Svaha, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Svaha
svaha—Amerindian; the time between
The last time the Indian Nations rode to war, their warriors were dressed in the suits of lawyers. They took the war to the World Court and this time they won, reclaiming vast tracts of the old tribal lands. When they withdrew into those Enclaves, they sealed themselves away from the Outer Lands with technologies none had imagined they possessed.
ONE
2
TWO
2
3
DREAMTIME
THREE
2
FOUR
2
3
DREAMTIME
FIVE
2
3
4
SIX
2
3
4
SEVEN
2
3
4
EIGHT
2
DREAMTIME
NINE
2
3
TEN
2
ELEVEN
2
3
TWELVE
2
3
4
5
6
7
THIRTEEN
2
3
FOURTEEN
2
DREAMTIME
FIFTEEN
2
SIXTEEN
2
3
SEVENTEEN
2
3
4
DREAMTIME
EIGHTEEN
2
3
4
5
NINETEEN
2
3
4
5
DREAMTIME
TWENTY
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
TWENTY-ONE
2
3
REALTIME
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the Author
Svaha
by
Charles de Lint
Copyright 1989 by Charles de Lint.
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this one's for Ron Nance
(Sam says hi)
CONTENTS
One
Two
Dreamtime
Three
Four
Dreamtime
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Dreamtime
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Dreamtime
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Dreamtime
Eighteen
Nineteen
Dreamtime
Twenty
Twenty-One
Realtime
Acknowledgments
About the Author
svaha—Amerindian; the time between
seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder;
a waiting for promises to be fulfilled
All men should strive to
learn before they die
What they are running from,
and to, and why.
—James Thurber
He who is sleeping,
the Spirit, I bring him,
a kinsman.
—Medé song fragment
The last time the Indian Nations rode to war, their warriors were dressed in the suits of lawyers. They took the war to the World Court and this time they won, reclaiming vast tracts of the old tribal lands. When they withdrew into those Enclaves, they sealed themselves away from the Outer Lands with technologies none had imagined they possessed.
This time the Nations would not allow the treaties to be broken.
—From the foreword of A History of the Native Enclaves by Satomi Ko (Shigaku Publishing Discs, 2094)
ONE
1
Rattle and drum.
It was beautiful music. Deer hoof rattles and cedar-shelled water drums. The clatter of bird quills against the skins of the hoop band drums. Speaking to the animiki, the grandfather thunders. The voices of the People raised in song.
"Midewewigun, n’gaganoodumaugonaun," they sang. The drums speak for us.
In the clear night skies, the animiki rumbled. Giwitaweidang, the scout thunder that goes all around the sky. Andjibnes, the renewer of power.
"Mino-dae aeshowishinaung," the People sang. "Tchi mino-inaudiziwinaungaen." Fill our spirits with good; upright then may be our lives.
The underpinning rhythm of the drums spoke to the feet of the dancers, to the shaking rattles in their hands, the stamping of their heels. A Parting Dance. Alone in the center, one man sat, his water drum speaking under the palms of his hands.
"N'midewewigunim, manitouwiyauwih," he sang. Upon my drum bestow the mystery.
"K'neekaunissinaun, ani-maudjauh," the People replied. Our brother, he is leaving.
Not to walk the Path of Souls, but to walk in the Outer Lands.
"K'neekaunissinaun, zunugut ae-nummook." Our brother, difficult is the road.
Alone he drummed by the post of a living green tree that had been cut and then erected in the center of the glade. A great fire burned beside it.
"K'neekaunissinaun, kego binuh-kummeekaen," the People sang. Our brother, do not stumble.
They sang to him, of the path he would take, as though he had died, as though he would never return during this turn of the world's wheel. In some ways, it was true, for to walk the Outer Lands meant one could not return, whether one lived or one died. To the tribe, it would be as though he had died. So they sang to him and let their drums speak to the thunders, asking the grandfathers to bestow their medicine on him to give him strength on his journey.
He acknowledged the gift. "Kikinowautchi-beedaudae," he sang. It shall be written.
Then he set his water drum aside and rose to dance. He offered his hand to the oldest of the women present. Maudji-Geezhigquae—Moving Sky Woman. His uncle's mother. In conducting her to the dance, through the joining of the hands of young and old, he sought to gain endurance from her long life. It was also the hand of man espousing that of woman, the giver of life.
Other women then rose and danced. Old men joined, followed finally by the very young. The water drums continued to speak. The animiki replied. The bird quills on the hoop band drums and the rattles in the hands of the dancers added a high counterpoint rhythm.
Now they represented a madjimadzuin, a moving line, an earthly Milky Way connecting those who have gone before with those who follow. The old singers often told of the Milky Way stars that rode the skies at night, how they were a part of an enormous bucket handle that held the earth in place. If ever it broke, the world would come to an end. So it was with the chain of madjimadzuin. When it broke, a clan ended.
The People danced that madjimadzuin now to assure their departing brother that the tribe would continue, that it would hold a place for him. They would meet again in the west, across the river that separates Epanggishimuk, the Land of Souls, from the world of the living. They would meet again in that spirit realm joined only to this world by meekunnaug, the Path of Souls.
He would be reborn from Epanggishimuk, into the tribe once more. The madjimadzuin would remain unbroken.
* * *
Later he stood in the Lodge of Medicine with a medé of his totem, Manitouwaub—Sees Like a Spirit. The medés' computers hummed around them, but no other sound carried in the broad room. He glanced at the wall mural depicting Negik—the otter totem, first patron of the Medewewin. The bright primary colours of the mural relaxed the tension in his shoulders. He let his gaze travel left from Negik to where his own totem gazed back at him from a corner of the mural: Makinak—the turtle. He inclined his head slightly, then bore his knapsack from the lodge, Manitouwaub walking at his side, neither of them speaking as they travelled to the borders of the Enclave. There, they were met by their chief, Zhawano-Geezhig—Blue Sky.
The borders of the Enclave rose misty before them, an opaque gaseous wall that stood as high as the eye could see, and higher. It had no true physical shape as might be measured by the eye, yet it was a more effective wall than any other barrier yet devised by men, in or out of the Enclaves. Manitouwaub took his spirit pipe from his bandolier and the three men shared its sacred smoke.
"Saemauh waussaeyaukaugae," Zhawano-Geezhig said to him. Tobacco will clear the cloud.
He nodded, understanding. Even in the Outer World, the manitou would be with him.
Manitouwaub gave him the pipe, which he stowed away in his knapsack.
"Tci-manaudjimikooyaun, n'd'aupinumoon," he said to the medé. I am honoured to receive your gift.
Manitouwaub spoke no word, merely embraced him. All words between them had been spoken before. The time for instruction had passed. Now was a time for ritual only, to evoke the sacred medicine of the manitou for his task.
He turned then. An engineer appeared at his elbow to show him the way through the barrier—a door-shaped greyness that appeared in the opaque mists, controlled by a miniaturized instrument that the engineer held in his hand. Just as he was passing through, he heard Zhawano-Geezhig say softly, "Auzhigo n'waubumauh gawissaet." Already I see him fall. Then he was through the barrier, stepping from the clean night air of the Enclave of the People into the poisoned world of the Outer Lands.
* * *
Later still, he stood on the roof of a deserted tenement building, looking not at the endless sprawl of the Toronto-Quebec Corridor that ran for a hundred klicks like a river of broken buildings and streets from the southwest to the northeast, nor at the smog-yellow skies that hid the stars and bright light of the moon above him, but back along the path he had taken, back to where the pale mist of the Enclave's borders rose ghostlike at the edge of the corridor where the northward march of the ruined structures ended.
I will remember, he thought. Though I never return, I will remember.
He was Gahzee Animiki-Waewidum of the Turtle totem, whose home had once been the Anishinabeg/Huron Enclave of Kawarthas—Place of Bright Waters and Happy Lands. No matter where he fared, or what the people of these Outer Lands did to him, that could never be taken away.
In the days to come, memory might comfort. But not now. What was lost was still too fresh. Loneliness cut too deeply. The reality of the Outer Lands was too intense all around him.
Thunder sounded in the distance. Bodreudang, the approaching thunder. A storm was coming. Not the clean rain of the Enclave, but the acid rain of the Outer Lands. Still, it was good to hear one of the grandfathers in this place, good to know that manitou still walked its hills and valleys where only the ruins of buildings and the buckling concrete of forgotten streets grew now.
Suddenly he smiled, then threw back his head and laughed. He was still Gahzee Animiki-Waewidum—Swift Speaks With Thunder. No longer simply a medé of the People, but their animkwan now as well. A dog-scout for his tribe in the Outer Lands. He could go forth doleful, with his head hanging, like a wolf with its tail between its legs, or he could go as one of the People, cheerful in adversity, accepting the challenge for what it was.
"Inaendaugwut," he murmured. It is permitted, meaning that, while events were caused by forces outside of a man, the exercise of personal talents and prerogatives were predicted by a man himself. This was not exile into which he fared. Rather, the manitou had steered him into an opportunity to grow in spirit and in accordance with the world.
Shouldering his pack, he made his way back down the treacherous steps of the building's inner stairwell and began his journey, heading northeast along the TOPQ Corridor. When the rains finally came, he ducked into the shelter of a nearby building, miles distant from where he had first heard the thunder. Legs crossed, he sat in its doorway and watched the acidic rains hiss and splatter on the stones outside the door.
2
Kaoru Okabe watched as her partner packed a small travelling kitbag and shook her head. That was Lisa, always taking everything to extremes.
"Lighten up," she said, leaning back on their lumpy futon, which was folded up to make a couch. She played with the channel control on her com-link's vid as she spoke, switching bands, looking for something worth watching. "What's the worst he's gonna do? Dock you a few credits? For that you're hitting the street?"
Lisa Bone shot her a quick hard look then resumed her packing. In the light of their lamp—scavenged from a dump months ago, its solar batteries already fading three hours after nightfall—her eyes gleamed like pale blue sapphires, lids painted with a rainbow design. Her black hair was cropped ragged and short, held away from a gamine's angular hollow-cheeked face with a length of grey and orange checkered cloth. Standing out starkly against her pale skin—red as cut strawberries on brow, cheeks, and chin—were the dark messenger stripe tattoos that saw her safely through the no-man's-land of the squats.
"Adder told me to get it back, or it'd be got back," she said as she carefully folded an antique T-shirt and placed it in her kit. It was a gift from her grandmother, made of genuine cotton and worth a small fortune. "Out of my skin," she added.
"Adder's just making you sweat. If the chinas nabbed the package, what can you do? It's not like he's got no insurance."
Lisa looked up again, the fear plain in her eyes. She started to speak, then shook her head.
Kaoru sat up with an abrupt motion. The silver bells braided in her black hair, which marked her as a fiberdisc dealer as surely as Lisa's tattooed stripes told the world she was a messenger, jingled sharply.
"Lisa," she said slowly. "What aren't you telling me?"
"You don't want to know," Lisa replied.
"Screw that. We're partners and—"
"Our partnership's dissolved, Kay. If I were you, I'd start packing. I told you, someone's going to be here looking for me, real soon now. If I'm not here, they just might settle for you."
Kaoru crossed the floor and caught Lisa's arm. "What aren't you telling me?" she repeated.
"Goro-san," Lisa said, her voice toneless. "Turns out the package was his. Adder says Goro wants to know, if the chinas jumped me, then how come I'm still living? He thinks I sold it to one of the tongs, or stashed it to sell later."
Under its mulatto shade, Kaoru's face went white. "Goro-san," she repeated dully.
The name hung in the stale air around them. Shigehero Goro was the oyabun of the local yakuza's Goro Clan.
Their squat was on the third floor of a deserted warehouse, just within sight of the tall gleaming spires of Trenton Megaplex. In the Plex the citizens had as much light as they wanted; patrolled streets, real apartments with data infeeds, positions with one of the Kaisha—the corporations that ran the Plex. In the squats outside the Plex's towers, the chinas and rats scrabbled for a living, relying on bootlegged vid links or mainlining fiberdiscs for their entertainment. They were marginals, hoping to buy in to citizenship; barred from the towers, but forced to squat on their doorsteps, looking for handouts and slag work—anything to turn a credit.
The Kaisha had their own security, but inside and outside the Plex the real powers were the warring tongs and triads, and the yakuza of Shigehero Goro. Close-knit organizations that no sane person would cross.
"You…you could sell yourself to him," Kaoru said when she finally found her voice. "Put in a little geisha time in one of his meat bars…"
Lisa shook her head. Sure, it was a way to get into the Plex, but it was a dead end. All it cost you was your soul. "He's not having any part of me," she said.
She went around to her various stashes in the squat, retrieving her small store of possessions. Hard credits because Goro would have killed her Bankcard by now. A plastic Steeljack fléchette auto-pistol, still encoded to the dead security drone that she'd stolen it from, complete with three spare clips of its small fléchettes. Plastic-wrapped concentrated food bars. A two-month supply of vaccine tablets. Another pill container, this one filled with water-purifying tablets.
"Where will you go?" Kaoru asked.
"I dunno. Up the Corridor—maybe to Kings."
"That's more than a hundred and fifty klicks. You're never going to make it on foot."
Lisa was all too aware of the dead lands that lay between the two Plexes. Klick upon endless klick of abandoned city blocks—the badlands of the Corridor that separated the Plexes. And when you thought of what inhabited those wastes…
"I don't have any choice."
She closed up her kitbag and swung it to her back. It was heavy. One week out beyond the squats she was going to wish it was twice as heavy because she was going to need every bit of what was in there and more. She looked around the squat. It wasn't much, but it was better than most had. A lamp and a heater, both outdated, but the solar batteries still sucked up enough juice to run them a few hours into the night. A few plastic-coated pictures on the wall. Her favourite was the one of Jammy Jim, heartthrob of the rats once, faded now from popularity, but still the one vidjammer she'd take into her bed. The futon she and Kaoru shared. Some pillows. Not much, but it was more than she was going to have in the days to come. And Kaoru…
