IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Paths
Chapter 42 Braintangle
Monday, October 19, 2708 (We blink, as a distant clock tolls the
strokes of midnight, opening our eyes to pure darkness, our bodies weird and
fluid all around us. Something just
happened. Something…psigenic. Siiiiiigh gyn gyn gyn NICK!
The word plays with my poor head.
Don and Zanne had discovered that the rumors were true, they'd told me:
the peasant-caste Duerlonghios had indeed created a real and potent psigenic,
which even made Merrill a telepath for a little while, a year or two ago. But why here, why now, why…why am I even
thinking at all? Everybody around me moves in slow motion. I do, too, shoving through a gooey
atmosphere. I think my brain has
forgotten how to compensate for my neural alteration. Click!
Creaaaaak…thump. All three of us
can feel it when they open the door: the wall of evil, like the stench inside
coagulated into a gelatin that shoves us back when we try to move forward—much,
much more intensely than before, when this potion riots in our blood. Don whimpers, Jake groans, and I claw past
the wool-clad bodies to grab Jake's hand.
But we can't turn back now—they drag us in, floundering through the
evil. Nausea…oh God. Sweet Jesus
calm my stomach like the heaving waters of Galilee! Cloying liquor and bitter herbs and that
death-stench and psychic assault and ohhhhhhh!) Throwing up. Don't know why. Just am.
Somebody holds me. Eyes won't
open. Then…all gone. "Acu…punc…ture," I hear Don mumble. "Pressure…point." Oh.
Okay. Yeah. I remember now. A point inside the wrist which, when pressed,
quells nausea. And I feel it doing that,
and just knowing an explanation, from a rational world, makes me feel better
all over. I cool down my panic, and the
stone cools, too. "Aiiiii!" Don screams as something wet and stinking sprinkles on
us. So much for my anchor of rationality! But then he quiets, or fades, or dissolves,
or something, or we all do. Yes, that's
it. We all dissolve. Just as we ought to do. Into sparks.
Glimmers in a gum-thick atmosphere. Rituals go on around us.
Should be able to…but I can't.
Nope, not right now. Can't
extrapolate locations, shapes, sizes, from the sounds, figure out what he picks
up, puts down, in what way, but…knowing that in a different frame of mind I
could do this comforts me. I know that I
psygraph all of this, automatically, and later, yes indeed, later I will be
able to reconstruct…what was I just thinking, again? Never mind.
Just kick back and feel woozy-good, even though hands shake me every
time I start to fall asleep…) "Wake her! Shake her!
Don't let her sleep!" "No, do let her sleep! That's
just a myth." "It doesn't matter. We can't…" Gone. (Gone. We all dissolve into
sparks. Itty bitty bits and pieces. No Jake, no Don, no Randy, no no NO! Don't let go of the thread! Motes of random blinks of energy try to
coalesce into a hand, an inner soul-hand holding onto something whose own
particles keep slipping through the spaces but others coalesce through me and
together we can combine into something sort of fingered that can keep this
thread of glitters from slipping quite away.) I almost…but no. It's okay.
Everything will be okay. Head
hurts, full of sparks, but leave the head behind, no fear, I'm held, I'm held,
I'm safe…drift off into safety...it's okay… (It's okay.) (We're
okay.) (He/we still hold the shimmering
coppery…whatever, we hold it. Rituals
drone on, slicing through the particle flow, but we hold on, we…we just…it's so
important that we just… "Kiss the baby.") "JAKE!" I scream, my whole
body arching. "What happened, what's
happening, Oh lord is that a seizure?" "Nightmare, maybe. I never heard of people shouting in a
seizure." "I have." "Oh dear God..." ("Lisa!" "Deirdre!" "Deirdre and Lisa!" "And Zanne!" we holler all at once. I don't know which parts I shout. "Deirdre, Deirdre, Deirdre don't let go!") Let go. Let it all go. (Nonono! "Deirdre! Deirdre!
Deirdre!" we keep on yelling, till hands clap over our mouths. "Quiet, quiet my darlings."
Is that George's voice? Yet so
melodious, so…seductive. "You can tell
us without shouting." "Deirdre," one of us sighs.
Or maybe we all do. "Lisa. Deirdre.
Zanne." "Changewright, they're holding on longer than anybody." "I told you they were special." I hear Don sob, "Lis...Lisa!
I-I was going to get married!" I weep, myself. "I loved
her, too." "But Deirdre!" Jake moans.
"Don't forget her. Don't let
go—oh please don't let go! We…we…I need
her.") I need...oh how I need... (I'm here Don, oh my
beloved Don and Randy, too, sweet Randy, and yes even Jake, I'm here I'm here I
don't know how we've broken through the blocking but something terrible has
gone wrong in Corriebhai Colony—they're destroying telepaths here,
they're...but you don't understand, do you?
Something wrong with your minds, too?
Hold on, please hold on, please, but already they...no...) (George grips me...no, Jake.
I can feel him gripping Jake, and I can feel Jake in my grip. He hisses, "Youuuuu…" but I hear approval in
the hiss. "You connect, in some way,
some unnatural way…" and he says "unnatural" with such
relish that it reminds me of…somebody disturbing. "You and she…but not in the hellish way…and
she…SHE HAS HELD MY GITA!" Commotion, noise and tumbling!
Groggily I realize that George Winsall has pushed Jake away, actually
stumbled back, and thrown us all into confusion. I feel my body sort of buzzing around me, but
my own body again. The potion starts to
wear off, faster than Winsall planned on—our altered neurology at work, no
doubt. But I have no trouble faking
unawareness of this, still feeling quite drunk regardless of the herbs mixed
with the kusmet. "Tell Zanne," Jake babbles.
"Tell Zanne, tell Zanne, tell...I forget.") (Commotion and tumbling...and then I feel Cybil's arms around me
as she drags me up out of the mud, in the dark, in the house that smells like
rats and mildew. She sits me on a rough
plank step of the cellar stairs and asks, "Zanne, what just happened?" "I have no idea," I say shakily, instinctively running a tidying
hand through my hair, only to realize too late that my hand is muddy. Oh Gates!
I hope I haven't developed a seizure disorder like Don did, we're all
vulnerable, all of us mindchanged ones.
Oh Gates of Knowledge forbid...but no, They never forbid, do They? Whatever is true is just...true. Well, then, Zanne. If it
comes to it, dear, you do have the herblore to concoct a remedy.) ("Well!" Winsall—Changewright—laughs, though shakily. "We've had a most productive evening, I must
say. But can you still remember the
names you just cried out?" Lisa and Deirdre. And Zanne. "No," I lie, bemusedly. Something tells me that I must not, under any
circumstance, reveal that the breaking of the spell upon this school stays
broken in the three of us.) Do I feel lips tremble on
mine, tentative, a mere flutter, as if a kiss could wake me from this
spell? Do I feel a warm, fresh tear hit
my cheek? "Oh Deirdre," Tanjin
moans. "Please don't d..." And then everything fades... (...fades...) (...fades...) (...fades...) (Feel it all fade away once more before Cybil can...) (...and then Don slips away from me as if we had never been born.) |
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