Wayfarer - Satori Part 7

"It'll sing. They all do. It's ... it's ... well, they're made to sing. They just do. Wait and see."

So she waited. One day, tired of waiting, she tried singing to the lizard. She tried the noon song, since it was that time of day. She wasn't very good at it, but the lizard sat quietly and listened to her. When she was finished, it turned its head and chased an insect. That evening, she tried the evening song with identical results.

From that day on, she sang to the little caged creature several times a day. Josh laughed at her and said maybe he should put her in the cage.

About a month after the caging of the lizard, Myali spent two nights at the home of one of her friends.

She was still too young to enter the Sisterhood, but she had attended the pre-cla.s.ses for youngsters that were held for a couple of weeks every fall. There she had met several girls her own age. One in particular had become her closest friend, and the two of them walked miles across the Plain to play with each other.

When Myali returned, Josh met her at the door with a big grin. "He's singing. Just like I said he would. Would've done it sooner if you hadn't bothered him so much. You did so much singing he never had a chance!"

Myali ran into her brother's room to see the little animal jumping and hopping around in its cage. She sat there for two hours until the sun was overhead. Then, sure enough, the creature sang. She listened carefully and her heart sank.

Unmoving, she stayed by the side of the cage until sundown, waiting for the lizard to sing again.

When the sun slid over the edge of the Plain to the west, the haunting whistle of evening song filled the air.

When the creature had finished, she rose and left the room, tears in her eyes.

She found her dinner, cold, in the kitchen. Her father was there, cleaning some vegetables from the family garden. Myali sat at the counter next to where he was working, watching him and dispiritedly nibbling at her meal.

After a long silence, she finally asked him, "Dad, why do lizards, even lizards in cages, sing?"

"What kind of an answer do you want?" he said gently.

She stared blankly at him. " 'What kind' of answer? Are there different 'kinds' of answers?"

He nodded. "There are as many different kinds of answers as there are ways of looking at the world.

An animal behaviorist might say lizards sing as a way of establishing their territory. A neurobiologist might say lizards sing when certain synapses in their brains open up or when certain neurotransmitters are emitted. A physicist might talk about sound waves. And a poet might claim they sing for joy or grief."

Myali shook her head impatiently. "But what's the real reason? What does it mean when they sing?"

"Ah," he replied with a slight smile, "you want to know the truth, eh?"

"Yes," she nodded vigorously to make it more emphatic.

"There are only two ways to know that." He paused. "The first is to eat your dinner with relish." She looked down at the food and wrinkled her nose. "But it's all lumpy and cold," she complained. "What's the other way?""Become a lizard," he said and turned back to finish washing the vegetables. "Or at the very least," he added over his shoulder, "stop being Myali."

He awoke suddenly, Jerked back to consciousness by a loud crashing in the undergrowth. Confused, he stared about in dismay for a second, wondering where the h.e.l.l he was. Then it all clicked into place and his hand moved to his pocket, finding and taking out his laser wand.

The crashing continued, but seemed to be moving away from him. Myali's memory, now more accessible to his conscious mind as a result of the integration exercises, told him that the noise was most likely a creature known as a forest dragon. About the size of a pig, it foraged the forest floor for nuts and roots. Although frightening looking, it was basically a harmless beast, given to flight instead of fight. If cornered, it could turn nasty and dangerous. Probably rummaging around and b.u.mped into me sitting here, he thought. Gave it one h.e.l.l of a scare, from the sound of things.

Dunn listened until the crashing faded and the forest became still again. Then he rose, placing the wand back in his pocket.

Surprisingly, his head didn't hurt as abominably as before. Not exactly up to doing cartwheels, he judged, but certainly good enough to make it possible to get this expedition under control.

For the first time, he took stock of his appearance. He was wearing an ankle-length brown robe, with a hood and a large pocket in front. Otherwise, it was quite plain and unadorned. The material was coa.r.s.e, but st.u.r.dy and tightly woven. The fit was loose and comfortable.

His feet were covered with what appeared to be a kind of short boot. No, they were really more of a moccasin, he decided. But they came up a good three inches above the ankle. Like the robe, they were unadorned. He lifted one foot. No sole as such, but by touch he could tell the bottom was a lot thicker than the rest. He wiggled his toes. Comfort seemed the main criterion for fashion on this world.

Kneeling down, he opened his pack to see what it contained. Food packets, each one holding what appeared to be a mixture of dried meat, grains, some crumbly gray stuff, and several completely unrecognizable ingredients. Myali told him it was common fare for a Wanderer. It could be eaten dry or dumped in a pot with water and made into a stew. Naturally, there was a small metal pot. And a bowl.

Some slightly pointed sticks about nine inches long. (For eating, Myali coached.) Something that looked a lot like a carefully folded waterproof poncho. Another robe. An extra pair of boots. And several small containers filled with odds and ends.

They certainly travel light around here, Dunn thought as he repacked everything. And speaking of traveling, maybe I'd best do a little planning while it's still light and my head is clear. He sat back and took the map from his pocket. Opening it up and flattening it out on the ground, he placed the open compa.s.s on top and aligned the two. The slice of territory shown was bordered on the east by what was probably an ocean. To the west were a series of hills and mountains. The area between the water and the mountains ran in a north-south direction and was bisected by a major river. Where the river met the ocean, and extending up it on both sides (but mostly to the south), was an extensive swamp. Along the eastern edge of the mountains closest to the ocean a smaller river ran in a northeasterly direction. It joined the swamp at a point where the mountains narrowed the land to a mere corridor.

His landing position was marked with a small black X to the south of the swamp. The smaller river lay west of him, but if he continued due north, he would have to cross it at the point where the strip of land narrowed, or venture into the swamp. He ran his finger northward until he found the spot marked "First Touch," his goal. It actually was dead north of his drop. But clearly, he'd have to detour to the west to get around the swamp.

Then he remembered he'd already made a detour. His hand shaking just slightly, he estimated a new starting point to the southwest of the original X. Nearer the river, nearer the mountains. Farther from his goal. How? Why? Best not to think about it too much, he decided as he felt his headache returning. He slipped the map back into his pocket, stood, and lifted the pack to his back. Checking the compa.s.s, he began to walk.

The forest stretched off in all directions. Any way he looked, it appeared the same. Not that the vistas didn't change with disconcerting rapidity. But the changes were basically meaningless to him. Alien.

Hidden. And as it began to grow dark, the whole thing took on an ominous overtone that made the hairon the back of his neck rise.

He tried to rationalize the feelings away. He was armed. Better armed, perhaps, than any other person on this planet. Furthermore, Myali a.s.sured him there weren't that many dangerous creatures in the forest. So there was no reason for his sense of anxiety. No reason at all.

Yet the forest watched him. It peered out from deep green places and stared at his soul. The forest held its breath and watched. He could occasionally catch it looking, out of the comer of his eyes. Just a flicker, but he knew. It watched. And waited.

As the dark crouched down between the trees, Dunn 's fear grew. I've got to stop, he told himself.

Stop and make a camp. I need fire and light and food.

Scurrying along, throwing ever-more-worried glances over his shoulders as he went, Dunn suddenly came to a vast tree. So huge and dense was it that the ground around its trunk was clear of underbrush for a good thirty feet in every direction. With a cry of relief, the spy scuttled across the open ground to the huge trunk. A ko, Myali said. He sank down and leaned back against the rea.s.suring solidity of the tree. After a moment's pause, he began to rummage through his pack, looking for something to start a fire. He found a box of matches. Dunn almost laughed. Matches! How prosaic. How comforting.

A quick circuit of the edge of his clearing yielded a fair amount of firewood. He'd just make a small one, he decided. Just to give a little light. That way, the wood should last until dawn.

Hurrying back, oppressed by the growing weight of the dark, he quickly built his fire. As the flames leapt up, cutting a bright hole in the night, he sighed with relief and leaned against the tree trunk, closing his eyes wearily. Ah, he thought, that's more like it.

He sat quiet and relaxed for several moments, enjoying the brightness he sensed beyond his eyelids.

As long as he didn't open them, he could almost pretend the glow was daylight. But it isn't day, came the uneasy thought. It's night. And sitting here with my eyes closed is like being blind.

There's nothing to worry about, he rea.s.sured himself. Nothing. Besides, even if I open my eyes there's nothing to see but what the firelight shows, maybe a patch some ten feet across. So why open them? Relax. Enjoy a moment of peace and quiet. And control your silly fear of the dark.

But the uneasiness grew. And was joined by a sickening sureness that there was something out there in the night. Something moving. Coming toward him. Closer. Closer.

Fear finally gained the upper hand and his eyes snapped open, wide and staring. There, just beyond the flickering glow, sensed more than seen, was a darkness within the darkness.

VIII.

Moving carefully and slowly, Dunn reached out and added two more sticks to his little fire. The flames rose just far enough to give the darkness form.

Much to Dunn's immediate relief, the figure that appeared seemed to be human. Or at least the head was. The body was hidden by the folds of a dead black robe and little could be said of it other than that it was generally of the size and shape acceptable as human.

That first flash of relief pa.s.sed quickly, though, as the spy took a closer look. The other's face was utterly still and calm in a way that spoke of alienness that went soul deep. There was no flicker of warmth or human emotion in the eyes. Not even a glimmer of fellow recognition lit them. They merely stared, flat, detached, with an almost disembodied sense of concentration. The mouth was firm, thin, unmoving.

Above it reared an arrogant beaklike nose. Hair as dark as the robe hung straight and roughly cropped to the shoulders. From the look of him, Dunn's visitor appeared to be kneeling, sitting back on his haunches. Two white hands rested on top of what must be thighs. Peeking from a fold of midnight cloth on the left side was the hilt of a sword.

Raising his glance once more to the other's eyes, Dunn cleared his throat by way of starting.

"Ummmm. I ... uh ... I'm Dunn."

The man in black didn't answer for several moments. When he finally did speak it was in a murmur, almost as if talking to himself. "This one confuses Totality," he hissed. "This one is strange. Totalitysearches for this one's essence, but cannot find it." He nodded to himself and muttered a few unintelligible comments. The creature's whole demeanor, the way he ignored Dunn's presence as a living, responding being, the manner in which he spoke to himself (or was it to someone else, someone invisible?), chilled him to his very core. Human form or not, this visitor out of the night was alien.

"Yes. This one is not one. This one is three. But how can one be three if there is no Totality? One is deep in darkness, yes, deep, deep. Yes. One is not whole, a skeleton, a husk, a shape without solidity.

The last is shadow, a presence of other, not here, not now, yes, mere memory." The visitor's lips barely moved. His face was equally still and dead in its masklike immobility. And the flat, unblinking stare of the eyes ...

Dunn shivered and made a decision. This was not a friend. It probably wasn't even human. In any case, the creature on the other side of the fire quite possibly was dangerous. Moving as surrept.i.tiously as he could, Dunn slowly moved his right hand toward the pocket which held his laser wand. Gently his fingers found the opening and entered, reaching for the cool firmness of the weapon. He almost had it. He ...

With a sudden swirl 6f black, the figure before him moved. In one fluid sweep, almost faster than Dunn could follow, the visitor's sword was out and stretching across the fire, aiming directly at his throat.

So swift was the motion, that the spy did not even have time to react. Ever so lightly the point of the blade, glinting redly in the firelight, touched his Adam's apple. He stared down at it, too surprised and fascinated to so much as move.

A hiss of laughter brought his eyes back up to the dark visitor. "Yes. Yes, Triple One. There is no self for the Mind Brothers to grasp and bring the Madness to. Oh, no. There is no one. But still Totality sees your mind and knows it as soon as you do. Leave the little death stick in your pocket. Touch it and all three of you die."

Slowly Dunn removed his hand from his robe pocket. His eyes riveted to the sword blade, he held both hands out, palm forward, to show they were empty. "What ... what do you want?" he finally managed to croak out.

The black-clad creature laughed its wheezing cackle again. "Want? What does this unit want? This unit wants nothing because Totality wants nothing. Totality wants nothing because you have nothing to give, Triple One. You seem to be, but are not. Perhaps you are becoming. But until you are, you have nothing to offer. No, you are not even worth the feeding." As suddenly as it had appeared, the sword disappeared, back into its sheath. The figure stood. "Becoming, yes. Perhaps becoming. For the one lost in darkness may yet be found. And then ..."

For a brief moment, the swordsman seemed to be holding an inner dialogue. Then he nodded, as if reaching an agreement. "We will follow this one to see if he becomes. Then we will decide what we want.

Yes." With an unexpected swirl of black robes, the creature simply disappeared into the night.

Dunn took several deep breaths, trying to calm his thudding heart. His hands were shaking so badly he sat on them. What the h.e.l.l was that, he wondered. He blinked and shook his head as if to knock loose the recent experience. Lifting the fingers of his right hand to his throat, he felt the area carefully. When he looked at his fingertips, there was no blood. Was it real? Did it happen?

He called on Myali. Yes, it was real. A Ronin. Dangerous, but not insanely deadly as in the old days.

The creature was human, or at least mostly human. The mind of a Ronin was somewhat outside the pale of humanity since it had developed for generations under the direct influence of the ... the ... Dunn drew a sudden blank. He thought harder, demanding access to the memory. Under the direct influence of the ...It wouldn't come. It wasn't there. Only a hole, an emptiness, a sense of vague menace. Why? Why was the memory faulty? How much of the rest of his memory was faulty?

The thought shook him. If the memories he had been given were not complete, what did it mean?

Myali couldn't have held anything back from the machine. Or could she? Impossible! Yet ...

His mind raced on. If she had withheld information, she must have done it for some definite reason.

My G.o.d, he thought, stunned by the idea. The only reason she could have had was if she'd known what was going on. And if Myali had known, that meant others here on the planet knew!

In an unexpected change of direction, his thoughts turned back to the Ronin. Something the creaturehad said bothered him. No, it wasn't any one specific thing. It was the general tenor of his remarks, the way the things had talked about his mind as if he could see it, the way it had known what he was about to ...

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Dunn groaned out loud in sudden realization. "The d.a.m.n thing can read minds. And if it can read minds, then it knows ..."

In a fit of sudden panic, the spy stood and glared out at the darkness pressing in on his tiny fire. They know! They're out there, waiting, watching. They'd sent in their mind reader to make sure, but now they were certain, drawing the net tighter and tighter. They were the ones who'd moved him. It was all just an elaborate trap, a game they were playing for their own twisted amus.e.m.e.nt. He could hear them now, hear them in the dark, coming closer and closer, getting ready to leap out of the night and ...d.a.m.n it, get hold of yourself, bellowed the spy in his mind. Panting and gasping. Dunn sat down and wrapped his arms around his body, trying to control the shudders that were surging through him in waves. "Control,"

he whispered huskily to himself. "In the face of the enemy, control above all else."

The sound of his own voice in the midst of the stillness of the forest appalled him. Stillness? But just a moment ago he had heard them coming for him, crashing through the underbrush. He listened again now, carefully, critically. There were noises, yes. Creakings and groanings from the trees as a high, light breeze stirred them. Rustlings as little things scurried to and fro on nameless night errands. An occasional squeal or grunt of pain or surprise. But no crashings, no comings or goings of spy-seeking hordes.

Calmer, his shaking stilled and his thudding heart slowing to normal, Dunn sank back against the trunk of the tree. As his head touched the rough bark, he realized that his headache had returned. Not as bad as before, but d.a.m.n irritating anyway. Between the surges of pain, he worked at convincing himself there was nothing out there in the dark after all. It's all right here, here in my d.a.m.ned, throbbing head.

d.a.m.n lousy integration job, he cursed silently. Sloppy hurried-up, f.u.c.k-up! Should have checked this all out before they landed me. Grimly he gritted his teeth against the growing agony. Got to sort it all out.

Got to get control. There must be more info in Myali's memory, things I've got to know before I make some really serious mistake. Got to get on top of this before I take one more step toward First Touch!

With angry determination, he began to clear his mind for a second run at the integration exercises.

The first try had given him access to some of Myali 's memories. But the access was strangely limited and far from complete. It had been more like waking up a second mind in his own, a mind that had been very willing to share, but had stayed separate instead of becoming integrated. It was pleasant, almost like having a very good friend he could talk to and share with. But it was not integration and would never do.

As he worked his way carefully down into his mind, his body calmed and he slumped slightly, physically relaxed for the first time in hours. Time pa.s.sed and the flames of his little fire died down to a few glowing embers. The dark crept in and in, until finally it smothered even the last few glimmerings of light. Blackness lay like a soft blanket, covering everything.

She blinked back the tears and tried hard to concentrate on the drifting clouds. Lying there, looking up, she knew that Karl was watching her from the corner of his eye even though he pretended to be staring at the ground while he talked. She was only half listening to him now. His first few words had thrown her into such confusion that she had instantly fled inward in an attempt to regain her equilibrium.

Myali shot a quick glance at him when she thought he wasn't looking. She knew that profile well. A strange combination of stern and soft. The lips were full, the nose slightly turned up at the end. A forehead, corrugated now with concern, soared like a cliff over heavy brows that scowled in concentration. On the other end of the face, a bold chin thrust forward.

The thing that fascinated her most, though, were his eyelashes. She had noticed them the first time she had seen him. They were long, thick, and wonderful. For some reason, every time she looked at them a shiver went down her spine and her stomach felt warm.

The rest of his body she knew equally well. They had been lovers for over a year. She pictured the curve of his back beneath his robe, the way that curve met and flowed into his b.u.t.tocks, then swept down to his muscular legs. She resisted a powerful urge to reach out and trace that line with her fingers.

Her eyes drifted back up to the clouds again. Many curves there. But none so beautiful as those on ... The tears came back and she couldn't see.Because Karl was leaving. Not just for a while. Forever.

Karl was two years older than Myali and had finished his training in the 'hood last year. Since then, he'd worked with his father, a talented artisan, who was designing a new type of wind turbine to be used on the Southern Continent where the winds were weaker and more erratic than here in the north.

But now he was leaving. Going to the Southern Continent to settle in the Far Out. And he was going alone.

Oh, he'd said something about coming back to see her once he got things under control. Even something about seeing then if she wanted to come down herself. But she knew it was just to make her feel good, to make the break easier.

That's exactly what it was, a break. He was leaving. Taking his eyelashes, the curve of his back, his strong legs, all of it, about as far away as someone could go on Kensho.

Suddenly she couldn't stand the apologetic droning of his voice. She felt an overpowering urge to say something, anything, to break the flow of his words, to stop the way he was draining the Me and joy from her through his mouth.

"I won't go south. I'll never go south," she muttered.

He fell silent, turning his head to look at her. She refused to meet his eyes. The silence between them stretched on and on until it was so thin she could barely stand waiting for it to snap.

Karl sighed. "No. No, I guess you won't. I guess your Way lies someplace else. I've thought so for some time now."

In surprise, she looked at him. Tears had wet his cheeks.

"Myali, Myali," he said in a choked voice. "I've known for months that there's no real place for me in your life. It took a long time, but I've finally learned to accept the fact that no one else can walk your Way with you, that you travel alone. I... I tried to tag along. But ... but ..."

She started to shake her head in denial, but he started again. "Yes," he insisted, "yes. It's true. You're going someplace, maybe you don't even know where yourself, but you're going and going and going. All the time."

"Even," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "even when we make love?"