Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (6 page)

 
          
I
broke off my viewing, not desiring this kind of covert closeness.

           
"How do you get all this stuff
up here, and your food and water and everything?" I directed my question
at Capsi, though he was hanging back as if he had arranged for Hasso to be here
especially to please me; which it didn't.
"Up all those
wretched stairs?"

 
          
"We
hoist heavy supplies. Winch 'em up in buckets."

           
"And how do you pay for
them?"

 
          
"Oh,
donations," he said vaguely. "And some of us work parttime down in
Verrino."

 
          
"How
many of you are there, anyway?"

 
          
"About twenty.
Some young, some old.
Come and see—we've nothing to hide. It's that lot over there who are hiding.
They're hiding from the river. And they make women wear black. And they bum
them."

 
          
"But
you're all
men
up here, aren't
you?"

 
          
Hasso
chuckled. "We aren't misogynists exactly. . . ." He had the good
grace not to add:
As you surely noticed.
"I hope Capsi passed on my affectionate apologies?"

 
          
"He
did.
Verbatim.
It seems to me that the men over there
must be the kingpins, who decide what women do—and
you
aren't above using women, if it suits you! Could there perhaps
be a certain element of envy in your activities up here?"

 
          
"There
could be, but there isn't." It was the old imp who spoke up; so he must
have been listening, instead of looking. "Sister Yaleen, knowledge is our
goal; that's all. The knowledge of what on earth is going on over there, with
the whole other half of our human community.
They who share
this world with us."

 
          
So
he already knew my name.
Which meant that they had all
discussed my coming.
I was as much part of a plan now as ever I had
been—in a more casual, extempore way—when Hasso lovingly deflowered me that
evening a year ago.

 
          
"You
feel . . . threatened, perhaps?" said the old fellow gently. "Please
don't. It's the women over there who are under threat.
Your
sisters, not you."

 
          
Yes.
But the observers hadn't known of this threat till recently, when they had
acquired Big Eye. And yet maybe they had guessed for a long time that the west
bank was opposed to everything that our river society stood for. . . .

 
          
"Well,
that's Big Eye," said Capsi lightly. "Come on and we'll show you
around, below."

 
          
"You
can show me around, brother
dear. I'm sure Hasso has lots more peeping to attend to."

 
          
Hasso
pursed his lips; he seemed more amused than offended.

 
          
So
Capsi proceeded to give me the guided tour of their eyrie and citadel—carved
into cell rooms, kitchen, refectory, store rooms and such, and culminating in
the "map room" where was filed or displayed every iota of
information, supposition or hearsay that they had ever gleaned about the west
bank all the way from Ajelobo to Umdala, a labour of goodness knows how many
years.
A hundred?
Two hundred?
More?
I saw panoramas and sketches and even maps of
the immediate hinter-land, though the maps themselves must have been beset with
flaws due to foreshortening, given the perspectives they were drawn from.

 
          
Such dusty patience.
Such dedicated . . . waiting. Capsi
confessed to me offhandedly that he, and they, rather regretted that he had
not brought his own pen-and-ink panorama of the shore opposite Pecawar with
him from home. But when I offered to collect it from our house and drop it in
at Verrino next time I was passing by, he didn't seem quite as glad of my offer
as I should have expected. Perhaps he had already promised his colleagues
something better?

 
          
Then,
the tour at an end (if I had indeed seen everything: the place was a bit of a
maze), Capsi escorted me back down those ankle-aching stairs to real life and
bustle, and a bottle of wine and spicy lamb couscous with minted yoghurt.

 
          
If
he had further schemes in mind for me, he didn't go into them. Though what they
might be, I was hard put to imagine—so much so that I was almost on the point
of asking him outright.

 
          
Two
days later, in the afternoon, just after I'd come back to my little rooftop
room after a visit to the quaymistress's office enquiring of a boat with an
empty berth to carry me back to Pecawar in another week or so, Capsi burst in
upon me, panting with exertion, his face flushed.

 
          
"They're
at it again," he panted.
"Crowd outside the town.
Bonfire piled up. Come on!" Strangely, he seemed glad.
Almost
radiant.

 
          
I
wondered briefly if this was a trick; but obviously something that happened six
months ago can always repeat itself six months later. I raced with him.

 
          
It
only took us about twenty minutes—with Capsi ducking up and down short-cuts
that would have lost me—to snake through the town and out to the Spire, and
spiral our way up till, almost heart-burst, we emerged on to the platform.

 
          
As
soon as we entered the observatory, which was crowded, a path opened for me to
Big Eye, where Hasso jumped out of his seat to make room. I was shaking and
panting so much from the sprint that I let him steady my shoulders as I sat
there.

 
          
I
peered: at a tiny crowd on a greensward, half of the people robed in black; and
an empty cart, and a bonfire burning. With a stake set in the centre of the
flames, and something fastened to the stake.

 
          
I
watched a long while, till the crowd began to troop back towards the wretched
village, dragging the cart along with them, leaving a smoking ruin behind.

 
          
Then
I ran out, around to the guard-rail.
Sure enough, away to the
west hung a tiny faint smudge.

 
          
I
returned; the observers, young and old, all watched me expectantly.

 
          
"What
do you want me to do?" I asked them.

 
          
Capsi
answered quietly, "We want to send an observer over.
To
find out."

 
          
"Over
there? But that's impossible. The black current's in the way. You haven't
learnt to fly, by any chance?"

 
          
"Our
ancestors must have known how to fly," remarked the old imp, whose name I
knew now as Yosef.
"A lost skill, eh?
Perhaps deliberately so.
Still, I've had a few ideas on the
subject. . . ."

 
          
I
quoted the preface to
The Book of the
River
at him. "Man is of the shore, woman is of the water,
only
birds are of the sky. . . ."

 
          
He
stared at me fixedly.
"Yes, precisely.
So there's
no point in my entertaining such thoughts, is there, boatwoman? Or we would
threaten the balance of the applecart. Something that no self-respecting guild
would ever allow. . . ."

 
          
"River
society
works,"
said
I.
"And nicely, too. Obviously things
don't work very well over there."

 
          
"Oh,
I wasn't suggesting that this particular applecart is in any danger of
overturning. None whatever! I've ruled out any fancy, speculative notions of
flying. It's a somewhat visible thing to attempt. Meanwhile, girls like you
are burning over there.
Twice now, in that one miserable
little town."

 
          
What
I'd seen had been far away, tiny and silent; yet just for a moment I felt an
intuition of the fear, the awful fear, and the agony, and was nearly sick from
it. Flames licking round my feet, crisping my skin to pig's crackling then
burning through to the bone, while I screamed and screamed. . . .

 
          
"Somebody
has to cross the river and report back," said Capsi. "You do see
that, don't you?"

 
          
"Men
can only sail the river once. Cross, and report back? That's twice. You aren't
suggesting that / make the crossing? It's ridiculous: the current's in the way,
in any case."

 
          
"No,
Yaleen, I wasn't suggesting you. Obviously a man is safer over there than a
woman. It's
me
who'll go.
Just once.
One way.
And I'll report
back by heliograph."

 
          
"But
how could you get through the current?
It's
madness—and death. That isn't just some rumour that we women put around!"

 
          
"Oh,
it's true, and no denying," said old Yosef. "The river has a mind of
its own, and senses things, and reacts to them. Or rather, let's say that the
black current acts this way. So it's a creature: a very long creature that
lives in the river, anchored to the
Precipice
Mountains
at one end like a tapeworm, floating all
the way along it and spilling out into the sea at its other end. And it can
smell what happens in the water. It can scent one man's odour and remember it,
and distinguish it from half a million others; and it can put thoughts into his
brain, of despair and death, if it smells him twice. Whereas women it favours.
No doubt because they pose no threat to it."

 
          
His
speculations seemed dangerously close to some of the secrets of my initiation
ceremony; though plainly the black current couldn't be a creature such as he
envisaged—not if it was possible to scoop out parts of it and bottle these in
phials. It had to be of a different nature, and much larger than their concept
of it: larger than our whole country, and perhaps much more powerful, in its
apparently quiescent, unrevealing way, than any of them supposed.

 
          
I
said nothing at all to confirm or deny to what extent the guild might have
reached the same conclusions—which of course had precious little to do with
the business of everyday life.

 
          
"So,"
I said simply, "there's no way through. However crazy you are."

 
          
"Not
through," replied Capsi.
"Under."

 
          
"Under?"

           
Old Yosef stuck his oar in again.
"Based on the reasonable presumption that the black current
doesn't extend all the way to the bottom.
Why should it, when it floats?
There must be clear water beneath. Maybe the current is only a few spans
thick."

 
          
"Ah,
I
see.
And it's only a hundred spans
wide. So Capsi is just going to hold his breath for five or ten minutes, plunge
into water infested with stingers, and . . . It's preposterous. Since when,
Capsi, could you swim like a fish?"

 
          
"I've
been practising," he said defensively.
"Down at the
Verrino baths."

 
          
"And
is that also where you've been practising holding your breath, till you turn
blue?"

 
          
"You
misunderstand/
⁷
said Yosef
. "
Come, and
we'll show you how."

 
          
Down
below, we entered a stone chamber with mullion windows cut in the rock wall
facing east. I'd certainly not been admitted here two days before, during
Capsi's guided tour.