Watson, Ian - Black Current 02

by The Book Of The Stars (v1. 1)

  "I've no doubt that you could spin me a fascinating yam till the sun comes up again. We'll have hours and hours for it, later on. Right now you and I are going for a walk, to somewhere more secluded, out of earshot."

  Did he have any accomplices? Andri and Jothan would most likely have been involved in organizing the poison plot on the other shore. But Edrick might not have escaped from Verrino alone . . . though it would have been easier for one person to get away. Would Edrick have tmsted others to be as clever as himself?

  He kept the pistol aimed at me, while with his free hand he pulled a kerchief from his trouser pocket. To use as gag, what else? This he tucked into the neck of his jerkin. Next he drew out a length of cord —to bind my wrists. The cord dragged something else from his pocket, something half the size of a person's hand. This fell heavily to the floor, making a metallic clatter. Hastily Edrick scooped the thing up and stuffed it back in his pocket, though not before I got a look at it.

  Part of a pistol? No, the tube was too fat and short. And what was that screw on top? The thing looked designed to be worn, to fit over finger and thumb. For punching with?

  He hadn't wished me to see it.

  Stick your finger inside the tube, turn the screw; and your finger, commencing with the fingernail, would be squeezed slowly till the flesh burst open like a squashed tomato. . . .

  Then another finger. Then another. There were plenty of fingers. Then your toes, one by one. I'd caught a finger in a door once. It hadn't bruised me much, let alone smashed anything, but the pain had been excruciating. Imagine that pain prolonged and multiplied.

  When I was over in the west, to scare me Andri and Jothan had mentioned such devices, kept in the cellars of the Brotherhood. Later I'd heard tales in Verrino of the cruelties of the Occupation.

  I doubted whether Edrick nursed scruples about torturing people, if he thought the gain was worth it. He wasn't me. He wanted to march me off to a quiet spot . . . where nobody could hear me screaming?

  Before he could do that, he had to tie my hands and gag me. That isn't so easy to do one-handed—not unless he planned to knock me unconscious with the pistol butt and carry me.

  I heard a faint rustle of noise. Ever so quickly, as if shaking my head, I flicked my gaze.

  My bowels chilled. Narya was standing in the shadows outside the hall door. She was watching me. As yet the door jamb hid her from Edrick. If he could manage to tie me and march me away, he could carry Narya along under one arm. And torture her. The better to persuade me.

  Go back. I thought at Narya. Back back back. Hide! I didn't dare look again.

  In between Edrick recovering the fingerscrew and beginning to edge round the room, to get behind me, fifty thoughts seemed to have been packed into a few seconds.

  Including: would Edrick actually use his pistol? What had Andri said about pistols? "Pompous things. As soon explode in your hand, as harm your enemy." Our army had been equipped with some pistols, crafted at Guineamoy. I gathered these weren't too popular compared with a bow. But Edrick probably had the very best.

  I threw myself from my chair, rolled head over heels and bounced through the doorway, aiming to crash into Narya and carry her off. That was the idea. Not that I thought it out in detail. I just went.

  It didn't work. I hit the doorway a glancing blow, knocking a good bit of wind out of me—but at least I ended up in the hall. Narya wasn't even there. She'd gone.

  Where should / go? Out of the front door? Edrick might have a companion posted outside. Besides, I mightn't get time to unbolt the door. Upstairs and out through Capsi's open window? Climb up to the flat of the roof if I could manage it, and scream blue murder? Rouse the neighbourhood? I leapt up the stairs with Edrick right on my tail. His hand clutched my ankle. Swirling, I slashed flesh with my diamond ring like a cat clawing a dog behind it. He cursed; I wrenched free, and fairly threw myself the rest of the way upstairs. Narya might have fled to her room. I mustn't lead him to her. And my room had a key, hers didn't.

  I slammed my bedroom door just a moment too late. Edrick blocked it from closing completely. For a few moments I held him off with my back to the door and my feet braced against the bedstead. What a weird reprise of childhood years when a teasing Capsi used to chase me to my room, pretending to be a bogeyman. Now there was a real bogeyman loose in our home, with a machine in his pocket to crush my fingers. The key was in the lock but I couldn't for the life of me force the door home. Instead the door was forcing me back slowly but surely.

  I couldn't hold it. My legs were packing up. A weapon: I needed a weapon!

  Scissors! Sharp scissors of best Guineamoy metal were kept in the bedside cupboard. I could use those to stab in the dark. I could smash Edrick's glasses, blind his eyes! I mustn't be squeamish about where I stabbed him.

  I let the door toss me right across the bed. I rolled to the floor beyond, dragged the cupboard door open, scrabbled inside, made a fist around those scissors. Staying low, I squinted over the covers.

  Edrick bulked in the doorway as a vague silhouette. I made my breath leak in and out slowly so as not to betray myself by panting.

  The silhouette announced quietly, "If you try to get away again, I will shoot you."

  He would have to spot me first. As yet he wasn't venturing away from the door. He was waiting till his eyes adjusted. Already I could see grey outlines. Stars were bright outside the window; but apart from the leaflet up top the window was closed. The only way out would be to burst through wood, glass and all. The fall could cripple me on those ornamental boulders below.

  I balanced, clutching my scissors, making believe I was a bouncy ball. Shutting the door behind him, Edrick took a few paces into the room. He didn't lock the door. Either he was unaware of the key, or he wanted to leave himself a quick exit.

  "Though," he whispered, "I mightn't need to hurt you if you cooperate. . . ."

  I slithered under the bed and backed up against the wall. In this position he couldn't knock me senseless.

  Footsteps; faint shape of feet.

  "So: gone to ground, eh?"

  He was kneeling down. He wouldn't be able to see me immediately in the deeper darkness where I lay, not if I kept still.

  Shoulders . . . head . . . get ready!

  Unaccountably the bedroom door began to open.

  Edrick saw where I was crouched. "Ah," he said.

  And past him I saw Narya faintly in the half-open doorway. The stupid, stupid child!

  Edrick laid his pistol down and groped for my legs. He would expect me to kick, and would grip my ankle again.

  What was Narya doing? She had crept around the door. The key! She was pulling the key from the lock!

  Hold the scissors just so . . . Squirm—and stab!

  "Aaah!" Edrick stifled a cry of pain. "You filthy damn witch."

  Narya was backing out—and I was sure she had the key. Yes, I heard it scrape into the far side of the lock! Then I heard the key turn: the faintest click. That damn conniving brat was locking her unwanted sister in with the bogeyman! This bogeyman had obviously come in response to her secret desires to dispose of the stranger called Yaleen.

  Edrick took up his pistol again in his wounded hand.

  "This is your very last chance. You toss that knife out, or I'll kill you."

  "I really don't think you ought to shoot me," I said. "You've no idea what a mistake it'll be if you kill me."

  "Ha ha," said tonelessly. But it was true.

  "Just let me explain what'll happen."

  "I'll count to five."

  "No, listen."

  "One."

  "It isn't in your own best interests, Doctor Edrick."

  "Two. You hurt me."

  "The Worm—"

  "Three."

  "That's to say, the Satan-Snake—"

  "Four. Nobody hurts me."

  "—It told me it would—"

  "Five. Die, Snake-daughter!"

  A blinding crash, a punch in my chest as if I'd b
een impaled by a mast. . . .

  Your body is where the world begins and ends. Your body is the boundary. And when that boundary, of the body, is smashed, when it's stove in like a boat rammed on a rock, oddly it isn't you who sinks, it's the world. It's the world that disappears into the depths down a deep dark well of water.

  The whole world sank right then.

  I was in a blue void. I was aware of nothing except for that azure light. My body had vanished. So had everything else. Maybe I was spinning? I seemed to have nothing either to spin with or to be still with, but I did wonder whether I was spinning.

  Maybe I was spinning so rapidly that nothing else was visible? I tried to slow myself down. I don't know what exactly I thought I was slowing, since I didn't have a body. . . .

  I seemed to be in this empty sky-space for a long time.

  Then:

  Welcome back, Yaleen, said the Worm.

  Damn it.

  Edrick had had his revenge, all right. His revenge for dashed hopes, destroyed ambitions. His revenge for being diddled by a slip of a girl.

  But what a hollow revenge this was, to be sure! If only he'd known the truth, how zealously he would have fought to keep me alive!

  Yet though he didn't know it, this was the best possible revenge he could have had. Because he had made me the Worm's own creature. I'd thought that event would be years and years in the future. It was soon, so very soon.

  / said hullo, Yaleen.

  I heard you. Hullo, Worm.

  That's better. Maybe you're wondering where you are?

  In the Ka-store, I suppose.

  Not exactly. Do you recall how I was outlining my scheme to send a human agent back along the psylink to Eeden?

  How could I forget? That's always been the great ambition of my life: to travel!

  The great ambition of your death, surely?

  Of course, my death. I forgot. How silly of me. Good joke, Worm. You always were a good sport.

  Only since you became involved in my affairs, Yaleen!

  How gallant.

  Not at all. I owe you, my dear. Didn't I promise to inform you of Kas and Godminds, of stars and Eeden? How could I possibly break my word? I have my honour to uphold.

  Id be quite happy to overlook all that, Worm. Consider yourself absolved.

  No, no, I insist. My treat. I shall now display how I intend to tackle this business. I'll show you what's about to happen, hmm?

  Couldn ’t you send somebody else to Eeden? No, I suppose not. We 're part of each other, aren’t we? In that case, how awful to separate us!

  Oh, you ’ll be back afterwards. I'm fairly sure I can manage that. With our affinity for each other, how could you doubt it? As you say, it’s really quite touching, our relationship: a bit like Mum and daughter. Heigh-ho, a goddess and her girl!

  Okay, so I'm touched. Except that there isn’t anything hereabouts to touch. I don’t seem to have any hands. I suppose there's no chance of you changing your mind?

  None at all.

  I sighed. Shall we get on with it?

  That’s my girl!

  All of a sudden there were images to see; and if I was spinning around, as I imagined, then those shapes must be spinning around too, keeping pace with me. This seemed to be so. Like the pattern on a child's top which wanders widdershins while the top spins the opposite way, the display slid slowly round me.

  I drank those images greedily. I couldn't help myself. Absolutely nothing else existed, so those images were everything to me—and I guess this printed them pretty deep in me, the way that I'd printed my special image into the fabric of the Worm a while back.

  If I'd had eyes to close, to shut those images out, maybe I could have avoided having to travel the psylink to Eeden as the cat's paw of the Worm. Maybe I could have become one of the ordinary river- dead, reliving my own life and other lives.

  But I couldn't, so I didn't.

  How to convey those images? They were shapes of power, if I can put it that way. They weren't pictures. Yet they conveyed knowledge, and this knowledge seemed to pop into my mind as if from nowhere. It was just as if the Worm knew exactly how my own thoughts were woven together, so it presented suitable patterns— and these immediately became garments of thought which I was wearing within me.

  Stolen garments! The Worm had filched these from the line where they hung: that line linking Sons of Adam (now deceased) with the Godmind far away.

  I began to understand the psylink. Somewhat. Perhaps "understand" is too ambitious a term. Say rather that I knew how I would be using it in rather the same way that I knew how to talk, but couldn't for the life of me have said what went on in my mouth when I spoke.

  I was aware, as if the knowledge had been bom with me, of how the Godmind had sent out ships with seeds of life on board. When our parent ship arrived here, its seeds were adapted to our world. Out of the substance of the ship, bodies were bred, and minds were printed upon these bodies: minds which the Godmind could fish back to Eeden when the bodies died. The Godmind could fish back all natural descendants of those first "artificial" colonists and replant their minds in artificial bodies, to live a second life back in Eeden; all, with the exception of those who were filtered out into the Ka- store of the Worm. And so the Godmind populated the universe with people, and brought back the knowledge thereof.

  This was slightly at odds with what the Sons thought in their cruel and jumbled way. Andri had once told me that all of us were Eeden minds in puppet flesh. Not so! Only the first generation possessed manufactured bodies. Later generations were all genuine persons of our world. However, the psylink survived, and was passed down from generation to generation just like blue eyes or red hair.

  Eeden must be getting kind of crowded by now, I remarked.

  Ah, but those second-lives will also end, as soon as the bodies wear out.

  What happens to their Kas after that? Do they just dissolve? Evaporate, what?

  Maybe, the Worm said in jolly vein, the Godmind eats them. But I'll get you back, I promise, then you can tell me what the Godmind really is—and why it bothers with human beings at all.

  Why it bothers: what do you mean?

  Consider: the Godmind uses people as its tools on distant planets; as its eyes and ears. Why bother, when it can send out machines so clever that they can build people? What's the plan? Where do people come into it? Who dreamed up the plan in the first place? And what about me? I was put here ages ago to stop intelligent life from blooming. Who put me here? Why? Okay, off you go, then!

  Hey, I'm not ready! There are a zillion things I don’t know.

  Me neither. In at the deep end, say I.

  Ho ho. That ought to have been my line. (With the caveat: "Just so long as there aren't any stingers in the water!")

  By now the shapes of power had melted back into the blue. I received the Ka equivalent of a pat on the back. Needless to say, the gentlest of touches on a spinning top will send it skittering wildly away. . . .

  I skittered; dizzyingly, a flutterbye blown by a storm.

  A storm: oh yes, there was a storm in the vicinity. This was no storm of clouds and rain, of thunder and lightning. This was a turmoil in the blue nothingness; and thanks to those power-images, I knew the cause.

  The psylink stretched away to Eeden like a long hawser mooring our world. Vibrations sped along this hawser. Where the hawser tethered our world, it splayed into a million separate fibres. A fair number of these hung loose. Tendrils of the black current, feelers of the Worm, blocked and parried many of these questing loose ends; there in what I now thought of as Ka-space. Others the Worm hung on to, knotting round them. This dance of thrust and riposte in Ka-space constituted the "storm". It caused a turbulence which hid any sight of far Eeden. I felt buffeted and battered.

  What was the nature of these tendrils? Emptiness, nothingness. It seemed as if knots could be tied in nothingness; as though emptiness could be braided; as though strings could be formed by winding the void around itself
—invisible strings as lengthy as thought itself.

  Suddenly I was clear of the storm-front. I was a vibration travelling along the hawser. Actually, I felt I was two things at once. I was a wave; and I was a mote bobbing upon that wave. My bobbing (no, my spin) produced the wave whereon I travelled. Equally, what propelled me towards my destination was the twitching of the hawser, the fluid rhythm of the psylink.

  A slim tendril of the black current had attached itself to me. This stretched out and out in my wake. By means of this I would find my way back to the /T«-store of the Worm . . . eventually, somehow, perhaps.

  I wondered what Doctor Edrick was doing. Was he breaking open my bedroom door? Kidnapping Narya? Burning the house down in pique?

  I would never know the answer. Not for a very long time, at least.

  Eventually I might relive a life which could tell me, if I ever got back to the A'a-store. Eventually: that might as well be never.

  Was Edrick doing any of these things now, at this moment? It might only be a short while since I'd died; equally it could be hours or days. No units of time meant anything any longer. In the blue void of death, with no sun shining nor stars, there was no way to tell the time or measure distance.

  I sped. I wasn't cold, I wasn't hot. I wasn't hungry, or even lonely. I was just me.

  I tried to recapture the sense of completeness I'd known once before in the Art-store, when I'd taken passage aboard other finished lives. I tried to enjoy the luminosity that floods a life when it's over. But this balm wouldn't come. For although I was dead, things weren't over yet. I couldn't re-live my life. I could only remember my life ordinarily; which is to say: not very well.

  I sped through the nothing. If nothing happened soon, how much longer could I go on being me?