The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “Another couple of centuries.” Laurinda’s tones wavered the least bit. “Afterward?”

  “It doesn’t last,” Christian predicted. “These are humans too. And—tell me—do they ever get to a real science?”

  “No,” said the presence. “Their genius lies in other realms. But the era of warfare to come will drive the development of a remarkable empirical technology.”

  “What era?”

  “China never recognized the independence that this country proclaimed for itself, nor approved of its miscegenation. A militant dynasty will arise, which overruns a western hemisphere weakened by the religious and secular quarrels that do at last break out.”

  “And the conquerors will fall in their turn. Unless Gaia makes an end first. She does—she did—sometime, didn’t she?”

  “All things are finite. Her creations too.”

  The leaves rustled through muteness.

  “Do you wish to go into the city and look about?” asked the presence. “It can be arranged for you to meet some famous persons.”

  “No,” Christian said. “Not yet, anyway. Maybe later.”

  Laurinda sighed. “We’d rather go home now and rest.”

  “And think,” Christian said. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Transfer.

  The sun over England seemed milder than for America. Westering, it sent rays through windows to glow in wood, caress marble and the leather bindings of books, explode into rainbows where they met cut glass, evoke flower aromas from a jar of potpourri.

  Laurinda opened a bureau drawer. She slipped the chain of her amulet over her head and tossed the disc in. Christian blinked, nodded, and followed suit. She closed the drawer.

  “We do need to be by ourselves for a while,” she said. “This hasn’t been a dreadful day like, like before, but I am so tired.”

  “Understandable,” he replied.

  “You?”

  “I will be soon, no doubt.”

  “Those worlds—already they feel like dreams I’ve wakened from.”

  “An emotional retreat from them, I suppose. Not cowardice, no, no, just a necessary, temporary rest. You shared their pain. You’re too sweet for your own good, Laurinda.”

  She smiled. “How you misjudge me. I’m not quite ready to collapse yet, if you aren’t.”

  “Thunder, no.”

  She took crystal glasses out of a cabinet, poured from a decanter on a sideboard, and gestured invitation. The port fondled their tongues. They stayed on their feet, look meeting look.

  “I daresay we’d be presumptuous and foolish to try finding any pattern, this early in our search,” she ventured. “Those peeks we’ve had, out of who knows how many worlds—each as real as we are.” She shivered.

  “I may have a hunch,” he said slowly.

  “A what?”

  “An intimation, an impression, a wordless kind of guess. Why has Gaia been doing it? I can’t believe it’s nothing but pastime.”

  “Nor I. Nor can I believe she would let such terrible things happen if she could prevent them. How can an intellect, a soul, like hers be anything but good?”

  So Laurinda thought, Christian reflected; but she was an avatar of Gaia. He didn’t suppose that affected the fairness of her conscious mind; he had come to know her rather well. But neither did it prove the nature, the ultimate intent, of Earth’s node. It merely showed that the living Laurinda Ashcroft had been a decent person.

  She took a deep draught from her glass before going on: “I think, myself, she is in the same position as the traditional God. Being good, she wants to share existence with others, and so creates them. But to make them puppets, automatons, would be senseless. They have to have consciousness and free will. Therefore they are able to sin, and do, all too often.”

  “Why hasn’t she made them morally stronger?”

  “Because she’s chosen to make them human. And what are we but a specialized African ape?” Laurinda’s tone lowered; she stared into the wine. “Specialized to make tools and languages and dreams; but the dreams can be nightmares.”

  In Gaia’s and Alpha’s kind laired no ancient beast, Christian thought. The human elements in them were long since absorbed, tamed, transfigured. His resurrection and hers must be nearly unique.

  Not wanting to hurt her, he shaped his phrases with care. “Your idea is reasonable, but I’m afraid it leaves some questions dangling. Gaia does intervene, again and again. The amulets admit it. When the emulations get too far off track, she changes them and their people.” Until she shuts them down, he did not add. “Why is she doing it, running history after history, experiment after experiment—why?”

  Laurinda winced. “To, to learn about this strange race of ours?”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s my hunch. Not even she, nor the galactic brain itself, can take first principles and compute what any human situation will lead to. Human affairs are chaotic. But chaotic systems do have structures, attractors, constraints. By letting things happen, through countless variations, you might discover a few general laws, which courses are better and which worse.” He tilted his goblet. “To what end, though? There are no more humans in the outside universe. There haven’t been for—how many million years? No, unless it actually is callous curiosity, I can’t yet guess what she’s after.”

  “Nor I.” Laurinda finished her drink. “Now I am growing very tired, very fast.”

  “I’m getting that way too.” Christian paused. “How about we go sleep till evening? Then a special dinner, and our heads ought to be more clear.”

  Briefly, she took his hand. “Until evening, dear friend.”

  * * *

  The night was young and gentle. A full moon dappled the garden. Wine had raised a happy mood, barely tinged with wistfulness. Gravel scrunched rhythmically underfoot as Laurinda and Christian danced, humming the waltz melody together. When they were done, they sat down, laughing, by the basin. Brightness from above overflowed it. He had earlier put his amulet back on just long enough to command that a guitar appear for him. Now he took it up. He had never seen anything more beautiful than she was in the moonlight. He sang a song to her that he had made long ago when he was mortal.

  “Lightfoot, Lightfoot, lead the measure

  As we dance the summer in!

  ‘Lifetime is our only treasure.

  Spend it well, on love and pleasure,’

  Warns the lilting violin.

  “If we’ll see the year turn vernal

  Once again, lies all with chance.

  Yes, this ordering’s infernal,

  But we’ll make our own eternal

  Fleeting moment where we dance.

  “So shall we refuse compliance

  When across the green we whirl,

  Giving entropy defiance,

  Strings and winds in our alliance.

  Be a victor. Kiss me, girl!”

  Suddenly she was in his arms.

  8

  Where the hills loomed highest above the river that cut through them, a slope on the left bank rose steep but thinly forested. Kalava directed the lifeboat carrying his party to land. The slaves at the oars grunted with double effort. Sweat sheened on their skins and runneled down the straining bands of muscle; it was a day when the sun blazed from a sky just half clouded. The prow grated on a sandbar in the shallows. Kalava told off two of his sailors to stand guard over boat and rowers. With the other four and Ilyandi, he waded ashore and began to climb.

  It went slowly but stiffly. On top they found a crest with a view that snatched a gasp from the woman and a couple of amazed oaths from the men. Northward the terrain fell still more sharply, so that they looked over treetops down to the bottom of the range and across a valley awash with the greens and russets of growth. The river shone through it like a drawn blade, descending from dimly seen foothills and the sawtooth mountains beyond them. Two swordwings hovered on high, watchful for prey. Sunbeams shot past gigantic cloudbanks, filling their whiteness with ca
vernous shadows. Somehow the air felt cooler here, and the herbal smells gave benediction.

  “It is fair, ai, it is as fair as the Sunset Kingdom of legend,” Ilyandi breathed at last.

  She stood slim in the man’s kirtle and buskins that she, as a Vilku, could with propriety wear on trek. The wind fluttered her short locks. The coppery skin was as wet and almost as odorous as Kalava’s midnight black, but she was no more wearied than any of her companions.

  The sailor Urko scowled at the trees and underbrush crowding close on either side. Only the strip up which the travelers had come was partly clear, perhaps because of a landslide in the past. “Too much woods,” he grumbled. It had, in fact, been a struggle to move about wherever they landed. They could not attempt the hunting that had been easy on the coast. Luckily, the water teemed with fish.

  “Logging will cure that.” Kalava’s words throbbed. “And then what farms!” He stared raptly into the future.

  Turning down-to-earth: “But we’ve gone far enough, now that we’ve gained an idea of the whole country. Three days, and I’d guess two more going back downstream. Any longer, and the crew at the ship could grow fearful. We’ll turn around here.”

  “Other ships will bring others, explorers,” Ilyandi said.

  “Indeed they will. And I’ll skipper the first of them.”

  A rustling and crackling broke from the tangle to the right, through the boom of the wind. “What’s that?” barked Taltara.

  “Some big animal,” Kalava replied. “Stand alert.”

  The mariners formed a line. Three grounded the spears they carried; the fourth unslung a crossbow from his shoulders and armed it. Kalava waved Ilyandi to go behind them and drew his sword.

  The thing parted a brake and trod forth into the open.

  “Aah!” wailed Yarvonin. He dropped his spear and whirled about to flee.

  “Stand fast!” Kalava shouted. “Urko, shoot whoever runs, if I don’t cut him down myself. Hold, you whoresons, hold!”

  The thing stopped. For a span of many hammering heartbeats, none moved.

  It was a sight to terrify. Taller by a head than the tallest man it sheered, but that head was faceless save for a horrible blank mask. Two thick arms sprouted from either side, the lower pair of hands wholly misshapen. A humped back did not belie the sense of their strength. As the travelers watched, the thing sprouted a skeletal third leg, to stand better on the uneven ground. Whether it was naked or armored in plate, in this full daylight it bore the hue of dusk.

  “Steady, boys, steady,” Kalava urged between clenched teeth. Ilyandi stepped from shelter to join him. An eldritch calm was upon her. “My lady, what is it?” he appealed.

  “A god, or a messenger from the gods, I think.” He could barely make her out beneath the wind.

  “A demon,” Eivala groaned, though he kept his post.

  “No, belike not. We Vilkui have some knowledge of these matters. But, true, it is not fiery—and I never thought I would meet one—in this life—”

  Ilyandi drew a long breath, briefly knotted her fists, then moved to take stance in front of the men. Having touched the withered sprig of tekin pinned at her breast, she covered her eyes and genuflected before straightening again to confront the mask.

  The thing did not move, but, mouthless, it spoke, in a deep and resonant voice. The sounds were incomprehensible. After a moment it ceased, then spoke anew in an equally alien tongue. On its third try, Kalava exclaimed, “Hoy, that’s from the Shining Fields!”

  The thing fell silent, as if considering what it had heard. Thereupon words rolled out in the Ulonaian of Sirsu. “Be not afraid. I mean you no harm.”

  “What a man knows is little, what he understands is less, therefore let him bow down to wisdom,” Ilyandi recited. She turned her head long enough to tell her companions: “Lay aside your weapons. Do reverence.”

  Clumsily, they obeyed.

  In the blank panel of the blank skull appeared a man’s visage. Though it was black, the features were not quite like anything anyone had seen before, nose broad, lips heavy, eyes round, hair tightly curled. Nevertheless, to spirits half stunned the magic was vaguely reassuring.

  Her tone muted but level, Ilyandi asked, “What would you of us, lord?”

  “It is hard to say,” the strange one answered. After a pause: “Bewilderment goes through the world. I too … You may call me Brannock.”

  The captain rallied his courage. “And I am Kalava, Kurvo’s son, of Clan Samayoki.” Aside to Ilyandi, low: “No disrespect that I don’t name you, my lady. Let him work any spells on me.” Despite the absence of visible genitals, already the humans thought of Brannock as male.

  “My lord needs no names to work his will,” she said. “I hight Ilyandi, Lytin’s daughter, born into Clan Arvala, now a Vilku of the fifth rank.”

  Kalava cleared his throat and added, “By your leave, lord, we’ll not name the others just yet. They’re scared aplenty as is.” He heard a growl at his back and inwardly grinned. Shame would help hold them steady. As for him, dread was giving way to a thrumming keenness.

  “You do not live here, do you?” Brannock asked.

  “No,” Kalava said, “we’re scouts from overseas.”

  Ilyandi frowned at his presumption and addressed Brannock: “Lord, do we trespass? We knew not this ground was forbidden.”

  “It isn’t,” the other said. “Not exactly. But—” The face in the panel smiled. “Come, ease off, let us talk. We’ve much to talk about.”

  “He sounds not unlike a man,” Kalava murmured to Ilyandi.

  She regarded him. “If you be the man.”

  Brannock pointed to a big old gnarlwood with an overarching canopy of leaves. “Yonder is shade.” He retracted his third leg and strode off. A fallen log took up most of the space. He leaned over and dragged it aside. Kalava’s whole gang could not have done so. The action was not really necessary, but the display of power, benignly used, encouraged them further. Still, it was with hushed awe that the crewmen sat down in the paintwort. The captain, the Vilku, and the strange one remained standing.

  “Tell me of yourselves,” Brannock said mildly.

  “Surely you know, lord,” Ilyandi replied.

  “That is as may be.”

  “He wants us to,” Kalava said.

  In the course of the next short while, prompted by questions, the pair gave a bare-bones account. Brannock’s head within his head nodded. “I see. You are the first humans ever in this country. But your people have lived a long time in their homeland, have they not?”

  “From time out of mind, lord,” Ilyandi said, “though legend holds that our forebears came from the south.”

  Brannock smiled again. “You have been very brave to meet me like this, m-m, my lady. But you did tell your friend that your order has encountered beings akin to me.”

  “You heard her whisper, across half a spearcast?” Kalava blurted.

  “Or you hear us think, lord,” Ilyandi said.

  Brannock turned grave. “No. Not that. Else why would I have needed your story?”

  “Dare I ask whence you come?”

  “I shall not be angry. But it is nothing I can quite explain. You can help by telling me about those beings you know of.”

  Ilyandi could not hide a sudden tension. Kalava stiffened beside her. Even the dumbstruck sailors must have wondered whether a god would have spoken thus.

  Ilyandi chose her words with care. “Beings from on high have appeared in the past to certain Vilkui or, sometimes, chieftains. They gave commands as to what the folk should or should not do. Ofttimes those commands were hard to fathom. Why must the Kivalui build watermills in the Swift River, when they had ample slaves to grind their grain?—But knowledge was imparted, too, counsel about where and how to search out the ways of nature. Always, the high one forbade open talk about his coming. The accounts lie in the secret annals of the Vilkui. But to you, lord—”

  “What did those beings look like?” Branno
ck demanded sharply.

  “Fiery shapes, winged or manlike, voices like great trumpets—”

  “Ruvio’s ax!” burst from Kalava. “The thing that passed overhead at sea!”

  The men on the ground shuddered.

  “Yes,” Brannock said, most softly, “I may have had a part there. But as for the rest—”

  His face flickered and vanished. After an appalling moment it reappeared.

  “I am sorry, I meant not to frighten you, I forgot,” he said. The expression went stony, the voice tolled. “Hear me. There is war in heaven. I am cast away from a battle, and enemy hunters may find me at any time. I carry a word that must, it is vital that it reach a certain place, a … a holy mountain in the north. Will you give aid?”

  Kalava gripped his sword hilt so that it was as if the skin would split across his knuckles. The blood had left Ilyandi’s countenance. She stood ready to be blasted with fire while she asked, “Lord Brannock, how do we know you are of the gods?”

  Nothing struck her down. “I am not,” he told her. “I too can die. But they whom I serve, they dwell in the stars.”

  The multitude of mystery, seen only when night clouds parted, but skythinkers taught that they circled always around the Axle of the North.… Ilyandi kept her back straight. “Then can you tell me of the stars?”

  “You are intelligent as well as brave,” Brannock said. “Listen.”

  Kalava could not follow what passed between those two. The sailors cowered.

  At the end, with tears upon her cheekbones, Ilyandi stammered, “Yes, he knows the constellations, he knows of the ecliptic and the precession and the returns of the Great Comet, he is from the stars. Trust him. We, we dare not do otherwise.”

  Kalava let go his weapon, brought hand to breast in salute, and asked, “How can we poor creatures help you, lord?”

  “You are the news I bear,” said Brannock.

  “What?”

  “I have no time to explain—if I could. The hunters may find me at any instant. But maybe, maybe you could go on for me after they do.”

  “Escaping what overpowered you?” Kalava’s laugh rattled. “Well, a man might try.”