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CHAPTER 13

Paula looked at Fuego, she looked at Clark, she looked past the open tent flaps where droplets were gleaming on the tips of uko leaves. Summer, she thought. When you look at a tree and the leaves don't surprise you, it's summer. In fall, when the leaves go, the trees are strange again until winter; then comes spring and the stranger, newer leaves. It was summer here, though the Lir still ran high and cold with floodwater from the north.

"Huey." They were straining, although it could do no good. Either he was there or he wasn't. Fuego clutched his probe and frowned. Relax, Paula thought. It's neurocode. Code is wonderful. You touched the probe, the sender entered and there came a message only you could discern from static; you and no one else, because this message knew you. Like angels, it spoke only to the worthy, and when it spoke it came clear beyond language, beyond senses, direct to the brain.

"Huey." Her calm was false. They had tried every day for weeks to raise Huey.

"Not in. Stand by." That was their daily answer. They looked at the ground. Clark tossed his probe aside. Paula gave hers a little yank and watched it float into place on the set. Fuego released his very slowly, sighed and went out into the rain to look for Akiva.

She raised the supply cart's burlap covering and put the communication equipment back in its corner beside the headset she had taken from Tiyar, when he decided to learn low Paffir and took drugs that repressed the language centers in his brain to force him to learn as a child would. The drugs also kept him from sleeping and made him irritable.

"I'll give back the headset when you learn to ask for it," she had told him, which was a little spiteful, since he couldn't understand her and when he learned to ask in low Paffir she wouldn't be able to understand him. He'd thrown mud at her and she felt a mild shock on contact as it soaked through her tunic. The clothes they wore now, taken from the dead Outlanders, were neither waterproof nor insulated.

She looked into the temperature-controlled drawer where Clark was forcing some potato plants. They were warm by night and cool in daytime, a happy little world like the botanic garden on Reshebora.

"Hey, Clark, how do you remat a Resheborian?"

"For two casheeks, we'll forget he's waiting. You told me that one this afternoon."

"Yesterday afternoon." It was true, both that she had run out of rematerializing-transport jokes, and they had been up all night. Just to hold one's own took so long here. By the time water was drawn and things cooked, washed or tended, this person spoken to about selling salt and a deal made with that one to trade wrought silver, the two or three daily squabbles broken up, and then every few days the slog, as Clark and Paula called it--the maddeningly slow trek of a hundred-odd lost and landless toward the capital-- by the time all this was done the summer day had passed into night almost without sunset, so clear was the Paffir air. Then, beneath shining moons in a sky brim-full of dim, distant stars, they studied together and did their special work, fussing with the potatoes, scanning new arrivals for disease, hearing life stories, asking questions, repairing defenses, checking equipment and trying to raise Hugh.

"I'll make up breakfast and strike the tent if you'll feed Tiyar," Clark offered. He pulled the compressed cereal from a drawer in the cart and began to rummage for a measuring spoon.

"Bringing his food isn't that big a job," Paula said. She was collapsing the sleeping sacs they hadn't used. "Unless he suddenly decides you're against him on the Local Question."

"The Local Question, is it? You know, Akiva might as well call Tiyar a local as the other way around. No, I don't care if he's hostile, but I don't like to see him when he's taking language drugs. It makes me sick." He turned from the cart, still squatting, to explain. "Drugs are the nearest thing we've got to divine intervention. Also pure hell." He turned back. "You know, when I took educational pharmacology, I couldn't look at a single one of the visuals. I skipped all the case studies and still I had nightmares about it." He found the measuring spoons, and beside them a little specimen vial. "What's this?"

"But you used ed drugs in school, didn't you?"

"No."

"How did you remember--?"

"I trained my memory. You don't need drugs if you know how."

Paula rolled the sac into a corner. What to tell him? You are an infinitesmal probability, a hundred-heads coin toss? "But you used Reshecomp's neuro system, just like everybody else. That's like a drug. It reads things into your memory centers."

Clark shrugged. "What's in this vial?"

"I found that. In the--during the bombing. There was a vault, underground. When the fires broke out, some people fell into it, when the earth shifted. There must have been something flammable in the vault. Probably brush had fallen in. The people were--they burned to ashes. Except the bones. And I saw that thing. I jarred one of the skulls and it fell out." She was looking at her feet. Boots had yellowed the skin.

"This was inside? It was inside the skull?" he asked.

"There was a...a little bit of tissue. Clinging to it." Paula feared that she might be sick or cry, and that Clark might try to comfort her, but he only asked in a calm voice, "Did you save the tissue?"

"Here. I dried it." She had to jiggle the drawer to get it open. There was nothing inside but the vial of black dust. "I should have told you about this before. I collected it for Luz, and then...then I forgot."

Clark bioscanned the dust. "You're right. It's brain tissue. The device is an energy reflector. Usually radio, I think. It's implanted in the brain to treat things like...well, mood problems, say. If you have a--it's a very gross thing, it's not fine-tuned. But suppose you have a condition where you're constantly anxious, and for some reason drugs and training won't work. You get one of these things put in so you can stimulate the--the--call them the calming centers. To control the mood."

"They can't have that kind of medicine here," Paula said. "I don't understand what you're talking about."

"No, no, wait." His voice was squeaking again. "That's clinical use. Now, maybe this one you found had been implanted clinically. In someone from off-planet. A spy or a fugitive. A Var. Or maybe these things are in common use here."

"But they can't be--oh." Where the hell is Fuego, she thought suddenly. But she could hear the Verloringers in the distance, singing their morning prayer, and knew he was with them. Did he sing or only listen? "Sure. It could be used as a weapon."

"I heard that on the Hostile Planets they used to implant them in prisoners because it's cheaper than jailing them. If the prisoner did something they didn't like, they just turned it on."

"What happened?"

"That depends on where in the brain they implanted the thing. In certain places, at certain frequencies, it can paralyze or kill. That was back when people practiced involuntary medication, in the old days. Sevit talked about that once or twice. Twice? No, it was once--the founders of Pravelany were the results of genetic experiments. That's why they were so tall, and they decided to settle on a low-gravity planet." He was talking to himself now and reconstituting cereal with the cart's expander. Paula went to the tent door to hear the Verloringers sing.

"Once. He talked about it once. The other time it was Akiva." When all sorrow was ended, they mourned ten thousand years for the sufferings of the past, he had said. Clark couldn't remember the rest of the story.

"This was my favorite time of day with Sevit. We used to get up early and spend an hour over breakfast, talking. Just talking about all the things--" Paula's voice trailed off and she returned to where Clark sat. "Can you find out whether anybody else has these implants? Scan people's heads?

"I guess so."

"OK. Do that. Just check, you know, when you're looking over the new recruits, but let's not tell Fuego and Tiyar until we're sure. It could have been just some random fugitive, and those two get upset about everything."

Clark smiled. "They are crazy, we are sane." How long had it been since he smiled last?

"Have you found out anything about the Ecclesiam mystery?"

Tiyar entered the tent, stooping. "Good morning, my friends and comrades. How are you? I do not see Fuego. Is this breakfast? Excellent. I am ravenous. We must set out soon; today we are coming to a provincial capital and we must expect a vigorous reception, and although we need not anticipate violence beyond reasonable caution, we are never sure--Rumors travel the city, that we come to destroy their temple, that we eat stones as if they were bread, that we will protect them from the Itscriyite refugees."

"Here," Paula said, handing him a dish of porridge. The language-suppressing drugs worn off, Tiyar would have the talkies until the stimulants failed, too. His eyes were glittering. He had to pause between sentences to wipe spittle from his lips.

"In a few days, we will cross the Red River into the Middle Plains. Akiva and his followers may wish to remain there. We must not." He paused, waiting for someone to ask why.

"Are you ready to go?" Clark asked.

"Because Pahid is coming and we cannot hope to defeat him. Pahid is the high priest of the Lir Temple, the Viyato's toady. The size of his army I do not know. Again we find rumor! His force seems to include a corps of women who fight under the influence of certain drugs--" He looked so eagerly at Clark, with eyes wide and palms toward him, that both listeners burst out laughing.

They sobered quickly. Paula guessed that Clark was remembering the party at Eyimalia House long ago, when it had been she and Sevit laughing, and Clark had met Efirr Nije. She said, "Every army has a killer corps of just women. It's a special effect, like having a knife tatoo on your arm that looks like it's stuck through a flap of skin."

Clark struck the tent and it vanished like a puff of smoke into a bag in his hand. The rain had stopped. Clouds broke for the change from chilly morning to full sweltering day. Tiyar went on, "The difference between high and low Paffir is this. High Paffir is spoken in religious ceremony by priests, and that is the language the Viyato and Ketry speak among themselves. I suspect they learned it here. It is the common speech of the upper class. It is very close to low Paffir, but pronounced at the front of the mouth. In low Paffir, by contrast, the sound has been guttaralized. 'Th' becomes 'gh' and 'k' becomes 'g.' That is the crucial difference. There are others. Low Paffir has many verb forms not found in high, and high Paffir has words and moods not found in low. This reflects the Viyato influence on the priestly class. But the two are degenerate tongues--oh, alas." He sat down on a fallen tree, closed his eyes and mouth and fell asleep.

The singing had ended. People were coming back from the Lir to gather their mats, blankets and tools. A ring of his disciples followed Akiva at a polite distance. Two or three were wet to the knees, the ones he had invited into the water. Akiva himself liked to sing his prayers to the morning immersed, so his clothing was soaked. At first, in the early spring when ice still floated in the river, Paula had thought this a strange ascetic practice, but she watched him go in and saw that he loved it. To him, the Lir was pure physical happiness.

Akiva pointed to Tiyar. "What is wrong?" he asked in high Paffir.

"Rest," Paula said.

Fuego came from a group of men and women. The hem of his tunic was wet. He had hung back. "We will carry him," he said.

They rigged up a stretcher and started out with Paula and Clark at Tiyar's head, Fuego at the feet. A little after midday, he opened his eyes to say, "The corn tassels are bright flames."

"We knew Ayekar in the generations of light," quoted Fuego, who could also see over the cornfields.

Tiyar sat up. "You shut your mouth, old skinbag! Those women are reactionary."

Fuego said, "I'm carrying you, Tiyar."

They glared at one another. Tiyar fell back. "They are with Pahid. He has recognized them. They march with his army."

"What women?" Clark called back.

"Those herbal-healer types," Paula said. "Their motto is we only..."

She looked over her shoulder toward Fuego's head where it rose between Tiyar's feet as though it had just been born from him. Some baby, she thought. Fuego's hair was matted, his eyes red and his smooth cheeks sagging because he had lost so much weight. In the hot sun he looked as though he had wilted.

"We knew Ayekar in the...the generations of light. Only we remember. False priests will never free the gods; it must be we only," Fuego quoted. "Or--yes. That's right. We only."

"False priests?" Clark put in. "What's wrong with that?"

"I tell you, Pahid has them! False priests--such terms are casheeks. Anyone may use them. Do you think he means himself, idiot?"

"You're going to get down and walk in a minute," Paula said without anger.

Tiyar shut his eyes; the rest bowed their heads. The thick dust provided no shade. We're going toward Pahid, aren't we, she thought. Clark grunted. Perhaps she had spoken aloud. But behind us come Itscriyites. There would be a crowd at the city. What could Tiyar say to move them? He knew only Greyesar's version of what Sevit taught, and the Outland, and Merced.

Merced was no training, an unhappy cavern teeming with sorrow and dread. There was no noble death there, seldom even any struggle, just the steady violence of unquestioned exploitation and despair. The Outland was a woman dazed by aphrodesiacs making love to the hiss of a titanium welder. The Outland was a miner so hypnotized by overwork that even in bed he lay exploring the ceiling with an imaginary probe, one shoulder ever higher than the other. It was winter and night without silence or rest.

Tiyar was talking to himself. "I see black spots in the sky," he said.

"Don't look at the sun," she mumbled. I don't even know where I am, she complained inwardly. If there were mining involved he could speak.

Tiyar murmured, half conscious, "Peasants. They are weeding among the vegetables. They dig deeper and deeper to find the root of the plants that rob them, but the roots are fast in bedrock. They chisel. They mine the rock, down and down, they seek the paymaster, but he--oh, he sits at an empty till."

Akiva, breathing the harsh musk of the sun-baked earth, would have lain down alone in the fields to embrace the old goddess. Earth remains, he thought. However troubled, so ever beautiful. She is her temple, brightest and darkest, most evil and good, house of the truest prayer. But this strong goddess is troubled, and with her all the others, even Hath.

A woman who met the Itscriyites had come to him the night before and begged him to hurry with his followers to the Middle Plains, where Pahid's Defenders would protect them. "The Itscriyites remember you. Father Akiva, the rainbringer, the godling of death," she said.

She was thin, with yellow eyes and tiny new breasts but a face already wrinkled. When she opened her mouth, there was only darkness there. A band of girls had come to her home in the middle of the night and set it and the fields on fire. The light drew others. The village was razed. "They killed my father and my mother. Men lay like animals on my sisters--not only strangers but our neighbors as well," she said, twisting her shirt in her fingers and casting glances along the ground as though she thought it needed to be swept.

"And you?"

"I joined the girls. We ran together until we came to the Lir."

"And then?"

"They drowned. They wanted to see who could stay under water the longest. Each one took stones in her pockets when the others weren't looking."

Akiva had once had a vision of the weeping moon at the Lir's source shedding drops of fire onto the burning earth. The woman's story, with the stubborn girls walking among the ghosts on the riverbottom, moved him deeply. He had her tell it all after he sent away everyone but Neshar, on whom she kept her gaze while she spoke.

"Our bodies were covered with marks. At night, we set fire to trees and bushes to light our way, and fought and ran till we fell. We set fire and watched the beasts and people flee, and we ran down the hillsides in bright moonlight. Sometimes we took off our clothes and compared our wounds and if one girl had too few the others beat her, and if a girl loved another she gave her marks because they were signs of strength and they made us beautiful in one another's eyes, and one girl became supremely beautiful and died--I, too, thought she was beautiful because her courage was so great and because she was dying, although I know, Father Akiva, that it is a sin to glorify these wounds."

She paused, so he said quietly, "It is virtuous to love the sick and dying."

The woman blushed and smiled and told him how they talked about Father Akiva, the rainbringer and agent of death, and jeered at their parents who fell on their knees in the dust when the rain began in Itscriye two years ago, after the drought.

"They love death; they are monsters. They spawn new monsters, as I became when they burned my village. They killed my mother and my father--" And she told the story again.

Akiva stopped, signing the others to walk on. They were fewer than a hundred, but their feet seemed innumerable and the cloud of dust they raised, glinting where it caught the sun, immense. Surely they saw it in the town, surely they heard the tramping feet in the Middle Plains, surely all these heads bent and hands swinging made some impression in the capital.
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CONTINUE.....................

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