Climate of Change (33 page)

“That's the problem,” Haven agreed. “We have to stay here. But at what cost to our identity?”

“We've always been close as a family,” Rebel said. “And as a culture. Our family isn't breaking up.”

“But we are in an alien culture—and liking it too well.”

“I've got confidence in us.”

“I hope you're right. I don't want the children to grow up as Traders.”

They stayed. The passage grave wasn't finished, but Craft had made a good impression with his construction expertise, and was transferred to the Trader shipbuilding enterprise. The Traders had come from the sea, and though they had been long settled on land, they had never forgotten their heritage. Trading vessels still came into port regularly, but the ships were getting old and unsound, and more needed to be built.

Soon Hero and Harbinger joined Craft, for there was plenty of moving and assembling to do. None of them had had prior experience with watercraft of this size, big enough to hold twenty to fifty men, and were interested. Then the women brought food to them at the building dock, and the family was together again, in its fashion. It was good work for them all.

Another appealing girl appeared, and Rebel lost her position as mistress. But by then the family was well established on its merits, and was able to retain its lodging and position. Rebel faded gracefully from Bub's presence, saying nothing. He ignored her, not interfering; her silence bought his silence, and it was convenient for them both.

But the children were growing, and Tour was getting prettier. They
tried to keep her out of sight, because they never knew when one of her small fits would come upon her. Haven worried that the girl's dawning beauty or her malady would get her into trouble. They garbed her in masculine fashion, not to conceal her nature but simply to mask her appeal. That was, however, a temporary expedient. It was time to return to the farm—but they couldn't. Not until the drought ended.

They stayed the second winter, and it continued well. Keeper, unable to overcome the relentless drought, finally had to join them among the Traders. Now they were all together again. But what of their farm?

In the spring of the third year, the rains returned. They could go home!

But the men now had excellent positions, and were loath to give them up for the risky nature of farming. Rains, like droughts, were unpredictable; suppose they returned to the farm, and the drought returned? It seemed better to remain here, at least as long as things were going so well.

“But don't you see,” Haven argued. “We are becoming Traders! We are losing our Farming traditions.”

They listened, and were swayed. They valued their Farming culture, and recognized the threat to it. They decided to make an application to the chief to return home.

That meant talking to Bub, who represented the chief in matters of immigration and emigration. That in turn meant that Rebel would make their case, for she retained an amicable relationship with the man. This should be routine.

When Haven and Crenelle returned from their day's labors, they found Rebel in the suite. She was not smiling. Something was wrong.

“We can't go,” she said.

“They value the men's work too much?” Haven asked, with a sick fear that that was not the reason.

“The chief went after the wrong girl-child,” Rebel said grimly. “This one rejected him—and her family has power. But they will let it be, if he swears never to touch another child.”

“But what has that to do with us?” Crenelle asked.

“The chief must take a grown woman as his next mistress. The
queen is as much concerned with scandal as anyone; she prefers him to have an adult mistress, rather than a child. Bub recommended me. It is a position of much favor.”

“But you can't accept,” Haven said. “We wouldn't be able to go home!”

“And the chief is a toad,” Crenelle said.

“I can't decline.”

“We could simply leave,” Haven said. “Immediately.”

“No.”

“I know the way Bub works,” Crenelle said. “What is his threat?”

“You won't like this.”

Crenelle paled. “Tour?”

“If I do not cooperate, Bub will advise the chief of her availability. If the chief suffers the price of scandal, he will have no restraint, and will take her openly. She will become hostage to our cooperation, and we will not be allowed to leave.”

“Maybe if Bub realized her condition,” Haven said, “that would make her unattractive.”

“He knows her condition. He is more observant than I realized. He saved the information until such time as it should become useful to him. If he tells the chief, she will be executed as spirit-haunted.”

“Either way, my child loses,” Crenelle said grimly.

“Unless I intercept the chief,” Rebel said. “I have to do it.”

“You have to do it,” Haven agreed reluctantly.

“I will do it. But you will have to help make me look young. Very young.”

They understood. They worked on her hair, and on her mannerisms, so that she could become innocently flirty in the way of a child. She had to make an impression on the chief that would satisfy him, and therefore satisfy Bub. In order to protect Tour, and their family. It was the only way.

Haven knew Rebel would succeed. But it did mean that they would not be able to return to the farm. Not this year. Their decision had been made for them, ironically. In time this business with the chief would pass, and they would be free. But would they still decide to leave? It had
been a close decision this time, and might go the other way a year or more hence. And what would that mean for the future of the family? How could they retain their culture in the face of the blandishments to which they would be subject by the favor of the chief? Haven dreaded the answer.

As it turned out, things changed. The Megalithic culture, here referred to as the Traders, had dominated this region, and indeed, western coastal Europe, for some one thousand, seven hundred years. But their absorption of these particular immigrants, called the Farmers, resulted in their gradual dominance by the culture of the Farmers, which was more enduring than their own. For the Farmers defended their way of life and their cultural identity with a remarkable persistence. They remained in this section of Europe, sometimes expanding, sometimes driven back, but always themselves, increasingly distinct from those around them. Indeed, they remain there today. They are known as the Basques.

Erectus
does not seem to have reached Australia, though there are patterns of holes drilled in stone that seem to predate the arrival of modern mankind. Pending the solution to that mystery, the human presence on the continent seems to date from about 50,000 years ago. People soon spread all across the region, though resources in the interior were sparse.

One region that could have supported a human population in the central desert is today known as Alice Springs, where a mountain range meets a lake almost in the center of the continent. This makes it an edge zone, where there is a greater variety of species than exist in normal zones. The red gum tree supports many kinds of insects, birds, and mammals, and kangaroos graze in the fields. The time in one sense is about two thousand years ago: the year zero. In another sense—

Rebel woke to a headache. She opened her eyes, and found the scene blurry. She felt her head, and her hand came away damp. She blinked to clear her vision, and saw that her fingers were coated with brownish red. Blood—from her head.

It was too much to assimilate at the moment. She relaxed, closed her eyes, and sank back into unconsciousness.

She found herself in Dreamtime. This was a special state of being.
Time separated into four phases: the future, the present, the past within living memory, and the distant past. At the far end of the distant past was the Dreamtime. It was the primordial period, when the ancestors traveled across the world, shaping the landscape as they went. The time before the great flood that washed away the previous landscape.

Dreamtime was also a state of being that extended across the other phases, so that sometimes people could reach it, through ritual or magic, and briefly become their ancestors. They could thus liberate their powers for a while, and re create the great journeys of their fore-bears. The logic of Dreamtime was not that of the normal world. There were no paradoxes or confusions there. Great distances could be covered in minutes, or a short walk might require many hours.

So Rebel walked the strange yet somehow familiar landscape, intrigued by its oddities. It was too bad that the flood had wiped it out, yet that had made possible the terrain that she lived in. She pondered the several explanations for that awful flood. Some said that ancestral heroes known as the
Wandjina
had caused the flood, then sent each to their own countries in the new landscape. Others believed that a blind old woman named Mudunkala had emerged from the ground carrying three infants. Maybe she had not impressed others, but as she walked across the barren wastes to the islands, water had bubbled up from her tracks, so voluminously that it raised the level of the sea itself and separated one land from another. But perhaps the most authoritative version was that the rainbow, in the form of a great serpent, made the flood, so that it would have a compatible place to sleep. That serpent was believed to exist still, hiding in the deepest pools. Woe to anyone who disturbed it!

Rebel loved it here, but she could not stay. Her own realm was drawing her back. Reluctantly she let herself be hauled to the present. She felt the water of the flood flowing from her head as she passed through it to reach her own phase.

This time when she woke, Haven was there, sponging off her head. Rebel was relieved to see her; Haven was very good at taking care of children and ill people. In Dreamtime Rebel might be gloriously healthy, but in the present she was an invalid. She opened her mouth to
speak—but was unable to put together the words. They simply wouldn't formulate.

Haven spoke. It was a liquid stream of sound, completely unintelligible.

Had
she returned to her own realm? It seemed real, especially in its discomfort, but this was supernatural.

Rebel tried again to speak, but somehow the words were like stones she couldn't grasp. They slipped away before she could organize them. This was frustrating, but again it was too much to handle immediately. She closed her eyes and faded out.

Each human band had its own wandjina, or ancestral spirit, represented by its totem animal. Some wandjina were very powerful. There was Biljara the Eaglehawk, and Wagu the Crow. They were the ones who had initiated the matrimonial laws, outlawing a man's marriage to his sister, and establishing the degrees of kinship in which marriage was proper. The community was divided into two moieties associated with the participants of the ancestral marriage, and thereafter individuals were allowed to marry only into the opposite moiety. Children could belong to either, depending on local custom.