Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 14

by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant

  This mission is a failure, he says to her. You must destroy abomination and return before the crime is discovered. There is no alternative. Even I cannot save you once they learn what you have done here.

  Rina tells him that no one will know what she has done here unless he alerts them, that he is her greatest danger, his pursuit of her a flag to others that Primus 27 is of interest and may still harbor a renegade Council scholar. Eventually, she says, the wrong person will wonder why the magnificent Soshu is so often wandering this flat world with no rare minerals, no compelling expression, and only the most ordinary terrain. It will not be long before the connection is made in the minds of those who would do them both harm.

  He is gone within seconds, and we are on the move again a few minutes later, climbing up the muddy side of a semi truck into warmth and safety. Rina will guide each driver to help and forget, help and forget, until by dawn we will have changed vehicles and directions three times, just to scramble the vector.

  * * * *

  Later, Rina will call their battles a war of harmonic tones, two powerful vibrations in sympathy but out of synch, and say that sympathetic vibrations can destroy even the strongest structure. I know this is a metaphor, meant to be an instructive explanation of my seizures, of why we live the way we do. I do not point out that it addresses how, but not why.

  Soshu values above all others the clear flow that is Rina, and seeks until he finds her, no matter where we hide. He is the greatest warrior of his time, an anarchist who travels the universal grid as if it were his own. He is the subject of legend, unregistered and unstoppable, and it is clear to me he will not rest until Rina returns with him to their home clan. His hatred of me is an absolute, and when he recites to Rina his list of my genetically engendered physical and mental faults, I become invisible, even to myself. He is certain I will never reproduce, and uses a word I understand only as “abomination.” This is not a translation of meaning, but I have heard the preaching man on TV use this word with the same harsh condemnation that Soshu pours into his word for me. The taboo against genetic mixing is so ancient and so strict in the home clan of Soshu and Rina that the word for a boy like me, a child formed half of their species and half of another, is lost. I am simply “abomination."

  We hide from Soshu for reasons Rina will not discuss, saying only that when even he cannot find us, we are invisible to all. So he is our grudging shield against greater danger. When we are alone, Rina tells me that until I develop the full male gifts of my second species and begin to travel the grid, I am invisible to those who would harm me. She promises this, and I believe her, while privately reserving the question of my high visibility to Soshu.

  Rina is a great warrior in her own right, whose talent lies not in seeking but in silence. I am still too fresh to grasp the intricacies of political wars along the grid. I comfort my agitation with the belief that Soshu will always find us, but Rina will make us invisible again when he does.

  * * * *

  After three days of scrambling, Rina has chosen a stopping place. This small room is like all the others. Quiet. Disquieting. New places assert their visibility, and until I learn to disregard my surroundings, I am not a strong presence in an empty space. I sit now in this sagging chair, and we are two halves of one creature, equal to the cobwebs and broken floor tiles, but in a few more days my familiarity with the unchanging contours of this place will lull me into a sense of mastery, and I will use the room without regard for it. This is a profoundly disrespectful attitude toward the miracle of matter.

  Rina laughs when I tell her so, and says it has nothing to do with reverence for the grid, or for the flowering of matter along its byways. It is simply my nature to heighten sensory input when confronted with something new. It is an instinct, she says, for protection and food-gathering. As I must so often, I accept Rina's instruction without full understanding. I glimpse only dimly how a talent for disrespect might foster the gathering of food.

  I am tired tonight, but wakeful. Because there is no one here to notice but the usual uninterested host, I have walked out under the night sky alone. I wander the rolling, overgrown pastures until it is safe to drop the damping field. Over a small rise is a fence, behind it two animals unfamiliar to me. They are long necked and heavily furred, and their round eyes gleam in the light of the rising moon. I startle them out of placid curiosity by speaking. My small size makes me no real threat, but they challenge me immediately, then run to the far side of their enclosure in confusion. I sit with them and allow their cautious inspection until they are satisfied of my neutrality. When they return to their feeding ritual, I try to test my astro-orientation skills, but soon give up in frustration at the wash of moonlight.

  Walking back, I consider the question of moons, weighing the practical value of a clear astral window against the convenience of a naturally lighted darkside. If Rina were with me, she would smile to hear me choose a transcendent third, holding reflected beauty in the night most dear.

  * * * *

  We have not moved in weeks now, and my curiosity rides me to indiscretion. I ask Rina if Soshu has left us alone at last. We are readying for sleep, joining our warmest clothing with that of the bed because our heat source has proven insufficient to the cold nights. I do not really expect an answer, but Rina startles me by turning her full gaze into mine and dropping her deepest privacy field. Her mind is suddenly transparent to me, its true voice powerful and serene.

  "You must not burden yourself with Soshu's agitation, rare one. You are not abomination. You are a tool to fight oppression, finely made, and it is a high ethic.” She waits, but I am too startled to reply.

  "This world is ripe for participation in the grid, but it will never be approved,” she says then. “No primitive clan is ever approved. Old power does not yield to new power. It must be outwitted, its displacement made inevitable."

  I listen to these words, listen even to the silence after the words, until Rina says, “Question.” It is permission and instruction, but I am tangled in my own confusion, trying to unravel the ever present question of Soshu from the sudden question of destiny from the central question of my siring.

  "He was a gentle man, wise by the measure of any clan,” she replies to my silence. “He would delight to see that you rapidly mature beyond even the broad speculations of hope. Come now, the day is over."

  On this odd cold night Rina arranges our bodies for warmth and strokes my hair in rhythm with my breathing until I am drowsy and content.

  "Soshu is a being of great honor,” she says then, “but he is not a visionary. He does not see you. You must not allow his blindness to close your eyes."

  * * * *

  The next day, and the next, Rina's deeper thoughts are inaccessible again, and our life resumes its slow and thorough pattern. I wait and wonder for several days. Then, on pretense of seeking instruction about the nature of temporal displacement, I ask a series of questions linked in a chain that leads to my future. After the second question, Rina smiles and will not respond further.

  I try again the next day, this time with a series of erroneous interlocking assumptions about my origins that cry out for correction. Her silence is unshakable.

  Days become weeks, and I grow increasingly desperate to return to the oracle of Rina's true mind, to ask those too-late, now-desperate questions about history and destiny. I travel one conversational route after another, personal and political and philosophical, but all terminate at the unscalable wall of Rina's silence. Finally comes the day when I lose my way completely.

  Rina is sitting at the table, reading bulky printed pages that she has collected from the world. I climb into the chair across from her, but she does not look up. I drum my agitation against the cool surface of the table, but her gaze never falters, sweeping down the pages with rhythmic efficiency. I hear myself say aloud that she must drop her privacy field now, that she must answer my questions, that I have an urgent need to understand exactly who I am. She looks up then. Aft
er several long seconds, she smiles and returns to her reading.

  My frustration blooms in a chemical heat that spreads from my core to my limbs until I am overwhelmed by the urge to destruction. I throw Gameboy to the floor with all the strength small arms can gather, then cross to the window and fling myself into the chair, pausing only to aim my new soccer ball at the picture on our wall. There is a satisfying crunch as the glass shatters into a pattern more lovely by far than the faded scene beneath. Astonished by the intensity of my experience, by my excessive response, a wiser me observes as I voice rude opinion on the topic of disrespect for the miracle of maturing sentience. There is a long silence, softened only by the shush of snow against the window glass, before Rina's serene reply.

  "Four cycles is a brief time here,” she says. “You will find that your gifts mature unevenly. Some days more than others."

  * * * *

  I am sitting alone in a point of space. The beings of my first clan surround me, sinuous and silent, crossing paths in all directions, weaving an invisible field. I gather it close, like a warm garment, but when I turn to speak my thanks, there is only Rina, standing in the sunlight next to the bed.

  "That is what is meant by ‘dream',” she says. “Rise now. This is the day you meet your home clan."

  * * * *

  For the first time, we go out into the snowy streets without the damping field, and Rina holds my hand. We walk toward a gathering of sound and color and scent in the central streets. All around me I hear the songs of my homeworld, voices as strange to me as if I had just arrived, shipwrecked on a sonorous ocean of speech. Now I can hear these beings of my first species shout and mutter and sing their thoughts without the least screen of privacy. Now I can see that none in my home clan accepts the thoughts of another except in the coarsest, most roughly modulated tones.

  "They do not realize they are always speaking,” Rina says. “Until they do, you must conceal the fact that you are always hearing."

  * * * *

  I train now for hours every day, in the streets. I walk with the Rina who works, who meets and talks and listens and mimics activities with my home clan. I am her silent companion on these journeys, instructed to observe my own reactions and assumptions. She says there will be many cycles in which to observe the reactions and assumptions of others, that first I must consider my own limitations and confusion.

  A sudden thaw under a warm sun brought many to the soggy common grounds today, and though it seemed a day for ordinary fieldwork when we walked out, it was instead a day when I kicked a ball with others of my clan. We were every one of us small and none of us proficient. It was not a soccer ball, and we did not resemble the matches on TV, but it was intensely pleasurable. Rina assures me that a talent for teamwork is indeed part of my individual nature, and promises I may frequently seek out those others who also like to kick the ball. Now, while she travels, I lie here awake, unwilling to end a day when visions may step out into the sunshine and run through mud.

  * * * *

  Rina came in from the world today stamping grey snow from her boots, bringing cold air smelling of metals in the failing light of a late blizzard. She did not speak, already in advanced preparation for her daily renewal. I waited quietly while she performed her ritual in privacy. I observed fiction on TV, challenging myself to construct assumptions about all characters based solely upon the words and actions of one. I was routinely accurate in my conclusions, and tired of the game quickly. Instead, I explored the deeper nature of “products,” their importance to the people here. My people here. I then chose food with a stimulating texture for my evening ritual. I sang a song. I lay on the bed with old red dog, watching my visions of him as sentient being, myself his best companion. When the door to the water room opened at last, Rina crossed directly to me. I held up my arms to her and she lifted me and wrapped me in her vital force. I was happy. I did not see clearly the probabilities of my life.

  * * * *

  Without warning, we have moved again, unhurried and in the light of day. Rina will not discuss her reasons, but it is obvious to me that we have traveled here to be in this place. Questions about Soshu prickle at the base of my skull, but I must set them aside as worries, for there is no clear sign of him in the probabilities of Rina's choice. It is a true mystery.

  This new shelter is unlike all former hiding places, another mystery. Here we are not living in someone's extra room. Instead, we are alone together in a tiny metal house, on a street edged with the tiny metal houses of others and busy with their movements. I think we are in the United State of Florida. It is very flat. The air is damp and warm, and smells powerfully strange and new. I have counted seven different United States so far on the license plates of cars that roll past our window. Of the parked cars that I can see today, three are from Florida and one from Nevada. If I am allowed to go outside before Soshu finds us here, I will check every driveway and curb against my simple deductions. I am not used to living in a place with such a large and constant sampling of active events, where I may form assumptions without reliance upon the gifts of my second clan. My training exercises are suddenly made rudimentary, little more than counting. I am free to sit at the window and observe. Excited. Breathing strangeness.

  * * * *

  I like hiding in a tiny metal house together. Rina smiles when I say this. Today she has brought me a large bag of storable foods. We have been here for seventeen days now, and she has begun focused research of a local biogroup. She claims the work is going well, but lately her thoughts are always screened, and she carries herself with a careful reserve that hints at unshared information.

  I am content to wait for her revelation. I am not yet allowed to join in her work, but we have run through the redolent darkness over warm sands to the living water, and I understand at last the literary love of “sea". Rina promises we will return to the ocean in the hours of day. Until then, I breathe its now-familiar breath and observe our crowded surroundings. I like watching the cars and drivers, the bicycles and the walking people. I am cataloguing the body customs of the dogs and cats. I like having other rooms, extra space to aim my soccer ball. I like the long and unremarked silence of Soshu's absence. Old red dog is settled on the bed, ragged and full of meaning.

  I tell Rina I have again exhausted Gameboy, hoping she will ask me for a report of my day, but she loads new training files and diversions in silence and then goes to her ritual. I examine my small stack of food choices, more curious than hungry. I have fashioned my own ritual of renewal from the suggestions of TV, but cannot eat at a large table with other chairs and other people, because there is only me. Rina tends to her energy needs in private. She says it is customary, that Soshu does the same and will some day teach me the male rituals of my second species.

  I am silent when she mentions Soshu, and cannot yet imagine how he and I might overcome the barriers between us to become teacher and pupil. He does not speak the languages here, and refuses to learn. I will never speak his language because the resonating chambers with their fragile hair-fine lattices are missing from my jaw and brow. It is true that he could choose to open his mind to me, but I know now this is a rare intimacy even for those who meet in trust and mutual esteem.

  I remind myself to set aside these thoughts of Soshu, as Rina has instructed. I choose a soothing food for my ritual, then turn my attention to Gameboy. He offers many challenging new tasks, and one new entertainment, to which I quickly form an urgent attachment.

  * * * *

  I awake to the buzzing of Soshu's anger, the pain, the darkness, the certainty of change. Never before have they argued so fiercely, or stopped so suddenly, or continued calmly into the stillest hours of the night. Never before has Soshu come into my room before dawn and offered his formal salute before leaving.

  He appears just inside the doorway, the radiating star of his vital fields shifting for a moment into an expression of physical body. He has given me not even the briefest outlines of his face. He strikes his
expression of chest with a fist, flat against the radiant focus point, and an instant later is gone.

  At daybreak, Rina sits next to me on the bed and speaks with quiet detachment, as if I were already ripened into my capabilities, as if I were a partner in her awful decisions. She speaks of probabilities, of genetics, of the tendency for a concentration of power to look first to its own perpetuation. She speaks of anarchy and entropy and the harsh event horizon of greed. I understand most of what she tells me, and by the time she makes her long-awaited revelation, open minded to assure me of its truth, it is secondary to my own conclusions. I want to struggle, to shout, to rise up and slay whole armies of probabilities, but my head is heavy on my pillow, and I am cold under the thin blankets.

  "There are thousands like you on other field projects, rare one, growing and listening, siring and creating others to grow and listen. It is a broad revolution, many thousands of cycles deep, and it will not fail. Even Soshu does not know this. I have put you at risk by lingering here to start your training, but understand that you are a rarity even among exceptions.

  "You are safe on your homeworld. No one will travel here. Only Soshu knows your signature, and he will never harm you, despite the things he says. He will die first, defending you, because I have extracted his oath to this effect, as he has extracted mine that I will stay by his side until your first maturity. It is only a little while. Twenty or thirty of these brief cycles here will precipitate the hormonal changes necessary to bring you to the grid. There will be time, then, for all the training that cannot be done safely today.” She touches my face and rearranges my pillow for my comfort, but it is too late for sleep. The new day is in the room, bright and terribly ordinary.

  "I know you understand this, rare one. The border fields will never be dropped here, no matter what my data shows, but it is your nature to step through those fields, and to bring change with you.” She pauses, waiting, I know, for some reply, a formal acceptance of this gift of destiny. I am only silence, growing out of silence.