Maybe they hoped to drive me to madness, although the chants I heard from beyond the temple's outer walls credited me with being mad already, and more evil than the foulest enemies of the Gods. But if there was one thing that my life, like the life of any other well-placed human, had prepared me for, it was the spectacle of hob sacrifice. Even though I understood the pleading gestures and moans in ways of which few other humans are capable, and was disgusted by the agony and the waste, I remained somehow unmoved.
If there truly was a pain that I was put through during my captivity, it was the perverse one of not caring and hurting enough. In my darkest times, I even began to wonder if people were right, and that I really was different—some kind of monster who lacked some crucial spark or spirit, or even soul.
* * * *
The seasons came and went with or without the aid of the priests, and grew increasingly cold. I took special delight in the return of a flock of swallows that I knew journeyed far downriver each winter to seek the better climes of the lands beyond Ulan Dor. They came to nest above my windows, and I watched the superb flight of the parents as they brought beakfuls of insects to feed their squeaking young.
It was on such a morning as I was staring from my window—for once, no sacrifices were going on, for which blessing I truly praised the Gods—and pleasantly lost in thought as I considered the play of the seasons and the way in which all life seemed to respond, that I heard an unusual noise: the turn of a key in my outer door. Not that my mute lizard hobs didn't still visit me, but their pattern was strict, and they only came at night. Even more extraordinary, then, was the unmistakable sound of human footsteps, and of a human voice.
“Are you in here? Are you alive?”
I found myself frozen despite the relatively warm light in which I sat. It wasn't just that it was Kinbel's voice; it was that it was anyone's at all.
She ducked beneath the low stone arch. She was wearing a plain, hooded cape. “I'd imagined somewhere far worse than this....”
It had been so long a time since I had spoken to anyone that I opened and closed my mouth like a frog.
“See, I've brought you gifts.” She put down a bag and pulled back her hood and gave a laugh, which sounded almost like the Kinbel of old. But not quite; she wasn't any less beautiful, but she had changed. Her face was sharper, and so was her gaze. She still moved with grace, but it was a grace that reminded me of the swallows, or even of my mute hobs. It had that edge of wariness, and of caution, which all creatures that are preyed upon possess. “I wondered if you could use a mirror, although I thought twice about bringing one. But you look well enough. I should have brought scissors, though.” She smiled. “Your hair isn't quite the current fashion.”
“Here, here...” My own voice sounded even odder than hers as, courteous as a hob, I brushed down my only chair and turned it around. “There must be a lot of stairs to climb to get up here.”
“Indeed there are.” She sat down. Her hair had streaks in it, silver amid the dark. Fine lines drew around her eyes as she squinted against the window's light. “What's that sound?”
“That? Those are my birds.” I felt my mouth shape a smile. “Not that I own them, of course. Or anything now. They come and go with the seasons, and return to exactly the same spot. They help keep me occupied.”
“Birds—the whole way you look at things. You haven't changed so very much.”
“I'm sorry.”
“No, no.” She shook her head. “I meant that as a compliment.”
It was strange to talk to a human again. I felt my face flush.
Kinbel told me about the outer world. Things were as bad as I imagined, but life went on. My homestead had been possessed by the priests of her father's own sphere, and then sold on at what, I pleased to note, was a considerable price, even if the priests had kept it all. The new owners imagined that they would be able to maintain the place as profitably as I had done, and I was even more pleased to learn that they had failed. My homestead was deserted now, apparently. So were many others. People were heading south, but, unlike my birds, they weren't returning.
“Your mother does well, or so the occasional communications that cross the storms in the Bounded Ocean assure me. She has remarried, of course. You didn't know? Stupid of me—how could you ... The way she put it, some kind of new alliance was essential because you have dragged the family name so low. She believes that she performs an important task in parading in pomp along the golden avenues of Thris. The way I hear it from my other contacts, she seems to be in so many places at once that people speculate that she employs two or three fake retinues, who process with all the usual scents and bells and awnings and rose petals by which she characterizes herself. But without her at the center, of course.”
“That hardly seems to matter.”
“No. For her, perhaps it does not.”
“You and I, Kinbel—are we still married? I mean, if we are, and if it causes you embarrassment—I mean, more than embarrassment...”
Kinbel looked at me. She still had that way of doing so. “Yes, we are married. Or at least as married as we ever were. Which isn't saying so very much. I still even get inquiries from the stonemasons who are storing the statues of ourselves we once had made. They ask if there isn't more work we should be doing if we are to gain the afterlife we deserve.”
“Perhaps we'll get that anyway.”
“Yes. Perhaps.”
“And it doesn't bother you?”
“What? Being married but having no husband? Or not possessing a tomb? Or lacking a name I can safely proclaim—or a homestead I can call my own?”
I'd forgotten about those flares of anger; I'd forgotten how strange and unpredictable people can be. But the glare in her eyes subsided almost as quickly as it had come. In that, at least, she hadn't changed.
“No. We remain married. No one else would have me now even if I were not. In fact, I think it suits my priesthood to have me thus. Not that I've been asked to disown you. But I know that I will.”
I felt a chill pass over me. “What do you mean?”
“Oh. I see. You imagined that this was the end of things—that you would be kept up here until you expired? I'm sorry, but that's never been the plan. There will be a ... I think the word they use is ‘trial.’ A special hall is being built for the purpose. I believe you can probably see it from that window. Unlike the rest of us humans, you will be called to judgement in this life rather than the next.”
“And punished?”
Her look melted. She rose from her chair. I believe she would have moved toward me, perhaps even embraced me, had I not shrunk back. “I should never have said...”
“No, no. It's important that I understand. And I had wondered what that huge new building that all those thousands of hobs are clambering to construct was, although I'd never have been arrogant enough to imagine it had anything to do with me.”
“Oh, you're famous.” She sat back down again. All the old distance between us had returned. “The priests wish to make you so.”
Kinbel went soon after, having left the contents of her bag. There was a mirror, as she had promised—although it was removed that evening by the creeping hobs, and the knives that I was given thereafter to prepare my food and shave myself were so blunt as to be useless; it had never occurred to me before that I was being watched. Kinbel also gave me spices for cooking, which I was happy to experiment with. She had even obtained some scrolls that, although they were couched in the ridiculous language of the priests, recorded several useful aspects of natural science. But what pleased me most were the blank scraps of papyrus and small cake of ink; both that she should think of bringing such a gift, and that I was finally free to write.
* * * *
Now, at last, I could put my ideas down.
Above all, I kept thinking of those arrow-tailed birds. The priests, I discovered in one of the scrolls Kinbel had left me, took their coming to these northerly lands as an augury, and had recorded their
precise numbers and the Moon of their arrival for thousands of years. There were far less now, and I wondered as I watched the swallows swoop among the spires at the many that must die during each long journey.
Here my heart started racing. Those creatures that flew and thrived the best, the thought rushed over me, would survive and produce offspring, while those that didn't would not. I'd be lying if I said that the rest came easily. But, looking back, I can see that it was but a small leap to consider that not only a change in habit might produce better chances of survival, but also that the types of alterations which I had deliberately been engendering in my homestead's crops and livestock would surely occur naturally as well.
After her first visit, Kinbel came to see me with every Moon. She brought news of the outside world, although she often seemed almost as distant from such goings-on as I felt myself. Far more importantly, she brought fresh writing materials. Soon, as well, she arrived with bundles of scrolls on the specific subjects I'd started to request. It would never have occurred to me to look for information about the natural world within sacred texts, but here was everything I could ever need recorded over aeons in pedantic priestly detail. I even tried to tell Kinbel about my vision, in which every type of beast and tree and plant and insect had changed and developed over aeons in response to the demands of its surroundings. And she appeared to listen, and sometimes even to understand.
“And if the pig and the boar are related,” she once said, “if a tree and a bush are sisters, if the fish that inhabit the oceans are remote cousins of those in our rivers, what does that make us?”
“Of course, of course. That is why I need to find out more! That taxation scroll on the categorization of different crops from the first dynasty you found for me was excellent, but perhaps there's something similar about livestock, or even fruit...?”
Outside, through the freezing mists, the great hall of my trial gathered its many roofs and domes, but it seemed vague, insubstantial compared to my theories and thoughts. I found it hard to believe that Kinbel's world, with all the gossip and ceremonies and money of which she talked, was real.
Her eyes were reddened. She sniffed. She looked weary and drawn. “I'm sorry. I have some small malaise that our priests cannot cure. Everyone seems to be possessed by it. Perhaps it's this cold summer. I do sometimes wonder if we humans were ever meant to live under such grey skies, and this far north. Apparently, the hobs get it as well, and have long done so, yet they thrive well enough. And now they seem to have given it to us. Shortly, many will be sacrificed as a result.”
“Why? I thought everything was supposed to be my fault?”
She looked at me in that bitter way she sometimes had. “You mustn't let the grandeur of that building outside fool you.”
“I'm sorry. I don't think I can imagine how difficult life is for you.”
“No.” She was still staring at me. “You probably cannot. But I've almost grown used to that. It's the way you are, and I don't think that's your fault. You see things, but you don't feel them. With you, that's almost an asset. But ... those early difficulties we had in our marriage—I've learned since that they're not so unusual. And I have a theory of my own. A small one compared to yours, admittedly, but still ... If we humans were brought up by our parents in the way that most other living creatures are—if we were suckled by them and touched by them, and perhaps cooed over and tickled as well. If we were allowed to laugh and cry and squirm and perhaps even feel love in the arms of another human instead of the arms of some trained anonymous hob ... well...” Suddenly, she appeared awkward. Her gaze traveled the floor. “I wonder if we might not all be better at being closer. I did tell you it was a small theory....”
I was flustered. I guessed that she was right, but I didn't know how to respond.
“Look at you now,” she said, although still without looking up. “Lost for words as soon as I mention human closeness. I suppose you'd call that evidence, wouldn't you?”
With a sweep of her cloak, and a sneeze, she left.
* * * *
By some process I longed to understand but didn't, Kinbel passed her malaise on to me. I coughed and sneezed for a while and thought it was nothing. Then I started to shiver. I crawled to my bed. The light of unnumbered days came and went at my window as I sweated and ached.
I had some new kind of fever, and that fever brought visions. I believed that I was no longer in my cell. I believed I was flying even higher and faster than my beloved fork-tailed birds. I saw everything. I saw the human cities as they really were—not just the great buildings and squares, but also the desolate sprawls of hob dwellings which surrounded them. I saw the endless ranges of white mountains that seemed to march in every direction from what I now realized was the tiny enclave of our human world. I saw the spreading glaciers, and the plains and savannahs, and the pull and flow of the great God River, and all the teeming life of the great tropic forests, and the storm-flecked grey and blue oceans that stretched even further than the wildest mariner's tale. I saw that our earth is vast, and I saw that time is even vaster, and that change is irrepressible and endless under the blaze of the ever-turning Moon and Sun. I saw, and understood, everything as I tossed and turned in my fevered shroud.
I awoke ringingly clear-headed to the sound of movement. I imagined at first that another quick day was passing and that it was the noise of the shadows dragging themselves about. Then I thought that it was merely my lizard hobs creeping about their usual duties. But the sound didn't fit that pattern, either. These were unmistakably human footsteps, and I felt a small flush of joy to know that Kinbel had returned. But the footsteps were many, and the air and light in my room seemed to be muffled by a presence that I realized could not be hers alone.
I opened my eyes.
Gorgeous in their raiment and retinues, wreathed in incense, fluttering with fans and bells, a horde of priests stood around me, and I knew that the time of my trial had come.
* * * *
The new halls loomed even grander than I'd imagined as I stumbled across the frosted paving and experienced the odd sensation of being beneath open skies. The rustle and murmur of a huge auditorium quietened as I was drawn inside. Thousands of faces from all the lands of humanity stared in my direction as I was led up and up a winding stairway to the high podium where I was seated on a kind of caged throne.
The first Moon of the proceedings was taken up in the initial bidding prayers and sacrifices. So was most of the next. Fires had been set in many places to keep the halls warm, and the whinnies of the suffering hobs and the stench of their offal mingled with wafts of undrawn smoke. Meanwhile, I had more than enough opportunity to consider the vast labor and invention that had been poured into the construction of this edifice, and to study the nature and reactions of the many humans who had gathered here: all the priests and the guards and merchants and mariners and other representatives who hoped to be persuaded that I was single-handedly responsible for every woe of the world, and, more importantly, be entertained. Even I shared something like their sense of anticipation; the thrilling idea that justice might be meted out in this world instead of some subsequent one appealed, although I was already certain that the justice would be false.
Kinbel was there, of course. She had a special podium far opposite across the great bowl of the main auditorium. She was not alone there, but sat at the pinnacle of a whole swarm of other priestesses who, according to the current stage of the proceedings, sang or danced or silently mimed their shock or concern. Many eyes other than mine were drawn to her, and the light and the fires and even the smoke conspired to make her presence glow. She seemed less like the woman I remembered than some Goddess made flesh.
Inevitably, for she was never one to miss out on a big social occasion, my mother attended as well. I soon recognized the characteristic pomp of her retinue down amid some of the more expensive balconies, where for every one human there was a swarmingly decorative mass of perhaps a hundred liveried hobs. I sometimes
thought I even caught glimpses of something small and withered and possibly human inside all that glory, although I was never sure.
I awaited the words of accusation with interest, yet was amazed at their length and invention when they finally came. I had supposedly done so many things that I felt almost flattered. All those foul desecrations, the terrible deeds, when I'd imagined that the worst that could be thrown at me was an unnecessary love of nature, and of hobs. It went on and on. Despite the glory of the occasion, I began to feel bored, and cold. I started to wish the hours away, and to miss my happy days alone in my cell, and the company of my fork-tailed birds, who had fled again to escape a winter so savage that I wondered if, this time, they would ever return. Even though I studied her endlessly day after day from across the distance of this smoggy, dripping, gilded hall, I missed Kinbel's visits, as well.
Moon by slow Moon, the proceedings continued. The crowds shuffled and whispered, then became noisy with sneezes and coughs as they were possessed by the same malaise that had afflicted Kinbel and myself. People came and went. Some didn't return. This winter city, set beside a frozen river within a great, ice-bound bowl, was cut off from the world, and struggled to cope with the inundation of representatives that my trial had caused. Looking down at all the faces, I studied humans as I had never studied them before. I saw the distinctions in attire and matters of custom that people from different regions affected. And I noticed, as well, the surprising variations in the color of their skin. Although Kinbel's ebony beauty might be rightly prized, I was struck by how many had a far lighter tint—even paler than my own, and my mother's. I was also struck by how, although the paleness of hob skin is cherished because of the fine contrast it makes with the red of blood, many, even at this high gathering, were surprisingly dark.
Asimov's SF, June 2008 Page 19
