Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe Page 6

  ‘How many are you?’ Teif growled.

  ‘Not many. You can see.’

  ‘Why live here?’ Manda said. ‘Why raise your children in a hole in the ground?’

  ‘Our forefathers came here to get away from the cities. This is our land, our place. Our way.’

  ‘It is a remarkable feat of adaptation,’ Chan said.

  Eykyn eyed Xaia. ‘You’re far from home.’

  ‘I’m seeking the City of the Living Dead.’

  Eykyn shrugged.

  Xaia said, ‘If it exists, it’s north of here. Do you know how far north?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. Never been there. Never met anybody who has.’

  ‘Do you believe it exists?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’

  Chan asked, ‘How many live like this, further north yet?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. None, so far as I know.’

  Teif asked, ‘Do you think it’s worth going on, hunting the City?’

  He smiled that broken smile. ‘If you do, come back this way. We’ll make you welcome.’ He held out the meat plates. ‘Look, do you want this or not?’

  So they ate, and washed their faces in the meltwater that trickled from a pipe in the wall, and, self-conscious, used the corner of the dwelling marked out as a lavatory. The natives stayed away, though the children brought them more food.

  To some unspoken signal, Eykyn and his people retreated to their own heaps of straw and fur.

  It was a relief for Xaia to spread out her cloak on her pile of dry summer straw, and ease her boots off and tend to her feet, rubbing the sore patches and work at calluses and blisters; mercifully she was still free of frostbite. She found she couldn’t bear to have the rabbit-fur blankets Eykyn had given them anywhere near her body. She made a pile of her own clothes and burrowed into it.

  The whole chamber was like a nest, full of breaths, sighs, farts, the rustling of straw as adults and children tried to get comfortable. Perhaps she slept.

  ‘They are like animals.’

  The whisper, soft in her ear, startled her awake. There was a mass in the bed with her, warm, heavy. She reached for her blade, under the heaped jacket she was using as a pillow.

  A hand touched her bare shoulder, a callused palm. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Manda? What the hell?’

  Manda kneaded her shoulder, her hand strong. She was behind Xaia, and snuggled closer; Xaia felt the pressure of her belly against her back, her knees in the crook of her own. ‘I was cold. Couldn’t bear those piss-soaked furs.’

  ‘No.’ Xaia laughed softly. ‘Nor I. Stay, then.’

  Manda’s hand slid down Xaia’s arm, caressing.

  Xaia came even wider awake. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Do you ever feel as if you are the only human beings in the world? You and I, Xaia. Listen to them.’ Soft snores, a scuffling as if somebody was humping somebody else. ‘They are animals. Like pigs. Even Teif. They turn into animals when they sleep. But not us. We don’t need them.’ Her hand slid over Xaia’s waist.

  Xaia, thrilled, uneasy, didn’t want her to stop. ‘Need them? I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t need Thom. Not any more. Not after this. You have an Orb, the Orb you took from Ossay Lange. A Founder’s Orb, the fifteenth, as valid as the fourteen that dangle from Thom’s fat neck. And you didn’t just have it handed to you by your uncle, like Thom. You found your Orb yourself, you risked your own life -’

  ‘And spent the lives of others.’

  ‘You can rule in your own right. We don’t need these others, Thom grunting like a pig over you.’ Her hand slid over Xaia’s breast, hard-palmed, almost like a man’s, and Xaia’s body shuddered with shock and desire. ‘We can rule Zeeland, you and I, Zeeland and the Scatter and the Belt and the rest of the world, forever -’ The word ended in a throaty gurgle. She convulsed, her hand gripping Xaia’s flesh so hard it hurt.

  And Xaia felt a seeping of warm fluid, smelled an unmistakeable iron tang. Blood. Suddenly there was shouting, screaming.

  Xaia grabbed her knife and rolled out of her bed, coming to her feet in a tangle of clothing. The light was dim. People moved everywhere, adults, children. She saw Chan huddled against a wall, a sword held in both hands before him. Before her, Manda, beautiful Manda, lay on her back with her throat laid open by a livid slash, her eyes on Xaia, fading. Over Manda’s prone body stood the girl, the smiling kid with the plaits who had brought Xaia the plate of fresh rabbit meat. She held a bloody knife in her hand.

  And Teif stood in the middle of the chamber, huge, wrathful. Blood seeped from his own belly. Eykyn’s people stood off from him, wary. He swung his sword - and removed the head of Manda’s killer with a single swipe. The pretty head fell onto Manda’s belly, and the body convulsed, blood spurting from the arteries at the slim neck before falling.

  The others closed in, the adults and the older children, all armed with clubs and knives. Xaia and Teif pushed through to stand before Chan by the wall, and Xaia scrabbled for her firearm. The detonations of the gunshots were ear-numbingly loud in the enclosed space, and their blades cut satisfyingly into human flesh. Xaia ignored the ache in her healing left arm, just as Teif showed no reaction to the gash in his belly.

  The fight didn’t last long.

  When it was done, Teif and Xaia laboured to pile the corpses at the centre of the chamber, Teif at the shoulders and Xaia grabbing feet and legs. The floor was slippery with blood, and spilled guts. Xaia was aware that Teif was grunting, his own wound giving him trouble. She felt stunned at the loss of Manda, unable to react, to think further.

  They had spared a couple of the women, the smaller children. They huddled against a wall, clutching furs, eyes wide and fearful.

  ‘Told you so,’ Teif said as they worked.

  ‘So you did, old man. I won’t question you again.’

  Chan, trembling, was in shock too. He seemed as afraid of Teif and Xaia as of dead Eykyn’s people. ‘I never saw people die that way. You were outnumbered. They way you killed them all – it was a frenzy.’

  ‘They are butchers,’ Teif said. ‘We are warriors. Once they lost the element of surprise they were doomed.’

  Chan was nodding. ‘Butchers, yes. That’s the right word. There are human bones, piled up in the corner with the others. I took a look. You can see the butchery marks. They sit here in their hole in the ground, eking out their summer supplies, their scavenging of hibernating animals. And, when chance wills it, they take the opportunity to feast on a supplement, on passing humans whose flesh they take like that of the animals that migrate at the equinoxes. No wonder Lange’s cousins exiled from the Reef never came home!’ He glanced at the frightened children who huddled against their mothers. ‘Maybe they feed on their own, when times are particularly hard. Their own children as emergency larders. But with you three, they bit down on gristle.’

  ‘I wonder what the Founders would think,’ Teif said. ‘If they could see this, see what they made, when they brought their children here.’

  Xaia glanced at Manda’s body, covered by her own cloak. She had learned more of Manda, the true meaning of her ferocious loyalty, her true ambitions, in Manda’s last few seconds of life than in all the years before. No wonder Manda had always driven Xaia on to feats of ever greater daring and ambition. She would never know how it might have worked out, one way or another, if Manda had lived - and become a rival to Thom in Xaia’s heart. Well, it was a story cut short, of ambition and lust and maybe love thwarted. Maybe it was better that way.

  She glanced at the cowering women and children. ‘Do you think they can survive? All the men are dead.’

  Chan shrugged. ‘I know you’re planning to take their supplies, their bread and jerky -’

  ‘Who cares?’ Teif asked. They had finished their corpse-piling he stood, breathing hard, holding his great right hand over his wound. ‘Let them eat their husbands and fathers. As for us, we stay until morning – and then we go, Xaia. Back to the ship
s, and to the south, and home. We’ve come to the end of the world, and all we’ve found here is decadence and savagery.’

  ‘But the City,’ Xaia murmured. ‘It may still exist.’ She looked at Manda’s corpse. ‘And it’s already cost me so much. In the morning we go on.’

  ‘North? How far, Xaia? How long? What would it take to convince you the quest is futile? When you are dying yourself, or freezing to death? I can’t let you put yourself at such risk again. Not while I’m still able to save you.’

  Teil’s loyalty moved her. But she said, ‘We go on. In the morning … But first we’ll take care of Manda.’

  ‘We can’t bury her,’ Chan said. ‘The ground is like iron.’

  ‘We’ll take her back to the ship,’ Teif said. ‘Bury her at sea. She’d have appreciated that, I think, even though she was a lousy sailor.’ Then he slumped against a wall of the chamber. His sword propped against his legs, he kneaded his belly and grimaced in pain, his face grey. But he wouldn’t let Chan or Xaia see the wound.

  VIII

  It was November by the time Proctor Chivian’s surveyors had chosen the optimal site for their Library of the Founders. It was inland, so away from the coast and any evidence of oceanic incursions on the past, and on the side of a hill, far from the flood plain of the nearest river, and far from the craggy slopes of Zeeland’s principal mountain, a volcano that had been long dormant but which, Chivian assured Thom, might waken when the world tilted and shook. ‘Nowhere is entirely safe,’ Chivian said. ‘Not on this world. But this vault, dug deep into the bedrock, will be as safe a repository as possible for the Founders’ wisdom.’

  Thom grunted. A thin sleet was falling from a leaden grey sky. He and the Proctor stood on the hillside above the construction site. From here he looked down a sweeping valley to the huddled rooftops of Orklund, and saw the glimmer of the sea beyond, with the murky glow of the cloud-masked sun low on the horizon. At this time of year, the sun never climbed much higher, and soon it would not rise at all.

  But even now, in late November, as the world headed into the depths of the coldwinter, the Proctor had insisted the work proceed. So teams of workers were kicking aside resistant clumps of Purple, and hacking at the ground, stripping back the turf and the scree to expose the bedrock that lay beneath. The monument they would erect here, the Proctor had assured Thom, would be visible from throughout Orklund. But much labour remained to be completed before that monument’s capstone was put in place.

  Thom said now, ‘It’s not the challenges facing future generations that trouble me, Proctor, but the difficulties I’m imposing on this one. That rock is basaltic. It will be a huge task to dig as deep into it as you claim you need.’

  ‘We have explosives,’ the Proctor murmured, unperturbed. ‘And plenty of spare muscle.’

  He was referring to the Proctors’ proposals to ship over indentured labour from defeated Brython. It would be another hugely unpopular step for Thom to take, and a further darkening of the relationship between Zeeland and Brython. And all without any input, let alone approval, from Xaia. But by now Thom knew what the Proctor was thinking: that if Xaia had not come home by now, this deep into the winter, the chances were she never would, and was therefore no longer a factor in the Proctor’s calculations about the future.

  The Proctor said now, ‘Grasp the goal, Speaker. Visualise the end goal. This won’t be just a Library; there will be a whole town here, of scholars and farmers and merchants and builders, all that is needed to support a great academic institution, and a network of roads to link it to Orklund and beyond. I’m told there is a proposal to name a wing of the Library after me. I am quite sure they will name the new city for you, as a memorial to your visionary leadership that will last for all time - even through the next precession event.’

  Or I will be condemned as the greatest fool since the Landfall, Thom thought gloomily. Thom hadn’t felt in control of events since the Proctor’s party had turned up at the parliament halls so many months ago with his outlandish proposal. If only Xaia were here.

  Come home, Xaia Windru! Come home!

  IX

  The crew had to be forced to enter the City of the Living Dead. Only Xaia herself went willingly, and Chan – and Teif, because he hadn’t left Xaia’s side since the nest of Eykyn, even though he loudly despised the inhuman place.

  ‘Inhuman, yes,’ he said as once again he walked with Xaia through the City. ‘The very light that bathes us is inhuman.’ A violet glow coming from all around them, it cast no shadows. ‘And human cities stay still; they don’t swim around you. There’s nothing here for us. There never was …’

  ‘It has some similarities with our cities,’ Xaia protested, and she quoted Chan’s analyses back at him. ‘It’s finite, for one thing, with an edge. Different within than without. It has internal structure that Chan is trying to map -’

  Teif swung a leg at a structure like a low, softly glowing wall. It broke up into clouds of violet spores. ‘It’s just Purple! Just a heaping-up of weeds …’ But the gentle action had hurt him, and his hand went to his lower belly.

  Xaia was concerned for him. But he wouldn’t even admit the wound’s existence. There was nothing she could do for him, because there was nothing she was allowed to do.

  He was right, in some ways, about the City of the Living Dead, however.

  At least they had found it, however enigmatic it was. She had achieved her goal. She supposed history would remember that about her, if it forgot everything else – always assuming she survived to tell the tale.

  After the nest of Eykyn they had returned to the coast and pressed on with their dual journey, the ships at sea and the scouting parties on land, heading ever further north. At last there had come a day when the sun hadn’t shown at all, and there had only been a vague, reluctant glow on the horizon at high noon. This was several days ahead of the sun’s disappearance at the latitudes of Orklund and Ararat, Chan said, itself a measure of how far north they had travelled. The cold bit hard, turning the ground to rock and the sea to a plain of pack ice. Soon the ships could no longer follow, for fear of being caught in the ice and crushed. So Xaia had ordered the construction of sleds, with runners made from polished ship beams, and harnesses for the huge warhorses that had endured this journey for months in the ships’ holds. And on they had pressed, with sleds laden with tents and food and fuel dragged by horses with iron grips nailed to their hooves, and when the horses had failed and died and been butchered, still a remnant of the party had pressed on over the frozen land, the sleds dragged by human muscle alone.

  It had been an epic journey; nobody would deny that. But in the end, it was perhaps only Xaia herself who had continued to believe – until at last the forward scouts had spotted the violet glow on the northern horizon.

  Presumably the vanished race called the Dead had been nothing like humans, to have built such a city as like this. Even the lighting was exotic. There were no lamps or fires. The City itself glowed, the streets and the structures that lined them all shining a faint violet. Often, when the skies were clear, this strange, subtly shifting glow was answered by the flapping of auroras far above, as if the star-strewn sky was a mirror.

  And there was an endless mobility. It was a ‘city’ of streets and blocks and structures, like buildings or like trees, some of which grew and changed as you watched them. Chan said there were patterns everywhere in the City, in the branches of the tree-like structures and in how they interconnected, and even in the layout of the ‘streets’ – if that was the right word, if these broad open avenues had a function anything like the streets in Orklund. Every day the scholar busily mapped what he could, walking the length of the City accompanied by crew holding up lamps. And every day, he said, he found the City changed, on every scale from the smallest to its largest. It had complexity and structure that changed in space and in time, he said, scribbling his maps and charts. He longed for the ‘computers’ spoken of by the Founders, marvellous machines that could hav
e analysed such complexity at the touch of a button.

  And Teif seemed to be right. All of it was made of Purple, the ubiquitous native weed that cost human farmers and gardeners so much energy in eradication. Kick a wall, push your hand through the side of a ‘building’, and the substance crumbled down to elusive spore-like structures, blowing away on the wind from the north, perhaps to settle on some other part of the City, a subtle and endless rebuilding.

  ‘Yes, it really is just Purple,’ Chan said at the end of the day, when Xaia and Teif and the scouts had retreated to the igloo village they had constructed on the City’s edge. ‘I say “just”. The shining is a new phenomenon, though there have been reports of bioluminescent clumps before, found in caves and so forth.’

  Xaia said, ‘Some of the crew don’t believe the City actually glows by its own light, but is just reflecting the aurora’s glare.’

  Chan snorted. ‘That’s easily disproved. Just bring a handful of the stuff into an igloo and douse the lamps. That’s typical of the untrained mind, that it’s incapable even of observing something that defies its own prejudices. In fact I suspect it may be the other way around. That the city’s evolving patterns generate a kind of electrical activity, which in turn interacts with the aurora …’

  Xaia shook her head. ‘I never heard of Purple behaving this way before.’

  Chan shrugged. ‘It could be that’s because humans always treated Purple as just a weed, to be cleared out of the way so we could graze our cattle and plant our beans. It’s said that the Founders’ Shuttle pilots deliberately aimed for the densest Purple reef they could see, on the modern site of Ararat, in order to cushion their landing. We have smashed up the Purple from the first Landfall. It’s only here, far beyond the reach of humans, that it can flourish in these complex communal forms.’