«Listen to me, El Tigre. There’s been an accident at Torres involving Rayo, and —”
“ Rayois stopped there?» Arrojo uttered a yell of triumph.
«Yes, but —” The little signalman was still regarding El Tigre.
«We’ve got him!» shouted Arrojo. «By Agni, we’ve got him! To the mules, men!»
«What is it, signalman?» asked El Tigre quietly. His heart was pounding. There was something in the little man’s eyes. They had lost their fierceness, and watched him with a new expression.
«One of your daughters, El Tigre. One of your daughters was … involved.»
Now Arrojo was quiet, and so was the rest of the crowd. They edged closer, sensing tragedy.
«Involved? How? Which daughter?» El Tigre towered over the man, fingers hooked as though to tear the details bodily from him.
«I don’t know which — the signal only spoke of the grupo. But.…» The little signalman looked away, regarding the mountains almost wistfully, as though he’d rather have been there. «They say she died, El Tigre.»
The sound El Tigre made was, wordless. He turned away, snatching reins from Arrojo, jumped into the saddle and flogged his mount into a gallop. After a moment’s shocked hesitation, others began to climb onto mules and ride after him.
Dozo watched them go. «So much for the reasoned tactics of our leader,” he said quietly to himself.
The death of Haleka
The Song of Earth makes little mention of the tump. It is not a flamboyant animal. It does not capture the imagination of the listener in the way that the kikihuahua space bats do, with their thousand-kilometer wingspan; or the beacon hydras whose roots have been known to permeate an entire planet and throw it into a new orbit. No, the tump is a dull lump of meat. On the happentrack of our story it is doomed — although, as you will hear, there are happentracks on which the tump thrived and multiplied.
One couplet only describes the tump:
«Across the hills of Old Brasil the landwhales eat their way.
Their herds are ever‑dwindling, their future in decay.»
Not exactly a song of hope. The tumpier Haleka was not even mentioned — on this happentrack.
Haleka’s life’s purpose was ended. The tump had halted at the beach for a short rest before its death plunge. Haleka sat astride, prepared to die with his mount. The sun was sinking behind him, and the tump cast a huge shadow across the sand left wet by the outflowing tide. Haleka looked to the south, and saw in the distance another vast form. It might have been a big rock, but it could have been another tump in a similar predicament.
And on another happentrack, it was.
Haleka didn’t investigate. He had no curiosity, no interest. In the last few minutes left to him, his mind slipped into the past. The image of a beautiful, tawny-eyed girl faded for a moment, and childhood memories began to soothe him. He remembered his early life in the Women’s Village; his mother, and a sister named Andra. The Women had taught him gentleness, patience and philosophy, preparing him for his youth as an apprentice. Those had been quiet years, for the Women’s Village was a fortified kraal in the jungle where adult males came only occasionally, where tall fencing kept out all animals except monkeys, where the jungle outside the fence was guarded fiercely by Bachelors — men who had not qualified as apprentices and so would never become tumpiers.
Even the felina grupos left the Women’s Village alone.
In later years, when Haleka succeded to his father’s tump, he visited the Women’s Village a number of times. It looked the same as he remembered it, but now he had changed himself. He came driven by emotions he hadn’t known as a child, and as a result the Women’s Village held a new and urgent significance. The Madre — the elderly head of the Village — recognized this when Haleka appeared narrow-eyed and panting outside the fence, having defeated the strongest bachelor in bloodless wrestling. She let him in.
They were times of fierce delight, those visits to the Women’s Village, and the bright memory stayed with Haleka always, sometimes coloring his dreams on tumpback. He visited a number of times over a period of two years until, one day, the Madre met him at the gate and said, «Enough.»
The bachelors carried him away, struggling.
Back on the tump, he knew this rejection meant one of two things: either he had sired enough children to sustain the Village balance, or the Madre suspected that an emotional relationship had developed between him and one of the Women. This had been known to happen, even though the Madre always ensured that the Men lay with a different Woman on each occasion.
And Haleka did have a guilty memory of one Woman who had held him afterwards, and stroked him in a quite unnecessary way while he murmured things to her instead of leaving.
Years later, they had brought him the boy they called his son, so he was at last able to forget the Woman. Seasons of peace followed while he taught the boy, and when Mauo, as he was named, was apprenticed to a tumpier over Torres way, it was the proudest day of Haleka’s life.
Just one thing disturbed him.
Mauo, before he departed, said hesitantly, «There’s a girl — she’d be a Woman, now. My half-sister. Your daughter, Haleka. I often think of her.»
Of course the Madre hadn’t told Haleka about the daughter; why should she? It was no business of his.…
And as Haleka sat on his tump waiting for the moments of dying, the phantom face of this unknown girl took on substance, forming in his mind as a clear vision of beauty — a girl with eyes that looked into his soul, with hair like the Wrath of Agni.
«Oh, Karina!» he shouted to the sea. «Why did you leave me?»
Behind him, the swiftest sailcar ever built fled southwards, her sails like transparent membranes against the late sun.
The tump began to move again.
The glory of Haleka
As we know, all of Time is composed of diverging happentracks. Starquin used this quality to direct events towards the fulfilment of his Purpose. He concentrated on favorable happentracks, but even he could not prevent unwanted happentracks from branching off into the Ifalong — because they were part of an even greater scenario than his Purpose.
Through an odd quirk of the Ifalong, some of these happentracks found their way into the memory vaults of the Rainbow on our happentrack, in the here and now, and on this hillside.
Listen:
«Why do I have to hurt someone I like?» Karina said. «You made me run out on that poor little man Siervo, and he died. Now you want me to run out on Haleka. What will happen to him?»
«He will die.»
«And if I stay with him?»
«He will live a few years longer. Just a few years, Karina. It’s nothing compared to the sweep of the Ifalong.»
«But it’s a hell of a lot to Haleka!»
«You gave your word, Karina,” said the handmaiden.
Karina gazed down towards the ocean, where the slumped silhouette of Haleka could be seen atop his doomed tump. «Well, I’m breaking it. I’m staying with Haleka. To hell with Starquin and his Purpose and the Dedo and the whole rotten lot of you. You’re only interested in yourselves and you don’t give a damn for anyone else!»
For once, the handmaiden lost her serenity. «Karina, my child. The Purpose of Starquin is the most important thing on Earth.»
«Not to me it isn’t. Right now, the most important thing to me, is that I go and look after Haleka, because if I don’t I think he’ll drown himself.» Her eyes were blazing as she uttered the traditional felino disclaimer. «So piss on Starquin!»
«As you will.»
«What? You mean you don’t care?» The handmaiden’s sudden indifference nonplussed Karina.