Sunfall, page 16
The door slammed open, echoing; the wind hit them like a hammer blow, and Mason flinched. There was a wide balcony outside, heavy pipe from which lines were strung. Mason clung to the door and Johnny dragged him forward by the arm. All the world stretched about them in the twilight, and there was ice underfoot, a fine mist blowing, bitter cold, making muscles shake. Mason slipped, and Johnny caught his elbow, walked a step farther.
"I can't go out on the lines," Johnny said. "Can't look out the windows. But company helps. Doesn't it?" He walked him far out across the paving, his eyes on the horizon haze, and Mason came, shivering convulsively within the circle of his left arm. The wind hit them hard, staggered them both, made them slip a little on the ice. His right side was numb. He kept his arm about Mason, walked to the very railing. "No view like it, Mr. Mason. I dream of it. It's cold. And it's far. Look down, Mr. Mason."
Mason clutched at the railing, white-knuckled. Johnny let him go, moved back from him, turned and walked back toward the lift doors.
The hatch opened. Police were there, with guns drawn. And they stayed within the doorway, leaned there, sickness in their eyes, hands clenched together on the levelled guns.
He laughed, noiseless in the wind, motioned toward the edge, toward Mason. None of the police moved. The world was naked about them. The soaring height of the other towers was nothing to this, to the City itself, the great Manhattan tower. He grinned at them, while the wind leached warmth from him.
"Go get him," he shouted at the police. "Go out and get him."
One tried, got a step out, froze and fell.
And slowly, carefully, holding up hands they could see as empty, he walked back to Mason, took his right hand and pried it from the icy rail; took the other, stared almost compassionately into a face which had become a frozen mask of horror, mouth wide and dried, eyes stark and wild. He put his arm about Mason like a brother, and slowly walked with him back to the police. "Mr. Mason," he said to them, "seems to have gotten himself out where he can't get back. But he'll be all right now." Mason's hands clung to him, and would not let go. He walked into the housing and into the lift with the police, still with his arm about Mason, and Mason clutched at him as the lift shot down. He smoothed Mason's hair as he had once smoothed Sarah's. "I had a sister," he said in Mason's ear. "But someone shut a door. On all of us. They'll convict Bettin, of course. And it'll all be forgotten. Won't it?"
The lift stopped at a lower floor. The police pushed him out, carefully because of Mason; and there were windows there, wide windows, and the twilight gleaming on the other buildings on the horizon. Mason sobbed and turned his face away, holding to him, but the police pulled them apart; and Mason held to the wall, clung there, his face averted from the glass.
"I don't think I want your job, Mr. Mason," Johnny said. "I'm going back out on the lines. I don't think I belong in your offices."
He started to leave. The police stopped him, twisted his arm.
"Do you really want me on trial?" he asked Mason. "Does the Mayor, or the Council?"
"Let him go," Mason said hoarsely. The police hesitated. "Let him go." They did. Johnny smiled.
"My lines won't break," he said. "There won't be any misunderstandings. No more jammed doors. I'll go back to the Bottom now. I'll talk where I choose. I'll talk to whom I choose. Or have me killed. And then be ready to go on killing. Dan Hardesty and the 50 East know where I am; and why; and you kill them and there'll be more and more to kill. And it'll all come apart, Mr. Mason, all the tower will come apart, the liners on strike; the Builders no more cooling, no more water, no more power. Just dark. And no peace at all."
He turned. He walked back into the lift.
No one stopped him. He rode down through all the levels of the City, to the Bottom itself, and walked out into its crooked ways. Men and women stopped, turned curious eyes on him.
"That's Johnny Tallfeather," they whispered. "That's him."
He walked where he chose.
There was peace, thin-stretched as a wire. The liners walked where they chose too; and the Builders; and the Residents stayed out of the lower levels. There was from all the upper floors a fearful hush.
So the city grew.
THE GENERAL
(Peking)
Man was old in this land. His dust was one with the dust which blew over the land, which had blown yellow and unstoppable from antiquity which stained the great river and covered the land and settled again. The Forbidden City looked out on a land which moved, which shifted in this latter age of the world, beneath a lowering moon and the aging sun. Northward lay the vast ice sheet, but southern winds fended away that ancient enemy. Eastward lay the sea and southward the strangeness of the peninsulas and the isles; westward lay the plains, the endless plains, across which men and beasts moved again as they had moved in ages before men wrapped and shielded against the sun, strange and shaggy as the beasts they rode.
In the Forbidden City, life was abundant, sheltered by walls. There was beauty in the seasons, there was art from the cultivation of rare flowers to the intricate symbolism of gestures and nuances of dress; they had had time to grow elaborate and refined. The inhabitants named the city the City of Heaven and its beauty was beyond dreaming. It had soldiers necessary when the impoverished plains tribes came with the winter winds, tribes which traded with them in good times, but whichrarelyturned, and beat themselves desperately and futilely against the walls.
The interior, which raiders never saw, was tranquility. Even the soldiers who defended the city were armed with beauty; weapons were works of art; and those were the only outward show permitted, for the walls were plain. The interior was beautiful as the accumulated treasure of ages could make it. Not all the beauty was of gold and jewels and jade, although there was a great deal of such work; but the quiet, patient work of ordinary objects, a sense of place and permanence and above all of time for while the City of Heaven was not the oldest in the Earth, still it was conscious of its passing years, and stored them up like treasures. It loved its age. It found life good. It found no great ambition, for it had been very long since its last outward motion; it rested at the end of days. Its quality now was patience, and meticulous loveliness, the contemplation of age and absorption in its private thoughts. Even the weather had been kind in the years of younger memory, only lately turning drier.
Only the season finally came of the yellow wind, and the dust, the worst dust of living memory.
Some whispered that it foretold a worse winter than any living had seen.
Some whispered that it foretokened invasion, for the grass must be dry and the hordes would move, and war among themselves.
But a tribe tamer than the others came for the season's trading and said, before departing again into the plains, that in the years of green grass and little dust, the hordes had multiplied, both man and beast; which meant greater numbers coming. And they told the City what the tribes had known for years, that the City had known peace because the hordes had massed for wars far to the west that a single horde had dominated all the others, and a leader had risen, under whose horsetail banner all the hordes of the world-plain moved. They themselves, said the more peaceful tribe, prepared to go far away: so did all the friendly tribes, the city's friends, who could not resist such a force. But the city suspected otherwise, knowing that the tribes did not love them. It was mere rumor, they said in council, some clever trick to weaken then: courage when these very peaceful tribes ran out of trade goods and turned to brigandage.
But the dust storms grew worse, and the tribes did vanish.
The City of Heaven searched its records and its long memory in more earnest. Indeed all these signs were confirmed, that one thing tended to lead to the other: they ought to have mistrusted the green years and laid in greater store of weapons.
Perhaps, some said now, they should call in the strangers their children, who would come with their machines and their starfarers' weapons and aid them to drive back the invaders.
But the citizens would not, because the strangers their children were rough-handed and sudden and liked to manage things their own way, whichagain ancient experience of them forewarnedled to strangers seeing the beauties of the city; and seeing led to desiring; and desiring led to quarrelsome threats and to disturbances in the city. To call in the starfarers was to invite a horde far greater than that which might gather on the vast plains; and to invite plunder as grievous.
So they did not.
After all, the records indicated that many times in the eons past such intrusion had come, and the city, when well prepared and well led, had prevailed.
Only when the dust took on a stronger color in the west did they take clear alarm. This plume amid the blowing clouds was indeed broader than it had been in living memory and darker. It was their sole warning, with the tribes of the surrounding area gone: they were without eyes and ears now but they were prepared in mind. The soldiers of the Forbidden City decorated their armor with ribbons, and polished their weapons and saw to their supplies of gunpowder for more deadly weapons again involved the thankless and rowdy starfarers, and they would have none of it, as the enemy, they fully trusted, had no such arms. They filed out, great in number, footsoldiers, for the folk of the Forbidden City no longer traveled and preferred the stability of infantry in such few wars as they fought. They prepared to fight as they lived, with precision and elegance, ribbons streaming from armor and weapons and flowers decking their helms.
All the city turned out to see the soldiers on their way, waved gaily embroidered kerchiefs from the beautiful walls, danced dragons in the streets, threw flowers and cheered for the brave defenders of the city.
It was an event, not a crisis. Ah, they knew their danger, but the danger was remote, and their long tranquility behind their walls had made them philosophical and happy.
Nowhere near the whole of the city's young folk marched out. It was in fact only half, the Lion and Phoenix regiments, which went, those forces which this year's turn made active. The rest were spectators.
Such were Tao Hua and Kan Te, of the Dragon. Kan Te was a tall young son of the Guardian of the Morning Gate, an excellent youth of straight limbs and a bright glance, and a brave heart; and Tao Hua, as splendid a young woman as Kan Te was a fine youth, daughter to renewed artists in inks. They were soon to be married. All the world was good to Tao Hua and Kan Te, and along with the rest of the cheering city, they turned out in optimism, standing on the walls by the western gate to wave cheer to their comrades and to take in the spectacle. Their hearts lifted for the brave display. The fighting was something beyond their imaginations, for while they were soldiers, they had never fought in earnest. Usually there were shots fired at a great distance and a few of the barbarians would fall and that would be the end of the war. It was all very tidy and none of the flower-decked armor was sullied; in fact, in the last encounter, much before Tao Hua and Kan Te were born, the army had come back with its flowers unwilled, unstained and victorious.
There were drams and cymbals, and the dragon dancers chained along at the army's side as they passed the gate.
"Perhaps we will be called up," said Tao Hua.
"Perhaps," said Kan Te, marking the size of the cloud; and the least fear was in his heart, for he had heard his greatgrandfather talking with his grandparents and parents after coming from council. "The council was divided about whether to send more."
"Lion and Phoenix are very brave," said Tao Hua.
"They are not enough," said Kan Te, surer and surer of this. He should not bear tales, things heard in family, but Tao Hua bore them no further. He took her hand in his and they watched the dust with the light of the dying sun piercing it with strange colors. "Some wanted to defend the walls from inside and some wanted to march out in all our strength; and the result the council sent only half, and left half behind. To send more, they said, would panic the people unnecessarily."
Tao Hua looked up at him, her face quite serene and golden in the sun, and he thought again how he loved her. He was afraid, perceiving a shaking in his world, as if it were the tramp of hooves and feet, foretold in the dust.
"I dreamed," he said further, "that all the grass of the plains was gone; I dreamed that the Earth swarmed with men and beasts and that they were much alike; I dreamed of tents and campfires like stars across all the plain of the world; I dreamed that the moon fell, and the moon was the hope of the city."
Tao Hua gazed at him, her black eyes reflecting the shifting clouds, and he thought again of the moon which fell, no bit comforted to have told his dream. There had always seemed time enough: the end of the world crept on at a leisurely pace, and in its ending there were beauties enough. There was no ambition left, but there was time all the time human lives needed: it was only the Earth which had grown old. Love had not.
For the first time the thought of death came between them.
The column moved slowly, inexorable in its flow across the plain of the world, a flow which had begun years ago in the Tarim and surged to the western rim of the world-plain; which now flowed back again multiplied until the eye could not span its breadth, let alone its length.
The general rode at the head of the column: Yilan Baba, his men called him, Father Serpent, but snake he had been from his youth, cunning and deadly in his strike. Now he was very old, braced in the saddle with furs and the habit of years on horseback. It was an old pony that carried him, a beast he called Horse, which was one in a long succession of shaggy high-tempered beasts of similar bay color how many, Yilan had forgotten; and this one had grown patient over the long traveling, and quiet of manner, tired, perhaps, as Yilan was tired, and old, as Yilan had gotten old but that was not the complaint which gnawed at Yilan. He was thin beneath the quilted coats and leathers and furs, thin to the point of gauntness. His mustaches were grizzled; his braids were gray, his narrow eyes were lost in sun-wrinkles and his cheeks were seamed and hollowed by age and by the wasting disease which had come on him in this last year.
But if he looked, squinting, through the sun-colored dust which swirled about them, it seemed that he could see this place of his dreams, the Forbidden City, the City of Heaven. He imagined that he could see it, as he imagined it each dawning, when the sun rose out of the east and the colors streamed through the dusty wind. The wind out of the east breathed of green lands, of beauty, of wealth
of ending. A place to rest. Beyond, was only the sea.
"Give me the city," he had asked of the hordes which he had gathered. For all of a lifetime he had gathered them, he, Yilan, the Snake, from his mastery of his own tribe to mastery of all the tribes which rode the world-plain.
They came with tents and with wagons, with oxen and with swift horses and with patient feet, men and women and children of the hordes. With the drought on the plains he might have lost them, but he stirred them now with visions of final paradise, with a dream which he had prised from the lips of a man who had actually seen the City of Heaven.
He had gathered power all his life, which had been fifty-nine seasons, and whichhe knewwould not be another. He wanted this thing, he wanted itah, beyond telling.
And the flesh grew thinner and the pain of his bones against the saddle grew all but unbearable; he bled from the saddlegalls, he was so thin, and his eyes watered so that much of the time he rode with the shame of tears on his cheeks.
"Drink, Yilan Baba," said a voice by his side. He looked into the young face of Shimshek, dark and fierce as a kite, who offered him kumiss and rode his pony close to Horse, so that he might steady him. He drank, and the liquor warmed him, but his hand was now so weak that he could not stopper the skin or long hold it. Shimshek caught it from him in time, and reached to grip his shoulder as they rode knee against knee. "Hold firm, Father, we will stop soon."
"The City will be in sight," he said, and comforted by the presence of his young lieutenant, he focused his mind and his eyes, and thought how long by now the plume of their dust might have been seen. "Hawk and Fox will go out with all others you can persuade," he said, his voice cracking; he steadied it and lifted his hand eastward, where he would send the forces. "And you must lead them. I no longer can, Shimshek."
"Father," Shimshek mourned. There was great sadness in his eyes, a genuine sorrow.
"I have taught you," said Yilan. Shimshek was not, in fact, his son; he had no son, though his wife's belly swelled with life. He loved this man as if he were a son, and trusted him with all that mattered. "Go," he said. "This time you lead."
Shimshek looked behind them, at the column of wagons which groaned after them, having in his eyes that look which was for the woman they both loved, and for things he could not say. There was fear in Shimshek's eyes that was not for the enemy, not for anything that he would yet name. Good, thought Yilan. Good, he knows; and yet Shimshek said nothing, because there was nothing which could be said. The task was for doing, and there was no help for it: he had himself fought his last battle, and knew it; and Horse knew it, who was also aging by now Horse would have known the enemy, would have flared his nostrils and thrown his head and walked warily and eagerly with the scent of strangers and strange land coming on the winds. But he plodded, head hanging.
