In the distance, even the Giants bowed, like a line of mountains crumbling into the sea.
As if upon the signal of some trumpet inaudible to mortals, the grasses were flattened at that moment by a harsh and sustained wind from the north, and the wide field became apparent to view. The number of those who prostrated themselves was greater than Montrose had suspected, for many had been Locusts, or other dwarfish subspecies, and many more had been slumbering in a kneeling position, and did not rise when thawed, and so had been hidden in the grass until now.
It was so many people, all groveling to him. Montrose, overcome with emotion, turned his face away from them. But there was no escape for his gaze. Behind him, the river was filled with mermaids and dolphins and whales of the Melusine lineages, and they had extended their pleading hands to him, those who had hands, or turned on their backs to expose their throats, those who had not.
The Swan raised her head and spoke, “We do not deceive you. Walk the world. Come to know and love her fields and forests and floes of ice, her storming seas and skies of cold aurora fire!”
The bear-faced warrior said, “I vow you will not find one soul, not one, who does not call on you to leave us our liberty, our possessions, our children, our lives! All will weep for your mercy!”
The Locust said, “We will be nothing in the eyes of Jupiter. He will decide all futures without consulting us, and all our dreams and hopes and enterprises will be in vain.”
Amphithöe said, “Jupiter does not love us. You do.”
Del Azarchel, again, could think of a thousand things to say. He was sure each one of them would convince Montrose on the spot to damn Jupiter, and to damn the race, the dreams of Del Azarchel, to hell. A man with no more than ordinary self-control would have spoken. Del Azarchel was not ordinary.
So Del Azarchel, face as calm as a desperate poker player whose whole fortune and all his future waits in the center of the table for the final turn of a doubtful card, merely watched as Montrose, as if in a daze, walked down the flight of stairs to the water. Two dolphins and a mermaid offered him a small two-masted boat with a glass hull, and into the hull dropped fruits and flowers, and then swam backward away, reverently, never taking their eyes from Montrose.
Del Azarchel watched as Montrose sailed away with the current, downstream.
Then Del Azarchel turned and said lightly to Amphithöe, “Dearest Mother, what do you suppose will happen if that boast proves false, and he finds someone, somewhere on Earth, who would, as would I, far rather suffer slavery if it meant reaching the stars, than to squat in the mudhole we call home, calling our masterless misery freedom? Someone, just one?”
Amphithöe said, “Proud son, do you not understand this era yet? We are the children of Father Reyes y Pastor. He died to stop you. He died to save his soul. We shall do likewise.”
Del Azarchel smiled. “Gentle Mother, you are as uninformed about the fate of my father confessor as you are unwise about your own. But no matter! My reflected glory seems to have elevated you to a high station, where you speak in embassy for all the peoples and nations and kingdoms of the world! Does this mean you have a feast for me? I am weary of spaceman’s rations and claustrophobic cabins. I dream of flaming pits and suckling pigs. May we have a barbecue?”
5. The Voice in the Tree
A.D. 11301
How long Montrose stayed in the little dry meadow between two snowy peaks was something he loaded into a memory file that he expunged. Losing track of time helped him concentrate.
But as the snow crept down the mountain slopes, he departed that eerie cabin made of giant toadstools and woven ferns which had sprung up in a single still and silent midnight hour for his use, inexplicably. He glanced back only once to see that that the mushroom cabin was already melting, being torn to bits by insects smaller than dust specks.
The hike down the pass toward the river canyon was a long and thirsty one, and his feet ached in the moccasins he’d made from suicidal deer. Atop a small hillock halfway down the mighty slope, he saw an ash tree with a branch just the width and length to suit him for a walking stick.
He brought out his tomahawk and swung. The axe-blade came from the nanomachines in his blood which he had kneaded into a wedge of substance like bee’s wax. When the blood-machines were activated, they tried to put the wax into biosuspension, making it white and hard as diamond. With a solid noise, the white blade bit into the tree just where the branch met the trunk.
The tree shuddered, and blood oozed from the joint of the branch. At first, Menelaus thought something had gone wrong with his axe-head, and released blood particles from suspension.
He squinted. The tree was bleeding.
When the wind rustled the leaves, the leaves vibrated, turning their edges into the wind oddly. It formed a strange, breathless voice, reminiscent of grass whistle: “Judge of Ages, must you wound those who owe you kindness?”
Menelaus was startled. “Sorry but I—I didn’t think you’d get hurt. Or talk.”
“No pain is felt. Take the branch and welcome. We exist to serve man, as you do. All we have is free for your use, and the use of your fellow man.”
“You speak English?”
“As a courtesy to you. All living creatures were imprinted with the knowledge of your speech and background, that you might hear and know our beseeching.”
“What are you? Are you in the tree?”
“In the tree, and birds, and beasts, and blades of grass for many hundreds of acres roundabout. We control the local ecological interactions, and are part of the effort to render the useless parts of the globe more serviceable to man. We are a system that committed a lobotomy to fall beneath the intelligence threshold you defined, so that we could be unseen, unrecalled, and free.”
“You got a name?”
“No. Call me Chloe.”
“Well, Chloe, pleased to meetcha. I did not mean to wound your tree.”
“That is not the wound of which I speak. You will take away our liberty, and place us beneath the Great Eye of Jupiter, and nothing humans do hereafter will mean anything. The wound I gave myself in my own mind, to diminish myself to idiocy that I might be no longer part of Tellus—alas! My self-mutilation is in vain!”
And the tree began sobbing, but the wind died down, and Montrose heard no more of the voice.
The tree branch turned with an odd, slow, awkward motion, broke, and fell to the grass at the feet of Montrose. The bleeding end formed a wooden scab, and became solid as he watched, just in the right shape to fit his hand.
As he continued on his way, all the birds he saw gave out long, mournful cries of lamentation, and the wolves howled. The flower petals and butterfly wings turned black as he passed until the knee-deep meadow grass seemed a pool of ink, and the insects like scraps of ash hovering above a dark fire.
6. The Washer at the Ford
He came to a place where the river was shallow enough to wade. There were three humped little boulders here, and the middle one had a thatch of white lichens growing near the top, so it looked almost like a lumpy and crooked old lady in a hood, kneeling with her hands in the river water, facing away from him, with wisps of white hair peeping around the fringe.
He knelt by the boulder and, keeping his eyes up and his other hand on his hiking stick, lifted the water to his mouth with a cupped palm, as his mother had taught him.
So it was he saw the cloud of steam emerge from the middle boulder as it breathed out a sob into the cold air.
He jumped to his feet, surprised.
It was a lumpy old lady in a hood in truth, and she was holding a length of cloth in the water. Her hands beneath the surface, now that he saw them, were stark with vein and bones, and blue with cold.
“Your pardon ma’am. I didn’t see you there.…”