Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

seemed to make her mother restless. Jamie watched as Demba stepped away from Nori and the silent attending crowd. Jamie was startled when Demba sang a single clear note across the gap to the reflecting stone walls. She moved to another spot and sang two notes, bell-like, at an odd interval. Jamie could not see a reason for an admiral to do this, but of course this woman was far more than just an admiral. Jamie glanced at the security officer Gregor to see if he was as surprised as she was. It seemed so.

  "Over there," Nori said to Demba. "Near the edge."

  Demba moved to the spot at the edge of the cliff. She sang three notes which carried far and sustained echoes well.

  "Sing?" Nori suggested hopefully.

  The old woman must have remembered that Demba could sing. Had she seen the Mother Earth Opera, or was her memory from a very long time ago, perhaps before Jamie was born? If this was to be an act on Demba's part to subvert resistance through music, no matter how wonderful a singer she was, Jamie thought it was at best amusing. What kind of music would fit such a setting as this? Yet Jamie was anxious to hear Demba sing, perhaps to verify at least one unbelievable thing about her mother.

  Demba sang! The sound filled the natural theater. An almost atonal song began like a lament, an eerily melancholy sound that tugged at Jamie's emotions, making her anticipate what else it might become. The path of the song began to climb. It could not be called melody or even variation, yet it progressed. It was a struggle toward order, its almost wordless notes a running battle against disorder, a search for beauty and resolution. It carried Jamie's emotions ever upward, even making her breathing synchronize to the rhythm of the strange song. It ended in triumph and release, its magic finished too soon. Looking around at the expressions on everyone's face she thought something had changed. She looked again at Gregor. There was an agreement in reaction between her and Gregor. Reality was gently shifted a short distance away from what everyone once knew.

  Nori Hoshino rested and regained her strength. They resumed their journey.

  "What was that?" Mnro asked Demba, breaking the spell that was cast over everyone. "What language?"

  "It was a song I believe to be half a billion years old," Demba replied. "I'm remembering Phuti now and our many research projects and this one just came to me. I spent forty years, off and on, deciphering it. I can't be sure it was meant to be a song. I made some guesses and I let myself get carried away. I'm sure the Elder Race would not have recognized their composition. This place made me think about it musically. The echoes, the ringing. The way the notes are related, I thought they should sound as though struck like bells."

  "It was the most alien thing I've ever heard," Jamie commented. "Why did you sing it?"

  "Just for the fun of it." Her mother smiled at her, perhaps mischievously.

  Jamie could not quite believe that reason. She could not imagine such an effective performance was due to the whim of enjoyment, but she could now believe Demba was the one who sang at the Mother Earth Opera.

  "As a warning," the Old One - Nori - said. "There are wonderful things we don't understand, and they will come to us whether we want them or not. And we may be changed forever."

  "I never knew you were so mystical, Nori," Mnro commented.

  "The closer you get to the end of life, perhaps the more mystical you become," Nori replied. "The mountains help."

  They moved on, gaining altitude. They entered another village beyond the mountain pass into the next valley. Villagers awaited them, filling the narrow, steep streets. Somewhere above them a bell with a deep note rang very slowly.

  The villages were small and not far apart, Jamie noted. They were more akin to neighborhoods in a lumpy landscape. Nor was the Five Worlds built on a planetary scale - it was more compact. But it was very easy for a person to feel small and planet-bound and living in an era before space travel.

  "How is she doing?" Demba asked Mnro, referring to Nori.

  "Not badly for a woman who has lived about fifty years beyond her Mnro Clinic Warranty."

  "Will she make it to the top?"

  "I doubt it. You remember how far it is."

  "And if she doesn't make it?"

  "Or if we run out of time."

  "Why didn't you keep her under treatment?"

  "Why didn't I learn how to rewrite human nature?"

  "You certainly didn't give me any chance to assert my human nature," Demba said in mock complaint.

  "Maybe you don't remember it," Mnro said, "but back at the beginning you warned me that you would try to rebel. You authorized me to take what measures were necessary to keep you on the path to this moment. I wish you had not. Look what I did to Jamie. And I could have done worse."

  That last sentence from Mnro was emphasized by a somber tone of her voice, making Jamie wonder and Demba pause.

  "It was your copy," Demba said, "not you, and she also almost let Nori slip away."

  "She couldn't come often enough in person. And she couldn't keep Clinic staff stationed here very long, because the place begins to shut down your imagination and your ambition. Phuti did too well. I almost prefer it when they were killing each other."

  "I think Phuti would agree with you," Demba said sadly. "I don't think he would have wanted to live here too long. The Five Worlds feels like an archaeological site waiting for its remains be dug up and sent to a museum."

  "Alex and Setek shouldn't have left him," Mnro said. "I'm sure Phuti would have wanted to go with them. But Alex knew he was in the midst of bringing peace to this world and never gave him a chance to decide. Given the choice, he probably would have stayed here, but he would have wanted to go with them."

  In the middle of a great forest Nori faltered. Jamie caught her before she could strike the ground. She placed her gently against the base of a tree and sat down with her to provide support. Sammy sat on a convenient rock. He rubbed where the regeneration machine connected to his leg.

  Mnro knelt and placed a hand on Nori's pumping chest. Nori looked up at her with a serene expression as she labored to breathe.

  "You waited too long!" Nori said between gasps. "I'm sure my father is dead. Must you take Phuti?"

  "Yes," Mnro replied. "We must."

  "Why? He can't be vital to your crew needs. He's only an anthropologist."

  "He belongs with us, Nori! He's one of us. We were shipmates and explorers. We are going exploring again. He would want to go with us!"

  "He isn't dead?"

  "You told me yourself," Demba said, "when I was last here. You said he was tired and just resting. He's been waiting for us, waiting for us to come and take him away. We need him!"

  "The people will be afraid to lose him," Nori said. "All in the Five Worlds make a pilgrimage to his grave, to remember him and to remember his lessons. If a man feels hate for his neighbor, he makes a pilgrimage and returns with love in his heart. The Five Worlds will fall back into chaos without him!"

  "If his legacy requires his dead body to maintain itself, then his legacy is peculiar and weak," Demba spoke with conviction. "Nor is Dawa Phuti Mende such an extraordinary man that others should be so much less, so dependent, so fearful to lose him. I think the people of the Five Worlds must give him up, or else their future will always look to them like their past, never changing, never challenging. But a different future will surely come, and when it comes, it may be unbearable, because the change will terrify them. What Phuti gave these people wasn't an eternity of peaceful social order, but merely a stretch of time in which to realize that war was avoidable. The universe is a dangerous place, always changing, and it will no more respect a dead body on a mountaintop than it will an insect you step on unawares. The people must believe in themselves and expect to be challenged by the future!"

  "I wish you could tell that to everyone on the road below us," Mnro said.

  "You have," Nori said. "As I hear, they hear."

  Jamie knew from a brief review of its history before coming to the Five Worlds that Dr. Mende had instituted the use of
communications augments, like shiplinks, to help stabilize the merging cultures through better means of dialogue. Apparently everyone was electronically connected to the hearing of Nori, the Old One, while this important event progressed.

  "How is she?" Demba asked Mnro.

  Mnro withdrew her hand from Nori's chest.

  "Her rhythms have stabilized but she shouldn't exert herself more. The emotional stress will be as much as I would want her to endure. I know she looks very calm, but I refuse to believe she's any better than me at containing her emotions."

  "Can I carry her?" Jamie inquired.

  When she received a nod of assent, Jamie positioned herself to accept Nori onto her back. The old woman put her arms around Jamie's shoulders and Jamie tucked her arms under Nori's legs after Demba rearranged the lower part of her robe.

  Jamie turned up the road, carrying Nori. She set a quicker pace.

  From side roads and paths, across fields and down rocky slopes, people from other places joined the procession. All along the road, even in high wild places, people gathered to wait to join the march. Their faces appeared solemn.

  Now they followed a wide footpath worn into the stone by countless pilgrims over many years. The altitude gave them panoramas of forests, farms, and villages far below them. Air pressure lessened slightly and gravity decreased more as they ascended into the clouds. Jamie didn't need to stop and rest. Struggling to keep pace, Sammy yielded to Demba and let her carry him on her back.

  The