“What open route?”
“The one we made when we called you. You can’t Walk that distance the same way you can from one planet to the next in the same galaxy. It takes planning, some lining up of wormholes. I left the route open so you could come home. But you didn’t use it. You came straight here. How?”
Seb looked at the tiny face, with its furious, frustrated expression.
“I don’t know.”
“Argh! I knew you were going to say that.”
Seb thought of the face he had seen in the flames. He detected nothing other than curiosity from Fypp.
“I saw something while I was in the Gyeuk Egg. A human face. Connected to me, somehow. Needing me. I followed it.”
“You followed it? You just…followed it?”
Seb thought for a moment.
“It was a little like when you called me, I guess. I was on Innisfarne then, and it felt as if I was leaving a piece at a time. As if the island, and the people on it, were becoming less real. But that took weeks. This time, it was minutes. And I was in control, I had more of a choice.”
“I gave you a choice, too. You could have said no.”
Seb thought back to those weeks.
“That’s not true.”
Fypp stuck her lower lip out. “Oh, boohoo,” she said, but Seb could sense genuine regret for her actions behind the flippant facade. She had called him in exactly the same way as the other T’hn’uuth, forgetting, or not properly considering, the fact that Seb had only just become T’hn’uuth. He was a puzzle to her. Her demonstrable lack of empathy for him and his situation, however much of an enigma he represented, was now causing her some discomfort.
“Well, whatever,” she said. “The thing is, you just did the impossible. And here you are again on this tiny planet. Maybe Baiyaan is right after all. Maybe. We’ll know better when we check the Egg.”
“Check it? But I failed. The People rejected me. They watched Cochta cut me to pieces.”
“We won’t know whether you failed, or succeeded, for certain until we observe what happens in the years following your intervention.”
“Years?”
“Yes. Years. We can observe any point in history we choose to. We can see the result of your messiah schtick.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m going home first. I may have been gone weeks. Mee will be worried. We can check the Gyeuk Egg once I’ve seen her.”
“Ah.” Fypp’s face didn’t change, but Seb began picking up some kind of shielding in her Manna, as if she was withholding access to something.
“What are you hiding, Fypp?”
As if trying to compensate for her previous lack of empathy, Fypp seemed determined to be more careful this time.
“Well, I know you think of time differently. When you’re billions of years old, it seems far more fluid. Shorter periods of time seem almost inconsequential. Do you see?”
“No.”
“Well, take the route I opened for you, for instance. It covered quite a distance. When a T’hn’uuth Walks a significant distance, she cannot break the laws of physics, just manipulate existing laws and her own mental processes. Hmm?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“A Walk across vast distances requires you to slow your conscious and unconscious routines significantly enough to give the illusion of instantaneous travel. In reality, of course, no such thing is possible.”
Seb had become very quiet and still.
“How long?”
“And, of course, you made the trip both ways.” Fypp was babbling now. She never babbled. “The time you spent with us, and the time you spent in the simulation, were just hours in your timeline, but the journey, well—”
“How long? Months? Longer?” Seb didn’t raise his voice, but Fypp knew she had to answer him.
“Seventeen years, three months,” she said.
Fypp decided to make the sandcastle while maintaining a Zen-like mental state, focusing only on the intricacies of the task in front of her, moving each grain of sand into place one by one, building a perfect replica of the castle a few miles behind her back. She deliberately slowed her progress to allow herself time to settle back into her customary mindset. She knew individual consciousness to be illusory; she had lived so many lifetimes that she barely recognized the person she was a thousand years ago, let alone a million. And yet the flash of pain from Seb Varden before he Walked had wounded her as well. She was unsettled. The monkey-descended upstart had barely lived long enough to begin to comprehend the merest hint of the beginnings of a partial understanding of the most basic concepts that might allow even a half-baked guess at the structures, real, imaginary and real/imaginary, that governed simultaneously his primitive flickering consciousness and the known and suspected dimensions of the multiverse. But try telling him that.
“Kids,” she muttered, aware that her attempt at returning to now-consciousness had failed. She completed the castle and stood, stretching like a cat.
She knew where Seb had gone, of course. In the same way that many animals sniffed their own shit, humanity was a species which actively sought out pain - particularly emotional pain. Seb had gone in search of his most recent sexual partner.
Fypp looked out across the sea, wondering how long to give him before she brought him back. Her fascination with humanity and the nub of ultimate reality they may have butted up against was fairly evenly balanced with the disdain she felt regarding the mess they constantly made of something as simple as sexual relationships. Even a cursory study of humans showed them to have an ambivalent relationship to mating, often weighing down the simple act of propagating the species with metaphysical notions regarding love. Love was an ill-defined term, and, bizarrely, that seemed to be how they liked it. Despite the fact that confusion about love’s meaning, how it should be dealt with, and to what extent it should be allowed to excuse otherwise incomprehensible behavior caused a great deal of unnecessary misery.
Fypp’s species of origin had not recognized the existence of love at all. Their evolution to Manna-using sentience had been swift, as only the most intelligent were permitted to mate. A few thousand years after her transformation into T’hn’uuth, Fypp had gained enough knowledge and insight to be able to look at her own species objectively, and wonder if such a calculated process of evolution was, in fact, optimal. Her own personality had changed significantly once she had freed herself of the societal constraints she’d barely been aware she was still carrying, and she had experimented with various relationships, some of which had evoked an emotional response akin to love. But the way love could hold an entire species like humanity in thrall, despite its manifest problems, was still a puzzle to her. She suspected a connection with the religious impulse, but the debate around it was so muddied by centuries of bickering that it was hard to find any clear, satisfying theory.
She looked out in the direction of Innisfarne. She had Walked there first, emerging on the beach where she had originally opened the route to bring Seb to his fellow T’hn’uuth. That he had arrived within a few miles of the same spot without the use of her route was almost beyond comprehension.
Seb was still an unknown quantity. He was either more powerful than she or any of her fellows had suspected, or he had somehow been helped when he made the Walk home. Fypp could detect the presence of no other T’hn’uuth nearby, but she had been around long enough to know that the universe was still capable of throwing up surprises.
There was an immediate, practical problem that would have to be confronted here. Mentally, emotionally, Seb was immature. He was still attached to the mortal creatures who made up his species of origin. He was yet to disconnect from humanity and accept his new status. The love he imagined he still felt could only ever be akin to the fondness humans themselves showed to animals they kept as pets. Until he managed to distance himself, he was vulnerable. For his own sake, it would be better not to watch those he loved grow old and die while he gre
w stronger and more powerful. It would only hold him back.
Fypp shook her head. Baiyaan had always been the compassionate one, but what he had done to this young human was surely going to lead to misery. He may have saved his life, but he had condemned Seb to a torturous lesson in the inevitability of impermanence. It was possible the shock Seb had received finding he’d been absent for nearly two decades would be sufficient to affect his sanity. She doubted it - he had certainly proven to be surprisingly resourceful so far. But…well, the risk was there.
She realized that the damage was done, that she was responsible as much as Baiyaan, and that the best course of action would be to leave him alone to find his own way through. If he could.
She sighed. She had never liked following “the best course of action,” preferring instead to consider other options until she could come up with a far more exciting course of action, usually with the potential for disaster. But, in this case, she elected to do the right thing, however boring that might be.
On the bright side, she hadn’t spent much time on Earth. She could be a tourist.
She decided to start with a few days at the bottom of the Pacific ocean. She’d heard it was fun there this time of year.
She Walked.
38
Unchapter 38
Innisfarne - Present Day
The moon that reflected on the pure white snow meant their walk to the north of the island was as well lit as it would have been during the day, the only difference being the blue, white, gray, and black tones that lent the familiar landscape a slightly dreamlike quality. As they rounded the final bend and the crofter’s cottage came into view, Seb turned to Mee and Joni, shrugging off the backpack and placing it on the ground.
“I’ll leave this with you. Just give me a minute.”
Mee raised an eyebrow. “That alien tosser took you away from me once before. I won’t let her do it again. We should go together.”
“She won’t do it again. She’s billions of years old, Mee, she had no idea such a short period of time away—as far as she understands time, at least—could cause us such pain. But I need to speak to her alone.”
Mee looked unconvinced. An unconvinced Mee was a dangerous thing. Seb took her hands in his.
“Trust me. Please.”
Finally, Mee nodded. “If you’re not back in five minutes, we’re coming in. And I’m going to give her a piece of my mind. Arsing alien shitburger.”
She was still mumbling obscenities when Seb disappeared into the cottage.
To his surprise, Seb found Fypp sitting calmly in front of a blazing fire, her legs folded under her in the lotus position. She didn’t acknowledge his return immediately, so he sat on the hard wooden chair by the window and watched her.
“I thought I’d give it a try,” she said, without opening her eyes. “Not sure it works for a T’hn’uuth. I learned to control my mind during the first few thousand years. So, no unbidden thoughts to distract me while I meditate. But no chance of encountering my true self, or no-self, either. I have tried on personalities like you might try on shoes. Some I’ve kept, and still wear now and again. Others have been discarded. ‘Fypp’ is just an arbitrary sound. Your method of communication couldn’t even say my original name. ‘Say’ is the wrong word, of course, but you don’t have the frame of reference to understand the difference.”
She got to her feet and looked at Seb. At times, her guise as a child failed to conceal her unimaginable age. Or maybe she just wasn’t trying to hide it. Whatever the reason, it made it hard for Seb to return her look.
“It’s possible that I’m not doing it properly. Self-sabotaging. Maybe because if I face myself as I truly am, I’ll know it’s time to let go. I know the allure, the beauty, of death. But I’ve avoided that final release, so far. I have my reasons. I sometimes wonder if those reasons are really good enough.”
She took out a yo-yo from the sleeve of her robe.
“I thought you’d be back sooner. I was in a funnier mood earlier.”
Seb was momentarily disorientated by the switch to practical considerations.
“I wanted to tell them where I had been, why I had been missing so long. About trying to help Baiyaan, about my time with the People.”
“Them?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said them. You wanted to tell them. Who?”
She stared back at the fire again, while sending the yo-yo up toward the ceiling and back in slow-motion. Seb felt a wave of anger and regret. Not as powerful as the feelings which had threatened to overwhelm him daily since his return, but enough that Fypp would certainly pick it up in his Manna.
“I have a daughter, Fypp. She’s nearly seventeen years old. I’ve missed her entire life.”
Fypp considered this. “Not yet, you haven’t.”
Seb felt a flash of rage rise up and instantly recede as his Manna interaction with Fypp’s told him that she wasn’t trying to make an inappropriate joke. She was just being logical.
“Everything has changed, Fypp. I failed the People, and I failed Baiyaan. Now I’ve come home to find I’ve failed as a father and a lover. I have to make things right from now on. With Mee, and with Joni. This is where I need to be. This is who I am.”
Seb felt Fypp partially block some of her Manna feed. He was getting better at reading the nuances within the constant stream of communication between them.
“You think I’m wrong, that I don’t belong here anymore. Don’t you?”
Fypp looked at him again, and he managed to meet those frighteningly ancient eyes.
“I don’t think you’re wrong, T’hn’uuth. I know it.”
At that moment, the door opened.
“Right, you, sling your hook. You lot love the final frontier, right? Well, boldly bugger off back to it.”
“You must be Mee,” said Fypp. She flicked the yo-yo back up her sleeve and held out her hand. Mee looked at it, slightly thrown by the polite gesture. Then, after a brief, but obvious, internal struggle between her feelings and her upbringing, her upbringing won. She shook the tiny hand, scowling.
“I’m Joni.” Fypp repeated the handshaking procedure. Seb had never seen Fypp act in such a polite, normal manner. It was perplexing.
Fypp stared at Joni for a few seconds. Seb was aware of Fypp’s Manna flowing around his daughter, probing, looking for information, but getting very little.
“Oh,” said Fypp, “this is what I felt when you were getting close a few minutes ago. Now, that’s very interesting. Maybe that starts to explain how Seb got back here.”
Mee stepped forward.
“Right, here’s your sodding Egg. Show us what you want to show us. But don’t take all day about it, we’ve got some more catching up to do.”
Seb knew Mee’s attitude was mostly bluster to cover how profoundly unsettled she was by meeting Fypp. It was one thing to be told about an alien older than your solar system, but it was quite another to actually meet her and feel the truth of it.
Fypp continued her unusual display of politeness and consideration.
“If I could have the Gyeuk Egg, please?”
Mee handed over the backpack, and they watched as Fypp took out its contents and slowly unwrapped the object, placing it carefully on the table.
“Wait,” she said. She closed her eyes briefly. Seb felt a burst of incredibly intricate Manna flow from Fypp to the Egg and return. The process lasted a few seconds before she opened her eyes again.
“Okay,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“Do we all have to join hands and chant?” said Mee.
“No.” Fypp showed absolutely no sign of rising to the bait. “Although you might want to sit down. It can be a little discombobulating.”
Joni and Seb sat on the sofa while Fypp reassumed the lotus position. Mee remained standing and rolled her eyes.
“Discombollocks. I think I’ll stand, thank you very much. I’m perfectly capable of SH—”
“—IT!”
/> They stood on the edge of the meeting circle. Seb guessed it was very early morning, as only one of the moons was still partially visible, sinking slowly behind Hell’s Teeth. Seb turned to see Fypp, Mee, and Joni alongside him, looking utterly out of place. He felt unexpectedly upset, as if they were intruding disrespectfully where they did not belong. He looked down at himself. Seeing his customary T-shirt and jeans, he winced.
The fire pit was cold, the ash old. There had been no meeting the previous night. Looking toward the settlement, Seb could see little difference from when he had left.
He turned to Fypp. “How long since I left?”
His voice sounded odd, but the musician in him recognized why immediately. Out of doors, in an open area, natural speech sounds a certain way - inside, the dimensions of the room subtly colors the sound, as reflections of the speaker’s voice come back in waves. A sound engineer would have spotted it immediately, and Seb only took a couple of seconds to figure out what was happening. His voice sounded exactly as it would sound back in the cottage. He was hearing himself back there.
As if reading his mind, Fypp winked at him.
“We’re not really here. Not like you were.”
The Elders’ meeting place, a slightly larger dwelling than those used for sleeping, was—unusually for this time of day—occupied. The animal skin across the opening had been secured from inside. Normally, the dwelling would only be used for meetings. The only time tradition dictated that a Leader might sleep there was when she was approaching death. As Seb watched, the skin was pulled aside, and two figures emerged, walking slowly, straight toward them. Seb did not recognize either one, although the strips of shuk skin on their belts marked them as Elders. They stopped and spoke in low voices.
Joni was looking around her excitedly, staring at the fire pit, then at the meeting circle and the forest to the west.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 117