Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe Page 5

  And a dull crump echoed from the cliff face.

  Xaia turned. Dust billowed out of the cave over the city stratum, and chunks of the black rock wheeled almost gracefully in the air. Above the collapsed cave a small landslip was starting, burying what had been there before. The charges Lange had evidently set in the cave roof had gone off.

  Teif growled, ‘What a crime! To destroy a relic a billion years old, all out of selfish pique.’

  Chan laughed.

  Teif turned on him. ‘Have you gone mad?’

  ‘No!’ Chan quailed back. ‘It’s just – this man has shown what a fool he is, how much less of a man than his grandfather. Yes, he’s destroyed that one dig site. But I’ll wager the city itself, the black stratum, goes on for kilometres, deeper into the rock. Sealed in the dark as it has been since the day it submerged, safe in the sandstone. All we have to do is bring the resources here to dig it out.’

  Teif looked as if he was struggling to understand. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ He turned to Xaia. ‘So you found your treasure. Black rock and bits of discoloured glass. Is that enough for your vanity? Can we go home now?’

  Manda was sitting on Lange, pinning his arms. He struggled, and turned his head to spit at Xaia. ‘Yes, go home, Lady, you glory-seeking buffoon with your pack of thug-bitches. Go home in failure!’ He began to hawk, trying to spit again.

  Manda grabbed his jaw, turned his head towards her, and dug her fingers into his damaged eye socket. Thick blood spurted, and the man howled. When she held up her fist it contained a bloody sphere, and his face was left a ruin.

  Chan retched.

  Teif yelled, ‘What are you doing, woman?’

  ‘Proving he’s a liar,’ Manda said.

  Xaia hurried over and, mindless of the blood and mucus, took the eye and examined it in the sunlight. ‘It is an Orb. Teif, look! A globe of the world in the Founders’ steel – here is the Belt, here the Scatter. Just like the others.’

  Manda grinned. ‘I thought I recognised the profile of Zeeland, printed on his fake eyeball.’

  Xaia said, ‘I always wondered why there were only fourteen Orbs, when every tradition has it there were fifteen Founders.’ She glanced at her companions. ‘You realise what this means.’

  Teif said, awed, ‘You hold an Orb. You hold the authority of the Founders – as much as your husband.’

  ‘And it proves that Lange was lying,’ Manda said, still sitting on the whimpering man. ‘Nobody would have brought an artefact as precious as an Orb out of Ararat. Everybody knows it took generations before the Zeeland families collected the other Orbs, and longer still until they were united enough to join them into the necklace of the Fourteen … The only way an Orb could have been lost here is if a Founder came this way.’

  Xaia nodded. ‘And if she or he came this far, they would surely have gone further.’

  Teif, alarmed, stood directly before her and stared into her eyes. ‘Lady, don’t even think about it. The season is already late. If we go on, we will be caught by the winter.’

  Xaia looked at him, and laughed, and closed her fingers around the Orb. ‘Throw that fool back to his family. Break camp. We’re going back to the coast. And in the morning, we go on.’

  Manda howled like a dog. ‘North?’

  ‘North!’

  VI

  ‘Earth II is unstable.’

  Thom Robell paced the streets of Orklund, aides at his heels, Proctor Chivian at his side. It was September, close to the autumn equinox, and the weather was pleasant, temperate, though clouds covered the sky, and a light rain made the pavements of Thom’s home city gleam.

  At this time of year, with both the world’s poles looking away from the sun, the roll of the planet delivered day and night of equal lengths, about fifteen hours each. It was said that this time of year was the closest the climate of Earth II came to emulating that of old Earth itself. But everybody knew this was the last of the good weather. In a month the snow would start to fall, and in just two months the sun would disappear altogether, for eighty long days, and the coldwinter would set in. So, all over the city, people were preparing, bottling food, laying in fuel for fires, strengthening the stone walls of their houses, preparing the cellars dug into the ground where the soil would retain some of the warmth of summer even in the winter’s depths. It was an important time of the year, essential for survival. It was too late even to think about starting the Proctor’s absurd Library project; everybody was too busy for that. Winter was coming.

  And Xaia was not yet home.

  Thom tried to focus. ‘“Earth II is unstable.” What can that possibly mean, Proctor?’

  The Proctor sternly matched Thom pace for pace. Thom sensed that he wasn’t going to give up today. Perhaps he had given himself a private target of the equinox to convince the Speaker to cooperate. ‘It comes from the work of Jan Stanndish, Speaker. Who has cultivated your son, at my suggestion, in the hope of finding a way to your ear. I’m sorry if that seems cynical – we are desperate, Speaker. I don’t use that word lightly.’

  ‘Because the world is unstable?’

  ‘Yes! That is Stanndish’s conclusion, the outcome of page upon page of mathematics – I will not pretend that I follow it all. Some say Stanndish is the most brilliant scholar we have produced since the Founders’ generations. And what he has been analysing is the motion of Earth II itself.’

  Thom frowned. ‘What is there to understand? Earth II spins like a top on its axis. And it follows a circular orbit around its sun. The planet’s spin axis is tipped over so that it lies in the plane of the orbit. At the solstices one pole or another points directly at the sun, and half the world is light, and half dark -’

  ‘Almost. The orbit is an ellipse – low eccentricity, not quite a circle. And the axis is a few degrees away from the plane of the ecliptic -’

  ‘Into the sea with your nitpicking! How it is unstable, man?’

  ‘If it were alone in this solar system, if there were no other planets, Earth II would be perfectly stable, yes. But it is not alone. You are aware that further from the sun orbit two giant worlds, balls of gas we call Seba and Halivah, off in the dark.’ He glanced at the cloudy sky. ‘They are remote, but massive, and their strong gravity plucks at Earth II. You have a child. Did he ever play with spinning tops? If you poke a top with your finger -’

  ‘It wobbles.’

  ‘Yes. And that, we think, is what is going to happen to Earth II – and soon, given Stanndish’s integration of a series of astronomical observations dating back to the Founders themselves. Probably not this year, maybe not this decade – within a century, certainly. It is an excursion that seems to occur once every few tens of thousands of years. Stanndish says there is probably a periodicity to it, but -’

  Thom marched on ever faster, growing angry, not wanting to hear any of this. ‘An excursion? I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. A wobble? How can a planet wobble?’

  The Proctor held his hand level. ‘The rotation axis will tip up, away from the plane of the ecliptic.’ He tilted up his hand. ‘No longer will the summer pole point directly at the sun. We don’t know how far this excursion might be. We do know that everything about the cycle of the seasons will change.’

  Thom tried to imagine it. ‘No coldwinter. No coolsummer. Will it be more as Earth itself was?’

  ‘Perhaps. That might be the end state. But it’s the transition that concerns us, Speaker. For example we know that ice collected at the poles of Earth – huge caps of it, kilometres thick. Sea levels were lowered drastically. That can’t happen on Earth II, not today -’

  ‘Because any ice that forms in coldwinter melts each hotsummer.’

  ‘Yes. But if the axis tips … And even before then, as the global distributions of ice, water and water vapour adjust we must expect extreme climatic events. Storms. Droughts and floods, failures of rainfall …

  ‘And, even worse than that, the tipping planet will shudder. There will be earthquak
es and volcanoes. Tsunamis, perhaps, triggered by undersea quakes. The crust of our quiescent world is so thick that any volcano, punching through, will be violent, and will hurl billions of tonnes of rock and ash into the air. We can expect acid rain. A darkness, a global shadow perhaps lasting years.’

  Thom stopped pacing at last. He tried to imagine a huge wave washing across the islands of the Scatter. ‘Dear God,’ he said quietly. ‘I never heard of events like this in accounts of Earth.’

  ‘Earth was different, in many ways. Crucially it had a moon, a massive moon. That helped stabilise its spin. We have no moon.’

  ‘Why is it only now that I am learning of this?’

  ‘We try to be responsible. We don’t wish to cause panic. With respect, I have been trying to tell you of this for some months -’

  ‘The Founders themselves must have known this was a danger. They surely knew far more about the dynamics of planets than even your tame genius Jan Stanndish.’

  ‘Yes. We have inferred, from hints in the chronicles, that there was a split among the inhabitants of the Ark when they reached Earth II. Some thought it would be uninhabitable because of the axial tilt. It’s said that our Founders were only a fraction of the crew who chose to stay, rather than go on in the Ark.’

  ‘Go on where? … Never mind.’

  ‘Perhaps they believed there would be plenty of time to deal with any tipping. Perhaps they believed their descendants would be able to stabilise the world. Well, if they thought that, they were wrong; after just four centuries, this is the danger we face. And we have no Ark to escape on.’

  ‘Then what will become of us? Is this the end of mankind on Earth II?’

  ‘Oh, we don’t think so. We’re a pretty resilient species. But we think it may be the end of civilisation. And if we do fall we may be slow to rise again. You know that this world has been emptied of its oil and metal ores by those who went before us.’

  ‘The Dead.’

  ‘Yes. How, then, can our descendants recover? And even if they do, even if there are once more cities and ships and scholars and Speakers, what will they know of where they came from? If the tale of the Founders survives at all, it will seem a legend.’

  And Thom understood. ‘Ah. And this is why you want to build the Library.’

  ‘Yes. So that our memory of our true origin will never be lost. Now do you see why it’s so urgent we do this?’

  ‘But it’s such an immense project, Proctor. We are a society that must work hard merely to stay alive – you can see that all around you today – we don’t have the spare resources for grandiose monuments.’ Xaia, Xaia – if only she was here! She was not wonderfully wise, and nor was Thom, but together, they seemed to make the right judgements … ‘Proctor, are you sure this axial excursion is going to happen? And that the effects will be as dire as you say?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We can prove it. It’s happened before. Not once but many times. You can see it in the rocks. Your wife told us she was making for a formation called the Reef, didn’t she? According to the Founders’ own records the Reef is the remains of a city, a Dead city, buried in the rock. You could see where the city had been – a thousand years of history, of building - and then the marks of the inundation - and then nothing, Speaker, nothing but layer upon layer of rock and the remains of burrowing purple things. That city never recovered. Even the people who built it have vanished, Speaker. Maybe they could not recover their culture, as all the metals and fuels were gone. Maybe another tilt wiped them out altogether. Or maybe they simply left this world for a better one, as the Founders left Earth.

  ‘We owe it to our descendants that cities like Orklund do not suffer the same fate.’ He grabbed Thom’s arm. ‘There’s still time to start, even this year. I know you fear for your wife. But she’s not coming home this year, if she ever comes home at all. Make your decision, Speaker. Let me build my Library. Let me save civilisation.’

  VII

  His name, he said, was Eykyn. Some kind of grease covered his face, to keep out the wind, and his hair was a nest of ropy lanks. Bundled up in what looked like layers of rabbit fur, it was impossible to tell how old he was.

  Eykyn’s home was a mound, already covered thick with snow. The entrance was a dark hole without even a proper door, just a plug of wood and grass that could be forced in, a bung to keep out the cold. It was clear that the main part of the dwelling was deep underground, deep enough that the frost could not reach.

  Xaia, Teif, Manda and Chan faced Eykyn, cold to the bones, wary, exhausted. The ground was already frozen, encased under layers of snow. They couldn’t survive out here. But that door was like a mouth, Xaia thought uneasily, a mouth in the earth that would swallow them all up. She felt deeply reluctant to enter.

  Eykyn smiled, showing blackened, gappy teeth. ‘You are welcome,’ he said, gesturing. His accent was something like that of Ararat, much thicker, distorted. ‘People are scattered pretty thin up here, and hunker down in the coldfall. We have food.’

  Teif, his cloak pulled around him, scowled. ‘What kind of food?’

  ‘Rabbit. Other stuff. You’ll see.’

  ‘And you’ll share it with us, will you?’ Manda said. ‘A bunch of people who just walked up out of nowhere.’

  ‘People are scattered thin,’ he said again. ‘Have to help each other. Otherwise none survive.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Manda said. Lacking Teif’s mass, the cold had got to her more and she was shivering. ‘Living like animals in the hole in the ground. What kind of people are they?’

  ‘Living people,’ Chan said, his own teeth chattering. ‘Surviving. It’s a rational strategy. Even given the depths of coldwinter, the season is so brief that the frost can’t penetrate too deeply into the ground.’

  ‘I say we leave this ball of grease to his pit,’ Manda said. ‘I don’t like the look of him.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of you,’ Teif said. ‘I don’t see what choice we have.’

  ‘We build our own shelter. Blocks of snow. We don’t need him.’

  ‘The sun’s nearly gone,’ Chan said. ‘We left it too late.’

  Xaia looked up at a lid of cloud. A flurry of snow came in on the wind, the flakes needle-sharp where they hit her cheeks.

  Chan was right. He usually was. They had left it too late. It was October now, they were deep into the coldfall, and the days seemed to get markedly shorter, one after the next. The ships were having to stand further off the coast because of the gathering pack ice, and Teif had lost several crew to frostbite and hypothermia already. To show leadership Xaia had undertaken the last few scouting trips into the land’s frozen interior herself, she and her lieutenants, searching for evidence of the City of the Living Dead. But today, not for the first time, they had got their timing wrong, and as the night’s cold clamped down they had got themselves stranded far from the coast.

  And here was this man, this Eykyn, offering them shelter.

  She murmured. ‘We’re all armed. We’re none of us fools. We take what we need from this man; we take no risks. All right?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Manda said again.

  ‘We have no choice,’ Chan said bluntly.

  ‘Discussion over,’ Xaia snapped. She led the way forward.

  Eykyn’s grin widened, and he stuck out his hand. She forced herself to shake it. Then she followed him into the mouth-like door of his shelter.

  Eykyn was shorter than she was, short and round, maybe an adaptation to the cold. She had to duck to follow him down the sharply-sloping tunnel.

  The walls were frozen and slick to the touch. The only light came from scattered lamps in alcoves dug into the wall, lamps that burned something smoky and stinking, perhaps animal fat. Down she clambered, deeper and deeper. It was like a nightmare, the enclosing walls and roof, the hunched form of the man going before her, the harsh breaths of her companions as they followed, all of it visible only in shards and shadowed glimpses.

  She had no idea how deep th
ey had descended before the tunnel opened out into a wider chamber. She stepped out onto a floor of hard-trampled earth – trampled but not frozen. Her companions followed her, Teif straightening stiffly.

  More oil lamps revealed a dome-shaped chamber, a dozen paces across, maybe more. The ceiling was coated with a kind of thatch. A fire, banked up, glowed in the middle of the floor. Possessions were scattered around, heaps of skin, animal bones. More people huddled warily by the far wall, men, women, children like balls of fur with wide eyes; the light was too uncertain to be able to see clearly.

  Eykyn stood proudly.

  Teif flared his broad nostrils. ‘Stinks like a toilet.’

  ‘You’re none too fragrant yourself,’ Xaia murmured.

  Manda was loosening her outer layer of clothing. ‘It’s not cold.’

  ‘I told you,’ Chan said. ‘Go deep enough and it never gets too cold – or too hot. Look – see the tree roots in that wall? Trees from Earth are adapting to survive, growing deep roots down beneath the frost, so their sap flows through the winter.’ He glanced around. ‘There are elements of design. The thatch must soak up the fire’s smoke. And the fire itself is banked and air-starved so it burns slowly. See the way the lamps flicker? There must be passages for the circulation of the air …’

  Xaia saw a heap of bones in one corner, stacked as if precious. Big bones, maybe from horse or cattle.

  Eykyn gestured at heaps of straw. ‘Summer grass. Beds. Eat, sleep, drink.’ He beckoned, and a couple of the older children came over with earthen plates piled with meat. One brighter-looking little girl was almost pretty, under the grease, and her hair was plaited. She smiled at Xaia.

  Xaia took a plate from the girl and bit into a chunk of meat. ‘Rabbit. It tastes fresh. I mean, not salted or dried.’

  ‘So it is,’ Eykyn said.

  Teif growled, ‘How can you find fresh rabbit at this time of year?’

  ‘We know where they hibernate. Big burrows in the ground.’ He pointed. ‘We have tunnels. We don’t even go up top. And we have the flesh of the horses and cattle from the herds that pass at the equinoxes. Dried, salted. We have dried fruit, wheat, the harvest from the spring and autumn.’