Until the Celebration (9 page)

Early the next morning Raamo left the Temple Grove by way of the great archway and Stargrund ramp, but as he reached Startrunk, instead of continuing downward, he began to climb higher. He had intended to glide directly down to the broad public branchways and then make his way on foot to Skygrund and the new Garden, but suddenly he had an urgent yearning for the bright clarity of the farheights. He would have time to remain for a short while in the heights and then, by starting his glide from far up among the rooftree fronds, he might be able to reach Skygrund, far to the west, in one long glide.

As he climbed, he began to feel a lightening of the burdens that had so often oppressed him since the Rejoyning. Where they came from he did not know. Not from any certain knowledge. There were many among the Rejoyners who were better informed than he, and they seemed still to be hopeful, in spite of the many problems that had arisen.

Nor did his anxiety come from any foreknowledge. He had had no foretelling visions concerning the future of the Rejoyning, except for the warning that seemed to relate in some vague way to Pomma and Teera. Yet his heavy weight of unjoyfulness had seemed to grow with the days and weeks—as fears and misunderstandings spread and grew between the Kindar and the Erdlings—until it seemed now to him that fear and mind-pain rode on the air in Orbora. But in the cool bright air of the farheights, the burden was gone, as if it had been left behind, far below on the crowded branchways of the city.

Raamo stayed as long as he could among the roof-fronds, moving slowly westward, stopping to rest now and then in a rocking nid of leaf and twig. But time was passing, and he was expected at the Garden, so at last he began to look downwards for a clear glidepath leading toward Skygrund. Soon, coming to an endbranch free of Vine and leaf, he saw below him a long narrow twisting flightpath; and leaping out, he launched himself into open space.

For the first few moments he fell free to gain impetus, his arms held close to his sides. Then, with a skill born of long experience, he spread his wing-panels and swooped upwards. Still gliding swiftly from the force of his first fall, he banked around a stand of Vine, dropped to avoid a grundbranch, and entered a wide glidepath leading toward the west. Within a few minutes he was landing on the wide branchway on the lowest level of Skygrund, only a short distance from the entry-platform of the new Garden.

Joining a stream of late arriving Erdlings, both children and adults, Raamo made his way into the building—a cluster of hanging and cantilevered classrooms arranged around a central platform. A small temporary stage had been erected in the middle of the central platform, and it was around this stage that the crowd had begun to gather. As he entered the platform, Raamo began to be recognized, and soon the Erdling families were pressing around him, jostling and shoving good-naturedly as they struggled to get a glimpse of the young Rejoyner. In their open Erdling faces Raamo saw curiosity and friendly interest, and here and there a bit of suspicious doubtfulness. But he pensed no real ill will; and to those who were nearest, he reached out in mind-touch, and with the natural Erdling ability to pense emotions, they reacted quickly and warmly.

The ceremony was short and simple, and afterwards Raamo spoke briefly to some of the Erdling teachers and to D’ol Birta. Birta, as she was now called, had once been in charge of all the Gardens; and, since the Rejoyning, she had taken a special interest in helping to establish the new centers of learning for the children of the Erdling immigrants. From Birta and the others, Raamo learned much that he could tell Wassou on his next visit. When it was almost time for him to leave, Raamo spoke to the chief-teacher about Teera’s clan-brother, Charn Arnd.

“Charn Arnd,” the teacher said. “I am not yet familiar with the names of all our children. But I shall inquire, and if he is here, I will send him to speak with you.”

Raamo was waiting in a small ante-chamber when the boy approached. He entered hesitantly, a sturdy, tawny-skinned Erdling child, his gray eyes wide with amazement at so strange a summons. Standing before Raamo, he stared at him curiously for several moments before he spoke.

“Hello,” he said at last. “My name is Charn. Did you want to see me?”

“Greetings, Charn,” Raamo said, extending his hands. “I am Raamo.”

“Yes, I know,” Charn said. “Everyone knows who you are. You are a Rejoyner and the brother of the holy child, Pomma.”

“I am Pomma’s brother,” Raamo agreed. “And I am also a friend of Teera Eld. And you are Teera’s clan-brother, are you not?”

Charn grinned delightedly. “Yes,” he said. “I am Teera’s clan-brother.” But then his smile faded. “That is, I was, when we all lived in Erda. But there are no clans in Orbora. I don’t even know if Teera remembers me anymore, now that she is holy and famous.”

“She remembers you very well—and she has asked me to speak to you and invite you to visit her at the Vine Palace in the Temple Grove.”

“At the Vine Palace?” Charn stared at Raamo in amazement. “But how do I get there? And how do I get them to let me in?”

“I will tell you how to get there. And the people who tend the palace gates will know that you are to be admitted.”

Charn’s smile returned and grew broader. “All right,” he said. “Tell Teera I will come. I’ll come on the next free day.”

“That will be fine. Teera will be very happy when I tell her that you are coming.”

Charn’s forehead wrinkled suddenly. “I’m not sure that I’ll know how to ... how to speak to her anymore. I’m not sure ... Pausing, he dropped his eyes, his face reddening. “I’m not sure if I know how to talk to a holy person.”

Raamo smiled. “I think you should speak to her just as you always have. I think you will find it very easy.”

Charn shook his head thoughtfully, but then suddenly he smiled. “Yes,” he said. “That must be true. Because people say that you are also holy, and you are very easy to speak to.”

This time it was Raamo’s face that flushed, and for a moment he could think of nothing more to say. But the boy was staring at him eagerly and after a time he thought to ask Charn about the new Garden.

“I don’t like it,” Charn said with Erdling bluntness. “I didn’t want to come here.”

“What is it that displeases you about the new Garden?” Raamo asked.

“It’s not that,” Charn said. “It’s just that I liked the old one better. The one the Kindar go to. I liked it very much, even though there weren’t many Erdlings there—only me and my brothers and a few others.”

“Why were there so few?” Raamo asked.

“I don’t know.” Charn shrugged impatiently. “Because of parents. Some of the Erdling parents don’t like all of the classes that are taught there. And the Kindar ones think we are too rough and noisy, and that we might teach their children to hurt each other and to eat lapans. But my parents say that we are all Kindar now together, and we should go to the Garden together. And I liked it there. I have lots of friends at the old Garden, and now I won’t get to see them very much.”

Charn’s face darkened as he spoke, but the cloud passed quickly. “Tell Teera, greetings,” he said. “Tell her I’ll see her on the next free day.”

As Raamo was leaving the Garden, he once more saw the woman who was now called Birta. She was standing near the entryway speaking to one of the teachers, and when she saw Raamo, she called to him.

“Raamo,” she said, “if you are going back to the city center by branchway, I will walk with you.”

“I thank you,” Raamo said, “but I am late, and I can reach the Grove faster by gliding. Do you wish to glide with me?”

“No. I must go first to the center today by way of Silkgrund and the public pantries. But there is a glidepath nearby that you may want to take. When you reach the midheights, take the second northeast branch. It would seem to be leading in the wrong direction, but it bends back and touches on a good glidepath towards the Grove.”

Thanking Birta, Raamo began his climb to the mid-heights of Skygrund. He climbed hurriedly at first, but there was much to think about, and by the time he reached the first midlevel branches, his pace had slackened. When he reached the second northeast branch, he was walking slowly, deep in thought. Suddenly, almost in mid-step, he stopped and listened. There was only silence, a deep, unnatural, birdless hush. He realized then that what had stopped him had not been a true sound, but something deeper and more inward.

It was not a sending. It did not flow freely. It reached him fitfully—thin and wispy—like the oozing breath of poisonous gases. Like the intermittent escape of thoughts too violent to be contained by even the most feverish blocking.

A few feet beyond where he stood on the narrow branchpath, a cluster of endbranches intersected a tangle of Vine, forming a dense leafy thicket. As Raamo stood transfixed and staring, one leaf quivered and then another. A curtain of Vine parted, and for a fraction of a second something gleamed like a ray of sunlight reflected in peering eyes.

Then it came again—the poisonous whisper of thought—and stepping suddenly backward into empty space, Raamo let himself fall. He dropped down and down for a great distance before he leveled into a glide that carried him towards the city center and the great public branchways of Broad and Stargrund. Landing near a large group of people who were gathered around the newsinger’s platform near Broadtrunk, he mingled with the crowd. He waited there, among the closely packed bodies, until the fear had faded, and then, by way of the heavily traveled ladders of Startrunk, he made his way back to the Temple Grove.

That night Raamo’s dreams were full of dark thickets that bulged and quivered with monstrous anticipations, and in the morning he went to the nid-place of the Chief Mediator to speak with him privately.

Afterwards he was somewhat comforted. In the telling of what had happened—or seemed about to happen—he realized that he was not certain. That his fear had come from a fleeting feeling rather than anything actually seen or heard. And Hiro had agreed that he might well have been mistaken.

So in the days that followed he tried to forget the dark quivering thicket and remember only the good the day at the Garden had brought: Wassou’s pleasure when he heard about the Garden, and Teera’s Joy in her reunion with her clan-brother. It was good to see the three children playing together. Watching them racing through the corridors of the palace or huddled together whispering mysteriously, Raamo’s fear for his sister and Teera seemed to diminish. Their games with Charn were rowdy and careless, childishly unconcerned with great honors and responsibilities, and in some undefined way the children seemed less threatened.

I
T WAS LATE AT
night, and the evening rains had long since begun to fall when a short, stocky figure, dressed in a long hooded cape, entered a muddy sidepath in the surface city of Upper Erda. The constant trampling of many feet had destroyed the spongy moss and topsoil of the forest, and the path had become a morass of ankle-deep mud. But the man who walked alone on East Pathway Three seemed not to notice the thick ooze that was coating his feet and the skirt of his flowing robe of lapan hide. His attention was, obviously, on more urgent matters. As he walked, his head turned rapidly from side to side, and he paused to stare cautiously down every crosspath.

When at last he stopped, it was before a long, low building fashioned of rough-hewn logs and roofed with a poorly woven thatch of frond. Going first to a low window, he squatted down and peered inside. For some time he continued his scrutiny, changing his position twice in order to inspect every corner of the interior. He stood, then, and going to the entryway, he pushed aside the doorhanging of soggy lapan hide and stepped inside.

The building he had entered was a lapan-house, one of several that had sprung up in recent months in Upper Erda. Specializing in cooking and serving the flesh of lapan and plak hen, the lapan-houses were patronized by immigrant Erdlings who had moved into the Kindar city of Orbora, but who had not yet become Kindar in their tastes and appetites. Only a few among them had renounced the eating of flesh. There were, in fact, some who daily defied the Council’s request that they refrain from cooking or eating flesh in their nid-places and continued to terrify their Kindar neighbors with their smoking hearth-fires and the smells of burning flesh. But the largest number, while honoring the Council’s ruling, returned often to the surface cities and the newly established lapan-houses to satisfy their taste for fried lapan or roasted plak hen.

Since there had been no public eating houses in Erda, no tradition dictated the cost of a hot meal; but the Erdling hearth-keepers were enterprising and inventive, and the charges tended to be flexible and open to negotiation. A plate full of hot mashed tarbo root and roasted lapan, washed down by a mug of pan-mead, might go for as little as five Erdling tokens or in exchange for a few paraso eggs or a basket of tree mushrooms. But now and then a hearth-keeper might ask for something as valuable as a new shuba, fresh from the looms of the Kindar silk-houses.

Due to the lateness of the hour, the lapan-house that the robed and hooded figure entered was nearly empty. Its regular patrons had long since returned to their nid-places in the heights. Most of the table-boards were empty, except for a litter of dirty plates and utensils. The light that came from two small wall lamps and the glowing coals of the hearth-fire at the far end of the room was dim, and the air was heavy with smoke and grease. Here and there rain dripped through the makeshift roof and fell into small muddy puddles on the earthen floor. In the far corner near the hearth, two men, sitting crouched over a table, looked up quickly as the newcomer entered. Leaving a dripping trail of rainwater in his wake, the figure approached the table, and a voice emerged from the shadows of the deep hood.

“Who is hearth-keeping?” the voice asked.

“Only Dergg,” one of the men at the table answered. “The other has gone home. It is safe.”

Taking off his soaked and dripping cape and throwing it across a nearby chair, the newcomer sat down at the table. He was dressed in a shuba, its softly shimmering folds contrasting strangely with his thick, graceless body, as well as with the long and heavy metal instrument that hung on a leather band at his waist.