The Braided World (14 page)

On the shore, hoda were cutting back the dense sprays of ferns next to the river, to allow passage on foot into the interior.

“We have said so before, Anton. The Quadi left us, long ago. But we do not raise up creatures to be objects of too much veneration, as the human custom is.”

Worship. Gods.
These were words she might have used, but didn't, there being none for these concepts in her language.

Vidori had already debarked, and was calling for Anton to join him on the shore.

He and Maypong did so, and they began a slow trek into the forest, the viven all following in a single line, stepping through thick mud but unconscious of the damage it did to brocaded boots. It was an outing, and their voices carried into the jungle, joining with the chatter of birds and hum of insects.

Once past the copious vegetation near the shore, they
made their way with less effort into the deep shade of the canopy. Like Earth's tropical forests, the Olagong harbored abundant species of trees, and they loomed tall, reaching for the sun.

Vidori led the group, just behind several large hoda who cleared away any obstacles. He turned slightly to Anton as he walked. “It is not far. The Quadi site is where the river-bank used to be, in ancient times.”

“I thank you, rahi, for presenting these ruins. I take it as a special favor.”

“Yes, Anton. I would have you understand we do not hide messages. If there are things the Olagong hides, it hides them from us all.” He stepped over a fallen log. “Your air barges that always fly looking for things… they will have shown this as well, thankfully.”

Anton masked his surprise. He had known that the king possessed telescopes. Apparently he used them to great advantage.

They hiked in silence for a time. The architectural summit of the forest, hidden visually, registered its populations by a cacophony of sound and the tremblings of the under-story A bird swooped into the darkened glade around them. As it lit on a branch, Anton thought it looked like a kingfisher, but as it turned its profile it revealed deep serrated edges along its beak. Similar, but different.

Joon's phrase did haunt him.

Now the ruins were in front of them. One moment there was only jungle, and then Anton saw slumping stone walls, nearly obscured by vines and roots. It was a ruin of large proportion, partly submerged in the muck of the clearing. His eyes tried to match it to what he'd glimpsed of Oleel's pavilion, said to be a replica. Yes, there were the same pillars, and their sizes did seem commensurate.

The roof was collapsed into the footprint of the building. Out of the center grew a gigantic tree, its muscular roots spreading in all directions, clasping the ruin in a
woody embrace. The roots followed the form of the collapsed blocks of stone, in a solid flow of wood.

Viven began to pick their way through the pile of stones, and soon Dassa were exploring with as much curiosity as Anton. With Maypong at his side, Anton climbed through the jumble.

Underwater half of the year, this site lacked dense vegetation. Yet the river had leached and scoured it, leaving nothing but lumps where hewn stone had been. It was melting away. The Quadi had chosen an unfortunate building material: limestone.

Maypong sensed his disappointment. “You hoped it would be full of Quadi things.”

Quadi things.
Or Quadi meaning. But here was an edifice long erased. “I didn't know what it would be, Maypong-rah. I didn't think it would be so ravaged.”

He bent down to inspect a fragment of wall. Something had been etched into it. Using one fìnger, he traced the pictograph—for that is what it was. The tracings in the king's archives had captured some of these drawings hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands of years ago, before the river had carried the renderings away, a molecule at a time. He pocketed the fragment, for Zhen to analyze later.

Maypong said, “The first of the Dassa people drew these things. To record what they experienced.”

Yes, Anton had seen those pictographs, of boats, jungle, and animals. And one fragment had shown what looked like hands: appendages that had six digits, two thumbs—clearly, two opposable thumbs. But that was the only surviving drawing of the Quadi form.

As Anton continued to search, the viven grew bored, and hoda brought out packages from the barge. Vidori's retinue lounged on fallen pillars and slabs of stone and took a leisurely meal.

After a time, Anton found himself sitting on a collapsed section of roof. Maypong sat beside him quietly, honoring his subdued mood.

“It doesn't make sense,” Anton said.

“What does not, Anton?”

He picked up a shard of stone, crumbling it between his fingers. “The Quadi picked the worst possible building material. I'll bet they had a lot of choices.” An understatement, surely, for a race that could
build
humans.

Maypong nodded. “Metal is best. But the mines are far away, and transport is always difficult.”

He watched as a tree branch wiggled nearby. It was not a branch, however, but a snake hanging down, secured to a branch by its thicker back end. It was extremely long. Then, snapping its body toward a passing bird, it unhinged its jaw, caught its prey, and began swallowing it alive. Palace-born, Maypong seemed uneasy around the reptile, and they climbed down from their perch.

Anton murmured, half to himself, “It's as though they wished to remain unknown.” He helped Maypong negotiate through a jumble of rocks, and their hands gripped for a moment. She smiled. He looked at her, thinking that she was very beautiful, and that he hadn't much noticed before.

“I think that is true, Anton. They left us nothing of themselves.” She led him toward the place where the king was sitting. “If they had left many things, perhaps we would have made them revered beings. Instead of treasuring, as we do, the Olagong.”

Revered beings.
Perhaps the Quadi did not wish to become gods. It was true that there were some among the
Restoration
crew who thought it unnatural that the Dassa had no religion, but Anton thought the Dassa simply had their own way of revering the world.

Up ahead he saw that the king was talking to a group that had just emerged from the forest.

When Maypong and Anton joined Vidori, they were facing a contingent of uldia.

Leading them was an uldia of perhaps middle age—by the iron-gray hair wound tight on her head. By her sheer
size and demeanor Anton thought he knew who it was: the chief of the uldia, Joon's uldia, and the king's nemesis.

Maypong began pulling on Anton, urging him into the background. Anton whispered to her, “Leave off, Maypong-rah. She and I would have to meet sometime.”

Maypong looked at him. “You would rather not.”

Vidori noticed Anton then, and gestured him forward. “I was just explaining to the Second Dassa your curiosity for this place, Anton. But she does prefer that we not linger.” He looked to Shim. “That being the case, we must wind our way back to the river.” Shim started to herd the viven down the path, but Oleel's voice stopped her.

“Oh this, then, is the visitor who demands to go here and there, without regard to whose land may be damaged.” She wore a silver gown, hanging loose from her shoulders.

Vidori remained silent, making it necessary for Anton to answer. Maypong rushed in with, “My lord regrets any offense. Being a stranger, he may be excused at times.”

Oleel turned to face Maypong. “Does your lord have a tongue?” Her face was unlined, but lacking the Dassa beauty, traded for heft and strength.

Maypong produced a smile that looked chipped out of rock. The viven stood like flamingos, waiting for something. Waiting, perhaps, for Oleel to go away, for the king to be delivered from this circumstance.

“I have a tongue, Lady” Anton said. “My people feeep their tongues, although we do not always know what to say.”

Vidori smiled the slightest bit. “I know what to say.” He turned to Oleel. “I do beg your pardon, Lady. We will leave the ancient site to your care. It was full of mud, and has ruined a perfectly good pair of boots. But that is no one's fault but my own.”

Oleel's deep voice answered him. “They are hoda, your visitors. Who keep their tongues. That is what is troubling, of course. Not boots.”

“Yes, but it does not signify, since he can do no harm,” Vidori said. “Anton is as empty of guile as the river.”

Oleel smiled, showing teeth. “You are a poet, Vidori-rah.”

“I am a soldier.”

“Better to stay with arms than similes.”

“When I can, I do.”

“As to there being no harm, perhaps you did not know, Vidori-rah, being concerned with boots, that the visitor whom you call Sen is in a troubling state.” At Vidori's quirked eyebrow, she continued, “Oh yes, we have heard that Sen is bearing inside her a human spawn.”

Vidori's face darkened. “I do not think so, rahi.”

Maypong whispered to Anton, “This is so?”

Anton thought Oleel was lying. He stepped forward. “Vidori-rah, this is not the case.”

The viven around them were reacting with shocked looks and murmuring. Someone said, “Bearing? The creature bears?”

Oleel's voice rose above theirs. “Yes, you will see her stomach distend, and the thing will swell inside her, greedy for blood, making her sick. Somehow, the spawn will get outside. I do not speculate on how this happens, thankfully” She turned to the king. “It will be your problem when it occurs, I believe.”

Anton was growing angrier, both at the lie and at Oleel's terrible description of pregnancy. But he had no time to argue with the woman, for Shim was propelling them down the path, herding the viven, and trying to change the topic, all at once.

Vidori was saying his good-byes, leaving the clot of uldia behind.

The group tromped back to the river, less carefree than they were on the hike in.

“She is determined to be my enemy,” Anton said.

Maypong said, “Yes, because she is afraid of you. Because if it is proper to bear children of one's body there is
no need for the variums and the uldia.” She lowered her voice. “But are you sure the thing about Sen is not true?”

He snapped at her, “No, damn it, it's not. No one is pregnant in my crew, on the ship or on the ground.”

She seemed mollified by his answer. But Anton thought the damage had already been done. Just the rumor of a pregnancy was a very effective reminder to the Dassa that the humans were extremely different from them. And extremely repulsive.

From the looks the viven were casting him, he thought that any good impression he might have made on them today was ruined by Oleel.

Ruins, indeed.

Under a morning sun already molten, Samwan wel
comed Bailey at her dock. The mistress was dressed for labor, in simple pants and jacket, but even these were fine. Samwan was one of the lucky ones: a firstborn child who inherited an islet from her landed mother or father.

“Mistress Samwan,” Bailey said as she relinquished her skiff to a hoda, “you look wonderful.”

Samwan smiled. “Oh Bailey, one is dressed for labor.” As she led Bailey into the compound, women waved— Samwan's half-sisters and full sisters, aunts, grandmothers. The compound filled with a chorus of Bailey's name, the human name without t's, k's, or, heaven forbid, zh's.

The grounds were baked hard, though the rainy season was only one week past. Under her hat, Bailey squinted into the glare of the day wishing for sunglasses. Perhaps she would put the concept out and see what the industrious hoda might devise.

Amidst darting children, the yard teemed with work as women dug trenches to rebury ceramic water pipes exposed by the erosions of the river. In addition, Samwan was
reconstructing her generator hut, where a new engine was being installed, driven by her household's hydrowheels in the Puldar, here in this land where people had no concept of public utilities.

As they approached the generator hut, Samwan cried out to one of the hoda workers. Frowning, she climbed a ladder, talking so fast Bailey couldn't keep up, but clearly showing the laborer how things should be done. Leaving Samwan to her construction project, Bailey wandered off, having grown more accepted in the compound, and hoping to see all sides of things, even things the Dassa did not wish seen—because of course everyone had something to hide. You didn't live to be seventy-eight without knowing that.

Proper Dassa and hoda alike worked in the long morning shadows of the huts or played with the dozens of children, here in this world of women's compounds and shared child-raising. Because so many female relatives chose to household with Samwan, the compound's allocation from the judipon was extensive, both in goods and slaves. Children nestled in hoda laps and mothers’ laps, or rushed about in small gangs. Like the boys, the girls were lavishly tended, but unlike the boys, girls grew up and toward their sharply defined fates: to become proper Dassa or hoda. Bailey turned from those thoughts. It made her like Samwan less.

But every child here looked plump and healthy. Nick said that the adult-rich environment fostered a thriving, cooperative, child-rearing culture. Even the nonbreeding adults shared child-care duties, relegating kinship to a minor consideration. So Nick said, debriefing Bailey after each of her excursions, all the while resenting her freedom of movement, chafing at the restrictions the palace placed upon him. And then, yesterday, Anton had left Nick out of the trip to the ruins …