Up Jim River

XII. IN THE REMNANTS OF EMPIRE

Blankets and Beads entered stationary orbit above Enjrun and Méarana gathered her team in the conference room so Captain Barnes could brief them on conditions below. D.Z. unrolled a holomap on the table and they gathered around the topography that emerged. Miniature mountains loomed over green floodplains. Matchstick cities sat on earthen mounds. Captain Barnes handed out earwigs.

“The noor jessen,” she explained, “once ruled this whole region.” Her arms swept across the alluvial plain, the neighboring forestlands, and the northern foothills. “So most everybody south of the Kobberjobble Mountains will savvy the loora noor jesser. We’ve loaded the lingo into these earwigs, so yuh shouldn’t have trouble being understood’ til yuh get to ‘bout here.” She pointed to the foothills. “Once yer in the high-up hills yuh’ll need to hire local translators. Enjrunii don’t take ducats or Gladiola Bills, but if yuh deposit some hard currency with the Resident, he’ll fix yuh up with enough silver or gold for expenses.”

“We’ll put you down here,” said D.Z., pointing with his light-pen, “at Nuxrjes’r, our regular trade stop. The name means something like ‘the place where the river can be crossed.’ You can call it ‘Riverbridge’—or ‘Noor Jesser’ if you’re disinclined to cough up the necessary phlegm. It’s the southernmost point where native technology can bridge the river. The east-west pack caravans connect with the north-south river traffic.

“Nuxrjes’r got rich from the tolls, and eventually got an Empire from the riches. Then, depending on who tells the tale, she grew either too greedy or too tempting, or both, and the barbarians moved south from Kobberjobbles and east from the Blistering Badya. By the time the Bonregarde found its way into the Burnt-Over District, the old Nuxrjes’r Empire had fragmented into a dozen successor states and a rump imperium, ruled variously by barbarian warlords or soi disant counts, depending on which day of the week it was.

“Bonregarde’s, lander put all their postimperial squabbles into perspective. The warlords and counts patched up a truce and agreed that River-bridge would be a neutral city governed by a Board of Dūqs and everyone would smile for the off-worlders.”

“That was about three generations ago,” Captain Barnes said. “So far, the truce seems to be holding, though the makeup of the Board can change sudden-like. Y’might say they moved the fightin’ from outdoors to indoors. But the trade consortium made it real clear that if trouble gets out of hand we stop a-comin’. So the Resident is like an impartial referee. He enforces commercial regs, negotiates deals, and judges disputes among the Dūqs.”

Teodorq spoke up. “If this was World, there’d be a lot of resentment boiling underneath. I don’t know if these noor jessers got honor or not, but judging what I saw back in Varucciyam, they’ll wanna either kiss your ass or cut your throat—or maybe both. Not much in between.”

The First Officer wagged his light-pen at Teddy. “Hear him,” he told the others. “His folk are more advanced than the Enjrunii, but he’s closer to their way of thinking. Everyone down there will be kissy-kissy on the surface, but everything depends on what they think they can get away with. And the farther north and west you go, the less kissy-kissy they’ll be.”

Captain Barnes said, “Yuh’ll meet with the Resident first. His name is Oodalo Bentsen. He’ll see yuh git outfitted proper.” Her pen swiped through the northern mountains. “The noor jessers tell us the parking stone jewelry comes from ‘upriver,’ which means these here mountains. The Kobberjobbles.”

The holographic projection displayed a broad corduroy of high-peaked crags and deep valleys through which the upper reaches of the Aríidnux’r wound like a hungry boa constrictor. “The noor jessers call that stretch of river the Multawee, which they tell me means ‘twisted.’”

Méarana spoke up. “Why not put us down where the jewelry comes from?”

D.Z. pointed into the map. “Because we don’t know were that is. We deal only with the Dūqs in Riverbridge. Where they get the jewelry from, they don’t say.”

The pilot, Wild Bill, snorted. “As if we had time to flit around the planet.”

D.Z. said, “Men accustomed to treachery will see it everywhere.”

Inevitably, eyes turned toward Billy Chins, who flushed and protested. “When Billy ever do such? One time, name him! Ask Donovan. I come to you be safe from shadow.”

“Scared of his own shadow,” murmured Teddy.

Billy turned to him and wagged a finger. “You be scare, too, if you know’ em, the shadows. Maybe now she no catch up; but who can say? Billy good fella, good man in fight. Stick by you. You see him!”

Sofwari raised a hand. “What about pickup? If you don’t know where we’ve gone…”

“Yuh’ll have yer beacons,” Barnes told them. “They handshake with our satellites and keep yuh located. After we finish our business here, we heigh off to Ōram and Zhenghou Shuai. We’ll pick you up when we backtrack. Don’t lose yer beacons, or we’ll never find yuh.”

They discussed a few more items regarding equipment, local mores, and terrain. Then D.Z. turned off his light-pen and tucked it in his blouse pocket. “Anything to add, Captain?”

Barnes pushed her lips out and shook her head slowly. “No, but Donovan, would yuh be good enough to stay for a few minutes?”

The others filed out. Méarana gathered her notes, capped her pocket brain, but remained seated. Barnes looked from her to Donovan, who said, “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of her.”

The captain shrugged. “Have it your way. There’s a bottle of Megranomic kurutakki in the cabinet, aged fifteen years in oak casks. I been saving it for a special occasion.”

Donovan, who had risen at the implied request to fetch the drink, paused half out of his chair. “And this is a special occasion? Because you don’t expect to see us again?”

“I won’t lie and say I’m optimistic. Best O’ luck and everything; but…Like we told yuh, them hill tribes can be a might peckish. Pour us three, ‘Kalim,’ and be generous.”

Donovan had poised the bottle over the first glass. Now he straightened and grinned at her. “I wondered if you recognized me.”

“Didn’t at first; but it come to me, bye and bye. Or should I call you ‘Fudir’?”

Méarana suddenly understood. “Maggie Barnes! Of course! You were January’s astrogator.”

“He told yuh about that? That was in a different life. I didn’t have these silver streaks back then, I tell yuh, let alone the cap’n’s rings. But as I recollect, this man here, he come aboard New Angeles with phony papers. We coulda lost our license, so this ain’t exactly old comrades well-met! Smuggling that O’Carroll fellow back to New Eireann to restart the civil war, that didn’t sit right with me, either.”

“That’s not exactly how it was,” Donovan suggested.

“Wasn’t it? Well, that was near twenty year since, and it don’t matter no more; so let’s drink to it. I won’t ask what phony pretense yer up to now. I’d say yuh was lying about being on Kennel business, except that Méarana here says yuh are, and her, I trust.”

Donovan handed out three glasses. He lifted his and said, “To Amos January!”

“Gods rot his liver,” agreed Maggie Barnes.

They threw back their drinks and Donovan sighed as he set his glass down. “Oh, that was smooth. Kurutakki… ’Eye of blood-red color?’”

“Close enough.” Barnes held her glass a moment longer at eye level. “There’s this fellow owns a distillery out near Thillainathan Flats, and he has his own grove of oak clones that grow as barrels. Can yuh imagine! Aged in living trees.” She put the empty shot glass on the table in front of her. “Yuh know we was ten years gettin’ back to known space? Yessir, that there is a fact. After January left New Eireann, an engine blew and we taken the Gessler Sun cutoff. Damn spanking new engine, rebuilt in the Gladiola Yards, and—” A snap of the fingers. “Well, the cutoff is one-way, and we found ourselves down in the Lower Tier. Not as bad as the Wild—or maybe it is. Ah, yuh don’t want to hear old troubles; but…Ten years! And Micmac Anne a-waiting every one O’ them back on Jehovah.”

Méarana said, “I wouldn’t mind hearing the story.” Her fingers curled instinctively on imaginary harp strings.

“We saw a sight of strange things, and that’s a fact. Maybe on the way back. There’ll be time for it then. But I didn’t want yuh to go down there, Donovan, if that’s what yer name is, and maybe git yourself killed, without I tell you what a platinum-plated son of a bitch yuh were.”

Donovan nodded. “Thanks. I hope we haven’t lost the touch.”

“Now git, before I lock yuh up.”

Méarana paused on the way out and studied their projected route on the holographic map. “Up Jim River,” she said.

Donovan heard her. “What’s that mean?”

“Jim River. It’s a wild river on my home world. It’s a nice lazy one in its lower reaches, but the farther upstream you go, the wilder the country gets. Swamps, deserts, mountains, rapids, wild animals—I’m talking Nolan’s Beasts that have gone feral. Not everyone comes back downstream.” She paused in reflection for a moment. “So Dangchaoers say, ‘I’m going up Jim River’ or ‘he’s up Jim River,’ to mean in big trouble.” She gestured to the Aríidnux’r and the mountains beyond. “Looks like we’re heading up Jim River.”

Donovan laughed. “Méarana, we’ve been heading up that river since we left High Tara.”

The night of their arrival from orbit, the G&R Resident hosted a banquet in honor of Méarana and her people, to which he invited several of the Dūqs in town for the “Star Market.” The Resident occupied a palace built of white marble joined and set entirely without concrete. The flooring and trim was of an aromatic wood akin to cedar, and the roofing consisted of ruddy, semicircular terra cotta tiles known as “oyster shells.”

The climate around Riverbridge was warm at that time of year, and Oodalo Bentsen wore only a plain white Enjrunii “jellybean,” a skirt similar to a Terran dhoti that left his torso bare. This made manifest the extent of both his hairiness and his indulgence of his appetites. He liked to think he was bluff rather than crude, and hearty rather than overbearing.

One of the guests was Chuq Lafeev, who was the Rice of Jebelsanmèesh and held the Dūq for the jewelry trade. The locals dined sitting cross-legged on the floor around a great carpet, on which were set basins and plates of hammered copper containing the food. Oodalo had alternated his local guests with the visitors from Blankets and Beads and had placed Lafeev between Méarana and Donovan. Méarana found the local quite witty and not at all unsophisticated about his celestial visitors. He listened sympathetically to the harper’s tale of her search for her mother.

“But of course,” he said, “it remembers me, your mother. It was seven moon-crossings ago…Wait. Good Oodalo, how are crossings tabulated in your ‘years’? So! Sugar and jazz.” Méarana’s earwig translated “sugar and jazz” as “thank you very much.” A servant standing behind Lafeev scribbled hastily on a slip of reed-paper and handed it to the Rice, who glanced at the computations. “Ah, more than a year of your time. Only once, and briefly, did we meet, yet the impression she left is everlasting.” He touched his forehead with his fingertips in a gesture of respect. “She, too, sought the source of the parking stone jewelry, and set off up-country in her flying cart. It fears me that she came to grief up there. Ay! A woman alone, and in the land of the Emrikii!”

“Do you know that for a fact?” Méarana said.

“Alas, never came she back. But perhaps,” he added more brightly, “it was that your mother rode her flying cart all the way back to her ship in feyityis.” He necessarily used the Gaelactic word for orbit, although he introduced a surplus vowel or two. Méarana supposed that the loora noor jesser did not have slender vowels and palatilization.

“That is most likely so,” she said. One thing for certain, Bridget ban’s ship was no longer in orbit. No one but the Resident’s people had the ability to reach orbit; and even they could not have entered a Hound’s vessel without the proper authorization codes. If Bridget ban had died in the high country, her field office would still be circling Enjrun.

“Unless the orbit decayed,” said Donovan when she had given voice to this hope. “Even a Hound’s ship would not survive uncontrolled reentry into a thick atmosphere.”

“Cheerful, as always. If the noor jesser—”

Lafeev chuckled. “Nuxr,” he said.

“Noor.”

“No, no!” Playfully, he enunciated. “‘Nu—’”

“Noo.”

“X—” He breathed roughly.

“Huh.”

“No, cough a little. ‘Nu-x-r.’”

“Noo-huh-r.”

Lafeev threw his head back and violated protocol with a belly laugh. The other Dūqs questioned him and he answered in a dialect that the earwig could not entirely translate. Méarana picked out the phrase “lazy throats,” which evidently referred to the Gaelactic inability to hack and cough their way through the local lingua franca.

She caught his eye and said, distinctly, “Fitir,” properly palatalizing the F, aspirating the T, and trilling the R. Her tongue, struck like a snake on the T. Then, before he could do more than begin to frown, she smiled. “Sure, and the Gaelactic plays as much with the lips and the teeth as your loora does with the throat and the tongue.”

There was no mockery in it, and so he took the correction in good humor. “A man one day older is a man one day wiser,” he pronounced. “By Owl, I swear it, I know not why he gave men such a myriad of tongues. But Owl knows all, and Owl knows best.”

The courses that were brought out also alternated Gaelactic and Enjrun dishes. There was a bean salad called pully that Donovan said was much like the fool he used to get in the Terran Corner. Sofwari commented that pully and fool might both be forms of an earlier word. “My colleague, Gwenna Tong Thalasonam, believes that basic sound units may change and pass on like the little thread shapes. What is an F, after all, but an aspirated P?”

“Did my mother tell you,” Méarana asked the Dūqs, “what she hoped to find up in the hills?”

Lafeev only shook his head. “Whatever it was, may Owl grant that she found it.”

The way things had turned out, Méarana very much feared that Owl had done just that.