Gods of the Greataway (4 page)

“A little,” said Caradoc. “The Rainbow only watches land surfaces, it seems. The beach is on the fringe of reception. There are several breaks in the recording, and we aren’t getting any sound.”

Some days later — they guessed at the time lag because the weed had rotted — Belinda emerged from the cabin in the cold predawn light. She looked very weak, and her hand was pressed to her breasts. Now a bright stone rested between them, hung from a silver necklace. Clearly, Manuel had given this trinket to Belinda; the Girl sighed. Belinda stumbled toward the place where the beach ended and the cliff fell directly into the sea, and the water was deep and dark. The storm was finished now, the sky clear. Belinda reached the cliff and sat on a rock, watching the ocean. The water heaved sluggishly, as though exhausted from its efforts. After a while it seemed that there was a shape out there, heading for the shore.

Later Manuel walked into the morning sun. He looked around and his lips were moving, framing the name
Belinda
, casting it soundlessly around the beach. Unconcerned at first, he began now to move with increasing urgency; then running, searching, climbing the cliff and trotting to the top of a low inland hill, running back to the beach, going back inside the shack and quickly emerging, looking around, looking up, looking out to sea, all the while his lips moving:
Belinda! Belinda! Belinda!

At last the Rainbow Room emptied of all clouds, of all images.

The Girl was crying. “Poor Manuel,” she said.

Zozula said, “She came from the sea and she went back to the sea. I wonder how. I wonder where she went. We asked the Rainbow for a display of ancient charts, and there are no islands out there. None at all — none so close that Belinda could have come from them. One thing is certain: She’s a True Human. If we could locate her tribe, we could breed bodies for every neotenite on Earth!”

Caradoc
spoke. “You asked the Rainbow the wrong question,” he said. “I think I’ve discovered the right one. Now watch this.”

H
ere
at the end of Time the minstrels are all dead, but their work lives on in the Rainbow. I, Alan-Blue-Cloud, am able to choose from the infinite resources of that great computer the most suitable legend, fact, thought or other device of communication to illustrate the story of the Triad.

Caradoc had discovered the secret of Polysitia — the floating islands that were created long before the coming of the Triad, in an attempt by Mankind to replenish the Earth’s oxygen. Polysitia had a culture and legends all, its own, but occasionally they interfaced with the culture and legends of the mainland. Such an example of converging legends is the story they tell of a grossly fat and indolent king named Kamaha. At the time of the story, Kamaha’s island, which measured approximately five kilometers by ten, was called Tama-oas — but the name changed as often as the island’s geographic location. Such was the custom of the times.

The Rainbow Room filled with a tossing ocean as the Rainbow told Zozula and the Girl the story of the lazy Polysitian chief.

Kamaha spent most of his days squatting on the resilient and heady grass of the island, popping triggershrimps between his slack lips and complaining about his lot. He was domineering and unpleasant toward men and women alike, and he dared not set foot near the shore, because the guidewhales, intelligent beasts, had taken a dislike to him and were in the habit of squirting water at him. So he grumbled his life away, earning the dislike of those around him, trapped in the prison of his environment.

One day of high
east winds and cold spray that flew a kilometer inland, something primeval urged Kamaha to his feet. With the wind pressing hard at his back, he walked west, staggering slightly as the ground rose and fell. He passed a few of his subjects on the way, barely glancing at them as they worked at the grass, cutting out diseased sections and piling it for disposal, fertilizing other areas that showed promise. They noticed him, though, watching him go with astonished eyes, then discussing the phenomenon in their liquid tongue after he was gone.

Eventually Kamaha reached the coast, and here the ground swell was so strong that he had to fall to his knees and crawl. Finally, clinging to a coarse tussock, he paused and surveyed the scene.

The coastline tossed with the waves that hurried beneath the island and raced in solid ranks toward a distant shore. Mountains rose behind that shore, solid and massive, capped with silver, like no land Kamaha had seen before. He gazed at the sight, while deep longings awakened from somewhere inside him. This was the legendary Dry Land.

His subjects toiled along the water’s edge, some bent low under loads of dying and diseased grass, which they tossed into the sea, others instructing the guidewhales with yelps and barks. The huge beasts rolled and scattered and reorganized, venting spray, working as a vast team with two main purposes: to keep the island from breaking up in the heavy seas, and to head it away from the distant land. They thrust their heads into the vegetation and, along a wide front, shoved with churning flukes. The people yelled encouragement.

Kamaha regarded the distant mountains. The island trembled to the thrusting of the whales.

Suddenly Kamaha rose to his feet. “No!” he shouted.

*

Little is known of the expedition ashore — the walk through the deserted town with its monolithic dwellings, while Kamaha’s subjects watched from their island home, becalmed in a sweeping bay. It is known that Kamaha returned with artifacts, one of which, a small crystal, caused him to experience wonderful visions when he plugged it into his ear. It is certain that from that day Kamaha was a changed man: still fat and indolent — maybe more so — but no longer domineering, no longer unpleasant. He spent all day sitting in the sun and let his people do as they pleased. With the crystal in his ear, he experienced visions of beauty, of an Earth that men had forgotten and only the machines remembered.

His people, concerned
by his blank expression but relieved by his personality change, left him alone. He had no desire to share his treasure, no urge to discuss the wonders he was experiencing. He retreated in on himself, allowed the crystal to take him where it would.

Matters would have remained that way until Kamaha died and his body, together with the crystal, had been committed to the ocean — if a strange occurrence had not taken place late one foggy evening.

Kamaha’s island was by that time called Zo-ben-tzintl, having moved far north into a region of cold nights and sparkling icebergs. When strange sounds first whispered across the foggy sea, people thought they heard icebergs making love. Nothing was inanimate in or around Zo-ben-tzintl, neither the land, nor the sky or sea. Life was everywhere.

The sounds increased, a deep rumbling accompanied by a high clatter, punctuated by fierce puffings like the exhalations of the greatest whale in the ocean. The people stirred uneasily, drew their sealskin wraps closer and huddled beside their shelters, staring into the mists that surrounded them. Even Kamaha looked up when the sounds interrupted a vision of ancient Athens. Something showed in his face, and a nearby girl forgot her apprehension to regard him in surprise. He touched the crystal in his ear and looked around him as though awakening from a long sleep. The sounds were very loud now, and the island seemed to tremble.

The fog lifted. Out of
the evening sky a huge thing bore down upon the people of Zo-ben-tzintl. It was enormous, a frightening monster, snorting fire and bellowing and whipping a long, glowing tail behind, so long they could not see the end of it. Afterward, when they dared speak of it, they called it the Fire Dragon of Northsea — and so it was absorbed into legend. Its din hurt their ears, and the sight of it struck some men mad, so that later they had to be committed to the ocean. As it passed they caught a glimpse of its entrails, exposed and flaring, and it seemed men were trapped there, consumed by the dragon, tiny figures working feverishly within the very flesh of the creature. Then the tail passed close overhead, bright and segmented and rattling. It took a long time, beating at the ears of the people with its din. That is what the people saw. A frightful dragon.

Kamaha saw something incomparably great and thrilling. The crystal had tuned his mind to the glories of the past and he saw the apparition for what it was — a steam locomotive of the late 525th century drawing a train of endless length, unsupported by rails, which was visible through some quirk of the Greataway, some rare conjunction of dimensions. Kamaha saw the Celestial Steam Locomotive on its eternal journey through space.

Magnificent and lordly, it rode its happentrack with a long moan from the whistle and a roaring beat from the exhaust, seeding the night sky with scarlet stars. That cold, long whistle raised the hairs on Kamaha’s neck with a nostalgia for sights and sounds he had never known — and smells, too, as the sweet scent of oil-perfumed steam filled the night with its evocation. Polished steel scintillated as the driving wheels spun, the rods rose and fell, the valve gear oscillated.

Above one splasher, a brass plate bore the name of the Locomotive — and this name meant nothing to those who saw it, yet it meant everything.

And the Locomotive slammed past, the stack blasting cannonfire at the sky, the whistle crying for yesterday, the wheels whirling their burden into tomorrow. Kamaha saw into the cab, just a glimpse of brass gauges and handles and levers, all swamped in a fiery glow — and of two men, one staring ahead through the spectacle plate, the other bent low and shoveling, shoveling as though the Devil himself cracked a whip around those black-clad shoulders.

Then the carriages
followed, windows glowing enigmatically, the occasional glimpse of a head, a raised fist, or some other quick movement against the inner lighting. Kamaha saw this and understood it. The wheels beat a rhythmic tattoo on phantom rail-joints, the couplings creaked and screamed as the Locomotive pulled its train into a long curve and climbed toward the moon. Upward and onward it went until the smoke stained the sky like a distant nebula, and the last carriage rushed past Kamaha in a twinkling of taillights, and the sounds died into low music from long ago.

The people stirred. They looked at one another and looked away, minds numbed by the menace of the dragon. They were scared witless. They looked toward Kamaha, their chief. They needed reassurance and leadership.

Kamaha lay back with his eyes closed, and there was a wetness on his face that had not come from sea spray. He uttered tiny sounds. As they watched, he plucked the crystal from his ear and held it in his hand for a moment. He opened his eyes and regarded it, and now they could see that his eyes were wet, too. They backed away, their fear increasing. Kamaha smiled and blinked, and this caused a freshet of water to trickle down his cheeks. The people moaned.

He tossed the crystal away. It fell into the grass. In two seasons it had worked its way through the fibrous layers to the underside of the island, which was now called Bo-chuzza, and one afternoon it fell free and slid into the depths of the ocean, coming to rest close by a joint in the Earth’s mantle where molten matter oozed out and forced two continents ever farther apart.

And afterward the sound of the wind became a song for Kamaha, and the black-white backs of the guidewhales were things of wonder, and every night was a gateway to a new tomorrow. In time he grew slimmer, and he ruled his people wisely and well. Sometimes in the evenings he would glance at the stars, and the people would see again that odd moisture in his eyes — but then he would shrug, blink and grin, remember yesterday and yesteryear and the things that Man had done, and the things that Man had still to do.

*

“They’re True
Humans,” said Zozula slowly. “Living out there in the middle of the ocean, for all these years. And we never knew. They’re going to be our salvation, Girl. They’re going to be the parents of the new human race. Did you see how slim they were — just like us Cuidadors? Except that fat chief, of course.”

“They’re beautiful,” said the Girl.

“You’d be happy with a body like a Polysitian woman?”

“Well, what do you think, Zozula?” said the Girl, smiling.

“More important, what would Manuel think?”

“Shut up,” she muttered.

As they made their preparations to leave the Dome, her brief happiness faded, however, and she found her thoughts returning to the Celestial Steam Locomotive, with its passengers in their insane pursuit of unearthly delights, and the crazed driver and the sinister stoker. And worst of all, now that Dream Earth was firmly in her mind, that terrifying figure of the Blind Man, from whom she’d escaped but who still chased her through the night, his white stick taptapping its way through her dreams …

Then Zozula and she climbed onto shrugleggers, and the ground-floor airlock swung open. Their bipedal mounts carried them into the bright sunshine and fresh, keen air of Outside.

Soon she would be seeing Manuel again.

S
he looked about forty physical years old, by natural reckoning. Her face was plump and smiling and friendly, her mouth large, her lips like petals, her teeth perfect. Her breasts were big and they moved as though they had intentions of their own, sliding behind her sapa blouse as she moved her arms in animated conversation. She wore a skirt also of sapa cloth — her specialty and chief trading advantage — which fell to mid calf, showing strong legs and ankles and suggesting more. Her voice was like low, soft music, and her body had the fragrance of the spices that lined the shelves of her store.

And
her eyes …

Ana’s eyes were almond and slanted like a Polysitian’s, but the resemblance ended there. They were luminous, and no man had ever been able to state exactly what color they were, because every man saw what he wanted in them.

Many times a vision of Ana would jiggle in the mind of a village man as he drank before his hut, the day’s work done. He would wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and, grinning furtively, would make his way down the road to the little store with the bright cloths hanging outside. His mind would be glowing with a vision of the mature and delectable Ana, and what he was going to do with her. He would stop outside the store, finger the cloths, and chip at the sandstone with his fingernail while he peered inside, wondering how best to declare his intentions. The evening sun would slant across the entrance, so he couldn’t see much, but his imagination would fill in the shadows. And the wind, rustling among the grasses that hung above the cave entrance, would be the rustlings of her clothes. Then, blinking, he would enter.