The Way Things Seem

by Mackey Chandler

  "You must understand. There are not a great number of us. A Sahar tends to be regarded as odd. Europeans tend to regard us as frauds. There is no great wealth in it, so a father does not seek a Sahar for his daughter. Some in business would rather not have us as workers. We tend to see too much they would rather keep hidden from customers or partners. I admit we have a reputation for wandering. What father wants his daughter following a poor wandering man? What merchant wants to hire and train a fellow who may grow bored and leave in a month?"

  But Uncle seemed to suddenly remember the original question. "But yes, I once met a fellow who took too much of the jewel. He said it became too difficult to pay attention to this world. It grew dimmer than the shadow world and he had to concentrate on this," Uncle made a circle of everything around them, "to see it instead of the other. Since we need to walk and eat in this world that was a huge inconvenience and danger. He'd grown thin from neglecting himself and not wishing to travel. It took some months to wear off."

  David didn't say anything. He was strongly conflicted.

  "You knew your own father’s nature, and you've been with me now some days, neither of us are dullards," Uncle pointed out. "He had some success in business, didn't he?"

  "Oh yes. He definitely had some success. He wasn’t a drug zombie by any means. He attributed some of it to what you showed him," David admitted. "Although now I'm wondering if this fades, how long could my father have benefited from it?"

  "Something, once seen and understood...can the learning not linger after the sight of it has faded?" Uncle asked.

  That seemed rather insightful. David was embarrassed he hadn't thought it through and come to that conclusion before asking. He was an executive after all. But if it was beneficial, wouldn’t it be much better to have a supply of the plant? Had his father perhaps brought some back? Or if he hadn't thought to, could he?"

  "Do you know if the plant has the same effect when dried?" David wondered.

  "I haven't tried that," Uncle admitted. "I want to get away from people occasionally anyway. It's been no burden to come out here now and again and seek it out. If you wish to try preserving some I have no objection. It isn't particularly rare hereabouts. But I think you should try it here, not take it back home and entrust your introduction to it around those inexperienced, who can't explain it to you."

  "No, no, I hadn't thought to do that at all. I guess I'm getting ahead of myself to worry about that. I may be like your nephew and see little change from it," David said.

  Uncle didn't say anything. David was pretty much rambling on to himself to delay deciding.

  "Will I still sleep if I chew some?" David wondered.

  "It's not stimulating," Uncle said, frowning a little. "But it may fascinate, so you want to stay up. I did pick the late hour because the effects of it are muted by the dark. It may be less confusing than in full sunlight." Yet he still didn't urge David to take it strongly.

  "I don't think I could honestly tell my father's attorneys I was successful as your student without trying it," David decided. He held out a hand for it.

  Uncle pursed his lips in thought, pinched off a bit, and laid it on David's palm. It was mildly bitter, but not anything difficult to force himself to swallow.

  They had talked so long the sunlight was gone from the hill opposite. David sat back and waited for something to happen. Uncle was as always, relaxed and not chatting just to make noise. David couldn't think of anything he really needed to know, so he stayed silent too. The first couple stars were just starting to show.

  Chapter 7

  A little breeze picked up. It was refreshing after the warmth of the day. David looked back up and there were a few more stars. The air was clearer here than at home. The stars looked subtly different, the colors more vivid than usual. He'd seen small differences in them before, especially among the brighter ones.

  The rocks on top of the hill opposite them looked different too. It had a glow to it that got brighter near the top. Exactly the pattern the sun painted on it as it set. David had seen so many satellite images in his business he wondered if he was seeing deeper into the infrared? Could Uncle's plant do that? Wasn't it impossible for that wavelength to pass the cornea? He blinked hard and opened his eyes, but there was a fleeting image...He closed his eyes again and he could see the ghostly outline of the hill, brighter near the top, with his eyes closed.

  Well...

  Turning his head he saw a faint shape where he knew Uncle to be. Opening his eyes the man was very difficult to see in detail in the failing light. He sat and thought on that awhile.

  After reasoning on it a bit he had a few ideas, but more questions than answers. He had serious doubts Uncle would explain all of them either. He could accept that he 'saw' with his brain, not his eyes. But if he was seeing with something else, or even with his brain directly, why did moving his head change anything? Why couldn't he see equally all around him? Or even in a sphere instead of the usual scene in front of him?

  "Uncle? I do see some odd shapes. Not very detailed, but like a glow where the sun left the hill across the valley warm. But I can tell I'm not seeing it with my eyes. Yet I don't see outside the arc of my normal vision. I'm trying to understand why. Am I saying this well?"

  "Very well," Uncle said. "You quickly find a cause for what you see. I'm impressed."

  "That's part of my work," David explained. "I often see pictures of things taken with instruments that can see things a human eye can't."

  "I am aware doctors have x-ray machines," Uncle said. "I have never had one, but I've seen pictures of them in a book. My niece showed me how they can look right through the flesh and see the bone to explain how the doctors helped her. But the book was in German and I couldn't read it."

  "Yes, but there are other forms of light," David explained. "The heat you feel off the fire, it can form images just like sunlight, if you have the right sort of machine to do it. Soldiers use it to see in the dark."

  "How interesting," Uncle said. "I wish we'd met forty or fifty years ago. We might have puzzled out some of these things together."

  "Why not now?" David asked.

  "You are kind, but I'm an old man. I suspect it is going to take you a long time to puzzle out why a Sahar can do certain things. I've never met anyone who immediately started questioning how it worked. Everyone has been content to just use it, even your father."

  David was conflicted by that statement. Uncle’s appearance was rather ambiguous to guess his age. He’d have been hard put to say if he a rough looking middle aged man or a youthful oldster, but talking about forty of fifty years ago he was older than David thought. Rather than chance an insulting Uncle with a foolish assumption he decided to speak only about his father.

  “Ah, well yeah. He was a rather direct man. A very practical man. He'd find a formula for the way a stock or an industry changed price and use it, but when I asked why it worked he insisted it didn't matter. He once told me people expend tremendous effort to simply affirm their gut feeling with a facade of rationalization."

  "Was he wrong?" Uncle asked.

  "Sometimes," David insisted. "I have offended some people by saying the same thing about psychiatry. That it is often farce masquerading as science."

  "My English fails there. I seem to remember in a video a fellow seeing a psychiatrist, if that is the same. I assume so the words are so close. But I forget what the man did for him. It's been awhile too. I confess I probably remember the simple lessons of cartoons from your culture better than movies trying to impart a serious message."

  "Psychiatry seeks to help people with mental illness. Where it can show a physical basis for illness I agree, but where it simply enforces cultural norms and acts for the family or state over the individual I object. Social things aren't objective standards, they are a matter of taste and preference," David insisted.

  Uncle had a different tone to his voice in the dark. "Perhaps that is why so many Sahar seek to be alone. A great many of the thi
ngs people do seem silly and petty if you have even a little deeper insight into their emotions and motives."

  "How can a plant possibly give you that ability?" David asked. "Even if it's a drug?"

  "You will see a play of new colors right on a person's face," Uncle assured him, "Does that seem so farfetched? Do you not already read a person's expressions, seeing if they become flushed or pale from emotion? This is superior because they can’t learn how to hide it."

  "You convince me," David admitted. "But how will I know what these new things mean when I see them?"

  "Experience," Uncle said with certainty, "Some will show alongside the same old signs you already know, but these are more reliable than the common things people learn to hide because they can see them in others. Neither can looking in a mirror reveal them."

  Uncle sat in companionable silence for awhile before he spoke again.

  "The few I've trained, because no Sahar tries to instruct a mob or gather a following, have not been as given to examining the way it comes upon them as you."

  Yeah, I'd say the process," David said. "It goes with my business. When I look at data I have to know how it was collected to know how to regard it."

  "I would not normally explain things ahead," Uncle said. "The student can too often strain, looking for something until they convince themselves they see something."

  "Yeah, you get the same with analysts looking at pictures of the Earth taken from a satellite. They start seeing dunes or roads where it is blank as a clean sheet of paper."

  "So, don't strive for it, but be aware you may eventually see connections between things," Uncle warned.

  "Would you give an example?" David requested.

  Uncle thought on it long enough it must not be a simple question.

  "You will see a connection between husband and wife. The more so if they have been together a long time. Things...objects can have a connection, if a man has carried something in his pocket for years. I have been told the country people occasionally ask Sahar to judge who is the true owner of an object. Sometimes what you see is not how other people would judge it. You may learn to be careful assuming who is bonded to who when meeting people. Their public matching may not be what their inner persons tell you. Best to let them tell you before you embarrass yourself and anger people by saying out loud what the community likely already knows and politely ignores..."

  David laughed at that, imagining the pitfalls. "But you didn't address why I see these new things in front of me very much like I was using my eyes."

  "I'm not sure," Uncle admitted. "I don't remember clearly how it happened from when I was trained. I was young and it was confusing at the time. I can only guess. If say, you'd never used your left eye, if your mother had put a bandage over it when you were born, and never allowed it to be used. Then if years later the bandage was ripped off, would you then suddenly see like all other men?"

  "Probably not," David admitted. That raised a whole list of other questions in his mind, but Uncle sounded tired. He didn't want to badger him.

  David had been thinking, elbows on his knees and fingers interlaced beneath his chin. He grew stiff and leaned back stretching his legs and looked at the sky again. His gasp made Uncle ask, "A new insight?"

  "The stars," David said. "There is a web between them!"

  "Pretty isn't it?" Uncle asked calmly.

  "Like lace," David said.

  "Hmmm...yes, that’s not a big item locally, but I know what you mean," Uncle agreed.

  David shut up and just enjoyed it. After a bit he shut his eyes and could still see it faintly if he tried with his eyes closed. Like that he fell asleep easier.

  * * *

  The sun woke him from the bright sky long before it rose over the hill opposite them. He stretched and went off to ease nature and get the stiffness out. Uncle had refilled the water bottles and left his visible. Nothing looked all that different and yet it did. He just had no terms to describe it clearly.

  Uncle looked like he hadn't slept well. David thought he should avoid pestering him with trivial questions. His face was actually a little flushed like he might not feel well. He started to ask if he might do anything for him, then looked harder. The flush was different. A different hue, but nothing for which he had a name. He found that disturbing. Well, it seemed bluish, but no blue he'd ever seen before. Not an entirely new color but like the rainbow was grabbed and stretch adding more bands.

  If one had never seen anything but red and yellow before and something orange was shown to you, surely you’d class it with yellow and red immediately. It was like that.

  When David looked around carefully he was pretty sure the same was true of the reds. There were some tiny berries that glistened with odd highlights. When he closed his eyes he didn't see it. But there was a sort of not quite random pattern to the backs of his eyelids that hadn't been there before. More like seeing a dirty windshield than an actual scene, or looking at something as a negative image with all the color reversed. He did that occasionally with satellite images and it took time before the eye learned to see the patterns one saw in normal colors.

  When he opened his eyes Uncle was observing him, amused.

  "Yes, it is working with you. My nephew didn't see anything for a week. One wonders what it is that makes a difference?"

  "If we had a big enough group we could probably run a DNA profile on everybody and see some sort of pattern in what ancestry is sensitive," David said. "There might even be a particular gene that is responsible and can be isolated."

  Uncle gave a dismissive wave. "In the videos I've seen police claim to identify a person from traces, like their spit. This is beyond my schooling and understanding. It's true then, not simply a thing made up for the theatre?"

  "It is, but of course in movies and TV shows they simplify far too much. Sure, you can find a tissue at a crime scene and prove somebody blew their nose in it, but does that prove anything? Does it even prove the person was there, much less committed the crime? I worry that now you may be able to take somebody's discarded tissue from a waste basket and frame them for a crime. You could take one at random from a public trash can and have the police running in circles trying to find someone who had nothing to do with it. The sad thing is they may feel they are being clever..."

  "You are a remarkably sensible man for your age," Uncle allowed.

  "My work has instructed me," David said, humbly. "I've drawn the wrong conclusion from all sorts of data and then been instructed later that I made faulty assumptions at the very start."

  Uncle furrowed his brow and regarded David. "As you asked me last night, can you give an example?"

  "Sure. We saw from high above an area that had been planted with different crops than usual. We wondered why and had all sorts of theories. They might have been motivated to by government programs. They might not have been able to get their usual seed supplies. The crop they didn't plant took more fertilizer, so perhaps it wasn't as available or the price had gone up. One fellow even theorized they were looking at the futures markets. It's a global market in grains after all. Maybe they saw this as a more profitable crop to put in. We had as many theories as we had analysts studying it."

  Uncle nodded. "What did it turn out to be?"

  "One old farmer who was noted for being successful made a habit of having breakfast with a couple others. He noted that the year before he bought seed corn and it stayed wet too late to get it in. He ended up buying sorghum as a rush order late, his seed corn from the year before didn’t store well. The price of fertilizer was up and sorghum uses less than corn. He pointed out a paid weather forecasting service they all trusted more than the government weather service predicted a repeat of the wet weather, and told the other farmers he was planning on planting sorghum from the start this year.

  "Both of the farmers did poorly the year previous, so they paid attention. They spoke to others, and the county service noted it as a trend. The farming community is surprisingly tight. There is ha
lf the degrees of separation among them as the world at large. It was traceable once we had human intelligence to one person. He had much more influence than he or anybody else thought," David said.

  "I'm not clear what you mean by degrees of separation," Uncle said.

  "How many people it takes to link any one person with another," David explained, making a hopping motion with his hand by way of illustration.

  "How many among the farmers?" Uncle asked.

  "Three," David assured him.

  Uncle sat and thought about it awhile. David let him think. "So small...and yet, I can picture my nephew’s community in my mind and it is as small, or perhaps even two."

  "I don't know if you've heard the English expression," David said, "but it's a well know phrase that, 'It's a small world'. People are surprised just how small. Six links will connect most any two people."

  Uncle looked at him skeptically. "Me and the head of... the Russian Republic," he challenged David. “Surely there are more than five people between us.”

  "You know me. I know several Congressmen and a couple large business owners who have met the Russian President."

  Uncle looked stunned. "I do see how it works. This is a power I never knew I held."

  "My father taught me this principle when I was about eight years old," David said. "I was whining about being powerless and he told me this. Then he added that the real lack of power came from not having anything worth my links repeating up the line to people of influence. The lesson stuck with me."

  "It's a good student from whom you can learn," Uncle acknowledged. "Would you like to go hunting with me? We don't have to climb down. There are quail up here."

  "Yeah, I'm starved."

  Chapter 8

  In another three days David knew a half dozen root plants he could eat, several fruits, and a number of plants that could be eaten as greens. He was aware of four birds and seven edible mammals. He passed on worms, grubs, amphibians and mushrooms to Uncle's amusement.

  Based on his progress Uncle gave him another dose of the plant. He was much less afraid of it now. But neither did he feel an immediate boost in his abilities. He picked some of the wizard’s jewel to dry in the sun and take home. When he offered to have Uncle hold it for him it was waved away.