A large rectangular green occupied the center of Dacitti. It included a sheep meadow and a pond where fish were cultivated. Much of this cornucopia was laid out for the visitors that afternoon in a great feast. Damáire, who was village headman, bid them official welcome and when the platitudes and formalities had been completed, Méarana finally got an answer to her question.
“The sky-fire comes down up there,” Watershanks told them as Damáire pointed to a flat peak at the far end of the valley.
“Every night,” said Billy Chins, “to cook their food.”
Damáire laughed at the humor of the starmen. “You are a funny man,” he told the Confederate courier. “That is only a legend of superstitious Valley folk. No, it is the sperm of the sky. When the god grows horny, he comes to our world to impregnate her. The sky-fire is his thrust into her.
“‘Fire from sky meets womb in ground.
Thrusting deep within…’”
“Well,” said Billy wooden-faced. “We wouldn’t want to believe a superstitious legend.”
“Sperm,” said Donovan. He could not get out of his mind what Méarana had told him on the Starwalk at Siggy O’Hara. “Then why ‘fire’ from the sky?”
“Because the god has what we call ‘the hots.’ God loves the world, so he comes back, again and again. And it is a beautiful world, though I know no others.”
Donovan could see between the three-stacked huts the newly plowed fields of Emrika valley rolling off toward forests and the mountains that rimmed them in. He could not tell Damáire he was wrong. He asked the headman how long it took the god to grow horny.
“Hard to say,” was the answer. “Gods are not like us, but it must be exhausting, making a whole world pregnant. I will ask the efrezde-who-watches-the-sky. Her tallyboard may tell us when the world is to be screwed.”
The efrezde-who-watches-the-sky spent several hours of prayer that night, using a sextant and jacobstaff to mark the positions of key sky-objects. But, as this was her station in life, she kept these observations updated daily, and it did not take long thereafter to complete her prophesy. “In one tenday and half a tenday,” she announced at morning prayer, “will the fire come down and enter the Well at the End of the World.” At breakfast later, she added, “So your arrival is timely. The other golden-skinned woman, who came in a sky-borne chariot, arrived last year. But it was not the proper time. So after a time among the Oorah she ascended into heaven.”
The harper’s knees nearly betrayed her. Donovan seized her by the arm and Sofwari took her by the other and between them they bore her up.
“Mother,” she said, almost in a whisper.
Perhaps that was another word that the centuries barely touched, for Chain Gostiyya-Uaid turned to her and something like understanding was in her eyes.
XV. AND BEHOLD, A PILLAR OF FIRE
They set off the next day from Dacitti in a shower of red maiden and edelweiss and with wreaths of dragon’s blood around their necks. Fifes and drums played them up the Broad Path to the ditch that connected the Xhodzhã with the Rjo-yeszdy at the north end of the island. The Emrikii lined the Path and cheered and threw confetti as they passed. A company of musketeers in powder-blue jacks and cross-belts marched with them as an honor guard. At the Xhorlm Ditch, the well-wishers remained behind and Méarana and her group continued along the Xhodzhã High Road that ran the length of the valley.
Méarana paused to thank Damáire, but he only waved his hands and said, “V’gedda-boddi,” which the translators told her was how the Emrikii said, “you’re welcome.”
With them went a “long hunter” named Bavyo Zãzhaice, who knew the way to the top of the Oorah butte, and Chain, who spoke a bit of the Oorah language. Bavyo had the broad stride and confident mien of one returning to his natural home.
“He is a man-who-likes-aloneness,” Chain explained through Water-shanks. “He lives in the forests and in the Big Mountains, so he gets little practice in talking to other people.”
Indeed, their guide frequently went off by himself when they stopped for night camp, to a lonely crag or an oak grove, where he sat in silent contemplation. Méarana joined him one evening on a great stone outcropping. There was a gap in the forest through which a distant mountain pass could be seen and the flat line of the plains beyond. The sky had deepened to indigo save where the sun had lately gone down, and there the clouds glowed a bright red. Bavyo said nothing the whole time she watched the sunset.
The next day, as they crossed the lower slope and entered the Borigan Forest, Chain fell into step with her. “Bavyo say,” she stammered in halting loor nuxrjes’r, “yes, he set beautiful.” Then she scurried ahead to walk beside him. He seemed to take no notice, and Chain looked everywhere but at their guide. Méarana smiled to herself.
Sofwari came to walk beside her. “What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. How goes your research?”
The science-wallah’s face clouded over and he touched a pocket in his coveralls. “I have only the data from Rajiloor and Nuxrjes’r, but your intuition seems to have been correct, and this is the origin of the anomalous cluster on Harpaloon.”
She took his hand and they walked companionably “Debly, tell me something.”
He hesitated. “What?”
“Why did these worlds crash so badly? The Dark Age was rough on the Old Planets. The prehumans deliberately mixed cultures and languages, and it took centuries to recover; but the Old Planets never forgot the past as badly as here. The Harps have a legend about ancestors who went out on the Shining Path, promising to return. But they never did. That would have been the expedition sent to Harpaloon. I’ve seen the landers in Côndefer Park, and even the’ Loons have forgotten what they were. No surprise, the Enjrunii never heard of the League or the Confederation. But I’ve mentioned the prehumans, Dao Chetty, even the Commonwealth. Nothing. It’s like they never were.”
They continued silently for a space while Sofwari gave it thought. A bird with a flare of red feathers at his crest called out from a branch they were passing and took wing to another tree. “This is outside my expertise,” he said at last, “but my guess is that as rich as the Treasure Fleet was, it was not as rich as a world. What they took with them was nothing; next to the whole of Terra. In the end, there were not enough of them, or they lacked for something essential, or they spread themselves too thin. Perhaps if they had focused on fewer worlds…”
“I understand the world has to be receptive. Look at Gatmander or New Eireann. Had they seeded too few places, and the prehumans had stumbled across them out here…No, their safest choice was to spread their seed as far and wide as they could. Who knows…”
“Who knows what?”
“Who knows what we would find in the Cygnus Arm, if we ever get there?”
She heard chimes, and looked around to see what the sound could be. The Harps placed “soul catchers” in trees and the wind rang the metal pieces woven into them. But this was far outside Harp country.
Donovan was answering his comm. unit. For a moment, the significance did not register. Then she realized. “Blankets and Beads! She’s back!”
Their translators and guide did not understand the elation. Méarana tried to explain to Watershanks that their “endarooa-of-the-stars” had retuned from a trade visit; and Watershanks tried to explain that to two people who had likely never seen an endarooa. A star canoe? What was that beside the wonders they had already seen? Ayiyi! The Scarred One spoke to a djinn invisible!