by Colin Harvey
You could visualise what you needed, but forming the words to fit the thoughts was more difficult. Ignoring him, you said to Bera, "Maps?"
"More nonsense," Ragnar said.
You formed another word, slowly wrapping your jaw around it: "Need maps."
"Of course," Bera said, taking your arm. "We'll find you some maps. Later, after you've peeled the vegetables. Come on, lovely, let's finish peeling the vegetables." She turned to Ragnar. "I'll only be a few minutes, Gothi. I'll get him back to work, and then I'll resume my duties. Unless you prefer to have him milling around wasting time?"
"No," Ragnar said, his voice normal now, the yearning tone gone. "Take him back to work. I've things I need to get on with, anyway."
She led you down the hill, back to your tasks. You caught a fragment of memory from the Other: this is all there is; peeling vegetables and sleeping on straw for the rest of your life. The despair in the thought was enough to stain the day dark despite its sunshine.
"You must try to keep to your chores, Loki," Bera said. Her identifying you from the Other gave you pleasure, though you did not know whether it was good or bad.
You exist. She recognised you, whatever she thought of you.
"Need maps," You said. "Need maps. To. Find beacon."
She stopped, still holding your elbow, and stared at you. "A beacon?"
"Need maps. To find beacon."
"Tonight," Bera said. "I have maps in my room, printed on pieces of scrap. I like to see how the world looks – it may be the only way that I will ever see it. When we finish our work, I'll sneak them out."
"Tonight?"
"Yes, tonight, Loki. Now, back to work." * * *
"Isheimur is geologically unstable and riddled with low-level vulcanism that paradoxically acts as a safety valve for more explosive events–"
Sometime – perhaps while you peeled vegetables – the Other returned. The next you knew, the setting suns and mellower light indicated that it was evening. Perhaps some weakening of his resistance, or some other trigger than the smoke that reminded the Other of Ship's death had allowed you back, with your hellish chorus of voices.
"For two centuries, after Gagarin, Armstrong and Heng led humanity out of their stellar cradle, space flight was only possible at sub-light velocities."
Bera stood with ragged scraps in her hand. One of them you recognised as a map of Isheimur. You snatched it from her hand, tearing it, inwardly screaming at the voices to be silent. Mercifully, it seemed to work.
"Beacon," you said, scanning the map for something familiar. You pointed to a patch of light blue on the equator. Ship had noted a lake shaped like that. "Where. This?"
"Surtuvatn," Bera said. "Where my parents lived. Is there where your beacon is?"
You ignored her, scanning the map: another body of water to the south-east. For all its periodic drizzle and scatterings of showers, the precipitation is never quite enough; this is almost a desert world, its few seas no bigger than lakes.
"Loki?" Bera said.
You looked up, realising that she wanted your attention. You'd learned what one of the voices calls socialisation, and were obscurely proud of this, although you knew that you were a mere apprentice compared even to small children. "Yes?" You said.
"You are Loki, then?" Bera said.
This was a question, the socialisation parameters indicated. Questions need answers. "Yes. I am Loki, Jocasta – Bera." She smiled at your correction, and you knew that you pleased her, which made you tingle. Perhaps she no more knows of her Jocasta side, the mothering side, than the Other knows of us.
"I never know which one of you I'm dealing with. Just a minute ago you were Karl."
This was not a question, so you did not need to answer. Nonetheless, there were concepts that you would have explained, that you both wanted to get home, albeit for different reasons, but the thoughts were too big to fit into the small words that are the only way of communicating between these people. Instead: "Need pictures," you said, pointing to the lakes on the maps. "Pictures of mountains. Lakes. Deserts." The view from space is not one of maps.
"Here," Bera said, offering you a set of similarly ragged photos from the bottom of the little bundle of maps she carried. "Printed from satellite views, taken before the Formers left. Most are meteorological or topographical images, rather than pictures." She sighed. "They took the satellites they could use elsewhere with them, and crashed the rest down into Nornadalur to feed the Norns; all the pictures we have pre-date the Leaving, and what there are – and there aren't many – probably aren't very accurate now."
"Nothing new?" You said.
Bera shook her head. "If we had, you wouldn't be able to get near them anyway. We have to make do with ground-based beacons scattered across the planet's surface to monitor the weather, and Ragnar and the other Gothis already spend their time poring over the output from them to try to predict the weather. Freya knows, if they had access to satellites, you'd never see a photograph. They'd hoard them all."
You studied them, looking for an answer.
"Latest analysis of Isheimur atmosphere: helium down to three per cent; neon down to five, nitrogen to seventy-three, oxygen up to eighteen, CO2 up to point zero two per cent–"
You'd started to get an idea of time how much time had passed while the Other had taken over. At first there were simply blank patches, but now a few precious images had started to soak through the barriers between the different parts of the brain where your memories and his were scattered. Your consciousness was squeezed into odd little corners of the brain everywhere and they needed to connect, so such seepage should have been no surprise.
It was the next day.
You walked a hillside with two other men. In the distant south-east the horizon flickered. One of them flinched.
"Storm season's starting," one of the other men said. Big, with dark hair and patches of bare skin between strips of facial hair: Arnbjorn Ragnarsson, a memory told you. Literally, Ragnar's son.
"Storm season?" You said. You'd identified that this is an optimal process for downloading information from brain to brain, via their mouth to your ear. Repeat what they say, and they would elucidate, usually.
"Aye, Loki," Arnbjorn said. "Storm season."
He did not elaborate, so perhaps you must provide a further stimulus, you decided. "There is… a storm season? Explain, please." Please is like a command prompt, you'd learned.
Arnbjorn shrugged. "The things you don't seem to know, utlander." They often call your frame "Utlander". Foreigner, stranger, alien, the lexicon supplied as meaning. Arnbjorn said, "No one's quite sure why Isheimur grows so racked by electrical storms during the weeks around the equinox – some say it's the seasonal drop in temperatures, some that Gamasol and Deltasol's radiation causes ionisation, others that it's simply a freak of timing – whatever the reason, storms will soon sweep through the area."
The other man, a Thrall – indentured farm-labourer, your lexicon explained – laughed. "Let's hope that we get home first, or that it heads elsewhere." His cranial hair was long and tied back, his beard bushy like Ragnar's.
A series of cries rended the air. "Trolls!" the Thrall said.
Arnbjorn broke into a run. "We need to make sure that they don't panic the sheep and drive them over a cliff!"
"What are trolls?" you asked.
"A pain in the bloody arse!" The Thrall was already starting to pant. "Hairy critters that attack farmsteads and drive rock-eater flocks across our lands!"
Your long, ranging lope had brought you level with them, although their swords weighed them down and you only had the wooden stick that Bera (or Jocasta?) gave you to slow your pace. You could have passed them easily, but they knew where they were going; you didn't. "This is problem? Rock-eaters?" Rock-eaters were not something that your memories contained. An anomaly, you thought. To your logical mind, an anomaly was the equivalent of ancient pornography – illicit, guilt-inducing, yet thrilling in a way that was inexplicable to s
omeone who didn't share such feelings.
"Rock-eaters aren't a problem in themselves." Arnbjorn's breathing had grown increasingly ragged. "Though a million little hooves at a time can wreck the crops. Vast flocks of 'em migrating, bringing snolfurs and trolls in their wake. They're a bloody problem! Now shut the fuck up!"
You shut up. Breaching the ridge, you saw a wave of white that filled the next valley and beyond.
"It looks," the Thrall said, gasping, hands on knees, "a… small… one… only… a… few… tens of… thousands."
"Aye," Arnbjorn said, gasping too.
You were barely breathing heavily.
You heard a screaming whistle that seemed to come from all sides, but must have been the sound echoing off the hills. Arnbjorn touched your arm. "Stand still," he said. You did as they did.
Something flashed into the middle of the sea of white, and one of the stocky rock-eaters erupted in a gout of flesh.
Arnbjorn's laugh was a maniacal cackle.
The Thrall said, "What?" When Arnbjorn didn't answer, but kept laughing, the Thrall said, growing progressively more annoyed, "What is it?"
Arnbjorn's laughter slowly wound down, and he wiped his eye. "This is amongst the land that Steinar's claiming – the valley runs down to the meadows over there." He pointed. "I bet he's included them on the details he's provided to the Norns. So when he asked for something really essential, they've fired it in a sub-orbital trajectory with their ballista – and it's over-shot. The Norns will reckon that it's within acceptable parameters, but the truth is that it's just eviscerated that Rock-eater, and ended up on our territory. Let's go take a look, see whether there's anything left of that package they've lobbed over."
"So that exploding rock-eater – that was a missile?" the Thrall said as your group set off toward the vast flock.
"It was an aid package," Arnbjorn said, laughing again.
"You're kidding me," the Thrall said.
"Nope." Arnbjorn continued, "That's why we have to file our land dimensions; the Norns can aim their packages away from the houses, but near enough that any bouncing projectile still ends up on the land of the petitioner." He said to you, "Exploding wildlife isn't normally one of the hazards of life on Isheimur, but sometimes we're warned to stay indoors when a package is due. This is why." He indicated the splattered rock-eater.
"Is that," you tried to form words to fit the concept, "why you have a ballista?"
Arnbjorn said, "Yep. The Norns' ballista has only a limited range, so to reach round the planet, we pass on the parcel. It may be that this wasn't for Steinar at all, except for him to act as a relay."
You and the other men strode down the hill until your group reached the edge of the Rock-eater herd; you pushed your way through, initially still moving quickly, but gradually slowing as you pushed deeper into the herd that was moving across your path.
"Bloody things!" The Thrall shoved a rock-eater head over heels.
It gazed at him reproachfully. It was about a metre tall, shaggy, with short stocky legs. Small ears poked through long, fine fur on either side of a head shaped like an extinct Terran animal called a gopher.
It must have taken an hour from when the rockeater died to push your way through the seething mass of purring beasts. Several times the Thrall complained at the pace, until Arnbjorn told him to shut up. "If Steinar's been indoors in the last couple of days, then he'll know from the Oracle that he's due a package from the Norns. He may guess that it's landed here. I'm not scared of him, but I'd rather not have a fight if he arrives with a half-dozen of his goons and we're still here."
Eventually you reached the carcass. Perhaps instinctively avoiding a dead member of the herd, the other rock-eaters swirled around it as a stream flows round a rock.
You stood over bits of splattered flesh and fleece, in the midst of which was a smouldering circular object, metallic, clearly artificial. "We'll take it home –" Arnbjorn pointed to a set of characters on one side of the object "– and enter these codes into the Oracle. They'll tell us where it was destined for. Let's go!"
The Thrall opened his mouth, but before he could speak, something shaped like a man – but hairier and shorter with a hairy face and set of nightmare fangs – detached itself from the swirling flock and rushed at your group, yowling and keening. Some of the notes sounded impossibly high, verging on ultrasonic.
Arnbjorn tossed the object at you and lunged forward, sword bared.
It stopped.
Human and alien gazed at one another for long moments, and then with a final yowl, it retreated.
"Troll?" you said, as the group set off toward Skorradalur.
"Of course," the Thrall said. "You really are so ignorant you don't recognise one?"
You gazed at him, trying to work out whether there was more meaning than first seemed to the question. You've learned that sometimes the simplest-sounding questions are actually the most complex. To put so many layers of meaning into such an inefficient communication method as mouth-to-ear seems to you the height of folly. They really should re-design their communication systems. But of course that isn't possible with their current technology.
You decided that if there was a second layer of meaning, you couldn't extract it, so answered the question as it was asked. "Yes," you said. "I really am that ignorant. But now I have 'troll' filed, and will recognise it: hostile, indigenous life-form. Sentient?"
"Absolutely not!" Arnbjorn said. "What kind of sentient life-form eats another?"
"Humans eat trolls?"
"Course not!" The Thrall erupted with laughter. "They eat us, you damned fool! We've fought them for centuries, just as they've slaughtered us mercilessly. Thor, what kind of fool are you?"
"Human, augmented," you replied.
You resurfaced, again not knowing what – if anything – triggered the return. It was evening once more. You stood in a small room, facing stairs that lead to the upstairs rooms. There was a white box in one corner. An image hovered in front of you, of mountains and lakes.
"This is Surtudalur," Bera said, "where I grew up. You can see the edge of the farmhouse, poking out from beneath that lava flow."
Without warning, she hid the maps. "Someone's coming," she said, and pulled you into the corridor and up the first few stairs, placing a hand over your mouth. "We might get in trouble, the amount of time we spend in here," she whispered. "Pappi likes us to learn from the Oracle, but only the things he wants us to know. Hush, now!"
You watched Ragnar back into the study, clutching an object under his arm. It was the spherical aid package. Arnbjorn followed, his voice imploring: "If we can check the codes on the Oracle, we can establish whether it's Steinar's, or whether some innocent community has got caught up in your feud with him."
"If it was intended for Steinar," Ragnar said, "it will be red-flagged as missing, and if you enter the codes it will sound tiny electronic klaxons all over the place. No, leave it alone."
"But, Pappi–"
"I said, leave it alone!"
There was silence, before Arnbjorn said in a high, tight voice, "Very well, Gothi."
The Other was starting to stir, and from the struggles, a thought arose: why do they put up with his petty tyranny?
Though you struggled for control, it was such an interesting question that when they left – seconds apart – and Bera removed her hand, you couldn't help echo it aloud.
Bera wrinkled her nose. "Think how hard it is for him, running this place. Some years we have good winters, when there's enough food that we can pretend that things are getting better. Some years are so bad that we even eat rock-eater and snolfur and endure the resulting sickness and cramps. But every year, every month, every day, we have to count what we have. How much can we spare? If it's stressful for each of us, what must it be like for him? Even the strongest would buckle under that kind of strain."
"So he is," you struggled for the right words, "mad? From worry?"
"Maybe, partly," Bera said. "Half the rea
son he is Gothi is that others in these parts who could do the job don't want to; while the ones who want to be Gothi have neither ability nor the others' support." She nudged you down the stairs. "He wasn't always this bad. But he loved Gunnhild as much as he loved life itself. Since then… Can you imagine how it feels to lose someone you love so much?" She sighed. "Oh, Loki, I love you as a son, but I so miss Karl. I can talk to him." She looked suddenly horrified. "He won't hear this, will he?"
"No," you answer. You felt the Other rising to the surface, and like a drowning man, stood on the mental equivalent of his head.
Bera continued, oblivious to your inner turmoil. "Since Gunnhild died, the many good things about Ragnar seem to have withered away, while his bad side's grown worse."