Most of all, such children become grateful for the many gifts of existence that others take for granted. I understand a little of how Davidge’s students become complete beings, able to become successful at whatever they choose to do, even if that choice is to become a meditative monk living in isolation and deprivation on Earth.
What then for Yazi Ro, one who can find dark on a star’s burning surface? If I do not have it and cannot take it, I do without and use this to make my dark darker still. When I made or repaired something with which to prolong my existence on Amadeen, I was not grateful or congratulatory for the means of survival. Instead I cursed the circumstances that made such survival necessary.
I look at the boots Haesni made. The tops are made of the same snakeskin, double layered and filled with seed down. The soles are made from many layers of snakeskin adhering to each other, glued together with some substance harvested from the land or sea. The residue from the smoke begins to affect my fingers, the skin burning. The back of my throat burns, as well.
I leave the boots on Haesni’s bed and walk toward the entrance to listen to the sea. The night brings no new storms, but the winds are still strong. At the door, my arms wrapped about me against the cold, Davidge’s first words to me make me smile.
I close the door, turn to look at the sea, and, staying well back from the edge, let the winds wash my face. For a moment I am caught in my thoughts, envisioning myself part of this harmony of being and universe wrought by an accident of war. As I am about to go back in the cave to retrieve my coat, far out over the sea I notice a point of light. Except for the overcast, I would think it a star. It grows brighter and brighter until I am driven back to my senses and run. Four, five steps and I jump for the path to the top of the cliff for cover as a shrieking roar races behind me followed by an erupting inferno that flings me against the rocks.
Half conscious, my arm covering my face, I turn to see a column of flames explode from the cave’s entrance. First red and orange, it rapidly becomes blue-white, the roar of it deafening. Ice, rocks, and frozen clods of dirt fall about me and I see another column of fire shoot from the top of the cliff toward the sky. Almost as soon as it comes to life, it dies. The stream of flame from the entrance weakens and sputters out, leaving an orange glow from the super-heated rock.
There is a sound behind me and I see Davidge and Kita in the rocks above sliding down the path. When he reaches me, Davidge goes down on one knee and studies my face by the remaining glow of the rock. His left cheek is scratched and a cut above his left eye is bleeding freely. Kita slides to a stop beside him. She appears unharmed but frightened. Satisfied with my state of health, Davidge slumps back and sits beside me. “I guess someone finally figured out how to set off that Thermex.”
I look out to the sea, amazed that I am still alive. I wonder how much longer a reasonable person could expect this condition to continue.
TWENTY-TWO
Instead of slowing us down, the rocket attack speeds things up. Placing Kita in charge of the Timan investigation, Sanda removes itself from the expedition to head up the search for the missile-launching aircraft on Friendship, while that night the rest of us make for the First Colony Port and the Aeolus, ahead of schedule.
As we are secured in our suspension pods, the first of The Talman stories begins. I see the others, clad in their skintight blue vapor suits entering their pods. I let my gaze linger a moment on Estone Falna, then tear it away to watch the crew check seals and read monitors. Captain Eli Moss looks upon everything with contempt and mistrust, which to my mind makes him someone hard to trust. As Davidge’s agent, Ty purchases what trust there is by paying Moss half in advance. Why this arrangement satisfies the others I cannot say. Loyalty that is purchased is not loyalty.
When I bring the subject up to Davidge, he tells me not to worry about it and to make certain I have my pod programmed with The Talman. As the steward, the one nicknamed Reaper, punches in the program, he makes comments about holy joes, salvation, and the illusion of illusion.
Once in the slot, as our pilot put it, the jump behind us, the pods are locked and the cooling fields engaged. The fluid entering my body through the needle in my leg is supposed to protect me from the cold, but I begin feeling the cold and, after one last look at Falna, I remember just in time to close my eyes.
The program is already running and the distraction of the suspension process causes me to lose track. I think for the start and it begins to play from the beginning.
“Sindie was the world.
“And the world was said to be made by Aakva, the God of the Day Light…”
Relaxed, focused, without resistance, I absorb the intellectual, philosophical, political, and spiritual saga of my species.
Rhada and the Laws of Aakva.
Daultha, Aakva’s lesson of no laws, and the division of the Sindie.
Uhe, its new law of war, and the unification of the Sindie.
Shizumaat and the discovery of universe and talma.
The three books of Mistaan who invented writing and recorded the life and words of Shizumaat and Vehya as well as its own.
Ioa and the founding of the first Talman Kovah.
Kulubansu, who destroyed the Talman Kovah, and Lurvanna, who hid The Talman in the memories of its students.
Aydan who fought in the War of Ages and made war a science to achieve peace.
Tochalla and the rebuilding of the Talman Kovah.
Cohneret who did for love what Aydan did for war.
Maltak Di who unified the problem-solving sciences into talma, the science of making rules to step outside of rules. Faldaam, Zineru and its truths, and there is the Koda Siayvida and Ro, the Ovjetah who took talma and applied it to crime and law. And now I understand what Davidge meant when he handed Zammis a rock and asked it if the rock was a shark.
“The tool of the one who acts becomes the one who acts. The one who murders is no more responsible for the murder than the one who ordered the killing or the one who provided the weapon or provided the compensation. If I throw a stone and it kills you, I am not exempt from responsibility because it was the stone that killed you, not I.
“Before the law, the stone and I are one. Before the law the assassin and its master are one…”
Avatu who left Sindie with the generation ships, Poma and the founding of Draco, Eam and the colonization of new worlds, Namvaac and the Thousand Year War, Ditaar, the end of the war and the Formation of the Dracon Chamber. It plays again and again, and each time I learn more. Each time, though, as I reach the story of Ditaar, I think of the missing book, the Koda Nusinda, The Eyes of Joanne Nicole.
A flash of warmth against my face, a wash of heat all over my body, sounds, words, garbled and dim. There is a yellow light and I reach to my eyes, the muscles of my arm, palm, and fingers tight and painful. There is a crusty substance along the edges of my eyelids that glues my eyelids shut.
“Slow down, Yazi Ro,” says the voice of Reaper, the steward. “Let me do it.” I feel something warm and wet on my eyelids, a little extra dribbling down the right side of my head. They are blotted dry as the steward says, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”
I can feel him move away as I reach my hand up once more and touch my eyelids. The gunk is gone. I pull my eyelids open and look to see a blur of shades and colors. They resolve into the brutal visage of Reaper. “Rise and shine, it’s maintenance time. Unass the box so I can change the filters.”
I look over at Estone Falna, still motionless in its sealed pod. I have seen an abundance of death during my years, and Falna looks dead. I cough, clear my throat. “Why is Falna so still?” I whisper. I look and mine is the only pod open. I look at the human named after death. “All of them?”
Reaper grins and says, “It’s either a mass murder, one hell of an equipment failure, or we do the pod maintenance in rotation and this time it’s your turn.” He makes a fist and gestures with his thumb. “C’mon, outta the box. Wash up, eat, get in some exercise, and
take your suspension meds.”
Every muscle protests as I pull myself into a sitting position. Reaper is checking the health monitors and he points me toward the shower booth where I wash myself down in the tepid water. Once I am dry, Reaper supplies me with a towel, a fresh vapor suit, and slippers. “It’s going to be a couple of hours before you go back in the box. Get some exercise and a bite to eat and do whatever you want.”
“Reaper, would you mind if I ask a question?”
The big man shrugs. “You can always ask.”
Taking that as assent, I look into his eyes, seeing there not the mind of a brute, but intelligence. I avert my glance and ask, “When you were in the Tsien Denvedah, what was your occupation?”
The man’s eyebrows jump up, then he grins. “Ilcheve. You know, a kind of cop―police officer.” He shrugs again and screws his face up. “Not exactly. Look, the shadow jetahs in the squirrel palace would idee a black hat. Sometimes a sleeper, op, brass, a glad hander, or maybe an enemy ilcheve. Then they’d pull my trigger and shoot me after the mark. I’d have to sniff him out and pull his plug, most times in hot zones. Sometimes the shadow masters wouldn’t know the target and I’d have do a holiday and find out who the bad daddy is. After I fingered the perp, the regreta Jetah would give him the thumbs down and I’d do him with prejudice to the max.”
I stare at Reaper for awhile and then say, “Your superiors would send you after someone they wanted killed and you would kill it.”
“Yeah.” The big man nods. “That’s what I said.” He holds up a hand. “Gotta go back to work. Don’t forget your exercise and meds.”
After the bland food and a run on the musclemill, I begin feeling Drac again. I watch Falna in its pod for a few minutes, letting my fantasies shadow my realities. Reaper tells me that everything is on automatic so I can go up to the cockpit and look at the stars if I want. Just don’t touch anything.
I sit in one of the acceleration couches watching the slightly distorted images of the stars pass by. As I lose myself in their hypnotic dance, the themes, lessons, and images from The Talman momentarily touch my awareness, presenting themselves like gems of unknown properties to he contemplated, observed, tested, and placed aside until more is learned.
My mind has been packed with words, phrases, chapters, ideas, and stories. I thought that once I had the words of The Talman in my mind, I would have its knowledge and wisdom there as well. All I have, though, are the words. Some of those words drift into my awareness: “Words are maps to existence. Once you travel a piece of reality it is possible to know the meaning of its words. If all you have before you are words, all you can consider are meaningless marks and sounds.”
I smile as I acknowledge my first application of The Talman’s words to my life. Knowing that I do not know is knowledge, says Faldaam in the Koda Siovida.
To see stars and the worlds that orbit them gives a strange perspective. How many hundreds or thousands of wars, crimes, atrocities, disasters, and horrors does the Aeolus pass by each moment? If Amadeen is among those worlds I can say no more than I can to those others passing around me now. It is so unimportant, so insignificant. Come, rise to where I am. See the stars and the worlds pass and know that you are occupied with trifles.
Yet we are to walk one of those worlds orbiting one of those stars and see if our trifle of a war on Amadeen can be influenced by another trifle on the Planet Timan. I remember all too clearly that in the mud and blood of Amadeen there are no trifles.
It is so hard to know what is important. Is there anything important in itself without regard to some thoughtful pair of eyes and a mind? At times there seems so much to learn that the task of learning it seems impossible.
I hear a click, a series of audio oscillations, and another click. I turn to my left and see Eli Moss in the pilot’s couch, his face illuminated by the white, orange and blue instrument lights. Seemingly satisfied as to whatever he was checking, he quickly scans the instruments then settles back to watch the stars, his face grim and bitter. I do not intrude, for I know his expression. I have worn a similar one. I get up to leave the cockpit and Moss says, “Do you have any questions I can answer?”
I pause and think for a moment. I only have one. “The ship you own, captain, the Edmund Fitzgerald. Why did you name your ship after an old wrecked ore freighter?”
Moss is silent, balancing his aversion at sharing himself with his desire for conversation. “It’s not named for the ship. It’s named for an old Gordon Lightfoot song, which was named for the ship. Do you know it?”
“No.”
I see the reflection of the panel lights in his eyes as he recites: “‘Does ,anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” He leans back on his couch. “Have you learned anything from The Talman?”
For no reason I can think of, I feel that I am under attack―that my choice of suspension learning materials is under attack. “A few things,” I answer. “I have yet to absorb what I have completed.”
He holds a hand out toward the stars. “What is the point of it, Yazi Ro? What is the purpose of it all?”
“The universe?” Moss nods in response as he lowers his hand. I can remember nothing that was in The Talman, and have no answers of my own. In response I ask, “Does it have to have a purpose?”
The captain examines me with his liquid brown eyes. He breaks eye contact, faces the stars, and leans his head against the couch’s backrest. “I suppose not. It would make it easier, though.”
“Easier?”
“Easier to tell if I am aiding that purpose or attempting to defeat it.”
There is a strange supply of questions and answers within me. “Which would you prefer, Captain Moss?”
The dark man grunts out a laugh and swings his feet to the deck, his back toward me. “Answering that I would prefer to defeat it would sound bitter, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” I answer. “Although one person’s bitterness is another’s realistic appraisal.”
Moss ignores my tired joke. “There are worse things than sounding bitter,” he says.
I sit on the edge of the acceleration couch and watch as our pilot rubs the back of his neck, rolls his head around to stretch the muscles, and twists his torso to look out of the front port at the stars. Perhaps some think of Eli Moss as a man with a bad attitude, I see a tower of pain that makes the human my sibling. It is easier to recognize such from my own heights. “As I understand The Talman, captain, each of us is free to choose its own purpose, yet there is a larger purpose, as well,”
Moss swings around until he is facing me. “And what if this larger purpose crushes my individual purpose out of existence?” Without waiting for an answer he turns his head until he is facing away from me. “I had a friend, Yazi Ro, who was sent to his death to accomplish nothing.”
“Max Stearn,” I guess. “The Buldahk Insurrection.”
“Quite a security check you people do.” The captain is silent for a long time. When he at last speaks there is a choking sound in his voice. “Do you understand the love of a man for a man?”
“No.”
His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. “Who in the hell are you to judge, Drac?”
An enormous sadness fills me. “I make no judgments, captain. You ask me if I understand the love of a man for a man and I do not. Neither do I understand the love of a man for a woman, the love of a woman for a woman, nor the love of a Drac for a Drac. Love of any kind is something outside my comprehension. What I need to have in order to understand was burned out of me.”
The man stares at me for a moment, his eyebrows raised. As he gets to his feet he says, “Hell, Drac, you’re riding a nightmare bigger than mine.” He places a gentle hand on my shoulder, looks at me for a moment, and leaves the cockpit. I am left alone with the stars.
Later, as Reaper adjusts the controls to the suspension pod, I look to see if the captain is getting into his pod. No other pods are open. “When does the captain go
into suspension?”
Reaper shakes his head. “He doesn’t. Not ever.” The big man holds up a player button. “That Davidge was finished with this when Yora did the maint on his box. He said you might want to wrap your lobes around it.”
“What is it?”
Reaper looks at a wrinkled scrap of paper. “I can’t make this out too good. Timan something. Surviving, I think. It’s by a Drac. You want me to switch it?”
“Yes.” While Reaper is inserting the new button in the player, I ask, “When you were in that mercenary unit with Captain Moss, who were you fighting?”
Reaper looks up, pursed his lips, then looks back at the player. “Dracs in the two rebellions in the Lota System; Dracs, humans, and Vikaans when we went after the Nadok Rim Pirates; and humans in the Freeholder Invasion on Earn.”
“Thank you. Although you seem to be unusually free with your answers―for an Ilcheve.”
Reaper shrugs and says with a big smile. “I got nothing to hide, and neither do you. When you people get ready to go to Amadeen, let me know.” His smile turns into a big grin. “I don’t do suspension, either, Ro. Gives me all the time I need to go through everybody’s things. Happy dreams.”
I glance at Falna, close my eyes, and try to relax as the pod is again sealed and the new words and strange thought patterns begin playing in my mind. As they play, a detached part of my awareness wonders if Reaper was joking.
TWENTY-THREE
There is a joke the Timans tell. A human, a Drac, and a Timan are locked in a chamber. The human’s task is to stab the Drac. The Drac’s task is to stab the human. The Timan’s task is to befriend both the human and the Drac and supply the cutlery.
Their jokes are teachings that prompt the young to witness and understand certain truths. The principal truth is: to survive, the Timan must turn force against itself, the Timan never revealing its own role.
Enemy Papers Page 53