Mercy, Chapter 7: Original Work
Sep. 23rd, 2011 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiChapters 1-6 on AO3
Chapter 7
Our Journey, Day 9, Continued
In the evening's cool, I hugged the fire, the beach rocks hard beneath me.
"It's a dangerous tech that makes you see dreams you can't snap out of," said Nyra as she stirred the pot. The smell of her stew almost dispelled our troubles. She was the hand of reality reaching into our dreams.
She and Lastri'nom maybe.
"Yes, it is," I said to her, then went on in Vunizh, "But was it caused by our tech? Tanez do you think you saw into Jana itself or...?"
"Or had a psychotic break?" He smiled.
The joke did not amuse Lastri'nom.
"It could well be Jana," said Glin. "The fact that we're being slammed doesn't mean our jae bands are inactive. We could be receiving input from Jana."
"Without consciously directing our minds toward Jana?" Anger colored Lastri'nom's voice. "That would be without precedent": would be frightening, he meant.
"It's not. You know it's not," said Tanez. "My father has spontaneously felt the presence of Jana almost since you First Walkers began."
"Your father has a unique connection to Jana. Everyone knows that."
"Still," said Glin, "one case doesn't equal unprecedented. Slamming's been rare too till now."
"Chi'anové?" I asked.
"It could be," he said sleepily. If anything, the idea of being connected to Jana comforted him.
Glin picked up a piece of sandstone and starting filing her nails. The sound of the tide rolled in to us like a giant's sleeping breath. The beach, blanketed in placid gray, was nothing now except itself. It carried no flavor of dreams.
My head felt wonderfully clear--that is, normally clear, which was wonderful. "And if you're right," I said to Glin, "I felt the effect through you because I'm a strong telepath. Sy'gad Lastri'nom, did you feel it?"
He rubbed his eyes, still unused to the slow sweep of the Nyrírlan day. "Indirectly--like you, I think. I could sense the feelings of others; that's all."
"So if it didn't come from Jana, what's your explanation?" said Glin, eyes on her nails.
"I think--" His mind flashed nervously to Tanez. "--there are a number of other explanations." Across from him, Tanez chuckled. "But it is also true that I have never been--how do you say it in Vunizh?" He asked me in Ash'torian, and I offered a translation. "I've never been susceptible to Jana constructs, so it's possible I just didn't sense it."
"Time to stop babbling," said Nyra, "and eat." Her linguistic exclusion was nothing personal, but it compounded a deep old hurt for her. For a gregarious nature, being ostracized as a Northerner meant living robbed of what she needed most. I resolved to give her more Vunizh phrases. After all, she too was part of us.
***
Our Journey, Day 10
The next morning, two men came in a fishing boat. We could hear them talking just beyond the breakers, but neither our party nor theirs made a move to acknowledge the other. "Good manners," Nyra called it with contempt. The abnormality of this social vacuum was so apparent that it shamed me to consider how routinely I practiced such avoidance.
When the fishers had gone, Nyra went out briefly on the rocks to replenish our seaweed, after which, we lumbered back up the cliff-side. On steepest part of the slope, a rotten tree limb broke off in Glin's hand, and she slipped. I panicked as she slid toward me, but she skidded to a halt before we collided.
"Never trust a dead tree," said Nyra.
"But you now just put your hand to one," said Glin in her broken Keshnul.
Nyra glanced at the branch she was grasping, cracked and desiccated. "This? Well, it's plain that it's stable."
Glin laughed, and Tanez eyed her strangely, unsure what had just happened. Deep in thought, he'd emerged into some conversation about trees, which he'd taken to be metaphorical. Never trust a dead tree unless it's stable. What did that have to do with Jana, he wondered.
As for me, I was falling in love with my senses and turned my back on Pig Bones Cove with reluctance. It was a good place, as some quiet recesses are, where the air and space are right. I've met such places by back walls and at the side doors of transport stations. But this beach brought not just peace but seeing; I don't mean Tanez's dream-inflected visions but the simple, concrete seeing of the world as it is, the substantial erasure of self in the face of the hard, atomic universe that precedes us and follows after.
The sea always to our right, we slid through high grass with a windy rattle. Beneath high trees, a salt wind scratched us. Sometimes the thin trail slid up sharply or down, and we had to watch our footing. By midday my legs and my shoulder both ached.
Chi'anové peered at me as I gingerly unslung my pack. "You should watch it, 'Eblia. It'll get worse if you're not careful."
"I am watching it. I think the straps have slipped a little; I'll ask Nyra."
***
That evening, as I was writing my daily notes, Lastri'nom sat beside me. When I looked up, he said, "Ad Chi'anové calls you by your given name."
"Yes. We slipped into it. He's tried calling me by my family name, but it won't stick."
"May I ask the provenance of your name?"
There were several shades of intent behind this question: curiosity, attraction, strategy too. He'd pleased me before by asking about my clan name. He wanted to see if he could please me again, and yet--I think--his interest was genuine too, which did please me.
"My parents were archaeologists," I said. "They spent some time on the Kiri worlds, hence the '-a' ending. My father was a Leddie, and so they gave me a Vunizh name, from 'ebbal.' So my name, in essence, is 'seer' with a Keshnul ending."
"Indeed, you see many things."
I saw that this was his way of telling me he knew I was an HT. I pretended not to notice.
"May I call you by your given name?" he asked, "since we're not formally working together?"
By this last observation, he meant to establish the possibility of sleeping with me. In that regard, he would be disappointed, but I was willing to allow him my name. "You may."
"And please call me 'Ghanior."
I pictured myself addressing one of the principal leaders of the Naha'jûn by his given name. "I'll try," I said wryly.
***
The Naha'jûn is with us here, that subliminal telepathic continuity that unites the people of Ash'tor. I did not feel it with only Chi'anové, but apparently three is a critical mass. With Lastri'nom, Chi'anové, and me, its soundless hum resumes, and we are Ash'tor, powerful and clear sighted.
***
Our Journey, Day 11
In the morning, the trail brought us out of the woods, back along the cliffs above the zones of gray that demarcated waves, wet sand, and dry beach far below. I should be grateful that our progress was arduous: it locked my mind on my steps and stifled my fear of falling. For hours, we picked our way along the eroded rock Nyra fancifully referred to as a "path." ("It's been rained away a bit since my time"; she shrugged.)
I was just ahead of Lastri'nom when I felt-heard him stumble: a scrape of pebbles, a jolt of fear. I shot a hand out to steady him, but Chi'anové, behind him, already held a firm hand to his shoulder.
"Thanks, Ad Chi'anové." He was stable now but balking at the gap of a meter or so between him and me, concerned it would defeat his faulty balance.
I stood in a wide spot on the far side. "I wonder if you'll take my hand?"
He nodded and, gripping my arm, leaned on it hard as he stepped across. He wobbled a moment on the loose gravel and then, when he found his footing, kissed me lightly and moved on ahead. Chi'anové threw me a glance as he, too, walked past.
I am platinum; men don't take liberties with me, yet Lastri'nom did it almost without thinking--a Perditan thing maybe. Among Ash'torians, work is work, and this march was clearly work, official or not. His action struck me as too familiar from a sy'gad--a high-ranking officer--in uniform.
But perhaps, it spoke of his simplicity. For someone often forced into the role of politician, he seemed a man of little pretense. He traversed life's surface in the light, and if that meant he had difficulty perceiving Jana's shadows, it also meant they couldn't claim him. They couldn't claim me either, outside Jana as I was. And Chi'anové knew no fear of them, for Jana was his home. And so our Naha'jûn remained inviolate.
***
Now, Tanez picked his way directly behind me. I felt his eyes lasering past me to lock on Lastri'nom.
When we paused to rest, I said to Lastri'nom softly, "He sees the hand of Jana in your stumble."
Lastri'nom smiled tightly. "Well, he's right. In my youth, I Walked under a miscalibrated jae field. If I hadn't, my cerebellum wouldn't be impaired today."
"That's not what I meant."
"You meant he thinks I was distracted because saw a vision, as he did, and don't want to admit it. And I wonder what you think, 'Eblia?"
"I think your balance is impaired."
"Thank you." He took a long drink, and we watched Glin and Tanez watch us.
***
Our Journey, Day 12
The trail broadened onto a wide headlands, pine-speckled in the distance. The haze eased, and the sun to beat down hard enough for Nyra and Glin to wear hats (Glin, having pale skin, had borrowed Nyra's spare when we left Southfield-city.) I embraced the baking of my skin with nostalgia; it had been less than a month since I'd strolled in the sun on A'dib but it seemed as far as childhood.
On the open trail, our party spread out since we were in easy sight of each other. With some anxiety I noted Glin sticking close to me.
"How's Tanez?" I asked.
"He hears a ringing. But not like a ringing in his ears or like the actual ringing of a bell, I think: more a sense of something in the air." Below us, the sea rasped like a cat's tongue. "Have you ever been on Lleróney?"
"I haven't. I'm told it's quite an unusual planet."
"I've never been there either. Tanez has." Unsurprising, as it's in the same system as his homeworld. "I'm not sure it was good for him. It's got, you know, a fantastic array of bioengineered humanoids, some really small. They do things like ring little bells all around. I think that's like what he's hearing."
"From Jana."
She hesitated. "Maybe."
"Sy'gad Lastri'nom didn't see anything from Jana."
"I know." We fell into silence. "I was born male, you know." The last bit was a question.
"I got that feeling, though not at first. The transformation is quite seamless."
She grinned at me with her bone-white teeth; it troubled me--annoyed me--to be the recipient of her smile. "Thank you. Does it make you uncomfortable?"
"It's unusual in Ash'tor. I'm not used to it; that's all." Our religion taught that the body was the book of the soul. To erase its history was for us akin to fleeing, and to flee was a rejection of God's will. I knew this belief to be an accretion of cultural history, yet I saw the value in it. I was Ash'torian after all, most connections to my Leddie family severed by the war in my childhood.
I said none of this to Glin, but she nodded in understanding--or thought she understood. I was content to let her think my discomfort came entirely from her change of gender. "It never fit me, being a boy. When I was a child, I used to love the stories of the gods changing sex, especially Usuzh, who could baffle people so freely with her--or his--various forms."
I tried to imagine Glin a little boy in love with the Trickster of the Leddie mythology. The incongruity amused me.
"I always thought of my body as a suit of clothes; it seemed unconnected to my essence. As I grew up, I was mainly attracted to men, but I was uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with a man as a man. It seemed a poor fit, like my body. When I was first training as a Walker--I was one of the first Walkers trained in Leddra--I met another trainee, a woman, who wanted to pair up with me. At the time I felt more comfortable with women, though less attracted--" I smiled tightly, hearing an echo of my own life. "--so I moved in with her. We had a baby quite young, and by the time our daughter was two, we'd split up."
The admission pained her; I wasn't sure what to say. Ahead of us at some distance, Lastri'nom and Tanez strode side by side, talking, Lastri'nom taller and statelier in his sy'gad's blue and black. Tanez--Glin too--looked gray-skinned and naked in their Leddie jumpsuits.
"I went through a bad time," said Glin. "My daughter went to live with her mother, and though I saw a lot of her, I felt like I'd failed her. I felt like I'd torqued every choice in my life. But I had a friend, one of my former instructors, Miaro, who poured a lot of time into pulling me together. After a while, it became obvious he was in love with me. I can't say I was in love with him, but he made me feel comfortable, so I moved in with him. It was the best choice of my life. We're still married twenty-five years later. He's mostly attracted to men, but when I told him I wanted to become a woman, he agreed with my decision. He'd known me long enough to know what it meant to me. After that, he wanted me less; I wanted him more. We made it work, the way you do when it's worth working for."
Her story hurt me, as people's lives always do on some level. It showed me my own failings and hers and the maze of life. I saw Glin, for a moment, in four dimensions, a self-regulating entity of time and space. I saw her apart from myself, myself effaced as I had been at Pig Bones Cove. I saw, with the clarity of setting self aside, her good and bad and the canvas she's painted with them.
It came to me I was detaching from her, casting off the desire to open the weave of her life and thread myself in. I wish I could say I'd arrived on this plane through the force of some revelation, but in fact, I'd merely switched my focus as in so many times past. My eyes now bent to Lastri'nom, which really was no better.
"And Tanez?" I asked because she'd paused to let me.
"He's our junior husband. He's been with us five years, and I think he'll stay. He fits us."
Lastri'nom's words about Tanez's mother came back to me. "He was close to his mother?"
"He was. Close to both his parents. Ghanior told you she was a dew addict?"
I nodded.
"It's not as bad as it sounds. She worked hard to be stable for her children. As far as I understand, she kept her lapses moderate--if that's not a contradiction--throughout most of their childhood. And Shes: while the kids were growing up, he almost stopped Walking to watch them, since Shalta did lapse sometimes. He says it wasn't so bad." She fell to musing.
I put my left arm behind me and pushed up on my pack. It took a little pressure off the right shoulder. We went a little way each lost in thought.
"May I ask," I said at length, "did you change your name when you changed your sex?"
"A little. I was born 'Glia,' but the usual feminine form would be 'Glyn.'" I could hear the longer vowel. "I wanted a form in the middle." She flashed another smile. "Like Usuzh. And I changed 'ik-Soval' to 'del-Soval,' of course."
I had always considered the Leddies to have a fluid sense of gender, as their gods did, yet they marked their names as persistently by gender as we Ash'torians. Perhaps their fluidity was not based on middle ground so much as on ease of switching: female Usuzh and male Usuzh but not both or neither at once, thus, "the son of Soval" and "the daughter of Soval" but not "the child of Soval," language inscribing culture.
I thought of Lastri'nom asking about my name. The power of names lived in all three of us, and that simple commonality brought comfort.
***
By afternoon, the sun beat down and the trail grew wide enough for three to walk abreast. We should have anticipated meeting others on that flat, well-trodden lane, yet we'd grown so used to this Nyrírlan hiding that the figures walking toward us surprised us all, yes, even Nyra. Two women and a man: they didn't flee. They even greeted us with a nod and a "good afternoon." If we made any allowance for the plague, it was to pass each other single file on opposite sides of trail.
"We're getting north." Nyra held her head a higher. "We bore the brunt of the plague, but it never cracked our heads up." Nyra had told us that the Northerners' comparative unconcern with strangers is an effect of the plague having run its course. In the South, isolation rather than immunity still protected many villages. Still, the reasons hardly matter. Even I, who was often more at ease far from other minds, appreciated our first taste of sociability since Nyra's family.
On that broad road, Tanez fell into step beside me. "It wasn't the little-silléra," he said, baffling me utterly. "Silléra" was the Keshnul word for bioengineered humanoids but-- "The ringing Glin told you about--what I heard on Lléroney--it wasn't the little ones; it was a village of Pey who had trained as musicians."
Genetically, Pey were very close to human: longer-lived, more sensitive to environmental toxins, more strongly telepathic than most humans. That was about all I knew.
"I've associated that sound with the Pey ever since." He surveyd the grass around us as if expecting some creature to fly up. "There are Pey on Nyrírla. I remember learning that in school, and Nyra confirmed it."
"And you think they're involved?"
He shook his head. "'Eblia, I have no idea. I'm just sharing my impressions."
***
Our Journey, Day 13
We passed several more people and saw a "large city" in the distance to our left: long, low wooden buildings, suggesting commune living: "Duskwindspeak-city," Nyra called it and took us there to trade sea scavenging for dried fruit. This far north, people dared to trade with strangers for food. We made for the city circle, a meadow surrounded by the buildings. As soon as the villagers spotted us, they gathered around, crowding out coherent thought:
Strangers, Southerners, hair like grass--him and her, and those two (awful) wearing seal skins--wonder what the cost would be--
"Good afternoon, travelers."
"Good afternoon, settlers. Any trade in berries for the northbound?" Thank our luck! thought Nyra. Decent northerly folk at last.
Minds circled me. If the brightberries weren't late this year--Sama-like, and how did he get that color dye--for trade, I wonder? Esha, stay back, not too close--heading North, she says--offworlders!?--why go into that howling land?
By the Five Faces, how I've missed seeing smiles. (Glin)
By the time we reached the circle, Nyra had already found several barterers. She was haggling over brightberries when an older man called her by name.
"Jolántalar!" She arrested an urge to rush into his arms. "What brings you to these parts?"
"I might ask the same of you, my girl." And so on.
An old neighbor from Nyra's hometown, Jolántalar invited us to his house for lunch. It was the first time since Southfield-city that we'd been inside a building: a small, dark-paneled room, eight people (Jolántalar's son joined us) around a cramped table. I missed the open sky at once, but the food compensated: eggs and onions and some sort of roasted bird. While Nyra and her friends chatted, I played the uncomprehending foreigner and let my thoughts flow free.
A start from Tanez seized my attention. "What sort of stranger?" he was asking.
Jolántalar shrugged. "The head-broke sort that's stayed in the North hills all these years, hiding from the plague--or the sort that's no more than a shadow and a tale. It has the feel of a tale." Again, he addressed Nyra. "Folk feel someone watching, hear voices in the wind, all the muddle the Jetháti teach is all in our heads, and I believe it is."
"You believe it all a tale, yet ye moved away down here," said Nyra.
"Not to flee the stranger," said Jolántalar's son. "The fishing's what drew us mainly."
"Does no hurt to be away from those tales though," the father added.
Tales of a stranger in the North, not far from the tech center that was our destination. Not far from Nyra's hometown. Jolántalar was right, of course. On this fearful planet, a mind sick wanderer could easily sprout rumors of some presence stalking travelers. Tanez, however, read it as a piece of his own vision.
***
That evening, Nyra went out on the town, and Chi'anové, wisely, took his blanket behind the house and fell asleep in the grass. The rest of us, on cushions in Jolántalar's son's room, conferred (that is, fought) about the wanderer.
"Could it be another slammed Walker?" asked Glin.
Lastri'nom shook his head. "The rumors are older than the Event."
"I suspect it's unconnected," I agreed. "Maybe a plague survivor--or just fears born out of the horror of the plague."
"But the stories are newer than the plague," said Glin.
Finally, Tanez said what we'd all been waiting for: "It could be a visitation from Jana."
Lastri'nom flared. "Leaving aside the fact that you have no evidence--"
"I do have evidence: the feelings in his mind--Jolántalar--they have the same quality as on the beach--"
Lastri'nom muttered something in Perditan that, I think, translated, "You moon-eye." (The phrase incensed Tanez.) In Vunizh, he said, "The quality, Tanez, is fear. Of course, it feels the same--"
"It's not just fear."
"Tanez, to project an image from Jana that people with no connection to Jana could see would take incredible force."
Glin, who'd buried her head on her knees, looked up. "And what, if not an incredible force, has slammed all of us expert Walkers?"
In those words, Lastri'nom's common sense and Tanez's intuition crossed, and anything seemed possible.
Chapter 7
Our Journey, Day 9, Continued
In the evening's cool, I hugged the fire, the beach rocks hard beneath me.
"It's a dangerous tech that makes you see dreams you can't snap out of," said Nyra as she stirred the pot. The smell of her stew almost dispelled our troubles. She was the hand of reality reaching into our dreams.
She and Lastri'nom maybe.
"Yes, it is," I said to her, then went on in Vunizh, "But was it caused by our tech? Tanez do you think you saw into Jana itself or...?"
"Or had a psychotic break?" He smiled.
The joke did not amuse Lastri'nom.
"It could well be Jana," said Glin. "The fact that we're being slammed doesn't mean our jae bands are inactive. We could be receiving input from Jana."
"Without consciously directing our minds toward Jana?" Anger colored Lastri'nom's voice. "That would be without precedent": would be frightening, he meant.
"It's not. You know it's not," said Tanez. "My father has spontaneously felt the presence of Jana almost since you First Walkers began."
"Your father has a unique connection to Jana. Everyone knows that."
"Still," said Glin, "one case doesn't equal unprecedented. Slamming's been rare too till now."
"Chi'anové?" I asked.
"It could be," he said sleepily. If anything, the idea of being connected to Jana comforted him.
Glin picked up a piece of sandstone and starting filing her nails. The sound of the tide rolled in to us like a giant's sleeping breath. The beach, blanketed in placid gray, was nothing now except itself. It carried no flavor of dreams.
My head felt wonderfully clear--that is, normally clear, which was wonderful. "And if you're right," I said to Glin, "I felt the effect through you because I'm a strong telepath. Sy'gad Lastri'nom, did you feel it?"
He rubbed his eyes, still unused to the slow sweep of the Nyrírlan day. "Indirectly--like you, I think. I could sense the feelings of others; that's all."
"So if it didn't come from Jana, what's your explanation?" said Glin, eyes on her nails.
"I think--" His mind flashed nervously to Tanez. "--there are a number of other explanations." Across from him, Tanez chuckled. "But it is also true that I have never been--how do you say it in Vunizh?" He asked me in Ash'torian, and I offered a translation. "I've never been susceptible to Jana constructs, so it's possible I just didn't sense it."
"Time to stop babbling," said Nyra, "and eat." Her linguistic exclusion was nothing personal, but it compounded a deep old hurt for her. For a gregarious nature, being ostracized as a Northerner meant living robbed of what she needed most. I resolved to give her more Vunizh phrases. After all, she too was part of us.
***
Our Journey, Day 10
The next morning, two men came in a fishing boat. We could hear them talking just beyond the breakers, but neither our party nor theirs made a move to acknowledge the other. "Good manners," Nyra called it with contempt. The abnormality of this social vacuum was so apparent that it shamed me to consider how routinely I practiced such avoidance.
When the fishers had gone, Nyra went out briefly on the rocks to replenish our seaweed, after which, we lumbered back up the cliff-side. On steepest part of the slope, a rotten tree limb broke off in Glin's hand, and she slipped. I panicked as she slid toward me, but she skidded to a halt before we collided.
"Never trust a dead tree," said Nyra.
"But you now just put your hand to one," said Glin in her broken Keshnul.
Nyra glanced at the branch she was grasping, cracked and desiccated. "This? Well, it's plain that it's stable."
Glin laughed, and Tanez eyed her strangely, unsure what had just happened. Deep in thought, he'd emerged into some conversation about trees, which he'd taken to be metaphorical. Never trust a dead tree unless it's stable. What did that have to do with Jana, he wondered.
As for me, I was falling in love with my senses and turned my back on Pig Bones Cove with reluctance. It was a good place, as some quiet recesses are, where the air and space are right. I've met such places by back walls and at the side doors of transport stations. But this beach brought not just peace but seeing; I don't mean Tanez's dream-inflected visions but the simple, concrete seeing of the world as it is, the substantial erasure of self in the face of the hard, atomic universe that precedes us and follows after.
The sea always to our right, we slid through high grass with a windy rattle. Beneath high trees, a salt wind scratched us. Sometimes the thin trail slid up sharply or down, and we had to watch our footing. By midday my legs and my shoulder both ached.
Chi'anové peered at me as I gingerly unslung my pack. "You should watch it, 'Eblia. It'll get worse if you're not careful."
"I am watching it. I think the straps have slipped a little; I'll ask Nyra."
***
That evening, as I was writing my daily notes, Lastri'nom sat beside me. When I looked up, he said, "Ad Chi'anové calls you by your given name."
"Yes. We slipped into it. He's tried calling me by my family name, but it won't stick."
"May I ask the provenance of your name?"
There were several shades of intent behind this question: curiosity, attraction, strategy too. He'd pleased me before by asking about my clan name. He wanted to see if he could please me again, and yet--I think--his interest was genuine too, which did please me.
"My parents were archaeologists," I said. "They spent some time on the Kiri worlds, hence the '-a' ending. My father was a Leddie, and so they gave me a Vunizh name, from 'ebbal.' So my name, in essence, is 'seer' with a Keshnul ending."
"Indeed, you see many things."
I saw that this was his way of telling me he knew I was an HT. I pretended not to notice.
"May I call you by your given name?" he asked, "since we're not formally working together?"
By this last observation, he meant to establish the possibility of sleeping with me. In that regard, he would be disappointed, but I was willing to allow him my name. "You may."
"And please call me 'Ghanior."
I pictured myself addressing one of the principal leaders of the Naha'jûn by his given name. "I'll try," I said wryly.
***
The Naha'jûn is with us here, that subliminal telepathic continuity that unites the people of Ash'tor. I did not feel it with only Chi'anové, but apparently three is a critical mass. With Lastri'nom, Chi'anové, and me, its soundless hum resumes, and we are Ash'tor, powerful and clear sighted.
***
Our Journey, Day 11
In the morning, the trail brought us out of the woods, back along the cliffs above the zones of gray that demarcated waves, wet sand, and dry beach far below. I should be grateful that our progress was arduous: it locked my mind on my steps and stifled my fear of falling. For hours, we picked our way along the eroded rock Nyra fancifully referred to as a "path." ("It's been rained away a bit since my time"; she shrugged.)
I was just ahead of Lastri'nom when I felt-heard him stumble: a scrape of pebbles, a jolt of fear. I shot a hand out to steady him, but Chi'anové, behind him, already held a firm hand to his shoulder.
"Thanks, Ad Chi'anové." He was stable now but balking at the gap of a meter or so between him and me, concerned it would defeat his faulty balance.
I stood in a wide spot on the far side. "I wonder if you'll take my hand?"
He nodded and, gripping my arm, leaned on it hard as he stepped across. He wobbled a moment on the loose gravel and then, when he found his footing, kissed me lightly and moved on ahead. Chi'anové threw me a glance as he, too, walked past.
I am platinum; men don't take liberties with me, yet Lastri'nom did it almost without thinking--a Perditan thing maybe. Among Ash'torians, work is work, and this march was clearly work, official or not. His action struck me as too familiar from a sy'gad--a high-ranking officer--in uniform.
But perhaps, it spoke of his simplicity. For someone often forced into the role of politician, he seemed a man of little pretense. He traversed life's surface in the light, and if that meant he had difficulty perceiving Jana's shadows, it also meant they couldn't claim him. They couldn't claim me either, outside Jana as I was. And Chi'anové knew no fear of them, for Jana was his home. And so our Naha'jûn remained inviolate.
***
Now, Tanez picked his way directly behind me. I felt his eyes lasering past me to lock on Lastri'nom.
When we paused to rest, I said to Lastri'nom softly, "He sees the hand of Jana in your stumble."
Lastri'nom smiled tightly. "Well, he's right. In my youth, I Walked under a miscalibrated jae field. If I hadn't, my cerebellum wouldn't be impaired today."
"That's not what I meant."
"You meant he thinks I was distracted because saw a vision, as he did, and don't want to admit it. And I wonder what you think, 'Eblia?"
"I think your balance is impaired."
"Thank you." He took a long drink, and we watched Glin and Tanez watch us.
***
Our Journey, Day 12
The trail broadened onto a wide headlands, pine-speckled in the distance. The haze eased, and the sun to beat down hard enough for Nyra and Glin to wear hats (Glin, having pale skin, had borrowed Nyra's spare when we left Southfield-city.) I embraced the baking of my skin with nostalgia; it had been less than a month since I'd strolled in the sun on A'dib but it seemed as far as childhood.
On the open trail, our party spread out since we were in easy sight of each other. With some anxiety I noted Glin sticking close to me.
"How's Tanez?" I asked.
"He hears a ringing. But not like a ringing in his ears or like the actual ringing of a bell, I think: more a sense of something in the air." Below us, the sea rasped like a cat's tongue. "Have you ever been on Lleróney?"
"I haven't. I'm told it's quite an unusual planet."
"I've never been there either. Tanez has." Unsurprising, as it's in the same system as his homeworld. "I'm not sure it was good for him. It's got, you know, a fantastic array of bioengineered humanoids, some really small. They do things like ring little bells all around. I think that's like what he's hearing."
"From Jana."
She hesitated. "Maybe."
"Sy'gad Lastri'nom didn't see anything from Jana."
"I know." We fell into silence. "I was born male, you know." The last bit was a question.
"I got that feeling, though not at first. The transformation is quite seamless."
She grinned at me with her bone-white teeth; it troubled me--annoyed me--to be the recipient of her smile. "Thank you. Does it make you uncomfortable?"
"It's unusual in Ash'tor. I'm not used to it; that's all." Our religion taught that the body was the book of the soul. To erase its history was for us akin to fleeing, and to flee was a rejection of God's will. I knew this belief to be an accretion of cultural history, yet I saw the value in it. I was Ash'torian after all, most connections to my Leddie family severed by the war in my childhood.
I said none of this to Glin, but she nodded in understanding--or thought she understood. I was content to let her think my discomfort came entirely from her change of gender. "It never fit me, being a boy. When I was a child, I used to love the stories of the gods changing sex, especially Usuzh, who could baffle people so freely with her--or his--various forms."
I tried to imagine Glin a little boy in love with the Trickster of the Leddie mythology. The incongruity amused me.
"I always thought of my body as a suit of clothes; it seemed unconnected to my essence. As I grew up, I was mainly attracted to men, but I was uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with a man as a man. It seemed a poor fit, like my body. When I was first training as a Walker--I was one of the first Walkers trained in Leddra--I met another trainee, a woman, who wanted to pair up with me. At the time I felt more comfortable with women, though less attracted--" I smiled tightly, hearing an echo of my own life. "--so I moved in with her. We had a baby quite young, and by the time our daughter was two, we'd split up."
The admission pained her; I wasn't sure what to say. Ahead of us at some distance, Lastri'nom and Tanez strode side by side, talking, Lastri'nom taller and statelier in his sy'gad's blue and black. Tanez--Glin too--looked gray-skinned and naked in their Leddie jumpsuits.
"I went through a bad time," said Glin. "My daughter went to live with her mother, and though I saw a lot of her, I felt like I'd failed her. I felt like I'd torqued every choice in my life. But I had a friend, one of my former instructors, Miaro, who poured a lot of time into pulling me together. After a while, it became obvious he was in love with me. I can't say I was in love with him, but he made me feel comfortable, so I moved in with him. It was the best choice of my life. We're still married twenty-five years later. He's mostly attracted to men, but when I told him I wanted to become a woman, he agreed with my decision. He'd known me long enough to know what it meant to me. After that, he wanted me less; I wanted him more. We made it work, the way you do when it's worth working for."
Her story hurt me, as people's lives always do on some level. It showed me my own failings and hers and the maze of life. I saw Glin, for a moment, in four dimensions, a self-regulating entity of time and space. I saw her apart from myself, myself effaced as I had been at Pig Bones Cove. I saw, with the clarity of setting self aside, her good and bad and the canvas she's painted with them.
It came to me I was detaching from her, casting off the desire to open the weave of her life and thread myself in. I wish I could say I'd arrived on this plane through the force of some revelation, but in fact, I'd merely switched my focus as in so many times past. My eyes now bent to Lastri'nom, which really was no better.
"And Tanez?" I asked because she'd paused to let me.
"He's our junior husband. He's been with us five years, and I think he'll stay. He fits us."
Lastri'nom's words about Tanez's mother came back to me. "He was close to his mother?"
"He was. Close to both his parents. Ghanior told you she was a dew addict?"
I nodded.
"It's not as bad as it sounds. She worked hard to be stable for her children. As far as I understand, she kept her lapses moderate--if that's not a contradiction--throughout most of their childhood. And Shes: while the kids were growing up, he almost stopped Walking to watch them, since Shalta did lapse sometimes. He says it wasn't so bad." She fell to musing.
I put my left arm behind me and pushed up on my pack. It took a little pressure off the right shoulder. We went a little way each lost in thought.
"May I ask," I said at length, "did you change your name when you changed your sex?"
"A little. I was born 'Glia,' but the usual feminine form would be 'Glyn.'" I could hear the longer vowel. "I wanted a form in the middle." She flashed another smile. "Like Usuzh. And I changed 'ik-Soval' to 'del-Soval,' of course."
I had always considered the Leddies to have a fluid sense of gender, as their gods did, yet they marked their names as persistently by gender as we Ash'torians. Perhaps their fluidity was not based on middle ground so much as on ease of switching: female Usuzh and male Usuzh but not both or neither at once, thus, "the son of Soval" and "the daughter of Soval" but not "the child of Soval," language inscribing culture.
I thought of Lastri'nom asking about my name. The power of names lived in all three of us, and that simple commonality brought comfort.
***
By afternoon, the sun beat down and the trail grew wide enough for three to walk abreast. We should have anticipated meeting others on that flat, well-trodden lane, yet we'd grown so used to this Nyrírlan hiding that the figures walking toward us surprised us all, yes, even Nyra. Two women and a man: they didn't flee. They even greeted us with a nod and a "good afternoon." If we made any allowance for the plague, it was to pass each other single file on opposite sides of trail.
"We're getting north." Nyra held her head a higher. "We bore the brunt of the plague, but it never cracked our heads up." Nyra had told us that the Northerners' comparative unconcern with strangers is an effect of the plague having run its course. In the South, isolation rather than immunity still protected many villages. Still, the reasons hardly matter. Even I, who was often more at ease far from other minds, appreciated our first taste of sociability since Nyra's family.
On that broad road, Tanez fell into step beside me. "It wasn't the little-silléra," he said, baffling me utterly. "Silléra" was the Keshnul word for bioengineered humanoids but-- "The ringing Glin told you about--what I heard on Lléroney--it wasn't the little ones; it was a village of Pey who had trained as musicians."
Genetically, Pey were very close to human: longer-lived, more sensitive to environmental toxins, more strongly telepathic than most humans. That was about all I knew.
"I've associated that sound with the Pey ever since." He surveyd the grass around us as if expecting some creature to fly up. "There are Pey on Nyrírla. I remember learning that in school, and Nyra confirmed it."
"And you think they're involved?"
He shook his head. "'Eblia, I have no idea. I'm just sharing my impressions."
***
Our Journey, Day 13
We passed several more people and saw a "large city" in the distance to our left: long, low wooden buildings, suggesting commune living: "Duskwindspeak-city," Nyra called it and took us there to trade sea scavenging for dried fruit. This far north, people dared to trade with strangers for food. We made for the city circle, a meadow surrounded by the buildings. As soon as the villagers spotted us, they gathered around, crowding out coherent thought:
Strangers, Southerners, hair like grass--him and her, and those two (awful) wearing seal skins--wonder what the cost would be--
"Good afternoon, travelers."
"Good afternoon, settlers. Any trade in berries for the northbound?" Thank our luck! thought Nyra. Decent northerly folk at last.
Minds circled me. If the brightberries weren't late this year--Sama-like, and how did he get that color dye--for trade, I wonder? Esha, stay back, not too close--heading North, she says--offworlders!?--why go into that howling land?
By the Five Faces, how I've missed seeing smiles. (Glin)
By the time we reached the circle, Nyra had already found several barterers. She was haggling over brightberries when an older man called her by name.
"Jolántalar!" She arrested an urge to rush into his arms. "What brings you to these parts?"
"I might ask the same of you, my girl." And so on.
An old neighbor from Nyra's hometown, Jolántalar invited us to his house for lunch. It was the first time since Southfield-city that we'd been inside a building: a small, dark-paneled room, eight people (Jolántalar's son joined us) around a cramped table. I missed the open sky at once, but the food compensated: eggs and onions and some sort of roasted bird. While Nyra and her friends chatted, I played the uncomprehending foreigner and let my thoughts flow free.
A start from Tanez seized my attention. "What sort of stranger?" he was asking.
Jolántalar shrugged. "The head-broke sort that's stayed in the North hills all these years, hiding from the plague--or the sort that's no more than a shadow and a tale. It has the feel of a tale." Again, he addressed Nyra. "Folk feel someone watching, hear voices in the wind, all the muddle the Jetháti teach is all in our heads, and I believe it is."
"You believe it all a tale, yet ye moved away down here," said Nyra.
"Not to flee the stranger," said Jolántalar's son. "The fishing's what drew us mainly."
"Does no hurt to be away from those tales though," the father added.
Tales of a stranger in the North, not far from the tech center that was our destination. Not far from Nyra's hometown. Jolántalar was right, of course. On this fearful planet, a mind sick wanderer could easily sprout rumors of some presence stalking travelers. Tanez, however, read it as a piece of his own vision.
***
That evening, Nyra went out on the town, and Chi'anové, wisely, took his blanket behind the house and fell asleep in the grass. The rest of us, on cushions in Jolántalar's son's room, conferred (that is, fought) about the wanderer.
"Could it be another slammed Walker?" asked Glin.
Lastri'nom shook his head. "The rumors are older than the Event."
"I suspect it's unconnected," I agreed. "Maybe a plague survivor--or just fears born out of the horror of the plague."
"But the stories are newer than the plague," said Glin.
Finally, Tanez said what we'd all been waiting for: "It could be a visitation from Jana."
Lastri'nom flared. "Leaving aside the fact that you have no evidence--"
"I do have evidence: the feelings in his mind--Jolántalar--they have the same quality as on the beach--"
Lastri'nom muttered something in Perditan that, I think, translated, "You moon-eye." (The phrase incensed Tanez.) In Vunizh, he said, "The quality, Tanez, is fear. Of course, it feels the same--"
"It's not just fear."
"Tanez, to project an image from Jana that people with no connection to Jana could see would take incredible force."
Glin, who'd buried her head on her knees, looked up. "And what, if not an incredible force, has slammed all of us expert Walkers?"
In those words, Lastri'nom's common sense and Tanez's intuition crossed, and anything seemed possible.
