Tropic of Creation (17 page)

She was using just his given name for the first time. It sounded strange, a little unnerving. He squinted at the glowing walls. “The lights are very bright.”

Rising, she went to the data plug again, and the lights dimmed, releasing the needles that had been plunging into his temples.

They sat in the dim quiet for a while. The chemipractor came and Maret dismissed him at Eli’s insistence.

In the semidark, Maret’s voice came to him. “I once had those I would have died for.”

He sipped from his straw. The water ran down his throat as though for the first time, tracing a cold path.

“Before the HumanWar,” she added.

“Millions dead …” Eli said, half to himself.

“Among us, there were fewer dead,” she said. “But we are smaller in number than you. Vastly fewer. And so each death was a blow.”

“Even the fifty million dead,” Eli mused, “each one had a mother who grieved, a father who grieved.”

“We do not use those terms. They are very strange to us.”

“Mother and father. Everyone has a mother and father.…” He felt that he was speaking in parables. His mind took him to absolutes and obvious places. He was peaceful, a little crazy.

“We do not. We have only all our kin. And for myself, I have not even that.”

Looking at her face he noticed that the markings exposed on her face and hands were darker—considerably darker—than before. She had been more accented for days now, he realized.

“Where are your kin, Maret?”

“Dead. In the HumanWar. The war took all but me. All my first net and second. Now that I am alone, I often think I would have gone in place of any one of them. Sometimes to be the sole survivor is a terrible thing.” She said this last looking at him instead of the mushrooms in her hand. “That is why I must be permitted ronid … to continue my bloodlines. And why I must not fail in my duty to Nefer, who might ruin all. Regrettably, she might influence the Data Guides who decide who will go Up.”

“Why do you go Up, Maret?”

Her voice was now only a whisper. “UpWorld … is the place of the bloodlines, Eli.”

“But sex is very free down here, you have said.”

She looked toward the door as though confirming that they were still in complete privacy. “It is not a polite conversation, to speak of Up World.” She glanced at him and he held her gaze until she continued. “DownWorld we bear only sterile issue. To be truly fertile, we must go Up. Humans do not express distinctions between sex-for-pleasure and sex-for-progeny. But for us, there is sex, and there is ronid.”

“Why are you only fertile UpWorld?” When she kept her eyes pointedly down, gazing at the floor, he remarked,
“It must be a dangerous place to have babies, your UpWorld.”

Her data tendril twitched in apparent surprise. “Of course. How else?”

She urged more water on him, and he drank, though his stomach warned against it.

“And you, Eli?” Maret continued. “What of your kin? Lost in the war also?”

Lost
—always easier to say than
dead
. “You know the concepts of sister and brother?”

“Yes, we have those concepts.”

“I have—I
had
four brothers. Two died in the same battle. Then later, Quinn was killed. It’s eight years ago now.… But we don’t forget.”

“No. One does not.” She helped him to raise the water tube to his lips. “You should drink more.”

He acquiesced. The sack was empty. Maret replaced it with another.

“Nefer wishes to avoid war,” she said. “My mistress is a cruel individual, but she is not wrong about all things. She hopes that you will help to avoid war by speaking for us and explaining that we did not kill your people.”

“If it’s true, then I’ll tell them. But what I say won’t carry much weight.”

“They will not listen to a ship’s captain?”

“Among your people, you have those of high and low degree, yes?” When she nodded, he went on, “I’m of low degree.” At her look of surprise, he said, “Don’t place your hopes on me, Maret. I’m one in disgrace. Like a gomin, you might say.”

“Your people are very strange. To despise such a one as you.”

“They have good reason.”

“If war comes, neither your sorrow or mine will much matter,” she said, so quietly it was almost inaudible.

“It will matter. Even then. Because we remember.” It
was bizarre to think he had just used the term
we
to describe himself and an ahtra. But he let it stand.

The dim light of the room shimmered in Maret’s eyes.

Maret kept vigil as Eli fell into an exhausted sleep. He dreamed of open skies and lying with a woman, while the sun warmed their bodies toward conception, and monsters roamed nearby, snapping branches under ponderous feet.

T
hey may yet live
. Eli paced in his cell, nine steps in one direction, nine back, thinking of how his crew might defeat the UpWorld threat—which was, Nefer said,
perhaps
the vone, the monster gods of the ahtra. Maret had said the survivors would be those without mercy. If so, they would be the hardened veterans: Luce Marzano … Sergeant Juric … and a few of the enlisteds with the mercy soaked out of them in regen baths. And he knew who would be the first to die: his civilian passengers. Young Sascha…

A movement at the far wall. A bubble swelled, beckoning Eli. The gomin was back.

The gomin was seated on a rug and gestured Eli to sit opposite her. “Eli Dammond, you have been ill. No longer, I hope?”

Eli shrugged. “The food. I’ve been better.”

“Yes. You—languish—would that be the word?”

“Close enough.”

The gomin spoke very softly. “I have so regrettably failed you.”

“How?”

“It would be like paradise, you said. To return to the place that you have lost, to be among your people. Even if you die of it, it tends to be a worthwhile gamble. For paradise.”

“Yes.”

“Eli Dammond, I have not behaved with all courtesy toward you, for which please forgive.”

“I’ve taken no offense.”

The gomin waved her arms, agitated. “No, I have failed in courtesy. I was inclined to learn of your sexual ways, and your path of happiness. I am disposed to many weaknesses, curiosity for one.” She closed her eyes, listening. When she opened them, she began speaking very rapidly. “The task was to tell you to leave us. But I have delayed. Now you have very little time.”

“Leave?” The gomin had his full attention now.

“Please forgive my many errors.”

“Tell me, then.” He reached out to urge the gomin to speak, but his hands pressed through the image.

“There would be danger. If one is caught, one suffers.”

Eli thought she spoke of herself as well as him.

The gomin continued, “Now remember, everything. Do not ask me questions that one will tend to fail, and that will waste time.”

“Quickly, then!”

“At the next meal your door will not be barred. Proceed—you would say, left—down the way. As the season is near, some guards waver in their attention. There will occur a distraction for the guard near your door. You will proceed to the nearest downway, taking it to the next way. One will leave a robe for you, where possible. Watch for it. Proceed right again to the fourth downway.…” The gomin continued in this manner, reciting right, left, downway, several times.

Eli concentrated. There were four rights, after the first
left. There were five ways to traverse. Only once was the next downway not the first one. This was on the second level, where he was to take the fourth downway. He would forget nothing; it was etched like acid on stone.

“You’re telling me to go down. What about up?”

“No, down, down! Then you will come to the old downway. There, one has been told, the hab is dead, very dangerous. Proceed as far as you can down. There is a probability someone will be there to guide you farther. You will go to an ancient way, beyond memory. From there, you may go up.” She looked at him, blinking. “It being dangerous, you would still engage the risks?”

“Yes. But in case I fail, I want a way to speak to my people. Just once. By radio.”

“No, no,” the gomin said, fluttering her hands. “We do not speak with those Above.”

“You don’t. But maybe I can?”

“No, the Well does not permit such. No radio.”

“What Well?”

“Our great Well, our … ancestral data cistern. One has the wrong words. But all our memory loops around the world in a great field. It forbids radio waves, while giving camouflage. It holds all knowledge and memory and all our kin nets. If you would speak to your people, you must ascend to the OverWoods.”

“What place is that?”

“It is where the vone dream, such dreams that we have fallen from, but struggle to know imperfectly, in intervals.”

“Myth or fact, gomin?”

“It is said that myth tends toward a condensed truth. Among us, everything is an approximation of truth. How can one know absolutely with so much uncertainty?” She closed her eyes, then stood up abruptly. “Eli Dammond, I am glad I learned that your sexual ways are not paradise,
nor are they chaos. Life is imperfect, in all realms, one is tending to believe. Even so, one hopes you find your paradise.”

“And you yours, my friend.”

“Lastly, no matter what the happenstances, do not trust Nefer Ton Enkar.”

“I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her.”

The gomin fluttered her hands. “Such a statement strays to delicious discourtesy.” She smiled broadly. “I will miss our talks, Eli Dammond.”

The bubble evaporated.

Far below PrimeWay, in a deep UnderPrime lobe, Vod stood facing Harn, his arm trembling with the desire to strike his coworker. They had exchanged words lacking in all courtesy, a breach of form that might well erupt into something worse. Just down the way, he could hear the clatter of the maintenance crew, intent on the Down World delivery systems behind an exposed flap of hab. The whole vicinity was darkened as the hab dealt with the intrusion.

Harn’s cousin Belah accompanied him. She gestured at them, urging them to retire around the curve of the way, out of sight of the statics. It was conducive to fluxor pride to keep disputes from the notice of statics who would be eager to feed the information into the common flow.

Affecting nonchalance, Vod sat on the rusted arm of an antiquated soil crusher. “Leave it be, Harn-as. I don’t answer for Maret.” He would have
liked
to answer for Maret, if she would ever listen to him, but events had veered too far in one direction now.

“Maybe not,” Harn allowed. “But then, where’s all the gip we contributed when we
thought
you answered for her?”

Vod had long been accumulating contributions against
the day Maret would lead them. Until now, diggers had given freely. “Your funds are safe,” he answered. “Do you want yours back?”

“Maybe I do. And what about everybody else that thought they wagered on Maret?” A crop of cella growing nearby lit Harn’s face with a ripple of light. Vod tried to calm himself. The threads of the mycelium linked DownWorld in a net of nourishment, like dweller kinship itself. There was no call for argument, especially among diggers.

He spoke reasonably. “It was never a wager. It was an investment.”

“A bad one, if she’s going Up.”

“She’ll be back.” He said it automatically.

Belah exchanged glances with him. They were both against Maret, Vod saw.

“She won’t be caring about diggers in any case, not like you led us to believe. Some think you strayed a hexal or two from the truth, Vod-as.”

Vod jumped off the crusher. A strand of anger coiled in his stomach.

“Not your fault. You were out of the flow on this one.”

Fairly said, and meant to mollify, but Vod rode a crest of emotion. He fought for his color, but it drained like free water into dirt spoils.

Then Harn added, “Your humble Maret serves Nefer. And now she serves the human.”

As Vod opened his mouth to protest, Harn added: “Maybe serves him more ways than one.”

Vod struck. It was a strong blow connecting to the dark side of the digger’s head, avoiding the tendril. And Harn went down. After a moment he struggled to rise, then lay flat again.

Vod pulled in warm gulps of air, feeling queasy. He had never struck anyone before, much less a fellow digger.

Belah hurried to Harn’s side. For a moment, Vod felt a strong attraction to her, despite the circumstances. Was
she responding to him? The atmosphere was gravid with tension and pleasure.

Vod was backing up, both relieved and disappointed to see that Harn had begun to regain his senses.

Belah looked up at him, her eyes mocking his lapse of control.

“So, Vod-as,” she said, her voice seductive and ironic, “the Season begins at last.”

Around them, the hab glistened with humidity. A trickle of water edged down Vod’s hand where he leaned against the wall. He wiped his hand on his clothes, stammering his apologies to Harn, but all the while looking at Belah, and her tacit offer of sex-for-pleasure. Then he turned and fled.