“Those who would track thee,” Foo-lin said, handing over the niplips, “will know when and where they are destroyed.”
“I know this thing, and for thy sake and the sake of all our common ancestors I will not destroy them here. But those who would track me will know the path these traveled and will follow their spoor to this place. Thou needst not know who they be.”
“Though one may hazard guesses.” He spat on the floor. “This place…” The foo-doctor looked about the dilapidated basement. “I spread my tents where I wist. This keller will be empty when they come.”
“Thou hast no love for the Names.”
“It is Terra of Old that I love alone. To the Names, I am indifferent. They are now; one day they are not. But Earth alone abideth.”
“And yet thou scornest the Terrans of the Diaspora.”
“They have fallen from the Faith, even as they have fled from the Earth. They would erect a secular Terra on the soil of the holy Commonwealth. ‘What’s done is done and what’s gone is gone, and what’s lost is lost and gone forever.’ What might they hope to revive but a corpse—a zombie Commonwealth, with Men of Brass aping the deeds of the Men of Gold. Beside which, it would arouse my neighbors against all Terrans and bring the boots upon our faces.”
The Fudir made a sign with his right hand. “Dream thy dreams of old, O venerable one. No such ill shall come of my visit. I am but a lonely fugitive.”
“May thy heels be swift, thy breaths drawn sweet, and thine end swift and painless. Now, about my fee…”
The Fudir laughed. “Know that there is ever a place for you in the Corner of Jehovah. Mention to the Seven the name of the Fudir, and if they do not slit thy throat from mere exasperation at the reminder they will welcome thee. The remainder of thy fee sits ‘on deposit.’ There is a loose brick on the face of this very building, in the cavity behind which I placed the coins. I will touch the brick casually—so—as I depart. Thou mayest then, at thy leisure, collect the remainder of thy fee.”
“Few are the men I would trust on such a promise.”
The Fudir wondered how much was trust and how much prudence in the face of a man who had beaten the thugs of The Severed Arm and (putatively) a Shadow. “I crave one further boon of thee. It is on me to make the hajj. I am given to understand that the Mount of Many Faces is close by this place.”
The foo-doctor laughed. “Aye, if by ‘close’ thou meanest ‘on the selfsame continent’! What drollery! Thou wishest coordinates for your flier? It is but the labor of a moment.” The old man busied himself at his console and shortly returned with a small disk. “Insert this in thy navigation system and straightaway thou shallt be taken to the legendary Mount.” He smiled as if at some secret joke.
Donovan understood the foo-doctor’s wit early the next morning when the flier he had rented under the name Tjoslina Tuk went into a tight circle above the specified coordinates.
The land below him was capped under milk-white ice a mile thick.
The wind howled unobstructed across the northern ice-plains, buffeting the small craft and challenging its autopilot to impressive feats of stability. Tiny ice particles rattled off the windshield.
The Fudir sighed. So much for the legendary heads: for Washington and Abe; for Jeff and Teddy; for Miwel II and Kgonzdan the Oppressed. They were not even buried, he thought—or the Sleuth thought. They were ground to powder by unimaginable pressure against the mortar of the earth.
It comes on suddenly, the Fudir remembered. A century or two from grassy plains to ice desert. But it wants thousands of years to melt.
It’s the albedo. Once the land whitens, it reflects more sunlight.
Donovan sighed. He had planned to tuck the two niplips up the nostril of Miwel II, whose copious nasal passages were said to have led into vast and secret chambers, full of pre-Commonwealth treasure. A suitable place for Donovan to search out; a reasonable place to have become trapped.
Instead, he tossed the two devices from his flier and let them fall to the ice, to be buried by the drifting powder. Then he turned his vehicle to the west and sought the fabled city of Prizga.
VII. Many Arrows Loosèd Several Ways
An ancient sage once wrote that all things happen by chance or by design, but that chance was only the intersection of two designs. Consider the man who is struck on the head by a hammer while walking to his lunch.
Everything about his perambulation is designed, which is to say intended. He is hungry—it is that time of day for it—and he habitually takes his lunch at a café two blocks distant from his workplace. It is a sunny day, so he wears no cap. None of this is by chance.
Likewise, the workman atop the roof of the building half a block along. He too ceases work for lunch and, habitually, leaves his tools unattended. Because of the geometric arrangement of his tools, his foot nudges the hammer as he arises, the which, in obedience to the inexorable laws of action and reaction, nudges back and so begins to slide. The god Newton teases it down the slanted roof tiles until it tips into his clutches and is pulled to the street below, even as the unfortunate lunch bound is passing beneath.
“Ah, what ill luck,” say the street sweepers as they cleanse the blood and brains from the duroplast walkway. Yet everything that has happened is the consequence of the actors’ intentions or of nature’s laws—and some say those laws are but the intentions of a greater Actor.
We call it “chance” and we marvel because our superstitions desire that concatenation be as meaningful as causality. The man was brained by a hammer! It must mean something. There must be a connection! And so poor Fate is made the scapegoat of intersecting world-lines. Having become all tangled up in the threads, we incline to blame the weaver.
Which is to say that if two travelers intend the same destination, it is no great thing that their threads might cross along the way.
A third thing that Méarana’s mother had taught her was how to handle herself in free fall wearing a skinsuit. This was a fortunate skill, as Méarana’s mother well knew, for it enabled the harper to step out of a doomed ship wrapped in nothing much more than a leotard, helmet, and cloak of invisibility, and to coast until coming to rest on the side of the smuggler’s monoship.
“We must match our mootions while still blocked from view,” Ravn Olafsdottr had warned her before closing the skinsuit seals. “It would noot do to touch the vessel with too great a delta-V.”