Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (72 page)

While on the other side of the world, in the morning of that same night, a single bomber leaves its escort and bores steadily westward through the high cold air. The
Enola Gay
is on course to Hiroshima.

. . .
Pain-driven, death-sinewed, the convulsed Beast strives against its Enemy
.
In ever-new torment it grows, rears itself to new brilliancy, achieves ever-greater victories over Death, and is in turn more fearfully attacked
.
The struggle flames unseen across the planet, intensifying until it breaks from the bounds of Earth and flings portions of itself to space
.
But the Beast cannot escape, for it carries Death with it and fuels Death with its fire
.
The battle heightens, fills earth, sea, and air
.
In supreme agony it fountains into a crest of living fire that is a darkness upon the world
. . ..

“Doctor, that was beautiful.” The senior surgical nurse’s whisper barely carries beyond her mask.

The surgeon’s eyes are on the mirror where the hands of the suturist can be seen delicately manipulating the clamped-back layers.
Lub-dub, lub-dub;
the surgeon’s eyes go briefly to the biofeedback display, check the plasma exchange levels, note the intent faces of the anesthesiology team under their headsets, go back vigilantly to the mirror. Vigilant—but it is over, really. A success, a massive success. The child’s organs will function perfectly now, the dying one will live. Another impossibility achieved.

The senior nurse sighs again appreciatively, brushing away a thought that comes. The thought of the millions of children elsewhere now dying of famine and disease. Healthy children too, not birth-doomed like this one but perfectly functional; inexorably dying in their millions from lack of food and care. Don’t think of it. Here we save lives. We do our utmost.

The operating room is sealed against the sounds of the city outside, which yet comes through as a faint, all-pervading drone. Absently, the nurse notices a new sound in the drone: an odd high warbling. Then she hears the interns behind her stirring. Someone whispers urgently. The surgeon’s eyes do not waver, but his face above the mask turns rigid. She must protect him from distraction. Careful that her clothing does not rustle, she wheels on the offenders. There is a far burst of voices from the corridor.

“Be quiet!” She hisses with voiceless intensity, raking the interns with her gray gaze. As she does so, she recalls what that continuous warbling tone is. Air-attack warning. The twenty minute alert, meaning that missiles are supposed to be on their way around the world from the alien land. But this cannot be serious. It must be some drill—very laudable, no doubt, but not to be allowed to disturb the operating room. The drill can be held another time; it will take more than twenty minutes to finish here.

“Quiet,” she breathes again sternly. The interns are still. Satisfied, she turns back, holding herself proudly, ignoring fatigue, ignoring the shrill faint whining, ignoring at the end even the terrible flash that penetrates the seams of the ceiling far above.

. . .
And the riven Beast crashes, bursts together with its Enemy into a billion boiling, dwindling fragments that form and reform under the fires of a billion radiant deaths
.
Yet it is still one, still joined in torment and unending vitality
.
With its inmost plasm laid bare to the lethal energies Life struggles more intensely still, more fiercely attacks the Death that quenches its reborn momentary lives
.
The battle grows to total fury, until it invades the very substrata of being
.
Culminant paroxysm is reached; in ultimate agony the ultimate response is found
.
The Beast penetrates at last into its Adversary’s essence and takes it to itself
.
In final transcendence
.
Life swallows Death, and forges the heart of its ancient Enemy to its own
. . ..

The infant between the dead thighs of its mother is very pale. Dismayed, the Healer frees it from the birth slime, holds it up. It is a female, and perfectly formed, he sees, despite the whiteness of its skin. It takes breath with a tiny choke, does not cry. He hands it to the midwife, who is covering the mother’s corpse. Perhaps the pallor is natural, he thinks; all his tribe of Whites have heavy pale skins, though none so white as this.

“A beautiful baby girl,” the midwife says, swabbing it. “Open your eyes, baby.”

The baby squirms gently, but its eyes remain closed. The Healer turns back one delicate eyelid. Beneath is a large fully-formed eye. But the iris is snow-white around the black pupil. He passes his hand over it; the eye does not respond to light. Feeling an odd disquiet, he examines the other. It is the same.

“Blind.”

“Oh, no. Such a sweet baby.”

The Healer broods. The Whites are a civilized tribe, for all that they have lived near two great craters before they came here to the sea. He knows that his people’s albinism is all too frequently coupled with optical defect. But the child seems healthy.

“I’ll take her,” says Marn, the midwife. “I still have milk, look.”

They watch as the baby girl nuzzles Marn’s breast and happily, normally, finds her food.

Weeks pass into months. The baby grows, smiles early, though her eyes remain closed. She is a peaceful baby; she babbles, chortles, produces a sound that is surely “Marn, Marn.” Marn loves her fiercely and guiltily; her own children are all boys. She calls the pale baby “Snow.”

When Snow begins to creep Marn watches anxiously, but the blind child moves with quiet skill, seeming to sense where things are. A happy child, she sings small songs to herself and soon pulls herself upright by Marn’s leather trousers. She begins to totter alone, and Marn’s heart fears again. But Snow is cautious and adroit, she strikes few obstacles. It is hard to believe that she is blind. She laughs often, acquires only a few small bumps and abrasions, which heal with amazing speed.

Though small and slight, she is a very healthy baby, welcoming new experience, new smells, sounds, tastes, touches, new words. She speaks in an unchildishly gentle voice. Her dark world does not seem to trouble her. Nor does she show the stigmata of blindness; her face is mobile, and when she smiles, the long white lashes tremble on her cheeks as if she is holding them closed in fun.

The Healer examines her yearly, finding himself ever more reluctant to confront that blank silver gaze. He knows he will have to decide if she should be allowed to breed, and he is dismayed to find her otherwise so thriving. It will be difficult. But in her third year the decision is taken from him. He feels very unwell at the time of her examination and shortly realizes that he has contracted the new wasting sickness which has been beyond his power to cure.

The daily life of the Whites goes on. They are a well-fed Ingles-speaking littoral people. Their year revolves around the massive catches of fish coming up from the sea-arm to spawn. Most of the fish are still recognizable as forms of trout and salmon. But each year the Whites check the first runs with their precious artifact, an ancient Geiger counter which is carefully recharged from their water-driven generator.

When the warm days come, Snow goes with Marn and her sons to the beach where the first-caught will be ritually tested. The nets are downstream from the village, set in the canyon’s mouth. The beaches open out to the sea-arm, surrounded by tall ice-capped crags. Fires burn merrily on the sands, there is music, and children are playing while the adults watch the fishermen haul in the leaping, glittering nets. Snow runs and laughs, paddling in the icy stream edge.

“Fliers up there,” the Netmaster says to Marn. She looks up at the cliffs where he points, searching for a flitting red shape. The Fliers have been getting bolder, perhaps from hunger. During the last winter they have sneaked into an outlying hut and stolen a child. No one knows exactly what they are. Some say they are big monkeys, some believe they are degenerated men. They are man-shaped, small but strong, with loose angry-looking folds of skin between their limbs on which they can make short glides. They utter cries which are not speech, and they are always hungry. At fish-drying times the Whites keep guards patrolling the fires day and night.

Suddenly there is shouting from the canyon.

“Fliers! They’re heading to the town!”

Fishermen paddle swiftly back to shore, and a party of men go pounding upstream toward the village. But no sooner have they gone than a ring of reddish heads pops into sight on the near cliffs, and more Fliers are suddenly diving on the shore.

Marn snatches up a brand from a fire and runs to the attack, shouting at the children to stay back. Under the women’s onslaught the Fliers scramble away. But they are desperate, returning again and again until many are killed. As the last attackers scramble away up the rocks Marn realizes that the blind baby is not among the other children by the fires.

“Snow! Snow, where are you?”

Have the Fliers snatched her? Marn runs frantically along the beach, searching behind boulders, crying Snow’s name. Beyond a rocky outcrop she sees a Flier’s crumpled legs and runs to look.

Two Fliers lie there unmoving. And just beyond them is what she feared to find—a silver-pale small body in a spread of blood.

“Snow, my baby, oh, no—”

She runs, bends over Snow. One of the little girl’s arms is hideously mangled, bitten nearly off. A Flier must have started to eat her before another attacked him. Marn crouches above the body, refusing to know that the child must be dead. She makes herself look at the horrible wound, suddenly stares closer. She is seeing something that makes her distraught eyes widen more wildly. A new scream begins to rise in her throat. Her gaze turns from the wound to the white, still face.

Her last sight is of the baby’s long pale lashes lifting, opening to reveal the shining silver eyes.

Marn’s oldest son finds them so; the two dead Fliers, the dead woman, and the miraculously living, scarless child. It is generally agreed that Marn has perished saving Snow. The child cannot explain.

From that time, little Snow the twice-orphaned is cared for among the children of the Netmaster.

She grows, though very slowly, into a graceful, beloved little girl. Despite her blindness she makes herself skilled and useful at many tasks; she is clever and patient with the endless work of mending nets and fish-drying and pressing oil. She can even pick berries, her small quick hands running through the thickets almost as expert as eyes. She patrols Marn’s old gathering paths, bringing back roots, mushrooms, birds’ eggs, and the choicest camass bulbs.

The new Healer watches her troubledly, knowing he will have to make the decision his predecessor dreaded. How serious is her defect? The old Healer had thought that she must be interdicted, not allowed to breed lest the blindness spread. But he is troubled, looking at the bright, healthy child. There has been so much sickness in the tribe, this wasting which he cannot combat. Babies do not thrive. How can he interdict this little potential breeder, who is so active and vigorous? And yet—and yet the blindness must be heritable. And the child is not growing normally; year by year she does not mature. He becomes almost reassured, seeing that Snow is still a child while the Netmaker’s baby son is attaining manhood and his own canoe. Perhaps she will never develop at all, he thinks. Perhaps there will be no need to decide.

But slowly, imperceptibly, Snow’s little body lengthens and rounds out, until when the ice melts one year he sees that small breasts have budded on her narrow ribs. The day before she had been still a child; today she is unmistakably a baby woman. The Healer sighs, studying her tender animated face. It is hard to see her as defective; the lightly closed eyes seem so normal. But two of the dead-born infants have been very pale and whiteeyed. Is this a lethal mutation? His problem is upon him. He cannot resolve it; he determines to call a council of the tribe.

But his plan is never to be put to action. Someone else has been studying Snow too. It is the Weatherwoman’s youngest son, who follows her to the fern-root grove.

“This is the kind you eat,” Snow tells him, holding up the yellow fiddleheads. He stares down at her delicious little body. Impossible to remember or care that she is thrice his age.

“I want—I want to talk to you, Snow.”

“Umm?” She smiles up at his voice. His heart pounds.

“Snow . . .”

“What, Byorg?” Listening so intently, the silvery lashes quivering as if they will lift and open to him. Yet they do not, and pity for her blindness chokes him. He touches her arm, she comes against him naturally. She is smiling, her breathing quickened. He holds her, thinking how she must feel his touch in her dark world, her helplessness. He must be gentle.

“Byorg?” she breathes. “Oh, Byorg—”

Trying to restrain himself he holds her more tightly to him, touching her, feeling her trembling. He is trembling too, caressing her beneath her light tunic, feeling her yielding, half trying to pull away, her breath hot on his neck.

“Oh, Snow—” Above the pounding of his blood he is vaguely conscious of a sound overhead, but he can think only of the body in his arms.

A harsh yowl breaks out behind him.

“Fliers!”

He whirls around too late—the red flapping figure has launched something at him, a spear—and he is staggering, grasping a bony shaft sunk in his own neck.

“Run, Snow!” he tries to shout. But she is there still, above him, trying to hold him as he falls. More Fliers pound past. As the world dims, he sees in last wonderment her huge eyes opening wide and white.

Silence.