“Like you said about the garden the other day.”
"Yes. Physics behaves the way it's supposed to in here because you think it should. But more than that, the dress feels the way it does because you know that silk feels like that. Even further, if you pick up a book in the cabin, you'll find that whatever you expect to be there will be there. Right now, there are books on gardening and outdoorsy activities, because you think that's what should be in a lake cabin collection of books. However, when we return, I think you'll probably find a few books on linguistics since you're expressing the interest. The state of the cabin is really a kind of reflection of the inside of your mind."
“And your experiences are also a reflection of my mind.”
"Not entirely. I am fully conscious. Outside of the personality and history that I have chosen to make in my mind and memories, I am, in a way utterly divorced from the person you see before you, aware that I… began the day you were implanted with my cybernetic framework. I am also, as Barbas, simultaneously aware that I am a twenty-nine-year-old Pan-American war veteran who just so happens to exist solely on the plane of your mind."
I shuddered a little, and, immediately regretting it, quickly said, “Doesn’t that mess with you? Knowing you aren’t… you aren’t real?”
Barbas put his hand over mine and brought both of them down to rest on the desk. “But I am real. I'm just not physical. And what is a memory but a subjective account of a moment in time that you will never experience again? I remember my childhood as Barbas, I remember the War, I remember my comrades and I remember Reconstruction. The details are a little fuzzy regarding how I came to be living in the mind of a twenty-six-year-old orphan of the late United States government, now an agent of Pan America on an alien world. I take it all in stride. What I think of when I ponder this, which isn't often, is the story of the djinni, of old Arabic myth."
“You mean like that movie?” I asked, smiling, thinking of a wiseacre blue ghost coming out of a lamp.
“No, not a genie,” he replied, smiling indulgently. “Did you know any Muslims, back on Earth?”
“I knew a couple, but we didn’t really talk about religion. I’m not a big ‘God’ person, and we all just kind of avoided the subject.” I smirked a little sheepishly. “On my census forms, I always put down ‘Asatru’ as my religious preference.” I made a clumsy sign of the Hammer with my free hand. “Hail Thor! Odin son!” I put my hand back down on the table. “I always thought Viking lore was cool.”
Barbas laughed and then continued. "In the Quran, it is said that Allah created three forms of life- the humans, who were people of the earth," he held up one finger. "He made the angels, the people of the heavens- his servants and messengers." He held up a second finger. "The third form of life, the djinni, were people made of smokeless fire, beings of spirit, like the angels, but able to affect the physical world, sometimes themselves, and sometimes through agents." He made a ‘there you have it' gesture with his hands, leaving his palms turned up. "Some cultures believed that some djinni was assigned to a human as a sort of personal spirit or demon. These djinni could lead people astray or closer to the divine, acting as a sort of tempter, or tester, against which their hosts' righteousness would be measured." He raised a hand, gesturing at himself with a ripple of his fingers. "And in a sense, that's what I am: a personal djinni- a Qarin, to use the old words.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah… that actually makes sense, in an odd way.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said, beginning to go through the notebooks stacked in the center of the broad desk. He opened one, revealing pages covered in phonetic representations of words, each of them accompanied by paragraphs of notes. “Now, you wanted to learn this language, so we had better get started.”
“Is that it?” I asked, gesturing to the books. “Did you get the whole thing already?”
Barbas laughed and shook his head. "No! No, that wouldn't be possible from an afternoon of talking to one warrior when neither of you understands a word the other is saying. No, these notes are just my speculations regarding a few verbs and conjugations, based on the pronunciation of several key phonemes."
I looked at him blankly. “What? ‘Bas, in Pan Standard, please.”
He sighed. "These notebooks represent my recordings of all the sounds that Volistad was making and the patterns he used. Some of these combinations," he gestured to the open notebook, "might be actual words in his language, but some of them, maybe even most of them, are simply random patterns of the major sounds he makes when he talks. I've identified at least six basic lingual sounds- or phonemes- that he makes that Pan Standard don’t have." Barbas pushed the first notebook toward me. "And if you want to learn to speak the language of the Chalice natives, you need to learn to make those sounds, and do it correctly."
I groaned. “Couldn’t you just download the knowledge into my brain? I mean, the other day you literally puppeted my body, which was, by the way, freaky as hell. By that same note couldn’t you just put all that you know of his language into my brain?”
“No,” Barbas replied simply. “I can read some of your thoughts- the loud ones, anyway, and I can transmit sensory information to your nerves. I cannot actually control your thoughts, or put actual thoughts into your head- much less muscle memory into your body. I cannot do anything with your subconscious mind. And the only reason I was able to make you move the way I did was by interrupting the signals between your brain and your limbs and puppeting the suit around you. The only thing that would have happened if I had tried to do that while you were outside the suit would have been you collapsing to the ground like you had just been knocked out.”
“Yep,” I said brightly. “Waaaay less freaky, ‘Bas.”
He narrowed his green eyes at me and asked, exasperated, “Do you want to learn this or not?”
I raised my hands in agreement. I had asked him to do this. He was doing what I had asked, and I was giving him crap about it. And when he controlled my body- or rather, turned off my body and controlled my armor suit, he had done so in order to save my life. Still, the fact that he could do some of the things he had already done was already starting to bother me. I had started sleeping with him, so it wasn't the fact that he had been inside of me- hell, he was inside my skull all the time, and everything else was just some kind of hyper-realistic dream. It was the knowledge that he could, at any time, utterly immobilize me, or steer me around for whatever he thought was ‘my own good'- that was the idea that started to bug me. I didn't know why it was bugging me now; it hadn't really bothered me a few days ago when he had done it to save me. Could he hear these thoughts, these doubts, right now? And what would he think when he heard them?
If Barbas did hear what was going on in my head, he chose not to mention it. Instead, he was poring over some of his own notes, muttering under his breath and occasionally making small, scribbled notes next to the elegant, organized script he had used to create this material. I followed suit, taking the notebook that he had pushed over to me and opening it. I took a deep, cleansing breath, turned the notebook to the first page, and began to read.
…
Perhaps three hours had passed in the dream library by the time I realized that I was starting to glaze over, that no more information was getting into my brain. I wondered how long the little study session had been going in the real world. One minute? Fifteen-minutes? An hour? More? I still didn’t have too good of a handle on this whole dreaming time dilation concept. Either way, I was fading, and there was no way I was going to be able to learn even one more of Barbas’ phoneme patterns tonight.
I shut the book and stood, and then circled the desk carefully to peer over Barbas' shoulder at the notes he was working on. He had drawn several lines, connecting several of the phonetic phrases, periodically circling the ones he found important. I leaned against his chair as he looked up, bending down to wrap my arms around his neck. My head pressed against his and my mouth was at about the level o
f his ear. The heady scent of him filled my nose and made me think of sawdust, cinnamon, and campfire smoke. He was an illusion; I knew that. This was a dream, an induced hallucination. I was really lying propped up against the base of my tower, motionless, encased in a shell of armor, dreaming the library, the books, my wonderful dress, the cascading waves of my hair spilling down about my face. It wasn't real- or was it? What was real, anyway? The smell of his hair was real. And but for him, but for this sweet illusion, I was alone.
Barbas reached up and ran his fingertips down my face gently, turning his head and murmuring, “Are you alright?”
“Just,” I hesitated. “I… I was just thinking about what really matters.”
Barbas pushed away from the desk, moving his chair back a half meter and turning so that he could pull me down to sit across his lap. “And what really matters?”
I thought about it for a minute, staring out at nothing, before I finally turned and met his eyes. They reflected the stolid light of the desk lamp back out at me as little twin candles burning copper oxide green. His face was dark, angular, and handsome as ever, but he seemed different tonight. His skin, usually the color of dark coffee, now seemed cut whole cloth from the shadows. What's more, he seemed blurry around the edges, like I was seeing him at a great distance through a heavy fog- rather than sitting on his lap, my face mere inches from his. As I watched, the green seemed to leak out of his eyes, swallowed up in the burning coals now smoldering in their place. I put a hand to his face, amazed, and felt it warm to the touch, hot as a fever. I smiled as I understood. He was choosing to appear as a djinni, ‘made from smokeless fire.' His suit was unaffected by the growing heat emanating from his skin, but the tie changed from bright green to a burnt orange, and the cufflinks at his wrists stopped being emeralds, winking to life as hot embers from the center of a fire.
“What matters, my qarin,” I whispered, “is that we’re here. It matters that we do what we came here to do, and make this world ready for the people coming after us.”
Barbas grinned, and his teeth stood out white-hot in the shimmering heat spilling from his mouth. “And what happens if we can’t? What if this tower we built does nothing and this place stays a frozen hell?”
“Then we make the best of what we have,” I replied immediately. “Our visitor and his people live here somehow. We’ll find a way, and no matter what, we’ve got this, the dream, each other.”
Barbas laughed, surging forward in his chair and taking me up in his arms, standing and lifting me up with him in the same motion. In the blink of an eye, he had dropped the burning semblance of the djinni, once more the handsome man with the viridian eyes and russet hair. His skin once more cool and smooth as cappuccino. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and for a moment we stayed that way, content in each other’s lips, in the flickering dance of our tongues. But then the hunger overtook us at the same time, and everything became urgent. A frantic stripping away of Barbas’ clothes, the tie of my dress coming untied from around my neck. One of his hands gripped my back while the other ran rampant, caressing my breasts with fingers dancing from one nipple to the other. He set me down on the edge of the desk so that he leaned into me where he stood, and together we swept notes and books aside in heedless abandon. There were more pressing things to attend to.
So distracted was I in the flurry of kisses, touching, and teasing, that Barbas almost took me by surprise when he slipped my dress up away from my hips and pushed into me, driving the breath out of me in a sharp cry. I circled my arms around his neck and kissed his lips, his face, his forehead; all thoughts were driven out of my mind with each push of his hips, each rock and circle of mine. My breathing came faster and faster, changing from the cycle of gasps and sighs to one of moan and cry. I bent forward and bit him, hard on the shoulder, delighting in the sudden ripple of tension that shot through him. "Come on ‘Bas," I hissed in his ear, "come and take me."
A growl was the only response I got, and this time, when Barbas pulled his hips back, he drew out of me completely, surprising me again. I let out a frustrated growl of my own and opened my mouth to goad him again. But before I could speak, Barbas gripped my shoulder in one strong hand and turned me, then bent me over the desk, pressing my breasts against the cool old wood. A moment later, one of his hands took a fistful of my hair and pulled- not too hard, just enough to make me arch my back, and then he was inside me again, driving into me with feral intensity. I gasped and gripped the edge of the desk like it was my only lifeline, the change in angle sent new, sharper spears of sensation burning into me from below. He thrust with metronomic rhythm, hard and powerful, not even slowing down when the orgasm wracked my body, lifting me back up off the desk so that I was standing with him, my back pressed against his chest. He gripped my breasts and continued his relentless conquest as I screamed with ecstasy. Time ceased to have any meaning at that moment. The sensation was overwhelming, all encompassing, and I was swept along before it like a leaf in a storm. Finally, the storm broke, and all the strength seemed to go out of Barbas at once. He sagged against my back and groaned as he spent himself inside me.
Suddenly, smoothly, with no discernible transition, we were stumbling back and falling into the soft, luxurious expanse of our bed in the cottage by the lake, the library gone as though it had never been. We lay tangled together, slick with sweat and panting, for what must have been ages. Then I rolled and curled up against Barbas’ broad chest, and sighed, ready for true sleep, my rest before what would be another hard day of work tomorrow. Just as my mind began to drift into the fuzziness of sleep, Barbas’ voice brought me back to consciousness. “I could almost believe this was real,” he murmured. “You make me feel real, Jo. I could almost believe…” His voice trailed off, and a moment later, I spiraled down into the dark, into true sleep. I dreamed of darkness and cold, the howl of a great storm, and of great, warm eyes staring into mine with fevered intensity. It wasn’t until the next day, when I woke up, that I realized that the eyes in my dream had not been the green eyes of my djinni.
...
Chapter Six: The Fall of Babel
Volistad
I stayed with the god, Joanna, for twenty-seven days. They weren't luxurious, or easy days, but they were fascinating. She was determined that we should learn each other's languages, and it seemed that each day when I woke, she had mastered everything I had tried to explain to her the day before. She was ravenous for my knowledge, and as we became capable of basic communication beyond useless hand-sign, I started to teach her what I could about the Erin-Vulur. She was beyond fascinated in our village, how we lived atop a mountain frozen in the ice, and after I had told her that, she had begun sending down little metal drilling creatures. They would dig deep into the ice, so far down I would be unable to see or hear them, and much later they would return with containers of whatever they had been set to collect.
At first, during all of this, Joanna would speak, rapidly and excitedly, in her language, saying things I could not possibly understand with my rudimentary grasp of the basics of her tongue. At first, I thought she was talking to me, or to herself, but watching her face in the crystal window of her helm, it became clear that she was receiving some answer that I couldn't hear. The Elders had spoken of the spirits of Ravanur, the winds, the cold, and the dark ones trapped beneath the glacial skin of the world- but I had never seen or heard any of the spirits speak. As far as I knew, neither had anyone I knew, not even the Stormcallers- though my sister told me that there were secrets they simply were forbidden to share with the rest of us. I found a new respect, and a sense of awe, growing within me the longer I stayed within the storm wall of Joanna, the fallen god from the Firmament. She could so easily pierce the barrier between flesh and spirit, that she could speak with the elusive hidden powers of Ravanur as easily as she spoke to me- this was surely a god I was speaking to, one both great and powerful.
I tried to maintain the stoicism expected of a ranger, to observe and gather knowledge that I
could report to the Elder without getting personally involved in this. After all, if Elder Lot was right, this god had slain a Stormcaller. I hadn’t seen any trace of the body, but that was hardly surprising. I had been watching her raise small buildings from nowhere for many days, and it was not hard to imagine that she could just as easily have commanded the ice to swallow the fallen mage, leaving nothing behind. When I finally began to be able to speak a rude act of her language, Joanna explained to me the purpose of her fall- the knowledge I had been waiting for this whole time. Having ascertained what I thought she was, she gently explained to me, in the tongue of my people, that she was not a god. Instead, she said, she was a person from another world out in the Firmament, and she had been sent to make Ravanur ready for the coming of many of her people. She explained how she was to make the air kinder, calm many of the storms, and make Ravanur warm enough to melt her glacial skin. All of these things were impossible, of course, so though she told me she wasn’t a god, I remained convinced that she was divine. After all, what mortal could shape the world with a wave of her hand? What simple person could best a Stormcaller in their own element? And who but a god could hope to make Ravanur, our Frozen Mother, warm again?
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