Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (27 page)

 
          
 
Their reptihan subbrains, tucked around the
nerve stem, preserved a taste for ritual and violence. Surrounding that, the
limbic brain brought an emotional tang to all thoughts—this, an invention of
the early mammals. Together, these two ancient remnants gave humans their
visceral awareness of the world.

 
          
 
The furry creature which watched the flowering
night knew, with a hard-won wisdom buried deep in its genes, that the battle
above marked the emergence of something ancient and fearsome. Humanity's
neocortex wrapped around the two animal brains in an unsure clasp. In some eras
that grip had slipped, unleashing powerful bursts of creativity, of madness, of
squandered energy.

 
          
 
The neocortex did hold sway with its gray
sagacity, directing its reasoning power outward into the world. But always the
deeper minds followed their own rhythms. Some forms of the human species had
integrated this triune brain after heroic struggle. Others had engineered the
neocortex until it mastered the lower two with complete, unceasing vigilance.

 
          
 
The raccoon-creature had a very different
mind, the process of nearly a billion years more of design by both Darwinian
winnowing and by careful pruning. Misgivings stirred in that mind now. The
broad face wrinkled with complex, unreadable expressions. From its feral legacy
it allowed itself a low, moaning growl colored with unease.

 
          
 
Very little of humanity's history had survived
the rub of millennia. In any case that tangled record, shot through by
discordant voices, would not have been comprehensible to this creature.

 
          
 
Still, it had a deep sense that it was
witnessing in the streaked sky not a mere passing incident, but the birth of a
savage new age. In the early eras of the human species, simpler minds had
identified the dark elements of life with the random tragedies which humans
suffered, from storm and disease and nature's myriad calamities. That time lay
in the unimaginable past. Now humanity's greatest adversary had emerged
again—not the unthinking universe, but itself.
And so true
evil had returned to the world.

 
          
 
The woman dreamed for two days.

 
          
 
She thrashed sometimes, calhng out hoarsely,
her words slurred just beyond comprehension. The creature had carefully moved
her to the shade of some tall trees whose branches formed curious curls like
hooks at the very top. It foraged for simple fruit and held slices to the
woman's mouth so the juice would trickle down her swollen throat. For
itself
small animals sufficed, which it caught by simply
keeping still for long periods and letting them wander within reach. This was
enough, for it knew how to conserve strength while never letting its attention
wander from the woman's weak but persistent rhythms of regrowth.

 
          
 
The uses of fantasy are many, and healing is
not the least of these. She slept not merely because this was the best way to
repair
herself
. Behind her jerking eyelids a thin
layer outside the neocortex brain was rerunning the events which had led to her
trauma. This sub-brain integrated emotional and physiological elements,
replaying her actions, searching for some fulcrum moment when she might have
averted the calamity.

 
          
 
There was some comfort in knowing, finally,
that nothing would have changed the outcome. When she reached this conclusion
a stiffness
left her and to the watching creature her body
seemed to soften. Some memories were eventually discarded in this process as
too painful to carry, while others were amplified in order to attain a kind of
narrative equilibrium. This editing saved her from a burden of remorse and
anxiety that, in earlier forms of humanity, would have plagued her for years
after.

 
          
 
In the second day she momentarily burst into a
slurred song. At dusk she awoke. She looked up into the long, tapered muzzle of
her watcher and asked fuzzily, "How many . . . lived?"

 
          
 
"Only
you, that
I can sense." The creature's voice was low and yet lilting, like a bass
note that had worked itself impossibly through the throat of a flute.

 
          
 
"No . . . ?" She was quiet for a
time, studying the green moon that swam beyond the mountains.

 
          
 
She said weakly, "The Supras . . ."

 
          
 
"They did this?"

 
          
 
"No, no. I saw some humans, like us, in
flyers. The Supras were engaged ... far away. I thought they would help
us."

 
          
 
"They have been busy." It gestured
at the southern horizon. In twilight's dim
gleaming
a
fat column of oily smoke stood like an obsidian gravestone.

 
          
 
"What's . . .
"

 
          
 
"It has been there since yesterday."
The looming distant disaster had strengthened the creature's resolution.

 
          
 
"Ah." She closed her eyes then and
subsided into her curious, eyelid-fluttering sleep. For her it was a slippery
descent into a labyrinth where twin urges fought, revenge and survival. These
two instincts, already ancient before the first hominids walked, rarely married
with any security. Yet if she did not feel the pinch of their competition she would
not have been by her own judgment a true human.

 
          
 
The next day she got up. Creaking unsteadily,
she walked to the stream, where she lay facedown and drank for a long time. One
finger was missing from her left hand, but she insisted on helping the creature
forage for berries and edible leaves. She spoke little. They took shelter when
silvery ships flashed across the sky, but this time there were no rolling booms
of distant explosions, as she remembered from before. She did not speak of what
had happened and her companion did not ask.

 
          
 
They came upon three humans crisped to ashes
and she wept over each. "I never saw weapons before," she said.
"Like Hving flames."

 
          
 
"Your enemy took care to thoroughly burn
each."

 
          
 
She sifted through the shattered bones.
"They had strange flyers. Cast down bolts, explosions . . ."

 
          
 
At evening meal she sang again the hypnotic
slow song she had pushed up out of her dream-state before, her somber voice
hanging on the long notes. Then her eyes abruptly filled and she rushed off
into the bushes. Later she sheepishly returned, her mouth attempting a crooked
smile, knowing that the need to cover emotion was a quirk of humans and would
mean nothing to the raccoon-creature.

 
          
 
On the morning of the third day she broke a long
silence with, "I am Cley. Do you use names?"

 
          
 
The creature did not use names among its own
kind but knew that humans did, and the animals
who
mimicked them. "I have been called the Seeker
After
Patterns."

 
          
 
"Well then. Seeker, I thank you
for—"

 
          
 
"Our species are allies. Nothing need be
said." Seeker dipped its large head in a way that seemed unnatural to it.
Cley realized with a pang that Seeker had studied humans enough to attempt this
gesture, invoking humbleness.

 
          
 
"Still, I owe so much."

 
          
 
"My species came long after yours. We
benefited from your struggle."

 
          
 
"I doubt we did you much good."

 
          
 
"Life builds upon life. Your
kind were
but fossils and dust when we walked."

 
          
 
They gathered berries in silence. Seeker could
rear up.
Centaurlike,
or even stand entirely on its
hind legs, using its midpaws like clumsy hands. This aided in scooping many
small fish from the cold stream rushing over black pebbles. They ate the
yellow-green fish without using a fire and stayed well back among the trees. Cley
had processed her deep sense of loss through several nights now and the pain of
it ebbed, permitting the color to return to her cheeks and no longer robbing
her of her sharpness. She and Seeker set out to search the forest further for
bodies and this gave her strength despite what she dreaded finding.

 
          
 
She was not married to anyone, male or female,
but she knew each person in her tribe intimately. The anonymous charred remains
were a blessing, in a way. Apparently some had rotted, then been burned.

 
          
 
They searched systematically through the
afternoon, finding only more scorched bodies. Finally they stood looking down
into a broad valley, tired, planning where to go next.

 
          
 
"I trust you are all right," a voice
said behind them.

 
          
 
Cley whirled. Seeker was already dashing with
liquid grace among the nearby trees. A tall, blocky man stood on the outer deck
of a brass-colored craft that balanced silently in the air. He had come upon
them from behind without even Seeker noticing and this, more than his size and
the silent power of his craft, told Cley that she had no chance of getting
away. Blinking against the sun glare, she saw that this was a Supra.

 
          
 
"I . . . yes, I am."

 
          
 
"One of our scouts finally admitted that
it was not sure all the bodies it saw were dead. I am happy I decided to check
upon its work."

 
          
 
As he spoke his ship settled gently near Cley
and he stepped off without glancing at the ground. Despite his bulk he moved
with unconscious lightness.

 
          
 
"My friend saved me."

 
          
 
"Ah. Can you induce him to return?"

 
          
 
"Seeker!
Please
come!"

 
          
 
She glimpsed a bulk moving through the nearby
bushes, closer than Cley thought the creature could be and coming opposite from
the direction Seeker had left. It must be quicker than it looked. There was
scarcely a ripple in the foliage but she knew it was there, still cautious. The
man smiled slightly and shrugged.
"Very well."

 
          
 
"You came to bury my kind?" Cley
said bitingly.

 
          
 
"If necessary.
I
would rather save them."

 
          
 
"Too late for
that."

 
          
 
A sadness
flickered
in his face as he nodded. "The scouts reported some bodies, but all have
been burned. You are all I have found— delightfully alive."

 
          
 
His calm mildness was maddening. "Where
were you Supras? They hounded us, tracked us,
killed
us all!"

 
          
 
His face showed a quick succession of
emotions, each too fleeting for her to read before the next crowded in. Still
he said nothing, though his mouth became a tight line and his eyes moistened.
He gestured at the pall of smoke that still climbed on the far horizon.