The Braided World (17 page)

The palace hydrologists and weather-mancers said that a
storm was coming, and Nick believed it. The stupefying heat of the last few days could not go on without splitting open his head. He'd thought the pressure in his temples was the river stench, but now he suspected a weather front. They'd grown used to shipboard conditions; here, the weather staggered from one thing to the next, unsettling the body and the mind.

Inside the tent of the canoe, the heat nearly gagged him. Secrecy had its costs. “Hurry,” he'd urged the hoda pad-dlers, but they kept their own rhythm.

He disliked this course of action: sneaking to the uldia pavilion, holding discourse with Oleel. It was insubordination, of course. Looking into Anton's face was the worst. Those black eyes knew him, but Anton said nothing. Damn, that the man made it necessary to lie and sneak. Damn, that Anton was so besotted by the king's daughter that every day he committed himself further to the king's cause. Even Bailey was starting to chafe. He'd heard them have words last night, when Bailey had accused Anton of badly judged entanglements. And now Strahan was dead.

God.
Had they come thirty light-years just to die on this drowned world? Had they bucked their families, their friends, the opinion of Earth, for nothing? A suicide mission, people had called it; Shaw's Folly. To answer the summons of an alien signal, when the universe had dealt the Earth nothing but disaster. And, some said, when alien intent lay behind the imminent demise of Earth.

Alien intent.
Was the very universe against them? The outbreak on board the ship was another instance of diabolically bad luck. Despite the preflight prophylactic measures, the virulent bacteria had hid on board in the least expected place, right in the antiseptic solutions designed to kill them.

Nick was dripping wet. His temples throbbed with the sheer heat. So it was with relief that he recognized the slowing of the canoe, signaling a turn into the hidden stream of Oleel's pavilion.

As before, they helped him onto the dock, which was shadowed by a thick stand of river trees, cloaking this access from Amalang River traffic. It wasn't really a stream here, but a lagoon, with brackish water slapping against the dock pilings. As the hoda ushered Nick into the doorway, he saw that the mangrove tree that sat astride the end of the lagoon was not solid, but hollow, as a skiff passed out from under it. Behind the skiff, the hole closed up again … but there was not time to watch, for two uldia were waiting for him just inside, taking over from the hoda, who stayed to secure the boat. They led him into the cool granite passageways, with their welcome chill.

Oleel waited for him at the head of a ramp, and led him to an area of the compound new to him: a large room housing long tables with ceramic and glass containers. A stew of chemicals hung in the air.

“My pavilion of medicinals,” Oleel said without preamble. “You are interested, Venning?” Her face had a gray tincture, augmented by her silver tunic, which she wore over a long skirt. A fitted jacket kept her arms covered.

“Quite wonderful,” Nick said. “If you're offering a tour, I accept.”

The laboratory was like nothing he'd seen in Lolo. Here was an ordered, collective endeavor, with uldia hunched over pestles and tubes, glancing up warily at him. Braziers heated vessels and ceramic columns, releasing vapors, while tangles of ceramic pipes wound their way between valves and tanks. From nearby he heard the shudder of generators.

“You are not the only ones with mechanics and scientific understanding, Venning. Never think so.”

He didn't think so; they'd all seen the rudimentary phones, the water turbines, the lightning rods, showing knowledge of electricity and electromagnetism. But here there was evidence of applications never guessed at: ceramic microscopes, and hints of chemical processes, though he could not imagine what their products were.

He leaned for a moment against the casement of a window. The normally open format of rooms in Oleel's stone retreat were here covered with shutters. As he leaned, he accidentally elbowed open one of the shutters, which fell wide on its hinges. Nick turned, surprised at the movement, as the shutter now sprawled open to reveal the tops of the trees, and a short distance farther, rectangles of water, like small pools.

Through the treetop canopy came the distinct wail of a baby Somewhere out there were the variums, where babies were birthed. Where swimming was guaranteed to be orgasmic.

But they preferred that he not look at it. An uldia approached, reaching past him and closing the shutter. As open as the Dassa were about sex, it was odd that they cared if he saw the pools.

Oleel was saying, “Did you think us simple river people, Venning? Without engines and science?”

“No, Lady but we haven't seen a chemical laboratory like this.”

“Oh yes, chemicals. Whatever is needed for our industry and our ministrations. All are produced here.”

They walked down the length of the tables, looking at tube stills, sedimentation tanks, drying screens, flasks. He couldn't keep from saying, “I thought you said your pri was too strong for illness.”

She walked ahead of him, her gray bun swollen behind her head like a tree bole. “Even those of strong pri may be stung by an insect, for which we have salves and irrigations. The hoda require broths, of course. The bereaved must have tonics of mood. And of course, the surgeries. Any Dassa may take cuts, here and there.” She spoke, as always, without moving much of her mouth. It was as though she couldn't bear to speak to him, and begrudged the movement it took.

They paused to watch a pulse from an inlet valve push reddish liquid into a deep ceramic cup set over a brazier.

“That is the distillate of langva, Venning, purged of impurities. The correct fractionation is a difficult art, but the residue is a powerful medicinal. It is the essence of pri.”

“Langva?”
It was the reddish tuber, the Dassa food staple.

“This is the source of pri, the gift of the Olagong, to those entrusted with its care.” She turned to look at him. “You have no langva on your world.”

Nick thought there was nothing like it that he'd heard of. The attending uldia tipped the cup, spilling the contents onto a tray for cooling. Oleel was still gazing at him.
No langva.
She was trying to tell him something. There was a thought clamoring for his attention. He turned away, looking over the tops of the tables, toward the shuttered windows, toward the outside world, where Dassa did not sicken, where no one faltered for lack of pri.

Immunity. These people had bolstered immunity. Strong pri, indeed. Beside him, Oleel was a specimen of strength. She looked like she could pole a barge entirely by herself. But it was not about Oleel.

It was about langva. Finally, the thought came loose.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the message they pursued—the meaning of that message—was not what they had assumed. Perhaps the “genetic heritage” was heightened immunity to disease. That was what could be recovered here, in the distillate of this red tuber.

Oleel produced a smile; you had to pay attention to see that it
was
one. She said, “Did you think that the Voi coveted our lands for the variums alone?”

A rhetorical question. It sent him deeper into his own revelation. The Voi wanted pri; they wanted the lands where the langva thrived. It fit.

His mouth went quite dry He looked at the lab in frank wonder. Had he found the secret, that obvious thing, that the Quadi thought they would so easily find? Langva. The Dassa diet was based on this tuber. They baked it, mashed it, rolled it into dough. And it made them the healthiest people he'd ever seen. The Quadi, foreseeing what would befall humanity, had designed a solution, had given it to the Dassa.

His disobedience, his hunch—it was all worth it. It was just possible that he'd cracked the entire problem wide open. Instead of facing discipline for insubordination, he'd receive the thanks of a grateful crew.

He wanted to ask her for a sample of the residue on the tray. But by the look on her face, he thought she would say no. She wasn't a woman to give things away. Even as he felt grateful for what she had just told him, he also understood she would use the reddish substance as a bargaining chip.

She was leading him from the hall. Out on her mezzanine, they paused at the edge, looking into the courtyard below. Away from the chemical fumes, the fresher air eased his headache. The trickle of water from the floor streams and waterfalls of the courtyard screened away all other sounds.

At his side, he could barely hear Oleel as she murmured, “Tell me about your captain.”

Glancing at her, he saw how it was. This was her payment. He gets something, then she gets something.

“Do you respect him, for example?”

Nick paused, though he shouldn't have. She noticed, damn her. “Yes,” he said. “He's an honest man. We're friends.”

“Hmm. To be obedient, is it necessary to become friends?”

But, of course, Nick wasn't obedient. Perhaps he wasn't even any longer a friend.

Her voice came more insistent. “Anton Prados was palace-born, and you were not.” She was gazing down at the simulation of the Olagong on the floor below.

Palace-born.
Perhaps that summed it up. But he would hear no criticism of Anton from this woman. Nick responded, “Palace-born, but rejecting the ease of the palace. He left his father to his wealth, joined the military. A man of simple tastes.”

“Rejected his father, his heritage.”

“Rejected the parts that exploited others.”

“Others such as?”

Nick wondered at her surge of curiosity. It was not a good trend, her interest in Anton. She was probing for his weaknesses. Well, if she looked hard enough, she'd find them. Probably her birth-water daughter, Joon, could tell her plenty about Anton's weaknesses.

“Others?” Oleel repeated.

“Lack of pri is a scourage. It spreads among us. Some— pavilions—send these people away, no matter their relation. Such as Anton's mother, and sister.”

“They lost their pri.”

“Yes. They were sent out to starve.”

Oleel watched the water fall from the mezzanine to the pool in the courtyard floor. “So he favors outcasts, then.”

Nick wouldn't have said so. He would have said that he himself had more the viewpoint of the underdog. He was the one who had come to the society of women. Although, now that he'd seen more of it, he couldn't say that they were underlings. Perhaps, in some ways, they controlled more than Vidori did.

“Tell me what else a friend knows about Captain Prados.”

She was compelling him to give secrets, and condemning him for it at the same time. He was torn, but then Nick did answer Oleel's questions, telling her about Anton Prados, giving her what a friend knows about his captain.

It was a small price to pay, however. Because of his revelation, perhaps the
Restoration
could restore them after all, could bring home their salvation. Now that he thought about it, he wondered why they hadn't seen it before. It was because they took the message literally:
What you have lost.
They kept thinking:
Genetic diversity.

Wrong.

Anton sat by a canal deep in the king's pavilion. Under the overarching canopy of trees, the water sluiced by, gray in the morning shadows. Through the trees, he could hear someone playing a reed flute, a haunting sound that under other circumstances might have been sweet.

“Oh, I have found him.”

Anton looked up to find Maypong standing nearby with a hoda. She stooped for a moment, and he could see that a child was with her, perhaps ten years old. She bid him goodbye and sent him off with the hoda. Anton knew that Maypong's remaining two children stayed in the compound of her sister, in order that Maypong could serve the king, but she visited them, and sometimes slept there.

She moved into the little clearing and settled herself next to Anton on the close-clipped grass. Watching the trickle of water, she said, “I am sorry that”— she struggled to say Lieutenant Strahan's name— “your friend has died. It is a hard thing. So young.”

“Thank you, Maypong-rah.”

“How will you bury him?”

“In the sky.”

“Ah,” she said, frowning at this concept of burial in the air.

Anton thought about all the zippered shrouds they had committed to deep space over the last months. Each one had been a little gouge out of his flesh. And now Strahan. In eight days, a strong man taken down. And three others stricken with the infection were following him, fast.

He turned to her. Her eyes were very light brown. Against the yellow of her yellow tunic, she looked like a golden sylph. “Maypong-rah, I need you to help me.” She continued to watch him. He knew it was her duty to help him, but that duty was overshadowed by her service to Vidori. “Help me get out of the king's protection. My people are dying.”

“Where would you go, then, Anton?”

“Everywhere. To see the judipon. To an audience with Oleel. To explore the Olagong. But to do so with the king's—permission.”

“So, you will look for what we have hidden from you.” She gazed at him with reproach.