Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

A high-relief carving made from a light red-orange wood which Cheng-bob called “blood maple,” it seemed intended as an altar piece for some Wild cult. It was too large and garish for most private dwellings. It would disturb the tranquility of Peacock Junction or overthrow the domestic order of Dancing Vrouw. It was not playful enough for High Tara or serious enough for Die Bold. Any art dealer would, on first impression, desire it and, on second thought, know it to be unsaleable.

The figures in the carving were relieved from the wood, as if like dryads they had always dwelt within. They were running away from a spot in the center of the perspective. The varied sizes gave the crowded scene the illusion of perspective. The smaller figures were fleeing into the wood, the larger fleeing out. Several of the latter were attached to the base block only by a single foot, and so seemed to be leaving the wood panel entirely.

Not all the figures were fleeing. Some danced around the focal point with raised arms. The running and dancing men were cacophonies of bright reds and blues and yellows—war paint, or ceremonial body paint. The backdrop was a night sky in black lacquer, in which a single white star gleamed. Red lightning ran from the star to the focal point, where it engulfed the figure of a young girl standing with arms outstretched to the sides and head thrown backward as if to glimpse the star above her. Head, arms, feet, breasts emerged from the red flame in bold yellow. The remainder of the body was suggested only in the shape of the flaming torrent. There were dabs of red—at the mouth, at the tips of the breasts, even—by God!—at the tips of the toes and curled fingers.

That was craftsmanship!

Only a connoisseur would ever buy such a piece. Only a philistine would dare display it. Graceful curling letters ran along the base of the work.

Méarana pulled out her medallion, and held it at arm’s length before the carving.

The medallion was an abstraction of the same scene. The black ceramic was the night sky, the diamond was the star, the ruby sliver was the lightning. It was broken off, she remembered. Perhaps there had once been a brown-and-green segment representing the ground; or perhaps the parkinger had wanted to suggest emergence by breaking the circumference. She turned the medallion around and compared the writing on the back side to that underneath the carving.

The letters on the medallion were plainer, lacking the ligatures and diacriticals that the woodcarver had rendered. It was a simplified font of the same script. And as near Méarana could tell, it was the same inscription. She turned to Cheng-bob.

“Do you have any idea what this means?”

The exporter pursed his lips and went to the pouch on the side of the rack. “According to Captain Barnes’s testament of provenance, this work was the occasion of craftsmanship for one Henery Satéep na Fibulsongaram, a citizen of the Qaysarlik of Riverbridge on Enjrun and depicts a biannual festival in the City On The Hill called’ the Well of the Sun.’ The title—and the inscription may be the title—is ‘Fire from the Sky.’”

Méarana sighed and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you.”

Teodorq scratched his head. “Yuh think yer mom went looking for these dancing savages?”

Méarana laughed, because as far as savagery went, Teddy ran rather closer to the dancers than to his present companions. But all things are a matter of degree and everyone drew the line somewhere. “Of course not,” she said. “She went looking for whatever that is.” And her pointing finger rested on the bright star from which lightning bathed the earth.

But Méarana could not take her eyes from the figure of the young girl engulfed in the flames, and a cold, deadly certainty engulfed her heart.

At dinner that evening Méarana was silent and uncommunicative. The Dukovers did not notice. Donovan, who talked to himself, did not notice. Teodorq, who talked to anyone, did not notice. But Billy Chins, their servant, who insistently helped their hosts in presenting the meal, took note and whispered encouragement to her.

“Maybe so, we find her, your mama-meri. Fella no look, fella no find.”

Méarana gave him a wan, but grateful smile and attacked her “red porch,” a cold vegetable stew dominated by beets, with all the enthusiasm it warranted. It added to the chill within her. In the whole time of her search—when time had gone by and gone by, when no word had come, when the Kennel had given up, when Donovan announced his pessimism, while she had wended the Roads out to Lafrontera—in all that time a small flame of belief had burned within that she would find Bridget ban at the end of it all. But the sight of that Wild carving had extinguished it at last.

Teodorq chattered on to no one’s interest about the arms he had procured. “They still had my old nine that I pawned for eating money when I come in on the old Gopher Broke.” His “nine” was an automatic pistol that fired off a magazine of bullets, but why it was called a nine neither the Wildman nor anyone else knew. “It’s just what it’s called,” he had protested. He had also picked up a long sword called a “claymore,” much to Billy’s amusement.

“Why any-fella need him, pistol and sword? Suppose other-fella got him pistol. What good sword? And suppose other fella got him sword, the pistol is enough.”

“Sure,” Teodorq replied expansively, “until yuh run outta bullets.” Then in a labored imitation of Billy’s accent, “Sword, no run him outta stabs.”

Méarana tossed her spoon to the table and stood up. “I’m going out to take the air.” She turned and passed out through the sliding glass doors into the broad shrub-littered lawn behind the house. The grass had the same ragged quality of everything else on Gatmander. The bushes seemed to grow wherever chance had driven the seeds, and were trimmed in what could be only described as the “natural look.”

She grew aware that someone had come out behind her, and she did not look to see who it was. “I don’t think I want to know you anymore, Donovan.”

The scarred man was silent for a time. “I may not disagree,” he said finally. “It’s too much work. What is your reason?”

“I saw you hit Billy, back on Chandlers Lane.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you and he lingered at the arms shop.”

“That? He teased me about my eyes. I gave him a swat. It was good-natured.”

Méarana shook her head. “That isn’t the only thing. You treat him badly.”

“What about me?” asked the Fudir. “Do you want to know me?”

She turned and struck him on the chest with both fists. “Stop! Don’t play identity games with me. I’m going into the Wild and I’m scared.” There. She had said it.

“You should be. It’s a rough and dangerous region. There are old settled planets out there that haven’t made Reconnection. Human worlds where starflight is unknown, where men fight with gunpowder or swords. Travel is chancy—there are no scheduled liners—and the people are treacherous. They don’t like Leaguesmen. They want what we have, and they know they can’t have it because they can’t build the tools to build the tools. You wouldn’t last. Some tramp captain could drop you off on some primitive internal combustion world and never return to pick you up. He could sell you as a sex slave to some machraj or king.”

“I don’t think I—”

“I think you can trust Teddy. And even Billy might not run in a pinch. But there are limits to what the three of us can do. Do you want to risk it all just to find your mother’s grave?”

“I know that now. She’s gone. But I have to keep looking.”