— Science News
June 30
LIBRARY ENTRY
Priscilla Hutchins’s Diary
(Reaction to above)
MacElroy never got anything right in his life.
— July 3
chapter 25
Lookout.
On the ground at Brackel.
Wednesday, August 13.
DIGGER HAD BECOME fascinated by the Goompahs, had learned to enjoy the shows, would have gone down every day to mingle with the crowds, to visit the temple, to stand outside the cafés, wishing he could take a place at one of the tables and join in the conversation.
Kellie told him he had cabin fever. But it was more than that. He had never been anywhere before where the inhabitants seemed to enjoy themselves so thoroughly. The nights were filled with laughter and music, and the downtown area played host each evening to happy crowds.
So they took the lander down regularly, and, to the extent they were able, mixed with the locals. Some nights they strolled along the beaches. Others, they went to concerts and visited sporting events, and sometimes they just sat in one of the parks.
Had they been able to set aside the coming storm, and the haunting memory of Jack’s death, it would have been a golden time. Kellie was bright and upbeat. She shared his fascination, had picked up enough of the language to understand much of what was going on around her. And he knew that the day would come when he’d look back on these evenings with a sense of wistfulness and loss.
The omega had by then become visible in the sense that a small patch of stars had gone missing. Occasionally Digger overheard conversations about it, conversations that grew more frequent as the weeks passed and more stars blinked out. The Goompahs admitted to each other that they’d never seen anything like it. There was no record of any such occurrence in the histories, and Digger could see they were getting nervous. He wondered how they’d be when it filled the sky.
The thing rose at night a few hours after sunset, and dropped into the sea just before dawn. And the Goompahs watched.
Where was Melakar?
Where was Hazhurpol?
Behind the cloud, he was tempted to tell them. They’re there, and if you folks know what’s good for you, you’ll start thinking about packing up and heading for the hills.
It might have been the sense that Athens, Brackel, with its theaters and its parks and its scrolls, was approaching its demise: It might have been this realization that drove him through its streets like a ghost, savoring its life and its fragile beauty.
Kellie tried to slow him down. She told him he was becoming obsessed. Maybe, she said, he should think about going back. Going home. Get away from there.
But he would not do that. Wouldn’t consider it.
Kellie thought the kite might work. She knew Hutchins well and had a lot of confidence in her. Digger didn’t point out that Hutchins hadn’t hidden her feeling that the al-Jahani/Hawksbill mission was a long shot.
Now that they could wrap a lightbender field around the lander, it was much easier getting in and out of Brackel. Kellie usually brought them in among the orchards and open ground on the north side of the city. One day, she picked instead a glade a short distance off the isthmus road. “Breaks the monotony,” she said, as the invisible craft descended.
Digger looked at the woods, hunting for Goompahs, but Kellie reassured him. “Bill can’t see anybody down there,” she said. “It’s okay.”
Anybody.
It was, as far as he could recall, the first time.
HE EXPECTED THIS to be an interesting evening. Even more popular among the Goompahs than the theater was an event that was part lecture, part free-for-all. A speaker, usually a visiting authority of one kind or another, attempted to present a point of view on a given topic while the paying customers engaged him in open debate. (Or agreed with him, as the case might be, though, in Digger’s experience, it seldom was.) The visitor might be discussing the health benefits of sunlight, an abstract ethical issue of one kind or another, the merits of a drama that had recently been hooted out of town, or a supernatural visitation she had undergone and which had led to a spiritual awakening and the sure and certain knowledge that the members of her audience were groping through moral darkness and needed to get their act in order. It was all great fun, and Digger was often left in doubt whether any of the Goompahs on either side of the issue were serious. The attendees paid for the privilege, the speakers looked for subjects that would provoke outrage, and everybody had a good time.
They were called sloshen, for which there is no completely accurate English translation. Call it a felicitous quarrel, a happy argument, a glorious difference of opinion.
That evening’s guest speaker, according to notices that had been posted for several days, would be Macao Carista, who was described as a cartographer. Macao was from Kulnar, a city immediately northwest of Brackel. According to the displays, she was widely known throughout the Intigo.
While lingering several days earlier in the lobby of the building that would be used for the presentation, Digger had overheard enthusiastic patrons commenting that she always brought maps of places to which no one had ever journeyed, or sometimes of which no one had even heard.
She used the evenings, apparently, to talk about her travels, describing various kinds of fantastic creatures she’d seen, armored terps as tall as she was, bandars that spat venom at a range exceeding the diameter of the hall (which was considerable), flying solwegs, talking bolliclubs. Last time out, she was reported to have described two-headed Goompahs, which she’d seen on an island in the eastern ocean. One head, she’d said, always spoke the truth, and the other always lied. But you never knew which was which.
And there was Yara-di, the city of gold.
And the bridge across the bottomless Carridan Gap, built by unknown hands, using engineering principles beyond the grasp of any alive today. The bridge was so long that, when she crossed on the back of a berba, it had taken three days.
She’d spoken of the Boravay, the carnivorous forest, from which no traveler, save Macao, had ever returned.
“Sounds like a hell of a woman,” said Kellie.
Goompah, thought Digger. She’s a Goompah. Not a woman.
A strict and formal decorum was observed during the slosh. No hooting, no raised voices. “If the honored speaker would pause for a moment,” one might say, “before we wander farther into confusion—”
It was a cool night. A brisk wind blew off the sea, and management needed several fires to warm the hall to a comfortable level. Macao was obviously popular because Goompahs filled the building, and sat talking quietly to one another while they waited for her to appear.
The audience, about two hundred strong, were seated above the stage, amphitheater style, but restricted to three sides. Kellie and Digger, who had long since planted a pickup near the stage, lurked in the roped-off section, well out of the way. At the appointed hour, two workers pulled a large armchair into view, made a great deal of fuss getting it aimed in the proper direction, and returned with a frame on which Digger assumed Macao would put her maps. Then they brought out a roll of animal skin and leaned it against the side of the chair. They added a table and a lighted oil lamp, and when they had everything arranged to their satisfaction, they scurried off. A bell tinkled, the audience quieted, and a Goompah in red and gold entered from the side. He placed his palms together, the equivalent of bowing to the audience. Digger missed part of his comments, but it came down to, Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, please give a hand to our world-traveling guest, Macao Carista.