by Jo Clayton
Brann knelt looking down at Danny Blue. He was long and lanky, not a great deal of bulk to him though his muscles were firm and full. Ahzurdan’s beard had vanished, but his hair (somewhat thinner than before, considerably grayer) filled in Daniel’s baldness. The changes in the face were more subtle, fewer wrinkles, none of them so deeply graved as those Ahzurdan wore like badges of hard living, the lips were fuller than Daniel’s had been but thinner than Ahzurdan’s, the cheekbones a hair higher and broader than Daniel’s but not so high and broad as Ahzurdan’s, the rest of the changes were a thousand such midway compromises between the two men.
His body shuddered, his fingers jerked, began clawing at the sod, his lips and eyes twitched. His breathing turned harsh and unsteady. Brann bent over him, spread her hands on his chest. “Yaril, Jaril!”
With the children occupying her body and his and guiding her, Brann began the struggle to integrate the two minds. She couldn’t see what the three of them were doing, only feel it; she groped blindly toward what she sensed as hotspots, paingeysers, cyclonic storms, working from an instinct that was an amalgam of her inborn unconscious bodyknowledge and the learned knowledge of the children (their understanding of their own bodies and minds, their considerable experience of the minds and bodies they indirectly fed upon). She was still seething with anger at being trapped into doing the Chained God’s work; her fantasies about bargaining with him were fantasies indeed, about as useful and lasting as writing on water. His/its tampering with Ahzurdan and Daniel Akamarino put her in a position where there was only one thing she could do and continue to live with herself.
The work went on and on, images fluttered into her mind; she didn’t believe they were dreams leaking from the disparate parts of Danny Blue, no, they were translations of emotion, perhaps concept, into images from her own stores, Ahzurdan had told her something like that when he was explaining how sorcerors developed their chants. Black malouch snarling circling about black malouch, these malouchi with sapphire eyes, not gold. She whined with angry frustration, every troublespot she soothed down seemed to birth two more. Black hair blue eyes not black Temueng trooper with a serpent tail, rearing up, swaying, hissing, deadly, tensing to strike, On and on. She saw the trouble under her touch gradually diminishing. Her anger drowned in a flood of fascination with what she was doing, with what was making itself under her fingers. Blue water heaving, blue iris, blue hyacinth, blue lupin, blue flames, blue EYES blue and blue, blue glaze shining, look deep and deep and deep into a blue bluer than a summer sky, deep and deep… Her need to make was almost as deep-seated in her as her need to breathe. She labored over Danny Blue, blind fingered, eyes shut, shaping him, manipulating his clay, all thought of the Chained God pushed away so that the Danny Blue under her hands seemed her creation, almost as if she’d birthed him. Thoughts (gnat swarms of blue sparks) in cloud shimmers blue funnels wobbling about each other, dipping toward each other, fragile, fearful, furious with hate, touch and shatter, struggling away, drawn back, always drawn back… On and on, spending her strength recklessly, no thought of the god and what other treacheries he might be planning, on and on making a man with all the art and passion in her. Clay under her hands, blue clay fighting her, holding stubbornly to its imperfections, holding its breath on her, keeping the treacherous air bubbles locked in it, bubbles that would fracture it in the firing, stubborn, resisting, tough but oh so fine, so fine when she got the flaws out. On and on until there were no more hotspots, no more images in blue, until the need that drove her drained away.
She broke contact and sat on her heels looking blearily down at him. He was asleep, snoring a little. She turned him on his side, shifted off her heels until she was sitting beside him on the grass. Jaril slid out of her, flickering from globe to boy, lay down a short way off, a naked youth molded in milkglass, she could see the jagged line of dark green grass through his legs. Yaril slid out of Danny Blue, crawled over to stretch out beside her brother, naked milkglass girl like she’d been when she rolled off Brann the day this all began, but older now with firm young breasts and broadening hips. Pale wraiths, they lay motionless, waiting passively for her to feed them or do something to restore their strength.
Brann rubbed at her back, lethargic, despondent. It had cost her, this scheme the godthing imposed on her, muscle tissue going with her energy to feed the reshaping of the man; there were some small lives in the trees and the undergrowth surrounding the glade, but they weren’t worth the effort to chase them down, so, she thought, let him/it pay its share of the cost out of its own stores of godfire. She closed her eyes, her mouth twisting into a quick wry smile. He/it wasn’t hovering over her, volunteering. Shuh! Amortis wasn’t volunteering either, but she gave to this small charity want to or not. What’s good for her is good for him/it. On hands and knees, Brann crawled to the children, worked her way between them so she could hold a hand of each.
*Jaril. Yaril. Can you hear me?*
*We hear.* Odd double voice in her head, charming harmonies that made her smile again, a softer wider smile this time.
*Remember Amortis and the bridge. Do you think you could make the bridge again? I do hope so, otherwise I don’t know how we’re going to replace what’s gone.*
*Can you feed us something? Just a little?*
She looked at the skin hanging loosely about her forearms, then over her shoulder at Danny Blue. *Might be able to steal a bit from him. Let me take a sniff at him and see.* She dropped the hands, moved back to sleeping Danny, touched his arm. A lot of what she’d put into him had been eaten up by the drain of the alterations, but she could pull back a small trickle without damaging what she’d made.
When she’d fed the children, she frowned down at them. There was a faint flush of color in their bodies, but the grass was still visible through them. *That be enough?*
Jaril wrinkled his nose. Enough to tell us how much more we need.*
Yaril drew her knees up, shook her head, not in denial, more to show her unhappiness with the way things were. *Brann, we’d better draw hard and fast, this isn’t really like with Amortis. He’ll hit back soon as he understands what’s happening and we don’t have Ahzurdan to stand ward for us.* A swift ghost of a smile. *All right, I admit I was wrong about him.*
*I hear. Hard and fast.* A pause. Brann drew her tongue along her lips. *When I give the word.* She pulled her hands from the children, folded her arms, hugged them tight against her. She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut, memories of pain scratching along her nerves; it can’t feel pain twice, but the body winces anyway when it knows that more is coming: For several breaths she couldn’t make herself say the word that would bring that agony down on her. Finally she straightened her back, her shoulders, lifted her head, set her hands on her thighs. “Do it.”
The children were glimmerglobes, paler than usual, drifting upward.
The children touched.
The children merged.
The children whipped into a thin arc, one end deep into the heart of the Chained God, the other sunk into Brann’s torso, she heard the shouted YES and pulled.
Godfire seared into her until she was burning, the grass under her was burning, the air round her was burning. She pulled until she was so filled with godfire an ounce more would spill from her control and turn her to ash and char.
The children sensed this and broke, tumbled to the grass before her, pale glass forms again. They reached for her, drew the godfire into themselves, drew and drew until she could think again, breath again, move again.
The god raged, but Yaril and Jaril threw a sphere of force about her until he/it calmed enough to reacquire reason. “What are you doing?” he/it thundered at them, the echoes of the multiple voices clashing and interfering until the words were garbled to the point of enigma. “What are you doing? What are you doing?
The children dropped to the grass a short distance from the sleeping body of Danny Blue; they sat leaning against each other, looking into a vague sort of distance, displaying a
n exaggerated indifference to what was happening around them. No. Not children any more. Young folk in that uncertain gap between childhood and maturity, doing what such folk often do best, irritatingly ignoring the crotchets of their elders, the questions, demands, rodomontades of those who thought they deserved respectful attention.
Brann rubbed her grilled palms on the cool grass, glanced at the changers, wrinkled her nose. Due to the convoluted workings of her fate, she’d skipped most of that phase of her development; at the moment she was rather pleased that she had. And rather shaken at the thought she had to cope with it in Yaril and Jaril. She pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the god who was still hooming unintelligibly. “If you’ll turn the volume down,” she said mildly, “perhaps I could understand what you’re saying and give you the answers you want.”
Silence for several minutes. When the god spoke, his/ its boom was considerably diminished. “What were you doing?”
“Taking recompense,” she said. “You asked me to do a thing, I did it. I spent my resources doing it, I nearly killed myself and the…” she looked at the changers, decided that children was no longer a suitable description, “… Yaril and Jaril. I simply took back what I used up.”
More silence (not exactly utter silence, it was filled with some strange small anonymous creaks and fizzes, punctuated with odd smells). Finally, the god said, “I’ll let it go this time, don’t try that again.”
“I hear,” she said, letting him hear in her tone (if he wanted to hear it) that she was making, no promises.
A pause, again filled with small sounds and loud smells. Lines of phosphor thin as her smallest finger spiderwalked about them, began passing through and through the sleeper, began brushing against her (she started the first time but relaxed when she felt nothing not even a tingle), began brushing against Yaril and Jaril who refused to notice them.
“When is Danny Blue going to wake?” The god’s multiple voice, sounded edgy. One of the phosphor lines was running fretfully (insofar as a featurless rod of light can have emotional content) around and around Danny Blue; it reminded Brann of a spoiled child stamping his feet because he couldn’t have something he wanted.
“I don’t know.” Brann watched the phosphor quiver and suppressed a smile. “When he’s ready, I suppose.”
“Wake him.”
“No.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You’ve waited for eons, wait a few hours more. If you wake his body now, you could lose everything else.”
“How do you know that?-
-I don’t. Know it, I mean. It’s a feeling. I’m not going against it, push or shove.”
The air went still. She had a sense of a huge brooding. The god needed her to deal with problems that might arise after Danny Blue eventually woke, she was safe until then. Afterwards? She felt malice held in check, a lot of the Admiral left in him/it, if what he said about the Admiral was anything like the truth.
“You are fighting me every way you can. Why?”
“If you do or say stupid things, you expect me to endorse them? Think again. It’s my life you’re playing with, the lives of my friends. You want an echo, get a parrot.” She scratched at her knee, sniffed at the stinking humid air, wrinkled her nose with disgust. “I’m hungry and he will be when he wakes. What you brought us here for is finished. Any reason we have to stay?”
The god thought that over for a while. Spiderlegs of phosphor flickered about Danny Blue, wove him into a cocoon with threads of light and took him away. Jaril shimmersphere darted after him, slipped through the walls with him. Yaril sighed, stretched. “Took him to Daniel’s bedroom, dumped him in the bed.”
Before Brann had a chance to say anything, the phosphor lines snapped back, wove a tight web about her and hauled her away, dumping her seconds later on the bed she’d slept in the night before. By the time she got herself together and sat up, Yaril was standing across the small room, watching her from enigmatic crystal eyes. She smiled at Brann and slid away through the doorfog. Brann grimaced, pushed off the bed onto her feet. She felt grubby, grimy. Good thing I can’t smell myself. Hmm. Start the teawater boiling, if I can remember which whatsits I should push, then a bath. She rubbed a fold of her shirt between thumb and forefinger. Wonder how they did their washing? Maybe the kids know. Hmm. I’m going to have to figure some other way of thinking about them. Wonder if that godstuff’s good for them, they’re growing so fast… I’d better take a look at Danny Blue. Ah ah the things that keep happening…
Brann was stretched out on the recliner Jaril had deformed for her out of a lump on the floor of the eggroom. A teapot steamed on an elbowtable beside her, she had a cup of tea making a hotspot on her stomach; she sipped at it now and then when she remembered it while she watched a story stream past on a bookplayer she balanced on her stomach beside the cup (the god had translated several of these and presented them to her, which surprised her and tended to modify her opinion of him/it, which was probably one of the reasons he/it did it). Yaril drifted in, leaned over her shoulder a moment, watching the story. “Braun. “
“Mmm?”
“Danny Blue’s restless. Jaril thinks he’s going to wake soon.”
“How soon?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe.”
“Hmm.” Brann set the player down beside her, shifted the cup to the elbowtable and pushed up. “He showing any trouble signs?”
“Jaril says he’s been having some nightmares, isn’t much to any of them, Jaril could only catch a hint of what was going on, more emotion than imagery. That stopped a short while ago. Jaril says it looks like he’s trying to wake up.”
‘Trying?” Brann stood, tucked her shirt down into her trousers, straightening her collar. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Brann bent over Danny Blue. His head was turning side to side on the pillow in a twitchy broken rhythm; his mouth was working; his hands groped about, crawling slowly over his ribs, his face, the bed, the sheet that was pulled across the lower part of his body. She trapped one of the hands, held it still. “He’s not dreaming?”
Jaril was kneeling close to her, a hand resting against the side of Danny’s face, fingertips bleeding into him. “No.”
“What do you think?” She felt his hand flutter like a bird within the circle of her fingers; using only a tiny fraction of his strength, he was trying to pull away from her. “Yaril, Jaril, should I let him kick out of it…” she frowned as he made a few shapeless sounds, “… if he can? Or should I jolt him awake? I don’t like the way he looks.”
Yaril leaned past her, her face intent, her hands moving through his body. She turned her head, stared for a long moment into her brother’s eyes, finally pulled free. “We think you better jolt him, Bramble.”
Danny Blue snapped his eyes open and promptly went into convulsions; he screamed, hoarse, building cries that seemed to originate in his feet and scrape him empty as they swept through his body and emerged from his straining mouth. Brann, Yaril and Jaril held him down, the changers reaching into him and soothing him whenever they could snatch a second between his kicks and jerks. Shivering, shaking, bucking, he struggled on and on until they and he were exhausted and even then he showed no sign he knew what was happening to him or where he was. He lay limp, trembling, blue eyes blank, looking past or through them.
Brann chewed her lip, spent a few moments feeling helpless and frustrated. She wiped the sweat-sodden hair off her face, tucked the straggles behind her ears and stood scowling at him. Finally she bent over him, slapped his face, the crack of her palm against his cheek filling the small room. -Dan!” She flung the word at him. “Danny Blue! Stop it. You aren’t a baby.” She rubbed the side of her hand across her chin, back-forth, quick, angry. “Listen, man, we need you. Both of you. I know you don’t have to be like this.”
He looked at her, the blankness burnt out of his face and out of his eyes, replaced by bitterness and rage. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and pushed up.
He looked at her again, then sat rubbing at his temples, staring at the floor.
“We need to talk, Dan. Can you work with Yaril and Jaril to give us some privacy?”
“You couldn’t wait?” He spoke slowly, with difficulty, his mouth moving before each word as if he had to decide which part of him was ordering his speech.
“What’s the point. Either you can or you can’t, what good will waiting do?” She shrugged. “Except to sour you more than you are already.”
He opened his mouth, shut it. He draped his hands over his knees and continued to stare at the floor.
“I’m not going to coax you,” Brann moved to the door, Yaril and Jaril drifting over to stand beside her, “or waste my breath arguing with you. Make up your own mind where you want to go. Don’t take too long about it either. We’ll be in the sitting room figuring how to walk out of this.”
A little over half an hour later Danny Blue ducked through the doorway (he was a head taller than he’d been two days ago) and strolled into the egg-shaped sitting room. He was wearing Daniel’s trousers, his sandals and his leather vest, Ahzurdan’s black silk undershirt; he had Daniel’s lazy amiability as a thin mask over Ahzurdan’s edgy force. He nudged a chair out of a knot in the rug, kicked up a hassock; he settled into the chair, put his feet up, crossed his ankles and laced his fingers over his flat stomach. “You can forget about privacy,” he said. “Over in the reality where this ship was built they had some mean head games. Very big on control they were. 01’ god here, he’s got a hook sunk in my liver which says I’m his as long as he wants me. I don’t work against him, I don’t help anyone else work against him, I don’t even think about trying to get away from him. You can forget about sorcery or anything like that, this has nothing to do with magic. Takes a machine to do it, takes a machine to undo it. So. There it is.”
Brann drew her fingertips slowly across her brow as if she were feeling for strings. “I don’t think,” she said slowly, “I don’t think it did it to me… um… us. We did some things it didn’t like… and… and we didn’t… there wasn’t anything inside stopping us. Yaril? Jaril?”