Murasaki, page 21
“You do the understanding, the standing between, don’t you?” he asked in English.
It was the first question he had asked her directly. try,” she said. She had no doubt about what he meant
“Learned much myself on Chujo about understanding and standing between. Masters and slaves.
Everybody’s right, everybody’s wrong.”
This was much less clear. She sat, buckled herself in, said nothing, willing, to just let Kammer talk even if he rambled. Nogura and Hiraiwa listened as well. No doubt recorders were on; Kammer had no private existence. He did not seem to notice or mind.
“Have there been any more messages?” he asked. “From who?”
“From Nicole. From my . . . “ He coughed. “Family.”
“Mr. Philby hasn’t mentioned any to us, and our ships haven’t received any.”
“When this is over, I’d like to send a message to them. Is that possible?”
“I think so,” Tatsumi said.
“I’d like to tell them a few simple things, set their minds at ease.” He smiled again, that ghastly, corpse-of-old-man grin. –That I think of them, even though every-body assumes... I’m doing the missing me.”
Tatsumi frowned in puzzlement. “I beg your pardon?”
“Assumes I’m not here. Who would be here?” He tapped his head. “After all I’ve seen. Years among the Masters. Aloof sons of bitches. Good reason, too. Doing the endgame.”
Tatsumi nodded.
“Carnot will be there?” he asked.
“He says he will be.”
“This is a large village, near the shore?”
“Yes,” she said. “Not a village, actually. An asso-ciation of fishers and whalers. Whaling now, this season.– “We can take boats out on the water?”
This was something new. “I don’t know about that,– she said. “We’ve made no arrangements. We have no boats of our own there.–
–All right,” Kammer said. “Just curious.”
The transport passed through a bumpy high-pressure ridge lying offshore on its curving path to approach the association from the sea. Kammer looked through his port intently, ignoring Tatsumi. She kept her seat, however, in case he should speak some more.
“Boats,—Kammer said. “Fishing boats.” He pointed through the window. A flotilla of Ihrdizu boats lay some ten kilometers offshore. Tatsumi saw that they were carpet whalers. There did not seem to be any of the himatids vis-ible. Somehow, she was relieved; the whaling disturbed her on an instinctive level; never expressed. Japanese had sav-aged the very different whales of Earth’s seas for decades longer than they should have; there was still controversy about that historical episode.
“Brave creatures, doing the sea,” Kammer said softly. They passed low and slow over the shore. and landed a hundred meters from the tide line.
“Carnot’s ship is here,” Dr. Hiraiwa observed. “At least this much is accomplished.”
Tatsumi looked through the port and frowned. He was not supposed to arrive early; Philby might interpret that as a breach. Perhaps it is a breach. What has he, done? Has he spoken to the Ihrdizu here, proselytized? The culture team will have prevented that... I hope.
All but Kammer donned helmets with helium/hydrogen mix tanks for the excursion. Hiraiwa and Nogura watched anxiously from _within their helmets as the transport’s air-lock pressure completed the slow equalization that had begun since they left. Honshu Station. Kammer stood steady against the weight and the inrush of Genjian atmosphere, thick and moist. The air lock filled with steam, which vanished imme-diately as the outer door opened. Hiraiwa stepped out first, then Kammer, with Nogura and Tatsumi following.
Kammer stood on the fiat slate stones of the upper beach, turning this way, then that, as if getting
,
accustomed to a place he had been away from for a long time, but a place he knew nonetheless. He did not betray any distress.
The three Japanese stood around him anxiously awaiting an adverse reaction. Kammer reached out with a twisted arm and touched Tatsumi’s shoulder, patting it as if in reassurance. His voice sounded softer but more res-onant as he said, “They did their work well. I’m comfortable.”
“Good,” Tatsumi said. Her own voice sounded high and squeaky in her ears; the helmet modulator deepened its tone for the others.
“Where is Philby?” Nogura asked. “He should be here.”
A group of four humans walked along the beach to-ward the Japanese transport, followed by a straggle of ten female Ihrdizu carrying ritual drapes of ocean weed. With some concern, Tatsumi realized these were members of Carnot’s party, and no Japanese had served as mediators between them and the Ihrdizu. “How long have they been here?” she asked.
“Not long, I hope,” Hiraiwa said. –Where is our cul-ture team?”
Tatsumi felt a sudden chill. “Something’s wrong,” she said. She made connections through her helmet with the transport’s communications system and sent a query to their ship in orbit. Kammer simply stood on the beach, rocking gently back and forth, waiting.
Carrot’s party was barely a dozen meters away when she received her answer.
“Japanese culture team met Philby’s party to arrange for rendezvous. Carnot’s party was not there; they must have gone ahead to the village.”
“Against our request?” Tatsumi said, face growing hot. She stared at the approaching group of four.
“Culture team reports they cannot advance to village now. There is a storm moving in rapidly. They are digging in for the next few hours; Philby’s party cannot leave, either.”
Tatsumi shut off the link in disgust. Not going at all well. She quickly explained to Nogura and Hiraiwa.
Kammer did not move forward to greet Carrot and his party. He leaned on his staff, still swaying back and forth.
“We could not land at the rendezvous,” Carnot ex-plained, coming forward, stopping two meters from Kam-mer, as if undecided where to go next. “There was a big storm coming in....1 believe your team and Mr. Philby are going, to be there for some time.”
How convenient, Tatsumi thought.
“We haven’t spoken with the Ihrdizu here, other than to exchange greetings,” Carnot continued.
“We’re trying to observe the terms of this meeting as much as possible.”
The Ihrdizu, staring at Kanuner, had withdrawn a dozen meters and stood on the shingles. bobbing back and forth. Nogura broke away from Tatsumi and Hiraiwa and walked up to them, stepping carefully on the rounded stones. He spoke to them through the translator.
“Excuse me,” Kammer said. “There’s something I need to see.” He walked away from Tatsumi, toward the ocean and the racks covered with himatid skins. Tatsumi glanced at Hiraiwa and followed him.
“Please, Mr. Kammer, we need to stick together. We should return to the ship and wait for the others to join us....
“Big storm, Carnot said. Not for hours, maybe longer. I need to see something.”
Tatsumi shuddered again at a sudden chill. Keep him away from the beach. But she could not simply grab him and hold him. Instead, she followed at his side, noting with fascination above her apprehension that his snug was ac-tually getting greener the longer he stayed in the Genjian atmosphere.
The snug was growing thicker; he seemed less like a mummy now and more like a vegetable man out of folklore, someone made of trees and moss.
With a start, Tatsumi realized that Carrot was walking on her right. He had left the rest of his party to stand in embarrassed silence with the Japanese. She looked back and saw three of the Ihrdizu also following, attention fo-cused on Kammer. “We should go back, all of us, please,” she said.
“Mr. Kammer,” Carrot said. “I am most happy to see you again, and startled to see you here.”
“Doing the shock bit,” Kammer said. “What are those things?” He raised a gnarled hand and pointed to the racked skins.
“Are you well? I did not know you could leave Chujo, or I would have—”
“Nobody knows what those are?” Kammer asked, turning to query Tatsumi. His pale eyes lingered on the Ihrdizu for a moment, then he faced forward again.
“They are skins, carpet-whale skins,” Tatsumi said. “This is a fishing and whaling association.”
Kammer stopped, seemed to breathe deeply, then con-tinued, Tatsumi and Carnot tagging along.
“I would like to speak with you about what I’ve been doing, on your behalf,” Carrot said Two of the Ihrdizu cut in front of Tatsumi, blocking her progress down the beach. They did not stop Carnot or Kammer. She tried to go around them, but they swiftly sidled to block her again.
‘Please let me pass,” she said, first in Japanese and then using the translator.
The Ihrdizu female who seemed to be senior in the party of three said, in Ihrdizu and very choppy Japanese, “We have heard of this human. Whalers bring stories from other regions.... You have told us nothing. Is he from Heaven?”
“He is human,” Tatsumi said.
“He walks without a suit, and does not die.”
So little time to explain. “Please, let me pass—”
“Has this one come to *judge* us?” The translator was struggling for the closest word. The other females gath-ered around Tatsumi, waiting for her answer.
“He isn’t here to judge anybody,” Tatsumi said, but it was obvious the translator did not express her meaning clearly.
“This one is from Heaven?” they repeated, three speaking at once. The translator squealed its inability to cope.
“Is this the human who bears messages from Heaven?” asked another female behind Tatsumi, speaking quite good Japanese. There were two males in her train, small and obsequious. “The other in the suit, who calls himself Carnot.”
“I can’t answer these questions,” Tatsumi said, lifting her hands, spinning to face all the Ihrdizu in turn.
“Please, let me bring them back to our ship.”
The first three females blocked her when she tried to walk to the shoreline. “The judgment must come.”
Horrified, Tatsumi switched on her link with the trans-port. Another team must come down, now; there was some-thing wrong here, and her group was not sufficient to handle it.
Eyes wide, she watched Kammer and Carnot proceed alone down to the racks of skins. Beyond them, the gray-blue sky, thick with rain and clouds several kilometers beyond the shoreline, pulsed with thick oily lightning dis-charges. The sound arrived moments later, pushing at them. “Please!” she begged.
The Ihrdizu bunched closer in front of her, a solid wall.
Kammer glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowing at a burst of wind and sound. Carnot followed with pained diligence, hunched over slightly, eyes eager through the faceplate. “I’ve been spreading your story to the Ihrdizu, to tell them about their ancient past, about the return of Christ to these worlds.... “
Kammer ignored him.
“They’ve listened and built temples. There are tem-ples all over Genji now, awaiting your sacrament, your sig-nal, to become villages, and then cities. We can give them back all that they lost, thousands of years ago.”
Kammer stopped three meters from the closest rack of skins. Three immature himatid skins—the upper portions of the whale, that is, less, skins than flensed plates of tis-sue—lay draped over many crossbars mounted on sticks carefully thrust into the shingles. They were not so much drying as curing; rain had pooled in their hollows and folds. A rainbow sheen glowed around the highlights of the wrinkles.
“My God,” Kammer said, raising his hands, dropping them.
“I beg your pardon?” Carnot said. He lifted his own arms tentatively, as if following some ritual gesture. “What have they done? What are they doing?”
“Is there something wrong?” Carnot asked.
“These are the creatures in the sea. The brave beasts.” Kammer fingered his snug, then ripped away a patch of it and offered it for Carnot’s examination. Carnot stepped for-ward, saw the layering in the snug, the way it writhed in Carnot’s fingers like something with its own independent life.
“I see it now,” Kammer said. “I’m doing the under-standing now, the standing between. There’s real ignorance here, all forgotten, all abandoned.... Real evil here! Sadness!”
“Yes,” Carnot said, enthused, bobbing his helmeted head. “You need to stay here and teach them, complete the link with Chujo.”
“They were slaves!” Kammer screamed at him. “They don’t want the Masters here! They were used like
They did the ... He could not finish. “And now they have their revenge. All the work of the Masters, all the planning, the genius ... “
He shook his hands at the racked skins. “My God, my humanity!” Kammer reached up and tore a long strip of snug from his face. Blood trickled from raw pink skin be-neath the thickest patches of snug.
Carnot turned, confused, and saw forty, fifty, sixty Ihr-dizu coming in a broad line down the beach toward them. The other hurnans were pushed close to their ships by burly females armed with Henning knives and clubs. He saw Madeline and Lin-Fa making broad gestures, Madeline bowing and raising her arms in fear and frustration, to no avail. ‘Mr. Kammer,” he said. “We must be careful. We should go back now.”
Kammer threw the ripped snug onto the shingles and reached his hands out to caress the ragged edge of a skin. A dense cloud of scent rose from the skin, and he inhaled. “The small young, the mobile ones. I’m remembering now.
“They are trained by the Ihrdizu, they work with the Ihrtlizu, some of them,” Carnot said. “I think there’s going to be trouble—”
“And the old ... He passed between the first few racked skins, to stand beside a huge skin, some fifty meters long and twenty across, like a mountain range in miniature: shiny black and green, dead. He touched this skin and more scent rose, and he screamed again. Up the beach, the Ihr-dizu doubled their pace.
“Mr. Kammer,”. Carnot said. “Please...
Kammer kicked out at the nearest pole and smashed his foot. Oblivious of the pain—if indeed he felt any pain—Kammer tried to pull the skin from the rack, but it was far too large, too tough, too heavy.
Now the scent of the skins came through Carnot’s helmet, through the oxygen-intake filter, and it was strong, and it made his eyes sting.
The horde was upon them, in a clearing surrounded on one side by immature skins, on the other by the single huge skin. They circled Kammer and Carnot, singing in their dreadful manner, feet pounding the shingles. Camot’s translator did not work well; it hummed and squealed al-ternately. Kammer ignored them, struck out with his staff at one close female, hit her on the crown between her upper eyes. The blow must have been slight, but she fell to the shingles nonetheless, and writhed there, foam pouring from her mouth.
“No!” Camot screamed, horrified. “We must go back! Kammer, no!”
“You goddamned butchers!” Kammer shouted, strik-ing again at another. The Ihrdizu went down, rolled over, kicked its legs in the air. “They’re the ones! They’re the ones, and you’re killing them!”
Again and again he struck out, and more females fell to the stone beach, not dead, perhaps not even injured, but motionless, Carnot had a horrible realization that this was ritual and he did not know its, purpose, or its end. He was seeing lights dance now, streamers of color surrounding the prostrate Ihrdizu, Kammer. He was having a revelation. He did not want a revelation now.
“Stop!” he cried, but his helmet muffled him. “Stop this, for the love of Christ!”
“We are judged!”
The Ihrdizu song reached a pitch, repeating this phrase again and again, and he heard the translation.
He was on his knees, then on his hands and knees. Strong limbs grabbed his helmet and ripped it away, seals separating, baring his skin. His nose began to bleed. The residual hy-drogen and helium in his lungs turned his screams into squeaks. He heard nothing now but a roaring. He saw Kam-mer with wings, the Ground of All Being a buzzing many-caverned hollowness behind, the face of Jesus rising from the clouds, approving, his nose bleeding.
“We are judged!” the Ihrdizu females cried, lifting Carrot above their heads. Naked, bruised and torn, blood dripping onto the shingles, he was carried, around the giant himatid skin, and then propped against two poles erected in the shingles. His head lolled; he looked with pain-glazed eyes on the Boschian monsters dancing around him, his back a single-splintered lance of pain, his shoulders loose under the burden this world imposed, his hands scraping against the rocks. One arm was mobile; with it
,
he picked up a flattened stone, tried to throw it at one of his tormen-tors, but his head lolled to the opposite side. He considered the death of Christ and the return to the Ground of All Things, which he could feel so clearly, his soul leaking below the Planck length, all things being equal there and fertile and unexisting. The stone rolled from his hand.
“Kill the judges!”
Tatsumi heard this cry, and wept; she knew this ritual. She knew its finish. Expiation for the act of hunting the himatids. Cleansing and renewal; rejection of the ultimate judgment, for the whalers were whalers, and must continue, but they must feel shame, they must face judgment. She could not see Kammer or Carnot, but she saw the stones filling the air like a cloud.
After just a few minutes, the Ihrdizu around her strag-gled away, leaving her on her knees, unharmed.
All the Ihrdizu, females and males, returned to the high shelter pla-teau, mounted the steep stairways, and were gone from the beach. All that remained were the skins; she still could not see Carnot or Kammer.
Dr. Hiraiwa helped her to her feet. He could not wipe the tears from his eyes, behind his faceplate.
Dr. Nogura stood a few paces away, repeatedly striking his hip with one hand and cursing in Japanese and English, a continu-ous, meaningless stream, interlaced with “Not again. Not again.”
Tatsumi knew he was remembering the deaths on Chujo, years past.
It was not fair, but she could not keep the thought from her head: now damned English rational Philby had what he wanted all along.
