Paul Mcauley: Shrine of Stars

“You like to think we are all a single mind,” the old woman in the corner told Ayulf, “but you know it is not true. It is just that we think alike, that’s all. Hush! They are here.”

There were whistles from below, a muffled splash. The crow stirred and hopped to the rail of the veranda, finding its balance with a rustling stir of wings. It cried out hoarsely. Ayulf stumbled to the rail, pushed the bird out of the way, and peered down into the darkness.

Voices floated up. The trader cursed and threw down the half-empty bottle of arak he had been clutching. It shattered on one of the banyan’s branches. “Too fucking late! You understand? Understand too late? Come back tomorrow!”

More voices. The trader cursed again, clambered over the rail, and swarmed down the banyan. Pandaras stood (the cluttered, shadowy shanty seemed to revolve around him, and he felt a spasm of nausea) and went out onto the veranda. Below, lit by the tiny lanterns scattered amongst the banyan’s leaves, Ayulf was arguing with a tall thin man who stood in a coracle. The man was holding up what looked like a huge ragged book. There were other coracles at the edge of the darkness beyond the glow of the lanterns.

Tibor came out and stood at Pandaras’s back. He said, “The woman wants to speak with you, young master.”

“Hush. I want to know what is going on.”

“This is a bad place.”

“I know. That’s why I need to know what this is all about.”

“We should go.”

“I want to fix the motor. I can do it, but I’m tired. Later. I’ll finish it later.”

Below them, Ayulf finished a long impassioned speech, but the man in the coracle made no reply and at last the trader threw up his skinny arms and climbed back to the veranda. He fell flat on his face when he clambered over the rail, got up and went inside and found another bottle of arak, ripped the plastic seal away with his teeth and took a long swallow.

“They are impossible,” Ayulf said petulantly, to no one in particular. He took another swallow and wiped his wet lips, glaring around at the women. A child woke somewhere and made a snuffling noise. Two more children clung to their mothers’ legs, staring at the trader with big black eyes. In the corner, the fat old woman was calmly whittling her bit of wood. “Animals,” the trader said. “Why am I wasting my time with animals?”

One by one, the fisherfolk climbed to the veranda and, stooping, entered the shanty. There were four of them.

Unlike their women, they were so thin that if they had been of Pandaras’s bloodline they would have been in the last stage of starvation, and so tall that their heads brushed the ceiling. Their green skins were dappled with darker tones. It was not a book their leader carried, but a sheaf of bloody uncured hides, and he placed this at Ayulf’s feet.

One of the women crept up to Pandaras while the trader dickered with the leader of the fisherfolk in their croaking dialect. The leader squatted face to face with Ayulf, his sharp knees above the top of his head, nodding impassively, occasionally picking a shrimp from the heaped plate and examining it with slow thoughtfulness before dropping it into his wide mouth and swallowing it whole. His companions stood behind him in the shadows, as still as herons waiting for a fish to swim by. Most of the hides were of marsh antelope, but one was that of a leopard. Ayulf had spread it out in front of him and was stroking the spotted, viridescent fur with his long fingernails. To Pandaras’s great scorn, the trader made no attempt to conceal how much he coveted the leopard hide.

“My mother will speak with you,” the woman said in Pandaras’s ear. “We know that you are a friend of ours, and we will help you.”

Pandaras yawned. It was very late and he was drunk. Drunk and tired. He had given up trying to fit the motor back together. His fingers were numb and his stomach hurt. Later. Tomorrow. The shanty was swaying to and fro like a boat on the breast of the river. The lanterns seemed very bright, a swarm of hectic colors that kept trying to run into each other. It was an effort to keep anything in focus for more than a moment.

The woman touched the fetish which Pandaras wore over his shirtsleeve, but Pandaras mistook the gesture and pushed her away. He wanted to curl up around the pain in his stomach. He wanted to sleep.

“Your master is a fool,” he told the woman. He was aware of Tibor’s steady gaze on the other side of the shadowy shanty. He said, “I can take care of myself.”

“Oncus,” the woman said, but Pandaras had forgotten that name and stared at her dumbly until she went away. Pandaras woke with a start some time later. It was still dark. His mouth was parched and he had a bad headache and somehow he was standing upright. Then he realized that Tibor was holding him up by the collar of his ragged shirt and kicked out indignantly. Tibor let him go. The hierodule had the reaction motor under his arm.

Ayulf was in a hammock on the far side of the shanty, half-curled around a fat young woman and snoring through his open mouth. A knot of children slept below. The oldest woman was watching Pandaras from her stool on the other side of the slab hearth, the carved peg of wood in one hand, her little knife in the other. “We go, young master,” Tibor said in a low, hoarse whisper.

Pandaras drew out his poniard. “I’ll cut his throat,” he said. He was still drunk. His stomach hurt badly, as if he had been swallowing slivers of hot metal. The muscles in his arms and legs felt as if they were on the verge of cramping. He said, “He poisoned me. I’ll cut his throat and watch him die in his own blood. I can do it.”

Tibor wrapped a large, six-fingered hand around Pandaras’s wrist. The poniard’s blade pressed against the hierodule’s gray skin, but did not cut it. “You fixed the motor,” Pandaras said stupidly.

“It is very like the motor of the Weazel ,” Tibor said, and added, “Your pardon, but I think you need to be helped,” and lifted Pandaras up and swung him over the rail of the veranda.

They were halfway down when Pandaras remembered something and began to scramble back up. Tibor tried to catch his foot, but Pandaras kicked his hand away. “The pack and the arbalest,” he hissed. “My master’s book. His money.”

The women stirred and whispered amongst themselves when Pandaras reappeared, but he ignored them. He found the arbalest and the pack by the flat hearthstone—the book was still inside, but the money was gone.

“Where is it?” he hissed at the old woman. “Where did your master hide my money?”

She shook her head, and put her fingers to her throat. Pandaras showed her the poniard. “I’ll kill him where he sleeps. Show me where he hid it and I will go.”

On its perch above the stay of Ayulf’s hammock, the crow stirred, gave a single hoarse screech, and flew directly at Pandaras. Pandaras dropped the pack and slashed blindly as the bird enveloped him in its beating wings and pecked at the forearm he had raised to protect his eyes. He cut it with a lucky thrust and it fluttered away, trailing blood and dragging a black wing across the floor.

Pandaras chased after it, bleeding from half a dozen places, and went down under Ayulf’s weight and hot stink. For a moment, the trader’s hands were everywhere as he sought to prise the poniard from Pandaras’s grasp, but then his weight was lifted away. Pandaras rolled over, gasping, and saw Tibor throw Ayulf across the shanty. The skinny trader crashed into the woven panels of the far wall. As they collapsed around him, he rolled away, quick as thought. Pandaras’s poniard quivered in the planking where he had been.

Pandaras scrambled for cover too.

“I’ll kill him,” Ayulf said. He was pointing a percussion pistol at Tibor, who stood foursquare in the middle of the shanty, the arbalest dangling from one hand. “Come out, my little man, and maybe I’ll let you live. Otherwise your slave dies, and then you die.”