River of Blue Fire (39 page)

A sudden thought jabbed her like a long, cold needle.
And if Stephen is tied up in this system somehow, if he's been sucked into it in some way, and the whole thing goes down
—
what then? Will he wake up? Or will he be trapped in a dying
 . . .
whatever it is? Machine? Universe
?

Without thinking, she looked to !Xabbu as though the little man could protect her from the chilling thought that she had not spoken aloud. He was holding his hands before him, wiggling his fingers—doing the string game without string again, she realized. His thin back was turned toward her.

She needed this man, she realized in a rush of affection, this sweet, clever person hidden behind a monkey's shape. He was her best friend in the world. Astonishing to consider—she had known him less than a year—but it was true.

Renie worked the lace of her boot free, then slid closer to !Xabbu.

“Here,” she said, handing him the cord. “It's easier with real string, isn't it?”

He turned it over in his small hands. “Your boot will not stay on. That is not safe.” He furrowed his brow in thought, then lifted the bootlace to his mouth and bit it through with sharp teeth. He handed back half the lace. “I do not need a long piece. My fingers are smaller now.”

She smiled and retied her boot. “I'm sorry I spoke that way to you earlier. I was wrong.”

“You are my friend. You want what is best for me—for both of us.” It was astonishing how serious a baboon face could look. “Would you like to see me work the string?”

Azador, seated against the wall a few meters away, glanced over at them for a moment, but his eyes were distant; he seemed lost in thought.

“Certainly. Please show me.”

!Xabbu tied a knot in the section of bootlace and stretched it into a rectangle, then his fingers moved rapidly in and out, plucking at the strands like a pair of nesting birds, until he held between his palms a complex, geometrical abstraction.

“Here is the sun. Can you see it?”

Renie was not sure, but she thought the diamond shape near the middle of the design might be what he meant. “I think so.”

“Now the sun sinks low—it is evening.” !Xabbu moved his fingers and the diamond moved down toward the line of horizon, flattening as it went.

Renie laughed and clapped her hands. “That's very good!”

He smiled. “I will show you another picture.” His monkey fingers moved quickly. Renie could not help noticing how much his movements resembled someone using squeezers to input data. When he stopped, he had made a completely different design, with a tight nexus of strings in one of the upper corners. “This is the bird called the ‘honey guide.' Can you see him?”

Renie caught her breath, startled. “You said that name before.” It seemed important, but she needed long moments before she remembered. “No. Sellars said it. When we met him in Mister J's, and you were . . . unconscious. Dreaming, whatever. He sent a honey guide to bring you back from wherever you had gone.”

!Xabbu nodded his head solemnly. “He is a wise man, Sellars. The honey guide is very important to my people. We will follow him for great distances until he leads us to the wild honey. But he does not like to lead humans to the honey—we are too greedy. Ah, see now, he has found some!” !Xabbu wiggled his fingers and the small spot in the corner moved agitatedly from side to side. “He is going to tell his best friend, the honey badger.” !Xabbu quickly made another picture, this time with a large shape at the bottom and the small shape at the top. “They are such close friends, the honey guide and the honey badger, that my people would say they sleep under the same skin. Do you know the honey badger, Renie?”

“It's also called a ratel, isn't it? I've seen them in zoos. Low to the ground, claws for digging, right?”

“Mean bastards,” Azador said without looking up. “Take your fingers off if you give them a chance.”

“They are very brave,” !Xabbu said with deliberate dignity. “The honey badger will fight to protect what is his.” He turned back to Renie. “And the little bird is his best friend. When the bees have finished making the honey, and it is dripping golden inside the tree or in the crevice of a rock, the honey guide comes flying out of the bush, calling, ‘
Quick, quick, it is honey! Come quick
!”' As !Xabbu repeated the words, this time in his own clicking language, he made the small upper figure vibrate again. The larger one remained immobile. “Then his friend hears him, and feels that there is no better sound, and he hurries after the bird, whistling like a bird himself, calling, ‘
See me, o person with wings! I am coming after you
!' That is a wonderful sound, to hear friend calling to friend across the bush.” !Xabbu worked the strings with his agile fingers, and now the lower shape was moving too, and as the smaller figure became tiny, so did the larger shrink away, as though the honey badger hurried after its guide.

“That's wonderful,” Renie said, laughing. “I could see them!”

“They are the closest friends, honey guide and honey badger. And when the honey badger comes to the honey at last, he always throws some out on the ground for his friend to share.” He let the string fall slack between his fingers. “As you do for me, Renie. We are friends like that pair, you and I.”

She felt something catch in her throat, and for a split-instant thought they were no longer locked in an institutional cell, but stood again beneath the ringed moon in !Xabbu's memory-desert, exhausted and happy from their dancing.

She had to swallow before she could speak. “We are friends, !Xabbu. Yes, we are.”

The silence was broken by Azador loudly clearing his throat. When they turned toward him, he looked up, feigning surprise. “No, do not mind me,” he said. “Carry on.”

!Xabbu turned back to Renie and his mouth curled in a shy smile that wrinkled the baboon muzzle. “I have bored you.”

“Not at all. I love your stories.” She did not know what else to say. There were always these strange watersheds with !Xabbu, and she had no idea what they might be leading to—a deeper and more familylike friendship than she could imagine? True love? At times she felt there was no human model for what their relationship might be. “Tell me another story, please? If you don't mind.” She looked over to Azador. “If we have enough time.”

Their cellmate, now engrossed in his quiet whistling again, made a vague hand gesture, bidding them amuse themselves however they pleased.

“I will tell you another story with the string game,” !Xabbu said. “We use it sometimes to teach stories to the children.” He suddenly looked abashed. “I do not mean to say that I think you are a child, Renie. . . .” He examined her face and was reassured. “This is a story of how the hare got his split lip. It is also a story of Grandfather Mantis. . . .”

“May I ask you a question before you start? Mantis—Grandfather Mantis—is he an insect? Or an old man?

Her friend chortled. “He is an insect, of course. But he is also an old man, the oldest of his family, and the eldest of the First People. Remember, in the earliest days,
all
the animals were people.”

Renie tried to figure this out. “So is he tiny? Or big?” She could not help remembering the terrible, razor-limbed monstrosity that had stalked them through the Hive. From the look that passed across his long face, she could see !Xabbu remembered, too.

“Grandfather Mantis rides between the horns of the eland, so he is very small. But he is oldest and cleverest of the First People, the grandfather of the Elder Race, so he is very big, too.”

“Ah.” She examined his expression, but could see no mockery. “Then I suppose I'm ready for the story.”

!Xabbu nodded. He quickly brought his fingers apart and began to move them in and out, until another many-angled pattern had formed. “In the early days, there was a time when Grandfather Mantis was sick, and almost felt himself to be dying. He had eaten
biltong
—that is dried meat—that he had stolen from his own son, Kwammanga the Rainbow, and when Kwammanga found out it was gone, he said ‘Let that
biltong
be alive again in the stomach of the person who has stolen from me.' He did not know it was his own father. And so the
biltong
became alive again in the stomach of Grandfather Mantis, and gave him a terrible pain.”

!Xabbu's fingers flexed and the picture rippled. A shape near the middle wriggled from side to side, so that Renie could almost see Grandfather Mantis writhing in his agony.

“He went to his wife, Rock-Rabbit, and told her he felt himself to be very ill. She told him to go into the bush and find water, so that by drinking he would soothe himself. Groaning, he went away.

“There was no water close by, and Mantis walked for many days, until he came at last to the Tsodilo Hills, and in their heights he found the water he had been seeking. Drinking deeply, he felt better, and decided he would rest a while before returning to his home.”

The baboon hands moved through a succession of shapes, and Renie saw the hills rise and the water shimmer. A short distance away, Azador had stopped whistling and seemed to be listening.

“But back in Grandfather Mantis'
kraal
everyone was frightened that he had not returned, and they feared that if he died they would never see him again, for no one of the Early Race had ever died before. So his wife Rock-Rabbit sent her cousin, the hare, to go and look for him.”

For just a brief moment Hare made his appearance in the net of string, then bounded off.

“Hare ran in Mantis' footprints all the way to the Tsodilo Hills, for he was a very swift runner, and reached them by nightfall. When he had climbed the hills, he found Mantis sitting beside the water, drinking and bathing the dust from his body. ‘Grandfather,' said Hare, ‘your wife and your children and all the other First People send to ask how you are. They fear that you are dying, and thus that they will never see you again.'

“Mantis was feeling much better, and he was sorry that all the others were worried. ‘Go back to them and say that they are foolish—there is no true death,' he told Hare. ‘What, do you think that when we die, we are like this grass?' He lifted a handful of grass. ‘That we die and, feeling ourselves to be like the dry grass, turn into this dust?' He lifted the dust in his other hand and flung it into the air, then pointed at the moon, which hung in the night sky.

“Grandfather Mantis himself had caused the moon to be, but that is another story.

“‘Go and tell them,' he said, ‘that as the moon dies but then is made new, so too in dying they shall be made new. And thus they should have no fear.' And so he sent the Hare back down out of the hills, bearing his message.

“But Hare was of the sort who believes himself very clever, and as he ran back toward the
kraal
of Grandfather Mantis and his family, he thought to himself, ‘Old Mantis cannot be certain of this, for does not everything die and turn to dust? If I give them this foolish message, they will think
me
foolish, and I shall never find a bride, and the other people of the Early Race will turn away from me.' So when he reached the
kraal
, where Rock-Rabbit and all the rest were waiting for him, he told them, ‘Grandfather Mantis says that dying we will not be renewed like the moon, but instead like the grass we will turn into dust.'

“And so all the people of Mantis' family told all the other First People what Hare told them Grandfather Mantis had said, and all the First People were filled with great fear, and wept and fought among themselves. Thus, when Mantis himself came back to his home, with his bag of hartebeeste skin over one shoulder and his digging stick in his hand, he found everyone full of sadness. When he learned what the Hare had said, and which was now being spoken as the truth by all the First People in the world, he was so angry that he lifted his digging stick and struck the Hare, splitting his lip. Then he told Hare that none of the bushes or grass of the veldt or rocks of the desert pans would ever keep him safe, and that his enemies would always seek him and find him.

“And that is why the hare has a split lip.”

The last string picture vibrated for a moment between !Xabbu's outstretched hands, then he brought his palms together, making it disappear.

“That was lovely.” Renie would have said more, but Azador abruptly stood.

“Time to go.”

Renie's arms were starting to hurt. “This doesn't make any sense.”

“It does not make sense
to you
,” Azador said airily. “Just keep your hands pressed flat.”

Renie muttered a curse. The position, facing the wall with her arms spread wide, pushing against the cold cement, was unpleasantly reminiscent of being arrested. Azador was lying on his stomach between her feet with his hands also pressed against the wall, parallel to hers but just above the floor. “All right,” she said, “you've convinced me you're out of your mind. What now?”

“Now it's what's-your-name's turn—monkey man.” Azador craned to look over his shoulder at !Xabbu, who was watching with a certain lack of enthusiasm. “Pick a spot as close to the center as possible—where the middle of an ‘x' would be if our hands were on the ends. Then hit it.”

“It is a very hard wall,” !Xabbu pointed out.

Azador's laugh was a grunt of irritation. “You are not going to break it down with your little hand, monkey man. Just do what I say.”

!Xabbu slid in so that his head was against Renie's stomach, just below her breasts. It made her uncomfortable, but her friend did not hesitate. When he had chosen his spot, he struck with the flat of his hand.

Before the smack had finished echoing from the cell's hard surfaces, the section of wall demarcated by their extended arms had vanished, leaving a blank white surface on all the exposed edges. With nothing left to support her, Renie stumbled forward into the next cell.