Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
Miles moved. Vivian crouched beside him, ready to silence him if necessary. It might not be necessary. Sometimes Miles slept well into the morning….
As he did this time. The wagons were some distance away before he woke.
When she could no longer see the wagons, Vivian assumed the wagons could no longer see her and went down to the campground, hoping that someone would have found some way to leave food and water. The place was as clean as any campsite the Tripmaster had ever left.
‘No cooky?’ asked Miles hungrily. ‘Where’s Brunny?’
Her eyes filled with tears. What had the Tripmaster hoped to do? Had he hoped to take the interlopers into Deepsoil Five and then return for her? Or send someone from Harmony? What would it be, minimum? Three days? Five? Surely he must have….
She put Miles down with an exclamation and ran toward the grove where both the Tripmaster and Brunny had gone. She found it almost at once, a little mound. Tentatively, she dug into it with a dried frond.
Shit.
She wrinkled her nose, disgusted. Well, of course. She shoved the half dried feces aside and kept on digging.
Deep in the hole she found a water bottle, a small carton of rations, and a little plastic sack. In the sack was a note for her and something for Miles.
‘We’ll be back for you,’ Brunny had written. ‘Stay put.’
‘Cookies,’ said Miles with satisfaction.
Staying put for the morning was no problem. The afternoon became less pleasant, with a strong, grit-bearing wind from the south. Vivian left Miles huddled beneath a sheltering Jubal tree while she searched the surrounding area for cover. To the northwest were ramparts of Presences, pale yellow and gray-blue with forests of ’lings gathered at their bases, dwindling southward almost to the trail. Directly north was the pass to Harmony, a long, ’ling-littered slope, almost barren of growth. Nearby, groves of Jubal trees and meadows of knee-high grass lined the trail on both sides. Farther east, another escarpment was first amber, then orange, then vivid red, peaking at its point of ultimate scarlet into the sheer facades of the Enigma. So much she either knew, had seen herself, or had learned from her over-the-shoulder observations of the charts.
To the south, the groves of the trees dwindled to nothing, and the sedimentary rock of a coastal desert took over, only an occasional pillarlike Presence breaking the flat monotony, the ruled-line of the horizon.
The rock was broken by potholes. Within minutes of beginning her search, Vivian found half a dozen of them, none of them much larger than her head. A bit deeper into the rock desert, the holes became larger, and about a quarter of a mile from the trail, in the middle of a patch of fine sand, she found a hole with nicely stepped sides, a sandy bottom, and an overhang on the south edge – a perfect shelter from the strong south wind.
It was warm in the hole, also. The stone walls gathered the rays of the sun and held the warmth. They would give it up slowly, even in the chill of the night. All day they sat in the sand at the bottom of the hole, Vivian manufacturing trucks for Miles out of ration cartons and bits of string, Miles building roads in the sand, both of them retreating under the ledge when the wind blew chill. It was a better hiding place than the grove of trees had been, and from the lip of the hole she could see anyone or anything approaching while it was still miles away. She did not consider that anyone might approach in the dark or in the fog. She had not even seen one of the notorious fogs of the southern coast.
When it came, it was not much to see. The first hint of it was the clamminess of the blankets that wakened her, blankets suddenly soggy and cold in the darkness. She had gathered dried tree fronds for fire, if it became necessary to have fire, and she lit a small pile of them with the firestarter from the rations kit. They smoldered with a dense, eye-burning smoke that would not rise above the lip of the hole, and she threw sand over the charred branches, cursing at them. Better to be cold than half asphyxiated, she thought, not realizing quite how cold it would get. Once that realization struck home, she pulled Miles onto her larger mattress and half deflated the smaller one to make a tent over them, thriftily setting the water jug beneath one folded corner and listening to the plop, plop, plop as condensation from the fog ran into it. A Tripsinger had done that once. She had read about it in his report. She sat cross-legged, with Miles in her lap, making a tent pole of her body and head, both blankets wrapped around them. After an endless time, she even dozed.
It was the voices that wakened her. Soft voices in the dark, calling her.
But not by name. At first the strangeness of that did not strike her. Only when she had come fully awake did the voices seem odd and mysterious. Until then they had been a component of dream.
‘We search for the wife of Lim Ferrence,’ the voices said. Sang. Chanted.
‘Lim Terree,’ another voice contradicted with a soft soprano warble. The mother said he called himself Lim Terree.’
‘So she did,’ the voices sang. ‘We search for the wife of Lim Terree.’
She did not answer, could not have answered. These were ghost voices from a world of spirits and haunts, a childhood world of reasonless fear.
‘Perhaps she is afraid,’ said the second voice. It sounded like a woman’s voice, or a child’s. Not a man’s voice. Vivian’s heart hammered. She had to say something. Perhaps they had come to help her. Help Miles.
‘What do you want?’ she called, her voice a thin shriek on the edge of terror.
‘Do not be afraid, please,’ the voices sang. ‘The mother of Lim Terree thought you were in danger. We have come to help you.’
‘Some men came,’ she cried. ‘Looking for me. For my little boy.’
‘Ah,’ the voices sang. ‘Can you move? Can you walk? Are you strong and well?’
‘Yes. Yes. I’m all right.’
The voices murmured in some other language. A few voices first, then several, then many. A chorus. Whatever it was they were singing, they did it several times over until it satisfied them. In some obscure way, it satisfied Vivian, too. When they were through with the song, it was completed. Even she could hear that.
‘We have sung this predicament,’ the voices told her. ‘You cannot walk in the dark. You have not the means, as we have. You would hurt yourself and the little one. So, when it is light, you must come to the red mountains. We will come behind and wipe away the tracks you will leave.’
‘The red mountain? The Enigma!’
‘Yes. So you call it.’
‘It’s where Lim died,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want to go there!’
‘Not quite there,’ they murmured. ‘Only near there. It is safe there. No Loudsingers … no humans come there.’
‘I wanted to go to Deepsoil Five,’ she cried. ‘Lim’s mother is there.’
‘We think the men who looked for you are also there. It is not safe there. Later we will take you there.’
The fog became silent once more. After a time, she thought she had dreamed it. When light came at last, she knew it had not been a dream. In the fine sand all around the edge of the hole were the strange four-toed prints of viggy feet. She had never heard that they could speak. In the light of day, she could not believe they had spoken.
Her disbelief immobilized her and would have kept her from moving, except for the light that came darting from the trail toward Harmony. Morning had come; the fog had slowly burned away; she had seen the tracks and marveled at them, uncertain whether to be curious or terrified. No one had ever alleged viggies to be harmful. The few specimens who had been caught in the early years of exploitation had all died, most of them very quickly. No rumor of violence attached to them at all. They were virtually unseen, a constant presence to the ear, an unconsidered irrelevancy otherwise.
But no one had ever said they could talk. It was this that made her suspicious. Suppose they were not really viggies at all.
‘But they were here,’ she told herself. ‘Right here, not four feet from me. If they’d wanted to, they could have snatched me up or killed me or whatever they wanted.’
Still, she was undecided. Then, as she was having a slow look around from the lip of the hole, she saw the glint of light up the trail toward Harmony. Flash. Then again, flash. She watched for a long time until it came again, three, four times. Light reflecting off lenses. Up that trail, at the limit of vision, someone was watching this place.
Had they been watching yesterday?
She slid down into the hole and began to pack their few belongings. A little way east of them was a narrow ridge, paralleling the trail, running eastward along it. If she could get behind that, no one could see her from the trail.
She watched first, waiting until the flashes came, then came again, then did not come. Then she was out of the hole and trotting toward the east with Miles staggering along behind. When they came to a grove of Jubal trees, she picked up Miles and darted into the grove to lie behind a tree and watch the Harmony trail.
After a time, flash, and flash again. This time she carried Miles as she trotted quickly away to the next grove. She had begun to get the feel of it. Someone was taking a look every quarter hour.
It took four more dashes between groves to attain the ridge. Then they were behind it.
‘More game,’ suggested Miles, who had become fond of diving behind trees.
‘Not right now, my big boy,’ she told him. ‘Right now, we’re just going for a long walk. Can you do that?’
He nodded, mouth pursed in a bargaining expression. ‘Cooky?’
‘When we stop for lunch, I’ll give you a cooky. How’s that?’
‘Fine.’
Long before they stopped for lunch he was worn out and asleep on her shoulder. Long before they arrived at the red mountains, while they were still miles from them, she was equally worn. Evening found them curled in a circle of settler’s brush, eating cold rations and drinking less water than they wanted, then falling into exhausted slumber.
‘Come,’ the voice said, almost in her ear. ‘You cannot sleep now. Men are seeking you. Come.’
This time she saw them, in the thinnest glimmer of New Moon light, occulted by the shadow of Serendipity to a mere scythe of silver. They were furred and large-eyed, with wide, mobile ears. Their necks were corrugated with hanging flaps of bright hide, shadowed red and amber and orange, and their heads were decked with long, feathery antennae that looked like nothing so much as the fronds of Jubal trees. They were all around her, singing, singing in her own language, and she was not afraid of them.
‘Where are the men?’ she whispered. ‘How far back?’
‘They saw you come this way,’ the viggies sang. ‘Even though we wiped the lands clean of your feet, still they search.’
‘What are we to do?’
‘We will take you where they cannot go, woman of Lim Terree, honored be his name.’
They guided her. She carried Miles, and two of the viggies ran along at her sides, their hands on her thighs, pushing or tugging ever so slightly to keep her on the right path. Bondri had introduced himself, as they went he named off the others of the troupe. Sometimes they slowed, sometimes to allow others of the troupe to clear a way ahead, sometimes to allow those who had been clearing the way behind to change jobs with others. Always they sang, sometimes in their own language, sometimes in hers. So she learned the story of Favel, the broken one, and of his release by the Loudsinger child. She wanted to laugh, then to cry. Lim hadn’t done it out of generosity. He hadn’t done it out of sympathy for the poor viggy, either. He’d done it out of spite and wounded feelings and jealousy and pain. She tried to tell Bondri this, and he listened with one ear cocked backward to hear her.
‘Good,’ he said at last. ‘This is what Favel wanted. Another view to make his song more true.’
It made no sense to her. Only that they were saving her, and Miles. That made sense.
They went eastward to the end of the ridge, then northward, into the crystal range. Now the viggies were singing in their own tongue exclusively, quieting the earth that trembled beneath them, opening ways that would be closed to those who followed. Some of the troupe climbed to the tops of peaks and yodeled into the night, while all those below opened their ears wide, listening.
‘What are they doing?’ she asked Bondri.
‘The troupe of Chowdri goes around near here. They keep watch on the Mad One, the one you call the Enigma. I have a daughter to trade with Chowdri, and we will sing of Favel’s death so the word may go east and south.’ He did this all in one breath, a kind of recitatif, and she shook her head in amazement. Lim had been an accomplished musician, perhaps a genius. But Bondri could do things with his voice Lim could never have attempted. Of course, Lim hadn’t had a song-sack on his neck to hold several extra lungfuls of air, either.
At dawn they stopped. The Enigma towered above them, a little to the east, like two bloody swords stabbed upward into the sky. Several weary viggies ran up from the south, singing as they came.
‘The men have gone back the way they came, still looking. They did not find any sign of the woman or the child. They say they will go to Deepsoil Five, that the woman must eventually come to Deepsoil Five.’
Well, she had left some of her few belongings on the wagon, in a carton. Undoubtedly whoever was after her and Miles had found them.
‘They cannot come in here,’ Bondri said. ‘Your people have no words to let them into this place.’
‘But I cannot stay with your people forever, Bondri Wide Ears! Someday I must go to my own people.’
‘Someday is someday. We will sing that later. Just now we eat.’
Miles woke up. He looked at the viggies with total wonder, then politely offered Bondri his last cooky. Bondri took it gravely and ate half, returning half. In return, Bondri gave him a cup of bark sap, which Miles shared with his mother. When she had drained the cup, she looked at it carefully, paling as she did so.
‘What … what is this?’
‘An ancestor cup,’ Bondri replied. This one belonged to Favel, who honored your husband’s name. Favel who laid his debt upon us that good should be returned for good.’