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“But the massacre was total.” Resentment glared from Burne’s face.
Francis kept allowing his gaze to wander furtively across the bedsheet. “Must be a vagabond.”
“I wish I could help you. If only my erections went south instead of north, I’d have a leg to stand on.”
“You’re taking your loss very well.”
Burne filled his mug in awesome silence. “You’ll need a weapon, Lostwax. When I had your job, I used Cortexclavus.”
“He escaped.”
“My sword is back at the ship.”
“No, I don’t want a sword.”
“What will you use?”
Francis shuffled sheepishly. “Promise me you won’t laugh?”
The tea soured Burne’s face. He nodded.
“I’m going to use love.”
Burne was still laughing when Francis left the room.
25
NORTH OF HOSTYA a great granite spire, chiseled with the names of four population centers, rises from the earth like a tombstone. The positions of the names tell the traveler which road will take him to the fishing village of Uxco, which to the mountain metropolis of Cuz, which to the seacoast capital of Aca, and which to the holy city of Tepec. In the opoch of Timlath the spire is particularly purposeful, for the roads themselves vanish completely under snow, though often as not the spire also vanishes, and the traveler must pause and rub it like a magic lamp until his destination appears.
Alone and cold, Francis stretched forth a gloved hand. Cakes of snow dropped away like scabs, revealing Tepec. Cuz, he remembered, was north-northwest, so he kicked his way to a likely spot where his rubbing brought forth a C—the C in Cuz, not Aca, unless, of course, he were lost. The proof lay in further rubbing.
A human eye appeared, staring from beneath a stuck lid. Francis fell over and lay gasping in his snow-mold. God of peace, it’s true! I’m tracking a murderer!
Throwing a hand over his eyes, he raised his boot and flailed at the corpse. Blue chunks struck his foreleg. He pulled his hand away and abused himself with a glance.
The glance told that the corpse was young, male, and lashed to the spire by Tez’s wool scarf. It told worse. The top of the head had been plundered like a nutshell. Snow collected in the hideous cavity.
He glanced again. Above the ragged murm, the letters u and z lay varnished by frozen blood.
Nauseated, he trampled toward his lipoca, mounting on the third try. He started for where the dead eyes looked—the awesome Ripsaw Mountains. As the peaks grew closer, his mind hopped crazily from thoughts of Tez to thoughts of Burne to thoughts of how the next visitor to the spire would find at its base an icy mound of undigested breakfast.
BLUE. BLUE ON BLUE. Blue that reached maddeningly in all directions. Glistening blue that caught the far, paltry sun and flung it squarely into Francis’s pinpoint eyes. The lipoca loathed the blue, refused to walk at a productive clip until Francis blinded it with a double-wrapped scarf. The blue kilometers trotted by.
At night Francis would pound the blue until it became a hard platform on which to spread his ground-cloth and pitch his tent. Whether in Arete’s oozy swamps or Luta’s feverish deserts, camping had never been for him anything but a panoply of inconveniences. But now he found himself admitting its romance, and he could even understand how Burne managed to perceive the collateral discomforts as fun.
Francis did not doubt that Nazra was correct in naming Cuz as Tez’s goal. But where the governor had used the same cru
de connect-the-dots logic that opochs ago brought Burne to his neurovore, Francis had tried entering Tez’s disordered brain and reconstructing her reasons. Above everything towered her guilt. Flee, it said. Carry your drives to a place of such peerless desolation—the southern jungles, the eastern oceans, the northern mountains—that you can do your race no further harm. Yet the drives would remain. Tez knew this. Building insidiously, they would one day fall upon her like rabid dogs. She would need people then—not a lone jungle ecologist or even a few Uxco fish catchers. She would need Cuz. Francis promised himself she would never get there.
After nine days they were among mountains. The self-pitying lipoca strained audibly as it ascended the crags. Nights proved equally unsatisfactory to the creature. The campsite was inevitably a cave, and the lipoca quaked as the animate night poured arcane scuttlings from the dark recesses into one ear and wolf howls from the outside forest into the other.
Aided by his lantern, Francis one night discovered that the scuttlers were some sort of mutant chitzal, their bodies bristled with venomous quills. Luckily, the light sent them into full retreat, leaving him to meditate on a range of incandescent stalagmites. The stalagmites evoked memories of poor Luther, then poor Kappie, whom he had loved unrequitedly, then poor Tez, whom he still loved in spite of everything. At this very moment Tez was alive somewhere, sleeping or, more likely, awake and thinking. Always thinking. If you want to understand someone, Francis mused, you must realize that he never stops thinking.
And then Francis pushed deeper into the cave, half believing that he need turn just one more corner, slither under just one more slab, and there she would be, ready to talk and make glorious love.
CUSPID-LIKE, the tall mountain erupted from the forest. The lipoca balked at crossing the timberline. Francis dismounted, tethering the beleaguered animal to a tree. He stuffed some firemoss chunks in his coat and for balance hung a lantern from the opposite pocket. He found a dead branch, called it a staff, and began, step by step, to narrow the distance between himself and the sun.
