seasoning, we make up for in nutrition.”
Harlan wiped his lip.
I’ll need a lot more convincing of that
, he thought. But the growing threat of hunger persuaded him to take another swig, which this time he swallowed. “Where did you find the dish?” And the cooking pot, come to that? The potatoes, he assumed, were another ‘blessing’ (as he’d heard one of the men say) from a dying firebird.
“We go out regularly in teams of four, searching, collecting up what we can.
Sometimes when we’re digging the crops,we come across gems like the cookingpot.”
“Then there’s really stuff out there?”
A smile played across Mathew’s face. “I told you, this place is not as dead as itsname implies. The Aunts provide us withcloth, but no food. They are well awarethat with enough ingenuity anddetermination a tribe can survive here –just. By handing us the responsibility ofscraping together our meagre existencethey can claim they’re not condemning usto outright starvation, which eases theirquestionable conscience and keeps themwithin the law. But hundreds do die here, Harlan.”
A weary groan from the bundle ofblankets in the corner announced that
Bernard, at least, was still alive. Rodericmoved across the floor to attend to him.
“Do the Aunts know about the crops
and the firebirds?”
“If they do, they’ve done nothing to stop it,” said Lefarr.
“Has it always happened?”
“No,” said Lefarr. “Roderic can tell you more about it than I.”
Harlan looked at the kindly old man. The skin on his cheeks was painfully thin, his facial muscles all but stretched to their limit. He was hardly the best advertisement for his own cooking, but his small grey eyes were quick and lively, and if what Lefarr had said about the
collection of minds here was accurate, even a bag of bones like him was not to be underestimated.
“The crops are a recent development,”
said Roderic as he welcomed Bernard
awake, “though it’s never been uncommon to see firebirds circling overhead, leaving food or helpful implements.”
“This was dropped by one,” said Lefarr, taking a needle from a pouch pocket stitched across the front of his robe.
Harlan nodded. He’d been wonderinghow the clothing had been put together. Hepinched at his robe and sniffed an armpit. The odour from it wasn’t good.
“It’s rumoured that they aid the sick,” Roderic added, “though we, on the Isle,have never seen any evidence of that.” Hehanded Bernard a dish of broth. “The kindof event you witnessed in the valley beganwhen one of our tribe, a man called Hugo
Abbot, whom you met yesterday, wasexploring the region and saw a distressedbird come down in the field beside him. One of its wings had got entangled in asmall piece of netting that Hugo had found. Unbeknown to Hugo, the net had blownaway on the wind, into the flight-path ofthe bird. Hugo was able to tear away thenet, but in its struggles the bird had put thewing out of joint. It was in anguish andready to give up its life. But Hugosteadied it as best he could and brought itto the Shelter where another of our men, Terance Humbey—”
“A medic in Central,” Lefarr put in.
“—was able to tend it. The bird gave aterrible cry of suffering as Terance resetthe wing. The poor creature went painfullylimp, and at first we thought it had died of
shock. But Terance detected a trace of air in its nostrils and he stayed with it until it duly came round. By then he had strapped the wing and settled the bird in a makeshift cage. It awoke blowing plumes of fire, spitting its red-hot embers at us as if we were its mortal enemy. Hugo bravely knelt down and spoke to it. Perhaps it was his gentle tone of voice or the fact that the bird simply recognised its rescuer, but it allowed him to put his hands up close and take the cage apart. There the bird stood, glorious in its bright yellow plumage, with its ear tufts raised like orange twigs. It looked at us all in turn, then began to peck at the binding on its wing. Terance followed Hugo’s example and knelt down also. Gently, so
as not to startle the creature, he
unwrapped the binds and set the thing free. It took to the sky in a flash of feathers, rolling and tumbling as though it was flying for the very first time. We clapped it and cheered and wished it well. Before
it left to go back to wherever it had come from, it hovered above us with its wings spread apart and the sun forming an aura around it. It was a wonderful sight to behold. Two days later, the first one came to add its fire to the Isle. Since then, others have done the same. The result, as you saw, is extraordinary.”
Lefarr stood up. “I’ve called a gathering,” he said. “Whenever new men arrive we come together to introduce ourselves and exchange knowledge. Roderic will show you what to do with your dishes. I’ll be waiting outside.”
“Mathew?”
Lefarr turned to look at Bernard. The
tech:nician looked weary, but was
otherwise OK.
“What does one do about… the soup that
isn’t absorbed?”
Lefarr laughed out loud. “One thing we’re not short of is ground to bury waste in. Roderic will take you to a designated field. When you’re ready, join us.”
The twenty-two Followers of Agawinassembled in an open space between thehuts. Many of them were sitting on parts ofold trees they had presumably draggedthere. How far, Harlan wondered, didtheir explorations take them; he had seenno sign of trees the night before. Bernardwas guided to a spare block of wood and
Harlan to a boulder that must haverequired the shoulders of the strongestmen to move it. Lefarr sat opposite,winding his limbs around a ragged trunkthat seemed to have footholds speciallycarved out for him.
“Friends,” he announced, “we welcometo the tribe Harlan Merriman, once a Professor of Phys:ics, and his colleague, Bernard Brotherton, from that same line ofwork.”
The men looked at Harlan keenly.
“In a moment,” Lefarr went on. “I willask you both to explain why you were senthere. But first, let us introduce ourselvesto you. On my left is Hugo Abbot, whomyou have already heard about.”
“Welcome,” said Hugo. He nodded hisnearly-bald head. Two slim wedges of
dark brown hair sat like crowns just above his ears. He wore round-rimmed
spex, though only the left side lens was present. “I was sent here for openly speaking my opinions of the Aunts and advocating a return to natural births.” He turned to a square-chinned man at his left, whose jaw was red with shaving marks. Whatever cutting implement the firebirds might have gifted him, it wasn’t slick or intended to scrape human skin. The whole tribe, bar two, had facial hair.
“Welcome,” he said, thick and nasal. “My name is Colm Fellowes. I am an engineer. I used to imagineer and tune Re:movers. I was sent here for making them deliberately malfunction when my wife was taken for Aunthood against her wishes.”
That raised a small cheer. And so itwent on, all around the circle. One manafter another, telling of their rebellionagainst the Higher or the Grand Design. Harlan’s confession of his experimentgone wrong stimulated many questions andprompted a long discussion about theproperties of time and the possible role ofthe firebirds in it. Finally, Lefarr said tothe new men, “Is there anything you wouldlike to ask of us?”
“Yes,” said Harlan. “I’m interested in the tower.” He pointed over his shoulder to the hill, rising like a moody giant in the background.
“Does the path take you to it?” Bernard asked. From his position he could see the hill clearly. He nodded at a faint brown line winding across the elevated ground.
“The tower is a sacred place,” said Hugo. “It’s all that remains of the dwelling place of Agawin.”
Harlan swivelled on his boulder, cupping his hands above his eyes. “Can we go up there?”
Lefarr glanced around the circle. He leaned close to Hugo Abbot and spoke in a whisper. Hugo gave the faintest of nods. “It is every man’s right to make the climb,” said Mathew, “but I should warn you, there are dangers.”
Bernard’s questioning gaze shifted back to the hillside. The sun was sitting just behind the summit. “It isn’t high. Surely we’re not likely to fall?”
One of the men, Thomas Spilo, gave out a short grunt.
Mathew raised a hand before others
could respond. “Men have been changed by the experience, Bernard. The tower, as Hugo said, is a spiritual place.”
Another of the men muttered something and for a second time Mathew overrode it.
“We will climb the Isle today, before dark. Myself, Colm Fellowes, Harlan and Bernard.”
“Why isle, not hill?” Harlan asked. He couldn’t wait to get started.
Colm Fellowes replied, “Alavon was once surrounded by water. When the Great Re:duction began, it drained to leave the marsh you crossed.”
“Re:duction?” Bernard said, looking round the circle.
“You’ve never wondered how these
lands earned their name?” said Lefarr.
Bernard concentrated inwardly for a
moment. “Weren’t we all taught that the elemental forces – ‘nature’ I believe it
was called – simply fell into collapse when humans gathered in Co:pern:ica Central?”
One or two of the men began to shuffle
their feet.
“I’m afraid that’s not correct,” Hugo Abbot said. “Mathew, tell them what you discovered in the Geo:grafical Institute.”
Lefarr waited for Harlan to look at him, then said, “As I’m sure you know, all living things have auma, from the smallest blade of grass to the largest hill. Once, this land was rich with it. Every stone, every granule of soil, every creature that burrowed through or lived in the soil or ran across its surface or swam in its pools of life-giving water, every tree or flower
that sprouted from the land and drank in the rain that fell from the clouds – all of
these things had natural auma, linked together in a collective consciousness called ‘Gai:a’ and shared with us, the most privileged, intelligent lifeform on the planet. And do you know what we did with that privilege, when we eventually discovered how our minds were
connected to this extraordinary resource? We slowly sucked the consciousness out of the earth and all of its creatures and all of its plants, and we took it to ourselves and we used it to enhance our fain. Before
we knew what we were doing, the plants and the creatures were fading from view and the land had become
dark
. We took it all, Bernard. We Re:duced it to nothing but a barren wilderness where hardly a
memory of its beautiful, boundless diversity survives.”
“But why? For what purpose?” Bernard said, wringing his hands in a belated show of guilt.
“For the purpose of ‘a better way of life’,” said Hugo.
“For the purpose of imagineering,” said Lefarr.
4
“In essence, we are farmers,” Colm Fellowes was saying, as he prepared Harlan and Bernard for their trek to the
summit of the Isle of Alavon. He tossed a sandal aside from the pile he’d been working through and chose one with a wider base for Bernard’s left foot. “We
miss our wives and our children of course, but what we have here we are rightly proud of. There is not a man among us who would not defend Alavon to his
death.” He tapped Bernard’s ankle as he found a good fit. “That pair will serve you well when we reach the stiffest part of the climb. They won’t be entirely comfortable, but they will keep the
calluses and blisters down. Harlan, you
seem ill at ease?”
Harlan snapped a dead twig and let thepieces fall. “I was thinking about thegreenery,” he said. Earlier, he hadaccompanied Colm and Bernard to ‘Brotherton Field’ as it was now known,where Colm had offered Bernard usefuladvice on what help he could expect fromthe rest of the tribe, what tools wereavailable to work the new crops (which,after their amazing first flourish, werenow dormantly soaking up the heat of thesun), and the best way to carry water tothe field, with which to irrigate thefledgling plants.
“The greenery?” Colm repeated.
“After what I learned at the meeting thismorning, it fills me with an odd kind of
sadness to see it.”
“But the plants are our lifeline,” Colm said, frowning.
Bernard raised a hand in a gesture of explanation. “I think I know what Harlan’s getting at,” he said, walking in circles to test his new footwear. “It was the study of plants, in particular the efficiency with which they converted light to energy in the photo:synthetic process, that indirectly led to a greater understanding of the laws of quan:tum mech:anics and the relationship between light, perception and consciousness – and hence the ability to imagineer.”
“But that was afterwards,” said Harlan, staring grimly at the hill.
“Afterwards? I don’t understand,” Colm said. He pulled on a backpack and
whistled to Lefarr.
“Bernard is talking about the way we fine-tuned our imagineering once we discovered we were capable of it. But how we made the breakthrough is still a mystery. We have always been able to travel in our minds, to think freely, to dream of better things. We can still do it here, in a place where our fain is useless, and I find that strangely liberating. But what was it that initiated the profound leap in consciousness that ultimately enabled us to make stable constructs of