The Waters Rising (59 page)

If she’d done that . . . if she and Marimi were sisters, genetic sisters, maybe . . . maybe it had been close enough to kill her! No, and it wouldn’t have acted this soon, would it? It had only broken a short time ago when she saw Bear . . .

She reached up to brush her hair from her face, remembering that night with Jenger, poor Jenger, he was gone, and she had brushed her hair away from the branch that . . . the branch that . . . did it catch her hair?
Because someone was out there in the woods.
No. It had been dark. Too dark. No one had seen, no one could have seen. Besides, it was too quick.
The capsule had only broken a little while ago.

No. No, the capsule broke before she fell asleep. She had been so tired that she had slept a long time. A long, long time. If the capsule had been Mirami’s, it wouldn’t kill her. Make her sick, maybe, but it wouldn’t kill her
. Unless those hairs had not been Jenger’s hairs . . .

It was the last coherent thought she had. She never heard the Old Dark Man raging through the cellars of the Old Dark House. She never heard him screaming at her, asking her what foolish, foolish thing she had done to allow her own methods to be used against her. “Mirror defense,” he cried. “Didn’t I teach you about mirror defense?”

Later, he left the place in a rage, like a spout of black fire. Generations he had bred to hate Tingawa! Generations to kill those who had foiled the aims of his makers! Now it was all to start over. He would have to do it all again!

E
yes from the forest watched the Old Dark Man go southward through the trees, a blazing black shadow, faster than anything natural could move. Eyes in the forest looked down at the Great Bear of Zol, lying dead among the leaves. Bear had been a great warrior. The thing that had defeated him was a greater warrior, but that thing was only partly human, and not the greater part.

The emissary from Tingawa leaned down and put his hand on Bear’s body, bloodied as it was. “I am of your people,” he said. “I respect your clan. I will carry your soul to the clan of Zol in Tingawa. You are not forsworn and I will be your Xakixa.”

He sat there for some little time, his head bowed, while the soul made up its mind to come with him. It was very confused and ashamed. The confusion often happened in battle. Men did not really expect to die. He guessed where the shame came from. Poor warrior. He had been tempted past his strength. The emissary kept his hand in place, forgiving whatever the cause had been. When the emissary knew, finally, that the soul had come to him, he arose and went into the Old Dark House. The monster he had seen would return here. The monster needed these machines, these devices. They had made the mistake of waiting for him before. They would not make that mistake again.

The emissary had brought weapons with him to vaporize this house and all it contained; ancient devices, partly discovered, partly remade, that would make it impossible for flesh to live on this ground for a very long time. He stood looking at Alicia’s body for a long moment. The machine that had protected her had been left without instructions. It clicked and hummed as though troubled. He took a flame weapon from his clothing and burned the inside of the device, crisped it, broke the wires, the linkages, wrecked it. Whatever else he did, this must be done first, this thing must be disabled. He would not wait, not even while he and his remaining men took time to check through the monstrous house. Both the machine and the woman’s body would vaporize, along with everything else, but he would not gamble on their getting it done before the creature came back.

They spread out, working their way upward room by room, floor by floor. They had newly created tools that helped them find hollows, secret rooms, all the places where the books were hidden. They had known there had to be books. He and his fellows scanned them rapidly, looking for particular things, particular subjects. He took those that would be useful, including a few that were extraordinarily interesting. The others he tossed about so that they, too, would be destroyed atom by atom. They were obscene in their love of pain, in their gloating over death.

In the deepest vault of all they found something stranger than anything they had found before, and they left the ways to it open, so that this, too, would be totally destroyed.

When they had gathered the things they intended to save, the emissary set the devices carefully, calling his remaining companions to help him from time to time, to double-check, to be quite sure. They few and the rest of the embassy staff, who had already begun the journey to Merhaven, were the only Tingawans left in Norland. They had stayed out of the conflict, for this duty had to be done and they could not risk being killed before it was done. If the monster hadn’t gone away, they would have had to use other devices from outside the Old Dark House, devices that might not have been as effective. The creature had gone, so they could do this part of the job right, do it as they had been trying to do for generations.

When they had finished, they went swiftly southward along a hilly road, toward the Lake of the Clouds. From a hilltop, they watched the bulbous cloud of fire and smoke that rose on a stem of flame above the heart of Altamont. They had allowed for the light evening breeze, which would spread the dust only so far as the ancient tunnels, the old shafts, the elevators, the towers. The dust would not reach farther than that, but that far it would reach. No one would go there again. He had brought pigeons with him to carry messages to the abbey, warning them away from Altamont, warning the world away from Altamont, warning them about the Old Dark Man, warning the world about the Old Dark Man. Without his coffin, his womb, his preserving container, he would not live long, but the terrible truth was he need not live long to do great damage. One day was too long. A year would be an eternity of destruction.

In the morning, they began the trek south and east where they planned to meet the other embassy staff on the road. They would all leave Norland together. They would not leave until they had consulted with the clan Do-Lok. There might still be things left to do here in Norland.

O
n the ship, life soon settled into a routine. Blue slept at night; the wolves prowled. First thing in the morning all four-legged passengers came out on deck to empty themselves in a designated place and have the resultant mess hosed overboard with the water that was pumped from the bilges. Precious Wind and Abasio then saw to their feeding: oats and hay for Blue, meat—often fish—for the wolves. While he ate, Blue leaned against the rail and thought of the trail he had traveled on the way to Woldsgard, thus keeping his mind off waves, water, and the fact that if he did not think of something else he would be seasick. Meantime, the wolves prowled around the ship if they needed additional exercise, after which they retreated to their den, where they lay about in snoring piles until evening came, when the whole process was repeated. By the tenth day, the sailors—who had very slowly grown accustomed to wolves—commented that there were no more rats on the ship. Precious Wind thought this unfortunate, since hunting rats had given the wolves something to do, and restless wolves would likely be discontented.

Remembering hiding-and-finding games she had played as a child, she hit upon the idea of hiding bits of dried meat about the ship for the wolves to find at night, and the sailors offered to do the hiding for her, in the holds, mostly. She allowed this, warning them that what a wolf could smell, a wolf would get at, one way or the other, and it would not be a good idea to bury the bait in places they did not want wolves to dig their way to. She also conducted races between various pairs and offered for discussion the idea of giving each member of the pack a name. The resultant discussions passed many hours for both men and wolves as names suggested by wolves were often impossible for humans to replicate; names suggested by humans were often unpleasant to wolven ears.

“Captain,” she asked when she began to run out of ideas, “is the equipment I left aboard when you brought me here still in the hold?”

He nodded. “That was a long time ago. It’s there. Do you want it brought up?”

“I’ll need a place with good light to work in. The devices are solar powered.”

“Aside from the deck, the best light is in where the horse is. There’s room in there for you to set up a worktable, if you like. If the horse won’t mind.”

“The horse won’t mind,” she said. “In fact he may be very helpful.”

Blue was interested. “What are you going to do?” he asked when the men had set up her table and she was busy unpacking the little machines she would work with.

“I’m taking the first tiny step in attempting to let the wolves learn to talk.”

He snorted, asked, “How are you going to do that?”

“Same way they did with you. Or with your father or mother. They discovered or created an equine voice-box cell for horses. They took genetic snips from humans, the parts that give them the parts of the brain associated with language, the vocal cords and throat, and the tongue. Then they took centuries or so to figure out how to meld the two physiologies and how to insert the genetic instructions into the reproductive system of horses.”

“Centuries?”

“Well, each new horse baby took almost a year to be born, then it had to be exposed to language, which meant people around it all day talking. Then if it didn’t work—and the first few dozen times it didn’t work—the people doing it had to figure out why it didn’t work, then they had to start over. I say ‘they,’ but of course there was a different ‘they’ every thirty or forty years. There was no way to hurry the reproductive part. It takes patience.”

“I have noticed my tongue is not like most other horses’ tongues.”

“Yes, the tongue has to change some while still not interfering with your normal eating habits. It’s all very complicated. We’ve succeeded with horses and dogs—that’s how I know we’ll be able to do wolves. There are only minor differences in the genetics, but . . .”

“There was a talking coyote in Artemisia.”

“So Abasio said, yes. Dogs and coyotes can talk; wolves are next.”

“Who will teach them to talk when they’re very young? Their parents can’t.”

“Well, sometimes we’ve been able to change adults. If we can change the pack members, they’d teach the young ones. Otherwise it would be whoever’s around.”

“And when you have talking wolves, then what? Will that stop the waters rising?”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Blue, nothing we know of will stop the waters rising.”

“Then what good is it?”

She sat down on a hay bale and gazed at him thoughtfully. “If you had the choice to change what you were and go on living—let’s say you could turn into a whale—would you do it?”

“My other choice being what?”

“Drowning.”

“Oh, I’d whale-ize. Sure. At a full gallop. Are you proposing to do that to me? A whale seems a bit large.”

“No, we’re not proposing to do anything to you, because at the rate the waters are rising, you’ll live out your life on land, and so will the wolves. But you have offspring, colts.”

“Foals; colts are male, fillies are female. I have offspring, yes, here and there.”

“You’d like the idea that your descendants could . . . whale-ize, wouldn’t you? If it was that or drowning?”

“I’d like the idea, I think.”

“And you’d like them to talk? Can yours talk?”

“Some of them, but not all. Speaking doesn’t breed true. With some mares yes, with others, no.”

“Well, if they could, they could tell us what they prefer. Wouldn’t that be an advantage?”

“To a whale?”

“Isn’t it an advantage for a race of creatures to be able to tell us it wants to be saved instead of just having us do it? Isn’t it an advantage to any creature to have a voice, language, and hands to manipulate things?”

“You mean, considering what mankind has done with all three of those great gifts?” He whinnied laughter.

She flushed. “Too many of mankind are fools, but not all. The waters rising may be the salvation of mankind, in fact. So we believe.”

“And you’re going to arrange it so whales would have hands?”

“A voice, a language, and manipulators of some kind. Whales and dolphins already have their own languages, but no one else can speak it. The easiest way to solve that may be the way we’ve done it already: create simple translators. Anyhow, that’s why I’m trying to give the wolves a language. I like wolves. I admire wolves. And horses.”

“Horses do not admire wolves.”

“I know. I realize that herding herbivores cannot admire packs of carnivores. I’m hopeful that the time will come when no creature with a developed brain will ever kill any other creature with a developed brain. We have always had two aims. First: to save humanity and as many other dryland living species as we can. Second: to make every intelligent creature mentally and physically capable of language and capable of talking to every other intelligent creature.”

“All creatures are intelligent.”

She threw up her hands, crying, “I know. We know. It’s impossible to save them all, so we started with those that either have a language or that we can give a language.”

She turned away from him, her shoulders sagging, and he knew this was a grave trouble to her.

He said, “Well, fish aren’t very intelligent, and we’ll all have to eat something. If the world is underwater, that means either fish or seaweed, and I don’t think I’d do well on fish.”