Fliers came and went. People unloaded hastily packed crates of food and bedding, then settled down in the midst of mystery, only to get up and wander nervously about once more, putting their hands on the wooden walls, knocking as though for admittance. Anyone who liked could have gone inside. Only the children did so, daring each other to enter again and again. After a time, even the children stopped their incursions, driven out by the strange, powerful smell.
A group from Settlement One had gathered beneath the trees halfway between the first-discovered mounds and the Departed village. Sal Girat was there, with Africa and China Wilm, and Theor Close, who had brought the word from Sam. Vastly pregnant, China crouched among her friends and kinfolk, weeping over Sam.
“Gone off like that,” she cried. “Sacrificing himself! For what?”
“Nonsense,” said Sal. “That’s not what he’s doing at all. Sacrifice isn’t necessary. You know that.” The words had come out automatically, without thought, but she stopped with her mouth still open, stricken with a moment of total recall, a visionary episode so vivid it was as though she lived it rather than merely remembering it. She was seeking an Old One, one of the Departed, crouched against the wall in a tiny, circular house. Sal was so close she could smell his earthy, slightly acrid smell. A linguist was crouched beside the Old One and had just asked, “Is sacrifice necessary?”
“Necessary?” scratched the Old One with horny tentacles. “Necessary to what? Is life necessary? No, sacrifice is not necessary. It is a way. A convenience. A kindness.”
Sal shut her mouth, which was suddenly dry. “Sam wouldn’t do anything foolish,” she said. “He isn’t a foolish man.”
China stared at the firelit towers and asked herself if that were true. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he a foolish man? Wanting that one perfect thing, whatever it was. The absolute. The marvelous. Playing about in helmet and sandals. Pretending to be all those ancient warriors. What was he doing now? What was he questing for?
She put her face into her hands and went on weeping, feeling the first stirring of birth, the first uncontrollable surges of her own body taking charge of things. “The baby’s coming,” she gasped to Africa. “Sam’s baby. Right now.”
Africa frowned at her choice of words. The baby could not be called Sam’s baby, not in any well-managed society, but Africa did not take time to argue. Instead, she moved swiftly and efficiently to attend to matters, sending someone in search of a medical tech while she herself considered what she might use for a tent to make a private space around them.
Sal held China’s hand, wondering bleakly if this birth might be a trade-off, a life for a life.
• On the plains below, some distance to the west, Sam walked toward the line of soldiers, where the prophets were, where his father would be found.
“Phaed,” Sam sang, not melodiously, rather a keening hum, a way of keeping his goal in the forefront of his mind. “Phaed,” whom he was being allowed to meet once more, in order that all things should be resolved between them. Phaed: wife-murderer, woman-killer, culprit of the Cause, one of the Faithful, faithful indeed, to the most ancient and bloody of all religions. Me-worship. My sex-worship. My tribe-worship. My kind-worship. Vowing rage and destruction against all else.
“Phaed.” Dream-dad, fable-father, king and hero, lost somewhere in Sam’s childhood and never found again. Was it a voice he remembered, from before he was six, a whispering voice telling tales before the fire while ochre light gleamed on the eyeballs to show that sly knowingness, that virile intelligence, which meant a more-than-human creature hunched beside the fire, lord-fox, king-wolf, great-bear. Prowler in the dark. Inhabiter of dreams. Troll-papa.
Did he come with a mask, father-player, full of false jollity, mirth made manifest, mockery falling from his lips like apples into Sam’s lap? Tell me, Dad. Tell me the story of when you murdered Maechy. Tell me about those times you worshipped your god with blood, those times you killed, mutilated, raped, tore.
“Phaed.”
Was it a face he remembered? Was there a face there, anywhere? Eyes with a certain look of pride at a son’s first words, first steps, a son’s finger on the trigger of his first weapon. Was it weapons he remembered? Only in play, the finger pointing, stick pointing, noise of rat-a-tat, immemorial childplay at killing. Maybe it was that sound he thought of, Phaed’s sound, in the night, rat-a-tat, killing something.
Was it a smell he longed for? The smell of semen and smoke, the smell of whiskey and sweat, the sour, oldsoapless smell of men who spent too much time together in closed rooms, socks and shoes full of that smell, trousers stiff with it, so old it wasn’t merely smell anymore but more a miasma, rising ectoplasmic, a living presence, melting on the tongue like a thick syrup of old cheese.
Was it that licked-up smell? Sickening and yet strong, strong as stones.
Was it a touch? Could he even remember a touch? A stroke, a pat, a hug. Blows aplenty, shoves, a closed fist knocking his thin, boy’s shoulder, a hard hand aimed in a butt-swat, a knuckle knocking the skull door open, boring into a cheek like an auger, painful as truth.
None of the above. Not smell, sight, sound, taste, touch. What, then? What memory of him pervaded, haunted, kept Sam wondering after all this time?
“Phaed?”
Sam had to know. Sam had to know him again, ask him, perhaps, look at him with these new eyes to see beyond the old veils. Only when he had finished with this could he go on, on—to whatever. To a future if there was a future. To an end if there was to be an end.
Before either, Sam had to find him, there, somewhere, behind the clanking, monstrousness of the soldiers, filing
