Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  “I have been mashed,” Khar intoned with deflated dignity, not to mention a hint of malice, “between a rapidly growing boy and the ground. How do you think I am?”

  “Ouch!” she offered back. “No bones broken, just bruised pride?”

  “Ghatti are never awkward. No bones broken on the boy, either. Though I hope he packed additional pants. A fresh breeze on his backside where they split.”

  Doyce swung down to survey the damage as Cady hauled the boy to his feet and dusted him off. Davvy was winded but basically intact, discounting his britches, eyes gleaming with triumph. “Smerdle! Almost had it that time, just have to remember to—”

  “Never try that again in my presence or on Lokka. That’s what you’d best remember,” she interrupted, straining for severity, instead breaking into laughter at his dust-streaked mien, bangs sweat-spiked like tiny horns. He had the grace to display momentary abashment before giggling as he rubbed his bottom. “Now it’s my turn to ride. And but me no butts, interpret that as you will. That goes for you as well, Cady. Davvy, you’ll ride with her for a while.”

  Had Lokka grown higher, wider? The effort of mounting worse than scaling a high wall, and the obstacle wasn’t the mare but her own girth. She almost beached herself on the pommel platform until Cady boosted her upright. Still, marvelous to be back in the saddle, it provided perspective on things, and perspective was sorely lacking about now. That, more than anything else, explained her moping, torn between worry for Swan and for her mother, fear of how she fared, plus her own insecurity, the nagging doubt that her choice was wrong—rekindling old ties best left as they were. “Khar, come on!”

  Khar nestled close to Lokka’s neck, almost crowded off the pommel platform. “Khar, I know I’m taking up more than my share, but I swear you are, too. You’ve been gaining weight, you rascal, haven’t you?”

  The ghatta evinced rapt interest in the passing scenery. “The sedentary life, you know,” she offered at last. “At least that’s what the Seeker General always said.”

  “Sedentary? I’d sooner say it’s sediment settling around your middle!” She tickled the striped sides with the reins while Khar sulked, fretful and indignant as she pawed Lokka’s mane. And then it dawned on Doyce. How could she have missed it? “Khar, you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” No response. “Well, aren’t you?” Damn all, she’d been right, the ghatta hadn’t asked for the ’script that controlled her fertility cycles. She hadn’t been absentminded—Khar hadn’t asked, had obviously planned this.

  “Love, I think it’s wonderful. Truly.” And let her mind flood with fond images of Khar, Khar with ghatten, a sleeping baby with a ghatten or two curled beside it. What she desperately wanted to ask but was too reticent to do so, was who had fathered them?

  “You’ll see.” Amber eyes dreamy, Khar leaned into Doyce’s stomach, forehead flattened against her as if she communed directly with the child. A jerk backward and Khar grimaced. “Kicking again. Nailed me right on the nose. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

  “Poor little pink nose,” she consoled. “I should think so. Khar, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  Loud purring as Khar leaned against her again. “I don’t mean that, though I’d planned to tell you. There’s something ... else.”

  “What?” She couldn’t imagine what Khar alluded to, where this conversation would lead. Suspicion, fear, captured her heart in a lock-hold. “Not Jenret? It doesn’t have anything to do with Jenret, does it?”

  The ghatta reared back, anxious. “No! I’m sorry. Nothing bad, my honor on it. Truly!” She resettled, licked a front paw. “You know how you’ve been searching for anything you could find about Matthias Vandersma and Kharm?”

  Relieved but still at a loss, Doyce grasped a white paw, shook it gently, held it trapped. “I should hope so! I wish more material existed, firsthand sources. Sometimes I feel as if I’m fabricating things, pulling them out of thin air to create or re-create his world. Daydreaming with what little I know and then embellishing it. ” She laughed, self-conscious. “Overactive imagination. If it isn’t real, I’ll make it real.”

  “Except that it is,” the ghatta pressed along, “real, that is. Haven’t you wondered why you’re daydreaming? Who actually wrote the diary you’ve dipped into now and again?”

  “Well, the diary’s of that period, I’ve no doubt. It probably puts me in the right frame of mind, in the mood. ”

  “Er, not exactly. The diary’s the one Matthias kept.” Khar took a deep breath. “You just haven’t read enough to realize. Haven’t you noticed that when you pick it up you become preoccupied, start daydreaming after just a few words? And the daydreams aren’t exactly daydreams. We’ve, that is, we ghatti ... especially the Elders ... are giving you special insight into those earliest days. We’ve been threading one of our Major Tales through your mind, unwinding it as you watch.”

  Doyce’s hands jerked convulsively on the reins, Lokka snorting and tossing her head in surprise. “Khar! By the Lady above! What right have you to do that? You know...” she shivered, a chill racking her, “how much I hate being manipulated like that! It’s too similar to what Vesey did to my dreams, manipulating them, twisting them inside-out, with me unaware, helpless to do anything about it! How could you?”

  The accusation stung. “But these are true seeings, not distortions. We took the responsibility on ourselves because we hope the past can guide the present. If you understand what Matthias and Kharm went through to gain acceptance, perhaps it will guide us, help Canderis learn to cope with the Resonants.”

  “Can’t we just leave the past alone? We’ve enough on our plates with the present. ”

  “No, please! You have to continue, have to search for a way to help. It’s not just your world that’s changing, but ours as well. What sort of world will our offspring inherit if you don’t?”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do? Let you trance me, let that world wash over me while I passively absorb it?” Anger now, anger at being used against her will. Well, let the ghatti see how much they could cram into her now that she was aware of what was going on!

  “That’s exactly it,” Khar supplicated. “You can do it yourself now, you have been, though you didn’t realize it. You can do it with your own willpower, without our help. Choose when to enter and relive what Matthias—” “Matty, ” Doyce corrected without even realizing it. “Matty and Kharm suffered to found the Seekers Veritas, take their place in society, not be viewed as different, as outsiders.”

  “Are you sure this will help? That the past holds answers for today?” Hadn’t she complained that leaving Gaernett was akin to fleeing danger? Well, danger stalked all around her, even in the countryside. If she didn’t fight it, what would happen? And what would happen if she did? She rubbed at the knot between her brows, tried to push the headache away.

  “I can do it myself, when I want? Not wait passively until you decide to spoon-feed me more whether or not I’m ready? ”

  Hope shot through Khar. “Yes, I’ll show you, show you how to float backward in time and yet remain separate, not let it suck you in.” A gamble, but she took it. “Besides, it might be nice to have a mental escape, elude your family if things become too much for you. Temporarily trade one past for another. After all, you always daydreamed as a child.”

  A certain seductive logic to the thought, remain physically present yet mentally aloof if her reunion became strained. “Could I try it now?”

  “Yes, but I’d advise practicing from the rear seat of the surrey rather than on horseback. Just in case you become overinvolved. Besides, it’ll reassure Davvy and Cady if you’re there, quiet and apparently resting.”

  “We won’t reach Coventry until tomorrow at this pace. I guess anything is better than wondering about the reception I’ll receive after all this time. ” She managed a grin. “But Davvy is not going to ride Lokka for the rest of the day!” An anticipatory excitement overcame her ... what was Matty doing n
ow ... or rather, then?

  Matty finished sweeping the packed earth floor with a twig broom, removing the previous night’s debris—bits of food, manure from half-scraped boots, the usual odds and ends that constantly sifted from people’s pockets or sailed off tables with an expansive arm-sweep. Nothing worth saving, so he gathered it on a shingle scrap, tossed the collection out the door.

  “Never know unless you check,” Kharm thrummed from where she dozed on a table, tail dangling. “You’ve found coins before.” Her head dipped as she caught sight of her disembodied tail below the table and swiped at it as if it belonged to a stranger.

  Well, more coins would be nice, but he’d hoarded a fair amount regardless. Not much need to spend them, but having them made him secure. Matty began to scoop up hand-fuls of dried pine needles from the bin and scattered them on the floor. Jurgen swore it sweetened the air; anything masking the stink in this airless, overheated sod tavern would be a blessing. Spring! Would it ever come? Would the river ice ever break? Waiting, stir-craziness raised to a fever pitch through this long, dismal winter, snow storm after snow storm hemming them in, an ice storm for variety.

  Matty’d begun in Gilboa helping with the repairs and rebuilding required after the Plumb’s destruction. Almost everyone needed assistance to beat the winter storms, and few free hands were available. He and Solange and Gheorghe had found eager bidders for their work. Some undertook the painstaking rebuilding of permanent structures, snapping their fingers at fate, convinced the chances of another Plumb exploding nearby were slim. Others contented themselves with repairs to their jerry-built, semipermanent structures, cobbled out of the flotsam and jetsam that the confluence of rivers and the sea tide deposited at their doorways. Someone’s old door transformed itself into another’s porch roof. Sod walls or rough timbered frames patched with whatever came to hand, including old Spacer ship scraps for the lucky ones, passed from generation to generation.

  He’d been eager and willing, the work hard but exhilarating, his size and lightness an asset in tight spots or heights incapable of bearing a full-grown man’s weight. Kharm would scamper a ridge pole to test it, and then he’d follow, easing along, securing rafters or roofing material.

  The basic problem was determining a scale of payment. The barter system prevailed, and he’d no place of his own to store his earnings, not to mention the time consumed in bartering for something he did want—not another smoked ham, three smoothed ax handles, a precious plexi pane slightly larger than his face. At last he grew bold, insisted on coinage, and even that was an education to calculate each piece’s value as he tallied his earnings. Nearly forty years of exploding Plumbs had ruptured the civilization being painstakingly built on the planet Methuen: one of the first casualties the minting of any sort of currency or coinage. Money now consisted of whatever odd coins from distant, off-planet federations that the Spacers had pocketed as keepsakes—Parims from the Pacific Rim, Reus from the Russian-European Union, Canusas from the Canadian-USA group, and Censoams from the Central-South American federation. Plus a few commemorative coins minted shortly after landfall. Not to mention dead circuit chips, plexi dial covers and gauges, twists of copper wiring (prized beyond fiber optic cable) from the ship remains—in short anything small and portable that could be assigned an arbitrary value.

  Well, he had his stash of all of those, had even unraveled the values of the copper wiring with its plastic coatings—dependent on diameter and length and valued as to the color of the plasti-coating. When the construction boom slowed, he’d hired on at the tavern Robey and Jurgen ran, no cash but a loft to sleep in and food to fill his belly and the ghatta’s. Given that winter had set in with a vengeance, he thought it a fair trade. How Solange and Gheorghe could survive in their raft shack he didn’t know. Not enough blankets in the world to block the winds racing across that river ice.

  He began stacking wooden trenchers, arranging wooden spoons in a fanned half-circle, the orderly arrangement that soothed Jurgen’s persnickety soul. Not that anyone would notice the presentation once the night’s trade started, but outward appearances mattered to Jurgen—if he were starving to death, he’d make sure his clothes were clean, his hair combed. Jurgen obsessed over order, neatness, a dour man who owned a half-share of the tavern with Robey. Everyone teased Jurgen about his ways, and he was the less popular of the two owners, but strangely enough he served as counter-man, apportioned food and ale, collected the payments, always faintly disapproving of everything under his nose. To Matty’s mind, the division of labor ought to have been reversed. Genial and outgoing, a back-slapper, friend to all, Robey concerned himself behind-the-scenes, ordering the ale, dickering for the white lightning and occasional wine that came his way, wine that enterprising women put up— those who knew how to get a kick to it, not some nose-holding tonic of dandelions or other herbaceous grasses. Robey cooked as well, trading for the wild game and limited domestic meats available, constantly scouting out extra potatoes or carrots or cabbage for sale.

  Sure Jurgen was preoccupied, Matty tickled Kharm with a wooden spoon, tapped her between the ears, while she squinted her eyes in sleepy exasperation. “Look out,” she warned as Jurgen fussy-bustled around the counter. Looking critically for ghatta hairs, Matty blew on the bowl of the spoon and sleeve-polished it, put it back into place. “Jurgen’s not in a good mood tonight, wife’s not well again.” Matty sighed, the sadness emanating from Jurgen clinging like a damp fog of self-reproach, constant concern for his sickly wife, worry at being away yet again. Sometimes he wished Kharm wouldn’t share these outside emotions since he wasn’t able to sympathize in return—first because of Jurgen’s sparse mentions of his wife, other than that he had one, and second because Jurgen abhored any appearance of human need. Thankfully, Robey was less complicated.

  Given that everyone’s temper had been honed by the winter’s privations plus Jurgen’s heavy mood, Matty wished he were somewhere, anywhere else. Best send Kharm to the loft soon before some fool tied something to her tail and then complained at being scratched. It wasn’t only that, he told himself, trying to be fair, Robey and Jurgen had grown as heartily tired of him as he was of them. Sometimes he just blurted things out, things he shouldn’t know—mostly in dismay, indignation at some inequity or wrong, not so much to him as to another—Kharm constantly feeding these things into his mind. All it gained him was a muttered, “Self-righteous little prig!” or worse as he elbowed by with fresh ale.

  Oh, to be home with Granther and Henryk, see Nelle, discover if she’d mourned his absence, missed him? The ache of it all burned his very soul. Everything was so unjust! And worse, people didn’t want to hear about injustice, know the truth!

  “Not true. You just haven’t discovered how to apply the truth to people’s advantage.” Kharm rubbed at his ankles, drew back politely as Jurgen passed to light the lanterns. The tavern was beginning to fill, the canvas flap constantly pushed aside, gusts of men and cold air forcing their way in, the peat fire smoldering and glowing. Already too crowded and close with smoke and sour body smells, not to mention the sour thoughts that Kharm transmitted, setting his teeth on edge like sipping vinegar. Everything was just too much! The room started spinning and he forced it to stop, stopped heeding his crybaby sorrowings, concentrated on seeing who needed what, anticipating their demands to help Jurgen keep abreast of serving. Flustered, he’d turn snappish, angry, most likely at Matty. He didn’t belong here, didn’t know where he belonged!

  Robey breasted his way from the kitchen, red and sweaty and good-natured with heat, bent to whisper to Jurgen. Frowning, Jurgen retrieved the cash box, misered it open. “How much?” he asked again in disbelief, pushing his thinning hair askew. Robey’d been engaged in protracted haggling over a side of beef, an unlucky cow having broken her leg on the ice. Whatever barter or cash the owner received for the meat wouldn’t begin to compensate for the loss of a good milk cow and the calves she would have produced through the years.

  Robey’s face
shone sunny-wide and innocent, crestfallen at Jurgen’s testy, disbelieving response. “Best I could do, my friend, best I could do.” Jurgen’s lips sealed tighter than a purse as he doubled-counted the wire bits and coins.

  It hit Matty with a wave of indignation, the words ringing in his head courtesy of the ghatta, as Kharm’s ears rose, alert. “Sure, five for the seller, and two for me. Same’s always. Even if you hand them the money direct, they’ll see I get my share. Or they won’t trade here again.” Not content with half the profits from their partnership, Robey was taking money on the sly! So that’s why Robey always worked out back with the suppliers, not out front with their clientele, why Matty’d seen money changing hands the wrong way a few times.

  Just let it pass, keep still, he instructed himself, but his mouth wouldn’t obey. “Jurgen, want me to confirm the price for you?” Why help one over the other, why make it his business? Why care? Except from the loft he’d heard Jurgen mumbling the accounts each night after closing, mounting expenses wearing him down, striving to put aside enough to hire someone to nurse his wife. The regret shone through him as if he were translucent each time the profits stacked thinner than he’d believed. So little to show for the hard work, the prolonged absences.

  He dashed back and returned, shouting over the din, “Likely Robey misheard. Five’ll do it.” The cow’s owner hadn’t dealt with Robey before, obviously didn’t know Robey’s system or that Robey had tacked his own bonus to the agreed-upon price.

  “You’re sure, Matty? Then why’d ye say ‘seven,’ Robey?” Jurgen sat tense and still, fingers clenching the coins, suspicions rushing to the fore. Although he hadn’t shouted, the tavern went silent, each person hanging on the next words, sensing something was brewing, wanting it to brew and bubble and explode in compensation for their own hard-won control through interminable, boring nights when even loved ones and best friends grated on the nerves. The smallest slight could spark an explosion.