The Crucible of Time Read online

"You will do no such thing," Jing decreed. It was strange, he reflected, how cold he felt, when he knew abstractly that he must be in the grip of fever. Just so long as he could continue to separate dream from reality ... "You will hew to your oath. You will undertake the protection of Lady Rainbow and her bud and all the parchments on which we have copied details of what we have discovered. You will escort her away from Castle Thorn before the peasants storm it, which will doubtless be the day after they notice its bravetrees rotting where corpses have been consigned to feed the roots." This, with a meaningful glance at Twig. "I have no homeland. I have no future. I have used my life as it befitted me to do. You have sometimes appeared to look on me as a substitute for the imaginary Maker who so long ruled your life. I'm not a god. If there is one, He watches us but does not interfere. He speaks to us, perhaps, but if His voice is couched in the language of the stars it's up to us, not Him, to spell out the message ... Oh, I ramble!"

  "Not at all!" cried Shine. "You tell me what I most need to be told!"

  "Believe it when I'm gone, and you'll do well," Jing said. Already he could feel the sac he had exposed starting to throb. "Now, take the future in trust. You here—you, Shine; you, Scholar Twig; you, Keepfire, who made us the tools to reveal unknown truth; you, my lady, who bear something of me which would otherwise be as hopelessly lost as Ntah itself—all of you must listen to my words and cherish what I say as proudly and as fiercely as when we took our oath. And by the way, Shine!"

  Humbly the ex-sacerdote looked a question.

  "Don't ever speak again of killing. Qat will die young; he was weakened anyhow by his suffering. Or it not, some crazy fool with a mindful of lunatic dreams will dispose of him. But this is neither justice nor vengeance. No, we must speak always and forever of life instead of death; we must fight the foolishness of dreams and concentrate on sanity. We must feed and shelter and educate our people, until the day dawns when we know how to conquer sickness and famine, blight and murrain. Then, and only then, shall we be fit to understand the message of the sky. Then, and only then, will the tools Keepfire created for us fall into the proper claws. And yours too, Twig, and mine—the star-charts created by my people ... my former people."

  He was briefly silent, and the pause was full of sorrow.

  "But let nothing that has been well done go to waste!" he resumed at length. "Not that it can, if it's recorded in the stars ... but we don't speak that language yet, and maybe it will be a long time before we do. Knowing now how many more stars there are than we believed, we must never be arrogant again! In all humility, going as it were in a mental crouch, we must patiently await the time when we are entitled to stand up to our full height, and that height shall reach the stars to take them in our grasp like ripened fruit! I say to you—"

  At that moment he felt the sac under his mantle rupture.

  Inward.

  While they looked at him in wonder, for his peroration had been charged with the same power which persuaded them to join him in their common pledge, he said gently, "I am as good as dead, my friends. Tomorrow I shall surely be insane. I speak to you with the last vestige, the last shred, of what was Ayi-Huat Jing, court astrologer to His Most Puissant Majesty Lord Waw-Yint of Ntah, who set forth upon a journey longer than any of his nation previously, and must now die as my nation died. Dream of me. Make others dream of me. Or all my work will go for naught."

  He added silently, "Would I had said that in my own speech. I could have expressed it so much better..."

  X

  The day after the Count's death, another of the regular barqs came to the castle wharf. Her steersman was horrified to learn that the plague was here ahead of him, and was in mind to put about at once and risk her starving under him on the return trip. But Twig ceded him all the pearl-seeds left in Jing's store—enough to buy the barq and her crew a score of times over—and he was reassured that at least this journey would not be as fruitless as he had feared. The peasants were in the grip of delirium; only the precarious loyalty of Sturdy and the other prongsmen kept them at bay while Rainbow and Shine, in obedience to Jing's order, scrambled on board with the precious parchments.

  "But where shall we go?" the steersman cried. "Forb is rotting like a blighted fungus! I saw its bravetrees lean towards the river as though they had been snapped by gigants!"

  "Any place the water carries you away from plague!" Twig retorted. "Do they not tell of folk who ply the ocean aboard barqs that make yours look like half-grown pups?"

  "We'd have to chance the rapids of the Sheerdrop Range!"

  "Then chance them, on a route you never dared before! It's better than the certainty of plague!" Rounding on the prongsmen, Twig ordered them to prod loose the barq's tentacles despite her groans of hunger.

  "Won't you come with us?" Rainbow shouted. "Even if—"

  "Your father's dead. Your husband told me he would rather you did not watch him follow the same course." Twig descended to the wharf's edge and gently touched her claw. "No, Shine is to take care of you now. I've had my life, as Jing had his. If only we could read the stars more clearly, we might know why. But what you bear with you will instruct the future. You are the wife, my lady, of the greatest man it's been my privilege to know. Create a posterity for him. If the bud fails, then do so anyhow. I cannot; I'm old and weak and I must resign myself to facts."

  "If by some miracle—"

  "Qat has told us positively there are no miracles with this disease. Only if the sac ruptures to the outside like mine ... and Jing's did not."

  "Couldn't you have made it rupture?"

  "That too was tried, in Ntah. It always failed."

  The steersman was glancing nervously from one to other of them. He said, "If this woman has the plague-mark on her—"

  "No, she does not!" Twig flared. "That's precisely why we want to get her out of here! You have pay for twenty voyages! Go as far as you can, go anywhere you can, and deliver our message to the world. Next time, perhaps, we may know enough about the universe to conquer such a plague! But without the information that you carry, someone else in the far future will have to start all over again! Oh, get under way, will you? The castle will be stormed within the day!"

  The steersman flogged the barq's tentacles, and they unwillingly let go their grip; she put about and made down-channel. Watching, Keepfire— who had had the chance to travel with Rainbow, but refused because he feared the water more than fire—said, "Do you think, sir, that our work has gone to waste?"

  "I sometimes fear it, sometimes think it can't," was Twig's reply. "Sometimes I feel it's like the seed funqi sow on the spring wind, so numerous that a few at least must find a lodging in good ground; sometimes I can imagine it being like a trencher-plant, at risk from unknown kinds of blight predicted or maybe not predicted by the New Star ... At all events I know one thing. We are to consign the remains of Master Jing to your hot pool, instead of to a pool with fishes in or the roots of a tree."

  Startled, Keepfire said, "This is to do more honor to me and my family? Sir, it's already been enough!"

  "Not honor," Twig sighed. "He said when he still possessed some trace of rationality that he'd been told how hot pools can break up a dead animal. Did Hedge or Bush mention this, or was it you?"

  "I think I did!" said Keepfire with a trace of pride.

  "He wants to die more completely than anyone before, dissolved if possible into his finest shreds. He wants to leave a legacy of health and information, and not a rotting body to convey more plague. Come with me. He said he had chosen to die on the departure of his wife, and when we enter his chamber we shall find a corpse for sure."

  "But we shall dream of him," said Keepfire, following. "We shall make sure he is dreamed of for all time."

  PART TWO

  FUSING AND REFUSING

  I

  After half a score of days the storm was over. Weather-sense and a familiar, reassuring noise lured Skilluck back from the dreamness whither he had been driven by exposure, privation and
sheer terror. Slackening his mantle, he relaxed his death-grip on the pole he had clung to while he was reduced to primitive reflexes, concerned only to escape the fury of the elements as his ancestors might have hidden from a predator larger than themselves.

  The sound he had recognized was the unmistakable munch-and-slurp of Tempestamer feeding.

  Weak exultation filled him. Surely she was the finest briq ever to set forth from Ushere! He had pithed her personally with all the expertise at his command, leaving untouched by his prong nerves which other Wego captains customarily severed. At first his rivals had derided him; then, however, they saw how docile she was, and how fast she grew, and in the end came begging a share of his knowledge, whereupon it was his turn to scoff. Now she had proved herself beyond doubt, for she had defied the worst weather in living memory and—he looked about him—brought her crew to a safe haven, in a bay landlocked among low hills and sunlit under the first cloudless sky he had seen in years.

  But where that haven was, the stars alone could tell.

  With agony stabbing through his every tubule, he forced himself more or less upright, though it would be long before he regained his usual height, and uttered a silent blessing for his name. Those of his companions who had been called by opposites—Padrag and Crooclaw—had been lost overside on the third day of the storm. But the rest, better omened, were in view, though still unaware: the boy Wellearn, whose first voyage had come so near to being his last, and Sharprong, and Strongrip, and Chaplain Blestar ... Was the chaplain also alert? His voice could be heard mumbling, "Let each among us find his proper star and there add brightness to the heavens in measure with his merit in the world..."

  But—no. His prayer was mere reflex. He was still lost between dream and imagination. And in a bad way physically, too; his mantle was bloated and discolored, a sure sign of cresh. The same was true of the others, and Skilluck himself.

  For an instant the captain was afraid he might be dreaming after all, that he was so near death he could no longer distinguish reality from fantasy. But in a dream, surely, he would seem restored to health.

  His pain was receding, although the areas where he had rubbed against the pole during the storm would remain sore for a long while. He forced himself to set out on a tour of inspection. One piece of essential equipment remained functional: the northfinder, tethered in its cage, responded weakly to his order and uncoiled itself in the correct direction. Also his precious spyglass had been so tightly lashed to a crossbar, all the gales and waves had not dislodged it. That apart, things looked grim. Most of Tempestamer's drink-bladders had burst, the trencher-plants had been so drenched with salt water they looked unlikely to recover, the vines had been torn bodily away leaving raw scars on the briq's bide, and—as he already knew—their reserves of fish and pickled weed had been used up.

  He sipped a little water from an intact bladder, struggling to make plans. Food must come first, and more water. Were there edible plants on this strange shore? Was there any chance of trapping a game-animal? He needed the spyglass to find out. But his claws felt weak and clumsy, and the rope was swollen with wet; the knots defied him.

  A shadow fell across him. He glanced round, expecting Sharprong or Strongrip. But it was young Wellearn who had joined him, hobbling along at barely half his normal height.

  "Where are we, Captain?" he croaked.

  "No idea, but I'd rather be here than in mid-ocean. Take a drink—but slowly! Don't try and put all your fluid back at one go, or you'll burst a tubule. Then help me untie the spyglass."

  Despite the warning, he had to stop Wellearn after several greedy gulps.

  "There are three more of us, you know, and only three full bladders!"

  Wellearn muttered an apology and turned his attention to the knots. After much difficulty they loosened, and Skilluck unwrapped the hide around the tube.

  "Take drink to the others. But be careful. The state they're in, they may not know the difference between you and food. Or themselves, come to that. I guess you never saw anyone with cresh before, hm?"

  "Is that what we've got?" Wellearn's eye widened in horror. "I heard about it, of course, but—well, what exactly is it?"

  "Who knows? All I can say is, I've seen a lot of it at sea when our trencher-plants got salt-poisoned and our vines were blown away, same as now. Most people think it comes of trying to live off stale pickles. Makes you leak, drives you into dreamness, kills you in the end ... Oh, curse the weight of this thing!" Skilluck abandoned his attempt to hold up the spyglass normally, and slumped forward in order to rest its end on the ridge of the briq's saddle. "I bet we'll be seeing cresh on land again one of these days, if the winters go on getting longer and harsher and seeds don't sprout and fish don't run ... But you shouldn't worry too much about yourself. It always hits the biggest and strongest first and worst. Dole out a sip at a time and be specially wary of Blestar—he's delirious."

  Carefully filling a gowshell from the drink-bladder in use, Wellearn heard him continue, mainly to himself: "Not a trencher-plant to be seen. Don't recognize a single one of those trees, don't spot a single animal. No sign of a stream unless there's one behind that cape..."

  The boy shivered, wondering whether his own mantle was as patched with creshmarks as the others', and the captain was speaking only to reassure him. All things considered, though, he felt remarkably well after his ordeal: weak and giddy, of course, so that he wondered how he would fare if he had to leap clear of a cresh-crazed crewman; thirsty in every fiber of his being; and hungry to the point where he wished he could browse off floating weed like Tempestamer. Yet he was still capable of being excited about their arrival in this unknown region, and that was an excellent sign.

  So Skilluck must be telling the truth. Sharprong, on the other claw, was almost too ill to swallow, and neither he nor Strongrip had the energy to attack a helper. Ironically, Blestar was worst off of them all, his mantle cobbled with irregular bulges as though it were trying to strain outward through a badly patterned net. He was talking to himself in a garbled blend of half a dozen learned idioms. Wellearn recognized them all; it was his quickness at language that had earned him a place among the crew. Their mission was to trade hides for food-plant seeds in the hope of cross-breeding hybrids which would grow very quickly during the ever-shortening northern summer. Many briqs this year had scattered on the same quest. If it failed, the Wego might have to move south en masse, and the hope of finding habitable but unpopulated lands was dreadfully slim. So there would be fighting, and the weakened northerners might lose, and that would be the end of a once-great folk. At best they might leave behind a legend, like Forb or Geys or Ntah...

  Tormented by the sun, Blestar was reflexively opening his mantle as though to roll over and cool his torso by evaporation. Wellearn had never been in such a hot climate before, but he knew enough to resist the same temptation; in their dehydrated state it could be fatal. Anxiously he wondered how he could provide shade for the sick men, and concluded there was no alternative but to untie one of their precious remaining bales of hides. The outer layers were probably spoiled, anyway.

  He contrived to rig two or three into an awning; then he distributed the rest of the fresh water and returned to the captain, dismayed to find him slumped in exhaustion.

  But he was alert enough to say, "Good thinking, young'un. Give me a little more water, will you? Even holding up the spyglass has worn me out. And I don't see very clearly right now. We'll have to wait until Tempestamer has finished feeding and see if we can make her beach herself."

  "Sharprong told me she hated that," Wellearn ventured.

  "Oh, she does, and I'd never try it normally, of course. But that's our only hope; we've got to get ashore! Maybe while she's digesting she'll be tractable. Otherwise I'll have to pith another of her command nerves, and if I miss my mark because she bucks and bolts, then the stars alone know how we'll find our way home—Did you give water to the northfinder?"

  "I didn't think of that!" Well
earn exclaimed, and hastened to remedy his oversight.

  Returning, he looked at the ruptured drink-bladders, wondering whether any were likely to heal. But they were past that, hanging in salt-encrusted rags. In time Tempestamer would grow new ones, but it might be a score of days before they were full enough to tap. There was only one thing to be done.

  "I'm going to swim ashore," he announced.

  "You have got cresh! You'd never make it." Skilluck brushed something aside. A strange kind of winget had settled on him; others, all equally unknown, were exploring the briq, paying special attention to the scars left by the uprooted vines. It was to be hoped they were not in breeding phase, for the last thing Tempestamer needed right now was an infestation of maggors.

  It occurred to Wellearn that in these foreign waters there might be creatures as hostile as the northern voraq, but Tempestamer showed no sign of being pestered by any such. He answered boldly, "There's no alternative! If I don't find water I can at least bring tree-sap, or fruit, or— or something."

  "Then unlash a pole to help you float," Skilluck sighed. "And take a prong in case a waterbeast attacks you."

  After that he seemed to lose interest in reality again.

  The water was deliciously cool as Wellearn slid overside, but he was aware how dangerous salt could be to someone with a weakened integument, so he wasted no time in striking out for shore. His mantle moved reluctantly at first, but he pumped away with all his strength, and the distance to land shrank by a third, by half, by three-quarters ... It was more than he could endure; he had to rest a little, gasping and clinging to the pole. To his horror, he almost at once realized he was being carried seaward again, by some unexpected current or the turn of the tide.

  Although fatigue was loosening his grip on reality, he resumed swimming. The sunlight reflected on the ripples hurt his eye, and salty splashes stung it; countless tubules cried pain at being forced to this effort without sufficient fluid in his system; fragments of dream and all-toc vivid imaginings distracted him. He wanted to rest again, relying on the pole, and knew he must not. At last he let it go, and the prong with it, for they were hindering too much.