Bound into the Blood

by Myers, Karen

  While he waited for him to get ready, he turned an ear to the tentative sounds of plumbing starting and stopping experimentally in the next room, and grinned. He liked looking at this world through Benitoe’s eyes. Or even Mag’s. They made it fresh for him, too.

  It would be fine, he thought. They’d work out a trade plan for Benitoe to take to the Kuzul, and Mag would get her geology grad course, customized to whatever she could find in the heads of the unsuspecting professors going about their daily business in that building. Angharad would get her rosebushes, and he’d go check out that fellow in Port Matilda. It was probably just a coincidence, no connection to him, and they’d be back home in no time. Then there wouldn’t be any reason for Cernunnos to be upset.

  And after that, soon, my daughter! It felt like his heart stopped every time he thought about it.

  Why stop with one, he thought. We’ve got plenty of room for more.

  Seething Magma remembered something George had once said when confronted with too many ideas at the same time. He’d said, “It makes my head hurt.”

  I may not have a head, she thought, but I recognize the feeling.

  She lay at the end of a way that emerged underground, which was to say, that ended at a dirt wall without emerging anywhere. She was confident that no human could detect her so far beneath the street but she’d taken George’s advice to go deep enough to avoid any of the complex pipes and conduits which his kind built beneath their buildings.

  She’d plucked from his mind the notion of water, sewage, and electrical connections underpinning their larger structures, and of concrete footings beneath the buildings, so she’d moved cautiously into place. She could feel overhead the rumblings of particularly heavy vehicles along the roadways, and the occasional thump as a large electrical motor kicked on, but otherwise she was blind and deaf.

  She was also frustrated and more than a little confused.

  Her plan was flawed, she understood that now. She’d thought she could lie in wait for a human expert in the knowledge of the earth, perhaps many of them, in this location, and just listen in, as George would put it. She could indeed taste that no few of the minds above her had some acquaintance with the subject, but that’s not what they thought about.

  They thought about their families. They tried to stay out of the hot sunlight. They were hungry, or thirsty, or interested in mating with each other. Some were worried about money, some chatted with friends, and some napped in their classrooms. They drove over her position in cars and listened to music. Those last were a special problem, because if she attended to them too closely, she began listening to the music, too, and had to tear herself away or she’d follow them to the end of her range.

  There were dozens and dozens of these humans, and none of them were of any use to her.

  She’d identified three particularly interesting people, two men and a woman, and they yielded more fragments than most. She thought they were possibly teaching others, and that helped them concentrate on the things she cared about, but even they were constantly thinking about something else. They remembered personal events while they lectured. They evaluated students for possible mating. They anticipated their next meals.

  What they did not do was sit quietly and think about the fundamental principles and latest developments in the study of the earth, in an organized and instructive fashion.

  I do better reading the textbooks we order through the computers, she thought, frustrated. There has to be a better method, some way of getting one of these people all to myself for intensive study.

  Unbidden, an image came to her of something she’d seen in George’s mind when they’d talked about traps. She visualized laying a trail of food from the lecture halls above her through the basements and then deep below, with one person following along until he reached her. She amused herself for a moment with a vision of widening the space here and molding a seat out of the displaced dirt. Wouldn’t work, she acknowledged reluctantly. No light and no air. The specimen wouldn’t survive.

  Patience, she chided herself. You must learn patience to accomplish anything, wisdom she’d learned from her mother Gravel back when she was Granite Cloud’s age.

  Learn what you can while you’re here, then ask George’s advice, she thought. She reached out and checked his location. He was with Benitoe, not too far away. Maybe he’ll know what to do.

  She settled in to sift the minds above her again.

  George finished the last bite of his lunch, a toasted bagel with salmon spread, and waited for Benitoe to finish his own sandwich, hard salami and goat cheese, at George’s suggestion, on the basis of “more samples to try.”

  “Alright,” he said to Benitoe as he wiped his hands with the paper napkins and stuffed the trash back into the paper bag it came in. They were sitting in the car in the back of the parking lot at the local grocery superstore. “Hands clean? Let’s set up these phones.”

  George read through the instructions and initialized both the disposable cellphones he’d picked up at Best Buy that morning. He set up voice mailboxes for both of them, too, then entered some phone numbers.

  “Look, I’ve stored the numbers you need so you don’t have to remember them. My phone, Mrs. Catlett, and my grandfather.”

  Benitoe held his own phone and watched intently.

  “Now let me see how much you remember of what I showed you. I’ll call you, and you answer.”

  He speed-dialed Benitoe’s temporary number, and the default ringtone sounded off. Benitoe almost dropped his phone in surprise. “That’s the noise you’ll hear when someone calls you. Now, you go answer it.”

  Benitoe pressed the button he’d been shown and held the phone up tentatively to his ear. George turned his head away from him in the car and spoke quietly into his phone. “See, this is what it sounds like. Now you say something.”

  Benitoe stammered out, “Can you hear me?”

  George replied, “Quite well. Now, when you’re finished, you say ‘good-bye’ and hang up. Remember how to do that?”

  Benitoe looked for the proper button then, before he pressed it, held the phone back up to his ear. “Good-bye,” he said, then brought the phone back down and pressed the button.

  His hand was shaking, to George’s amusement. “Now, was that so hard?”

  Benitoe gave him a black look.

  “This time, you call me,” George said.

  Benitoe looked for the stored numbers but couldn’t find the right sequence of commands. George showed him once more, then leaned back and let him try again. He found George’s number in his speed-dial and pressed the button that dialed it. George answered his phone when it rang, and let Benitoe start and end the dummy conversation.

  “See? Easy-peasy,” George teased.

  “Just one more thing. If someone doesn’t answer, you can usually leave a message. A machine will speak to you…” He paused to roll his eyes at Benitoe’s stare. “Like a…” What could he compare it to? Calling it a robot wouldn’t help. “Like one of those birds that repeats phrases. It sounds intelligent, but it isn’t. It’ll tell you what to do.”

  Benitoe continued to give him a blank look.

  “It’s easier just to show you. Look, you call me, but this time I won’t answer. Maybe I put the phone down, maybe I’m busy, or maybe I’m talking to someone else.”

  Benitoe dutifully speed-dialed George’s number again. After five rings, it went to voicemail, and a recording said, “The number you have called is not responding. Please leave a message when you hear the tone.”

  Benitoe opened his mouth to speak, but George held up a finger to forestall him, until the beep sounded. Then at George’s go-ahead gesture, Benitoe said, “Um, this is my message.”

  George prompted him, “This is Benitoe. Please call me back because…”

  Benitoe repeated the words. “Because I need to talk to you about… something.”

  “Perfect!” George said. “Now you can just hang up.”

  Benit
oe stabbed at the button, and the call ended.

  George held up his own phone so Benitoe could see how it showed him there was a message, and the phone number of the person who had left it, then he clicked on the display and let Benitoe listen to the message he’d left.

  “See how this works?”

  Benitoe was clearly uncertain, but he nodded gamely. “I think so. Can we practice some more, later?”

  “Of course we can. Don’t forget, it needs electricity to operate. This little picture here gives you an idea of when it needs more power. I don’t think we’ll be here long enough for that to matter, but you should keep the power cord just in case you need to recharge it.” He held up the cord and demonstrated how it connected to the phone. “You can plug it in anywhere. I’ll show you in your room tonight.”

  He shoved the phone in his pocket, and Benitoe did the same. Teasing aside, George was relieved that Benitoe now had some degree of backup in case they were separated. If he couldn’t reach George, he could reach Mariah Catlett or his grandfather, and he was confident they would come help in an emergency. Mag could get back on her own, but not Benitoe.

  Benitoe was shaking his head. “That store this morning, it was like a magic shop. I didn’t understand almost anything they were selling.” He patted his pocket over the cellphone. “It feels like I just got a magic wand.”

  He waved his hand at the grocery store visible through the windshield. “At least the goods in that food store don’t make noises or come with screens.”

  George chuckled in agreement. He decided to check in on Mag, who’d been silent all morning. How are things going, he thought to her.

  The response was delayed and a bit distracted. *So many people, so little I can use.*

  He picked up an image which reminded him of one of the big old computer card-reading machines from the 1960s, diligently sorting through data.

  She sounds busy, he thought. I’ll try again later.

  What next? He had a couple more places in mind but didn’t want to overload Benitoe completely.

  “Any thoughts so far?” he asked the lutin.

  “You mean, for the Kuzul?”

  George nodded.

  Benitoe paused to consider. “I can’t help thinking that we shouldn’t just be looking for items the korrigans passed by. It would be too easy for them to add those themselves, and then where would we be?”

  He continued, “And then, I’m not pleased with the notion of setting up big trading villages and warehouses like Tremafon. I don’t think most lutins would want to live like that.”

  George commented, “You could have your own goods for trade, but you don’t necessarily have to do your own delivery. You could hire the korrigans to transport the goods for you, pay them a fee. Your folk could show people what’s available, maybe hand out samples, and take orders. Then Broch’s folk could deliver. Either your customers could pay you in advance, or the korrigans could collect upon delivery and transfer the payment to you.”

  Benitoe said, slowly, “I suppose we could use Broch’s warehouses, too, for a fee.”

  “Or maybe a combination,” George said, “Some items you store, some items he does. Maybe you even produce some of the items, like new foods from the human world, or new crafts.”

  “But how would people find out about our goods?”

  “Lutins could travel with their samples and show them.” George waved his hands in the air. “It’s not like you’re a blacksmith with a new weapon, stuck in one place and dependent on local people finding out about it and spreading the word. You’re more like a group of traveling blacksmiths, showing everyone the new weapon, prepared to satisfy many requests, not just a few.”

  He had an incongruous mental image of a big burly blacksmith cloned into dozens of copies, each with a human rubber-tubed slingshot ready to demonstrate.

  Benitoe said, “So, you’re thinking of a traveling store.”

  “Well, there may be too much to just carry along with you. Samples only, maybe.” He envisioned a sort of tinker’s wagon, but he didn’t think Benitoe would understand what that was.

  Benitoe grunted. “Let me think about it.”

  George commented, “If you need an investor, let me know. I’d be glad to help.” His old company-building career might be of some use in his new life after all, he thought. Maybe he could get in on the ground floor of a market for coffee, say, or chocolate. Do they even have banks in Gwyn’s kingdom, he wondered. He’d have to find out.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Look how the light is brighter on the south side, and the shadows are beginning to warm in the westering sun.”

  Angharad was looking over Bedo’s shoulder as he tried to capture the scene in watercolors. He was new to the medium, so she’d set him an initial subject of a single rose, using George’s potted gift from the day before.

  She stepped back, careful to avoid the small work tables she’d had brought out onto the veranda while the clear weather persisted. If Seething Magma was going to visit via the garden at the huntsman’s house, she planned to base herself there as much as possible with her apprentice, not inside the studio. Some outdoor studies would be a pleasant change.

  All the animals were sleeping underfoot in the shade of the veranda roof, except for Imp who basked alone in the hot sun on one of the steps. Before Angharad could sit down again, the black cat rose and stretched. He casually trotted down to his spot on the path from yesterday and sat expectantly.

  It was no surprise to hear Maelgwn come out through the back door behind her, and Alun with him.

  “Mag, again?” she asked her foster-son.

  He walked up to stand beside her, and nodded. “She says it’s not an official meeting for Gwyn this time.”

  Angharad sometimes wished she could hear the rock-wight like he did, but there was no way-finding in her blood. She curbed her impatience and waited. Bedo put his materials aside and stood up.

  In just a few moments, Seething Magma flowed out onto the path, putting a sharp bend in her body to keep from disturbing the rest of the garden, as she had done before. This time, Angharad lost her dignity and burst out laughing at the sight of the two tall yellow rosebushes rising out of form-fitting depressions on her back, one behind the other, their long canes drooping down her sides and swaying as she moved.

  Seething Magma lifted the nearest one out with her pseudopods and placed it at the foot of the veranda steps, then passed the second one forward along her back and put it next to the first. The body cavities that had held them filled and left no trace behind.

  Angharad said to her, “I have a vision of you coming next time with a whole series of them, one after the other. Do you suppose that’s what he’s planning?”

  Mag rumbled, “I cannot say. The impulse seems to be difficult to restrain. I will remind him of the limited size of this space, should the occasion arise.”

  Angharad laughed again. “Never mind. If he overflows the garden, I’m sure we can find suitable homes for them.” She was tickled by George’s unexpected persistence in drowning her in rosebushes, and rather curious about what might be next. The plentiful yellow blossoms had a strong sweet scent just like the roses she remembered from Gwyn’s father’s court.

  These looked like climbers, and that suddenly made more sense of the number—one for each corner of the veranda. Imp strolled over to sniff at the flowers, then sat and batted at one cluster of fat blooms that dangled from a long cane.

  “Can you spend a little time with us?” Angharad asked Seething Magma. “What have you been doing?”

  Maelgwn added, “What’s it like over there?”

  The rock-wight’s body settled slightly. “There are too many people, but I think I am beginning to understand how to filter them out.”

  She indefinably tilted toward Maelgwn who sat down on one of the veranda steps, far enough away to be safe from accidentally touching her.

  “We are at a place of learning, friend of my daughter, a school for old
er students. There are hundreds of buildings and thousands of people, even though most of the students are away. I spent my time today in a way underground near the building where the humans who study and teach geology work. The hardest part is finding individuals to attend to, but once I do, I can hear them well. There are about two dozen people I’ve come to recognize and follow.”

  “Can you learn about rocks just by listening to the teachers?” Maelgwn asked.

  “It is not so simple,” Seething Magma said.

  Angharad thought she could almost hear a sigh. “Let me guess,” she said. “If they don’t know you’re listening they think about something else, don’t they? And then you can’t find out what you want to learn.”

  Mag rumbled, “So George warned me, and so it has proven to be. Only when they teach students or engage in their other professional work do they think of what I wish to know, and then only in fragments. It is less concentrated than their words in books.”

  Bedo asked quietly, from the top of the stairs, “What will you do, my lady?”

  Seething Magma said. “George calls us impatient, and so we are. We will think about this expedition and make a plan. I am not sorry to have gone—the human world is strange and wonderful, and we are beginning to learn what our limits are.”

  She paused. “Perhaps we will learn patience, too.”

  Angharad suppressed a smile. “Please give my husband my love, and tell him all is well here. And tell Benitoe he is missed by his friends, too.”

  Without changing the position of her body, Seething Magma absorbed the pseudopods facing Angharad, extruded them at the other end and flowed back into the way.

  Angharad had not yet painted a rock-wight, but she thought that trick of theirs to change direction without turning their body would be one of the hardest things to capture. Along with their general indefinite form. Did they look the same underground, she wondered, when they were at home?

  Alun looked down at the pair of rosebushes. “I think I should be planting these, at the foot of the pillars.”