Virginia Hamilton (11 page)

And flicked her mind. Within a blink of an eye, Justice transferred her mind within the Bambnua’s. She plunged into streams of Slaker thought and memory. There was Slaker life and Slaker history—past, present. There was heritage, not just strange. It was fantastic, bizarre.

In one memory, a great colony of Slakers was on the move. Justice gathered that it was on a quest, a long search for an end. In the memory flow, the Quest for an end stood out plainly. But, for Justice, the meaning of it was lost. Then she experienced a steady engagement of thought-pictures.

She felt incredible weight and massive bulk. The Bambnua was heavy and clumsy, walking on three legs, wings at rest. The force of gravity acted on her shifting center of mass. She continually fought to keep her balance against what was for her a relentless pull from the center of the earth. Her movements were dizzying. The maneuvers, or lack of them, were caused by this balance disturbance.

Justice felt like vomiting. The alien motion surrounding her mind became quite sickening. She also discovered a new shape of loneliness. It was a wildness of independence. She knew a lust to live and a ferocious desire to fly. Through the thought-pictures of memory, Justice knew the Bambnua would fly, and soon. Flying was the Dustwalker’s way of escaping the torture of her cumbersome bulk on the ground.

Justice, in mind with the Dustwalker’s memory, understood that the Bambnua carried a male infant under each wing. The infants were the offspring of an ordinary female Slaker, and they would never fly. The Bambnua carried them because
that
female had dropped them; otherwise, they would be kicked about (kicked about? Justice didn’t comprehend and let it go as the stream of memory continued). So the Bambnua had taken the infants under her wings. Safe, out of sight, nestled against her, they breast-fed and curled their toes with satisfaction.

Their contentment was comical. They rolled their bluish eyes and humped their backs in pleasure. Justice would have laughed out loud if she hadn’t feared the Bambnua might become aware of her. So far, the Dustwalker had no inkling of her presence.

Now, in Dustland, where the entities of Justice and Dorian were invisible to her, the Bambnua sat as before. Facing Justice, she was aware of something and saw nothing, save Thomas’ cliff and white rock. The power of the unseen energy kept her still and in one place.

Picture-memory. Justice in the Bambnua’s unbroken mind-streams.

The added weight of the infants under her wings caused the Bambnua’s body to overheat. Feeling even more ill, Justice fought down nausea. Suddenly she saw through the Bambnua’s sight, a sweeping 360° view over the whole colony. The sensation of all those Slakers—there had to be at least sixty or seventy of them—was terrifying. Male Slakers were ugly creatures, and powerful. They had downy hair about an inch long in a pattern along the center of the scalp, like the comb of a rooster. Their inability to fly caused them occasionally to attack a female attempting a lift-off.

Justice sensed that, bound to the earth, the males looked on the flying females with growing intolerance. Within the colony there was an undercurrent of strife between male and female, separate from the fierceness between male and male. The female of the species had little heart for battle. Her basic struggle was for equilibrium against the force of gravity.

Only for the sake of the whole colony and the Quest did such a being as the Bambnua suffer walking on the ground part of the time with the males. There was not much of a sense of liking or dislike in her for the males. No emotion that could be considered deep caring. There was instinct for protecting colony and kelms. She would do anything short of damaging herself severely, or weakening herself beyond survival, to carry out the Quest for the end.

What is
the end?
Justice sensed that the answer was near.

The Bambnua, the Dustwalker, knew she was important to the Quest and that the fact she could fly was an advantage. She accepted the male as a most important part of the kelm but not necessarily a vital force for the Quest to the end. She accepted other females and the
yun
Slakers, as tikes were called. Yuns. The Bambnua accepted her lot, all of it, except for Dustland.

The Bambnua would leave Dustland. All Slakers would leave. They were constantly on the move in order to leave. Deep in Slaker heritage was the idea of end and out. The Quest had to be for an
end
to Dustland and a way
out
of it.

What? Astonished, Justice’s mind reeled.

There’s an end to it? A beginning to Dustland? Then we have stumbled in—this really could be someone else’s future. But how—?

Suddenly she sensed symbols of Slaker communication. She had missed them entirely, at first, she had been so involved in the Slaker memories. But behind the pictures there were sounds. They were harsh and strident. Their thrust was violent. But slowly, as Justice grew more comfortable with the Bambnua, with the weight of her powerful bulk rushing toward the end, she began to comprehend a small part.

To say that the noise Slakers made was spoken language was to attempt to put whatever it was in terms of her own time. It was not language as Justice knew English. But it was far different from whines or grunts or howls or roars of animals. It was Slaker
phamph-uan,
Justice gathered from a series of thought-pictures. All Slakers communicated in ’ph-uan, and yun Slakers were born knowing it.

There was a way of warning outside of language. Only dustwalkers like the Bambnua had extrasensory ability through the skin. Then Dustwalker must be a category, Justice realized. The colony she was viewing, which consisted of two kelms, had three mature dustwalkers and one on the way.

In a revolving view out of the Bambnua’s eyes, Justice searched for a pregnant female, but could not find one. She did discover a female carrying something soft and almost round that was covered with a fine pinkish down.

That’s it! Female Slakers lay eggs!

The female Slakers were egg-layers. And this egg-layer who carried the downy egg was also a dustwalker.

But did only dustwalkers lay dustwalker eggs? Justice wondered. Yes. Yes, four to a colony. The dustwalker, the one in the picture carrying the egg, had become infected.

With—digging!

She had been killed.

There came a rapid flow of pictures. Here was heritage of ancient depth. Slakers had come from beneath the dust to live on the surface ground.

They emerged from deep holes and dark tunnels. Slakers believed they had not devised these dank, subterranean places. But they found themselves in them. They grew, raised yuns and continued in them. When they died, they were shunted into short side tunnels, which were sealed when they were full of the dead. In that ancient time they had not eaten the dead.

Then what did they eat? Justice wondered.

Slakers ate things in the ground. Things in the ground.

Until one ancient time there came a Slaker who shivered and grew frightened of the dark. That one’s skin erupted in welts. All who had been alive then had felt the skin eruption. And somehow they knew because of it that great change was upon them.

The one, the Slaker, gasped for breath, had to get out of the tunnels. Had to. Wiggling through holes and tunnels for an endless time. Endless. Grew tired, weakened. The pain of the welts; they became infected. The Slaker was a mass of running sores. And died.

But I don’t understand—

And died. And the next one to shiver and panic in the dark. Came crawling and wiggling. The time was long. Was long. That one, too, weakened and died of infection. But beside her was found an egg. And the egg lived to become the third one to panic. It realized the huge humps on its back were useless in the tunnels, worthless for crawling, but good for covering and keeping warm. This one, after an agony of time and loneliness, of trial and error through the tunnels, reached the surface ground. She. The first.

Dustwalker?

Justice searched through recent flow of thought.

The one killed not long-ago had been caught digging. Thus, she had been brought down from the air by a crew of females. Digging was the action nearest to a crime. Any caught digging, male or female or yun, was killed. Not one Slaker decided this. All of them apparently knew by instinct. This was a law of the kelms, as close as Justice could understand it. Never would Slakers return to the underground. And the dustwalker recently killed had become food for those who lived.

So little food for so many? Justice wondered.

Add to it bodies of two others who had died of natural causes—a fight among five males—and there was blood and flesh enough for the strongest of the colony. The remaining Slakers would feed on what they could find. Small creatures. Perhaps worlmas.

Eagerly, Justice homed in on the picture-thought of worlmas.

Why did some worlmas move when they were dry husks? When they seemed no longer to live? Were the husks another stage of life, like old age?

Sitting there across from the Bambnua but still in the Bambnua’s mind, Justice’s curiosity had got the better of her. She had suggested the worlma questions to the Bambnua.

She should have known better. It was the first time she had made her mind presence known. Justice had built the questions in pictures as Slakers made picture-thoughts. And had overlooked the very real danger to herself.

Without warning, there came a seething burst of sound that was staggering:
WHY YOU WHY? WHYYOUWHY WHY YOU WHY?

Inside the Bambnua’s mind, she was trapped in a sickening sensation and jolted in a surge upward, then down, then back up and down as the Terrij vaulted into the air by the strength of her third leg.

The Dustwalker was not trying to take off in flight, but to see above everything, Justice thought, fleetingly. To see over the dust.

The Bambnua broke out in welts, warning off the Slakers at a distance.

Justice felt her skin on fire. Breathtaking pain. She sucked air in, but could not breathe out again. Desperately she tried to get out of the Bambnua’s head.

Fire. I’m on Fire. Die.

She truly believed she was dying. Life definitely faded from her. She saw hordes of Slakers tearing her limb from limb. Dead, she was a carcass to be eaten. She found out that death was seeing. It was hearing, but with no ability for life movement. She was devoured. There had been no pain. All was white light where her mind and life had been. White light of Miacis’ Star.

Justice fainted dead away.

S
EATED AS BEFORE,
J
USTICE
faced the Dustwalker. But she was still inside the Bambnua’s mind. She did not even dare to think. For she was certain that before she had fainted the Bambnua had mind-spoken to her.

Now the Bambnua was in contact with a group of Slakers from her kelm. Although the whole colony was on the move, this was the group that had stayed with her to investigate the source of the energy she had discovered. All of the group were females and loyal to the Bambnua. Being able to fly, they were not concerned about catching up with the colony again.

Cautiously the group had come nearer to Thomas’ imaginary cliff. They could see it now, absolutely clear and stark in the dust. They had not come upon the real watering hole yet, because the cliff image was too startling. But they could smell fresh water; it took all of their control not to rush to it. They were perpetually at the edge of maddening thirst. The Slakers waited upon the Bambnua’s consent. And they trusted her completely in matters of extrasensory and the protection of the colony.

Picture-thought. Commands from the Bambnua to the female Slakers: danger, wait.

The group halted for as long as was necessary. Justice sensed them—wings touching, and heads resting on one another’s shoulders. Like giant birds sleeping.

Apparently the Bambnua felt that grave danger was still present and she would hold back her females until she figured out what to do. She had not connected the danger in her mind to the energy still at rest across from her.

Justice knew she had severely frightened the Dustwalker by entering her thought with the question about worlmas. It had been dumb of her. She had indeed felt as if she were dying and had been happy, exhilarated when she came to again. But maybe what she had done wasn’t as dumb as she had first thought. That slight mind-touching might have paved the way. The next time the Bambnua might not respond with so much fear.

Oh, yes, I’ll do it again, Justice thought, careful to keep the thought confined to herself. That woman said something to me, I know she did, if I could just think what it was. All that sickness came on me so fast. And then that awful burning.

Now Justice realized she would have to work quickly before the Bambnua brought in the other females. Even with what had happened, she sensed that, given a proper preparation, this female and the others would not deliberately harm her.

I could be wrong, she thought. But it’s my guess that these poor women are more gentle than they want the male Slakers to find out. Well, I won’t ever tell on them!

The Bambnua’s mind was not powerful in the way that Justice’s was. Yet Justice had experienced force and might like nothing she had known. She knew what she had felt was mature and womanly, in the same way her mother was grown-up and womanly, and the way she herself would one day be a grown-up woman. With the Bambnua, that female force held a sense of agony and struggle of the very first dustwalker, as well as all others down through time. And, touching the Bambnua’s thoughts, Justice had in herself felt courageous and bold.

Justice had the power, was the Watcher. She would make contact with the Bambnua, letting it be understood that she could sense and project with greater strength than all of the dustwalkers together from the beginning of time. If her power was not clear to the Bambnua when the Bambnua realized her there in her thoughts, then it would be necessary for Justice to reveal it. The process would have to be undertaken with care, and slowly.

Slowly. Slowly, Justice thought. I do still hold the balance? I am still the Power? Yes. Yes, I will always be the Watcher.