Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (75 page)

And so on, throughout the night.

Farber did not understand. Jacawen did not understand Farber.

After a while, in spite of tradition, Jacawen stopped coming at all.

The last month of pregnancy began, and Liraun underwent another sea-change. Although still physically weak and shaky, she seemed to tap some inner source of serenity and strength She was at peace with herself, once again the old Liraun. But now the Council began to take up more and more of her time, as if they were getting as much use out of her as possible while she was still a Mother of Shasine, and Farber was left to himself more than ever.

He began to spend time with Genawen
sur
Abut, Liraun’s father, and Jacawen’s older half-brother. Although one of the Thousand Families, Genawen was not a Shadow Man—you had to become one, you could not be born into the cult—and didn’t seem to share Jacawen’s dislike of aliens. He was a shrewd, jovial old man, and he ran a large household with benevolent firmness. His house was a rambling stone structure—fronting the Square of the Ascension, at the far end of the Esplanade.

Genawen’s wife was a Mother at the time, and that gave him and Farber some common ground for conversation, although Genawen seemed to want to spend most of his time complaining about how his wife was simply ruining his household staff during her period of authority over them. But what was disrupting Genawen’s household the most at the moment, it seemed, was what looked to Farber like a circus parade, sans elephants, in the inner courtyard.

“What in the world is that?” Farber asked, as Genawen led him around the flagstone rim of the courtyard.

“It’s the rehearsal for my wife’s Procession,” Genawen answered. “But what’s a Procession, anyway?”

Genawen stopped dead. He stared at Farber in amazement. “What’s a Procession?” he murmured blankly, and then he said: “What’s a Procession! Oh, ho ho ho! By the First Dead Ancestor, Mr. Farber, do you know that I’m not really sure how to tell you what it is. I’ve never had to explain it to anyone before. Oh, ho ho ho!” Genawen always laughed by saying “Ho ho ho!” like Santa Claus, with perfect enunciation and never an extra “ho!”—or a missing one. He even looked something like Santa Claus, minus the beard: bushy eyebrows, ruddy cheeks, fat jelly-bowl stomach. Since his wife was pregnant, he was in lactation, and his six pendulous breasts flopped up and down when he laughed. “Well, let’s see, how do I explain,” Genawen began, becoming more serious. “You know that my wife, Owlinia, is a Mother, and she’s pretty close to term. She should be delivering any day now, as a matter of fact. Well, these people will escort her to the Birth House when she’s ready—you do know about the Birth Houses, don’t you?”

“Yes, Liraun mentioned them just the other day.”

“Well,” Genawen continued, “the Procession will escort her to the Birth House, sort of like a—” he groped through his small stock of Terran referents.

“—an honor guard?” Farber suggested.

“Yes,” Genawen said, “that fits well, although you must realize that there are solemn religious aspects to it as well. That’s why those men are in costume, and why some are carrying Talismans, or idols, as you people would have it—though that doesn’t quite get the concept across. Many represent People of Power, or symbolize natural forces.”

“What does that one represent?” Farber said, nodding toward a Cian who was dressed head to toe in an odd grey costume, which was covered in turn with soft downy hair—he had big staring circles of red and black paint around his eyes, and gilded false canine teeth that were almost a foot long.

“That’s one of the Fetuses,” Genawen replied, “and it is ill luck to talk of what they represent, especially for men in our position, with Mothers almost ready to go on Procession. The proper forms must be observed in these things. That’s why there are always at least two of the Twilight People with a Procession, a
twizan
and a
soúbrae.”

As if responding to a cue, a
soúbrae
picked that instant to come out of one of the encircling buildings and enter the courtyard. This was the same emaciated, hatchet-faced Old Woman who had presided at Liraun’s Naming, Farber realized. She glided like an iceberg through the sea of brilliant costumes, giving orders with a word, a nod, a curt gesture. They were instantly obeyed. The
soúbrae,
stopped momentarily, and stared at Farber. Farber returned her gaze. It was obvious that she recognized him. She flared her nostrils, gave him a look of cold disapproval, and moved on. She seemed to leave a chill behind her even in the dusty afternoon courtyard.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Farber said.

Genawen shrugged.

“What does
soúbrae
mean anyway?” Farber asked.

“It is an archaic word,” Genawen said. “It means ‘Sterile One.’”

“She looks it, too,” Farber said. “Sterile as a rock.”

Genawen grinned. “Oh, ho ho ho! You had best be careful, Mr. Farber. Some of them have power. She might curdle the milk in your paps!”

“I’m not worried,” with a lazy grin.

“Eh?” Genawen said. Then: “Oh, ho ho ho!” again as the joke hit him. Farber was counting. “How many men in this Procession, ah, twenty?”

“Twenty-five in this one.”

Farber whistled, then clicked his lips for Genawen’s benefit, as the Cian did not whistle in surprise. “That must be expensive.” He suddenly looked worried. “Am I supposed to pay for Liraun’s Procession?”

“No, the government, by custom, will always finance at least a small Procession for any Mother of Shasine. Of course, if you want extra marchers, or expensive costumes, then you must pay for it, as I have here. Oh, ho ho ho! Though I won’t be able to afford it for long, by the Second Dead Ancestor, if Owlinia keeps mismanaging the budget.”

But Farber wasn’t listening. There was a thought in the back of his head that kept itching for attention, but he couldn’t quite reach it to scratch.

He forgot it.

A week later, Farber met Genawen again in a little park at the foot of Kite Hill. Genawen and a young Cian woman were strolling six babies in a complicated, crowded wheelbarrow-wagon.

Farber greeted them, and Genawen insisted on picking up one of the babies and thrusting it enthusiastically under the Earthman’s nose. The baby began to cry, just as enthusiastically.

“Oh, ho ho ho!” Genawen said. “A fine litter, don’t you think! Just listen to him squall!”

“They look very healthy,” Farber said.

“Too healthy,” Genawen replied. He had switched the baby to one of his fat, glistening breasts, now left exposed in the fashion of nursing fathers. “They hurt when they suck too hard.”

Farber suppressed a smile. They stood in silence for a moment, looking down over the sprawl of New City below, while Genawen fed another insistent baby. The young woman remained in the background, looking on.

Finally Genawen noticed her. He beckoned her forward, and put a meaty hand on her shoulder. They both smiled at Farber, Genawen enthusiastically, the girl shyly. “Mr. Farber,” Genawen said enthusiastically, “I’d like you to meet my new wife.”

The next time, Farber managed to catch the elusive thought in his head.

He instantly wished that he hadn’t.

Farber left work early the next day and went in search of a Birth House. They were not easy to find—the Cian sense of propriety dictated that they must be unadorned, nondescript buildings, and there was no Cian equivalent of a telephone directory. But one of Farber’s workmates had taken his wife to the Birth House a few days before, and although he had stonily refused to answer any of the Earthman’s excruciatingly impolite questions about the process, Farber had overheard him describing the route of the Procession to his friends. Farber had a vague idea, then, as to the location of one of the Birth Houses anyway.

He set off on foot through Aei New City, following River Way along the bustling Aome waterfront. There were no Birth Houses in Old City, he had picked up that much information in the past few days—apparently it was forbidden. He doubted that there would be any in this district either; as he understood it, Birth Houses were located in quiet, out-of-the-way pockets of the city, not because they were considered shameful, but because they were so sacred that they must not be unduly contaminated by the mundane flow of urban life. So he walked rapidly, almost at a dogtrot, until the city began to dwindle and fall away on either hand, and he turned onto the North Road. Here he must walk slowly and keep alert. The Birth House could be anywhere.

The North Road paralleled the shore of Elder Sea, about a quarter-mile inland from the unbroken wall of the Dunes. Farber followed it up the coast for miles, while the scattered clumps of buildings that served Aei for suburbs became less and less frequent. They had all been places with some obvious utility—truck farm, heavy machine shop, pottery works—and none of them could be the Birth House. Doggedly, he kept walking. The towering monolith that was Old City had been looming ahead and to the left; now it pulled abreast, and then slowly fell behind him, its mazy roofs and towers glinting against the muted afternoon sky. As it fell behind, the world opened up, as the city had opened to suburb when he turned onto the North Road. He had the feeling that the Eye of God had just done a long slow dolly-back, like some preternatural television camera, reducing him to a tiny black spot toiling across an immense field of white. The wind now tasted of distances, of all the places he had never been, the unimaginable expanses of an alien world, open to the horizon. It was both daunting and madly exhilarating. He realized that he had never been out of sight of Old City on this world, that his experience of Weinunnach was bounded by a twenty-mile circle. Now, as the obsidian cliff and its burden of stark towers began to sink under the horizon behind him, like a skeleton-masted ghost ship going down, Farber felt a sudden overwhelming urge to just keep walking, heedless of his original goal. To keep going on and on across the snowy plain until Aei disappeared, until everything he knew was gone—to forget about Liraun, about their child, about Ferri, about Earth, to put away and forget all of his old life, to go on until he came to a new place, a new city, to start again. That went through him like a sexual thing, like an electric current, like a hot drugged wind. It shook him and staggered him. For a moment it straddled and rode him like a succubus, then he tore it free. The wind whipped it away, and it was gone. He blinked. He shook his head.

He kept walking.

Still no Birth House.

The countryside around him was buried under at least ten inches of snow, although the North Road itself had somehow been kept spotlessly clear. Nothing grew here now, except for the snowtrees that were scattered in groves over the low hills to the west. These were tall, lustrous, translucent plants, something like giant asparagus, something like wax beans, with spiky ebony-leafed heads. They were heliotropic, and they hunted the sun as it slid across the horizon from east to west. They flourished in this season, in the deepest winter, and the air was full of the drifting white clouds of their pollen. For a while then, walking the road, Farber underwent a strangely pleasant attack of
déjà vu
that persisted until he had puzzled out the reason for it. The bright sunlight, the hazy blue sky, the drifting pollen, all combined to reproduce for him—if you ignored the snow—the effect of a balmy spring day on Earth, shirtsleeve weather, birds singing invisibly behind the bright sky, sweet-smelling clouds of cherry blossoms. They all ignored Farber completely, and he made no attempt to attract their attention. He sat stolidly on the rock, saying nothing, and in a little while the Procession had passed down the hill and out of sight, into a snowtree grove.

He gave them five minutes, and then got up and followed them.

The Birth House was another three-quarters of a mile down the Road. It was a low, long, flat-roofed structure, made of rough grey rock, fronting on the road and recessed into a low hill that rose up behind it to the west; probably the hill was excavated inside. There were no windows, and only one door that Farber could see. It was a most unremarkable building, and he might easily have taken it for a warehouse, except that the Procession had drawn up in a semicircle before it. As he arrived, they were going through the Ritual of Imminence, celebrating the Translation-to-come. Farber watched from a position about thirty yards away, standing hunch-shouldered against the cold. Again he was in plain sight, and again he was ignored as if he did not exist—Farber had no business here, and if he chose to snoop, then that was a manifestation of
his
poor taste, his boorishness; no one else would take a chance on contamination by deigning to notice him. The ritual was short: after being anointed by the
twizan,
the
soúbrae
escorted the Mother up to the Birth House, up to the tall iron door of the featureless stone wall. The door opened. There was a glimpse of someone inside, white-costumed, vague. The Mother entered the Birth House. The door closed behind her.

The
soúbrae
turned away from the Birth House, and the Procession was over. The marchers ceased to be a precision unit, and became again an informal aggregation of individuals. They straggled back toward Aei in no particular order, talking, laughing at a joke, the musicians with their instruments slung over their backs, the Impersonators resting their long poles across their shoulders. Most of them glanced surreptitiously at Farber as they passed. Only the
soúbrae
and the
twizan
did not look, and they radiated a chill disapproval almost tangible enough to cause frostbite. Within minutes, they had disappeared up the Road, and Farber was alone again.

He waited.

The wind moaned in from the sea, and the sun slid west across the horizon.

Nothing else moved—everything was cold silence and suspension.

He waited, freezing, hugging himself against the cold, finally doing calisthenics to keep warm, jumping jacks, squat thrusts, running in place, wondering what the Cian who were probably watching made of these unorthodox obeisances, feeling conspicuous and absurd but keeping grimly at it anyway, his feet slapping circulation back into themselves, his breath coming in violent little explosions of vapor, like an old steam engine building up working head, and still, doggedly, he waited. He haunted the Birth House for another hour and a half, while the long afternoon guttered to night around him. During that time, two more Processions arrived from Aei. These were less elaborate affairs, from poorer households—neither of them were made up of more than twelve members, and their panoplies were not quite so sumptuous. All the marchers ignored him, as the inhabitants of the Birth House had ignored him during the long intervals between Processions. While Farber watched, the last Procession delivered their Mother to the Birth House, lit smoky, punk-smelling torches—for it was full dark now—and headed back to Aei, their torches growing smaller, becoming tiny bobbing matchflames, winking out one by one. Again Farber was alone, staring at blank secret rock.