Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Donovan could not remember his childhood; but he said Yes because it sounded right.

“There was nothing special about her leaving, Father. Just a note. ‘Back soon.’ It should have been more. She should have said something more.”

“You never know when it’s the last time. No one ever knows. First times, though. That’s different. You called me ‘Father.’”

She leaned closer. “I was never sure before that I wanted to.”

“You almost did, a couple of times. At first, I was afraid that you would. Later, I was afraid that you wouldn’t.”

“I guess this is the time when I go all warm and gooey.”

Donovan laughed and, unlike the laugh of the scarred man, it was a pleasant one to hear. He kissed her on the forehead, and said, “I told you once that I’d always hoped something good had come out of the Dancer affair. I’m glad something did.”

The Sleuth was shaking him awake. Donovan! Fudir! Brute! We have trouble!

Groggy, he opened his eyes a slit. Red dawn was stealing through the open windows. “What is it?”

The old headman said, “We take our most precious treasures and place them in the Vagina of the World to be consumed by his love.”

That means to be incinerated by the power beam .

“Yeah, yeah. And…?”

Chain assured us that the Oorah consider a guest as their “most precious treasure.”

That means…

“Oh, shit.”

“And exceptionally deep, too,” said the Fudir.

«The door is the only way out of the longhouse. The stairs up through the terraces are a maze. We are seven to several thousand.»

“Will they use force?”

For a god of this sort? Of course.

“Armament?”

Billy and us got dazers, both fully charged. Teddy’s nine. Méarana has a pellet gun, and Sofwari has the needier, if he ain’t lost that, too. Knives, each of us. Méarana has three, two in the baggage. Paulie and Teddy have longswords. Watershanks has a knife, but nothing else.

“And all that against several thousand?”

A hefty fee for the ferryman; but otherwise, not a chance.

Donovan closed his eyes…. and sees a young girl in a chiton. “There is a way out of this,” she tells him, and her voice is like a melody .

The headman came shortly after the second morning hour. He was accompanied by flower girls strewing their path with spring petals, by a musician playing a morning rag, and by several very large acolytes.

Méarana told him, through Donovan, that she wished to dedicate her most precious treasure to the god: her harp. Teddy agreed and named his best sword. No one else admitted possessing a most precious treasure—Donovan had one, but he was not about to sacrifice her—but they agreed to accompany their friends down to the pile of offerings. And so, flanked by the flower girls—and the large acolytes—and followed by the musician, all of them singing in harmony, they set off in a procession to the path that led down from the longhouse.

Teddy and Paulie were also singing, in their own languages, a jarring dissonance. What words Donovan caught sounded bawdy, but given how the Oorah had conceptualized the power beam, somehow appropriate.

The musician had an instrument that Donovan knew as a steel guitar, but was known here as an ishtar. He played the rag in alap—slow and improvisational—adding each new note of the scale at the right time. The Pedant reminded him that an alap could meander for hours and the Sleuth wondered if that meant they had lots of time. “We don’t know when he started playing,” the Fudir reminded them.

When they reached the base of the path, the ishtarist upped his tempo to jor and a tabla man walking beside him added rhythm. Donovan told his companion in Gaelactic, “When he ups his tempo again to jhala, things will start to happen, fast.”

Donovan could see the statues of all sixty-three saints. The Sleuth told him that these must be the statues of earlier sacrifices. With each new pass of the god, the oldest-but-one of the statues was retired, melted down, and recast in the image of the latest sacrifice.

Their own children. Sometimes, an elder. No wonder they welcome guests.

“Thank the gods,” said the Fudir, “that she came in the wrong season.”

Bavyo must have known; and so had Chain, but Donovan wasted no breath cursing them. The Emrikii had likely interpreted their eagerness to find Oor as a willingness to be sacrificed. It may have saved an outlying farmstead from a bloody mesa-top raid.

The offering pile was large, but given the size of the ring-village, not terribly so. Donovan was reminded of the sacrifices to Newton he had witnessed, in which a bull was dropped from a leaning tower to smash on the flagstones below or—in more humane settings—was felled by a weight smashing his skull. (It was important only that gravity killed the beast.) The offal and tripe were burned to the god; but the tasty meat—the rump, the flank, the loins—were butchered and distributed to the poor in the temple’s district. So a child of Oor might offer a beloved toy—but one that was worn out after much play.

A mongrel dog had been pegged into the ground by its leash. Seeing the harper’s distress, Teddy turned and cried out for Donovan to translate, “I dedicate this sword, Goodhandlingblade, to the god!” Under his breath, he added, “to the Chooser of the Slain.” Then he tried to stab it into the earth. In doing so, he accidently severed the dog’s leash, and the animal, sensing its freedom, tore immediately from the bowl.

The crowd murmured, trying to understand whether this was a good omen or not. Teodroq tried to look sheepish.

Then the priest looked up at the sun and barked an order and the well-wishing crowd turned to file out of the bowl. Watershanks cried out and ran after the dog. To catch him and bring him back? The priest knew better; and likely he had seen such last-minute changes of heart by previous volunteers. He signaled to one of his acolytes, who sped after Water-shanks, caught him easily, and struck him on the side of his head with an obsidian-edged club. The riverman fell without uttering a sound. The acolyte checked him, then made an angry gesture, and left him lying there.

Donovan reached into his scrip and pressed a button on his comm. unit: 999 999 999. Méarana glanced at him, and he nodded. There was no mistake now. The Oorah intended them for kindling.

The lander from Blankets and Beads soared up and over the western rim of the mesa. It had come down quietly in the night and had been waiting in the wastelands for Donovan’s signal. It circled the bowl once, to get bearings, and to scatter the flower girls and the musicians. They cried out at this apparition and one of them called to Holy Fahbády, who had come and gone in just this sort of chariot.

“Remember what we agreed,” Donovan cautioned them. “One at a time up the ladder. Méarana first. Billy last.”

The musician had recovered his ishtar and he and the tabla man resumed the rag they had been playing, although they missed notes and beats now from nervous glances at the chariot. They backed away at jor tempo.

The priest stood a moment longer. Perhaps the chariot was intended as the most precious offering of all?

The craft settled to the ground and the hatch popped open almost immediately. Kid O’Daevs stuck his head out. “Move yO’ asses! Ten mintes to closest approach! Wild Bill takes off in five!”

They moved as one to the base of the ladder, and Sofwari helped Méarana onto the rungs even before it was fully extended.

The priest cried out and the burly acolytes rushed them. Teddy pulled his nine and shot the first. Paulie winged the second. Billy sprayed them with his dazer but, waving it back and forth as he did and not concentrating his fire, only numbed them.