A Door Into Ocean (43 page)

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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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MERWEN PURSUED HER deadly game with the Valan wordweaver, as doggedly and perhaps as blindly as she had with Virien so many years before. In between, down through those years, how many countless Gatherings and Unspeakings and troubled souls had shared at least some healing from Merwen's wordweaving, yet today it was Virien all over again, with thousands of lives and rafts at stake beside her own.
They did share a common goal, she and Realgar. Each intended to reach an agreement, an understanding, with the other. But where Merwen tried to elicit healing, Realgar offered only sickness, which he wished her to share in order to lessen the shame of his own living death. Against that current Merwen had made slow progress.
Merwen did not blame him for striking her. She knew she had asked for it the moment she slipped and let herself share his fear, instead of reaching for his soul. After that, his own fear rose to such a pitch that it had to come out somehow. And then, his act was a sign to her: when a wordweaver acts, it is usually because one has run out of words.
Merwen thought over these things as she sat crosslegged upon her elevated sleeping-place, her swollen face uplifted to Nathan, who examined her bruises with his blunt Valan fingers. Nathan asked, “Are you sure you won't take an injection? The swelling will go down much faster.”
“No, thank you.” Perhaps unfairly, Merwen had resisted Valan medical treatments as far as possible since the deaths of those poor men withdrawn from the care of Sharer lifeshapers.
“The general wants to see you again,” Nathan added. “I told him you are in critical condition, but he is very insistent.”
Merwen eyed Nathan sternly. “Why did you share an untruth?”
At that the would-be lifeshaper left in a hurry, and Merwen was suddenly alone. She thought of her daughters, and of the untold suffering that went on outside, until anguish possessed her and screamed from her mind:
The sea … give me back the sea. How long must I dwell on land?
A dark shape entered the room. Merwen struggled to focus her eyes, which stung beneath her hot eyelids. The shape wavered, then fixed.
It was Realgar. Merwen had never seen him come to this place before. Realgar watched her calmly, his arms at his sides with the fingers closed, his mouth small, his eyes clear and wide. Then he sat down and crossed his legs on the floor.
Immediately Merwen slid off the sleeping-place and fell hard on the cold floor. She seated herself to face him, and her pulse raced as though a wild fanwing had come to roost at her feet. The Valan looked so odd, though, with his flat-bottomed boots poking awkwardly from his legs and the creases stretched in his plumage. Nervous laughter welled up in her throat, but she clenched her teeth against it.
“I regret that I shared injury with you. It will not happen again.” His words flowed in Sharer, for the first time since Merwen had come here.
“I saw your anger,” Merwen said, trying to relax, to slow the blood that swelled her veins. “A Sharer so angry would have Unspoken me for a year. That would be much harder to bear.”
Realgar took time to choose his words. “Do you know why I was so angry? It is because I saw my face in the mirror at the time when it most resembled yours.”
Merwen sighed and her eyes half closed. If only the Valan could grasp the full truth of his own words. “And why? A hundred times why, why should that make you angry?”
“Because the choice was not mine. You insisted then that I was ‘human' enough to share your breathmicrobes; yet you will not share with me why you know that I am human.”
She remembered suddenly when Nisi had first brought her Valan lovesharer to Shora: a male, as strong and proud as Yinevra, one who rarely spoke but showed a dry wit when he did, his eyes hard as coral except when they reached to Nisi. “I knew, when I saw the love you shared with Nisi.”
“Nisi.” The name came reluctantly from him. “I share nothing with Nisi. In fact, I will have to hasten her death.”
Then Nisi was still alive. Merwen glowed with the pleasure of it. She had been so sure that Realgar would not let Nisi live, despite his love. Merwen thought, How little faith I have.
“Does it please you to hear that the one who betrayed you will die?”
“I rejoice that she may not die, that you still have a chance to share life with her. To
not-kill
her.” Not-killing—in Valan terms, that was the lesson Merwen had to share.
“Merwen, have you ever known a Valan who did not share betrayal in the end?”
Merwen thought. “There was Siderite.”
“Siderite betrayed you with every word he shared. All his learnsharing was intended to control, to share defeat with you.”
“If that was his intent, then we indeed betrayed him. Do you suppose that Usha would share the most crucial of her skills with a frightened child?”
Realgar said nothing, and the silence expanded, a wave rippling outward. The silence called to her, shamed her more than any words could to share the last truth. Feeling lightheaded, she did so, knowing that she committed herself to fate.
“Spinel,” she whispered. “Spinel may be Impulsive, but he will never share betrayal.”
“The young Spirit Caller?”
“Spinel was like you, as a child. On the day we first met in Chrysoport,
he urged me blindly to share the will of those who carry death-sticks, as you do. Yet now he is healed. ‘That is why I still share hope with you.”
“Perhaps it's time we had a reunion with … Spinel.”
 
The next day Merwen was led again to Realgar's office. He was sitting carelessly on his desk, in relaxed conversation with another soldier—
Spinel, in full red plumage down to the black boots, toying curiously with a death-stick in his hand.
Spinel turned his face, and he gasped, and the death-stick clunked on the floor. He stepped forward, reaching out. “Merwen, it's you at last!”
But she shrank back to the wall, every inch of her skin rebelling at the shape he had taken, her tongue arching with nausea.
Spinel stopped, puzzled. “It's okay, Merwen. They wouldn't let me in without getting dressed. Anyway, I've come to share taking you home.” He glanced uncertainly at Realgar, then back to Merwen.
Realgar said, “He learned to use the firewhip.”
“What? Not really, only just now.” Spinel kicked the death-stick away from him.
“Didn't you? You've become one of us now.”
“I did not.” Blinking furiously, Spinel began to see the trap he was in. “I did not, I tell you!
You tell her I didn't!”
He grabbed insistently at Realgar's arm.
Realgar shook him off. “Come, now, is that any way for a Sharer to behave? It's no use; you're one of us now.”
“I … am … not …” Spinel slumped down against the desk, his head at an angle. Gradually his face and hands turned olive-green as on the first day she saw him, devoid of violet.
“Damn.” Immensely irritated, Realgar shouted at a plate on the wall, and a guard came to drag Spinel away. Then Merwen regretted that she had not shared a word at least, that she had let the shock repress her. But this time, she thought, he knows whitetrance; he must be safe.
Realgar was cordial again. “Of course, Spinel was too shy to perform for you, but we have a recording of his service with us.”
The room darkened, except for a luminous cube above the viewing stage. A simulation appeared, a three-dimensional mirror of life as miraculous
as the ones shown by the first traders. There was blue sky, above the deck of the soldier-place, where Spinel stood in his soldier's plumage, strangely impassive. The sound of ocean rushed in, and a stray note from a clickfly:
today was a daughter conceived by Aia of Umesh-el.
… Beyond Spinel sat two sisters of Sayra-el, come in their turn to witness unto death.
The cloth creased and stretched behind Spinel's shoulder as his arm rose, and at his hand the stick glinted, and then the witnessers gave up their life-blood.
Spinel
. Spinel had died in life. Yinevra was right; the Valans were no better than servos. Let the flames consume them, and let Shora's ocean bury them forever.
But the Sharers of Shora would never know.
Already her surroundings were telescoping into one dark hole, but her last words escaped. “Hear this, however long you live in death: Though Spinel has shared my betrayal, you, Realgar, shall not.”
Then her soul flew out, and the galaxies swirled away to sunspecks on water. Farther and farther her senses expanded, more distant than she had ever flung herself before, until all the universe was just a faint haze in the dark behind her, a shockwraith slinking away. She reached out to the Last Door and stepped through.
Dreams came, too vivid for whitetrance. All those she saw in her dreams were dead by now: Mother Ama, Trurl, Yinevra glowed whitely before her. Their bodies were youthful, all barely out of girlhood, as Merwen had not seen them for decades. Yinevra's forehead was as unlined as on the day they first had kissed and murmured of a future together, a future unknowingly foreclosed in bitterness and pain. Only there was no pain here. “Yinevra. Forgiven.”
Yinevra smiled, the small knowing smile that Merwen had leaned upon before she had learned her own strength. “Almost too long you waited, Patient One. Come in, now, and close the door behind you.”
So the Last Door remained open; she still had to close it. For some reason Merwen hesitated.
Today was a daughter conceived
… “Yinevra, what are you doing here? Why hasn't your soul found a new home?”
Yinevra's shape flickered and fled. Ama loomed above her, erect and tall, large as if Merwen were still a child. “My daughter, we can't go back yet, because there are too few infants to take us in. Too many deaths hastened, too soon.”
Then Merwen understood that Mother Ama wished her to go back, to somehow find a way. “It's too late, Mother. I would only fall sick.” The sickness unto death—Merwen would not share that betrayal.
The dreams evaporated, and all was still. Out of the stillness, through the Door, came a regular tapping sound, and she strained to catch it. It was the sound of her own heart beating.
Someone or something outside in that distant blot of a universe must have kept her heart going when she had willed it to stop. Could it be Nathan, the primitive lifeshaper? Perhaps his Valan skills were good for something, after all.
Curious now, Merwen stilled her own breath. Within seconds it started up again, despite her absent will. It must be Nathan, she thought, and the thought of a Valan actually shaping life for a change gave her a peculiar joy. What else could Nathan shape? The pressure of her blood, its pH, its sugar level; all these she willed out of balance, in turn, and each was soon restored. When she altered her endorphin secretion, that failed to return, so she restored it herself and continued to probe Nathan's skill. Merwen was in no hurry to close the Door, nor to return and face the impossible existence she had left behind.
IN THE INFIRMARY Realgar looked down on the frail Sharer head, which was white as the sheets around it except for blue veins tracing around her neck. Realgar himself felt drained from mental fatigue, his neck tense and sore. The day before, it had taken more out of him than he expected to face Merwen here, for every ounce of his will rebelled against the submission of sitting on that floor.
But the gain was well worth it, since he had stolen the last of her secrets. And now, despite her defeat, the doctor had kept her alive. “Nathan, you've done well.”
“Yes, General.” The doctor's chin shifted as if he meant to say more, but he looked down instead.
“What's that? Something wrong?”
Startled, Nathan looked up again. “Nothing, sir, only … given our previous experience, I'm surprised I kept her against her will.”
“Perhaps you have more at stake this time.”
But Realgar knew better. He had seen the despair sink into Merwen, and he had heard her last threat, “Though Spinel betrayed me, you shall not.” Merwen knew she had to kill him to keep him from betraying her; she had accepted the unthinkable. And despite that, she lived. She had lost her will to die, at the last minute, just as Berenice had done.
Broken, now, Merwen could go home to share her defeat with her sisters. At long last, the will of Malachite had been done.
From what Merwen had said, even Siderite had never learned the true extent of lifeshaping power from his precious Usha. Those treacherous lifeshapers had played with the scientist all along, tossing him harmless tidbits of their skill, just as Realgar had predicted but Talion refused to see.
And sure enough, reports came in that his seaswallower repellent was not working as well as the first time, even as clickflies had forewarned. Swallowers were starting from the north pole and already had caused some nuisance at the northernmost bases. Realgar ordered the dosage raised tenfold; if that did not do the trick, they would have to hunt down stray swallowers by helicopter, and his troops would have good reason to curse the natives again.
Another swallower season, already … . He would never have believed that Operation Amethyst could spin out so long.
There was still Berenice to think of. What could he possibly do with her?
You still have the chance to not-kill her
. That insidious voice … . Torr's name, he was glad to be done with the Impatient One.
Abruptly his monitor came to life with an alert: trouble had erupted on the deck outside. A scuffle had broken out between a couple of guards and threatened to spread among the troops. The captain soon got things in hand, but Realgar was concerned enough to go out and assess the situation.
Out on the deck, a brisk wind whistled from the hard blue sky. There was a knot of guards who straightened into rows as the general approached with several aides in tow. Three men and a woman were
under restraint, one badly bruised, their hair disheveled and tossing in the breeze.
“What's up?”
The captain saluted. “Quarrel started over a native, sir.”
“A native?”
“Here, sir.” The captain pointed.
“Here? Why wasn't she shot?”
“I don't know, sir.”
Realgar stared hard at the captain, then followed her pointing arm.
A young native sat near the edge where the waves splashed up, her small-boned arms glistening in the sun. In her arms she cradled the tiniest infant Realgar had ever seen, nursing calmly as if there were nothing else going on in all the world.
His mind faltered, and there was a flash of yielding, a sense that he had already lost a struggle somewhere. It faded swiftly, leaving only a dull apprehension. Realgar shook himself free of it and faced the captain again. “What happened?”
“Barite and Zircon started the quarrel, sir.”
“
I
would have wasted them,” Zircon shouted hoarsely. “That's the orders.”
“Go ahead, why don't you,” challenged the other. “Sniveling childkiller.”
“They're
catfish,
I tell you, slimy sneaking things that crawl into wherever they're not wanted, like maggots. And I'll squash them like maggots, like we're supposed to, until the whole planet's clean of them.”
“Treason, you swine—in the name of the Patriarch.”
Everyone froze. Only the ocean beyond rumbled on, pounding up against the deck, while the troops awaited the judgment of the general. What was treason, and what was not? When was a suckling infant a soldier?
“Captain, confine the troublemakers to barracks, all privileges suspended. Everyone else clear out.”
“Yes, sir. And the native—?”
“I'll handle it.”
“Yes, sir.”
In short order the troops were dispersed. “Stay here,” Realgat told his aides. He strode quickly to the native girl, hoping the sea would mask their voices. He looked down at her sternly. The infant was
sleeping now, and she leaned her head over it, rocking gently, while her eyes watched the general.
“If I let you stay, tomorrow I'll find a hundred of you.”
She thought it over. “I'll come alone. With Laraisha,” she added, hugging the child.
“Very well; but one more, and you're all dead.”
“But why? Won't you stay and tell me … ?”
Realgar had already returned to his staff. “She'll stay, and no others,” he told them. “It'll help public relations.” Behind the terse remark, Realgar knew he had about reached the end of his rope. With his troops demoralized, half under the spell of the natives, his hands were tied.
But the seaswallowers were coming, brought by those natives; and there was still Merwen, who would return to tell her sisters they had to fight back. As soon as the first hint of their next plague came, his troops would rally again, and then his satellites would strike.

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