Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (62 page)

He smiled deeply. But Jatkan found his gaze caught by old Jivadh’s face. Jivadh was not smiling; his gaze was cast down, and his expression was tense and sad. Indeed, something of the same strain seemed to lie upon them all, even Bislat. What could be wrong?

Bislat was continuing, his voice strong and cheerful. “So they have found for us a fertile land, an empty land on a beautiful world. The
Dream
will stay here, as a permanent memorial of our great flight. They will take us there in another ship, with all that we need, and with people who will stay to help and teach us.” His hands met again in thanksgiving; his voice rang out reverently. “So begins our new life of freedom, safe among Joilani stars, among our people of the faith.”

Just as his listeners began quietly to hum the sacred song, old Jivadh raised his head.

“Of the faith, Bislat?” he asked harshly.

The singers hushed in puzzlement.

“You saw the Gardens of the Way.” Bislat’s tone was strangely brusque. “You saw the sacred texts emblazoned, you saw the Meditators—”

“I saw many splendid places,” Jivadh cut him off. “With idle attendants richly gowned.”

“It is nowhere written that the Way must be shabbily served,” Bislat protested. “The richness is a proof of its honor here.”

“And before one of those sacred places of devotion,” Jivadh went on implacably, “I saw Joilani as old as I, in rags almost as poor as mine, toiling with heavy burdens. You did not mention that, Bislat. For that matter, you did not mention how strangely young these High Elders of our people here are. Think on it. It can only mean that the old wisdom is not enough, that new enterprises not of the Way are in movement here.”

“But, Jivadh,” another Elder put in, “there is so much here that we are not yet able to understand. Surely, when we know more—”

“There is much that Bislat refuses to understand,” Jivadh said curtly. “He also has omitted to say what we were offered.”

“No, Jivadh! Do not, we implore you.” Bislat’s voice trembled. “We agreed, for the good of all—”

“I did not agree.” Jivadh turned to the tiers of listeners. His haggard gaze swept past them, seeming to look far beyond.

“O my people,” he said somberly, “the
Dream
has not come home. It may be that it has no home. What we have come to is the Joilani Federation of Worlds, a mighty, growing power among the stars. We are safe here, yes. But Federation, Empire, perhaps it is all the same in the end. Bislat has told you what these so-called Elders kindly gave us to eat. But he has not told you what the High Elder offered us to drink.”

“They said it was confiscated!” Bislat cried.

“Does that matter? Our high Joilani, our people of the faith—” Jivadh’s eyelids closed in sadness; his voice broke to a hoarse rasp. “
Our Joilani
. . . were drinking Stars Tears.”

HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER

—D
ELIVERANCE QUICKENS
, catapults him into his boots on mountain gravel, his mittened hand on the rusty 1935 International truck. Cold rushes into his young lungs, his eyelashes are knots of ice as he peers down at the lake below the pass. He is in a bare bleak bowl of mountains just showing rusty in the dawn; not one scrap of cover anywhere, not a tree, not a rock.

The lake below shines emptily, its wide rim of ice silvered by the setting moon. It looks small, everything looks small from up here. Is that scar on the edge his boat? Yes—it’s there, it’s all okay! The black path snaking out from the boat to the patch of tulegrass is the waterway he broke last night. Joy rises in him, hammers his heart. This is it. This—is—
it
.

He squints his lashes, can just make out the black threads of the tules. Black knots among them—sleeping ducks. Just you wait! His grin crackles the ice in his nose. The tules will be his cover—that perfect patch out there. About eighty yards, too far to hit from shore. That’s where he’ll be when the dawn flight comes over. Old Tom said he was loco. Loco Petey. Just you wait. Loco Tom.

The pickup’s motor clanks, cooling, in the huge silence. No echo here, too dry. No wind. Petey listens intently: a thin wailing in the peaks overhead, a tiny croak from the lake below. Waking up. He scrapes back his frozen canvas cuff over the birthday watch, is oddly, fleetingly puzzled by his own knobby fourteen-year-old wrist. Twenty-five—no, twenty-four minutes to the duck season. Opening day! Excitement ripples down his stomach, jumps his dick against his scratchy longjohns. Gentlemen don’t beat the gun. He reaches into the pickup, reverently lifts out the brand-new Fox CE double-barrel twelve-gauge.

The barrels strike cold right through his mitts. He’ll have to take one off to shoot, too: it’ll be fierce. Petey wipes his nose with his cuff, pokes three fingers through his cut mitten and breaks the gun. Ice in the sight. He checks his impulse to blow it out, dabs clumsily. Shouldn’t have taken it in his sleeping bag. He fumbles two heavy sixes from his shell pocket, loads the sweet blue bores, is hardly able to breathe for joy. He is holding a zillion dumb bags of the
Albuquerque Herald
, a whole summer of laying adobe for Mr. Noff—all transmuted into this: his perfect, agonizingly chosen OWN GUN. No more borrowing old Tom’s stinky over-and-under with the busted sight. His own gun with his
initials
on the silver stock-plate.

Exaltation floods him, rises perilously. Holding his gun, Petey takes one more look around at the enormous barren slopes. Empty, only himself and his boat and the ducks. The sky has gone cold gas-pink. He is standing on a cusp of the Great Divide at ten thousand feet, the main pass of the western flyway. At dawn on opening day . . . What if Apaches came around now? Mescalero Apaches own these mountains, but he’s never seen one out here. His father says they all have TB or something. In the old days, did they come here on horses? They’d look tiny; the other side is ten miles at least.

Petey squints at a fuzzy place on the far shore, decides it’s only sagebrush, but gets the keys and the ax out of the pickup just in case. Holding the ax away from his gun, he starts down to the lake. His chest is banging, his knees wobble, he can barely feel his feet skidding down the rocks. The whole world seems to be brimming up with tension.

He tells himself to calm down, blinking to get rid of a funny blackness behind his eyes. He stumbles, catches himself, has to stop to rub at his eyes. As he does so everything flashes black-white—the moon jumps out of a black sky like a locomotive headlight, he is sliding on darkness with a weird humming all around. Oh, Jeeze—mustn’t get an altitude blackout, not now! And he makes himself breathe deeply, goes on down with his boots crunching hard like rhythmic ski turns, the heavy shell pockets banging his legs, down, going quicker now, down to the waiting boat.

As he gets closer he sees the open water-path has iced over a little during the night. Good job he has the ax. Some ducks are swimming slow circles right by the ice. One of them rears up and quack-flaps, showing the big raked head: canvasback!

“Ah, you beauty,” Petey says aloud, starting to run now, skidding, his heart pumping love, on fire for that first boom and rush. “I wouldn’t shoot a sitting duck.” His nose-drip has frozen, he is seeing himself hidden in those tules when the flights come over the pass, thinking of old Tom squatting in the rocks back by camp. Knocking back his brandy with his old gums slobbering, dreaming of dawns on World War I airdromes, dreaming of shooting a goose, dying of TB. Crazy old fool. Just you wait. Petey sees his plywood boat heaped with the great pearly breasts and red-black Roman noses of the canvasbacks bloodied and stiff, the virgin twelve-gauge lying across them, fulfilled.

And suddenly he’s beside the boat, still blinking away a curious unreal feeling. Mysterious to see his own footprints here. The midget boat and the four frosted decoys are okay, but there’s ice in the waterway, all right. He lays the gun and ax inside and pushes the boat out from the shore. It sticks, bangs, rides up over the new ice.

Jeeze, it’s really thick! Last night he’d kicked through it easily and poled free by gouging in the paddle. Now he stamps out a couple of yards, pulling the boat. The ice doesn’t give. Darn! He takes a few more cautious steps—and suddenly hears the
whew-whew, whew-whew
of ducks coming in. Coming in—and he’s out here in the open! He drops beside the boat, peers into the bright white sky over the pass.

Oh
Jeeze
—there they are! Ninety miles an hour, coming downwind, a big flight! And he hugs his gun to hide the glitter, seeing the hurtling birds set their wings, become bloodcurdling black crescent-shapes, webs dangling, dropping like dive-bombers—but they’ve seen him, they veer in a great circle out beyond the tules, all quacking now, away and down. He hears the far rip of water and stands up aching toward them. You wait. Just wait till I get this dumb boat out there!

He starts yanking the boat out over the creaking ice in the brightening light, cold biting at his face and neck. The ice snaps, shivers, is still hard. Better push the boat around ahead of him so he can fall in it when it goes. He does so, makes another two yards, three—and then the whole sheet tilts and slides under with him floundering, and grounds on gravel. Water slops over his boot tops, burns inside his three pair of socks.

But it’s shallow. He stamps forward, bashing ice, slipping and staggering. A yard, a yard, a yard more—he can’t feel his feet, he can’t get purchase. Crap darn, this is too slow! He grabs the boat, squats, throws himself ahead and in with all his might. The boat rams forward like an icebreaker. Again! He’ll be out of the ice soon now. Another lunge! And again!

But this time the boat recoils, doesn’t ram. Darn
shit
, the crappy ice is so thick! How could it get this thick when it was open water last night?

’Cause the wind stopped, that’s why, and it’s ten above zero. Old Tom knew, darn him to hell. But there’s only about thirty yards left to go to open water, only a few yards between him and the promised land. Get there. Get over it or under it or through it, go!

He grabs the ax, wades out ahead of the boat, and starts hitting ice, trying to make cracks. A piece breaks, he hits harder. But it doesn’t want to crack, the axhead keeps going in,
thunk
. He has to work it out of the black holes. And it’s getting deep, he’s way over his boots now. So what?
Thunk!
Work it loose.
Thunk!

But some remaining sanity reminds him he really will freeze out here if he gets his clothes soaked. Shee-it! He stops, stands panting, staring at the ducks, which are now tipping up, feeding peacefully well out of range, chuckling
paducah, paducah
at him and his rage.

Twenty more yards, shit darn,
God
-darn. He utters a caw of fury and hunger and at that moment hears a tiny distant crack. Old Tom, firing. Crack!

Petey jumps into the boat, jerking off his canvas coat, peeling off the two sweaters, pants, the gray longjohns. His fingers can barely open the icy knots of his bootlaces, but his body is radiant with heat, it sizzles the air, only his balls are trying to climb back inside as he stands up naked. Twenty yards!

He yanks the sodden boots back on and crashes out into the ice, whacking with the ax-handle, butting whole sheets aside. He’s making it! Ten more feet, twenty! He rams with the boat, bangs it up and down like a sledgehammer. Another yard! Another! His teeth are clattering, his shins are bleeding, and it’s cutting his thighs now, but he feels nothing, only joy, joy!—until suddenly he is slewing full-length under water with the incredible cold going up his ass and into his armpits like skewers and ice cutting his nose.

His hands find the edge, and he hauls himself up on the side of the boat. The bottom has gone completely. His ax—his ax is gone.

The ice is still there.

A black hand grabs him inside, he can’t breathe. He kicks and flails, dragging himself up into the boat to kneel bleeding, trying to make his ribs work and his jaws stop banging. The first sunray slicks him with ice and incredible goose bumps; he gets a breath and can see ahead, see the gleaming ducks. So close!

The paddle. He seizes it and stabs at the ice in front of the boat. It clatters, rebounds, the boat goes backward. With all his force he flails the ice, but it’s too thick, the paddle stem is cracking. No bottom to brace on.
Crack!
And the paddle blade skitters away across the ice. He has nothing left.

He can’t make it.

Rage, helpless rage, vomits through him, his eyes are crying hot ice down his face. So close!
So close!
And sick with fury he sees them come—
whew-whew! whew-whew-whew-whew!—
a torrent of whistling wings in the bright air, the ducks are pouring over the pass. Ten thousand noble canvasbacks hurtling down the sky at him silver and black, the sky is wings beating above him, but too high, too high—they know the range, oh, yes!

He has never seen so many, he will never see it again—and he is standing up in the boat now, a naked bleeding loco ice-boy, raging, sweeping the virgin twelve-gauge, firing—BAMBAM! both barrels at nothing, at the ice, at the sky, spilling out the shells, ramming them in with tearing frozen hands. A drake bullets toward him, nearer—it
has
to be near enough! BAM! BAM!

But it isn’t, it isn’t, and the air-riders, the magic bodies of his love beat over him yelling—canvasback, teal, widgeon, pintails, redheads, every duck in the world rising now, he is in a ten-mile swirl of birds, firing, firing, a weeping maniac under the flashing wings, white-black, black-white. And among the flashing he sees not only ducks but geese, cranes, every great bird that ever rode this wind: hawks, eagles, condors, pterodactyls—BAM! BAM! BAM-BAM!! in the crazy air, in the gale of rage and tears exploding in great black pulses—
black! light! black!
—whirling unbearably, rushing him up—

—And he surfaces suddenly into total calm and dimness, another self with all fury shrunk to a tiny knot below his mind and his eyes feasting in the open throat of a girl’s white shirt. He is in a room, a cool cave humming with secret promise. Behind the girl the windows are curtained with sheer white stuff against the glare outside.