XVIII. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE
It is said that earlier generations interpreted the Scrolls in ways quite different than we do now, in our modern Commons.
Without doubt, each wave of immigrants brought to the Slope a new crisis of faith, from which beliefs emerged restructured, changed.
At the start, every fresh arrival briefly held advantages, bearing godlike tools from the Five Galaxies. Newcomers kept these powers for intervals ranging from a few months to more than eight years. This helped each sept establish a secure base for their descendants, as humans did at Biblos, the hoon on Hawph Island, and the g’Kek at Dooden Mesa.
Yet each also knew its handicaps — a small founding population and ignorance about how to live a primitive existence on an unknown world. Even the haughty gray queens conceded they must accept certain principles, or risk vendetta from all the others combined. The Covenant of Exile set rules of population control, concealment, and Jijo-preservation, as well as proper ways to handle dross. These fundamentals continue to this day.
It is all too easy to forget that other matters were settled only after mordant struggle.
For instance, bitter resistance to the reintroduction of metallurgy, by urrish smiths, was only partly based on qheuens protecting their tool-monopoly. There was also a sincere belief, on the part of many hoon and traeki, that the innovation was sacrilege. To this day, some on the Slope will not touch reforged Buyur steel or let it in their villages or homes, no matter how many times the sages rule it safe for “temporary” use.
Another remnant belief can be seen among those puritans who despise books. While paper itself can hardly be faulted — it decays well and can be used to reprint copies of the Scrolls — there is still a dissident minority who call the Biblos trove a vanity at best, and an impediment to those whose goal should lie in blessed ignorance. In the early days of human life on Jijo, such sentiments were exploited by urrish and qheuen foes — until the great smiths discovered profit in the forging of type, and book-addiction spread unstoppably throughout the Commons.
Strangely, it is the most recent crisis-of-faith that shows the least leftover effects today. If not for written accounts, it would be difficult to believe that, only a century ago, there were many on the Slope who loathed and feared the newly arrived Holy Egg. Yet at the time there were serious calls for the Explosers Guild to destroy it! To demolish the stone-that-sings, lest it give away our hiding place or, worse, distract the Six away from following the same path already blamed by glavers.
“If it is not in the Scrolls, it cannot be sacred.”
That has always been the declaration of orthodoxy, since time immemorial. And to this day it must be confessed — there is no mention in the Scrolls of anything even remotely like the Egg.
Rety
Dark, clammy, stifling. Rety didn’t like the cave. It must be the stale, dusty air that made her heart pound so. Or else the painful scrapes on her legs, after sliding down a twisty chute to this underground grotto, from a narrow entrance in a boo-shrouded cleft.
Or maybe what made her jumpy was the way shapes kept crowding in from all sides. Each time Rety whirled with her borrowed lantern, the creepy shadows turned out to be knobs of cold, dead rock. But a little voice seemed to say — Always… so far! But a real monster may wait around the next bend.
She set her jaw and refused to listen. Anyone who called her scared would be a liar!
Does a scared person slink into dark places at night? Or do things they was told not to do, by all the big fat chiefs of the Six?
A weight wriggled in her belt pouch. Rety reached past the fur-lined flap to stroke the squirming creature. “Don’t spook, yee. It’s just a big hole in the groun’.”
A narrow head and a sinuous neck snaked toward her, three eyes glittering in the soft flamelight. A squeaky voice protested.
“yee not spooked! dark good! on plains, li’l man-urs love hidey-holes, till find warm wife!”
“Okay, okay. I didn’t mean—”
“yee help nervous wife!”
“Who’re you calling nervous, you little—”
Rety cut short. Maybe she should let yee feel needed, if it helped him keep his own fear under control.
“ow! not so tight!” The male yelped, echoes fleeing down black corridors. Rety quickly let go and stroked yee’s ruffled mane. “Sorry. Look, I bet we’re gettin’ close, so let’s not talk so much, okay?”
“okay, yee shut up. wife do too!”
Rety’s lips pressed. Then anger flipped into a sudden urge to laugh. Whoever said male urs weren’t smart must’ve never met her “husband.” yee had even changed his accent, in recent days, mimicking Rety’s habits of speech.
She raised the lantern and resumed picking her way through the twisty cavern, surrounded by a sparkle of strange mineral formations, reflecting lamplight off countless glittering facets. It might have been pretty to look at, if she weren’t obsessed with one thing alone. An item to reclaim. Something she once, briefly, had owned.
My ticket off this mudball.
Rety’s footprints appeared to be the first ever laid in the dust — which wasn’t surprising, since just qheuens, and a few humans and urs, had a knack for travel underground, and she was smaller than most. With luck, this tunnel led toward the much larger cave she had seen Lester Cambel enter several times. Following the chief human sage had been her preoccupation while avoiding the group of frustrated men and women who wanted her to help guide them over the mountains. Once she knew for sure where Cambel spent his evenings, she had sent yee scouring the underbrush till he found this offshoot opening, bypassing the guarded main entrance.
The little guy was already proving pretty darn useful. To Rety’s surprise, married life wasn’t so bad, once you got used to it.
There was more tight wriggling and writhing. At times, she had to squirm sideways or slide down narrow chutes, making yee complain when he got squeezed. Beyond the lantern’s dim yellow puddle, she heard soft tinkling sounds as water dripped into black pools, slowly sculpting weird underground shapes out of Jijo’s raw mineral juices. With each step Rety fought a tightness in her chest, trying to ignore her tense imagination, which pictured her in the twisty guts of some huge slumbering beast. The rocky womb kept threatening to close in from all sides, shutting the exits, then grinding her to dust.
Soon the way narrowed to a corkscrew horizontal tube that was tight even for her. She had to send yee ahead before attempting the contorted passage, pushing the lantern along in front of her.
Yee’s tiny hooves clattered on gritty limestone. Soon she heard a welcome hoarse whisper.
“is good! hole opens up, little ways more, come wife, faster!”
His chiding almost made her snort angrily-not a wise idea with her cheek, nose, and mouth scraping rank dust. Contorting her body to turn the next corner, she suddenly felt certain the walls were moving!
She recalled what Dwer’s brother had said about this region, when he led her down that last stretch to the Glade, past steaming sulfur vents. Lark had called this a land of earthquakes, and seemed to think it a good thing!
Twisting uneasily, her hip jammed in a stone cleft.
I’m caught!
Thought of entrapment sent a whimpering moan surging past flecked lips as she thrashed, banging her knee agonizingly. The world really was closing in!
Her forehead struck stone, and pain-dazzles swarmed her dimming vision. The candle lantern rattled from her clutching fingertips, almost toppling over.