Nightwings Read online

  The occasion was our halting by a company of invaders coming north from Afreek. There were perhaps twenty of them, tall and harsh-faced, proud of being masters of conquered Earth. They rode in a gleaming covered vehicle of their own manufacture, long and narrow, with thick sand-colored treads and small windows. We could see the vehicle from far away, raising a cloud of dust as it neared us.

  This was a hot time of year. The sky itself was the color of sand, and it was streaked with folded sheets of heat-radiation—glowing and terrible energy streams of turquoise and gold.

  Perhaps fifty of us stood beside the road, with the land of Talya at our backs and the continent of Afreek before us. We were a varied group: some Pilgrims, like Olmayne and myself, making the trek toward the holy city of Jorslem, but also a random mix of the rootless, men and women who floated from continent to continent for lack of other purpose. I counted in the band five former Watchers, and also several Indexers, a Sentinel, a pair of Communicants, a Scribe, and even a few Changelings. We gathered into a straggling assembly awarding the road by default to the invaders.

  Land Bridge is not wide, and the road will not allow many to use it at any time. Yet in normal times the flow of traffic had always gone in both directions at once. Here, today, we feared to go forward while invaders were this close, and so we remained clustered timidly, watching our conquerors approach.

  One of the Changelings detached himself from the others of his kind and moved toward me. He was small of stature for that breed, but wide through the shoulders; his skin seemed much too tight for his frame; his eyes were large and green-rimmed; his hair grew in thick widely spaced pedestal-like clumps, and his nose was barely perceptible, so that his nostrils appeared to sprout from his upper lip. Despite this he was less grotesque than most Changelings appear. His expression was solemn, but had a hint of bizarre playfulness lurking somewhere.

  He said in a voice that was little more than a feathery whisper, “Do you think we’ll be delayed long, Pilgrims?”

  In former times one did not address a Pilgrim unsolicited—especially if one happened to be a Changeling. Such customs meant nothing to me, but Olmayne drew back with a hiss of distaste.

  I said, “We will wait here until our masters allow us to pass. Is there any choice?”

  “None, friend, none.”

  At that friend, Olmayne hissed again and glowered at the little Changeling. He turned to her, and his anger showed, for suddenly six parallel bands of scarlet pigment blazed brightly beneath the glossy skin of his cheeks. But his only overt response to her was a courteous bow. He said, “I introduce myself. I am Bernalt, naturally guildless, a native of Nayrub in Deeper Afreek. I do not inquire after your names, Pilgrims. Are you bound for Jorslem?”

  “Yes,” I said, as Olmayne swung about to present her back. “And you? Home to Nayrub after travels?”

  “No,” said Bernalt. “I go to Jorslem also.”

  Instantly I felt cold and hostile, my initial response to the Changeling’s suave charm fading at once. I had had a Changeling, false though he turned out to be, as a traveling companion before; he too had been charming, but I wanted no more like him. Edgily, distantly, I said, “May I ask what business a Changeling might have in Jorslem?”

  He detected the chill in my tone, and his huge eyes registered sorrow. “We too are permitted to visit the holy city, I remind you. Even our kind. Do you fear that Changelings will once again seize the shrine of renewal, as we did a thousand years ago before we were cast down into guildlessness?” He laughed harshly. “I threaten no one, Pilgrim. I am hideous of face, but not dangerous. May the Will grant you what you seek, Pilgrim.” He made a gesture of respect and went back to the other Changelings.

  Furious, Olmayne spun round on me.

  “Why do you talk to such beastly creatures?”

  “The man approached me. He was merely being friendly. We are all cast together here, Olmayne, and—”

  “Man. Man! You call a Changeling a man?”

  “They are human, Olmayne.”

  “Just barely. Tomis, I loathe such monsters. My flesh creeps to have them near me. If I could, I’d banish them from this world!”

  “Where is the serene tolerance a Rememberer must cultivate?”

  She flamed at the mockery in my voice. “We are not required to love Changelings, Tomis. They are one of the curses laid upon our planet—parodies of humanity, enemies of truth and beauty. I despise them!”

  It was not a unique attitude. But I had no time to reproach Olmayne for her intolerance; the vehicle of the invaders was drawing near. I hoped we might resume our journey once it went by. It slowed and halted, however, and several of the invaders came out. They walked unhurriedly toward us, their long arms dangling like slack ropes.

  “Who is the leader here?” asked one of them.

  No one replied, for we were independent of one another in our travel.

  The invader said impatiently, after a moment, “No leader? No leader? Very well, all of you, listen. The road must be cleared. A convoy is coming through. Go back to Palerm and wait until tomorrow.”

  “But I must be in Agupt by—” the Scribe began.

  “Land Bridge is closed today,” said the invader. “Go back to Palerm.”

  His voice was calm. The invaders are never peremptory, never overbearing. They have the poise and assurance of those who are secure possessors.

  The Scribe shivered, his jowls swinging, and said no more.

  Several of the others by the side of the road looked as if they wished to protest. The Sentinel turned away and spat. A man who boldly wore the mark of the shattered guild of Defenders in his cheek clenched his fists and plainly fought back a surge of fury. The Changelings whispered to one another. Bernalt smiled bitterly at me and shrugged.

  Go back to Palerm? Waste a day’s march in this heat? For what? For what?

  The invader gestured casually, telling us to disperse.

  Now it was that Olmayne was unkind to me. In a low voice she said, “Explain to them, Tomis, that you are in the pay of the Procurator of Perris, and they will let the two of us pass.”

  Her dark eyes glittered with mockery and contempt.

  My shoulders sagged as if she had loaded ten years on me. “Why did you say such a thing?” I asked.

  “It’s hot. I’m tired. It’s idiotic of them to send us back to Palerm.”

  “I agree. But I can do nothing. Why try to hurt me?”

  “Does the truth hurt that much?”

  “I am no collaborator, Olmayne.”

  She laughed. “You say that so well! But you are, Tomis, you are! You sold them the documents.”

  “To save the Prince, your lover,” I reminded her.

  “You dealt with the invaders, though. No matter what your motive was, that fact remains.”

  “Stop it, Olmayne.”

  “Now you give me orders?”

  “Olmayne—”

  “Go up to them, Tomis. Tell them who you are, make them let us go ahead.”

  “The convoys would run us down on the road. In any case I have no influence with invaders. I am not the Procurator’s man.”

  “I’ll die before I go back to Palerm!”

  “Die, then,” I said wearily, and turned my back on her.

  “Traitor! Treacherous old fool! Coward!”

  I pretended to ignore her, but I felt the fire of her words. There was no falsehood in them, only malice. I had dealt with the conquerors, I had betrayed the guild that sheltered me, I had violated the code that calls for sullen passivity as our only way of protest for Earth’s defeat. All true; yet it was unfair for her to reproach me with it. I had given no thought to higher matters of patriotism when I broke my trust; I was trying only to save a man to whom I felt bound, a man moreover with whom she was in love. It was loathsome of Olmayne to tax me with treason now, to torment my conscience, merely because of a petty rage at the heat and dust of the road.

  But this woman had coldly slain her own h
usband. Why should she not be malicious in trifles as well?

  The invaders had their way; we abandoned the road and straggled back to Palerm, a dismal, sizzling, sleepy town. That evening, as if to console us, five Fliers passing in formation overhead took a fancy to the town, and in the moonless night they came again and again through the sky, three men and two women, ghostly and slender and beautiful. I stood watching them for more than an hour, until my soul itself seemed lifted from me and into the air to join them. Their great shimmering wings scarcely hid the starlight; their pale angular bodies moved in graceful arcs, arms held pressed close to sides, legs together, backs gently curved. The sight of these five stirred my memories of Avluela and left me tingling with troublesome emotions.

  The Fliers made their last pass and were gone. The false moons entered the sky soon afterward. I went into our hostelry then, and shortly Olmayne asked admittance to my room.

  She looked contrite. She carried a squat octagonal flask of green wine, not a Talyan brew but something from an outworld, no doubt purchased at great price.

  “Will you forgive me, Tomis?” she asked. “Here. I know you like these wines.”

  “I would rather not have had those words before, and not have the wine now,” I told her.

  “My temper grows short in the heat. I’m sorry, Tomis. I said a stupid and tactless thing.”

  I forgave her, in hope of a smoother journey thereafter, and we drank most of the wine, and then she went to her own room nearby to sleep. Pilgrims must live chaste lives—not that Olmayne would ever have bedded with such a withered old fossil as I, but the commandments of our adopted guild prevented the question from arising.

  For a long while I lay awake beneath a lash of guilt. In her impatience and wrath Olmayne had stung me at my vulnerable place: I was a betrayer of mankind. I wrestled with the issue almost to dawn.

  —What had I done?

  I had revealed to our conquerors a certain document.

  —Did the invaders have a moral right to the document?

  It told of the shameful treatment they had had at the hands of our ancestors.

  —What, then, was wrong about giving it to them?

  One does not aid one’s conquerors even when they are morally superior to one.

  —Is a small treason a serious thing?

  There are no small treasons.

  —Perhaps the complexity of the matter should be investigated. I did not act out of love of the enemy, but to aid a friend.

  Nevertheless I collaborated with our foes.

  —This obstinate self-laceration smacks of sinful pride.

  But I feel my guilt. I drown in shame.

  In this unprofitable way I consumed the night. When the day brightened, I rose and looked skyward and begged the Will to help me find redemption in the waters of the house of renewal in Jorslem, at the end of my Pilgrimage. Then I went to awaken Olmayne.

  3

  LAND Bridge was open on this day, and we joined the throng that was crossing over out of Talya into Afreek. It was the second time I had traveled Land Bridge, for the year before—it seemed so much farther in the past—I had come the other way, out of Agupt and bound for Roum.

  There are two main routes for Pilgrims from Eyrop to Jorslem. The northern route involves going through the Dark Lands east of Talya, taking the ferry at Stanbool, and skirting the western coast of the continent of Ais to Jorslem. It was the route I would have preferred since, of all the world’s great cities, old Stanbool is the one I have never visited. But Olmayne had been there to do research in the days when she was a Rememberer, and disliked the place; and so we took the southern route—across Land Bridge into Afreek and along the shore of the great Lake Medit, through Agupt and the fringes of the Arban Desert and up to Jorslem.

  A true Pilgrim travels only by foot. It was not an idea that had much appeal to Olmayne, and though we walked a great deal, we rode whenever we could. She was shameless in commandeering transportation. On only the second day of our journey she had gotten us a ride from a rich Merchant bound for the coast; the man had no intention of sharing his sumptuous vehicle with anyone, but he could not resist the sensuality of Olmayne’s deep, musical voice, even though it issued from the sexless grillwork of a Pilgrim’s mask.

  The Merchant traveled in style. For him the conquest of Earth might never have happened, nor even all the long centuries of Third Cycle decline. His self-primed landcar was four times the length of a man and wide enough to house five people in comfort; and it shielded its riders against the outer world as effectively as a womb. There was no direct vision, only a series of screens revealing upon command what lay outside. The temperature never varied from a chosen norm. Spigots supplied liqueurs and stronger things; food tablets were available; pressure couches insulated travelers against the irregularities of the road. For illumination, there was slavelight keyed to the Merchant’s whims. Beside the main couch sat a thinking cap, but I never learned whether the Merchant carried a pickled brain for his private use in the depths of the landcar, or enjoyed some sort of remote contact with the memory tanks of the cities through which he passed.

  He was a man of pomp and bulk, clearly a savorer of his own flesh. Deep olive of skin, with a thick pompadour of well-oiled black hair and somber, scrutinizing eyes, he rejoiced in his solidity and in his control of an uncertain environment. He dealt, we learned, in foodstuffs of other worlds; he bartered our poor manufactures for the delicacies of the starborn ones. Now he was en route to Marsay to examine a cargo of hallucinatory insects newly come in from one of the Belt planets.

  “You like the car?” he asked, seeing our awe. Olmayne, no stranger to ease herself, was peering at the dense inner mantle of diamonded brocade in obvious amazement. “It was owned by the Comt of Perris,” he went on. “Yes, I mean it, the Comt himself. They turned his palace into a museum, you know.”

  “I know,” Olmayne said softly.

  “This was his chariot. It was supposed to be part of the museum, but I bought it off a crooked invader. You didn’t know they had crooked ones too, eh?” The Merchant’s robust laughter caused the sensitive mantle on the walls of the car to recoil in disdain. “This one was the Procurator’s boy friend. Yes, they’ve got those, too. He was looking for a certain fancy root that grows on a planet of the Fishes, something to give his virility a little boost, you know, and he learned that I controlled the whole supply here, and so we were able to work out a little deal. Of course, I had to have the car adapted, a little. The Comt kept four neuters up front and powered the engine right off their metabolisms, you understand, running the thing on thermal differentials. Well, that’s a fine way to power a car, if you’re a Comt, but it uses up a lot of neuters through the year, and I felt I’d be overreaching my status if I tried anything like that. It might get me into trouble with the invaders, too. So I had the drive compartment stripped down and replaced with a standard heavy-duty roller-wagon engine—a really subtle job—and there you are. You’re lucky to be in here. It’s only that you’re Pilgrims. Ordinarily I don’t let folks come inside, on account of them feeling envy, and envious folks are dangerous to a man who’s made something out of his life. Yet the Will brought you two to me. Heading for Jorslem, eh?”

  “Yes,” Olmayne said.

  “Me too, but not yet! Not just yet, thank you!” He patted his middle. “I’ll be there, you can bet on it, when I feel ready for renewal, but that’s a good way off, the Will willing! You two been Pilgriming long?”

  “No,” Olmayne said.

  “A lot of folks went Pilgrim after the conquest, I guess. Well, I won’t blame ’em. We each adapt in our own ways to changing times. Say, you carrying those little stones the Pilgrims carry?”

  “Yes,” Olmayne said.

  “Mind if I see one? Always been fascinated by the things. There was this trader from one of the Darkstar worlds—little skinny bastard with skin like oozing tar—he offered me ten quintals of the things. Said they were genuine, gave you the real communi
on, just like the Pilgrims had. I told him no, I wasn’t going to fool with the Will. Some things you don’t do, even for profit. But afterward I wished I’d kept one as a souvenir. I never even touched one.” He stretched a hand toward Olmayne. “Can I see?”

  “We may not let others handle the starstone,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t tell anybody you let me!”

  “It is forbidden.”

  “Look, it’s private in here, the most private place on Earth, and—”

  “Please. What you ask is impossible.”

  His face darkened, and I thought for a moment he would halt the car and order us out, which would have caused me no grief. My hand slipped into my pouch to finger the frigid starstone sphere that I had been given at the outset of my Pilgrimage. The touch of my fingertips brought faint resonances of the communion-trance to me, and I shivered in pleasure. He must not have it, I swore. But the crisis passed without incident. The Merchant, having tested us and found resistance, did not choose to press the matter.

  We sped onward toward Marsay.

  He was not a likable man, but he had a certain gross charm, and we were rarely offended by his words. Olmayne, who after all was a fastidious woman and had lived most of her years in the glossy seclusion of the Hall of Rememberers, found him harder to take than I; my intolerances have been well blunted by a lifetime of wandering. But even Olmayne seemed to find him amusing when he boasted of his wealth and influence, when he told of the women who waited for him on many worlds, when he catalogued his homes and his trophies and the guildmasters who sought his counsel, when he bragged of his friendships with former Masters and Dominators. He talked almost wholly of himself and rarely of us, for which we were thankful; once he asked how it was that a male Pilgrim and a female Pilgrim were traveling together, implying that we must be lovers; we admitted that the arrangement was slightly irregular and went on to another theme, and I think he remained persuaded of our unchastity. His bawdy guesses mattered not at all to me nor, I believe, to Olmayne. We had more serious guilts as our burdens.