Pilgrimage v1.0, page 16
“Brann, why do you worry?” she asked.
He struggled away from the woman, whose name perhaps was Kand and whose hand pressed plum food light to his lips and whose straw-color hair smelled like autumn heat. He felt some inner distress, some surging in his blood and faster heartbeat, and he said loudly: “What is happening to the folk while we are here? The city is dying and the folk have gone off on a Pilgrimage to someplace.” He looked at them entwined, touching, eating. There were alek then tickling him; one perched on his shoulder. He felt them go into his brain and the blood rush faded from his veins.
Broken, broken! Brann heard the twitter; an alek called.
Broken, broken!
Kand led him. A bearing shrieked. She darted down alleys among machines whose oil smell and hum of frictionless motion soothed. But the alek cried out for her. There was a breakdown beyond its healing powers. A great pump, like the head of a beast seen only in a Gad’s menagerie, tugged at a thrust rod which drove far down into the substratum of the city. The rod was frozen. Alek swarmed it Bherk milled, making tiny mindless chatter: Broken, broken.
All the little creatures made way for Brann and Kand. He had no notion of why he had followed her. It seemed rather that there was no reason why he shouldn’t; something had broken. What was more, it seemed superfluous that Kand had said, “The piston has seized,” to him, when of course he saw that it had and that in the bearing case the heat and smoke grew and met and glowed, a dull red. He reached in quite naturally through the soft metal of the case to find the point at which heat built the most. A lovely sense of warmth, a short pleasure, traveled his arms. Alek gathered, drew the heat and stored it, scurrying away. Within the piston, Kand slipped to the snag. It seemed no trouble for Brann to shunt the drive power when Kand called—and when the worry came that his hands lay on red-hot alloy and that the flesh singed and the sizzle and stench were fierce and the pain unendurable. Then an alek came and his hands were whole again and his mind could not hold the thought that this had happened.
“It is loose,” Kand called. He shunted power back. He told the bherk to return the pump to the network. The pump head moved again. Something almost broke free within him, then Kand came and took his hand and alek moved within and without as he did also, he with Kand on pillows of orange, and somewhere Liza was also and somewhere Halsam.
They were alone, Brann and Liza and Halsam.
“Where are they?” she whispered.
A group of which they were not yet permitted to be a part was gathering. Across the quick place light was brilliant, all colors at once.
A thought came with great difficulty to Brann: We have to leave now. He said it aloud.
“I know,” said Liza. “We’ve been changed. We are like them.” She grimaced. “How can you be with Kand?”
“I can’t help it,” Brann answered. “And you with Magh?”
“He’s beautiful.”
“And that makes you stay?”
“No. Every time I think that we must leave, an alek will come and what is in my head disappears.”
They wore nothing. The Gad’s-cloth suits had vanished sometime and none could recall where. Only Hals wore anything; it was the jewel which now hung on a collar of machine metal which Leoht had fashioned, saying, “It is one of the only master keys. It is charmed to you, you know. You mustn’t lose it.” She had said that it would open anything in the city, that the master key was once one of many, but she had seen one like now in two thousanyar. (This was not a word of her speech, which was Tailend speech taken from their thoughts. Where had she heard thousanyar, or tausenya?) “It is not the chief key, though,” she had said.
“What will the chief key do that this won’t?” Hals had asked.
“It will unlock only one thing—the folk from the city.”
“Where is it?”
“It is lost. It had been lost since the city was built”
Brann stood to look across the quick place at the mechanics’ gathering. “There are none here now to stop us,” he said. “Let’s leave.”
“Could we?” Liza asked. “They’ll see. They travel so swiftly.”
They sat near the conduit where they had first crossed the chasm. Beyond was the dead place where the power of the mechanics dwindled.
“There.” Brann pointed. “When we cross they will not be able to keep us.”
“Nothing keeps us here,” said Halsam. Cloaks covered him and the others. But on Brann and Liza the cloaks seemed clothing, replacements for their lost Gad’s-cloth suits. On Halsam, though, the cloak was the same as those of the mechanics. It seemed part of his hair; it clung to the nape of his neck and molded to his spine. The jewel was always alight now and its answers to all speech of the mechanics came in high multi toned twittering. Halsam’s light cloak was bronze and it sparkled in the centers of his eyes, bronze against brown. He seemed to stare through the others, and he followed Leoht toward breakdowns of the machines more often than Brann followed Kand or Liza followed Magh. The jewel played some part in this, Brann knew. But the jewel was firmly fixed around Hals’s neck now on the unbreakable collar, and Hals would doubtless refuse to take it off anyway.
“Why would you want to go away?”
‘Halsam asked. “I truly love it here. I love Leoht.”
“We’ve been changed here,” Liza said. “The
“There is nothing wrong in that,” Halsam said. “The machines must be maintained.”
“Remember how you fought against the Driver, Hals?” Liza said. “Remember how he tried to make you one of the dumb folk and you hated him?”
“This isn’t the same, Liza.”
“Our skin will turn into light; we’ll never die and we’ll never leave here,” Brann said. “Do you want that?”
“Yes,” said Halsam.
“We’ll take you whether you like it or not,” Liza told him. She reached for his arm and Halsam turned fierce, face contorted, tears in his eyes.
“I’m not leaving; I’ll call them!”
A swift twitter sang from the jewel. Its center grew to a brilliant red spark and across the quick place lights boiled.
“I’ll call them,” Hals screamed. “They’ll come. They’ll help me.”
Brann saw the look Liza gave him as they struggled to hold Halsam’s arms and as a multicolored river of light gathered and a light tide swept their way.
“It’s so warm,” Liza said. Her hair hung lank and plastered. Her fair skin was crimson and sheened with sweat. The air was like a steam bath thickening around them. In it there were no creatures of the alek or bherk. It was a homogenous haze. Halsam’s limbs were slippery, especially the light cloak on his wet skin, and Brann tried to hold Hals, pulling him. He felt the conduit but couldn’t see it “This way, Liza,” he said. “We’ll carry him across the chasm.”
He thought Liza was next to him. Someone held Hals’s arms. She was singing to Halsam. It was a sweet young woman’s voice and he saw her, Leoht, clear in the confusion, dwindling as he was borne back somehow—were hands holding him, carrying him? Leoht was crying; Halsam, it crumbles beyond here. Stay in the quick place! She was singing, he never knew how he understood her. Were there linguists, they would have called it impossible, the means by which she spoke, deep structure to deep structure, short-circuiting surface speech, constructing grammars, building speech analogs within the temporal lobe. Were there linguists? There were not. He understood. And Brann and Liza understood. Perhaps it was the jewel.
Outside there is change, Halsam! Time, age, erosion, fatigue.
Somehow she dwindled. He was carried. A flattened conduit passed beneath him and he swayed over an opening which was endlessly deep and where pieces of the quick place fell—he should have been frightened. Were there two others (Brann and Liza?) speaking to each other in a terrific calm as if leaving the quick place were of no consequence? There was a machine, quite dead, a derrick twisted down from its living height The metal seemed soft. It would break like cheese. There was a connection for it, severed, which had once made it part of the amber roof. He stopped, went down. The hands released. The mist thickened and in it Leoht stood unobscured across the chasm. A chorus of voices twittered: age-return; exhaustion; return; crumble; quick place-return; desire; age-return; exhaustion; love return; love return; love return! A tall, brown-haired boy, a slim, red-haired girl struggled above him.
The lights swarmed. Brann and Liza clambered up onto an old dynamo case. A clear space was about it as if the lights refused to come close to the rotten metal. Liza moved toward the machine’s far side. An alek swept down, brushed her, stung her. She tried again and, as her foot found a place on the far side, several alek came around. They grazed her leg.
“It hurts, Brann!” A weal faded from her skin. Alek stung him, too. He batted at them. “It doesn’t hurt long, they’re not trying to harm us. They just want to make us stay.”
The boy who had given Brann the fur coat so long ago had once described snow. “Mak cold, betouk ea skennen, mak brunnen, sam ta ferr!” (Makes it cold when it touches the skin, but it bums the same as fire.) If he could see snow, Brann thought, drifting, touching, burning, this would be its like. Like the unknown snow, the alek melted when they touched the dead metal, losing form, gold light dimming; a vapor puff and gone. The alek didn’t like the dead place’s metal. It was stalemate. They couldn’t go on. When they clambered down the far side of the machine alek came to sting them and drive them back. But the alek were loathe to approach too closely, fearing to melt on the dead metal.
Across the chasm, Leoht stood with one foot on the fallen conduit.
“She’s crying,” said Liza. The sparkles were tears. Her cloak rippled as if in a wind. Farther back were Magh and Kand, hands and faces visible only from behind an air pump.
“Bring him back,” Leoht called.
“Halsam stays,” Brann answered.
The light was like a vapor, cold on their skin, and the alek danced above. The air was deep violet; it tasted again like rust.
“Will you help me?” Leoht asked Magh and Kand. The two smiled blankly.
“It’s the dead place, Leoht,” Magh said. Kand’s fingers hid her face; her jade eyes were solemn.
Leoht took a tentative step out onto the conduit. She was trembling. Alek came to her, touched her, hovered about her face, troubled. All across the quick place the light creatures were agitated. Many of the bherk gathered, directionless, at the brink of the chasm. Mechanics’ red light bobbed here and there. In it were watching faces. And the alek dove like drunken birds, crossing to the dead place, shearing off from the dynamo, their reflections diffused on its eroded surface.
“Please,” Leoht called, “won’t you bring me Halsam? You don’t have to stay. We won’t compel you. You can go wherever, out into the dead place, out into any place in the city.”
“Why?” Brann asked.
“I want him.”
“Why?”
“Love!”
A change had come to Brann, subtly and unnoticed. Perhaps Leoht detected it and this was why she pressed him. She walked farther out onto the bridge. The alek flitted faster; the brink behind her was solid now with light, with swarming bherk and with the ruddy light of mechanics. Magh came close, stopped at the edge of the bridge.
“I can’t carry him alone,” she said to Magh. “Allow the alek to help me. Cross with me yourself, help me bring him back. They won’t.”
“Leave him, Leoht. Let him go!”
“Leave him, Leoht!” Kand called. “It disturbs the bherk. I feel it disturbing the harmony.”
Leave him, Leoht! the chorus twittered.
She walked farther, faster until she was across the bridge and below Brann and Liza where Hals lay in the shadow of the machine. He seemed to have no strength or real consciousness. Leoht pulled at him. She was terribly strong in the quick place. The alek gave her such strength, but not so here. Her powers were more ordinary and human. She bent down then close to Hals am and kissed him, brushing fingertips across his face, which was puffy and flushed. She pushed back his hair.
She whispered, “Come, Hals.”
“Leave him, Leoht!” Magh called. “Don’t you see the battle is killing him? The alek can’t help him there.”
She put her arms around Halsam from behind, half lifted his upper torso from the concrete. She began to drag him back toward the conduit bridge.
The idea showed the change in Brann. It was an adult sort of thought On the home gallery someone would have noted it, marked it. He understood that while he disagreed with Leoht, she was also right, in her way. Hals wanted to stay, Leoht wanted him to stay.
“I’m going to help her,” Brann told Liza.
“We’re going to leave Halsam here?” she asked.
“Yes.” He began to climb down toward them. The alek didn’t obstruct him.
Tears really were on Leoht’s cheeks. Brann saw them as he took hold of Halsam’s legs. Liza came; perhaps she understood, too. She went to Leoht’s side. Cradling Halsam, they moved back across the bridge. It swayed now as it hadn’t before.
“We’ve decided, Leoht,” Kand said. “We won’t have them here. We tried to reshape them, make them the same as we are. You can see it isn’t possible.”
“Leoht, come here,” Magh said. “You’ll forget him. The folk are short-lived. In an eye blink he will be gone and crumbled more surely than the dead place. Let them take Halsam away.”
The bridge swayed. The light grew red and hot so that in it all that could be seen were the moving glows of the alek weaving and the bherk which advanced. On the bridge the metal gave the whisper of fatigue; the bherk were forcing it to crumble. Where they advanced, the bridge sagged.
“Let them go now, Leoht!”
“I won’t.”
“You’ll all fall together. There’s no room for them with us.”
Hals seemed to awaken, become aware of the endless drop beneath the falling bridge.
“Return to them,” Brann said. “We’ll take Halsam. They’ll let us go now. You were the only one who wanted Hals to stay.”
Leoht shook her head. “We’ll carry him back across together.”
“Will you go with them, then, Leoht?” Magh asked.
“You present me with no other choice, Magh.”
He seemed astonished. His voice twittered in swift conversation with Kand and other mechanics.
“This has never happened, Leoht Do you know the nature of time outside? It will be a single moment and without the alek you will be crumbled. The alek say that there are processes which will take place, chemical changes, which their powers abate here.” They were off the bridge. The bherk advanced as a violet carpet, and where their light touched, the bridge shivered, rotted; pieces of it broke free and fell into the chasm.
“Come, Leoht, the bridge is breaking. Once it is gone, you will end as they will end.”
“Maybe, Magh, but another shaking might come, another quake to shrink the quick place and you will crumble, too. Why don’t you come with me if you have the strength? Cross the bridge before it falls.”
“No!”
The bridge crumbled and sections fell away. A rain of old metal rattled down into the chasm so light and brittle that it was no more loud than the falling of leaves in a parkplat. It fell until the sound of its falling faded and still came to no bottom. For an instant the bherk hung, connected like a living bridge, a violet outline of the conduit. Then the ghost structure evaporated, the bherk drew back, and the milling color on the far side of the chasm dimmed.
“Goodbye, Leoht! We’re sorry for you.”
“And I, for you, Magh!”
Halsam stood by himself. Leoht held her about his shoulders. They walked into the place between the dynamo and other giant dead machines. Leoht’s cloak tattered and, at Halsam’s throat, the jewel’s red light died.
Chapter Three
The Prison
The decay here reminded Brann most of that first strange gallery where they had encountered the Driver. The machines gave up their shapes, lapsing into corrosion. Dereliction had made them into jagged spires and useless, toppled constructs. Faint lights flitted within them, bherk ghosts and cdek spirits, set free from their bom tasks, immune to the crumble of the dead metal, wandering. A reddish glow came once, a voice.
“Not all mechanics came back to the quick place,” said Leoht “Some are out here, changed; we don’t know how they live. They won’t speak directly to us. But often I have heard them calling.”
It was a very lonely sound. “What does he say?” Liza asked.
Leoht shrugged, made as if to answer, would not. “He says nothing to matter.” But she stepped faster among the old machines and seemed uneasy for a long distance.
The only light was a diffuse saffron glow from the distant ceiling. It cast no shadows. In it distance became imprecise. The four lost all track of how far they had come and of what lengths they had yet to travel. Subtly the landscape changed. The remnants of machines were almost shapeless now. Often they were only rust piles from which protruded angular skeletons. Where they walked the flakes of rust scratched on concrete and even the small vibration of their steps occasionally brought down those delicate structures.
Leoht could still conjure the glow-food. Its taste had paled, though, and its substance thinned. For the first time in many days they were hungry.
“I’m frightened,” Leoht said. She stood unadorned, the light cape gone. The greatest concentration of her thought brought only a momentary glimmer to her skin. It would flash like sparks in the ash of burned paper. This happened most often when the voice of that solitary mechanic spoke from the waste of dead machines. Halsam knew she was troubled then and he would stare out into the gallery while his fingers fidgeted with the jewel.
“Can you understand?” Leoht said. “I did nothing without the help of the bherk and aleks. Pain was a game; you’d feel it for fun and let the aleks end it when it grew tiresome. When you moved a thing, a piston, a lever, .there were alek inside you moving also; nothing was too heavy. Now I feel cold and there’s nothing to do about it I’m hungry and the glow-food doesn’t come so easily. I’m tired and I sleep because I must Do you always live like this?”
