Dave Duncan - West of January

The answer, we soon discovered, was “not much,” so Kettle set to work to teach me about time, and that took much time in itself.

At rare moments, when there are large hills to the west and the sky is clear, the inhabitants of Heaven can glimpse the stars, the Other Worlds, shining in the sky. There are millions of them, and they are terrifyingly beautiful. Which one is First World and how the firstfolk drove their great chariots through all those shining worlds, even the saints do not know. But the Other Worlds turn about Vernier in a predictable path. Were a man to observe the sky when he lay with a woman and she then made a baby, he would see the same pattern repeated when she was delivered of the child. The saints call this amount of time a turn.

At our first meeting, I had heard Kettle refer to another measure of time, one that the firstfolk used, the year. The year is about one and one-third turns. Heaven keeps its records in years, but—as everyone admits—it is a very impractical unit and is preserved only because it is sanctified by age and custom.

More convenient is the month, which is almost sixteen years, or twenty-two turns. I was two and a bit months old, Kettle informed me smugly. He expected me to ask how he knew, but he’d already told me that, so I didn’t. Almost a month had passed since the seafolk’s great migration, and much of that month I had spent in the ants’ nest. One month makes a baby an adult. A man can hope to live for four months, and a very few make five…and so on. Time is handiest in months. Twelve months makes a cycle, when High Summer returns to the same place. A cycle is three old men’s lives end to end, seven or eight generations, two hundred years.

The firstfolk came to Vernier almost a hundred cycles ago.

“Copies!” Kettle would exclaim sometimes, when he became annoyed with the old texts. “Copies of copies of copies! Reports of rumors of commentaries on critiques of analyses! Bah!” Sometimes he used an even stronger word than “bah!”

Despite the efforts of generations of scribes, and of the many heavy-laden snortoises who bear Heavens library, there are lamentable gaps in the old learning: much has been lost. What, for example, were the “goods” whose loss the firstfolk lamented? Kettle thought they must have been like the sorts of things that Heaven guards so carefully—the smithy, the pottery, the toolmaker’s shop—and most likely the legend of many goods being lost means that they were swallowed up by Nightside. Other saints disagreed. Goods, they maintained, had been in some way related to gods, and their loss was somehow tied in to the way the gods had scattered all across Vernier. Every group has its own god, they pointed out, and some have several, all lost to Heaven. Kettle made very rude sounds at this idea. The various gods had come much later, he insisted.

And why, if the firstfolk could move themselves and their goods through the Other Worlds, could they not also keep these goods moving when they came to Vernier? Kettle had a theory that—but then, every saint had theories.

In that first lesson, he did little more than confuse me on the subject of time, but at least I learned the words of the Great Compact. In Heaven, everyone is required to know it by heart. Long ago, Kettle said, all of Vernier did. Then he began to quote, almost chanting:

We, the people of Vernier, in order to preserve the wisdom of our ancestors from the dark of ignorance, our goods from the dark of night, our liberties from the dark of tyranny, our minds from the dark of superstition, and our children from the darknesses of inequality and intolerance, violence and oppression, do hereby enter into Compact together, for ourselves and our descendants forever.

He paused, looking reverent, which was not easy with a face so much better suited to registering mirth.

“That’s it?”

“That’s just the beginning. It goes on to describe ‘the college,’ which is Heaven, and ‘the instructors,’ which we now call angels—”

“Why? Why change the names?”

“I have no idea!” The solemnity slipped slightly, and his eyes twinkled. “There is an old tradition that it started as a joke. A heaven is a place where a god lives, and the Great Compact bans all gods from Heaven. Let me tell you the rest of it…”

And so he did. But then and later, he left many questions unanswered and many hints unexplained, and in time he had me begging for reading lessons so that I could find out for myself, which is probably what he had intended from the start. Probably I wanted to show that herdmen and reading were not incompatible…and Quetti was learning too, of course.

After that first session with Kettle, though, I returned to Cloud Nine with my head full of wonders and my belly empty. I discovered a near riot in progress because the seraph cook had been removed to attend to more urgent business. The cherubim were solving the problem with beer and loud indignation. Feeling too hungry for such behavior, I headed for the kitchen to set to work on my specialty, an all-inclusive stew.

My news of an angel slave had rocked Heaven as if all the snortoises had taken up dancing. Michael was planning a force of forty men, which meant at least fourteen chariots, and no such effort had been mounted since the mission to the herdfolk, back in my childhood. Everyone became involved. I was to see learned saints wielding paintbrushes and archangels sewing sails. The seraphim were run to exhaustion.

Technically I was only a guest, but I did not escape the preparations. Angels were too busy now to instruct, while senior cherubim were frantic to win their wheels before the war party departed. Quetti’s stories must have found gullible ears. A blushing cherub asked if I would give him some tips in archery. Then it was marksmanship, although I had not shot a gun since I ran out of ammunition in the crocodile swamp. Then horses. Soon I was as insanely overworked as everyone else, and mostly I was training angels, which I found ironic. In exchange, I demanded lessons in dogsledding and snowshoeing, so I could make my own way around Heaven without needing help all the time.

Then Sariel invited me along to meet some traders, and I found myself haggling on Heaven’s behalf. The traders did not appreciate my intervention. Sariel was appalled at the difference it made.

But I am getting ahead of my story… About the second or third time I was playing cook in Cloud Nine, Michael sent a seraph to fetch me. He wanted only to chat, but Michael’s whim was Heaven’s law.

I refused the seraphs dogsled and set off on my own snowshoe-shod feet. The sky was black, with a murderous cold wind coming from Nightside, and I was red-faced and breathless by the time I arrived at Throne. Michael made me welcome, apologizing for having taken so long to call me back. He led me into a small and very cozy office, where lantern flames danced happily and logs crackled in a tubby iron stove.

The chairs looked soft and difficult. I chose to settle on the floor with my back against a wall. Michael fetched some shabby old cushions for me, and then he proceeded to warm dulcified wine on the stove and to roast beef nuts. He was being charming again, and that put me on guard.

But I seemed to have misjudged him. He was amused and excited at having a real live son turn up in Heaven. To console him in his old age, he said with a laugh that came close to a cackle. We must get to know each other. Tell me about your childhood. Have some more wine. Have you heard the story…?

He was bright and inexhaustible, witty and irascible by turns. I was weary after a long series of lessons given and taken. I sat there, and we talked until my neck sagged and my eyes glazed. Finally he relented.