Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  “No, that’s not it.” He gestured to his savant, and it drew near. “Give us some light,” he ordered. It lit slowly, casting a warm glow through the room. Liam ran his fingers through his chestnut hair. “What woke you?” he asked.

  “I thought I heard a … whisper. A question.” I had felt a warm breath.

  “It was a bogy.” He brushed the wall where the shape had been, stroking it with his fingertips as if seeking out some secret message encoded in its texture. “Come out, little one,” he crooned. “You have something to say. So show yourself.”

  “Liam, what’s a bogy?”

  “A kind of mechanic.”

  An artificial creature. “Like a savant?” I asked.

  “No. Nothing like that. More like a watcher. A place spirit. Some are horrible. Many are very beautiful. But they’re not alive, so sometimes they get returned by the silver … and it’s said some players made them for just that purpose—to hold the memory of a favorite place, when it seemed sure the silver would take it.

  “But from all I’ve heard most have a darker nature, guardians created to keep intruders away or to complete some unwholesome task their owners left unfinished.”

  I caught a flash of motion to the left and turned. Liam followed my gaze.

  There she was—and no faint shadow this time. She had gained definition in the light, and as her tiny hand moved, her fingers—so strangely long and slender—emerged from the wall like fingers breaking the surface of water. Liam stepped in front of me. “Stand away,” he warned. “It’s coming out.”

  The hand reached from the suddenly fluid wall as if it were pushing a curtain aside. Then the creature leaned forward, and a delicate woman’s face peered into the room. Her gaze settled on us as she stepped forth onto the floor.

  She was as white as the walls, with eyes that were saved by a small film of iridescence from being as white and blind as a statue’s. Her hair was sculpted and fixed in an upswept coiffure. Her body was sculpted too, appearing white and unshadowed and terribly slender as she slipped free of the wall. But she was no starveling: no bones showed through her skin, though nothing else was hidden. She was nude, with long, long legs in no human proportion and small breasts and a sculpted patch of white pubic hair. She smiled coquettishly at Liam. Then she whispered a syllable, the same syllable I had heard before, and again I felt the warmth of her breath.

  “Do you know that word?” Liam asked.

  I shook my head. The wall behind her looked intact, as if it had given up nothing of its structure. I wanted to knock against it to see if it was still solid, but Liam raised his arm protectively in front of me as if this little mechanic might be a threat. So I went instead to fetch my savant.

  There are people who claim to remember the details of their past lives: who they were, what they did, where they lived, and who they loved and hated. Perhaps their claims are true, but I had no such specific memories. The best evidence of my past was a knack for ancient languages. There were nine I could speak and understand in full, and several more in pieces. All of them had come to me easily the first time I heard them spoken, so I can only think they were languages I had used in other lives. I was sure many others still lay undiscovered in my mind, and I hoped to find one that night.

  I retrieved my savant from its post at the door. Then I turned to the bogy, and in our own language I asked her, “Can you understand any of the words we say?”

  She fixed me with her iridescent eyes, answering in a strange, harsh tongue. I didn’t recognize any of her words, and neither did my savant. So I switched to another language, and repeated my question, and when that didn’t work I switched to another. That was the charm. The bogy drew back in startled surprise. Then she spoke: not in the language I had just used, but in one somewhat similar.

  It was as if a channel had come into focus. Her words suddenly made sense within my mind. She had asked: “Do you know this one?”

  I did. It was an archaic language, one I had learned from my savant, so old that its origin had been forgotten even in the time of that ancient sage. “Yes,” I said. “I know this tongue.”

  The bogy drew herself up. Though she was scarcely four feet tall, she somehow contrived to look down on me with a haughty gaze. “It is a slave’s language.”

  I turned a puzzled frown on my savant. “What is this word?”

  In its cultured voice the savant explained the meaning of “slave.”

  Liam’s expression became grim. “Translate for me,” he said.

  I nodded at my savant to convey the order. Then I turned back to the bogy, and speaking her “slave language” in a tone that was none-too-friendly, I said, “You are from a time very long ago. Much has changed in the world.”

  She paid no attention to my words. Instead she listened as my savant whispered its translation to Liam. I had no doubt she understood the implication, for she turned to Liam with a crafty smile. “Your slave has been plotting against you.” With a nod of her head she indicated me, while the savant dutifully provided Liam with a translation. “She has been in contact with another slave. Punish her now, and perhaps she can be made to serve properly. If you do not take a strong hand, you will surely have to kill her in the end.”

  I knew at once that she was referring to my conversation with Yaphet, and I felt a surge of guilt for it was true that I hadn’t mentioned it to Liam.

  He glared at the bogy. His face had taken on a dark, rosy flush. His hands were clenched in tight fists and I couldn’t tell if he was about to erupt in fury or in laughter.

  “I was talking to Yaphet,” I said quickly, feeling an irrational need to make this confession. “While you were asleep.”

  His gaze shifted to me. “Were you?” His voice sounded strained. A smile flitted around his mouth, then disappeared. “Best you behave, Jubilee. Your daddy might not like it if I had to do you harm.” He winked at me. Then he turned to the bogy and spoke to it, while my savant translated his words into the “slave’s tongue.” “You came here to tell me something, didn’t you, little one?”

  “Your words are not polluted by this slave’s dialect.”

  Quickly I asked, “How would you say that in your own tongue?”

  I didn’t expect the bogy to respond. She obviously thought me beneath her notice, so I was surprised when she spoke her language again, though she addressed her words to Liam, not to me. I repeated her strange words, speaking them softly to myself and immediately I felt a resonance deep in my mind. Liam watched me expectantly. “I think I have it in memory,” I told him, “but I need more words.”

  Liam got them for me. He questioned the bogy, commanding her to respond first in the slave’s language, and then to repeat the same thing in the master’s dialect, and to my surprise she obeyed, though when I remarked on this, Liam only shrugged. “Calling bogies is a talent of mine. This is the fifth one I’ve seen.”

  “You never mentioned it before.”

  “It’s not a talent I would have chosen. They’re mostly wicked things, left behind to guard a place or perform a task too distasteful for true players.”

  That was certainly true of this one. We learned she was a persona based on the ancient queen of this city, though I think she was only a shallow reflection of that evil, without much wisdom or cunning. Despite what I had told her, she believed that only a few days had passed since the silver had drifted over her city. She thought she knew Liam as one of her warlords. This angered him. None of us can be held responsible for our past lives, but it’s never pleasant to think of the evil we might have done. She told us that the aristocracy of this city had been supplemented with children who fell within a certain genetic range. They were taken from their slave mothers and made into warriors. Liam was of this class.

  But what did it mean that I was quickly learning to speak the language of such a people?

  The bogy believed it was Fiaccomo himself who had brought the silver into this city.

  All that last week before the silver came t
here had been public executions of his followers. On the final evening, as the executions progressed, a report arrived from a scout in the hills north of the city. Fiaccomo had been seen. Warriors were sent after him in flying machines—

  (Flying machines! I could hardly contain my surprise. Flying machines were like tinder made to ignite a silver storm. Any mechanical device rising into the atmosphere could not go long without attracting an outburst of silver, even in the bright light of noon. But the bogy spoke of flying machines as if they were common devices, and safe.)

  The warriors searched until full dark, when all communication with them abruptly failed. Minutes later the silver was sighted, flowing out of the northern hills and down onto the plain. The queen’s anger reverberated in the bogy’s fierce voice: “It was Fiaccomo who stirred up this legendary weapon against us, dredging it up from the dead past. We had no defense. Those who mattered escaped in flying machines, but the slaves—Fiaccomo’s own people—they all succumbed. I heard them screaming in the streets below and then a silence.

  “But it was not over. Trespassers had gotten into the tower. They crept up the stairs, to this very room, but their insolence did not save them. The silver rose, flooding my windows, floor by floor, until it rolled into this chamber. How they screamed! And well deserved it was, for trespassing in my private rooms.

  “The fog lingered for an hour or so past dawn. No one remained when it finally went away. That was nine days ago. Fiaccomo thought he could destroy us with this ancient curse, but now you have come back. Have you found Fiaccomo? Is it time for our counter attack?”

  Liam’s face was more grim than I had ever seen it. “There will be no counter attack, little one. Not ever. This city is dead and you are a powerless ghost, and I hope you vanish into the silver again, and for all time. Now begone.”

  Her face contorted in fury at his words, but somehow she could not disobey him. She stumbled sideways, toward the central wall, thrusting a hand out to keep from falling. “You will hang too,” she growled. “Traitor.”

  “Go!” Liam shouted. “Vanish!”

  And she did. Her substance flowed back into the wall until not even a shadow of her remained … except the shadow she had left on our minds. I could hear her voice speaking in its master’s tongue the death sentences of hundreds and it made me dizzy. My head buzzed and I sat down before I could fall.

  “Jubilee, are you all right?”

  Next thing I knew Liam was crouched beside me with his arm around my shoulders. My skin felt clammy and I didn’t know how to answer. “Is it dawn?” I whispered.

  “It’s close enough.”

  “Then let’s go home.”

  We packed our things as quickly as we could and we left that city when the sun’s light was only a glimmer in the east.

  Chapter 5

  “Wake up, Yaphet. Yaphet?”

  I could see him asleep on his bed beneath the dim glow of a hanging lamp, its globe worked in tiles of colored glass to make flowers purple and yellow in color. The variegated light fell over him, illuminating the high points of his face, accenting the shadows. Sleep gives to some people a look of peace so profound it is almost inhuman. Yaphet had that look. In the shadows he seemed more a memory of an idealized past than a young man of this world.

  “Yaphet.”

  A week had passed since my adventure in the city and in that time I had been able to talk to Yaphet only twice. The market connection to Vesarevi was intermittent and rationed, and tonight the channels were especially bad. My father had called that morning to say he was leaving Xahiclan at last. He was to have called again from Temple Nathé where he would stay the night, but an antenna must have gone down along the highway because we’d had no word from him. So it was a wonder I’d reached Yaphet at all.

  “Yaphet!”

  He sat up abruptly, the peace on his face replaced by fear as he stared wide-eyed at the door of his room.

  “Yaphet, it’s me. Jubilee.”

  He turned to the sound of my voice. His gaze found the mimic screen of his savant, and as he focused on me, the tension went out of him. “Jubilee. I was dreaming. What time is it?”

  “Late. It’s past midnight here.”

  “Are you outside?”

  I nodded. I’d come to sit on the lettered-stone wall that surrounds Temple Huacho. Silver filled all the vales that night, making islands of each hill. The gleaming surface of that nocturnal sea lay a hundred feet below me, disturbed by currents and restless waves that moved in no concerted direction, but it wasn’t rising. I breathed its fresh, invigorating scent (like newly made air, I thought). Its cool, clear light lit the night, spilling over the wall to touch the shapes of the trees in the orchard. Through their whispering leaves I could just see the pink glow of a lantern in the temple courtyard. Moki had come out with me. He lay now with his chin in my lap, breathing softly in a dreamless sleep. Overhead, the Bow of Heaven arched in faint luminescence across the stars.

  Yaphet glanced again at his bedroom door. Then he spoke in a low voice. “I wish I were with you. Now.”

  “Don’t come,” I warned him. “Not yet.” I was frightened at how quickly his feelings were changing. He’d been wary at our first meeting, but he’d been hungry at our second. After that there had been a row with his father, and by the anxious way he watched his door I guessed there had been another, but I didn’t ask.

  “Don’t you want to be with me, Jubilee?”

  In truth, I wasn’t sure. I liked Yaphet. I liked talking to him, and I would stay up hours for the chance of a few minutes of conversation. He was a puzzle to me, a fascination: How could it be that of all the players in the world, he was for me? Why should it be so? I wanted to understand this strange rule almost as much as I wanted to understand the silver.

  But I also knew that if Yaphet left Vesarevi he would be taking away from me the years I had planned to spend wayfaring. I would be forced to wait for him at Temple Huacho and that I did not want to do.

  So I mumbled some reassuring sentiment—“We’ll be together in time”—and went on to another subject. Yaphet had many interests, and it wasn’t hard yet to turn his mind onto other tracks.

  I told him about the archaeologist from Halibury who had gone out to the ruined city. “I saw the report in the market—he came too late. There had been silver floods since I was there and they’d eaten away at the buildings. The base of the tower and the execution tree in the square were so badly eroded they’d toppled.”

  I had seen pictures. The tower resembled a log drizzled with sugar frosting while the execution tree had become a long, thin, branching mound of no discernible purpose. I remembered my first impression of the city, the ephemeral feel of the pristine white buildings, and how I had wondered if they were made of salt. Now they were melting like salt structures lapped by a rising tide. It was strange—even disturbing—to think that Liam and I might have been the only players to see the city intact. Even my mother had never heard of a ruin so large, brought forth by the silver and consumed again with such speed. Everyone agreed we were lucky to have seen it, but I wondered … was it luck? The silver was said to act sometimes as if with a purpose: the dreaming goddess, waking briefly to accomplish some small task in the world. I was young enough to wonder if the goddess had somehow guided our visit to those ancient ruins.

  “You were lucky it was quiet the night you were there,” Yaphet said.

  I shrugged. “It’s a quiet region. There are only three or four floods a year.”

  “It sounds like there were that many just in this last week.”

  Was he criticizing me? I didn’t like the idea. “So I was lucky. I’m a lucky player. It’s what everyone says.”

  He didn’t seem to notice my change of tone. “I wonder if there’s something in the ruins that draws the silver?”

  “That bogy,” I suggested, only half facetiously. “Fiaccomo’s ghost probably wants it lost again.”

  That drew a faint smile, but already our time wa
s up. “Be safe,” he whispered. He raised his hand as if to touch me, and the link closed.

  I lingered awhile on the wall, wondering at myself. Why didn’t I feel more grateful for my luck? To find a lover like Yaphet so easily, and so soon—it was unheard of. But my gratitude was mixed with resentment, and I began to worry that my ambivalence would extract some terrible price of its own.

  I was immersed in these gloomy thoughts when Moki came suddenly awake. He raised his chin from my lap, his jackal ears pricked forward and a low growl in his throat. I turned to follow the direction of his gaze and was startled to see a dark figure walking up the switchback road from the vale. It was a man, but I knew at a glance it wasn’t Liam. The walk was wrong, the span of the shoulders, the manner of dress. This was a stranger.

  But that wasn’t possible.

  The silver lay only a few dozen feet behind him. All night it had encircled the hill. There was nowhere this man could have come from, unless he had been hiding in the brambles since nightfall.

  Moki stood, growling again, louder and more menacing than before. I laid a hand on his back and felt his red fur standing stiff. “Quiet,” I whispered. “Let’s see who he is.”

  I watched the stranger come up the path. The color of his skin was lost against the glow of the fog, but I could see he was a man of medium build, near my own height. He was dressed strangely, in wide, starched pants and a long tunic with starched sleeves. At first I thought he was wearing an odd hat, but as he drew nearer I saw it was his hair, long and thick and folded on itself in sleek black waves, pinned in place by silver clips.

  I was sure he glimpsed me as he rounded the switchback but he did not call out a greeting. Neither did I. Little Moki gave up on his defense. He slunk behind me and lay down, his chin pressed against the lettered stone of the wall. The night was quiet, so that I could hear the stranger’s footsteps as he advanced up the road.

  He bypassed the gate and walked across the grass until he drew even with me. Then, standing below the wall, he looked up.