“There is not much knowing,” he answered.
“Were you always on this world?” I said.
“Nothing is always except the great other,” he replied. Perhaps that was a religious statement (it sounded like one) or perhaps he just meant that Wayworld had no native hren (which many believed, despite the presence of vessels orbiting the world and shooting down visitors).
“Were you born here?” For ‘born’ I used a Shikachui word that basically meant “come into being”, whether through live birth, hatching, or whatever.
Ankosh paused a long time. “There is no meaning to those words.”
“Does Ankosh remember another world besides this one?” He paused again.
“There is some knowing, but not much. There is memory of others that moved like Ankosh but were not hren.” Did Ankosh have amnesia?
After we’d spoken for a few confusing hours, I desired to be on my way.
“Ankosh, do you know if there is a settlement further upstream from here?” I said.
“No” he said. “The nearest gathering of which there is knowledge is downstream.”
“I’ve enjoyed talking with you, but I’d like to continue my journey now,” I said, rising and beginning to load Debbie.
“Ankosh wants to journey with Diggory,” he said. “Ankosh will learn about humans.”
I thought it over. Ankosh fascinated me. I agreed and in a few minutes, my strange new companion and I were heading back downstream. We walked in silence for a little while, then Ankosh began asking questions.
“Diggory carries many things. Many other hren carry many things. Diggory uses animal to carry things. Why does Diggory carry so many things?”
I gave him a run-down of the food, tools, and supplies I had with me. It led to more questions.
“Is it hard for humans to find food?” “Why can’t humans eat [fill in the blank with random organic substance]?” “Why do humans need tents? Is the night air poisonous to humans?” “What is the purpose of the cloth that humans and some other hren wear?” I was surprised by many of his questions.
“You’ve traveled among other hren before. Didn’t you learn about [fill in the blank] from them?”
His responses varied. “There is no (or little) remembering of that” or “Ankosh wants to know why humans do it”. He pointed once to Debbie. “The animal walks on all limbs. Why do humans and many hren walk only on some?” I answered that our bodies weren’t built like that.
“This is what it means to be hard,” he replied. “Hard ones must use bodies in one way only. Ankosh can use body in many ways.” With that he poured himself in rough approximation of Debbie and walked along on all fours for some time after that.
Ankosh proved to be a very interesting companion. He was naive about a great many things, and had a child-like curiosity about nearly everything that was new. On the other hand, his long pauses of reflection before speaking gave him the air of a wise sage or scholar.
Personal pronouns eluded his speech. He spoke little about himself, preferring to talk about his travels, which were extensive. His knowledge was broad, but shallow, and full of holes. Wrapped around all of that was a language barrier complicated by a very alien mind-set. All this together made for strange but enjoyable company.
Ankosh needed rest, just as any other living thing. At night when I stopped to sleep, Ankosh found a hollow spot in the ground, and poured himself into it. Come morning, he was up and about before I was, and I had no idea how much or little of that time he spent liquefied.
Ankosh could eat nearly anything organic, and also gained energy from sunlight, presumably a form of photosynthesis. If I followed his twisted language correctly, his entire skin was sensitive to light (he could shape himself to focus the light using make-shift eye-spots), odor, taste, touch, vibration, et cetera. Ankosh swam or soaked in water daily whenever it was available. He said he needed to stay moist.
After several days we found ourselves back at the praad village, where we were met with a great deal of hustle and bustle. Workers loaded wagons. Sections of the village were being torn down. Everywhere there were praad of every sub-type directing the efforts of the numerous other hren that lived in and around the village. I sought out Shikachui speakers to question. It took me quite some time to find some of the wuv that had translated for me earlier.
“What is all this?” I asked. “What is everyone doing?”
“The praad have found the city you spoke of,” she answered, clacking her beak nervously as she busied itself securing packages to a wagon. “They have decided to move to that city, as it is larger and better equipped.”
“But why is everyone packing for them?” I asked. “And the fields are being trampled by the work. All your farms are going to be ruined!”
“The farms are not as important as preparing for the praad journey. We hurry them on their way.”
I knew little of the relationship between the praad and the Protected, especially at this town. Maybe things were not as smooth here as they were at Sarnin.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Are you so eager to be rid of the praad that you will destroy your work and homes to hurry them on their journey?”
“What do you mean?” clacked the wuv. “We will not be rid of them—we are going with them.”
“Why would you want to do that?” I said.
“What we want is not the question,” she answered. “We have no choice. Did you not know this? The praad rule; the Protected serve.” I soaked up the revelation in silence.
“I thought the praad took care of you,” I said at last. “I thought they protected you.”
“They take care of us the same way you take care of your vedrad,” she said quietly, “and for the same reason. The protect us from many things. Mostly they protect us from what they think is our stupidity. They protect us from making the mistakes they are convinced we would make without them. To the praad, all other hren are ignorant fools.” She glanced over her shoulder at a nearby overseer. “I have work to do,” she said. “You should go before they decide to protect you, too.”
It was hard to hear. My first impression of the praad was that they were very arrogant. Later I felt that maybe they weren’t, since they cared about other hren and wanted to help them. From what the wuv had just told me, my first impression was true and then some. The praad were slavers, in fact if not in name.
“I think we should leave,” I said to the still-almost-Debbie-shaped Ankosh. He did not respond but turned and walk away with me as meekly as the vedrad. I walked as quickly as I could while looking (I hoped) casual. As we traveled further downstream we saw a caravan of praad and their wagons, accompanied by various Protected, making their way off to the west, presumably toward the pass.
I wondered how much damage had I done? I had reunited two domineering communities, who would now have greater numbers and resources concentrated at Sarnin. Feeling pensive, I resumed my march southward along the river.
Once we were well out of sight of the praad caravan, Ankosh’s vedrad-shaped head morphed into something more humanoid.
“Was there no knowing in Diggory that the praad acted this way with other hren?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Was there no knowing in Diggory that the praad made rules for every activity in their gatherings?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Well, maybe. Not really. Well, I suppose, I guess I did after all. But I did not know that they felt they should control others so completely.”
“Why is there surprise in Diggory that a hren who make so many rules would think that all others must obey them completely?”
“I don’t know, Ankosh,” I said. “I never really thought about it. On my homeworld we have many laws, but we do not believe that we own others.”
“‘To own’ is to carry, as Diggory carries food and tools, correct?”
“Yes. ‘To own’ also means to control, as I control the vedrad.”
He paused a while.
“There is no joining among humans. There is otherness. Do some humans make rules for other humans?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Since there is no joining, the humans that must obey the rules do not make the rules?”
“Uh, sometimes, yes.”
“Some humans control other humans as Diggory controls the vedrad, correct?”
“Not exactly, no. The control is not complete.”
“Does Diggory control the vedrad completely?”
“Well, not completely.”
“How then is this different than humans controlling other humans?” Ankosh was not asking a rhetorical question. He genuinely wanted to understand my thought process.
“I don’t know, Ankosh,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
“If Diggory does not know, can Diggory know it is complicated?”
“Don’t your pakren have rules where you partly control each other’s actions?” I asked.
“Ankosh is not other. Ankosh is pakren. Ankosh is Ankosh.” And then we were back to the indecipherable issue of Ankosh and his relationship with his pakren. After this I tried to avoid talking politics with him.
It was nearly impossible to describe my former role as an inspector in enforcing these rules without sounding stupid even to myself. I hadn’t become an inspector out of any love of regulatory practices or any desire to “keep people safer”. A few of my colleagues had—or at least so they claimed. I had chosen it because it was easy and involved no real responsibility. I didn’t have to produce anything, take risks, or worry about outcomes. I put a bunch of X’s into a bunch of boxes. I learned when to not to look too carefully at something. If something was really wrong (which was rare) I passed it along to someone else that actually knew what they were doing. Such was my former profession.
My former profession. The phrase echoed in my mind. I hadn’t spared my old job much thought in months. I thought often of the dad I’d probably never see again. I thought about my mom. I even thought about the little brother I barely knew. I still occasionally thought about Lena. But I almost never thought about the “career” I’d left behind. I was too busy tending to reality: hunting, eating, building, traveling, making, learning, running, fighting. Too busy not dying.
The river that we followed south joined the east-running river that flowed along the plains just north of the mountains. The mountain range, which had, up to that point run east-west, now turned southward, running diagonally across the compass points. Soon the river’s path took us through hillier territory as it cut closer to the foothills.
I engaged my companion about the various hren he knew. Most of his knowledge was of the races north of the mountains, but at some point he had traveled through the “middle lands”. Here his knowledge was very sketchy.
I wondered if he had suffered some sort of brain damage—assuming he had a brain. He had picked up Shikachui, and he knew of Black Banks. He knew nothing of the okavi, but he did know the shokhung (who thrived almost as well in the upper lands as the middle), ruaka, wuv, and the praad.
He elaborated a little on praad society. Though one species, they had specialized castes for fighting, labor, clerical work, and leadership. They believed they were inherently suited to guide the destinies of less enlightened species—by which they meant all of them. Everything was centrally planned and coordinated by their leadership. At least, that is what I surmised from Ankosh’s strange manner of speech.
I tried, mostly failing, to discern more about Ankosh’s species. Did they fall from the sky like the rest of us? “There may have been falling.” Was he alone or where there others? “Ankosh is not other.” Where did baby Ankosh’s come from? Where they born or did they hatch? He seemed very puzzled by this. “Ankosh makes more,” was all he could tell me.
Days went by without finding any hren. We came across a few abandoned huts here and there, and once found the ruins of a small village. We explored the wrecked and falling houses, but found nothing of value—only a little bit of furniture and broken pottery. The furniture and houses were not built for anything humanoid, rather it looked like some sort of quadrupeds had lived there.
I rummaged idly through some of the debris.
“What does Diggory look for?” asked Ankosh.
“Anything,” I replied. “Just idle curiosity. I wonder who lived here and how they lived. They weren’t human, but I still wonder about them.” I fished about in my bag and pulled out the white fluff that might have been part of a feather. “For example, I found this in another abandoned village. It reminds me of something from my world called a ‘feather’ from Earthly frama. I haven’t found any creature on this world with such a structure.”
“Ankosh wants to examine that,” he requested. I handed it him. He held it for several moments before handing it back to me. “That is unknown to Ankosh,” he said. “Tell Ankosh about the Earthly frama.” And so we talked for a while about birds. He asked me to describe them in great detail. After a while, he poured himself into a very crudely formed bird.
“Are ‘birds’ shaped like this?” he asked, using the English word for ‘bird’.
“A little bit,” I said. “But the beaks are usually shorter.” He shifted a bit.
“More like this?”
“Yes, but you don’t have a feathers.”
“Very small things, like hair, are difficult to shape,” he said. “Aside from feathers, is this a bird shape?”
I gave him directions as he refined the shape. After half-an-hour we had arrived a passable facsimile of a very large eagle. Ankosh moved his newly made wings about in an approximation of flapping.
“There is no knowing in Ankosh,” he said, “of how to use these wings. They are very different from the frama of this world.”
“Wait, Ankosh, are you saying that you can fly?” I asked.
“Now Ankosh is too large to fly,” he responded. His giant eagle melted back into a large blob. Then a small bud, maybe the size of my two fists together, bubbled out from the main form. The bud refined in shape, elongating here, stretching out there, flattening elsewhere, until it bore a good resemblance to some of the hairless bat-winged frama of Wayworld. The wings stretched and flattened until they were thin and translucent and started flapping. To my amazement, the Ankosh-frama took flight and left the main blob of Ankosh behind on the ground. It flew high into the air and circled overhead.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“Diggory saw how that was done,” he responded, after shifting into his pseudo-Diggory form.
“But, can you control the other Ankosh you created?”
“There is no understanding,” he said. “Ankosh is not other. Ankosh is Ankosh.”
I pointed to the flying figure above.
“Is that another Ankosh?” I asked. “Or is it part of you somehow?”
“Ankosh is not other,” he repeated. “Ankosh is Ankosh.”
“Okay, but who or what is that?” I asked, still pointing at the pseudo-frama.
“That is Ankosh,” he said.
“Okay, but is it part of you or is it separate?” I asked.
“There is no understanding,” he said. “Diggory can see that it is separate.”
“So that up there is not part of you anymore?”
“That is Ankosh,” he said, pointing up, then pointed to himself. “This is Ankosh. That Ankosh was with this Ankosh. Now that Ankosh is not with this.”
“So you were both here together all along?”
“There is no understanding. There was not both. There was only Ankosh. Ankosh was here. Now Ankosh is here and Ankosh is there.”
“Are you the same?” I asked.
“Ankosh is Ankosh,” he answered unhelpfully.
“Are you two connected somehow?” I said.
“Diggory can see that this Ankosh and that Ankosh are not touching.”
“Does this Ankosh know what the flying Ankosh is thinking? Do you know what it is seeing or hearing or feeling?�
�� Ankosh paused a long time.
“No. Can humans see where they are not? Can they know the thoughts of humans without joining or speaking?”
“Well, no, but we also can’t chop off bits of ourselves and send them flying away.”
“It is because humans are hard,” he said. “One human is one and another human is other. Is this not so?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Diggory is human. But there are humans that are not Diggory.”
“Correct.”
“Ankosh is Ankosh,” he said simply.
Moments later the flying pseudo-frama came swooping down, quickly lighting on the Diggory—Ankosh. It melted into the “flesh” of its former host. As I watched the process I saw very faint flashes of light within Ankosh, barely perceptible—I would have missed them if I had not been watching the absorption with rapt attention.
“Ankosh and Diggory should leave now,” he said with a hint of urgency in his windy voice. “Kralsnar come this way.”
“Did he… it… you—did the frama you made tell you that?”
“There was no frama. Ankosh saw them while Ankosh flew.” I didn’t pursue the matter but quickly threw my packs across Debbie and departed with Ankosh at my side. As we left Ankosh gestured northwest. “Kralsnar come from that way.” Hence we directed ourselves south-east, veering away from the river. We hastened in that direction for a couple of hours, staying to low places and clumps of trees and shrubs. After a while we paused in a copse of anemone-trees.
“Can you do your frama trick again and scout the area?” I asked.
“What is frama trick?”
“You know,” I said, “what you did earlier. Can you make another frama and send it out searching?”
“There was no frama,” he tried to explain even as he began forming one. “There is only Ankosh. A portion of Ankosh formed like a frama. Ankosh is not frama, though sometimes Ankosh is formed like one. When Ankosh was formed like vedrad, or when Ankosh is formed like Diggory, Ankosh is Ankosh.” By now my request was fulfilled and the pseudo-frama was flying back along the way we came.
“So do you control the frama-shape?”
Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1) Page 23