"Oh, no. Burning us, Baj. But not you, who are as they are — a Sunrise-human and in love with wonderful Warm-times, when there were no Persons." She looked around her. "This, I think, is your dream as much as theirs."
"Perhaps. But I wouldn't burn people for it." Baj had spoken too loudly. A woman at a table nearby raised her head, startled, as if at a sound mysterious.
"Keep your voices down." Richard looked at a last piece of mutton on his platter, but appetite gone, didn't eat it.
"No, Baj," Nancy said, "you wouldn't burn the tribesmen, or cut the sweat-slaves and take their eyes. But still you wish there was no cold, no Ice-wall... wish there were no Persons made with little bits of this animal or that added in them. Wish there was nothing new since everyone (so very long ago) smelled like owls, had ugly hot little houses and women who showed everything, and mechanical wars and were assholes!"
"Talking too loud," Richard said.
"Nancy... I only understand them."
"It's the same thing!"
"It is not!" And to Errol, who hearing anger, scrambled from under the table. "Stay and be still!"
"You two are attracting these people's attention," Richard said, "— which we do not want."
"— And these Sunrisers, Baj," Nancy said, "these Believers and Burners so dear to you, do you think they have guest-honor? That because we 'apparent' ones have been given food, and eaten food, they won't decide to make engines of us?"
"What I think," Baj said, and gripped Errol's arm to keep him sitting still, "— what I think is that you need to speak more quietly."
"Ah. A Sunriser commands! The true-human, the Prince has spoken, and we're to wag our tails and obey!"
Several people near them now seemed puzzled by some odd disturbance, and turned to look this way and that.
Nancy drew a breath to say more, might have said more — but Richard, humorous as if it were all in play, reached over, took her by the nape like a kitten, and gripped her into silence before he let her go.
Then he stared at Baj. "I'm tired of this conversation," he said, quietly, "— which is dangerous, and not even about what it's about. Do you understand me, Prince?"
Baj said, "Yes, sir," since that seemed wise.
There was only the pleasant noise of others, enjoying themselves around them.
Then Nancy said, "Uh-oh." The second time she'd said it.
The young man who had welcomed them was walking toward their table, pausing to speak with others on his way.... He came to stand by Baj, and looked down, but at none directly. "Some have heard what might be questions, here," he said.
"Questions of each other, only," Baj said, "— not of what is real."
The young man seemed to consider that. "... Always an interesting experience," he said, "if not lingered on, to stand near temporal error. Innocent error, of course, though still not to be allowed for long." He looked at Baj. "Did you know — by the way, my name is Louis Cohen — but did you know that all things are made of trembling tinies? Both the real, and the only-seeming? Did you know that?"
Baj cleared his throat. "I have heard the... idea."
"Have you?" Louis Cohen nodded. "Well, it's a correct idea. All things are made of those vibrations, a sort of music our ears are too dull to hear, but which great men sense . .. and greater men act on."
Baj smiled agreement, very content to keep his mouth shut.
"I have sharp ears," Nancy said, and stared at Baj as if she spoke to him. "Almost all Persons, Moonrisers, hear very well."
"Yes," Louis Cohen said, "and many such Time-lost seem stronger than we, and some"— he smiled just past her — "appear more beautiful. You... apparent people have a place, in this icy, dissolving world, and we do not grudge it. But Warm-time is still to be retrieved, and can be brought back by no lever or engine-motor, by no fiddling of the Boston Talents — but only by conviction." He was no longer smiling. "That alone makes the littlest things spin and tremble and fly the way they must to roll time's carpet up again." He stood silent, then, and seemed abstracted.
"We must not interfere?" Baj said, then wished he'd said nothing.
Louis Cohen nodded. "Just so. You've been our transitory guests — barely imagined by the well-taught, though dealt with decently by those wiser, able to see and hear you fairly well.... You are, as all creatures out of place in time, interesting in your way." He shook his head. "But you will become more and more... weighty as you stay near us, and might tear the fabric that marches to perfection and Warm-times again. We cannot allow it."
"Then our thanks to you and your father," Baj said, "for permitting a visit that has hardly happened. And since any... occurence here would be even more a disturbance, we are gone as if we'd never been...." He stood up from the bench, and bent for his pack, bow, and quiver, praying to every Jesus that Nancy and Richard would do the same. And, as though he'd drawn them with him, they did — even Errol, drowsy with feeding, stood, ready to go.
Baj didn't look at Louis Cohen again, said nothing more to him, but took hold of Errol and walked away through the crowded tables of people eating, families enjoying their sunny day despite the cold breeze blowing.... He walked away, making a spirit of himself that did not see and was not seen — hoping that Richard and Nancy were following.
He crossed the grassy square, and kept on past the row of little buildings, copy-treasures he would dearly have loved to stroll through.
... Padding footsteps. Richard came up beside him. "Middle-Kingdom," he murmured, "might have done worse than kept Bajazet-Baj a prince, for swift decision and common sense."
"Don't run." Nancy, behind them. "Don't run..."
The buildings left behind, they passed a street of little houses, grass lawns, and shading trees. The copy driving-cars, so brightly painted, rested silent and forever still on gravel drives.... A chill wind was gusting over distant harvested fields, breezing down from blue mountains, the Tuscaroras, that rose rank on rank, the northern gates of Pass I-Seventy.
Behind them, the musical band could be heard playing a cheery melody — from the very oldest copybooks of musical notation. An odd and ancient tune, but one Baj had heard before. "... Good Vibrations."
* * *
They came over stubbled fields to the northern mountains' foothills in late after-noon, and climbed up into those forested slopes as if into their mothers' laps, for safety.... By evening, high in a hemlock clearing, they settled to sleep, curled in cloaks and blankets, to no music but the wind's, sliding though evergreen boughs.
Baj lay awake awhile, saying a good-bye to the Bajazet of only Warm-time weeks ago. That prince uncertain, was now hammered harder in mind and body by mountain traveling, travel's fair meetings and foul. Tempered too late, of course, to aid his brother.... He said that good-bye, then turned in his blanket, and slept, dreaming of living in the Copy-town. He knew, within his dream, what the houses were like inside. He was served a breakfast of pork-strips and eggs by a pretty woman in a flowered apron, who spoke odd book-English and called him by another name.... Then, still in his dream, he walked down a narrow hall on woven carpet dyed one creamy color, and stepped into a nursery where a baby lay in a huge iron crib. Immense — bigger than Richard — naked, pale, and smelling of pee and perfumed cream, the child turned its great head as Baj came in. It stared at him with eyes a drifting milky blue. — Then Patience stood up at the crib's other side, and said, "Get out."
"... Enjoy your visit?"
Baj, waking after a hunting-dream following the other, roused to dawn's first light and heard Patience ask her question again, and Nancy say, "No."
Lying propped on an elbow under a wind-bent hemlock, with her worn blue greatcoat buttoned to her throat, Patience yawned, glanced at Baj as he threw his blanket aside and sat up. "— And here's a busier visitor. One who should learn to knock before he enters others' dreams." She'd taken her nose-spints off, leaving only a fading bruise across the bridge.
"Your pardon," Baj said, startled by the mention — and
the cause, though he'd heard of double dreaming, usually by sweethearts.
"Oh... not your fault."
Richard came lumbering through brush, doing up his trouser lacing. "All awake, I see." Errol ambled behind him, doing up in imitation.
"Ah," Patience said, "— he has finished his toilet, and finds us awake! As, at moon-down, I settled here to find you all snoring. I could have cut your throats, one by one, and each throat deserving it."
Richard's deep, considering hum as he knotted his laces.
"Before you burst into song, dear one," Patience said, "you might remember that Moonriser ears and noses may have been sentry enough in the south. But we're north, now. It's time and past time we stand night guard, or some other air-walker, for Boston's reason, may sail down silent to kill us."
Richard stopped humming and said, "True. Time to guard against Walkers-in-air. We'll set night watch and watch."
Patience nodded. "... And none of you enjoyed your visit to almost Warm-times? Warm-times in a blown-glass bottle — where, from the smell of you, you ate a great meal of meat."
"I did enjoy the idea of it," Baj said.
"Ah. The 'idea.'"
"Yes.... Such an effort to make imagination real."
"As they did to the Robins," Nancy said. She stood, and walked away into the brush.
Patience sat up, eased her left arm from its sling, and gently exercised it. "You wished to stay?"
"No."
"And why not, if you admired their efforts?"
"Because it's only wishing," Baj said. "And they cripple and murder to try to make it otherwise."
Patience got to her feet, swung her arm in careful slow great circles. "Not nearly the first, not nearly the last to do that. Wishing is the winding-key of history, for — as copybooks say — good or ill.... I am absolutely starving."
"Baj," Richard said, "travel ahead a little, hunt for us."
"Straight north by the sun?" Baj picked up his bow, knelt to set and string it. He had only seven arrows left — the rest splintered, or lost despite searches.
"North, by the sun. We'll catch up."
"I'll climb with you, Richard." Patience stretched. "Walking either way, in air or on the ground, stiffens me a little, either in mind or muscle — the penalties of age."
Baj fastened the throat of his cloak — it was not a warm morning — shouldered his pack and quiver, and trotted away uphill, brushing through crowding damp hemlocks as he climbed. Not a warm morning. The air, that had been so friendly all the weeks coming north, traveling with the short-summer — now, closer to the Wall, had turned a warning chill, as if Lord Winter spoke through it... whispering, as snow in gathering blizzards whispered, "I will arrive. Shelter, or die."
Baj heard no soft scuttling behind him, Errol not coming after as he often did — perhaps for the first bleeding fruits of the hunt. Perhaps for weasel reasons of his own.
.. . The Tuscaroras were not the mountains of the south. Though a little lower, these were cold-country mountains, cloaked with thick evergreens as if for warmth. Which made easier climbing in a way, with frequent handholds in dangerous places along cliff-rims, on rubble-slides. Easier in that way, more difficult in another, where almost every clearing, every slope required ducking through hemlocks' green fronds, so Baj hunted damp as if under rain.
On these tree-thatched heights, open only to the sky above, it was a relief to recall the wide fields the copy-locomotive had rolled through on its way to their celebration — though chugging by slaves' sweat only, and past the cries of children bereft.... Wonderful Warm-time word, bereft.
Birds were Baj's only company through the morning. Very small gray-brown birds, and very fat, that chirped among the evergreens... liking especially, it seemed, to perch high on tender twigs that bowed and swung in the mountain wind.
There were occasional whistles of distant conies or marmots denned in rockfalls. "A fat marmot," Baj said aloud, "— would not be despised." He imagined Mountain-Jesus listening from where he hung impaled, perhaps by Shrikes, on his immortal evergreen. Listening, and commanding a marmot to show itself to be killed, cooked, and eaten.
Baj climbed, went carefully along a crumbling rim — from this, at least, there was a longer view than green branches and little birds. A view east... past the humped shoulders of other mountains, to only a suggestion of green levels and lowlands, so distant an horizon it seemed it might edge the very Ocean Atlantic.... Ranchers, Patience had said, ran sheep and spotted cattle down that eastern territory. Farmers grew barley and rye. Civilized country in its way, though certainly bowing to Boston more often than not — and nothing like Middle Kingdom, its Great Rule from Map-California to Map-Missouri, and south to the Mexican Sierras. Still, the east apparently not all wilderness.
... Standing on broken stone a little later, with only air and a sailing raven to his right, Baj glanced up as if a finger beneath his chin had tilted his head, and saw an animal looking down at him from a towering stone chimney much more than a bow-shot away. A sheep.
Not a sheep gone wild. He was certain of a close brown coat, as well as curls of heavy horns as it turned away in no hurry, climbed a wall perpendicular, and was gone. Mountain sheep — which Baj had heard described, but never seen — that must have drifted, over the centuries, two thousand Warm-time miles from the Map-Rockies. And found this rare palace of granite amid soft green.
There was no chasing up that cliff. Baj shrugged to settle his pack, and minding his footing — grateful he was wearing moccasins rather than hard-sole boots — began to climb to the left around that chimney's immense base... up and over what rock shelves he came to, keeping the granite height to his right as he slowly half-circled it, sweating in a cold breeze.
Even half-circling that monument, was WT's "slow-going," and took him deep into windy after-noon, when the ram and his ewes were probably already gone to other grazing. But Baj kept to it, since it seemed nothing else in the mountains was stepping closer to his bow.
Foolish... foolish... foolish. A chant other hunters had certainly muttered to themselves, chasing odd animals from first times to these times. The reason, he supposed, that men — women insisting? — had finally settled to growing southern wheat and northern barley.
Baj stopped to breathe, leaning against the great chimney's sun-warmed stone, and swung his pack off his back, untied his tarred-wood canteen — unplugged it, and took three swallows.... A shadow came flitting over, its dark mark sliding across the rock. He thought it might be Patience... then saw a hawk, a red-shoulder, swinging away into deeper blue.
Baj supposed he was happy. Certainly felt happy. It seemed that this traveling through mountains was bound to continue forever — or at least a good while longer — and, in justice, shouldn't end with him being killed. With Nancy being killed. Shouldn't end with any of them dying.
It seemed strange enough that his brother was dead, that Newton smiled... nowhere. That Newton worked grimly as he'd always worked at any task set for him... nowhere. And was breathing — as Baj now breathed the chill mountain air — nowhere. It seemed so unlikely, as if there'd been a simple error in the loom when this year's time was woven.
Baj put his canteen away, shouldered his pack, and moved on, thinking that surely this granite tower must have an end to circling, must meet the rest of the mountain somewhere.
There'd be no use mentioning the mountain sheep to the others, only so they'd know of the shot he'd lost, the mutton they wouldn't have for supper — a second supper of that meat, since Copy-town. And, truth was, he hadn't minded eating turkey through those many days coming past the Gap-Cumberland. Had pretended to, of course.... Still, spotted-cow beef was the best of meats, done not too brown. The best but for Talking-meat, old people said — old people, and a few brute barons far upriver, who still filed their teeth sharp as any tribesman's.
Rounded the tower, and up a last pitch of winter-broken stone, Baj paused to rest and look over and down sweeping steep meadows where clusters of
pine and hemlock grew stunted, bent south by northern gales. There were, of course, no mountain sheep to be seen under bright sunshine, broken as clouds streamed high over the range.
Reminded by the breeze's bite, Baj stared north, looking for the distant white line of the Wall. Too distant, supposedly running along the top of this Map-Pennsylvania. From here, even this high, he saw only green.
The meadows made a change from rubble-stone, and, of course, easier going downhill. Baj stepped along swiftly, his strung bow over his shoulder — and had passed a stand of pine to his right, when he heard an odd scraping sound, glanced toward it, and saw the mountain-sheep ram standing a long shot away, staring at him.
The ram pawed the ground, tossed his head as if he might come butt Baj off his mountain. Four... five other sheep drifted from the pines behind him.
A wasp, or bee, hummed past Baj . .. then went buzzing down the meadow.
The ram stood where he was, his flock shifting, nervous.... It was too long a shot, and there seemed no clever way to make it shorter, so Baj began to walk across the meadow to them, walking slowly... and bent a little, to seem smaller. As he went, he eased the bow off his shoulder, reached back for an arrow, and nocked it to the string. Not many broadheads left. .. .
The ram took a step or two toward him, tossed his heavy-horned head again. Beautiful animal... short light-brown coat. Streaks of lighter color in it. Baj could see the ram's topaz eyes — there was no fear in them — and he imagined himself being butted along the slope. From prince, to festival clown.
As if he'd shared that vision, the ram trotted several fast steps to meet him — and doing so, came into the bow's range. Still a long shot, but one that could be made.... Baj stood still, drew, but didn't shoot. The ram stared at him, pawed the rough meadow grass, and took several swift steps closer with an innocent courage that knew nothing of curved glued wood-and-horn, knew nothing of hammered steel, sharpened for an arrow-head, nothing of fletching an arrow's perfect shaft.
It was unfair. Baj looked past the ram to the others — saw what seemed another male, younger and shyer, standing skittish with the ewes — raised his bow and took that long and unlikely shot, knowing it to have been a boy's decision.
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