Walking Mountain Page 4

  And then it clicked.

  ‘You haven’t got a shadow!’ he exclaimed.

  Singay stared at him.

  ‘It must be the light.’ He waved his hands about vaguely. ‘It’s coming from . . . everywhere. So, no shadows.’

  It was true. The light was coming from the walls, the ceiling and the floor with an equal, silvery luminousness.

  ‘Snows!’ exclaimed Singay, craning to see behind herself. ‘You’re right. Light from everywhere!’ She shook her head in amazement and then, disconcertingly, started to walk away.

  ‘Wha— wait, wait, where are you going?’

  ‘Where do you think I’m going? I’m going to find the crying person. That’s what we came for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course. That’s what we came for. But how do you know that’s the right way to go?’ he asked desperately.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Singay. ‘I guessed. Look, you can go the other way, if you like. Or you can wait for me here. I really don’t mind.’

  ‘What? Wait? Don’t be silly. I was just . . .’ He paused, afraid his voice was going to squeak. The last thing he wanted was to be left on his own. ‘Of course I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Singay hoped he couldn’t tell how relieved she was.

  They carried on in Singay’s chosen direction. As they walked, Pema checked over his shoulder. He checked again, and again, until finally Singay turned and glared at him.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘The place where we came in. Only, I can’t see it anymore. The curve of the passageway . . .’

  Singay stopped abruptly. ‘What’s that?’ She sounded a little breathless.

  Pema frowned. ‘I said, I can’t see—’

  ‘Shh! Did you hear that?’

  Pema shushed, and listened.

  At first he heard nothing and then, there it was, coming from up ahead: soft, wordless, piercingly mournful, it was the sound of someone singing. And then the singer was not alone anymore, for other voices were joining in, in subtle, melting harmonies.

  ‘I thought you said you heard crying,’ whispered Pema.

  ‘I did. But this isn’t . . . this is . . .’ Singay couldn’t find the words. It was the saddest, most beautiful thing either of them had ever heard and it drew them on like a lure.

  ‘There. Just ahead,’ she murmured, pointing at an opening in the wall. Hearts in their mouths, they crept forward, and looked inside.

  It was a high, vaulted room, lit with the same ambient light as the passageway. It was furnished with tables and cases and chests, all of luminous stone and covered in clutter of a hundred sorts. There were pieces of rock and books and small machines and a collection of timepieces and gizmos and a mishmash of other things they’d never seen before. And there, in the midst of it all, dressed in a wildly coloured, exotic robe, was a little man, so small he would barely reach Singay’s shoulder. He was silver-skinned and silver-eyed, with fluttery pale hair and an odd face. He was singing to a row of rocks laid out on the table and, unlikely as it seemed, the rocks appeared to be singing back. The achingly beautiful music that had drawn Pema and Singay was coming from this impossible choir.

  There was no knowing how long they might have gone on standing there, mesmerised by the strangeness of sight and sound, but then the little man, in the throes of emotion, raised his arms, lifted his head and looked straight at them. For a moment it was as if he didn’t realise what his eyes were telling him, and he just went on with the performance. Then the notes trailed off, and though his mouth stayed open, nothing came out of it. Without taking his eyes off them, he reached out to the rocks, still warbling on the table. As he touched each one, its voice was cut off as if by a knife, until there was only silence, and three pairs of eyes, two sets of brown and one of silver, staring in astonishment. The silence stretched and stretched, until . . .

  ‘Who are you?’ exclaimed Singay.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Little Silver Man

  The little man screamed.

  ‘This isn’t happening!’ he shrieked. ‘I’m not here! You can’t see me!’ He flung himself into the corner of the room, grabbed a woven rug off the floor and dragged it over his head. ‘Please don’t kill me,’ came his muffled voice. ‘Please!’

  An image leapt into Pema’s mind. He looks a little like the albino lamb Shisha the shup man showed us that time. It was scared of everything too.

  ‘We’re not going to kill you,’ he said gently.

  ‘Why would we want to?’ said Singay. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘What have I done? I got found out!’ The rug shifted and one silver eye peeped out from its folds. ‘How did you find me?’ the little man whispered.

  Pema hunkered down and spoke softly. ‘Well, there were these cracks in the rock and Singay heard someone crying . . .’

  The rug drooped. ‘That was me, I’m afraid. I’ve been so lonely! We’re not meant to be alone, we really aren’t.’

  ‘We?’ said Singay. ‘Who’s we?’ She looked over her shoulder, but there was no one there.

  The silver eye disappeared again. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you! You’re going to kill me – I know it, I know it.’ The heaped-up rug trembled and whimpered.

  Pema shook his head. None of this made sense. ‘Will you come out if we both absolutely promise not to hurt you – any of you?’

  ‘There’s nobody here but me,’ came a whispered reply.

  ‘Then why’d you say we?’ insisted Singay.

  The voice from under the rug squeaked, ‘I can’t tell you about the others. What am I saying? There aren’t any others!’

  ‘He’s just talking nonsense!’ cried Singay in frustration, but Pema flapped a hand in her direction.

  ‘All right, then, can you tell us who you are?’ he said, as gently as he could.

  ‘Which is where this stupid conversation started,’ muttered Singay. But this time it seemed that the little man couldn’t resist an answer.

  ‘Call me Rose!’ He jumped up, dropping the rug to the floor and clasping his strange silver hands together beseechingly. ‘Oh please, will you call me Rose?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Pema, ‘if you like.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we call you Rose?’ demanded Singay. ‘Isn’t that your real name?’

  ‘Well, no,’ the little man admitted reluctantly. ‘We don’t really have names much. Well, not at all.’

  ‘We? Who’s we?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh, for Snow’s sake!’

  ‘All right, all right!’ said Pema. ‘Let’s all calm down. If you can’t tell us anything about the others, or about yourself, can you tell us anything about the Mountain? Can you tell us, for example, why it’s started moving backwards?’

  ‘WHAT?’ Rose shrieked, leaping back wildly and knocking a chair over with a crash. He began wringing his hands and twitching from foot to foot in agitation. ‘What do you mean?’ he wailed. ‘About the Mountain? Did you say it was going . . .’ He seemed unable to say the word ‘backwards’ out loud and only mouthed it.

  ‘What if it is? Stop being so ridiculous,’ said Singay through gritted teeth. ‘Acting like it’s your fault!’

  Rose turned a stricken face to her. ‘Of course it’s my fault!’ he cried. ‘I’M DRIVING!’

  Pema and Singay couldn’t get any sense out of the strange silver man for some time after that. He dived back under the rug and they could hear him muttering wildly, ‘No, no, NO! That’s terrible! Think of the destruction! Think of . . . People could be killed!’

  ‘Too late,’ said Pema, thinking about the angry old man at Jungle Head.

  Rose moaned. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no.’ He burrowed deeper.

  ‘Right,’ said Singay abruptly. ‘That’s it.’ She snatched the rug off Rose’s head. ‘You’re going to tell us exactly what you’re blithering about.�
� As Rose opened his mouth to answer, she loomed over him. ‘And don’t you dare say “I can’t”!’

  The little man stared up at her and quivered.

  ‘I . . . but . . . I . . .’

  ‘I really think you should tell us everything now,’ added Pema gently. He tugged on Singay’s sleeve. ‘Back off – you’re scaring him,’ he muttered. He helped Rose off the floor, righted the toppled chair and settled him into it.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he said, keeping his voice mild. He was using gow-calming techniques his grandmother had taught him. It seemed to work.

  ‘All right. I’ll try,’ said the man and then, in a rush, he confessed, ‘I’m a Driver.’

  ‘And?’ Pema prompted. ‘What is it you drive?’

  ‘Well, mountains, obviously. But not normally. Normally we drive meteors.’

  Before Singay could say anything, Pema dug an elbow in her ribs.

  ‘And why do you do that?’ he asked Rose.

  ‘For the Harvest . . . for the Homeworld . . .’ Then he broke off again. ‘Oh no, no, no, this is all wrong. You’re not supposed to find out about us. Everyone knows it only leads to disaster, if people find out about us.’

  Pema nodded as if he understood, though he really didn’t. The thing is to get him to talk. We can figure out what it means later. ‘Whatever you tell us will be our secret, just you, me and Singay. Just take your time . . .’

  And, gradually, in fits and starts, with gentle coaxing and encouraging noises from Pema, the Driver’s story began to emerge.

  It was strange. Unbelievable.

  Beings that lived in space. Drivers, who travelled unimaginable distances in the blackness, herding meteors. Helping them grow. Avoiding collisions.

  Amazing. I wanted something amazing. Singay was struggling to take in what she was hearing. But what if he’s just crazy? Just showing off? What if he’s making it all up? She gave a sour grin. And now I sound like the Great Gow. She suddenly realised she’d been sounding like the Abbess the whole time. Because she was scared. Because Rose was different. But there was no time to think about that.

  ‘At first,’ Rose was saying, ‘we were an entirely nomadic people. And then we found Homeworld. I wish I could tell you how lovely a planet Homeworld is.’ There was a longing in his voice that Pema understood. He knew what it felt like to love your home. ‘And it was so wonderful to have a place to come back to. After the journey.’

  He explained how Drivers now travelled with the meteors, instead of just hoping to come across them by chance. The Drivers and the herds followed a specific route, a gigantic arc out from home, beyond the stars and back again. The Great Circuit.

  ‘We gather more meteors as we go – we usually have herds of a thousand or more by the end of a Circuit. In some ways, a larger herd is easier to manage. We can fine-tune the magnetic fields within it to re-enforce the general direction we want them all to go in. Then it’s just a question of controlling any external influences to the edges of the herd – solar systems or other sources of gravity pull, or perhaps an exploding star that might create a bit of a shove.’

  The enthusiasm that had started to sparkle in the little man’s eyes died away, and his voice grew sombre.

  ‘As I said, we guide our herds from one asteroid belt to the next, so the meteors can prosper, accruing bits of rock smaller than themselves, growing big. It is our duty to keep them safely away from planets and moons. We take our responsibility very seriously. You must believe me when I say this.’ His voice was desperate, pleading.

  Singay could feel her heart tightening.

  ‘It’s very rare – it really is! – but sometimes, every once in a very long while, one of the meteors escapes.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘And . . .?’ Pema prompted.

  ‘And we catch up with it and steer it back to the herd. That’s what’s supposed to happen. But, well, sometimes, we don’t reach it in time and it . . . it’s out of control, and . . . and it crashes into a star or . . . a planet. Of course, not every meteor that hits a planet comes from a Driver herd,’ the little man added quickly. ‘There are plenty of feral ones out there, roaming about loose. But, as I say, sometimes it’s one of ours.’ He quavered to a stop.

  ‘What are you trying to tell us?’ Singay’s voice was hoarse.

  Rose closed his strange eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked down at the floor.

  ‘We had arrived at the asteroid belt that runs round the rim of your solar system. Everything seemed under control. It was my cousin’s birthday and we had a party. Oh, I know, I know, it shouldn’t have happened. But everything seemed all right . . . It was only when we were about to leave that we realised.’

  ‘Realised what?’

  ‘One of the meteors was missing.’ Rose’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Three of us volunteered to bring it back. It takes three Drivers to control a comet. We searched the whole outer asteroid belt, hoping our meteor was still there, lurking about, getting fat too fast. But it wasn’t in the belt any more. It had headed inwards, towards your star, right into the heart of your busy system. All we could do was check each planet and moon we came to for damage, and hope for the best. Eventually we arrived at your inner asteroid belt. Still no sign. We carried on. And then we came to your world. That’s when we saw it. Ahead of us. But we were too late. It happened, right before our eyes.’

  Pema felt a sense of dread growing in his chest.

  Singay looked sick.

  Rose nodded, still unable to meet their eyes.

  ‘When a meteor above a certain size crashes into a planet, it sets off a series of events far more destructive than the impact itself. There are earthquakes and tidal waves and volcanic disturbances, but even these only do damage in the short term. What really devastates a world is the dust.’

  ‘Dust?’ whispered Singay.

  With an effort, the little man looked up.

  ‘When the rogue meteor hit your world, huge quantities of volcanic dust were thrown high into the air in a choking cloud. Winds took the cloud and spread it round the planet, so thickly that there was nowhere that the sun could pierce through. The green life of the land struggled in the gloom, and then it died. And, eventually, everything that depended on green things died too. There was nothing but desert left. Nothing—’

  ‘Stop it!’

  Singay’s cry took the others by surprise.

  ‘What is it?’ Pema jumped up. Singay was shaking. He put his hand on her arm. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She looked at him, her face stricken in the alien light.

  ‘I’ve dreamt about this,’ she whispered. ‘This was in my dreams!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Long Walk of Mountains

  For a long moment no one spoke. There was only the sound of Singay’s ragged breathing.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that was real?’ she asked at last, staring wide-eyed at the Driver. ‘The things in my dreams really happened?’

  Rose nodded. He looked at Singay with a kind of sad wonder. ‘The memories are all there, of course. In the rocks. But I’d no idea anyone who wasn’t a Driver would have access to them. This is most remarkable. Please, if you will, tell me what you saw, what you dreamt.’

  Singay’s dreams had always made people uncomfortable. They told her to ‘stop showing off’. They didn’t want to listen. This time it was different. This time there was someone nodding their understanding as she haltingly described the images of destruction, the darkness and the cold, the feeling of things dying all around her, out of sight. Of not having sight, really, but still knowing that the world had changed utterly. She was so busy explaining and describing that she didn’t notice Pema’s increasing restlessness until he couldn’t contain himself any longer.

  ‘But you’re not making any sense, either of you,’ he blurted. ‘The world hasn’t been destroyed – it’s still there! It’s right outside! I was there, in it, only yesterday! Unless . . .’ His voic
e trailed off and he looked at Singay with a sudden horror. ‘Unless your dreams are of the future. Is that what the Mountain is going to do to us? But that’s impossible . . . isn’t it?’

  But Rose was shaking his head, so hard his pale hair blurred in the air. ‘No, no, you don’t understand. The world out there – the world you live in – is what came much, much later. After we’d entered your Sea, after we’d waited, after we’d rebuilt.’

  ‘Waited for what? Rebuilt what? How?’ asked Pema. It was all so much nonsense! He was talking to a man who had probably gone mad from living alone too long, and a girl who even the Sisters thought was cracked. He would not listen to another word of this craziness.

  But before Pema could make a move, Rose began to tell them about the Long Walk of Mountains.

  ‘First, once the dust in the air had started to filter out, we encouraged the rocks beneath the ocean to make this.’ He waved his silver hands. ‘The first Mountain. And then it was my job to drive it out of the sea. We needed to create an enclosed area of desert, enclosed by mountains I mean, and allow the normal action of the winds to produce rain which would in turn produce green things which would in turn produce the life that depends on green things. So of course one mountain wasn’t enough. We needed a sort of V shape, so while I was driving this mountain north, the other two Drivers were building, so to speak, more – two strings of mountains, one on each side, but fanning out so that there’d be a big wedge of land between them.’

  He began to speak about tectonic plate manipulation, encouraging a specific configuration by influencing mantle convection currents, utilising strong magnetic polarisation and susceptibility. The little man’s eyes shone with pleasure as he talked, even though he left Pema and Singay more bewildered with every word. Finally, he noticed their faces and slowed to a halt.

  Singay tried to hang on to the words she thought she understood. ‘Are you saying . . . No, that’s ridiculous,’ she said, though her voice shook. ‘Nobody can drive a mountain!’

  Rose looked at her. ‘Drivers can. It’s not dissimilar to driving a comet. As long as you’re not asking rocks to do anything outside their nature, it’s not that hard.’