Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (26 page)

 
          
Where a cockerel
crowed.

 
          
Whereupon she
awoke.

 
          
And awaking, forgot.

 
          
As she lay abed, calmed by dawn
light, listening to the doodle-do of the bird and the soft snores issuing from
Peli in the neighbouring bed, to her astonishment Yaleen discovered that she
was wearing a ring. A diamond ring! Scrambling from the covers, she darted to
the window, the better to examine her discovery.

 
          
The ring must have cost upward of
sixty fish!

 
          
She had never owned a ring before.
Yet for some odd reason this particular ring seemed to belong on her finger—as
though it had always been there, but invisibly and intangibly.

 
          
Quickly she roused her friend.

 
          
"Oh thank you, Peli dear! It's
lovely. It's too much. What a surprise."

 
          
"Eh?
Uh?
What?" Peli struggled blearily to focus on the hand held before her face.

 
          
"Does this mean that you'll come
along in the balloon, Peli? Does it? Or, oh dear, is it your way of saying
sorry, no, adieu?"

 
          
"What are you talking
'bout?"

 
          
"This!
Your
gift.
The ring you slipped on my finger while I was zonked out!"

           
Abruptly
Peli sat up. "I did
not.
No such
thing!" She seized Yaleen's hand. "You're joking. Where did you get
that?"

 
          
"Do you swear by the river you
didn't put this on my finger?"

 
          
"Honest. May I puke if I
he."

 
          
"But if
you
didn't. ..." Yaleen's hand leapt to her mouth. "That
man Andri! He was giving me the eye last night."

 
          
"An eye's one thing; a diamond
ring's another."

 
          
"He must have come back in the
wee hours!
They
chose the house for
us—maybe there's a tunnel from outside leading to the cellar. He must have
crept up here and done this without waking me."

 
          
"How romantic."

 
          
"I don't think it's romantic.
He's put his mark on me, Peli, like a farmer tagging a cow. Probably thinks he
owns me now. Or that I owe him something. Or whatever rogue thoughts infest
their heads over here. I'm going to throw this away. I reject it. I'll leave it
on the pillow."

 
          
"Don't be daft, a lovely ring
like that."

 
          
Yaleen tugged tentatively at her
finger. On second thoughts she settled the ring back. "I, um, I don't want
to take it off."

 
          
"Don't! Wear it. Enjoy it. We'll
be shot of this dump before you can say hickity-pickity. Why not write a rude
message to him on the window pane? Then if he comes snooping once we're gone. .
. .
No, better not.
He's s'posed to be one of the
decent Sons, eh? I still can't credit he sneaked in here.
But
the nerve of it, if he did!"
Peli inspected her own hands.
Comically downcast, she said, "Don't I rate a ring, too?"

 
          
"You can have it, Peli! Take it.
I mean that, honest. I'll likely just lose it, up in one of your sandstorms in
the sky."

 
          
"Don't be silly. It's yours. And
my fingers are all too big. Tell you what: scratch your name on the window with
it. That'll mean it's yours for ever and ever."

 
          
"Okay. I will, too."

 
          
So therefore, in spidery style,
Yaleen cut her name upon one of the crude little greenish panes. Close up, the
glass distorted the view of the Kirque beyond. Each tiny motion of her head, as
she worked, either compressed or stretched the building.

 
          
"Vandalizing
embassies, eh!"
Peli chortled. "What'll it come to next?"

 
          
"Huh.
Small
beer, this, compared with how they vandalized Verrino."

           
'That's all
water down the river now. But their beer isn't water. Nor all that small! Oof,
my head. What a way to wake up."

 
          
Yaleen stepped back to admire her
efforts. The pane looked as if it had been signed by a shaking, arthritic
grandmother.

 
          
A few hours after that, the party of
ten easterners departed on their return trek towards the river, where a vessel
stood at anchor waiting to convey them back to Guineamoy.

 
          
No one waylaid them en route, to try
to murder them; so the mission must definitely be accounted a success.

 
          
Whilst tramping along, Yaleen started
rehearsing excuses just in case the river guild asked her to return to Manhome
South as part of the permanent embassy. Or in case they wished her to tarry in
Guineamoy, there to receive the embassy from the west, help Andri feel at home,
and gentle him.
Her
personal sights
were set on the sky, on the desert, and on what lay beyond. Maybe she would be
obliged to sign off the river entirely, instead of just taking leave?

 
          
On the other hand, the river temple
still needed to give its blessing to the proposed expedition. Lacking that,
the balloon venture would be taboo.

 
          
If
the worst comes to the worst, thought Yaleen, maybe I can live with a taboo?
Supposing that Tam and Hasso and their sponsors can.

 
          
Next,
she thought to herself: Is that the real reason why they invited me along? Not
because they really love me—but because I'm of the river, a member of its
guild? Thus they propitiate the river temple?

 
          
No!
They do love me.

 
          
And
I love them. I love Tam.
Hasso.
Tam.
One of them; I don't know which. I'm sure I do.

 
          
Trouble
is, I don t know what it is to be in love! That's because I've never been in
love before.

 
          
But
I shall be in love.
That s a promise.

 
          
What
is this thing called love? Maybe I'm in love already?
Without
realizing?

 
          
In love with Tam.

 
          
Yes,
with Tam.
Him.

 
          
While the
Blue Guitar
sailed away from the western shore, Yaleen concentrated
upon this concept of love—realizing that by so doing she would indeed truly
fall in love, presently.

 
          
Was that the real purpose of this
ring she wore? So that she could present her ring as a love-pledge to Tam?

 
          
Hardly! Tam's fingers were so big and
knobbly (though not clumsy, not in the least). In which case, was the ring
mocking her?

 
 
          
Absolutely not.
The diamond was brightness, light, purity of
purpose, truth. It sparkled, like sunlight on the wave tops where the water
was chopped by the passage of the
Blue
Guitar.

 
          
The initiative for the balloon
expedition had originally come from Hasso, one of those Observers who spied on
the west bank by telescope from Verrino Spire. Much good their vigilance had
done Ver- rino town when the western soldiery invaded, drugged to resist
riverphobia! But at least the Spire had held out; though now that the war was
over and the west bank was less of a mystery, the Observers' role might have
fallen into abeyance—were there not still outstanding the even greater mystery
of what lay beyond the inland desert, which had swallowed several parties of
explorers in the past.

 
          
What better way to observe vast new
vistas than from the newly invented balloons which Guineamoy's artisans had
crafted under the stimulus of war?

 
          
But of course this mode of transport
was still in its infancy.
Whether it would remain just a
novelty or would develop into something grander and life-changing depended
largely on the say- so of the river guild and river temples.
In Manhome
South, Guildmistress Marti had stated, "Whenever we feel confused, we
should be guided by tradition." Even Yaleen allowed that this was a
sensible axiom. When it came to the possibilities raised by balloon flight,
many factors were involved.

 
          
Rampant balloons might upset the
traditional female monopoly over trade and communications. They might weaken,
or wipe out, the taboo against men travelling more than once, a taboo which for
the most part had served eastern society well. The taboo was backed by sound
medical sense, since a mental and bodily crisis afflicted any man who broke the
prohibition against repeated river travel, and could easily kill him. But if
men were able to float high above the river, and so become mobile and
taboo-free (disregarding for the moment the problem of the anti-inhibitor
drug), men might conceivably try to dominate affairs, as a cockerel treads its
hens—something which the Sons in the west had so signally shown might happen.
The Sons had turned their own more stringent river-taboo on its head, and
forbidden their women to go near the water at all, fighting liquid with fire.
Such men in power had proved themselves oppressive, thrusting,
warlike
.

 
          
Westerners needed to mend their ways
and learn the womanly, flowing touch. Their own women, emerging from the dark
cloud of ignorant centuries, must learn the way to show them; and learn how to
sail the river. Yet would that happen, if balloons could carry men hither and
thither untrammelled?

 
          
Thus balloon travel should only be
introduced cautiously, in tandem with social improvements in the west; many
'mistresses said so. Any balloon must be strictly licensed and approved.
Otherwise the world might plunge into another such calamity as the Sons'
discovery of the fungus "anti-inhibitor" had unleashed. (It was
fortunate that the Sons had so ignorantly exploited the fungus, virtually
wiping it out in its jungle haunts! Or so they claimed; a claim lent credence
by the abrupt collapse of their war effort.)

 
          
On the other hand, the jungle
guild were
rooting for balloons. Ridiculous to conceive of
ever shifting timber by balloon, needless to say! But it was the men of the
jungle guild who had made the long march from Jangali to Verrino to win the
war. They deserved some recompense for all their suffering and sacrifice; such
as a guarantee that
next time
—though
pray river there wasn't a next time!— they should fly to war, not walk. So when
the trans-desert balloon expedition was mooted by the Observers, the 'jacks
supported this. Support also came from certain important industrialists of Guineamoy,
purveyors of the weapons used in the war, who saw balloons as a future source
of profit.

 
          
The prevailing winds mainly blew
north or south along the river. However, the weather patterns of the highfleece
clouds showed that further up in the atmosphere, and in particular over the
area where the desert pressed closest to the river, in the Gangee-Pecawar
region, air-streams often blew due eastward. Hence the site selected for
assembly and launching: namely Pecawar. To begin with the balloon would drift
south as it arose, but then it would enter the east-bound sky-stream. (A
hundred leagues further south, high winds often blew in from across the desert
towards the west; so there was a fair chance of returning, depending upon the
kind of country encountered beyond the eastern desert.
Assuming
that the desert eventually gave way to hospitable terrain.)

 
          
"Let them go!" argued some
voices in the river guild. "Let them equip! Let them launch their balloon!
They'll never come back from beyond the desert. Probably there's just desert,
and nothing else beyond it. We'll lose our adventurers—bravely, tragically, and
foolishly. Balloons will dip in esteem."

 
          
Work on the big balloon began, and
continued, but the river temple had still not pronounced the final word of
consent. Yet privately guild and temple were sure of one item. If the balloon
were
to fly, young Yaleen of Pecawar
should be part of the crew. Her wayward wish should certainly receive the
blessing of her guild.