The Best of Lucius Shepard (35 page)

For
a long time the arcevoalo stood beside the pond, thinking about what the Indian
had said, watching the sunlight fade; in its stead a gray-green dusk filtered
down from the holes in the roof. Soon he felt himself dimming, his thoughts
growing slow, his blood sluggish, his muscles draining of strength: it was as
if the dusk were also taking place inside his soul and body, and a gray-green
fluid seeping into him and making him terribly weak and vague, incapable of
movement. He saw that from every crack and cranny, jeweled eyes and scaly
snouts and tendriled mouths were peering and thrusting and gaping. And in this
manifold scrutiny, he sensed the infinitude of lives for whom he was to be the
standard-bearer: those creatures in the ruined foyer were but the innermost
ring of an audience focused upon him from every corner of the jungle. He
apprehended them singly and as one, and from the combined intelligence of their
regard he understood that dusk for him was an hour during which he must be
solitary, both to hide from men the weakness brought on by the transition from
light to dark, and to commune with the source of his imperatives. Dusk
thickened to night, shafts of silvery moonlight shone down to replace those of
the sun, which now burned over Africa, and with the darkness a new moon of
power rose inside the arcevoalo, a silver strength equal yet distinct from the
golden strength he possessed by day, geared more to elusiveness than to acts of
domination. Freed of his intangible bonds, he walked from the hotel and set
forth to find Sangue do Lume.

*
* * *

During the twenty-seven days it
took the arcevoalo to reach Sangue do Lume—which means “Blood of Light” in
Portuguese, which is the language of sanguinary pleasures and heartbreak—he
tested himself against the jungle. He outran the malgaton, outclimbed the
tarzanal, and successfully spied upon the mysterious sortilene. He tested
himself joyfully, and perhaps he never came to be happier than he was in those
days, living in a harmony of green light and birds by day, and by night gazing
into the ruby eyes of a malgaton, into those curious pupils that flickered and
changed shape and brought the comfort of dreams. One evening he scaled a peak,
hoping to lure down the huge shadow that each night obscured the stars, and
when it flew near he saw that it was almost literally a shadow, being
millimeters thick and having neither eyes nor mouth nor any feature that he
could discern. There was something familiar about it, and he sensed that it was
interested in him, that it—like him—was the sole member of its species. But
otherwise it remained a puzzle: a rippling field of opaque darkness as
incomprehensible as a flat black thought.

Sangue
do Lume lay in a hilly valley between three mountains and was modeled after the
old colonial towns, with cobbled streets and white stucco houses that had
ironwork balconies and tiled roofs and gardens in their courtyards. Surrounding
it—also after the style of the old colonial towns—was a slum where lived the
laborers who had built the city. And surrounding the slum was a high wall of
gray metal from which energy weapons were aimed at the jungle (no such weapons,
however, were permitted within the wall). Despite the aesthetic incompatibility
of its defenses, the city was beautiful, beautiful even to the eyes of the
arcevoalo as he studied it from afar. He could not understand why it seemed so,
being the home of his enemy; but he was later to learn that the walls of the
houses contained machines that refined the images of the real, causing the
visual aspect of every object to tend toward the ideal. Thus it was that the
precise indigo shadows were in actuality blurred and dead-black; thus it was
that women who went beyond the walls veiled themselves to prevent their
husbands from taking note of their coarsened appearance; thus it was that the
flies and rats and other pests of Sangue do Lume possessed a certain
eyecatching appeal.

Each
morning dozens of ships shaped like flat arrowpoints would lift from the city
and fly off across the jungle; each afternoon they would return, their holds
filled with dead plants and bloody carcasses, which would be unloaded into
slots in the metal wall, presumably for testing. Seeing this, the arcevoalo
grew enraged. Still, he bided his time and studied the city’s ways, and it was
not until a week after his arrival that he finally went down to the gate. The
gatekeepers were amazed to see a naked man walk out of the jungle and were at
first suspicious, but he told them a convincing tale of childhood abandonment
(a childhood of which, he said, he could recall only his name—Joao Merin
Nascimento), of endless wandering and narrow escapes, and soon the gatekeepers,
their eyes moist with pity, admitted him and brought him before the governor,
Caudez do Tuscanduva: a burly, middle-aged man with fierce black eyes and a
piratical black beard and skin the color of sandalwood. The audience was brief,
for the governor was a busy and a practical man, and when he discovered the
arcevoalo’s knowledge of the jungle, he assigned him to work on the flying
ships and gave orders that every measure should be taken to ensure his comfort.

Such
was the arcevoalo’s novelty that all the best families clamored to provide him
with food and shelter, and thus it was deemed strange that Caudez do Tuscanduva
chose to quarter him in the Valverde house. The Valverdes were involved in a
long-standing blood feud ‘with the governor, one initiated years before upon
the worlds behind the sky. The governor had been constrained by his vows of
office from settling the matter violently, and it was assumed that this
conferring of an honored guest must be his way of making peace. But the
Valverdes themselves were not wholly persuaded by the idea, and therefore—with
the exception of Orlando, the eldest son—they maintained an aloof stance toward
the arcevoalo. Orlando piloted one of the ships that plundered the jungle, and
it was to his ship that the arcevoalo had been assigned. He realized that by
assisting in this work he would better understand his enemy, and so he did the
work well, using his knowledge to track down the malgaton and the sortilene and
creatures even more elusive. Yet it dismayed him, nonetheless. And what most
dismayed him was the fact that as the weeks went by, he began to derive a human
satisfaction from a job well done and to cherish his growing friendship with
Orlando, who, by virtue of his delicate features and olive skin, might have
been the arcevoalo’s close relation.

Orlando
was typical of the citizenry in his attitude of divine right concerning the
land, in his arrogance toward the poor (“They are eternal,” he once said.
“You’ll sooner find a cure for death than for poverty.”) and in his
single-minded pursuit of pleasure; yet there was about him a courage and
soulfulness that gained the arcevoalo’s respect. On most nights he and Orlando
would dress in black trousers and blousy silk shirts, and would join similarly
dressed young men by the fountain in the main square. There they would practice
at dueling with the knife and the cintral (a jungle weed with sharp-edged
tendrils and a rudimentary nervous system that could be employed as a living
cat-o’-nine-tails), while the young women would promenade around them and cast
shy glances at their favorites. The arcevoalo pretended clumsiness with the
weapons, not wanting to display his speed and strength, and he was therefore
often the subject of ridicule. This was just as well, for occasionally these
play-duels would escalate, and then—since even death was beautiful in Sangue do
Lume—blood would eel across the cobblestones, assuming lovely serpentine forms,
and the palms ringing the square would rustle their fronds, and sad music would
issue from the fountain, mingling with the splash of the waters.

Many
of these duels stemmed from disputes over the affections of the governor’s daughter,
Sylvana, the sole child of his dead wife, his pride and joy. The bond between
father and daughter was of such intimacy, it was said that should one’s heart
stop, the other would not long survive. Sylvana was pale, slim, blonde, and
angelic of countenance, but was afflicted by a brittleness of expression that
bespoke coldness and insensitivity. Observing this, the arcevoalo was led to
ask Orlando why the young men would risk themselves for so heartless a prize.
Orlando laughed and said, “How can you understand when you have no experience
of women?” And he invited the arcevoalo to gain this experience by coming with
him to the Favelin, which was the name of the slum surrounding the city.

The
next night, Orlando and the arcevoalo entered the cluttered, smelly streets of
the Favelin. The hovels there were made of rotting boards, pitched like
wreckage at every angle; and were populated by a malnourished, shrunken folk
who looked to be of a different species from Orlando. Twists of oily smoke
fumed from the chimneys; feathered lizards slept in the dirt next to grimy
children; hags in black shawls sacrificed pigs beneath glass bells full of
luminescent fungus and scrawled bloody words in the dust to cure the sick. How
ugly all this might have been beyond the range of the city’s machines, the
arcevoalo could not conceive. They came to a street whereon the doors were hung
with red curtains, and Orlando ushered him through one of these and into a room
furnished with a pallet and a chair. Mounted on the wall was the holograph of a
bearded man who—though the cross to which he was nailed had burst into emerald
flames—had maintained a beatific expression. The flames shed a ghastly light
over a skinny girl lying on a pallet. She was hollowcheeked, with large,
empty-looking eyes and jaundiced skin and ragged dark hair. Orlando whispered
to her, gave her a coin, and—grinning as he prepared to leave—said, “Her name
is Ana.”

Without
altering her glum expression, Ana stood and removed her shift. Her breasts had
the convexity of upturned saucers, her ribs showed, and her genitals were
almost hairless. Nevertheless, the arcevoalo became aroused, and when he sank
down onto the pallet and entered her, he felt a rush of dominance and joy that
roared through him like a whirlwind. He clutched at Ana’s hips with all his
strength, building toward completion. And staring into her hopeless eyes, he
sensed the profound alienness of women, their mystical endurance, the eerie
valences of their moods, and how even their common thoughts turn hidden corners
into bizarre mental worlds. Knowing his dominance over this peculiar segment of
humanity acted to heighten his desire, and with a hoarse cry he fell spent
beside Ana and into a deep sleep.

He
awoke to find her gazing at him with a look of such rapt contemplation that
when she turned her eyes away, the image of his face remained reflected in her
pupils. Timorously, shyly, she asked if he planned to return to the Favelin, to
her. He recalled then the force with which he had clutched her, and he
inspected the tips of his fingers. Droplets glistened beneath the nails, and
there were damp bruises on Ana’s hips. He realized that his touch, his secret
chemistry, had manifested as love, an emotion whose power he apprehended but
whose nature he did not understand.

“Will
you return?” she asked again.

“Yes,”
he said, feeling pity for her. “Tomorrow.”

And
he did return, many times, for in his loveless domination of that wretched girl
he had taken a step closer to adopting the ways of man. He had come to see that
there was little difference between the city and the jungle, that
“civilization” was merely a name given to comfort, and that the process of life
in Sangue do Lume obeyed the same uncivilized laws as did the excesses of the
sortilene. What point was there in warring against man? And, in any case, how
could he win such a war? His touch was a useless power against an enemy who
could summon countless allies from its worlds behind the sky.

Over
the ensuing weeks the arcevoalo grew ever more despondent, and in the throes of
despondency the human elements of his soul grew more and more predominant. At
dusk his reverie was troubled by images of lust and conquest stirred from the
memories of Joao Merin Nascimento. And his work aboard Orlando’s ship became so
proficient that Caudez do Tuscanduva held a fete in his honor, a night of
delirium and pleasure during which a constellation of his profile appeared in
the sky, and the swaying of the palms was choreographed by artificial winds,
and the machines -within the -walls were turned high, beautifying everyone to
such an extent that everyone’s heart was broken.. .broken, and then healed by
the consumption of tiny, soft-boned animals that induced a narcissistic ecstasy
when eaten alive. Despite his revulsion for this practice, the arcevoalo
indulged in it, and, his teeth stained with blood, he spent the remainder of
the night wandering the incomparably beautiful streets and gazing longingly at
himself in mirrors.

Thereafter
Caudez do Tuscanduva took Orlando and the arcevoalo under his wing, telling
them they were to be his protégés, that he had great plans for them. Further,
he urged them to pay court to Sylvana, saying that, yes, she was an icy sort,
but the right man would be able to thaw her. In this Orlando needed no urging.
He plied her with gifts and composed lyrics to her charms. But Sylvana was
disdainful of his efforts, and though for the most part she was equally
disdainful of the arcevoalo, now and then she would favor him with a chilly
smile, which—while scarcely encouraging—made Orlando quite jealous.