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They were approaching a brown wall, a monolithic trunk so vast as to
belie its organic origin. Surely nothing so enormous could grow-it had to have
been built.
The party was beginning to fan out along one of the big emergent's major
branches, torches flashing umber off the meters-thick bark.
"The trunk must be thirty meters thick at this point," Logan whispered,
impressed. "Wonder what it's like at the base." She raised her voice. "Born!"
The hunter turned from his place in the line of march and waited politely
for them to catch up.
"What do you call this one?" She indicated the grandfather growth whose
central bole was now behind them.
"Its true name is lost to the ages, Kimilogan. We call them
They-Who-Keep, because they hold safe the souls of the people who die."
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"Now I see," she declared. "I was wondering how you disposed of your
dead, since you never descend to the surface, to the First Level. And I didn't
think you'd hold to cremation."
Born looked confused. "Cremation?"
"Burning the bodies."
Any of Born's older associates, Reader, for example, or Sand, would have
been openly shocked at this thought. But Born's mind did not work like those
of his friends. He merely regarded the question thoughtfully. "I had not
imagined such a possibility. Is that how you dispose of those among you who
change?"
"If by change, you mean die," Cohoma responded, "yes, it is, sometimes."
"How strange," Born murmured, more to himself than to the giants. "We
come of the world and believe we should return to it. I guess there are those
among you who are not of the world and therefore have nothing to return to."
"Couldn't have put it better myself, Born," Cohoma admitted.
They walked on in silence several minutes more, until the column began to
spread out onto a slightly wider section of branch.
"We've come to the place?" Logan asked softly.
"One of the places," Born corrected. "Each has his place. A proper one
must be found for every man." He looked upward, considered the black branches
in the sky. "Come. You will see better from above."
After several moments of ascending the ever-present stairway of vines and
lianas, they found themselves looking down on the wide section of branch
below. Everyone was bunched tightly around a deep crack in the branch. It was
several meters across and not many more long. The feeble light from the
torches shielded against the rain made it impossible to tell how deep it went
into the wood.
The shaman was murmuring words too fast and soft for either Logan or
Cohoma to interpret. The assembled people listened in respectful silence. One
of the men who had died fighting the Akadi and a dead furcot were brought
forward from the heavily laden litters.
"They're buried together, then," Logan whispered.
Born studied her sadly, a great pity welling up in him. Poor giants!
Sky-boats and other miraculous machines they might possess, but they were
without the comfort of a furcot. Every man, every woman had a furcot who
joined them soon after birth and went with them through life unto death. He
could not imagine living without Ruumahum.
"What happens to those furcots whose masters die before they do?" Cohoma
asked.
Born looked at him quizzically. "Ruumahum could not live without me, nor
I without him," he explained to the attentive giants. "When half of one dies,
the other hah' cannot long survive."
"I never heard of such a severe case of emotional interdependence between
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man and animal," Logan muttered. "If we hadn't observed any sign of it, I'd
probably suspect some kind of physical symbiosis had developed here as well."
Their attention was diverted from this new discovery by the actions
below. Sand and Reader were now pouring various smelly liquids over the two
bodies, which had been lowered into the split in the branch.
"Some kind of sacred oil, or something," Cohoma ventured. But Logan
hardly heard him. Emfol? mutual burial- half of oneself? Thoughts were
spinning around and around in her head without forming any pattern, refusing
to mesh, to reveal? what?
The furcots pining away for their dead masters she could understand. But
for a man to die of loneliness for his animal, probably Cohoma was right.
Born's people had been forced backward along the path of development by the
sheer necessity to concentrate on surviving. This emotional entwining was a
symptom of that sickness. One of the pounding thoughts swamping her brain
suddenly demanded clarification.
"You said men and women," she whispered, staring downward. "Do furcots
and people match up by sex?" Born looked puzzled. "You know, female furcots to
women, male to male? Is Ruumahum a male?"
"I do not know," Born replied absently, involved in the ceremony playing
to its conclusion below. "I never asked." As far as he was concerned, that was
the end of the question. But it only stimulated Logan's curiosity further.
"And Losting's furcot, Geeliwan. Is it a she?"
"I do not know. Sometimes we say 'he,' sometimes 'she.' It matters not to
a furcot. A furcot is of the brethren of furcots. That is sufficient for them
and for us." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]