“Huh? No, not really. I think we should head west. As far as we know, no hrunt live there. But that’s where Annau is.”
“Annau?”
“Yeah, the city of Annau.”
Vaya sat up and regarded him, her dark eyes narrowed. “Why do you speak of an abode of the Old Gods? It is bad luck to do so.”
“Uh-huh. Well, look. Things are going to change around here. I realize that taboos are hard to overcome, but it simply has to be done if your people are going to have any future.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Future?”
“Sure. Do you want your people living in tents and scraping a living off this wasteland forever? You told me that every year the hunting is harder. Every year the tribe’s population shrinks a little. It’s a losing fight. That’s what happened to the Umoi when they tried to go the Whole Earth Catalog route. It was a dead end, and now they’re extinct.”
She shook her head. “You speak of many strange things. Forbidden things. You make me afraid, my husband.”
“Not to worry. Rub me right there. Yeah, that’s it.”
Her hands were soft. “But you are a great warrior.”
“You won’t get an argument from me.”
“You have killed more hrunt than all of my husbands combined. You have killed more than any yalim has ever killed.”
“Just applied some modern military tactics, is all.”
“One day you will kill all the hrunt and they will never again raid our camps or steal our food.”
“Right. Well, look, I’m no Stalin. I’m not out to exterminate the kulaks, or do anything like that. The hrunt …” Gene propped himself up on one elbow. “Look, there’s something you have to know about the hrunt. I’ve been researching this with Zond. And Zond says —”
“Is that the name of the spirit you converse with?”
“Uh, yeah. You see, the Umoi — the Old Gods — created both yalim and hrunt, but for different purposes. The hrunt were the field niggers, and the yalim were the … never mind. They were both servant classes, but the hrunt were created stupid so they wouldn’t mind working in deep mines or doing other dangerous stuff. But the real thing you should know is, hrunt are really just yalim who’ve been genetically altered a little bit.”
Vaya lay down, paralleling Gene, her long golden body radiant in the lamplight.
“Speak more of this to me, my husband.”
“Uh, yeah. Um … well, what that means is, a hrunt is really a yalim except for a few extra genes spliced into his DNA. They turn him ugly and change his body chemistry a little bit, but essentially he’s human. The thing is, once we get back into the cities, it won’t be any problem to snip those pesky genes out. We’d have to round up all the hrunt women, of course, and do some cell surgery….” Gene considered it. “Actually I guess the simplest solution would be sterilization, though that does have a totalitarian ring to it. But morally speaking, since hrunt are really just handicapped humans —” He trailed off into deep thought.
Presently he sat up. “Hey, guess what. Things aren’t simple even in fantasyland.”
“Things are never simple, my husband. It is not the way of the world.”
“Or the universe. Or universes.”
“You are a strange one, my husband. You came here speaking a strange tongue, wearing strange clothes, riding a chariot of the Old Gods. Yet you are a man. Are you a god as well?”
Gene raked his eye up and down Vaya’s exquisite body. “No. Just the best swordsman this side of Castle Perilous. And the luckiest guy in several worlds, I might add.”
She held out her arms. “Come to me, husband and lover.”
“Oy.”
Twenty-three
Island
Their house, sheltered by hill palms, had a beautiful view of the sea. A screened veranda jutted out to one side, and Sheila would sit there at all hours weaving baskets, mats, and other housewares. She liked watching waves break against the rocks and huge seabirds wheel in the sky.
The birds weren’t gulls; at least they didn’t look like sea gulls. They were eagle size but fatter, and they fished the waters of the lagoon. It was thrilling and a little frightening to watch them stoop, dive, and pluck a struggling fish out of the water, clutching their prey in great silver talons.
The weather was always beautiful. It rained sometimes at night, very softly, very soothingly on the thatched roof of their house. Trent told her that a monsoon season would come eventually, as this was standard procedure for tropical climes. But, then again, he didn’t know this world. Maybe the weather stayed fair all year long. Sheila hoped so.
After Trent finished the house, he spent his days building a raft. There was a reason for this.
The volcano had begun smoking about two months after their arrival. It had trailed wisps of white vapor for a week, then began putting up a steady column of dark smoke along with an occasional plume of ash. Every once in a while it would shoot out boulders the size of automobiles. Sheila watched them splash into the sea. Their island was in no danger at the moment, but the volcano was too close for comfort. Trent said that the presence of birds meant there had to be mainland near, or at least a bigger island, and they would have to reach it to be really safe.
So every day, Trent would go down to the lagoon — the “shipyards,” as he called it — and work on the raft. Sheila spent most of her time now braiding rope. The raft needed lots of it to hold its heavy logs together. Trent said that he would have built an outrigger canoe, had there been more time. But the raft would be seaworthy, of that he was sure. A square-rigged sail would have been ideal, if there had been any fabric to make a sail out of. As it was, they would have to trust in God (and the gods, in Trent’s case) and hope for a good current.
But Trent kept thinking about a sail.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a government research grant, usually. You’ll have to fish today while I go up the mountain and see if I can find anything.”
“I’ll dig up some shellfish and make chowder,” Sheila said. “You go do your research.”
“I knew you were a Democrat.”
When Sheila wasn’t braiding, she would work on magic, as did Trent when he wasn’t shipbuilding. They called it “Research and Development,” and although no breakthroughs had happened since Trent’s tentative levitation of a neo-coconut, Sheila felt that one was possible. There was some obstacle that she couldn’t quite see her way around. It was a difficult problem, and she needed more time.
Unfortunately the volcano’s output steadily increased, its smoke column turning black and ugly. There might not be any time at all. Trent said that an eruption was inevitable. It was just a matter of when and how bad.
R&D’s chief technological spin-off to date was fire. Their was no flint or chert to be had on the island, but a primitive spell made sparks fly when you rubbed two ordinary stones together. The grilled fish was delicious, but Sheila wouldn’t eat the lizard, even though Trent said it tasted exactly like chicken. She couldn’t bring herself to eat something that was green and looked like a miniature dinosaur.
But she was getting tired of seafood. Maybe eventually, when she got a real craving for meat …
Meanwhile, they led an idyllic life, swimming every morning in the bright surf and in the warm tides at evening. They made love on the beach every night, and afterward lay together beneath a night canopy of brilliant stars and smoky, spiral nebulae.
Sheila had asked Trent what they were.
“Galaxies,” he’d said. “This planet seems to be in the thick of a galactic cluster.”
“Why can’t you see any of those from Earth?”
“You can, you just need field glasses or a telescope.”
“They’re so beautiful.”
“They are. And so are you, my darling.”
“Thank you. But you do need glasses.”
“You keep throwing my compliments back at me. Don’t you know you’re a good-looking woman?”
“I g
uess not. I’m glad to hear it. Oh, I’m sorry, Trent. Really. I guess I can’t take a compliment, not even from you.”
“That’s sad.”
“Now you’re making me feel rotten.”
“Sorry.” He kissed her. “I want to make you feel good.”
“You have. You don’t know how much. After my marriage —”
“Tell me about it. About him.”
“He was a jerk. Oh, my God, was he a jerk.”
“Did he beat you?”
“No. I would have killed him, the rat. No, he just screwed around on me, drank like a fish, and peed away all our money. So I tell him to get out, and he gets ticked off. Refuses. Finally I pack up all his clothes and put them in his car, and he gets the idea. But when the process server gives him the paper, what does he do? He breaks into the house and trashes it from top to bottom, after he takes the stereo and the VCR and all his stuff out. Breaks up all the furniture, smashes windows. Does ten thousand dollars in damage.”
“Did you have the blackguard thrown in the clink?”
“No. What good would it have done? My lawyer filed a judgment on him for the damage, but I haven’t seen a penny. Meanwhile, I’m paying the mortgage on one salary.”
“On behalf of my sex, let me tender our sincerest apologies.”
“Don’t apologize for your sex. Your sex is fine with me. Even when it’s tender.”
“Oh. You mean that sex.”
“I love you, Trent.”
“And I you, beloved.”
“The way you talk sometimes, in that language. It’s so beautiful. And I understand it, too, somehow.”
“Of course. It’s Haplan, an ancient tongue. You hear it all the time in the castle. The servants speak it. It’s a great language for expressing poetic intimacy.”
“Is it ever. Say more.”
“Let me speak with another tongue.”
She drew a long breath.
Days passed, and the volcano spewed more ash, a fine gray film of it dusting the palms, the grass, and the rocks.
They put a crash raft-building program into action. After a day and a half of frantic preparation, the craft still wasn’t entirely ready, but Trent said that they would leave regardless on the morning tide.
“She’s not as big as I wanted, and the sail will never hold up in a high wind, but —”
“It’s a wonderful ship. How in the world did you do it with only stone tools?”
What Trent had constructed was a cross between a raft and a catamaran. It was little more than a deck of long thin logs lashed to a pair of larger, tapered tree trunks which formed a twin “hull.” These latter were solid; the wood of these particular trees was lighter than balsa, but stronger. They made ideal pontoons, and with a crude stone ax, Trent had sculpted their prows into something that would cut water.
The sail was a technological wonder, a quilt of thin woven mats coated with a tree resin that resembled latex. This technique made for a sail that was small, clumsy, and inordinately heavy, but it worked. Trent made a test run late in the evening. To his amazement, the makeshift rigging held and the sail actually caught wind.
“Trent, do you think we’ll make it in this thing?”
“Depends. Depends on how far we have to go. As to a heading and course, we’ll just be guessing. I’ve never had time to do much watching, but wouldn’t you say that the birds come and go in a generally easterly direction?”
“You’re right. I see them against the morning sun all the time.”
“Then that’s our heading, east, away from the volcano. Good.”
They gathered as much food as they could. Neo-coconut shells made excellent canteens, and they loaded up with fresh water. There wasn’t time, though, to finish the matting for the sunscreen.
“Do we need it?” Sheila asked.
“Definitely.”
“Why? We’ll just lie out and get tanned.”
“We’ll get good and burned. Neither of us has a shirt and that grass skirt of yours is some protection for your legs, but not much. No, we need a little cabin, crude as it is. Besides, we have to keep the fresh food out of the sun, too.”
“Okay, but we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Palm leaves will have to do. It’s either that or give up the sail.”
“Palm leaves it is. Up that tree, Tarzan.”
At last, they were ready.
The volcano wasn’t on the same schedule. Late that night, Sheila awoke and looked out the hut’s lone window. It took her a disoriented second or two to realize that what she was seeing wasn’t snow covering the ground, but an inch-deep layer of volcanic ash. The sky was a hell of dark clouds outlined in red light.
Trent was already up.
“Time to go, Sheila. The volcano’s going at it pretty good this time. Looks like a full-scale eruption.”
They made haste, leaving tracks through the warm ash.
They piled everything they could think of on the raft and cast off. The sail caught a sulphurous breeze, and they were under way.
The tide was in, and the waterline was high against the rocks at the mouth of the cove. Once past this natural breakwater, the craft hit the choppy currents of the open sea.
Orange clouds brooded above, and the smell of brimstone filled the air.
“Maybe we should have gambled and holed up in the cave.”
“I hate bats,” Sheila said.
They sailed on into the fiery night, demon’s breath speeding them on their way.
Twenty-four
Philadelphia, Outskirts
The driver was a young one, mid-twenties, maybe. He wore his head hair cropped at the sides and long in the back. The back of his head looked like the tail end of an animal Snowclaw hunted out in the tundra. The kid smoked skinny, wrinkled cigarettes that emitted a weedy, pungent smoke.
“Hey, you want a toke, Snowy?”
“What is it?”
The kid laughed, showing yellowed teeth. “It’s smoke, man.”
“No, thanks.”
“Hey, all right. Just trying to be friendly. How long you been working for Mr. Iannucco?”
“Not long.”
“Uh-huh. Where you from?”
“Canada.”
The sky was dark, but the countryside blazed with a million lights. Snowy had trouble understanding how anyone could sleep around here, it was so bright at night.
“How’re the women in Canada? I never been there.”
Snowy shrugged. Darned if he knew. He said, “Fine. Same as everywhere, I guess.”
“Hey, women are different different places. Know what I mean?”
“Nope.”
“Like, New York women are real wise-ass. You can’t pull anything on them. Try to hustle ’em, and they’ll put you down slicker than owl shit. But f’rinstance you take down South. Man, they’ll look at you with big eyes and buy the whole store. Ever been to Miami?”
“No.”
“In Miami —” The kid looked over and scowled. “Hey, you’re not even listening.”
“Huh? Sorry. They have so many lights around here.”
The kid didn’t know what to make of that. He turned his eyes back to the road.
They drove on into the night, galaxies of bright lights shooting by. Snowy had never realized until he got here how heavily populated this world was. Human dwellings blanketed the land, arrayed in rows on an endless crust of concrete. There was barely any dirt showing. Here and there, a stand of trees relieved the monotony. Things had looked the same outside since they left New York, two and a half hours ago.
“Christ, I’m hungry,” the kid complained. “I always get hungry on the road. You want to stop and get something to eat?”
“Um, maybe.”
“I’m gonna get off the greenstamp and get something. Some burgers or maybe a hero sandwich. You gonna have something to eat, or what?”
“What’s a hero sandwich?” Snowy asked.
“Don’t they got ’em in Canada? What do
they call ’em? Submarines, hoagies?”
“Uh … I don’t know. I’ll have one of those hero sandwiches, though, if you don’t mind.”
“Christ awmighty. I never seen anything like it.”
“What’s wrong?” Snowy asked through a mouthful of Italian cold cuts and bread.
“I never seen anyone eat like that.”
“Is this too much?”
“Too much?” The kid hooted. “Four goddamn whole hero sandwiches. Jesus, that’s four goddamn whole loaves of bread you got there!”
Snowy finished off the first one and bit a huge chunk out of the second. “Sorry.”
“Hey, it’s nothing to be sorry about. I just never seen anybody eat like that. You gonna …?”
Snowy chewed three times, swallowed, then bit off another astonishing hunk, leaving only a lettuce-draped nub of bread.
“Jesus Christ, y’makin’ me sick.”
The kid heaved his own sandwich and soft drink out the window, not bothering to watch them splat against the asphalt of the parking lot. He lit up another skinny cigarette.
“Let’s boogie.”
Endless night, frigid night. But not cold enough for Snowy. The cab of the truck was a roaring furnace, and Snowy tried to persuade the kid to feather back the heater, to no avail. So he cranked down his window halfway, letting in a soothing, icy blast.
“Whaddayou, a goddamn Eskimo?” the kid demanded.
Snowy was getting annoyed, but thought better of giving the kid the head-whacking he deserved.
“Come on, close the goddamn window!” the kid screamed. “Waddayou, crazy or what?”
Snowy said mildly, “Buddy, where I come from, it’s not so wise to mouth off to a guy as big as me, especially for a little twerp as skinny —” Snowy blinked. “What’s wrong?”
“Jesus Christ.” The kid was staring tearfully at Snowy, mouth hanging open.
“What —?” Snowy halted a motion to scratch his head and realized what the kid was seeing. His hand had turned furry, the fingers tipped with milk-white claws. It was his normal hand. He felt his face. Sheila’s spell was fading.
The kid tore his eyes away to glance at the road, then looked back. “Hey …”
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