River of Blue Fire (76 page)

!Xabbu's dance continued, a throbbing, rhythmic movement that carried him gradually around the circle he had drawn. A few birdcalls enlivened the dawn, and the jungle trees rustled and shivered in the breeze, but in the camp the only movement was the baboon pacing
step, shuffle, shuffle, step
, bending toward the ground and then straightening to stretch his arms high and wide, eyes turned ever outward. He completed the circle and kept going, now a little faster, now slowing once more.

Time slid by. A dozen circuits became a hundred. Emily's eyes had long ago trembled and fallen shut, and Renie was half-hypnotized with fatigue, but still !Xabbu danced, moving to music he alone could hear, tracing steps that had been immeasurably ancient when Renie's own tribal ancestors had first come to the southern reach of Africa. It was the Stone Age she was watching—the living memory of humankind, here in the most modern of all environments. !Xabbu was aligning himself, she realized—not with the material universe, with the sun and moon and stars, but with the greater cosmos of meaning. He was relearning his own story.

And as the dance went on, and the jungle began to ripen into full dawn, Renie felt the cold hopelessness inside her thaw just a little. It was the story that mattered, that was what he had been telling her. Porcupine, Mantis—they were not just quaint folktales, but ways of seeing things. They were a story that gave life order, that taught the universe how to speak the words that humans could understand. And what was anything, any human learning or belief, but just that? She could let chaos swallow her up, she realized, as the All-Devourer swallowed everything—even Grandfather Mantis, the spirit of first knowing—or she could shape chaos into something she could understand, as Porcupine had done, finding order where only hopelessness seemed to exist. She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.

And as she thought these things, and as the little man in the baboon's body danced on, Renie felt the thaw inside her spread and warm. She watched !Xabbu drawing his careful repetitions, as beautiful as a written language, as complex and satisfying as the movement of a symphony, and suddenly realized that she loved him.

It was a shock, but it was not a surprise. She was not certain whether it was a man-woman love—it was hard to get past the anti-pathy of their different cultures and the strange masks they now wore—but she knew beyond a doubt she had never loved anyone more, nor had she ever loved anyone in quite the same way. His monkey form, which disguised but did not truly hide his bright, brave spirit, was transformed from a subject of bemusement into a shining clarity of meaning, as powerful as a drug experience, as hard to explain as a dream.

I'm the one who has to see that we are all connected
, she thought. !
Xabbu's dream told him that all the First People needed to come together, like in that story about his ancestor and the baboons. ‘I wish there were baboons on this rock,' wasn't that it? But that story isn't really about him
—
it's about me. I'm the one the hyena has been chasing, and !Xabbu has offered me his shelter, just like the People Who Sit on Their Heels did for his ancestor
.

“There
are
baboons on this rock,” she whispered to herself.

And, discovering this truth, she felt it burning inside her. It was so
right
. She had turned away from a gift, thinking it did not matter, but in fact a gift—and specifically the gift of love—was the only thing that
did
matter.

She wanted to grab the little man, pull him out of his trance and explain to him all that she had just comprehended, but his concentration was as great as ever, and she understood that these revelations were hers—!Xabbu was searching for his own. So instead she fell into step behind him in the circle, hesitantly at first, then with ever-growing confidence, until they moved in parallel, the diameter of the circular track always between them, but the circle itself always connecting them. He gave no sign he knew she had joined him, but inside her heart, Renie felt sure that he did.

Emily woke up again, and this time, seeing both her companions treading the circle, her eyes went even wider.

They danced on as dawn crested and morning took possession of the jungle.

Out of silence, a story. Out of chaos, order. Out of nothingness, love
 . . .

Renie had been in a sort of trance herself for a long time, and it was only when weariness made her stumble that she saw the world around her again. It was a disturbing transition: she had been somewhere else, and knew in an inexplicable way what !Xabbu meant by “the eyes of the heart.” He himself was still dancing, but slower now, with great deliberation, as though he were approaching a moment of reckoning.

Something else was moving in the corner of her vision. Renie turned to see Emily crouching like a frightened animal, waving her hand as if to drive something away. At first, Renie thought that the sight of her and !Xabbu dancing so long and so single-mindedly had unnerved the girl. Then she saw a face peering in at them from the undergrowth, a scant half a dozen yards away.

Renie stumbled again, but out of caution forced herself to dance on, although her heart was no longer in it. She examined the spy as best she could without obviously staring. It was one of the patchwork monstrosities they had earlier disturbed drinking at the river. The face was human, but only barely. The nose looked like something else that just happened to be in the middle of the face—formerly a toe, perhaps, or a thumb; the creature's ears jutted from its neck, which made its naked head seem stark as a battering ram. But despite these terrifying abnormalities, the creature did not seem threatening. The cowlike eyes watched !Xabbu's dance with a yearning that was almost pathetic.

But that doesn't mean anything
. Renie's revelatory trance was shattered, her internal alarms jangling.
Those creatures have been altered
—
expressions, body language, none of those things can be trusted
.

She slowed her own dancing as naturally as she could, then stepped out of the circle as though she had finally tired. It was not altogether false—she was panting and soaked with sweat. She stole another look as she wiped her forehead. A second face had appeared beside the first, this one with its eyes set far too low in its cheeks. A third freakish countenance followed, then a fourth, all now jostling in the undergrowth to watch the baboon dance.

Emily had fallen to her hands and knees and was pressing her face against the ground, her thin back quivering with barely-suppressed terror. Renie was worried, but there was something so timid and helpless about the creatures that, altered or not, she had begun to feel they offered no immediate danger. Still, she called out to her friend.

“!Xabbu. Don't do anything sudden, but we have guests.”

He danced on,
stamp, shuffle, shuffle, stamp
. If he was only pretending not to hear her, it was a brilliant piece of acting.

“!Xabbu. I wish you would stop now.” Behind her, Emily made a little choking noise of fear. Her friend still did not seem to notice anything outside himself.

More of the damaged people were becoming visible. At least a dozen had formed a semicircle in the thick vegetation at the edge of camp, cautious as deer, and Renie heard a faint rustling behind her as well. She and her companions were slowly being surrounded.

“!Xabbu!” she said, louder now. And he stopped.

The baboon tottered for a moment, then fell down. By the time Renie reached his side he had struggled back up to a sitting position, but the way his head wobbled on his neck frightened her, and although she held him and spoke his name, his eyes would not focus. A stream of clicking, unintelligible speech came out of his mouth, dumbfounding her, until she realized that the networks' translation gear must not know any Bushman dialects.

“!Xabbu, it's me, Renie. I can't understand you.” She fought against rising panic. !Xabbu engrossed in dancing and meditating was one thing, but !Xabbu unable to communicate at all was a lonely, terrifying thought.

The baboon eyes rolled back under his lids and the incomprehensible language, fluid and yet laced with percussive sounds, trailed away to a whisper. Then, weakly, he said, “Renie?” Her name, that single word, was one of the most wonderful things she had ever heard. “Oh, Renie, I have seen things, learned things—the sun is ringing for me again.”

“We don't have time to talk about it,” she said quietly. “Those creatures we saw earlier—they're here. All around the camp, watching us.”

!Xabbu's eyes popped open, but he did not appear to have heard anything she'd said. “I have been foolish.” His evident good cheer was startling. Renie wondered if he had gone a little mad. “Ah, it is different already.” His eyes narrowed. “But what is it I am feeling? What is different?”

“I told you, those creatures are here! They're all around us.”

He clambered out of her arms, but only flicked a glance at the ring of half-humans before turning back to Renie. “Shadows,” he said. “But there is something I have missed.” To her astonishment, he put his long muzzle close to her face and began sniffing.

“!Xabbu! What are you doing?” She pushed him away, terrified that the watchers might turn violent now that the Bushman's dance had ended. !Xabbu did not fight her, but simply walked around her and resumed sniffing her from the other side. His monkey hands moved delicately across her arms and shoulders.

The audience moved closer now, sliding out of the vegetation and into the circle of the camp. There was no threat in their movements, but they were still a frightening sight, a catalogue of malformation—heads set too low, arms growing from rib cages, extra legs, a row of hands running down a back like a dinosaur's crest, and all the modifications done with what appeared to have been clumsy carelessness. Worst of all, though, were the patchwork people's eyes—stupefied by pain and fear, but still aware of their own suffering.

In desperation, Renie tried to grab at !Xabbu, but he eluded her, continuing instead to sniff and pat and ignore her questions. Her terror and confusion were already threatening to overwhelm her when a loud sigh rippled through the monstrous human herd. Renie froze, certain that the creatures were about to charge, which allowed !Xabbu the freedom to thrust his hand into her pocket.

“I should have known it,” he said as he lifted Azador's lighter up to catch the morning sun. “It was speaking, but I was not listening.”

The crowd of watchers began to move again, but instead of attacking, they stepped back into the undergrowth so quickly that their misshapen forms almost seemed to have liquified and flowed away. Renie was stunned, both by the apparently causeless retreat and her friend's even more incomprehensible behavior.

“!Xabbu, what . . . what are you doing?” she gasped.

“This is a thing that does not belong,” He twisted the lighter from side to side as though hoping to see some secret mark. “I should have known it before, but I have let myself become confused. The First People were calling to me, but I did not hear.”

“I don't know what you're talking about!” The deformed creatures were gone, but her sense of tension had not diminished. A branch snapped nearby, loud as a firecracker. Something was crunching toward them through the jungle, careless of stealth. Even as Renie reached out to her distracted friend, a group of dark upright shapes shambled through the line of trees and stopped at the edge of the clearing.

There were perhaps half a dozen of them, huge, shaggy, bearlike creatures that were nothing so simple and clean as bears. Livid patches of moss grew on their pelts, and vines rooted to the sides of their necks coiled down through the fur, as writhingly alive as worms, to burrow in again at crotch and knee. But worse of all, where their heads should have been they wore instead the mindless smiles of carnivorous plants, great shiny purple and green pods which sprouted directly from their short necks, the mouthlike openings edged with toothy spines.

As these monsters waited, chests jerking with heavy, uneven breaths, another figure shambled out of the trees and took up a position in front of the plant-bears, a shape that although shorter, bulked even wider than its massive servants. Its tiny eyes gleamed with pleasure, and its flabby mouth stretched in a grin that revealed broken tusks of different yellowed lengths.

“Well, well, well,” rumbled Lion. “Tinman has been a bad little machine, letting you get away. But his bad luck is my good, and now the game is mine. Ah! This must be the Dorothy, and its . . . container.” He took a waddling step toward Emily, who scuttled away across the dirt like a wounded crab; Lion laughed. “Congratulations on your pregnancy, little Emily-creature.” He rotated his knobby head toward Renie and !Xabbu. “Some sculptor once said that the statue is already inside the marble—that all the artist is doing is cutting away what is unnecessary.” He laughed again. Spit glistened on the distended lower lip. “I feel the same way about the Dorothy.”

“What is the point of this?” Renie demanded, but she knew how small and unconvincing her voice sounded, how insignificant her strength was compared to even one of the massive and hideous plant-bears. Hopelessness washed through her. “It's all a game, isn't it? Just a cruel game!”

“But it is
our
game—my game, now.” Lion smirked. “You are the intruders. And, as someone once said . . .
trespassers will be eaten
.”

Renie wracked her mind for anything about Lion or his Twin that might help, but nothing came. They were fearsome, Azador had told her. They were unimaginably cruel.

“I can feel something,” said !Xabbu brightly, startling Renie so that she turned to stare at him. He still stared at the lighter cupped in his hands; Lion, his mindless slaves, everything else might not have existed. “Something . . .”