Robert Silverberg - At Winter's End

Noum om Beng said, “Guard your stone, boy. Swallow it, if you are endangered. It is an essential thing. We have had to struggle twice as hard for our greatness, or more, because we have been careless of ours.”

“And what is the Barak Dayir, then? I had heard it was a thing made in the stars.”

“No. It is a human-thing,” Noum om Beng said. “That is all I can tell you. Something older even than the Great World. A device that the humans made, so I realize now, and gave to our kind, to use in many ways. But what those ways are, I have never known, and you have only begun to learn.”

Hresh reached for the amulet of Thaggoran at his throat, for he felt great tension and fear oppressing him. But then he remembered that he had given the amulet to Koshmar, to see her through her dying hours.

He said, “I wish we were not leaving Vengiboneeza so soon, Father.”

“Why? The world is waiting for you.”

“I want to stay here with you, and learn all that you can teach me.”

Noum om Beng laughed again. Without warning his thin stem of an arm came up and he dealt Hresh an open-handed slap that bruised his lip and numbed his cheek.

“ That is all I can teach you, boy!”

Hresh licked at a sweet spot of blood on his lower lip. Softly he said, “Shall I go now, then? Is that what you want?”

“Stay as long as you wish.”

“But you will answer no more of my questions?”

“You have more questions, do you?”

Hresh nodded, but said nothing.

“Go on. Ask.”

“I must be tiring you, Father.”

“Ask. Ask. Anything, boy.”

Hesitantly Hresh said, “You told me once that the gods repay all our striving by sending death-stars, so that nothing has any meaning. I called this a flaw in the universe, but you said no, no, the universe is perfect, and we are the ones who are flawed. But it still seems like a flaw in the universe to me. And you said also that we must go on striving anyway, though you did not know why. You told me that I must find that out, and when I did I should come and tell you what I had learned. Do you remember, Father?”

“Yes, boy.”

“Not long ago I had another vision of the Great World, using a different device from the one that showed me the humans, I had that vision only this night past, Father. What I saw was the last day of the Great World, when the first death-star came and the sky turned black and the air grew cold. The humans were already gone, I could not tell you where, and the hjjks were heading for the hills, and the vegetals were dying and the sea-lords were about to die and the mechanicals were going off to die elsewhere. But the sapphire-eyes, though they knew they were coming to the end of their time, were altogether untroubled by what was happening around them. They showed no fear and they showed no distress. Nor did they do the slightest thing to deflect the falling death-stars from the world, though surely that must have been within their power. I am unable to understand that, Father. If I knew why the sapphire-eyes were able to accept their doom without seeming to care, I might be able to tell you why we must strive ever onward even though the gods will some day destroy all we have built.”

Noum om Beng said, “What is the name by which you call your god who is the Destroyer?”

Hresh blinked in surprise. “Dawinno.”

“Dawinno. What do you understand of Dawinno, then? Do you think that he is an evil god?”

“How can a god be evil, Father?”

“You have answered your own question, boy.”

Hresh did not see that he had. He sat blinking, waiting for some further illumination. But none was forthcoming. Noum om Beng was smiling at him amiably, almost smugly, as if quite certain that he had given Hresh the key to all that troubled him.

Behind his smile the old Helmet Man’s face was gray with fatigue; and Hresh himself felt the strength of his mind taxed to its limit. He dared not ask for further explanation. Here I will stop, Hresh thought. Already he had burdened himself with so much that it would take him years, so it seemed to him then, to comprehend it all.

He rose to go. “I should leave now, Father, and let you rest.”

“I will not see you again,” Noum om Beng said.

“No, I think not.”

“We have done good work together, boy. Our minds were well met.”

“Yes,” Hresh said. There was a strange ring of finality in Noum om Beng’s tone that made Hresh wonder how much longer the old Helmet Man could hope to live. From him radiated an awareness of imminent death, and a deep acceptance of it, too, that made him as tranquil as any sapphire-eyes who had watched the sky grow black with the rain of dust that the death-star had flung up. Hresh, who only this morning had heard Koshmar speak so blandly of her oncoming end, felt himself surrounded on all sides by mortality today. How could they be so accepting, these dying folk? How could they shrug their shoulders in the face of oblivion?

Uncertainly Hresh moved toward the door, not really wanting to leave so soon, but knowing he must.

Noum om Beng said, “Was there not another errand for which you came here this morning, other than to speak with me?”

Yissou! The vermilions!

Hresh’s face blazed with shame. “There was, yes,” he said lamely. “Koshmar asked me — our chieftain — she wondered if — whether we could have — if it would be possible to have—”

“Yes,” Noum om Beng said. “We foresaw the need. It is already arranged. Four young vermilions are yours, two males, two females, our parting gift. Trei Husathirn will bring them an hour from now, and he will instruct your people in how to control them, and how they are bred. That was all, was it not, boy?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Come here, Hresh.”

Hresh went forward and knelt before the old Helmet Man. Noum om Beng raised his hand as though to strike one last blow; but then he smiled, and softened the movement of his arm, and touched his hand lightly to Hresh’s cheek in an unmistakable gesture of the deepest affection. With the slightest of nods he indicated that this was the moment for Hresh to take his leave. No other word was said between them; and when Hresh paused at the door to look back and his eyes met the red ones of Noum om Beng it seemed to him that Noum om Beng no longer saw him, that he no longer had any idea who Hresh might be.

It was midday by the time Hresh reached the settlement. The sun hovered in a cloudless sky. Hresh felt the full heat of the day settling upon him like a blanket. The wintertime of frost and cold winds was lost in the infinitely remote past. His fur was dusty and sweaty from his hasty journeys between the settlement and Dawinno Galihine, his head throbbed, his eyes were raw. It seemed to him that he had not slept for a month.

There was furious activity in the plaza, for the dismantling of the settlement was nearing its climax. Parcels were being dragged from the houses, crates were being hammered shut, the wheels of the newly constructed wagons were being oiled. He saw Orbin tottering under three immense bundles, Haniman hammering like a madman, Thhrouk smashing a hole through the wall of a building half as old as time so that some parcel too wide for the door could be shoved through the opening. Though there had been some murmuring against the decision to depart — Haniman seemed to be the chief opponent of the idea, and some of the others whom Hresh had seen that night kneeling to the Dream-Dreamer statue — no one was holding back from the work of making ready for the trek. The People’s instincts of cooperation were too deeply engrained.

Taniane stepped out of Koshmar’s house and waved to him from the threshold.

“Hresh! Hresh, here!”

He went to her. She was holding herself strangely, as if she had injured her back: her shoulders were pushed up high, her elbows were close to her sides. Her lips were quivering. She was wearing a blood-red sash that he had never seen before.