Gods of the Greataway (32 page)

“Dance with me, Manuel!”

So he took her in his arms and they danced to the insistent beat of the maracas, drums and flutes of the Pu’este orchestra, while all around them the other dancers circled, some in costume, some, like Manuel, normally dressed. As the girl rubbed her face against Manuel’s shoulder, some of the cottonballs fell away and she looked up at him, laughing.

“It’s Ellie, isn’t it?” he said resignedly.

“Who else!” She laughed, tossing her hair. “Are you still listening to the sea, Manuel? Or have your travels taught you that there are other things in life?”

“There is a lot more in life,” he agreed, feeling old and very wise.

“Good.
Then come to my hut, Manuel — just for a moment.” In rubbing against him she had contrived to shed more cottonballs, and now she stepped back so he could get the effect of firelight on her tanned body. “Come on.”

And probably he would have, but somehow the face of the girl in the Simulator arose in his mind’s eye, and he knew that it wouldn’t work. “Not right now,” he said, and wondered at himself. A flurry of activity on the other side of the fire gave him the excuse he needed. “They’re starting the Dance.”

Everybody sat down in a big circle around the fire and uttered hisses and catcalls as the Snake came weaving its way through the audience and into the bright firelight. The Snake was big this year, at least twenty meters long and supported by ten pairs of legs, gaudily colored, made of stitched cloth and furs, with a fringe of scarlet alpaca wool and a great fearsome head of painted clay on a wooden frame that swung this way and that and provoked screams of terrified delight from the children. For a long time the Snake cavorted and the crowd bestowed their good-natured derision upon it, guessing at the identities of the legs. The band pounded away indefatigably, and Ellie squeezed Manuel’s hand.

Then the Horse arrived amid cheers. The Horse, the savior of Mankind, would do battle with the Snake and drive it from the skies. More kuta was passed round and the audience drank and settled back to watch the ceremonial tournament. The Horse, like the Snake, was sustained by pounding pairs of legs, but only four rather than ten. Its color was comparatively drab and its face wore a kindly grin. In truth it was a dull animal compared with the Snake, but such has been the comparison between good and evil down the ages.

The combatants fenced for an opening. The Snake moved sinuously, its occupants weaving from side to side as they ran with bent knees — making the whole effect one of menacing stealth. The Horse people, however, stayed in a disciplined row and ran upright with high knees, so that the animal appeared to prance along with jerky dignity. The audience, feeling the effects of the kuta, urged the battle to its climax.

The opponents were no doubt anxious to conclude the matter, too. On the priest’s rostrum (from which Dad Ose would pronounce the blessing after the Pouring-on-of-Waters) stood their prize — a great jug of potent fluid known as “nid,” a distillate of various herbs and fermented sugars prepared exclusively for Horse Day celebrations and infinitely more powerful than the beery kuta.

Battle was
joined. The Horse, head nodding, lurched against the Snake, which sidled away, abashed. The Horse reared up and its head rose high in the crimson light of the fire so that it looked like Vengeance itself, and its smile seemed to become a stern frown of Retribution. Sensing the drama, the audience quieted down. The Horse tottered, overbalanced, and its head crashed down across the back of its adversary. Cries of pain emanated from the Snake.

The Horse charged again and the Snake cringed back, and for a moment it looked as though the fight was virtually over, that the traditional conclusion was near. Then the audience noticed a deviation from the accepted ritual of combat. The tail of the Snake had swung round and, with shouts of rage, was attacking the rear of the Horse.

The Horse wheeled, swaying and grinning, losing discipline and folding in the middle as it attempted to beat off this cowardly onslaught. Now the Snake completely surrounded the Horse, and the two animals were becoming lost in a tangle of struggling figures. The battle lost its formal aspect. The crowd howled with delight. The animals were trodden into the ground as the teams cast off their trappings and fought with bare fists, a jumble of thrashing silhouettes in the dancing flames.

The battle was soon over. Outnumbered, the Horse team took to their heels and fled into the darkness, leaving the field of victory to the Snake. After a moment’s pause, during which they might have been expected to reflect on the enormity of what they had done, the Snake team, showing no remorse, raised the limp carcass of the Horse and flung it onto the fire. Flames roared into the night sky.

The forces of Evil had triumphed.

Fat Chine, knuckles pressed to his mouth in superstitious horror, murmured, “Oh, my bones … Oh, my bones …”

It was a
confusing moment, and the audience was not sure how to take it. However, every such moment has its man, and Dad Ose clapped his hands sharply and strode to his rostrum.

Afterward, talk in the village centered around whether Dad Ose had really known what was happening around him. He had lived a very long time, and he had presided over countless Horse Day celebrations. To him, the whole thing must have become mechanical. It is conceivable that he hadn’t noticed that the outcome of the battle was in any way surprising. The good fight was over, the flesh of one of the animals had been ceremonially cast into the flames and it was time for the Pouring-on-of-Waters. The purpose of this rite was to produce billowing clouds of steam from the holy Waters, symbolizing a generation of new horse clouds following the death of the Snake. It was a fine and cleansing act.

So Dad Ose, an impressive figure in his flowing robes, took the gourd and, uttering the sacred words, flung it over the glowing remains of the Horse.

A huge ball of fire materialized out of the embers and sprang directly at him.

The audience screamed in awe, suspecting Divine Judgment. Dad Ose rolled in the dirt, beating at his flaming robes. For some time nobody went to his aid, fearing that they, too, might incur wrath from Above. Then Manuel, tearing himself loose from Ellie, got some rugs around the priest and extinguished the flames. For a moment people watched him nervously, until a fresh outburst caught their attention.

The Snake team, gathered around the rostrum for their celebratory cup, found that the pitcher contained only holy Waters. Dad Ose had thrown the nid on the fire.

*

Dark night, and the world still existed. Starquin had not destroyed it because of the sacrilegious doings in the village, and reassuring horse clouds now curtained the stars. Manuel walked home. Behind him, the villagers drank kuta, fought and made love, and, thought Manuel, they would all be feeling the worse for it in the morning.

And
what were his own regrets? Why did he feel so sad?

Maybe he should have had sex with Ellie. Maybe he shouldn’t have left her sitting there unhappy and deserted because all the other young people had paired off. But he couldn’t help the way he was, could he? Ellie knew he was different she knew that sex alone was unsatisfactory to him. Or maybe, she still couldn’t conceive what he’d tried to explain to her.

The road was very dark, lined with black trees and sighing, sleeping animals. Sounds of celebration still carried to him, and turning around, he could see the glow of the fire and the sparks rising against the black hillside. Farther away a single light burned high that would be from Dad Ose’s church, where the priest was licking his wounds. Manuel walked on, and now he saw a glow ahead.

Wise Ana was back home.

Suddenly his depression was gone, and he quickened his footsteps. Ana would welcome him she always did. She would offer him one of her strange drinks, and then they would sit together by the fire and talk — and maybe, in due course, fall comfortably asleep …

Manuel still couldn’t quite face the idea of sleeping in his own shack, alone.

He reached Ana’s cave. The light streamed from a crack in the heavy cloths that covered her doorway. He was about to push them aside and enter, when he heard voices and paused. Ana had company. Disappointed, he wondered what to do. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see him. She was an odd person in many ways, and he never had quite understood the nature of her dealings with people, or why strangers came from distant lands to see her, or where she went when she traveled …

“Come in, Manuel. Don’t hang around out there in the dark!”

And that was another funny thing—that sixth sense of hers. Manuel entered. Ana leaned on her counter in her accustomed pose, in conversation with a girl, who turned round as he crossed the room. He nodded to her briefly, resenting her presence then he stared. She was a pretty girl, with dark hair and a snub nose, and a smile that went straight to his heart. She was different: Slender like Belinda but definitely not a Polysitian, and her eyes were brown and bright. But that was not the only reason he stared until she laughed aloud.

She was
the girl whose portrait hung in Selena’s quarters.

For a moment nobody said anything. Then Manuel asked, wonderingly, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

Ana answered for the girl. “This is Elizabeth, Manuel. She likes to be called Beth, for short.”

*

Manuel looked at Elizabeth.

Ana said, “It’s Horse Night — you don’t want an old woman like me around. Why don’t you two go for a walk along the shore and get acquainted. The air’s like wine — maybe the ceremony worked, for a change. Me, I’m going to go visit a relative, and I won’t be back for a couple of days. So you’re quite welcome to use my home while I’m gone. I know your own place is kind of unwelcoming just now, Manuel. You’ll find plenty of food here, and drink — oh, and don’t let Beth stay out too long. It’s going to take her a few weeks to get used to our changeable atmosphere. If she gets tired, use the Life Cave in the back there.”

And with that, Ana, one of the great figures of history, and certainly not an old woman by any standards other than those of humans, pushed through the drapes at her doorway and walked into the night and out of the story of the Triad.

“Will you show me your land, Manuel?” asked Elizabeth, as though she were a foreigner.

“Of course.” Manuel took her hand and they went outside. Ana was nowhere in sight. A hazy moon glimmered through the horse clouds, giving enough light to walk by. They took the road to the beach. Manuel felt very comfortable with Elizabeth, as if he’d known her for a long time. “I’ve met you before, haven’t I?” he said.

“Have you?” The whiteness of her smile was visible. “Do you think I’m pretty, Manuel?”

“Yes. And different. You’ve come from a long way off.”

They talked of animals and people, ideas and philosophy. They walked along the beach, looked in at Manuel’s shack, climbed onto the cliff and followed the guanaco trails in the moonlight. In the end they talked of love.

Manuel
said, “This is how I want it to be. This is how I always thought it would be — but it never was. Except once, but that’s all over now because she’s dead. Now it’s like that again, and I can hardly believe it.” His arm was around her waist and he squeezed her as they watched the moon on the water. “I’m scared you’ll go. I want to be here, with you, forever — do you know what I mean? It doesn’t sound stupid to you, does it?”

“It sounds good, Manuel.”

“Perhaps none of this is real — perhaps I’m back in one of those other worlds and in a moment Zozula will come and I’ll be on the Train again …“ His eyes searched her face. “A terrible thing happened to me recently, when I had to fight some monsters. I remembered seeing them first,
then
I actually saw them afterward. It happened the wrong way around. The memory came before the event. Now it’s happened again, and it’s not terrible at all. I remember loving you — and now suddenly here you are, and I love you. How can that happen?”

Elizabeth said mischievously, “Maybe I’m your dream girl. Maybe you’ve always imagined someone as perfect as me, and now here I am. What are you going to do about it, Manuel?”

But Manuel was not amused. A fear was growing in him, a fear that fate was playing with him again, that — for all he knew — Elizabeth was no different from the village girls, with their fleeting attachments and their inability to form emotional bonds, their inability to …
love
. This girl, he wanted to keep. This girl, he loved. Did she feel the same?

Haltingly he said, “There’s a thing people used to do — I learned about it a long time ago, and I don’t think anyone knows about it but me. But it seems that in the old days people liked each other more than just for sex — I mean, there was another feeling… they called it
love
. Anyway, when they loved, when they were so sure of themselves and of the other person, then they had a priest
marry
them, which means —”

“I know what that means,” said Elizabeth. “Where I come from, people do it.”
But they only do it for fun, for kicks, to live out a role that has caught their fancy for a while,
she thought.
This isn’t what Manuel means
. Suddenly she realized she was hundreds of years older than Manuel and she’d experienced everything a human can dream up. She looked at Manuel, his young face so serious in the moonlight, and she felt unworthy of his love, even though she wanted to return it and knew she did return it. But in a way she was playing with him, and this wasn’t fair.

So she
said, “You can’t separate love from sex.”

“I think I can.”

“That’s only because you’re different and you’ve been unlucky. I knew another person who was unlucky in a different way, and because of it she had to try to separate love from sex, too, and it didn’t work for her, either.”
Now
, she thought,
you throw it away forever, you fool
. “You knew her, too. You called her the Girl. She wasn’t the kind of creature you’d have sex with. Did you love
her
, Manuel? Did you?”

And he said, “Yes.”