Sheri S. Tepper - Awakeners 1 - Northshore

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NORTHSHORE-Awakeners1
NORTHSHORE-Awakeners 1
Sheri S Tepper
1
There was no need for watchmen on the boats that plied the World River. Since everything moved at the same speed,
pulled by the same invincible tides, there was little chance of collision; this no less on the barge Gift of Potipur than on any
other boat. Thrasne, third assistant owner's-man, had appointed himself watchman nonetheless, borrowing the title from
those who manned the gates between townships on North shore.
Northshore.
North shore with its Awakeners and frag powder merchants, its oracular Jarb Mendicants and blue-faced priests of Potipur,
glittering with sacred mirrors. North shore, with its processions of black Melancholies, flailing away at the citizens with
their fish skin whips and given good metal coin to do it. North shore, with its puncon orchards and frag groves and wide
fields of white-podded pamet and blue-tasseled grain.
And Northshore’s River’ edge, where lean forms of stalking Laughers, tight-helmed in black, announce their approach with
cries of scornful laughter, ha-ha, ha-ha, making the heretics run for cover. Echoing the Laughers, stilt-lizards hoot through
their horny lips, scattering the song-fish from around their reed like legs only to snatch them up one by one to gulp them
down headfirst. Ha-ha ha-ha.
Once in a while Thrasne would see the up-pointed finger of a Tower scratching at the sky, fliers gathered around it like
flies around dead fish. Once in a greater while he would see the lonely knuckle of a Jarb House. And the River itself, some
places smooth as a rain pond, other places full of rocks as a worker pit, everywhere dotted with blight-buoys and striped
with jetties, as wide as half the world.
Township after township, town after town, with fences between to keep people from moving east and gates between to let
people move west, the World River tugging the ships along on the endless tides, and all the panoply of life laid out for
Thrasne's watching.
He knew watchmen were necessary on land to keep foolhardy youths from sneaking between townships in the forbidden
direction or greedy caravaners from rushing too quickly westward, clogging the orderly flow of commerce. He knew that
on a boat a watchman could only watch, but that was what Thrasne did best. He wasn't bad at handling sails or sculling
oars. He could make the fragwood deck gleam as well as any boatman. He could give orders and see they were carried out,
which is what gained him the third assistant's post. And he could stow a cargo so that what was wanted next was always on
top. These were necessary and useful talents, but he felt his talent for watching was better than these. Certainly it was more
developed.
He had created a little cubby in the fore wall of the owner-house, up top deck, where the ventilation shaft opened from the
forward hold. Across this shaft he rigged a high grating of poles with a sack of loose pamet on top. When his round was
done for the day he could sly up to top deck, wait until no one was looking, then hang himself by his fingertips from the
owner-house roof with his toes on a hand wide railing and shinny around into the cubby. No windows there; no owner's
wife looking for anyone not occupied so she could find something unnecessary for them to do; only the sun-warmed boards
of the owner house wall vibrating to the ceaseless flow of the tides. Sometimes he'd stay until dark, and sometimes past that
if there were things to see.
It was from the cubby he had first seen a flame-bird set fire to its nest, from the cubby he'd first seen a strangey, rising from
the depths like some great green balloon, looking at him out of huge, wondering eyes from its fringes as it spit its bones at
him.
It was from the cubby he had first seen a whole ship and its crew caught by blight, drifting ever farther into the unknown
southern currents with wooden men standing at the rail as though they'd been carved there.
It was from the cubby he had watched the golden ship of the Progression gliding by on its seven-year journey, the doll-like
figure of the Protector of Man held high on the arms of the personal guards.
It was from the cubby he had watched the crowds on shore, thousands of shouting townspeople and file on file of mirror-
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staffed Awakeners and gem-decked priests all shouting the Protector's name, "Obol, Obol, Obol."
It was from the cubby he had seen all there was to see for the four years he had been Blint's man, and it was from the cubby
he now noticed the hard lines of jetties wavering over the River surface not far ahead, where no jetty was supposed to be.
According to the section chart-of-towns, there were no piers closer than Darkel-don, a good ten-day's tide yet, and just
yesterday owner Blint had told them they could fish as they liked till then with no worries at all. Now, having seen what
he'd seen, there was nothing to do but slither below and tell Blint of this, though it might put him to wondering how
Thrasne had seen the piers. They wouldn't be visible from deck level for some time yet, and it wasn't Thrasne's shift to
work the rudder deck at the high stern of the boat.
He reported the sighting in a quiet voice, hoping his very mildness and lack of excitement would throw Blint off the scent.
Which it might well have done had not Blint's wife been standing near, overhearing him, going at once to peer over the rail.
"Jetties? There aren't any jetties! I can't see any jetties!"
"Well, boy?" demanded Blint.
"Yessir. Piers."
Blint's eyes crinkled at the comers. "He saw them from above, wife. I told him to be sure to check the owner-house roof
was tight."
"Tight? Of course it's tight, Blint. It was rebuilt only a Conjunction ago. What do you mean, tight?"
Blint, who answered few of her questions, did not answer this one. "How close?" he murmured.
"Close enough, sir. We'd better get our nets out of the water or the fisherman caste of the place-assuming there is one, for
why else have piers-they'll be heaving stones at us."
"We could move into deeper water."
"There was that bunch in Zebulee with the catapult."
"Ah. So there was. Well then, go tell the boys. Haul in and hide the evidence, tell them. No fishskins drying on the deck.
No strangey bones lying about. I'll leave it in your good hands."
"Any chance of trade, you think?"
"Well, we'll have to see, won't we." Owner Blint strolled away, no whit disturbed, leaving it in Thrasne's good hands. If
Thrasne hadn't been available, he'd have left it in firstman Birk's good hands, or secondman Thon's. Thrasne scrambled into
action. At least the boatmen wouldn't argue with him. The memory of that catapult was too recent.
When they were hard at work getting the nets in, they'd have to be stowed wet, which would stink up the net locker.
Thrasne went to the chart room to take another look at the North shore section chart. They were passing Wilforn now.
Nothing of interest listed on the section chart for Wilforn. Next place was Baris, and the section chart didn't say a word
about Baris having jetties. Baris had pamet, art work, confections, puncon fruit when the weather was right and toys. The
Baris Tower was listed as middling active, not fanatical, which meant the Awakeners weren't likely to search the Gift for
any kind of contraband, books or such. And that's all Blint had written down six, seven years ago when he'd been by last.
Thrasne made a mental note to hide his own books, if there were changes in one thing, there might be changes in others and
to add a description of the piers as soon as he'd had a good look at them. Probably some fisherman moving west had come
to Baris and decided piers would be a good idea. Probably sold the local Tower on the idea and got a worker crew to build
them. In which case, Thrasne snorted, spitting in habitual disgust, it was sheer luck they were still standing.
He returned to the deck in time to help empty the nets. Not much in the way of fish and two or three hard, clattering things
bumping on the deck with an unmistakable wooden sound.
"Blight-fish!" one of the boatmen cursed. "I swear by the carrion birds of Abricor, it's too much. All we get lately's the
blight."
"Come on, Swin, it's not that bad. We haven't really seen any of it since Vouye. Be careful!" Thrasne pulled him back.
"You almost touched that one."
"It's hard. Probably blight's gone out of it. Almost."
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" 'Almost' gave the boatman a wooden leg."
The men snorted. An old jest, but a true one. What the blight touched, it turned to wood, slowly or quickly, and if it
touched the boatman's hand he would have the choice of cutting the hand off if he moved without hesitation or becoming a
life-size carving of himself.
Some said once the blight hardened completely it lost its power of contagion, but Thrasne had seen a man lose a foot
kicking something that seemed very hard indeed. "Just push it over the side, Swin. Don't stand there looking at it, or you'll
forget what you're looking at and pick it up."
Swin grunted and pushed the fish overboard with a boathook. The few remaining fish were free of blight, thrashing around
on the deck making high-pitched squeals from their air bladders. The men began clubbing and cleaning them, tossing the
gutted fish down where other crewmen waited with the salt kegs. Thrasne turned to stowing the nets. Blight meant extra
care there, too. They would have to be lowered into the net locker without touching them and sprayed with a mixture of
sulphur and powdered frag leaf. Only when they had steeped in this mixture for a day or two could the men safely handle
them again. Now they were plying (he long hooks in gingerly fashion, pushing the nets below, and Obers-rom was already
mixing frag powder. A good man, Obers-rom. Never needed to be told anything twice.
Thrasne leaned over the rail to watch the blighted fish moving alongside, sinking very slowly as they went, still visible
after long minutes had gone by. They floated right side up; they looked almost alive, only the lack of movement betraying
that they were fish no more. Or perhaps fish of a different kind. Thrasne had seen a man touched by blight once. In fact,
Thrasne had been the one to use the axe, and he still woke in the night sometimes sweating from the memory of it. The
boatman had kept his chopped-off leg in a netting sack, sprayed down with blight powder. He carried it about with him to
taverns, where he sold topers a look at it in exchange for drinks, daring the foolhardy to touch it and see whether the blight
had left it or not.
"Dangers in every caste and trade," said owner Blint from time to time. "None free of peril."
Thrasne supposed that was true. He went below to change his shirt and hide his books. Not that he had many, but those he
had he wanted to keep. His book of fables about the South shore. His History of North shore in three volumes, Bine-tenths
of it nonsense, Blint said, and all of it forbidden. Thrasne didn't care. It made a nice thing to do some evenings when the
winds were warm, sit on the deck in the light of the owner-house windows and read about how humans first landed on
North shore, down from the stars, and about their great wars with the Thraish, whoever they may have been. Winged
creatures, by the sound of it in the stories, who could talk just like men. And all the men using metal tools and weapons,
which was enough right there to show you why it was all false and unapproved. But who wanted to read approved books?
Lives of the Great Awakeners. The biography of Thoulia. Poof. One might as well read the chart-of-towns; it was more
interesting.
They'd be in Bans by noon, and owner Blint would likely seek trade. Most of the towns along this stretch were short of
spices and salt. They'd want to give pamet in exchange, and the Gift couldn't take it. No room left in the holds. It would
have to be something less bulky. Dried fruit, jam, jelly. Candies, maybe. The confectioners were supposed to be something
special along here. Something about candies in one of their Festival myths. And toys. Little things for children. Mechanical
ones that could be wound up. The toymakers on this stretch were notable. Not that Thrasne had been along this stretch
before; he'd been only four years on the Gift of Potipur, starting when he was twelve as go-get-boy.
As he struggled with the buttons of his shirt, he examined the row of carvings set on his storage chest. There was a long,
slender piece of clear fragwood he'd been saving, and he thought he'd make a fish of it. A surprised fish, with blight
halfway up its tail. The carvings stared back at him from the chest top: merchants, children, the tall robed figure of an
Awakener, even a worker, shapeless and hopeless in its canvas wrappings. The little figures seemed almost to breathe. One
at the near end of the row looked at him in eternal supplication, and Thrasne took it into his hands with a little groan,
warmth pouring into his belly.
"Suspirra," he whispered. It was his name for her, the otherwise nameless ideal, loveliest of all women, created out of his
head and his aching loins. She lay on his pillow when he sought his solitary comforts. She watched him when he dressed
and washed himself, always with the same expression of supplication and entreaty. "Love me," she begged silently. "Love
me." And he did love her, in a lonely fever, almost forgetting sometimes that she was no longer than his forearm. He had
carved her in one daylong frenzy of creation, the wood curling away from his blade as though it sought to reveal what lay
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within it, the pale soft grain of the face, the darker grain of the long, smooth hair, the gown, clinging to her as though wet
so he could see every line of her sweet breasts and belly, the curve of her thighs and the soft mound where they joined.
Even her feet had sprung out of the wood magically, every toe perfect, the fines of the nails as clean as the line of her lips.
"Suspirra," and he set her down, turning her slightly away from him.
"You should be artist caste," Blint had said when he first saw Thrasne's carvings. "Some of these towns give high status to
artists."
Thrasne had shaken his head. "I'd rather see everything. Not just stick in one town. Maybe, someday, when I'm tired of the
River."
Though he could not imagine being tired of the River. There was always something to see on the River. As there was right
now the new piers fringing the edge of Baristown.
When he reached the deck he gave it a careful look over. No signs of nets or hooks. The net poles were put away. He could
still smell the sulphur and frag, but the River breeze would carry it out river this time of day. He checked the hatch over the
net locker to see it was tight. Funny the way shore bound fishermen resented any fishing done by the Riverboats. Even
though the Riverboats caught different kinds of fish, to say nothing of the deep River strangeys, which probably weren't
fish at all. Glizzee spice, now. Everyone wanted that, even fishermen. And Glizzee spice was nothing but ground strangey
bone, though the boatmen didn't tell everyone that.
When he'd completed the round, he went back and climbed up to the rudder man. "What did Blint say?"
"Told me to pick the longest pier and see could I come around it."
"No side wharfs, hmm?"
"None we can see from here," Some of the towns had at the end of their piers sideways extensions that ran along the River
flow rather than across it. A Riverboat could steer close, toss a line to be made fast, then let the tide turn the boat on the line
to lay alongside. Coming around a long pier was harder work than that.
"Is Blint getting the sweeps set?"
"He got Birk out of his hammock. Said for you to stand by here where you could see everything." The man sniggered, not
maliciously, and Thrasne grinned at him. Taken all in all, the boatmen rather liked having a carver aboard. There wasn't
one of them he hadn't carved something for, as a pretty for themselves or a gift for someone they treasured. When a man
only came to his home place every six to eight years, he wanted to have something special for his children, at least. Though
it wasn't uncommon to find more children than reason suggested was appropriate. Many a man gone six years came back to
find two- and three-year-olds, but such was the life of a boatman and accepted as such. The women couldn't be blamed, not
with the procreation laws the way they were. And after all, if things like that mattered to a man, he wouldn't be River.
The pier was coming up on the right, a long one, not completed yet. The oarsmen had the sweeps set in the rope locks to
turn the ship as soon as the pier was past. The tide wasn't strong just now, not with the moons all strung out like this, not
like Conjunction, when no one in his right mind would try to tie up except at the Riverside itself.
"Hold fast," breathed Thrasne, locking the sculling oars out of the way of the rudder. "Hold fast."
"I see it," grumbled the steersman. "Been doing this for twenty years."
Thrasne ignored him. If Blint wanted him on the steer-house, it was to take charge of things.
"Hold fast," he muttered again. "Now! Hard over!" He bent his back to the rudder as the bite of the oars took hold, taking
up the slack on the tackle until it was tied hard over and they could watch the sweating men at the sweeps. Blint himself
was at the line cannon. In a moment it went off with a dull thwump of its huge wooden springs, and the line arched out
over the pier, where half a dozen stand bouts made it fast.
"Sweeps up," cried Blint. "Stand by the winch!" The ship shuddered as it began to draw toward the pier, moving against the
surging tide. Thrasne shook his head, remembering the time they had taken on a boatman from a place called Thou-ne.
"Born in Potipur," he said he was. Sanctimonious half-wit. Insisted that no ship had the right to oppose the tide, and the
only way to moor was at the end of a line along the bank. Fool had said winching was evil, anti-life, and against the will of
Potipur. He lasted until the time he took an axe to the rope during a winching operation. Assuming he had been a good
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swimmer and hadn't encountered the blight, he might still be alive. Since Blint had dropped him over the side in the far mid-
River after dark, however, his survival was only conjectural.
There were no other boats at the Baristown piers. Despite this, there was a considerable gathering at the end of the jetty,
engaged in some noisy set-to.
"What're they doing?" Thrasne asked.
"Couldn't say," offered Blint. "Have a look if you like. I'll need the walkway down anyhow for those fat bellies coming."
He nodded toward the town. Several members of the merchant caste were bustling toward them, each trying to be first
without being ostentatious about it. None of them quite broke into a run. Thrasne set the walkway, then strolled over it,
hands in pockets, down to the end of the pier.
Most of the crowd were simple stand bouts, though there were a few fishermen and merchant apprentices who should have
been elsewhere. There was one Laugher in his polished black helm, fiddling with the flasks at his belt, staring at each
member of the crowd in turn, as though he would see through to the bones. Those at the end of the jetty, however, were
Awakeners directing a worker crew in dragging the River.
2
Thrasne got a whiff of the workers and moved back a few steps. Using workers to labor in Potipur's behalf was a religious
requirement in every town they traveled by, but Thrasne thought it a stinking one, literally and philosophically. The
shambling figures were so damned inefficient. Everything had to be done six times over. It took a crew of Awakened
workers four times over a field to plow it, and Thrasne had never seen a ditch dug by workers fit to run water through until
some competent irrigation manager cleaned it out and trued the sides. Now they were heaving hooks at the ends of long
lines, tossing them about a fourth of the distance Thrasne could have thrown them, dragging them back with slow tugs
against the tide.
"What're they looking for?" he asked one of the stand-abouts.
"Some woman went in the River. Drowned herself."
"So? Why the dragging?"
"She did it to get out of bein' Sorted. So they say. I don't know. All I know is the Awakener's mad as a fisherman with a
blight-fish on a new line."
The Awakener was indeed very angry. He could hear her clearly as she spat at a long-faced, miserable looking man before
her. "Fulder Don! It was your duty to come to us if you thought she would do this!"
"I didn't think she would," the long-faced man said plaintively, his voice flat, almost without expression. "I thought it was
just her talk. She talked about a lot of things she never did. I didn't think she'd ever leave the baby. She cared so for the
baby." The little girl in his arms was crying. About three or four years old, Thrasne thought. Old enough to remember what
was going on, without being old enough to understand it.
An old woman with a tight, lipless mouth stood beside the depressed-looking man. "Fulder Don," she said, "I've known
since you married that silly fool she'd do something like this. I wouldn't have thought heresy, but who could put it past her?
She hadn't an ounce of loyalty in her."
"Mama," begged the man placatingly. "Now, Mama ... "
"Don't 'Mama' me. You married beneath you and beneath artist's caste, and that's all there is to it. Take that idiot child and
give her to Delia, will you. I can't stand the sight of her. It wasn't enough her mother had to do this dreadful thing, now
you're saddled with the child for her whole life."
"Well, Mama, she's my child, too."
"I'm not even certain sure of that." The old woman stomped off down the pier, the cane in her hand slamming down hi a
furious whop, whop, whap, which sent angry echoes booming under the pier over the lick and slap of the water.
The Awakener threw up her hands, twirled her staff, and began a slow, mind-curling chant. Thrasne shut it out, humming to
himself. He couldn't stand Awakener chants. If it was to escape this, this chant-driven pretense of life, this shambling
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excuse for existence, he did not blame the nameless woman who had drowned herself. The band of workers turned from the
River to shamble back up the pier, following the glittering staff, eyeless, faceless, only their feet and hands indicating what
lay beneath the loosely woven canvas sacks and hoods they wore. "Papa," the little girl was pleading. "Papa." The man paid
her no attention, merely stood staring at the River as though he wanted nothing more than to be deep inside it himself. The
passivity of that face moved Thrasne. His hands twitched, wanting to capture that face. This was a man who had given up.
He would not do anything, not ever again. He would only float, pushed by the tide of others' lives, waiting his end under
the canvas hood, deserving it. The child turned, caught by the watchfulness in Thrasne's face, stared at him, eyes wide and
accepting with something of that same passivity. "Papa," she said again, hopelessly.
A woman came out of the crowd to take the child, a nothing much of a woman, small and plump, older than middle-aged.
"There, there, my Pammy," she said. "There, there." The child sobbed once and laid her head on the woman's shoulder.
That, too, Thrasne coveted, that line of child against the woman's body, limp and exhausted, giving up everything in the
acceptance of this comfort.
Thrasne moved toward the man. What had the old woman called him? Fulder Don. "Fulder Don," he asked casually, as
though he were only another stand about, "why did your wife go in the River? How do you know that she did?"
The man looked at his feet, mumbling. "A fisherman saw her. She was sick. She was afraid to die. Afraid to risk Sorting
Out. My mother ... was always at her. Telling her how bad she was. How incapable. I guess she thought ... " His voice
trailed away into nothing as he stared into the water, his long, mournful face intent upon another time.
"She was so beautiful," he whispered at last. "So very beautiful."
Something in the intonation made Thrasne look at him again. Yes. Under the shabby cloak the man wore the smock of the
artist caste. An artist. Not a successful one, from the looks of it. For which Fulder Don's mama probably blamed the dead
woman. Thrasne turned quickly to return to the Gift of Potipur, his hands itching for his carving knife. The man, the
woman and child; if he was lucky, he could get both the carvings started before Blint found something else for him to do.
They spent three days in Baris. The merchants wanted spice, but they insisted on trading bulk pamet for it. Blint would take
no more pamet. "Silly blight-heads," he complained as still another delegation left the boat unsatisfied. "Can't seem to
understand every town in this section has more pamet than they can use. We'll have to go all the way to Vobil-dil-go before
anyone will want pamet. I told them we'd take toys, or those dried puncon candies, or woven pamet cloth, provided it was
something out of the ordinary. They'll come to it eventually. Just takes them two or three days to make up their minds."
On the third day they did make up their minds, and Blint did a brisk business. By dusk all the trading was done, and the
crew of the Gift went into Baristown for some jollifications. Thrasne offered to guard the ship. He wanted to finish the
carvings and brought them on deck to do so, working in the lantern light from the owner-house windows. He had caught
Fulder Don to his own satisfaction, the sorrow, the loss. Now he was finishing the carving of the woman, Delia, and the
child.
There were no sounds except the soft push -of the water along the sides, an occasional burst of laughter or song from the
taverns. The soft bumping had gone on for some time before he even heard it.
Once alerted to the sound, it still took him a while to find it. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. At last he
leaned over the side and heard it clearly. Something in the River, knocking against the side of the boat.
He lowered a lantern on a line to see only the oily shifting of the water. Then she came from under the wavelets to look up
at him for an instant, turning in the ripples to glance sideways at him from half-closed eyes.
"Suspirra!" He set the lantern down, shaking, rubbing his eyes with his hands. The face was Suspirra's face. The bumping
went on. He lowered the light again, and again she shifted to look upward at him, the water flowing across her face, the line
in which she was tangled making a silver streak across her breast.
Sick cold in his belly, he could no more have left her there than he could have burned his own Suspirra for firewood. It
took long moments to realize the bumping made a wooden clattering rather than the soft sound of flesh. He thought of a
carving, first, and only then of the blight. This was the woman they had been dragging for. The woman who had been so
beautiful, who was so beautiful. Blighted now. Wooden. And deadly. Still, he could not leave her there.
He brought up one of the small nets, safe enough after its frag powder soak. He rigged a line to the boom. Working silently,
cursing the amount of time it took, he pushed the net under her with poles, and then heaved the boom all alone against her
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weight, heavier than he'd thought, to lift her dripping body to the deck.
She turned in the lantern light, toward him and away in a silent dance, eyes half-open in invitation, lips curved as though
about to speak. "So beautiful," he murmured, wanting to touch her, holding himself from doing so only with difficulty. "So
beautiful."
A burst of laughter as some Riverfront tavern opened a door and spat revelers into the street. Blint would be bringing the
crew back shortly. If Blint saw her, he would sell her to the family, or to the Awakeners, though what good she would be to
either, Thrasne could not imagine. No. He wouldn't do that. She had fled from them, family and Awakeners both. The
woman who had fled was gone. This was his own Suspirra now. He plotted furiously, discarding one notion after another.
Then he thought of the ventilation shaft beneath his own watching post. Up went the net once more as he guided it from the
owner-house roof, down into the shaft, suspended there in its netting bag from the pole grating upon which he so often sat,
where none could see it, wonder at it, touch it-save Thrasne himself.
When Blint and the crew returned, he was crouched beneath the owner-house window, finishing the carving of Delia and.
the child. That night, for the first time since he had made her, he did not even look at the small carving of Suspirra.
Night on the River in the township of Thou-ne. Lanterns gleaming along the River walk, on the quays and jetties, where the
oily water throws back slippery reflections, fish belly lights, momentary glimmers. Rain misting the cobbles into fish scale
paths, River sucking at the piers with fish mouth kisses, all watery and dim, silver and gray, evasive as dark bodies turning
beneath dark water. Lantern man strolling along beside his wagon, wagon boy tugging, head down, sliding a little on the
slick stones. Fish-oil cans in the wagon; fill the lanterns; trim the wicks; light the lanterns; then move on. Behind these two
the lantern light lies in liquid puddles on the stones, pools of light, wetter than water as the crier follows after, "Dusk falls,
night comes, let all abroad take themselves to home and hearth." The call so well known over lifetimes it comes out in
drawn vowels, "Uhhhs aaaahs, aiiit uhnunms, aaaad ohhhhm aiiinli."
Peasimy Plot trots along the River path, behind the crier, stepping carefully into each puddle of light to splash it onto the
path. Slap, slap, slap with the soft soles of his boots, slap, slap. Light has to be distributed. Nobody sees to it but Peasimy.
What good are these puddles with all the dark in between? Have to splash the light around. He does not look behind him to
see the pools of light still separate and rimmed with black. He has splashed them; now the walk is lighted.
Never mind what the eyes see. Never mind. It is what the soul sees that's important.
"Uhhhs aaaahs," the crier calls. "Aiiit uhmmms."
Night is already here. Potipur glares in the eastern sky, full and ominous, his face half-veiled in River mist. Viranel is half
herself at the zenith, skittish behind clouds, as she becomes at these slender times; Abricor has whetted his scythe on the
western horizon and goes now to harvest the crops of night. Peasimy stops in midsplash to contemplate the scythe-moon.
"Harvest," he calls in a whispery fish voice, full of bubbles and liquid gurgling. "Cut down the lies, Moon of Abricor. Foul
weeds of untruth. Cut them down, down, down." Then back to the splashing once more. Pitty-pat, pitty-pat, slap slap slap.
Twelve years old, Peasimy is a neat one in his high-collared coat with the shiny buttons, his tight dark trousers fitting down
into the soft boots, his perky little hat perched high on his tight, shiny hair. Daytimes he sleeps, like a strangey, lost in the
depths of his sleep as in a cavern. Nighttimes he comes up for air and to look at the moon and splash lantern light. Peasimy
knows Thou-ne would wither away if he didn't splash the light around. It doesn't matter no one else knows it. All night long
he will continue this perambulation, spreading the light. Dawn will mean a bite of breakfast, then pulling the shades down,
hiding in the dark. No one knows why, but he's been that way since childhood. No trouble to anyone. Just see him decent
dressed and let him go. So says Peasimy's mama, the widow Plot. So says her kin and kith. Let him alone. He doesn't hurt
anything. Poor little fellow. Lucky when he can remember his name.
Peasimy ... well, Peasimy remembers a lot of things. Peasimy remembers catching his mama putting Candy Seeds on his
bed when it was supposed to be the Candy Tree growing there that did it. Peasimy remembers things Haranjus Pandel said
in Temple. Peasimy remembers every lie ever told and some he only suspects. Peasimy can recognize true things when he
sees them.
Lanterns, now, they are true things. Water is true, and the widow Plot. The lantern man is true, and the crier. Daylight is so
true he needn't even stay awake to watch it. All light is true. Dark is a false thing, full of lies, making you think a thing is
one way when it's actually another. That's why Peasimy splashes the light. Have to fight the dark. Can't just let it overcome.
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There's an image Peasimy sees sometimes in the dusk, maybe in the dusk, maybe only in his head, he's not sure always
where things are. But the image is there, somewhere, shining. A glowing thing. Looking at him. Looking at him and
shining with its own light. Truth. Shining. He doesn't know what it is, but he expects to find it. Somewhere. Along this
alley, perhaps, between splashes of his boots. Along that street.
And until then, he goes along.
"Aiiiih uhmmmms," calls the crier.
"Night comes," whispers Peasimy. "Light comes."
3
It was six days before Thrasne was left alone and could look at the drowned woman again. Under a grove of enormous frag
trees, tied up at the Riverside past Shabber, he was able to lift the net once more. He stood on the owner-house roof, staring
at her in lantern light where she swayed in the net. She was dry now. Her hair had fluffed out like fine pamet fiber, a warm,
lovely brown. Though he had thought her eyes open when he brought her aboard, they were closed now, the lashes lying
softly upon her cheeks as she seemed to sleep. His eyes marked her, measured her, trembled over every part of her,
fascinated and aroused. He had to hold his hands behind him to keep from touching her. At last he could stand it no longer.
He went below and took a live fish from the cook's cage where it hung over the side. Carrying this squirming burden, he
went back to her to thrust the wriggling thing against her, careful not to touch the part of it that touched her. He laid it on
the roof, watching closely, and within moments the front part of it stopped thrashing and began to bump against the roof,
moved by the tail, which was still alive. The blight lived in her still. He brought the sprayer up and covered her with a
powdery, golden shower before lowering her into the shaft once more. The fish was still bumping, and he shoved it
overside with a pole.
"Suspirra," he whispered down to her. "It's all right, Suspirra. A few more days' drying, the good powder will do its work,
then you can come out of there ... " Except, he told himself, she could not. Where would he put her? How would he
explain?
"Blint, sir, would you mind making me a small payment on my wages?"
"How small, Thrasne? And what do you suddenly find yourself so needy of? Isn't wife Blint seeing well enough to your
food and clothing?"
"It isn't that, sir. I have a mind to make a large carving, and I'd like to purchase a block of wood from a frag merchant ... "
Which block of wood was not easily come by. Some were too crooked and others too straight. Some had harsh graining
that would spoil the features, others were too dark. Thrasne found one eventually, at the bottom of the pile, and paid for it
with good coin. He put it in one corner of his little room aboard the Gift, knives and chisels ostentatiously by. When he
began to carve it, the wood opened up to reveal the Suspirra within. Still, it was a largish thing, life size, and it was longer
than he liked before it resembled her, longer yet before it was her, line for line. Then was a long time between towns,
during which he was never left alone, so that when he finally came to take the drowned woman from the net, replacing her
with the carving-in case he might ever need to hide the real woman again-it seemed a season had gone by.
The drowned woman came gladly to his place, standing in one corner of it as though invited there for dalliance. She looked
at him through barely opened eyes, lips not quite curved, as though she were thinking of smiling but had not yet
accomplished it.
"Well," said Blint when he saw her first. "I still say you should be artist caste, Thrasne. Not that I'd like doing without you.
Still, that's a beauty, that is. Pure fragwood, is it? Surely not the hair? That doesn't look carved?"
"Well, no sir," he lied without a change of expression. "That's a wig I bought in Tsillis. Somehow the carved hair didn't
look ... well, it didn't look soft." Her hair had not looked soft, either, when he had raised her that last time, matted and filthy
as it was from the frag leaf and sulphur. He had rinsed her time and again with buckets of clean water, brushed her hair, and
run soap through it. Now it lay gleaming on her shoulders, not unlike the color of frag, yet more silken. The rest of her
gleamed in nut-brown colors, also, with a hint of rose at nipples and lips.
"What do you call her?" asked Blint.
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"Her name is Suspirra. It was the name of a girl I knew onee back in Xoxxy-Do, where you found me."
"And where you'll be again in a year or so. What will she think of this, your having a life-size doll of her to keep you
company?" Blint was roguish, twinkling.
"She wouldn't mind." Since Thrasne had invented such a girl on the spot, he was not concerned about what she might think.
What Blint would think had concerned him, but evidently Blint thought nothing untoward. If a boatman wished to have a
life-size carving of a beautiful woman in his cabin, well, so be it. It took all kinds, as Blint would say, to do all the things
needing doing.
At first Thragne merely looked at her in the lantern light before he slept or in the early morning before he rose. He touched
her face sometimes, almost reverently. He did not presume to touch her breasts, though once he laid his cheek against them,
almost sobbing as the promise of softness was betrayed. After a time he stopped touching her at all and began talking to her
instead. At a short distance he could forget the blight, forget her petrifaction, believe that she was living flesh. He still
called her Suspirra. He told her all the things he had never been able to tell anyone, not even Blint.
"Blint saved my life," Thrasne told her.
"I lived in Xoxxy-Do. Halfway round North shore from anywhere. A mountainous place, where the falls come over the
cliffs into World River, and the ships have to tie up behind great shattered rocks along the sheer walls and the boatmen
climb steep, twisty stairs to reach the towns above. My father was a builder there, a builder in stone. My mother was an
artist-though there was not so much of the caste system there in Xoxxy-Do as I have seen elsewhere. It was she who taught
me to carve-or let me learn it, I suppose. She gave me a knife when I was only five. She was a wonderful carver. When
Father finished a place, it was she who ornamented it. They had a great success together. They were very happy. So was I."
He was silent then, waiting for Suspirra to say something, to comment. He heard her saying, "1 was not happy. I envy your
happy family, Thrasne. My own was not like that."
"I saw your husband's mother," he replied. "My father's sister was like that. All pinch-lipped and hating. She could not bear
it that they were happy. Could not bear it that they were in love. She had predicted doom on them, and the doom did not
come. Not the kind she threatened." He fell silent again, this time out of pain. The memory still had this power to undo him,
to turn his muscles to water, his bowels to aching void.
"Ah," said Suspirra. "Then we have much in common."
"They died. They had gone to the quarry together, and there was a great storm. The worker-built road was inadequate even
in calm weather. In the storm it dissolved like sugar. They were found at the bottom of the gorge, crushed beneath the
stone. My father's sister took me in."
"I know that kind of taking-in," said Suspirra.
"The first thing she said to me was that my father and mother were in the worker pits of Ghasttown to the east, being raised
up by the Awakeners. I could not stop crying, but she went on saying it. She took my knife away, saying I might hurt
myself. It was the knife Mother had given me. I stayed with her for almost a season, but then I lay awake one night
planning to kill her."
"You had to get away," prompted Suspirra.
"I had to get away. Blint found me along the Riverside, half-starved, talking to a little carving of Mother I had made." It
had been his first attempt at carving Suspirra, but he did not remember that.
"A kindly man, Blint."
"Blint is kindness itself." He stopped talking, appalled. She could not have spoken, and yet he had heard her speak. He left
the little room to go out on deck and stride about, back and forth, hour on hour.
"What's troubling you, boy?"
"Do you ever find yourself talking to yourself, Blint?"
"All us boatpeople do, Thrasne. Never known one that didn't. Married Blint-wife just to have someone to talk to and found
out it didn't work. Have to talk to yourself. How would you find out what you think about things otherwise?"
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"Did you ever-did you ever pretend it was someone else answering you?"
"Always. Makes it more interesting that way."
So he came to accept it. Boatpeople came to the River because on that ever flowing current they could talk to themselves
about North shore without that world forcing its own opinions on them. On the River one could repudiate the Awakeners,
hate the workers-both for their hideous existence and for the shoddiness of the work they did-cogitate upon Potipur and
Abricor and Viranel, question their very existence, perhaps, without being accused of heresy.
"Do you think Potipur is loving?" whispered Suspirra.
"I don't think Potipur is anything," he answered. "Except a moon which pulls the tide around. And a moon-faced god in the
Temples with the priests all bowing and waving incense and sparking their staffs at the congregation every tenth day and
twice at the end of the month." Ten days make a week, and when five weeks are gone, then you've a month with a holy day
tacked on. Or so Thrasne's mother had always said.
"Then why?" Suspirra murmured. "Why, why, why? ... "
They had been on the River some forty days from Shabber when Blint complained that the pamet stacked in the forward
hold smelled of mildew. "Must be something blocking the ventilation duct," he said with a sigh. "We'll see to it next
mooring."
Thrasne was annoyed with himself. The wooden likeness of Suspirra was undoubtedly blocking the duct, and he should
have seen to it long since. "Let me do it, Blint, I've a cubby up top where I sit and watch things. Perhaps I've let something
fall into the duct."
"Have you now? Well then, you see to it. I'll leave it in your good hands."
He did it at night, with all the crew ashore, the fitful light of torches from the pier throwing orange stripes across the netted
burden as it came out of the shaft. Once lowered on the roof, he stripped the net away to have a long look at it before giving
it to the tide.
There was something wrong.
He had carved it to be like the blighted woman. Like her line for line, eye for eye, lip for lip. And this was not like. These
eyes were half-shut, these lips not quite curved, as though about to smile, but the Suspirra in his cabin had wide-open eyes,
her lips were compressed. Leaving the statue where it was, he went below to make sure. Her eyes met his as he entered the
room, her lips set tight as though humming, as though admonishing, as though about to say something.
"I'm going mad," he whispered to himself, knowing he was not. "Suspirra, am I going mad?"
"The world is mad," she said. "You see what you see."
He put the carving into the tide, watching it until it vanished on the wavelets, casting a glance at the moons. Slack water
would not come until early morning. It would travel far by then. He would never catch up with it again. Perhaps someone
would fish it out along a pier and wonder at it.
Below in his room he began a small carving like the one just thrown away, line for line. When it was done, he did another
of Suspirra as she was now. If the drowned woman was changing, he would make a record of those changes.
Over the next five years he carved forty little Suspirras. They were stowed under his bunk, numbered on their bases, and
once in a very great while he would take them out and stand them in a long file before him, from first to last, the position of
each slightly changed, the eyes and lips slightly opened or closed. Something about this silent throng oppressed him and
bothered him at once, as though he should infer some meaning that evaded him. He still spoke to the drowned woman, and
she still answered him, but this throng of small Suspirras seemed to shout at him in silence, a mute demand: "Pay
attention." He looked and looked, not understanding.
"Are you alive?" he asked her.
"What is alive? Perhaps you stopped the blight before it was finished with me."
"Do you want me to put you back in the River?"
"It is cold in the River, and lonely. Perhaps you will let me stay a while."
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摘要：

NORTHSHORE-Awakeners1NORTHSHORE-Awakeners1SheriSTepper1TherewasnoneedforwatchmenontheboatsthatpliedtheWorldRiver.\Sinceeverythingmovedatthesamespeed,pulledbythesameinvincibletides,therewaslittlechanceofcollisio\n;thisnolessonthebargeGiftofPotipurthanonanyotherboat.Thrasne,thirdassistantowner's-man,h...

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