Collected Short Fiction, page 693
“They are human, Olmayne.”
“Just barely. Tomis, I loathe such monsters. My flesh creeps to have them near me. If I could, I’d banish them from this world!”
“Where is the serene tolerance a Rememberer must cultivate?” She flamed at the mockery in my voice. “We are not required to love Changelings, Tomis. They are one of the curses laid upon our planet—parodies of humanity, enemies of truth and beauty. I despise them!”
It was not a unique attitude. But I had no time to reproach Olmayne for her intolerance; the vehicle of the invaders was drawing near. I hoped we might resume our journey once it went by. It slowed and halted, however, and several of the invaders came out. They walked unhurriedly toward us, their long arms dangling like slack ropes.
“Who is the leader here?” asked one of them.
No one replied.
The invader said impatiently, after a moment, “No leader? No leader? Very well, all of you, listen. The road must be cleared. A convoy is coming through. Go back to Palerm and wait until tomorrow.”
“But I must be in Agupt by—” the Scribe began.
“Land Bridge is closed today,” said the invader. “Go back to Palerm.” His voice was calm.
The Scribe shivered, his jowls swinging, and said no more.
Several of the others by the side of the road looked as if they wished to protest. The Sentinel turned away and spat. A man who boldly wore the mask of the shattered guild of Defenders in his cheek clenched his fists and plainly fought back a surge of fury. The Changelings whispered to one another. Bemalt smiled bitterly at me, and shrugged.
Go back to Palerm? Waste a day’s march in this heat? For what?
The invader gestured casually, telling us to disperse.
Now it was that Olmayne was unkind to me. In a low voice she said, “Explain to them, Tomis, that you are in the pay of the Procurator of Perris, and they will let the two of us pass.”
My shoulders sagged as if she had loaded ten years on me. “Why did you say such a thing?” I asked.
“It’s hot. I’m tired. It’s idiotic of them to send us back to Palerm.”
“I agree. But I can do nothing. Why try to hurt me?”
“Does the truth hurt that much?”
“I am no collaborator, Olmayne.”
She laughed. “You say that so well! But you are, Tomis, you are! You sold them documents—”
“To save the Prince, your lover,” I reminded her.
“You dealt with the invaders, though.”
“Stop it, Olmayne.”
“Now you give me orders?”
“Olmayne—”
Go up to them, Tomis. Tell them who you are, make them let us go ahead.”
“The convoys would run us down on the road. In any case, I have no influence with invaders. I am not the Procurator’s man.”
“I’ll die before I go back to Palerm!”
“Traitor! Treacherous old fool! Coward!”
I pretended to ignore her, but I felt the fire of her words. There was no falsehood in them, only malice. I had dealt with the conquerors I had betrayed the guild that sheltered me, yet it was unfair for her to reproach me with it. I had been trying only to save a man to whom I felt bound, a man moreover with whom she was in love. It was loathsome of Olmayne to tax me with treason now, to torment my conscience, merely because of a petty rage at the heat and dust of the road.
But this woman had coldly slain her own husband. Why should she not be malicious in trifles as well?
The invaders had their way; we abandoned the road and straggled back to Palerm, a dismal sizzling, sleepy town. That evening five Fliers, passing in formation overhead, took a fancy to the town and in the moonless night they came again and again through the sky, three men and two women, ghostly and slender and beautiful. I stood watching them for more than an hour. Their great shimmering wings scarcely hid the starlight; their pale angular bodies moved in graceful arcs, arms held pressed close to sides, legs together, backs gently curved. I had loved a Flier girl once, in a fashion, and the sight of those five stirred my memories and left me tingling with troublesome emotions.
The Fliers made their last pass and were gone. The false moons entered the sky soon afterward. I went into our hostelry then, and shortly Olmayne asked admittance to my room.
She looked contrite. She carried a squat octagonal flask of green wine, not a Talyan brew but something from an outworld, no doubt purchased at great price.
Will you forgive me, Tomis?” she asked. “Here. I know you like these wines.”
“I would rather not have had those words before, and not have the wine now,” I told her.
“My temper grows short in the heat. I’m sorry, Tomis. I said a stupid and tactless thing.”
I forgave her, in hope of a smoother journey thereafter, and we drank most of the wine, and then she went to her room nearby to sleep.
For a long while I lay awake beneath a lash of guilt. In her impatience and wrath Olmayne had stung me at my vulnerable place; I was a betrayer of mankind. I wrestled with the issue almost to dawn.
—What had I done?
I had revealed to our conquerors where a certain document might be found.
—To whom did the document belong?
To the guild of Rememberers.
—Did the invaders have a moral right to the document?
It told of the shameful treatment they had had at the hands of our ancestors. It gave justification for the conquest of Earth.
—What, then, was wrong about giving it to them?
One does not aid one’s conquerors, even when they are morally superior to one.
—Is a small treason a serious thing?
There are no small treasons.
In this unprofitable way I consumed the night. When the day brightened I rose and looked skyward and begged the Will to help me find redemption in the waters of the house of renewal in Jorslem. Then I went to awaken Olmayne.
III
Land Bridge was open on this day, and we joined the throng that was crossing over out of Talya into Afreek.
There are two main routes for Pilgrims from Eyrop to Jorslem. The northern route involves going through the Dark Lands east of Talya, taking the ferry at Stanbool, and skirting the western coast of the continent of Ais until Jorslem. But Olmayne had been to Stanbool to do research in the days when she was a Rememberer, and disliked the place; and so we took the southern route, across Land Bridge into Afreek, and along the shore of the great Lake Medit, through Agupt and up to Jorslem.
A true Pilgrim travels only by foot. It was not an idea that had much appeal to Olmayne, and though we walked a great deal, we rode whenever we could. She was shameless in commandeering transportation. Only two-days’ walk out of Perris she had got us a ride from a rich Merchant bound for the coast; the man had no intention of sharing his sumptuous vehicle with anyone, but he could not resist the sensuality of Olmayne’s deep, musical voice, even though it issued from the sexless grillwork of a pilgrim’s mask.
The Merchant traveled in style. His self-primed landcar was four times the length of a man, wide enough to house five people in comfort. There was no direct vision, only a series of screens revealing upon command what lay outside. The temperature never varied. Spigots supplied liqueurs and stronger things; food tablets were available; pressure couches insulated travelers against the irregularities of the road. There was slavelight for illumination, keyed to the Merchant’s whims.
He was a man of pomp and bulk, deep olive of skin, with well-oiled black hair and somber, scrutinizing eyes. He dealt, we learned, in foodstuffs of other worlds, bartering our poor manufactures for the delicacies of the starborn ones. Now he was en route to Marsay to examine a cargo of hallucinatory insects newly come in from one of the Belt planets.
“You like the car?” he asked. Olmayne, no stranger to ease Herself, was peering at the dense inner mantle of diamonded brocade in obvious amazement. “It was owned by the Comt of Perris,” he went on. “Yes, I mean it, the Comt himself. They turned his palace into a museum, you know.”
“I know,” Olmayne said softly.
This was his chariot. It was supposed to be part of the museum, but I bought it off a crooked invader. You didn’t know that they had crooked ones too, eh?” The Merchant’s robust laughter caused the sensitive mantle on the walls of the car to recoil in disdain. “This one was the Procurator’s boy friend. Yes, they’ve got those, too. He was looking for a certain fancy root that grows on a planet of the Fishes, something to give his virility a little boost, you know, and he learned that I controlled the whole supply here, and so we were able to work out a deal. Of course, I had to have the car adapted, a little. The Comt kept four neuters up front and powered the engine right off their metabolisms, you understand, running the thing on thermal differentials. Well, that’s a fine way to power a car, if you are a Comt, but it uses up a lot of neuters through the year, and I felt I’d be overreaching my status if I tried anything like that. So I had the drive compartment stripped down and replaced with a standard roller-wagon engine, heavy-duty, a really subtle job, and there you are. You’re lucky to be in here. It’s only that you’re Pilgrims. Ordinarily I don’t let folks come inside, on account that they feel envy, and envious folks are dangerous to a man who’s made something out of his life. Yet the Will brought you two to me. Heading for Jorslem, eh?”
“Yes,” Olmayne said.
“Me too, but not yet! Not just yet, thank you!” He patted his middle. “I’d be there, you can bet on it, when I feel ready for renewal, but that’s a good way off, the Will willing! You two been Pilgriming long?”
“No,” Olmayne said.
“A lot of folks went Pilgrim after the conquest, I guess. Well, I won’t blame ’em. We each adapt in our own ways to changing times. Say, you carrying those little stones the Pilgrims carry?”
“Yes,” Olmayne said.
“Mind if I see one? Always been fascinated by the things. There was this trader from one of the Darkstar worlds, little skinny bastard with skin like oozing tar, he offered me ten quintals of the things. Said they were genuine, gave you the real communion, just like the Pilgrims had. I told him no, I wasn’t going to fool with! the Will. Some things you don’t do, even for profit. But afterward I wished I’d kept one as a souvenir. I never even touched one.” He stretched a hand toward Olmayne. “Can I see?”
“We may not let others Handle the starstone,” I said.
“I wouldn’t tell anybody you let me!”
“It is forbidden.”
“Look, it’s private in Here, the most private place on Earth, and—”
“Please. What you ask is impossible.”
His face darkened, and I thought for a moment he would halt the car and order us out. My hand slipped into my pouch to finger the frigid starstone sphere that I had been given at the outset of my Pilgrimage. The touch of my fingertips brought faint resonances of the communion-trance to me, and I shivered in pleasure. He must not have it, I swore. But the Merchant, having tested us and found resistance, did not choose to press the matter.
We sped onward toward Marsay.
He was not a likeable man, but he had a certain gross charm. Olmayne, who after all was a fastidious woman and had lived most of her years in the glossy seclusion of the Hall of Rememberers, found him harder to take than I. But even Olmayne seemed to find him amusing when he boasted of his wealth and influence, when he told of the women who waited for him on many worlds, when he catalogued his homes and his trophies and the guildmasters who sought his counsel, when he bragged of his friendships with former Masters and Dominators. He talked almost wholly of himself and rarely of us, for which we were thankful.
Our Merchant’s life seemed enviably undisrupted by the fall of our planet; he was as rich as ever, as comfortable, as free to move about. But even he felt occasionally irked by the presence of the invaders, as we found out by night not far from Marsay, when we were stopped at a checkpoint on the road.
Spy-eye scanners saw us coming, gave a signal to the spinnerets, and a golden spiderweb spurted into being from one shoulder of the highway to the other. The landcar’s sensors detected it and instantly signalled us to a halt. The screens showed a dozen pale human figures.
“Bandits?” Olmayne asked.
“Worse,” said the Merchant. “Traitors.” He scowled and turned to his communicator horn. “What is it?” he demanded.
“Get out for inspection.”
“By whose writ?”
“The Procurator of Marsay,” came the reply.
It was an ugly thing to behold: human beings acting as road-agents for the invaders. But it was inevitable that we should have begun to drift into their civil service, since work was scarce, especially for those who had been in the defensive guilds. The Merchant was stormy-faced with rage, but he was stymied, unable to pass the checkpoint’s web. “I go armed,” he whispered to us. “Wait inside and fear nothing.”
He got out and engaged in a lengthy discussion, of which we could hear nothing, with the highway guards. At length some impasse must have forced recourse to higher authority, for three invaders abruptly appeared, waved their hired collaborators away and surrounded the Merchant. His demeanor changed; his face grew oily and sly, his hands moved rapidly in eloquent gestures, his eyes glistened. He led the three interrogators to the car, opened it and showed them his two passengers. The invaders appeared puzzled by the sight of Pilgrims amid such opulence, but they did not ask us to step out. After some further conversation, the Merchant rejoined us and sealed the car; the web was dissolved, and we sped toward Marsay.
As we gained velocity he muttered curses and said, “Do you know how I’d handle that long-armed filth? All we need is a coordinated plan. A night of knives. Every ten Earthmen make themselves responsible for taking out one invader. We’d get them all.”
“Why has no one organized such a movement?” I asked.
“It’s the job of the Defenders, and half of them are dead and the other half in the pay of them. It’s not my place to set up a resistance movement. But that’s how it should be done. Guerrilla action: sneak up behind ’em, give ’em the knife.”
“More invaders would come,” Olmayne said morosely.
“Treat ’em the same way!”
“They would retaliate with fire. They would destroy our world,” she said.
“These invaders pretend to be civilized, more civilized than ourselves,” the Merchant replied. “Such barbarity would give them a bad name on a million worlds. No, they wouldn’t come with fire. They’d just get tired of having to conquer us over and over, of losing so many men. And they would go away, and we’d be free again.”
“Without having won redemption for our ancient sins,” I said.
“What’s that, old man. What’s that?”
“Mere bloody resistance would thwart the scheme the Will has devised for us. We must earn our freedom in a nobler way. We were not given this ordeal simply so that we might practice slitting throats.” He snorted. “I should have remembered. I’m talking to Pilgrims. All right. Forget it all. I wasn’t serious, anyway. Maybe you like the world the way it is, for all I know.”
“I do not,” I said.
He glanced at Olmayne. So did I; for I half expected her to tell the Merchant that I had already done my bit of collaborating with our conquerors. But Olmayne fortunately was silent on that topic, then.
We left our benefactor in Marsay, spent the night in a Pilgrim hostelry and set out on foot along the coast the next morning. So we traveled, Olmayne and I, through pleasant lands swarming with invaders. And so we came to Land Bridge and met delay and had our frosty moment of bickering and then were permitted to go on across that narrow tongue of sandy ground that links the lake-sundered continents. And so we crossed into Afreek, at last.
IV
Our first night on the other side, after our long and dusty crossing, we tumbled into a grimy inn near the lake’s edge. Most of its clientele appeared to be Pilgrims, but there were some members of other guilds, chiefly Vendors and Transporters. At a room near the turning of the building there stayed a Rememberer whom Olmayne avoided even though she did not know him; she simply did not wish to be reminded of her former guild.
Among these who took lodging there was the Changeling Bernalt. Under the new laws of the invaders, Changelings might stay at any public inn, not merely those set aside for their special use; yet it seemed a little strange to see him here. We passed in the corridor. Bernalt gave me a tentative smile, as though about to speak again, but the smile died and the glow left his eyes. He appeared to realize I was not ready to accept his friendship. Or perhaps he merely recalled that Pilgrims, by the laws of their guild, were not supposed to have much to do with guildless ones. That law still stood.
We had a greasy meal of soups and stews. Afterward I saw her to her room and began to wish her good night when she said, “Wait. We’ll do our communion together.”
“I’ve been seen coming into your room,” I pointed out. “There will be whispering if I stay long.”
“We’ll go to yours, then!” Olmayne peered into the Hall. All clear. She seized my wrist and we rushed toward my chamber, across the way. Closing and sealing the warped door, she said, “Your starstone, now!”
I took the stone from its hiding place in my robe, and she produced hers, and our hands closed upon them.
During this time of Pilgrimage I had found the starstone a great comfort. Many seasons now had passed since I had last entered a Watcher’s trance, but I was not yet reconciled entirely to the breaking of my old habit; the starstone provided a kind of substitute for the swooping ecstasy I had known in Watching.
No Pilgrim is ever without his stone. They come from one of the outer worlds and may be had only by application to the guild.
We waited for the stones to overwhelm us. I gripped mine tightly. Dark, shining, more smooth than glass, it glowed in my grasp like a pellet of ice, and I felt myself becoming attuned to the power of the Will.
