“Wha—what did you do that for? What’s going on? Why are you poking me? What are you pointing at. Who’s—oh.” The spluttering male stopped talking when he recognized the tribe’s First. The Leader held the highest authority among the People, but the First led their warriors, and only a fool would risk incurring her displeasure. He slid out from under the furs and scrabbled around for his cloak before scuttling out. Sopharndi thought she recognized him as one of the fishermen. Warriors had their pick of males, and Katela had always been fond of variety in her sleeping partners.
Sopharndi stepped into the dwelling, tucking the hide doorway open so that they could see each other. It was still as much night or day, but it wouldn’t be long before the first gray tendrils of light began to soak into the featureless landscape.
Katela saw the full pouch slung over Sopharndi’s shoulder and the long spear in her hand. No one was supposed to hunt unaccompanied, but being First had certain privileges. If Sopharndi wished to hunt alone, she would hunt alone. As long as the People were protected. Katela nodded.
“How long?”
“I will be back at the end of Cley’s Journey.”
Katela nodded again. She knew Cley must be dead or dying by now. For a Blank to survive into adolescence was unusual, but Cley could neither feed, nor protect, himself. Perhaps it would have been easier on Sopharndi if Cley had met the same fate as Katela’s own children. Still, it would be over soon enough, and if Sopharndi could spend the intervening time away from the comments, the sympathy and the stares, she might be better prepared for the gathering, when Cley’s death would become official.
“I will place a warrior in your dwelling until you return. The People will be protected.”
“I know it, and I thank you.” Sopharndi turned to go, but Katela called softly after her.
“The Singer will not let him suffer. It will be quick.”
Sopharndi walked east all morning, following the river, then cut back northwest in the afternoon, heading into Canyon Plains. She knew she needed to grieve, and she knew she needed to be angry. For both, she required solitude. The People required the First to show strength, and Sopharndi had always projected an aura of unshakable, calm confidence. The taunts of Cochta and her cronies could never affect her, but the sympathy from others might find a crack in her demeanor and induce a display of emotion. Which must not happen.
As she walked, she thought about the Singer.
The songs told the story of the People. There were songs describing how the earth cracked open on the first morning and every creature had crawled out, pursued by those who would dominate them. The tribes crawled out last of all because they were greater than all others. The People sang another song which described the way the tribes were divided on that first day, making it clear that the Singer favored the People. There were songs about good hunts and bad hunts. About the dry days without rain, and about the years when good things grew and animals were plentiful. Songs about fishing, songs about drying animal skins and making cloaks. Songs about war, songs about peace, songs about the ancestors and the first Elders. Songs about children, songs about the old. Songs about birth, songs about dying. Songs about the best berries to pick in fall, or the best kind of animal shit to dry for use on fires. All those songs, but none about the Blanks.
The People lived, as did all the tribes, in a hierarchal system that had brought stability to their society. The songs told of a time when the tribes had always been at war, when there were no settlements to live in, just a constant moving on. Life had been shorter, more violent until the Singer had sung her first songs to the first bard.
His name had been Aleiteh.
Before the tribes had learned to speak, before the mountain god had lost her children and wept, creating River, Aleiteh had gone, alone, to the hills west of the forest. He had heard something which seemed to call him, something which could not be ignored. He walked until he dropped to the ground with exhaustion. He slept for three years and, when he woke, a tall woman stood before him, as bright as the sun. He could hardly bear to look at her. She told Aleiteh she had sung to him while he slept, and now he must sing to others. He was the first bard. He must sing these songs to the tribes. Aleiteh returned from the hills and found the first song on his lips, telling of the one he had met - no mortal woman, but the true god above all gods, the Singer. And, of those he met, many were amazed that he was still alive. Then their amazement turned to fear and awe when they found they could hear and understand the words of Aleiteh. They joined the first bard and listened to him sing. Aleiteh sang of the way they should live now. The females had always led, but they listened to this male who had dreamed of God. He told them they would still have authority, for was not the Singer a female herself? There would be Elders to decide, judge and lead warriors to fight, hunters, fishers, and foragers to feed them. The males were to teach the children, make dwellings and prepare food. But some males would become bards - and they would learn the songs, and be given new songs to sing, as the Singer made her wishes known.
The Singer promised Aleiteh’s tribe would flourish, that their enemies would fall before them. And so it came to pass. Aleiteh’s tribe prevailed in every battle, and they grew in number and strength. All who saw them came to know the power of the Singer and the truth of her songs.
All was well for many generations until the Dark Time, the years of famine, when the People fell to arguing about how it had come to pass that the Singer had deserted them and allowed their children to die. They fought among themselves. The tribe spilled the blood of its own people. The sky darkened, the air turned colder than had ever been known and the world nearly came to an end. Finally, the tribe split into many factions, each establishing settlements far from each other. Slowly, the world recovered and the famine ended.
The final song the bards learned to sing told of the day the Singer would bring the Last Song and the People would be reunited, making the Land a paradise.
Sopharndi considered how long the People had waited for this new song. So long, that there were those who wondered if it would ever be sung. Such thoughts would never be spoken publicly, of course, but in the privacy of her own dwelling, Sopharndi had heard her own doubts echoed in the quiet conversations of friends. Although she had kept her own counsel on these occasions, she had recognized that her own faith in the Last Song was weak. She had good reason for her lack of faith. She had always honored the Singer and kept her ways, but her reward had been giving birth to a Blank. It was hard to believe in the Singer’s justice and mercy after that. Sopharndi had begun to think that the Last Song was no more than a myth.
She thought about the bards she’d known in the settlement. They were very different to the earliest bards revealed in the songs. Those bards were remembered as prophets. They had shaken the People with their revelations, sung to them by the Singer in dreams. Now, it seemed that the correct interpretation of early songs was not straightforward. Many interpretations were only agreed after discussion and analysis over a period of years. Some of the oldest songs contained verses which were still discussed around the fire late into the night. These days, the current bard simply passed on the songs to his chosen apprentice - the boy who had shown the most musical promise. No new songs had been sung by the bards since the Dark Time, generations after Aleiteh’s death. It would seem the Singer had nothing more to say to her people. And, although she knew it was heresy, this was something Sopharndi found so bewildering that she had begun to wonder if the Singer had transferred her favor to another tribe.
When she had walked half the morning and the settlement was far, far behind her, Sopharndi stopped, looked around her, laid down her spear, took off her waterskin and pack, and sank to the floor, wailing like a lost child. Startled birds took to the air from the bushes and trees lining the riverbank, and small mammals foraging nearby splashed into the water in surprise, swimming away from the unidentifiable sound.
Sopharndi wept and pummeled the hard-packed dirt with her fists. N
ext, she beat her own chest with her hands, hard enough to start to bruise the tough skin. Finally, she angled her head upward and yelled defiance at the Singer. At first, her screams were incoherent, then she cursed the god, pouring out the rage she felt at the years of care she had given a child who had never been able to give anything back.
She had tried to harden her heart against her own child when his condition had become obvious, but by then it had been too late. Despite the lack of any response from Cley, somehow she had found herself loving the boy. She had brought him up herself, not trusting the males and old women to give Cley enough time or care, when there were healthy, responsive young to care for. They didn’t kill Blanks at birth these days, but that didn’t stop almost all of the tribe at best ignoring, at worst, taunting and bullying the defenseless child as he stumbled unknowingly through boyhood into adolescence. Sopharndi knew she had let her stubborn love for him cloud her judgment, even to the extent of going to the Elders, trying to prevent Cley’s Journey.
“Where was his song?” she demanded of the silent blue sky. “He should have a song. Why is there no song for my son?”
As always, there was no answer.
Chapter 15
Fypp looked at her fellow T’hn’uuth, her eyebrows raised. No one spoke. Seb found the dynamic between them interesting. Baiyaan didn’t seem to use language at all, Kaani and Bok had obviously played Fypp’s games for long enough to know when there was no point interrupting her.
Fypp sighed theatrically. She turned to Seb, then back to the others.
“The experience they report—the human mystics, I mean—occurs, almost always, within the constraints of their seemingly contradictory religious belief systems. They experience a loss of self. Some traditions embrace the nothingness, the emptiness. Others interpret it through different cultural filters. Julian of Norwich called it being oned with God.”
“Who’s he?” said Seb.
“She,” corrected Fypp.
“Strange name for a woman.”
“Well, on the gaseous swamp-world of Fruvmettlar, Seb is the word they use to describe a slug-like creature that feeds on fresh excrement, so you’re hardly one to talk.”
Seb opened his mouth, then thought better of it.
Fypp turned to her fellow T’hn’uuth.
“You really don’t care what’s going on? You can’t see that this might be important?”
Kaani laughed. “Important? A strong word. Mildly diverting, perhaps. But interesting enough to change the way intelligent life evolves in the universe? You sound convinced by Baiyaan’s argument. I’m beginning to wonder why you abstained.”
“Because, unlike you, I don’t see the need to jump to conclusions. Baiyaan claims the potential danger posed by humans will, ultimately, be nullified and transformed by the mystical thread running through their religions. If we give them long enough. He might even go so far as to say that the threat they pose is worth risking when held up against the potential discoveries they might make.”
“We just voted against that,” said Kaani.
“Yes. But you may have missed a possible side benefit of allowing Baiyaan his way. It may help us understand the Gyeuk.”
Seb was intrigued by the notion that something existed Fypp didn’t fully understand.
“We and the Gyeuk follow a policy of mutual respect based on an almost complete lack of understanding. And yet, on the face of it, we are so similar. Both Gyeuk and T’hn’uuth are made up of sentient sub-atomic particles. Ours evolved biologically, the Gyeuk’s artificially. The Gyeuk is a hive mind, its consciousness a sea of individuals, groups and fallow regions coexisting in a constant state of change.”
That last sentence made Seb’s brain hurt. He wondered if that was a sensation produced by his Manna to gently indicate the limits of his intelligence.
“It could be argued that each T’hn’uuth is a smaller, discrete version of the Gyeuk. We are, in effect, colonies of intelligent nanotech. But our differences are more than just biological. Each T’hn’uuth is a separate, self-sufficient, sentient being. I am always Fypp. That identity is coherent, constant and traceable throughout my life. You might argue that the Fypp of a billion years ago is not the Fypp of now, but by most indicators, I am the same person. The Gyeuk has no discrete personalities within it because there never was an individual, only a collective. So the mutual respect between Gyeuk and T’hn’uuth is colored slightly by mutual fear. We don’t understand each other.”
Seb remembered the ship he had met on Earth, part of the Gyeuk that had carried the Rozzers across space to wipe out humanity and start over.
“H’wan seemed like an individual to me.”
“Yes, their ships do present an interesting anomaly. But it’s temporary. The ships always return to the swarm, some as quickly as months after forming. Others stay out for years. I’ve even heard rumors of ships retaining a separate identity for centuries. But, in the end, they can’t help themselves. They always return and are reabsorbed by the Gyeuk. They allow their illusion of selfhood to dissolve in the sentient soup. Weirdos. Still, what I just described sounds surprisingly close to human mystical experiences. ”
Bok rumbled a question of his own.
“Please, Fypp. Enough talking. What do you propose?”
Fypp told them. Seb understood approximately one word in every twenty in her rapid explanation.
Kaani stood up and leaned across the table, her voice a low hiss of anger.
“To do what you suggest would mean approaching the Gyeuk, going through their ridiculous protocols, waiting for a response. Even allowing for their skill with the manipulation of quantum time, it would be months before you could even…”
Her voice trailed off suddenly, and her eyes narrowed in anger. Some kind of electrical energy seemed to crackle into life around her and the gray hair visible under her hat began to rise. She looked about as terrifying as it’s possible for a witch to look.
Almost as scary as the witch in Disney’s Snow White, mused Seb. He still had mental scars from that Sunday afternoon matinee showing.
“You have already consulted the Gyeuk,” said Kaani. “You petitioned them. You have it here. Don’t you?!”
Fypp giggled and clapped her hands at Kaani’s display.
“You’re just delightful sometimes, Kaani. Yes, of course I do.”
“So why not just tell us in the first place? Why this rigmarole of—why bother trying to get us to agree to—why…?” The witch closed her eyes and muttered something. In the far distance, a patch of sky darkened quickly, then became completely black. There was a thunderclap loud enough to make the ground tremble, then a huge flash of lightning which turned the entire scene blindingly white for a split second. The sky cleared instantly, and Kaani retook her seat at the table.
“Ooh,” said Fypp, appreciatively, “pretty.”
The argument between Fypp and Kaani made so little sense that Seb gave up trying to follow it. When he finally became aware that they were no longer talking, he glanced up and found them all turned toward him. He felt like a fifth grader who had been caught daydreaming. He looked at what Fypp was holding and felt his eyes and his mind slide away from the sight, dismissing it as impossible and—therefore—probably not even there.
“A Gyeuk Egg,” said Fypp in answer to Seb’s unspoken query. “There is no real equivalent in your human language, no concept that can begin to do justice to its complexity, its depths.”
She was holding a dark object, a large oval. It was the first time Seb had seen the ancient child show respect for anything. She handled the Egg reverently, like a holy relic. She had produced it from the air, almost as if she had reached through one plane of existence into another, and pulled it through the skein that separated them. Now she held it toward Seb, and he cupped his hands to receive it.
Seb had expected some weight to the object he’d been handed and was surprised at how light it was. He could feel something touching the skin of his hands (no-skin,
no-hands) but the sensation was quite unlike anything he’d ever experienced. In one way, it felt like he was holding a ball of cotton, the tiny fibers barely registering on his fingertips. In another way, he felt the presence of the thing more solidly than if he was holding a bowling ball. The overriding impression was of something that didn’t quite belong, was somehow in his hands, but actually not there at all, a foreign body, something utterly other. His Manna was providing no useful information besides a feeling that the object was unreachable. For the first time as a World Walker, he found himself encountering a limit to his power, a line he couldn’t cross. It made him a little afraid, but—more than anything—he felt relief. The T’hn’uuth weren’t all powerful. At least, he wasn’t. And, judging by the way Fypp had handled the object he now held, she was similarly limited.
“But what is a Gyeuk Egg?” said Seb. In answer, Fypp held out a hand, and he gave it back to her. She placed it in the middle of the table. The other T’hn’uuth were silent.
“In the simplest terms possible, it’s a simulation,” she said.
“Like a computer simulation?”
“Well, like I said, monkey-boy, I’m using the simplest terms possible. A computer simulation is to a Gyeuk Egg as a microbe is to a human being.”
Seb was unsure whether “monkey-boy” was intended as an insult or a term of endearment. He decided to let it slide either way.
“So, er…how does it work?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Fypp was right. He didn’t understand. Apparently, it had something to do with wormholes, string theory, quantum spinning, and comb-overs. And that was the bit of her explanation that made the most sense. After nearly four minutes of mental pain, he held up a hand and conceded.
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series Book 4) Page 8