by SM Reine
A portly man who looks to be in his mid-sixties stands at a balcony, giving a speech to a packed crowd standing below. The older man wears dark red pajamas and a long, embroidered tunic that looks Asian yet is not.
The crowd listens raptly as he speaks. I look over the crowd, fascinated by the beauty in so many of the faces I see, regardless of age. Men and women both wear their hair long, I notice. The men’s is wound in wooden clips studded with brightly colored stones, and the women’s hangs loose down their backs, woven through with thin metals and threads with small, embedded stones. More jewelry adorns men’s hands and ankles, compared to the women who wear stones at their throats and hanging from around their ears.
I listen to the crowd murmur, although the language is new to me, and to Revik too, it seems...so different that even my mind’s translations inside the Barrier aren’t quite right. Above the speaker’s head, a three-dimensional Barrier image shows two curved lines with parallel staves, like a crude drawing of one of those impossibly tall Japanese bridges.
Everyone in the square sees it, I realize. The image is painted inside the Barrier, but they all see it over him, and stare at it in some curiosity.
The man’s words grow more distinct, however briefly.
“I do not present this...concept from...ego, for self-aggrandizement,” I hear him say. Words go missing in his speech, words for which my mind cannot find context. “I merely wish for sight...the urgency behind...my plea. It can be peaceful,” he adds, holding up a finger. “There is no wanting to...war. Or...living miseries.”
The man continues to speak.
I hear only some of the words.
He speaks of working through differences, of wars that have come before. He exudes confidence, yet is unsure if they hear him, if they really understand what he is trying to tell them. I feel a lot about his mind, I realize.
My spine prickles as I wonder if it is too much.
This is Balixe, Revik says.
I startle, having forgotten him.
Even so, I look around me as his words sink in, in a kind of wonder. This is more than prehistory. This is history most humans don’t acknowledge having existed at all. This is history before humans.
If Revik is affected by this, I cannot tell. He continues to teach, even here.
This is our history, Allie...not prehistory from a seer perspective, but early history, certainly. The Merensithly Address, prior to the first Displacement...
The First Displacement? I say wonderingly. So these are Elaerian? They are the first race?
I feel Revik acknowledge this, right before his thoughts grow audible once more. Most cannot even see events of this kind. Vash is very generous to share it with us.
Revik gestures towards the podium.
This man...he is famous to seers. History describes him as the final war’s architect...its greatest proponent. It is unknown whether he was a Rook, as we think of Rooks today. But he was definitely some kind of precursor to those that exist now...
His words cut me somehow.
Focusing back on the podium, I shake my head.
No, I tell him. That’s not right.
I feel Revik’s puzzlement, riding the edges of his bad mood. He looks between me and the man.
It is right. He makes an effort to be conciliatory. Do not be naïve about his words, Allie. He was a politician, a rich man who only claimed to be a humble scientist. He used his studies to further his social and political agendas...
It is not his words, I say, pointing. It is his light. Look at it!
Revik barely glances at the man, before frowning back at me.
Light can be disguised in many ways, Revik warns me. Do not be naïve about that, either. It is the oldest game in the Barrier, to impersonate light frequencies of one kind or another...I have done it, as an infiltrator. To pretend to resonate with someone or something safe or familiar to your target is often the easiest way to get them to lower their guard. As a Rook, I did this all the time, Allie. I would adopt the light connections of relatives or loved ones, simply to get the person to open to me...
I try to take this all in, shielding myself slightly from Revik’s emotions. But I cannot just go along, letting his words stand, when they feel so wrong to me.
No, I say finally. You’re wrong about him. You’ve been misinformed.
I feel Revik’s stare, even before I focus on him.
Allie, he says, and I feel him fighting the bad mood once more, the anger I feel under it. These scenes have been studied extensively by the clan elders. I’m not defending my own sight, but that of the greatest seers in the clans. He adds, sharper, I do not say this to cause offense, but you are a beginner, Allie...
Before I can think how to answer, the scene around us shifts.
It is difficult at first to tell where we are.
A dark organic platform has been erected in the middle of a ripped up town square. Looking at the broken pieces of estuary and volcanic glass, the piles of burning bodies and the mountains looming up above the remnants of the ancient city, feeling fills me without warning...it shocks me with its intensity.
Revik grabs my light arm.
Calm, he murmurs. Yes, it is the same square.
It affects him too. I feel his grief, but mostly I feel anger in him, unconnected to this place.
Before us stands the same man on the platform, but he is older now, and thinner. His eyes look haunted, hollowed-out. Someone has tied him to a pole at the center of the platform. Bruised and cut, his face hangs over a dark-colored robe spotted with blood. His feet are bare and look like they’ve been beaten with sticks; blood drops down on them from one leg.
A man on the young side of middle age with a dark beard stands next to him.
Feeling explodes in me...unfocused, irrational.
Love, regret, grief...they tangle my light. I can’t tell if they are my feelings, my memories, or some imprint I carry with me, something handed to me from somewhere else. It is all too strong to sort out, too intense to do anything but try to absorb, or at least let pass through me.
The younger man raises his hands to silence the crowd. They look up at him, and I recognize that look, at least. They love him. They positively adore him.
Haldren, I murmur.
I feel Revik’s light focus on mine.
Just then, the bearded man’s voice rises, whipping in the wind.
“Kardek will die!” He speaks with passion, raising his hands as he shouts. “Yes! He will die...but his death will not save us. It is too late...the sickness will take many more. We will starve. We are almost out of water. Our enemies will kill us!”
Moans rise from the crowd, cries of pain.
I flinch away from them, feeling a part of me crushed into pieces like the volcanic rock, unable to feel without feeling too much. I know myself as connected in some way to what happened here. Not responsible, exactly, but more sad than I’ve ever felt in my life, even after my dad died. Even after my mother got murdered by the Rooks.
“...And for those of us left behind, there is no justice! Not for your families! Not for friends and neighbors! He cannot cure you! He can never bring back your joy!”
Haldren’s dark eyes fill with emotion.
“...But I can promise you this! He will harm you no more!”
Shouts rise from the crowd, screams. Fists raise into the air.
I make myself look at them, at their faces, and at the city that had once been so beautiful. Flowers no longer bloom from balconies, though. The stones are broken like jagged teeth, strewn instead with fingers of dried sticks from dead plants and mud and other filth. Instead of ornate tapestries and curtains, rags are crammed in cracks to keep out the icy wind. Blankets covered in ash and blood flap in smoke-filled wind, warning passersby away from the disease hidden inside the walls of those dwellings.
Blackened holes also scar buildings from some kind of fight. Volcanic glass cobblestones are broken and torn from their moorings; most of what remains lay
in chunks and powder. The crowd wavers on its feet: sick, thin, dirty, clothed in rags. Many have volcanic shard knives and spears strapped to their backs, along with branch-like devices that also feel like weapons.
The stone skeleton of the city is all that remains.
“This man,” the bearded man shouts. He points at Kardek. “...He, who has called himself the Bridge! He stands before you, a traitor to our people! A heretic, and a liar!”
I feel Revik’s shock ripple through my light.
His whole attention is on me now. I cannot look at him, though. I cannot even care about his reaction. I am being slowly crushed under the weight of this city’s pain. Like the rest of them, I focus on Haldren to keep from collapsing, the bearded man with the intense eyes and the angry voice. Haldren. He will redeem the old man, cleanse him through fire.
It feels just. Right, even.
Haldren is a friend. The way he speaks is familiar, the way the crowd hangs on his every word, as if in a trance. Moans rise with his voice, emotion-laden screams. People throw things at the old man, hitting him with pieces of ripped up cobblestones. I wince as the lines cross, but feel nothing, in my body or my mind.
The man with the dark beard finally holds up a hand. He speaks quietly, for the old man alone. “You should have listened to me, Liego.” His voice breaks. “How could you do it? You will die the greatest mass murderer the world will ever know...”
With these words, it hits me.
More than that. It annihilates me.
I scream into that blue sky. NO NO NO! Get me out of here! NOW! NOW!
Allie! It’s okay! Revik is beside me, alarmed. No, afraid. It’s all right...
No. I shake my head, my terror crushed by grief once more. No, it’s not all right. Please, get me out of here. Now. Please, Revik...please...
He surrounds me, and then—
I am back in that quiet place.
It is the place he took me when my mom died. We float over a valley of sunset red. Towers of light billow like gold silk before an ocean of liquid diamonds and light. Normally, I think of it as his place...or maybe ours...but this time, it feels like mine. Friends surround me, try to comfort me. So much relief exists in being with them, in knowing it is finally finished, that it is finally over. That I don’t have to go back.
I don’t have to go back until...
Revik is there, too.
He is a different Revik, though, just as I observe a different me standing in waist-high water, in that golden ocean with my friends, relieved to be done. That other Revik talks to me in a low voice, and we are alone together now, and he holds me. He has perhaps been talking for some time, as if parts of us never stopped whispering in the dark.
I feel myself grow calm.
His light coils deeper into mine and the pain worsens.
There is familiarity there, beyond what I’ve felt from anyone...beyond what I’ve felt from him. We know each other here. We are more than friends. It is his comfort I seek, above all the rest. I know he understands. He understands in a way that none of the others can, in a way they never will, no matter how hard they try.
He succumbs to the pull, without reservation, and wishes—
STOP! STOP IT!
Panic fills my light. This time, it’s not mine.
STOP THIS, ALLIE! Please, stop...!
I have not come to this paradise alone. The other Revik’s light flashes out.
The arc blows us apart like dead leaves, until—
I took a breath. I took another.
Air shocked my lungs. I choked on it, fighting to work the rhythms of my physical body, fighting to align myself, to exist inside myself.
Eventually, I found I was lying on the floor.
Virtual stars met my eyes, flooding the ship’s stateroom and the ceiling above where I lay. Flat-seeming now, those stars shone palely as they ran down pastel walls.
I felt him move next to me.
When I glanced over, he raised a hand, covering his face, but I saw his jaw harden before he did it. I realized only then that I clutched his shirt in my own hand, right before he pushed my fingers off roughly, forcing me to let go.
Some emotional kickback made it hard for me to look at him, but also hard to look away. I watched him sit up, trying to wrap my head around him again, around his familiarity, even through the shield he wore around himself like a wall.
I couldn’t reconcile the impression of complete impenetrability I got off him with the sense that I knew him behind it, somehow.
I tried to push both feelings away, if only so he wouldn’t notice me thinking about him. I tried to pull my mind back into one piece, but could only breathe, watching him as he fought to do the same. I don’t remember moving, but somehow, I was sitting up, too, watching him breathe. I couldn’t seem to unclench my hand.
He looked at me. His eyes held the same expression they had that morning in Seattle.
Even as I thought it, he shook his head.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he said.
His voice was hollow, lost-sounding.
Whispers of that other place remained, pulling at his light and mine; I felt him wrestle with it, forcing it out of his light only to be compelled to look at it again. Pain wafted off him, for the first time in weeks, and he didn’t seem to be trying to hide it from me. Without thinking beyond a vague desire to reassure him, I reached for him, touching his face, pausing to finger his longer black hair back behind one ear.
He jerked from the caress, but afterwards he stared at me.
His eyes flickered to my mouth, lingered there.
For an instant, just an instant, he hesitated. Then I saw his eyes change. They grew openly angry...just before the light in them died.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he said again. His voice roughened. “I want to sever us. Do you understand me, Alyson?”
I didn’t understand, not really. But he waited for an answer.
“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I—”
“Will you agree to it?”
“I don’t really know what...” I trailed, seeing his eyes harden to glass. I softened my voice. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want, Revik.”
“Good.” He nodded, once. “Thank you.”
Without waiting, he regained his feet. For a moment he only stood there, over me, as if catching his breath. Then he moved, stepping around me to reach the stateroom door.
He opened it without hesitating, without a backwards glance.
I saw him murmur something to the guard, too low for me to hear, and probably in a language I didn’t know. The man standing there stared first at him, as though he didn’t quite believe what he’d heard, then at me, his expression openly bewildered. The guard continued to stare at me, his eyes a near question, when Revik’s voice sharpened, bringing his eyes back to him. As I’d suspected, Revik didn’t speak Prexci, but something else...one of the languages he hadn’t decided to teach me.
Eventually, the guard stammered a reply, bowing to him.
I watched Revik slip around the guard an instant later and disappear.
After a last, piercing look from the guard himself, the door closed.
I heard the lock glide into the wall with a soft click.
Through all of it, the stares and Revik’s anger, it slowly sank into my awareness that something had just happened...something decidedly more than one of our bantering back and forth bickering matches, or even the fight around Kat in Seattle. Even knowing this, I found I couldn’t move, or think really, not at first. I could only sit there, fighting to control whatever rose in me at his absence.
But I knew. Maybe I’d known for weeks now.
I was in love with him. Like, really in love with him.
Clearly, that wasn’t going to work for him, either.
18
BETRAYAL
Terian studies the construct, mesmerized.
Like all constructs, the images that obfuscate the border between it and the Barrier proper conta
in some flickering of truth. Like now, they show a monolithic parade of living stills that coalesce around certain themes despite how quickly they morph and change. Water figures in abundance of course; given their mode of transport, that is hardly surprising. The construct flashes with waterfalls, waves, cracking ice in metal trays, rivers and streams gushing over dark stones, puddles on city streets, saliva, sweat, tide pools, rain.
Terian recognizes some of these images from providing light to Dehgoies in the past.
Others must belong to Alyson, or one of the Seven’s Guard, whose lights watch over the edges of the construct walls.
Terian has studied the construct for days.
It takes that long to notice differences in the ripples of light. Now he knows the rhythms and moods of its normal state, as well as the range of its oscillations.
Therefore, when a shift occurs in those rhythms, even a relatively small one, he cannot help but taste the new flavor, the faint whisper of something he hasn’t felt before within the churning pulse. The difference weaves into water and ice and cold night skies. The change is subtle, but distinct enough that Terian picks it out before it can be reabsorbed.
A flicker of warmth greets him, a fleeting image of limbs entwined, clouding breath and glowing eyes, gone as soon as he catches the scent.
He has felt masturbation before this, of course.
There are over twelve seers inhabiting this particular construct. Only a few of those seers are female, including the Bridge. Even fewer of them are currently having sex.
Terian even swears he’s felt Dehgoies masturbate...although he can’t be certain of something that specific, of course. Not from outside the construct’s walls.
This feels different.
The images stabilize, enfolded by whoever is currently tasked with monitoring the construct walls. Terian already knows that whoever that person is...it is not Dehgoies.
An old steam engine floats by, whispers of blood and illness, and then back to water and night, ice and mountains, eagles winging silently over cold waves and tastes of Asia and even flickers of Germany and the war, South America and the United States, Russia and the Ukraine.