Neverness (39 page)

   I built the fire up until it roared. Orange tongues of fire flickered outward, licking the rocky cavefront and melting a circle of snow four feet wide around the firepit. The heat burned my face. With our backs to the warm rock, we sat looking out over the long, snowy slope leading to the forest below.

   "That is better, it is good to be warm - Listen, how long will it be before the stars light the sky?"

   "Not long," I lied.

   We sat there throughout the agonizingly long afternoon, talking of Katharine's pregnancy and other concerns of the tribe. Shanidar loved to talk, even when he was so weak and ill that his breath rattled. He had to pause for long periods in between his words. The Devaki came and went. When they passed, they gave us a wide berth. The women especially, bent low beneath huge blocks of drinking snow, looked at us suspiciously, as if we were wolves intent upon stealing their children. Often during the past days, they had whispered and shaken their heads at my visits to Shanidar, perhaps wondering why I would choose to be with a man who had not died at the right time. As I fed the fire and watched Shanidar's shrunken lips struggle to shape his words, I wondered the same thing.

   Darkness fell at last and the stars came out, ten thousand glittering particles of ice against the black fur of night. "_Losas shona_," he said, struggling to look at them with his half-blind eyes. He coughed for a while before gasping, "How I love these lights! - Could you throw some more wood on the fire, it is cold, hmmm? Listen, I think this deep winter will be dead cold early. It is still winter, isn't it? - and already it is so cold. Listen, Mallory, my eyelashes are freezing from my breath. Could you wipe the ice from my eyes?"

   I wiped his eyes, and a fit of coughing wracked his entire body. When it was over, he was silent and still. I thought he had died, but no, he gripped my hand suddenly, keeping me there while he grasped at life as a falling climber grasps at the rocks of a mountain. "It hurts," he said. And then, "The lights in the sky are stars, you know. Burning hydrogen fuses into light - my father taught me that when I was a boy."

   For a moment I was shocked at his use of the word "hydrogen." I was not, of course, shocked because he knew the word - I remembered that he had journeyed to the stars in his youth - but because he had spoken the word to
me
as if I would know it, too. "Ydroogene?" I said, feigning puzzlement. "You use strange words, Old Man."

   He clutched the edge of my fur, and he said, "You have fooled the others, but you have not fooled me, Man of the City. When I was younger -" And here he coughed for a while. "You know ... I remember what it was like to have strong muscles as you have - when I was a young man who had no legs, I went to the cutter named Rainer, and he grew me new legs, there in his cutting shop in the Farsider's Quarter of the Unreal City. You see, I know a man of the City when I see one."

   After much evasiveness and outright lying on my part, after I had looked around to make sure no one was near, I finally admitted that I was indeed a man of the City. "But how did you know?"

   "You can wear real shagshay furs and you can learn The [sic; not "the" - reb] Language and you can change your body - You know, I used to have a fine strong body, even though I had no legs - Listen, you can change everything but the way you think, hmmm? You cannot change your thoughtways - otherwise I would not be an outcast among my own people."

   He asked me why we had come to the Devaki, and I told him. I do not know why I trusted him. The night was deepening around us, cold and bottomless as space, and I repeated the message of the Ieldra: "The secret of man's immortality lies in our past and in our future. If we search, we will discover the secret of life and save ourselves." I told him of my journey into the Entity. Even though I no longer believed it, I said that the secret of secrets might be found in the oldest DNA of human beings. I told him all these things as the fire burned low and the stars showered streamers of faint light into our eyes.

   "You are a pilot, then? Listen, I am an ignorant man - you know, my father taught me as best he could - you are a pilot, and you might think all the things I have said to you this past year are nonsense, hmmm? But no, you know, it is not nonsense."

   His coughing had stopped only to be replaced by a liquid wheezing. Every word forced from his throat was gasped out in between clutching breaths. "Listen, the Devaki have their own knowledge so you must understand that everything I said to you about killing your doffel and standing apart from other men - and do you remember what I said about evil and good, hmmm? - all that I've told you is true."

   "I've listened to everything you've said," I told him truthfully.

   "Then listen to the plea of an old man. Do not trust the message of the gods. When I was born without legs here in this cave - Listen, this is the saddest story I know - because I was born a marasika without legs, in deep winter they dumped me into the snow where I froze to death. My father brought me frozen to the cutters of the City, but they could do nothing to help me. So my father, my poor father who was Goshevan, son of Jaharawal whose father was Pesheval Kulpak of Summerworld, my father brought me to Agathange. There the men - do you know this, Pilot? - the men are like gods. They brought me back to life so that I could return to the cave of my birth - how kind of them, hmmm? You know, they made me alive again, and they could easily have grown me new legs, but they did not. Why? Listen, this is the truth: The gods are tricksters, and when they remake a man, they always leave something undone. To humble him. So do not believe this message of your Ieldra about the secret of life because those gods have obviously left unsaid the simplest thing, which is this: The secret of life is more life." And here he tried to lift his body towards the opening of the cave. I turned my head and listened to high-pitched barking and squeals of childish laughter. "Listen, do you hear the sounds of Jonath and Aida playing with the puppies? The secret of life is making children - my father told me this when I was a boy, but I did not believe him."

   I thought about fathers and sons, and I listened to him choke for words.

   "If you ever have a son, you must be kind to him, Mallory."

   I rubbed my nose and said, "You don't know the rule of our Order, but I should tell you: pilots may not marry." I thought of Katharine growing bigger day by day with someone's child. "I'll never have a son," I said.

   "Oh, it is very bad to go over to the other side without sons and daughters, I should have believed my father." He coughed and he moaned; he tried to say something that I could not understand.

   "Does it hurt?" I asked.

   He rubbed his arm weakly and said, "You know, when the Devaki go over they are never afraid because they have sons and daughters to pray for their ghosts." He raised his eyes to the sky and spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him, "But I'm afraid, Pilot." And then, "Oh, it hurts, here in my arm and in my throat -" He coughed hard once and grabbed his chest. "Like ice, oh, listen ..." and here he began to mumble and groan. I think he said something like, "_Shona los halla; halla los shona_," and then he closed his eyes and gasped for air. After a while - it was a long time, really - his breathing seemed to stop. I held the corner of his robe under his nose to see if his exhalation would move the silky white hairs. But the fur remained unruffled because he had no breath. I would have felt for the pulse in his throat, but I did not want to touch him. I was afraid he was dead.

   I stood up and drew my furs tightly around me. The air was so cold I thought my eyes would freeze. I watched him for a long time, until the skin of his old, shriveled face began hardening like marble. And then for no good reason - for whatever he had been was gone, swallowed like a ray of light down a black hole - I raised my head to the night and prayed for his ghost: "Shanidar,
mi alasharia la shantih Devaki
." His mouth and lips were frozen into a slack mask; his face seemed both too familiar and utterly alien. I could not look at him so I covered him with his fur. I turned my back to his body and went to find Yuri.

   I had never before seen a dead human being.

   I hurried through the cave, stumbling across the pitted, uneven floor. The oilstones had burned low, and the huts were dim globes lost in darkness. I came to the lava pendant in the middle of the cave. It was the Old Man of the Cave, smiling his dark smile into the cave's black depths. For no reason, I slapped the rock sculpture on its face. The slap cracked through the air. I struck the Old Man of the Cave again, all the while thinking about Shanidar. I wondered if everyone felt as I did upon seeing a dead human being for the first time: I was terrified of dying myself and ecstatic because I was still alive. Later would come mourning and melancholy, but at the moment, I was glad that it was he who was dead, and not I. I felt intensely alive; possibly at no moment in my life had I ever tasted life so poignantly. I slapped the sculpture, and my hand stung. I thought the secret of life must be feeling intensely alive.

   I woke Yuri in his hut and told him that his near-cousin had died. While he roused the rest of his family - for no event among the Devaki is as important as a death - I went to get Soli and the others. We gathered in the open area behind the Manwelina huts. Wicent and Yuri laid Shanidar's body on a newl skin, and Liam and Seif built six small stacks of aromatic pela wood around him and lit the mourning fires. The warm light bathed Shanidar's naked skin, which Anala and Liluye rubbed from heel to brow with hot seal oil. (The Devaki believe that a man - or a woman - must make the journey to the other side naked, as when he first comes into the world. But since he must journey past the frozen sea, his body must be properly greased against the cold.) The red streaks of light reflected off Shanidar's white body were both ghastly and beautiful. As the women covered him with blue snow dahlia and arctic poppies, I covered my eyes with my hand. The sweet smell of broken flowers stung my nose. Then Yuri, who was Shanidar's nearest near-cousin, picked up a flint knife and sliced the right ear from the corpse's head. Someone wrapped it in feather moss, and Yuri said, "We preserve the ear of Shanidar, and he will always hear the prayers of our tribe. I, Yuri, son of Nuri, will pray for Shanidar's ghost because he had no sons or daughters to pray for him. And my son Liam and his sons, we will all pray for Shanidar,
mi alasharia la shantih Devaki
. Even though it is easy to blame him for waiting so long to go over, we must not blame him because a man must go over free from blame."

   When the mourning fires had burnt low and most of our throats were sore from praying and weeping - most of the men were able to Weep on command while the women remained dry-eyed and somber - we wrapped Shanidar in the newl skin and carried him outside to the graveyard above the cave. The ground was frozen hard as stone and buried in snow, so we built a pyramid of granite boulders over his body. The boulders were heavy; our stomach muscles strained and our biceps popped, but soon, under the watchful eyes of the stars, we finished our work. Yuri said another requiem and the Devaki yawned and returned to their beds. My mother and the rest of my family, even Bardo, left me there, too.

   I stood alone above the grave. The wind spilled down between the black tree trunks, drowning me in cold, muddled thoughts. I stood there all night until the blackness began to soften. How tragic, I thought, that Shanidar had died leaving no particle of himself to grow and taste the bittersweet liquor of life! How I pitied him, pitied myself, pitied anyone who had to die childless and alone! Shanidar was right: To be a link in the eternal, unbroken chain of life - this was the secret of life. There was nothing else, no other immortality, no deeper meaning. I turned away from the wind and slapped some life back into my freezing face. Suddenly, the begetting of children seemed the most important thing in the universe. A son, I thought, could there be anything better than having a son?

   I ran back to the cave to find Katharine. I crept through the tunnel of our hut, went to her bed, and I covered her mouth with my hand. I woke her. I whispered in her ear; I told her that I had to talk to her. In silence she dressed, and in silence we sneaked out into the open air. Down into the forest I led her, down to the stream cutting through the hills below the cave. During the night some clouds had come up; it was warmer but the moisture made everything feel cold as slush. The woods were submerged in the rolling gray of twilight, and snow was falling. The air was marbled with patterns of light and dark. I could barely see my boots slipping against the rounded rocks of the stream bank. At last I stopped and began to talk to her. My words were nearly lost to the gurgling of the stream beneath the ice, but at least no one would be able to overhear what we said.

   I took her arm and looked at her. "You told Soli that you didn't know who the father of the child would be. Is that true?"

   "Did I say that? I don't think I said ... you should search your memory, Mallory, what were my exact words?"

   I did not remember her exact words, though I remembered that one must listen with exactitude to everything a scryer said. I tried to read the truth from her face, but I could not see the shape of her mouth. It was dark and her lips were hidden beneath the ruff of her hood. She stood with her hands over her belly. She could not hide the shape of her belly. Unlike some women who carried their babies low, as if they had a ball tucked beneath their furs, Katharine's belly was long and ovoid like a bloodfruit.

   "Who is the father, then?" I asked. "Do you know?"

   "The father is ... who he is; he is who he will be. The mother ... the father."

   I was desperate to know if I would be a father. I could not bear the thought that Liam might be the father. What would the child look like? Would he have blond hair and thick brow ridges? Would he be half-Alaloi and half-human? Or - since Mehtar had sculpted our flesh but not our germ cells - would he be wholly human, wholly the fusion of Katharine's and my seed, wholly mine to call "son?" I took her mittened hand in mine and asked her, "Is it our child, Katharine?"