Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 04]

by The Fall of the Shell (v0. 9) (epub)

  “Liar,” one man shouted.

  “Come and see. The whole city fell with them in it.”

  The Peshtak were bewildered. The rest of the guardsmen appeared now, with Jaiyan and Jamin freed. The two Sen-tani were worn and famished, and rubbed their wrists where their bonds had cut into them. The Peshtak stood around with no one paying obvious attention to them. They were not sure what to do.

  “One other thing,” the same guardsman said. “We can cure the Peshtak plague now. If you have it, you might want to come with us.”

  “Liiiiaaaar,” one shouted again.

  The guardsman laughed. “We cured Osel and sent him home. He’s been a prisoner at Pelbarigan. Know him? We told him to tell your people that any more raids will bring their entire destruction. We’ll all go together and do it. Are you hungry? We have some bull meat here. All cooked and dried.”

  The nonchalance of the Pelbar guardsmen unnerved the Peshtak, though they knew they were being watched. As the party set out for the river, the Peshtak came along, bringing the wounded man on a litter. Late in the day, when they came through the last brakes and woods, they saw the city of Threerivers now a pile of rubble, the pyramid thrusting up through it. The two ships and the crowd of small boats on the east bank bewildered them.

  “You might as well come with us,” the guardsman said to the Peshtak, as several boats pushed off from the east bank in answer to their horn. “We’ll look after your wounded man.”

  The Peshtak were not genuinely sure that they were free to go, thinking the offer might be some trick to allow the Pelbar to kill them as escaping prisoners. They got into the boats with the others, one to a boat. On the east bank they were amazed to find a crowd of Pelbar, Tusco, and Atherers together.

  Gamwyn greeted the two giant Sentani with a shout and led them to Misque, who lay under a tree with Brudoer. “We want to rebuild, Jaiyan. You can stay with us. You can build your organ. We can all use it. Really. You’re just in time to hear our evening songs. You can imagine how the organ might help them.”

  “Gamwyn, I—” Jaiyan began. “I don’t know what. . .” The big Sentani fell silent as a choir of guardsmen and Threerivers people sang a hymn to Aven, the restorer, the one true builder, their voices swelling in a harmony that brought a blank amazement to Jaiyan’s face. Several songs later, he was wholly enraptured and decided to stay with the Pelbar, After the singing, the travelers from the south all gathered around Bival, and Samme made an announcement “We wish to make a presentation. Gamwyn is now ready to make restitution to you. It took him awhile, and like most boys, he did a lot of other things along the way, but—well, we will let him finish.”

  Grinning, Gamwyn presented Bival with a rough cloth bag—the same one the old hermit had tied in the tree during the hurricane. Inside, Bival found not only the shell of the Broad Tower but the shell models for the other towers that now lay in ruins nearby. She was overcome with emotion and sank to the ground crying, covering her face with her hands. Warret put his arms around her.

  “For her, we thank you. We thank you all,” he said. “She will thank you herself in a while.”

  The evening was chill and dry, with a slight breeze. There was much to organize, but somehow the entire array of people felt relaxed and relieved—even the old Threerivers women, to whom the loss of the city in which they had spent all their lives was a great wrench. The tumbled heap of the city lay south of the riverside field where they bedded down for the night, with a circle of fires around them and guardsmen from Pelbarigan on watch. On one of the ships, someone played a pellute, though it was barely audible on shore over the loud calls of the fall insects.

  Morning brought a heavy river mist, shrouding the two ships save the mast tops. With the new day courses of action became clearer. The old Threerivers people would go to Pelbarigan, unless they wanted to stay and work to rebuild and refashion Threerivers’ society. The Tusco artisans wanted to stay, as did most of the younger Threerivers people. The Atherers wanted to press on to Pelbarigan to learn what they could about the Lost One. Jaiyan and Jamin would also stay. Misque would not leave Brudoer and the two Sentani, and Artess had attached herself to Gamwyn. For Ms part, Gamwyn knew already he never wanted to be very far away from her.

  Surprisingly enough, the five remaining Peshtak who had been guarding Jaiyan and Jamin also decided to stay. That way, they said, if the disease appeared, cure could be near. They had been talking with Misque, and after their initial anger at her betrayals, as they saw them, they calmed. It was a long trip home, and trouble waited at the end of it. At least here was a possibility, a new society, just forming, a relaxation from danger.

  Brudoer described the location of the tunnel leading to the caves, and with some effort, they dug to it behind the city ruins. The boy explained to Bival that all Cray dor’s plans lay there in a stone chest, dry and well preserved.

  It was decided to leave the ruined city as it was, as a monument to the past and a grave for the Peshtak. They also feared the consequences of digging into it with so many infested dead in it. Initially, they would use only stone from the two walls that fell outward.

  On the second afternoon, one of the ships from Pelbarigan got under way with many of those leaving. The next morning saw an opening made from the caves directly outside, something Craydor’s people had never done. That evening, ail those who were staying gathered in the field north of the old' ruin to decide about a new government Initially, they agreed to use the Pelbar representative system, with some changes. All the peoples there would have a part Males would have an equal voice. The family representational system would be abandoned. The Protector would be elected by all. No decisions would be made except by the entire council. The Protector would have a regular term of office. Ownership would not be communal but individual. They would reconvene in the spring to forge more carefully a basic document of government.

  Udge was present, but her vehement statements simply swung others more insistently toward a looser system of government. “Appalling. Utterly appalling. Disorderly and anarchical,” she muttered repeatedly.

  “Will you be quiet?” Dardan hissed. “Do you want to go to Pelbarigan and work in a laundry?”

  “Unthinkable. Unthinkable.”

  When Bival was appointed to design the new settlement, she immediately asked if an open form, of individual houses, like the Shurnai farm town west of Northwall, would be acceptable. No one objected. She pointed out that a central citadel could be built for safety if need be, but they didn’t have to live in it all the time.

  The old Ardena had been killed by the Peshtak, and Bival openly wished she had the advice of her former antagonist. “She knew that the design of anything begins with the life that is to be lived in it,” Bival remarked. “Craydor knew that, too, but she was forced by her times into choices that would become outgrown. No doubt the choices we make here will eventually also be outgrown. We have to make them easy to alter.”

  When Samme and his Southocean friends floated downstream four weeks later, all wearing Pelbar winter coats, they could already see the rough outlines of a settlement beginning to take shape.

  Samme found the chicken workers especially happy with the chance to direct and profit from their own employment. Freedom from the watchful eyes of the Nicfad and the Committee had left the Tusco artisans baffled at first, and they were only beginning to learn to direct their own choices.

  The Peshtak had become the chief fishermen of the settlement, and they seemed to reconcile themselves to their unexpected lot fairly quickly. One of them, Ustral, was very young—scarcely older than Gamwyn and Brudoer. He was merged quickly into the household of Pion and Rotag. Jamin also spent most of his time there, under Misque’s watchful eye, since his father had gone to Pelbarigan to build an organ there. No one could haul rock like the giant, simpleminded Sentani, and he was content to do that.

  Udge had refused to leave the Broad Tower, and to humor her, since she had returned Brudoer’s bracelet intact, th
ey had dragged and rolled the great structure down onto the level ground, where she lived alone. She had already found that no one would care for her as a drone, so she had reverted to the occupation of her youth, becoming a potter to the settlement.

  One day, when Dardan stopped in to tell Udge she was marrying one of the Tusco artisans, the old Protector, after initial shock, resumed wedging her wet clay in silence. “Well, I never would have thought it,” she remarked, digging the heels of her hands into the plastic substance. “I never would have thought a lot of things. I wish ... I wish a society could be shaped as perfectly as this. But there are lumps in it. And air bubbles. It’ll never make a perfect bowl.”

  “And you’ll never make a living pot,” her old friend said. “By the way, one of the older Tusco might be just perfect for you. He isn’t used to managing his own life. He-—” Dardan stopped when she saw Udge’s face, then simply said, “He wouldn’t be a very good bowl, though.”

  “I imagine not,” said Udge. Then she smiled. “I’d have to cover over the eyes and eliminate the nose. The ears would be enlarged for handles. He would have to be depilated.”

  “He nearly is.”

  “So much the worse. I suppose he is acquiring a rounded bowlish shape, though. In the middle.”

  “No. Angular. Must be some sticks in there. You know, Udge, I really think you’re happy.”

  “Happy? How can I be with what has happened? With my shame? But you might stop over sometime and play some cross squares. I still have the old set here. You may bring your... your Tusco. Provided he bathes.”

  Dardan laughed. “I will if you promise not to inspect his nails. Of course he would think your hairstyle dowdy.” Dardan left, and Udge, who started to put her hands to her head, remembered they were covered with clay. With a grant, she went back to her shaping.

  The evening after his arrival, Samme stopped in to see Gamwyn, who asked him if he had learned what he wanted to about the Lost One.

  The Atherer sighed and raised his shoulders in a shrug. “It was worth coming. There was a man named Jesus. I think Darew*s ‘Jeez I cry’ was once ‘Jesus Christ.’ What that means, though, I don’t know. It is a statement here, a bit of writing there. His adherents seemed to argue among themselves about him. Maybe they spent so much time doing that they lost him. Then there are other names, too—Ishmael, Mohammed, Graham, Plato. A mess. How could they have lost the Lost One?

  “I begin to think, though, that the history ain’t as important as the essence of the thing—and yet the history is important. But it ain’t entirely lost. It’ll be found. Somewhere we’ll find the full story. I feel sure of it. Meantime, we’ll have to get along on what we have—the kindness, generosity, love, goodwill. I’m sure there’s much beyond that. But not every society has that. You sure saw that. When I come to you Pelbar, and find the same considerations I knew at home, I feel the presence of the Lost One. It ain’t like the Tusco. Or these Peshtak. But you see them take to it like birds to air. There’s something in them that’ll respond.

  “Look at Misque. We all know she was sent to Jaiyan’s Station to spy. But they took her in. Look what it did to her.

  “You know what, Gam? Maybe the Lost One is going to win in the long voyage after all. Maybe not. What could be worse than the great burning time? Something rose up to kill everything. Something was very afraid. But here we all are. It’s very strange, after all.”

  They sat and watched the wood fire crumble for a while. Then Samme stood up and dusted himself. “Well, Gam, I ain’t used to this cold. We’re goin’ in the morning. Two of us want to stay—Athe and Arit. They say with all the other people here, some Southocean people ought to be here, too.”

  ‘They’ll be our hermits, our spies.”

  Samme laughed. “We’ll keep track of each other. I hear your Jestak says we’re all one people. Maybe he’s right. We’ll come back. The whole river is open now from the Bitter Sea to the South Ocean. We might as well use it all.”

  “Might as well.”

  In-the morning a happy crowd watched Samme’s party leave. Udge surprised everybody by giving him one of her first fired bowls, a deep red with bands of white. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll keep it safe. We’ll take it all the way home—-beyond the end of the river. Who knows? Someday it may go to the uttermost parts of the sea.” He looked at Gamwyn, and his broad mouth flashed white in a laugh as he dug his paddle into the mud and pushed out onto the misty river to begin his long trip home.