Crossworld of Xai

by Steven Savage

  Slate nodded. Same here. Of course, he was an Outrider, and he was gone for odd lengths of time and for odd reasons. It must have made his relationship with Lorne hellishly complicated.

  It certainly made him appreciate Garnet. Garnet was occasionally moody, but she was stable and she was responsible. This meant a stable relationship, which meant Slate could get on with life.

  “How do you deal with it?” Slate asked frankly. “You and Lorne seem happy, and … you have to deal with your schedule and everything else. How the hell do you do it?”

  Xianfu seemed taken aback, and Slate realized just how impolite he’d acted. Nailing a guest, a boyfriend to his friend, hell, perhaps his best friend, with a personal question.

  “Sorry,” Slate began, “Look, Lorne’s a great guy and he’s happy, I just …”

  “I don’t know.” Xianfu’s answer was terribly final. “I … well to be frank I dropped by as you’re about the only person I know very well besides HuanJen, and he’s awful busy. “

  “And not exactly himself,” Slate found himself saying.

  “… and you I know through Lorne. Hell, I’d planned to … nevermind. I talked to Verrigent yesterday, he was visiting.”

  Slate’s mind roared into a kind of understanding. Verrigent, Xianfu’s old partner, who’d left Xai out of frustration with politics to a level-3 Earth. How that must have felt …

  “It makes me really think about being an Outrider. He seemed so distant, and I knew this guy for years, Slate. Nothing here matters to him anymore. Hell when I told him how the Powersmiths confessed to that problem with the blackouts … ” Xianfu’s dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to be like that. Ever get like that?”

  “I don’t allow myself.” Slate’s words were iron and stone.

  “You have something to keep you here.” Xianfu said. “I … damn, I am sorry, I didn’t mean to …”

  “No, no, it’s all right. I know. I know what it’s like. I wish someone could tell me what to do. I’ve got a home to find, a marriage, I’m asking questions I never asked before, and Garnet and I … it feels a home and a wedding is all we live for anymore.”

  “I envy you that,” Xianfu said frankly, “I really … had hoped to learn more about you two. Really. Before … Verrigent.”

  “I’d like to be back to being free and happy.” Slate bit his lip. “I could get rules and foolish pretension back home.”

  “You know, Lorne thinks you have it all worked out.” Xianfu smirked sadly. “I guess I did too.”

  “You’re hideously, terribly, awfully wrong.” Slate responded, articulating each word with a jeweler’s precision. “I don’t. I don’t have any plans. I barely see Garnet between work, the house search, and … a few other things.”

  Xianfu raised an eyebrow. “A few other things.”

  “A few other things.” Slate smiled, much to Xianfu’s surprise. “Things and thoughts, ideas. Plans. Lorne was helping me.”

  “I … see.” Xianfu said slowly. There was a glimmer in Slate’s blueish eyes, an almost playful one. “Lorne and I talked a few times about …”

  “What you can do here, not Outriding. I know.” Slate nodded. “I know. Changes all around. I think more to come.”

  “I think you are right.” Xianfu looked down at his hands. They were covered in calluses and scars. Lorne said they were manly. Lorne said a lot of things that were nice to hear.

  “Lorne talked to HuanJen about things.”

  “HuanJen is a good man,” Slate said cautiously. “A very good man. Let me guess, he was no help at all.”

  “No. The guys nice, but I’ve only seen him stressed out … as stressed as he gets.”

  “He’s around my sister, she flys off the handle enough for two people.” The huge Vulpine smiled. “You better.”

  “A little. Hey, you and Garnet have something aproaching normal. It’s nice. It’s … a sense of hope.”

  “I think … that’s all we can sometimes give each other.”

  August 9, 2000 AD, Xaian Standard Calendar

  There are scales of stories.

  For instance, in Metris the big story was the Communicants Guild, the powerful masters of radio and television, and how the other Guilds sought to put them under their control. It had been done with the Traveller’s some thirty years before, though that had precipitated a minor civil war. The current situation had precipitated politics, which killed less people sometimes, but could make you wish you were dead.

  However, you get used to the big stories. They’re around you, like air. The Communicants had slowly faded into the background, and even news they had finally given in to the other Guilds seemed less than noteworthy. People focused on other issues.

  Or, in the case of a lone man ambling down Temple street, tried hard to focus on anything.

  Some people’s stories are great novels. Some are tiny tales. Some are the scribblings of a deranged mind. In most cases, only careful analysis can tell which is which.

  Religion was a serious business on Xai - in every sense of the word.

  Foremost, on the chaotic quilt-culture of the Crossworld, a world where only about half the people were native-born, religion was a way to connect people. It was a way to see the larger world and understand the smaller.

  Second, on a world where oddities, spirits, specters, and other creatures from the other side of reality gathered, religion was a way to cope with them. Strange alterations in the magnetic field of the world bound haunts easily, and the Earth-between-Earth had always attracted those who saw a bit further around corners and into the soul.

  Finally, it was a business literally. Xai was a world of commerce, and no one begrudged holy men and seers a nice living. Guild Esoteric, one of the oldest Guilds on Xai, perhaps the oldest, ensured everything ran smoothly.

  Smoothly as possible, at least. A business never went perfectly.

  Walking out of the Lobby of the Guildhall of Guild Esoteric, HuanJen and the native shaman Brownmiller didn’t appear particularly happy with how smooth their days were going.

  They were an mismatched pair - HuanJen, tall and thin, built out of straight lines and hard curves. Brownmiller was dressed in the rainbow motley of a native shaman, his bald head and rotund body giving one the impression of a mobile and muscular egg. Together, they appeared to be a one and a zero from different sides of town.

  “So, you missed your Guild Medical meeting for … this.” Brownmiller’s voice was that of a friendly volcano. He tried to be civil -HuanJen’s occasional work to monitor shared services with Guild Medical was a sore point and had been so for some time.

  “I keep hoping the reports are over, and then, something else comes up,” HuanJen said, “it is very irritating. At Guild Medical at least I accomplish something.”

  Brownmiller nodded, shading his eyes and looking down Temple Street, the great place of gods-a-walk that terminated in the huge Guildhall. “We’re all accomplishing things. Even this, finishing things with the Historian …”

  ” … and the Scribe,” HuanJen added. “They still ask.”

  “You still don’t tell?”

  “Words have limits. Used when not needed, the effects are negative.”

  “True,” the shaman nodded, the talismans around his neck rattling.

  The two of them walked on wordlessly for awhile, passing by stores and shops and holy paces. Minutes later, Brownmiller finally spoke.

  “They’re thinking of taking you off of Guild Medical duty?”

  “Yes,” HuanJen’s answer was curt. “There’s talk of reorganizing Zones in my area, and I am not sure I fit in at Guild Medical. Now that the Communicants agreed to Guild control and more independence for their members-companies, and there’s all these changes, I wonder what is necessary …”

  “You like it? Guild Medical?” The portly shaman’s tiny eyes scanned the crowd as they talked. The incidents of the past few months had awakened a cautious streak he didn’t enjoy - too many months of talking about Zig
gurat Jack and the Historian carefully, in whispers or in private.

  “I am helpful.” The answer was simple, heartfelt, and weary.

  “Is it the money?” Brownmiller guided HuanJen to a small area of odd statuary, somewhere between a shrine and a display of art, one of the oddities of Temple street.

  “I could get money taking the offers I have coming in,” the Taoist mystic said flatly. “No, it is a desire to stop being treated as what people think I am and to be myself.”

  “You blame the Guild.”

  “No, I do not. They have done well, with the incidents, the helpline …”

  ” … which I’m betting will never go away,” Browmiller added.

  ” … it is merely I wish it over. Let things settle, like muddied water. It is confusing.”

  “For you and Jade?” Brownmiller hazarded. He rather liked Jade, but felt most people gave her too much credit - she was as human as anyone.

  “Yes. We’re trying to relax, trying to have a life like others …”

  ” … and?”

  “It’s rather not been as enthusiastic as it was. We’ve gone to dinner, we’ve done the things other couples do … and we still havent … our sex life has seemed uninspired, and …”

  “HuanJen!” A voice called out usuredly.

  Brownmiller saw the Fang-Shih cringe. Actually cringe. HuanJen was as usually calm as a flat sheet of silver.

  “Domino,” HuanJen muttered, though he muttered in an instructional manner.

  The portly shaman turned to see a tall, gangly man with short blond hair ambling towards him. He seemed to move as if he was made out of poorly coordinated rubber bands.

  Domino. A man from many Earths away, who had found unusual mental abilities awoken when he’d Traveled. It wasn’t the odd Navigational talent that let some people cross between Earths by choice, it was one of those strange gifts that popped up under unusual circumstances.

  It was also a gift he couldn’t handle. He’d become a kind of walking generator of mental static, and he had not coped well. A reminder that Xai had not developed a reasonable, wide-scale form of mental health care. Those things were left up to Guild Esoteric, the Magdelinic Order, and Guild Medical.

  “HuanJen, I need your help,” Domino said spastically, “I … I think I’ve become a supernatural menace to society.”

  The Taoist Magician-Priest looked up at the troubled man. “You lost your dominoes, didn’t you.”

  Brownmiller remembered all too well how he’d gotten the nickname. They called him Domino because of an unusual therapy devised to control his wild talent. Simple, solitaire games. Ironically, the nickname seemed to had helped.

  “Well … I gave them away. I think I can control it, Huan, but …”

  “We’ve told you to keep spares, and …” HuanJen clutched the side of his head for a moment. His voice turned as flat as the sky.

  Brownmiler felt his vision blur. He knew what that meant; Domino’s odd mental talents, a kind of psychic white noise, were manifesting. It wasn’t a weapon, but it was unsettling, and for a few people vulnerable to epilepsy, it could trigger seizures. Brownmiller cast his mind towards the Divine City, concentrating on the world of spirits, his grounding.

  “Youre projecting, Domino. You need to do your exercises,” HuanJen continued.

  “But, I … look, maybe an exorcism, maybe I’m demonic … “

  Brownmiller put a mety hand on Domino’s shoulder. The other rested on his ritual hammer, the sign of his service to construction-god Korsufar Bex - and a rather large piece of metal that it would hurt to be hit with. Domino became very aware that, though Brownmiller had some extra fat, his genes had gone for the economy sized pack of muscle during puberty.

  “Um …” Domino began.

  HuanJen pressed some Guilders into one of Domino’s large palms. “Now, go to the game store on Crescent and get some new dominos. You know they help you focus and keep things in check. Is your boss OK?”

  “He … knows I need to take time off from the paint store.” Domino looked at the coins in his hand. “Walk it off. I … Magister Nate thinks he may have something that’ll help next month. Maybe he can train me.”

  “Good.” HuanJen looked into Domino’s wild blue eyes. “You will go and get them and do those games you were taught. You’re not a supernatural threat, you’re just like us, we’re just helping out.”

  HuanJen’s voice was not forceful, it merely stated what would happen. Brownmiller almost smiled - as a cleric, that tone of voice was an important tool in your profession.

  “Yeah.” Domino nodded. “Th … thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  “Take care,” Brownimller managed to say.

  Domino ambled off. HuanJen seemed to deflate. His thin frame shrunk into itself.

  “He called me, you know, wondering if he was going to become dangerous. I think he feels it makes his situation seem less … pathetic.”

  Brownmiller put a thick arm around the young Magician-Preist’s shoulders. “Don’t let it get to you. We do our best, and Domino … well no one’s sure what happened to him on his Earth, and we can’t blame him for being a case of being the mental equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.”

  “At least he has those little exercises Nate taught him.” HuanJen said. “I wish he hadn’t fallen for the latest popular trends.”

  “Let it go. And let us go, I have to get home. I’m taking my son to the movies.”

  HuanJen nodded. “Well, let us see what else is going on …”

  “Driving?”

  ” … that is going reasonably well, but I feel some sympathy for Lorne …”

  People knew HuanJen was naive. This was not a case of ‘suspect,’ people knew, mainly because you could ask him, and he’d say he was.

  However, he was deliberately naive. He was, yes, well-spoken and well-educated, but he preserved a kind of educated innocence. He knew you could make your life overly complex with very little effort, and in many cases other people would be willing to make life complex for you.

  He was a person that strongly believed life would balance out. He had been raised that way in the Order of Sanctum, and his real life experience had borne it out. Life balanced, and nothing was outside of the great cycle of life, despite peoples endless and pointless attempts to flee it and control it.

  Yes, he did get involved with peoples lives, but it was what he did. It was how he was inclined. He was honest, and felt his life was just another part of the great Unity of things.

  However, he had also spent over eighteen years of his life in a religious order where most people felt this way more or less. This led to the peculiar problem of him assuming other people felt the same way he did, even if to a lesser, more unmystical extent.

  Thus, for instance, he was reasonable sure Domino would, indeed comply, buy some dominoes, and perform a series of odd mental exercises to calm down.

  He also was quite sure that Jade was doing very well. Yes, she’d taken a peculiarly domestic streak as of late, seeming more interested in socializing with him in a more … “classic” atmosphere. But, she had to know what she was doing. He trusted her.

  Of course, Jade had come from a world where the Vulpines gathered in a conspiratorial society known as Colony, brokers of truthes and lies on their Earth. It rarely crossed his well-meaning mind that she wasn’t used to being trusted.

  August 11, 2000 AD, Xaian Standard Calendar

  Garnet Rubissom was a planner.

  On her old world, she had been a clerk, one of the few Vulpines who interacted reguarly with the human-standard population. On Xai, she’d spent some time working as a Secretary, a member of the Administratum. After meeting Slate, she’d become his homemaker and accountant after becoming his girlfriend.

  So, when Jade had asked her to help with something …

  … she answered. Jade was quite organized herself, so when she had problems, you listened. Actually, when she asked for help, you checked to see if
there were any other signs of the apocalypse present. It was that noteworthy.

  It’s just Garnet had not expected the subject matter.

  She’d met Jade at the apartment she shared with HuanJen (and had once shared with the mystic himself for a time). Jade had been polite asked how she was …

  … then broke down.

  “Garnet …” Jade began, pacing around the room. Garnet, having just gotten comfortable on the infamous white fluffy couch in the living room, felt the edges of the world peel away.

  “Garnet … I’m confused. A lot. Badly.”

  “Jade?” Garnet was now a bit afraid. This was a rather … well Jade was never vulnerable. This was an unconfident Jade.

  She was ready to look for other signs of the apocalypse. This had to be one of them.

  “I …”

  “Let it out,” Garnet said calmingly. She didn’t know what else to say, but she could feel something within Jade fraying. She figured it was better to get it out in the open than let it fester within the Vupline’s head.

  Then, all hell broke lose, and it had black fur and green eyes.

  “I’m not sure what’s happening! HuanJen is so busy! He’s got all this crap, the Guild isn’t sure about having him work with Guild Medical. Domino dropped. Our sex life stinks! It’s boring! It was fine when Paldayne was mucking around, but no, now … it’s dull and this is HuanJen! I mean …”

  “Yes, I know about HuanJen.” Garnet said, amazed at the tone of her voice. She was intimately aware of HuanJen’s rather affectionate and dynamic sexuality due to some previous complicated events. “I know.”

  “Well, yeah, you know what he’s like in bed … er, sorry. I mean, it’s dull. And it’s in bed, we rarely have sex in bed … had … sorry.”

  “No, please, I thrive on details I don’t need.” Garnet tried to use some humor to cheer Jade up. Jade took little notice of the words, let alone the attitude they were presented with.

  “I mean … we have a chance at some normalcy here and it’s boring! OK, forget the calls, forget the interviews, forget the weird mail, damn it …”

  Garnet clutched her forehead. She could feel Jade was repressing something. She couldn’t get inside her head - only one man could truly do that, and he was the point of contention.