Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  “We can reassure them from here that we mean no harm!” Faertom cried, wilted hopes blooming.

  “But our physical presence, unarmed, will prove we mean no harm, not pretty mindspeeches. The one thing you Resonants don’t have,” Sarrett emphasized, “is the ability to discern the truth. Only the ghatti can do that. That’s why T’ss and I are along, as well as Jenret and Rawn. You may have lived without the need for Seekers, but surely even Resonants know our reputation for truth-speaking.”

  They hurried after Addawanna, aware they’d never match her preternatural silence, her earth-bonded communion with the very land itself. Jenret and Faertom crawled up a shallow rock slope mantled with sodden leaves, T‘ss and Rawn already poised on its edge, peering over. T’ss’s tail swept once, while Rawn remained motionless. “Approach slowly, raise your hands over your head,” Rawn instructed Jenret, “and tell the others to stay well back unless we instruct otherwise. Especially Faertom.”

  After a whispered colloquy, Jenret complied, his heart sinking. So, they weren’t the only ones seeking, searching, and it looked as if they’d been found first. A horrible thought, others searching for Resonants, stalking them like wild game. Still, jumping to conclusions did no good, and Rawn hadn’t indicated anything either way. He dug toes into the loose shale, surging upward, unsteady without the use of his hands. As he rose higher, he caught sight of Addawanna at the center of the clearing. She stood, hands on hips, foot tapping. “You wan be meetin’ Gleaners, Res‘nants, you meetin’em den. Sorry I not introduce you, but for one of yours, he look like he know what hatchet for. Figger you younger Addawanna, you test and see. Not what I here for.”

  Her raised chin and bittersweet smile made Jenret trip as he looked where she pointed, at last puzzled out the shape of a tall young man dressed in greens and gray-browns, blending with the fir trees behind him. He held a hatchet poised to throw, a second one ready in his other hand. Just beyond he glimpsed the rigid line of an arrow, jutting as no branch would. How many were there? The strangers held the higher ground, could pick them off as they crested the knoll. Battle was the last thing he wanted, despite Sarrett’s ability with a sword. So what now—a battle mind to mind, Resonant pitted against Resonant? But that wasn’t why he was here, indeed, the exact opposite. Did Resonants perpetually live with the fear pricking at him now—of constantly being outnumbered, the minority, backing down, retreating despite their superior skills? Damned if he’d back down.

  “My tabard proclaims me a Seeker Veritas,” he pitched his voice to carry. “I must speak with you, see if we can’t find alternatives to this senseless running.” He made the transition into mindspeech without pausing, “What you can’t judge from my outward appearance is that I’m a Resonant as well as a Seeker ”

  He waited, but no one rose to his bait. Were they Resonants—or hunters, foresters, surprised, wary at their unexpected, unexplained presence? “Where’s your ghatt, then? Anyone can don a tabard, play Seeker.” The hatchet never wavered, although Addawanna had sat, doughty and clearly bored. The hidden bowman still targeting him left Jenret less sanguine. A squelch of wet leaves behind him as Rawn called “Coming!” and sprang to his right for easy visibility. But a loud crash resounded leftward, and the bowman stepped clear of the maze of branches for an unhindered shot, bow bending as he drew it.

  “Faerbaen! Baen, don’t hurt them! It’s me, Faeralleyn!” The bow jerked, arrow flying wide of its mark. Faertom, more accurately Faeralleyn Thomas, spun toward the arrow’s source. “Faerclough, you never could hit anything smaller than a barn door!” But the next arrow landed neatly between his feet.

  The words lodged in Faertom’s brain with searingly accurate intimacy, perfectly targeted, as only one Thomas could with another. “They haven’t compelled you? Compulsed you?”

  “No!” Their suspicion baffled him.

  “Then why’d you expose us, reveal us as Gleaners for all the world to see when you dropped your Transitor-cover, trotted off like a besotted fool to join the Research Hospice? Were you crazy? Everyone knows why people go there now. With you in cahoots with them we might as well have posted the island: ‘Gleaners Live Here’.” Faertom’s mouth dropped at his elder brother, Faerbaen’s, bitterness.

  “But, Baen, I never meant ... he wailed, but a short, grizzled man appeared at forest’s edge, gesturing to Faerclough and Faerbaen to lower their weapons. “Father!” A wellspring of eager supplication in that one spoken word as Faertom began a clumsy run, cast himself at the man’s feet, glowing with relief.

  “Get up. Go back to them, they’re your people now, not us. You made your choice.” The order gruff, irrefutable. Faertom staggered up, arms imploring, unsure which way to turn. His hurt smote Jenret, the same hurt he’d lived with ever since his own father had tried to disavow his younger son’s potential, kill the child to ensure he never attained his brother Jared’s perverted skills. Now his father had naught but a dry husk of a mind, a gaping emptiness. If only his father had believed there were other ways, that it was a gift, not a dangerous taint. Opposite reasons for paternal anger, but the end results were all too similar. And for the first time Jenret foretasted what his own relationship with his unborn child might be at some future day.

  “Faeraday, wait!” From behind the shielding trees a tall, statuesque woman joined them, clear where Faertom and his brothers had inherited their height and coloring. “You swore we’d talk first, not condemn out of hand!” She didn’t so much dwarf her husband as diminish him, his fiery disposition and sharpness tempered by the honor and goodness emanating from her.

  “At last someone wid common sense.” Addawanna rubbed her hands together, “Woman, whad else? ‘Lowed bring od’ers up to talk? Not left like scaredy badger huddlin in hole?” He’d completely forgotten the others, Sarrett and T’ss, Towbin and Yulyn, still massed below the slope, able to hear but unable to see what transpired. Without a doubt Sarrett had split them into defensive positions, attempting to shadow their movements by their voices.

  With a look that cowed her husband, the woman called her agreement, Jenret retreating until he could glance downward, gesture them forward. Not a word of mindspeech had he heard from their captors, shut out, not fully accepted as one of them. Which side did he belong to, where did he fit in, caught between two worlds?

  “By the havens, Faeraday, can’t we at least sit and discuss this rationally?” The woman greeted Jenret and the others as they surmounted the rise. “I’m Claudra Thomas. My husband Faeraday, and my two elder sons, Faerbaen and Faerclough.” She motioned them close, a son on either side of her as she stood behind her husband, hands lightly resting on his shoulders, so balanced and complete a picture that it appeared no room for Faertom had ever existed.

  Their closed solidarity was emblematic of the meeting as a whole. No matter how Jenret and Yulyn pleaded, argued, persuaded, nothing convinced the Thomases of their goodwill, the good intentions of most of Canderis. Less than no help at all, Faertom hovered in the background, biting his lip, ill at ease, unable to scale the barriers walling him out. And in her turn, Addawanna remained scrupulously neutral, her silence a weight, refusing to tip the balance for either side.

  “We’re not going back.” A pounding fist on palm reiterated Faeraday’s determination. “We’ve left everything behind, what choice have you all given us?” And Jenret knew “you all” included him, no allowance to be uniquely himself. Sides had been drawn before he’d learned the rules of the game, let alone the name of it. All stood stiff, uncomfortable at the mounting tension. “We’ve tasted fear before, our own fears and the fears of others, and we worked so they’d find no fault, no reason to direct that fear toward us. Now it’s all over, all out in the open—thanks to Faeralleyn, here—at least for us.” He glared at his youngest son, but Faertom’s eyes were fixed on his feet. “Never satisfied, never happy with what you were but that you had to go wishing to be something more. Satisfied now, boy? Satisfied we’ve had to pull up stakes, start over somewhere
else?”

  A snap of the fingers; the toss of an empty hand dramatized their loss. “The boat business, gone. The house, the island, left behind as if plague-ridden. But we’re the plague, aren’t we? Liable to infect anyone our minds touch. Havens! Why would I want to ‘speak a Normal mind? We don’t know for sure if Marchmont’ll welcome us as refugees—untutored, untrained, scum! That’s how they’ve always viewed us before—why alter that view now?” The flood of invective dizzied Jenret. Why would Marchmont think that of them? How much did Marchmont even know of the Gleaners’ precarious existence? After all, Venable Constant had believed he’d brought all the Resonants to Marchmont, safe from the Plumbs. If they’d known some had been left behind, why hadn’t they helped before this?

  “It doesn’t have to be like that, not if you don’t let it,” Yulyn persisted, not ready to yield. “Canderis may be frightened of what we represent—what they think we are—but they can learn. But only if we’re willing to show them our decency, our potential to improve their lives. Any group harbors good and bad, we know that. Would we have Vesey Bell seen as our exemplar? Our actions must repudiate what he stood for, the pain he caused, because that was never our way. Nor do the Reapers stand for Canderis as a whole, they’re a distinct minority.”

  Uncomfortably aware that he and Sarrett represented all Normals, Towbin looked funeral-somber, careworn. “You take getting used to, you know. Considered fleeing far as I could when I discovered what Yulyn was, but I couldn’t outrun our love, even if I didn’t understand how her mind worked. Scared the living daylights out of me time and again. Has its advantages, though,” and a ghost of a smile flickered at one corner of his mouth. “Lets your wife mentally caress you in public, with no one the wiser. No censorious looks. No flouting of decency laws. Scandalously sexy!” A dimple flashed on Claudra Thomas’s cheek, but her husband scowled, red-faced with mortification.

  “Two octs, that’s all I ask,” Jenret took their silent challenge. “Stay here at camp for sixteen days before you push on to Marchmont. I can’t ask for longer, winter’s coming. If other Resonants are hiding nearby or passing through, ask them to wait, hear me out when I return. I’ll broaden our search as much as we can, try to find stragglers, direct them to you.”

  “And what can you promise by then? That Normals will magically come to terms with the idea of us, let alone our reality? That we won’t be corralled together, imprisoned, ghettoized? We’ve heard rumors of a bounty for each Gleaner discovered.” Faerclough spoke now, the middle son, as tall as the others, but more slightly built and more fiery tempered, his father’s son.

  “Then ‘truth will out,’ as they say. That’s what we Seekers Veritas have always stood for, truth.” Jenret spoke evenly, cloaking his despair. Sixteen days! Too short a time, you fool! Too short a time to negotiate with both sides for some sort of agreement, a face-saving compromise. Where to begin? Why had his stubbornness, his pride, led him to this impasse? But any truce was a start.

  “Never could credit the ancient history books talking about ‘endangered species’ on Olde Earth, all kinds of different creatures lost because they couldn’t survive a changing environment. Now I do.” Faeraday Thomas ignored Jenret’s outstretched hand. “Mind, though, I don’t plan for my offspring to become extinct. I’ll break the old rules to make sure of that. See that the terms hold.” Not a threat, but a calm explication of what could come. What old rules? And again Jenret felt lost, at sea, wondering what was meant?

  “We’ll wait, Seeker, we’ll wait,” Claudra Thomas stated it as a fact, not simply a promise. “We’ve waited, fearful of discovery all our lives, all our parents’ and grandparents’ lives and beyond. Waiting sixteen more days won’t hurt. Now I think it best you go.”

  As they readied to leave, the Thomas clan sliding away, canny as forest creatures eluding the hunter, Jenret at last heard a mindvoice. “We’ll wait, Seeker. And take good care of my boy, my youngest. Yes, he’s impetuous, but he may just have the right of it. Old ways have to change, have to grow, or we will become extinct. ”

  Overwhelmed by the scale of the task they’d set for themselves, they settled around the fire at a deserted Erakwa camp that night. Addawanna’s chuckle broke through their silence. “Now you know true what it like be ou‘cast. Dey don’ wan you, an you see any od’er Erawka ‘cept me here? Erakwa don’ wan you ed’er. Oh, I don’ mind you, used to you, used to sharing after so long, but don’ need share ev’ryting wid you!” Her innocent mirth seemed particularly mocking in the chilly night air, flaying their petty pride. Despite his genuine liking for her, Jenret glared back, defiant but unsure what he defied. Addawanna bridged two cultures, had ever since her liaison with a trader who, in truth, was Prince Ludo of Marchmont, father of her child, Nakum’s long-dead mother. If Addawanna could bridge two cultures, so could he, Jenret thought, his respect for her growing.

  Faertom stayed, face down-tilted, peeling thin strips of bark from a twig. Any desire to communicate had dwindled, died since his abortive reunion with his family, all his emotions, all thoughts barricaded inside his brain. Jenret yearned to ease his hurt but hadn’t a clue where to begin, contented himself with patting his shoulder. It had comforted him when Darl Allgood had done it. But Faertom gasped at Jenret’s alien, awkward touch and bolted from the firelight, crashing through the undergrowth.

  Embarrassed by his reaction, Jenret started after him until Yulyn’s soft command halted him. “Leave him be. You know what ails him, don’t you?”

  “Well, it should be fairly obvious, or should I say Faeraday, Faerbaen, and Faerclough obvious.” Yulyn shoved hard at her husband’s knee, angry at Towbin’s whimsy.

  “Well, that’s enough, I agree, but there’s more to it than that.” She turned to include Sarrett in the conversation. “Any ideas?”

  Sarrett propped herself on her elbows, T’ss on the blanket beside her. “I think so. All sons have to challenge their fathers at some point to prove their manhood.”

  “That’s obvious. So?” He remembered his earlier thoughts about his father, his father’s fears for what his younger son might be, but Jenret had been too young to challenge him. Jared as well, though his untrained Gleaner skills outstripped his youth. And if there wasn’t a father to challenge, as there really hadn’t been in his case when he’d reached adulthood, you chose a surrogate. He stiffened, realized he hadn’t thought of it that way before. Syndar Saffron, his mother’s lover, had played that role for him.

  Sarrett sat up to emphasize her point. “How did he act when he first saw his father, Jenret? We weren’t there to see.”

  “He busy watchin hatchet, bows an arrows, no bad idea right den,” was Addawanna’s rejoinder.

  “I saw enough—eager, anticipatory. It didn’t look like a challenge to me. And then blank, so blank you’d scarcely have known it was Faertom.”

  “Don’t you see?” Yulyn shared a secret smile with Sarrett. Why had he expected that? If he still couldn’t understand Doyce, did he have any chance of understanding Yulyn and Sarrett? Was this another bridge he’d be responsible for building—the one connecting men and women? Unfair, since he was hardly the first to discover the crossing tenuous. But Yulyn went on, “Conflict is one thing, it’s to be expected. But he’s not being allowed the battle he needs. By denying him that, by denying him, pretending he doesn’t exist, Faertom’s lost his way. Without them, who is he? Who or what is Faertom?”

  “He’s not a total innocent,” Jenret protested, on the defensive for both himself and Faertom. “He’s been out in the world, more so than his family. After all, he spent several years as a Transitor on road and bridge surveys.”

  Yulyn pressed home her point. “But did his work define him, the way it does for many people? Did he live it, eat, drink, and breathe it, the way many people do?”

  “Like Seekers?” Sarrett needled.

  “Or was he always a Resonant wearing the mask of a Transitor? He gave up that mask, revealed himself to take training at the Researc
h Hospice. And now his relatives won’t acknowledge him.”

  He was beginning to grasp Faertom’s plight, but it was an imperfect understanding at best. After all, he was still a Seeker, no matter what else in his life had changed. “So Faertom’s doubly doomed? He can’t be what he was—that innocence is shattered—and he isn’t sure what he is, without the battle to prove it?” He shared a look with Towbin, saw that he had no plans to enter the discussion. A wiser man than he’d realized—or more used to Yulyn than he. “Ah, I see,” though Jenret wasn’t entirely sure he did, and let the discussion drop.

  A life so circumscribed that real life loomed impossibly large and elusive was almost beyond Jenret’s ken, but pondering it wasn’t going to do any good, he decided. Not when he had more pressing problems—such as reassuring the Resonants of his group’s honorable intentions on their behalf. He dug out his leather writing case, licked a pencil point, and began to marshal his thoughts. If only he could convince the Monitor of what had to be done. He hoped, selfishly, that Faertom would reappear, at least by morning, so he could carry the letter to Gaernett. Haste was needed. And putting some distance, physical and emotional, between Faertom and his family wasn’t a bad idea for a few days, at least.

  Dismounting and tying his horse to a post, Bard scanned the barnyard nervously. Simply too much bustle and life for his liking, and he fervently wished he could mount and flee the commotion, the dust, the debris, chickens squawking as a cockerel challenged a rooster, geese hissing and flapping at his horse from their protective ring near the scummy watering trough.

  “Plenty of activity, that’s for sure,” M’wa remarked from the safe vantage point of his pommel platform. “Easy to get mislaid in it all.” A piglet squeezed under the fence, ran at his feet and butted, eager to have its ears scratched, for all the world like a puppy. Someone clearly treated it more as a pet than as a prospective dinner, and he prayed it wasn’t Lindy.