The Great Wheel (17 page)

It was growing darker by the minute, and John’s unease at stumbling along the brink of shadowed drops was tempered only by the thought that they would soon have to stop. But he was wrong; skipping ahead, waving her umbrella through the dusk, Hettie obviously knew the way blindfold. He increased his pace to catch up with Laurie, then fought for his breath.

“What’s the problem?” Laurie’s eyes glittered at him. “Come on!”

She turned and headed quickly up the path. His legs aching, John trudged on behind her.

Hettie lit a fire when they finally camped. By then their breath was making clouds, and the sweat that had drenched John’s clothing seemed about to freeze. They all crouched around the flames, their arms outstretched, shadows and smoke twining up over the rocks surrounding them.

Hettie wandered off, peering under stones. When she came back, she was swinging a bundle. As she stooped into the firelight and finally put down her umbrella, John saw that the bundle consisted of a bunch of lizards gripped by their tails, and that they were all still alive. One by one, Hettie tossed them onto the fire. He imagined that she was indulging in some kind of ritual until she found a stick to fish one out, lopped off its head and tail with a knife, ripped out the steaming guts, and began to eat. Her mouth full, blood and grease running down her wattled chin, she gestured for John and Laurie to do the same.

The thin sticks on the fire didn’t last; cold darkness soon closed in. John climbed without much expectation into his sleeping bag, feeling queasiness in his belly and the rocky ground prodding his shoulders. He gazed up at a sky that, even in this darkness, churned with wind and movement, and felt himself falling up into it, as if, one by one, the strings of doubt, discomfort, and tiredness that bound him to the earth were snapping away. Sleep came easily.

He woke only once and saw Hettie sitting there, her umbrella swaying as she sang to herself, gently rocking to and fro. Closing his eyes, feeling the chill prickle of frost settling on his face, he tumbled back into a seamless dream.

Next morning, in exchange for the roast lizards of the night before, Laurie offered Hettie one of her foodpacks of sweet porridge. Hettie nodded eagerly. She obviously had no compunctions about sharing food. And once or twice she had even poked at John with a bare, bony finger. Remembering the witchwoman who’d confronted him in Banori’s room, he wondered if this absence of fear, this willingness to come close, wasn’t a part of their madness.

Puncturing the heat catalyst, Laurie handed the foodpack to Hettie and demonstrated how to slit it open. Hettie did so, sniffed the contents, and scooped out a blob on the tip of her finger. She studied the steaming oatmeal, put it into her mouth for a moment, spat it out into her palm, stirred the mash with her finger, and then began to eat in her usual lip-smacking way.

They packed their bags and began to climb. The ravine widened to a high valley floor where a small stream ran amid rocks, disappearing underground, reemerging, disappearing again. There were stunted conifers, meadows of tufted grass, and small bell-shaped flowers that shivered silver in the wind. The swift clouds were big-bellied with moisture. Far above, a hawk rode the thermals.

These living mountains seemed almost unchanged, but in truth they were a fluke, an unsought consequence of European climate control. The air that the satellites pulled across Africa contained little moisture, and much of that was used as a vast filter for the northeasterly flow of the Gulf Stream across the River Ocean. But the satellites and the millions of absorption panels couldn’t rewrite the laws of nature entirely. Air cooled as it rose over these mountains, causing rain to fall, and the rain brought life, and the life held moisture, darkened the slopes, stabilized the temperature, and in turn encouraged more rain. Still, the cycle was as artificial as the wind from the south that brought it. Even to John’s untrained eyes, there was a sameness about the vegetation here.

They were able to walk three abreast along the valley floor and talk, Laurie acting as intermediary between John and Hettie. Hettie explained that the village they were heading towards was called Lall. Her own dwelling lay a few kilometers beyond, and not far beyond that, where the pass began to dip down to the desert, the Last Hammada, was a site of special fear and significance. It was called Ifri Gotal, the place of fury.

John and Laurie exchanged glances. Had Hettie been to Ifri Gotal? Of course, but only once—nobody went there more than once. It was a terrible place. And would she show them the way? Hettie shrugged, and the skulls and bells of her umbrella jingled; from where she was going to take them, any fool could find Ifri Gotal. Even an
Outer,
a European.

They walked on, across an old stone bridge. A stream raced beneath. John began to see greenish purple clumps on the valley sides, which he guessed were koiyl.

By mid-morning, there were signs of habitation. Climbing a stairway of rock beside a waterfall, they reached a higher sweep of the valley. Here, where mountain peaks surrounded them through drifts of cloud, the lower, greener slopes were roughly walled into fields containing long-haired sheep. A figure stood watching them pass from the top of a high mesa, carrying a rifle. Hettie waved and shouted something. The figure waved back.

Patches of koiyl were common now, although John was careful not to show too obvious an interest. The koiyl bush grew semiwild, but it was still a crop; on the coast, one leaf would be worth a quarter of a day’s wage. Undried, the leaves of this mutant succulent were plump, each a little larger than his thumb, bisected by a thick stem, covered with faint purple fuzz. The bushes were just coming into flower, and the blooms were tiny and off-white. They had a pleasant, musty odor.

The village of Lall lay over a final ridge. Cooking smoke rose, dogs barked, babies cried, and the tearing sound of a powersaw came from the open doors of a barn as they picked their way down the slope. Adults and young children emerged to watch. There was no sense of surprise in their stance; word of the approach of the three had obviously gone ahead.

“What do we do now?” John asked.

“Hettie says we should be
amikay
—accept their hospitality.”

A large black dog ran up to him. Planting its paws on his thighs and nearly knocking him over, it tried to lick at his strange hands. An old woman in a shawl gave a whistle, and the dog ran back, its tail spiraling. As she leaned down and rubbed the creature behind its ears, John wondered whether the reports reaching Lall had omitted the fact that an
Outer
was coming. But when he drew nearer the muddy circle of low stone buildings, he saw that the villagers shuffled back from him, discreetly making the sign against the evil eye even before they could see the silver of his irises.

Laurie, Hettie, and John were seated out-of-doors around a large, flat-topped rock that served as a communal table. Soon, most of the village was sitting there too, and plates of food were being passed. In the circle there was a gap between John and Hettie. She ate voraciously, talking at the same time. He presumed that she was regaling the villagers with news from Tiir. There was certainly a fair amount of laughter. He glanced around. Whenever he met someone’s eye, the person would nod politely, raise a beaker, try to smile.

The meal consisted of fatty lumps of lamb. The beer that came with it was better, but all of it weighed heavily in his stomach. What could these people possibly have to do with Daudi and Martínez, the river of death that flowed down into the Magulf? He thought of Tim, the blossoms falling from the cherry trees along the Zone’s Main Avenue as Tim sat eating a mountainous dessert at Thrials, saying, John, just what do you expect to do with the truth if you find it?

Laurie was saying something to him. He turned.

“They say they’ve heard you’re a
baraka
.”

He raised his beaker and nodded.

“They want you to offer a prayer to your god.”

“A prayer for what?”

“This year’s harvest.”

He gazed around at the expectant faces. Women nursing babies, men with faces scarred from disease, the old, the young, the frail.

“Go on, John. You must have something suitable.” Bringing his hands together, he recited:

The lord is my shepherd:

I shall not want…

When the food was finished and the goatskin of beer had been emptied, a large red-glazed bowl was produced, offered first to Hettie, then to Laurie. It contained fresh koiyl leaves. Nodding thanks, Laurie took two.

“Here’s your big chance to try.” She handed John a leaf.

The dried koiyl leaves sold in the Endless City were often small enough to be chewed entire, but a fresh one was too big. He watched Laurie bite off an end and drag it back over her teeth to remove the inedible stem, rather as if she were eating the leaf of an artichoke. He did the same. He knew that even for her there was no risk from one koiyl leaf—a harmful buildup of isotopes took years. But still he felt an odd frisson. The koiyl tasted…briefly strong, almost like nutmeg, and then a little like coal-tar soap. Then the flavor disappeared as the sap released some kind of anesthetic. His mouth went numb. He imagined that at least part of the skill of chewing koiyl involved learning not to bite your tongue. He swallowed and wiped his lips, certain that he was drooling. By now, he was beginning to experience the full effect of the leaf. The pain from his blistered feet and shoulders dissolved. The many aches in his limbs vanished. He felt both cool-headed and drunk. It was as when he had lain down the night before, looked up at the racing sky, and felt the ties of the earth snapping. Perhaps the influence was strong because the leaves were fresh, or because the drug was new to his system. Either way, if this was the effect that koiyl produced, it was easy to understand its popularity.

Laurie said, “They want to know what you think.”

“Tell them
bona
—it works.”

Laurie relayed the comment. There was general, red-toothed laughter. He looked around. In the flush of the koiyl, these villagers of Lall truly did seem to be a happy people. He saw a mother nursing a child, the dogs who were scolded as they hung around for scraps at the table, the old people, their faces lined with smiles. He looked up the hill at the unmistakable mounds where the dead were buried, at the well and the cooking houses, at the piled bricks and bloodied stones of a shrine, the tinkling foil and skulls, the ancient gauntlet of a spacesuit. The baby that the mother had been nursing was wailing now, opening the round red toothless O of its mouth, kicking and waving the smooth handless sausages of its arms.

The clouds that had obscured the mountains were now rolling down into the valley, bringing flurries of rain. John and Laurie were in no hurry to go on that day, but as usual Hettie was insistent. Didn’t the Fatoo want to see her home? It was only a short way. She prodded her dripping umbrella in the direction of swirling mist, a steep hillside. Unsure that the villagers of Lall would welcome their continued presence, Laurie and John were in no position to argue.

Before they left, the village elder presented John with a bag of koiyl leaves. As they plodded up the valley behind Hettie, Lall and its waving villagers were soon lost in the mist. This time, even Laurie seemed to have little appetite for the climb.

The rain increased. Night came. They were still ascending. Once, skidding on the wet rubble that fringed some unguessable drop, John’s feet went out from under him and he began a sickening slide until Laurie grabbed his flailing hand. He walked on, trying to still the shaking in his legs.

It hadn’t occurred to him to ask Hettie what kind of home she kept in the mountains. It would probably have been impolite, anyway, but up here it was hard to imagine finding anything that resembled a roof and walls.

They entered a gorge. Even in the darkness, glistening rock was visible on either side. Finally, when it seemed as though night would soon turn into morning, Hettie began to climb a loose stairway in the cliffs. Every now and then there were handholds, but sometimes it was like scaling a sheet of wet ice. They passed a hole in the rock. Another hole. The mouth of a cave. John’s questing hands touched odd outlines and depressions in the stone: carvings of some kind.

Hettie shouted something, then disappeared into the cliff face. Laurie followed, then John. Blissfully out of the rain.

Hettie poked along a fissure with the ferrule of her umbrella. Finding a pack of chemlights, she broke one open. The catalysts fizzed against the damp, then slowly brightened. The cave they stood in had been fashioned into walls, a floor, a stairway. There were friezes of men and animals, birds and lions and baboons, trees and flowers; scenes from a time when these mountains had been a vast forest of cedar and pine.

Hettie held the chemlight aloft. Gesturing to John and Laurie to follow, she went up stone steps intricately carved with ropes and whorls. The breath of the three smoked ahead of them, and the sound and the smell of the rain faded. They reached another chamber in the cliff. It was obvious from the smell alone that this was where Hettie lived. Crouching on a rug, she lit a foline lamp with the heat from her chemlight, pumping up the pressure until a sphere of light filled the chamber.

Most of the bare rock was covered with carpets and hangings. There were sagging tables and heaped cushions, corners filled with clean white deadfalls of bone, niches crammed with jars and oddments, dried and stuffed animals, broken mirrors, faded paper flowers, figurines, books, and bells. There were also bowls and spoons and neatly stacked tins of food, looking both reassuringly homely and oddly out of place amid all this witchwoman paraphernalia, and several small receivers, screens, and cameras in various states of disrepair. Peeling off the sodden top layers of her clothing, oily rivulets rolling down her surprisingly muscular arms, Hettie started a fire in a soot-blackened alcove. A natural chimney led up through the rock, drawing off the worst of the smoke.

John offered a blisterpack of tablets that swelled into biscuits when immersed in water, and Laurie produced a plump freeze-dried pack of processed steak. Soaking the steak and cooking it in an iron pan hooked over the fire, Hettie stirred various nuts and vegetables into the spitting juices. The firelight pulsed, briefly filling more corners of the chamber. John glimpsed a wooden crucifix about half a meter long hanging from the bare rock, nailed with the skeleton of a lizard.