One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (23 page)

Tek’tek hauled Enoch onto his back. “That’s it. We’re gone,” he said.

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Enoch spent their return journey in prayer over Sara. Tek’tek ripped up some of Enoch’s clothes and bound his wounds. Sara lay wide-eyed, fighting sadness and sedatives. “Those poor people,” she said. “Cut off from the world, giving birth to monsters. They must have thought they were cursed.”

“
I didn’t realise he had pinned so much hope on joining them,” Tek’tek used eyeview.

“
He’s looking for a wife,” Sara returned. “That was what the lace and the other gifts were for. To show that he could look after her.”

“
Not much hope of that now,” Tek’tek said, sickly. Enoch had come a long way in accepting those not made to God’s image. He had prayed for the girl as if she was human. Tek’tek shut his eyes and saw her dead face. The hitherto abstract notion of mortality bit deep.

“
It’s not your fault,” Sara tried to comfort him. “We should have foreseen…” Her voice tailed off.

Professor Xi had everything organised as soon as they touched down. Sara and Enoch were sent to hospital. A rescue team was dispatched. They found that the boys had abandoned the huts and vanished into the woods. The rescue team left food and supplies, and a letter telling the boys how to contact them. It was all they could do.

Sara recovered rapidly. By the end of a fortnight she was limping around, although she would not fly for weeks.

Enoch recovered slowly, then ceased to recover at all. He lay in his hospital bed staring at the ceiling. His face went grey, his eyes sank back into their sockets, and the gash on his forehead became infected.

Interns scurried around campus stripping willow bark to make an old pain relief medication called aspirin, and snatching up mouldy fruit. “We’re looking for a fungal spore,
penicillium
,” Dr Greggog explained. “It’s a natural antibiotic. I fear we’re too late. Enoch has taken a psychological blow from which he cannot recover. In layman’s terms, he has lost hope.”
 

It only occurred to Tek’tek then that Enoch was dying. He sat by Enoch’s bed, big hands dangling uselessly. He read Enoch’s Bible through, and read aloud all the passages he could find about hope. He even gritted his teeth and joined Enoch in interminable prayer. It was no use. Enoch was sunk in a deathly despair.

“
This is stupid,” Tek’tek complained to Dr Greggog. “Give him modern medicine, just don’t tell him.”

“
No treatment without consent.” Dr Greggog was firm. Her fishy eyeballs glowed moist with keen sympathy. “My interns found out something that used to be popular in the old days when medicine was not so beneficial. It’s called a placebo. If you have any ideas let me know.”

“
placebo,
n.
a medicine which performs no physiological function but may benefit the patient psychologically,” eyeview said.
 

Tek’tek went back to his bedroom. He took the feather from its hiding place. Enoch didn’t need to know he got hold of it. “Sara thought you might like it,” he told the sunken-eyed figure in the hospital bed.

Enoch let the feather drop to the covers, then he picked it up. He turned the quill between his fingers so the bronze highlights glimmered. “It is like an angel’s,” he said, mournfully.

“
Sara is an angel,” Tek’tek said. “I hope,” he added, fervently.

Enoch smiled, at last, although his smile was not happy.

“
Don’t give up. There is always hope,” Tek’tek encouraged him. The dead girl haunted his dreams, all lapped in lace.
For dust you are and to dust you will return.
The concept of guilt struck home like a steam train. What did her death mean, anyway? If death was the end then what was life for? He snatched one brief glimpse into the depths of his soul then retreated, appalled.
 

He hitched his bulk nearer to the bed, so he could whisper. At last he asked Enoch what Dr Gregogg had forbidden. “We could make a spike from the Old Stacks genetic sample. We could give it to your children. They don’t need to know it is a spike. Just show them the feather and tell them it is a miracle,” he begged him.

Enoch’s face twisted in agony. “Do you think I haven’t thought of that? That if one soul did wrong, one soul, and he didn’t tell anyone, then only that one soul would be damned. It’s no use. That way lies the devil’s temptation of sin and pride. If our children die young they die uncorrupted by this world. They speed to God’s grace. We should not mourn for them.” Yet he struggled with tears.

Tek’tek was uncomfortably aware of the mental anguish he was causing. Yet he pushed on. “God sent you here,” he reminded him. “God has shown you a cure. ‘Behold, I send an angel before you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place which I have prepared’,” he shot right back at him.

“
The Devil can quote scripture when it serves his turn,” Enoch said, yet he gave Tek’tek a watery smile.

“
God is love. You told me that,” Tek’tek said. “He wouldn’t punish your children when they had done no wrong.”

“
I the Lord your God am a jealous god, and visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations,” Enoch said, mechanically. Yet for the first time he did not seem to speak as he believed.

When Tek’tek left, late that night, Enoch was awake in bed, turning the quill of Sara’s feather between his fingers so that specks of bronze light danced over the walls and ceiling.

The next morning Enoch ate a proper meal. By afternoon he was sitting up, his forehead healing.

“
That feather was an excellent placebo,” Dr Greggog congratulated Tek’tek.

“
It is not a placebo,” Tek’tek snapped, angry for the second time in his life.

A few days later Enoch was out of bed and packing. “There is no need for me to stay any longer,” he said. “The summer is over. Soon it will be harvest. I must return.”

“
We’ll miss you,” Tek’tek said, mournfully. With the Old Stacks cleansed he retrieved several cases of undamaged books and a working copy of the Gutenberg Press which he found in the machine exhibit on the seventh floor. “Take it with you and see what the Elders say,” he said when Enoch protested. “It means you can print your own Bibles,” he tempted him. Also, he managed to keep word of the feather from Sara. This involved swearing a gaggle of giggling nurses to secrecy.

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The next morning they returned to the station. The train was repaired, and Enoch’s crates were loaded.

Enoch carried his suitcase, his Bible and his feather, although the feather was almost as large as he was and a handful in the breeze. Sara met them at the station. Her half-healed wing was limp. When she saw the feather, her smile stiffened.

“
Say nothing,” Tek’tek warned her via eyeview.

“
You had no right to keep that!” she scrolled right back.

“
It gave him hope.”

Sara fell ominously silent.

A crowd gathered to farewell Enoch; Professor Xi, Dr Greggog, relieved interns, hospital nurses and the college crowd. Gossip flew around. Plans for moving the university closer to the galactic core had been finalised. Falling enrolments were blamed. The last outpost was giving up its guard.

Enoch was delighted to see everybody. He led a prayer, then zealously threw himself into one last, long preaching session. Finally he handed around his Bible.

“
That book really should be in a museum,” Sara made sure everyone had their gloves sprayed on before they handled it. “Look, even Enoch has finally realised how precious it is. He’s wearing gloves too,” she said to Tek’tek, delighted. Then she remembered she was still mad at him, and flounced off.

“
Group hug,” Tek’tek announced. He threw himself into the scrum.

He and Sara farewelled Enoch at the train door. Enoch gave Tek’tek the plough share and Sara the candle holder. “Something to remember me by,” he said. His eyes were sad but he smiled at Sara. “Thank you so much for your feather.”

“
Don’t mention it,” Sara said, through gritted teeth.

“
I’ll visit sometime,” Tek’tek promised him. “I’ll try not to cause a riot.”

Enoch took their hands in farewell. “I believe in my heart you will both be saved,” he said. “I will pray for you.” He waved out the window as the train steamed away.

Tek’tek galloped after him until the train vanished around the curve of the mountain.

He returned to the station. Everyone had left, except for Sara who waited, hands on hips, with one angry wing-tip tapping the ground. Sara let rip, but she stopped, disconcerted, as Tek’tek burst into laughter. He laughed until he wept. Then he sat on the station platform and hiccupped.

Sara sat on the edge of the platform, swinging her long legs.

“
Sorry about that,” he hiccupped to a halt at last.

Sara had put two and two together. “What’s with the feather?”

“
We spiked it with the Old Stacks genome sample,” Tek’tek said.

“
And Enoch didn’t know? You couldn’t,” she gasped.

“
He knew,” Tek’tek said. “You noticed he wore gloves the whole time he handled it.”

Sara had. She subsided.

“
He’s going to take it back to his community and tell them what it is. They’re going to gather in their church and discuss it. That’s how they decide things. They talk it over. Enoch says they can talk for days,” Tek’tek said, deeply relieved he wouldn’t have to hear it.

“
It won’t fly,” Sara shook her head. “They’ll fall back on prayer to find a cure.”

“
Enoch will say that prayer led him here, and God revealed a cure,” Tek’tek said. He and Enoch had discussed the whole idea.

Sara kept shaking her head.

“
It’s not an enhancement. It’s just returning them to the original,” Tek’tek told her. “Anyway, they can listen to what he has to say, and decide if it’s a devil’s snare. ‘A net is spread in vain before the eyes of them that have wings,’” he added, just as Enoch would have said.

It was only when Tek’tek saw what was left in Vermont that he understood the pressures Enoch’s community faced, and the reasons behind the decisions they had made. He still thought they were wrong, but that didn’t give him the right to treat Enoch like a child. “Our history is what makes us human,” he realised, aloud.

Sara gave a surprised laugh. “If you keep on like that you’ll get a Pass,” she gasped. She stretched her injured wing, and winced. “So shall the last be first and the first last.”

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I
n
times of plenty, being born the son of a Chief is a blessing from She Who Watches.
 

But I was not born in times of plenty.

I was born in the year of famine, when the blood that coloured the snow was not the blood of leopard seals and penguins but that of skeletal, starved warriors sent to raid the caches of other tribes.

And we were at war.

The eggs in the giant penguin rookeries had not hatched and the mature birds were poisoned by the venomous squid that they fed on; we did not know, before the Tall People came, that they came in search of food.

They came in vain. The barnacled whale had not come into the Bay of Blood to give birth, and we, the Pale People, were reaching the end of the fat that had been stored in the ice. We had no choice but to double our catch of silverfin, or else begin laying newborn babes in the snow to keep the tribe’s numbers low.

The first attack must have frustrated the Tall warriors. Their slender spears could not penetrate the thick furs our warriors wore, while our clubs easily cracked skulls and our rippers, set with shark’s teeth, opened up their bare thighs and throats. Their bark canoes could not follow our skin boats into the open water. Our women and children were evacuated up the coast of Culwinna to the winter caves. I was six months old.

In the second attack, my father lost his hand. It was the custom of the Tall People to make fish hooks out of the finger bones of their enemies. They believed the penguin eggs had not hatched because we had laid a curse on them, and that once deprived of the hands which had performed the ritual to catch the Lady’s eye, our curse would fail and the Lady’s favour would return to them.

The Lady’s favour never did return to them. Although they had returned with heavy scythes of obsidian and thunderbird crest, our people still had all the knowledge of the terrain, and their numbers had been severely reduced in the initial assault. The Tall warriors were eliminated.

Father brought his severed hand to the winter caves. He thought it a great joke. The wind dried it and the cold preserved it. He liked to hide it in amongst our possessions to startle my mother.

“
Be strong, Toman,” he said to me when I was old enough to understand that a one-handed man could not remain Chief without great reserves of power. “Defend the tribe with your strength.”

I nodded, eager to please. Secretly, though, I knew it wasn’t strength which had defended the tribe, but something I had no word for, yet. It wasn’t until I met the Traveller that I truly understood what my immature mind had tried to grasp.

Technology.

It was technology which had defended the tribe. Our tools had been better suited to the task at hand.

“
Be steadfast, Toman,” my mother murmured to me on the morning I turned nine years of age and departed for my warrior’s initiation. “Defend the tribe with your patience. Your endurance.”