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for all his adult life -- was after all a murderer and a pillager of Khem, his homeland. Bar-Woten had said startling things under the influence of the demon's needles. Fifteen years of travel together had not revealed such things. Bar-Woten's drugged ramblings had raised the past to hideous life, bringing back the phantom of his mother -- long lost in his thoughts, part of a warm, frightening blankness -- haunting Barthel with all the memories and suspicions he had always known would be best left forgotten, dropped like plum stones in a pond. Bar-Woten stirred in the dark and murmured. You are no longer Barthel, servant to the Ibisian who killed me, the ghost told her son. You are Amma bin Akka, and you are free. Prove you are free. Barthel stood over the Bey, the Ibisian. He lifted the sharp strip, tears filling his eyes and streaming down his cheeks. He thought, I have served you, worshipped you, followed you across land and sea. I have loved you. Why must I be the one to kill you? He beseeched the ghost, but she would not relent. You belong with us, she said. Your sisters are with us. We kept them from the conqueror's hands, as we would have kept you. All of our family, together. Carried in the Bey's strong arms, rushed from a house full of corpses, Barthel had caught a glimpse of his sisters, their throats cut, lying on their pallet in the two-room mastaba-house, blood dark red in the dusty sunlight from the smoke-hole in the straw roof. Barthel had been little more than a baby; the drugs had opened his earliest memories now, and they were eating him alive. Before the Bey had come to pick him up, he had heard his sisters' shrieks, his father's prayers to Allah, his mother's weeping. Had seen the dull flash of the sheep-knife lifted above the mud-brick partition. With a strangled shout, Barthel drove the makeshift blade down toward the Ibisian. Kiril heard a shout and the tearing of fabric. He sat up half awake and grunted a question. Bar-Woten felt the resistance of flesh and the warmth of spilling blood but by then it was too late. He had reacted with the automatism of a scorpion's tail, had rolled from the point's arc and, not thinking who might be attacking, had thrown up the bedclothes, entangling the assailant. Drops of moisture -- Barthel's tears -- stung against his cheek. The shadow struck again and again, shrieking and kicking like an enraged child. Knowing with twenty years of combat experience where the weapon was, even in the dark, Bar-Woten grabbed the hand and turned the point inward, driving it home with a kick of his foot against the shattered wrist. The attacker had no chance and perhaps he had known that. With a quiet gasp he went down and whether there had been blood first, or the resistance of the flesh, the snap of bone or the tearing of cloth, there was no knowing. For Bar-Woten, still half-asleep, it was all muddled. A light came on. Two guards stood sleepy-eyed in the cell's open doorway. Bar-Woten looked down on his servant from where he lay on the cot. Barthel, tangled in bed- clothes, writhed on the floor, saliva and tears shining on his face and chin. He stared at Bar- Woten. "Bey!" he said, his voice like a lamb's bleat. Bar-Woten got down on his knees beside the boy and hugged him, his one good eye still dry, but closed. "They would have killed you," he whispered in Ibisian. Barthel had pulled the point from his stomach and was trying ineffectually to shove it through the Ibisian's thick sailor's coat. Bar- Woten did not block the stabs; they didn't even draw blood. "I was mad from the carnage, and they were slaughtering infants. I could not stand by. I did not know they were your parents." The guards raised their rifles. "No!" Kiril shouted. He leaped from his cot and stood before the two. Bar-Woten glanced up at his back, face impassive and white in the sudden glare. One guard stepped forward and knocked Kiril aside, reaching down to remove the strip of metal from Barthel's grasp. He raised the butt of his rifle to drive back Bar-Woten, but the thin file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Hegira.txt (63 of 77) [5/21/03 12:35:58 AM] file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Hegira.txt cloaked shadow of the demon hissed in the doorway. The guard stepped aside abruptly, as if stung, bloody point held up as evidence and excuse. "You should never have left home, Bey," Barthel said, his voice soft and quiet. "Your pilgrim is still alive, Guest Excellency," the guard said, pointing to Kiril. "By our quick action." Barthel's face wrinkled in final pain and ail the remaining tension left his body, Bar-Woten did not move until the guards pried the corpse from his arms. Twenty-four Two of the thin, cloaked demons walked behind Kiril and Bar-Woten. On all sides, armed guards formed walls as the procession moved through a high-walled canyon of steel, glass and concrete. Hundreds of thousands of people watched from tiers of seats on each side of the boulevard. Paper streamers sizzled through the air and confetti fell in thick clouds, getting into their clothes, itching. Kiril vaguely heard the carnival cheers and the cries of "Pilgrim! Pilgrim! Find your way!" Amplifiers mounted on light standards along the boulevard echoed a tinny refrain: "Find your own way, make love to the Wall, Be the clown who will learn, The fool who might return ..." Kiril couldn't make out the rest. It was a mummer's farce, and he was the central caricature, an unspectacular man accompanied by a silent soldier, both of them having come tens of thousands of kilometers to be paraded up this street of the sophisticated English-speakers, met with ridicule and ceremony, sent to the Wall like belled goats. The demons were taking no chances. Both Bar-Woten and Kiril were accompanying them to the Wall. Kiril was the likely candidate, but who could completely riddle fairy tales, especially those of another species? Kiril hated them all fiercely. He saw in the English-speakers all the concentrated disease and decay of the Second-born, their science and knowledge contributing little or nothing to remedy their lack of dignity and respect for their fellows. Kiril hated himself, as well. He had survived. But the incomprehensible violence that had ended Barthel's journey hung like a dead weight around his shoulders. He fell behind Bar-Woten and the guards pushed him on. The third demon was staying behind as part of an agreement with the English-speakers. The two accompanying them would climb the eight kilometer slope of the Wall with the pilgrim, whichever he might be. The boulevard ended at the Wall. Kiril and Bar-Woten were given packs of food and climbing equipment. The demons were equipped with steel cylinders and cloth-wrapped parcels. The noise of the crowd subsided behind them. "This is not by our design, human," one of the demons told Kiril as they started to climb. "We have a journey, also. We all reach our destinations." Kiril nodded, not facing the silvery mask. A thousand pilgrims had climbed the wall before them, the English-speaker's history books said. The last had been a year ago, before the arrival [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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