Robert Silverberg - At Winter's End

And yet, and yet, and yet—

The sapphire-eyes—

Hresh sees them going steadily about their business in the midst of the madness. The huge crocodilians are calm, terribly calm. It is as though nothing more serious than a light summer rainstorm has begun to fall.

All about them, fear-maddened creatures of the wilds boil and writhe and leap and prance. And calmly, calmly, never betraying the slightest sense of alarm or dismay, the sapphire-eyes pack away their treasures, dictate instructions for their care, perform their regular obeisances to the gods who even now are sending doom.

Hresh sees them gathering in placid groups to listen to music, to watch the play of colors on giant crystals set in the walls of buildings, to indulge in quiet, reasonable discussions of abstruse issues. In all ways, their normal life continues. A few, but only a few, go to the machines of the hooded lights and are swallowed up; but perhaps this too is normal, and has nothing to do with the advancing catastrophe.

Yet they know that doom is here. They must! They must! They simply do not care.

The cold deepens. The wind becomes more fierce. The sky is starless, moonless, a black beyond black. A chilling rain has begun to fall, and it turns to snow and then to hard particles of ice before it reaches the ground. A deadly shining transparent jacket coats every tree, every building. The world has taken on the glitter of mortality.

The other peoples are responding now to the devastation, each in its own way.

The hjjks are leaving the city. They have arrayed themselves in an endless double file, yellow and black, yellow and black, and are marching out via the southern gate. They are unhurried, perfectly disciplined, totally and monstrously orderly in their evacuation.

The sea-lords are leaving too, and they show no panic either as they go down to the waterfront and slip away from shore. But the lake is beginning to freeze even as they enter it, and there is no doubt that they are going to their deaths. They must know that.

The mechanicals also are departing, by way of the grand avenue that winds through the foothills of the mountain wall and up and over it toward the east. The gleaming dome-headed machines move in a quick, jerky way. Perhaps they are bound for the rendezvous point in the far-off plains where Hresh and his tribe will find them, dead and covered with the rust of millennia, one day in the very distant future.

There is no exodus for the vegetals. They are already dying. They crumple where they stand, poor blasted flowers, slender stems and limbs turning black, withered petals folding over and into themselves. As they topple, mechanicals which have not yet left the city appear and sweep them up. The city will be maintained to the last.

Of all the Six Peoples only the humans cannot be seen. Hresh scans the whole city for the pale, elongated creatures with the somber eyes and the high-vaulted heads, but no, no, there is not a single one to be found. They are gone already, it seems: shrewd anticipators, bound on their journey — where? — to safety? To a quiet death elsewhere, as the sea-lords and mechanicals will have? Hresh cannot say. He is baffled and numbed by the sight of the end of Vengiboneeza. He is mesmerized by those black winds sweeping across the black sky, by the somber death-music, by the migrations of the Great World beings outward and of the wild forest denizens into the city. And by that incomprehensible acceptance that the sapphire-eyes unanimously display as the time of last times descends upon them.

He watches until he can bear to watch no more. To the end, the sapphire-eyes show indifference to their doom.

At last he presses the stud with a trembling finger and the vision ceases, the music dies away. He falls to his knees, stunned, overwhelmed.

He knew that he did not understand a thing of what he had seen.

As never before, his soul churned and bubbled with questions; and he had no answers for them, not one, nothing at all.

In the morning when Koshmar tried to rise from her couch a powerful unseen hand pressed itself between her breasts and hurled her back down. She was alone. Torlyri had gone to the temple the night before to continue her task of packing the holy things, and she had never returned. Gone off to her Beng, Koshmar thought. She lay quietly for a moment, panting, wincing, rubbing her breastbone, making no effort to get up. Something was burning within her chest. My heart is on fire, she thought. Or it could be my lungs. I am consumed in fire from within.

Carefully she attempted to sit up again. This time no hand pushed her back, but still it was a slow process, with much shivering and shaking, and several long pauses while she balanced herself on the tips of her fingers and struggled not to slip backward. She felt very cold. She was grateful that Torlyri was not here to see her weakness, her illness, her pain. No one must see; but especially not Torlyri.

By second sight she groped outside her house and became aware of Threyne passing by, with her boy Thaggoran. Shakily Koshmar called to her, and stood in her doorway, grasping the frame, holding her shoulders back, fighting to make it seem that all was well with her.

“You summoned me?” Threyne said.

“Yes.” Koshmar’s voice sounded husky and quavering in her own ears. “I need to speak with Hresh. Will you find him and send him here to me?”

“Of course, Koshmar.”

But Threyne hesitated, not going off to do as Koshmar had bidden her. Her eyes were veiled and troubled. She sees that I am ill, Koshmar thought. But she doesn’t dare ask me what the matter is.

Koshmar glanced at young Thaggoran. He was a sturdy boy, long-limbed, bright-eyed, shy. Though he was past seven he stood half-hidden behind his mother, peering uncertainly at the chieftain. Koshmar smiled at him.

“How tall he’s grown, Threyne!” she exclaimed, with all the heartiness she could manage to muster. “I recall the day he was born. We were just outside Vengiboneeza, then, near the place of the water-strider, when your time came. And we made a bower for you and Torlyri saw you through your time of delivery, and Hresh came to give the boy his birth-name. You remember that, do you?”

Threyne gave Koshmar a strange look, and Koshmar felt a new stab of pain.

She must think my mind has softened, Koshmar thought, to be asking her if she remembers the day her own firstborn came into the world. With a hand that she struggled desperately to keep from shaking she reached out and stroked the boy lightly along his cheek. He shrank back from her.

“Go,” Koshmar said. “Get me Hresh!”

Hresh was a strangely long time in coming. Maybe he is off rummaging in the ancient ruins one last time, Koshmar thought. Desperately trying to grab whatever he can still find before the tribe leaves Vengiboneeza. Then she reminded herself that Hresh was mated now, or almost so, and perhaps he was simply deep in coupling or twining with Taniane just now and unwilling to be disturbed. It was odd to think of Hresh as being mated, or twining, or doing any of the things that went with those things. For her he would always be that wild boy who had tried to slip out of the cocoon for a look at the river valley one morning long ago.

Finally he came. He had a rough-eyed, ragged look about him, the look of one who has had no sleep at all. But the moment he saw Koshmar he caught his breath and became suddenly alert, as though the sight of her had shocked him into full wakefulness.

“What has happened to you?” he demanded instantly.

“Nothing. Nothing. Come inside.”

“Are you ill?”

“No. No!” Koshmar swayed and nearly fell. “Yes,” she said, half-whispering it. Hresh seized her by the arm as she tottered, and guided her to a stone bench covered with furs. For a long while she sat there with her head down, while waves of pain and fever went rolling through her. After a time she said, very quietly, “I’m dying.”