He peered overhead at the curved canopy of distant forest and patchy mud flats. These told him nothing of what he could expect here beside the river, of course, and he decided to explore a little. This was far down the river. He had fallen asleep last night again, sucked into slumber by a darkening of the world-tube, and might have drifted at a fair clip past Lord knew how many reefs and towns. The silent enormity of the river insulated a lonely skiff from the rhythms of land and made coasting downstream and downtime natural, silkily inevitable.
He walked upshore, into the silent press of time that felt at first like a mild summer’s breeze but drained the energy of anyone who worked against it. As he went he eyed the profusion of stalks and trunks and tangled blue-green masses which crouched close to the river’s edge. No signs of people. So he was unprepared for the man with a duckbill blunderbuss who stepped from behind a massive tree trunk and just grinned.
“What’s the name?” the man asked, spitting first.
“John.”
“Walking upriver?”
Better to skirt the question than to lie. “Looking for food.”
“Find any?”
“Hardly had a chance to.”
“Couldn’ta come far. Big storm just downstream from here.” The man grinned broadly, showing brown teeth, lips thin and bloodless. “I saw it pull a man’s arms off.”
So he knew John couldn’t have just strolled here from downstream. John said casually, “I walked down from the point, the one with the big old dead tree.”
“I know that place, been there once. Plenty berries and footfruit there. Why come lookin’ here?”
“I heard there’s a big city this way.”
“More like a town, kid. Me, I think you oughta stay out here in the wild with us.”
“Who’s ‘us’?”
“Some fellas.” The man’s fixed grin soured at the edges.
“I got to be getting on, mister.”
“This baby here says you got fresh business.” He displayed the blunderbuss as though he had invented it.
“I got no money.”
“Don’t want or need money, boy. Your kind, my friends will sure enjoy seeing you.”
He gestured with the blunderbuss for John to walk. John saw no easy way to get around the big weapon so he strode off, the man following at a cautious distance.
The blunderbuss was in fact the ornate fruit of a tree John had once seen. The weapons grew as hard pods on the slick-barked trees and had to be sawed off when they swelled to maturity. This one had a flange that opened into a gnarled ball and then flared further into the butt—all part of the living weapon, which if stuck butt-down in rich soil, with water and daylight, grew cartridges for the gun. From the size of the butt he guessed that this was a full-grown weapon and would carry plenty of shots.
He stumbled through a tangle of knife grasses, hearing the man snicker at his awkwardness, and then came to a pink clay path. Plainly this man planned to bring him to some kind of mean-spirited reception, and the boy had not a clue about what that could mean. Simple thieving, or a spot of buggery—these he had heard of and even witnessed.
But the man’s rapt, hot-eyed gaze spoke of more. Something beyond a boy’s world, from the unknown swamp of adulthood.
What should he do? His mind churned fruitlessly.
John’s breath rasped and quickened as he took his time on the steepening path. Like most footways, this one moved nearly straight away from the river, and thus a traveler suffered neither the chilly press of uptime nor the nauseating slide of downtime. John judged the path would probably rise into the dry-brown foothills ahead. Insects hung and buzzed in the stillness of slumberous, sliding moments. A few bit.
He thought furiously. They passed through a verdant, hummocky field and then up ahead around a sharp bend the boy saw, just a few steps beyond, a deep shiny iron-grey stream that gurgled down toward the river, and a dead muskbat that lay in the gummy clay path.
A muskbat never smells grand and this one, at least a day dead, filled the air with a sharp reek.
John gave no sign, just held his breath. The stream murmured beside him. Its weak time-churn unsteadied his step only a little. A fallen branch and windstorm debris lay just a bit beyond the muskbat’s cracked and oozing blue-black skin.
He stepped straight over the muskbat and three steps more. As he turned the man breathed in the repulsive tang and his swarthy face contorted. The man drew back, foot in midair, and the blunderbuss wavered away.
John snatched up the branch. Without meaning to he sucked in the putrid fumes. He had to clench his throat tight to stop his stomach from betraying him. He leaped at the man. In midair he swung the branch, wood seeking wood, and felt a sharp jolt as he connected.
“Ah!” the man cried in pain. The blunderbuss sprang into the air and tumbled crazily into the stream—
—which dissolved the gun with a stinging hiss and explosive puff of fragrant orange steam. The man gaped at this, at John—and took a step back.
“Now you,” John said because he could think of nothing else.
He got the words out at his lowest bass register. With a devouring metal rivulet nearby, any wrestling could bring disintegrating death in a flicker. John felt his knees turn to water, his heart jump into his throat.
The man fled. Scampered away with a little hoarse cry.
John blinked in surprise and then beat his own retreat, to escape the virulent muskbat fumes. He stopped at the edge of a viny tangle and looked back at the stream.
His chest filled with sudden pride. He had faced down a full-grown man. He!
Only later did he realize that the man was legitimately more frightened than John was—for he faced a wild-eyed boy of some muscle, ungainly but armed with a fair-sized club. So the man had prudently escaped, his dirty shirt-tail flapping like a harrying rebuke behind him.
John skirted away from the foothills, in case the swarthy man came looking with his friends. He headed downstream, marching until sleep overcame him. By keeping a good long distance from the river he hoped to avoid the time storm the man had mentioned—assuming it wasn’t a lie.
The river was always within view from any fair-sized rise, since the land curved up toward the territories overhead. The sheen of clear water blended with the ruddy mud flats at this distance, so that John could barely pick out the dabs of silver and tin-grey that spoke of deadly undercurrents.
He had arisen and found some mealy brush fruit for breakfast and had set off again when he felt a prickling at the nape of his neck. A ripple passed by. It pinched his chest and stung his eyes. Hollow booms volleyed through the layered air.
He looked up. Across the misty expanse he could make out the far side of the world. It was a clotted terrain of hills and slumped valleys, thick with a rainbow’s wonder of plant life, dappled lakes, snaky streams—all tributaries to the one great river. As he watched, the overhead arch compressed, like an accordion he had seen an old lady playing once—and then the squeezing struck him as well. Clutched his ribs, strained at his neck and ankles as though trying to pull him apart. Trees creaked, teetered, and one old black one crashed over nearby. He lay on moist, fragrant humus where he had fallen and watched the massive constriction of his entire world inch its way downstream, a compression wave passing and then relaxing, like the digesting spasm of a great beast. Strata groaned, rocks shattered. A final peal like a giant’s hammer rolled over the leafy canopy.
He had only seen five ripples in all his life and this one was more unsettling, for as he watched it proceed on he saw through his binoculars for the first time the spires of the city, and saw one tumble in a glimmering instant as the great wave passed. Somehow he had thought of cities—or towns, as the man had said, a word strange to John—as grand places free of the rub of raw nature, invulnerable.