Annah and the Children of Evohe

by Clay Gilbert

  “Jonan,” she had said to him, “I care for you. How could I not? Your roots took soil so near to mine. Our seeds and buds share the same Grove. So I ask you to understand: as much as I care for you-and I care for you deeply-you are not my life’s partner, and never will be. I cannot do this with you.”

  He had nodded his head; said he understood-and, inside, he had hoped that she would change her mind, with time. But she had remained alone, and while she had never been cold to him, the warmth she showed him was not the sort of warmth that would ever bring a bud to fruitfulness. And that is the warmth she shares with this stranger, who is neither of her seed, nor of her Grove, nor of her generation-nor even of her kind. And he is not only a stranger-he is an enemy. Perhaps, thought Jonan, the Old Ones would not have to be awakened for this matter. Perhaps he and Annah could handle this, themselves. He would give her a second chance.

  * * * Holder and Annah reached their camp at the crash site just as dusk was settling over the woodland landscape. It had been nearly two months now since the crash, and Holder had found himself becoming accustomed to sights that had, not so long ago, seemed utterly foreign: the indigo skies over this world-a deeper blue than the clearest spring day back on Earth; really more violet, even, than blue-the ring of light that bloomed in the sky at sunset, which was probably an after-effect of residual radiation from the attack a century before, Holder knew, but somehow still beautiful, and the bright sky-trails that streamed from the heavens nearly every night.

  Holder knew these were the signs of life passing in the cosmos. Some, in fact, may have been, like the ‘heartstone’Annah had shown him, parts of this very world. But if one could not enjoy a thing without the fear of its ending, then one could have no joy. Annah had taught him this.

  “So many of them,” Annah said with a sigh, tracing the trajectory of one brightly-falling fusillade with her finger. “And so far away from us.”

  Holder thought of something, and grinned. “Would you like to see them closer?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Just a minute.” Annah watched him as he rummaged through the items in the ship’s cargo hold, until finally he came back with what looked like a small black box.

  “It’s a viewer,” he told her. “You turn this end toward your face-”he indicated which end was which-”look through there and-”

  “Oh!” Annah jerked the viewer away from her face, then, after a moment, slowly brought it back up. “So close. I feel like I could hold them in my hands.”

  “They look even closer from up there,” Holder said, smiling at her fascination with the device. She put down the viewer, looked up at him; touched his face with her fingers, as if she sought to close a cut on his cheek with that odd heat in her hands. He found that she was beginning to heal something in his mind, instead. “I would like so much to see them.”

  “Hell with it. The mapping and charting I told you about? I could do it if I wanted to, I guess. I could freelance. Make up starcharts from my findings and sell ‘em at spaceports or on the cybermarket. And you could see the Sea of Stars, Annah. You could come with me.”

  She frowned. “Why would you want that, Holder? I know you say you care for me, and I certainly care for you. And that is why I say this to you: I would be nothing but a complication. Nothing but a burden. I do not even know if I can live apart from this world. It is the heart of my kind; perhaps it is our life as well. Perhaps I am wrong to want a life beyond the trunk and stem.”

  Holder touched her hand. “Listen, Annah. I’m not sure what I think about things. I don’t know exactly what you are, or what we are to each other, or might be. I don’t know a lot of things. But I don’t think you could ever be a burden to me. When I get the ship fixed, when I leave here, if you want to come, I’ll take you.”

  “If you asked me, Holder, I would gladly go.”

  * * * The next morning, Holder awoke to find Annah already gone-the first such morning in more than a week. He called to her, and followed the sound of her voice down a stonelined hill to where a small stream made its bed. There, he found Annah bathing. Beads of water clung to her hair, and the sunlight shone on her skin so that it seemed to him as if she were clothed in a hundred colors at once. He stumbled over a rock in his distraction, nearly falling the rest of the distance between himself and the shore where she swam.

  “Careful!” she said.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “You don’t make it easy.”

  She laughed. “Would you like to come in?”

  He thought about it only a moment. Why the hell not? She came to him when he was still only hip-deep in the water, taking his hand and pulling him deeper in. The water had reached Annah’s neck by the time it was merely at Holder’s chest, and he looked at her, alarmed.

  She laughed again, kicking her feet so that she bobbed near the surface, then turned on her back, floating and watching him. “I am all right, Holder,” she said. “Do not worry. I love to swim. And my body needs the water, anyway.”

  The way it needs sunlight, Holder thought, thinking of how she sometimes liked to lie in the afternoon sun as they talked, or ate, or worked on the ship together. As pale as she was, and as much time as she spent in the sun, she ought to burn with ease, but she never did. That was beginning to make sense.

  “Can’t you drink it?” Holder asked. “I can, and I do, sometimes. But this is faster, and physically, it is more fun. My skin is different from yours.” “Well, that’s true enough. If I’d been out in this water as long as you have, I’d already look like a prune. It doesn’t even take that long.” He held up his fingers, which had already begun to wrinkle.

  “How odd,” Annah said. “You must remember though, Holder, for all the ways that we are different-our bodies are also similar in many ways.”

  He looked at her glistening form; the ease with which she moved in the water. “That’s true. Hey, there’s something I’ve thought about, lately. It’s kind of a crazy question really.”

  Annah swam closer, treading water with her legs and arms as she looked up at him. “You know you can ask me anything.”

  “Okay, well-I know our bodies are similar-what do you think would happen if one of my kind and one of yours-”

  Alight came into Annah’s eyes, and she smiled at him. “Go on.”

  “Well, if they tried to-”

  “Bring a seed to bud together?” she asked, in a wondering voice.

  “Yes, that’s it.” It’s warm out here, Holder thought. “Would they even-could they? I mean, how do your people-” Annah laughed. “Very much the same way that your people do, from everything I know. You have seen me, Holder. Is my body that different, I mean, in those ways, from the females of your world?”

  “Well, no. It doesn’t seem to be.” “I will not lie to you,” Annah said. “When I learned your language from your ship, I studied other things about your kind, too. It is useful to know the biology of a species, when you are helping them to heal. And I was curious. What you are asking-I believe it would be possible, yes.” She smiled at him, as if she were considering the limitless possibilities of chance, as divergent and many-numbered as the sky-trails in the Sea of Stars.

  This cannot be, Jonan thought, pushing away the unwelcome Vision. He burned inside at the thought of Annah and that abomination walking together; swimming together-at her treating the stranger with more care than she had shown him in longer than he could recall. She has lost her way. But I can help with that.

  * * * Kale Goodman thought, not for the first time that being a company man came with both benefits and hindrances attached. This business of Gary Holder and the dead planet Evohe was starting to become one of those hindrances. This was the second conference call he’d been on with the ViceCommander about the matter, and it wasn’t making much more progress than the first one had.

  “There’s nothing there, sir,” Goodman said, for the fourth time in less than forty minutes. “It had a Duster dropped on it. And even if our tech is better now than it
was back thenwith all due respect, it was still a Duster. I’ve been to that system, sir, when I was still on Active. There’s nothing there. Evohe is a dead rock now, whatever it might have been, once.” It’s a dead rock, in pieces. Unless it’s not, he thought to himself, not seeing the need to share that particular piece of doubt with the Vice-Commander just now.

  “Very well, sir. I know, sir.”

  “Holder’s dead too, Goodman.” Unless he isn’t , Goodman wanted to say, but didn’t. I don’t think Evohe got Dustered enough. Planet’s like a bad penny. Holder might be just like that, himself.

  Night had fallen, and now the high blaze from Annah’s and Holder’s campfire danced a duet with the nightly shower of light from above.

  “You really do sing beautifully, Annah,” Holder said, as she leaned against him.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry you had to close up the heart-place, though.”

  “It is not truly closed,” Annah said. “It is only hidden. Work can still be done there. Iwecan still go there.”

  “If we do that, though, we have to be careful.” Like I need to tell her. It’s her world, after all. “It should be all right,” Annah said, although she was unsure. It was said, in stories, that in the times gone by, sometimes the Old Ones were sung into waking. I certainly hope that does not happen now, she thought.

  “And if it isn’t,” Holder said, “then we’ll face what we have to face.”

  “Yes,”Annah agreed, though she sounded worried. “Do all your people sing?” Holder asked, watchingAnnah’s eyes as they traced the calligraphy of starlight in the skies above them.

  “No,” Annah said. “I mean, our people have always loved music. We were born from it, so how could we not? But not all of us can really use it. Some of us are Shapers, and some do not have that gift. And it is said that the Shaper’s paths encompass more than song, anyway.”

  Holder laughed. “It’s that way on my world, too. And I wish more people could tell whether they had the gift or not.”

  Annah laughed. “And do you have the gift, Holder?”

  “Not the way you do, that’s for sure.”

  “And would you silence the songs of everyone who did not ‘have the gift’?” she asked him.

  She has a point. “No,” he admitted.

  “Good,” she said with a smile. “What do you know of music, then, Holder?”

  “I know a little,” he said. “Want me to show you?”

  “I would love that.” Holder went to the ship and, after a few moments’ rummaging, came back with the beaten-up old acoustic guitar he used to fool around on during downtime in spaceports or on Recon missions.

  “What kind of music-maker is that?” Annah asked, as he sat back down beside her.

  “It’s called a guitar. You use the strings; you strum some of them with some of your fingers, while you hold others down.

  “Play a little for me?” Holder played a few bars of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” then, thinking Annah might like something more upbeat, broke into “Casey Jones” by the Grateful Dead, which made her smile, and sway back and forth to the rhythm. “Sometimes I think you have your whole world in that ship, Holder,” she teased.

  “There’ve been times I thought I did,” he said.

  “Now play me something else,” Annah said. “Something of yours.” “Mine, huh? Oh, all right.” He wasn’t going to bother protesting that nothing of his was going to be up to the standards of Bob Dylan or the Dead. When Annah wanted something, he was discovering that she usually found a way to get it. Holder let his fingers find the right notes, the complimentary chords, and waited for the through-line of the melody to appear as it always did; a silver tether that had held him together on more than one occasion. And appear it did: soft and plaintive at first, as seemingly uncertain as his and Annah’s first interactions had been. Then the melody changed; grew richer and deeper, again echoing the effects the passage of time had had on the two of them.

  Holder looked over at her for a moment, feeling the current of the music change beneath his fingers as he did; letting them remember for him all the pain he’d felt when Shannon left—-years of effort and commitment thrown away; dismissed in just a few short words: I’m leaving, Gary. I just don’t think I can do this anymore. He looked to Annah again; saw her hand trembling, as if she wanted to touch him, but was afraid to disturb the music. Or maybe she’s remembering, too.

  He let himself think of the first days he’d spent with herwhen he’d first heard her voice in his mind; seeing her for the first time, and how the time had melted in upon itself, until it no longer mattered. Six months, he realized, the sense of time that had so often been his anchor on long trips in space returning to him after what seemed like forever. It’s been six months. He drew the last notes out-joyful notes, like the undistilled sunlight through the trees outside their camp in the first moments of morning-and let them fade, like memories one treasured, held close, then set back again into thought, to be kept for another day’s remembering. He let the strings fall silent, then brought one hand to perch on the beaten body of the old guitar, and the other gently to rest on Annah’s arm.

  “Holder,” she breathed, “you are a Shaper, after all.”

  He smiled, gave a chuckle. “Of what, I don’t know.”

  “Many things,” Annah said, her fingers stroking his hand. “And more.” “I suppose music is something else I always thought I’d like to do, if I ever got a spare minute between running around and about after some other man’s business out in space.”

  “Sounds like you ‘fit it in’ just fine,” Annah mused.

  “That’s all that matters, then.”

  “Holder, may I sing something for you?”

  “You know you can,” he told her. “Is it something the Old Ones have been teaching you? She shook her head, smiling. “No, no. The Old Ones say that each of us here on this world, and maybe other worlds, too, have our own song to learn, and sing, and share with others. It is inside, in our Memories, if we know how to listen. That is what they say to me, anyway.”

  Holder couldn’t help smiling at the girl’s exuberance. “And you’ve found yours?”

  “Part of it. The beginnings. Would you like to hear?”

  “Are you sure, Annah?”

  “Yes, I am. There is no other I would rather share it with.”

  * * * Jonan listened at the edge of the forest, hearing the notes of music, however far away. She sings for him. For the stranger. I have never been good enough for her. I have tried to serve the First Ones; I have tried to bring honor to our Grove. I wanted to teach her my song; wanted to learn hers. I wanted us to help to continue our race, together. But she does not want these things. Not with me.

  Because of her, I have lost my way. I listen for even those few notes I once knew from my Memories, and now there is nothing. No song but the song of anger. No music but the music of regret.

  First Ones, thought Jonan, she sings so beautifully.

  * * * Just as he had been when she sang for him at the heartplace, when she’d closed the gate, Holder was amazed at the beauty of Annah’s voice. He’d heard great singers before; plenty of them, and not all of them on Earth. Some of them—quite a few of them, actually-had more control, perhaps more technical skill, than Annah did. She was young, and he could hear her own range racing beyond her reach, like a great dragon of fire she would one day tame to her will, and learn to ride. But every note she sang, every tone and scale, pulsed with the energy of her own life, with the sum of all she was. And for some reason, she was sharing it with him.

  If Holder had been asked to describe how that made him feel, he wouldn’t have had the words. Was this what Homesec was so afraid of? Was this the power they had been so desperate to attain a hundred years ago? But there’s nothing of destruction in it; not in Annah’s song, at least.

  Annah let the song trail off, took in a clear pull of air; stilled her thoughts and her racing heart. It was everything she
remembered; everything she was. And she had sung it for him. She did not completely understand why. She had known him for half a cycle now; she had cared for his wounds, had come to care for him. And he cared for herlistened to her, cared about what she thought and didn’t just speak dismissively of ‘the way things are done.’ He valued her, this stranger, and for more than the buds she carried or the glory of the Grove. He did not look at her and see merely the reflection of her race or of her world-he saw her. And although she had once seen him with the fear the Memories had instilled in her, she found she no longer did. “Was-was that all right?” she asked.

  “It was more than all right, Annah. It was amazing. You are amazing.” She hid her face for a moment. Not even Jonan had said such things to her. And I do not think that it would be the same, even if he had. She met Holder’s eyes again. “I am not, Holder. I am young, immature, and there are many things I do not know. If you were of my kind, you would know these things. You would see them in me, as others do.”

  “Do you care that I am not of your kind?”

  “I do not. We are creatures of the same Spirit. But there may be those who will care.”

  “Do you care that I am, strictly speaking, older than you are?”

  “I do not. But-” “I know. There may be those who will. Do you really care what they think?”

  “I do not,” she said. “But I do care about you. I do not want to cause trouble for you, Holder. If something happened to you because of me-if you were hurt, or something worse-I could not bear it. I have never wanted to hurt anyone.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen, Annah.” It was the sort of lie he’d heard a lot of soldiers tell loved ones as they left for the wars. No. It wasn’t a lie. It was a hope. “And, if you’re ‘trouble’, I’ll take you anyway. You’re the best ‘trouble’ I’ve ever gotten myself into.”

  “If you say so, Holder,” Annah said, and she was smiling as she said it. “Come and lie down by the fire. Come and lie down with me.”

  He did as she asked. It was not the first night that he’d slept outside the ship-he’d been doing that now for nearly a week-but he usually made a bed for himself a little farther off from where she rested. He stripped out of his clothes as he usually did, leaving on only the boxer-shorts he slept in, and lay down just behind her. He kept his hands at his sides, although doing so felt awkward and uncomfortable.