by Nancy Kress
Was it possible that he had already known the answer to his own question? That he had asked it not to hear her reply, but to see if she could make it without headpain? Did he suspect already what she was?
Panic struck Enli. If that was so, if her informant status was ruined and she had failed … She fought to cahn herself, to reveal nothing, while Pek Bazargan watched her from his alien eyes. It was a relief when Pek Sikorski returned.
Except—Pek Sikorski was no longer sneezing, red-eyed, nose-dripping.
That wasn’t possible. The trifalit blossom still stood on the table. And trifalit fragrance filled the air: there was a lacy bed of it at the far end of the garden, beside the pool. Trifalitib would be in bloom for two more tendays, which was how long Tabor had always suffered, each day worse and deeper into atonement. But here stood Pek Sikorski, with no flower sickness.
I haven’t gotten around to taking an antihistamine yet.
They had some potion that took away flower sickness, as the government pills took away headpain.
Enli’s hand steadied on her worm knife. She was a good informant after all. She would have something important and unique to tell Pek Nagredil next tenday. Not to mention Pek Voratur.
“Well,” Pek Sikorski said, “are you ready, Enli, for more Terran words?”
Enli nodded yes.
“Are you sure?” Pek Voratur said. “Completely sure?”
“Yes,” Enli said. “I saw it. She had bad flower sickness for trifalitib, then she took an antihistamine, and she did not have any flower sickness at all.”
Pek Voratur stood, crossed to the window, and looked out. Enli gave him time to think.
Pek Voratur’s personal room was by far the grandest she’d ever stood in. The walls were covered with flat waxed flowers, every inch, their many colors faded by the wallers’ art to muted, harmonious beauty. Arched windows faced a private court of pajalib, sajib, and rare yellow anitabib. Underfoot lay a thick carpet from Seuril Island, gold as grass, with one continuous intricate curve of black woven through it. The sleeping pallet had of course been removed, but breakfast bowls of dark oiled wood and heavy pewter trimmed with gold remained on the low curved table, along with a jumble of severely circular business letters.
Along the south wall stood the flower altar, the loveliest Enli had ever seen. Living wood had been trained to grow in those swooping curves, trained for years until the wood was harvested, polished, fitted with two silver vases. The vases held fresh bouquets in honor of the First Flower, the perfect bloom that had come down from the moon Obri and unfolded to create World. Between the two vases lay a flower remembrance for Pek Voratur’s ancestors, and it, too, was the most beautiful thing of its kind. Delicate glass blown into looping tunnels, through which ran the quick silver-red liquid metal called flowersoul.
Enli looked away. Until she was once more real, flower altars were not for her. Especially not for her. Tabor …
Pek Voratur turned around. “We will go together to see Pek Bazargan.”
“Me?” Enli said, confused. But then she understood. This was not informing, but real, trader business. Reality must be shared. She nodded, hoping that Pek Voratur did not know she had hesitated, did not realize that for a moment she had forgotten that he, at least, was real.
“We will go now,” Pek Voratur said, and plucked a pajal from his hospitality bush, while Enli looked away.
They found Pek Bazargan in his personal room, which was far less sumptuous than the household head’s but far more so than Enli’s shared chamber. Pek Bazargan was not alone. With him were Pek Allen, on a rare visit outside the crelm house, and the huge male Terran, Pek Gruber, whom Enli had not seen since her first day in the household. Pek Gruber looked sweaty, dirty, and very happy. He had obviously just arrived. A pack of distressingly square design still straddled his back, rising above his enormous shoulders. The three Terrans stood talking intently. She heard the words “Neury Mountains.”
Pek Bazargan spotted Enli and Pek Voratur and picked a flower from his hospitality bush. “May your garden bloom, Pek Voratur.”
“May your flowers please your ancestors, Pek Bazargan, Pek Allen. Pek Gruber, welcome back.”
“Yes, our Pek Gruber has returned from his journey.”
“With rocks,” Pek Voratur said, and Enli knew he was laughing inside. Everyone thought Pek Gruber’s passion for rocks was funny. Rocks!
“Wonderful rocks,” Pek Gruber said. His World was accented with the soft slurring of the mountain people.
“The flowers of my heart rejoice for you,” Pek Voratur said, still with that same inside laughter. Only Pek Bazargan smiled back. Once more Enli felt a stab of doubt. Pek Bazargan seemed to share reality so much more than the other Terrans … Was it possible that only he was real? But he also seemed to share reality with Pek Sikorski and Pek Allen and now Pek Gruber, so he couldn’t be real …
Pek Voratur said, “I have thought about that picture of my brain, Pek Bazargan. Perhaps there is a way to bring a bargain to flower.”
“What might that be?” Pek Bazargan said. Enli saw him make a small motion with his hand, so small that even she might have missed it if she had not seen him make it often before, to Pek Sikorski. It meant, Say nothing, I will talk for all of us. A strange gesture.
Pek Voratur looked pointedly at the pillows heaped on the floor. Pek Bazargan apologized and everyone sat down, Pek Gruber finally shrugging out of his heavy pack. It fell with a heavy thunk. Rocks.
“Enli will join us,” Pek Voratur said, and Enli, too, sat on a curving pillow, off to the side. Bazargan offered a plate of small cakes.
Pek Voratur began. “Enli Pek Brimmidin, as assistant to Pek Sikorski in her healer’s chamber, naturally spends much time with Pek Sikorski. They share the day’s reality. And of course Enli shares reality with my household, too. In this way I have come to hear of a curious thing. Is it not shared reality that Pek Sikorski had a flower sickness for trifalitib? And that she took a potion of Terran devising and the flower sickness disappeared, even though trifalitib are still in bloom?”
“It is shared reality,” Pek Bazargan said.
“And this potion is called an antihistamine?”
“It is shared reality.”
“Aaahhh,” Pek Voratur said. “Then this is indeed a valuable potion.”
Pek Bazargan said nothing, his dark gaze steady.
Pek Voratur changed from questioning learner to brisk businessman. “I would bring a bargain to flower between us for this potion, so that I might be the sole trader of it on World. Your antihistamine traded for a picture of my brain.”
Pek Bazargan nibbled on a sweetcake. Giving himself time, Enli thought. These Terrans were indeed good traders. Eventually he said, “When we discussed this once before, Pek Voratur, you said to me that you could not risk exposing your brain, the home of the soul, to something you do not understand. Why has shared reality shifted?”
He knew immediately that he had made a mistake; Enli watched him watch Pek Voratur’s astonishment. The answer itself was shared reality—Pek Bazargan should already know it. Pek Voratur’s face shifted from astonishment to discomfort. The headpain was starting.
Pek Bazargan said quickly—too quickly, to Enli’s alert ear—“I would hear you say it, Pek Voratur. It is better to have our shared reality shared aloud. Such is the custom on Terra.”
Pek Voratur’s face eased. Enli knew his thoughts: Speaking reality aloud versus not speaking aloud was only a small shift. Well within what was real, especially for a sophisticated trader, used to local shifts in reality. The headpain would now be receding behind Pek Voratur’s eyes. But not behind hers. She could feel it, a storm raging just beyond the strong artificial seawall of the government pills.
“In the first months of life,” began Pek Voratur, as if reciting a story on a village square, “we are all infants. We are buds, not yet real blooms. Buds are tender and must be protected. So, many parts of shared reality are withheld from children, j
ust as direct rain and sun are withheld from the petals of buds, safe in their enfolding green.
“As we grow—Is this indeed how reality is shared on Terra, Pek Bazargan? With the obvious told, as if adults were children in the crelm house?”
“Yes,” Pek Bazargan said.
“Very well. As we grow, more and more of reality is shared with us. But even as adults, we may need protection. Does a village family require that the old grandmother share the heavy lifting of logs? No. So the strong young men risk their backs so that the old may have shelter. The fisherwoman risks the sea that her family may eat. The mountain father risks his life to save his child from wandering into the Neury caves. Risk for the shared good is part of shared reality.
“If thousands, perhaps millions, could be freed from the shame of flower sickness, is that not a risk worth a brain picture of one man of World? Even if I do not understand it? The soul will always emerge triumphant from a risk on behalf of shared good, although it may not from a risk undertaken purely for profit. Nothing is more pleasing to the First Flower, and so nothing is more real, than a person who risks his life for others. Except, of course, the person who actually gives his life to save others—the special and adored joy of the First Flower, who bloomed and died to create World. There, I have told the shared reality aloud.”
Pek Voratur smiled, although Enli could tell he still felt uncomfortable.
Pek Bazargan nodded. “I thank you. Now permit me to offer you flowers of learning.”
Pek Voratur nodded graciously, accepting the subservient role of learner. This at least was familiar bargaining ground.
“World and Terra may share reality, but we do not share bodies. You have neckfur, we have headfur. You have dark eyes, some of us have light eyes. You can eat hanfruit, we cannot—if we try, we will become very sick.”
“You have tried this?” Pek Voratur asked with interest.
“In a manner of speaking,” Pek Bazargan answered, and what, Enli wondered, did that mean? But Pek Bazargan rushed on. “There may be many more differences deep inside our bodies, where we cannot see. If we trade for the antihistamine potion, World bodies may be made sick by it in ways we cannot foresee. Naturally, Terrans do not wish to cause you harm.”
“May your flowers bloom,” Pek Voratur said. He was frowning.
“May your garden bring joy,” Pek Bazargan replied. “So, unfortunately, we cannot trade the antihistamine potion for the brain pictures. However, to trade water pipes that never rust, as once we discussed—”
“I will think on it,” Pek Voratur said abruptly, rudely, and rose. “I will share reality with the servants of the First Flower. Come, Enli.”
She scrambled up from her pillow, surprised at his loss of courtesy, of smoothness. Pek Voratur had even omitted farewell flowers!
Hurrying behind him across the courtyards of the great house, Enli realized the reason. Pek Voratur was furious. She had not, in her stay in the Voratur household, seen this before, but apparently it was not unknown. Servants, gardeners, even a houseguest from the capital took one look at Pek Voratur’s s face and disappeared into doorways, behind trellises, under an arched stone bridge spanning an ornamental stream.
Once more in his personal room, Pek Voratur turned to Enli. His voice, controlled as ever, made her neckfur rise.
“You will steal the antihistamine from Pek Sikorski’s personal room and bring it to me. Tonight. Do we share reality, Pek Brimmidin?”
“We share reality,” Enli got out. Then she managed, “But if it is dangerous to World bodies …”
“Shared good justifies the risk. For those Terrans to presume to decide that for me … for me! Enli”—abruptly his voice changed—“I begin to wonder if they are real at all.”
Enli said nothing.
“Of course, that is for the servants of the First Flower to decide, not me. I don’t envy the priests their task! But meanwhile, these presumptuous Terrans are guests in my household, and the antihistamine is certainly real enough. Steal it.”
“I will. But … Pek Voratur … if I may ask … who will swallow it?” And risk death, she didn’t say. Or need to.
“I, of course.” Pek Voratur said. “Who else? I will.”
SEVEN
GOFKIT JEMLOE
He’s very angry,” Dieter Gruber said, in English.
Ahmed Bazargan nodded. Voratur had indeed been angry. It was the first time Bazargan had seen the alien anything but smiling, affable, slippery as eels but manageable. Now Voratur had been touched at his core. That was dangerous.
“The problem is that girl, Enli,” he said to the other two. “I think she may be—”
“The problem is the priests!” David Allen burst out. “Didn’t you hear him say he was rushing off to consult with them? The priests have these wonderful people totally in thrall, almost certainly to keep themselves in power!”
Bazargan looked bleakly at Allen. The young man was fired up about something, hot with it, fevered to the soul. Just as clearly, he was not ready to discuss it fully with the whole team. Oh, the young. Always convinced their theories, no matter what the scientific discipline, would uproot everything that had gone before. Equally convinced that older, more established names were eternally on the prowl to claim credit that should be theirs. Not experienced enough as yet to know that the big leaps forward often started not with the heated vision but with the small anomaly. The seemingly inconsequential detail that didn’t quite fit. Like Enli.
“If it weren’t for the priests,” Allen rushed on, his unlined face flushed, “no one would be declared ‘unreal’ and then killed. The physiological mechanism of shared reality would still exist, the headaches would still act as social restraints, the only thing that would change is that there might be slightly more divergence of thought between isolated regions as societal controls eased. That’s not bad! And the whole populace would be released from fear that—”
“They are not a fearful people,” Bazargan said, more sharply than he intended. Something about David Allen bothered him. Something more than rampant ego coupled with tedious insecurity. “However, I would be glad to listen to your theory later. Right now, I wish to hear Dieter’s report. He has, after all, been gone several months.”
An exaggeration, but it worked. Allen subsided.
“Much of what the recon team stated I merely reconfirmed,” Gruber said in his accented English. His blue eyes shone. When Gruber was really excited, Bazargan knew, he lapsed into German. “But I also went deep into the Neury Mountains, which the first team didn’t have time to do. Lieber Gott, it is amazing! The composition changes utterly. The mountains have not the same composition as the rest of the planetary surface. They’re a jumble—some light volcanic rock, basalt and dacite and pumice and obsidian, riddled with radioactive elements with enormously long half-lives. Much more thorium and uranium than you’d expect. All this mixed up with the hard rock typical of deep-sea formations. I believe the Neury Mountains are the remains of an enormous asteroid hit sometime in the earliest geological ages.”
“Interesting,” Bazargan said. He could tell Gruber was not done, and that he would tell his story in his own way.
Allen was not so patient. “Well, what’s so amazing about that?”
Gruber ignored him. “The asteroid probably hit on water, above a ‘hot spot’ where there was already underwater volcanic activity, with magma being forced up from the planet’s core. That underwater impact caused the rock that was thrown up to be full of gas, forming all that pumice. Pumice may even have filled the entire strike basin, on top of the asteroid.
“Eventually, tectonic plate subduction lifted up the whole basin to form the Neury Mountains, without cutting it off from the initial hot-spot stresses. Volcanic rock erodes easily, and it was already porous, so what you ended up with is square mile after square mile of caverns. Interconnected caves with so much underground water, chimney holes, lava tunnels, and peculiar radiation that it’s all combined. to create entire und
erground ecologies, including some of the most amazing mutant flowers!”
Ann’s face lit up. “The Neury Mountains are supposedly where the First Flower unfolded. The World creation myth. That’s why the mountains are forbidden.”
“The radiation might have something to do with that as well,” Bazargan said dryly. “Dieter—”
“I took only thirty-two rads total,” Gruber said, “and I had my suit. And no one saw me enter or leave the mountains, I am sure of it. But the radiation is the marvelous thing, Ahmed. I have never seen anything like it. In places, water or rocks of denser metals form natural shields, so that one cave may be perfectly safe and another beside it—or under it—may be lethal. And the niche ecologies created by that! Ann will be ecstatic.”
“If she sees it,” Bazargan said. “For now, there is enough to do here.”
“Yes. But wait, there is more. Listen to this! in some exposed rock walls in the mountains, I found the thin layer of clay one would expect, yes, from a major asteroid impact. Dirt gets thrown into the air, blown all over, settles gradually. We have such a clay layer on Earth, from the asteroid impact sixty-five million years ago at the K/T boundary that—”
“Dieter, not too technical,” Bazargan said. “Have mercy.”
Gruber gave his great, belly-born laugh. “I get carried away, ja? But just look at this!”
From his pocket Gruber dug out a handful of dirt. He displayed it on his big dirt-seamed hands as if the dirt were diamonds. Peering closely, Bazargan saw tiny grains of something glassy mixed with the loose silt.
“Quartz!” Dieter roared. “Under my scope, the grains are all cracked and strained, like happens only with sudden great heat and pressure. Such as an asteroid impact!”
“Ah,” Bazargan said. “Does the—” But there was no interrupting Gruber on a geological bender.
“The asteroid that made these is a marker. Below the clay-and-quartz layer all the fossils differ from above it.”