The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 92

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Mantis is an insect with huge eyes that see all and with arms like a little man. Eland is an animal, oh, yes, much larger than the gemsbok, with a dewlap so full of rich fat that it sweeps the earth. The San's love of fat was almost equal to their love of wild honey. And twisted horns that sweep the sky. If we are fortunate we will find both Mantis and Eland at the place to which we are going.

In the meantime, talk to the stars, Nam Child, for they are beautiful, but put your trust in Mantis and Eland. Thus simply H'ani explained the religion of the San, and that night she and Centaine sat under a brilliant sky and she pointed out Orion's glittering train.

That is the herd of celestial zebras, Nam Child, and there is the inept huntsman, she picked out the star Aldebaran, sent by his seven wives, she stabbed a gnarled finger at the Pleiades, to find meat. See how he has shot his arrow, and it has flown high and wide to fall at the feet of Lion Star. Sirius, the brightest of all the fixed stars, seemed truly lionlike. And now the huntsman is afraid to retrieve his arrow and afraid to return to his seven wives, and he sits there forever twinkling with fear, which is just like a man, Nam Child. H'ani hooted with laughter, and dug her bony thumb into her husband's scrawny ribs.

Because the San were also star-lovers, Centaine's bond of affection for them was so strengthened that she pointed out Michael's star and her own in the far south.

But, Nam Child, O'wa protested, how can that star belong to you? It belongs to no one and to everybody, like the shade of the camel-thorn, and the water in the desert pool, or the land on which we tread, to nobody and yet to everybody. Nobody owns the eland, but we may take of his fat if we have need. Nobody owns the big plants but we may gather them on condition that we leave some for the children. How can you say that a star belongs to you alone? It was an expression of the philosophy which was the tragedy of his people, a denial of the existence of property which had doomed them to merciless persecution, to massacre and slavery or to exile in the far reaches of the desert where no other people could exist.

So the monotonous days of waiting were passed in discussion and the leisurely routine of hunting and foraging, and then one evening both the San were galvanized by excitement and they faced into the north with their little amber faces turned up to a sky that was the flawless blue of a heron's egg.

It took Centaine a few minutes to discover what had excited them, and then she saw the cloud. It groped up over the rim of the northern horizon like the finger of a gargantuan hand, and it grew as she watched it, the top of it flattened into an anvil shape, and the distant thunder growled like a hunting lion. Soon the cloud stood tall and heaven-high, burning with the colours of the sunset and lit with its own wondrous internal lightnings.

That night O'wa danced and whistled and sang the praises of the cloud spirits until at last he collapsed with exhaustion, but in the morning the thunderhead had dispersed.

However, the sky had changed from unsullied blue, and there were streaks of high mare's-tails cirrus smeared across it. The air itself seemed also to have changed. It was charged with static that made Centaine's skin prickle, and the heat was heavy and languorous, even harder to bear than the dry harsh noons had been, and the thunderheads climbed above the northern horizon and tossed their monstrous billowing heads to the sky.

Each day they grew taller and more numerous, and they massed in the north like a legion of giants and marched southward, while an enervating blanket of humid air lay upon the earth and smothered it and everything upon it.

Please let it rain, Centaine whispered each day, while the sweat snaked down her cheeks and the child weighted her womb like an ironstone boulder.

In the night O'wa danced and sang.

Spirit of Cloud, see how the earth waits for you the way that a great cow eland in heat trembles for the bull.

Come down from on high, Spirit of Cloud whom we venerate, and spill your generative fluids upon your earth wife. Mount your lover and from your seed she will bring forth new life in abundance. And when H'ani trilled and piped the chorus, Centaine cried out just as fervently.

One morning there was no sun, the clouds stretched in a solid grey mass from horizon to horizon. Low to begin with, they sank lower still, and a stupendous bolt of lightning tore from their great grey sowlike belly and clanged upon the earth so that it seemed to jump beneath their feet. A single raindrop struck Centaine in the centre of her forehead, and it was as heavy as a stone, so that she reeled back at the shock of it and cried out in astonishment.

Then the hanging clouds burst open and the rain fell from them thick as locusts. Each drop as it struck the surface of the pan rolled into a globule of mud, or made the wiry scrub branches around the edge jump and quiver as though flocks of invisible birds had alighted upon them.

The rain stung Centaine's skin, and one drop struck her in the eye and blinded her for a second. She blinked it clear and laughed to see O'wa and H'ani capering across the pan. They had thrown aside their meagre clothing and they danced naked in the rain. Each drop burst in a silver puff upon their wrinkled amber skin and they howled delightedly at the pricks of it.

Centaine ripped off her own canvas skirt, threw aside the shawl, and mother-naked stood with her arms thrown open and her face turned to the clouds. The rain thrashed her and melted her long dark hair down across her face and shoulders. She pushed it aside with both hands and opened her mouth wide.

it was as though she stood under a waterfall. The rain poured into her mouth as fast as she could swallow. The far edge of the pan disappeared behind the blue veils of falling rain, and the surface turned to yellow mud.

The rain was so cold that a rash of goose bumps ran down Centaine's forearms and her nipples darkened and hardened, but she laughed with joy and ran out to the pan to dance with the San, and the thunder sounded as though massive boulders were rolling across the roof of the sky.

The earth seemed to dissolve under the solid sheets of silver water. The pan was ankle-deep and the silky mud squelched up between Centaine's toes. The rain gave them new life and strength and they danced and sang until O'wa stopped abruptly and cocked his head to listen.

Centaine could hear nothing above the thunder and the lash of the rain, but O'wa shouted a warning. They floundered to the steep bank of the pan, slipping in the glutinous mud and the yellow waters which by now reached to their knees. From the bank Centaine heard the sound which had alarmed O'wa, a low rushing like a high wind in tall trees.

The river, O'wa pointed through the thick palisade of silver rain, the river is alive again. It came like a living thing, a monstrous frothing yellow python down the sandy river bed, and it hissed from bank to bank, carrying the bodies of drowned animals and the branches of trees in its flood. It burst into the flooded pan and raced in serried waves across the surface, breaking on the bank beneath their feet, swirling on to catch them around the legs and threatening to drag them under.

They snatched up their few possessions and waded to higher ground, clinging to each other for support. The rain clouds brought on premature night, and it was cold.

There was no chance of a fire and they huddled together for warmth and shivered miserably.

The rain fell without slackening all that night.

In the dull leaden dawn they looked across a drowned landscape, a vast shimmering take with islands of higher ground from which the water streamed, and stranded acacia trees like the backs of whales.

Will it never stop? Centaine whispered. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, and the chill seemed to have to reached into her womb, for the infant writhed and kicked in protest.

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