Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (32 page)

 
          
"In the
what?"
For "Ka" was the name the Westerners gave to the mind-part of a
person. They said the
Ka
flew back to
Eeden when the body died.
Flew to another world . . .
"Are you from the
West Bank
?"
I demanded.

 
          
"No
. . . Sarjoy, once. . . ."

 
          
"You
did just say
'Ka',
though?"

 
          
He
nodded.

 
          
"Are
the Westerners telling the truth, then?
About the God-Mind on
Eeden?
How can there be a Ka-store here? What
is
it? What does—?"

 
          
He
flapped his hands in distress. "Please!" The dead man gestured at
another line of stepping stones continuing along the cavern towards the azure
fog. "Could we possibly . . . ? Sooner we go, sooner I get back to my
dreams."

 
          
"Go
where?"

 
          
"To the Ka-store."

 
          
"How
can there be a Ka-store here? This isn't Eeden. The current isn't the
God-Mind—or is it?"

 
          
He
slumped down and clasped his hands around his knees. Maybe he had difficulty
standing up, after being dead for so long. . . .

 
          
"I
suppose we've time to spare," he conceded.

 
          
"Time?
You do realize there's a war on? That good
people are being butchered? And all because the current withdrew! Was it
poisoned?"

 
          
"If
only you'd stop bombarding me . . . Yes, I realize there's a war on. No, the
current wasn't poisoned. Will you listen to me? The black current can store the
Kas
of the dead, so long as people
were close to it in life. As it links more
Kas
in its store, so its mind grows in power."

 
          
"You
mean to tell me that all riverwomen who ever lived are still alive here?"

 
          
"Well,
they're dead, but yes. They dream each other's lives now. And as they
interweave, so the creature who was here before us all seeks . . . seeks the
mind-key to the universe."

 
          
"Oh."
The mind-key to the universe.
Tamath had speculated
that there was a key stuck down the worm's throat ... So it was the key to the
universe, was it? But apparently the worm, too, was still hunting for it. Just
then I remembered what Andri had told me: that people couldn't simply arrive on
a foreign world and merrily fit in from the word go. "Did the current
shape
this world for us?" I asked.

 
          
"I
don't follow you."

 
          
I
did my best to explain. "Did the current alter this world so we could eat
and drink and breathe here?" I ended up.

 
          
"Quite the contrary!
The world grew of its own accord.
So did the current. I don't quite know how its body works, but I do know that
it takes energy from water. It splits and bums and changes water . . . Well,
aeons ago it floated off down the river. And it made a big mistake. On its own,
you see, it has no more brain than a worm in the soil. But it can use
other
minds. It has a thirst for them,
it can drink them. And after drinking them it can start to think."

 
          
"I
sometimes feel that way myself."

 
          
The
zombi looked irked.
"Really?
Well, the current
sensed dawning minds on the land. So it exerted itself to use these minds. But
they were only dawning, and it quenched them instead. They withered and died
out. Then for aeons more it just lay inertly, sensing only the slow dim wits
of fish and the like. It hoped other creatures might become aware, if it let
them alone."

 
          
"How
could it
hope
for anything, if it
hadn't a mind of its own?"

 
          
"It
sensed. It
felt.
The flow of its
being is to
know,
through others. To
absorb, to drink. . . ."

 
          
"So
then I guess the Ship from Eeden arrived at Port Firsthome?"

 
          
It
had indeed. Yet for aeons the creature had been sluggish. It had simply been
existing
at the bottom of the river like a vegetable.

 
          
Before
it could grasp what was happening, the world had half changed. New plants and
fish and animals were mingling with the native ones, in some cases pushing the
old life aside, in other cases even cross-breeding.

 
          
Suddenly
as if from nowhere, bright strong minds were present. Young minds, printed with
mature purpose, newly dressed in knowledge. This was the first generation of
settlers.

 
          
Amongst
whom, the current dimly detected two varieties of being: those of Flow, and
those of Thrust.
The one, compatible with it; the other,
alien.
Excited, confused, it rose from the depths, putting forth its
senses—to be dazzled, blinded.

 
          
It
still couldn't "think" about any of this—which in any case after all
those dormant aeons seemed to happen instantaneously. And almost immediately, a
vast intelligence from far away shone through these bright new minds as through
a window; touched the current, tasted it, tried to extinguish it.

 
          
This
distant intelligence was a being of Thrust, rejoicing in its grandeur and
dominion. So, at any rate, it seemed to the current, when the current tried to
analyse events long afterwards. However, this ambitious intelligence had
already transformed almost the whole of its local substance to breed plants and
animals which would be at home on the new world, and then to build human
bodies, and to light their minds with
Kas
from afar.

 
          
Instinctively
the current lashed out to save itself. And there was madness on the land: a
storm of forgetting, a whirlwind of disruption. The worm wasn't quite sure
whose fault the mind-disaster was. It suspected that the far intelligence might
have tried to extinguish its
own
experiment upon this world, to break the link with the creature it had woken.

 
          
Some
settlers lost less of themselves, some more. All were deeply confused. Two
groups survived: one on the west bank, where the far intelligence was
remembered, though chaotically; another on the east bank, where its origin was
quite forgotten.

 
          
Down
succeeding centuries, as the current established a rapport with
Those
of the Flow, in the east, and drank the spirits of the
river-dead, it began at last to
know.

 
          
Thus
spoke the zombi. His name, he added in an afterthought, was
Raf
;
though he seemed to attach little significance to it, as if it had been
centuries since he last used it.

 
          
And
now events were on the move.

           
"Poisoned?"
Raf
chuckled. By now he behaved more naturally, though he
wasn't exactly my notion of convivial. "Not on your sweet life! The
current got just the ingredient it needed dumped into it.
The
rennet, to curdle the milk of its mind.
To thicken it, enrich it. It had
been trying to influence those cult-women inland from Port Barbra, but they
were hard to get hold of. . . ."

 
          
"What?
Say that again!"

 
          
Credence,
boatswain of the
Spry Goose,
hadn't
been so hard to get hold of! Suddenly that whole episode of the Junglejack
Festival took on a startling new perspective—and I found myself pitying
Credence. She had been manipulated in her beliefs, used as a tool—to be
discarded when she couldn't prise open Marcialla's cabin door. Credence mustn't
entirely have known why she was conspiring; otherwise she might have proved
more effective. Hell, who was I kidding? With Marcialla unpersuaded and
marooned up a tree, it was only by a hair's breadth of bad luck—known as
Yaleen—that Credence failed.

 
          
Raf
looked dreamy. "Ah, I have been one of those
cult-women. She fled from her coven to sail the river . . . She could see how
young they all died, and looking so old! Oh, I've known the
Time-stop,
and the Timespeed . . . But never mind about it now."

 
          
Never
mind? In one sense Credence hadn't failed at all. All unwittingly, she had set
me
up as her successor.

 
          
And
this,
Raf
was only too happy to confirm. For the
second time within a few seconds my perspective on events swam inside-out.

 
          
"You
came along just at the right time," he said. "The current read you.
You
proved better. More economical! You
solved another problem, besides: how to lure those Sons of the God-Mind closer,
so that the current could drink enough dead
Kas
to really get to know them —and taste and test the link to that far puissance.
. . ."

 
          
"Hang
on! Do you mean to say the current provoked this war? Just so that Westerners
would get killed, and it could harvest some of them?"

 
          
"That
is putting it a bit crudely."

 
          
"How
can it harvest dead Sons now it has
quit
the battlefield?"

 
          
"Never
fear! After a while it will return downstream. It can judge the progress of the
war by the
Kas
of newly dead
riverwomen. Since they’re in tune, they still die into it."

 
          
"And
am I supposed to applaud this clever scheme?
Which brings
agony and death!
" If I'd thought Doctor Edrick was unscrupulous,
then surely here was his match!

 
          
"Well,
it wants to become a God, you see."

 
          
"A . . .
God?"

 
          
Raf
glanced around. I did, too . . . and my blood chilled.
Surely the cavern walls had crept closer while we were talking? Surely the roof
was lower than it had been a while before?

 
          
"The
Sons would have waged war in any case,"
Raf
said
reasonably. "Sooner or later they would have found a means.
In fifty years or a hundred.
The time isn't important."

 
          
"It
is, to anybody who's alive!"

 
          
This
part of the cavern definitely was shrinking. The fronds sprouting out of the
ground-mist were getting agitated.

 
          
"No,
it
isn't
important! Not when you can
live a host of other lives hereafter. Nobody who is taken into the
Ka
-store regrets it. And remember, when
the current becomes a God, all those
Kas
will be part of that God too."

 
          
"According to you."

 
          
"You'll
find out soon enough, Yaleen. The current is pregnant with itself—"

 
          
"Uh?"

 
          
"I'll
rephrase that: soon the current will give birth—to something greater than
itself. And it feels it should be fertilized—"

 
          
"For
crying out, doesn't it
know?
Who ever
heard of getting fertilized
after
getting pregnant?"

 
          
"I
don't mean literally fertilized. It
senses
that it needs the intimate presence of a living person during the change. Here
is the womb; you are the man-seed."