IV
In fact, by first bright Chybee had already made up her mind. What alternative lay before her? Even at Hulgrapuk, far smaller than Slah, she had seen too many young people struggling for survival because they had quit the fertile countryside, or life at sea, to seek a more glamorous existence in the urban branchways, ignorant of the fact that in a city every fruit, every funqus, every crotch where one might hope to rest, belonged to somebody else, perhaps with a claim stretching back scores-of-scores of years. Consequently they often fell into the clutches of the psychoplanetarists, who offered them a meager diet (spiked, some claimed, with pith-confusing drugs) in order to recruit yet more worshipful admirers for their fantastic visions. If she could do something to save even a clawful of potential victims—
No: she was too honest to believe the yarn she was spinning herself. There was nothing impersonal or public-spirited about the decision she had reached. It stemmed partly from the fact that she was terrified she might otherwise creep home in a year or two’s time, dreamlost from hunger and misery, reduced to just another of what Wam had termed “dupes,” and partly from … She hesitated to confront her knowledge, but at last she managed it.
She wanted revenge, precisely as Ugant had guessed. She wanted a revenge against all those who had stolen his future from a boy called Isarg.
Before dawn the rain drifted westward. As soon as the sun broached the horizon, creatures she recognized only by descriptions she had heard appeared to groom and cleanse the occupants of the bower: expensive variants of the cleanlickers used in medicine since ancient times. At first she was reluctant, but they exuded such alluring perfumes that she was soon won over, and readily submitted to their mindless yet enjoyable attentions.
A little later Fraij announced that Ugant’s scudder was ready for them, and a storm-pulse afflicted Chybee. On the rare occasions when she had ridden one before, it had been in the wild forest around Hulgrapuk; the idea of traversing Slah in competition with so many dolmusqs, haulimals and—come to that—people, alarmed her.
But Ugant was being unbelievably generous and helpful, and it was such a privilege to be in her and Wam’s company. As best she might, she controlled her reaction.
She could not, of course, conceal it entirely; her exudates betrayed her. Ugant, however, was affability itself as the beast swung into the interlocking tree-crowns and headed east, adroitly dodging other traffic without further orders, and her small talk was calmative, at least.
“Is this the first time you’ve been to Slah? Yes? But perhaps you know the story of how it came about?”
“I’m not sure,” Chybee muttered, thinking how many padlongs they were from the ground. Once beyond the city boundary, things might not be so bad; here, though, everything happened so fast!
“As nearly as we can establish, Slah was once a city of the People of the Sea,” Ugant expounded in a perfectly relaxed tone. “That may sound ridiculous, given how far it now lies above sea-level, but our researches have confirmed what for countless generations was only a folktale. When the Greatest Meteorite hit, the city Voosla was borne many padlonglaqs from the nearest ocean. Naturally the over-pressure killed its inhabitants.
“But by chance enough salt water was carried up with it to fill that valley you see to our left—yes? All the creatures originally composing the city died off too, but their secondary growths flourished thanks not only to the nutriment offered by the carcasses of the barqs and junqs and whatever that it was assembled from, but also to the availability of the same kind of dissolved salts they had been used to before. By the time the temporary lake drained away or was diluted by rainfall, the plants had adapted themselves and spread to occupy much of the area we’re now looking down on. Naturally, when the folk started to recover from the effects of the meteorite, this was one of the places they made for first, to see whether anything useful could be found hereabouts. There must have been several brilliant biologists in the community, because some of the food-plants in particular were unique. You’ve probably been enjoying them all your life without realizing they were rediscovered right here.”