Tropic of Creation (25 page)

“Don’t be a clod. Of course not. We have to draw the line somewhere.” His voice was laced with heavy irony. “I for one would draw it right there.”

They fell silent as they descended, with Tirinn puffing even more heavily than he had on the way up. Vod thought the old fluxor might die just from the exertion of the stairs and the shock of what he had seen. It would have been an altogether better death than the one Tirinn was likely to get.

F
ive ahtran guards herded Eli along. They told him that the short wands they carried would fell him in an instant if he ran; he didn’t doubt their prods could do the job. Many dwellers followed in their wake, eager to see the spectacle, their voices trailing in a throbbing bass rumble.

The guard to his left was the one who spoke the best Standard. From him Eli learned that he had won his wager with Nefer Ton Enkar. The first fluxors had returned from ronid, giving reports that at least some humans still survived. The guard couldn’t say how many of his crew or passengers yet lived, but the news gripped Eli fiercely. He thought of his best soldiers, and of Sascha and Geoff and Luce Marzano. He couldn’t let himself believe it was any of these, but the hope broke through anyway.

Now the flow was bursting with demands to see him paid off in full view, in the PrimeWay. The rabble—the diggers—were especially keen on such rituals, the guard said, and in a show of indulgence, Nefer Ton Enkar had agreed to the event. Her popularity soared. Upon losing a
wager, one does not begrudge the winner, he added piously.

This ahtra had good reason to learn a bit of his prisoner’s language. For tidbits of information, Eli had agreed to behave in certain ways that the guard wagered upon. Especially on what days Eli would become outward and fight his guards. The guard on his left had earned a tidy sum off of Eli, and was disposed to offer bits of information in payment.

From side ways dwellers poured forth, falling in behind what had become a jammed procession. Eli looked straight ahead of him, conscious of the train of ahtra behind him. It all fed into his plan. The bigger the crowd, the more his gambit might thrive. Much like entering armed combat, his muscles surged with adrenaline.

Nefer would be waiting for him, and that would be a battle in its own right.

Coming into the expansive PrimeWay, Eli took a powerful breath of the cooler air, finding relief in the vast arched ceiling after the confinement of the smaller ways. He looked for Maret as he and his escort pressed through the throng, but all he saw were strangers, and the occasional gomin in the typical white flowing dress. Over the heads of the thousands of ahtra crowded into the way, he glimpsed a great canopy—the stage that was his destination.

As the guards pushed him forward, Eli saw one ahtra he recognized. Not Maret, but the gomin of his virtual conversations. She looked very pale, and she turned away from Eli, but he managed to swerve closer. The guards grabbed him firmly, but Eli made eye contact with her. “Translate for me,” he said, “and I will repay you.”

The guards pushed him onward, and the gomin fell into step. “I am only a gomin—now less than all others.”

Eli jammed to a stop. “What is your name?”

The guards indulged him for a moment as she stammered, “I am a gomin.”

“Everyone has a name.”

She looked him full in the face then. “Zehops Cer Aton.”

“Well, then, Zehops-as, speak for me today.” He twisted his head to see if she followed, but now, pushed firmly onward by his escort, only the stage filled his view. He climbed the ladder as he was bid to do, finding himself on a platform some fifteen feet above the ground. Maret had once told him that this was a favorite stage for the ahtran dramas that flourished alongside the virtual entertainments of the flow. Below him, a vast crowd filled the PrimeWay. Above the throng, a breeze greeted him, bringing the sweet and sour odor of his enemies to his nostrils.

And Nefer stood waiting there. Whatever she herself smelled, she took snuff to remedy it; one of her attendants offered a wand to her.

Her great blue eyes raked over him, then she turned to the PrimeWay. She spoke, and a hush descended. Whatever the content of her speech, it was short, and then greeted with a roaring so deep it seemed to issue from the cavern itself.

Nefer turned to him. Her entourage turned with her, as though they were her chorus in a play. She said, in Standard, “State what is your very reasonable demand, Eli Dammond, upon the winning of this minor wager.” As he was about to speak, she added, “Always remembering that one has said one would not break traditions.”

“Nefer-as,” he said, avoiding her eyes, and looking steadfastly out to find Zehops in the crowd, “I would have my translator speak for me.”

“I would be your translator. There is no other, you perceive.”

“There is Zehops Cer Aton.”

At the sound of this name, those foremost in the crowd
stirred, passing the news backward, and Eli heard the whispers of
“Zehops Cer Aton, Zebops Cer Aton …”

Nefer’s attendants engaged her in heated discussion, perhaps of protocols, but before Nefer could respond, Zehops was climbing the ladder, her robes flashing their subtle aurora. Guards surged after her, but Nefer waved them back.

As Zehops came to stand next to Eli, a murmur swelled up to the stage from the crowd below. Zehops looked small and terrified.

Declining to take notice of the gomin, Nefer said, her voice amplified: “One is ready to hear your request, Eli Dammond.”

He filled his lungs and said to the crowd: “Leniency.” And Zehops turned to the masses and uttered an ahtran word that Eli could only hope matched the nuance of the word he had chosen.

Nefer spoke to the crowd. Beside him, Zehops murmured her translation: “There tend to be many who would say I have been lenient with you, Eli Dammond.”

He answered Nefer, looking at the rapt faces tilted up at the stage. “Not for myself. For Zehops Cer Aton.” Zehops turned to stare at Eli. “Tell them,” he urged.

Her translation caused a stir.

All down the PrimeWay screens showed Eli and Nefer and Zehops standing there, and from all down the corridor, Eli heard his own voice echo back to him, along with a crescendo of murmurs from the gathered throng. A shuffling ensued, and after a moment it became clear that gomin were pressing forward, threading their way through the crowd to the foot of the stage. Though it seemed to stir anger in some ahtra, others stepped aside and allowed their more colorful neighbors to come forward.

Beside him, Zehops was trembling. “They may think my translation tends away from the truth,” she said to him.

In what he hoped was a confirming gesture, Eli placed his hand on the gomin’s shoulder. “Leniency,” he repeated.

Zehops translated.

The cavern of the PrimeWay surged again with bass voices. Amidst this clamor Eli saw some dwellers dressed in the garb of diggers push forward to join the gomin. Several hundred dwellers stood there, the grime of digging in sharp contrast to the shimmers of the gomin robes beside them.

And then Nefer was speaking. Her voice carried along the PrimeWay, and next to Eli, Zehops whispered her rendition. The speech was laced with references to loyalty and subversion and tradition. But amidst her calm words, Nefer could not help but note the rapt faces of the gomin and the diggers at the foot of the stage, looking up at Zehops and Eli. Perhaps it was this that persuaded her to grant the request, for she ended by saying that Zehops Cer Aton would have her access to the flow reinstated, provided that all her data strands were public, and several other limitations that made no sense to Eli.

When Nefer was finished speaking, Eli turned to Zehops. “Is it lenient, what Nefer is allowing?”

Zehops looked at him for a long moment. “There is a probability one can find a path of happiness after all, I come to believe.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It tends to be a yes.”

Eli nodded, then spoke to the crowd. “That is fair payment for my win. I thank Nefer Ton Enkar.”

As Nefer turned to go, the crowd seemed fixed on Eli. He had stepped toward the edge of the stage. They knew, with their sense of spectacle, that more was to come.

“Nefer-as,” he said. “There’s one more thing.” He searched for Maret, hoping that he would get it right.

Nefer stopped along with her entourage. Slowly, she turned to face him, her eyes as wary as Eli had ever seen
them. She looked at him as though he had a weapon. And he did.

“I demand to return home,” he said.

When Zehops translated, the throng erupted, their rumblings and shouts echoing along the PrimeWay and looping back from speakers. The gomin in front of the stage were louder than anyone.

“You have accepted payment for the wager!” Nefer boomed out. “Too late to ask for what must regrettably be denied—due to tradition.”

In turn, Eli shouted over the tumult of the crowd. “But tradition holds that those whose names live in the flow are still with you, are remembered, are dwellers forever. I am present in the flow. From the moment I came among you, my name was a subject of wager and discourse.” Over the surging voices of the crowd, Eli called out, “I claim my right to ascend.”

“A human cannot undergo ronid!” Nefer responded.

Beside him, Zehops trembled and grew ashen with the stress of translation.

Eli steadied her with a grip on her elbow. Then he proclaimed, “Let the vone decide who may and may not, as they do with all who ascend.”

At that, pandemonium overtook the crowd. Below Eli’s feet, a wave of dwellers surged against the stage, their shouts deafening.

Next to him, Zehops shouted something, a brief salvo. And then the gomin below took it up as a chant.

At Eli’s questioning look, Zehops explained, “For Eli’s kin. For Eli’s kin.”

Then, to his surprise, this chant proliferated up and down the PrimeWay.

Nefer held out her arms. “A Data Guide has not approved him! He has had no training. It is not in accord with tradition!”

After several minutes of continuing pandemonium, Eli
noted a commotion at the foot of the stage ladder. Then an ahtra of exceptional bulk could be seen lumbering up onto the stage. His appearance caused a hush to fall over the throng. To his side, Eli heard something very like a growl from Nefer.

The new figure spoke to the crowd in a soft voice. He appeared almost weary in his demeanor, but the crowd hung on every word.

Zehops translated. “Thus says Tirinn Vir Horat: As for training, Nefer Ton Enkar has kept this human on a data stage as his prison, and tested him most thoroughly.” Then the rotund ahtra turned to Nefer and spread his arms in a simple gesture that seemed to convey self-evident truth.

Zehops translated. “I say he ascends.”

At this statement, the clamor in the PrimeWay made further talk futile, and Eli judged that the crowd was overwhelmingly persuaded in his favor—for as long as crowd emotions might last.

In the uproar, Nefer approached Eli, leaving her escort on the other side of the stage. As she drew closer, her stare caused Zehops to hastily retreat.

Nefer stopped just far enough away that she needn’t raise her chin to look Eli in the face. Her eyes took him in with a frozen calm. “Go, then, Eli Dammond. One withdraws protection of you.” A small white smile appeared and fled. “And may the monsters of the upper realm delight in you.”

Eli returned her gaze, gray eyes against blue. “They can’t be worse than the monster of Down World,” he said. “But I thank you for your hospitality, Nefer Ton Enkar.”

S
ascha grabbed on to a thick root and hauled herself up the steep slope after Private “Lemon” Limon, who kicked in footholds on the way to the ridge. Behind her, Private “Pig” Platis shuffled and grunted in the effort of his climb. The lamp, hanging now on her back to keep it from banging against the hillside, sprayed its light across the valley. Perhaps, somewhere below, Badri Nazim could see this beacon—or Captain Dammond, if he had returned from the lair of the ahtra.

She’d told Sergeant Juric about her ahtra sighting. By his face she couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.