|
IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Paths
Chapter 50
Thursday, October 22, 2708,
continued What am I doing here, in this stall,
trying not to choke on the barnyard smells, trying to feel comfortable sitting
in the straw? (What am I doing here, rake in hand? Oh yeah, mucking out a stable, trying to do
my detention-work while remembering my rookie mission, that strange day deep
underground, amid the forty-thousand year old picture-gallery of Crespus
Inglorius.) "We need the larger picture…" Oh yeah, strategy meeting. I lean my aching head back against a post,
hoping that it props me up against the wobbles, hoping that I look halfway
intelligent and attentive, but all I can do is gaze from scar to scar, on all
of these children, wondering how it could get so bad, over how many centuries,
how this entire gorgeous country, this paradise, could become one great
cicatrix. (I
recall how Crespus fingered a framing ridge of crystal. "It looks rather like scar tissue, doesn't
it, in its own sparkling way? I suppose
it is. We keep it cut back from actually
covering the pictures, but let it be as much as we can." Then he turned to me. "And I think you can see the problem." I
nodded. "Magentine is a form of
calcite. These caverns are full of it." He
nodded back, smiling as at an approved student in a class on horrors. "Indeed.
You hit the nail on the head. Do
you have any idea how long it took science to discover that the magentine
crystal doubled the four-sided formation into eight through a sort of
interdimensional folding?" He shook his
head, his eyes still twinkling above the mask.
"Of course you do. You must have
studied all of this in that excellent educational facility which you call
home." I
bristled, I recall. "I'm home right now,"
I protested. He
only rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, you're
a very good student-agent, earnestly trying your hardest to convince yourself
of your faith in cultural immersion. I
took the same classes, Jake." Agency
classes? But I'd thought he was the
client. He
didn't have to read my mind; I must've look pretty puzzled. "Didn't they tell you that you would meet
your veteran when you arrived? I am that
veteran, Jake. I served Til as an agent
for years before returning to my homeland to retire. Did you think that every agent comes straight
out of the comorrans? And yes, I'm the
client, too. Unusual, but not entirely
without precedent." I
stood there, feeling the humanity bled into the rock. "You don't really know what the problem is,
do you?" "No,
Jake. I don't. I just feel that a problem exists, something
new, something building." "Not
new," I could hardly find the breath to put behind the words. "And not old, either." "And
yet both. It builds towards a future
that I won't survive to see. I have done
my best to prepare my grandson for it, but I also need someone on the outside,
someone in the Tilián, who..." He
stepped forward, his eyes burning, and he gripped my shoulders. "You.
You have prepared for this. You
must spend your life...but you won't live to see all of it, either." He sighed and let go. "Sooner or later you will know who will
survive to see the rest, to guide it. A most unlikely direction. Not yet,
though. We must deal with the most
immediate part of the problem, in the here and now—such as it is." He'd
stepped back from me. "Go ahead,
Jake. Wander. Find whatever it is that the caverns want you
to find. I
didn't wander. I'd felt the pull build
in me ever since my foot hit the level stone.
I walked straight through the corridor to my right, took a left turn
after awhile, in a diagonal, and walked to one painting in particular.) "I'm sorry,
Bijal," I find myself saying, "Could you
please repeat that?" I feel like I'm
repeating my own words, myself, but can't remember what I've said earlier in
the meeting. (She
had big thighs. They used to like that
in women. Round bellied, well-fed. Icon of prosperity. She sort of leaned into the rock, shoulders
bent as though she'd fainted against it, her face turned away. Somehow the ocher seemed to have seeped into
layers deeper than the surface, giving the crude picture a strange
dimensionality. And she was not just a painting. "Here,"
I said, laying my gloved hand on her back as Inglorius hissed, right over where
the heart would've been. "They marked
the spot with this picture. They tried
to make a portrait of her. Their
priestess." I turned to him, not lifting
my hand. "She merged with the
stone. She didn't mean to, but it
happened." Crespus
frowned over that. "We have known such
things—rarely—on Novatierre, wherever enormous magentine deposits fill the soil,
if someone has lingered too long there in a trance. But this came from Earth, Jake." "Yes
and no. Magentine folds dimensions." I took a deep breath of stifling-hot air,
feeling half-choked by the respirator. "Consuelo
Tercos must have known, or sensed it somehow, when she invented Transfer Technology. We have no idea what all she knew." I paused, panting in the heat. "But there had to be some Earth connection,
when you think about it, for it to work.
Something connecting every parallel earth in existence, but leading
ultimately to the hub, to here, where the magentine crystals grow. This Earth.
This Novatierre. The
center." I shook my head. "On other worlds they only see the
calcite—one fold of the magentine.
Crystals don't normally form with eight sides." "Remove
your hand, Jake." "Think
about it. What is the probability that
every single transfer-world, even the most poisonous, at some time evolved
calcium-concentrating microorganisms in their oceans, so many over so much time
that they could create miles and miles of limestone, chalk, and marble? Magentine needs calcium deposits." "Remove
your hand!" "Why?"
I'd snapped. I liked the vibration. It felt good.
It felt right. "You're
in danger, Jake—now do as I say!" But
I'd turned away from him, to gaze on her.
"She didn't mean for it to happen, but resigned herself to her new role
when it did. And, down here, she has
finally fully connected with all of the others.
And with Consuelo, too. Consuelo
called her, by calling Manuel, but they'd met, the old one and Manuel, years before
on another planet. She..." It filled me, something beyond words, some
great purpose, guided by the survival instinct of a prehistoric woman. "She made sure that humanity would
survive. It was her job." Suddenly
I felt a wrench, a whirl, a PAIN! And
then I came to myself, kneeling on the floor of chiseled rock, clutching my
hand, watching the blood bloom upon the papery glove, but none of it getting
past the surface, only the filtered moisture escaping. "Sorry
I had to knock you over," Inglorius said, "But it tells you something that a
cancerous old man could knock
over a strapping young fellow like yourself.
Let's get out of here, Jake." I
shook my head, trying to clear it.) I shake my head, trying to clear
it. The words keep flowing on and on
around me. ("Can you, Jake?" I
nodded, and tried to stumble to my feet.
But when I would lean on the wall to help me up, he shoved his body in
between, and I found myself pulling myself up by him, though he swayed and
grunted with my weight. And
so began the long ascent, mostly in silence, as we digested our shared
experience. Neither of us knew, really,
what has gone wrong, let alone what we were supposed to do about it. But something indeed had—has!—gone wrong, and
needs some prep-work before we can repair it—sometime after our deaths, through
some proxy. Before
the end I had to drag myself up by the bannister, stumbling on the steps,
catching myself again, stumbling again, leaving wet prints on the wood from the
hurt left hand. But I'd've been damned
if I'd ask that frail old man to help me up the final steps! "Why
did you even bother going to the Cave of Changes?" I rasped by the time I
staggered past the first airlock, into the stairwell of wood and polished tile. He
shrugged. "Because Til required it, and
I needed the training. But you're
right—I'd already had a more powerful experience right here." He pulled the respirator off with a gust of
relief, and I did likewise, shivering a little with the change of temperature. "And
why, in the name of all gods, past, present, and future, didn't you build an elevator?" He
grinned at that, though he clutched his side.
I remember thinking that his tumor must lie somewhere there, below the
ribs, at least the original, largest one, before it had metastasized. "Now Jake, some things must never come
easy. You know that.") "...so, with Kiril's troop
taking themselves a little vacation, we can stay here as long as..." "I'm sorry, Bijal—what were
you talking about?" But he just stares
at me, looking so worried. Oh God—am I
going the same way as Lucinda? "Okay,
I'll say it and save us both some trouble.
I'm better, but I'm still not up to speed—is that what you're thinking?" "Deirdre, I..." He can't say more, just stares at me
helplessly. Oh, but my poor head hurts! Do I look like Lucinda did
at the end? Glassy-eyed and
troubled? "Promise me something,
Bijal." My voice sounds hoarse with
emotions that I didn't intend. "If I put
you in charge, will you give command back to me as soon as I know I can handle
it?" "Of course!" "Swear it on your mother's
grave." "With my mother's rebel
ghost as witness I do swear it." Swear to what? Think, Deirdre! Has to do with...my incompetence? I'm sitting here silent too long; he must
wonder. Am I becoming
like...Lucinda! Yes, that's it—he swears
not to do me like Kief did her. "I
promise, in turn, that I'll be honest about my own ability...I...I won't return
myself to duty till I'm ready—can you trust me?" Earnestly he says, "I've
already trusted you with my life." "Good, then. I hereby..."
What words? Think! I raise my voice so that all can hear. "As commanding officer and medic both, I
hereby declare Bijal in charge until I..."
Blink. Blink. "Get your full wits back?"
he prompts. "Yeah. Uh...judge myself fit to resume command." He clasps my hand, his eyes
watering. "You were honest enough to
admit it in the first place, Deirdre—how can I not trust you?" "Thanks," I say, and clap
him on the shoulder, then struggle to my feet, feeling a weight slide off my
soul. I can walk without help, now,
slowly and with rests. (The cart stands full of filthy straw, the earth bare before
us. Randy and I sprinkle fresh straw as
Don pushes the cart over to the compost heap, and then we join him, glad of the
outdoor air even as our breath puffs on the chill, the barn behind us as we
pitch it all back out into the compost heap.) I make it as far as a fence
just outside the barn. I lean on it and
smell spring upon the air, and the sweetness of the orchard no longer makes me
want to gag. I can think okay, too,
really, allowing for the gaps as I lose and recapture my train of thought. (Yet wasn't there some other, distant,
thought? Mine and yet not mine,
or…) It eventually works out to
coherence, so long as I don't need to explain myself to someone else, or have
to make quick decisions on a battlefield. I watch child-veterans help
to plant the earliest frost-resistant crops in the new-turned soil. Good clean mud dirties them now, not the
grime of homeless wandering, and certainly not blood. The hard, old squint has nearly left their
eyes, the jaws almost unclench. They
could pass for innocent, if I didn't see the scars. I walk the perimeter of the
field, steadied by the fence, needing the exercise. I get better rapidly—faster than nature. I may not be a real doctor, but I know that
it's a bad look-out if a concussion patient stays stuporous for longer than
twenty-four hours; I lost close to two days.
I hadn't expected that the neural changes wrought on me—what is it, a
month or two shy of eight years ago?—would have this effect, but it makes
sense. My brain speeds to form new
synaptic connections to replace the damaged ones. I should tell my old friend, Don, if I live
to see him again—the medical possibilities look promising. And all you have to do is damn your patient
to hell. And now I remember that I
already told him. I had suffered a
concussion a few years ago, in the tempest of Alroy, and I bounced back surprisingly
well from that, too. I gaze out at the peaceful
peasants, planting their turnips and kale and the tough, mountain-bred
corn. Most of them have killed before
they reached puberty, and think nothing now of taking human life—why do I feel
wickeder than all of them combined? My headache won't
relent. We performed a terrible
experiment, my friendclan and I. We
accelerated the brain's capacity to make new connections and zip messages
faster through old ones, despite the banning of the research a century
before. We unleashed agony and madness
to do it, we momentarily released the hold of conscience and compassion and
plain good judgment...until murder happened. I want to say that it's all
a blur, that I can't remember precisely what occurred that day, that it all
happened too fast. (Hah! Yeah—too fast. Right.)
But right now those memories stand out clearer before my bruised mind's
eye than anything going on today. I did
not, personally, raise my hand against Tom Czenko or Jesse Vrede, but my presence
there, my complicity in the crime that lead to those final crimes, stains me as
surely as if I'd pointed the gun myself.
These children arrived at birth to a culture that has never allowed them
the luxury of innocence—what excuse do I have, privileged daughter of Til? |
| |
|
|
|
|
||
|