by Jim Grimsley
“We’re the Fukate,” Vekant said. “A choir of ten thousand ought to be able to manage most anything on a planetary scale. But we’ve always had difficulty working on Ajhevan. At first we thought the trees simply had a certain amount of resistance to us, that it was innate to their kind. This would make more sense if you knew more about the chant; it’s certainly possible. But even the Mage never detected any overt sign of true language at work in Greenwood.”
“A true language?”
“A language that can affect the physical world when you know how to use it.”
“A language that works magic when you speak it.”
He sighed. “That’s the vid interpretation, anyway.”
“Is it a better explanation to call it a true language and change the rhetoric around a bit?”
He gave her the sort of lofty look that she had come to expect from him; he was a bit of a prig on the subject of his knowledge and his studies. He had in fact explained a good deal of this to her before, including several introductions to the term true language, but on each occasion appeared to forget that he had done so, perhaps because he enjoyed the lecture. Most of the Hormling who succeeded in making it through their years as a novice had this kind of superior attitude, whereas the Erejhen Prin appeared to be arrogant by nature. “Point taken,” he said, a bit grudgingly.
“But the Dirijhi don’t speak any oral language.”
“They use words. I understand they’re made up of chains of proteins, or some such? Very slow language, but language.” He sighed. “We already know of at least three different true languages from our own history. Iraenian history, I mean.”
She was beginning to see his point, now. “So there may be more.”
“It’s virtually certain that there are.”
She sat quietly for a moment. “You really think the Dirijhi have developed true language?”
He looked at her. His brow arched. “I don’t know what I think.”
“If you think the trees are resisting your magic—your chant—in some way, what else could it be?”
He gave her a careful study; she was meant to feel flattered. He spoke with a dramatic air. “A visitor.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Not only are there more true languages than the three we know, there are more operators than Great Irion and the Prin.”
“Other creatures who can do what you can do?”
“Yes. Or to be more precise, other creatures who can do what Great Irion can do.”
The thought was too large. Like everyone her age, she had lived with fairy tales about Great Irion for as long as she could remember. “Is there a creature like that on Aramen? Can you tell?”
He was brooding, staring into a frame filled with the morning news. “Do you think your friends in the independence movement will know more about the timing?”
“I think so. My best contacts aren’t happy about the partnership with the Dirijhi. They think the trees mean to use them as cannon fodder.”
“Anything you can learn will be helpful.” He pulled a tin from his robe and slipped a candy into his mouth. “Mean-while, we’re looking at everything that’s going on at the moment. Enforcement is studying some of the flowers, but they don’t have the staff to study all of them. We’re gathering experts from the universities, and the governer and Commander Rui are calling for more help from Senal. We’re collecting specimens of all of the new species we can find. There are dozens of new flowers alone; we’re seeing the ones in bloom because they’re vivid and they stick out. We need a team to examine other kinds of flora that aren’t so easy to spot.”
“You think these mutations come from the Dirijhi?”
“You know yourself how dangerous it is to travel in Greenwood, you’ve told me often enough.”
“It sounds as though I’ll need to leave for the north earlier than planned.”
“I think you should go to Ajhevan right away. I don’t know who I can send to meet you when you’re ready to head upriver but I’ll get word to you.” Vekant had provided a Prin escort for two of her trips into Greenwood, in contravention of the treaty with the Dirijhi.
He looked as if he wanted to say something more. The eyebrow ticked up and down a bit, and his chin quivered.
“What?”
“I’m assuming we’ll have at least another ten-day before the Dirijhi move. But what if we don’t?”
“If they attack right now, are we ready?”
“No. The army’s on the alert but we don’t know what kind of attack to expect. We haven’t even figured out how to kill the fungus that ate the flyers and the heavy armor.”
“Can’t the Prin get rid of these flowers?”
Reluctantly Vekant shook his head. “We can get rid of some. But some of them aren’t even identified. We can find the fungus in its adult stage to get rid of it, but who knows how many spores there are? We can’t see them well, they’re not identified and named. Until something is named it can’t be touched with our words. A Drune can do better, but it helps to have a sample of the thing nearby, or a way to identify it in true language.”
“So the trees really can give you a run for your money.”
“Yes.”
“Then Mage Malin will have to come and take care of the problem herself.”
“Which she would do, no doubt, except that if this scenario we’re discussing is the right one, she may well have her own problems to deal with. There’s already so much commotion on Senal because of the reforms to the Common Fund.” He stood and wandered to the edge of the garden, looking over the Citadel, apparently; the wall of his office was all glass. Even in his walk he had a kind of fussy self-consciousness, as if he were being careful to project a performance of concern, as if this were a moment in a vid or a play. “We have a choir of ten thousand; that ought to be enough.”
“I suppose we’ll have to hope so.”
“The first step is to find out what kind of time frame we have before the Dirijhi move. I’m checking through other sources, too, Kitra, but you’re our best.”
“I’ll do whatever you need as long as this doesn’t delay my next trip to Greenwood. I need an escort.”
“I can’t do anything to stop a war. With a war coming, I may not be able to spare anyone to travel with you. I’ll need every voice for the choir.”
She set her jaw and looked at him. “I’m going, one way or the other.”
“Even though we can’t do anything for your brother?”
“We can keep him alive,” Kitra said.
“How will you travel with him this far from his tree?”
“Your people teamed up with some scientists and have worked out a way to store sap. I’ll drain some from his host tree and use it. I have to try it, at least. If there’s a war, I won’t leave him in Greenwood.”
“What if I can’t sent you protection?”
“I’ll go anyway. I’ll have my biosuit.”
He frowned, more concerned than she had expected, his face heavy and jowlish, clownish in its way. His dark eyebrows knitted together, again with that look of self-preoccupation, as if he were seeing himself in a film about this moment, as if his reviews were good. “I see I can’t convince you, so I won’t make things awkward by trying.”
A story appeared in the news-frame about a tree growing at the rate of a foot per hour in a downtown Feidreh plaza. Vekant was studying the frame with concern as Kitra excused herself.
2.
She did as he asked, and her contact, Shanes Sharma, an electronics dealer in Jarutan, told her to get off of the southern continent as fast as she could. Shanes had no idea exactly how soon the Dirijhi and the rebels would launch their military force, but she knew it would be within a couple of days.
“You can stay with me,” Shanes said, a half smile on her face, checking the secure status of the line.
“That’s a little dangerous.”
“But fun. Or it was the last time.”
“I won’t be al
one, Shanes. Though it’s tempting.”
“If you have a girlfriend, you’re welcome to bring her.”
“Not like that.”
Which ended the discussion as far as Shanes was concerned, since, as Kitra knew, Shanes had no use for men at all.
Kitra had to wait a day for the arrival of the man she had agreed to guide into Greenwood. This detail she had kept from Vekant; she made it a policy never to share all her secrets in the same place, and this one was worth keeping: a man from the country Irion, or Iraen, as people were beginning to call it. Someone from that fairy-tale place had contacted her only a day ago with a request to conduct him northward into the Dirijhi preserve. He was an operator of a true language, exactly what she needed, one of the Drune priests who spoke a separate language from the Prin and operated singly rather than in choirs. She had verified the fact directly as a condition of agreeing to escort him.
“Yes,” he’d answered, his tone guarded. “Though I’ll thank you to keep it to yourself at all times during our journey. That’s a condition of my taking you along.”
“You’re taking me along?”
“Yes. I’m going myself, one way or the other.”
The words were familiar enough that she paused. Something in his tone made her cautious; or else she was uncomfortable with an ardor that appeared as great as hers. “Maybe I should reconsider,” she said. “Somebody who’s never traveled there ought to be less cocksure.”
He paused, and his voice changed in tone ever so slightly. “I can help you get your brother out alive.”
Her heart pounded, and she stood with the link live, replaying his words in her inner hearing. “You know about Binam.”
“It’s not hard to find out; I have contacts among your ten thousand choir there.”
“Vekant?”
“No. You needn’t ask any other names, either. I’ve told you what I can do for you and your brother. But on condition you keep secret what you know about me.”
“You sound as if you don’t expect to be traveling alone.”
“I don’t. You’ll have to bear with me on that point as well.”
His name was Dekkar up Ortaen, an Anin, a fallen Drune priest, meaning he had been kicked out of the Oregal, the master organization of magicians, which was what everyone called them regardless of what they called themselves. She was to meet him at the Plaza of Two Worlds; she had the schedule for his shuttle and tracked it across the Anilyn Gate.
A day later she was in a flitter waiting for Dekkar and his party to come aboard; she was searching northbound lanes for a low, long route to Ajhevan that took her out of the path of any invasion traffic coming across the water. Her passengers had settled into their seats with grave, serious faces, all except the young boy, Keely, who was amusing himself with a Disturber toy, a huge insect with spiky legs. The toy appeared a bit young for him and his behavior struck her as oddly childish.
The civilian fellow whose name Kitra had not caught, one of Dekkar’s guests, had a cyborg spider crawling on top of his head, some kind of bodyguard. She found herself keeping an eye on it as he clambered into his seat.
“I have a silvershield that will help hide us over the water,” Kitra said, when everyone was strapped into safety belts. The flitter swung in a low curve down from the bluff, dropped close to the water, and started to pick up speed. The mag-lev controls were balky at first, as always. “You’ll see a bit of distortion through the window. Don’t worry about it, that’s the silverfield.”
“This is your flitter?” asked the civilian man with the spider on his head, and she remembered his name as Figg and felt again as if she ought to remember his face.
“No. It’s mine on assignment from the Citadel.”
He looked puzzled.
Dekkar said, “That’s the university of the Prin, here. Where the Fukate Ten Thousand sing the chant.”
“I work for them,” Kitra said. “I’m a factor for supplies the Prin buy from Ajhevan.”
“Why are we running?” Keely’s nanny asked this, a handsome older woman whom Kitra found to be a bit forbidding; the woman was seated stiff as a bolt with a large woven bag in her lap. She kept her attention on the boy, who looked to be about ten or so, small for his age, playing with the intensity of someone half as old, attention fixed on the toy, oblivious even to the choppy ocean across which the flitter glided some scores of meters up.
Kitra said, “There’s an independence movement in the north. They have allies in the forest, Greenwood, where the Dirijhi live.”
“The sentient trees,” Figg said, nodding his head toward the woman. “Remember, Nerva?”
“I want to see the trees if they really talk,” Keely said, looking up.
Nerva said, “But they don’t really talk, Keely. You’d never understand if one of them said anything to you.”
“But it would still be talking,” Keely said.
“And you think they’re launching their rebellion now?” Figg asked.
As an answer she pointed east, where, high up, lines of aircraft swept overhead, covering the sky as far as the eye could see, some of them hidden at moments behind the clouds. The party in the flitter was long since out of sight of Jharvan continent, but those the aircraft were headed that way.
“Was this just a good guess?” Figg asked. “Or did you have warning?”
She was looking at him in the mirror and had the feeling again that she had seen his face. She answered a different question than the one he had asked, watching him coolly. “We’re taking a long route to Ajhevan that will put us ashore well north of Jarutan. The main routes are clogged with military traffic.”
Figg touched his temple, where the spider stirred. The thing had been watching Keely’s toy in a predatory stance, as if she wished she could eat it. For some reason, Kitra naturally thought of the spider as a “she.” That was when Figg announced that the Anilyn Gate had closed.
Kitra had no stat or any permanent link; hers had been removed as part of her work with the Prin, who limited use of the Surround in order to maintain privacy in their own operations. She had some electronics hidden in her scalp that she could make use of for data storage and enhanced analysis, and she had a chip library in the back of her neck with a large store of information hardwired into her, updated periodically in a minor surgical procedure. As the system grew she was having data storage added along her spine, none of it detectable to the naked eye.
After the first impact had soaked in, when it was clear the news had rattled Dekkar, he said, “I suppose we’re on our own then,” and threw up his hands.
Figg said, “It’s the Prin. They do this kind of thing to keep people off balance.”
“Why would they disrupt their own communications?” Dekkar asked. “Unless they want to isolate something on this side of the gate.”
Figg was looking up at the sky. Another wave of aircraft passed overhead. “Those look like individual personnel carriers,” he said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Dekkar agreed. “Armored infantry, probably?”
“That’s what Enforcement would use,” Figg said.
“What else could it be?” Dekkar asked, as if he was considering this question carefully, and Kitra watched him for signs that he was using true language at the moment. He gave no hint.
“How long before we’re there?” Nerva asked.
“At least six hours, provided I can keep up this speed,” Kitra said. “You might want to rest.”
Ten Thousand
Vekant called for the Fukate Choir to assemble as soon as he understood that what he and the daily choir of a thousand voices had seen was the launch of masses of aircraft from Ajhevan, from all over the continent, news that was confirmed by a call from Enforcement only a few moments later. The ten thousand, who actually numbered closer to eleven, were scattered over Jharvan continent, however, and would require time to return to the Citadel. For the early part of the attack, Vekant could assemble three thousand Prin or so, and there
were likely another three thousand assigned to smaller choirs in the twin cities; those priests would return quickly to add their voices. As for the rest, Vekant made the call while in kei-state himself, and he could feel the impact of his words all along the local Oregal.
He felt a delicious thrill inside, giving the dramatic order for all members of the choir to return to the Citadel. The fact that he was already afraid was no more than was to be expected; he was often afraid, even in the pursuit of normal activities like a daily round of meetings or a session singing the Tervan Symmetries with real Tervan musicians.
A cantor held within the Oregal is a creature curiously between freedom and compulsion. There was no impulse to obedience, but always present was the will of Great Irion, implacable and persistent. As if Vekant stood in Great Irion’s presence, he felt that distant consciousness, borrowed part of its strength, and made a call to all the Prin who could hear. The subsequent response from all the Prin sounded in his head like the rustling of wings, birds preparing for flight. He could feel the wave of the choir’s concern and the throbbing of certain notes in the current song, “Seeing and Far,” mixed with other odes. The drill of an emergency return to the choir had been rehearsed many times; orderly groups of ten and one hundred headed for their skitters or putters, dropping every other task. As if Vekant himself spanned the whole continent, he could feel them moving toward him now. Even from a distance they could add to the power of the choir, and so, in that sense, most of the ten thousand were assembled almost as soon as the trouble was seen.
The process that caused this to happen, that drew these voices together, had been called magic for generation after generation, until Great Irion opened the first gate to join his world to the world of the Hormling. The word “magic” had served as a placeholder, preempting even the idea of faith; for everyone born in Irion understood that magic sprang from God. But now that Great Irion had encountered science, his own faith was said to be shattered, and a word like “magic” no longer served.
The Fukate Hall was opened and staff began to prepare it for the coming work of the cantors.