The Alchemists

by Geary Gravel

  She moved forward to the front of the desk, standing where the sourceless light was brightest, and looked at him squarely, hands on hips. "Why did you come to me with your story?"

  He was a long time answering, his brow furrowed as though he examined and reexamined his thoughts for any possible error before he would commit them to his voice.

  "I came to you for judgment," he said finally. 'To free myself from the tale by telling it. And for another reason. What I think—" He stopped with a frown of doubt, began again after a moment, "What I think, Panit Varshni, is that we were sent tiiere. Not by Maribon. Not by the Community." He was staring up at her face with an intensity that pleaded for belief. "What I think is that the world Belthannis was a message for us, and that we were sent there to receive that message."

  "A message from whom?" Her voice was very soft.

  He gestured to the window, and beyond it to the vast, deserted city ringed around with so much human longing and despair. "I began to be certain after I learned about the Darkjumpers, that there truly was a reason for all the suffering of recent years—or a cause, if not a reason. And that it seemed to have nothing to do with them. That part had always been so hard to reconcile, that they would leave us and then destroy us in their wake." He looked at her. "The Elyins," he breathed. "I know now why they had to leave."

  She said nothing, her face a mask.

  "I already knew the answer, that's what's strange. I knew the words before I went there. I think we all did. But now I feel them, now I know it for the truth. The answer was there on Belthannis, and the message was in what happened there, and how it came to pass.

  "We went to a world where there could be no men and we found men there. When we began to see that we were wrong— that we had found what we were looking for, rather than what was really there—it was already too late, we were already trying to change them. First, because we wanted to save them, thinking they could be harmed by the same things that harmed us; later, because we really believed that they could become like us, and because the lure of almost becomes too strong after a while." Strain broke his voice. "Do you see? Oh, I never understood before I walked Belthannis, I never imagined what it must have been like for them four centuries ago: to have been what they were and to have come upon us in the wilderness, so like mem and so very different—"

  Dark eyebrows arched in the round copper face. "And now you think you can understand them, do you?"

  "Only this small part of them, a tiny crack in the door." His face was withdrawn, yearning. "Just enough to be able to

  share their pain. For the one thing I understand about them is that they could be wrong. Perhaps their achievements will always be beyond our comprehension, but I think they knew that we could understand their failure, or hoped we could. And so they showed it to us."

  "But why?" she said. "For what purpose would they let us see their mistake?"

  "As an apology, perhaps. A plea for forgiveness. Or a simple request for understanding."

  Her chin stiffened. "What could make you think that they were ever, ever concerned about what we felt for them?"

  "Only the way that I feel myself. Oh, if I could have spoken to the kin—just once if I could have been able to communicate our reasons and our regrets..." He stared unseeing at her. "Because in the end, different or not, they loved us, Panit Varshni. What else could have made them leave?"

  "So your theory is based on imperfection." Her hands moved restlessly at her sides. "If they could err in their evaluation of us, why not imagine a whole spectrum of frailties and weaknesses. Love—" She shook her head. "Well, perhaps this is best." She walked to the curving window, stood gazing through the tinted membrane on the bright land below. "Perhaps it's best to have such a story to hurl them down with now, before the slow transformation into gods is complete."

  "There's no need to hurl them down," he said. "Only to accept them for what they always were. Not our gods. Not us. Don't think love is a weakness, but don't let it frighten you either. It's a part of understanding, and understanding is far more generous a gift than worship. It permits the recipient to be less than perfect. If I were a god, Panit Varshni, I would rather be understood, I think, than worshiped."

  "You will perhaps be neither when your tale is told, Jon

  Emerson. But we shall see___No, I'm not afraid of their love.

  You've shown me things that frighten me, but that's because you've been showing me myself. How much easier it's been to hate them than to struggle with understanding." She sighed. "But it's a lonely universe you present us, Neighbor. Never to find sameness, never to really touch—"

  "You don't need to be the same to touch." He crossed to stand by her side at the window. "You know, for all I've said there's still a thing I wonder and wonder about: Why bring it

  to us like this? Why teach a lesson to a handful of people? A handful, out of trillions..."

  She turned to look up at his face. "You can't see it, can you? The real reason you came here: not for judgment—which I'm no more qualified to give you than you were to give the kin, or the Others were to give us—but to tell your tale. That's what brought you here, the need to tell the story, to repeat the lesson. Am I right?"

  He nodded slowly. "You must be, for I'm not free of it yet. I think none of us ever will be."

  "No, for you bring us what we need: a tale, a new legend to preserve and to embellish as the years pass. Something all of us can share as we let the Others fade into myth. A human thing. A tale of human heroes and of the great deeds they did on a strange and beautiful world."

  "Heroes—" He snorted with a despairing shake of his head. "Is that what we were? Is that what we did there?"

  "Oh, let me tell you what you did, Neighbor." She took his arm and led him back to the chair and the desk. "Let me give you back the tale now. Listen."

  That night the spot of cool light near the tip of White Spire shone long past First Dawn and long past Day Rise, till finally it was swallowed up and lost amid the radiance of many suns.

  To Emrys, Sessept on University From Jefany Or

  Herring Gull Lane

  Cotawen Small

  Earth

  Written this twelfth day of November (GY 380)

  Dear Jon:

  I send this by the trusted hand of one Gillerie, an old friend with business on Lekkole, who has sworn he will contrive to deliver it to you no matter how long he must camp outside your dormcell while you prowl through the warrens of Low—

  level. You must come up for food, we reason, or at least for a glimpse of natural sunlight; and when you do, Gillerie will be waiting there to press these pages into your pallid hand.

  If the tone of the above seems overlight to you, understand that I am at ease only because of my great faith in you, Jon: faith enough to keep me certain that you would not allow your mind or body to come to harm while life still remained in them. For I know that you regard that life as a gift, not to be abused or discarded casually—as I also know that whatever has compelled you to shun human contact must have a firm rooting in both logic and necessity.

  I write to you now for several reasons. First and foremost, because scrawling these words is as close as I can come to speaking with you until you will it otherwise. I miss us, Jon.

  Secondly, I write to ask your opinion of the attached manuscript, my first draft of a book to be called The Lonely Man. It is a rough telling as yet, but one which has reached the stage where other eyes than mine must see it. You once asked me to see clearly for you. I return the request.

  You will find some portions of the tale have been left unfinished. I await their outcome.

  I also write to tell you that I have fulfilled my promise and contacted Weldon. Last week I spoke with the family. They cannot understand all of what has happened, only the tragedy of it as yet; but they seem strong, loving people and they will wait for her return.

  I recall often what you told us that day of your experience in White Spire. She spoke the truth to you. N
one of us have been released from our task yet. The voices which Marysu began to hear in the stillness of the forests and the meadows still seek to speak through us. Each day I sit here in the sunroom of our cottage, phrasing and rephrasing my own recounting of the tale, while Cil wanders along the shore below, whispering to the journal on her wrist and struggling to shape forgotten · notes and remembered feelings into the meticulous monograph of the Pattern of the Autumnworld which she feels must be produced. I keep in sporadic communication with Marysu and Jack. She continues to refine and perfect the Worldspeech, and now Jack has begun to learn it, though he already reflects its words and movements in bronze, in glass, in sculptured air. Somewhere on his way to the Maren, I know that March is

  and perhaps even Choss is working again, under whatever circumstances he now finds himself, on the completion of his History.

  And Raille herself—what tale will she unfold when they have brought her back to us from her dreams at last?

  But there was one more purpose to this letter, Jon.

  Perhaps you remember the small, pretty flowers that Raille found bordering the Hut one evening. She studied them for a while, fascinated, as they had sprung up literally overnight. Since our arrival on Earth, Cil has been going through the botanical journal Raille had stored in the Library of the Hut. The other day she came upon the following entry, made near the end of our final month on Belthannis:

  [ have decided to call them brey d'enelba, for in Weldonese that means compensatory flowers. It is a rather awkward name, but one that I think suits them. My tests revealed that the row of brey not only absorbed precisely the same amount of moisture from the ground as would have been consumed by the silver grass were our domicile not sitting here, but also processed and converted equivalent amounts of nutrient and mineral matter. It's almost as if the Hut weren't here.

  Jon, Cil's further computations confirm what Raille had believed: that these intriguing plants were produced specifically for the purpose of replacing the function of that small area of viable meadowland covered and destroyed by the Hut. The world would not allow even that undistinguished plot of ground to be prevented from fulfilling its role in the great pattern. Consider the implications of this, Jon. If Belthannis could react with this much dispatch and creative determination to the loss of a single patch of silver grass, mightn't we be justified in anticipating another sort of "compensatory flower?" Cil and I find ourselves able to draw some comfort from this speculation, Jon, and perhaps you will come to share it.

  When I first tried to contact you through the Screen, your colleagues informed me that you had banished yourself to the Limited Access sections of the Well, there to engage in research in connection with a "confidential project of great importance." The second time I called they looked a little less sure of themselves, and one of them showed me a copy

  of the peculiar little note they had found pinned to your door, perhaps believing it to be a sign of rapidly advancing senility in their esteemed associate. Having grown up at the edge of a great ocean, I understand what "Gone Fishing" means, and I wish you luck with your days spent searching through the well.

  I will close now and keep you from your work no longer. I know that you will communicate to me in your own time. Cil joins me in wishing you health and peace. We both look forward to the day when you appear on our doorstep, filled with news and prepared for a lengthy stay.

  The thin, golden gel slid down his throat like honey scooped from the surface of a star, like a sweet fire burning him. He had almost forgotten the feeling of molten vastness sweeping through his veins, the flaming wings beating toward his heart—

  Someone was watching him. Choss stoppered the bottle and placed it in the cupboard above the broad stone writing shelf, first sliding the neat stacks of recording chips to one side to make room for it. He turned to the open doorway.

  "Yes?"

  A young novice watched him from great dark eyes carefully devoid of curiosity. "It continues to disturb you that we have no inner doors." The words were like the face: smooth-polished, no edges.

  He shrugged. "I've told you that it's not our way to leave everything open. Not my way, at least. I suppose I'll get used to it in time."

  "I have brought you a measure of cloth. It can be hung in - the doorway." A long bolt of faded green rustled into view.

  "Thank you. Thank you very much. Why do you give me this?"

  "It is a bondsman's color. Next week I become an anchorite and take up the gray. I will not keep it anymore. It was from the village.".

  "Thank you, then."

  He turned to get out his writing materials, but the other lingered in the doorway. He looked back over his shoulder. "Was there something more?"

  Dark eyes sought the open cupboard behind his head. "You drank the liquid. It prolongs corporeal life."

  "Ember, we call it. Yes." He nodded. "If we have chosen to take it, it must be at certain intervals. It was time for me. Almost past time."

  "You consumed but half."

  "It was sufficient. I'm saving the rest." He was silent for a few moments. "It has certain healing properties, as well. If she should need it, if she wants it—it's here."

  The novice considered this. "An adept told me yesterday that she will reach consciousness soon. Perhaps tomorrow."

  Skin prickled along Choss' arms while a spot of cool fire unconnected with the Ember grew in his stomach. "It's taken a long time."

  "They are bringing her—up to the surface, one could say, but the words are not precise. They go very slowly, not to damage her. They are quite thorough: nothing is lost. They study her. She is a new kind of person to them and, like you, she brings new things to Maribon."

  "I don't understand what they expect to find."

  "Words are not sufficient." The voice was almost wistful. "If you were a novice of my reach there would be .understanding."

  Choss shook his head, smiling faintly. "I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. I'd no more change places with you than you would with me."

  "Yet there is much change in this place now," the novice murmured, as if deep in thought. The pale face lifted toward the narrow window slit. "Mizar-the-sun approaches the zenith. I shall go now and sit with the adepts in the outer wellcourt for an hour."

  The cloaked figure retreated through the doorway, then paused. "You wish to say something before I depart."

  Choss stood silent, fingers playing with the inkjar set into the far corner of the stone shelf. "Would you come for me?" he asked abruptly. "When they decide to wake her. I would like to be there."

  The dark eyes measured him, unreadable. "I will come."

  "What did you mean before? When you said that she had brought new things to Maribon, like me. What new thing could I have brought you?"

  But the novice only watched him silently for a moment longer and then was gone.

  CODA: BELTHANNIS

  Where does a year end?

  In the mind, in an instant, in the flicker of a jeweled eyelash. Perhaps it ended on Belthannis, at sunrise.

  He moved slowly down the slope, the wind in his hair. At one point he turned his head in a half-circle, staring for a long time at the tall black trees, the garden of pastel stones at the bottom of the river, the long blades of gleaming grass. He continued down the hill.

  Slowly he sank to his knees by the edge of the river. A face came up to meet him from the depths, dark and windburned, with long ragged black hair. He watched the reflection for a long time, and once it was as if he were not only looking into the water, but peering out from it as well.

  Clouds moved eastward and hid the sun. His reflection faded into ripples. A small blue insect lit on his naked shoulder for a moment, chimed twice, and lifted into the wind again.

  He extended a hand toward the water, paused, and held it motionless, suspended above the swift current. He glanced at the sky and the clouds drifted farther east, revealing the small white sun.

  He touched the surface of the water with his
palm, gently. Then his mind opened and the world flowed in.

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