The Alchemists

by Geary Gravel

  Emrys is speaking. He has been talking for about five minutes now, mainly about the Community, about its Laws and the penalties attendant upon defying them.

  Choss flinched and moved perceptibly closer to Raille when the Senseless Sleep was mentioned. An interesting thought: one wonders about the nature of Raille's status before the Laws. As a citizen of a Private World and a dayfly into the bargain she is unique among our company. Would they dare send her down Deepside and steal years from her as punishment? Pray Isis it never has to be tested.

  Emrys is talking about this world now. He talks about the kin, about their right to remain what they are.

  He is stubbornly honest and frank in his speech, avoiding hyperbole and excessive preaching. Yet he speaks always with great power and compassion, and I envy him his gift of calm (or its most convincing counterfeit) in times of uncertainty. Though I have heard these thoughts before from both our lips in long discussions on lost Chwoi Dai, still his belief in the possibility of what he proposes makes each word new for me and I begin to believe again also.

  Abruptly he is finished.

  He calls for questions, but we are silent. For the first time tonight I sense doubt in him: he cannot read us.

  Now he will want our votes. There is no way to put it off any longer. He looks at us, measuring. Who will be asked first?

  I was not expecting that!

  What did I say? And where did the words come from, for I've lost them again.

  But I know it was yes, in as many different ways as I could express it. With caution urged, I remember, and with a recognition of the many difficulties and dangers involved—but yes, yes, yes.

  Marysu is next, and there are tears on her lower lashes, or else she has dusted them with tiny sapphires. He names her name and she responds:

  "I suppose it might prove an interesting diversion. Recherche, kuisado da pel. Possibly even amusing." And then (and they were sapphires, after all), in her laziest, most razored tones: "Why not?"

  Emrys studies her face. "Very well," he says after half a minute. "We need you, Marysu."

  And then to Cil, whose soft reply—"Of course I'll help. Help life whenever possible"—-has the effect of making it seem so obvious that you wonder why you had to ask at all.

  Sweet, gentle March appears to be totally engrossed in his patterned transparencies (and I have just realized what they are: Dance patterns, of course, in the old notation!). He has not taken his eyes from them once since he first spread them out for examination. "March?" No response.

  Emrys waits behind him for a long moment, his face a mask. Then he taps the stiff shoulder. "March!"

  I find that I am holding my breath, but when the soldier pulls his golden face up there is only vague annoyance in his true eye. He frowns at Emrys. "I went out, I looked at it. Probably not faking, really empty-headed." Immediately his head snaps down again to the intricate diagrams.

  Emrys is quietly adamant. Again he prods the shoulder. "And so?" he says to the rising brown-green glare. "Does that mean you're with us?"

  "Yes," the other man snarls. "I said yes, didn't I?" "Perhaps you did," the victor says softly. "Thank you, March." And next is: "Jack?"

  Who looks up startled at the sound of his name. Looks to Marysu (who looks pointedly away), then back to Emrys: "Huh?" "Will you join us, Jack, will you help?" Blinks, shrugs, scratches his collarbone, nods. "Sure, I guess, I mean if you really want me to—"

  Which brings us to Choss and to something I really would not have predicted. Our historian sits slumped in his chair, looking most deeply troubled. The corners of his mouth are pulling down beardward. He peers at Emrys over tented fingers and sighs. Then he opens his

  mouth and closes it as if unable to speak. I believe he is near tears. Finally he clears his throat, a ragged sound, and speaks, his face turned away from us toward the wall.

  "To be associated with such a plan as this, even to the limited extent of not reporting it to the authorities, would be enough to destroy my professional reputation. By saying nothing concerning your illegalities I would be seen as tacitly endorsing the Builder cause—to say nothing of espousing Law-breaking!—and thus denying the most basic tenet of my Major: objectivity.

  "From then on my work would be considered tainted, my former contributions discarded. My standing at University would be forfeit, of course. My certificates canceled, my striving nulled." He sighs. "Not that that matters so much, you know, but—"

  He halts, rubbing his chin. We cannot see his face directly, but I glimpse a reflection of his torment in Raille's expression. The rest of us wait, silent as a ring of stones.

  "It's my whole life, it's all I've ever wanted. And objectivity is the heart of u the very essence of the discipline. Oh, 1 know historians must seem bland and equivocal to you at times—"

  "The gift of understatement," Marysu murmurs, damn her, but with little malice in her voice. Even she is subdued by Choss' evident pain.

  He continues, reddening as he turns to face us.

  "But this is intentional. It's what we choose, a conscious effort to remain in the background, to stand well away from the great events and see them recorded without bias. I could no longer do that, here, as a component of this Group, though they allow us a dispensation for the Evaluation and the secret vote. There is no dispensation for conspiracy. ..."

  Emrys has been standing several paces away, leaning forward against the back of a chair. He seems calm until you notice the whitened knuckles and the stiffened shoulders. But a look of resignation is settling over him slowly like a wave of weariness. I know his thoughts: If all are not agreed, it cannot be done. But in his face there is no anger, only compassion and a gentle sadness. He opens his mouth to speak, thinking it is time, but Choss raises his hand for silence.

  "However—" The bearded historian clears his throat. "However, one realizes in the end how rare in life is the opportunity to accomplish something of this magnitude: to really and finally act upon one's deepest beliefs. So rare as to be worth nearly any price. So yes, Emrys, I will assist you. I will be most honored to assist you in any way."

  And this, I think, is Choss at his unexpected best: frightened, determined, and utterly sincere.

  We are all moved to some degree, even March, who will not

  raise his face from the shadows, but sits staring at an empty section of the tabletop. Cil is talking jubilantly with Jack. Emrys looks happy and relieved, if a bit dazed, and Marysu is smiling widely. Ha, bravo!" she cries and blows Choss a kiss of approval, which he acknowledges with a shy nod.

  It occurs to me that communication of any sort may be a little freer in our Group, now that Choss has suffered for us all, torn down some walls in our presence and survived. Things have been said which apply to each of our lives in one way or another. Now we will not have to dwell upon them; we can go back to our jibes and sophisticated cynicism, knowing that there is an understanding of purpose somewhere underneath it all.

  And now it is Raille's turn.

  Hers will be the final voice, the seal of confirmation to our pact, and Emrys turns to her with a gentle smile.

  There is a small noise in the anteroom. Smiles freeze and heads turn.

  He is there in the shadows.

  Black and gray and white: he is there, standing just outside the archway.

  How long has he been there?

  He steps forward slowly and, looking at the others, I see that doubt has come into the room with him. I know what they are wondering, because I have the same thoughts: How much of it has been real? How much has been false? How much has been his?

  Raille's eyes are on the empath as he walks across the room.

  "Yes," she says softly, though Emrys has not yet asked the question. "Oh, yes."

  CHAPTER 9

  I shall not write in here again. Tomorrow we go,

  the last people in the last town, and then it is no

  longer our world. Back to the blue jewel, to the safe

  pretty sa
pphire where the lakes and sensible seasons

  are, and hives at the back door again.

  But I myself will miss this wind and the bells

  inside it, the proud desolate voice of this world we

  had almost begun to know, which we called Pelerul,

  the New Life.

  How has it happened so quickly, the panic and horror? Everyone has an answer until you listen closely, and then no one does. It was a gamble. Those who stayed at home will never let us forget that we knew about the risks. But it seemed to be working. Why now, after so long without a hint of trouble? We were half a million strong and clever people to their thousand seldom-seen dreamers. Sometimes we traded with them, but not much. And that was all, for three years. Now the largest of their five little settlements has been destroyed and yesterday morning Weiweldon Itself was inflames on Great Continent—our first true city here was burning. Where are the reasons?

  FROM A HANDWRITTEN JOURNAL FOUND

  OYS1 ON PORTECTORATE WORLD 79.

  FOLLOWING DISSOLUTION OF THE

  WELDON/MARIBON EXPERIMENTAL COLONY

  Had he been a more courageous man, Choss would have told Raille that he thought her laughter matched the sky for silver. The sound entranced him, pealing out over the meadowland in flights like widening ripples in a sweet, clear stream.

  The historian was trying his best to entertain her with a bit of ancient doggerel he had discovered in the datapool during free-phase on University, and he found himself feeling absurdly pleased with his ability to amuse.

  "Recite it again, will you?" Raille coaxed. "In the old Anglic. At least the part about the mandrake root,"

  Choss was acutely aware of the pleasure he derived simply from having Raille near him. And when, alone in his room at night, he thought about her, Raille's smooth skin, her wood-brown hair, the scent of her, were wedded in his thought to her humor, her gentleness, her curiosity. The laughing voice was a delight to ears grown weary of the flat University accent; he knew that she had learned Inter the hard way, without the linguaspeek machine, and her Weldonese inflection added a soft patina to the crisp vowels of that carefully constructed tongue.

  "Oh, wait just a moment." He motioned past her. "I think Emrys is going to say something."

  They were in the midst of what Marysu had termed apicka-nick, which amounted to eating a communal meal while sprawled outside on the ground, rather than upright around the table in the Hearth Room. The Hut had packaged their food in cumbersome wicker contrivances which it assured them were necessary for authenticity. March had immediately turned his basket upside down on the stone floor of the foyer and left it there, stuffing the pockets of his coveralls with handfuls of artfully crafted delicacies.

  "Well now," Emrys said from his position of eminence atop a fallen trunk. "You've had some time to look at the problem. What are your insights? What's to be done first?"

  "Tie a rope around the neck of that thing in the upstairs room and take it out to the Water and drown it," March suggested around a mouthful of pink pastry.

  "Thank you, March, I'll come to the matter of our guest a little later. I was referring to the modification of the kin."

  The soldier paused to lick crumbs from his fingers before replying. "Get me a master patterning frame by tomorrow morning and he'll be twitching come nightfall. Already mapped out most of the basics on a template. For walk, for sit, for lift the arms. If he takes to the patterning I build it from there."

  "Excellent. You'll have your frame this afternoon if you want it. What about the trigger? Have you thought about that yet? It has to be something subtle enough to slip by the Sauf Coben. We can't be whispering snapwords in its ear every few seconds."

  March shrugged. "Gestures, one of the tactile codes, a linked association key—hard to plan on any one trigger matrix at this point in case of surprises, but probably it won't be a problem. Maybe a few long Dances, several hours each, with variations built in at the tricky points so there's still some leeway for choices and control."

  Carefully settled on a level stone not far from the Dancer, Choss tugged thoughtfully at his beard. He was fascinated by the changes in March's speech patterns: while discussing his specialty, March spoke in much more complete phrase groups and used a vocabulary Choss would have thought beyond him. He wondered if the constant crudeness was part of an easily shed mask designed to maintain the solitary existence the other man so obviously sought. The historian did not expect to have the puzzle answered; he could not imagine someone like March ever lowering his armor long enough to confide in another human being.

  As Choss watched March, Jefany found herself studying Choss. She sat on the grass nearby with her long legs extended, back to back with Cil, who was playing Golden Ring with Jack on a patch of rugmoss. Jefany switched on the writing square that lay in her lap and massaged the frame until a surface

  appeared that was blank except for a single line at the top of the pad: notes for a work of fiction. She began to write.

  "Sevens," Cil said and rolled the dice again. The blue one came up with a three that flickered to a nine and then stabilized at seven, while the white icosahedron showed the Coin Bearer, his tiny lazy smile reversed to a frown from her vantage point.

  "Ha! Golden Ring," she said and doffed her cards to show Jack a duplicate of the luminous image, sandwiched between a glowering Culpate and a serene Stick Lady.

  Jack gathered up the cards and began to shuffle them expertly in one hand while Cil played with the dice.

  "I think the light's going out on one face," she said, inspecting the blank ivory surface. "D'you want me to take it apart and fix it?"

  "If you can," Jack said. "That would be good." He began to deal the cards.

  "You designed these, didn't you?" Cil said. "This Coin Lady's like that sketch you showed me the other morning."

  Jack nodded, pleased. "A few years ago. I had them done up back in the Bosmas, which is where I mostly used to live on Earth." "They're really the best I've ever seen."

  "Thanks." They shared a smile.

  "—Perhaps Cil could answer that." Marysu's voice climbed higher, slicing into the cloudless afternoon. "Or perhaps Cil hasn't been listening."

  "Of course I have, Marysu." Cil brushed a strand of hair from her face and tilted her head toward Emrys. "I think Lacken proved conclusively on Dunbar's World that much of what we've been considering true Artifacts could be explained by purely natural phenomena. The low-tide altar stones, for example, the maze-ring formations out by Sully's Cove—"

  "You're right, yes, it was shown on Dunbar's World— every centimeter of the Endless Beach has been catalogued and accounted for by now—as well as on Chalice and Tourmaline," Emrys responded vigorously. "And the Coben will be familiar with Lacken's contentions."

  "You call them contentions—"

  "Because that is what the Sauf Coben will call them. You

  must realize what kind of individuals we'll be dealing with when we finally take our emissary before the Weighers. Here are one-time experts who've chosen to put shields on their eyes and stoppers in their ears in the name of expediency. Oh, Pinconning is a Scholar, granted, and Hakateny-Thu thinks he is; but the rest are professional facilitators, politically motivated administrators with a bellyful of self-righteousness and a pet scientific adviser at each ear. Even cold, hard truths will flow and run in a climate like that, and we've got to remember that it's not so much technical perfection that we're after as a convincing performance, a big, complicated wanderlight to flash in their eyes."

  Cil responded with animation, her dark eyes darting back and forth between the debate and the cards without missing a beat. Marysu crinkled her lips and stared off into the empty sky.

  "No learning," Cil said. "No adaptation."

  "None at all. I believe you could set a torch to its feet and it would stand there until the legs had burned out from under it."

  "And you want us to make him pass for human," Choss said dully from behind Jefany. "Sel
f-preservation is part of the Code also."

  "I know!" Emrys clenched fists full of air. "That's what makes it so maddening. Here he is, outwardly a perfectly unexceptional human specimen. And inside: nothing. Why does he look like us? Why? What's the point?"

  "The point is," Cil said finally, "that we have to counterfeit adaptation, bypass learning for control." Her dark eyes scanned the far hori/on. "And we have one month less than a year in which to do it."

  Two weeks had passed since Emrys' first attempt at questioning the empath. During that time, he had made repeated efforts to communicate, meeting with little more success. The visitor from Maribon passed his time almost exclusively in the

  north high room, which Cil had gladly relinquished, transferring the few belongings she had stored there to Jefany's quarters.

  The Hut itself seemed fascinated by the newcomer, reporting that he spent most of his days in what appeared to be a trancelike state, long periods of motionless silence punctuated by shorter episodes during which he would slowly pace the room, muttering or chanting under his breath words the Hut could not identify.

  "This is a most peculiar individual, if social behavior is any criterion," the Hut confided to Emrys one day. "If I were allowed to deal frankly with the matter, I would have to say that neither his actions nor his responses to stimuli strike me as being particularly human. This is a hasty opinion, of course, and based only on my limited experience—I do not pretend to be a sound judge of what is human and what is not."

  Emrys had responded with a wry shake of his head. "Nor does any of us, Hut."

  Late each night the empath emerged from his seclusion for a few minutes, going straight down to the Hearth Room and obtaining from the table a quantity of protein-rich broth which he took back to his quarters and consumed. The Hut had informed him that he could be served quite comfortably in his room, if he so desired, but had found itself once more ignored.

  With the empath a rarely glimpsed presence in their midst, the members of the Group turned their thoughts once again to the implementation of their great deception, and work began in earnest.