PAUL J. MCAULEY

The Temporary King

The following story of the unexpected effects of a high-tech culture on a Future Shocked rural village begins, in its own words, “as all the old stories began”—but it ends very differently indeed.

Born in Oxford, England, Paul J. McAuley is one of a number of British writers beginning to make names for themselves in the SF world of the late ’80s. He is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and has also sold stories to Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and to other markets. His first novel, 400 Billion Stars, is forthcoming from Del Rey Books. McAuley works as a cell biologist at Oxford University, and lives near Oxford with his family.

 

THE TEMPORARY KING

Paul J. McAuley

I’ll begin as all the old stories began, and tell you that once upon a time there was a great forest in the shadow of a mountain, and in a clearing of the forest stood a house built all of logs, and roofed with living grass. It was the home of the Lemue family, and the head of the family was my father; I was his youngest child and only daughter. That was how things were before Gillain Florey arrived.

I remember him even after all this time as well as if he had just now left the room. For I was the first of our family to see him, and I was the cause of his downfall. It was spring then, all those years ago. In the mud and new reeds beside the creek, frogs were calling hoarsely each to each; there was a scantling of green along the limbs of the dogwood and alder trees, and the flowers of the magnolias were just about blown; and every still pool was mantled with a golden scum of pine pollen, wrinkling in the wind like the blankets of uncertain sleepers. It isn’t the same here, under the dome, where you notice the spring only by changes in the quality of the light if you notice it at all. When I was a child, the lengthening days and the warmer weather were only a part of it. It was like a great reawakening, a stirring; and I felt the same stirring, too.

I was seventeen then, yes, the same age as you. That’s why I’m telling you this now. Seventeen, and I felt as if I had done everything that could be done in the forest. I felt trapped, closed in, by the worn familiarity of home, by the prospect of marriage. Oh, I suppose I loved Elise Shappard, but it had all been arranged by his father and mine. I loved Elise, but not in the way you’ll love, freely, of your own choice. I felt that there had to be more, but I didn’t know what. My family and the house and a small part of the forest were all I knew.

So that spring day, when my mother asked that someone go collect ivy sap—it makes a good red dye, and we boiled some of our wool in it—I went gladly, carrying a pot and a small knife up through the fern clumps that were just beginning to show new buds beneath the pines. And that was where I found the man.

He was stretched full out on a bank of ivy amongst the roots of a leaning pine, boots crossed one on the other, his trousers of some shiny, dark stuff, the flaps of his leather vest open on his smooth, naked chest. His face was as white as a woman’s, and his hair long and tangled, like black snakes around his head. I remember how I hardly dared breathe as I looked at him, as if he were a vision conjured by the finest, most delicate of spells. And then his eyes opened. I dropped my pot and my knife, and I ran.

I made a fair commotion when I reached the house, scattering hens and geese as I ran yelling through the compound. People looked out of doors and windows to see what was happening, and I’d hardly had time to begin to gasp out what I’d seen—a man, a stranger, up in the forest—when someone cried out a warning and we all turned.

In the distance, someone emerged from the shadows beneath the trees and strolled down from the grass slope toward the house as if it were his own and he were returning to it. He briefly disappeared when he reached the ha-ha; then he had scrambled up the other side and started to cross the bare fields.

One of my uncles called, “Don’t worry, Clary, we’ll see him off!” and someone else swung onto a horse and, brandishing a staff, galloped toward the stranger. Behind him the others whooped and yelled encouragement. He swept past, and the stranger ducked the staff, raising his hand as the rider—it was my brother Rayne—checked his mount and turned. And then the horse stumbled, plowing into the ground in a tangle of legs and reins, Rayne tumbling over its head. Someone screamed, and someone else fired a shot that sprayed dirt a meter from the stranger’s boots. Tall, white-faced, he turned to us and once more raised his hand.

The air turned white, white as the sun. It felt as if your eyeballs had all of a sudden turned inward and there was nothing in your head but cold, white fire. It was all so sudden that I didn’t even feel frightened, was simply puzzled that I was lying on the ground with someone’s boots in front of my face.

It was the stranger.

I picked myself up; all around, everyone else was picking himself up, too. The men shuffled uncertainly, all of their oafish bluster deflated by the magic. A dog barked a challenge and someone hushed it. We were all looking at the stranger, who was looking at me.

I felt a kind of laughter bubbling inside, a singing in my head, and I brushed at my dress and stepped up to him. I still don’t know why I did it; perhaps I felt responsible.

He smiled and held out my knife, hilt-first. “You dropped this, Seyoura. I’m afraid your little pot was broken, though.” The pupils of his eyes were capped with silver; there was something funny about his knuckles.

I became frightened, snatched the knife, and backed off into my mother’s embrace. But the spell was broken. My father, pulling on his beard, cautiously approached the smiling stranger, then stuck out his hand, which the stranger looked at, then shook. The other men, all my uncles and brothers, began to crowd around, grinning, asking him how he had knocked us all down, how he could knock Rayne’s horse over without touching it (leading the horse, which seemed none the worse, Rayne came limping up, ruefully shaking his head but grinning like the rest). My mother had once said that the games of men always required that someone be hurt, so that they would seem more important than they were; and now that it was all over with no more than a sprained ankle to show for it, they were babbling in relief. The stranger was the calm center of it all, smiling and shaking hands, telling them that his name was Gillain Florey, please call him Gil, that he came from another world.

I wanted to see more, but my mother pulled me toward the kitchen, scolding me and worrying about what might have happened in the same breath. All the rest of the day and all that evening, the kitchen bustled as we prepared a formal meal. My father had declared Florey to be the honored guest of the house.

“Which simply means extra work for us,” my mother said, sitting as usual on one side of the great fireplace, her fat, naked arms resting on the arms of her high-backed chair as she watched her daughters-in-law and their children cook and carve and clean.

My grandmother, shrunken and frail in her own chair on the other side of the fire, said that outsiders always brought trouble, and it was lambing time, too; you couldn’t expect the men to care about that now. I was carding wool in the corner by the door, pretending not to listen. I wanted to sit at the feast and hear all the stranger had to say, but of course I couldn’t. I was only a girl. The only reports I had were the breathless exclamations of the women as they brought out empty plates and waited to take in the next course. One told my mother that the stranger claimed that his family had once lived in the countryside around, hundreds of years ago; another said that he had a little metal stick, and that was what had knocked us all down. “Fancy all this happening to us,” she said, and scurried out with a platter of fruits as big as her head balanced on one shoulder.

“A three-day wonder,” my mother said, picking at her own food. “And what good will it do us? That little stick won’t get the lambs born or the seed sown, for all the men gape and gawk at it.”

“In my day,” my grandmother said, “we didn’t have any of this trickery, not even the glowing-tubes. Just lanterns and candles. Though I do like the light now. It doesn’t jump about so.”

“One thing’s certain,” my mother said. “He isn’t here to sell to us, much less give anything away. Live off us awhile and move on, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll have a word about that.”

But I wanted the stranger to stay; I wanted to gawk, just like the men. Later that evening my fiancé rode over and we sat at the edge of the fields. His dog lay a discreet distance away, her head on her crossed paws, as I told Elise all of what had happened.

Elise was scornful. “He’s probably just some fake.”

“How could he do what he did? You’re just jealous because your family didn’t find him.” I felt that the stranger was mine in a way; as if I had charmed him awake and led him to the house. Yes, just like one of the old stories. By defending him I was defending myself. “If you ask my father, I’m sure he’ll let you meet him; then you’ll see he’s no fake. He’s real, Elise.”

“I don’t know.”

“You ask. It’s all right, you’ll be one of our family soon enough.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t want to, Clary. This man’ll be gone soon enough and nothing will have changed, you’ll see.” And he leaned over and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. I leaned against him, stroking the bumpy top of his head through his short, crisp hair. He was a tall, lean, gawky boy, but handsome enough when he smiled, and gentle. I hadn’t any choice in the matter—like all marriages then, it was an arrangement; and in exchange for my hand, my father would have certain rights of passage over the land of Elise’s family—no choice, yes, it’s true. But I felt lucky about Elise, cared enough for him not to press him about seeing the stranger.

So we sat side by side in the twilight, the lights of the house behind us, the dark forest rising beyond the flat, bare fields. The first stars were out, and you could see a few of the swift sliding lights that Seyour Mendana had once told me were ships and whole cities forever falling across the sky. I leaned against Elise, feeling the hard muscles in his arm, his comfortable warmth, and wondered about the stranger, wondered which light he had stepped down from and why, until it was time for Elise to go.

Even after Elise had politely bid my mother good night and had ridden off, and I was lying in my own room unable to sleep, my thoughts were of the stranger, his white face and the way he had handed me my knife, the way he had lain there on the ivy in the forest, all unawares. He was somewhere in the house. The thought was thrilling and alarming, and I listened for some sign of his presence, but heard nothing except the usual night noises. And later, at last, I slept.

*   *   *

And the next morning, truly as if I had somehow stepped into a story where wishes come true, the stranger, Gillain Florey, came looking for me in the kitchen. He explained to my mother that he needed a guide for the day. “Just a little trip into the forest, back along the river.”

My mother held the long braid that fell over her right shoulder and said that it was not the sort of thing a girl did. Florey smiled and told her, “Now, I know she goes up there because that’s where she found me. And I can look after her. You saw my defenses, right?”

“It isn’t exactly that,” my mother said uncomfortably. I’d never seen her like that before: at bay in her own kitchen, her kingdom, as if she were no more than what she seemed, a fat woman twisting her braid in a fat white hand.

Florey’s smile widened. His silvercapped eyes. His white, white teeth. “You’re worried about her honor! I can assure you, Seyoura, that nothing is further from my mind. No, I need a guide, that is all, and I wouldn’t divert one of your menfolk from their work. You know the problem I’ve been set. Well. I’m going up to solve it, if I can.”

My mother began to deny precisely the thing she had been worried about, and Florey waved a hand negligently. “Please, you have not insulted me. No, not at all. Where is your daughter? Ah, there. Yes, come now…”

So I went with him, my heart bumping as we passed through the compound and crossed the fields, people gaping after us as if we were a parade. We followed the creek into the forest, and once we were out of sight of the house, Florey sighed and slowed his pace.

“I thought they might follow us. Well, that’s all right.”

“They wouldn’t—I mean, you’re a guest.”

He smiled and I blushed. “I’m glad to hear it. I hardly slept at all last night. Even with this.” He drew out, from a pocket inside a flap of his vest, a little tube.

“Is that what knocked us all down?”

“To be sure.” He showed me the clear lens set in one end, and in his hand it began to shine, growing so bright that I had to look away, blinking back tears and green afterimages.

“Brighter than a thousand suns. Well, not quite, but bright enough to cause disorientation with nanosecond pulses at the right frequency. The silver in my eyes protects me from that, you understand? The other end is a sonic caster. It’ll put you to sleep, like that poor horse, but its range is limited. And that’s all I have, which is why I didn’t sleep much last night. But I’m a guest, you say. Well.”

“What are you doing here?”

“To see the fabled ruins of Earth, of course. Escaping from civilization, if you know what that is. I can’t believe the way you all live here. You’re not in the net? No? Not even receivers? Not even electricity?” Each time I shook my head, his smile widened, until at last it seemed as bright as his light-stick. He laughed. “Well! Just about perfect. And no one bothers you here?”

“Only Seyour Mendana. And sometimes a flying machine brings a doctor.”

“Who is this Mendana?”

“He buys the furs the men trap in winter. You’re really from another world?”

“What? Oh yes, yes. Try and name one I haven’t come from. Well. Looks like the M.C.C. really does keep you sealed off. About time my luck changed; perhaps I’ll stay here after all. Come on, then, let’s follow the river. Your father wants me to solve a problem. You really can’t cross it farther up?”

“It runs too quickly, and there’s a gorge, up beyond our land and the Shappards’. The creek is the border between us, you see. Down here there’s only one path we’re allowed to use on the other side, and we have to pay for that.”

“That’s what your father said.”

For a while we climbed beside the creek in silence. Florey was awkward as he scrambled over the smooth white boulders the spring snowmelts had year after year tumbled from the higher slopes, and soon he was puffing and panting. As he perched on one great boulder, catching his breath, I asked at random—there was so much I wanted to ask—“What’s the M.C.C.?”

He looked at me. “To be sure, the child doesn’t know who owns her. The Marginal Culture Council: the M.C.C. They’re what keeps you safe from the outside world—though to be truthful, if it weren’t for San Francisco, I suppose the whole area would be sealed off.”

“San Francisco?”

“A port. A couple of hundred kays from here. You really don’t know, do you?”

“I’d like to. I’d like—” I paused, but I couldn’t hold it back. “I’d like to see what it’s like, outside the forest. Except I’ll be married soon enough, and then I suppose I’ll be too busy bringing up babies.”

“To be sure,” Florey said quietly. I don’t think he understood me. He got up, and we walked and scrambled higher. When we reached a smoother part of the way, he had breath enough to ask me about my family. “I guess I should know whom I’m staying with.”

“You really were going to leave?”

“Really. I thought your father was after my stuff, so that’s why I asked you along this morning. A hostage in case of ambush, but there was no ambush. Really, you can go back down now.”

“I’d like to go with you.”

“O.K.”

Now it was my turn to ask about him, and he explained that he was from a very rich family who grew something that made people immortal, that his home was a castle on a world called Elysium. “People from this continent settled Elysium before the war, hundreds of years ago. In fact, my ancestors came from this very region, which is why I went to San Francisco. My yacht is there now, waiting for me. Ever heard of the Californian Collectivists? No? Oh well, it was a long time ago. Anyway, I’m fabulously rich and have little to do, so that’s why I’m here. An important person. You might contrive to mention to your father that if I’m harmed, a scramble rescue team will be out here at once. So he shouldn’t get any ideas about kidnapping me, O.K.?”

I nodded solemnly: I believed it all, would have believed him if he’d said that on his world, men swam through the air like fish and slept on clouds. It was only later that I wondered why, if he was able to call up help so quickly, he had been afraid of anything my father could do.

But then, walking beside him over a thick carpet of pine needles at the edge of an ever deeper channel that the creek had carved for itself, I was too happy to think.

The way grew steeper, and at last we reached the series of waterfalls and deep pools before the gorge, and climbed beside them using the narrow paths deer had made. At the top, at the edge of the cliff, Florey looked into the gorge and white water that thrashed amongst rocks toward the glossy lip of the first waterfall, then pointed upstream and shouted above the roar of the water, “That’s where I’ll have the sheep cross!”

“But they always go through the Shappards’ land. And besides, sheep can’t fly, not on Earth.”

“No need. Your father explained that he has to pay each year for passage to the fields or whatever higher up.”

“The summer pasturage.”

“Whatever. Well, your father asked if I could help; I think he hoped I’d stride into the midst of your neighbors and drop them left and right just as I had to drop all of you last night when the men tried to make fun of me. I have other ideas.” He gestured grandly. “I will have a bridge built. There, where the gorge narrows.”

I couldn’t see what he meant, and his talk about suspension ropes and load bearing only confused me more. “You’ll see when it’s done, and your sheep will cross above your neighbors’ land. Better than frightening people, eh?” Then he looked away sharply. “Who’s that over there?”

After a moment Elise stepped out from behind a tree, his dog following at his heels. Florey ordered him to us, and he came reluctantly, apprehension in his look. His dog watched Florey with her yellow eyes, her teeth showing between her loose black lips. I think that if I hadn’t been there, Elise would have run: men and their pride.

“He’s my betrothed,” I said to Florey, and told Elise, “I don’t see what business you have following us around. If my father knew, he’d be mad.”

“This is common land, up above the waterfalls, your father has no say here. Anyway, I was on my way to lay traps for banshee.” Elise was looking at the ground between his feet. “When I saw you, I thought…”

“It’s true,” his dog said, her voice a low growl.

Florey lifted Elise’s chin and said, “A handsome lad, Clary.” Elise twisted away, scowling. “You’re lucky to be in line for such a fine, caring husband. But why does everyone think the worst of me?”

“We’re not used to strangers, I guess.”

“I meant no harm,” Elise said. “I just wanted to see—”

“I understand,” Florey said. He was looking at Elise’s face, at the spike-jawed traps hung at his belt, at his dog. “Are you walking back with us, young man?”

“I really have to set the traps.” Elise looked at me. “I’ll see you later, Clary. Good-bye.”

“Don’t hurry on my account,” I called as he walked away, but he didn’t look back. I was annoyed by his following us, as if my independence had been diminished, as if he had already married me, already taken possession.

“You’ll make a fine, handsome couple,” Florey said, and put an arm over my shoulder. We walked like that all the way back: I was never so happy.

*   *   *

For three days things went just as Florey ordered them. It was as if he had supplanted my father’s authority, yet no one seemed to notice or to mind. The men felled a tall pine so that it lay across the gorge, and another was sawed into four and, using chocks and levers, the pieces were set at either end. Under Florey’s instructions a complicated web of ropes was strung between the spine of the bridge and the pillars, and a plank floor was laid. The men began to grumble that sheep would never cross it, but Florey simply smiled and showed them how to build high sides that leaned against the rope webbing. “What they can’t see can’t hurt them, and they’ll follow their leaders. Sheep are like men, yes?”

I contrived to be near him as much as possible, taking up his food and running errands and looking after the notched stick and the weighted twine he used to work out how the ropes should hang. No, never so happy as then. He had us all under his spell, whether he was striding about and ordering the men in short bursts of energy, or sitting with his back against a pine trunk, amongst the feathery shoots, his eyes closed as I watched his white face.

And in the evenings there were his stories.

Florey would hold forth to the whole family for hours, pausing only to drink from the mug of cider I kept topped up for him as he told us about the other worlds: the singing stones of Ruby; the oleaginous oceans that girdled Novaya Rosya, boiling in summer and frozen in waxen floes in winter; the great canyon where everyone had to live on Novaya Zyemla; the beautiful empty seacoasts of Serenity. He described them all so vividly that we might have been there ourselves, and told tales at once so fantastic yet so plausible that the very trees seemed to lean closer to listen. Then he would smile and stretch all his length like a cat and say that it was time to sleep, and we would all be left gaping at each other, slowly becoming aware of the creek’s babble and the mosquito bites we had not heeded, the cold night air and the babies and animals bawling to be fed.

Even Elise stayed still all of one evening, but afterwards he said to me, “Those tales don’t really matter, Clary.” He held one of my hands tightly, as if he were afraid I might fly away to one of Florey’s fabulous worlds. And I would have, if I could.

“Gil makes them sound real. Isn’t that the same?”

“He’s got you bewitched, all of you in this house. That’s what my father says.”

“Your father’s just jealous. So are you.”

He ran a hand over his head, his short hair making a crisp sound beneath his palm. “I guess I am. Aren’t you to be my wife, Clary?”

“Oh yes, it’s all arranged.”

“Except that bridge means your father won’t need the bride price anymore. Do you think he’ll still let you marry me?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that the bridge would make so much of a difference. “I suppose it’s gone too far to be stopped.” His anxious look touched me: I still cared for him, I realized. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to run away from the marriage.”

“Then you shouldn’t be hanging around this stranger, like, like—”

“You aren’t my husband yet, though. So don’t tell me what to do.”

We stood staring at each other, angry and frustrated. The frogs were croaking to each other down by the creek; in the other direction, by the house, someone sang a snatch of an old song, her voice clear and small in the night. O the times they are a-changing … Elise swore and turned on his heel and stumped off along the bank of the creek to where he had tethered his horse, beside the ford. His dog looked at me for a moment, then yawned and turned and loped after her master.

*   *   *

The next morning we hadn’t been up by the bridge for an hour when Florey said suddenly, “Are there any ruins nearby, Clary?”

“Some. There are ruins everywhere, I guess. Do you want to see them?”

“Yes. Right now.”

“But what about the bridge?”

Florey gestured at the men, naked to their waists, who were cutting and shaping planks for the sides. “They know more about carpentry than I do. I’ll have to show them how to fit it all together, but that won’t be until tomorrow at least. We won’t be missed.” He picked up the bag that contained the food I’d brought, looked at me with his silver-capped eyes, and smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re scared…”

For a long time we walked through the forest without speaking, Florey swinging the bag at the new, tightly curled heads of the ferns. Sunlight slanted between the dark layers of the trees; once we saw a parrot fly off, and a moment later heard its shrieking alarm call. But I couldn’t stay silent forever, and the question I most wanted to ask, because it was the thing I most feared, at last had to be spoken.

“Are you thinking of leaving?”

“Oh, I can’t stay here forever.” He grinned at me, then broke into a run; and I ran, too, chasing him through the clumps of fern underneath the trees, until at last we collapsed breathless with laughter beside the bole of an enormous pine, a grandfather of the forest.

For a while we did nothing but breathe hard, smiling at each other. Then Florey reached up to touch the trunk. “Look.”

A glutinous tear of sap was oozing from a crevice in the papery bark. A scarlet beetle struggled in it. “Once upon a time your ancestors ruled over half this world, and half a dozen besides. Your ancestors, and mine. Now look at your people, ruled by Greater Brazil and not even knowing it, trapped in their little lives. Insects in amber. You’re different, though, aren’t you?”

“I…”

“Sure. You want to escape.” And he leaned forward and kissed me.

I pulled back, but only a little. His silver eyes were a centimeter from mine; his hands touched my face before he sat back, smiling.

His hands … I caught one, the left. The knuckles were slightly swollen, and I could feel something thin and hard sliding under the bump of bone in each.

“All right,” he said, and made a fist. And from his knuckles sprang claws, black and curved to a point like thorns, the one above the thumb slightly larger, a spur like that of a bird of prey, tipped with translucent gold. “I had it done a few years ago, when I signed up and out. The freighter ended up on Serenity, and this was the fashion there, briefly. Still comes in handy in fights, once in a while.” He touched my cheek, and I felt five pricking points, the nearest (the thumb) just beneath my eye. Now I did jerk back, and stand.

“I thought you had your own ship. You said…”

Florey brushed at his forehead. “Oh yeah, that.” He stood, too, brushing pine needles from his knees. “Can you keep a secret, Clary?”

“I guess.”

“What I said when I first came here, about being rich and so on, that was to impress your father. So he wouldn’t throw me out, so he’d take notice of me. Oh, I’m no duke, just a freespacer, but I do come from Elysium … and I’m not freeloading. That bridge will work. Understand?”

“A little.” But I wasn’t sure how I felt about him now, what his untruths meant.

“Come on, show me the ruins.” He held out his hand, and after a moment I took it. And like a fool led him on.

*   *   *

The ruins began as a long ribbon of clear ground between the trees; only thick, spongy cushions of moss grew there. You walked along this and suddenly realized the rocks on either side were the remains of walls, all overgrown with grass and fern, and then you were in the middle of it, tall trees growing up through what had been houses, square doorways gaping like the mouths of caves. Some had left no trace but the shape of their cellars, deep pools of still green water over which clouds of mosquitoes swirled.

Florey poked around for a few minutes, then complained, “I thought there’d be more than this. What happened to all the machinery?”

I didn’t know what he meant.

“Metal,” he said impatiently, “or plastic. Christ, it couldn’t all have rotted away. There must be something worth taking. What’s inside here?”

He stooped at a doorway curtained with ivy, and I caught his shoulder. “You can’t go in there. Bears live in some of these old places. They can be dangerous.”

“So can I.” He drew out his lightstick and flicked it on, pushed through the ivy. After a moment I followed, my heart beating quickly and lightly. Holding his light high, Florey stood at the beginning of a spiral ramp that curved down and down. You couldn’t see the end of it. Bright colors glistened on the walls in twisting abstract patterns. You felt that you would fall into them forever if you looked for too long. Here and there mud had been daubed in crude symbols: the traces of bears. I pointed them out.

“They live in the rooms underneath. No one knows how far it all extends. They say it underlies all of the mountain.” It was cold in there, and I hugged my shoulders as I peered into the flickering shadows of the spiral ramp. “The bears can be dangerous. They speak a kind of American, but it isn’t much like ours.”

“Our ancestors, Christ. Why did they trouble to alter bears? They were crazy, Clary, you know? They did so much damage to the world at one time that they spent most of their energies afterward putting it back together, changing animals to make them more intelligent, raising extinct species from dust. What do you think the bears are guarding down there?”

“It was all looted ages ago. Come on, Gil, please.” I thought that I could hear something moving far below, in the darkness. After a moment he shrugged and turned to follow me out into the sunlight.

I sat in the shade of a little aspen that canted out from the remains of a wall, and watched Florey prowl the ruins. The sunlight sank to my bones, and I closed my eyes. After a while Florey sat beside me. His white chest, the single crease in his flat belly. His black hair tangled about his white face.

“Is it true,” I asked, “about the people in the old days growing animals?”

“Surely. Plants, too. Greater Brazil may have invented the phase graffle, but it’s way behind the old biology. That was all lost in the war, like a lot of things. On Elysium we lost Earth, you know.”

“What’s a phase graffle?”

“It keeps a ship together in phase space. A sort of keel into reality, you understand? Otherwise the entropic gradient would spatter it all over the universe.”

I sighed. “I wish I knew more.”

“It’s a big universe outside this forest. You’re better off here, really you are.” His silver eyes flashed in the sunlight. His knees leaned negligently against my thigh.

I don’t know how it happened; the beginning was lost in the deed. But one of us must have made a move toward the other, a word, a touch. I don’t remember whether it was Florey or me, but we were tangled together, kissing, and then he began to make love to me and I surrendered. It didn’t last long. Afterward I lay still while Florey rearranged his clothing and said, to the ruins, to the sky, “A virgin! Well, well. A virgin!” He seemed both delighted and amused.

A stone was digging into my shoulder, and my skin stung where his claws had scratched all down my sides, but I lay in a kind of haze of fulfillment. I had changed something, made a move all my own; and as I tenderly watched Florey, I imagined leaving the forest with him, rising amongst the lights in the sky with him … and then I remembered Elise. A kind of panic seized me, and I began to cry, although there were no tears, just a sort of racking hiccup attack, absurd and not at all romantic. Of course Florey tried to comfort me, and that made things worse.

“I won’t tell,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s not that. It’s…”

“Your fiancé, yeah. He kind of hates me, doesn’t he?”

“He’s just … just a jealous kid.”

“Listen, Clary, I’m maybe ten years older than he, but that’s all. I’m human, too. I didn’t ask to be raised into some kind of god.” As if the thought had struck something in him, he repeated, slowly, “Some kind of god. Jesus Christ.”

“I think you could be head of my family if you wanted.”

“No, Clary, see, your father tolerates me because I’m helping him, raising his prestige. That’s all. Listen, I’ll have a talk with your young man, set him straight. He’s kind of cute, you know. I’d be unhappy to think he dislikes me.”

“I don’t see how—”

But Florey smiled. “Don’t I have a way with words, now? Come on, smile. That’s it. I’ll fix it up, you’ll see. You ride a horse?”

“Not often.”

“But you have, yes?” All at once he was brutally businesslike. “So don’t worry about your maidenhead, O.K.?”

I said helplessly, “I love you,” and felt the guilty pang that goes with letting slip a lie, and didn’t know why. Of course I know now that I was in love not with Florey but with the idea he represented, the idea of freedom, of flying away from the forest.

“You can’t come with me, Clary. My life is kind of complicated right now.”

“You’ve done something wrong, haven’t you?”

He was silent for a moment. His silver eyes were unfathomable, and I began to feel afraid. Then he sighed. “Yeah, you could say that. You won’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, we both have our secrets to keep.” Everything, the bright sunlight spinning amongst the new leaves of the aspen, the soft green ruins, the spring air, mocked me. I was a dark, discordant blot in the center of it all. When Florey held out his hand to help me up, I ignored it, and we didn’t touch, and hardly talked, all the way back.

*   *   *

At the house, I went straight to my room and scrubbed the dried blood from my thighs and my dress with cold, clean water, rinsing over and over until my skin was red and sore. Then I lay down and cried—real, hot tears, but not for long—and went down to the kitchen and helped prepare supper as if nothing had happened. If my mother noticed anything, she kept it to herself.

That evening as usual, Florey sat out near the creek with a half-circle of people before him as he recounted one of his stories. I could hear his lilting cadence from my bedroom window, all meaning botched by distance, and I had to pull my bolster over my head so I could sleep.

*   *   *

The next morning I didn’t go up into the forest but worked in the kitchen, preparing vegetables and then scrubbing the long, scarred pine table until it shone white and my fingers were raw. It was a kind of penance. My mother watched me work, and at last brought me a parcel of food.

“You’ll be carrying this up to your friend, I suppose.”

I had to take it: to refuse would have been to admit that something had happened.

“Clary,” my mother said, and brushed her long hair back from her round face. “Child, I haven’t said anything before, but be careful. He’s a stranger, remember, not our own kind.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mother.”

“Don’t you be, Clary, that’s all. Think of Elise. You’re hurting him, and by doing that you’re hurting both families. Life has to go on, Clary.”

“Oh, of course. Everything has to be as it always was.” My grandmother was watching me, from her corner, her sunken eyes bright in her wrinkled face, and suddenly I felt trapped. I grabbed the parcel and ran out, was crossing the fields before I remembered that I didn’t want to see Florey.

But he wasn’t at the bridge; my father told me that the Seyour Florey had gone on up. “He said that he wanted to see what it was like. An odd one, eh, Clary?”

I remembered what Florey had said about seeing Elise, and felt cold. Things were getting out of control. I would have fled after him, but my father began to tell me about the work on the bridge. This was meant kindly enough; he thought that I was interested, didn’t see my panicky impatience. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before, but it’s a fine idea.” He scratched his grizzled beard. “You’re like me, aren’t you, Clary? You like new things. Not like your mother, keeping herself in her kitchen.” For it was my father’s idea, not wholly inaccurate, that my mother was forever plotting against him.

My brother Rayne was chopping a pine log into wedges while my father talked: the sound of his ax rang amongst the trees, and each blow was like a blow in my heart. At last I could bear it no longer.

“I have to go,” I said, “so the Seyour gets his lunch.”

“Oh, he’ll be down with us soon enough. Wait up, Clary!”

But I was already halfway across the new bridge, the rough, unseasoned planking swaying under my bare feet so that I had to cling to the rope hand-guide. The cladding was finished on only one side; on the other side I could see, fifty meters below, thrashing white water. Droplets stung my face as I went, and then I was safe on the other side and I turned to wave to my father before I went on, climbing through the forest toward the high pastures.

I left the trees behind, and fresh breezes blew down the grassy slopes into my face; beneath my feet the turf was as warm as fresh-baked bread. Our family’s sheep should have been at pasture by then, but the men were waiting until the bridge was built, and their small, turf-roofed hogans were shuttered and empty. Higher up I could see the Shappards’ flocks slowly moving against the green mountainside; higher still, the snow-covered double peak flashed in the sunlight.

My worries seemed to fall away as I climbed, insignificant beneath the vast blue sky. I dissolved in the breathless now of the spring day, swinging the greasy parcel of food as I tramped upward, stopping now and then to sprawl on the turf and look at the line of the forest below, the long, tree-clad ridges that saddled away on either side, vanishing into the hazy distances. Someday I would find out what was beyond them, even though I would be married to Elise. If my mother could handle my father, I could handle him.

And then I saw Elise’s dog.

She came running toward me at her full speed, overshooting and turning back to posture frantically, so excited that her few words were no more than panting barks. “’ome, ’ome,” she managed to say at last, “follow me, ’lary!”

I asked what was wrong, but all she would say was, “Ba’. Ba’ thing. ’ome!” And she grabbed my wrist, pricking it all round with her teeth, tugging gently but impatiently.

Sheep scattered before us as I followed her, the bells of the leaders clonking dully. A high bluff jutted out of the slope, cloaked in blueberry bushes. When we reached it, the dog circled me, then growled, “Ba’ thing,” and led me through the bushes.

And there, in a hollow on the other side of the bushes, I saw them. Elise and Florey.

Both were naked, moving like starfish on each other.

And I ran, plunging through the bushes with the dog at my heels, out pacing her as she turned back to her master. I remember thinking that I mustn’t drop the parcel of food, otherwise they would know who had been there. That seemed important at the time. If they didn’t see me, it would be all right. I didn’t stop running until I reached the first trees, and then I had to stop, and leaned against the fragrant bark of a pine as I sobbingly caught my breath.

At last I could go on, and I took the old path down, my mind as empty as the shafts of sunlight that fell between the trees. The path followed a ridge around the valley in which the Shappards’ house lay, its tangle of roofs and pinnacles small in the distance as a toy’s, and I broke into a run again, crossing the ridge and plunging down through the trees, leaping from white stone to white stone at the ford and running on toward my own house. My mother was in the yard feeding the chickens—and then she saw me and dropped the little sack of grain just as I crashed into her oh so familiar bulk.

It all came out in bits and pieces. I would start to say something and then begin to cry, shaking my head away from my mother’s soothing hand. But my mother was calmly insistent, listening to all I had to say but not believing any of it until I timorously showed her the scratches Florey had made along my flanks.

“Child, child.”

My aunts were all there, too, by now, watching me to see if I would explode or change into a lizard, do something at once wonderful and dreadful. But I did nothing except cry, quietly and steadily now, sniffling and wiping my nose on the back of my hand.

“Child, child.”

“Something,” my grandmother pronounced from her corner, “something must be done. Or he’ll bring ruin to us all.”

“Stop crying, child,” my mother told me. “We’ll think of something.”

“How can we do anything against him?” It was my aunt Genive, nervous as a squirrel. “I mean, with that stick of his, even the men couldn’t—”

“Men, Jenny, know nothing useful,” my mother said. “We’ll be more subtle. Go on now and get some ivy leaves. A double handful will suffice.”

Genive opened her mouth, then saw my mother’s expression and darted out of the kitchen.

“What—what are you going to do?”

“Wipe your nose, child. We’ll befuddle this Seyour Florey, that’s what, and take him down a peg or two as he deserves. Duke indeed. He won’t stay around here when we’ve done.” She lifted out the flagon of cider cooling in a tub of water and poured it into a pan on the stove. The sweet, sharp smell of apples filled the room as she stirred, and when Genive brought in bunches of ivy, my mother plucked the leaves and one by one dropped them into the pan. In her corner, my grandmother chuckled and nodded.

“The old ways, oh yes. He’ll see.”

“You taught me,” my mother said. Every face was intent on her as she stirred; we must have looked like a coven of witches. Now the smell of apples was tinged with something earthy and bitter. My mother lifted the pan from the stove and said, “We’ll strain it when it’s cool. Clary, tonight you’ll pour the Seyour Florey’s drink for him when he tells his lies, and make sure he has his fill.”

I nodded, although I didn’t understand.

“You’ll see,” my mother said, and rumpled my hair. “Now, tell me what you know of his weapons.”

*   *   *

As Florey talked that evening, spinning out a tale about the jungles of Pandora and the old ruins hidden within them, I sat at his elbow and topped up his mug with the adulterated cider as my mother had ordered. Earlier, Florey had cornered me in the yard and told me that everything was all right with Elise, he would come down later on and make up with me.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“You’re trembling. You’re not frightened of me, now. After our time in the ruins?”

“A little.”

He laughed and looked around—no one was about—and bent and printed a kiss on my lips that burned all evening. Later, when I came up to him as people were settling around the stump on which he sat, a king with his court at his feet, and poured his first mug of cider, he winked at me and whispered, “Don’t worry, Clary,” and drank off a draft. I looked away, ashamed at my betrayal but feeling at the same time a sick eagerness for it to be over: that image of Florey and Elise burned in my mind as Florey’s kiss burned on my lips.

As ever, Florey gulped down several mugs of cider as he wove the spell of his tale, my family spread before him and the evening darkening beyond the various ridges of the house. My mother was in the front of the audience, flanked by my aunts like a queen amongst her attendants, a gnarled walking stick I recognized as my grandmother’s lying like a scepter in her lap. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

“More cider,” Florey said, and I quickly poured, spilling some. He drank and held out the mug again, said to no one in particular, “Best drug in all the worlds, alcohol, because it’s the oldest. Though I’ve something in my pack that would make you all feel as if you were in the very hands of your God.” He drank again, then pushed the mug into my face, saying, “Drink, too, girl, go on.” I closed my eyes and sipped. Sweet, with the faintest bitter tang beneath. My mother had put in mead to disguise the taste of the ivy. Florey tilted the mug, but I closed my mouth so that the cider ran down my chin and spilled onto my dress.

“Flower of the forest, this girl. Where was I? Yes, the ruins, circled by bare ground that had been poisoned to keep out the jungle, the ruins in the sunlight. Picture it,” he said, and briefly closed his eyes. “But you all know about ruins, yes? Ruins all over the Earth. They’re all around you. You’re living out your lives”—he belched—“your lives in the wreckage of the past. It’s in your faces, I see it in your faces. Christ, and your eyes, too, like holes in the past.” Florey leaned forward, staring intently at his audience. I could see a dark rim of dilated pupil circling the silver caps in his eyes. “You’re feeding on me, on my words. No more.”

People began to whisper; I saw Rayne say something to my father, who nodded grimly. The spell had been broken.

Florey staggered to his feet. “No more, no more tonight.” He swayed, and cider spilled from the mug. “No more. Head too thick. Fresh air and exercise. Clary—” Florey reached for me.

“No!” It was my mother, on her feet, with my aunts rising around her. Florey turned and reached inside his vest, and my mother swung at him with the stick, knocking aside his arm and sending him sprawling, striking him again as he tried to rise. Then all the women were upon him, and I saw his hands amongst them, claws extended, slashing and slashing again, and somehow he was free, staggering back while Aunt Genive knelt over a puddle of blood, her own blood dripping from her torn face. My mother stood over her; Florey’s light-stick was in her hand.

The men were all on their feet now, and my father started to say something but my mother silenced him with a look. “He raped Clary. This guest you brought under our roof. He’ll die for it.”

Florey held out his hands, glancing at the crowd behind my mother, glancing at me. “You can’t hurt me with that,” he said. “I have protection, remember?”

“But I can put you to sleep,” my mother said. “I know how to do it: my daughter told me.”

“Ah, your daughter.”

Then Florey sprang, but not at my mother. I was seized and spun and found myself pulled tightly against him, his claws at my throat. “You can’t put us both to sleep. Give me my weapon.”

My mother shook her head. Some of the men were beginning to edge out of the crowd, and Florey called to them. “If you love this girl, you won’t go for your guns, or follow me either. I’m walking backward now. Don’t follow. Come on, Clary.”

His right arm crushed my right breast; his claws pricked my throat. I moved backward with him, stepping amongst the seedlings in the newly turned field, then onto the rough grass beyond. My mother stood still, my family gathered behind her. Then Florey grabbed my wrist and yelled, “Run!” and dragged me toward the trees. People shouted and a deadening tingle started up my back; then we were in the darkness beneath the pines, my feet flying of their own accord as I struggled to keep up with Florey’s long strides. His grip was a circle of pain on my upper arm; when at last we stopped and he let go I felt blood trickle down my side from the four closely spaced wounds made by his claws.

Florey looked back through the dark trees. “Sonics work only at close range,” he said. “Fortunately. I thought we were almost done for, girl, but they aren’t following. Not yet, anyway. Come on.”

“They might leave you alone if you let me go.”

“I don’t think so. You’ll have to come with me after all. Don’t cry. You wanted adventure.” He pulled me close, stooping so that his eyes glittered a handbreadth from mine. His breath was sickly sweet. “There was something in that cider. My heart is pounding in my head.”

“My mother—”

“Oh, of course, your mother.” He gripped my arm, and as we half-walked, half-ran through the dark forest, he talked and talked, his fear bleeding out in ravings and threats and sheer bluster that I hardly remember now. All of us in the forest were barbarians was the gist of it; we had betrayed our inheritance. “Elysium sank low enough when war cut us off from Earth, but not as low as you. Just two hundred klicks away, girl, ships lift for every world in the Federation, while here it’s all superstition and darkness. Christ! First you tried to make me into some kind of god, and now this.”

He gave me a little shake, glared at me, and dragged me on. We were near the bridge now.

And then I saw someone coming toward us through the shadows. It was Elise. When his dog recognized Florey, she growled, her ears flat. Florey whispered to me, “Keep quiet, girl. Or I’ll mark you so no one’ll want you.”

Elise hailed us cheerfully enough, but he was obviously puzzled. Florey grinned. “We’re just out for an evening stroll. Hoped we’d run into you. How are you, boy?”

“It’s dangerous in the forest at night.” Elise was looking at me; I tried to smile, failed, and looked away.

“Don’t worry, boy. You know my weapons. Remember? Go on down and we’ll follow in a bit. I want to see how the bridge is holding up. Clary’s father was asking after you earlier, seems he wants a word with you about something.”

“Is it all right, Clary?”

Florey was watching Elise now, and had let go of my arm. It was my last chance, and I took it. I said, “I saw you both, this afternoon.”

For a moment neither Florey nor Elise understood; then it struck them both. Florey slashed at me, but Elise’s dog reached him first, knocking him down and climbing his chest, growling. Florey’s fist swept across her muzzle, and the growl became a high-pitched whine that cut off as Florey slashed again. I backed away until I fell over something, a pile of pine wedges with an ax beside it. As Florey scrambled to his feet, I threw the ax to Elise.

“Now boy. Now Elise…” Step-by-step, Florey moved toward Elise, who slowly backed away, the ax raised at his shoulder. “Remember what you told me, what I told you this afternoon? You don’t want her, I know; I can give you everything you want. Come on now.”

Elise’s face was a white blur in the twilight; I couldn’t see his expression. He had reached the edge of the gorge and glanced at the drop behind him before he said, “No.”

“Then I’ll go. That will be all right, yes?” That cloying voice, smooth and sticky as honey. “Just go, leave you be.” He was almost on Elise now. I couldn’t move. And Florey reached out, just as Elise brought the ax down.

The blow swung Florey around. He sank to his knees, clutching at his chest; darkness spilled over his white fingers. Elise swung again. Without a sound, Florey toppled over the edge.

After a moment, Elise threw the ax after him, turned to me. “I love you,” he said, and ran. I called after him as he plunged across the bridge, but he didn’t look back. Soon he was lost amongst the trees on the other side.

There isn’t much more to tell. Outsiders came looking for Florey a few weeks later; it seemed that he had killed someone important in San Francisco and had been on the run ever since. But we had burned his body—it had washed up by the ford—and told them nothing. My father had the bridge cut down: I think my mother made him do it. For a while I used to climb up to the clearing where it had been and sit alone and think, but then I became betrothed to someone else.

No, not your father. I’m not quite done.

Things had changed. Florey’s stories had spread amongst the families, and month by month a few people left the forest for the larger world; in turn, this slow exodus brought the curious to us, off-world tourists in search of the more outré corner of Earth, illegal hunting parties, once an archaeological team that spent an entire summer digging over the ruins where Florey had taken me.

And Elise came back, just once. Two years after he’d run away. He’d become a freespacer, sailing the sea of space between the stars, had gained a swaggering, bold manner and sought to impress us with wild tales of the wonders he’d seen.

But we were no longer in need of stories. The old days were dead, buried with Florey, our oh so temporary king. They won’t come again. Soon after Elise left the forest, I left, too, abandoning my family and the kindly, slow-witted man to whom I’d been betrothed, whom I’d never really loved. And came to the city, yes, and met your father. As for the rest, well, you know it as well as I.