Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset (55 page)

Poul Mer Lo decided to take a gamble. ‘Yet who can say what and what does not belong to the dreams of Oruri. Might not Oruri dream of a strange country wherein there are such things as silver birds?’

Enka Ne was silent. He folded his arms, and gazed thoughtfully down at
his prisoner. The feathers rustled. Water ran from them and made little pools on the stone floor.

At last the god-king spoke. ‘The oracle has said that you are a teacher – a great teacher. Is that so?’

‘Lord, I have skills that were prized among my own people. I have a little of the knowledge of my people. I do not know if I am a great teacher. I do not yet know what I can teach.’

The answer seemed to please Enka Ne. ‘Perhaps you speak honestly … Why did your comrades die?’

Until then, Poul Mer Lo had not known that he was the last survivor. He felt an intense desolation. He felt a sense of loneliness that made him cry out, as in pain.

‘You suffer?’ enquired the god-king. He looked puzzled.

Poul Mer Lo spoke with difficulty. ‘I did not know that my comrades were dead.’

Again there was a silence. Enka Ne gazed disconcertingly at the pale giant kneeling before him. He moved from side to side as if inspecting the phenomenon from all possible angles. The feathers rustled. The noise of the fountains became loud, like thunder.

Eventually, the god-king seemed to have made up his mind.

‘What would you do,’ asked Enka Ne, ‘if I were to grant you freedom?’

‘I should have to find somewhere to stay.’

‘What would you do, then, if you found somewhere to stay?’

‘I should have to find someone to cook for me. I do not even know what is good and what is not good to eat.’

‘And having found a home and a woman, what then?’

‘Then, Lord, I should have to decide how I could repay the people of Baya Nor who have given me these things.’

Enka Ne stretched out a hand. ‘Live,’ he said simply.

Poul Mer Lo felt a sharp jerk. Then his arms were free. The two silent Bayani warriors lifted him to his feet. He fell down because, having kneeled so long, the blood was not flowing in his legs.

Again they lifted him and supported him.

Enka Ne gazed at him without expression. Then he turned and walked away. After three or four paces he stopped and turned again.

He glanced at Poul Mer Lo and spoke to the guards. ‘This man has too many fingers,’ he said. ‘It is offensive to Oruri. Strike one from each hand.’

Poul Mer Lo was given a small thatched house that stood on short stilts just outside the sacred city, the noia with whom he had spent his imprisonment, and sixty-four copper rings. He did not know the value of the ring money; but Mylai Tui calculated that if he did not receive any further benefits from the god-king he could still live for nearly three hundred days without having to hunt or work for himself.

Poul Mer Lo thought the god-king had been more than generous, for he had provided the stranger with enough money to last his own lifetime. Wisely, perhaps, Enka Ne had not shown too much favour. He had made sure that Enka Ne the 610th would not be embarrassed by the munificence of his predecessor.

The little finger on each hand had been struck off expertly, the scars had healed and the only pain that remained was from tiny fragments of bone working their way slowly to the surface. Sometimes, when the weather was heavy, Poul Mer Lo was conscious of a throbbing. But, for the most part he had adjusted to the loss very well. It was quite remarkable how easily one could perform with only four fingers the tasks that had formerly required five.

For many days after he had received what amounted to the royal pardon, Poul Mer Lo spent his time doing nothing but learning. He walked abroad in the streets of Baya Nor and was surprised to find that he was, for the most part, ignored by the ordinary citizens. When he engaged them in conversation, his questions were answered politely; but none asked questions in return. The fate of a pygmy in the streets of London, he reflected, would very likely have been somewhat different. The fate of an extraterrestrial in the streets of any terrestrial city would have been markedly different. Police would have been required to control the crowds – and, perhaps, disperse the lynch mobs. The more he learned, the more, he realized, he had to learn.

The population of Baya Nor, a city set in the midst of the forest, consisted of less than twenty thousand people. Of these nearly a third were farmers and craftsmen and rather more than a third were hunters and soldiers. Of the remainder, about five thousand priests maintained the temples and the waterways and about one thousand priest/lawyer/civil servants ran the city’s administration. The god-king, Enka Ne, supported by a city council and an hereditary female oracle, reigned with all the powers of a despot for one year
of four hundred days – at the end of which time he was sacrificed in the Temple of the Weeping Sun while the new god-king was simultaneously ordained.

Baya Nor itself was a city of water and stone – like a great Gothic lido, thought Poul Mer Lo, dropped crazily in the middle of the wilderness. The Bayani worshipped water, perhaps because water was the very fluid of life. There were reservoirs, pools and fountains everywhere. The main thoroughfares were broad waterways, so broad that they must have taken generations to construct. In each of the four main reservoirs, temples shaped curiously like pyramids rose hazily behind a wall of fountains to the blue sky. The temples, too, were not such as could have been raised by a population of twenty thousand in less than a century. They looked very old, and they looked also as if they would endure longer than the race that built them.

In a literal and a symbolic sense Baya Nor was two cities – one within the other. The sacred city occupied a large island in the lake that was called the Mirror of Oruri. It was connected to the outer city by four narrow causeways, on each side of which were identical carvings representing all the god-kings since time immemorial.

If Baya Nor was not strong in science, it was certainly strong in art; for the generations of sculptors and masons who had carved the city out of dark warm sandstone had left behind them monuments of grandeur and classic line. Disdaining a written language, they had composed their common testament eloquently in a language of form and composition. They had married water to stone and had produced a living mobile poetry of fountains and sunlight and shadow and sandstone that was a song of joy to the greater glory of Oruri.

Poul Mer Lo knew little of the religion of the Bayani. But as he surveyed its outward forms, he could feel himself coming under its spell, could sense the mystery that bound a people together in the undoubted knowledge that their ideas, their philosophy and their way of life were the most perfect expression of the mystery of existence.

At times, Poul Mer Lo was frightened; knowing that if he were to live and remain sane he would have to assume to some extent the role of serpent in this sophisticated yet oddly static Eden. He would have to be himself – no longer an Earth man, and not a man of Baya Nor. But a man poised dreadfully between two worlds. A man chastened by light-years, whipped by memories, haunted by knowledge. A man pinned by circumstances to a speck of cosmic dust from that other speck he had once called home. A man who, above all, needed to talk, to make confession. A man with a dual purpose – to create and to destroy.

At times he revelled in his purpose. At times he was ashamed. At times, also, he remembered someone who had once been called Paul Marlowe. He remembered the prejudices and convictions and compulsions that this
strange person had held. He remembered his arrogance and his certainty – his burning ambition to journey out to the stars.

Paul Marlowe had fulfilled that ambition, but in fulfilling it he had died. Alas for Paul Marlowe, who had never realized that it was possible to pay a greater price for private luxuries than either death or pain.

Paul Marlowe, native of Earth, had accomplished more than Eric the Red, Marco Polo, Columbus or even Darwin. But it was Poul Mer Lo, grace and favour subject of Enka Ne, who paid the price for his achievement.

And the price was absolute loneliness.

The half-starved youth, clad in a threadbare samu, who climbed up the steps as Poul Mer Lo watched from his verandah, seemed vaguely familiar. But though there were not many beggars in Baya Nor, their faces all looked the same – like those of the proverbial Chinamen to people on the other side of a world on the other side of the sky …

‘Oruri greets you,’ said the youth, neglecting to hold out his begging bowl.

‘The greeting is a blessing,’ retorted Poul Mer Lo automatically. After two fifty-day Bayani months, he found ritual conversation quite easy. According to form, the youth should now tell of the nobility of his grandfather, the virility of his father, the selfless devotion of his mother and the disaster that Oruri had inflicted upon them all to bring joy through penitence.

But the boy did not launch into the expected formula. He said: ‘Blessed also are they who have known many wonders. I may speak with you?’

Suddenly, Poul Mer Lo, who had been sitting cross-legged with Mylai Tui, enjoying the light evening breeze, recognized the voice. He sprang to his feet.

‘Lord, I did not—’

‘Do not recognize me!’
The words shot out imperiously. Then the boy relaxed, and carried on almost apologetically: ‘I am Shah Shan, of late a waterman. I may speak with you?’

‘Yes, Shah Shan, you may speak with me. I am Poul Mer Lo, a stranger now and always.’

The boy smiled and held out his begging bowl. ‘Oruri has seen fit to grace me with a slight hunger. Perhaps he foresaw our meeting.’

Silently, Mylai Tui rose to her feet, took the bowl and disappeared into the house. Poul Mer Lo watched her curiously.

She had seemed almost not to see Shah Shan at all.

‘Poul Mer Lo is gracious,’ said the boy. ‘It is permitted to sit?’

‘It is permitted to sit,’ returned Poul Mer Lo gravely.

The two of them sat cross-legged on the verandah, and there was silence. Presently Mylai Tui returned with the bowl. It contained a small quantity of kappa, the cereal that was the staple diet of the poor and that the prosperous only ate with meat and vegetables.

Shah Shan took the kappa and ate it greedily with his fingers. When he had finished, he belched politely.

‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘whose head has been troubled with dreams and strange thoughts. I think that you may help him.’

‘I am sorry for your friend. I do not know that I can help him, but if he comes to me, I will try.’

‘The kappa is still green,’ said Shah Shan.

Poul Mer Lo was familiar enough with idiomatic Bayani to understand that the time was not ripe.

‘My friend is of some importance,’ went on the boy. ‘He has much to occupy him. Nevertheless, he is troubled … See, I will show you something that he has shown me.’

Shah Shan rose to his feet, went down the verandah steps and found a small stick. He proceeded to draw in the dust.

Poul Mer Lo watched him, astounded.

Shah Shan had drawn the outline of the
Gloria Mundi
.

‘My friend calls this a silver bird,’ he explained. ‘But it does not look like a bird. Can you explain this?’

‘It is truly a silver bird. It is a – a—’ Poul Mer Lo floundered. There was no Bayani word for machine, or none that he knew. ‘It was fashioned by men in metal,’ he said at last, ‘as a sculptor fashions in stone. It brought me to your world.’

‘There is another thing,’ continued Shah Shan. ‘My friend has seen the silver bird passing swiftly round a great ball. The ball was very strange. It was not a ball of yarn such as the children play with. It was a ball of water. And there was some land on which forests grew. And in the forests there were waterways. Also there was a city with many temples and four great reservoirs … My friend was disturbed.’

Poul Mer Lo was even more amazed. ‘Your friend need not be disturbed,’ he said at length. ‘He saw truly what has happened. The great ball is your world. The reservoirs are those of Baya Nor … Your friend has had a very wonderful dream.’

Shah Shan shook his head. ‘My friend has a sickness. The world is flat – flat as the face of water when there is no wind. It is known that if a man journeys far – if he is mad enough to journey far – from Baya Nor, he will fall off the edge of the world. Perhaps if he is worthy, he will fall on to the bosom of Oruri. Otherwise there can be no end to his falling.’

Poul Mer Lo was silent for a moment or two. Then he said hesitantly: ‘Shah Shan, I, too, have a friend who seems wise though he is still very young. He told me a story about six men who found a sleeping tlamyn. Each of the men thought the tlamyn was something else. Eventually, they argued so much that it woke up and ate them.’

‘I have heard the story,’ said Shah Shan gravely. ‘It is amusing.’

‘The tlamyn is truth. It is not given to men to understand truth completely.
However wise they are, they are only permitted to see a little of the truth. But may not some see more than others?’

Shah Shan’s forehead wrinkled. ‘It is possible,’ he said presently, ‘that a stranger to this land may see a different countenance of the truth … A stranger who has journeyed far and therefore witnessed many happenings.’

Poul Mer Lo was encouraged. ‘You speak wisely. Listen then, to the strange thoughts of a stranger. Time is divided into day and night, is it not? And in the day there is a great fire in the sky which ripens the kappa, rouses the animals and gives the light by which men see … What is the name of this great fire?’

‘It is called the sun.’

‘And what is the name of all the land whereon the sun shines?’

‘It is called the earth.’

‘But the sun does not shine on the earth by night. At night there are many tiny points of light when the sky is clear, but they do not give warmth. What is the Bayani word for these cold, bright points of light?’

‘Stars.’

‘Shah Shan, I have journeyed among the stars and I swear to you that they seem small and cold only because they are very far away. In reality they are as hot and bright and big as the sun that shines over Baya Nor. Many of them shine on worlds such as this, and their number is greater than all the hairs on all the heads of your people … My own home is on a world that is also called Earth. It, too, is warmed by a sun. But it is so far away that a silver bird is needed to make the journey. And now that the silver bird on which I came is dead, I do not think I shall return again.’