The Alchemists

by Geary Gravel

  "No!" Chassman's voice was harsh with urgency. "I can't leave here with you."

  "What?"

  "I'm staying, don't you understand?" The black eyes were desperately earnest. "Don't you remember? You heard it yourself: I opened the door for them. But I can't pass through it. I'm changed, but in a different way. I have no place there now."

  "Chassman, I'm sure they'd be willing to take you to Lekkole. Or Commons if you preferred, or wherever you—"

  "I have to stay here!" The tones were pleading; the young face was anguished. "No other place wants me."

  "Alone—on the whole world? Think of what you're saying."

  "I've always been alone:" Dark eyes pleaded with him. "I must stay."

  "Let him," Cil said suddenly. "He can't cause any more damage than has already been done here. Let him stay."

  "But this is a fantasy. They wouldn't let you remain here. This world is under interdict as of tomorrow. No one will be allowed to set foot here for years and years to come."

  "They don't know he's here," Cil said. "They'll follow the testimony of their lifeseekers. They've made their count of living beings. Eight humans. Two hundred and forty-five kin, with one more due next month. They're satisfied."

  "Yes." Chassman turned to him. "If you tell them about

  Kin's death, then they'll know I don't belong here. Emrys, I swear to you: As I am now, I could not survive on Maribon, or on your worlds, or anywhere for very long. But here—here there's a chance. I feel it, I know it."

  Emrys looked at the transfigured face. "It will have to be a Group decision, as before."

  An hour later they stood assembled in the Hearth Room.

  "All right," Emrys said to the young man before him. "You heard the vote. We're true to our pattern. You'll have your lie."

  "Thank you," Chassman said.

  Many approached the empath as the others left the room.

  "We have a day to get ready. Then we go up in the packets. But before that they'll send down a shuttle for Raille." She looked at Chassman. "They'll evacuate the building before any of us go up, so you'll have to be gone by then. Outside."

  He nodded.

  In the corridor outside the north high room he met March.

  "You'll need supplies," the soldier said, avoiding his gaze. "You'll need food and a groundskin."

  "No," Chassman said. "I'll take nothing with me."

  "But—"

  "I can't live here—if I'm allowed to. If not, I'll die."

  "Well, that's your choice, then." March hesitated, then turned. He had moved a few paces off when Chassman said his name. He looked back over his shoulder, a stricken look.

  "March," Chassman said. "That last night, before the storm, she talked to me. She told me you had asked her a question once. The answer, she said, is to let go of it. The answer is to go on."

  Hunching his shoulders forward, March hurried away down the corridor.

  Marysu and Jack were the last to say goodbye.

  "Errirys said it's almost time. Everyone's packed. The shuttle's about to leave the ship." Jack stood with his arm around Marysu's shoulder.

  "Yes. I'm ready." He stood in the center of his empty room.

  "I've decided to go back on the Big Block for a little while,"

  Marysu said, watching him from crystal-blue eyes. "I need something to occupy me while I finish work on the—the language. I can't seem to get rid of it yet," she said with a shrug.

  "We're going to split up for a month or two—but less if we can help it," Jack added, and she nodded. "After everything's settled. Then I might spend some time at University with her when she's done traveling. I thought I'd look into some things—architechnical basics, stuff like that. And—" He looked around the little room. "There's a lot I want to say, I mean with my painting. I need some time to sort it out. We both do." They looked at him anxiously. "Do you think it's a good idea?"

  He gave a faint nod, not knowing what to say to them.

  "Oh, look," Marysu said, drawing the shining bluemetal wig from her head. "Don't laugh." Her scalp was covered by a few days' growth of fine, dark hair. She shrugged again with a small quirk of her lips. "Time for something new."

  "I see."

  "Well." They each took his hand briefly, and he clutched at the contact.

  "Good luck."

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  Then there was really nothing more to say. They left him quietly, Marysu glancing back once over her shoulder.

  He looked down at his black tunic and breeches, began to remove them slowly. For the first time he felt lost without words.

  The Hut domicile went first, its chambered complexity folded and retracted to a third of its previous size, then sent upward by clusters of silvery guide-jets attached to its sides. Beneath it lay a patch of dead earth outlined in a precise border of green and golden flowers.

  Next the small shuttle twirled slowly up into the night, tiny lights twinkling as it lifted above the meadows.

  And then the packets began to rise, like bubbles freed from the bed of a dark ocean, turning faintly prismatic in the pale moonlight. Crouched at the edge of the great forest, he watched their ascent, continuing to stare upward through the tall black trees long after the last of them was out of sight.

  CHAPTER 17

  We stood together for the last time beneath

  Skinner's phase painting, Humanhome, a shifting

  portrait of the Galaxy in hologrammic section. Vast,

  sequined veils of night stretched above our heads, the

  whole immense composition overlaid with dim

  traceries of something else: Hands? Faces? There

  was the suggestion of a multitude of beings, soaring,

  gathering....

  "She says that we should tell the story. She thinks that people need to hear it now. She says—" His voice broke, recovered. "She says it will do some

  good."

  Heads bowed, nodded, shoulders lifting. "Yes," the planalyst said, "we must tell them." But I looked up at the black and stars, the fine

  shifting webs.

  "Everything?" I asked softly, lowering my eyes to the circle of faces again. "Should we tell them

  everything?" All eyes were on him.

  "I don't know," he said finally. "What do you

  think?"

  FROM THE TALE OF THE LONELY MAN. BY JEFANY OK

  273

  On Commons, the Great World, there is a museum which has grown so famous in the past few centuries that it is referred to simply as The Museum on eighty-seven of the two hundred and twenty-eight Worlds of the Human Community.

  Many of the structures that make up The Museum are as large as the cities of other worlds, while others are as small as a single dwelling node. The space within and between the structures is variously divided, from the vast dark halls where the Cold Ships hang brooding above a distant floor, to the tiny alcoves, the winding galleries wherin lie the histories of whole civilizations, the scattering of cloistered chambers where the scale is human, comfortable, and private.

  On the topmost level of Wing Ten Western Vega, there is a circular hall with a great convex lens for a ceiling. The light is kept normally to a pleasing blend of pale apricot and Antique gold, but on certain occasions the extravagant combination of suns in the afternoon sky will react with this lens to flood that single chamber with a rich excess of color for an instant or an hour.

  "How long do you think it will take?" Cil squinted into the Sterriman Tapestry, a wall-long rectangle of gold and silver threads in which elusive figures peered and fled from the casual eye. "It's already been what? An hour? Two?"

  "I don't know." Jefany squeezed her hand. "He'd lost weight, did you notice? His face looked thin. Oh, I hope this was the right decision."

  "Hoy," a man's voice said. "I've tracked you down at last! Took me half an hour to find you after they told me it would be so easy—'second floor in the old Vegan wing, down the red-brown hall, fourth door
way on the left: the Al-Kimiya Room'—easy, ha! I'm lucky I made it at all."

  The silver-skinned man ducked his tight curls through a low archway, sauntered past a pool—or the image of a pool—in which green shadows darted, his blunt fingers reaching out to toy with a sleek abstraction on a white pedestal.

  The man approached under the gaze of curious eyes. He was halfway to them when the ceiling began to glow: shafts of orange-gold washed like lava across his face, pooling to an ingot on the false eye of chade.

  "No." Marysu clicked her tongue, brushed slender fingers through her short black hair. "Is it really?"

  His smile was that of a friendly wolf.

  "Skin gets too tight, you shed it." He looked at the four of them, nodding. "Good to see you again, it's good. I ship for the Maren in a week. A long trip these days: a year out, a year back, maybe a solid pentade in between for the job I got on the Block. They need skills out there to become self-sufficient, and they need them faster than people can learn them. The Dance is the answer, so they can work their bodies while the minds take time to learn." March cuffed Jack lightly on the shoulder. "Saw your pictures while I was stumbling around down below. God's geek, you've been bucy! I like the bronze thing the best—what do they call that?"

  "Bas-relief."

  "Right, and the colloidal sculpture. Thought I recognized some familiar faces in that one."

  Jack smiled with a small shrug.

  "I understand," March said, his face darkening for a moment. "You should see the Dances I've been working on— some of the best things I've ever produced, and pure Kin, every one. I can't seem to get away from it either. Well—" He rubbed his hands together, looked around at them. The hot gold from above had gradually faded, and he wore skin of brushed silver again, his hair a cap of iron-colored curls, his carven eye cooled to pale green above a plain worksuit of soft browns. "Is he up there, then? Did he go through with it?"

  "Yes. We've been waiting to hear. It may be a long wait."

  "But why?" The Dancer's mismatched eyes narrowed in puzzlement. "Why did he want to take this risk? Why talk "about it?"

  Jefany looked at the quiet man who stood before her in his silver, green, and brown. "Why indeed?" she said.

  There are two cities on the Great World, and they share a single name: Paripassu.

  One city is old beyond human understanding. Old, but only recently dead, it was once ablaze with beauty and life, and the other city lies about it in an irregular ring, a cluster of dwellings and workplaces seeking to warm themselves at a cold hearth, an empty center.

  Midway between the innermost edge of the New City and the silent periphery of the Old, a great and ancient tower soars high above them both, a part of neither.

  The Imperial Office was by tradition unblemished white, a cool oval like the interior of an eggshell, softly lit. The Emperor-Abdicate was short and plump, and shared with Emrys the smooth, coppery complexion of a native of Green Asylum. Her loose jacket and trousers were of the simplest cut, pale cloudy green embroidered with silver and maroon. Sitting in the low seat behind the curving white desk, she was like a leaf clipped from some exotic plant, the one spot of life and color in the room.

  She leaned out over the broad desk to touch her palm to his. Her hand was small and cool. The dark eyes blazed with intelligence and a calm, subtle humor.

  "Well then, Neighbor. Find a seat for yourself, if you can see one in this white cavern. I feel snowblind half the time. Better still—have this one." She came from behind the desk, motioned him to take her place. "I can't sit when I have to talk."

  He sank into the full cushions as she paced before the desk.

  "Soft, isn't it? Not like home. We're a far jump from Peach-tree Knoll in this ugly upright tusk, eh? Give me a year and I'll have the offices moved from this Spire to the city proper— the live part, I mean, our part. Only don't repeat that to my aides—they'd leap from the windows, in a neat straight line, no doubt. D'you want something to drink or breathe? There's

  some decent avavith in the desk, God knows what else in the walls."

  "No. Thank you."

  "Ah, fine, that's fine. I'm not letting you talk, am I?" She shot him a close look. "It's Tate, back home, isn't it? The Tate family?"

  "Yes. Jon Emerson of Willow Cove."

  "Ah, never mingled, never knew them. Only you, by reputation. Emrys of University, Sessept. Mine from the other side of the Garden, from Bluebowl in the Nibor."

  He nodded politely. "I've visited the Nibor many times." There was a short silence.

  "Excellence—"

  She made a brushing motion with her small hand. "Call me by my name, call me Panit. They haven't figured out what the title should be yet, these masters of protocol—and anyway I won't use it." She stopped pacing, looked at him intensely again from bird-bright eyes. "I know, I know. The strange matter at hand. You know, when your petition for an audience reached my desk, it read more like a request for an opportunity to confess—"

  "I've come to tell you what really happened on Belthannis," he said quietly.

  "I had an idea that was it. I reviewed the materials on file: the records of my predecessors, those astounding holos you brought back of the world and its inhabitants, the official assessments of the crew that picked you up. They all seemed to agree that you were doing an exemplary job of observation there on that odd world. Making the best of a situation you . must have found extremely distasteful, shall we say. I also reviewed the biographical data we have on you. Service, compassion, learning—a long and distinguished career marked by honesty and sacrifice. Too much of both for your own good, perhaps. And now you come to White Spire, fresh from judging those you felt you had no right to judge, and sit here before me with a slice of the Dark behind your eyes. Sessept, if you wish to let the record stand as it is, I'll have a sip of avavith with you and let you go home. It's been a while since you've touched the Garden, and there's always peace to be found there."

  "Not for me." He looked up at the small figure with an

  expression of calm resignation. "Not until I've given you my story, and perhaps not after that." He studied the featureless surface of the desk. "It's hard to know what to say or how to begin, now that I've finally come. I wish the Hut were here to help me."

  "Hm? Have you developed some sort of attachment for these machine brains, then? If so, you share that predilection with very few of our homefolk."

  "The Hut was my friend," he said simply.

  "Ah well," she said, reading the deep pain in his eyes. "You'll have to tell me about that, as well."

  She found a low white chair near the desk, settled on its arm like a bird.

  "I would like to hear the tale of what happened, now, Jon Emerson Tate, from your own lips." And then, in the language of their homeworld, she added an ancient plea for sharing: "May I hear it from your heart?"

  She could not remain perched in one spot for long, but paced and turned about the room while he spoke, coming to light on the chair now and then, just long enough to ask him to clarify or to repeat something, then wandering off again, her lips pressed together, her eyes always on his face. At the end of the tale, when he broke a promise to himself and began to weep, she turned her face away and contemplated the Great World through her window until he had regained his composure. Then she studied his face openly for a long moment.

  "Did Raille and Choss go to Maribon?" she asked.

  He nodded. "There was an agent of the empaths—a bondsman they call them—waiting for us when the ship reached Sipril. They took Choss and the bain-sense with them. I wasn't told the details of their plan, I didn't want to know, but a Darkjumper was to be diverted briefly the next week on its way to Stone's Throw. They can edit a person's memory in some way, so the crew would never be aware of the detour. It seemed the only way to get them there, and there was some urgency. Chassman was certain that only his people could give Raille the help she needed to survive. But we don't know what's happened since. I've tried to contac
t Choss several times—"

  "But Maribon's Screen is down. I know. We sent a ship with a replacement, but they wouldn't receive it, and they've

  been completely incommunicado for a month now. Perhaps what you've told me explains why—there must be great turmoil there and they've gone into their chrysalids for a time until they can sort it out." She grimaced at the white ceiling, staring into memory. "Hard to accept their part in this, you know. I had an aunt that I knew when I was a girl—she captained one of the early missions to Maribon, the one that resulted in Moselle, as a matter of fact. Well, she killed herself when I was still a child, here on Commons. Perhaps you've heard the story. They said she went mad, but I've always felt it was because of them—"

  "Yes," Emrys said faintly. "I met your aunt once." He looked up with her to the emptiness above them. "If it helps anything—they've been lost for a long time, like children looking for a way to go, and the wrongs they've committed and the suffering they've caused have been always without malice or understanding. Perhaps that's changing now. Perhaps they're waking up...."

  "And what of the world Belthannis, Neighbor? What of the wrong done there?" She wheeled to face him, copper cheeks aflame. "What of the pattern that we've broken? What of the kin?"

  "We don't know," he said, and her face softened at the quiet anguish in his voice. "Cil said the world is very strong, and fiercely determined to preserve its balance, but whether we were stronger—" He lifted his shoulders.

  "Yes, well." The anger had gone out of her voice. "The interdict remains. There's nothing to be done now, for the world or the person you left behind there. We must pray he causes · no more damage, to the world or to himself, and that his own end is a peaceful one. But no one else shall go there for a great many years to come—I swear that."

  "I know," he said. "Thank you."

  "Now I have one more question for you, before I tell you what I've decided in this matter."