Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 Read online

  The young woman had perched upon a tall stool. "Why the pretense in the hall of thrones?" she demanded.

  Teodorq shrugged. "A man speaks more freely when he thinks none can hear." Then he turned to the graybeard and said in the sprock. "Like sunna Vikeram."

  The graybeard smiled. "Yes. I had wondered when you used child-talk to deny being a spy."

  "Ol' Karakalan is a Serp, which it means he ain't too bright. He learned your talk, but he never figgered that you were learning his."

  "You wished I know your countryman dishonest in his translation."

  "Sooner we got that outta the way, the better. Karakalan is okay, but he is a Serpentine."

  "If you don't mind," the graybeard said, "let us continue in plavver. I learned some of your sprock, but I fear for now any discussion in that tongue would be too limited. By what name be ye known?"

  Teodorq introduced himself and then Sammi. "Sammi here is on what his folk call a walkabout. Me, I had a disagreement with the Serps. They wanted my head, and I still needed it. And what're yer handles?"

  That request seemed to surprise the girl, but the old man took no note. He named the girl the Figa Anya Goregovona Herpstonesdoor. The kospathin was her father. The old man called himself Wisdom Sharèe Mikahali Fulenenberk, and he advised the lord.

  "And that means I must know all I can about the lands and peoples that you have passed through. Aya kospathin desires I first learn of the sodbusters that occupy our... our fodanny valadenny. The plavver has no word with the proper meaning. It means the lands whose use is entrusted to our kospathin."

  "Yeah," said Teodorq. "Funny how often a tribe's home grass already got someone else a-grazing on it. Bowman said this here land been in his clan since creation time."

  "That means," the girl said, "since his great-grandfather. Three generations are all they need to say 'thus hath it always been.'" She twisted her mouth to caricature the nasal drone of the shortgrass.

  The old man took up one of the feathers and dipped it into a phial to blacken it. "Now, let us begin. What are the distances? Where are the hills and forests and rivers? What prowess at arms have the various folk you have met?"

  "Sammi and me come a long way. The telling wants a long time."

  Sharèe Mikahali wagged his hand. "Then we may as well start now. Unless you have other plans for the evening...? Tell me of the grassmen west of here."

  "So you can compare it with what sunna Vikeram done toldja already."

  "Of course."

  "Well, Bowman and his crew are fixing to move out west. He's been building carts and wagons and stealing all the horses he can lay hold of. If'n you don't push him, he'll be gone before the Sperm shoots out."

  The Wisdom paused, startled, his marking-feather half-raised. "The... Sperm?"

  "Stupid plainsman means Consort. Enters Sun when in heat. Later Sun give birth."

  The old man's eyes brightened. "Ah, you mean the Red Sun!" He scratched the paper briskly with his feather.

  "You spilled that readily enough," said the princess. "I mean about Bowman's plans, not your sperm."

  "Hey, babe, it's bad cess to the Timberlake folk west of the stony river that Bowman's gonna muscle in on 'em, but it ain't no skin off my nose."

  "And what is meant by 'babe'?"

  "In the sprock, it is a term of respect for important women."

  Sammi coughed violently, but Teodorq offered his most winning smile and the princess accepted the translation.

  "And if we do push him?" asked the Wisdom quietly.

  "Ever seen a kid with a toy what he ain't playing with it, then some other kid comes along and picks it up? Give Bowman his space and he'll beat feet. He knows long run he can't win."

  "And the homesteaders he has ambushed and killed?" said princess Anya. "The widows and orphans of his raids? Be they unavenged?"

  "Meaning no disrespect, babe, but do you want that land or do you want revenge? All you have to do is wait a little while, and you'll have the dirt cheap. Better yet, let him steal some more horses or lay hold of a couple of your wagons and you'll get rid of him sooner. Can't really blame him for trying to hang onto what was his. Ain't it revenge enough to cut him off from his grandfathers' graves?"

  "So, Wiz," said Sammi, "that make your king happy?"

  The Wisdom turned to the mountain man, as if surprised to find him there. Sammi had a way of keeping still that allowed him to drift from the consciousness of others. "Our kospathin is not a 'king,'" said Sharèe Mikahali. "At least not as the sodbusters reckon kings. 'To every kraal, its king,' they say. But the true king is All Highest Eskandor, the Third of his Name, the Little Father of the North." Both he and the princess traced a sigil with their right hands, and Teodorq squirreled the information away in his memory.

  The minds of men leave footprints in their words. If there was a true king, then there was likely a false one; and Teodorq could hazard a guess or two why Eskandor's man had come down off the cliffs to seize the short-grass. He wondered if other kospathins of this Eskandor could be found in freshly-built sawaks along the base of the scarp.

  Likely so, he concluded. Something had pushed Eskandor's men off the plateau; though it was surely a long way to jump.

  A Door in a Box

  "Now," said Sammi. "What second thing?"

  When the old man blinked, Teodorq spoke. "Yuh said the first thing your boss wants to know. So the second thing must be something you wanna know. And I ken what it is. Yuh surely perked up when I mentioned the Commonwealth of Suns."

  A smile parted the Wisdom's beard. "There are no flies on you."

  The non sequitur puzzled the plainsman until he realized that it must be a proverb among the iron men. "My saddle is cinched," he agreed, and that, in turn, puzzled the Wisdom.

  The Wisdom pulled out a massive stack of parchments all bound together between covers of heavy board. He pulled out a straight razor and scraped the runes off a rugged sheet of parchment. Once the "scrape-paper" was clean enough, he wet his pen in the ink-jar and poised the feather's point above it. "Yes. The Commonwealth of Suns..."

  He pronounced the words differently than had Jamly-the-ghost, but it was recognizably the same phrase. And it was just as recognizably a term alien to the iron tongue. The princess laughed and slapped her thigh like a man would. "Old man," she said, "you chase moonbeams."

  But the old man was undisturbed. "I cannot take seriously the protests of one-I-once-dandled-on-my-knee." In the shortgrass plavver they were using, that was a single term. "Tell me, O Teodorq, how does one become a scout for the great band of stars?"

  Teodorq cocked his head. "The great band of stars?"

  "The swath of white that crosses the sky during the nightless Little Winter resolves into a myriad of individual stars when viewed through a special glass. In ancient times it was called 'the commonwealth of suns,' and still is by our liturgical language."

  "Hillmen," said Sammi, "call it the Lactation, which means the milk from the breast of the Mother."

  "And on the Great Grass," Teodorq added, "we call it the Treasure Fleet. Each of the individual stars in front is a Rider carrying a torch through the Great Night and behind them is a great heap of gems and golden beads they are bringing to World."

  The Wisdom grunted. "Fleet?"

  Teodorq shrugged. "I always figgered it meant a 'heap' or 'hoard.'"

  "So what do your people mean when they say 'Commonwealth of Suns'?"

  "We don't. I never heard of it before Sammi and me met Jamly-the-ghost."

  Teodorq saw no harm in recounting the tale, in which he thought he came off rather well, and so he told how he and Sammi had independently discovered the ruins of Shuttle Starbright–17 out in the western marches of the shortgrass prairie.

  "Except stupid plainsman find place by accident," said Sammi, "while I hear sodbuster stories, track it down."

  Teodorq ignored the jibe. "It matters not how a man may come to a place. What matters is how he leaves it. The shuttle was a ho
use within a hill. It had come to grief so long ago that the soil and grass grew thick on its back and sides and only through a narrow cleft could a brave man gain access." He paused and added, "Being the braver man, I went first inside."

  Sammi added, "Being smarter man, I let him." The princess laughed.

  "Someone must go first of all," Teodorq said, "and best that man be one that others would follow. Inside, we found all a ruin. Dust layered thick on the floors; plants and creeping things encroached within, and among them lay the scattered bones of those who had gone before us. But did Teodorq sunna Nagarajan turn back?"

  "Not when Sammi of Eagle-clan stand behind, blocking way."

  "Very strange was that house-within-thehill. Passages led forward, led right, led left; and even led up and down, as if a man might stride level in every direction. Then, seeing the bravery of Teodorq and his stalwart companion, the headman of the shuttle summoned them to her council chamber. This was Jamly-the-ghost."

  "Ghosts," said the princess, "are more talked of than seen."

  "Duh," said Teodorq, "they're invisible? But Jamly, as I came to understand, was somehow a portrait. Ay! What man may understand how a drawing might move or speak? Even Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand does not know this, but rests content that this one drawing did so. Jamly then recounted old deeds. She told how the countless sky-wagons called the Treasure Fleet came to World and founded the great villages of Iabran and Varucciyamen—which, by the way, do you know where them places are?"

  The graybeard shook his head. "The names are unknown to me."

  The princess said, "Faerie tales."

  Teodorq inclined his head. "Yuh may be right, babe, for Jamly appeared, floated in the air, and disappeared. A faerie tale told by an old wet nurse may be disregarded; but a faerie tale told by a genuine faerie carries some weight.

  "Now, in the course of building their villages, the starmen were discovered and attacked by their great enemy, the People of Sand and Iron. In the battle that followed, the starmen were victorious, but their wagons were destroyed and Shuttle Starbright–17 fell to earth, killing all aboard save Jamly-theghost."

  "Ghosts already dead," Sammi pointed out. "Can't die twice."

  Teodorq shrugged. "As may be. Jamly has awaited succor from her people for more years than a man may count even with a pebble jar. Concluding that her comrades knew not where she lay, being covered by earth and grass and all, she made me and Sammi 'authorized personnel' and told us to find the starman villages."

  The Wisdom glanced up reflectively. "So Jamly's 'Commonwealth of Suns' is...?"

  "A league of many villages that exists somehow above our heads in the great band of light. The chief of them is a village called Terra."

  "When a man dies, we say he has 'gone home to Tra.' I wonder if this 'Terra' is another name for the Abode of the Dead."

  "Jamly swore us a mighty oath to defend the Commonwealth against 'all enemies, human and inhuman.' This is why the son of Nagarajan wears the three red stripes on his arm, and Sammi the two."

  "Uncle," said the Princess Anya. "Human and inhuman?"

  "I heard. Perhaps these men have been sent to us by the Doom."

  Sammi mutter sotto voce, "That can't be good." Teodorq ignored him.

  The Wisdom rose and beckoned them. "There is something I would show you. It is a holy object anciently possessed by House Tiger and sacred, so it is said, to the Commonwealth of Suns."

  Wisdom Mikahali led them through another labyrinthine passage into a fane lit with blue flames enclosed in glass bowls. The walls were hung with the likenesses of men in the robes of the kospathin. His ancestors, perhaps. As Teodorq walked up the center of the fane, the eyes of the old Firsts followed him. Ayii! The plainsman flinched from the eldritch magic. What could be so precious that such men stood watch over it? But as he studied them more closely he saw that the likenesses were a mock made of smears of colored pastes and he let his breath out. That the eyes seemed to move was startling, but only a clever art. Jamly had moved, too; and he thought now that it had been through a similar though more potent artistry. The ironmen could make eyes seem to move by daubing colors on a curved surface; the starmen could make whole bodies move... and talk... and float through the air... so, a lot more potent ... but perhaps magic was after all only a sufficiently clever art.

  A bald man in a floor-length robe entered the fane. His face was painted, though decoratively rather than as for war. His eyes were outlined in black and his lips glossed in red. Gold draped his neck and hung from his ears. His head alone would be a substantial prize to take. He spoke the yashiq irontalk in a soft melodious voice and Teodorq, who by now could follow simple sentences, heard him say, "What wouldst thou here, Wisdom?"

  "Tsadaràsity, Sharèe Thawèteri. May the light of the Commonwealth shine on your nights."

  The shaman was unimpressed. "Thou followest new gods, Sharèe Mikahali. Why comest thou to call upon the true ones?"

  In plavver, the Princess Anya explained to Teodorq and Sammi that her uncle, like most educated ironmen of the past three generations, followed the One who sustained World, and therefore he regarded the Great Band as merely another created thing, composed of fires like Sun. Sharèe Thawèteri on the other hand regarded the Great Band as the gods themselves keeping watch over World.

  "We would gaze upon the Relics," the Wisdom explained.

  "The Relics," Sharèe Thawèteri answered, "are not for profane eyes." Teodorq thought that the painted man had no testicles and wondered what enemy or accident had deprived him of his descendents.

  The shaman seemed inclined to resist indefinitely, but the princess coughed gently and the unman cast her a cautious glance.

  "Perhaps my father could resolve the matter?" Anya suggested.

  It seemed to Teodorq that Anya's father could resolve matters without ever putting in an appearance, for the shaman hurried to obey. With a golden key that hung about his neck, he unlocked a tall, rosewood cabinet, swinging each door wide to display the Relic within. "You may not touch it," said Thawèteri, "but you may kneel and kiss it."

  The Wisdom and the princess seemed disinclined to honor the Relic, but neither did they defy the shaman. They merely nodded to the cabinet, inviting the western men's regard.

  The Relic was a flat, rectangular panel bearing four sets of runes.

  Sammi stepped forward and kissed it. Teodorq wondered at this sudden fit of devotion, but when Sammi rose again, he announced, "Same esramig as shuttle. Taste same, feel same, smell same. Rap with knuckles, maybe sound same." He glanced at the shaman, who showed no inclination to permit that. But when Sammi concluded, "This come down from sky, like shuttle," the man smiled as if he had brought it down himself.

  "So, it is truly made of skystuff," the shaman whispered.

  Teodorq slapped Sammi on the arm. "Hey! It's one of them sliding doors, like we seen in the shuttle."

  All of them, the shaman included, stared at the Relic, as if waiting for it to slide. But it remained stubbornly stationary.

  "A man's arm don't wave," Teodorq suggested, "after it's been hacked off his body. So maybe the door don't slide when it's been taken from the shuttle."

  "Needs Jamly-the-ghost," Sammi concluded. "Ghost moves body. Jamly moves shuttle."

  The four lines of runes were so different in style that Teodorq judged them the runes of four different peoples, much as the all-prairie signs used on the Great Grass differed from the sigils used by the Hillmen or the angular runes employed by the ironmen. Strangest was the sigil that appeared to show the lesser moon rising over a range of hills with two parallel rivers flowing away from their base.

  "Have you seen the like of these inscriptions before?" the Wisdom asked them.

  Teodorq nodded. "I saw many inscriptions like the first in the shuttle. None like the second. A few like the third and fourth." Sammi said nothing but grunted his agreement.

  "Maybe this is a part of your shuttle and your Jamly wants you to bring it back to mak
e the repair."

  The shaman sucked his breath in horror, but Teodorq said, "Jamly tells of many ships and shuttles. I 'spect there are lots of pieces scattered about, from many vessels."

  The Wisdom shook his head sadly. "There is so much we do not know."

  The shaman meanwhile had brought out of a tabernacle a smaller panel in a golden reliquary. It shone with a dull light, much as the panels on the shuttle had. But this was filled with lines of the curly runes.

  "It is like a page from a manuscript codex," said the Wisdom, "but it is neither parchment, nor vellum, and the ink will not smudge. In all the generations House Tiger has possessed it, that page has neither faded nor grown brittle. Each time it has been displayed, the lines have changed. Yet, there is only this one page. One page that is somehow at the same time many pages. And no man knows the art of reading it."

  The shaman replaced the Page in its tabernacle and returned to the Door. "I wonder where it once led. Somewhere wonderful. To the heavens, I am sure."

  In a peculiar flash, Teodorq wondered if the unballed man might not be right. But he thought the Page might be more wonderful still, should a man ever decipher its runes.

  A Chip Off The Block.

  A few days later, the Wisdom had them summoned to his quarters, where he and the princess again awaited them. Clapping his hands, the Wisdom summoned a servant to bring a tray of fruits and dried vegetables which could be dipped into a variety of sauces using short skewers. Teodorq and Sammi exchanged glances. There had definitely been an upgrade in their status.

  "I take it me and Kal gave you straight skinny about Bowman," Teodorq ventured.

  The Wisdom fingered his beard. "His assessment of the sodbusters was as you have said. Our legionnaires tell us they are busy fleeing from our might."

  "Cowards," said Princess Anya. "They do not stand and fight, but strike by night and ambush."

  "Wise people," suggested Sammi.

  When he did not elaborate, the Wisdom and Princess looked to Teodorq, who explained. "A man fights from his own strengths, not from his enemy's."