West of January

by Dave Duncan

  “Where do you want to start?” he asked.

  “Where do I want to start what?”

  He looked surprised and waved a hand at the chaos. “Learning.”

  “Is a herdman capable of learning?”

  “That depends on what sort of herdman!” Chuckling, he bent over to scrabble through a heap of things on the floor, rising red-faced with a relatively neat and respectable ledger. He found the page he wanted and held the book out to me. I took it, surprised at its weight, and stared in incomprehension at the thousands of tiny, close-packed squiggles and at one large and unsightly ink blot.

  “What does this mean?” I asked crossly. I had only a very hazy idea of writing, even then. “What use is this? Someone has been very careless.”

  “Yes, that happens,” Kettle sighed. “It’s quite impossible to read what was written underneath. That page tells on an expedition sent out a long time ago…before you were born, certainly. Four chariots went across the grasslands to Dawn, to the wetlands. Purple-white-blue, Green-red-orange, Indigo-two-black…and now the fourth name can’t be made out at all! Not that it really matters, of course.”

  He was prying, wanting to see my reaction, and I in turn was studding his baggy brown face. He was still smiling, and I did not detect a threat, which have must been one possibility. “You ought to report that blot to Michael.”

  Kettle shook his head, swinging jowls. “Michael needn’t worry about such details. Nobody else need, either, in my opinion.”

  “So who’s the enemy?”

  His eyes twinkled. “Gabriel and Raphael. They don’t like some of the innovations that Michael is trying to make.” He explained about the five archangels and their unending rivalries.

  “So why antagonize Uriel?”

  “Uriel is one of Michael’s—this present Michael’s—own appointees, and he’s starting to waver, so it’s said. The meetings are private, of course, but the story is that he sided with the opposition in the last vote.”

  “So why antagonize him?” I asked again.

  Kettle chuckled. “Michael doesn’t need to bribe. He rewards or punishes. You watch him! He’s a master.”

  Yes, I thought, I might well learn a thing or two by watching Michael.

  I dropped my eyes to the book, to tales of things that had happened before I was born, to the deeds of men who might be dead by now. The tiny script seemed to dance before my eyes like midges. I thought of Misi’s delicate embroidery. I had never managed to match her at it…but I had learned to sew, after a fashion. I thought of the heaped documents I had been shown, full of the voices of the long-dead, full of wonderful things. I shivered at the thought of being able to hear those voices and see those things.

  But reading would be of no use to me back on the grasslands.

  I closed the book. “Tell me about the Great Compact.”

  Kettle looked disappointed. “The Compact? Then I must speak first of the firstfolk…and therefore of time. How much do you know of time?”

  The answer, we soon discovered, was “not much,” so Kettle set to work to teach me about time, and that took much time in itself.

  At rare moments, when there are large hills to the west and the sky is clear, the inhabitants of Heaven can glimpse the stars, the Other Worlds, shining in the sky. There are millions of them, and they are terrifyingly beautiful. Which one is First World and how the firstfolk drove their great chariots through all those shining worlds, even the saints do not know. But the Other Worlds turn about Vernier in a predictable path. Were a man to observe the sky when he lay with a woman and she then made a baby, he would see the same pattern repeated when she was delivered of the child. The saints call this amount of time a turn.

  At our first meeting, I had heard Kettle refer to another measure of time, one that the firstfolk used, the year. The year is about one and one-third turns. Heaven keeps its records in years, but—as everyone admits—it is a very impractical unit and is preserved only because it is sanctified by age and custom.

  More convenient is the month, which is almost sixteen years, or twenty-two turns. I was two and a bit months old, Kettle informed me smugly. He expected me to ask how he knew, but he’d already told me that, so I didn’t. Almost a month had passed since the seafolk’s great migration, and much of that month I had spent in the ants’ nest. One month makes a baby an adult. A man can hope to live for four months, and a very few make five…and so on. Time is handiest in months. Twelve months makes a cycle, when High Summer returns to the same place. A cycle is three old men’s lives end to end, seven or eight generations, two hundred years.

  The firstfolk came to Vernier almost a hundred cycles ago.

  “Copies!” Kettle would exclaim sometimes, when he became annoyed with the old texts. “Copies of copies of copies! Reports of rumors of commentaries on critiques of analyses! Bah!” Sometimes he used an even stronger word than “bah!”

  Despite the efforts of generations of scribes, and of the many heavy-laden snortoises who bear Heavens library, there are lamentable gaps in the old learning: much has been lost. What, for example, were the “goods” whose loss the firstfolk lamented? Kettle thought they must have been like the sorts of things that Heaven guards so carefully—the smithy, the pottery, the toolmaker’s shop—and most likely the legend of many goods being lost means that they were swallowed up by Nightside. Other saints disagreed. Goods, they maintained, had been in some way related to gods, and their loss was somehow tied in to the way the gods had scattered all across Vernier. Every group has its own god, they pointed out, and some have several, all lost to Heaven. Kettle made very rude sounds at this idea. The various gods had come much later, he insisted.

  And why, if the firstfolk could move themselves and their goods through the Other Worlds, could they not also keep these goods moving when they came to Vernier? Kettle had a theory that—but then, every saint had theories.

  In that first lesson, he did little more than confuse me on the subject of time, but at least I learned the words of the Great Compact. In Heaven, everyone is required to know it by heart. Long ago, Kettle said, all of Vernier did. Then he began to quote, almost chanting:

  We, the people of Vernier, in order to preserve the wisdom of our ancestors from the dark of ignorance, our goods from the dark of night, our liberties from the dark of tyranny, our minds from the dark of superstition, and our children from the darknesses of inequality and intolerance, violence and oppression, do hereby enter into Compact together, for ourselves and our descendants forever.

  He paused, looking reverent, which was not easy with a face so much better suited to registering mirth.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s just the beginning. It goes on to describe ‘the college,’ which is Heaven, and ‘the instructors,’ which we now call angels—”

  “Why? Why change the names?”

  “I have no idea!” The solemnity slipped slightly, and his eyes twinkled. “There is an old tradition that it started as a joke. A heaven is a place where a god lives, and the Great Compact bans all gods from Heaven. Let me tell you the rest of it…”

  And so he did. But then and later, he left many questions unanswered and many hints unexplained, and in time he had me begging for reading lessons so that I could find out for myself, which is probably what he had intended from the start. Probably I wanted to show that herdmen and reading were not incompatible…and Quetti was learning too, of course.

  After that first session with Kettle, though, I returned to Cloud Nine with my head full of wonders and my belly empty. I discovered a near riot in progress because the seraph cook had been removed to attend to more urgent business. The cherubim were solving the problem with beer and loud indignation. Feeling too hungry for such behavior, I headed for the kitchen to set to work on my specialty, an all-inclusive stew.

  My news of an angel slave had rocked Heaven as if all the snortoises had taken up dancing. Michael was planning a force of forty men, which meant at least fourtee
n chariots, and no such effort had been mounted since the mission to the herdfolk, back in my childhood. Everyone became involved. I was to see learned saints wielding paintbrushes and archangels sewing sails. The seraphim were run to exhaustion.

  Technically I was only a guest, but I did not escape the preparations. Angels were too busy now to instruct, while senior cherubim were frantic to win their wheels before the war party departed. Quetti’s stories must have found gullible ears. A blushing cherub asked if I would give him some tips in archery. Then it was marksmanship, although I had not shot a gun since I ran out of ammunition in the crocodile swamp. Then horses. Soon I was as insanely overworked as everyone else, and mostly I was training angels, which I found ironic. In exchange, I demanded lessons in dogsledding and snowshoeing, so I could make my own way around Heaven without needing help all the time.

  Then Sariel invited me along to meet some traders, and I found myself haggling on Heaven’s behalf. The traders did not appreciate my intervention. Sariel was appalled at the difference it made.

  ─♦─

  But I am getting ahead of my story… About the second or third time I was playing cook in Cloud Nine, Michael sent a seraph to fetch me. He wanted only to chat, but Michael’s whim was Heaven’s law.

  I refused the seraphs dogsled and set off on my own snowshoe-shod feet. The sky was black, with a murderous cold wind coming from Nightside, and I was red-faced and breathless by the time I arrived at Throne. Michael made me welcome, apologizing for having taken so long to call me back. He led me into a small and very cozy office, where lantern flames danced happily and logs crackled in a tubby iron stove.

  The chairs looked soft and difficult. I chose to settle on the floor with my back against a wall. Michael fetched some shabby old cushions for me, and then he proceeded to warm dulcified wine on the stove and to roast beef nuts. He was being charming again, and that put me on guard.

  But I seemed to have misjudged him. He was amused and excited at having a real live son turn up in Heaven. To console him in his old age, he said with a laugh that came close to a cackle. We must get to know each other. Tell me about your childhood. Have some more wine. Have you heard the story…?

  He was bright and inexhaustible, witty and irascible by turns. I was weary after a long series of lessons given and taken. I sat there, and we talked until my neck sagged and my eyes glazed. Finally he relented.

  “You’re weary!” he said, as if that had not been obvious for a long time. “I was hoping the weather would clear. Well, I can summon a dogsled—unless you’d care to stay here?”

  I looked up at him blearily. “Would that be wise?”

  He sulked for a moment. “No, I suppose not. There would be more gossip.” Then a flash of humor: “You make me feel like a maiden guarding her reputation!” And a pout: “Such pettiness!”

  “Can they throw you out?”

  The blue eyes narrowed. “Certainly not! Oh, it’s been done a few times—Michaels who became too old, or went mad, or became corrupt… I’ve done nothing to provoke that. But they can stop me from experimenting with new things that need to be done—like trying to enlist herd-men. No angel wants to be the first, in case it doesn’t work out.” He paused, thinking. “If we suffer serious losses against the ants, then they might pull me down, I suppose.”

  He sighed in exasperation and rose from his chair. “Well, I have enjoyed our chat. We’ll have time for lots more, I’m sure.”

  Relieved, I levered myself away from the wall on my seat. “You’re coming… You’re coming along to lead the mission in person?”

  “Eh? No, I’m not going! Who would I blame if it failed? I’m not going, and neither are you!”

  I had been about to do my rollover and double-up maneuver. “I’m not going? But I’m the one—”

  “A war party is no place for a cripple.” He folded his arms and was suddenly big. Partly it was a trick of the giant shadow dancing on the wall behind him. Partly it was his bulky white gown, and of course, I was sitting on the floor looking up, but the little man did look big, suddenly. I saw that I was not going to accompany the angels’ attack on Hrarrh’s nest.

  “Damn! I can shoot as well as—”

  “So I’ve heard. Uriel admits that you’re a better all-rounder than most of the cherubim and, he says, many of the angels. So’s your young friend, and I suppose you trained him.”

  “Well, then—”

  “He can’t be an angel until he can read and write. He needs some book learning, but in fieldwork he’s ready. Don’t tell him, though.” Michael had not moved. Only his shadow writhed and swayed.

  “And me?”

  That surprised him, and suddenly he showed caution. “You said you were not a pilgrim. Not a candidate, you said.”

  “I wasn’t. But I want to go on this war party, and—”

  “No.” He sank down on his chair again, which happened to put his face in shadow. “Don’t you understand, Knobil? Hasn’t Kettle explained?”

  “Explained what?”

  “Why you can’t be a cherub or an angel as long as I’m here in Heaven. You shouldn’t be here at all.”

  “Because you’re my father.”

  “Yes. But that’s not the scandal. Angels make bastards all the time. We encourage it! It spreads the genes around… I mean, it reduces the inbreeding, and that’s a bad problem in many areas. Groups don’t mix much, but seamen angels visit the deserts and treefolk angels the wetlands—the more angelbrats, the better! But we never know who they are. And—hasn’t Kettle explained the Great Compact?”

  “He’s explained some. We’ve both been busy.”

  “Of course.” Now he became kindly and gracious. “I could leave, of course. You’d make a good angel, and if you weren’t a cripple, I might even do that, so that you could become an angel. But that is an important factor, Knobil: you can’t deny that being a cripple makes a difference. And I think I’ll be a good Michael, given more time. As for going home… I don’t know what my arthritis would say to the wetlands now.”

  I felt suddenly sorry for the little man and angry at myself because of it. “This is why there are no women in Heaven?”

  “Talk to the seraphim if you get desperate. There are usually some trader wagons just over the hill.”

  Anything’s negotiable.

  “That wasn’t what I meant!”

  He chuckled, then sat back to stare at nothing. “No. And yes. No women in Heaven! That’s what the Compact says. And no sons. No known sons. Because knowledge is power, and power leads to tyranny and oppression. You know how men feel about sons…son.”

  “I know how herdmen feel about them. They kill them.”

  He turned his blue-blue eyes on me without revealing anything. “I forgot again, didn’t I? Apart from herdmen, then? Most men favor their children over others. They will pass on their goods when they die. And their power, if they can.”

  I had seen enough of traders’ customs and met enough village herd-men to be able to nod in agreement.

  “So that’s the Compact! That’s why angels expect to be trusted with power—they have less temptation to abuse it. That’s another reason we get to tumble the women—because we can’t have any of our own.” We both sat in silence for a while.

  Then he murmured, “Do you feel more guilty or less guilty now?”

  I rolled over and jackknifed myself upright. Then at least I could look down on him. “I thank you for the hospitality.”

  Michael might not have heard me. He was gazing dreamily at the misshapen wall opposite. “I often wonder about the firstfolk and those mysterious goods of theirs… How many trader wagons would it take to move Heaven, Knobil?”

  “I don’t know a number big enough!”

  “Ironic, isn’t it, that the answer was something as simple as snow? Those poor firstfolk, seeing all their precious goods destined to be destroyed by the dark—and then they discovered the snortoises. Nothing else can move a load like a snortoise can.”
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br />   I hesitated and was about to head for the door, but apparently he was still musing.

  “So they saved their knowledge, their library. Ironic again—this is the worst place on Vernier to live, except Nightside itself. Do you see the problem?”

  “Er…no.”

  Michael was a curiously changeable character, but this dreamy introspection was both new and surprising. Then Throne uttered an enormous bellow, and I hastily lurched across the room to lean both hands against a wall while the building rocked.

  Michael did not seem to have noticed. “Some people staying to guard the snortoises and the books and things, others spreading out all across Vernier…finding all sorts of ingenious ways of earning a living… I suppose at first they all sent their youngsters back here to be educated. Gradually the distances would become greater…so the girls wouldn’t come any more, because girls would be precious. Boys…well, it’s always nice to get the boys out of the compound when they get to a certain age—at least the rowdy ones. Send them off to learn, you know? Like the ghoulfolk still do?”

  “Yes?” I straightened up cautiously.

  “It’d be more restful.” Then Michael’s eyes flickered around to regard me, and he smiled his thin-cheeked, old man’s smile. I wondered if he’d been playing a part deliberately. “Then send off fewer and fewer boys, just the adventurous ones, and those would be sent back to advise and teach… That must have been how it all came about, I think: the start of Heaven and the angels. But maybe I’m wrong. It was a long time ago.”

  —3—

  EVENTUALLY THE ARMY WAS READY and it departed—forty-two men and nineteen chariots. I stayed behind in Heaven, and so did Michael. The commander was Three-brown, a heavy-jawed, long-armed slasher. He did not impress me. I thought better of his deputy, who had the typical yellow eyes and tousled hair of a wolfman. When I cheekily said so to Michael, he explained that wolfmen rarely made good leaders because they were always too eager to please, but they were infinitely loyal subordinates and dogged fighters.