Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1)

by T. Daniel Sheppeard

  “Where can I sleep?” I asked him.

  “I do not know how humans sleep,” he said, “or what you need for it.”

  “Is there a place where a visitor can sleep at night after paying money?” Okay, I didn’t know a word for ‘visitor’. I actually said, “a person not from here”.

  “Oh, there are many places for that, but most hren will just sleep in tents on the edge of town.”

  “Do you know a place where I can buy a tent?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is that?”

  He gave me directions to a merchant that sold various items for travel, including tents, who turned out to be an ostrich-thingy, were called grend. The grend clicked his beak-like snout excitedly when asked about tents.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, “I sell many tents. Very good quality. I have tents of skins, of cloth, of woven vine…” He rambled on at some length, pulling out sample cloths and so forth. I had to forcibly redirect his attention to my specific need: a small, cheap tent. His head drooped dejectedly but he pulled out a bundle that looked like a large leather umbrella. He helped me unfold it and I saw that it was barely large enough for me to lie down inside.

  “How much does this cost?” I asked him.

  “How much will you pay?” he returned.

  “You don’t know your own price?” I asked.

  “Make an offer,” he said.

  “Listen, I don’t really know how much things cost around here. I have some copper ingots, or I have a few items I could use to trade.”

  “Oh. You are new here?” he said. “Well, I give you good price. This is a good tent. It was hard to make. But I will give you a good price. How about… hmm… eight frim?”

  “Eight? How about five?” I thought perhaps the grend would be more apt to bargain than Vetuvenu, but it tossed its head back and howled.

  “You think because you are new you can rob me? Go away!”

  “Seven! How about seven?” I needed that tent. The grend swung its head back around to look at me.

  “I will take seven,” he said. “But don’t try to cheat me again!”

  I exchanged the ingots and took the tent to the outskirts of town, where the setting sun showed a small village of tents camping for the night. As I bedded down, I noticed that the murmur from the city did not die down all that much, leading me to imagine Black Banks was home to numerous nocturnal peoples. I was tired enough that it did not keep me awake.

  I woke at dawn, hungry and sore. Looking at my cache of food, I elected to munch on some fruit and, packing my tent, headed down to the river to try fishing. I found the ferry-boat captain in the shallows, his cloak on the banks, wading about with a net on a long pole, swishing it around in the waters. His body, as I could now see, was long and sinuous, almost serpentine, with long slender limbs and a tail. He hailed me as I approached.

  “Ele!” he called out. “I gave you ride yesterday, yes? What was it it… hupam?”

  “Human,” I responded. “But my name is Diggory.”

  “Humans eat fish?” he said. Mind you, the category of ‘fish’ didn’t exactly fit the aquatic creatures of Wayworld, but it’s the closest translation of the word spon.

  “Many of us do,” I responded as I wedged my fishing pole between some stones. I then began wading downstream with a spear. We fished in silence for about an hour. By then, I had caught several specimens of fan-fin eels (they were a different variety than the ones I had caught near Augie Field) and speared a wide, flat, disc-shaped fish-thing that swam by an undulating motion of of fins along its edges. Then I started a fire and began cleaning my catch. Soon the ferry captain was approaching, fish in his net, and his robe situated about his body again.

  “May I share Diggory’s fire?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, and he sat down and thrust a couple of fish on a sharp stick into the fire. “What’s your name?”

  “Paksachi,” he said. “In my own language, my people call ourselves shifwithukwi.”

  We chatted amiably as our breakfasts cooked.

  “You said you came here alone,” I said “How did it happen?”

  “On my planet,” he said, “I am not fish catcher, or boat-man. I am knowledge-man and machine-maker.” I didn’t know those terms, but I took his words to mean that he was a scientist or scholar, and an engineer. “I make vessel to go to far away worlds, farther than any shifwithukwi ever go before. But I go farther than I try to. I come here. Unknown enemy destroy my ship, I fall down. Was lucky to live. How did you come here?” I relayed my own story.

  Despite his alienness, I found Paksachi to be very approachable. I told him about Lena, and the ship, and my foolish rescue attempt. He ate fish and listened.

  “This female,” he said as I finished, “is she your mate?”

  “No.”

  “But you wanted her to be?”

  “Yes—well, maybe,” I said.

  “Is it hard for humans to find mates? Are there few females?”

  “No, there are many females, but it is sometimes hard to find someone you like enough, and who likes you, too.”

  “Were you bound to her, somehow?” he asked. “Was it a matter of honor? Would shame come to you if she died and you did not save her?”

  “No,” I said, “no one would expect me to do it.”

  “What was your work?” he said. “On my world we have savers-of-other-people. Are you a saver-of-other-people?”

  “No,” I answered. “I was a—” How to say ‘inspector’? How to describe it? “I would look at things that some people make, and tell other people whether they had built them correctly.”

  “So you are a great maker-of-things?”

  “No, not at all. I didn’t make things on my world.”

  Paksachi wagged his head back and forth, looking at me squarely with one eye, then the other. “I do not understand,” he said. “You do not make things, but you tell some people whether other people make things the right way?”

  “When you say it like that,” I responded, “I guess it doesn’t make much sense.”

  “So you are not a maker, yet you tell others how to make. You are not a saver-of-other-people, yet you try to save this female. She is not your mate, yet you do all this because of your desire for her, even when there are many other females.”

  “That’s about right,” I said.

  “I do not know the ways of your people,” he said. “Please forgive me if I insult you. But to me, this sounds very strange. Do all humans act as you do?”

  I thought about the question. How many people would do what I did? Some, surely. Not all. Many or few? Was I very brave, or very foolish?

  “That’s a hard question, Paksachi,” I said. “Many humans act as I do, and many others do not. You do not insult me. I agree. It is very strange. I come from a strange people, I suppose.”

  We finished our meal. I bid the ferry captain a good day.

  “It was good to eat with you, human Diggory,” he said. “I hope we do it again.”

  I went back to town to ask around about humans again. With nearly everyone I saw, I asked the same questions: Do you speak Shikachui? Have you ever heard of humans? Have you ever seen or heard of hren that look like me? The answers were invariably: yes, no, and not really. I interviewed potters, woodworkers, smiths, grocers, hunters, and others whose profession I could not possibly guess.

  Early in the day I passed a shop that had clothing of various sizes spread out on hangers and tables. I stopped short as I caught sight of something I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It was a mirror made of highly polished metal. What really caught my eye was my own reflection in it.

  I could hardly recognize myself. I had spent my entire adult life a little bit pudgy, thanks to lots of time in reduced gravity and little interest in exercise. The man before me was raw and lean. I was wearing shorts and had left my shirt off as it was a very warm morning. I was still no body builder, but my chest and arms were chiseled, if not
bulky. My wavy brown hair was shaggy and wild looking, as was my beard. I had always kept my hair too short for any curls to show and stayed clean-shaven. My skin was browner than it had ever been, except where it was marked with numerous scars.

  And there was something in the eyes that looked back at me: something wild, almost fierce. A sense of alertness, where before there had been casual nonchalance. And something harder to define. Something familiar. It occurred to me that they were my father’s eyes when he was hunting: calm behind the wariness. Quiet and still. I stood staring at the oddly familiar stranger when I heard someone saying, “… that would fit you.”

  I spun around to find a shokhung tailor behind me. So much for alertness.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I have anything that would fit you,” he repeated. “Though I could make something custom for you. It would take time.”

  “Oh, uh, no thank you,” I said. “I was just wondering…”and I started my usual questions with him, receiving the usual results. I wandered about town, an image of the skinny tan savage in my mind.

  I found no answers to my questions that day, but I did learn a great deal. Not surprisingly, hren tended to congregate with their own kind, but inter-species business partnerships, while not the norm, were not unheard of. Vetuvenu (a ruaka, I learned) had an oiwepol partner, and the two of them were planning a joint venture to Sarnin the following season.

  Black Banks was governed by a council elected from members of various guilds and trade unions. Every member of one these organizations was a sort of volunteer constable, and were expected to help keep the peace. One grend I spoke with estimated that fewer than a third of the city’s population was permanent, the rest being seasonal workers and merchants, or wandering tradesmen and vagabonds—at least, that’s what I think he said.

  Copper ingots were a common form of currency, but they held no official status as such. Copper was useful, and could be divided to small units, and the weights could be standardized. There wasn’t a lot of mining going on, so metal was somewhat rare. The insignia printed on my copper was put there by the praad, a race that controlled the city of Sarnin, to signify a standard weight. The praad had a reputation for exacting standards as to weight and purity, so Sarnin ingots were typically well-received. I also found out that I was grossly overcharged for my tent. Oh well, live and learn.

  Obsidian was also commonly traded, as it was useful in making knives, mirrors, arrowheads, and various tools, but it couldn’t always be broken down into exact, discrete amounts, so it wasn’t much of a currency. Similarly, there was a stone called chach, resembling orange jade, used in knives, tools, and decorations that was commonly traded.

  I went to camp at night and the next morning repeated my fishing session with Paksachi. He was good company: highly intelligent, brightly curious, and genuinely interested in just about everything. He asked me endless questions about Earth and humans, and found us to be a strange and fascinating species. He asked me about our science, and seemed to understand my answers better than I did. He asked about our politics, and was truly baffled by my answers.

  His own species’ space-faring advancement was not far different than ours: they had set up a few mining colonies and space stations here and there, but by and large their solar system was uninhabited. They had no contact with other hren—as far as he knew, Paksachi was the first to do so.

  Socially they were far different. Females outnumbered males two or three to one. Paksachi was a bachelor: a great rarity among his people. Being a single male was frowned upon, as you were depriving females of a mate. Families made pacts with each other, forming arbitrary tribes, which in turn formed alliances.

  Paksachi confirmed his ship had been attacked. He had survived the attack and made it to the planet surface with even less than I had started with. I asked him his theories on who or what was attracting and trapping us.

  “Some say that a very powerful race is planning to conquer us all, and are trapping our fastest ships so that they can destroy our ability to fight back,” he said. “Some believe that they are trapping us to study us. Some say we are kept as pets.”

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “I think these ideas are stupid,” he said. “Consider the first: perhaps they are attracting our fast ships. This is sensible. But why then do they abandon us? Would they not capture us, and ask us many questions? Is this not the way of war? Capture, ask questions. Obtain information about your enemy. Yet, this they do not do.

  “Consider the second: they are studying us. How many of their subjects die in the attack? As a knowledge-man, I would not be willing to destroy so many. And how do they study us without ever showing themselves? It is possible, yes, but not likely.

  “Consider the third: we are their pets. This suffers the same problem as the last: why would they kill so many pets?

  “I think that whoever is doing this, their mind is so strange to us that we cannot imagine how they think. I believe that their reasons for doing it are not knowable for us. Maybe the first idea is half right? Maybe they are conquerors, and in their strange—to—us minds this is how they conquer—not by taking our worlds, but taking our people and trapping us like bugs.”

  “Is anyone doing anything about it?” I asked.

  “What is to do?” he replied. “We are trapped here with nearly nothing. I heard that shokhung have built vessels to fly off the world, but they were destroyed. Some have built weapons to attack back, but they cannot find the vessels. Only a few have even caught a little sight of them.”

  I chewed on that for a while. I’m sure just about everyone on the planet had asked these same questions. Had no one found any answers? I voiced that to my companion.

  “Answers, no,” he said. “Mostly we are too busy learning to survive at first, then we are too busy surviving. And then, many probably do not survive. And then there are wars here, too. To rebuild the knowledge to search out these things may take many lifespans. But keep asking your questions, human. Maybe your mind will find an answer that others have missed.”

  Late that morning I found a day job helping a group of chivik (the tall, gangly creatures, with long snouts and tusks) unloading and carrying. It barely paid enough for a few simple meals, but it gave me a good chance to talk to them and learn more of their travels. They mostly traded between Black Banks and Sarnin.

  The next day I talked a leather-working chivik into letting me assist with some braided work. He readily agreed that I had ‘clever hands’ and allowed me to work with him on a few projects. A few days later I was helping out an oiwepol potter add fine details to her otherwise purely functional work. She agreed that if the detailed work brought better pay, she would allow me to assist more often. Working with her, I realized the oiwepol didn’t really have a ‘front’ and ‘back’. Their arms and legs were jointed so that they could walk or work on either side, their mouths were on the top of their head, and their eye-stalks could bend in any direction, so she would simply swivel her eyes around and walk the other way if she needed to.

  I settled into a daily routine. I would fish in the morning and breakfast with Paksachi. If either of us had a surplus and the other a deficiency, we would share, or sometimes one of us would catch something inedible to the one but not the other.

  After breakfast I would go into town. Sometimes I’d have extra fish that I would sell or, more often, trade, usually for fruits or vegetables. I would then check in with the small handful of people who’d offered me work. I sometimes did some portering for the wuv (the bird-beaked lizard-monkey thing), chivik, oiwepol, or grend, but I could hardly compete with the ruaka or shokhung for brute strength. Few hren, however, could compete with the human hands for fine control, though, of course, skill and experience outweighed natural ability. The few whose manual dexterity approached mine did not have nearly the hand strength of a human.

  I also foraged a little, and discovered that in the wooded fields near the town grew a
succulent fruit high in the trees that many hren liked to eat, but had trouble reaching, because aside from the wuv and shokhung—and now, me—none of the hren of Black Banks could climb trees with any ease. In the evening, I would retire to the outskirts of the city in my tent. I’d found a secluded nook in a pile of boulders that concealed my tent nicely, so I didn’t carry it with me the whole day.

  And so I got by. Every day was an exercise in trying to find someone new to ask about my pakren. I had many interesting conversations, but I remained a singular creature. I did learn a bit about the geography, and made a list of other cities to explore. Sarnin was definitely the closest large city.

  After buying some needles one day from a chivik bronze-smith I went to the wrinkled brown lump to see if it had any tools that would pass as pliers, which it did. I purchased a pair to use in fishing and making hooks. The proprietor was still brusque and curt, but not nearly so rude as at our last meeting. I asked if it had ever met or heard of a creature like me.

  “Yes,” it said.

  “Really?!” I cried, elatedly. “Where? When?”

  “Right here,” it said. “About a ganulan ago. Looked like you. Smelled like you. Did not buy anything from me. I told it to go away.”

  My elation vanished. It was talking about me.

  On another occasion I received a ‘yes’ from a visiting grend, but it turned out to be D’Silva on a rare trips beyond his woods.

  For a while, this was my life. It became tedious and boring, but after years as a low ranking inspector, I was accustomed to tedium. Months ago, at home, I would never have believed I could get bored living and working around a multitude of alien intelligences in a strange, far-away world, but there I was, bored nonetheless.

  I grew restless. Despite the number of travelers coming and going, no one was familiar with humans. If the Jamestown crew had wound up on Wayworld, they were not nearby. I had an entire world to search, and my heart sank as I dwelt on the knowledge that even if they were here, I could easily spend my entire life searching for them without success. On the other hand, what else was I going to do with my life? Paksachi seemed content with his lonesome life, but I was not content with mine. I made up my mind to travel again. Sarnin was as good a place as any.