The Alchemists

by Geary Gravel

  "Oh, Jon, I've lived through one full century and more than three-quarters of the next—and you, you've seen almost four! An Antique man would be thrice in the grave by then and firmly convinced his little eyeblink had been a rich, full life. And it's still such a miracle to you and me—is it not?—that we open our eyes each new morning. Oh, we're the strange ones now, not they."

  She moved away from him, and the words came like a prayer: "We're old: like planets, moons, suns. When you yourself were born it was another age, the back-before, the last trickle of Minn, and death was still yawning nearby like a pit, a thiny in the dark you felt yourself withering closer to each day. Even after they came, even after the gift was given, realization lagged behind. Nobody thought the Ember would work, for God's sake, though I don't know why not. Everything else they brought us did. For a while." She took a breath of the scented night and released it slowly, coming to stand at his side again.

  "In the Great Year 201, when I was born," she continued in a softer voice, "people were just beginning to grasp the idea that the old adversary might be beaten. And for the last few generations he's never existed—he's Darkjumps away! Everyone ages, but no one's old. We grew up thinking we'd grow wrinkled and weak, and we can't adjust to our reprieve. But these new ones, they have no doubt they'll stay young forever. Bright little drifting children..."

  They were silent, each with his own thoughts. The song died, and when a new one rose through the doorway Emrys found words flowing through his mind. His lips moved around a bit of the melody; a young voice came from the ancient throat.

  This song was also very old, and the words which he remembered spoke of things that happened only rarely nowadays, and of feelings that Community Man seldom experienced.

  She stirred uncomfortably as the old man sang in his beautiful voice. "You're out of your time," she said at last. "One doesn't sing when music is playing."

  He stopped abruptly. "One did in my day."

  "But not in mine, and surely not in theirs." She glimpsed the expression on his face. "Oh, Jon, it doesn't matter. I'm the only one here. Don't let there be year-distances between us too. Sing, if you like, it's all right." But he was silent.

  The trees were scratching the belly of the middle-sized moon when he spoke again. "You know I really had no way of being sure. I just had to hope you'd come."

  "Oh, well, I had to," she said in a tone that mixed fondness with resignation and something else. "If not for myself or for you, then for Cil, who laughed with excitement when the notifications came." She turned to face him. "But it's been two years since Chwoi Dai. A great many things have happened, a few of them good. I'm with Cil now, for one—but you must have known that."

  "No. I assumed you'd met on board the ship."

  "No, it's been almost a year. But, Jon, we both received requests."

  "Pure coincidence. I had no idea."

  "Ah, that is strange indeed."

  "Stee?"

  "Back on Stone's Throw, with two of the children. They live together, oddly enough, near a big Builder research plant in Paiak. He's become a very good architech, I hear, due for advancement on the Big Block. I saw him briefly last year; he's grown a beard and panked his eyes into rainbows." She paused. "But I'm with Cil now."

  "Are you still living on University? In the Free Forest?"

  "No, on Melkior, where Cil was born. I half-finished another prose collection last year. I've been trying to start writing again for a long time. No luck. I never seem to stick with it. I thought maybe here—" She gestured at the night.

  "And Cil?"

  "She did a lot of professional planalysis until a few years ago. She was at a resort on Vesper when one of the Blink Wars broke out and several close friends were murdered by mistake. She was badly torn up herself, left for dead. They found her after a few days and managed to rebuild everything—the physical part, anyway. When she left the medipal she felt no desire to go back to work, and she's just been drifting from

  place to place, though not with a capital D yet."

  "And now, does she owe much on the Block?"

  "It's the other way around. She was one of the top half-dozen in her field."

  "Ah, that's fortunate."

  He could think of nothing else to say, though he still had many questions. The talk about Cil had left him uncomfortable; he was not sure why. He cleared his throat and reached for his cup, but it was misted with dew and fell silently from his fingers to the dark grass below.

  "I remember the party after the Chwoi Dai Judgment," he said finally. "You wore silver and shells."

  "Yes." She smiled. "And you wore bitterness and got drunk as quickly as possible."

  "It won't happen like that this time," he said softly. "Not to Belthannis."

  And they were still talking, both hoarse, both near tears, when the last of the moons had wandered away, when the stars had begun to fade like birds going to sleep, when dawn came.

  CHAPTER 2

  If you have confessed, and give Glory to God,

  I pray God clear you, if you be innocent.

  And if you be guilty, discover you.

  And therefore give me an upright answer:

  have you any familiarity with these spirits?

  No. I have none but with God alone.

  How came you sick, for there is an odd discourse of that in the mouths of many.

  I am sick at my stomach.

  Have you no wounds?

  I have not but old age.

  You do know whether you are guilty, and have familiarity with the devil,

  and now when you are here present, to see such a thing as these testify:

  a black man whispering in your ear and birds about you.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE EXAMINATION

  OF REBECCA NURSE ISALEM VILLAGE,

  EARTH. A.D. 16921

  41

  Raille Weldon of Weldon came walking and whistling through the wide meadow. Her first planetfall in a Hfeskin packet had left her trembling with nervous excitement, and the stimulus of a new world exhilarated her, lengthening her stride and keeping a constant flickering smile about her lips.

  When she wasn't walking, she was shading her eyes in anticipation at some distant soot-colored tree, or down on her hands and knees to inspect an insect or a cluster of flowers. When she wasn't whistling, she was whispering small excited bursts of description into the delicate silver journal clasped around her wrist. In one hand she carried a tiny, expensive holodot picture cube which she had purchased on board the Darkjumper. Under her arm was a frayed blue-and-white object with Biota Exotica and H.R. Tauck in neat black Weldonese characters on one side. From time to time she would set down the cube and thumb carefully through the dog-eared book, always making an entry in her journal when expert and planet disagreed.

  The meadow crept slowly into a patch of medium-sized forest. Between two ancient trees she found the faint suggestion of a path worn into the inch-deep leafmold. Deliberately avoiding the tracks, she stepped several paces to her right and struck off on a vaguely parallel course. She moved slowly through the forest, swaying like a dancer past the bushes that tugged at her long, colorful skirts. She breathed deeply—not with exertion, though the atmosphere and gravity were still new to her, but to fill her lungs with the sharp unfamiliar smells, to catch strange hidden scents in the back of her throat.

  Raille recalled from the curiously brief data spool she had viewed on the ship that the local day was a good deal longer than its Weldonese counterpart. Although she had been walking for several hours by her chronometer, the tiny sun was only just approaching the zenith when the forest dissolved into meadow once more. The wind was cool and refreshing in the open field, but the midday sky was almost painfully bright: it

  stretched like flashing metal foil above the distant mountain ranges.

  She paused in the meadow, shielding her eyes from the silver glare, as she realized she was lost.

  She caught the sound of water rushing somewhere not far
away. Turning in that direction, she started off, guided more by her ears than her eyes.

  She almost stumbled over the fruit. It was lying half hidden in the silver grass, several meters from the nearest bush or tree. She examined it with delight, sinking to her knees and cupping it in her hands. Beneath its thin skin the flesh was red and pulpy, reinforcing her first impression of rich succulence.

  Raille was beginning to regret her plan to make friends with the countryside before meeting her fellow Evaluators. / should have let them call down from the ship for someone to meet me, she thought. / could be at the base by now, with a place to lie down and something cool to drink.

  She looked longingly at the dewy fruit, made a small click of her tongue and shook her head. Thumbing the journal on her wrist, she began to dictate slowly. With her free hand she held the fruit up to the sun. Her fingers appeared through the translucent flesh as though dipped in blood. Squinting fiercely against the noon brilliance, she found that she could see clearly through the whole fruit, which cast a scarlet shadow down her forearm.

  "No seeds, no stone," she informed the journal thoughtfully. "How does it reproduce? Is it really a fruit at all?" She paused in contemplation. "I dub youfaux-pomme," she said at last, tapping the taut red skin with a fingernail. She closed her eyes and tried to recall a teasingly similar specimen in one of the recorded lectures sent to her from Lekkole. Bright afterimages danced in her brain. Chewing on her lower lip, she reached absentmindedly for the Biota Exotica. Still holding the mock-apple in one upraised hand, she began to leaf through the unwieldy volume.

  That was how it happened.

  One minute there was nothing but ferns and grass and Raille Weldon of Weldon; the next, she felt a slight pressure come and go on the back of her knuckles, the lightest of taps, as if a butterfly had blundered against her hand in the brisk wind.

  Then suddenly there was a sharp tug, and the fruit was wrenched from her fingers.

  She discovered her hand pressing tightly against the base of her neck. She had snatched it back quicker than thought, as if burned. She stared stupidly at her empty fingers for a moment, then looked up. She blinked in the blinding light. A dark figure loomed against the sky's shattered mirror.

  She rose slowly, aware that she was shaking gently, and lifted a hand to shield her eyes. The sun burned small and fierce directly above the vague outline of a man, crowning him with a halo of bright spears. She peered into the shadowed face and gradually made out eyes, nose, mouth.

  He lifted his hand and took a bite of the fruit.

  Raille clutched at the ragged edges of her composure. Her mother had told her many tales of offworlders' bizarre customs and outrageous manners. Could it be they all behaved this way?

  Since sending her reply to Lekkole, she had been rehearsing the words she would speak when introduced to the Group Leader, a distinguished High Scholar. Now she searched desperately for the gracious phrases, watching them scatter before her inward eye like a school of distant fish. The silence was growing intolerable. She tried in vain to see more of the man's face. Was this Person Emrys himself?

  She took a shuddering breath. "Well met, Person," she said in her clearest Inter. "Are you from the Special Evaluation Team? I'm the Natural, Raille Weldon."

  The man said nothing.

  She began again. "I'd planned to explore a little before coming to the base. We are not great travelers on Weldon, you see, and it's very exciting for me to have this opportunity. My first new world—" She smiled ruefully. "But now I've lost my way completely. If you hadn't found me..." She let the words trail off, an expression of apologetic gratitude on her face.

  The man had taken another bite of the fruit. He seemed to be staring at her, though it was impossible to be sure.

  "If you could just take me—"

  He chewed carefully. Staring.

  Then a bank of curly clouds passed leisurely in front of the sun and she was able to see him clearly for the first time, able to see his eyes, and to see that he was naked. She looked at

  him for several blank moments, trying to blink the bright dots away from her eyes, and small hidden things seemed to shift and move in her mind; sounds came from nowhere to tremble on her lips.

  He had finished the fruit now. He was staring. He took a step forward, then another. She was not sure whether he raised one of his hands or not.

  Later, when she tried to remember, she could never recall the exact moment when she had cried out, the precise second when she had started to run blindly through the silver grass, past the skeletal trees, beneath the dulling sky. But she could visualize perfectly every detail of the time that followed, separately, as if it had been recorded by some meticulous, impersonal watcher and recited back to her night after night, in her dreams.

  She remembered:

  heavy skins whipping at her ankles

  knuckles white around the solid familiarity o/H.R. Tauck

  breath shrieking in and out of lungs like a flock of razor-winged birds

  one hand-tooled sandal lost to a patch of clutching furze— the foot was soon striped and crossed with blood like a stick of candy

  a dark figure standing in the center of a meadow, knee-high in flickering grass and staring, staring, staring

  the shrill and mad piping that pursued her through the open spaces, arising from a number of small gray plant-things crushed-underfoot—

  did the tiny screams make her run faster? could she even hear them at that point?

  Early evening found Choss, Jefany, and Cil in the Hearth Room, Choss engrossed in a NewsNet drama featuring the Personalities, and the women playing Golden Ring with dice and luminous cards.

  March and Emrys were in their respective rooms, one doing exercises, the other sitting quietly as he pondered the days ahead.

  Jack slept with a smile in the Music Nook.

  Marysu was walking in the Garden of Earth, alone with her thoughts among beech and willow, buttercup and birdsong.

  Then the Hut spoke calmly in all rooms at once and informed them of the presence of a madwoman on its outer doorsill. Converging in the hall nexus directly above the Hearth Room, they hurried to the foyer and brought her in.

  When Emrys opened the door, she flopped in on the rug and her hair spread like a rust-brown stain on the rich pile. Emrys reached for her at the same time as Choss; they collided and withdrew, mumbling apologies. March picked her up and carried her to a couch. There was dried blood on her feet; one shoe was missing. The gypsy skirts were torn and there were twigs in her hair. She was unconscious, lovely.

  "What should we do?" asked Choss, shoulders bent, dark eyes on her face, which was dirty, scratched, and contorted. "Who is it? Weldon of Weldon? What's happened to her?" He looked at the others and blushed, retreating a few steps from the couch and fingering the twining ivy.

  March knelt by her head, thumbed her eyelids, felt at her throat. "Pulse steady," he said.

  "And no major wounds apparent," Emrys added.

  "If I may comment," ventured the Hut. "Like the rest of us, she is a newcomer to this world, a creature in a new environment, alone, perhaps lost. Her general appearance suggests that she has been running, possibly for some time. She may have been frightened by something in the forest."

  Emrys glanced sharply at the ceiling, then back to the girl.

  "Oh. Yes. You may be right. Perhaps she did blunder onto something—unfamiliar." He paused, biting his lower lip. "In which case, the bain-sense might be best, once those cuts have been attended to."

  "It might indeed," the Hut said, and the rest agreed.

  Created in secret by the empaths on Maribon and dubbed "sense bath" in the old Language of Pleasure, the bain-sense was a subtle instrument constructed in the shape of a coffin— an ancient form of packaging no longer widely used. In the

  bain-sense one could lie down in warmth and darkness to experience in a few minutes what would seem like hours of pure happiness. The bain-sense blurred over anxiety and recalled ins
tead a precious childhood memory in perfect detail. To replace formless worries, or a traumatic incident, the bain-sense substituted an equally formless sense of well-being, an equally exciting surge of joy. Working from within rather than attacking from without, the bain-sense was more of a servant to the mind than a master. One lay down in the bain-sense and the bain-sense was the key.

  Panacea, moodbender, comforting friend: those were its common uses. It was also a cure for madness.

  They brought her water, ointments, and lifeskin, and they washed and dressed her feet and the lesser scratches on her face and body. Then March and Emrys carried her up to the Library, past the chipfiles, and put her in the bain-sense, folding her hands on her breast and making sure her head was snuggled up against the thousands of tiny silver contacts which were themselves complex machines.

  Emrys keyed in a basic program, one of healing and selective blocking, and closed the velvet-lined lid with care.

  The silence that accompanies the operation of an expensive machine filled the room, and the two men edged out into the corridor with the others.

  Inside, the bain-sense opened to the lower levels of the patient's mind, smoothing and sorting. It made of itself a mirror for the babble of image and sensation pouring from her brain, a pliable thing to be shaped by her need. Those emanations deemed harmless were caught and sent back after being woven into something bright and pleasant. The dangerous ones were allowed to become lost somewhere in the velvet darkness.

  Inside the room, inside the gleaming coffin, Raille began to remember and to forget.

  Turquoise, azure, cerulean, brole... Lavender, lilac, orchid...

  Violet, indigo...

  Jack was walking with his eyes on the walls when he left the Library with the others. In this section of the Hut the sides of the corridor were endowed with a gentle optical pattern, a mild visual relaxant that occasionally activated when humans walked the hallway. As Jack watched, the blues and purples undulated rhythmically, brimming at the edges where wall met floor as if ready to overflow onto his bare feet.