Rift (33 page)

Spar turned to face him, scowling in concentration. “Sometimes I got to admit your head’s not
all
stuffed with hay.” They shared the moment’s revelation. “You thinkin’ you need a new clave, then?”

“Maybe I do.”

Spar glanced away, screwing his lips into thinking mode. “Well, we got to take this under ad-visement.” He leaned against the rail once more, mumbling, “Man’s got to have a clave.”

2

As the jinn ferried everyone to the burial site, Loon gave up her position in the boat in favor of swimming to the shore. She spent every possible moment in the water, diving for the rich brown sediments at the bottom, the strong, intoxicating taste that spiked the blue soup of the Tallstory. Gone were the shouting salt flavors that masked her nourishment. Pull away the salt, and the good soil was here, in little swirls and pockets. They were headed in the right direction, ah yes! Up the Tallstory, somewhere up the Tallstory—that was where she could eat at last.

She could hardly feed enough. At first, gulping down fistfuls of sand, she made herself sick. Now, more cautious, she snacked, pacing herself. She took one last pinch of soil and swam to shore, hurrying down the beach to join the funeral procession.

The jinn looked at Loon from the corners of their eyes as she joined the group. These jinn put gifts in front of her door, but why? They feared to touch her, or to look her in the eyes, and yet brought gifts. Spar said they were paying respects. But it was another wall around her. Always, people put her on the other side of a wall, whether with jeers or respect. Everyone except Reeve of the Sky Clave.

Isis was dead. The sad queen had choked during the night, after a coughing fit that no one could fix. The ship had rung with Dante’s bellows as he raged against the doctor and the queen’s attendants for failing to cure her. His screams were terrible. Finally the ship had grown quiet, and no one dared to stir. Perhaps the breather had killed her. Loon had watched how Isis
gagged to swallow it, how she feared it each time she had to change to a new one. But Dante made her do it, because he loved her so much, and thought it would save her. So it is sometimes that love will kill you, Loon thought, if by love is meant that someone thinks he knows what is good for you.

Ash snowed down from a dark sky, covering their heads and shoulders with gray dust. Through this warm snow they carried Isis on a bier long enough to lay her out in her accustomed headdress. Along the shore they walked, four jinn on a side, making their way toward the side canyon, where a path led up to the burial site. Dante walked in front, leading the way, stripped to the waist—leaving behind his fine clothes, as befitted one who mourned.

Loon stepped in line with Reeve, who draped his jacket over her shoulders. It stirred her to think that its warmth had just come from Reeve’s body, that body that demanded so much of his slave lover at night. She had wondered if Sky Clavers bedded each other like ordinary people, and now she knew. She was learning how like—and how unlike—her clavers they were. She stuck out her tongue, wanting to taste a flake of ash, but it was the same as ever, dusty gruel.

The grave was very long. They lowered the queen into the earth, all wrapped in a fine velvet cape. Three brass-trimmed trunks were brought up from the shore. From these chests, the jinn drew forth many fine things, arranging them around the body: a cup studded with jewels, sparkling necklaces, science books, gowns, and a mirror with two sides that made you big or small. Dante himself stepped into her grave to lay two magnificent headdresses at her side, as though she might have them without reaching too far.

Tears streamed down his face. Among the many wonders Loon had seen on her long journey was this man who could fling a child from a great height and yet love a woman and cry at her grave.

Many jinn were also crying, and even the old woman, Marie, dabbed at her eyes with a cloth. Loon thought a funeral was a very fine thing, where people showed how much they loved someone. She would have liked to have seen her father buried, to cry like Dante and not care who saw. She wondered who was crying because they really minded that Isis was dead, and who was crying so that Dante would notice.

Marie approached the grave and, glancing at Lord Dante for permission, knelt to place a breather among Isis’ burial gifts. Then they filled in the grave with soil, shoveling the leftover soil into the now empty trunks, which they carried away, lest anyone see there had been digging here. They sprinkled rocks and twigs over the grave, and upon a tiny branch of a willow bough Dante set his largest ring.

On the way back to the ship, in the cold, ash wind, it struck Loon that in just two days the joy had fled from their journey, and now no one would dance on board the ship as the beautiful women had danced. She would have given much to see more dancing. The people of her clave never danced, and Dante’s dancers had set her heart racing, even more than the sight of Reeve taking his pleasure with the woman he preferred to herself.

3

Bitamalar walked purposefully into the orthong jungle, without a glance backward. Clearly, Nerys and Galen could follow or not, and for a moment Nerys doubted that she would. Their domain was vast and strange, an assault to the eyes. Once inside, who knew what aspects of her life she could still control? It gave her pause, but at last she hurried after Galen, who was already growing dim on the lavender path.

The outer stockade was many yards thick, composed of rows of what looked like stacked bubbles
looming thirty feet or more. As she and Galen passed through this outer region, she saw something stirring within the giant bubbles. Beyond the lavender bubble walls came a hedge of yellow stalks the thickness of her legs, each with a spray of rubbery tendrils forming a topnot. The yellow forms lined the pathway, blocking any view to the side. Yellow gave way to blue forms, and white, establishing a succession of evenly colored patches.

If the orthong thought their forest beautiful, then how they must despise the flora of the outside world, so much more subdued and irregular. But perhaps this region was cultivated to some purpose, and a wild region would be found deeper within.

They emerged into a small clearing where four orthong stood or kneeled among looping coils of dark blue. These forms might be anything: crops or weeds or artwork or unimaginable machinery. Nerys hesitated to touch anything. She would learn these mysteries, in time, she supposed. The orthong turned to watch the procession, their faces betraying nothing she could decipher. One of them curled its hand in a speaking gesture, to which Bitamalar responded with the merest of finger movements.

Bitamalar led them onward through tunnels of vegetative matter. The forms seldom penetrated into neighboring patches, but maintained boundaries of form and color. Nerys stared at the bands and surges of growth until she grew weary of their strangeness. At times the contour of the valley floor took them uphill or down, but most often their path took them around hills. Some of the hills contained bermed dwellings, with transparent walls, permitting a brief view of orthong inside.

When at last they emerged into a great plaza, its openness soothed Nerys’ ragged nerves. Beside her, Galen whispered, “Look up, Nerys.” The clearing was more open to the sky than the outer settlement, and
Nerys saw that the sky had turned very dark, tinged in red. Never one for portents, Nerys answered, “It’s a dust storm likely.” But Galen kept looking up, a single line furrowing between her eyes. Within the plaza, many orthong went about their errands or gathered in small groups, some turning to watch the strangers pass. The plaza was framed by low, bermed enclosures, larger than those they’d seen before now. Like the region through which they’d just come, the berms formed blocks of colors, this time in shades of blues and grays.

The cloth of orthong dress had a polished look, like the burnished shell of an insect. Two styles predominated. One was a belted, sleeveless tunic. The hides of some who wore this were silvered in the exposed arms and legs. Others wore a very long, belted coat over a tunic. The long sleeves of the coats bore the ominous cuffs that clavers had come to fear. No orthong wore shoes, and Nerys had seen why. She spied one very small orthong, a juvenile she guessed, holding on to an adult’s belt for what might have been reassurance. Several orthong moved together to form a white wall, masking her view of the young one. She didn’t know if any of the orthong she saw were female, there being only slight differences so far in their sizes and their clothing. As they left the clearing, Nerys looked back to try to glimpse the juvenile again, but the white wall remained intact. Good enough to bear the pups, are we, but not to look at them? Nerys allowed herself a little sneer, judging that they couldn’t be very good at reading human expressions—no more than she could read theirs.

They passed into a side channel, where the habitat forms grew more sparsely and where groups of orthong could be glimpsed, standing quite still or sitting among the outcroppings. They might be resting, arguing, or praying, Nerys thought, not even attempting to guess which was most likely.

Nowhere they had penetrated so far showed any evidence of paving, flooring, or bridging. Everything simply sprang from the ground in outbursts at once impressive and inelegant. If this was their civilization, Nerys thought, the orthong must be awed by the great colonist cities, still magnificent even in ruin.
We were once great
, she mused.
We would have held a place like this in low regard, all piecemeal and garish
. But if the orthong habitat was crude, it still dominated, imposing its will, along with its insistent colors. Amid all of this, who would remember human things?

They continued their walk for a quarter of an hour, until Nerys was startled by a familiar sound penetrating the forest. It grew louder until they entered yet another clearing where, as they paused at its edge, human voices greeted them. Framed by bermed constructs, the center courtyard held perhaps fifty human women. They sat in chairs or recliners, laughing and talking, some weaving or drawing, a few fixing each other’s hair, one or two writing in tablets. All of them were pregnant.