Tropic of Creation (36 page)

The forest knelt before them as they passed. Before the vone, all others gave way, retreating into hiding, as though he threw a long shadow ahead, clearing the way. Thoughts dropped away from her like dead skin. There existed only the riding, riding. She was safe for the first time UpWorld, under the protection of the prince of the woods, his smell soaking into backmind, dissolving every barrier. He stayed well clear of the streams, not engaging the dark waters, not risking his passenger. She hugged herself even tighter
to his arm, watching the world unfold in drunken beauty, the chance convergence of light and substance.

They passed many rounds of trees, circular stands of reed and tree, each similar to the next. Except for one: a bizarre tableau came into focus. There in the heights of a tree round she saw a human, a young girl placidly gazing out. The girl stood on a limb as long as a vone’s arm, the black hair of her scalp shooting into the breeze like mycelium. Sitting by her feet was an immature vone. Even more bizarre, a mechanical construct clung to a nearby branch, a tall pole extruded, with an ocular on the end, swiveling in Maret’s direction. Maret’s vone paid no attention, but strode on, its humming so deep she felt her skin vibrate.

When they arrived at the nest, the vone lowered his arm, creating only the slightest indentation among the bed of leaves. Slowly she dismounted. Everything was slow: his movements, and hers. Shadows thickened here, the primary sun a weak memory. Overhead the dwarf star rose over the jagged wall of the den, beginning its traverse of this tree-bound circle of sky.

The vone sang to her. She didn’t know the melody, but she sang a counterpoint, as the vone’s bass humming reverberated on the drum of her chest wall. The vone lay on his back, a posture both passive and sensual. Dropping her clothes like fallen leaves, Maret climbed on top, finding the pedestal that was, as it must be, just her size. The red sun rolled overhead, squeezing the breath from her. In the vone’s embrace, she learned to breathe the green shadows, and she learned to sing his song.

V
od stepped into the PrimeWay. It seemed a new place to him. The vibrant, blushing hab enfolded the great Way as it always had; data pedestals nubbed out from the walls, stewards called out the odds on wagers, statics and fluxors mingled without touching, the glint of a gomin robe appeared in the throng like a charged crest in the data flow. But it would never be the same, not after his sojourn in the AncientWay, not after his awful tour of the gomin’s SecondWay.

He couldn’t venture into the digs. Nefer’s forces would watch for him there. Whatever he did toward revolution it would be here in the PrimeWay. A small, rolled package under his arm reminded him that he had yet to give away one gomin robe. He stepped forward to speak to a fluxor watching the latest display of kin wagers.

Beside him, Zehops, holding two more packages in her arms, urged him on with a thrust of her chin.

The fluxor ignored his greeting. Of course, Vod wore the garb of an unnatural.

He tried again. “One wagers on that traitor, Vod Ceb Rilvinn?” Vod asked her.

“He is no traitor,” the fluxor responded, flicking her data tendril to signal her interest to the data steward.

For a moment Vod’s mood improved, but then, the fluxor spoiled it, adding: “He forces concessions from Nefer Ton Enkar, who has released disbursements by lottery.”

“So he is a hero for making you marginally richer?” Vod could barely contain his sneer.

The fluxor turned to Vod. “Follow your own way, gomin.”

“I am no gomin.”

The fluxor eyed Vod, then Zehops.

“But I hide as one.” As the fluxor stared at him, Vod thrust his package forward. “This is a gomin robe. The more wear it, the more we register our discontent.”

But already the fluxor was backing away. “You have gone down an up way,” she said. Her expression said the rest. The fluxor kept watch on him as he turned to others in the PrimeWay. He didn’t think she would betray him. But if she did, if any of them did, Zehops and her cohorts were threaded through the crowd, preparing to cover his escape.

Zehops whispered, “Backmind her. She is a fool.” She gripped his elbow in encouragement.

Around them, other gomin—clutching packages of their own—circulated through the PrimeWay. It looked as though no one was accepting a robe. And in turn, Vod was still failing to divest himself of his package. Dwellers were starting to stare at him; he had revealed himself as he approached each one, and now a rumor flew through the Way:
Vod Ceb Rilvinn is among us; Vod has become a gomin
.

Harn approached him, looking decidedly awkward in
the pastel caftan. “I’d rather chew my way through granite. It would be more pleasant. And more successful.”

Vod was aware of the nearest portals, keeping his escape in view. “Give it time, Harn-as. We do not tend toward change.” He felt it was the thing to say, but it didn’t impress Harn.

“I could change more minds with a shovel in the side of a few heads than with gomin costumes.” He narrowed his eyes at Zehops as though she were to blame for his embarrassment.

Vod stood with his package under his arm, feeling less and less like a leader. Nefer was bringing war and ruin upon them, while he dithered with robes.…

It was then that they felt the tremor. It began with a tingling of their feet. The clamor of the Way subsided, and dwellers came to a standstill. Perhaps the vibration would crest and fade. Harn turned to stare at Vod, no doubt with identical thoughts to Vod’s own. The tremor grew to a distant, barking rumble. Zehops plugged into the nearest gate, searching for information, but Vod needed no data. He knew what that sound was.

Now the PrimeWay exploded with motion. Dwellers flooded out of the minor ways, shouting. In the boiling crowd, Vod was pinned into immobility. Nearby someone yelled that it was the digs, a major collapse. The rumbling of Down World subsided, but PrimeWay was chaos. Vod saw Nefer appear on a screen, urging calm. It was a minor tube, she said. Lives lost, yes, but minimal. All threat had passed. All that tended toward needful action tended to be done. Next to Vod a dweller was shouting, gesturing. When Vod focused on what this dweller was doing, his skin grew cold with fury. The craven static was betting on the number of rugs that would be filled today. Turning, Vod saw the flurry of arms and gestures, the fast wagering, with data stewards happily sweeping up the commissions.

Without consulting Zehops and Harn, Vod shoved his way to a stall where he could stand on a platform, above the crowd. Scrambling to the top of it, he raised his arms, shouting, “Listen! Listen! The digs have killed some of us!” He shouted it again, and a few dwellers turned to stare at him. “Killed!” he roared. “And you wager! Is that all digger deaths signify?”

Hands were pulling at him; Harn and Zehops were urging him to come down. But he was done with indirection. Vod plugged into a data gate, and entered his fury. His words appeared in the flow:
Diggers will leave these tunnels wrapped in their kin rugs. Diggers who renew the ways for you. Where is the honor diggers have earned, to accept all risk to keep you safe?

Across the PrimeWay, a familiar static turned from a data pedestal and gazed at him. Her sculpted face and fine oval lines were unmistakable: Nefer Ton Enkar. She was gated into the flow, but she was physically present, a stone’s throw away from him.

“Run!” urged Zehops, while Harn tried to grab at him. Furiously, Vod shook off Harn’s entreating hands.

Gated in, he read Nefer’s message:
Bold words, gomin. But what can a digger’s path mean to such as you, dressed in an unnatural’s cloak?

He answered:
We all share the Way. The Common Way
.

Truly? One has been confused, then, for all these spans. One thought a gomin tended to defilement, and a digger to—know his place
.

You have indeed been confused, Nefer Ton Enkar
.

She was watching him with a tunneling gaze. Beside her, a rustle of movement, and Vod saw her henchmen making for him. He fell backward into Harn’s waiting arms, and they ran, with Harn plowing a path through the crowd.

“The SecondWay,” hissed Zehops.

“No. The digs.”

The three of them sprinted to an upway. Vod listened for the pounding of feet behind him, but, choosing a circuitous route, they lost their pursuers.

When they arrived at the digs, it was a scene of riot and confusion. The air was thick with dust and shouts. Dwellers ran in all directions, some bearing digging instruments, others helping the wounded. Blood and moans colored the scene.

Then Vod noticed flashes of white spotting the dark haze of the tunnel. Vod passed a gomin, covered with blood, helping a digger who could still walk. Gomin were in fact everywhere, shoveling, scrambling amid the rock and soil, some scooping the dirt out with their bare hands. By their sides, diggers in blackened and torn work clothes struggled mightily to clear the cave-in.

Harn grabbed a spade and began shoveling like one gone berserk.

Vod paused for a moment to savor the picture of these white robes of mercy amid the dirt and blood. Then he dove into the fray, digging for signs of life.

T
he rivers were swelling. Even as Sascha stood on her lookout watching the endless rain, she thought she could see the rivers eating into the forest floor. The ground could not absorb any more water. Soon the broad rivers would join hands and turn the Gray Spiny Forest into a vast swamp.

The nearest river was just within view. Over the last few days she had watched as animals hitched rides on broad leaves, tree branches, and other flotation devices, captives of the river’s slow journey. Amphibs, she noted, were all but gone, their eggs by now fertilized and tucked into their wet beds with silty covers. The waters bristled with other swimmers, whose backs and tails emerged like probes from another world, then sank away from sight.

The world was changing, but as yet Sascha could not quite say how, except for the distended rivers. She herself was no longer what she had been. Her hair hung in grimy ropes around her face. Her skin was browned from the sun, and her belly cramped. It was a gravid swelling, an ache that bloomed and receded, and bloomed again. Her
body had signaled her for days that it was changing, but she was too bruised from her fall on the ridge to realize that her first blood was coming. Not that she would have recognized what it was…

Now the final change came: the bot had left her.

Perhaps it was the sight of the rising rivers that convinced the bot to leave. If it was to fulfill its programming, it could travel faster on land than in a swamp. And, if it listened at all to her, she had given it her blessing to go.

Still, watching it trundling into the forest made her throat catch, a little.

Demon and the bot engaged in a mutual ignoring when the bot passed him. The lurking Singer was neither one thing nor the other to the bot: Demon might be ominous, but he was also a Singer like the nurturing Watchful. It had apparently resolved its dilemma by deciding Demon did not exist. The bot picked its way past him with an air of studied indifference, like a snub imparted to an old enemy.

When the bot left, it took her field notes, her record of all that happened, and her only human connection. The one to her father.

Last night she had told the bot, “Remember this: Lots of the rocks and pebbles we saw in the dry season were really pods and eggs. The Singer nest is littered with their cracked shells, so the disguise doesn’t fool them, at least. When we came here, we didn’t pay attention. We went by what infantry said, that in three years it never rained. We never thought there might be different length cycles—years-long cycles. We saw what we expected to. There’s probably lots of times like that, when we don’t see things as they really are. I wonder what we could discover about all the worlds if we could look past what we expect. Or would that ever be possible?”

That was her last entry. The rest of her notes contained her every observation about the Singers, surely the most
interesting animal she had yet seen. Perhaps their bearing of ahtran young was an important scientific discovery. All this went forth with the bot.