Primordium, p.4
Primordium, page 4
Clearly, the Lifeshaper was more complicated than anything I could easily encompass. Or the old memory, the Lord of Admirals, was wrong.
We are here, true? Within you, within … others … true?
“I think so,” I said. Riser had also experienced the old memories. “We are all visited by the Lifeshaper at birth.”
I very much wanted to get away from these ruins and remains—this graveyard. Abada the Rhinoceros would never remember these Forerunners in their time of judgment, that much I knew; no Great Elephant would rustle through their bones and save them from the ravages of the hyenas, if any such beasts were here.
I had no idea what Forerunner spirits were now set loose or whether they would blame me if they did show up and find me here. Both gods and spirits are unpredictable and quick to judge the living—for whom they feel both lust and envy.
But I could not leave yet. I had to find my “jar.” And soon enough I did, all the way across the ellipse: six meters wide, split open like a seed pod, purple-brown, burned and pitted on the outside, smooth and polished black on the inside.
Empty—now.
Who had had charge of me at the last—the Master Builder’s forces, or those in charge of the Halo? Had the Halo defenders snatched us away? Had they juggled Riser and me between them…?
I stooped beside the jar, the pod, and felt around inside, grimacing at my lack of memory. Nothing remained that I could use. Nothing here but quiet and mystery and sadness—and awakenings that neither the Lord of Admirals nor I wished to encompass all in a rush.
I returned to Vinnevra and stood with her for a moment, my back to the wreckage, having trouble breathing.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“Just as you said—dead Forerunners,” I said.
“We did not kill them. They were already dead.”
“I see that.”
“Will they punish us anyway, when they return?”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
She looked at me with a squint. “Gamelpar knows more than I do. He’s very old.”
I glanced down at the filthy rags that covered me, then raised my arms in query—was I presentable?
“He doesn’t care about that,” she said. “Mostly, he goes naked, night and day. But sometimes he talks like you—crazy talk. Nobody wants him in the village now. They’d kill him if they could. But they don’t dare hurt him because he knows the great way, daowa-maadthu.”
Again the Lord of Admirals stirred. Daowa-maadthu … Fate is off-center, the wheel of life is cracked, the wagon will hit a rock, jolt hard, and fall apart for all of us—eventually.
“You know that truth?” she asked, studying my expression.
“I know of the broken wheel.” How odd that we were now actually riding inside one. I had first heard of the great way from Riser. He had called it daowa-maad. If the Lord of Admirals knew of this, then it was a very old teaching indeed. I felt a spark of hope. Maybe this Gamelpar had heard about the great way from Riser. Riser might be out there now, waiting for me, afraid to enter a village of large, strange humans.
“Sometimes it’s all Gamelpar talks about.” Vinnevra shrugged. “He wishes I understood more. Maybe he’ll stop pestering me if I take you to him. Are you coming?”
Dark was perhaps an hour away. “Yes.”
She walked ahead quickly on long, skinny legs. I had to hurry to catch up. We skirted the confines of the village—really just a circle of huts around the central meeting house.
“They say Gamelpar brings them bad luck,” she said. “I suppose he could if he wanted to, but around here, bad luck comes all by itself.”
In a few minutes, we crossed the bare, tramped-down dirt and entered a forest of low trees and brush. At last, night slipped down over us, and we followed the distant light of a campfire.
* * *
The old man was squatting and tending the fire. He was as black as the girl. His long legs and long arms were like gnarled sticks, his fingers like square-cut twigs, and his square head was topped by a pure white fringe. His mouth still held a few yellow teeth, but if he let it, his chin could almost meet his nose.
Around the fire he had laid out the skin of a small animal he had skinned and cleaned, which he had roasted in the coals and was now eating. The second he had cleaned but not skinned. They looked like rabbits, and confirmed my suspicion there were other familiar animals here on the hoop. The Librarian’s collection might be large and diverse.
Vinnevra stepped forward out of the reflected glow from the sky bridge and into the firelight. “Old Papa,” she said. “I bring a fig from the first garden.”
The old man looked up from the bone he was gnawing, somewhat ineffectually. “Come close, fig,” he said, his voice a soft, rattling squawk. He was looking at me. I was the fig.
Still chewing, he waved greasy fingers that glinted in the firelight. Meals for him were no doubt long affairs. “Tell the fig to strip away those rags.”
Vinnevra cocked her head at me. I pulled off my rags, then stepped in toward the fire, feeling a little awkward under the old man’s calm scrutiny. Finally, he turned away, smacked his gums, lifted the bone to his lips, and took another bite. “Human,” he said. “But not from the city dwellers, nor the ones near the wall. Show me your back.”
I slowly turned and showed him my naked back, looking over my shoulder.
“Hm,” he murmured. “Nothing. Show him your own back, daughter’s daughter.”
Without shame or hesitation, Vinnevra turned and lifted her ragged top. The old man waved his greasy fingers again, for me to look close. I did not touch her, but saw imprinted, in the skin of the small of her back, a faint silvery mark, like a hand clasping three circles.
She lowered her top. “This is the one who fell from the sky and lived,” she said. “He claims to come from a place called Erde-Tyrene.”
The old man stopped chewing and lifted his head again, as if hearing distant music. “Say that again, clearly.”
“Erde-Tyrene,” she obliged.
“Have him say it.”
I spoke the name of my birth-planet. Now the old man rotated on his ankles and rearranged his squat, arm resting on drawn-up knee, the half-eaten rabbit leg dangling from one outstretched hand. “I know of it,” he said. “Marontik, that’s the biggest city.”
“Yes!”
“Outside lie the lands of grass and sand and snow. There is a place where the land splits like a woman, deep and shadowed, and mountains of ice roll between mountains of rock and grind and drop big stones from their jaws.”
“Have you been there?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not since I was a babe. I don’t remember it. But my best wife was older. She came from there before me,” he said. “She called it Erda. She described it. Not like this place.”
“No,” I agreed.
Now the old man switched over to the language I had been raised with. He spoke it fluently enough, but with an odd accent, and using some words that were not familiar. He motioned me to come closer and sit beside him, while he said, in my birth-tongue, “That wife was a teller of the finest stories. She filled my life with great flares of passion and dream.”
“What’s he saying?” Vinnevra asked me.
“He’s telling me about his favorite wife,” I said.
Vinnevra lay down on her elbow on his other side. “My mother’s mother. She died in the city before I was born.”
“We have been here for many long nights—many years,” Gamelpar said. “My best wife would be eager to hear about Marontik. How is it now?”
I described the old city and its balloon rafts and farm-to-market squares, and the power stations left nearby by the Forerunners. I did not go into my experiences with the Manipular or the Didact. Now was not the time.
“She said nothing of balloon rafts,” he said. “But that was long ago. Vinnevra tells me you lost a friend somewhere out there. Was he one of the small people with sweet voices?”
“He is,” I said.
“Well, some of them are here, too, but not in the city or nearby. Way over toward the far wall. We saw them long ago, and then they walked a long walk. They were honest, in their way, but had little respect for size or age.”
Riser had been quite old when he took me under his guidance. Chamanush lived long lives.
Finally, Vinnevra said, “Gamelpar, we are hungry. We have come from the village where there is no good food. You remember.”
“I sent you there to look when the sky burned and the stars fell,” the old man said, nodding. “They still don’t like me there.”
I could not keep track of the windings of all these stories. Which were true? Perhaps for these People, on this broken wheel, it didn’t matter.
“They have no rabbits,” Vinnevra wheedled.
“They eat all the game and leave none to breed, and then they go hungry. They burn all the wood and then go cold, they flee the city but live nearby and fear to leave … and then they vanish. But it is not their evil. Forerunners carry some off to the Palace of Pain, and now the villagers are stiff with fear and don’t want to do anything. Pfaaah!” He threw the bare bone out into the bushes.
“Share your meat and I’ll tell you what I know,” I said.
Gamelpar stared into the fire and softly cackled. “No,” he said.
Vinnevra glanced at me reproachfully. She knew how to deal with Gamelpar, it seemed, and I did not. “We went back, and the dead Forerunners are still there. Nobody has come for them.”
The old man looked up, reconsidered for a moment, then made up his mind. “Here, clean this branch,” he said to Vinnevra, “and I will spit and cook the second rabbit. It will be for both of you. I have eaten my fill.” When Vinnevra had stripped away the bark with teeth and nails, he thrust the stick through the rabbit, then tossed it directly into the fire, skin and all, and used the end of the stick to shift and turn it.
And so we settled next to him, waiting for the second rabbit to cook, beneath the fitful stars, with the bright silvery band of the sky bridge high above.
Gamelpar turned the rabbit again on the coals. The smell of burned fur was not appetizing. Was he trying to punish me for my presumption?
“Rabbit cooked in its skin is most succulent,” Vinnevra explained.
“Smells bad, eats fine,” Gamelpar agreed. “Tell me what you saw. The fire in the sky, and the brightness, and you falling—what did it look like, from up there?”
I told him a little of what had happened. “The Forerunners were angry at each other, last time I was with them. And the dead ones—”
“You were with them?” Gamelpar lay down on his side, then on his back, and contemplated the bridge.
“I did not know them. It could be they were carrying me someplace.”
He nodded. “Shooting stars—dying ships. Lots of ships. But the brightness—the sky turning so white the eyes and head hurt—I don’t know what that is. Do you?”
Gamelpar was proving remarkably astute. Still, he wasn’t exactly telling me the truth, about not understanding—not knowing. He knew something, or at least he had made a decent guess, and now he was testing me.
Ask him who else he is.
“Why are you scowling?” Vinnevra asked me.
I shook my head. I was not about to serve as a go-between for two old, dead warriors—not yet. I fancied I was still my own person. For now.
“There,” he said, indicating a blotchy patch about a third of the way up one side of the band, “is where a big ship crashed into the hoop, before the brightness and the shooting stars, just before you fell from the sky.” He reached for another, thicker stick, handed it to Vinnevra, and blew out through his lips. She showed the stick to me. There were many notches already. “Mark another double handful,” the old man instructed. “A day or so doesn’t matter.”
Vinnevra took the stick and removed a sharp rock from her pocket. She began to carve.
“Many mysteries,” the old man said. “Why are we here? Are we like animals in a pit that fight to amuse the Forerunners?”
“We have something they want,” I said.
The old man shifted the rabbit again and bright orange sparks flew up into the cool air. “Can’t let the skin go black all over,” he murmured. “Can’t let the legs burn through. Why do they move us around, why do they take us to the Palace of Pain … why treat us so?”
I itched to ask about this Palace of Pain, but the time did not seem right—the look on his face as he said those words …
“Humans defeated Forerunners, long ago,” I said. “Forerunners still resent it.”
Now the old man’s expression really sharpened. His jaw firmed and dropped a little, making his face look younger. “You remember such times?” he asked. He fixed me with an intense, if rheumy-eyed, stare, then leaned toward me and whispered, “Are there old spirits inside your head?”
“I think so,” I answered. “Yes.”
Vinnevra considered both of us with alarm and moved away from the fire.
“Does he have a name?”
“No name … just a title. A rank.”
“Ah. A highborn, then.”
“You’re encouraging him!” Vinnevra accused from the shadows, but who was encouraging whom, she did not make clear.
“Pfaah,” the old man said, and lifted the rabbit. “Break off a leg. I wish we had some salt.” He poked the now-bare spit over his shoulder, toward the part of the bridge spinning into shadow. The blotch where a ship had crashed was a dark gray smear, tapering in one direction, and then flaring outward with the marks of burning debris.
“Before the strange brightness, the sun was different—true?” I asked.
Vinnevra had moved closer again, and she answered this time. “Golden-red,” she said. “Warmer. Larger.”
“Did you see the sky bridge—the hoop in the sky—disappear into the brightness, before all the rest?”
The old man favored me with a gap-toothed grin. “So it did.”
“Then it is a different sun,” I said.
“Not different,” Vinnevra insisted, her brows arching. “It changed color. That’s all.” Any other explanation was too vast for her. Perhaps too vast for me as well. Moving something the size of this Halo the way the Didact had moved us from Erde-Tyrene to Charum Hakkor, then out to the San’Shyuum world …
But I did not back down. “Different suns,” I insisted.
The old man pondered, his nearly toothless jaw moving up and down. I began to regret this discussion—we were distracting him from portioning out the rabbit.
He raised himself up in his seated posture and squared his hands on his knees. “I was brought here when I was an infant,” he said. “I do not remember much about Erda, but my best wife told me it had a flat horizon, but when you are high up, the end of the world curves down to each side, not up. Makes you wonder what’s on the other side of the wheel, down there … doesn’t it?”
He caught me staring at the rabbit. I wiped drool from the corner of my lips. He tapped his finger lightly on the ground, then lowered his head, as if in mourning. “I remember the long journey in the gray walls and no way to see the sky, with air that smelled of closeness and sweet and bitter herbs, like perfume. Herbs that kept us quiet during the voyage. And then … the first ones were brought here, to the hoop.” He tapped the ground again. More firmly. “I was just a babe. We had lived for many days within gray walls, but now the great ship shook us like ants from a cup. None were hurt; we drifted like fluff to the dirt and rocks.
“Then, so I was told, we stood together, holding each other, and looked up, and saw the sky bridge, the way the land rose up, and there was much wailing. Finally, we separated into families and small tribes, and wandered this way and that—”—he swung his arms—“outward. We came to forests and plains and we made our homes there, as we were used to living. For this while, in my youth, we were tended like cattle, but because there was little pain and we were fed, we came to believe this was where we should be.
“The Forerunners gave us bricks. We used the bricks and made walls and houses and great buildings. We lived in peace and raised children, and the children were touched by the Lady, and when they could speak, they told us of this beautiful Forerunner, so tall, who spoke to them in their first days and filled them with light. I already knew her. She had come to me on Erda.”
“When you were born?” I asked.
Gamelpar nodded. “But it was not the same, how the Lady touched those from Erda and how she touched the children born here. As I grew up, I sometimes remembered things that I never lived.” His voice grew thin. He lifted his gnarled hand, pointed in a broad sweep, up toward the center of the Halo’s spin, then down, as if poking his finger through to the other side. “So many memories,” he whispered. “Old, old memories—in dreams, in visions. Weak and frightened … old, lost ghosts.
“But years later, the old memories became stronger—after we finished the city, long after I was husband and father. After the sky changed five times. Those were great darknesses, long, long nights. Different suns, different stars, came and went.
“Each time, glowing bars climbed across the sky and a big, pale blue disk appeared inside the hoop, like the hub of a wheel. Each time came the white brightness, then a great darkness.…” He swept his hand across the welkin. “Spokes shot out from the hub, and glowing fires burned on the ends of the spokes, to warm us in that darkness. And twice we saw something other than brightness and darkness—something terrible that came out of the hub and the center of the wheel—something that gave us fits and hurt the soul.”
He rubbed his forehead and looked away from the fire. “But we did not die. We moved again. Under the orange sun, where Vinnevra was born.”
Vinnevra stared intently at her grandfather.
“It was under that sun that the Forerunners came in their boats and carried us off to the Palace of Pain. They stole away my daughter and her mate, and many, many others. They came so often we were afraid, and we abandoned the city, crawled back out onto the plain. And there, as we huddled in fear, the beast came among us and pointed its awful arms, and raised its jeweled eyes.”
