He used no conscious effort or belief.
He looked at the Girl, and something seemed to flow between them. He couldn’t describe it, afterward (although later humans had a name for it). It was similar to the way he felt when he did his mind-paintings—particularly when he did the painting of Belinda — but it was not the same. It was somehow stronger, and it did not come from him alone. It had something to do with the Girl’s being there, too, but that was still not the full answer. It had to do with something inside him, a living entity that was part of him, yet separate, perhaps like a soul.
The Skytrain faded from around the Triad, and they found themselves on a hillside overlooking the ocean, and it was morning, the sun rising out of the easterly bank of crimson clouds.
IN LORD SHOUT’S ROOM
Before the Mole had become Caradoc, he had lived for some weeks in a remote area of the Dome, having been brought there by his father, Lord Shout. Lord Shout was a Wild Human who had found the blank curved walls of the Dome depressing after the boundless space of Outside, so he had instructed members of his tribe to climb the catwalk on the Dome’s outer surface and clean the muck of aeons away until the windows of his room were clear again and he could see the distant hills where his village lay. This had been somewhat shocking to Zozula, who had not realized that the Dome’s surface was intended to be transparent. It was also a little terrifying, because the clear windows were as high as the clouds, and on a clear day surveyed a dizzying expanse of Earth.
Now Selena stood in Lord Shout’s room.
She trembled as she looked at the great Outside, so open, so clear, so limitless compared to the only Outside she had ever known: the low clouds and tiny confines of the People Planet’s lone island. But she was a Cuidador, and outside this window was the future; she and other Cuidadors must get used to it.
Hearing a sound, she turned.
Zozula stood there. Her heart leaped with joy, but she managed to conceal it. “I hear your journey was a success,” she said.
“We captured a Bale Wolf — Brutus has it now. But the Girl was seriously hurt. And … and we lost Mentor, I’m afraid.”
“So I heard.” She turned away.
“He died like a hero. I was a fool — he had much more courage than I gave him credit for. The Girl told me he saved her life. He threw himself in the way of a Bale Wolf’s knife and took the blow that was meant for her. He was a brave man, after all.”
“Of course he was. He was your clone-son.” Her voice was muffled.
“He gave a bad impression, at first.”
“That was my fault. I raised him badly. I spoiled him.”
“I … I was ashamed of him, Selena. I kept thinking he was what I might have been. What I am, underneath. A coward who wakes up screaming at night.”
“We all do that, Zo.”
Standing beside her, looking at the vastness of Outside, he caught sight of a tear on her cheek. Awkwardly, he put an arm around her. “There was nothing we could do to save him. It all happened so quickly. He liked the Girl, I think.”
“Don’t we all?” she muttered.
“Listen, Selena … I’m very sorry. I … I realize you were fond of him. I’m not a fool, you know.”
She swung round to face him, and her eyes were glittering. “Oh, yes you are!”
He backed away, astonished at her violence. “My dear …”
“Haven’t you got the sense to work out why I raised Mentor, why I kept him in my quarters as an adult? Are you completely stupid, Zozula?”
“Well, I thought you explained all that. Research, and so on …” He flushed. “If you’re trying to tell me you were lovers, well, it’s really no concern of mine. What you do up there is your own affair.”
“Yes, we were lovers.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.” Now he too was getting annoyed.
“Well, you’re going to, whether you like it or not. I’ve spent fifty years of unhappiness with Mentor, you know that? Fifty years of wondering why I did such a thing. Wondering if the caracals would tell people. Wondering if they already had and if the entire Station was laughing behind my back. Wondering if word would get back here, to the Cuidadors. Fifty years of guilt, Zozula. Watching Mentor growing up to look like you, and to walk and talk like you, and yet not to be you. Fifty years of watching him develop into a spoiled brat, of living with a poor substitute while you and Eulalie were living together, content with each other and hardly aware of the Dome around you.”
There was a long silence. In the end, Zozula said helplessly, “I loved Eulalie very much. Now she’s dead, I don’t know how to handle it … and I don’t know how to handle people, either. I feel alone suddenly, and I feel as though the rest of the Cuidadors are my enemies, attacking me with their sympathy. Does that sound strange? I lived with Eulalie for centuries, and I never knew how much I depended on her. All that time, she was protecting me from the way I feel now, and I never realized it. This is why I’ve thrown myself into this quest of ours. It’s not through a sense of duty — not really. It’s because I can’t face life without Eulalie, and because I find the company of Manuel and the Girl less … less embarrassing than the company of the Cuidadors. And because I suddenly hate this Dome. Does that explain anything?”
“Not really.” But Selena’s tone had softened.
“I’m just an arrogant old fool who’s been caught out, Lena. That’s the truth of it.”
“I know.”
“It’s too soon for me to start thinking of the future.”
“I know.”
Tentatively, he said, “There’s still plenty of time.”
*
Meanwhile, the nurses, using ancient technology under the direction of Caradoc, worked on the Girl. She was still alive, but her breath was shallow and her pulse weak. The venom of the Bale Wolf was being carried through her system, although the wound itself had begun to heal.
Brutus took samples of venom from the Bale Wolf and fed them into the Rainbow. The creature lay on its back in a cage, breathing slowly and powerfully, drugged into insensibility. It had to be kept that way, unconscious, because no cage could have held it if it recovered its senses and its powers.
The Rainbow analyzed the samples. The answer came back: The Bale Wolf’s venom contained a virulent agent with an effect similar to cancer, capable of changing the very structure of body cells, and quickly.
A nurse injected adrenalin into the Girl, simply to keep her alive. She was wasting away. Her substance seemed to be dissolving into the force fields in which she was suspended.
Zozula and Selena arrived and stood looking at the Girl for a long time. Brutus blinked and scratched, wondering how to tell them his news.
Eventually he spoke in a rush. “I added a sample of the Bale Wolf’s venom to a True Human gene culture, but I had to destroy it. For a while it grew fast and I thought there was an embryo developing. But then …” He gulped. “It wasn’t anything like a human embryo. It was a crawling thing, and it began to move about too soon. I recycled it quickly.”
“How about tissue samples?” asked Selena.
“I tried that, too. The result was the same.”
Zozula was regarding the Girl. “She’s become so thin, so quickly. She won’t last much longer.” His eyes were unnaturally bright when he turned back to Brutus. “We’ve failed. Everything was for nothing. I don’t understand it …” A vision of an old woman came to him, and the way she had described Time and the quest of the Triad. “Maybe it’s just that we’re on the wrong happentrack,” he said. “But I was so sure. I suppose it was simply my arrogance again. I was assuming everything we did was important, when in fact it had no significance at all. And now I’ve killed the Girl.”
“You did everything you could, Zo.” said Selena. “You had to try to cure the neotenites. And at least you know now why they’re dying.”
“But I can’t do anything about it. The fireman on the Celestial Steam Locomotive is Death himself. He’s i
nevitable, and we can’t fight him. Like the Locomotive itself, he’ll always exist. And that stupid smallwish Silver will always introduce people to him. Nobody is truly immortal, because even if their bodies receive the best of care, there comes the time when their minds decide to call it quits.”
“I suppose so.” Selena took Zozula’s hand. “Thank God you didn’t get scratched, Zo. And at least Manuel isn’t here to see the Girl die. What happened to him, anyway?”
“I sent him home.” Zozula’s tone was short.
“Why? Wouldn’t he have wanted to stay with the Girl?”
“He did, but I wouldn’t let him. Don’t you understand? All of this is my fault. I couldn’t stand his watching the Girl die. He was very fond of her, you know. He was beginning to blame me, and he was right.”
Selena regarded the Girl. “I wouldn’t have believed a person could change so quickly. That venom is pure poison — she’s no heavier than me, now. In an hour or two she’ll be little more than a skeleton. Even her face has changed.”
“And she’s grown eyelashes,” said Zozula. “Her hair is much thicker, too.”
“If you forget the way she ought to look,” said Selena slowly, “she’s really quite attractive. What a pity she can’t stay just like this.”
“I think she might!” Brutus suddenly swung round to face them, and there was a blazing light in his eyes. “The Bale Wolf’s venom would have killed you, Zozula — my tests proved that. You’re a True Human. But the Girl isn’t; she lacks something. What she lacks is what the Bale Wolves took away with them, all those thousands of years ago. And now … I think this Bale Wolf has given it back to her, in its venom. Look at her!”
The Girl was breathing easily now, slim and pretty.
“She’s going to be all right,” said Brutus.
*
Selena and Zozula returned to Lord Shout’s room. It seemed to be an appropriate place to consider the future, up here where the land was spread before them.
After a while Zozula said, “We’re close to the time when our duty is done. I should be feeling pleased about this. So why don’t I, Selena? Why do I feel scared?”
She laid a hand on his sleeve. “We’ve lived a long time. It isn’t easy to face change. And you’re wrong about our duty being done. We’ll be spending the rest of our lives organizing the release of the New People. We can’t just turn them loose to starve. We have to build a new society Outside. We and our children. Our True Human children.”
“Except that they won’t be True Humans for long,” said Zozula. “Ironic, isn’t it? In generations to come, they’ll evolve and adapt. They’ll develop big lungs to cope with the thin air, and there will be other changes. They’ll turn into Wild Humans.”
“And there’s another factor.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You remember what the saybaby told us about the Macrobes and the Everlings?”
“Yes. The Everlings were a failed experiment, weren’t they?”
“That’s right. Now Brutus has found out they weren’t the only experiment that took place in those days. Listen to this.”
Holding tight to the memory potto, she told Zozula a story. It is a story that, in later years, assumed the quality of a legend, and is sometimes heard in the Song of Earth under the title of “The Giant of Buenos.” The final version, polished by the minstrels, goes like this:
Once there was a tiny creature called a Macrobe that lived within a larger creature, called an Everling. It was the Macrobe’s sworn duty to spread his kind throughout the Galaxy, and this he had done in many ways, but now he was trapped in the Everling because this creature could not reproduce.
Then the great god Starquin, scanning the Ifalong, found that this Macrobe was important in the scheme of things and must be taken back to Earth, because it would soon be needed there. So one night, while the Everling was asleep, Starquin sent a bat to suck his blood. When the bat had finished, it flew to a Rock, where an old woman caught it and, by mysterious means, dispatched it to Earth. And the Macrobe went, too, having passed into the bat with the Everling’s blood.
Now, the bat was a dull, stupid creature, but the Macrobe was very clever — and moreover, the Macrobe had a very strong sense of self-preservation. Arriving on Earth, it caused the bat to seek out the most powerful creature around. This creature was a huge Wild Human who for years had terrorized a village of Earth known as Buenos. And this giant, annoyed by the bat fluttering around his head, caught it in his great paw and ate it. Now the Macrobe had a very powerful host.
The giant then went out on one of his periodic rampages. He strode into the village of Buenos and kicked down several huts. Then, as was his custom, he demanded a ransom.
“Otherwise,” he roared, “I will lay waste the entire region!” And, within the giant, the Macrobe was sad because it seemed to the little parasite that the giant was asking for trouble.
As it happened, the Macrobe need not have worried, because the villagers were under the influence of the Kikihuahua Examples. They used no metal or fire, they didn’t kill anything and they were generally peaceable. The Macrobe, however, did not know this.
Now the giant seized Asesina, the beautiful daughter of the village chief and bore her to his cave. She lay there unresisting all that night, and he possessed her many times.
In the morning a deputation from Buenos approached the cave entrance, and the chief called timidly for the release of his daughter. “She has served you well,” he cried, “and the ransom is now as good as paid.” But at the first rustlings within the cave he backed off, and behind him his companions fled. “Mind you,” he called quickly, “I am a reasonable man and am willing to negotiate.”
But it was his daughter, Asesina, who appeared. Her clothes hung in tatters and she was drenched in blood.
“My darling!” called the chief. “What has he done to you?”
“It’s what I’ve done to him,” replied Asesina, brandishing a huge knife. “I’ve killed the bastard. And now,” she added, as smoke billowed from the cave. “I’ve set fire to his body.”
“But what about the Kikihuahua Examples?” cried her father.
“They were not relevant to the situation, Father. This came to me as a vision when I was lying beneath the weight of the giant. It seemed that I was possessed with an entirely new outlook, wherein the Examples had no place. My own safety became paramount, so as soon as I was able, I took the giant’s knife and drove it into his heart.”
“I cannot condone what you have done,” said her father. “But it’s good to have you back.”
Life in the village of Buenos continued as before, except that Asesina had changed. She became stronger and fiercely loving and more than a little violent. The young men sought her out and loved her back such loving had not been known for centuries in the slow pace of the village. Asesina’s children grew up strong and loving, too. Even on his deathbed, however, her father lamented the change that had come over Asesina since that night with the giant.
“I can’t think what got into her,” he said.
*
This was substantially the story that Selena told Zozula, although the Rainbow’s version was less colorful, more factual.
“It’s interesting …” said Zozula. “So there used to be Macrobes out there.” He gazed at the panorama. Wisps of smoke rose from the village, where the Wild Humans were preparing for their annual festival.
“There still are,” said Selena. “I had the saybaby check out the local population. We may not be the only people who use the Inner Think, for instance. There are all kinds of things happening Outside that we know nothing about.”
“We have a lot of learning to do, and it’s ironic to think that the Wild Humans will be our teachers, after all I’ve said about them in the past. But I’ll get used to the idea.”
“The Macrobes will spread again, through us and the neotenites — the New People, that is. That will help.”
“I still find the idea of
Macrobes a little unsettling, Lena. I always thought the Inner Think was just a knack.”
She smiled. “The Macrobes can only make things better. They’ve learned from their mistakes, too. By the way, the say-baby identified two people in Pu’este who have the Macrobes in their genes. One of them is an old priest; but he’s of no consequence.”
“And the other?”
“Manuel.”
HORSE DAY
The Cuidadors showed Manuel out of the Dome, kindly but firmly. The quest was over. The Bale Wolf had been caught and the rest was up to the scientists. Zozula shook his hand and said he’d drop by in a couple of days and let him know how the Girl was, but that meanwhile there was no point in his hanging around.
Grieving for the Girl and angry at his dismissal, Manuel returned to Pu’este. By now it was midafternoon and the sun was hot overhead. He looked in at his shack and found everything in order, but the place didn’t seem to be his home anymore. His depression deepening, he climbed the bank and took the road inland. Wise Ana was not at home. Her little shop was closed, the wares all stacked inside, out of the sun. Barra the herdsman, strolling by with a baby vicuna in his arms, said he hadn’t seen Ana for days. Manuel walked on to the village.
He met a scene of frenzied activity. Women sat before their cottages working busily with thread and bright raffia. Men brought armfuls of straw, stirred vats of dye and built a great mountain of combustibles in the middle of the but circle. Children ran about, squealing with excitement, getting in the way and earning the sharp disapproval of their elders. Only old Insel was unaffected, lying flat on his back as usual, cloud-gazing and muttering prophesies.
Chine bustled up. “You, Manuel. Go over to the north slope and bring in the animals. Quickly, now.”
It was a poor task for Manuel, Space rider and conqueror of the Bale Wolves, so he ignored the old chief, instead wandering away among the huts.
Gods of the Greataway Page 24
