Storms Over Open Fields (Life of Riley Book 2)

by G. Howell

  I didn’t know if he was blowing smoke or if it was true. It would be something to find out, but for now… “Okay. All right,” I growled. “Do it.”

  He waved an affirmative. “Thank you. I think it will make things, easier.”

  I nodded curtly, not caring how he interpreted that gesture. I was still angry, but taking it out on him would be counterproductive. At least… at least Chihirae would have some insurance. If something happened to me she wouldn’t just be out on the street.

  If he kept his word.

  “Now,” he said, “perhaps an offering from you? A gesture of [something] goodwill?”

  “An arm?” I asked. “A leg maybe?”

  He sighed. “I can see that this is something we are going to have to work at. No. We have a handful of days on board and we should make the most of it. I think we should take time for you to teach us about yourself.”

  “Hasn’t Shyia told you enough?”

  “A few scraps here and there,” he said dismissively. “I would like you to sit with Jenes’ahn and myself. We would like to hear about you, your life, your home. Shyia told us you have… picture-stories,” that was how the term he used translates, “of your home that we certainly wish to see. And hear your explanations of them. I think that the information we’ve already received about you isn’t entirely accurate. It would be good to remedy that.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there’ll be a great deal more,” he said, smoothing down a tuft on a furry knee. “But it will be something to pass the time, and we have plenty of that - these journeys can be rather dull.”

  “I’m getting to like dull,” I replied. “It can be an interesting change from the rest of my life.”

  He sighed and an ear twitched. “I suppose that is understandable. I think that we will postpone this first session until this evening, when we anchor. Necessary, I believe: It will give you and Jenes’ahn time to smooth your fur out so you don’t kill each other. Until then, Micah.”

  ------v------

  Rris can see well in the dark, but they’re not foolhardy enough to try and navigate a large and unwieldy vessel through lake waters at night.

  The air was calm and cool, the heavens clear. High overhead the sky was a bottomless velvet blue while beyond the western horizon a faint amber glow still highlighted the skyline: the last warm light from the setting sun just flaring on couple of stray high clouds. To western lake waters were still and dark and filling with stars.

  I sat slouched on the roof of the forward cabin, my back to the solid wood of the mast and arms on knees, watching the night come out. There were faint slapping sounds of water against the hull, the occasional creak of a timber. Somewhere back toward the rear of the ship were Rris voices, a few feeble oil lamps and the smell of cooking. Out there… there was a small rocky spit of land, a cluster of scraggly pines clinging to a crag of jagged boulders at the tip, that was a black silhouette against an evening sky. I thought back to those terrifying nights only a week ago when I’d been lost and naked under that darkening sky and shuddered.

  Rris had been avoiding me all day, which was no mean feat when you consider the size of the ship. All of them, Chaeitch and Rraerch included, had kept their distance. Probably because I’d been in a frustrated and angry mood the rest of the day and in turn had stayed away from them. I didn’t feel like interacting with any Rris and my attitude must’ve been bad enough to show. Once I’d seen Rraerch exchanging subdued but heated words with Rohinia, an exchange which was cut short when they’d noticed me. I didn’t care. I steered clear of them and brooded and simmered all day. It gave me time to cool down. By evening I didn’t feel like I was going to pop a vein when I thought about Shyia. I still wanted to hurt him, but it could wait.

  Shadows stretched across the world. The sun settled beyond the horizon, setting the edge of the world aglow. For a time the high sails had incandesced with the last direct touch of daylight. That warmth climbed higher and higher until that too was gone. Twilight turned to dusk. We’d dropped anchor in small cove that was probably an often-used anchorage on this route. The crew certainly knew the area: where the hidden shallows and odd rocks were. They anchored where the spit of land would provide some shelter to stop the ship being driven ashore if the wind were to pick up in the night. The sails had been furled and crew had gone about the mundane tasks that I supposed helped keep a ship on top of the water. I’d settled myself on the forward cabin in the warm evening air, leaned back against the mast and watched the stars come out.

  “Mikah?” a voice ventured and over to my right a silhouette moved, rounding the mast and stepping carefully over a coil of rope on the cabin roof. “It’s Rraerch,” she ventured, and then hesitated and crouched. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but she was being uncommonly wary. She was carrying something. “You’re... calmer?” she asked.

  “A,” I said.

  She made a throat-clearing sound and nodded down to her hands. “I brought you some food,” she said. It was a bowl in her hands. “It’s only stew. I asked them to overcook it for you. If you want...” she trailed off. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but she was nervous.

  “Thank you, Rraerch,” I said. “Really. Look, it’s not you I’m angry with. It’s...” I raised a hand, then waved a ‘forget it’ gesture. “It’s not you.”

  She handed the bowl over. The contents were hot and rich and I was hungry. She watched, while I ate and the last of the dusk glow vanished, before venturing: “Rohinia asked if you are ready.”

  For... Oh, yeah. I worked a sliver of meat out of my teeth, then nodded. “A. I suppose so.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said.

  “Ah, and thank you,” I said and she looked back at me. Her eyes flashed once, startlingly brilliant in the dimness. “For the food,” I elaborated, raising the bowl. “It’s good.”

  “I’ll pass the compliments to the cook,” she said and I think she smiled before she left.

  I had another minute eating in peace and quiet before another pair of figures ghosted out of the twilight. I looked up at the Mediators looming against the stars. Rohinia stared back down on me while Jenes’ahn was a silhouette lurking in the background. “You have time?” he asked.

  “My other appointment is late,” I said and munched a final mouthful of stew. “I guess I can fit you in.”

  A snort and they settled themselves: Rohinia seating himself on that coil of rope and Jenes’ahn sitting cross-legged at his shoulder. Rohinia placed a bundle on the deck at his feet and produced a small, pale square. A piece of folded paper I thought, from what I could see. “I have drawn up a preliminary agreement,” he said. “If you would like to study it?”

  I snorted. “My reading ability is pretty much limited to cub stories, a fact of which I’m sure you are already aware. I will have Chaeitch and his people look over it. For now… I will keep my word.”

  He cupped his hand and then slid the bundle over – the laptop case.

  I picked it up and clicked the latches open, running my fingers across plastics and materials that wouldn’t be developed here for god-knows how long. It was in good condition. Hell, these things are designed tough for good reasons. “Where do you want me to start?” I asked.

  “How about at the beginning?” he suggested. “Tell us about you. About your past. Your youth. Your upbringing.”

  I leaned back against the solid trunk of the ship’s mast and looked up at the sky. Spars and rigging and ropes formed angles and curves in front of the stars. “That’s going back a bit. Could take a while. “

  They didn’t say anything. I sighed and started from the beginning. From my early childhood over on the west coast where my earliest memories were dry and dusty backyards. How job opportunities for my father in the struggling aviation industry had moved us east to Connecticut. My two br
others and I’d grown up around west Hartford, beyond the burbs where there were still forests and hills. There are worse places, as I found out when I shifted back to the West coast. They had colleges with good Media Studies and Design pedigrees there, but they didn’t have green hills: it was all scrubby brush, dying back as the irrigation failed. After completing that course - with distinction - it was back east again, this time down to New York where I started simply as a pixel pusher in an advertising firm and then moved over to a media production house. There were relationships: some bad, some disastrous. Then I met Jackie during a ridiculous magazine promo event that was trying to kick-start a mod fashion fad. We hit it off pretty well. She convinced me to take some time off so we could head out of town for a while.

  While I related the story of my life I started up the computer and found the pictures. They were there on the laptop: things I hadn’t shown any Rris, except Chihirae. Most of them were more interested in movies and other more action-packed items, and she still didn’t seem to understand most of it. There were still pictures and videos; there were scans of old photos of old family and friends; pictures and videos of my folks when they were younger and more footage of their own family as they grew. Video of me learning to walk, of my older brothers helping me, of my older brothers sitting on me. A lot of things that were very dear to me in ways that these Rris couldn’t fathom, and things that hurt more to watch than I want to think about. I thought I could tamp it down, lock it behind a mask and just push on through it. I should’ve known that kind of thing seeps through the cracks.

  So light from the display flickered across the Rris constables, momentary hues of lighting. Their eyes followed the movement, their entire heads twitching in spasmodic twitches as they tried to follow what was on screen. The sound from the speakers carried, and beyond the Mediators I caught flashes - like underwater quarters catching flickers of light - as other Rris peeked.

  Then Rohinia leaned forward and squinted at a cellcam video taken a couple of Christmases back before... it happened. “That is you, isn’t it,” he growled. “The head fur is different, but that is you.”

  I ground to a halt, somewhat surprised. “Well, yes.”

  “How are you doing that?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making it show you?”

  Now my mouth hung open as the scale of that misconception hit me. There had obviously been some miscommunication or understanding somewhere along the line and he wasn’t only on the wrong track, he was on another line in another state going in another direction.

  To be fair, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The first time audiences back home had seen grainy and jerky black-and-white images of a train approaching they’d fled the theatre. The Rris were seeing full-color, high-bitrate, high-def at a time when their culture had nothing comparable. They didn’t even have a word for ‘recording’, so I had to wonder how this device had been explained to Rohinia.

  “I was told it showed scenes of your world,” he rasped, sounding a little warily. “You are making it do that?”

  “A,” I nodded and tried to word my response carefully. “But they are not... happening now: I am not making them. They are scenes that it keeps. They are like moving paintings: you can make them once and then view them again and again.”

  He looked at the screen. “Moving paintings? That doesn’t make sense.”

  I sighed and brought up the recorder software for the screen cam. “Wave your hand,” I told him. Dubiously, he did so. I captured ten seconds or so then tapped a couple of quick keys, turned the screen back to him and saw his eyes widen and his head rear back. “It can store sound and pictures like that,” I said and played with the keys, fast forward and rewind and playback in a slow motion loop. “That’s what those pictures are: they’re views of my life from... years ago.”

  “Then these are like memories?”

  Again with the misconceptions. “They are pictures of my past. They are like a… a visual journal. I have recorded them to help my memories, but these do not change and shift like memories can. What you… store doesn’t change over time.”

  Furrows creased a muzzle. “A ‘record’ is what shopkeepers keep and ‘store’ is a term used for goods.”

  I shrugged, not in their fashion. “There are a lot of words and terms that are used in my language that just aren’t in yours. My language has… shifted over time. As new ideas came about, words and phrases changed to fit. For example: to start this machine is called ‘turning on’; the term for storing pictures is ‘record’, which is similar to keeping accounts, only with pictures; there is a term used to refer to someone who is a liar named after a communicating machine that was used to commit frauds; a term used to search for information named after a program, which also means something else in your words. There are a lot of others.”

  Their eyes stared impassively and I had to wonder if that had just ricocheted: incomprehensible gibberish to them. “Does that make sense?” I asked.

  The Mediators exchanged glances. “Somewhat,” Rohinia conceded. “So this device... records what it sees exactly as it sees it.”

  “A,” I said, somewhat relieved. He seemed to be getting it. “This was the last time before I came here.”

  On screen were the dim lights and background music of the old Triumph, one my old watering holes. Not a wildly pretentious place, but a place with decent prices, occasional underground live music and good food and drink. The view bobbed and blurred as the phone was handed about, showing faces I’d known well. Laughter and banter came from the speakers.

  “It was a birthday celebration,” I recalled quietly, watching scenes that brought back memories. “It was something usual. A thing that was often done: an excuse to go out and enjoy oneself with friends. It was Tim’s twenty third year. It was a Friday night, then end of the working time. We went out on the town: Jackie and myself, Tim, Sophie, Mark, Sari, John. There was a very bad movie and then we went to the Triumph. I remember she had the Thai salad and I had the steak. They do a really good béarnaise sauce. That was… the last supper, hah. The last time I got a picture of her…”

  They were memories that surged back with remarkable ease. It was easy to remember the crowd sounds, the band doing an unsanctioned cover of Summer of 69, the smells of perfume and taste of the food; the laughter and the easy smiles.

  Someone tapped my neck, jolting me back to the present. Beside me, Chaeitch was crouching with a hand on my shoulder and the other Rris were all staring. Not at the video; at me. For a few seconds I wondered why, then my cheek tickled and when I rubbed at it my hand came away wet. Carefully Chaeitch reached down to the laptop and there was a click of a claw tip on plastic. The video stopped and he threw me a reproachful look.

  “Perhaps something a little less personal, a?” he suggested.

  “A,” I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. “That might be… Sorry,” I told him.

  Jenes’ahn leaned forward, her features ghastly in the light from the screen. “Why were your eyes leaking?” she demanded.

  Shit.

  “It’s a sign of distress,” Chaeitch said into my silence and then asked the Mediators, “Rot, do you have to do this?”

  Their ears went up – surprise at the mouse’s roar.

  “He did agree,” Rohinia said.

  “A,” I sighed. “I did agree, Chaeitch. I didn’t think… I thought I was over that.”

  “Apparently not,” Rohinia observed and cocked his head when he asked, “Do you wish to continue?”

  I flexed my fingers uncertainly, then jerked my shoulders in a shrug: “We started so we may as well finish.”

  The expression on Chaeitch’s face was quite opaque as he glanced from me to the Mediators and then huffed air. “Hai, then perhaps something that doesn’t stir up so many personal embers, a?”

  Rohinia eyed
me with head cocked and ears doing the equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “You can do that?” he asked.

  There was plenty of other material on the laptop and the sticks. I showed them other video I’d shot; other stock footage of cities and people and life. It still stung, but it didn’t dig in deep as the personal stuff had done. While the stars wheeled above and ship timbers creaked gently I showed them images of people and cities and devices and other wonders from another world. And tried to explain them.

  They didn’t have the grounding necessary to understand it. They only had their own experiences and their culture hadn’t advanced far enough to look beyond it. It was similar to Victorian visions of the future: full of steam-powered vehicles and clockwork machinery. Or even science fiction from the mid-twentieth with their room-sized valve computers. Like us, they tended to use their own experience to predict the future, and the things I was showing them were just so far outside theirs.

  “This is real?” Rohinia leaned into the light to ask of a scene of Chicago streets in snow. “You said there were entertainments. Is this true or a fiction?”

  “That is not fiction.”

  He wrinkled his muzzle, squinting at the screen where brightly colored metal vehicles moved around in snow and slush. “All that… those buildings and conveyances… how can you tell what is real and what isn’t?”

  I shrugged. “I grew up with all this… that. I spent almost fifteen years at learning institutions…”

  “Fifteen?” Jenes’ahn interjected.

  “… which wasn’t unusual. It was necessary. Just to learn to live in my world took a lot of time. It was a complex place.”

  “And ours isn’t?”

  I thought for a bit. “Perhaps I should say we’ve made it a complex place. Tell me, what is the most complicated machine you know of?”

  Rohinia huffed meditatively and then rasped, “I saw a mechanical actor once, in a playhouse in Wandering. It could move its arms and legs and wave its tail. There were hundreds of little bits inside.”