Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (5 page)

 
          
If
all our men get burnt up by the Godmind, and there are no more fathers, your
inner landscape isn't going to get much more input from anyone!

 
          
My
dear, I already contain multitudes of experience; so many are the Kas that I
have swallowed.

 
          
Look:
the Godmind wants to zap you. It'll find that a damn sight easier if it has
access to crowds of dead men's Kas hereabouts.

 
          
True.
... I must survive. Therefore you must all survive in me, man and woman alike.
You’re right. Together we stand; together we'll unriddle the universe too, who
knows?

 
          
Couldn 't
you accept men into the Ka-store but somehow forbid them access to the
river? Except as now, for the one-go?

 
          
In
that case how could Tam go pledging in the water to dig clay?

 
          
Oh.
Um.

 
          
It's
more of a problem than that, Yaleen . . . though I believe I spy a solution.

 
          
Let
me explain how it is at present that men are able to sail once and once only;
and why twice brings madness and death. Down Tambimatu way, deep in the jungle,
there's a little plant which catches insects to eat. This plant resembles
toothy green jaws, yawning wide. If you touch the jaws once, nothing happens. A
falling leaf might touch them once, or a drop of water. But if you touch them
twice in the same manner, the jaws snap shut and devour. You see, something
which touches twice is alive and active. I'm like that plant. I have arranged
myself so as to ignore the first touch of a man—his first journey on my river.

 
          
And
if the same fellow touches you twice, you seize him?

 
          
Just so.
I could re-arrange myself so that a man's first brush with me kills
him. That way men could drink of me, and gain the Ka -store, but they couldn’t ever
stray offshore. Alternatively I could re-arrange myself so that men always have
free access to the river.

 
          
Wait
a minute! Are you saying that you could have fixed things during the war to
give our whole army safe passage downstream? You could have kept your jaws
shut?

 
          
Dear
me. Those Sons might have sent reinforcements over.

 
          
Fat
chance, with you back in position blocking the way across! You just wanted to
spin things out.

 
          
Might
I remind you, Yaleen, that you never asked any such favour of me?

 
          
True.
Too damn
true.
Right then I could have curled up inside with embarrassment and
grief. All that extra needless suffering; now I knew it for a fact. I wished I
hadn't mentioned the matter.

 
          
Smug
bug,
I snarled.

 
          
Temper!
You do want some clay for your boyfriend, don’t you?

 
          
Yes.
Sorry.

 
          
To
resume: what I propose is that I shall turn out my lamp of death, which bums
the moths of men. I shall extinguish it for a while. Your Tam will gain access
to his clay. During this time you should build dikes in the shallows where the
clay is, to hold the water back. You could drive in stakes to fix a wicker
fence to,
then
pile bags of sand and heaps of stone
along this fence. After that, bail out all the river-water. That part of the
river bed will become land. Once that's done, thereafter I'll kill any man who
ventures on the water at all. But all men shall drink of me and enter me at
death—of the wisdom of that, I'm thoroughly persuaded. And only women shall
sail.

 
          
Hang
on. If men can 7 sail at all, how will they get wedded? How can they follow
their fiancees to distant towns—hundreds of leagues in some cases? Lovers would
have to aim their arrows much closer to home. What fun would a girl’s
wanderweeks be? How could our towns be meshed by marriage, and the gene-pool
stirred?

 
          
Just
last week I gathered in the Ka of a woman who fell from the sky at Guineamoy.

 
          
What?

 
          
And
from her I gather that some people have started experimenting with transport
by steerable balloon. Excellent! Such balloons can carry lovers on honeymoon
flights—how enchanting!
A once in a lifetime experience.
I think that solves the problem.

 
          
Balloons! There'd been some talk of
military balloons, but I thought nothing had come of it. . . .

 
          
Well
I never did, I said.

 
          
Somebody
else did. But she fell out—from a few hundred spans high. It's a really neat
death.
Elegant and graceful; bar the final splat.
At
the time she rather spoiled the effect by being so scared but in retrospect she
can appreciate it better.
If you want to die and join me and
don't fancy drowning yourself.
I'd seriously recommend leaping from a
balloon. I assure you the last instant, when you get broken, is hardly
noticeable.

 
          
Thanks
for the tip. I was planning on surviving a while longer. In fact, I was
planning on everybody, everywhere, surviving.

 
          
Thus
totally trouncing the Godmind?

 
          
That's
the general idea.

 
          
I
need a fresh perspective on that, Yaleen. I've been trying to feel my way along
the psylink to Earth,
then
out again in another direction.
I need to find another Worm like me. Strength in numbers! Two eyes see deeper
than one! Frankly I’m not having much luck on my own, so if you'd care to jump
out of a balloon. . . .

 
          
So that was it. The Worm wanted to
project me through
Ka-
space once
again.

 
          
Since
I didn't answer, the Worm continued. Meanwhile, that’s the offer
Your
men gain access to my Ka -store—and lose the river
entirely.

 
          
All for a few
barrels of clay. . . .

 
          
No, not just for
that.
For the sake of every man alive.
Actually,
the Worm's offer ought to delight the river guild. They would continue to
control the waterway.

 
          
Does
my priestess so pledge, for her people?

 
          
Okay,
agreed.

 
          
So
be it. Now you carry on dreaming, and I’ll show you the precise sites of those
clay deposits.

 
          
At first Chanoose was incensed.

 
          
"You want to make mud pies? What
is this, a complete reversion to childhood?"

 
          
"I intend to help my friend and
companion get the materials he needs for his art. I
insist.
You yourself said we could do with some decent plates and
vases in the temple."

 
          
"I did?"

           
"Didn't
you?" I asked innocently.

 
          
"So now you want a gang of
riverwomen to dam and drain two stretches of river!"

 
          
"Ah, there's more to this,
Quaymistress. And if I don't get my way, you won't get yours. What I've
arranged with the Worm is as follows. . . ." And I explained.

 
          
When I'd done, Chanoose said quietly,
"You impulsive imbecile. You really are incredible." She spoke for
form's sake only; I could see that her brain was pumping away nineteen to the
dozen.

 
          
All of a sudden her eyes shone and
she almost did a dance, there before my throne.
"Got it!
Oh yes, I've got it! We time the work on these wretched dikes just long enough
to
sail
all the captured Sons up
north and ferry them over. That way, we shan't need half a 'jack army to escort
them. We can keep the Sons chained up. We can take on local militia guards at
each town. And while
that's
going on,
we'll sail the whole 'jack army back home to Jangali—before they get too
accustomed to foreign parts, or too restive.

 
          
"All those repatriated captives
ought to mess up the west bank nicely. I shouldn't be surprised if half of them
turn bandit, or try to overthrow their government. Then when everyone's well
and truly back where they belong, hey presto, the dikes get finished. Your Worm
opens its jaws again. Immediate embargo on the river!
Brilliant,
brilliant."
You'd think she had thought of it herself.

 
          
"Yes indeed! And we'll start
putting men on the temple rolls. They'll accept the new set-up. We'll say it
was the only way we could negotiate them a safe conduct into the Ka-store. By
the way, the Worm's spot-on about balloon experiments. I think I'll slip news
of those to the
Pecawar Puhlicizer
—"

 
          
"Including how you can fall out
of them?"

 
          
"We'll have to tighten our grip
on balloons. Invest in them; that's best. Hmm, which leaves us with one little
problem: the black current only stretching just north of
Aladalia.
. . .
Never mind, never mind! You can have your dikes, Yaleen; rest
easy. And / have signals to send."

 
          
Departure of one
satisfied customer.
Or so I thought; she was back within a minute.

 
          
"Entirely forgot! This all drove
it right out of my head. Double benefit, though, Yaleen! Recently a savant in
Ajelobo approached the Guild. He's done a couple of services for us before.
Sees things our way, he does. Well, he's been trying to analyse the nature of
the current and the Godmind, based on what's been published already. So, what
with the river being open to everyone for a while, we can sail him down
here—"

 
          
"I'm not having anyone kibitzing
over my shoulder!"

 
          
"Of course not, dear girl. He
won't bother you. But if he's on hand when you finish
The Book of the Stars
—which I shan't even enquire about, so as not
to irk you—how utterly convenient! Meantime, you could possibly bring yourself
to iron out a few earlier points which puzzle him."

 
          
"Such as how
he's going to travel home afterwards?
It's nigh on four hundred leagues
to Ajelobo."

 
          
"Not
quite."

           
"He
won't be able to sail home."

 
          
"Nor could the army, till
now—and look how that problem's been solved. This fellow will probably return
by balloon. Mind
you
—" and
Chanoose smartly changed the subject—"if the Sons mount another invasion
while the river's open, we could be in a mess— supposing the current let them
plough through it on rafts. Which I doubt! Rafts haven't the draught of a boat,
and the current's substance isn't ordinary. But even so! We'd better send all
prisoners north securely battened under hatches in their chains, so that no
westerners spy what's going on. We'll ferry them across at the last possible
moment."

 
          
"If the Sons wanted to invade,
they could do it now—up north of Aladalia."

 
          
"And doesn't every last jill and
'jack from Firsthome to Umdala know that, Yaleen, thanks to you! But really,
that's way beyond the other enemy capital at Manhome North; so presumably the
logistics forbid. That
was
your
reasoning in leaving the far north unprotected, I take it?" (To which I
said nothing.) Chanoose rubbed her hands. "Fine, that's settled
then."