IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Lives
Chapter 47 Not Actually a Party
Tuesday, October 20, 2708,
continued The dawn light does,
indeed, hurt like payment for my sins. I
try vaguely to remember the party last night—something about a lot of little
candles, and the heavy smell of chaummin, and...ice cream? God, not ice cream! I make a staggering dash for the barn door to
vomit out the night’s festivities, then gingerly cradle my throbbing head in my
hands... ...bandages? “Deirdre! You’re up!”
Why do they act so surprised? I
find bruises all over me—oh Lord, did I get in a brawl last night? Disgraceful in an officer. “Yeah, I’m up,” I growl,
sagging against the barn door, still wobbly on my feet and feeling worse by the
minute as the daylight spreads. “Must’ve
been some party.” “Party?” Tanjin asks as he
and Chianti come to prop me up on either side like I was still drunk or
something. Testily I wave them away,
then reel around to go back inside, but my legs buckle under me—good Lord! Did somebody drug the wine or something? I surrender to their help as they ease me
back to my blankets, feeling very ashamed and wondering if I have even more to
feel ashamed of than I guess. “You go rest, too,” I tell
the kids. “You’ll need it if you’re half
as hungover as I am.” They laugh suddenly at that—painful
noise! Then, grinning, Tanjin says,
“You’re not hungover, Deirdre. You got a
bad knock on the head.” Then, more
anxiously, he asks, “Don’t you remember?” “Uhhh, no. Wait...did this involve a tree splitting in
two?” “I’m not sure.” He glances down, embarrassed, at his arm in
the sling. “Betany, you saw the whole
thing. Did a tree split?” “Yeah,” she drawls in that
hollow voice of hers. “It got the worst
of the grenade blast that threw Deirdre up in the air. Then her head hit a branch on the way down.” I ask them, “But what about
the candles and the ice cream?” They stare at me blankly,
till Tanjin says, “You must have dreamed that.” Betany asks, “What’s ice
cream?” * * * (The chemistry teacher drones on about
latent heat and inertia, his back to the class as he writes on the chalkboard,
while we slip from our seats at George’s nod.
“So, since brine freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water, ocean
ice serves better than snow to freeze ice cream.” I shiver at the very thought, ducking into
the supply-room behind Jake and Don. With no one to see how quickly we can move, we set up the
still in record time. “But of course
none of you boys want ice cream this early in the year. So, in summer, with no sea ice available, how
do you produce the same conditions?
Anybody?” We pile in the fruit too rotten to make into ice cream,
and set the Bunsen burner going. If we
can get this slop distilled before the end of class, we will gain credibility
points enough to move up in George’s Circle…now that we know that George
Winsall is the Changewright. “Yes, Brockhurst?” “You add salt to the ice.” “Excellent. And
why does that work?” “Uh…because it makes the ice briny?” “Be more specific, please.” Silence.
“Would you please read aloud what I wrote on the chalkboard? That might help.” Don closes the door, very, very quietly. Now we can’t hear the class at all, just the
soft bubbling of the still. Heated, the
fermented fruit actually smells almost pleasant—but maybe that’s just hope in
the result. Still, I feed in cinnamon
sticks and cloves to help mask the worst of the taste. I surprise myself by anticipating the result,
so soon after George’s concoction, but hey, I’m not Merrill, to let one boyhood
hangover compel me to a lifetime of sobriety. (George doesn’t actually need this hootch, not with Joel
supplying him with a steady stream of smuggled liquor, but his boys will
appreciate the party all the more if brewed illicitly right under the teacher’s
noses, no matter how vile. And if we can
make it not-too-vile, so much the better!) Gazing at the flame, blue light upon his face, Jake asks
quietly, “How long would it take for humankind to change the shape of magentine
effect?” Don thinks a minute, then answers, “We’ve done that from the
first. What do you mean?” “Explain, please.” Jake says in a slightly strained voice. I move closer, asking, “Are you all right? You sound so...” “Just explain,” Jake insists, staring at Don, ignoring me. The most intelligent member of Fireheart Friendclan tells
us, “Well, Novatierre didn’t have enough consciousness in its indigenous
life-forms to trigger off magentine effect at all, before the Migration. Oh, a primitive sentience started up for
awhile, but it didn’t survive. We don’t
even know for sure if it was mammalian, reptilian, or avian.” “And now,” Jake murmurs, “with just half a dozen
centuries behind us, give or take, the planet boils with ghosts and gregors,
blessings, curses, shandows and shirikis.” Don shrugs. “You
know all this. Why ask anything? And what’s a shiriki?” “Because you know more about Archives than anyone else
that I have access to right now.” Don asks, “Archives?” “Don’t play dense.
Psychometrists aren’t the only ones who know that it’s not really a
computer.” I hiss, “Keep your voice down!” as Don says, “Very well. You could call it a human/magentine
interface, if you wanted to. Is that
what you’re getting at?” “I’m not sure. It
may have nothing to do with anything.
But you brought out an important point: magentine effect doesn’t exist
without consciousness. We had consciousness,
but no magentine on Earth, leaving psi so weak that most people didn’t even
know it existed.” “And, aside from a brief flurry with proto-sentients, it
would never have existed here, either, without us.” Jake steeples his fingers, biting the topmost nails a
little, before remarking, “Strange to think on.
How many other potentials never stir...Don, answer me a riddle. What distinguishes conscious creatures from
all others?” “Intelligence?” “Not quite.” “I knew it even as I said it.” “Several animals could’ve developed equal or greater
intelligence, but for lack of one trait.” “I follow you. Imagination. One can only conceive of individuality if one
can imagine oneself distinguished from the rest, with one’s own collection of
traits to fit into the whole: individuality that needs adapted or adapted to.” “Which means that a phenomenon owing at least part of its
existence to our consciousness will adapt.
Change. Grow. Maybe even imagine.” “I see,” says Don, while I shiver in the dark lab storeroom. “Frightening.” “Now, consider this.
We–our kind–arrived in Novatierre by a means as close to magentine
effect as our original planet could produce.” “You mean transfer?
Would that explain why we ended up on this particular parallel–an
affinity of likes?” “That’s not important right now. Or not centrally.” I gulp, despite myself, and tap a little cup into the
drip from the still. “What, then?” I
ask. Jake wrings his hands a moment, then says, “What if
magentine effect began to take on some traits of transfer? The affinity, as you say, Don, is there. The original Technological Laboratories
derived transfer from research into nonphysical, or “primitive”
technologies–crude harnessing of psychic phenomena–and refined it to the
limit.” “What if...oh.” Don takes
the cup from me, sips, and hands it back for my turn. “Exactly.” Jake
nods grimly and accepts the cup from me.
“Physics would no longer limit it.” We let most of the rest of the distillate drip into the
bottle meant for it, but pass the teacup around between us, Don musing, “Anything
done anywhere could have an impact anywhere else.” “Or anytime,” Jake adds.
I squirm, for some reason hearing, or not quite hearing, rather sensing,
the spring calls of distant southern birds, vibrating along a fine thread which
I mustn’t dare let go. Don thinks a moment.
“The time-side of the space-time continuum would get harder to
manipulate, though; I don’t think we’ve come to that, yet.” “I hope not,” says Jake.
I hope I’m wrong about space, even.
The result could disrupt whatever life has evolved for. Instability in space could get nigh unlivable,
but without history it would become impossible.” “Are you so sure?” Don asks. “What about your own Gift?” Jake pauses with the cup halfway to his lips. “Oraclism?” “Sure.” Don’s face
seems just a little bit more rosy, though the blue light might deceive me. “Don’t possible futures bleed back to you
some way?” “My God!” Jake cries.
“Why didn’t we see this years ago?” The muffled lecture in the other room falls suddenly
silent. Obliviously, Don says, “Of course. The process began awhile ago. Now it accelerates.” The door slams open.
“You boys are in so much trouble!” the teacher shouts. Jake chuckles tipsily, with frightened eyes. “Ohhh yeah.
Tell me about it!”) |
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