Authors: Paul Park
He had to be singing from the Song of Angkhdt, Charity decided. In Charn, before the revolution, it had been a criminal offense to duplicate the rhythm of a verse of holy scripture, even in casual conversation. Nor had it been the fashion for at least a generation to set the words to music.
“You talk about religion in a new way,” she said aloud, finally, after the song had drifted down to nothing. “What did you say before? ‘Great Angkhdt tells us to help those in pain.’ I never heard of that before.”
“It is from an old translation,” replied Freedom Love, staring straight ahead over the bow. “Soon these verses will be common knowledge, now that it is spring.”
“What do you mean?”
The old man rubbed his head, and waited a while before speaking. “The word of God is like a living thing,” he said at last. “It has its seasons underground.”
All around them the water stretched away into the dark. From time to time the wind seemed to shift direction, so that the sail flapped and rattled overhead. But still the boat moved slowly on as Freedom Love tugged upon the oar. “Winter is a barren time,” he said. “If people turn for comfort to these phallic images, is it any wonder? When the Earth is sterile for a man’s entire life, is it any wonder that he makes a cult out of fertility? That is his need, and in winter, the Song of Angkhdt adapts to it. The subtler verses are all stripped away. Our God becomes a phallic monster, deformed, inhuman, cruel, but with a supernatural vitality, a potency that covers all the Earth. It fills the sky. His sperm is in the rain.”
“And now?” asked Charity.
“And now the world is changing. Our faith is changing, too. But as always, the change is very difficult, because men and women are always ready to die for what they think is true. It makes it hard for them to let go of the old ways. There has been violence and bloodshed, and there will be more. But you are young enough. You’ll live to see the Earth become a garden. Your children will know verses of the Song that you have never heard. And even the crudest of the verses now, you will find that they have changed. The crudest and the most obscene—you will find they are about love.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Charity. “I mean, what happens now? There has been a change of government in Charn.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “It was to be expected,” he replied. “There were some grave abuses. Spring is the time for atheistic governments. But the people are still with us in their hearts.”
“I’m not sure. When they brought the great brass statue of Immortal Angkhdt down from the temple into Durbar Square, ten thousand people stood in line for seven hours in the rain, just to file past and spit on it.”
Again the old man shrugged. “But that too is a kind of worship. It goes deeper than that. You will see. Every week dozens come down from the streets to hear me preach. They risk their lives to bring us food. How do you think we live?”
The boat was moving faster now. It had reached some kind of current; the water was turbid up ahead, and the boat was carried by its own momentum as the sail lolled and flapped. “I hadn’t asked myself,” said Charity. “Who are these men?”
“They are a tribal people called the Dogon. They have lived down here for generations. I am a newcomer by contrast. A refugee. I was censured by the bishop’s council, four, almost five months ago. I was condemned for heresy, but I escaped. These men are my converts.”
They were entering a channel where the current flowed more rapidly. The lanterns on the stern and forward poles swung wildly back and forth. All was in darkness beyond their flickering reach, and out of that darkness came a constant roaring sound. The wind was stronger now, and damp and hard to breathe. Charity’s hair was slick with moisture, and there were beads of water on her clothes.
“They call themselves the Dogon,” continued Freedom Love. “They speak another language, far more ancient than our own. And until I came, they had no inkling of the truth—they fished in these lakes and ate the roasted carcasses. They worshiped pagan gods.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Seventeen. At least there are many tribes down here. The labyrinth stretches for fifty miles. But not all tribes are so receptive to the truth. These are the first. They are my children. I have taught them to grow mushrooms in the lower crypts.”
Charity was asking questions to keep herself from thinking how Freedom Love could steer his boat through total darkness underneath the earth. But there must have been something in her face, for he laughed as he pushed upon his oar, and the boat scudded out into the roughest current. “I put my faith in God,” he said. “Besides, look there.”
He pointed up ahead to where some greenish lights were shining in a row. At first they were very small, and seemed to jiggle in the darkness like a row of dots along the inside of her eyelid as Charity turned her head. She raised her hand to block out the glare from the forward lantern, and then she saw them clearly, thirteen pinpricks in a line, growing all the time as she rushed towards them. After a few minutes she could see that they, too, were lanterns, strung out along the width of the vast cavern.
“It is the Morquar Dam,” said Freedom Love.
The current was gentler now, and in the gathering light, Charity could see the water breaking apart into a series of small whirlpools, losing its momentum, turning back upon itself. In front of her the lights were strung along the top of a white barricade. She could see the pumping station and the weir.
Freedom Love turned the boat in a wide, slow semicircle, and the current brought them around close to the dam. Charity could hear the rushing of the water through the sluice. Up ahead the current was slowly wheeling back upon itself, turning back out into the darkness behind them. But Freedom Love was keeping the boat along the barricade, which rose a dozen feet above their heads. There was no wind in the sail, but the Dogon had taken up their paddles. They pulled the boat into a stagnant stretch of water below the east end of the dam, where Charity could see for the first time the rock walls of the cavern, and even its ceiling far above. The water around them was full of dust and bits of wood.
From the house above the sluicegate, the keeper of the lock was peering down at them. She was a tiny, ancient woman, with white hair braided down her back. Freedom Love called up to her in a language he seemed to speak only indifferently, for he could only manage a few words. But the woman said nothing. There was no expression on her face either; she just leaned on the railing of the dam and stared down at them. The Dogon were pulling down the sail.
In the bottom of the boat the stranger looked up anxiously. “What’s happening?” he asked, but Charity shook her head. She was looking at the woman, studying her colorless, enormous eyes, wondering how many generations of living underground it took to develop eyes like that. The Dogon didn’t have them. They were a dark-skinned race.
The woman held up five colorless fingers, and Freedom Love threw her a coin. It was a wide, copper penny, and he flicked it with his thumb so that it turned over in the air. The woman caught it overhand and rubbed it between her fingers before thrusting it away into the bosom of her dress. Then she bent over the wheel, straining with her skinny arms until the sluicegate opened up.
The dam was made of concrete, but the doors were wooden and elaborately carved, and painted with scenes from the life of the Beloved Angkhdt. Once on his journey through the universe, the Prophet had come to a planet where there was no light. The only light in all that world came from the Prophet’s mouth when he spoke the word of God.
The door into the Morquar lock was painted to represent this episode in the immortal life. The outer panels were all decorated with barren landscapes and frozen cityscapes, painted black so as to be invisible. But the Prophet’s open mouth was on the central panel, golden red behind a fence of canine teeth. And when the gate split open, Charity could see that the inside of the lock was painted red.
“Ah, God,” she murmured, as the Dogon pulled them inside. The air was dank and close, and an oily foam covered the top of the water. Behind them, the doors churned closed, leaving them in a small red room.
“The lock is four hundred feet high,” said Freedom Love, as the water started to suck away beneath them. The sides of the shaft were painted from top to bottom, circles of orange and red. They seemed to glow brighter as the boat descended. Something in the paint reacted with the lantern light, a phosphorescent sheen mixing with the orange of the Prophet’s throat. But as the air got worse, the lanterns flickered low, so that the color was lost. Soon all that remained was the gleam of the phosphorescence on the dripping walls. “It’s from the rain,” said Freedom Love. “It drains into the river lower down.”
After many minutes the lock let them out into a small pool at the bottom of the dam. Behind them the great white wall stretched out of sight, out of reach of their lanterns, while in front all was in darkness. Around the boat, bubbles rose and broke constantly on the surface of the pool, filling the air with a noise like crackling fire.
The boat swung sharply around. The Dogon dug their paddles deep into the water. The stranger was sitting in the bilge, staring back at the dam with a look of empty wonder. His mouth hung open, and there were beads of sweat along his upper lip. “D-do people live down here?” he asked. Freedom Love pushed on the steering oar. He was looking for the channel down out of the pool, and he slid the boat into a gap between low banks of fitted stone. It was only a few feet wider than the boat. The Dogon scraped their paddles along the channel’s sides, yet still they made swift time, moving as if haste were important.
“In ancient times,” said Freedom Love, “there was a period of seven years when the weather was far harsher than it is even today. Winter and summer, the extremes of temperature were much harsher. It is a periodic fluctuation; the last time was many years ago, and at that time, it is recorded, half the population of the city lived underground. Even more, at certain times of year. Half a million people lived down here. Rich people, mostly. They had tunnels dug as far as Caladon.”
He pulled his flashlight from the breast of his robe and shined it up above their heads. “Look,” he said. “Look there.” The lanterns in the boat had guttered low, and the beam of the flashlight pierced the darkness where they could not follow. It illuminated the ceiling of the tunnel they had entered and played among the carvings and the painted figures with their eyes of mirrored glass. “The dam fed an electric generator,” said Freedom Love. “This tunnel was once called the Prince’s Walk.”
He was steering with one hand, while with the other he shined his flashlight at the pictures on the wall and into the doors of abandoned galleries. He told them the history of the place, and took detours into other, smaller corridors to show them special things: a crystal chandelier still hanging from the dome of one small chamber; the portals of the summer house of Lord Berylliam Starbridge; the winged, porcelain statue of the Snake of Relativity; and one enormous cavern where the vault was set with moving lanterns, long extinct, to duplicate the constellations of the winter sky.
As he explained these wonders, Freedom Love seemed calm and at his ease. But Charity noticed that the Dogon were paddling as fast and as hard as they could. They had turned down the lantern on the prow until it was scarcely bright enough to guide them, and they looked back anxiously at their leader’s powerful flashlight. Yet they had no way of expressing their disapproval except by the energy of their work, their bent backs and the sweat along their arms, the flash of their paddles and the power of their stroke.
“They are afraid of something,” remarked Charity.
Freedom Love made a careless gesture with his hand. “The woman,” he replied. “The white-faced woman. It is true, she has been seen near here.”
The Dogon had paddled without ceasing until they came into the reach of a long spit of sand. Then they put their paddles on their knees and let the boat drift up onto the beach. Gudrun Sarkis stepped out into the shallow water and dragged the boat the last few yards, until its bottom groaned ashore.
Men and women came to greet them down the beach. They all greeted Charity in the same way, a little bow with their palms joined together. But when Freedom Love descended from the boat, they got down on their knees in the dark sand. They made a line on either side of him, and as he walked up the beach between them, they put out their hands for him to touch.
When he had passed, one got up and came forward and took Charity by the hands. She was a dark, handsome woman, younger than Charity and still dressed in the remnants of a rich, embroidered gown. She too had pressed her palms together, but not so carefully that Charity had failed to glimpse the flash of gold and silver in the lamplight.
She was a Starbridge of the soldier’s blood, a member of Charity’s own clan. But still she did not introduce herself that way. “My name is Varana,” she said, and then she laughed when Charity looked puzzled. “It is the name my master gave me,” she explained. “It means ‘the bell that God rings,’ in I don’t know what language. Don’t you think it suits me?”
She was a constant talker, but kind, too. She took Charity to her own house, a wooden hut down by the water’s edge. She made Charity lie down in her own bed, and brought her soup and basins of hot water. And all the time she chattered constantly, a blithe, comforting sound, until Charity fell asleep.