In Green's Jungles (47 page)

"I'd like to ride with you, like I did on Green when we went to see the lander. I was a bad rider, I know."

"I'm a poor rider myself, even though I've had to ride so much of late. Certainly you were a better one than I expected."

"Your son, the big one, said we couldn't be ghosts." She giggled. "Because his horses weren't afraid of us. He thought he was making a joke, remember? And I said, oh, horses don't have to be afraid of me. He liked me, he really did. He liked me better than Bala fat."

I did not reply.

"So if I could ride with you here the way I did there, you could say I was your daughter-in-law, Hide's brother's wife."

"I could. I would not."

Jahlee seemed not to have heard me. "I've got enough money to buy a horse. Money is easy for us. For me anyway. Real cards. We like cards, because they're light."

"Taking them prevents the landers from returning to the Long Sun Whorl, also. That means fewer prey for you."

She gave me a tight-lipped smile. "Oh, there are plenty of you. More than enough for me."

I was busying myself with my pen case, sharpening the little quill I am using. "You don't care about your race."

"You are my race. You know that, why won't you admit it? Inside, I'm one of you. So was everybody who fought for you at Gaon."

"What about the inhumi who destroyed the Vanished People, Jahlee? Were they human too?"

"They were dead before I was born."

We sat in silence for a time, listening to the wind in the trees and Hide's slow breathing. From time to time he mumbled a word or two indistinctly; perhaps Jahlee could distinguish them or guess the content of his dreams from their tone, but I could not.

"Where's Oreb?" she said at last.

"Nearby, I imagine. He flew after warning me that you were coming."

"He doesn't like me."

I did not reply; or if I did, merely muttered something noncommittal.

"Do you?"

I had never thought about it. After a time I said, "Yes. I've been wishing you would go. But yes, I do."

"I drink blood. Human blood, mostly."

"I know it. So did Krait."

"We don't kill you, though. At least, not very often."

I nodded.

"When you were on the river with that little girl from Han, we all said we were going to kill you, that we had to. That was what we had decided. But none of us wanted to, not really. We kept hanging back, each of us hoping somebody else would do it."

"Were you one of them? Yes, I remember now. There were so many of you-almost all of you had to be there."

"But you thought I wasn't, because you like me. You hoped I wasn't, really."

"Also because you didn't try to kill me when we met again."

She looked pensive. "I kept thinking that you'd be killed in the fighting. That way I wouldn't have to. Rajan-?"

"Yes?"

"That woman. The big woman they were keeping chained up. I forget her name."

"Chenille."

"Yes, Chenille. They-we were going to kill her children, we inhumi. They tried for years to have children, she said, she and some man in the cellar."

"Auk."

"But they couldn't, so they had taken in children whose parents had been killed. Five of them, she said. It seems like an awful lot."

"There must be a great many children in need of parents on Green."

"Do you think we'll really do it? We inhumi? Kill those children? They were supposed to take your son's village, and they tried, but they couldn't do it."

"Abanja's village. That's Maliki's real name, as I realized when I had time to cast my mind back to the old days in Viron. Colonel Abanja. Qarya is her village, not Sinew's. It may never be Sinew's."

"I'd argue with you about that, Rajan."

"Let's not argue."

She sat in silence for a while, and this time it was I who broke the silence, saying, "You can't cry, can you, Jahlee?"

"No. Not here."

She waited for me to speak, but I did not.

"Would you like me to go, Rajan? I mean, I'm coming with you. With you and Hide, no matter what you say. But if you'd like me to go away for now, I'll do it."

"Yes," I said. "Please go."

She rose, nodding to herself as she swept back the long sorrel hair of her wig. "You know where I would like to go, don't you? Where I'd like to be?"

I nodded.

"I can't go there without you. Where would you like to be, Rajan? Where would you like to be if you could be anywhere at all?" Her arms were growing wider and flatter already, her hands flattening, too, as they reached for her ankles.

"I'm not sure."

"In New Viron with Hide's mother? That's where you're going."

"Anywhere?" I asked her. "Possible or impossible?"

"Yes. Anywhere."

"Then I would wish to be back in our little sloop with Seawrack." I had not known it until the words left my mouth.

"Was that the girl from Han?"

I shook my head; and Jahlee gave me her tight-lipped smile, raised vast pinions, and flew.

From a branch overhead Oreb exclaimed, "Bad thing! Bad thing!"

* * *

This morning Hide asked whether Jahlee had come back the night before.

"Bad thing," Oreb assured him.

"But did she, Father? Was she there with you while I was asleep?"

Puzzled and interested, I asked him what had made him think so.

"Because I dreamed I was back on Green. I know I wasn't really there. It was just a dream, but I thought she might have been here talking to you and it sort of spilled over on me, whatever it is the two of you do together that takes us to those other whorls. Father…?"

"What is it?"

"Sinew and Bala and all the other people on Green? Are the inhumi going to kill them all the way they did the Vanished People that were there?"

"No," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be without actually knowing the answer, Hide. I can't possibly know-I'm sure you must realize that. You were asking my opinion, and my opinion is that they won't."

I found his next question startling, as I still do. It was, "Because of something we did?"

I said, "Of course not. Do you think that we can save an entire whorl, my son? Just you and I?"

"It isn't just us. There's Sinew and Bala and their children, and Maliki, and a lot of others."

"Ah! But that's a very different question. In that case, yes. Green will be saved because of things we've done and things we'll do. So will Blue. The Vanished People know it already, and I should have known it too when they asked my permission to revisit Blue. If the inhumi were to enslave humanity here, the Vanished People wouldn't want to come back; and if they were to exterminate it, no such permission would be needed."

Hide nodded, mostly I think to himself.

"You are always bored when your mother and I talk about the whorl that we left to come here-the Long Sun Whorl. So I'll try to make this as brief as I can. When we were on the lander, I thought as we all did that Pas had made a terrible mistake, that Green was a sort of death trap filled with inhumi."

"It is."

"No, it isn't. There are inhumi there, of course, and in large numbers. But not in overwhelming numbers. They prey upon the colonists-or try to-exactly as they prey upon us here."

"Sure.51

"And they are killed in the attempt, not every time but quite often. Sinew and the colonists can kill them, you see, and frequently do. They lose nothing by it. The inhumi can kill them, too. I cleared a large sewer on Green once, Hide. It was choked with human bodies, several thousand I would say."

"That must have been horrible."

"It was. But, Hide, each of those bodies represented a slave or a potential slave, an inhuman who had bled to death instead of working and fighting for his masters. Sinew's victories leave him stronger, but the inhumi's leave them weaker."

Tonight Hide made the same argument to Jahlee, couching it in his own terms and presenting it much less concisely than I have given it here.

She shook her head. "We'll win. We're winning on both whorls already."

C'Why?"

"Because you fight among yourselves far more than you fight us. Do you remember the question I asked your father when we came to the gate of Qarya?"

Hide shook his head.

"I asked what good the ditch and the wall of sticks were, when we inhumi can fly. He didn't answer me, because he knew the answer. Would you like to try?"

"I guess not."

"You sell your own kind to us for weapons and treasure," she told him almost apologetically, "and the more numerous you are, the crueler and more violent you are. Your cruelty and your violence strengthen us."

He stared at her, puzzled.

"Ask this man you call your father. He'll tell you."

I said, "He hasn't, and he won't."

She ignored it. "You took part in the war Soldo fought with Blanko. Who do you think won it?"

"Blanko," Hide said.

"You're wrong. We did."

When he had gone to sleep and Jahlee had flown, Oreb returned, saying, "Good things. Things come."

"Neighbors, you mean?" Although they had given me the chalice in Gaon and I had often sensed their presence at Inclito's, I had not spoken to one since they returned me to the Long Sun Whorl.

Oreb bobbed in agreement, his bright black eyes glowing like coals with reflected firelight. "Come quick!"

"Come already," a Neighbor said. I could not see his face, but his voice smiled.

Another joined him, and both sat with me at our fire, at my invitation. I said, "I know you won't eat our food or drink our wine, but I wish I had something to offer you."

"Wisdom," said the first, and the second, "Conversation."

"Wind and foolishness, I'm afraid. Will the inhumi really drive us away as they did you?"

The first shook his head. "You cannot go where we are."

The second asked, "Back to your ship, you mean?"

I had forgotten the word, and repeated it.

"To your starcrosser, to the hollow asteroid that you call the Long Sun Whorl."

"That isn't possible," I said. "There are very few landers in working order, and more of us every day."

The first said, "Then they cannot drive you away as they did us."

Oreb bobbed to that. "No go!"

"We must stay and fight." I felt my heart sink. "Is that what you're telling me?"

"We have nothing to tell you. We fought our inhumi a thou sand years ago, exactly as you are fighting yours. You know the result. Why should you listen to us?"

"Good thing!" Oreb insisted. "Thing say."

I said, "Because you are wise, and have proven yourselves friends. If I could ask only one question-"

"We will not answer."

"I would ask you what god it was that you worshipped at an altar Oreb found for me in the hills between Blanko and Soldo."

"An unknown god," said the second Neighbor, but his voice smiled.

"I have been thinking about all the gods we had in the Long Sun Whorl, you see. Echidna, Tartaros, Quadrifons, and all the others. I hadn't thought much about any of them for a year or more."

The first Neighbor said, "We know very little about them. Much less than you do."

"We had been talking about Pas-by we, I mean Hide and Jahlee and I. Hide and I thought Pas had been correct to send the Whorl to this short sun. Jahlee seems to feel quite certain that he had miscalculated."

The second asked, "You do not agree?"

"No. But I may well be wrong. Years ago I concluded that Pas was capable of error, because it seemed clear there should have been female soldiers on the Whorl as well as male ones such as Hammerstone."

"Good man!" Oreb declared firmly.

"Yes, he was a good man in his way. All the soldiers were, perhaps."

The second Neighbor said, "If you do not wish to tell us about the gods you had in your ship, you need not feel obliged to."

"They were many," I said, "and they often quarreled, which is all you need to know. Echidna tried to kill Pas, and was killed by him for that, and Sphigx's city of Trivigaunte tried to dominate Scylla's city of Viron-which was my city, too."

He nodded.

"I was weighing the possibility that Pas had erred, as Jahlee contended; and it occurred to me that he had surely erred in permitting other gods in the Whorl. That had been a mistake, and in the end it nearly proved fatal to him."

The first Neighbor said, "Then this Pas may have erred in sending your ship here as well."

"Yes. But whether he erred or not, it is certain we did. We erred by accepting Echidna, Scylla, and all the rest as gods, and erred again by removing the Outsider from our prayer beads." I paused to clear my throat. "We took him out because we thought that he wasn't one of Pas's family, I dare say. We knew the names of Pas's seven children and he wasn't one of them. I doubt that it ever occurred to us that he might be Pas's father, or even that Pas had one."

"Pas is your god," the first Neighbor told me, "not ours."

"Exactly. But who were yours? That is the question."

"One we will not answer, for your sake."

"I don't see how I would be harmed by knowing who your gods were, unless you mean that it would be better for me to work it out for myself."

They rose to go.

"My son Sinew found an altar in the forest, the altar of an unknown god. Later I thought that Seawrack's mother must have been your sea goddess."

They backed away. "Farewell, friend!"

"Do you know about Seawrack and her mother? I told some of you."

They had vanished into the shadows before I pronounced the last word; but I heard one say, "Once, she was."

"Wet god? Wet god?" Oreb called plaintively after them. Did he mean the Mother? Or Scylla, who haunts my dreams? I have questioned him, but he refuses to answer or contradicts himself. Possibly he meant both.

* * *

It has been nearly a week since I wrote last, a week of constant rain and snow. Hide and I found a cave in the cliffside and spent many idle hours there, talking and playing draughts with stones. I did not write, having only this single sheet left.

This morning the snow stopped and the sun returned. We ventured out, determined to buy more grain for our horses, who are thin and hungry. It was clear and bright, but very cold. Every branch was covered with hard, bright ice, as they still are.