That was craftsmanship!
Only a connoisseur would ever buy such a piece. Only a philistine would dare display it. Graceful curling letters ran along the base of the work.
Méarana pulled out her medallion, and held it at arm’s length before the carving.
The medallion was an abstraction of the same scene. The black ceramic was the night sky, the diamond was the star, the ruby sliver was the lightning. It was broken off, she remembered. Perhaps there had once been a brown-and-green segment representing the ground; or perhaps the parkinger had wanted to suggest emergence by breaking the circumference. She turned the medallion around and compared the writing on the back side to that underneath the carving.
The letters on the medallion were plainer, lacking the ligatures and diacriticals that the woodcarver had rendered. It was a simplified font of the same script. And as near Méarana could tell, it was the same inscription. She turned to Cheng-bob.
“Do you have any idea what this means?”
The exporter pursed his lips and went to the pouch on the side of the rack. “According to Captain Barnes’s testament of provenance, this work was the occasion of craftsmanship for one Henery Satéep na Fibulsongaram, a citizen of the Qaysarlik of Riverbridge on Enjrun and depicts a biannual festival in the City On The Hill called’ the Well of the Sun.’ The title—and the inscription may be the title—is ‘Fire from the Sky.’”
Méarana sighed and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you.”
Teodorq scratched his head. “Yuh think yer mom went looking for these dancing savages?”
Méarana laughed, because as far as savagery went, Teddy ran rather closer to the dancers than to his present companions. But all things are a matter of degree and everyone drew the line somewhere. “Of course not,” she said. “She went looking for whatever that is.” And her pointing finger rested on the bright star from which lightning bathed the earth.
But Méarana could not take her eyes from the figure of the young girl engulfed in the flames, and a cold, deadly certainty engulfed her heart.
At dinner that evening Méarana was silent and uncommunicative. The Dukovers did not notice. Donovan, who talked to himself, did not notice. Teodorq, who talked to anyone, did not notice. But Billy Chins, their servant, who insistently helped their hosts in presenting the meal, took note and whispered encouragement to her.
“Maybe so, we find her, your mama-meri. Fella no look, fella no find.”
Méarana gave him a wan, but grateful smile and attacked her “red porch,” a cold vegetable stew dominated by beets, with all the enthusiasm it warranted. It added to the chill within her. In the whole time of her search—when time had gone by and gone by, when no word had come, when the Kennel had given up, when Donovan announced his pessimism, while she had wended the Roads out to Lafrontera—in all that time a small flame of belief had burned within that she would find Bridget ban at the end of it all. But the sight of that Wild carving had extinguished it at last.
Teodorq chattered on to no one’s interest about the arms he had procured. “They still had my old nine that I pawned for eating money when I come in on the old Gopher Broke.” His “nine” was an automatic pistol that fired off a magazine of bullets, but why it was called a nine neither the Wildman nor anyone else knew. “It’s just what it’s called,” he had protested. He had also picked up a long sword called a “claymore,” much to Billy’s amusement.
“Why any-fella need him, pistol and sword? Suppose other-fella got him pistol. What good sword? And suppose other fella got him sword, the pistol is enough.”
“Sure,” Teodorq replied expansively, “until yuh run outta bullets.” Then in a labored imitation of Billy’s accent, “Sword, no run him outta stabs.”
Méarana tossed her spoon to the table and stood up. “I’m going out to take the air.” She turned and passed out through the sliding glass doors into the broad shrub-littered lawn behind the house. The grass had the same ragged quality of everything else on Gatmander. The bushes seemed to grow wherever chance had driven the seeds, and were trimmed in what could be only described as the “natural look.”
She grew aware that someone had come out behind her, and she did not look to see who it was. “I don’t think I want to know you anymore, Donovan.”
The scarred man was silent for a time. “I may not disagree,” he said finally. “It’s too much work. What is your reason?”
“I saw you hit Billy, back on Chandlers Lane.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you and he lingered at the arms shop.”
“That? He teased me about my eyes. I gave him a swat. It was good-natured.”
Méarana shook her head. “That isn’t the only thing. You treat him badly.”
“What about me?” asked the Fudir. “Do you want to know me?”
She turned and struck him on the chest with both fists. “Stop! Don’t play identity games with me. I’m going into the Wild and I’m scared.” There. She had said it.
“You should be. It’s a rough and dangerous region. There are old settled planets out there that haven’t made Reconnection. Human worlds where starflight is unknown, where men fight with gunpowder or swords. Travel is chancy—there are no scheduled liners—and the people are treacherous. They don’t like Leaguesmen. They want what we have, and they know they can’t have it because they can’t build the tools to build the tools. You wouldn’t last. Some tramp captain could drop you off on some primitive internal combustion world and never return to pick you up. He could sell you as a sex slave to some machraj or king.”
“I don’t think I—”
“I think you can trust Teddy. And even Billy might not run in a pinch. But there are limits to what the three of us can do. Do you want to risk it all just to find your mother’s grave?”
“I know that now. She’s gone. But I have to keep looking.”
“Why? Do you think she would thank you? Do you think she would even know?”
Méarana shrugged. “She may. You plan to go on, though.”
“There’s something out there. It’s just not your mother. Something that created an entire district of burnt-out worlds. The Burnt-Over District. It’s what your mother set out to find.”
“Then I’ll find it for her.”
The Fudir shook his head. “No. That’s not your quest. Go back to Dangchao. Put all this in your songs. Keep Bridget ban in your heart. That’s where I keep her.”
“Do you? I hadn’t noticed. But she was never an easy one to keep anywhere. She had a way of slipping off. You can’t go out there, Donovan. No matter how despicable you are, I can’t let you go.” She took him by his shirt and shook him until he rattled. “You’re coming apart, old man! You’ve grown unfocused, indecisive. Those six pieces of you are flying in all directions. And when any of them gets in a snit, you lose a part of yourself. You were more single-minded behind a bowl of uiscebeatha in the Bar of Jehovah!”
“It was the one thing on which we could all agree.”
“Listen to yourself. Is there some part of you that wants to die? What good would you be to me if your were half-drunk all the time? Whose skills would you blunt? The Pedant’s memory? The Sleuth’s deductive abilities? The Brute’s physical prowess? Keep them docile and you keep them useless.”