John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  Boyle shrugged. “Nothing really, only what Keemon says: land of milk and honey stuff.” He fidgeted a moment, then pointed at Bowman’s Rory garb. “Well, you’re better dressed than we are, even if it is strange. And you both look to be in good health.” Boyle's gaze wandered across the group around the fire. “We could do with a touch of that here.”

  Bowman was incredulous. “And you believe what Keemon says?”

  “Sure. Apparently, he's a cop from the old days, before things really went to shit. Things were better then, things were in order, back then.”

  You can believe that, Boyle, but if you believe Keemon, you're in trouble, thought Bowman.

  “Yeah, Keemon says you have to go through a series of long, narrow passes to get to this Animarl. And it’s heavily guarded, that’s why we needed more of these.” Boyle patted the machine gun by his side. “Well, we’ve got ‘em now. Cost us, big time.” Boyle's face blanked as he reflected on something, then he flinched back to the present. “Anyhow, you know this Keemon better than me, what's the story? Is it true about Animarl? Can you trust him? He says you're the only one can guide us there. And that you won’t go back unless you’re well protected. Nothing personal, but if you can take us out of this crap hole, that’s what you’ll do, even if it takes a gun at your head to make you.”

  Bowman looked away. Yes, the cop had done a number on this one. Boyle was a desperate man who’d been shown the beacon of Hope. Bowman shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Sorry, Bowman, that’s just how it is! So…what d’ya think, this trip to Animarl, is it worth it?”

  “I'm not quite sure what Keemon’s told you, Boyle. But my advice is: don't trust him. We're not friends - by any stretch - but you're right, I know him well enough. He'll screw you to the wall, first chance he gets.”

  If the conversation could have gone anywhere from there it didn’t. Keemon sauntered over, leant close to Boyle’s ear and spoke. Bowman caught something about tomorrow's arrangements. The cop and Boyle left together, heading for the mouth of the cave.

  The campfire burnt down. One by one, Boyle’s people settled for the night. Bowman meant to wait for Keemon to return, but the ball of light appeared as he became drowsy, and, not wanting to fight against it, he hurried past it into sleep.

  ***

  During the night Bowman had two dreams.

  In the first, he ran through a city of diseased people, chasing Keemon. Walls were falling in the street but every human went about their business in a dream world of their own, oblivious to falling masonry even as it crushed them. In a wide square, Keemon pulled up in a cloud of scattering pigeons. He turned to Bowman and said, “You fall through the net, Bowman; when you stop falling, I’m what caught you. Look at these morons, heads down running full tilt through their lives, and they haven’t got the guts to stop, or that old falling feeling catches up. Then the only thing they’ll know is what they’ll hear, the tearing sound a world makes when your mind comes apart. They could all die and make no difference to you and me; it takes one Outlander to know another, and to see from the outside what goes on here.” Bowman looked around and the scene metamorphosed into normalcy. A shabby old man stooped for cigarette butts. A boy argued with his girl. A mobile-phoning suit gesticulated with his free hand. An elegant woman adjusted her shoulder bag and went on coolly waiting. Adolescents rollered past or lounged, smoking. The footpaths around the square milled with a lunchtime crowd. What could the cop see that he couldn’t? It was all so ordinary! Then Keemon's leering face came back, saying, “This is all there is, Bowman, stop looking below the surface, you win no points for it. It doesn’t matter what you do; the end’s the same. When you know there’s nothing at the end except the end, you're above all law. After that, there’s nothing to stop you travelling the way you want!”

  In the second dream, a voice called him to a little cave above a rill that rushed with spring snowmelt. The entrance draped itself with concealment: vines hung down, and before the vines, water fell in a diaphanous sheet, so thin that near the bottom it broke in a fluttery line like breeze-lifted curtains.

  She beckoned, and when he came closer, it was the woman married one life and a world ago, holding out her hand and drawing him in. She spoke to him through what he saw, and first she showed a grave in Dyall's Ford cemetery. It was an old grave, whose stone slab had fallen in on its rotten hold. Tender shoots of what decay enables cracked through. On the headstone faint words said that here had been interred the loving wife of John, that she'd not died but gone on living in another world, one sweeter than this, where love so blinding whitened every wound away. Bowman stared at it and stared, knowing here was some part of the secret, but only managed to divine the words, 'Passed From This World', and emotion washed the rest away in tears. Then something pungent cleared his vision. She was holding fresh earth up to his face, crushing it. It ate flesh away as it broke and rolled across her palm, the finger bones powdered, the contagion raced through her and she drained like sand through the hole her hand had become. The clearing vapour of her form revealed a burial. They were saying things about a man, how the land would lock his body in Her grasp forever, how there was no way of knowing who'd unwrap the shroud his soul shipped in. Then they filed past Bowman's face; it was Yalnita and her Pack, all of them, even the dead were living now in his dream world. When they’d gone he saw a stickbow, unstrung and laid the length of the freshly mounded earth. He heard a distant roar grow towards him, and he toppled backwards, blindly screaming in the thrall of nightmare’s terror. As he fell, someone gripped his wrist and, placing in his hand a rough-hewn stave, whispered to him, 'Finish It.'

  He woke in sweat, screaming his way out of the dream's grip, then screaming at the gun shoved in his face by Keemon. “Shut up, you flake, and look around. It's just a dream. Here, eat this, and be quick; we're leaving.”

  Bowman looked at the plate of food, and at the faces of the men circled round him. It was Boyle's band, dressed to march, laden with guns and ammunition. One look was enough to tell what they thought. He bowed his head and ate.

  ***

  Later, his head still fogged from broken sleep, and with the tip of Keemon's gun to nudge his indecision, he led them out to the field that he and the cop had arrived in from Animarl. As they stumbled along in the pre-dawn Bowman observed the expectant faces of Boyle and the eight men he’d chosen to come with them.

  Boyle’s motivation was understandable: he thought Paradise was around the corner. The other outcasts from Dyall's Ford shared in that dream, no doubt. And Bowman only had himself to blame for this trek, since Keemon had believed Bowman’s story about the trip between worlds necessitating a location with the right ‘vibes’. At least, Bowman mused, it seemed the cop had believed him. But just as likely, Keemon might be thinking to get the cache of guns away from the bulk of the hideout’s defenders, then make some kind of getaway while Boyle and his men slept or were otherwise distracted. That would be Keemon’s mind at work, thought Bowman.

  They entered the field of hip-high grass and followed the trampled trail blazed by the two Outlanders the day before. Keemon drew Bowman aside as they reached the spot where they'd come through from the other world. Boyle's men filed to a halt.

  Keemon hissed in Bowman's ear. “Now this is gonna require deft handling. So I'm warning you: not a word, don't even flinch or it'll be the last bad move you ever make.”

  Boyle's nose twitched as he sensed the trap. “What's the holdup, Keemon? Stopping in the open like this is asking for trouble.” Boyle’s men, bent over and panting under their heavy packs, looked from their leader to the cop and back.

  Keemon smiled. “No need to worry, I know where I'm going,” he said, and he summed the line of men in one quick scan. Each one had their weapons stowed so they could concentrate on steadying their loads. Each one except Boyle, now nervously fingering his carbine. And that is where Keemon started, taking them in one long, steady burst, their leader being first to be blasted off his feet.
>
  Bowman stood, looking, blinking, looking, but the picture didn’t change. Something got him breathing again.

  Then the butt of Keemon’s gun crashed against Bowman's head. Bowman sank to his knees and a hand closed over his face. In the hand was a cloth, soaked in something more powerful than death, stronger than revulsion, more urgent than panic. Where in hell did he get chloroform? Bowman wondered as blackness swept him.

  ***

  When Bowman woke, nine shallow grave mounds proclaimed the fate of Boyle and his men, and Keemon was nowhere around.

  Bowman got to his feet and stood swaying till his head cleared. He tried to make sense of the cop knocking him out, but couldn’t. He tried to fathom a reason for the cop taking the trouble to bury Boyle's group, There had to be a reason; Keemon always stayed one step ahead of the game. And he couldn’t have gone far, needing to be close by when the Gate between the worlds opened. Bowman didn’t know how long that door remained ajar, and right now, lacking the opportunity to kill Keemon, leaving the cop behind seemed the best idea. Bowman wasted no time doing what he had to.

  But he was still numbed by the drug, and made a hurried exit that resulted in a botched return to Animarl. He ended up wedged in a fissure of rock that opened on the Feasting Hall. The room was tantalizingly close, his fingertips reached into its free air. But the wall held the rest of him.

  He tried to hump his spine up but it only moved the thickness of his shirt. He twisted sideways and rubble fell into the space his stomach vacated. He kicked free of the rocks that lay about his legs and a little landslide pinned him up to the waist. Every way he turned the mountain moved in front; every movement caused his envelope of air to further shrink. Rock crushed his ribs; when he coughed, the action emptied space quickly claimed by the constricting mountain.

  Rage and panic took him; he thrashed and yelled against the incrementing crush until dust and exhaustion stilled him. He listened for sounds beyond those his body made. There were none; his heartbeat filled everything. It slowly quietened as his mind began to flood with the chemicals that sluice away terror, and usher in acceptance.

  Bowman disembodied, rolling on his back to face the crust of lightless mass above. He could sense its layered bones, its chaos of broken rock and further up, its stone buildings, and every creature on it, those with heads lifted to danger, those sunk in lush grass, the rivers draining to sea, and all the ignorant trees growing from its skin: all were crushing down on him; the whole thoughtless mass of the mountain sank on him and did not even want him dead.

  Here is the centre, Bowman thought, here is where weight of numbers overwhelms the mind. The countless worlds shrank on this ultimate aloneness, and he knew why men went on their knees to God: they also fell to the centre of an imploding universe that snuffed light and hope. Only prayer reached free of that ever-tightening core.

  So this is it, he thought. Caylen, forgive me, I tried. So far to come, and so little to show. God help me, I’m dying. He closed his eyes.

  But in the blackness of his resignation something sparked, something that long ago had led from dark the thing his mind clung to. A conduit flashed open and he saw it: he’d made the thoughtless mountain with his thoughts, and just as surely, this moment he now commanded would result in either him continued, or annihilation. It was a birth that only he could do. In despair, go forward, he thought, and the broken mountain parted as he undulated through.

  ***

  Part V

  Tide And Moon

  Chapter 21

  An Abandoned Orchard

  Bowman's eyes adjusted to the light. Dust cleared like fog a welcome sun burnt through. He unfurled from the hunch he’d landed in and stood.

  The Feasting Hall had fallen into disuse. Dust veneered every horizontal surface, broken here and there by the tiny trails of vermin. Its abandonment made Bowman more uneasy than if he’d found signs of the Kasina occupation he’d expected. He edged outside.

  It was daylight, sometime in the late morning. A mild day, and leaves fell steadily; he figured it to be late autumn. No sound of human activity met him. Now and then a far-off raven cried; silence filled the gaps between its mournful commentaries. As he entered an overgrown orchard his feeling of isolation grew; with it he became bold and frustrated. He trotted the length of the neglected trees, smashing their dead limbs off with his pumped arms.

  “That’ll be far enough, Outlander!”

  He froze in a moment of gut-knotting fright, then relaxed into mere embarrassment as he looked up and found Rain Dog’s face. The Rory was perched in a tree fork twenty feet above ground, his bow across his lap, an arrow nocked.

  “Rain Dog? Rain Dog!”

  Rain Dog frowned. But when Bowman asked what he was doing in the tree, he had to laugh.

  “Well, I’m not picking apples!”

  Bowman cringed. “I’ve ruined your hunt, right?”

  “You could say that, yes.”

  “And the animals, birds – this valley used to teem with them, now it’s almost empty. I guess game’s scarce, and, well… I’m sorry, Rain Dog,” he said, but he couldn’t help smiling as he spoke; it was just too good to see the warrior’s familiar face, to know he’d survived capture.

  Rain Dog smiled, too. “That you look, John Bowman! That you look.” He slid the arrow back in its quiver, dropped quiver and bow to the grass at the base of the tree, and climbed down. His descent was painfully awkward, and it wasn’t until he gained the ground and retrieved his bow that it became clear why. Standing on one leg, he deftly unstrung the bow and secured the string around the stave at its free end. Then he hobbled over to Bowman, using the bow to support the dead weight of his dragging foot.

  “The Kasina infested Animarl for so long, the animals shunned it.”

  “Then why hunt here?”

  The Rory shrugged. “The hunting’s hard, but not impossible. It’s quiet, it’s got plenty of shelter, and since the damned Guards went, there’s not much in the way of threat. That’s important; you see how I have to get around now.” It was said without a trace of self-pity. Rain Dog was doing what he always did, what any Rory would do. These were facts; he was living with them.

  “So where is everybody, how did you get away from the Kasina?”

  “Yalnita freed me.”

  “Yalnita! How? And Caylen, where is she? And Regrais?”

  Rain Dog put a hand up. “These are too many questions to answer standing. Are you hungry?”

  Bowman admitted he was. The Rory shuffled past him “Come on then.”

  They went into one of the thickets of saplings that had appeared in Bowman’s absence. Rain Dog’s things were strewn around, and a small heap of coals still smouldered in the middle.

  “Your camp, huh?”

  “It does me in good weather. Other times I go into the Origins. My leg keeps me from going far when I hunt; another reason the pickings are poor lately: smart animals steer clear of camp smells.” He handed Bowman some jerked meat and a water bag.

  Bowman swigged some of the cool liquid and chewed off a piece of meat. He looked around at all the new growth.

  “How long have I been gone, Rain Dog?”

  “Nine rings, almost. This would be” – he paused to calculate – “the seventh moon of the ninth ring after you left us.”

  “God!” Bowman mumbled through the mouthful of food. Less than a day in Dyall's Ford had done all this. He wondered if he himself had aged. How long was it since he’d looked in a mirror?

  But the act of eating grounded him in Animarl, as if he ingested its structure when he swallowed. He came back into the present.

  “So where are Caylen and the others?”

  With a dexterous effort, Rain Dog lowered himself and settled against a backrest of woven willow branches. When he was comfortable, he let his breath go in a sigh and looked up.

  Something – age or weariness - had moved across that face, Bowman noted. But Rain Dog hadn’t hardened with his trials; his toughness had
prepared him for them, and having bested them, he’d relaxed, even softened. Bowman could sense that, right through the frown the Rory wore as he answered.

  “The Kasina wanted me alive when they got to the Palace. And their own wounded meant a lot of stops for doctoring.” He snickered. “It slowed them, which they hated. Our attack had put the wind up them and they were expecting more.” He stopped to adjust his lower back, and went on. “One night we put up on a sandbar in the Lagoon of Islands. They posted sentries all around - half of that whole troop kept watch at any one time, that’s how worried they were!” he snorted.

  “By morning three of them were dead. No warning, not a sound. Just didn’t come back from their watch. I tell you, Bowman, it was sweet to see the sweat on their replacements’ faces as they went out to investigate!”

  “Yalnita, right?”

  Rain Dog nodded.

  “And Regrais?”

  Rain Dog looked at his feet. “She doesn’t really say much about it. Buried him the same day the Pack split.”

  “Damn! I, ….”

  Rain Dog looked up again, let another breath out. “It was a warrior’s death. That’s all we can ask for; all Regrais would have wanted.” He shrugged and went on quickly to describe Yalnita’s war against the Kasina responsible for her bereavement.

  “Well, she was moving alone, as I said, and the Guards were slowed with their wounded. Like most of us Rory, Yalnita swims well, and she travelled light to keep up. She’d got one of their canoes from the first attack. After that, she was only one island behind us at any time. Stayed out of sight by day, and slowly wore them down with night attacks. By the time those Guards cleared the Lagoon, half of them were dead, and half the rest were either injured or carrying wounds from when we hit them earlier.”

  “My god,” murmured Bowman, “not a woman to cross, is she?”

  Rain Dog smiled. “Yalnita is a great Rory.” He shifted his weight again and continued the story.