Annah and the Children of Evohe

by Clay Gilbert

  Holder’s voice was a point of light in the darkness, like the filtered film of sunlight clinging to the water’s surface in her thoughts. I can hold you here, she thought, in my memory. I can come here, to this secret place, to talk to you, from time to time. You will see me in the grasses and the Grove, and I may not be able to speak it aloud, but know that I am yours, and that that will never change.

  * * *

  “Are you all right?” Holder turned toward the sound of the voice, and although he knew whose it was, he was still somewhat shocked to see Ardan standing there. “That’s not the word I’d pick. Come on, sit down.”

  “If you want me to go-if I should not have come-”

  “No, Ardan, stay. It’s good to see a friend.”

  “I wanted to hate you, Holder. I wanted to hate you because she loves you instead of me.”

  Holder nodded. “Yeah, we have that on my world, too. What changed your mind?” “She has never loved me,” Ardan said. “She cares for me, and has always cared for me, but that is not the same. You are a good man, Holder. Even were I to hate you, it would not change her feelings.”

  “We could use more people who think like you back on Earth,” Holder told Ardan.

  “There are not that many here who think like me. That is why Annah and I are friends. We are both not so crazy about the rules, in different ways.”

  “Yeah,” Holder said, prodding the fire absently with a stick. “I know what you mean. Annah’s got a pretty good sense of duty, and I can relate to that.”

  “I suppose so,” Ardan said. My parents are asleep too, like Annah’s. But no one ever tried to teach me anything. The Old Ones-they do not talk to me as they do to her, not even in my dreams.”

  “Do you try listening?” It was a strange question, Holder thought, one he felt came from the space of Annah’s absence, as if, since she wasn’t there to ask it, he had to speak for her.

  “I have, sometimes. She and I-does it bother you to hear this? I mean, you know we have a history, but you also know-”

  “Go on,” Holder said. “It doesn’t bother me. And I guess I’m not the only one who misses her.”

  “She and I sometimes went to the Elder Grove together; spent time there together. She liked to go because it was where she could hear the Old Ones; she could have stayed there for hours, talking to them, listening to them, and never saying a word to me.” He laughed. “Except that she never would have done that. You know Annah. She kept trying and trying to get me to hear them, too.”

  “Yeah, she’d do that, I’m sure. So, did you ever hear them?”

  “No,” said Ardan. “I think that sort of thing is a gift.” “I think it’s a gift too,” Holder said, “but just because something is a gift, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there for everyone.”

  “Do you think so?” Holder thought. Back on Earth, so many people were all convinced they were the only ones who could talk to God—at least, the right god, in the right way. And they were always convinced there was only one right way-and only one right God, come to that. Holder had never believed any of that. He’d felt God-or the gods-lots of times, in lots of places. He’d felt that feeling the first time he looked up at the night sky as a boy; the first time he flew in an airplane-the first time he looked back at Earth, from space. He’d sensed God-or the gods-while sitting in his room reading poetry or one of the science-fiction novels he’d always loved, or listening to music, whether it was Wagner or the Grateful Dead.

  He’d sensed Him-or Them-when he and Shannon had made love. And he had that same feeling, now, listening to Annah sing, when he looked into her eyes, or when he felt her touch. “I do think so, Ardan. I think we just have to listen.”

  They were silent for a moment, and then Holder thought of something. “So, you say, and Annah has said, that your parents are ‘sleeping’, that many of the Old Ones are ‘sleeping.’ Does that mean they’re dead?”

  “Not as you would think. Though their rest is deep, their lives and thoughts continue. They simply do not move, or speak aloud. It is the way of our kind, and the reason we live so long.

  “Will-will Annah ‘sleep’, too?”

  “One day, she will. But you may be long dead by then.” “Not something I like thinking about,” Holder said. “I would not worry, if I were you,” Ardan told him. “I think Annah will not take more than her nightly rest while you are with her.”

  “I wish I could sleep,” Holder said, “until this ridiculous business with Jonan is over, and she and I can live our lives.”

  “My friend, I hope there comes a time when that happens, and for both your sakes, I hope it is soon. But you should know that Jonan does not intend to let her go.”

  “I know,” Holder said. “But this can’t go on forever. We have to think of something. We have to do something.” “Sometimes, it serves best to let a storm recede in silence,” Ardan told Holder. “Jonan understands little of patience. You must understand it better than he, if you want to get through this.”

  Holder felt Annah’s absence as a black void in the pit of his stomach; an ache like hunger, but one he could find no way to fulfill. He thought of every touch and word; the sound of her voice, the will with which she met the struggles that surrounded her.

  “You have to trust in her, Holder,” Ardan said. “She loves you. Not Jonan, not me, not anyone else. I have never known her to give up easily on something-or someone-she believes in.”

  “It’s not logical, though,” Holder said. “It’d be so much easier for her just to choose him, or even you. It would make so much more sense.”

  “And no doubt, that is what Jonan would like to convince her of,” Ardan said. “However, Annah does not do things because they are simpler or faster. She does what is right.”

  * * * When Annah had been a bloomling, she had thought the Temple of Promise was beautiful. The histories said that it had been built from the pale stone that rose in cliffs by the shores of the Great Sea. To her young eyes, then, it had seemed that the Shapers who made it had crafted it from the sky itself, for its walls were stained the sky-blue that her people praised as the color of renewal, and its high, arched ceilings were the color of the clouds. Many cycles had come and gone since that day, though, and now Annah thought the Temple of Promise nothing more than a pretty prison.

  She lay across one of the long couches in the Temple’s meditation room. They were meant for soon-to-be Promised partners to sit and talk with each other and with the First Ones about the seriousness of the decision they had made. Annah lay with her face pushed into one of the cushions, turned away from Jonan. She prayed he would be silent—and for more. First Ones, she prayed, if I cannot be with him-if they will never let that be-then let me sleep, as my father and mother sleep. Let me sleep, until both he and I have left this life behind, and we may be reunited in a new life, a new world more just than this one. But she did not sleep, and Jonan did not stay silent.

  “You should eat something.” Jonan told her, bringing a bowl of soup and placing it on a tray just beside the couch. Annah didn’t realize how hungry she was until the aroma of the soup found her nostrils: she recognized the mingled scents of spices and salts mixed with a rich meat broth, and the tangy hint of sweetglobe nectar. A sharp pain stung her belly.

  “I know you must be hungry,” Jonan said. “Eat. Save your strength.” Still she said nothing, although it required much of her willpower not to take the ladle that lay across the tray and spoon the succulent-smelling soup into her mouth. “I do not wish to eat,” she said.

  “You will need your strength,” Jonan said. “We have much to decide, you and I.” “There is nothing to decide,” Annah said, her voice muffled in the cushion. “All that is to be decided already has been. There is nothing left to do now but what Spirit compels.”

  “I am glad you have decided to be reasonable, Annah,” Jonan said. “Come now. The soup is getting cold.”

  “I told you, Jonan,” Annah said in a virtually toneless voice, “I do not
wish to eat.” First Ones, she prayed, help us. This cannot go on. * * * “If Moren realizes what I am doing with these books, Holder, I will be cast out of the Grove.” Ardan looked at Holder with a grave expression. “At the very least.” Moren was part of the Grove’s family of lore-keepers; the recorders and interpreters of their history and laws.

  Moren was the same age as Ardan and Annah, and was still only an apprentice lore-keeper, but he took the craft seriously. Ardan had told Moren that he was doing research on his family’s history; his mother and father had gone to their rest when he was around five cycles old, and he knew little of the buds and branches he had sprung from, back through time. It hadn’t been entirely a lie; just enough to mask the more important motive Ardan and Holder had in mind: to find some provision in the law to lift Annah’s obligation to Jonan.

  “I appreciate that,” Holder said, “and you sticking your neck out for us like this, too.” “It shames me to say it, Holder,” Ardan said, “but I despise Jonan. There are other seed-maidens who would willingly join with him, yet he has always craved Annah. I do not think there is a limit to what he would do to possess her. I do not even understand it. She is not-well understood, in the Grove, as I am sure you know.

  Holder frowned. “Yeah. I know.” “I think Jonan enjoys trying to see if he can bend others to his will. And it is the most challenging when someone has a will as strong asAnnah does.”

  Holder could tell Ardan was as disgusted by Jonan as he himself was, and it made him like the seed-youth even more. “Heh. She definitely has that.”

  “In the days before our world was broken, one like Jonan would have had his views corrected, or been driven out of the Grove. We have learned to too easily tolerate that which is twisted, and which would bend all that is whole into its own form.”

  “Like it or not-and I’m sure you don’t,” Holder said, “Annah’s the one most of your people see as twisted. Not only because of how she thinks, but-why does she look so different?”

  “No one knows,” Ardan said. “I do not even think Annah herself knows. There are those who say she was cursed by the First Ones, although why they think that, I do not know. I have never known her to do anything that would earn anyone’s curse. Do you love her in spite of how she looks?” Ardan asked.

  “Not in spite of, and not because of it, either. It’s just a part of who she is, and she’s beautiful to me.”

  Ardan smiled. “And to me. You are a good man, Holder. But Jonan”“I have to try not to hate him,” Holder said, “although it’s definitely tempting. It’s not what she would want me to do, though.”

  “As you wish,” Ardan said. “Let us see what gifts these books have for us.”

  “The lead was a sweet one, Maestro,” Goodman said into the ‘com he wore around his neck. “Remind me to do you a favor, sometime.”

  “Better be careful what you say, m’boy,” the Maestro laughed. “Somebody might take you up on it. Can’t get a fix on where you are—do ya mind lettin’me in on that little mystery?”

  “That’s my insurance,” Goodman said. “I’m sure you can dig it.”

  “I can. I don’t like it, but I dig it. Come see me, sometime.”

  “Will do. I’m out.” The lead, Goodman thought, had been a sweet one. But not the way he expected. It’d been a name: Marco Caminos, supposedly the contact for the HPF in the Homesec Central area.

  Caminos was a businessman, or was supposed to be, in any case-the word was, he’d made his money trading in alien artifacts and scavenged technologies; spent more time Offworld than Earthside, but, apparently, when it came to that, he funneled most of his money into Earth-rebuilding efforts-after spending a chunk of it on himself.

  Caminos had been the one who’d sparked up interest in Evohe back during wartime. Nobody in the HPF had liked the idea of Offworlders having anything Earthers didn’t have, and what these Evoetians had going would sure save money on weapons. They could shape things just by singing, it seemed, or, presumably, destroy things the same way. Just like Joshua in that old legend about the battle of Jericho.

  If Earth could get hold of whatever these Evoetians had, and find a way to replicate it somehow, there’d be no more Big Wars. Two things stood in the way. First was finding out how they did it, the second was wiping out the planet, no matter what. You couldn’t just leave someone else in possession of that kind of weapon. They might just turn around and kill you in your sleep.

  There had never been another plan , Goodman realized. Whatever they found, whether they could use it or not, they were gonna wipe Evohe off the starmap anyway. They’d just have a good cover story to use so no one got all pissed off.

  Too bad, Goodman thought. I’m pissed off. Now, the question was, what to do about it? Marco Caminos seemed to be some kind of ghost. All Goodman’s best intel couldn’t turn up where the man lived, anything about his family, not even a photo. Whoever Marco Caminos really was, he was the man who’d killed Evohe. Why do I care so much? Goodman thought. It’s just a freakin’ job. And then he realized: I used to love Earth, too. And I guess I still do. But there are an awful lot of people-starting with you, Caminos-who deserve to ride the express train straight to hell. And if I could drive, so be it. So much the better.

  The first key to being able to be in that driver’s seat was to have the power to do it. But power over who? Who can I really trust? Not his bosses at Homesec, that was for sure. He wouldn’t be surprised if they were up to their necks in what had happened to Evohe. Trusting people like the Maestro was a little tricky, but, in his way, the Maestro was a lot more plain-dealing than the state he’d spent his life serving. And just how had he come to this conclusion? He wondered to himself, every step feeling like he’d just stepped off one of the antigrav simulators they had in amusement parks on Earth to give people who’d never been Offworld a taste of space.

  It had started with a ghost-suit, and a pair of borrowed eyes. It was funny, Goodman thought, just how much truth you could reveal with a disguise. The disguise had been the Maestro’s idea. Goodman guessed that when you spent the time the Maestro did trying to keep order in a place like Scattertown, you learned the best ways to make it through the darkness without too much of it sticking to you. Trouble was, more of it ended up sticking than you ever thought would.

  A brief stop by Homesec Central, where there was still no more news about what was going on, specifically, than there had been, and he told the Vice-Commander not to expect him in for the rest of the day, at the very least.

  The Maestro had wasted no time beeping Goodman’s ‘com about as soon as he hit Scattertown.

  “Eyes in the back of your head, Maestro?” Goodman asked.

  “Nah, man. Just eyes on the back of yours. Come on in. Office is on the corner. The old library.” “I’ll be right there.” Library. Yeah, well. No one uses those anymore. It was pretty easy to spot. It took up a whole block and had probably been busy enough back when people actually cared. Now, though, anything you could read was just a click away-who needed it, now? Damn shortcuts, thought Goodman.

  The library was right on the edge of what most people considered Scattertown; positioned like a border between what was and what had been. Goodman found the Maestro waiting for him behind the front desk. “Nice office, Maestro. I hope you’ve got more appreciation for this place than most people would these days.”

  “Hey, if I didn’t care about information, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today.” He reached under the counter, brought up a long cardboard box that might have been a simple gift, had someone else been on the giving end. “Got something for ya,” the Maestro said to Goodman, opening the box.

  The skin-tight, black mesh outfit looked like every other ghost-suit Goodman had ever seen. There was a small notch in the side of one leg where you slid a chip carrying the DNA patterns of whoever you wanted to look like. The circuits and filaments in the suit did the rest. Standardissue, Goodman thought. Problem was, every other ‘standard-issue’ ghost-suit he’d
ever seen had been the property of Homesec headquarters. “Not gonna ask where you got this, Maestro,” Goodman said. “Just gonna ask what it’s doin’ here, and what you’re expecting me to do with it. Then I’ll decide whether I’m gonna tell you to fuck off, and walk outta here.”

  “The chip in the suit belongs to a man named Evan Piscene. Name’s pronounced “Piss-ini”, but some wiseasses called him ‘the Fish’ or ‘Fishy’ for obvious reasons. He was Marco Caminos’ right-hand man.”

  “Was?” Goodman asked.

  “Well, sometimes DNA samples ain’t voluntary. But don’t worry. I didn’t kill him.”

  “All right, all right. But what’s that got to do with me, and why do I want to put on that suit?” “Piscene was the middle man for a lot of Caminos’ shadier business deals. I’ve heard-and I believe it-that he ran a lot of, shall we say, pharmaceuticals, from Offworld down to Earth. Stuff in the same category as the Jupe flu.”

  “Offworld where?” “Caminos’ private island in the stars. He keeps it floating out near border-space. Guess he thinks he’ll be safe up there with the boulders and the other star-trash. He’s pretty much right, best I can tell. Piscene’s a frequent flyer up there. No one would bat an eye.”

  Border-space, hmm? Interesting. A split-second after the thoughts crossed his mind came a third one: Just forget about Evohe. You’ve got a job to do. Do it, come home, and maybe then you can work on your private hobby.

  “I’ll do it. What’s this ‘private island’ called?” “Erewhon.”

  “Oh, so Caminos is a smartass?”

  “Whatcha mean?” “That’s the name of practically the first utopian novel ever written. Old Earth author named Samuel Butler, I think. Spell it backward and you’ve got Sam Butler’s opinion of utopia.” Goodman chuckled to himself. “Never mind me; it’s a hobby of mine: all the ways man manages to imagine perfection, which usually ends up being more screwed up than what he started with.”