Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (20 page)

 
          
(This whole business of trading maids
is something to which
you
take
considerable exception! Pod can't understand what you're rabbiting on about;
so you've rather given up on the propaganda. As Pod sees it, how else could
talent
be
improved out on the fringes? How else could
powers best be stirred, so as to flow in a current, in and out?

 
          
(Why not trade
stud-boys instead, say you!)

 
          
Here you are, looking from a stone
casement down over roofs and stairs—and over
Lake
Stare
—on a mom when Bigmoon is
eclipsing Blindspot, sending temporary shadow across the town.

 
 
          
Blindspot
is the sun which you don't even
glance
at if you value your eyesight. It's tiny and intensely bright—though its light
isn't steady, more like a mirror flashing, flashing fast. There's also the
giant sun Redfog, which is currently approaching hidden Blindspot; and
elsewhere in the sky is the more sensible, yellow Homesun.

 
          
Moons also come in three sizes:
Bigmoon, Midmoon and Babe- rock.

 
          
So
Lordevil is spread throughout the blackwaters region, eh Pod? But he can clump
together and rise up anywhere?
In the sea off Bark, for
instance?

 
          
He
never has. That was desperate wishful thinking on my part—hoping he might
somehow save me from the louts' ship. There isn V enough of him here at his
edge.

 
          
Hmm.
And Lordevil gathers in the Ka5 of the dead?
So that
they can relive their lives in the Lord for ever after?

 
          
Oh
no. I hardly think so! When people of the dark waters die, Lordevil sucks back
the powers he gave them—and he sends those powers forth to young new talents.
Now do you understand?

 
          
Yes.
Lordevil is kin to the black current of my own world. Obviously Lordevil stores
Ka5, the way those 'lectric batteries on Earth store power. He must have been
dumped here once to soak up any native talent that emerged. Now he’s gone his
own way. He can make certain people in his domain powerful. And the good folk
of the clean water hate him deadly. Does Lordevil understand what he is? Do
you, Pod? Does anyone?

 
          
Some
of the Wizzes of Omphalos may.
I once farsaw a Wizz communing
with Lordevil.
It was just a glimpse, quick as a Blindspot flash.

 
          
You
must get yourself traded to Omphalos!

 
          
I
thought you were opposed to that sort of thing?

 
          
I
am. But
you must.

 
          
What,
me?
A half-baked farsi-fey from a jewel-less isle on the very
verge?

 
          
"Look, they're coming," she
says aloud.

 
          
Way below, four men who are wearing
great white bone-combs in their oiled black hair are escorting a bald young
woman, whose face is painted orange, up Plunge Stair. Those are the
talent-traders from Tusk, a hundred sea-miles inward, accompanying their
merchandise.

 
          
If
only you could demonstrate a new talent, Pod!

 
          
I
can't even show much
farsi
. As for fey, why fair
enough if one of them's about to die! Which should make him very happy, I’m
sure! The seer amongst them shall hear my Duenna's affidavit and shall
peep
me, and that shall be it. That’s supposing I didn't
throw all my chances away when those Vicars' lice took me.

 
          
Your
Duenna said you were brave and adroit to get away into the waves.

 
          
Oh
to save face she said it.

 
          
What
if you could astonish the seer?

 
          
They
should re-trade me further inward. Fat chance!

 
          
I'm
with you, Pod. Maybe he could
peep
me.

 
          
You
aren't talent, Yaleen.
You re only a visitor squatting in me.

 
          
All
the things I could tell you, to tell him!

 
          
So?
He should have to
peep
them for himself

 
          
(So . . . sew.
Sew
tapestries! You'd almost forgotten about those other cabins! Is
it possible to show their tapestries?)

 
          
Listen,
Pod: I'm many persons. Each of me weaves her own vision. I want you to try as
hard as you can to farsee my other selves. Your talents spring from Ka -space
—that's the key to my other cabins.

 
          
I
don’t understand.

 
          
Let
the seer peep tapestries of other worlds.
You ’ll
be
the farsi who sees furthest of all! Try it! Together
we ’ll
get to Omphalos.

 
          
A distant bell begins to dong,
summoning Pod and other infantas to the deep-hewn rock-room called
Cave
of
Scales
, where fates are weighed
and talents are traded.

 
          
The walls of the
Cave
of
Scales
are scalloped by the
chisels of long- dead stonemasons. The main body of the rock-room is a dome.
Four subsidiary cupolas sprawl like paws. Two rock-shafts are the eye sockets
of the room. By now Bigmoon has shifted aside from Brightspot, and Redfog is
starting to eclipse the white dazzle; the light admitted down those shafts
grows golden, amber. You're inside the shell of some great armoured beast eaten
hollow by ants; only its corset of scales remaining.

 
          
Beneath one of the cupolas is a stone
block whereon stand weighing pans of copper—a more obvious kind of Scales. (As
so often on Bark, there are two levels of meaning. One is insufficient.) Both
pans are piled with Barkish treasure—since you could hardly fit a talented maid
into either of those pans, and if you did, it would likely bankrupt Bark to
balance her weight. A relatively humble dowry is on show, though displayed to
best effect. There are well- sheened nacre shells, goblets of volcano-glass,
jars of seacumber salve, a conch-trumpet with silver clasps.

 
          
Candidate infantas occupy benches
beneath the second cupola
Under
the third cupola,
alone on a low stool, sits the young woman with shaved head and orange face.
She looks disdainfully amused by her out-isle cousins. The fourth cupola
shelters her escort of talent-traders. Centre stage—the dome itself—is occupied
by the Duenna, her face and figure enveloped in black fish-net garb.

 
          
"Farsi-podwy-fey,"
creaks
her voice. Now it's Pod's turn to show off her wares.

 
          
As Pod rises and advances, the seer
from Tusk adopts a poised, intent stance.

 
          
Now,
Pod!

 
          
Pod whispers her black name to
herself in an undervoice which you cannot hear.

 
          
Shift! Shift cabins in your ship of
Ka-
space. Linger. And while you linger,
a sister of yours shares Pod's mind.

 
          
Shift back.

 
          
Yes?

 
          
Oh
yes.

 
          
Pod farsaw a tapestry of bile-green
swamp and silt isles. A honeycombed cliff reared high. She hung frozen on a
breeze: birdwoman. Suddenly the woven threads had writhed into reality. She
plummeted, to snatch a swimming snake. ... It was
Marl
's
world.

 
          
Shift! Linger. Shift back.

 
          
This time Pod
farsaw a world of yellow clay, flat as a platter.
Several great globular
vegetables, crowned with homy leaves, broke the monotony; also a pear-shaped
plant, its midriff plated with stiff leaves. From the top of this pear rose a
thin erect stalk like a root tapping the air. In the crown of the pear three
hauntingly human eyes stared fixedly ahead. Energy crackled in a cloudless
eggshell sky. Stabs of lightning slashed at one another. . . .

 
          
The seer, astonished, kneels before
Pod.

 
          
With a lurch, the flickering lights
and shadows slow abruptly. . . .

 
          
Oh wasn't Donnah furious when you and
Peli got back aboard the
Crackerjill
after your truant trip to the temple! That's when she muttered darkly,
"Just you wait, little priestess. Just you wait."

 
          
Wait for what?

 
          
Wait for weeks. Weeks while your
priestess's progress took you onward to Tambimatu. Weeks more while
Crackerjill
sailed back north again.

 
          
On the return voyage
Crackerjill
only called in quickly at
the towns en route: barely half a day in port to stock up on fresh fruit and
veg, and no stopover whatever at Port Barbra. Presently you docked at smoky
Guineamoy.

 
          
Fortunately
it's
wintertime, so you don't have to open the port for ventilation; the outside air
is none too sweet. (To the people of Guineamoy, does the air of other towns
smell wild and raw, uncivilized?) Through the glass port, in the grey sky over
the town, you can watch a huge balloon blundering through its paces. . . .

 
          
You
can.
You.

 
          
This is the weirdest thing. Many
weeks have flown by at utmost speed, far too fast for you to notice anything
beyond the rushing and the flickering, the tick-tock rhythm of day and night.
You can't say you've "lived" through those weeks. Yet now that time
has suddenly resumed its normal pace, you can recall everything that happened
in the interval, just as though you'd been a conscious part of everything that
occurred.

 
          
You've been part of a living
tapestry.
One which alters and evolves.
One which shows
you what will happen if you start from such and such a point, and move in a
certain direction. Why, after a while you must reach Guineamoy.

 
          
"Yal-eeeen!"
Boots bash along the corridor. The cabin door wrenches open. Donnah bursts in.

 
          
"Why, you
little—!"
She's livid with anger. She brandishes papers, pages of
newssheet.

 
          
"This
is on sale all over town!" She thrusts what she's clutching under your
nose.

 
          
It's
The Book of the Stars
by Yaleen of Pecawar, printed in neat
columns on big smudgy sheets of newsprint.
Of course.
What else?

 
          
"Right here in Guineamoy, where
we've had the most trouble persuading people to take their medicine!"

 
          
"Good. Maybe this'll do the job
better."

 
          
"Will it really? Well I'll have
you know that I've sent urgent signals north and south."

 
          
"What
for?"

 
          
"To search all
cargoes, dear girl!
To intercept the rest of
these."

 
          
Should you tell her the truth about
the way your book has been published? Should you keep mum about it? Which?