Paragaea (7 page)

Sitting by the cooling embers of the cook-fire, Leena saw that this was hardly the first injury, or even the hundredth, that Hieronymus had suffered. His back was a crisscrossed nest of scar tissue, lines and curves of scars spelled out strange sigils on his chest and arms, and on his lower abdomen was what appeared to be the remaining marks of a gunshot or puncture wound. She'd seen the faint white scar that ran in a line from his right eye, across his temple to his left ear, but had entertained no notions that that was just the figurative tip of an iceberg of ancient wounds.

The tracks of time, though, had left other traces on his flesh. On his left bicep was a spiraling black tattoo, similar to that Leena had seen in photographs of South Pacific islanders.

“There's another one,” Hieronymus said, startling her. He'd seen her gaze lingering on his tattoo, and was smiling slightly. His smile faded to a wince at Balam's less-than-gentle ministrations, but his eyes still twinkled. “The other indicates my status as Family in the nation of Drift. But I'm afraid I'm not quite comfortable enough in your presence yet to show you
that
one.”

“Trust me, woman,” Balam snarled, not looking up from his labors. “You
don't
want to know where he's got it hidden.”

They struck camp and set out, continuing along in their roughly northern direction for all the daylight hours, their every attention on the path ahead.

By nightfall, through the breaks in the tree line, they could see the sky glowing dimly red to the north and east of their position, the lights of some large city. Hieronymus smiled, and pointed ahead.

“Laxaria.”

The next morning, after a simple breakfast and a few short hours' trek through the final stretches of jungle, they reached the main road. It was hard-packed dirt, and ran from east to west.

They continued on to the east, following the main road, and near midday came upon a company of half-sized humans driving aurochs along before them. The small beings, with arms reaching down to their knees and wide mouths across their small heads, wielded S-shaped boomerangs, and bristled at the trio's approach.

Hieronymus approached the small beings with his hands held
palm forward before him, and said, “Ebvul das letdak.” He paused, and then added, “Mat odat Sakrian?”

One of the diminutive creatures stepped forward. Standing just over a meter high, he was the tallest of them, and seemed to be the leader. He shook his head, and in halting syllables answered, “Elum odat Sakria.”

“Dakuta,” Hieronymus said, smiling beneficently. “Elar ata uk etvam. Erre kad mat, at Laxaria.”

The little creature turned and exchanged a few words with his fellows in a language of long vowels and halting consonants. At length, he turned back to Hieronymus and nodded.

“Dakuta. Uk etvam. Erre.”

The small creatures, waving their long arms to drive their aurochs ahead of them, moved to one side of the road, giving the trio a wide berth as Leena and Balam followed Hieronymus down the road and past them.

When they had gone a few hundred meters, safely out of earshot of the small creatures, to say nothing of the range of their S-shaped boomerangs, Leena grabbed Hieronymus's elbow.

“What those short men?” she asked.

“There are many races of men on Paragaea,” Hieronymus answered, glancing back over his shoulder at the small creatures following a safe distance behind, driving their aurochs before them in a cloud of dust. “Even leaving out the number of metamen like the Sinaa, and other sentient beings. The half-sized men behind us are the Sheeog, who are rarely seen out of sight of their mound homes in the deep forests, but come to town only to sell their domesticated aurochs at market.”

As Hieronymus spoke, they came about a slight curve in the road, and the forest gave way to wide, flat plains. There before them lay a grand city, stretched for wide kilometers in every direction, encircled completely by high walls. The road upon which they walked joined with several others just beyond the walls, indistinct masses of people and vehicles coming into and out of the high gates.

As they drew near the city walls, Leena could scarcely believe the types of beings streaming in and out of the city gates. The jaguar people and half-sized men were the least of them. There were beings walking on two legs like men, but who had the characteristics of lizards and birds, dogs and birds, and more combinations than Leena could comprehend. Beings that looked like humans in every respect, except that they towered almost a full foot over Leena. Strange beasts, too, and vehicles and conveyances the likes of which she had never seen. All jostling for position as a half-dozen roads converged at the city gates, all hurrying either to enter the city, or leave it behind.

Into this confusion of creatures and cultures Leena walked, her head spinning.

As they made their final approach to the city walls, Hieronymus took Leena by the arm, helping guide her through the ever-increasing crush of bodies.

“This,” he said, “as I have said, is the city-state of Laxaria. We are now at the southern edge of the plains of Sakria. The Sakrian principalities—Laxaria, Lisbia, Hausr, Azuria, and so on—are among the youngest civilizations on Paragaea, going back only a handful of centuries at most. The majority of the Sakrian city-states were founded by humans of the type with which you're familiar from Earth, but in recent decades more and more of the older races have begun to migrate to the cities, leaving behind their hidden places in jungle, mountain, and desert, leaving the old ones to dream of lost days of empire while they, in their youth, try to better their situation.”

“This is a human age,” Balam said at her other ear. “Before the humans, the Metamankind Empires divided the globe amongst them, and before them ruled the martial Nonae, and before them the Black Sun Empire.”

“And now,” Hieronymus went on, “at the edges of this new-minted human world, still linger the older powers, in decline but not yet dead. Perhaps they bide their times, looking for a moment to return to power. The wizard-kings of the Black Sun Empire have retreated into their citadel city in the cold southern wastes; the Nonae patrol the eastern deserts in their small numbers, raising their children up tough and hard-edged, weaned on adversity. The metamen fight their internecine wars, race against race, tribe against tribe.”

“Those that have not chosen to follow the banner of Per and the Black Sun Genesis, that is,” Balam noted with evident scorn.

A heavy silence hung over the trio as they passed beneath the arches of the main gate, entering the city proper. A city guardsman, some sort of air-powered rifle slung at his shoulder, gave them a long glance as they passed by, but made no move to stop them.

“Be that as it may,” Hieronymus said, trying to brighten the mood, “Laxaria is one of the more welcoming of the Sakrian cultures, and is a pleasant change from the forest primeval.” He paused, and then added, his voice low, “But you should still watch yourself.”

For the man Hieronymus and his jaguar companion Balam this was a brief respite, a momentary return to civilization; for Leena, it was like stepping once more into another world.

To Leena's eyes, the city seemed like something out of the days of the czars. Hieronymus explained the surroundings as best he could—the people, the buildings, the conveyances—but after the green monotony of the jungle trails, she found it difficult to take it all in at once.

The honor guards of the Laxarian Hegemon marched in their rank and file through the wide avenues, escorting some minor princeling on his business, pneumatic rifles slung on their shoulders. Airships passed
overhead, bound for the northern reaches of the Sakrian plains, or to the far shores of the Inner Sea. Caravans gathered in large squares, heading out across the flat lands to the other Cities of the Plains, bearing passengers and goods. Presbyters, cenobites, and mendicants wandered the streets, each preaching their own flavor of salvation, each ignoring the others. Temples, money houses, stables, and inns lined the avenues and byways. Near the city center stood a large theater, a sporting arena, a library—each larger than the last. There were mounted police on their patrols, and cutpurses and sneak thieves skulking in the shadows. There were men and women in every hue of skin imaginable, and small scatterings of dog men, laughing raucously. A figure with the body of a woman and the head and paws of a cat caught Balam's eye, but hissed with her shoulders arched as he walked past. In the shadow of a nameless temple, a bent figure with scaled, hairless skin, large eyes, and a double slit for a nose recited strange poetry, perched on one leg, while at his feet a smaller snake-creature with scales of yellow flecked with violet caught the coins tossed by passersby.

Leena, threading her bewildered way through this swirling insanity, had no choice but to accept it all. No longer could she question the reality of her situation. However she had come here, she was in a world not her own, and it was her most pressing duty to return home and report what she had learned.

“Shall we pause for victuals?” Hieronymus asked, pointing out a row of food stalls along a narrow promenade.

“No,” Leena barked, eager to press ahead. “Answers first, eating after.”

“Fair enough,” Hieronymus answered, and guided her by the elbow on through the crowds. “Don't forget, Balam,” he said to the jaguar man following close behind, “that you owe me a drink.”

The outlaw prince of the jaguars growled, low in his throat, but did not answer.

In the eastern quarter of the city, they came to the Scholarium, a large edifice surmounted by three domes. They passed through an
immense oaken door, with bronze cladding, engraved with astronomical symbols and mathematical formulas. The air within was heavy with age, dust lanced in the air by shafts of sunlight.

Beyond the doors was a long arcade, hung on both sides with ancient banners. On each banner was embroidered an intricate symbol of angles and curves, a different one for each. Their meaning escaped Leena, though they reminded her somewhat of atomic notations, somewhat of circuit diagrams.

“My earliest tutor was an alumnus of the Laxarian Scholarium,” Balam said, his voice rumbling softly near her ear. “The Scholarium is given over to the study of thaumaturgy, the art of effecting change in the surrounding world.”

“What my heathen friend means,” Hieronymus added, at her other ear, “is that this place is dedicated to natural philosophy, what you might term science, though its practice and execution here might differ from that which you would recognize.”

An ancient, bent man wearing heavy robes and an unlikely hat ambled across the timeworn floor towards them, a look of inquisitiveness etched on his open face. His skin was the color of ebony, and what little hair he had was stark white, the shade of new-fallen snow. The ancient man spoke to them in a language Leena could not follow, sounding much like that which Hieronymus and Balam whispered to each other when they didn't want her to hear.

“This is the magister of the institution,” Hieronymus explained, after exchanging brief words with the old man. “The head man. He says he's happy to answer any question put to him.”

“Ask him, how it is you get to Earth,” Leena said while the old man looked on, smiling uncomprehendingly.

Hieronymus translated, her sentence reduced to a few brief syllables, and the old man held forth for what seemed an eternity. Hieronymus listened carefully, nodding and making polite noises when appropriate, while Leena waited impatiently for the translation.

“The magister explains,” Hieronymus translated at length, “that Earth is a quaint belief among the indigenous peoples of the mountains and jungles to the south and west, and that many view it as a kind of otherworldly paradise, to which the beneficent will go upon their deaths. The crude peoples of the city of Drift…” At this, Hieronymus paused, and shot a harsh glance at the ancient man, who smiled beatifically. “The people of Drift in the Inner Sea speak of ‘The Other Ocean,' a supernatural abode which parallels in many ways the mythical Earth, from which bounty flows from wave and sky. Among the Pakunari of the Ogansa Valley there is a religious doctrine which—”

“No,” Leena said, shaking her head in annoyance. “Tell him I am from Earth, and that my desire only is to return.”

Hieronymus shrugged, and translated. When he had finished, the magister looked at her with something like pity clouding his features. He made a sign in the air, muttered a few words, turned, and walked away.

Leena looked from the retreating magister to Hieronymus and back again.

“Chto? What? What did he said?”

Hieronymus looked on her with an expression torn between sympathy and amusement.

“Well, you see, the magister has decided that you are insane, and said a quick prayer for your psychic well-being before departing.”

That evening found the trio at a pub near the commercial district, where Hieronymus and Balam conducted a secretive meeting at a back table while Leena languished at the bar. The cheap spirits the barmaid poured out reminded her of the worst vodka she'd ever had, but it was slowly ushering her into a sense of numb oblivion, so Leena wordlessly motioned for a refill whenever her mug emptied.

She was trapped on a mad world full of mad people, with no way to return. Those back in Baikonur would never know that she still lived, nor know to mourn her if she died, her life reduced to a cryptic reference hidden in a file somewhere in the cold heart of Russia. Failures were not proclaimed, as they were not conducive to the general spirit of the Soviet peoples; so the populace would never know that Vostok 7 had ever launched, much less failed. It hadn't failed, of course, but succeeded beyond the chief designer's wildest imaginings; but only Leena would ever know it.

She slammed her fist down on the pitted wood of the bar, shouting a wordless howl of rage.

“What troubles you, little sister?” Hieronymus asked, sliding onto the stool at her left.

“She does seem agitated, doesn't she?” Balam said, easing onto the stool at her right. He motioned for a pair of drinks.

“And why should not I be, I think?” Leena snarled. “I am here, in this crazy place, with no way home, and no one knows the way home, so I am stuck. Should I not seem the agitated?”

Balam took a long quaff of the mug the barmaid sat before him, and swallowed hard before erupting with a roar of laughter.

“You give up too easily,” the jaguar man said, and took another long pull of his drink.

Leena, annoyed, looked from the large jaguar man to the slyly smiling man on her right, and back again.

“What is it you say?” she demanded.

“Well,” Hieronymus began sheepishly, “we never said that
no one
knew the way back to Earth. Only that most people don't believe in its existence, and that you'd find no answers among the learned men and women of the cities.”

“Chto?”

“I mean, in all the world, there must be
someone
with that knowledge,” Hieronymus went on. “There are whispers and rumors aplenty,
out on the fringes, of those who know the secret ways. One of them
must
be true, it only stands to reason.”

Leena looked into the depths of her mug, the fumes from the spirit stinging her eyes.

“But how will I find them with this knowledge?”

Hieronymus and Balam exchanged glances over her head. The jaguar prince laid a clawed hand on her forearm, gingerly.

“We have no pressing business, at the moment,” Balam rumbled.

“Yes, things have been getting a little dull, of late,” Hieronymus said. “A proper quest would give my life a bit of shape, a sense of purpose. What do you say, Balam? Shall we help the little sister in her hour of need?”

Leena looked up, not willing to trust to hope.

“We've taken on harder tasks for less reason before,” Balam answered. “Which is not to say it will be easy.”