The Best of Lucius Shepard

by The Best of Lucius Shepard (v5. 5) (epub)

  “This truth I have eaten has told it to me,” said the Indian, holding up a pouch containing a quantity of white powder. Grains of it adhered to his fingers. “I was called here to speak the truth to someone…doubtless to you. But now I must leave.” He slipped off the lily pad and waded toward the edge of the pond.

  Moving so quickly that he caused the merest flutter of shadow upon the surface of the water, the arcevoalo leaped to the far side of the pond, blocking the Indian’s path. “What is this ‘truth?’” he asked. “And who called you here?”

  “The powder derives from the asuero flower,” said the Indian. “A plant fertilized with the blood of honest men. As to who called me, if I had known that I might not have come.” He made as if to haul himself from the pond, but the arcevoalo stayed him.

  “How must I go about conquering my enemy?” he asked.

  “To do battle one must first understand the foe.”

  “Then I will keep you with me and learn your ways,” countered the arcevoalo.

  The Indian hissed impatiently. “I am as different from those you must understand as you are from me. You must go to the city of Sangue do Lume. It is a new city, inhabited by Brazilians who fled the September War. Until recently they dwelled in metal worlds that circle the darkness behind the sky. Now they have returned to claim their ancient holdings, to reap the fruits of the jungle and to kill its animals for profit. It is they with whom you will contend.”

  “How will I contend? I have no weapons.”

  “You have speed and strength,” said the Indian. “But your greatest weapon is a mere touch.”

  He instructed the arcevoalo to press the pads of his fingers hard, and when he did droplets of clear fluid welled from beneath the nails.

  “A single drop will enslave any man’s heart for a time,” said the Indian. “But you must use this power sparingly, for your body can produce the fluid only in a limited quantity.”

  He flicked his eyes nervously from side to side, obviously afraid, eager to be gone. The arcevoalo continued to ask questions, but the effects of the “truth” drug were wearing off, and the Indian began to whine and to lie, saying that his cousin, whom he had not seen since the Year of Fabulous Sorrows, was coming to visit and he would be remiss if he were not home to greet him. With a wave of his hand, the arcevoalo dismissed him, and the Indian went scuttling away toward the lobby.

  For a long time the arcevoalo stood beside the pond, thinking about what the Indian had said, watching the sunlight fade; in its stead a gray-green dusk filtered down from the holes in the roof. Soon he felt himself dimming, his thoughts growing slow, his blood sluggish, his muscles draining of strength: it was as if the dusk were also taking place inside his soul and body, and a gray-green fluid seeping into him and making him terribly weak and vague, incapable of movement. He saw that from every crack and cranny, jeweled eyes and scaly snouts and tendriled mouths were peering and thrusting and gaping. And in this manifold scrutiny, he sensed the infinitude of lives for whom he was to be the standard-bearer: those creatures in the ruined foyer were but the innermost ring of an audience focused upon him from every corner of the jungle. He apprehended them singly and as one, and from the combined intelligence of their regard he understood that dusk for him was an hour during which he must be solitary, both to hide from men the weakness brought on by the transition from light to dark, and to commune with the source of his imperatives. Dusk thickened to night, shafts of silvery moonlight shone down to replace those of the sun, which now burned over Africa, and with the darkness a new moon of power rose inside the arcevoalo, a silver strength equal yet distinct from the golden strength he possessed by day, geared more to elusiveness than to acts of domination. Freed of his intangible bonds, he walked from the hotel and set forth to find Sangue do Lume.

  During the twenty-seven days it took the arcevoalo to reach Sangue do Lume—which means “Blood of Light” in Portuguese, which is the language of sanguinary pleasures and heartbreak—he tested himself against the jungle. He outran the malgatón, outclimbed the tarzanal, and successfully spied upon the mysterious sortilene. He tested himself joyfully, and perhaps he never came to be happier than he was in those days, living in a harmony of green light and birds by day, and by night gazing into the ruby eyes of a malgatón, into those curious pupils that flickered and changed shape and brought the comfort of dreams. One evening he scaled a peak, hoping to lure down the huge shadow that each night obscured the stars, and when it flew near he saw that it was almost literally a shadow, being millimeters thick and having neither eyes nor mouth nor any feature that he could discern. There was something familiar about it, and he sensed that it was interested in him, that it—like him—was the sole member of its species. But otherwise it remained a puzzle: a rippling field of opaque darkness as incomprehensible as a flat black thought.

  Sangue do Lume lay in a hilly valley between three mountains and was modeled after the old colonial towns, with cobbled streets and white stucco houses that had ironwork balconies and tiled roofs and gardens in their courtyards. Surrounding it—also after the style of the old colonial towns—was a slum where lived the laborers who had built the city. And surrounding the slum was a high wall of gray metal from which energy weapons were aimed at the jungle (no such weapons, however, were permitted within the wall). Despite the aesthetic incompatibility of its defenses, the city was beautiful, beautiful even to the eyes of the arcevoalo as he studied it from afar. He could not understand why it seemed so, being the home of his enemy; but he was later to learn that the walls of the houses contained machines that refined the images of the real, causing the visual aspect of every object to tend toward the ideal. Thus it was that the precise indigo shadows were in actuality blurred and dead-black; thus it was that women who went beyond the walls veiled themselves to prevent their husbands from taking note of their coarsened appearance; thus it was that the flies and rats and other pests of Sangue do Lume possessed a certain eyecatching appeal.

  Each morning dozens of ships shaped like flat arrowpoints would lift from the city and fly off across the jungle; each afternoon they would return, their holds filled with dead plants and bloody carcasses, which would be unloaded into slots in the metal wall, presumably for testing. Seeing this, the arcevoalo grew enraged. Still, he bided his time and studied the city’s ways, and it was not until a week after his arrival that he finally went down to the gate. The gatekeepers were amazed to see a naked man walk out of the jungle and were at first suspicious, but he told them a convincing tale of childhood abandonment (a childhood of which, he said, he could recall only his name—João Merín Nascimento), of endless wandering and narrow escapes, and soon the gatekeepers, their eyes moist with pity, admitted him and brought him before the governor, Caudez do Tuscanduva: a burly, middle-aged man with fierce black eyes and a piratical black beard and skin the color of sandalwood. The audience was brief, for the governor was a busy and a practical man, and when he discovered the arcevoalo’s knowledge of the jungle, he assigned him to work on the flying ships and gave orders that every measure should be taken to ensure his comfort.

  Such was the arcevoalo’s novelty that all the best families clamored to provide him with food and shelter, and thus it was deemed strange that Caudez do Tuscanduva chose to quarter him in the Valverde house. The Valverdes were involved in a long-standing blood feud with the governor, one initiated years before upon the worlds behind the sky. The governor had been constrained by his vows of office from settling the matter violently, and it was assumed that this conferring of an honored guest must be his way of making peace. But the Valverdes themselves were not wholly persuaded by the idea, and therefore—with the exception of Orlando, the eldest son—they maintained an aloof stance toward the arcevoalo. Orlando piloted one of the ships that plundered the jungle, and it was to his ship that the arcevoalo had been assigned. He realized that by assisting in this work he would better understand his enemy, and so he did the work well, using his knowledge to track down the
malgatón and the sortilene and creatures even more elusive. Yet it dismayed him, nonetheless. And what most dismayed him was the fact that as the weeks went by, he began to derive a human satisfaction from a job well done and to cherish his growing friendship with Orlando, who, by virtue of his delicate features and olive skin, might have been the arcevoalo’s close relation.

  Orlando was typical of the citizenry in his attitude of divine right concerning the land, in his arrogance toward the poor (“They are eternal,” he once said. “You’ll sooner find a cure for death than for poverty.”) and in his single-minded pursuit of pleasure; yet there was about him a courage and soulfulness that gained the arcevoalo’s respect. On most nights he and Orlando would dress in black trousers and blousy silk shirts, and would join similarly dressed young men by the fountain in the main square. There they would practice at dueling with the knife and the cintral (a jungle weed with sharp-edged tendrils and a rudimentary nervous system that could be employed as a living cat-o’-nine-tails), while the young women would promenade around them and cast shy glances at their favorites. The arcevoalo pretended clumsiness with the weapons, not wanting to display his speed and strength, and he was therefore often the subject of ridicule. This was just as well, for occasionally these play-duels would escalate, and then—since even death was beautiful in Sangue do Lume—blood would eel across the cobblestones, assuming lovely serpentine forms, and the palms ringing the square would rustle their fronds, and sad music would issue from the fountain, mingling with the splash of the waters.

  Many of these duels stemmed from disputes over the affections of the governor’s daughter, Sylvana, the sole child of his dead wife, his pride and joy. The bond between father and daughter was of such intimacy, it was said that should one’s heart stop, the other would not long survive. Sylvana was pale, slim, blonde, and angelic of countenance, but was afflicted by a brittleness of expression that bespoke coldness and insensitivity. Observing this, the arcevoalo was led to ask Orlando why the young men would risk themselves for so heartless a prize. Orlando laughed and said, “How can you understand when you have no experience of women?” And he invited the arcevoalo to gain this experience by coming with him to the Favelin, which was the name of the slum surrounding the city.

  The next night, Orlando and the arcevoalo entered the cluttered, smelly streets of the Favelin. The hovels there were made of rotting boards, pitched like wreckage at every angle; and were populated by a malnourished, shrunken folk who looked to be of a different species from Orlando. Twists of oily smoke fumed from the chimneys; feathered lizards slept in the dirt next to grimy children; hags in black shawls sacrificed pigs beneath glass bells full of luminescent fungus and scrawled bloody words in the dust to cure the sick. How ugly all this might have been beyond the range of the city’s machines, the arcevoalo could not conceive. They came to a street whereon the doors were hung with red curtains, and Orlando ushered him through one of these and into a room furnished with a pallet and a chair. Mounted on the wall was the holograph of a bearded man who—though the cross to which he was nailed had burst into emerald flames—had maintained a beatific expression. The flames shed a ghastly light over a skinny girl lying on a pallet. She was hollowcheeked, with large, empty-looking eyes and jaundiced skin and ragged dark hair. Orlando whispered to her, gave her a coin, and—grinning as he prepared to leave—said, “Her name is Ana.”

  Without altering her glum expression, Ana stood and removed her shift. Her breasts had the convexity of upturned saucers, her ribs showed, and her genitals were almost hairless. Nevertheless, the arcevoalo became aroused, and when he sank down onto the pallet and entered her, he felt a rush of dominance and joy that roared through him like a whirlwind. He clutched at Ana’s hips with all his strength, building toward completion. And staring into her hopeless eyes, he sensed the profound alienness of women, their mystical endurance, the eerie valences of their moods, and how even their common thoughts turn hidden corners into bizarre mental worlds. Knowing his dominance over this peculiar segment of humanity acted to heighten his desire, and with a hoarse cry he fell spent beside Ana and into a deep sleep.

  He awoke to find her gazing at him with a look of such rapt contemplation that when she turned her eyes away, the image of his face remained reflected in her pupils. Timorously, shyly, she asked if he planned to return to the Favelin, to her. He recalled then the force with which he had clutched her, and he inspected the tips of his fingers. Droplets glistened beneath the nails, and there were damp bruises on Ana’s hips. He realized that his touch, his secret chemistry, had manifested as love, an emotion whose power he apprehended but whose nature he did not understand.

  “Will you return?” she asked again.

  “Yes,” he said, feeling pity for her. “Tomorrow.”

  And he did return, many times, for in his loveless domination of that wretched girl he had taken a step closer to adopting the ways of man. He had come to see that there was little difference between the city and the jungle, that “civilization” was merely a name given to comfort, and that the process of life in Sangue do Lume obeyed the same uncivilized laws as did the excesses of the sortilene. What point was there in warring against man? And, in any case, how could he win such a war? His touch was a useless power against an enemy who could summon countless allies from its worlds behind the sky.

  Over the ensuing weeks the arcevoalo grew ever more despondent, and in the throes of despondency the human elements of his soul grew more and more predominant. At dusk his reverie was troubled by images of lust and conquest stirred from the memories of João Merín Nascimento. And his work aboard Orlando’s ship became so proficient that Caudez do Tuscanduva held a fete in his honor, a night of delirium and pleasure during which a constellation of his profile appeared in the sky, and the swaying of the palms was choreographed by artificial winds, and the machines within the walls were turned high, beautifying everyone to such an extent that everyone’s heart was broken…broken, and then healed by the consumption of tiny, soft-boned animals that induced a narcissistic ecstasy when eaten alive. Despite his revulsion for this practice, the arcevoalo indulged in it, and, his teeth stained with blood, he spent the remainder of the night wandering the incomparably beautiful streets and gazing longingly at himself in mirrors.

  Thereafter Caudez do Tuscanduva took Orlando and the arcevoalo under his wing, telling them they were to be his protégés, that he had great plans for them. Further, he urged them to pay court to Sylvana, saying that, yes, she was an icy sort, but the right man would be able to thaw her. In this Orlando needed no urging. He plied her with gifts and composed lyrics to her charms. But Sylvana was disdainful of his efforts, and though for the most part she was equally disdainful of the arcevoalo, now and then she would favor him with a chilly smile, which—while scarcely encouraging—made Orlando quite jealous.

  “You’d do better to set your sights elsewhere,” the arcevoalo once told Orlando. “Even if you win her, you’ll regret it. She’s the kind of woman who uses marriage like a vise, and before you know it she’ll have you squealing like a stuck pig.” He had no idea whether or not this was true—it was something he had overheard another disappointed suitor say—but it accorded with his own impressions of her. He believed that Orlando was leaving himself open to the possibility of grievous hurt, and he told him as much. No matter how forcefully he argued, though, Orlando refused to listen.

  “I know you’re only trying to protect me, friend,” he said. “And perhaps you’re right. But this is an affair of the heart, and the heart is ruled by its own counsel.”

  And so the arcevoalo could do nothing more than to step aside and let Orlando have a clear field with Sylvana.

  On one occasion Caudez invited them to dine at the governor’s mansion. They sat at a long mahogany table graced by golden candelabra through whose branches the arcevoalo watched Sylvana daintily picking at her food, ignoring the heated glances that Orlando sent her way. After the meal, Caudez led them into his study, its
windows open onto the orchid-spangled courtyard where Sylvana could be seen strolling—as elegant as an orchid herself—and held forth on his scheme to milk the resources of the Amazon: how he would reopen the gold mines at Serra Pelada, reinstitute the extensive-farming procedures that once had brought an unparalleled harvest, and thus feed and finance hundreds of new orbital colonies. Orlando’s attention was fixed upon Sylvana, but the arcevoalo listened closely. Caudez, with his piratical air and his dream of transforming the Amazon into a tame backyard, struck him as being a force equal to the jungle. Pacing up and down, declaiming about the glorious future, Caudez seemed to walk with the pride of a continent. Late in the evening he turned his fierce black stare upon the arcevoalo and questioned him about his past. The questions were complex, fraught with opportunities for the arcevoalo to compromise the secret of his birth; he had to summon all his wits to avoid these pitfalls, and he wondered if Caudez were suspicious of him. But then Caudez laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, saying what a marvel he was, and that allayed his fears.

  Whereas in the jungle, time passed in a dark green flow, a single fluid moment infinitely prolonged, within the walls of Sangue do Lume it passed in sharply delineated segments so that occasionally one would become alerted to the fact that a certain period had elapsed—this due to the minuscule interruptions in the flow of time caused by the instruments men have for measuring it. And thus it was that one morning the arcevoalo awoke to the realization that he had lived in the city for a year. A year! And what progress had he made? His life, which had once had the form of purpose, of a quest, had resolved into a passive shape defined by his associations: his friendship with Orlando (whose wooing of Sylvana had reached fever pitch), his sexual encounters with Ana, his apprenticeship to Caudez. Each night he was reminded of his deeper associations with the jungle by the huge shadow that obscured the stars; yet he felt trapped between the two worlds, at home in neither, incapable of effecting any change. He might have continued at this impasse had not Ana announced to him one evening that she was with child. It would be, according to the old woman who had listened to her belly, a son. Standing in the garish light of her burning Christ, displaying her new roundness, flushed with a love no longer dependent on his touch, she presented him with a choice he could not avoid making. If he did nothing, his son would be born into the world of men; he had to be certain this was right.