Below the Root (3 page)

Every child of the Kindar began to learn about the Pash-shan in earliest infancy. From the time a child learned to climb from his nid and crawl about the floor of his home and out onto the branchpaths, he was constantly being cautioned about the Pash-shan. Indeed, it was then, before a child was old enough to wear and use a shuba, that the Pash-shan were the greatest threat—because it was only then that falling was a real and constant danger. Not from the fall itself, since the gentle gravity of Green-sky was not apt to cause serious injury unless one fell from the very highest regions. But a fall that ended on the forest floor put anyone, child or adult, in grave and terrible danger—because there, on the dark fern-choked earth, far below the great pathways formed by the lower branches of the grundtrees, the Pash-shan were very, very near.

Almost no one among the Kindar had ever seen a Pash-shan, except in restless dreams or evil imaginings, but every Kindar knew exactly what they looked like and how they came to be imprisoned beneath the surface of the earth. In their homes as well as in the classes at the Garden, Kindar children learned by memory how the Ol-zhaan, far back in the days of the flight, had, through the Spirit-force of ritual and ceremony and the ancient skill of grunspreking, changed a strong native vine into the Wissenvine—the Sacred Ivy, builder, comforter and protector of all human life on Green-sky. Not only did the Vine produce the soothing Berry used in ritual and ceremony, as well as at times of unjoyfulness and stress, but its long limber tendrils were used in almost every form of construction. Everything, every structure, every article of furniture, nearly every utensil used by the Kindar, was fashioned at least in part from tendrils. Limber and elastic when alive, when severed from the Vine, the slender tendrils hardened quickly to a material of almost indestructible toughness and strength. Thus a nid, a womblike cradling hammock, was woven of springy living tendril, while thicker ones, severed and shaped, could support a table-board or frame a wall.

But as necessary as were the Berries and tendrils of the Vine, they were as nothing compared to the indispensable protection given by the Root. The Root of the Wissenvine was an enchanted growth. Summoned and nurtured by grunspreking—the ancient art of Spirit-force communication with plant life—the Holy Root spread over the entire surface of Green-sky in a close-woven latticework of indestructible strength. And below this lattice in their dark and noisome caverns lived the soul-eating, cloud-spinning monsters, the fearful dream-haunting Pash-shan.

All these things the Kindar learned in infancy, but according to Valdo, there were other facts concerning the Pash-shan known only to the harvesters.

“In the forest,” Valdo told his family, as he had often told them before, “the tunnels run far below the surface of the earth and only rarely approach the surface, while in the orchards the Pash-shan have dug many tunnels that run in every direction, just below the grillwork of Wissenroot. Do you know why it is that they have done this?”

“Yes, father. To steal food and try to catch harvesters,” Pomma answered, but Valdo explained anyway, in case she was not really certain or had forgotten an important detail.

“The surface tunnels in the forest are used only for ventilation and, of course, as lookouts for fallen Kindar foolish or unlucky enough to be within reach of their long arms and sharp claws.”

“What happens to them—the fallen Kindar?” Pomma asked, her face puckered with fascinated horror, intrigued in spite of herself by this part of the recital.

“Who knows. Eaten undoubtedly. Perhaps sliced to bits by the long claws.”

“Valdo, please,” Hearba said. “It’s not decent to speak of such things. Particularly before children.”

“Except they don’t eat the babies who fall,” Pomma prompted her father.

“We know only that they don’t eat all of them,” he agreed. “Babies small enough to be pulled down through an opening in the Root are kept alive—as slaves. It is well known that there are Kindar slaves in the lower regions. Kidnappers, the Pash-shan are, as well as thieves who lie in wait constantly in their orchard ditches, trying to catch every morsel of fruit or pan that falls from the trees before it can be harvested.”

“But you spoke of rumors,” Hearba said. “Of whispers spreading among the harvesters. What do they concern?” Valdo’s brow contracted into furrows as his thoughts shifted with apparent reluctance from solid certainties to troubling suspicions. “Only rumors,” he said again, but with less assurance. “There are some who say that the cloud columns of the Pash-shan rise daily from new locations, and that this is undoubtedly the cause of the increase in illness and mind-pain among the Kindar. And there is also talk concerning the great increase in the number of Vine Processions, of late. Almost every day in recent weeks, one sees processions of Vine Priests bearing the urns and symbols and the great altar of Wissen, on their way to the forest floor. There are those who say that all is not well with the Blessed Vine—that there are places where the Root seems to be withering and the spaces between growing larger and more open. That is what they are saying but it is perhaps, only talk, with no meaning.”

“At the last assembly,” Raamo said, “the Ol-zhaan spoke of the need to return to the old ways and practice the ceremonies more faithfully. Perhaps the Ol-zhaan are only setting a good example. Perhaps in the olden days the processions were always made more often.”

“Exactly,” Valdo said. “I mentioned the same thing last week when some of the rumor spreaders were whispering in the robing room as I was putting on my shading garments. I said that it was probably only a return to the old ways, but they said—” Valdo paused suddenly, uneasily.

“And they said?” Raamo urged.

“That there have been more disappearances lately. That among the missing have been grown men and women, some of high honor, and that it is almost certain that they have been taken by the Pash-shan.”

“But how?” Pomma asked. “They surely couldn’t have fallen—”

“Not unless they carelessly ventured out of their nid-places without their shubas,” her father said. “It seems unlikely that grown men and women, among them learned academicians and high officials, would do anything so foolish, but perhaps they did. Unless they were even more foolish, and ventured down to the forest floor of their own free will.”

“Surely no one would do that,” Raamo said.

“It is hard to believe,” his father said. “But I’d rather believe that than—” Again he paused and then went on hurriedly. In his agitation his thoughts broke through the careful mind-blocking that was a part of his very nature, and Raamo was able to pense that he was deeply troubled. “—than what they are whispering. That the Root is, indeed, withering and that there are places where the Pash-shan have already broken through into Green-sky.”

They stared at him in consternation as, with obvious effort, Valdo D’ok regained his composure—and with it the mental barrier that usually so effectively checked the sending of his true thoughts and feelings. He smiled stiffly, and the words he gave them were cheerful and comforting. “But, of course, there can be no truth in such rumors, or the Ol-zhaan would have told us so.”

They smiled in return, Raamo and Hearba and the wide-eyed Pomma, and silence fell among them. Outside the nid-place the night rains had begun and the falling droplets rustled in the rooffronds and whispered down the broad surfaces of the grundleaves. The damp forest air, fragrant with greening life, breathed through the loosely woven walls. Somewhere nearby a flock of paraso birds giggled sleepily, and from the distance came the occasional shriek of a blue-winged trencher. The sima whimpered softly and climbed into Pomma’s lap. Clinging to the soft folds of the child’s shuba, she turned her nearly human face from side to side, as though listening to sounds that only she could hear.

In their woven cages the moonmoths grew dimmer, and at last Hearba rose and lifted her palms to Raamo’s in the tender ritual of parting.

“Good night, my Raamo,” she said, and then smiling almost teasingly, “my Chosen one.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” Valdo broke in heartily. “Your mother is right. It is very late. The time for sleeping will soon be over.”

But hours later, swaying gently in his nid, the time for sleeping still had not come for Raamo. Although soothed by the rocking nid and the breathing, flowing night, his mind refused to accept the comfort of sleep. Instead it raced on and on, exploring and questioning. It was truly the strangest night of his life.

H
E SLEPT BRIEFLY. WHEN
he awakened, the night rains were scarcely over and, on every leaf and frond, drops still gathered, clung, and then fell slowly down through the sweet green damp of the forest morning. Slanting rays of early sun, filtering through the rooffronds, made channels of light in which the falling drops were turned into sparkling stars. Leaning out the window, Raamo had a sudden wish to leap outward and drift down a corridor of sunlight, splashing through the glittering stardrops and spattering them into a million smaller stars that would trail behind him in sheets and plumes of brilliance as he glided down, down—

Finding himself perched precariously on the window ledge, in nothing but his waistcloth, Raamo slid back to the floor of his nid-room, and quickly slipped into his shuba, fastening the wrist and ankle straps securely before he returned to the window. The raindrops had nearly stopped, but now Raamo noticed that just above his window a Wissenflower had blossomed during the night. It was an enormous bloom, its thick translucent petals glowing, flowing, with changing shades of rich deep reds and purples and tender fruity oranges and ambers. Breathing the tantalizing fragrance, Raamo was tempted to touch or even taste the petals, as he had often tried to do as a young child. He had tried many times before he gave up, resigned at last to the sad reality that a Wissenflower could not be tasted or touched without causing it to wither immediately to ragged grayish shreds.

Extending both arms toward the Flower, Raamo centered the force of his Spirit into his fingertips and concentrated—narrowing and channeling all his body energy until he could feel it flowing out toward the loop of Vine that bore the Sacred Bloom. The tingling in his fingertips grew stronger, and the Vine began to move closer until the Flower was only inches from his face. Still holding the looped Vine by the force of kiniporting, Raamo drank in the beauty of the pulsing colors and breathed deeply of the intoxicating odors. But as his face approached the edge of a petal it recoiled, thickening and shortening as it drew away from him, back into the center of the Bloom.

“Raamo,” his mother’s voice startled him, and as his Spirit-force wavered, the loop of Wissenvine straightened, pulling the Blossom upward and away. Hearba came to the window and stood beside him looking up at the glorious Blossom.

“How lovely it is,” she said, “and how sad that it dies so easily.” She smiled at Raamo. “I see that you are still able to kiniport.”

“Yes, a little. I can lift things of little weight or substance, and move them toward me, but that is all. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary?” Hearba questioned. “Do you mean you know others of your age who can do as much?”

“Why yes,” Raamo said. “In my last year of kiniport at the Garden there were many who could move the cylinders more rapidly than I.”

“Truly?” Hearba asked. “I had thought—” She paused and then continued. “But Pomma told me that she believes that no one in her class can truly kiniport anymore. And even when I was a child in the Garden, most of my classmates could no longer lift or summon so much as a feather by the time they were nine or ten years old.”

Raamo was puzzled. “But I have seen them kiniporting, and not long ago. The children in Pomma’s class and even older ones.”

“Pomma told me—only last month when she brought home her latest reports—that she could no longer kiniport except by illusion. I had praised her for her good mark in kiniporting, and she giggled dreamily—I think she had been eating Berries on the way home—and said she should have gotten failing in kiniporting and excellent in illusion. She said she was really very good at illusion.”

“Illusion?” Raamo asked. “What did she mean?”

“I asked her, of course, and she seemed, for a moment, worried that she had told, but then she giggled again and said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ And she told me that two or three years ago when she began to be unable to move the cylinders by Spirit-force, one of the teachers kept her in after class and showed her how the tables were hung and balanced so that a touch of knee or elbow would set them vibrating in such a way that the cylinders began to move toward the end of the table where the one stood who was practicing—or pretending to practice—kiniporting.

“And after that, she said, she watched the others closely and saw that most of them were vibrating the tables also. She said that she had become very good at causing the table to vibrate in a manner that was very difficult to detect, and that the teacher praised her for it and said that when one loses Spirit-force one must learn illusion to take its place. She also said that there are ways of practicing illusion in the pensing class and that her good mark in pensing was also due to the use of illusion.”