The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “What other place was that?” Mercald asked, suspiciously. “Nextdown? Midwall?”

  The man chewed, swallowed, spooned another mouthful up before considering this question. “Oh, not any place very local, I’m afraid. Elsewhere, I think. Before I came here at all.”

  “You came from elsewhere,” commented Mavin. “Perhaps from the place the ancestors of these chasm dwellers came from? Or from the southern continent?”

  “Elsewhere,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the rock around them, as though he had permeated it recently. “It started with liquids. They didn’t understand liquids. Local geometry is non-space-filling. Icosahedra. Triginal bi-pyramids. Oh, this shape and that shape, lots of them. More than the thirty-two that fill ordinary space, let me tell you. That’s why things are liquid, trying to pack themselves in flat space, and that’s what I told them.

  “They couldn’t deal with it. They wanted order, predictability, regularity. Silly. Local geometry can be packed, I said, just not in flat space. So, I said, give them a space of constant curvature and they’ll pack. All they did was laugh. I took some liquids to a space of constant negative curvature to show them it would crystallize, and it sucked me up. One minute, there. Poof. Next minute, somewhere else. Somewhere different, thank the Boundless. Boundless. That’s a local word for it. Picked it up from someone on the stairs out there. Boundless. Good name for it.”

  “I’m sure the Boundless would be gratified at your approval,” said Mercald, much offended.

  “Shhh,” calmed Mavin. “The man’s a guest in our midst.”

  “They said every place was like the place I was. Infinite replications of sameness. They called it translational symmetry. Well, I determined to find difference no matter what it took. So I left there and came here. It’s different here. It’s local. Poof and feh on translational symmetry.”

  “I thought you said you got here by accident,” said Beedie, trying to make sense out of the person. “By some curvature or other.”

  “Yes. Both. Hardly anything is mutually exclusive when you really think about it. You can’t look at things too closely. The more precisely you look at one thing, the more uncertain the others get. If we locate me precisely here, how I got here becomes increasingly unsure. Tell you the truth, I don’t remember.”

  “Reality has many natures,” said Mercald in his most sententious voice.

  “That’s the truth,” said the theoretician, focusing on the priest for a moment before drifting away again.

  “That’s the truth, so far as it goes, at least.” He chewed quietly to himself, smiling at his own thoughts. “Surfaces,” he murmured. “Edges. Reality has edges.”

  “That’s the truth,” Beedie muttered to herself. “So far as it goes.” She glared at Mavin. “What did we need him for?”

  “Need? Well, sausage girl, what do we need you for? To make life more interesting. He’s different, isn’t he?”

  Mercald circled the theoretician in slow, ruminative steps, eating, staring, eating. At last he said, “What do you mean, reality has edges?” Receiving no response, he repeated the question, finally driving it through with a kick at the stone the man was sitting on. “Edges?”

  The theoretician put his plate down, picked up a length of root from the floor of the cave. “You see this? This is a system. It has surfaces. It has extent. It has size and corners and edges and impurities and irregularities.” He put it down, searched for a stone, found one. “This one, too. Here’s another. Not the same, not the same at all. And another one yet. All local. Everything’s local. Local.”

  The other three looked at one another, Mercald kept on with his circling; at last it was Roges who said, “So?”

  “Not to them! Oh, no, not to them. To them, everything is the same. In all directions. Forever. No edges. No corners. They used to scream at me. ‘What do you do about surface states?’ As though that meant something. I thank the Boundless for the surface states. Show me something, anything without surface states! Anything at all! There’s nothing like that in reality. But they didn’t understand. Just went on inventing ’ons. Palarons. Plasmons. Phonons. Exitons. Vomitons and shitons soon to come. Feh.”

  Beedie murmured, “I don’t know, Mavin. It seems to me we ought to let him go back to his cave and start worrying about the Banders.”

  “Banders,” screamed the theoretician in a sudden expression of fury. “Infinite lattices. Homogeneous deformation. Idiots.”

  “I really think it’s something religious,” said Mercald to Mavin in a thoughtful voice. “There’s a fine kind of frenzy about it. Of course, it might be heretical, but it sounds quite like doctrine.” He regarded the theoretician almost with fondness.

  “We’ll take him with us,” said Mavin. “If he wants to go. Thinker, do you want to come with us?”

  The man shook his head, then nodded it, reaching into the general pan for the last of the fried root mice. “If it will be different where you are going. I’ve modeled this place. There’s nothing left to do here.”

  “He means he has realized it,” said Mercald with satisfaction. “I’m beginning to understand him. It is definitely religious, after all.” He stroked the theoretician’s shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the feel of the rags. “I’ve got an extra shirt I can lend him.”

  “Ah,” said Mavin. “I’m glad you find him sympathetic, Mercald. I wonder if he has any practical use at all.” She stretched herself on the cave floor, seeming, to Beedie’s eyes, to flow a little, as though she shaped herself to the declivities of the place. “Thinker, will you solve a problem for me? Give me an answer?”

  “Answers? Of course. I always know the answer. After I see the problem, of course. Not before. They’re always terribly simple, answers. Which one do you need?”

  “We need to get to the stairs below Nextdown – that’s the bridge just below us – without being seen by anyone on Nextdown. There is no other stair and no root climbable by any of us but perhaps Beedie here.”

  “Ah,” said the theoretician. “Might one ask why?”

  “There are a dozen large men at the end of this stair who are determined to do us harm,” said Mavin, without changing expression. “Is that reason enough?” She had been watching Beedie’s bright, excited face and was determined not to change into some huge climbing shape which would solve all problems and take all the fun out of the expedition. Besides, Shifting was too easy. Sometimes it was more fun to plot one’s way out of trouble. This praiseworthy thought was interrupted.

  “Shhh,” said Roges, moving to throw his jacket over the fish lantern. “I hear voices. Someone coming down.” They fell silent, listening, hidden as they were in the dark of the cave, the last glowing coals of the fire hidden from the entrance by their bodies. There was the sound of a dozen pairs of feet, a malignant mutter, a phlegmy cough.

  “I smell smoke,” said someone from outside. Byle Bander’s voice. “Smoke, Dah.”

  “Well of course you smell smoke, idiot boy. There’s Nextdown no more than a few hundred steps down. This time of evening when don’t you smell smoke? Everybody’s cooking their dinner, and good time to do it, too. I’m hungry enough to eat for six.”

  “You think the Birder’s gone on down? You think our fambly took ’em at Nextdown, Dah?”

  “I think that’s probable, boy. In which case, we’ll have a high old time finding out from that Birder what they’re going after.”

  “And Beedie. I get to ask Beedie, Dah. That and a few games, huh? She’s one I’ve been wanting to play a few games with for a long time…” The voices faded away into silence, footsteps echoing up the stair for a time, then nothing.

  “Ah,” whispered Mavin. “So we are not only expected below, but followed after as well.”

  “They won’t find us down there,” said Beedie. “But they’ll know we have to be somewhere.”

  “It’s all right, sausage girl. They won’t come searching back up the stairs until morning. Well, Birder. Was their conversation pro
of enough for you?”

  Mercald gestured impotently. ”What did they say? They would ask me questions. They would play games with Beedie. Can I prove dishonorable intent?”

  “Rootsap,” said the theoretician. “I’ve been thinking about rootsap. The way down, you know. Rootsap.”

  “Poisonous,” said Beedie. “Eats through your skin.”

  “Not at the temperature of the chasm at this altitude at this time before midnight,” said the theoretician. “Which is the coolest time of the daily cycle in the chasm. A phenomenon which awaits explanation but is undoubtedly the result of a warming and cooling cycle on the surface.” He stood up and patted himself, as though taking inventory, though he carried nothing at all. “Knife,” he said. “Or hatchet. We need several good sized blobs.”

  “Knife is quieter,” commented Mavin.

  Beedie nodded. Mavin took a knife from her hip and went out of the cave, Mercald following her silently. The theoretician merely sat by the coals, his eyes unfocused, staring at the stone around them, muttering from time to time. “Suitable viscosity. Alpha helix. Temperature dependent polymerization. Glop. All local.”

  Beedie dumped her pouch on the ground and re-packed it, taking a moment to put her hair in order, coiling the dark wealth of it neatly into a bun when she had finished. She caught Roges looking at her, and he flushed. “You have lovely hair,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted to say that, you know.”

  “That … that kind of talk isn’t customary, Maintainer,” she said stiffly. Then, seeing the pain in his face, “Roges. You embarrass me. I’m sorry. Nobody ever said I had nice hair. Aunt Six always says I’m a scatter-nonny.”

  “You’re not a scatter-nonny,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s just … just, I’ve never had anyone trying to do me harm before. If anything happens, I wanted … I wanted to have said…”

  “I don’t think they’re going to do you harm, Roges. I think it’s me they’re after. And Mercald, maybe. They don’t even know Mavin is here.”

  His face darkened in a kind of remote anger. “Harm to you, Beedie, is harm to me. Maintainers are not mere servants. We are a good deal more than that.”

  “Polymer,” said the theoretician, loudly. “About now.”

  Mavin reentered the cave, carrying a huge milky blob of rootsap on a piece of bark, Mercald just behind her similarly burdened. They put the blobs down where the theoretician could see them. “Well, Thinker?”

  “Cooler,” he directed. “Wherever it’s cooler.”

  Beedie rose, moved around the cave. “It’s coolest just at the entrance, Mavin. There’s a draft there.”

  They put the rootsap down and waited as the theoretician wandered about, examining roots that came through the cave top, smiling at rocks. At last he came to the cave entrance and peered at the blobs. “There,” he said with considerable satisfaction. “You can see the polymerization beginning.” They looked at the whitish blobs which were turning transparent. “Cut it,” he suggested in his mild voice. “Into four pieces. No. Five. I’ll go with you.”

  Mavin shrugged, took her knife and cut the blobs into five parts. They resisted cutting, piling up around the blade. She pushed the blobs apart, for they seemed to want to rejoin.

  “That’s funny,” said Beedie. “I’ve never seen it behave that way before.”

  “Nighttime,” said the Thinker. “You’d have to have seen it at nighttime, when it’s cool.”

  “You’ve seen it at nighttime before?”

  “Well, no. But I thought about it.”

  “Now what?” asked Mavin. “We’ve got five blobs, rapidly turning transparent. What now?”

  “When they are totally clear, you’ll need to pull it through a hole of some kind. Lacking any method of precise measurement, I would say something roughly finger size. Small finger size.” He watched with interest as Mavin carried the blobs and the fish lanterns out into the dark. There she found a chunk of tough rootbark and drilled a hole in it with her knife.

  “So?” she asked. “Why don’t you do one.”

  “Madam, I am not an experimentalist!” The theoretician turned his back on her, as offended as Mercald had been earlier.

  Mavin snorted. “Well, if you won’t soil your hands, you won’t. Have you any suggestion what I should do next?”

  He turned, very dignified in his rags. “You’ll need to push the blob through the hole. You’ll need to fasten that chunk to something that will hold your weight.”

  She found a convenient fork in a root and wedged the chunk behind it after pushing some of the blob through the hole with a stick of deadroot.

  “That should do,” said the theoretician, taking a firm hold on the part of the blob which protruded from the hole and leaning outward into space. “Be sure to make all the holes in the bark just that size. The yield at that diameter will be approximately one hundred man heights…” The blob stretched. He grasped it firmly. It stretched further. He stepped into air, and the blob stretched, becoming a thick rope, a line, a line that went on stretching, bobbing him gently at the end of it like a child’s balloon as he sank down below the light of the lantern into darkness. “I thought it would do that,” his voice came plaintively up. “I could theorize, but does anyone know what’s down below?”

  “For all our sakes, I hope it’s the stair to Potter’s bridge,” muttered Mavin, leaning out into the chasm. “Well, let’s make another chunk with a hole in it, sausage girl. However, let me try it first. What works for our strange guest might not work for us. He’s fond of saying everything is local.”

  After another session with knife and bark chunk, Mavin stepped into the chasm and dwindled away at the end of the stretching line, bobbing as she went. The sapling made a thin humming noise as it stretched, a kind of whirring. After a time, when the blob had shrunk almost to nothing, the whirring stopped, and Beedie heard a muffled call from below.

  “I guess we try it,” she said to Roges, wiping her hands up and down her trousers.

  Mercald was dithering at the edge of the drop, peering down once more. “I … I … can’t … let … I can’t”

  “Oh, foof,” she spat. “He’s got the down-dizzies. I might have known. Mercald. Don’t look. I’m pushing some of it through, now take firm hold of it. Wipe your hands, ninny. They’re all slippery and wet. Here. I’ll use my belt to fasten you to it so you can’t drop. Now. Roges and I are going to hold you by the hands. Shut your eyes. Now! I mean it. Do what I say, or I’ll call the Banders and let them have you. We’re holding you. Now. I’m going to let go. You’re going down. Just keep your eyes shut. Shut!”

  She checked the straps of her pack, wiped her hands once more. “Are you ready, Roges? Roges?”

  “Hnnn,” he whined through his teeth. “As ready as I’m likely to be, Bridger. I, too, suffer from the down-dizzies, but I suppose it’s time to get over it.”

  She surprised herself, and him, by touching his face, stroking it. “Honestly, Roges. You can get over it. It just takes getting used to. Do what I told Mercald. Just don’t look down.” She watched as he eased himself over the edge, teeth gritted tight, sweat standing out on his face. He began to drop, and she took firm hold of her own blob, jumping outward with a strong thrust of her legs, stretching it abruptly, so that it twanged, bobbing her up and down in midair. She clung for dear life, cursing her own stupidity.

  When she stopped bobbing, she was beside him, falling down the side of the wall in a dream drop, the hairs of the roots tickling her face, occasional small creatures fleeing with squeaks of alarm. She could see only the light of the fish lantern above them, fading into distance, and the lights of Nextdown which came nearer and nearer on her left, until she and Roges were bathed in their glow. He still gritted his teeth, but his eyes were open, darting this way and that, and she knew that he searched for danger to her even as he fought fear for himself.

  Then the lights of Nextdown were above them, becoming only a glow against the root wall as the bulk of the b
ridgetown eclipsed the lanterns. From below she could hear the voice of the Thinker raised in complaint.

  “They would never have thought of that. Their systems have no surfaces, and it’s totally dependent upon surface…”

  “I think I’m going to get very tired of that voice,” she said to Roges plaintively.

  “I’m tired of it already,” he agreed. “Still, we’re past Nextdown. We didn’t get captured or tortured or held for ransom. We’re all alive. And I’m confident we’ll find out what’s eating the roots, and then we can go home.”

  Beedie was silent, watching the glow of Nextdown fade above her. “I’m not sure I want to think about … home, Roges. Not just yet. I know you get the down-dizzies, but … isn’t it exciting? Aren’t you enjoying it at all?”

  There was no time for him to answer. Mavin’s voice came out of the blackness nearby. “The stairs are to your right, sausage girl. I’ll toss you a line.” Then they were drawn down onto the stairs, and she forgot she had asked the question.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Where are we?” asked Mercald, his voice still trembling.

  “On the stairs to Potter’s bridge. Which is not where we particularly want to be,” said Mavin. “Nextdown is slightly above us on one hand, Potter’s bridge a long way below us on the other hand. Midwall, which is where I need to go in order to reach Bottommost, eventually, is beyond Nextdown, quite the other direction.”

  “We can work our way along the root wall under Nextdown,” said Beedie, not looking at all sanguine about it. “That will bring us to the Midwall stairs.”

  “I think not,” said Mavin. “At least two of us, possibly three, would find such a traverse difficult. I’d rather find another way, if possible.”