The Wind From a Burning Woman: Six Stories of Science Fiction (15 page)

Geneva, Sonok said as we passed an armored hatch. Where do we go? I heard a whirring sound and looked up. The shielded camera above the hatch was watching us, moving behind its thick grey glass like an eye. I dont know, I said.

A seal had been placed over the flexible valve in the corridor that led to the bubble. We turned at that point and went past the nook where the message tank had been. It was gone, leaving a few anonymous fixtures behind.

An armored hatch had been punched into the wall several yards beyond the alcove, and it was unsealed. That was almost too blatant an invitation, but I had few other choices. Theyd mined the ship like termites. The hatch led into a straight corridor without gravitation. I took Sonok by the arm, and we drifted dreamily down. I saw pieces of familiar equipment studding the walls, and I wondered if people from my world were around. It was an idle speculation. The way I felt now, I doubted I could make friends with anyone. I wasnt the type to establish camaraderie under stress. I was the wintry one.

At the end of the corridor, perhaps a hundred meters down, gravitation slowly returned. The hatch there was armored and open. I brought the rifle up and looked around the seal. No one. We stepped through, and I saw the black in his golden suit, fresh as a ghost. I was surprised; he wasnt. My rifle was up and pointed, but his weapon was down. He smiled faintly.

We are looking for a woman known as Geneva, he said. Are you she?

I nodded. He bowed stiffly, armor crinkling, and motioned for me to follow. The room around the comer was unlighted. A port several meters wide, ribbed with steel beams, opened onto the starry dark. The stars were moving, and I guessed the ship was rolling in space. I saw other forms in the shadows, large and bulky, some human, some apparently not. Their breathing made them sound like waiting predators.

A hand took mine, and a shadow towered over me. This way.

Sonok clung to my calf, and I carried him with each step I took. He didnt make a sound. As I passed from the viewing room, I saw a blue-and- white curve begin at the top of the port and caught an outline of continent. Asia, perhaps. We were already near Earth. The shapes of the continents could remain the same in countless universes, immobile grounds beneath the thin and pliable paint of living things. What was life like in the distant world-lines where even the shapes of the continents had changed?

The next room was also dark, but a candle flame flickered behind curtains. The shadow that had guided me returned to the viewing room and shut the hatch. I heard the breathing of only one besides myself.

I was shaking. Would they do this to us one at a time? Yes, of course; there was too little food. Too little air. Not enough of anything on this tiny scattershot. Poor Sonok, by his attachment, would go before his proper moment.

The breathing came from a woman somewhere to my right. I turned to face in her general direction. She sighed. She sounded very old, with labored breath and a kind of pant after each intake.

I heard a dry crack of adhered skin separating, dry lips parting to speak, then the tiny click of eyelids blinking. The candle flame wobbled in a current of air. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that the curtains formed a translucent cubicle in the dark.

Hello, the woman said. I answered weakly. Is your name Francis Geneva?

I nodded, then, in case she couldnt see me, and said, I am.

I am Junipero, she said, aspirating the j as in Spanish. I was commander of the High-space ship Callimachus. Were you a commander on your ship?

No, I replied. I was part of the crew.

What did you do?

I told her in a spare sentence or two, pausing to cough. My throat was like parchment.

Do you mind stepping closer? I cant see you very well.

I walked forward a few steps.

There is not much from your ship in the way of computers or stored memory, she said. I could barely make out her face as she bent forward, squinting to examine me. But we have learned to speak your language from those parts that accompanied the Indian. It is not too different from a language in our past, but none of us spoke it until now. The rest of you did well. A surprising number of you could communicate, which was fortunate. And the little children who sucklethe Nemithey always know how to get along. Weve had several groups of them on our voyages.

May I ask what you want?

You might not understand until I explain. I have been through the mutata several hundred times. You call it disruption. But we havent found our home yet, I and my crew. The crew must keep trying, but I wont last much longer. Im at least two thousand years old, and I cant search forever.

Why dont the others look old?

My crew? They dont lead. Only the top must crumble away to keep the group flexible, only those who lead. Youll grow old, too. But not the crew. Theyll keep searching.

What do you mean, me?

Do you know what Geneva means, dear sister?

I shook my head, no.

It means the same thing as my name, Junipero. Its a tree that gives berries. The one who came before me, her name was Jenevr, and she lived twice as long as I, four thousand years. When she came, the ship was much smaller than it is now.

And your menthe ones in armor

They are part of my crew. There are women, too.

Theyve been doing this for six thousand years?

Longer, she said. Its much easier to be a leader and die, I think. But their wills are strong. Look in the tank, Geneva.

A light came on behind the cubicle, and I saw the message tank. The murky fluid moved with a continuous swirling flow. The old woman stepped from the cubicle and stood beside me in front of the tank. She held out her finger and wrote something on the glass, which I couldnt make out.

The tanks creatures formed two images, one of me and one of her. She was dressed in a simple brown robe, her peppery black hair cropped into short curls. She touched the glass again, and her image changed. The hair lengthened, forming a broad globe around her head. The wrinkles smoothed. The body became slimmer and more muscular, and a smile came to the lips. Then the image was stable.

Except for the hair, it was me.

I took a deep breath. Every time youve gone through a disruption, has the ship picked up more passengers?

Sometimes, she said. We always lose a few, and every now and then we gain a large number. For the last few centuries our size has been stable, but in time well probably start to grow. We arent anywhere near the total yet. When that comes, we might be twice as big as we are now. Then well have had, at one time or another, every scrap of ship, and every person who ever went through a disruption.

How big is the ship now?

Four hundred kilometers across. Built rather like a volvox, if you know what that is.

How do you keep from going back yourself?

We have special equipment to keep us from separating. When we started out, we thought it would shield us from a mutata, but it didnt. This is all it can do now: it can keep us in one piece each time we jump. But not the entire ship.

I began to understand. The huge bulk of ship I had seen from the window was real. I had never left the grab bag. I was in it now, riding the aggregate, a tiny particle attracted out of solution to the colloidal mass.

Junipero touched the tank, and it returned to its random flow. Its a constant shuttle run. Each time we return to the Earth to see who, if any, can find their home there. Then we seek out the ones who have the disrupters, and they attack us send us away again.

Out thereis that my world?

The old woman shook her head. No, but its home to one groupthree of them. The three creatures in the bubble.

I giggled. I thought there were a lot more than that.

Only three. Youll learn to see things more accurately as time passes. Maybe youll be the one to bring us all home.

What if I find my home first?

Then youll go, and if theres no one to replace you, one of the crew will command until another comes along. But someone always comes along, eventually. I sometimes think were being played with, never finding our home, but always having a Juniper to command us. She smiled wistfully. The game isnt all bitterness and bad tosses, though. Youll see more things, and do more, and be more, than any normal woman.

Ive never been normal, I said.

All the better.

If I accept.

You have that choice.

Junipero, I breathed. Geneva. Then I laughed.

How do you choose?

* * * *

The small child, seeing the destruction of its thousand companions with each morning light and the skepticism of the older ones, becomes frightened and wonders if she will go the same way. Someone will raise the shutters and a sunbeam will impale her and shell phantomize. Or theyll tell her they dont believe shes real. So she sits in the dark, shaking. The dark becomes fearful. But soon each day becomes a triumph. The ghosts vanish, but she doesnt, so she forgets the shadows and thinks only of the day. Then she grows older, and the companions are left only in whims and background thoughts. Soon she is whittled away to nothing; her husbands are past, her loves are firm and not potential, and her history stretches away behind her like carvings in crystal. She becomes wrinkled, and soon the daylight haunts her again. Not every day will be a triumph. Soon there will be a final beam of light, slowly piercing her jellied eye, and shell join the phantoms.

But not now. Somewhere, far away, but not here. All around, the ghosts have been resurrected for her to see and lead. And shell be resurrected, too, always under the shadow of the tree name.

* * * *

I think, I said, that it will be marvelous. So it was, thirty centuries ago. Sonok is gone, two hundred years past; some of the others have died, too, or gone to their own Earths. The ship is five hundred kilometers across and growing. You havent come to replace me yet, but Im dying, and I leave this behind to guide you, along with the instructions handed down by those before me.

Your name might be Jennifer, or Ginepra, or something else, but you will always be me. Be happy for all of us, darling. We will be forever whole.

<>

* * * *

MANDALA

The city that had occupied Mesa Canaan was now marching across the plain. Jeshua watched with binoculars from the cover of the jungle. It had disassembled just before dawn, walking on elephantine legs, tractor treads and wheels, with living bulkheads upright, dismantled buttresses given new instructions to crawl instead of support; floors and ceilings, transports and smaller city parts, factories and resource centers, all unrecognizable now, like a slime mold soon to gather itself in its new country.

The city carried its plan deep within the living plasm of its fragmented body. Every piece knew its place, and within that scheme there was no room for Jeshua, or for any man.

The living cities had cast them out a thousand years before.

He lay with his back against a tree, binoculars in one hand and an orange in the other, sucking thoughtfully on a bitter piece of rind. No matter how far back he probed, the first thing he remembered was watching a city break into a tide of parts, migrating. He had been three years old, two by the seasons of God-Does-Battle, sitting on his fathers shoulders as they came to the village of Bethel-Japhet to live. Jeshuaironically named, for he would always be chasteremembered nothing of importance before coming to Bethel-Japhet. Perhaps it had all been erased by the shock of falling into the campfire a month before reaching the village. His body still carried the marks: a circle of scars on his chest, black with the tiny remnants of cinders.

Jeshua was huge, seven feet tall flat on his feet. His arms were as thick as an ordinary mans legs, and when he inhaled, his chest swelled as big as a barrel. He was a smith in the village, a worker of iron and caster of bronze and silver. But his strong hands had also acquired delicate skills to craft ritual and family jewelry. For his trade he had been given the surname TubalJeshua Tubal Iben Daod, craftsman of all metals.

The city on the plain was marching toward the Arat range. It moved with faultless deliberation. Cities seldom migrated more than a hundred miles at a time or more than once in a hundred years, so the legends went; but they seemed more restless now.

He scratched his back against the trunk, then put his binoculars in a pants pocket. His feet slipped into the sandals hed dropped on the mossy jungle floor, and he stood, stretching. He sensed someone behind him but did not turn to look, though his neck muscles knotted tight.

Jeshua. It was the chief of the guard and the council of laws, Sam Daniel the Catholic. His father and Sam Daniel had been friends before his father disappeared. Time for the Synedrium to convene.

Jeshua tightened the straps on his sandals and followed.

Bethel-Japhet was a village of moderate size, with about two thousand people. Its houses and buildings laced through the jungle until no distinct borders remained. The stone roadway to the Synedrium Hall seemed too short to Jeshua, and the crowd within the hearing chamber was far too large. His betrothed, Kisa, daughter of Jake, was not there, but his challenger, Renold Mosha Iben Yitshok, was.

The representative of the seventy judges, the Septuagint, called the gathering to order and asked that the details of the case be presented.

Son of David, Renold said, I have come to contest your betrothal to Kisa, daughter of Jake.

I hear, Jeshua said, taking his seat in the defendants docket.

I have reasons for my challenge. Will you hear them?

Jeshua didnt answer.

Pardon my persistence. It is the law. I dont dislike you I remember our childhood, when we played togetherbut now we are mature, and the time has come.

Then speak. Jeshua fingered his thick dark beard. His flushed skin was the color of the fine sandy dirt on the river-banks of the Hebron. He towered a good foot above Renold, who was slight and graceful.

Jeshua Tubal Iben Daod, you were born like other men but did not grow as we have. You now look like a man, but the Synedrium has records of your development. You cannot consummate a marriage. You cannot give a child to Kisa. This annuls your childhood betrothal. By law and by my wish I am bound to replace you, to fulfill your obligation to her.