Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (24 page)

 
          
As
before, it drained me. It didn't speak, though. Maybe it was too busy with what
it was learning from me of the western land to spare time for my immediate
problems. For little
me,
lost in the middle of the
river. Maybe it had already communicated enough by sending me that dream.
Perhaps I had to be truly unconscious, before it could connect on the personal
level.

 
          
Or
did it communicate? Not in words as such?

 
          
Somehow
I sensed that it was satisfied with me. Somehow I suspected that I might be
able to pass through it in future whenever I wished, or needed to. This was
nothing vouchsafed to me directly; no more than an intuition.

 
          
Certainly
this second passage was far
more smoother
than my
first brain-crunching, suffocating inadvertent one.

 
          
Then
I was through.

 
          
And flailing about in ordinary river water.
Phosphorescence
dazzled me once more. The invisible shore
lay
another
three-quarters of a league away. I was as far from land as could be.
And quite wrung out.

 
          
I
felt dreadfully, absurdly let down and abandoned. All of a sudden my relief at
passing through was replaced by rage. In retrospect I think this was a
necessary rage—like my screwed-up emotions on the jungle trek weeks
earlier—which gave me the strength to carry on.

 
          
"Help
me, damn you!" I cried. The current ignored my appeal. I was of no further
interest.

 
          
"You
heap of shit!" I howled.

 
          
Then
I gathered myself, and struck out again along the quicksilver road, not so
quick for me.

 
          
Eventually—on the hundredth or thousandth occasion when I craned my
neck—I saw lanterns distinctly, tiny pools of light, irregular dark humps of
buildings lightly rimed by starlight.

 
          
Suddenly:
masts spoking the stars,
a fishing
smack lolling on my
left by a moored buoy, another on my right.

 
          
Quite
unexpectedly I was there.

 
          
I
stroked along that last lapping shining tongue. I sidled along the base of the
wharf. I touched a stone step. I hauled myself out.

 
          
Dripping
silver, I crawled painfully up the flight. I weighed a ton. Each separate step
was unbelievably solid and unmoving.

 
          
At
the top I slid forward and spread out like a boneless jelly. But before I
passed out I decided maybe I was wrong about the imperviousness of stone.
Spanglestream quayside suddenly felt more comforting, more tenderly cradling,
than any other place where I had
lain
my head to rest
for a very long while.

 
          
I'm
hazy about the exact sequence of events thereafter—I was discovered presently,
still lying there—however the night certainly ended with me wrapped in a
blanket on a spare bunk aboard a brig, the
Cornucopia.

 
          
Next
day was confession day.

 
          
After
I'd been lent new togs, and had devoured a huge plateful of good fried river
fish, I confessed to the boatmistress of the
Cornucopia.
That afternoon I repeated my story to an emergency
mini-meeting of the river guild—consisting of the quaymistress, Halassa, and
two guildmistresses who happened to be in port. One of these had been present
at the conclave held on board the
Santamaria
at Tambimatu, prior to my New Year's Eve departure. She was able to vouch that
I was the person I said I was.

 
          
To
these three women I told my whole story, Verrino included.
And
how I had informed Doctor Edrick about the fungus drug.
And how men of
the west believed that all of us on this world were made of artificial flesh;
and when people died, their minds returned to Eeden—home of the God-Mind which
originally sent us forth to populate strange planets, and multiply.
All of it, all.

 
          
Many
were the urgent coded signals flashing up- and downstream during the next few
days; you can be sure of it!

 
          
And me?

 
          
I
was quartered at the quaymistress's own home in town till a full guild meeting
could be convened. Halassa wavered between regarding me as a miracle, and a
miscreant. Or perhaps as somebody who had contracted a lethal disease and
survived it uniquely, to carry its seeds around henceforth in my veins. I was a
prodigy—and a bit of a pariah.
Heroine,
and renegade.

 
          
The
mini-conclave had sworn me to keep mum about the bulk of my tale. (Though what
exactly my oaths were worth when the black current itself had twice allowed me
passage, was another matter. . . .)
The
bulk of it;
but not all. That was impossible. Word had spread around the
Cornucopia;
and had leaked ashore, as
well as to other boats. Nor did Halassa try to keep me penned in her house. If
she had tried, she wouldn't have succeeded. Halassa's home wasn't
—couldn’t
be—another Edrick's. After my
months of exile, I had to rub shoulders with real life again: streets, taverns,
cafes,
waterfront
. I was on a leash, but not too short
a one.

 
          
As
I wandered about, I attracted a certain amount of attention. To those in the
know, I was a bit of a wonder, to point the finger at. Look: there's the first
riverwoman ever to cross the current—and cross it twice! She's the first of us
who knows all about the west! Does she not have horns on her head now, or a
jet-black tongue, or some other mark of strangeness? Maybe she can read the
current's mind and foretell the future!
That sort of thing.
Some women would try to pump me for information, either back-slappingly or
unctuously.

 
          
I
enjoyed this for a while; then it began to oppress me. Presently —and none too
soon—life settled down again. People stopped staring and asking silly
questions—or not-so-silly questions, which I dared not answer. Six weeks after
I'd swum ashore, a full conclave of eight guildmistresses was held aboard a
schooner out of Gate of the South; and I confessed in full all over again.

 
          
This
conclave spanned four full days. The guildmistresses were not so much sitting
in judgement, but more as a tribunal of enquiry: to delve into all available
facts about the other half of our world, facts which might cast a new light on
what we thought of as the certainties of our existence.

 
          
They
always conducted their deliberations with me present, and free to contribute.
Until near the very end I was never sent out of the elegant cabin, with its
silver wall-sconces, gildenwood furniture, and its tapestry of the Obelisk at
Port Firsthome. Still, I fancied there was a certain whiff of trial about the
proceedings.

 
          
On
the last day the youngest mistress present—a handsome blonde woman of Sarjoy
named Tamath—raised the matter of that obelisk.

 
          
The
monument rose from a rocky butte overlooking the town. A popular picnic
spot, that,
commanding a fine view down meadows towards Port
Firsthome and the river. Whoever had woven the tapestry had included several
family parties. Scarlet and orange rugs were spread, to contrast with the
rumpling background grass that rose (in the tapestry at least) to meet the grey
conical roofs of Sarjoy, and the blue of river and sky—the heavens wearing a
few fluffy clouds for contrast. Some naked children skipped in the foreground,
a young couple kissed, and an old man capered curiously, brandishing a flask of
wine. The seated mothers and fathers were mostly squat, as though their threads
had sagged or the weaver couldn't manage figures at rest. An open hamper
spilled fruit and fishes and strings of sausages on to the rug. It looked as
though the antic patriarch had kicked the hamper open, in pique of their having
forgotten to cook most of the food.

 
          
The
Obelisk of the Ship was a basalt shaft a hundred spans high, shaped like a
sleek fish with tail fins to support it. Really, it ought to have dwarfed the
picnickers more than it did. An attempt at perspective had been
made—unsuccessfully. The column was leaning, about to topple and crush the
people below.

 
          
I
suppose the tapestry was charming.

 
          
Inscribed
on one of the black base fins in tiny letters was a simple legend:

 
          
HERE
PEOPLE FIRST CAME
 
INTO THIS WORLD

           
Into it they came, with rugs and a
hamper, arses like barrels, no clothes on the kids, and a drunken grandad. . .
. That was, I recalled from my own visit, the actual inscription carved in
time-worn letters on the obelisk.
Verbatim.

 
          
Tamath
rose, crossed to the tapestry, touched the legend.

 
          
"Isn't
that an odd way of phrasing it?" she asked. "Not landed upon' or
'arrived at'—but 'came into'. Almost as though people first
came into
existence on that spot . .
." She eyed Nelliam, a senior guildmistress of Gangee, an ancient wrinkled
woman with the face of a prune. She eyed her hopefully. "Doesn't our guild
agree?"

 
          
"Language
changes with time," suggested Nelliam.
"The sense
of words."

 
          
Tamath
pressed on. "How do we really imagine we got here? Were thousands of human
beings crammed into a ship of space? What would they eat? Consider the cargo
problems! Consider, too, what Yaleen has said: a foreign world may not be
immediately hospitable."

 
          
I
looked attentively at Tamath, careful not to grin in gratitude or stupid pride
that she valued my report.

 
          
"To
be sure, it must have air and water and life on it already, or else it's no use
whatever. But why should the life be life that people can live with? Why should
the air be air they can breathe? Why should the plants and fish be edible at
all?"

 
          
The
more I looked, though, the more I began to suspect that

 
          
Tamath
was, well, speaking out of fright. As people will babble pointlessly when they
don't know the answer; yet they're compelled to speak for the sake of it, to
keep up their presence.
That sort of fright.

 
          
She
had raised the matter because she had to raise something— vigorously. The
tapestry was on hand to suggest the very thing; as well as providing the
pretext for her to parade elegantly across the cabin.

 
          
She
was only repeating what I had said. She continued repeating it forcefully, as
though it was her own idea.

 
          
Nelliam
shrugged.
"Life's life.
Air's
air."

 
          
"Is
it? Are they? Maybe we did have to be 'made'—or 'remade'— for this world of
ours?" And now Tamath had to conjure something new out of the hat. I could
almost see her reaching, straining herself. "If so, then the only place to
make us was
right here."

 
          
Oh
well. I supposed some people had to psych themselves up to excel.

 
          
But
now Sharia, a senior guildmistress, spoke up. She was of late middle age, and
if any ultimate secrets were in possession of the guild, surely she should know
them. Obviously she didn't; obviously there weren't any. . . .

 
          
"You
know," drawled Sharia, "that obelisk has always puzzled me on another
score. It's a symbol of a ship of space, right? So where's the hulk of the ship
itself? Something tough enough to travel between the stars ought to last for
lifetimes after it lands—even with rain and rust attacking. Yet there's nothing
at all."