Singer From The Sea
Singer From The Sea by Sheri S. Tepper part one
“Chamis was one of those worlds where the settlers killed off all the native life right away, and it was one of the first worlds that Marwell bought from. But, lately it doesn’t have anything to sell and the population is dropping like a stone. And Ares is another one they pretty much stripped when they settled. Within a few centuries, it was mostly bare. And now it’s losing so much population that they called in experts from other worlds to try and find out why, but no one knows why. If Stephanie was right, the world spirit probably left both places.”
Jeorfy stared at her. “Did you know,our population is decreasing?”
Genevieve blinked slowly at him. “Decreasing? I suppose it goes up and down a little, all the time. It’s supposed to, isn’t it?”
“It’s supposed to, yes. But it doesn’t. It went up when we first settled. Then it reached the plateau at about a million three, just as everyone expected, and it was more or less flat for a long time. The last several hundred years, though, it’s gone down. At first just a little. Lately, more.”
“How much down is it?”
“About ten percent.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Of course it’s a lot, because the rate of decline is increasing. Say it took ten years to lose ten percent, another two years we’ll have lost another ten percent.”
“Maybe it’s just that people are moving around. They’re coming down from the mountains to live by the rivers, I know that.”
“They’re coming down from the mountains because there are too few of them left up there to handle things. Living on the mountains is labor intensive. It takes a lot of hands.”
Now Genevieve sat up. “Jeorfy, are you sure?”
“That’s what the files say. They keep track of population. The Tribunal’s got a system of registering births and deaths that tells them how many people there are. Each little area registers its own births and deaths, and then the books come into the archives and are entered there. It’s slow, but it’s accurate.”
“Ten percent,” she mused. “How strange. Is it in one place? Or everywhere? Is it fewer babies? Or fewer old people?”
He shook his head. “1 didn’t have time to look at the details, my dear. But I shall, when I return.”
By this time they had come far beyond the storage areas, and the way was too narrow for anything but the level path on which they rode, a sinuously endless lane that was always the same at the edge of their lights, always the same behind them: pale gray dust and dark gray stone. The dust-fall was much lighter, a veil instead of a carpet. Genevieve drove while Jeorfy rested, and vice versa. Once they stopped so both could sleep, turning off the lights to save the fuel and curling up in their blankets on the cart itself, for fear of losing it in the dark. Several times, Jeorfy changed the fuel cell on the little cart.
“Zeb didn’t even know they could be changed,” Jeorfy said, shaking his head. “The designer didn’t make the job simple, and Zeb’s no mechanic. He won’t have any idea we could get this far. What I’m hoping is that he thinks I fell in the chasm and you escaped. That’d be best. And I pray there’s enough fuel to take us to the end. If the maps are right, there should be, just.”
They saw light filtering in among the rocks above them shortly before the fuel ran out. Trudging the last few paces of the tunnel, they made a left turn, and another, to see a bright vertical slit between two rock columns, a narrow eye of light through which they pushed into the outside world after feeding their luggage out piece by piece. Behind them the sun rose over the mountains of Merdune. Below them a narrow trail ran along the edge of the forest.
“We’re facing west,” said Jeorfy, “looking back at the way we’ve come. We’re right into the edge of the Merdune forest. That trail ahead of us runs north and south along the forest edge, and if the map is right, there should be two trails through the mountains down to the shore of Merdune, one north of us and one south of us, which is your shorter route. I’m afraid your friend will be ahead of you, but I packed plenty of food and water to get you to Midling Wells. If you don’t meet up before, you’ll meet him where he planned.”