Rites of Passage (15 page)

Yarrek wondered then if these agents were the angels of yore, which allegedly had founded the Church. What irony if that were so – the formation of a Church which might have brought about lasting peace but which, over millennia, had fossilised to the point of denying the existence of the Ark.

The creature continued, “The experiment, if you wish to call it that, has been deemed successful. Now we can commence the next step of the programme.”

“Which is?” Yarrek found himself asking.

“The time has almost arrived to seed the planets again, to empty the Ark of its precious cargo and allow the races, now hopefully improved, to evolve as they will.”

“You are playing God,” Yarrek said.

The creature inclined its head. “If you wish to use that term, then so be it. We are playing God, in order to save and perpetuate these races.” It gestured, and all around the creature, stretching back towards the walls of the cavern, a great crowd of beings appeared, insubstantial as ghosts.

Yarrek stared, taking in beings of every conceivable size and shape. He saw creatures like crabs, and four legged beasts like lox, and things that resembled kite-fish floating in the air, and great birds, and bipedal hairless individuals with domed skulls.

And then he saw, in the silent crowd, tall, furred creatures like his own people, though more elongated of limb, and grey instead of brown.

The naked pink being went on, “We are the Controllers, my friends, though once, long ago, we called ourselves humans. Our intention was not to wield the power of God, but to empower others to evolve peacefully, to inhabit planets in harmony with nature and with themselves.”

“But when will that be?” Yarrek asked, wondering what it might be like to stand on the
surface
of what the creature called a planet.

The human gestured to the viewscreen. “The time has almost arrived to seed the cosmos. Perhaps, in a hundred of your cycles, the races of the Ark will be ready and the process can begin.”

A hundred cycles? He would be an old man then, Yarrek thought, if he lived to see the wondrous event. Oh, he could not wait to return to the Hub, and tell Yancy of his find, blind Yancy who had always been more far-sighted than himself.

“Now go,” said the human, “and inform your people of what awaits them.”

And so saying, the manifestation of the enfeebled creature, and the host of the saved, vanished in an instant.

Yarrek turned to Zeremy. To his surprise the Prelate was weeping.

“But you were aware of the truth, sir,” Yarrek said, “and yet you did not tell the world.”

“When my sons told me of what they had discovered,” the Prelate said, “I thought that it would be they who would tell the world... but of course that was not to be. I had to wait, then, until...”

Yarrek stared at the old man, awareness slowly dawning. “Until?”

In reply, Prelate Zeremy laid a loving hand on Yarrek’s shoulder and steered him towards the exit. “Come, my son, together now we have a duty to tell the world the truth.”

And Yarrek, bearing a freight of understanding greater than the mere fact of a race saved from itself, made his slow way back through the rock and ice to Sunworld and the task awaiting him there.

W
e sat around the glow-coals and Old Tan, our Storyteller, told us about the time when water filled the valleys and people lived on the mountaintops.

“Millions of people,” he said in a whisper.

“But what is millions?” I asked.

Old Kahl, who was respected for his wisdom, said, “Pick up two handfuls of sand, Par, and let the sand trickle to the floor. That is a million.”

Dutifully I scooped up two handfuls of fine sand and felt the grains squirm from my grip. But I could not imagine that each grain was a person. “Surely it was impossible,” I said. “So many people could not exist.”

Old Tan was exaggerating, of course; he was known to make great claims to enhance his tales. For the next hour he told of mountain peaks that had teemed with people, of valleys filled with more water than could be imagined.

“But how do you know?” Kenda asked with his usual arrogance. He was a big-boned youth a winter my senior, who hated me – and for good reason.

Old Tan shook his head and said, “Long ago Old Old Old Marla, my mother’s mother’s mother, told of her Initiation. She did not go Below, but Above.”

I was aware of the sudden silence that greeted his words. I looked around at the fifty dark faces in the feeble light of the glow-coals. They were all staring at Old Tan, eyes wide, many mouths hanging open in wonder. Beside me, Nohma gripped my hand. I could see her teeth in the glow, smiling at me in excitement.

“And what did she find?” someone asked.

We knew, of course; Old Tan had told the tale many times before. I recall my disbelief the first time I had heard the story; the wonder and the thrill. It had made me aware that there was more to our world than just the Valleys, the Caves and the Bottoms.

“Old Old Old Marla found dwellings high up on the mountaintops, places where the ancient people lived.”

“But didn’t she burn to death!” a youngster exclaimed.

Old Tan smiled. “She wore crab-shells during the twilight hours, and travelled only at night.”

“But the people who dwelled on the mountaintops many, many winters ago – surely they would have burned to death!”

“This was many, many thousands upon thousands of winters ago,” Old Tan said, “The world was cooler then. Our people could live on the mountaintops in safety.”

Our people?

“But how did Old Old Old Marla reach the mountaintops?” someone else asked.

Old Tan smiled. “She climbed,” he said.

“But how! The mountains are steep! And crabs patrol the slopes!”

“She made her way through the upper plain,” Old Kahl said, “where our people lived many winters ago, before we came down here. From the upper plain she climbed to the eastern valley. From there she picked her way through mountain passes to a far away escarpment.”

“And the crabs?” I asked, even though I knew full well how Old Old Old Marla had escaped being nipped in half and eaten.

Old Tan took up the tale: “She took a live goat, and sacrificed it to the first crab. And then, while it was eating, she climbed onto a high rock and, with her sharpened staff, jumped onto the back of the crab. Her weight drove the staff through the creature’s shell, killing it instantly. Old Old Old Marla and her companions ate well that night, but set aside some crab meat to bait other crabs they might meet in the days ahead.”

“And at the top?” a child asked.

“At the top she found dwellings, and...”

“Go on!” we chanted.

“And she found people still living within the ruins of the dwelling places.”

We who had heard the tale many times before smiled as Old Tan said this, for we knew it to be an exaggeration – or call it a lie – with which he spiced the stew of his story.

“She found small blackened people, burned by the sun, who did not need water to survive. They stared at her for a long time, but did not have the power of speech, these poor people, and then they moved off and disappeared. And that is the end of her story, as she once told me.”

“But what became of Old Old Old Marla?”

Old Tan smiled. “She became a skilled Waterwoman, and gave birth to my mother’s mother, and lived a long and productive life. She now gives life to a pearly tree on the Goat Skull Terrace. Its marker bears her name.”

Not long after this the meeting broke up, and I scuttled back to my hollow. Nohma snuggled in beside me and we made love, and later I stared into the absolute darkness and thought about Old Old Old Marla and the people who had dwelled on the mountaintops.

~

A
t twilight that evening, as the sun went down and the stars showed in a long bright strip of night sky between the high canyon walls, we made our way up to Goat Skull Terrace and toiled. Nohma tended the cacti, cutting slices for the communal meal later that day, and I allotted precious water to the pearly trees.

Nohma was excited. She danced between the spiky plants. Her big eyes shone in the light of the stars.

Tomorrow we were to be interviewed by the Elders, and we would choose our Initiation. Nohma was still undecided: would it be the Bottoms for her, following the trail of a thousand Initiates before her, or more daringly the Eastern Valleys? I had decided to join her in whichever path she chose, but now I was having second thoughts.

I moved along the row of pearly trees, tipping a skull-f of water over the gnarly roots of each plant. I could almost hear their relief, and imagined them begging for a little more. These days the trees were looking thin and tired, and every harvest they gave fewer fruits.

I had been a Farmer for five winters now, and in that time I had watched the land we tended become less and less. Five winters ago we had farmed all the way up to the high Terraces, but that soil had become dry and useless over time, and our crops had withered and died, and then had not grown at all. So we had moved further down the slope, farming land that bore the brunt of the midday sun, but which had not been farmed before. Now that land produced fruit, but wise heads wondered for how much longer. I tried to think of life without the occasional app and pearly, but the very notion frightened me.

I carried water along the row of a hundred pearly trees, and when I reached halfway I rested.

I looked down the valley, and the beauty of the sight brought tears to my eyes. The land was silver in the moonlight, marked by fields and Terraces. And in the valley my people worked tirelessly, all fifty of them, men and women and children, tiny figures bent and busy. I imagined our people toiling in the canyon like this for a hundred winters, a thousand, and the thought reassured me. If we had been here that long, then we would be here, working the land, for a thousand winters to come.

I sat and leaned against Old Old Old Marla’s pearly tree, reached out and touched the marker that bore her name. She had been alive long before my birth, and had defied convention and climbed the mountain to the very top. The thought of it stirred some strange emotion deep within me.

“Wake up, Par!” Nohma said, dancing up to me and cuffing my head. She dropped down beside me and said, “It didn’t really happen, you know.”

“What didn’t?”

“Old Old Old Marla’s adventure. Old Tan made it up. You know how he lies.”

“That’s not true. We’ve all heard Old Old Old Marla’s story many times before.”

Nohma looked at me, her head tipped sideways. “So that makes it true, does it?”

“But why would he lie?”

“To entertain us, to scare us. To make us glad that we live safe lives in the Valley and the Caves.” She paused, then said, “I recall the first time I heard it, when you were still a babe in arms. The story was different then. Old Old Old Marla did not kill a crab – she ran away from it. And she didn’t meet blackened people on the mountaintop. All she saw was skeletons and skulls.”

I stared at her, aghast. “But why would Old Tan make these things up?”

“To make his story more interesting, Par. More frightening. More entertaining. You must admit, everyone was wide-eyed and breathless during its telling.”

I shook my head and stared up the slope of the far valley wall. It climbed and climbed until the high edge became a dark line against the star-filled night sky. “There must be things up there. Things we can’t even dream about.”

She shrugged. “They don’t matter, Par. All that matters is the Valley, the Caves, the Bottoms.”

Her words made me angry, even though they had come from the girl I loved.  “No!” I said.

Nohma sighed, and called down to the next terrace where Kenda cut dead branches from app trees. I tried to stop her while the shout was still on her lips, but not in time. “Kenda! Join us for a rest. Talk some sense into Par, here!”

I boiled with frustration at her invitation. I disliked Kenda. He had loved Nohma before me, being the same age as her, until they had argued and she had chosen me. I feared that one day she might be tempted back to him. He was older than me by two winters, and stronger.

He climbed to our terrace and stood before us, his very posture arrogant. “I’d have difficulty talking sense into Par’s thick skull.”

“Tell him that Old Old Old Marla didn’t really kill a crab and meet blackened people on the mountaintop, Kenda.”

He looked at me. “He thinks that? He believes the lies Old Tan tells? Then you’re a bigger fool than you look, Par.”

I wanted to hit his big smug face, as he stretched out before us, smiling at Nohma. Instead I said, “I suppose you think there’s nothing up there? No dwellings of the old people, no strange blackened beings still living on the mountaintops?”

Kenda stared at me as if I were not worth the effort of arguing with. “Grow up, Par,” he said.

I looked at Nohma. She was smiling to herself. I felt something nasty squirm within my chest, a hatred of everyone, but more than that a hatred of myself.

I stood quickly, picked up my waterskin and returned to work.

~

D
ay came.

The heat in the valley bottom increased so that soon it was hard to breathe. Overhead the stars were replaced by white light. The sun blistered over the edge of the canyon, striking the far valley and turning the upper, abandoned terraces to molten gold.

We fled underground, to the cool refuge of the Caves. We shared a communal meal of sliced cacti, a sliver of crab meat each and a cup of pearly-flavoured water as the temperature dropped and we sat around the glow-coals.

Old Tan told of how the first Waterwoman – who wasn’t a Waterwoman back then, of course, just a woman – entered the Caves and descended and eventually found water – a cavern full of the cool, life-giving liquid. He told how she, and the team she led, stood at the edge of the cavern illuminated by the glow-coals they carried, and stared at the silken expanse of water.

He told of how the Waterwoman took a step forward, her advance held in check by her fear that the water would be salted.

She took another step forward, and knelt, and reached out a cupped palm. She dipped her hand in the water and slowly, slowly, watched breathlessly by her fellows, raised the water to her lips and took a tiny, experimental sip.