Deucalion (10 page)

He laughed, and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘A person who works in Security because he can't get Research Funding.'

‘No,' I coaxed. ‘I really want to know.'

‘Well, that would place you in a minority of two in this place.' I could taste the bitterness in his voice, but he went on: ‘Seismology is the study of movements in the planet's crust. Earthquakes.'

‘Earthquakes?' I was genuinely surprised. ‘I thought Deucalion was a pretty stable place. Do we
have
earthquakes?'

‘Of course we do. All the time. It's just that they've always been centred too far away to affect us on the east coast. But in the Central Desert, and around the coastline of the inland sea, there's volcanic activity and movements as violent as anything on Old Earth. And there are whole areas in the west that are totally uninhabitable because of seismic activity.'

He stared across the ransacked room towards the window before continuing. ‘In fact, about ten thousand years ago, there was a series of quakes and tectonic shifts so powerful that practically the whole bed of the inland sea was raised by over 20 metres. Two new islands were born, and the water level rose so much that it flooded the coastal areas all along the north and east. The volcanic activity poisoned a lot of the remaining soil so badly that nothing would grow there for centuries. ‘Have you heard of the Great Trek?'

The question caught me by surprise. I was imagining the scale of the devastation. Suddenly, I could see where he was leading. ‘Of course. The Journey of the Elokoi across the Central Desert to the east coast.'

He nodded. ‘Did you ever wonder what made them attempt the journey?'

‘I don't know. It's a legend. They were following some sort of vision. Someone called Gaita.'

‘That's the legend. But why? Why follow anyone across the most hostile desert imaginable just because of a vision?' It wasn't a question that required any kind of answer. I just shrugged, and he went on, ‘They had no choice. The floods, the quakes, and the clouds of sulphur ash had made it impossible to stay. Maybe the Dream was a sign. Maybe it was an excuse. Maybe Gaita made it all up to get them going. I don't know. Fact is, they really had no choice.'

‘How do you know all this?' I asked the question to keep him talking. For as long as I could remember, all ten or eleven months, I'd never seen anyone talk about anything with such intensity. Everyone I knew was so disciplined, so ordered. Suddenly Denny was . . . incredibly attractive. And I wanted to understand his passion.

‘It's all there in the rocks. If you know what you're searching for, they tell you everything. I looked it up. For a while, when I thought there was a chance of getting Funded, I read everything ever written about the area. In the early years, the surveyors and geologists spent a lot of time there, and a great deal of detailed work was done on the geological record. Especially by a guy called Collier. But once it proved uneconomical to pull the minerals out and transport them, the Corporation lost interest and the Funding dried up. I've been there a couple of times.' The statement was designed to impress me.

It did. ‘To the inland sea?' He nodded, pleased at my reaction. ‘What's it like?'

His pager buzzed again, insistently, and he raised his eyes to the ceiling.

‘I could tell you about it over dinner. If you're interested.'

‘In your story, or in dinner?'

‘Both, I guess. I get off work at seven.'

I hesitated. But only for a moment. ‘All right.' Then I looked around the ruins of my room. ‘But what do I do about all this?'

‘Maybe we'll talk about that too. Over dinner.'

Then he was gone, and I was staring at the door as it slid shut behind him. Trying not to think about how bizarre my life had suddenly become.

10

HAAJ

Roosevelt Ranges, Edison Sector (Central)

20/7/101 Standard

DARYL

Five days proved far too optimistic. We'd spent so long on our way through the mountains that by the time the five days were up, even though we'd made up a bit of time on the flatlands east of the foothills, we still weren't three-quarters of the way to Edison. I guess if it had been just Cael and Saebi, they could probably have made much better time, but Elena was exhausted, and I wasn't feeling a whole lot better.

Anyway, on the fifth day, when I should have been sound asleep, I found myself wide awake. We'd taken shelter, as usual, in a stand of Ocra, beside a stagnant-looking stream. I'd fallen asleep as soon as my head touched ground. But three hours later, I was suddenly awake. Maybe it was hunger. The small stock of food we'd brought with us from Cael's cave had run out the evening before, and I'd walked the best part of 20 kilometres that night on an empty stomach. Whatever it was that woke me, as soon as I opened my eyes I knew something was wrong.

Next to me, Elena was mumbling softly in her sleep and rubbing her collar between her finger and thumb. She was troubled by terrible nightmares, which sometimes had her waking up screaming for her mother. But not this time.

I looked around for the two young Elokoi, and suddenly I realised what felt strange. They were gone. We were alone, lying there under the trees.

I stood up and looked around. They were nowhere in sight. The sun was burning hot in a clear sky, and I could feel the sweat soaking into my shirt, as I moved around between the trees and then beyond them, trying to figure out where they might have gone.

Maybe my communication skills weren't as good as I'd thought they were. Cael had said five days. Maybe he'd meant that was how long they'd help us. But they wouldn't just leave us here alone, surely?

Who could say? Who knew anything about the Elokoi?

I mean, after the way they'd been treated in their own land for the last hundred years, it was a wonder they came to help us at the crash site at all, let alone take the risky journey across the mountains to lead us out of danger.

Maybe they figured we could find our own way from where they'd left us, which was probably a pretty fair bet. The worst of the journey was certainly behind us. We'd get pretty hungry in the next couple of days, but on this side of the Ranges there was plenty of water, and the land was quite flat. Whatever their reason for leaving us, they'd waited until we were safe before doing it. Maybe they just weren't too keen to go all the way to the city with us.

As I looked back at Elena sleeping in the shade of the trees, I felt a strange . . . emptiness all of a sudden. The same as I'd felt when my father died and they wouldn't let me see his body.

Back then, they hadn't realised just how important it was to say goodbye – to say thank you. For everything. At the funeral, his coffin had been shut tight, and although I knew it was only his body, that the part of him that mattered wasn't in that synth-wood box anyway, I just wished that I could have seen his face one last time. To say all the things a fifteen-year-old boy is too proud to say – until it's too late. I'd owed my father for the chance he'd given me in life.

And now, I owed these Elokoi life itself. But they'd just disappeared while we were asleep. Without a single word. I realised then just how little I really knew about them.

Maybe it was fate that had brought us back together at such an important time. Maybe it was just a huge, impossible coincidence. Fate or coincidence, I made myself a promise. When I got back – not ‘if', but when – I was going to make it my business to find out as much as I could about the Elokoi.

SAEBI

The offworlder Daaryl was awake. She could see him standing in the hot sun, with his back to the Ocra trees they had chosen that morning as their resting place. He was upset, that was clear from the colour of his emanations. But the emotion was not the intense horror or the fear of earlier days.

It was frustrating. At times she came so close to understanding something of what went through that alien mind, but in the end its structures were forever closed to her, and she could catch only the vaguest hint of his emotions.

With the girl it was different. Saebi probed a little, then withdrew. The child was sleeping. The images of her under-self were troubled. But they were clear. Her dreams were free of the alien speechwords that so often masked her thoughts during her waking hours; clear images gave a face and a form to the fears which dominated her sleep. Why it should be, Saebi could not fathom, but the girl was not such a closed book. She was unlike any offworlder that Saebi had ever encountered. Cael had noticed it too. They had discussed it that morning, as they were walking.

Daaryl had not noticed their approach. He was lost in thoughts of his own, facing away from them. For a moment she was tempted to experiment with the greetingword he had taught her, but she was too tired to make the sounds. A full night of travelling, then the activity of the morning, and the heat of the day. Cael seemed to show no effects, but in the past weeks she had so little energy. And the rigours of the journey had not improved things. As they approached the stand of trees, all she could think of were the hours of rest still left to her before nightfall, when the journey must begin again.

At the last minute, when they were almost upon him, Daaryl turned around to face them, and she felt his emotion wash over her mind . . . It was a strange emotion, masked by the alien colours of his thoughts, but it felt like . . . love.

Daaryl smiled and took a step in their direction. ‘Cael. Saebi. I thought you'd left us. Where did you go?'

From behind her, she heard Cael replying in the offworlder wordspeech. ‘Food. Breakfast . . . Two day, maybe three. Too far, no food. Long way.'

Soon they would discover who was right. Cael had insisted that if the offworlders were hungry enough, they would eat anything. But she had never heard of an offworlder swallowing more than one bite of the flesh of the Yorum, and she had told her mate they might prefer to finish the journey with empty bellies.

DARYL

They had rigged up a sort of primitive sled to carry their prize. A couple of Ocra stems with a skin stretched between them, which they had harnessed to their shoulders and took turns dragging along the ground, had the carcass of a full-grown Yorum lashed to it with vines. The animal was bigger than either of them. It may well have been bigger than
both
of them. I stood there trying to figure out not only how they'd managed to kill it with just a basic fire-hardened spear each, but how they'd managed to drag it all the way back.

When I asked them about it later, they just gave the Elokoi equivalent of a shrug, and said that it was just the way it had always been done. When I asked them why they didn't wake me so that I could help, Saebi touched my face, the way they do with small cubs, and Cael explained that they didn't have a ‘moonlife' to spend teaching me how to walk.

I could have felt insulted, but I'd learned enough during the past few days to know that an Elokoi would never insult you on purpose. An Elokoi will also never tell you a lie – they don't know how. Which makes sense, when you think about it. How easy would it be to lie to someone who's already walking around inside your head, and knows what you're really thinking? If the truth hurts, it's because it's the truth, not because someone shows it to you. And it would be no less true just because they choose to keep it to themselves.

So I missed out on my first Yorum hunt. To tell the truth, the way I was feeling, it wasn't the biggest disappointment I could remember in my twenty-two years of existence. Besides, someone had to stay and look after Elena. Well, that was what I told myself . . .

The Yorum is one of only a couple of animals that the Elokoi hunt. As a race, they're not great meat eaters. If the animals' tough and flexible skins weren't so important to them, I think they'd probably leave them alone entirely. Still, in Elokoi villages the Yorum hunt is a major annual event. The meat is considered a delicacy, and to be served a meal of Yorum flesh is a special honour. Of course, I didn't know all this when Saebi and Cael returned with ‘break . . . fast'.

I also didn't know just how incredibly bad Yorum flesh actually is. The texture is bad enough. It's a bit like chewing shredded latex foam. But that's nothing compared to the taste. The Yorum is a creature that lives along the Fringes, in the mountains and on the coastal plains. It also survives in pockets around the inland sea – or so the ROM-link in my punchboard informs me. On the vid display, it looks like a cross between a mountain goat and a wart-hog, with a ridge of thick black hair along its spine, a bushy tail and a mean disposition.

What they forget to mention on the ROM-link is that Yorum meat has a flavour that's . . . how can I describe it? Imagine smoked rat droppings, or your mother's best pasta bolognaise after she left it on the back veranda for three weeks in the middle of a very hot summer. The survival manuals will tell you it's not actually poisonous if eaten by humans, unlike most of the native plant and animal life on Deucalion. But I'll bet the person who wrote the manual never actually had a meal of it.

We did. And we survived.

Just about three days later, we made it to the Elokoi Reserve about 30 clicks west of the city itself. A couple of hours more and we were watching the flyer settle to the ground in the central Greenspace. The ordeal was over.

For most of the time between arriving in the village and climbing aboard the flyer, I watched the Elders gathered around Elena. They seemed unusually interested in her. She sat quietly among them, smiling sometimes, occasionally mumbling the odd word.

It was a pretty special day in the village, by all accounts. From what I could gather, not only had we arrived with the ‘child', but just the night before, a Teller had appeared as well. She'd travelled down from the highlands south of Edison and was spending a few days with them, teaching and Telling the old stories.

Cael explained it all in his broken-Standard. Saebi apologised, he said, for disappearing, but there was no telling when an opportunity like this might come again on their
haaj
.

Haaj?

He couldn't translate the term, and when he tried to explain, he lost me somewhere between ‘capturing the Ancestors' and ‘obeying Saebi's Dream'. So I let it go.

Later, when I looked it up in Tolhurst's
Translations
,
it made a little more sense:

haaj
(noun): a sacred journey, akin to the (Old Earth) medieval pilgrimage. Elokoi ‘religious' observance centres around the ‘Tellings' of the Ancestors. Following the era of the Great Trek, and especially after the arrival of the ‘offworlders' and the resultant social dislocation, the
haaj
became a way of gathering and keeping alive the stories, history and culture which the loss of the Tellers had endangered.

‘A sacred journey'. That explained why the pair of them had been so far from their village and their Clan when we came down.

I thought about Cael's obsession with the Pictures. And it all made sense. That first time, all those months ago, I'd stumbled onto the beginning of the Dream. And I thought I'd understood. What was it he'd said? ‘You . . . take old Pictures. I paint . . . new Pictures.'

We'd ripped off their sacred art and shipped it back to Earth. He was replacing it. I guess it struck a chord with me. It was why I hadn't told anyone about it. Why I hadn't tried to cash in on it. And it was why I'd gone back on my next rec-leave and left them my own contribution. I guess I felt it was a useless gesture, in the face of what was happening to their people, but I thought at least I understood.

In the end, Saebi's Dream turned out to be so much more than just repainting the Wall.