Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

As the Family’s traditional route moved further north again, though, it also took a less traditional jog further in-land, to avoid an increasing number of taboo sites where things had happened that shouldn’t have happened in the past. The new routing was far enough inland that they could no longer even see the great rock where they’d found the dead man and almost been captured by his ghost. Some of the men didn’t like such a radical change, since it meant more intensive scouting by more and more warriors, leaving the camp less protected, more vulnerable. Even Father Alex was concerned that Mother Paulista’s fear of the unknown was threatening them in more pragmatic ways, not to mention the fact that the trees and bushes and ancient gardens where they foraged for food were not as plentiful in some of those new inland areas, while some natural barriers, particularly some decent-sized rivers, were real impediments.

So it was that they were camped one evening near the edge of a mighty river that seemed to go on and on. None there could remember seeing such a river before, nor hearing of it, so they knew that they had perhaps come too far from their traditional territories. There was no way to cross the thing; it was easily several kilometers to the other shore, and there were currents and eddies and small whirlpools in the mud-brown water that clearly showed that it was not just wide but also deep and treacherous.

Littlefeet knew the river, though; at least, he remembered seeing it from the heights above before he’d stared too long at the distant demons.

“I cannot say where we are compared to what I saw,” he admitted to Father Alex, “but I can say that several great rivers flowed from the mountains out onto the great plain and that most of them joined into one at different stages, or flowed close enough together that they probably joined beyond where I could see. That may not be a shore over there, but merely a dividing part of land between two great rivers yet to merge.”

Father Alex nodded. It was not good that they were this far east and backed up against such a barrier. If Hunters came in force, there would be no way to run, nowhere to hide, and he was not sure that anyone could stay afloat if they fell into that thing. Worse, the bluffs along the river were not good for growing edible things, at least not here. The pickings were fairly poor even though the vegetation was dense. He went to see Mother Paulista with the intent of insisting that they move back inland as quickly as possible and spirit dangers, real and imagined, be damned. This was not a fit place for the Family.

He found her surprisingly unnerved and in agreement. “I did not see this,” she admitted to him. “This is a barrier we were not meant to cross. If God does not part the waters, then we shall do as you say.”

Nobody liked the river, and when Littlefeet slept, even his dreams were about the river, and the unholy things beyond it.

He could sense them, almost hear them talking one to another, although what they said made no sense and was like the banging of drums and hollow rocks, reverberating back and forth into a babble.

And yet he knew, he’d always known, that it was some sort of speech, that this was their language, their tongue, and that they heard and spoke and thought in ways far different from humans.

Words…? Littlefeet couldn’t call such a cacophony words or thoughts, but occasionally through the din he would get other things: pictures that partly related to things he could understand, and sometimes even odd feelings. Like now, he was convinced that the din was some sort of argument. Not a violent argument, or a heated one, but an argument nonetheless. And, occasionally, in the flashes of color and rippling patterns that floated through his sleeping mind, there were pictures, almost snapshots of events rather than full observations. Most made no sense, at least he couldn’t make sense of them, but sometimes there were—faces. Human faces. Faces in many cases filled with fear, or, worse, worshipful devotion to something he could not see, but with eyes that showed little or no thought, just an achingly single-minded desire to please.

And they were in some ways like no humans he knew. They were humans without scars, without blemishes of any kind, with smiles full of perfect teeth and proportions that said they had never been hungry or had to keep in the kind of trim that a Family member must to survive. They also had no tattoos, and the only jewelry they all had was a kind of shiny diamond thing in their foreheads that seemed to pulse off and on, almost like the city itself had seemed to pulse when he’d looked at it.

The other images were of the demon flowers, those great flowers whose rippling rows covered the center of the region and possibly much of the continent beyond for all he knew. Gigantic flowers, planted in perfect rows, growing to two or three times the height of a man, with varicolored stalks and even more exotic patterns in their huge petals. Every color of the rainbow was there and more, and patterns made of those colors in almost any variety or configuration. Unlike the confusing and scary other scenes, these were very pretty, although the view was distorted and the groves were being seen from a vantage point that was moving very, very fast over their tops. He began to get dizzy, even a little sick, and he felt suddenly that he was not alone, that someone or something was there with him, and that the thing was now abruptly aware of his presence and turning to look at him, to reach out for him…

He woke up in a cold sweat. It was not quite dawn, and there was a thick fog all around them that made seeing nearly impossible and soaked everything and everybody right through.

Unable to see much of anything, even in the predawn light, he used his other senses and was glad that he wasn’t on sentry duty right then.

His hearing could place those nearest him fairly easily, and because the Family tended to make camp in the same pattern each time no matter what the lay of the land, it was also easy to find his way through, using hearing and smell to avoid walking into things or over people.

Hewas heading for a specific spot just outside of camp and downwind, and he had even less trouble finding that place by smell. One of the last jobs that some were assigned to do before camp was broken was to bury the pit so that no one could smell it and begin to map out camp locations.

He took his acute senses of smell and hearing for granted, and just about everybody his age did as well, but he knew that the older people did not share the abilities, at least not to the degree his age peers took them for granted. Father Alex in particular would be helpless in this soup, even to make it to piss or crap on his own. The heightened senses had not escaped his notice, either; he had wondered for some time if it was being born and raised in this new element, or just age, or if, in fact, this newly remade world was changing the people who lived in it into something slightly, subtly, different.

Littlefeet’s parents could do it, although not quite to the same degree, and the same could be said of their parents. There were also other survival senses that seemed to be emerging. Many, although not all, of the younger generation seemed to be able to sense the direction and location of the demons when they moved through the air or came near. The lines that Littlefeet said he could see from the mountain heights some professed to see even at ground level, particularly in the darkness. Some seemed to be able to see almost through the tall grasses, as if they could see or sense the heat of human bodies.

Most mutations in the past had been harmful or disfiguring; few had ever seemed really beneficial. Maybe, just maybe, humans were adapting to a new set of conditions to ensure survival after all.