The Braided World (29 page)

Anton crested the hill, noting that Reen was already climbing the next hillside. He wasn't going to touch the subject of
mother.
Nerves were frayed thin enough.

Carefully, he replied,
“Good mother
here is different than where I come from.” And
good father, good daughter.

As they began to climb, the conversation lapsed. The flat river lands had given way to the low hills of the valley wall. After pausing for a silent midday meal, the three of them continued their climb, slick with sweat and now battling an envelope of gnats, like a new layer of skin.

Maypong stopped to confer with Reen, and then to Anton's astonishment they proceeded to strap Maypong's pack onto Reen's already heavy one. Maypong left to reconnoiter their trail, which would soon split into east and west passages over the valley escarpment.

“Let's wait here, Reen,” he said. The woman could not possibly shoulder that mountainous pack.

Maypong-rah says we must hurry,< Reen signed. To make a camp before sunset. < She signed quickly, challenging his fluency. But Nick's lessons paid off, and he kept up. The woman hoisted the double pack onto her thigh, then bent into the straps, and somehow stood tall. Anton watched her as she set out, a towering backpack obscuring its bearer.

They were following a ridgeline up into more jagged hills. Down in the gully to one side came a rustling movement. Reen had stopped, watching, and Anton, behind her, followed her gaze. A circular portion of the jungle floor trembled, setting up a rustling of fronds and vines.

Reen signed, Woor. The fulva are in woor.<

Peering closer, Anton saw the fulva gourds. They were twitching and bulging on their stems. A snapping noise issued from the circle, and then another, as several of the gourds split. Soon all of them were erupting as the cracks spit out a slick jelly.

Reen signed, They all come at once. Those who eat them can't take them all. Some will escape.<

The first newborn emerged, kicking its back legs free of the gourd. It was a wild pig, with black hairs matted against pink skin. At once, it wobbled to its feet, shaking itself free of the gooey strands. Little teeth glistened in its mouth. It staggered off into the brush, wisely distancing itself from the noisy birthings. No mother to suckle it; therefore the early teeth …

Reen urged Anton to leave before predators converged. Large cats, for instance, by her description.

As they continued up the path, Anton heard the cracking and splitting sounds of birth sacs for several minutes. He tried not to imagine a similar scene with Dassa babies, but the vision came anyway. It was a thought he'd kept at bay for as long as possible. But wasn't it all a matter of familiarity, and custom? What in nature could be so foul that a scientific mind could not accept it?

Plenty
, Anton thought, swiping at gnats and hurrying to put the scene behind him.

By late afternoon they had climbed high enough to leave the heat and gnats behind. Here, in a region of steep, green hills, Maypong thought it safe to follow the well-beaten trails. Anton found it a relief to be on a clear trail free of undergrowth, as the three of them walked single file along sinuous paths worn from millennia of Dassa seekers.

They left the wide trees of the lower slopes and entered a land of squat, frondy bushes and mosses. They could see across the narrow valley to the side of the next hill, lush with green.

Following the switchbacks along the mountainside, they soon brought out warmer clothes, then climbed toward clouds hugging unseen peaks. Now fully enveloped in the fog, Anton could see no farther than Reen, who followed Maypong.

At a switchback bend, he found Maypong sitting on the trail. She was taking off her boots.

They had hardly spoken for hours. It was a bad silence, and one Anton both wanted and didn't want to repair. He watched as she handed her boots to Reen, who strapped them onto Maypong's pack.

“Maypong-rah?”

She rose, lifting an eyebrow at him.

“Why are you taking off your boots?” The trail was rock-strewn, and he hoped her boots weren't a bad fit, because she would need them.

“To walk barefoot,” she answered, slipping her arms into her pack and shouldering it.

“Barefoot? The path is rough, Maypong-rah.”

Reen was watching them from the lead position, frowning at Anton. They were both frowning at him. Just what wasn't he getting here? “Maypong-rah, is there something wrong with your boots?”

“No.”

“Then why aren't you wearing them?”

“One doesn't, in cloud country.”

Anton quelled a growing sense of annoyance, trying to keep a reasonable tone. “I am wearing boots; Reen is wearing boots. One
does.”

Finally, Maypong met his gaze. “Not if one is seeking … peace, you might say.”

“Peace?”

“Yes. A peaceful heart.” She noted his look of consternation, and added: “Seekers who come here with a storm inside will walk cloud country without boots. It is our custom, Anton.”

He gazed at her, sorting it. “Storm …”

“My daughter,” she whispered.

They faced each other on the path. Words came to mind, and evaporated. She couldn't walk the path barefoot, not carrying a heavy pack, perhaps not at all.

He was looking at her, trying to sort his emotions. The one clearest to him was relief. The woman felt something.

“Maypong…”

She stopped him, shaking her head. “This is what I will do. Since we come to cloud country, I must.” Her eyes glittered with flat light reflected from the haze. “For Gilar, yes?”

“I shouldn't have criticized.”

“It is not for you, Anton. It is for me.”

The import of this was now becoming clear. He turned to Reen. “Put your pack down, Reen, please. We're not moving for now.”

He was blocking Maypong's path. Her feet were bound in woven stockings. They wouldn't last ten minutes. “Maypong-rah, Gilar's circumstance isn't your fault. There's nothing you can change.”

“No. But when my feet bleed, I will be able to cry”

Looking into her eyes, he saw how her placid face held a lock on tears. He should have known why it had to in the

Olagong. Gently, he said, “Maypong-rah, why didn't you tell me what you planned to do?”

She blinked, saying, “Would you have taken me up-country if you had known?” When he hesitated, she said, “Then you would never get here. Taking the hidden ways, the side ways, was necessary. Who knew the route—who that you could trust?”

He took a deep breath. He turned to look at Reen, who was still watching him. “What will persuade her, Reen?”

Reen softened a notch, signing, Nothing.<

He turned back to Maypong. His heart felt like it was developing a cleft, a ravine. He must turn back, for her sake. But he couldn't, for the mission's sake.

Seeming to read his mind, she said, “I will walk on with you or not with you, Anton.”

He knew that look in her eyes, and didn't doubt her. “Take off your pack then, Maypong-rah.”

To his surprise, she obeyed, lowering the burden to the ground. Anton looked up at Reen, who was already coming forward. The hoda knelt on the trail and started removing the pack's contents, distributing things into the two remaining packs. That done, Reen hid the empty pack in a mass of vines.

“Maypong,” Anton said, forgetting the honorific, forgetting his recent bitterness toward her. “I'm sorry that I thought you hard.”

She stood before him. “I
am
hard.”

As they started forward again, Maypong in the center, he could only watch her bare feet, and wince as she kept pace with Reen.

That night, the three of them huddled together on a small ledge some distance from the trail. Anton kept guard, thankful for his weapon, but knowing it might mean little against greater numbers. Occasionally Maypong, her feet torn and swollen, moaned softly, despite the healing mud
that Reen spread on them. With the moon new, darkness was absolute, but he could feel the fog against his face.

At dawn, after a cold meal, they climbed back to the path and trekked on. Whatever clues or ruins Anton hoped for were—if present—doubly obscured, first by clinging vegetation and second by fog as thick as burrs. If there were caves they would be invisible, unless the
Restorations
laser survey revealed some promising site. At last radio contact, it had not.

As they resumed their hike, Maypong's feet blistered and broke. She hobbled, but silently. They were all silent now, speaking when necessary in sign language. Above them, the path switchbacked to the crest and then down again, Maypong signed, forming a nonending path throughout the maze of the uplands. Below them, down a hugely steep ravine, the sound of a stream gurgled at them. At one point they passed a rope bridge that spanned the near gorge, a spider's thread gluing one hill to the other.

Rounding a switchback, he saw Maypong pointing down the valley, where a tear in the fog revealed a patch of neon green on a hill where the sun set the hillside alight. As Anton squinted, he saw a line of people winding their way up a switchback trail. They were uldia, by their dress. Fog re-formed under their path, making it look as if they were treading clouds, gray angels in an altered heaven.

Walking meditation, < Maypong signed.

The line of women snaked along the path, barely an undulating ribbon at this distance. If it was wisdom they wanted, Anton figured they'd be walking a long time. Seeing them put him more on edge. Maypong had said there would be other travelers here, and that some might not be seeking wisdom.

As they ascended their own path, he tried not to stare at Maypong's feet. She allowed one blister, the worst one, to be bound with a cloth, but now the cloth fluttered free, useless. Tearing his eyes from the sight of her bare feet, he squinted at the hillside. It was furry with green; there was
nothing but green, though he scanned every hump and protrusion for signs of a vanished race. He conjured up every manner of thing—phantoms of mausoleums, stone tablets, hidden doors—only to find, when sweeping the moss away, that what he had uncovered was yet another branch or rock. There was nothing here. He queried Maypong and Reen.
Are there features, here, something notable, perhaps named among the Dassa? No, it is all the cloud hills, Anton. Are there caves? No, only cloud hilb. What is the bridge called? Cloud bridge.

There was blood on the path in places. Maypong-rah,< he signed several times, go back. Reen and I will do this trek.<

Always her answer was the same: nothing. Tied to Reen's pack, Maypong's leather boots flopped in the swaying gait of the hoda. It was awful, and inevitable. He felt so ignorant of the Dassa, and their predecessors, these Quadi who left no footprints.

The sound, when it came, was like a stone dropped onto porcelain.

There was a large arrow embedded in Reen's temple. She lay sprawled on the path, twitching.

Anton was crouching, swinging his pistol up and down the path. Maypong whispered, “Below us.”

He heard the cracking of branches. People climbing toward them. “This way,” Maypong whispered, urging him down the path, the way they had come. “The bridge.” He glanced down at Reen, now lying still. Blood streamed out where the arrowhead exited the right eye. He squatted and, snapping the ties, yanked Maypong's boots from the pack. Then he rushed to join Maypong, who was already sliding down the hillside. She had left the path, heading into the rear flank of their pursuers.

Voices on the slope. The close-packed flora distorted distance—the voices sounded as if they were a hand's breadth away. Maypong was moving fast, trading silence for speed, and Anton followed, gun at his hip, needing both hands to grasp roots and vines as he went down, unless he wanted a
much faster descent. She waited for him in a little gully, lying in the mud, pressed close to the hillside.

He lay on top of her, concealing her brighter garment with his green fatigues.

She whispered next to his face, “I'll lead them away Go down the trail, cross the bridge, and then bear southeast as much as the hills allow. Thankfully, you will find the Sodesh.”

“No. You're coming with me.”

“We have no time, Anton. Cross the bridge, now.”

“No.” He held her firmly, making his point with the tension of his body. “I'm not going without you.”

She nodded then. They began to descend again, riding on their backs part of the time when it was so steep they were practically standing up. Then, skidding onto the trail, they rushed down it, with the noise of their pursuers still bright in the foliage. Anton ran with his pistol drawn, as Maypong rushed headlong in front of him.

The rope bridge was much farther than he remembered. Shouts rang out behind them. He guessed there were about a dozen of them, and there were men among them, not just uldia, or so he guessed from their voices. Maypong ran, heedless of her torn feet, and dangerously, with her long knife drawn, ready to turn and fight. At the next bend she pointed with her knife toward the gorge, but it was so full of fog, he couldn't see anything. She had seen the bridge, however, and now they ran faster, just centimeters from the steep plunge to the river.

It was then that a hole appeared in the clouds, and he glimpsed the bridge: a filament in midair.

Maypong led him down a side path where they came upon the near end of the bridge, anchored by great spikes in a rare use of metal. The ropes were frayed and rotten; Anton thought the bridge had long been abandoned.

“Hope for clouds,” Maypong whispered, staring at the bridge.

“They'll follow us,” Anton said, turning sideways to listen
to the voices, coming faint and loud as the canyons echoed and disguised sounds.

“Hope for clouds,” she repeated.

They crouched, looking down a three-hundred-meter drop graced with jagged rocks and seeping water. Behind them, they heard voices. Maypong stiffened. Dassa were coming down the path, having figured out where their prey had fled.

“Clouds, clouds,” Maypong whispered, like a prayer, from a woman who never prayed, who never conceived of such a thing.
Clouds, clouds.
Anton took up the chant in his mind. He didn't think the bridge could hold one person's weight, much less two.