Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (66 page)

“Go,” she groans. “Go. Too late. Mother no more.”

“I don’t want to leave you. Why must I go? Mother!” I wail, “Speak to me!” I keen my baby hum,
Deet! Deet! Tikki-takka! Deet!
hoping Mother will answer crooning deep,
Brum! Brrumm! Brumaloo-bruin!
Now I see one huge Mother-eye glow faintly, but she only makes a grating sound.

“Too late. No more . . . The winter, I say. I did speak. . . . Before the winter, go. Go.”

“Tell me about Outside, Mother,” I plead.

Another groan or cough nearly shakes me from my perch. But when she speaks again her voice sounds gentler.

“Talk?” she grumbles. “Talk, talk, talk. You are a strange son. Talk, like your Father.”

“What’s that, Mother? What’s a Father?”

She belches again. “Always talk. The winters grow, he said. Oh, yes. Tell them the winters grow. So I did. Late. Winter, I spoke you. Cold!” Her voice booms. “No more! Too late.” Outside I hear her armor rattle and clank.

“Mother, speak to me!”

“Go. Go-o-o!”

Her belly-plates clash around me. I jump for another nest of fur, but it comes loose in my grip. Wailing, I save myself by hanging to one of her great walking limbs. It is rigid, thrumming like rock.

“GO!” She roars.

Her Mother-eyes are shriveling, dead! I panic, scramble down, everything is vibrating, resonating around me. Mother is holding back a storm of rage!

I leap for the ground, I rush diving into a crevice, I wiggle and burrow under the fearful bellowing and clanging that rains on me from above. Into the rocks I go with the hunting claws of Mother crashing behind me.

Oh, my redling, my little tenderling! Never have you known such a night. Those dreadful hours hiding from the monster that had been my loving Mother!

I saw her once more, yes. When dawn came I clambered up a ledge and peered through the mist. It was warm then, the mists were warm. I knew what Mothers looked like. We had glimpses of huge horned dark shapes before our own Mother hooted us under her. Oh yes, and then would come Mother’s earthshaking challenge and the strange Mother’s answering roar, and we’d cling tight, feeling her surge of kill-fury, buffeted, deafened, battered, while our Mother charged and struck. And once while our Mother fed I peeped out and saw a strange baby squealing in the remnants on the ground below.

But now it was my own dear Mother I saw lurching away through the mists, that great rusty-gray hulk so horned and bossed that only her hunting-eyes showed above her armor, swiveling mindlessly, questing for anything that moved. She crashed her way across the mountains, and as she went she thrummed a new harsh song.
Cold! Cold! Ice and Lone. Ice! And cold! And end
. I never saw her again.

When the sun rose I saw that the gold fur was peeling from my shiny black. All by itself my hunting-limb flashed out and knocked a hopper right into my jaws.

You see, my berry, how much larger and stronger I was than you when Mother sent us away? That also is the Plan. For you were not yet born! I had to live on while the warm turned to cold and while the winter passed to warm again before you would be waiting. I had to grow and learn. To
learn
, my Lilliloo! That is important. Only we black ones have a time to learn—the Old One said it.

Such small learnings at first! To drink the flat water-stuff without choking, to catch the shiny flying things that bite, and to watch the storm-clouds and the moving of the sun. And the nights, and the soft things that moved on the trees. And the bushes that kept shrinking, shrinking—only it was me, Moggadeet, growing larger! Oh, yes! And the day when I could knock down a fatclimber from its vine!

But all these leanings were easy—the Plan in my body guided me. It guides me now, Lilliloo, even now it would give me peace and joy if I yielded to it. But I will not! I will remember to the end, I will speak to the end!

I will speak the big learnings. How I saw—though I was so busy catching and eating more, more, always more—I saw all things were changing, changing.
Changers!
The bushes changed their buds to berries, the fatclimbers changed their colors, even the sun changed, and the hills. And I saw all things were together with others of their kind but only me, Moggadeet. I was alone. Oh, so alone!

I went marching through the valleys in my shiny new black, humming my new song
Turra-tarra! Tarra Tan!
Once I glimpsed my brother Frim and I called him, but he ran like the wind. Away, alone! And when I went to the next valley I found the trees all mashed down. And in the distance I saw a black one like me—only many times as big! Huge! Almost as big as a Mother, sleek and glossy-new. I would have called, but he reared up and saw me and roared so terribly that I too fled like the wind to empty mountains. Alone.

And so I learned, my redling, how we are alone even though my heart was full of love. And I wandered, puzzling and eating ever more and more. I saw the Trails; they meant nothing to me then. But I began to learn the important thing.

The cold.

You know it, my little red. How in the warm days I am me, Myself-Moggadeet. Ever-growing, ever-learning. In the warm we think, we speak. We love! We make our own Plan. Oh, did we not, my lovemate?

But in the cold, in the night—for the nights were growing colder—in the cold night I was—what?—not Moggadeet. Not Moggadeet-thinking. Not Me-Myself. Only Something-that-lives, acts without thought. Helpless-Moggadeet. In the cold is only the Plan. I almost thought it.

And then one day the night chill lingered and lingered and the sun was hidden in the mists. And I found myself going up the Trails.

The Trails are a part of the Plan too, my redling.

The Trails are of winter. There we must go all of us, we blacks. When the cold grows stronger the Plan calls us upward, upward, we begin to drift up the Trails, up along the ridges to the cold, the night-side of the mountains. Up beyond the forests where the trees grow scant and turn to dead stonewood.

So the Plan drew me and I followed, only half-aware. Sometimes I came into warmer sunlight where I could stop and feed and try to think, but the cold fogs rose again and I went on, on and up. I began to catch sight of others like me far along the mountain-flank, moving steadily up. They didn’t rear or roar when they saw me. I didn’t call to them. Each one alone we climbed on toward the Caves, unthinking, blind. And so I would have gone too.

But then the great thing happened.

—Oh, no, my Lilliloo! Not the
greatest
. The greatest of all is you, will always be you. My precious sunmite, my red lovebaby! Don’t be angry, no, no, my sharing one. Hold me softly. I must say our big learning. Hear your Moggadeet, hear and remember!

In the sun’s last warm I found him, the Old One. A terrible sight! So maimed and damaged, parts rotting and gone. I stared, thinking him dead. Suddenly his head rolled feebly and a croak came out.

“Young . . . one?” An eye opened in his festering head, a flyer pecked at it. “Young one . . . wait!”

And I understood him! Oh, with love—

No, no, my redling! Gently! Gently hear your Moggadeet. We
spoke
—the Old One and I! Old to young, we shared. I think it cannot happen.

“No old ones,” he creaked. “Never to speak . . . we blacks. Never. It is not . . . the Plan. Only me . . . I wait. . . .”

“Plan,” I ask, half-knowing. “What is the Plan?”

“A beauty,” he whispers. “In the warm, a beauty in the air . . . I followed . . . but another black one saw me and we fought . . . and I was damaged, but still the Plan made me follow until I was crushed and torn and dead. . . . But I lived! And the Plan let me go and I crawled here . . . to wait . . . to share . . . but—”

His head sags. Quickly I snatch a flyer from the air and push it to his torn jaws.

“Old One! What is the Plan?”

He swallows painfully, his one eye holding mine.

“In us,” he says thickly, stronger now. “In us, moving us in all things necessary for the life. You have seen. When the baby is golden the Mother cherishes it all winter long. But when it turns red or black she drives it away. Was it not so?”

“Yes, but—”

“That’s the Plan! Always the Plan. Gold is the color of Mother-care, but black is the color of rage. Attack the black! Black is to kill. Even a Mother, even her own baby, she cannot defy the Plan. Hear me, young one!”

“I hear. I have seen,” I answer. “But what is red?”

“Red!”
He groans. “Red is the color of love.”

“No!” I say, stupid Moggadeet! “I know love. Love is gold.”

The Old One’s eye turns from me. “Love,” he sighs. “When the beauty comes in the air, you will see . . . He falls silent. I fear he’s dying. What can I do? We stay silent there together in the last misty sunwarm. Dimly on the slopes I can see other black ones like myself drifting steadily upward on their own Trails among the stone-tree heaps, into the icy mists.

“Old One! Where do we go?”

“You go to the Caves of Winter. That is the Plan.”

“Winter, yes. The cold. Mother told us. And after the cold winter comes the warm. I remember. The winter will pass, won’t it? Why did she say, the winters grow? Teach me, Old One. What is a Father?”

“Fa-ther? A word I don’t know. But wait—” His mangled head turns to me. “
The winters grow?
Your mother said this? Oh, cold! Oh, lonely,” he groans. “A big learning she gave you. This learning I fear to think.”

His eye rolls, glaring. I am frightened inside.

“Look around, young one. These stony deadwoods. Dead shells of trees that grow in the warm valleys. Why are they here? The cold has killed them. No living tree grows here now. Think, young one!”

I look, and true! It is a warm forest killed to stone.

“Once it, was warm here. Once it was like the valleys. But the cold has grown stronger. The winter grows. Do you see?
And the warm grows less and less
.”

“But the warm is life! The warm is Me-Myself!”

“Yes. In the warm we think, we learn. In the cold is only the Plan. In the cold we are blind. . . . Waiting here, I thought, was there a time when it was warm here once? Did we come here, we blacks, in the warm to speak, to share? Oh, young one, a fearful thinking. Does our time of learning grow shorter, shorter? Where will it end? Will the winters grow until we can learn nothing but only live blindly in the Plan, like the silly fatclimbers who sing but do not speak?”

His words fill me with cold fear. Such a terrible learning! I feel anger.

“No! We will not! We must—we must hold the warm!”

“Hold the warm?” He twists painfully to stare at me. “Hold the warm. . . . A great thinking. Yes. But how? How? Soon it will be too cold to think, even here!”

“The warm will come again,” I tell him. “Then we must learn a way to hold it, you and I!”

His head lolls.

“No . . . When the warm comes I will not be here . . . and you will be too busy for thinking, young one.”

“I will help you! I will carry you to the Caves!”

“In the Caves,” he gasps, “in each Cave there are two black ones like yourself. One is living, waiting mindless for the winter to pass. . . . And while he waits, he eats. He eats the other, that is how he lives. That is the Plan. As you will eat me, my youngling.”

“No!” I cry in horror. “I will never harm you!”

“When the cold comes you will see,” he whispers. “Great is the Plan!”

“No! You are wrong! I will break the Plan,” I shout. A cold wind is blowing from the summit; the sun dies.

“Never will I harm you,” I bellow. “You are wrong to say so!”

My scaleplates are rising, my tail begins to pound. Through the mists I hear his gasps.

I recall dragging a heavy black thing to my Cave.

Chill cold, kill cold
. . .
In the cold I killed you.

Leelyloo. He did not resist.

Great is the Plan. He accepted all, perhaps he even felt a strange joy, as I feel it now. In the Plan is joy. But if the Plan is wrong?
The winters grow
. Do the fatclimbers have their Plan too?

Oh, a hard thinking! How we tried, my redling, my joy. All the long warm days I explained it to you, over and over. How the winter would come and change us if we did not hold the warm. You understood! You share, you understand me now, my precious flame—though you can’t speak I feel your sharing love. Softly . . .

Oh, yes, we made our preparations, our own Plan. Even in the highest heat we made our Plan against the cold. Have other lovers done so? How I searched, carrying you my cherry bud, I crossed whole mountain ranges, following the sun until we found this warmest of warm valleys on the sunward side. Surely the cold would be weak here, I thought. How could they reach us here, the cold fogs, the icy winds that froze my inner Me and drew me up the Trails into the dead Caves of Winter?

This time I would defy!

This time I have
you
.

“Don’t take me there, my Moggadeet!” You begged, fearful of the strangeness. “Don’t take me to the cold!”

“Never, my Leelyloo! Never, I vow it. Am I not your Mother, little redness?”

“But you will change! The cold will make you forget. Is it not the Plan?”

“We will break the Plan, Lilli. See, you are growing larger, heavier, my fireberry—and always more beautiful! Soon I will not be able to carry you so easily, I could never carry you to the cold Trails. And I will never leave you!”

“But you are so big, Moggadeet! When the change comes you will forget and drag me to the cold.”

“Never! Your Moggadeet has a deeper Plan! When the mists start I will take you to the farthest, warmest cranny of this cave, and there I will spin a wall so you can never never be pulled out. And I will never never leave you. Even the Plan cannot draw Moggadeet from Leelyloo!”

“But you will have to go hunting for food and the cold will take you then! You will forget me and follow the cold love of winter and leave me there to die! Perhaps that is the Plan!”

“Oh, no, my precious, my redling! Don’t grieve, don’t cry! Hear your Moggadeet’s Plan! From now on I’ll hunt twice as hard. I’ll fill this cave to the top, my fat little blushbud, I will fill it with food now so I can stay by you all the winter through!”