Gods of the Greataway (35 page)

“Well, whatever the reason, they have each other now.” Ana smiled. “I’ve so enjoyed this last century. This is a wonderful way to finish it off.”

“You’ve enjoyed it because I allowed you human emotions for a while. It was necessary to the Purpose that you should appear to be a normal human. You played your part successfully and manipulated the humans to our ends. That is as it should be. However…” Shenshi permitted herself a wintry smile — purely to make herself understood to Ana — and continued, “You may have a few minutes more, until I die.”

“You’re going to die so soon?” Horrified, Ana hurried to Shenshi’s side. She took her mother’s hand, feeling something crackle there, but hardly noticing it. “Why? Don’t leave me now, Mother. Not after all we’ve done.”

“I am old and frail. The Joy will be too much for me.”

“The Joy?”

“The Departure of Starquin.”

“Oh, I see …” Ana stood beside Shenshi for a while, regarding the Rock with some awe. Then she became aware of the paper her mother was holding. “What’s this?”

“It’s nothing. Just a poem a human wrote once.”

Ana read it. After a while she said, “It’s quite nice, I suppose. At least…” Her eyes widened. “Mother! He knew your name!”

“You’re not the only one the human poets wrote about, Ana. I spent my years among them, too, you know. When my mother was alive I was allowed emotions and human contact, just as I’ve allowed you.” She pointed. “There’s a sandy cliff to the south. Millennia ago a group of gentle humans lived there. They didn’t fight, and maybe I thought humans would always be like that. I became more friendly with them than I should have, and they took me into their houses and treated me as one of them. There was little Traveling then, because humans had not yet discovered the Greataway.

“One man
in particular — his name was Mijel. He made me feel things that I don’t believe our kind has ever felt. He was kind and gentle, and he held me in his arms often — as I sometimes hold you, only the feelings were different. They were feelings of Earth, not the Greataway. Mijel gave me these feelings, and he wrote me a poem — then, like all humans, he died.

“I used to go and look at his village, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to the people anymore. Many of their generations went by, and they forgot that once I’d been their friend and they began to regard me as a witch again. Then the ice came, and the earthquakes, and the village was wiped away. And the people were gone.” She fell silent, staring at the Rock as though trying to read the past in its translucent depths.

“But you kept the poem,” said Ana, looking at it. Then she said, “Did you show him the Rock? What’s this about a monolith?”

Shenshi said, “I, too, was foolish in my day. But there was no danger. A city stood on this spot, and the Rock was very well disguised. He might have caught some glimmering of it in another happentrack, but that’s all. He was a very perceptive human. What a waste, that their lives should be so short.”

“And ours so long.” Ana regarded her mother with compassion. “What does it feel like, dying?”

“It feels as though Time is coming alive. All the past is dead, because one millennium is much like the next — just a desert of years with a few memories, like oases. But now … I catch hold of each day when the sun rises. I take it in my hands and my heart, and I try to hold it for as long as possible. But suddenly it’s a living thing, and it slips through my fingers and it’s gone and it’s night again, and I lie there in the dark and I mourn for that day gone as if it were a lover.”

“How did this first start happening?”

“It came inside my head, so slowly I didn’t notice at first, because my body was still strong. At first there was just a quick alarm, as when a capybara thinks he hears the jaguar. Then it was gone and I forgot it. Just that once, it had seemed a little harder to send the Traveler on his way. Then it happened again and the jaguar was closer I could smell him — or could I? It might have been the scent of an old den, abandoned and safe. But I remembered what my own mother had told me, and I knew I’d had the first sign — so I gave birth to you, my daughter. Travelers came and went, and my mind was hunted now, the strength of the Essence draining away, just as the legs of the giant rodent weaken — because no animal can escape the jaguar, who is death incarnate. So I ran, hunted, doing my Duty as I must, because I was born to it, as you are born to it, and only one of our kind has ever done anything different, and we carry her shame with us forever. Now my mind runs no more. It is collapsed, waiting, panting. And it hears a rustling in the jungle nearby, very close.”

The daughter
shivered because the cold breezes of night were trickling down the hills, and because she was reminded that Starquin, the Five-in-One, is the epitome of logic and would not have created a being that lived on after its purpose was fulfilled.

Impulsively, she said, “You think of death the way a human does. And you kept the poem all this time. I love you, Mother.”

The Rock glowed.

The facets lit up, one by one, covering a quadrant close to Shenshi’s head. She stepped back, the glow lighting her face and smoothing the lines until she looked quite young again. Then she placed the palms of her hands against the facet that shone the brightest. She stood as still as the Rock itself while she accepted the Traveler into her being. Her face filled with a joy that was not a human joy. It transcended all lower emotions, and Ana felt humble as she watched and wondered, and willed her mother to live through this last minute.

Shenshi divined Starquin’s intent, and she touched the facet he required and sped him on his way with her Essence. Now her expression was one of great pride, her eyes fixed on the Rock, her Duty done. Ana, sensing it was over, moved forward and took her mother in her arms, mourning at how light she was, how brittle. She took Shenshi away from the Rock and laid her on the bed. Shenshi lay stiff, consumed, no more sentient than stone, but with that expression of pride still on her face. She was nothing now, merely Earthly material already beginning to decay, but Ana held her and cried. Starquin had gone and life had gone, and now Shenshi was no more than any little old human lady, lying dead, all glory flown.

*

Starquin departed.
His going was not attended by any noticeable phenomenon.

Centuries later the inhabitants of the Red Planet discovered that the route to Earth was clear again, and they came screaming through the Greataway with their Weapon. They unleashed it on Humanity.

Humanity never knew it happened.

By this time the Macrobes had spread throughout the genes of Mankind. Everybody could practice the Inner Think. The Red Planet’s weapon was harmless. And the Outer Think? That was in the genes, too, although the source has never been isolated. Some say it is an accidental gift from Starquin, passed on to Humanity by a certain legendary Dedo. But that is another story for another century.

And as for the present story, Manuel and Elizabeth returned to Pu’este and lived their lives among the animals and Wild Humans, just like anyone else. They never spoke of their travels or of the momentous things they had done — except to two people: an old man and a woman who would outlive them all. The four of them used to get together every year or so and talk about old times and drink kuta.

The death of Manuel and Elizabeth is not recorded. One day after a difficult night of snake clouds, both were missing from the shack on the beach. They were never found. There is a story that a sapa scarf said to have belonged to Elizabeth was found near the Dome, beside a pool where axolotls lived. The snake clouds, whistling down from the mountains, had uncovered some kind of smooth rock nearby, and the scarf was wedged against it.

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Cat Carina

The Celestial Steam Locomotive

For Kevin Coney

with love

Michael G. Coney (1932 – 2005)

Michael G. Coney is the award-winning author of such novels as SYZYGY, MONITOR FOUND IN ORBIT, BRONTOMEK, CAT KARINA, and THE CELESTIAL STEAM LOCOMOTIVE. His short stories have appeared in magazines the world over and are frequently included in anthologies.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © The Estate of Michael G Coney 1984

All rights reserved.

The right of Michael G Coney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 12943 6

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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