Cat Karina (21 page)

Their herds are ever-dwindling, their future in decay.”

Not exactly a song of hope. The tumpier Haleka was not even mentioned — on this happentrack.

Haleka’s life’s purpose was ended. The tump had halted at the beach for a short rest before its death plunge. Haleka sat astride, prepared to die with his mount. The sun was sinking behind him, and the tump cast a huge shadow across the sand left wet by the outflowing tide. Haleka looked to the south, and saw in the distance another vast form. It might have been a big rock, but it could have been another tump in a similar predicament.

And on another happentrack, it was.

Haleka didn’t investigate. He had no curiosity, no interest. In the last few minutes left to him, his mind slipped into the past. The image of a beautiful, tawny-eyed girl faded for a moment, and childhood memories began to soothe him. He remembered his early life in the Women’s Village; his mother, and a sister named Andra. The Women had taught him gentleness, patience and philosophy, preparing him for his youth as an apprentice. Those had been quiet years, for the Women’s Village was a fortified kraal in the jungle where adult males came only occasionally, where tall fencing kept out all animals except monkeys, where the jungle outside the fence was guarded fiercely by Bachelors — men who had not qualified as apprentices and so would never become tumpiers.

Even the felina grupos left the Women’s Village alone.

In later years, when Haleka succeded to his father’s tump, he visited the Women’s Village a number of times. It looked the same as he remembered it, but now he had changed himself. He came driven by emotions he hadn’t known as a child, and as a result the Women’s Village held a new and urgent significance. The Madre — the elderly head of the Village — recognized this when Haleka appeared narrow-eyed and panting outside the fence, having defeated the strongest bachelor in bloodless wrestling. She let him in.

They were times of fierce delight, those visits to the Women’s Village, and the bright memory stayed with Haleka always, sometimes coloring his dreams on tumpback. He visited a number of times over a period of two years until, one day, the Madre met him at the gate and said, “Enough.”

The bachelors carried him away, struggling.

Back on the tump, he knew this rejection meant one of two things: either he had sired enough children to sustain the Village balance, or the Madre suspected that an emotional relationship had developed between him and one of the Women. This had been known to happen, even though the Madre always ensured that the Men lay with a different Woman on each occasion.

And Haleka did have a guilty memory of one Woman who had held him afterwards, and stroked him in a quite unnecessary way while he murmured things to her instead of leaving.

Years later, they had brought him the boy they called his son, so he was at last able to forget the Woman. Seasons of peace followed while he taught the boy, and when Mauo, as he was named, was apprenticed to a tumpier over Torres way, it was the proudest day of Haleka’s life.

Just one thing disturbed him.

Mauo, before he departed, said hesitantly, “There’s a girl — she’d be a Woman, now. My half-sister. Your daughter, Haleka. I often think of her.”

Of course the Madre hadn’t told Haleka about the daughter; why should she? It was no business of his.…

And as Haleka sat on his tump waiting for the moments of dying, the phantom face of this unknown girl took on substance, forming in his mind as a clear vision of beauty — a girl with eyes that looked into his soul, with hair like the Wrath of Agni.

“Oh, Karina!” he shouted to the sea. “Why did you leave me?”

Behind him, the swiftest sailcar ever built fled southwards, her sails like transparent membranes against the late sun.

The tump began to move again.

As we know, all of Time is composed of diverging happentracks. Starquin used this quality to direct events towards the fulfilment of his Purpose. He concentrated on favorable happentracks, but even he could not prevent unwanted happentracks from branching off into the Ifalong — because they were part of an even greater scenario than his Purpose.

Through an odd quirk of the Ifalong, some of these happentracks found their way into the memory vaults of the Rainbow on
our
happentrack, in the here and now, and on this hillside.

Listen:

“Why do I have to hurt someone I like?” Karina said. “You made me run out on that poor little man Siervo, and he died. Now you want me to run out on Haleka. What will happen to him?”

“He will die.”

“And if I stay with him?”

“He will live a few years longer. Just a few years, Karina. It’s nothing compared to the sweep of the Ifalong.”

“But it’s a hell of a lot to Haleka!”

“You gave your word, Karina,” said the handmaiden.

Karina gazed down towards the ocean, where the slumped silhouette of Haleka could be seen atop his doomed tump. “Well, I’m breaking it. I’m staying with Haleka. To hell with Starquin and his Purpose and the Dedo and the whole rotten lot of you. You’re only interested in yourselves and you don’t give a damn for anyone else!”

For once, the handmaiden lost her serenity. “Karina, my child. The Purpose of Starquin is the most important thing on Earth.”

“Not to me it isn’t. Right now, the most important thing to me, is that I go and look after Haleka, because if I don’t I think he’ll drown himself.” Her eyes were blazing as she uttered the traditional felino disclaimer. “So piss on Starquin!”

“As you will.”

“What? You mean you don’t care?” The handmaiden’s sudden indifference nonplussed Karina.

“It’s of no significance now, because on another happentrack you have obeyed my wishes. Happentracks are infinite, Karina.”

“Damn you! And damn that other me!”

“The other Karina will become famous. But you will not, and you will never see me again.”

“See if I care,” said Karina, turning her back on the tall woman and walking away.

“So Mauo told me he had a sister — my daughter. I never saw her, but I often think about her. I think she might have been something like you, Karina.…”

Haleka’s voice droned softly on, telling of his childhood while Karina sat facing him on the broad back of the tump. They were boring, these endless pointless yarns, but they were better than suicide, thought Karina. Haleka had to talk things out.

“Look!” she said suddenly. “There’s a car — that must be
Rayo!
What’s wrong with her?”

The swiftest sailcar ever built limped southwards, her sails like transparent membranes against the late sun. The mainmast had broken and the car had been crudely jury-rigged, the two pieces of the mast splinted together with a crimson liana, the sail hanging crooked like a broken wing.

“So she wasn’t so fast after all,” said Karina. “After all that trouble and secrecy, she’s slower than any of the others.”

“Speed is the enemy of man,” said Hakela. “This is one of the first lessons a boy learns in the Women’s Village. I recall one day the Madre —”

“What are your plans, Haleka?”

“My work is done. As the Madre once said —”

“I think we should build a boat, you and I. We should sail off east to the Magic Islands, where women live in grass castles and men ride whales, so the legends go. Wouldn’t that be fun? We could build a castle and send for my sisters, and we could all live there, forever.”

“What would we eat?” asked Haleka tolerantly.

“We’d catch fish, of course, like the Magic Island people do.”

“Eat flesh? Me? Never!” said Haleka, whose ancestors came from the floating islands of Polysitia themselves, if he did but know it.

The tump began to move again, heaving itself towards the water, and Karina’s heart missed a beat. “Look!” she cried desperately. “There’s another tump further down the beach. I think our tump looked at it. Maybe it’s a girl tump!”

“Tumps have no sex, Karina. That’s the whole problem. That’s why they’re dying out.”

“How do you know they have no sex? Have you ever looked?” Karina warmed to her theme. “Can you honestly tell me anyone’s ever rolled a tump over and
looked?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Karina.”

“Well, then!” The tump had reached the water’s edge. Karina and Haleka still faced each other. Haleka watched the sea, Karina the land.

Haleka said, “The very fact that a tump can’t roll over ought to tell you it can’t mate.” The conversation was becoming distasteful to him. Tumpier culture dictated that Men ceased thinking about sex once their reproductive duties were done, and much of the childhood teaching was conditioned to this end. “It wouldn’t be able.… It couldn’t.… Even if it had.…”

“It couldn’t bring its organs to bear,” said Karina with relish. Then, with the subject seemingly at an end, the sadness rolled back like a sea fog. “Are you really going to kill yourself, Haleka?”

“That is the way.”

“I’m not going to let you — you know that? I’m going to fight you and drag you back, and the whole thing will become ridiculous. You know I’m stronger than you.”

“Please let me die with dignity, Karina.”

“No way.” She took his hands in hers. The tump was in the water now, and a wave touched her feet. She kicked at the water, hating it.

“Karina! Please don’t take this away from me!”

The tump was buoyant, rocking beneath them in the light swell. Karina held Haleka firmly around the wrists. His eyes were shut. Tears of shame started from under the lids. Karina blinked, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Haleka wanted to die, but she wouldn’t let him because.… Because she was just as selfish as the Dedo and the handmaiden and lousy Starquin.

“All right, Haleka,” she said quietly. “Goodbye, now. I love you.” And she kissed him on the cheek.

She slipped from the tump’s back and began to swim alongside, unwilling to head for the shore just yet. Looking around, she saw the other tump was closer now, a low mound showing above the water with a tumpier sitting on top, shoulders drooping. Haleka’s tump rocked, nearly unseating him. The bulky animal was not nearly so stable in the water as on land, and Karina moved away a couple of meters, fearing a capsize.

A capsize .…

“Haleka!”

“What is it now?” He was trying to compose himself. He loved her, but couldn’t she leave him alone?

“Why do tumps take to the water?”

“To drown, of course, when their time comes. Just as I shall do. Our time has come.”

“Haleka — suppose this stuff about times coming is all garbage! I know it’s traditional, and so on. But I can’t really believe the tump wants to die. I can see his eye from here, and he looks pretty lively to me!”

On an impulse she swam up to the tump and laid her hand on its head. The tump sensed her presence but this time it didn’t shy away from her; rather, it moved her way, recognizing something in her. Something flowed down her arm, flowed back. Karina smiled.

“So
that’s
it,” she murmured.

Years later, Karina thought to visit the tump pens.

By now she was a mature felina with three grupos behind her, and a lot of good memories. El Tigre had died several years previously during a brawl on the outskirts of Rangua but he’d taken three True Humans with him, and further assured himself of a place in felino legend. Karina was still beautiful, with the fleshy, wild beauty of the older felina, and the gray streaks in her red-gold hair lent her a slight vulnerability which added to her appeal.

It was not surprising that the man in charge of the tump pens stared in admiration as she walked slowly along the beach. Twenty meters from him she stopped and looked out to sea. There was a breakwater out there; a rocky wall which had taken several years to build, enclosing half a dozen rectangular pens. The backs of the tumps could be seen breaking the surface, two to a pen.

In the pens nearest the beach were the young tumps. They were being conditioned by the rise and fall of the tide to the feel of dry land under them. Each year another two or three young tumps were ready for the fields. It was simply a matter of training. Left alone, they would have spent their lives in the ocean, like the whales they were descended from, grazing the continental shelf. Trained to live on land they thrived just as happily — until, after a thousand years or so, they matured. Then, like an amphibian, they returned to the water to mate.

But this essential part of tump lore had been lost until recent years.

Tentatively, the man approached the beautiful woman. “Can I help you?”

“No.… I was just looking. Tumps fascinate me.”

“They’re interesting animals. I’ve studied them all my life. There was a time when we thought they were dying out — that would have been a bad thing for you felinos, eh?”

“Oh, I don’t know.…” The Examples weren’t so rigid, these days. Two nights ago she’d led her youngest grupo into the jungle and they’d feasted on capybara, and felt not the slightest guilt.

He laughed suddenly. “We tumpiers like to feel indispensible, you know. Don’t mind me.”

Her eyes flashed, as though this show of humility had annoyed her, and she said sharply, “The tump is the most important animal on the coast. Many felinos would have starved if the secret of the tump’s life cycle hadn’t been discovered.”

Still smiling, he said, “You said it for me. But tumpiers would have starved too, with nothing to trade in. We both owe a debt to Haleka.” Now he glanced at her, glanced away. “He was my father, you know.”

“Oh.” She scrutinized his face.

“Yes, really.”

“You must be very proud to have a father who is a legend.” He was a couple of years younger than she — yes, he could be Mauo. “The old Pegman sings of him often — Haleka, the tumpier who solved the riddle of the ages, and saved the felinos. How does it go …?” And she sang, in a low, melodious voice, the song which begins,

“From the tumpfields to the ocean,
Sing Haleka, sing Haleka.
How he earned Mankind’s devotion,
Sing Haleka.…”