by Geary Gravel
Cil stepped forward into the silence that followed. "Thank you. It had to be said, you see, sooner or later by one of us. Everyone would have considered it at some point."
She raised her hand to touch Marysu's shoulder, let it fall back to her side when the other woman flinched.
"Besides, now that it's out in the open it'll be easier to lay to rest. The reason is simple, Marysu, you've said it yourself. If the creatures on this planet were Ely in themselves, or tools of the Elyins, and if they didn't want us to know it, then there's no way we could ever find them out. They did not make mistakes. This leaves us with a rather important choice. Either we assume the kin are what they appear to be and work forward from that assumption, or we're paralyzed. And remember, Marysu: for all you know I'm an Elyin, or Jack is, or Raille, or Emrys. Do you see? We have to stop that now."
Marysu poured herself a glass of wine and said nothing, her face shut tight around the bright blue eyes.
Jefany gave the frame an impatient tap, and another chapter faded into the pad's long memory. The writing surface cleared to its incorruptible square of white. Her foot tapped nervously on the floor. She touched the journal at her wrist and muttered: "Time."
At once her own voice began to recite from the black-and-silver circlet: "Day Commons fifteen Mergent 380. Day local thirteen. Hour seven of the morning. Minutes forty-two advanced. Seconds—" She covered it with her hand and heard her own quick breathing again.
Seconds.
She wrote out of a need for movement, any kind of movement, and from a wordless desire to thrust her thoughts out where she could see them and weigh them from a distance as a stranger would.
Silent seconds piling up and each one bringing me the same thought's echo: I don't want to go through this again. I want to go home. Am I a coward?
Is Emrys a fool?
He amazes me. Can he really be so naive? Is this simplistic falsehood sum and total of the great gamble he hinted at up on the sundeck that night?
It's another Chwoi Dai, despite the bizarre physical resemblance. A Chwoi Dai without hope, lacking one shred of real evidence to support a Judgment of Humanity.
That other time, at least we all believed that what we were saying was true as well as morally correct. We thought them human by the Code. But here it's a lie, and we know it from the start.
And it won't work.
A year. It stretches out ahead of us like links in a chain already forged. Soon after we call in with our Judgment they'll dispatch a ship. Assuming we survive the trip, we appear on Commons a few weeks later with tears in our eyes and a pair of the creatures. Perhaps there's a slight stir at first, the inevitable speculation about Elyins, lost colonies, parallel evolution—but then the Sauf Coben spends a leisurely
morning really examining the things and by afternoon our Judgment's overturned.
Back goes a ship. This time it's one loaded with torporin (do they still call that the King's Sleep?) and in a few months those kin who survive the transfer have their very own compound at Mauve Terrace, complete with false black trees and a nice shiny silver sky projection.
She set down the stylus, turned off the pad.
She raised her chin. "Is Emrys inside the building, Hut?"
"Yes, he is in the Library, Jefany. Would you care to—"
"I want to talk to him. Let me see him. Here." She struck the wall sharply with her palm.
A circular area about a half-meter in diameter blanched and shimmered in front of her. The wall suddenly windowed the Library as Emrys turned to face her, dark brows lifting in curiosity. Past his shoulder she glimpsed Cil slowly pulling the mushroom shape of a New World dream hood from her head.
Emrys gave her a small bow.
"Fair afternoon." A smile twitched to his lips, became apologetic. "Let me get right back to you, can I? I promise. This is a bad moment. We're in the middle of something complicated, and if I take the time..." He finished with a shrug, made a small signal to the Hut, and moved off in Cil's direction as the image faded.
"Damn you, Jon, you'd better take the time. Hut!" She slapped the wall; the image swayed like a bubble about to burst, then brightened again.
Emrys' mouth was half-open in the beginnings of a question to Cil. As he looked back over his shoulder he closed his mouth, watching Jefany in wary silence. Cil stood just beyond him, her face revealing nothing.
Jefany felt doubly excluded, doubly angry.
"I think I want to be out of this, Jon, right now. And I want Cil out, too. And you—you're deranged"—she felt a brief satisfaction at his wince—"if you expect this foolish charade will accomplish anything more worthwhile than the ruin of seven careers and possibly an equal number of lives—without helping the kin at all! And the pain for your Group, whether they're punished or not—to build up such hopes, knowing they'll be ripped away! I won't let Cil suffer an experience like Chwoi Dai—"
"Jefany, wait." To her great surprise it was Cil who spoke, coming up to stand by an expressionless Emrys. "There are some things you don't know yet."
Jefany felt a twinge of annoyance partly directed at herself. She struggled between the desire to protect Cil and the knowledge that she had no right to interfere in another person's life.
"Cil, Dove, I've been through this whole process once before. Emrys and I both know what will happen. First it may seem like a challenge, almost like a game, before it all begins to fall apart. We've stood before the Weighers. We know the kinds of irrefutable proof they'll demand. It's cruel and irresponsible to—"
"I said wait, please." Cil brushed back strands of pale hair from cheeks flushed quickly crimson.
There was a beat of silence. Emrys cleared his throat.
"Have you ever seen the Dance as it's used on animals?" he said in a calm, musing voice. "Not entirely legal, but it's done here and there, mainly on the simpler ones for work or entertainment. The elaborate tricks they can perform at a hidden signal, the intricacies of movement! It's hard to believe they're no more than puppets."
Jefany stood silent, expressionless, as Cil took up the refrain.
"March is an expert Dancer, did you know, Dove? Oh, many mercenaries have Dances in them, but he himself is a bit more rare; performer and composer."
"And Marysu with all her tongues," Emrys continued. "There aren't a dozen panlinguists of her caliber in the whole Community. It's said the really skilled ones can actually make up whole new languages in their heads. Imagine that, if you can: a consistent, original, fully generative language that would be all but impossible to distinguish from one that had evolved over millennia."
Cil smiled at the game of back-and-forth. "Historians like Choss are also unique. Like libraries in a way, like storytellers of the truth. Perhaps their organic memories can't match a Manck's compendium for length and accuracy, but unlike a compendium they can deal with the knowledge they possess on more than a mnemonic level. There are pieces of thousands of vanished cultures in a mind like that. It's a mind trained by University to reconstruct the currents that sweep events along
from age to age." She paused. "And of course you know a competent planalyst can devise ways to justify almost any natural phenomena, under almost any conditions."
Emrys was watching with a regretful smile. "I'm sorry, Jefany. I'm a poor Group Leader. Bellmaple on Chwoi Dai was better, all charts and organization. But me—I talk too much about nothing, and I'm never there when it's time to say the really important things. I always wait too long, it seems___"
He lifted his hand toward her in a beckoning gesture. "But come join us now, if you're willing. Come and hear the rest of it."
CHAPTER 7
Heard a rather intriguing proposal during
afternoon session today. A Captain someone who
headed the latest diplomatic mission to Maribon—a
mission which all had assumed would yield the same
galling lack of either rejection or recognition as its
predecessors—has been asked by t
he Maribonese to
act as their plenipotentiary in some sort of joint
colony effort with, of all unlikely worlds, most ancient
and reclusive Weldon.
The proposal came right out of the Dark and Empty: I don't think there was a Voice in the Shell who wasn't taken off guard. The colonial venture seems absurd on the surface: we must have better uses for Moselle, which is a fair planet in the holos. And what an unlikely band of colonists: several thousand proud eccentrics from one Private World and half a handful of pasty-faced misfits from another! Perhaps it's just the novelty of it all, as if a pair of shut-ins had finally expressed the desire to take a stroll in the fresh air together and nobody's got the heart to deny them. I feel half-inclined to support the
proposition myself. After all, what harm could come of it?
FROM PERSONAL NOTES OF
DAN SAKAMEL. JUNIOR
WORLD VOICE FROM
FLAMILUS ON AKAI. GY 47-53
103
Emrys had proclaimed a holiday.
March, Raille Weldon, Marysu, and Jack spent the early part of the day at varying distances from the Hut, tagging after the kin or browsing through meadows rich with unrecorded life.
Choss stayed inside, in the privacy of his room, playing history and drama dots gathered from the Library, Betta splendens navigating cautiously at his elbow. Occasionally he asked the Hut to show him the four who wandered the fields; he paid particular attention to the one who plaited flower heads in her unbound hair and hummed soft ballads as she stroked mossy trunks with the backs of her fingers.
That evening wanderlights were set adrift in the Hearth Room and the wineglasses refilled themselves with something new each time they were returned empty to the table.
They dined to a presentation of music from contrasting cultures. The Hut strove to blend the different selections with care, often beginning a piece in some other part of the habitat and bringing it closer to the Hearth Room chamber by chamber, as the final strains of the preceding selection faded to echoes above the table.
To Raille, who had never witnessed such artistry, the Hut seemed peopled by a troupe of fantastic spirits who, one after the other, approached the human audience and told their tales of joy or woe. Knowing that this was a technological rather than a mystical marvel did nothing to detract from her enjoyment.
First came the Antique melodies of the clairschach, its choppy notes falling like bright feathers in the darkened room. Later, throbbing Regressive rhythms played. Jack and Marysu rose in a dance that Choss had never expected to see outside a
fieshpress, and that Raille watched carefully from lowered eyes, pulse loud and swift in her ears. There were cries of encouragement and laughter, and even March smiled once, a long wolfish grin of approval.
The wanderlights novaed silently in bright pastels. The shifting illumination caricatured the assembled faces, helping in some cases to disguise expressions of tension and profound doubt.
Near the end of the meal came Mariki windchange music: the tonalities of ritual, all hollow whistling and tiny, distant bells.
After the first triad, Marysu began to talk quietly of her experiences on Marik, weaving words with such skill and unexpected feeling that soon the room was haunted by windswept deserts and proud matriarchs with velvet faces.
When the fragile lament of the Vegan step-songs had brought an end to the Hut's presentation, March got to his feet and performed, unasked and unaccompanied, the Dance called Bum to Death, one of the very old compositions of Ingrid Peretti of New World.
As he whispered the trigger words, the Dance pattern took possession of him, muscle and nerve, and his mind was tucked away in a dark place without time or sensation.
Then his face spasmed into a mask of demonic suffering.
Golden fingers clawed at the air.
Breath became a hiss, motion a portrait of pain.
The initial movements were tight, constrained. Rapidly they grew in scope and speed until he spun around the room like a mad toy.
The Dance was five minutes and twenty-six seconds long, and Raille flinched uncontrollably every time the whirling shape drew near, though Choss had quietly assured her that the Dancer's senses functioned even if his mind did not, and would prevent his coming into contact with any objects or persons during the performance. With fingers curved like talons and jaws wide in a soundless scream, March leaped along the dragon's back, and his feet were a blur like bright sand where they struck the cool mosaic.
When the Dance was over he walked back to the table. Ignoring the comments of the Group, he went through the
required exercises, tugged his heavy boots back on, seated himself stiffly, and ordered a platter of fried mulel, which he gulped down with the aid of his inexhaustible wineglass.
The talk had turned to Ely ins again, and they were matching Departure theories by the time Emrys rose at his seat between Cil and Jefany. A wanderlight flared too near his head, and he blinked in the resultant haze and with a gentle shove sent the globe toward the other side of the room.
"It's midnight," he said. "Local midnight."
Faces turned toward him.
"That means that on Commons right now it's midmorning. The tourists are afoot. Not so many as in years past, perhaps, but still an enthusiastic mob. How they swarm through The Museum, pointing, judging! Later they'll flood the viewing galleries at Blue Shell, always chattering among themselves, rarely lingering through an entire debate on the floor below."
He paused, and Jack whispered sadly to Marysu: "I think the holiday's over." She shushed him, her eyes on Emrys.
"And Mauve Terrace," he continued. "The 'xenobiological facilities,' the 'zoological gardens.' They flock to Mauve Terrace with their whispers, lifting the children to see them, pointing out the ones that remind them most of themselves, saying isn't it funny the way they look and the things they do—but who could ever think they were human?"
Jefany sat with her head bowed, hands cradling her temples. Cil's expression was unreadable in the random illumination; she sat very straight, fingers toying with the ring on her right forefinger.
"Back at the Shell, business is being conducted as usual: perhaps a citation of approval is issued for a slumworld that's managed to double its population again, perhaps the Voices vote to cut grain shipments to Frond or Lelute, and send out the order to round up a few thousand of the hungriest and ship them off to the newest colonial find..."
Emrys' voice made a pleasant background blur.
Slumped forward on fists and elbows, Jack played with the reflection of his face in the polished tabletop. He smiled lazily, grimaced, puffed out his cheeks, winked, twitched his nose like the little furry animal they had glimpsed near the clearing.
He glanced up when Marysu shifted back in her seat; he noticed an unfamiliar tautness in the arm that brushed against him.
Jack looked at the others, reading the messages in arms, legs, spine and fingers. More than wanderlight was in the air. It was as if a hidden cord had been passed through them all. As he watched, the cord was pulling tighter, forcing their bodies into lines of the same expression.
He listened to Emrys for a few minutes, feeling the same silken touch that had bound the others beginning to press upon his will. But it was only words, and like most words they struck him at the wrong angle and slipped away, a dozen glancing blows like leaves in the wind, with nothing there to catch them.
Emrys had paused, and now a new speaker held Jack's notice, however tenuously.
"Emrys. The people need food." The tone of Choss' voice asked that his words not be judged too quickly. "I appreciate your anger, but the fact remains that there must be food enough and room for people to live in dignity."
The old Scholar pivoted and looked down at the other man, his face set with resignation rather than reproach.
"No, I'm afraid you don't appreciate my anger if you find it that easy to dismiss. Let me tell you a story, Choss. Consider if you will the tale of
the Ydras tree, from the legends of my homeworld. A thing of destiny, this tree, immune to disease, free from aging, a tree permitted by the gods to grow forever at the rate of its youth. A tree, Choss—a holy thing on my world—a tree whose roots quest without pause through the rich soil, drinking, devouring, altering all that they meet. Whose branches thrust ever outward, knowing no barriers. What is the fate of such a thing? Such a tree cannot survive anywhere but in a legend, you know, for it will one day cover its own world, supplanting all other life—not out of hate, I'll grant you, nor even from desire—but thoughtlessly, because anything not of its own being is utterly ignored. It needs nourishment, you see, and a place to grow. And one day, yes, this tree will cover everything and it will be alone. On that day it will begin to die...."
Choss was chewing a fingernail, looking embarrassed and unhappy. "It's a good story," he said with a sigh. "And it may
be a true representation of the issues. But—Emrys, I fear the tale cannot end any other way, sad and futile as it may seem. Things are what they are. The nature of your holy tree is to grow."
"True enough." Emrys nodded. "But the nature of a human being is to change his nature. To think before acting. We are the mutable ones, the dreaming ones. Long before we had the Screens or the Darkjumping ships, and long before we had the Ember, we possessed a great power of our own: the ability to step back from our environment and bend it to our will. A great power and a terrible one. On Green Asylum, this has been understood for a long, long time. The power is there, it cannot be ignored, so we strive to use it in a complete way: stepping back, seeing ourselves, seeing our world from a different perspective—then stepping in again where we belong, aware of the importance of our involvement with all life."
Choss noticed that Raille was looking in his direction. He straightened in his seat. "Emrys, I empathize, 1 really do. But that is philosophy and this is government. We have to draw the line somewhere. Say this is human and this is not."