alt.human (30 page)

A human city, but one protected by a starsinger! I glanced across at Skids and knew that he, too, was sold. Even if we chose to settle here, I knew then that Skids would continue the journey; alone, if necessary.

Until now, Divine had remained silent, but now she joined in. “!¡
sceptical
¡! It was a ’singer that unsung Cragside,” she said. “So now you’re saying we look for a place run by one?”

“!¡
impatient
¡! Not run by one,” said Marek. “
Protected
by one. !¡
controlled
¡! Harmony is a human city,” he continued. “Run by people like us.”

He stood now, and walked to the centre of the gathering. “!¡
passionate
¡! Look at you,” he said, spreading his arms as if to embrace his audience. “Look at us all! This is our world, yet we’re squeezed into reservations, segregated, abused. We have no history, no sense of who we are. We live in the cracks and model ourselves on our alien masters. We live in nests, in clans. We talk in a language that’s a mixed up soup of a dozen alien languages. We have no history other than that we exist in the spaces afforded us by the dominant races. How much of what we are is truly human, and how much imported, copied, second-hand mimicry?

“Harmony is a place for us to learn to be human. It’s a place where other humans are already being human.”

“!¡
approving
¡! Harmony is a place where you can find your story,” said Saneth. “Humankind has more story than any other species. Humankind has spark, has difference. Around us: the All is known, completely known; we ancient races... our stories have been told and retold. You must find
your
story. That is Harmony.”

“!¡
pressing
¡! Where is it?” I asked. “If we choose to seek Harmony, to continue on our journey... how do we find it? Marek: you’ve been sending people to Harmony. What instructions did you give them? What directions?”

Marek stood before us, thin as a stick and his neatly trimmed beard grown more full on our journey. “!¡
hesitant
¡! To the east of Angiere,” he said. “To the east of Laverne.”

Click language gives it all away. Click language is from the heart, a spontaneous, hard to control thing. Click language betrays. Marek’s hesitation said it all: he did not know where Harmony was. He did not know the way.

“!¡
faltering | exposed
¡! It’s a city,” he continued. “An ancient city, dominated by ten towers. A city of spires and blocks, much of it ruined over time, but with the core kept in good repair by its current occupants. A city set in the mountains to the east–”

“!¡
derisory | triumphant
¡! So you’re telling us we are heading for a city that is...
somewhere
?” demanded Herald. “That’s the best you can do? A city set in the mountains. I see no mountains! Does anyone see any mountains?”

“!¡
calm | reasoning
¡! If we see no mountains, then clearly we haven’t travelled far enough to the east,” I said.

“!¡
hostile
¡! Or it could just mean that you’re pursuing a myth.”

I turned to Saneth, and said, “!¡
respectful
¡! Lauded one... you’ve been leading us on this journey. Where do we go now? How much longer will it be? How far is it to the mountains? What do the maps in your head tell you? What’s in the wires?”

Saneth swivelled that false eye to look at me and dipped her-his upper body.

And suddenly I knew that we had lost.

“!¡
deference to junior scholar
¡! We are old,” said Saneth. “Very old. !¡
defiant
¡! But we know what is true, and we know that Harmony is the one place where your kind can find its destiny.”

“!¡
pressing
¡! Where
is
it?” I asked.

Saneth’s eye swivelled downwards. “!¡
factual reporting
¡! It is set among a band of mountains variously called in your terms the White Mountains or the Snake Belt or the Curl, after their colour or the shape they make on a map.”

“!¡
pressing
¡! So how do we get there...?” I asked.

“!¡
timid | deferential
¡! It is to the east...”

Saneth didn’t know.

“!¡
loss of status
¡! This lauded one is old,” said the chlick. “This lauded one is weak. This lauded one is dying.” Saneth reached for her-his false eye, plucked it from its socket and held it high, as if surveying the gathering. “Without this we are blind. Our senses fail us. This one has no maps in our head. This one has no links to the All, no means of locating and orienting and directing, guided from beyond. All that this one has is in memories and learning, and in that alone this one has the knowledge that we must seek Harmony.”

Saneth’s voice had dwindled to a whisper. “This lauded one is weak,” she-he concluded. “This lauded one is what you see and no more.”

A silence followed as we absorbed this.

A silence broken by Herald. “!¡
triumphal | contemptuous
¡! So here we are,” he said. “Seeking a city we have no proof even exists, a city of rumour, a city of desperate fantasy. Guided by a creature who does not even know the way... Can anyone really argue in favour of blindly following this course? Can any of you even–”

“I know the way.”

Herald fell silent.

The voice: small, hesitant. Up the slope, where Saneth stood, now Hope stood too. She looked like a frightened animal, about to bolt.

“I know the way,” she said again. “To Harmony. I’ve seen it. A city of ten towers, four of them coiled like whirlygig seeds. A spaceship hanging above it. A beam of light from the ship to the tallest of the towers. The rest of the city is blocks of buildings – three, four, five storeys high – some with smaller spires and towers. Much of the city is abandoned, in ruins.

“Beyond the city there are mountains, white in the sun. And a river runs down from the mountains and through the city, its banks cut in straight lines. It is the river that runs through Laverne and meets the sea at Angiere. Harmony is where the river runs down from the mountains. To find Harmony, we follow the river.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

H
OPE.
S
HE HAD
so much in her head, and she was only now coming to know it.

She had found herself on this journey, with this strange array of people, and all that she knew, all that she really knew in her heart, was that Harmony was a place she needed to be. The city’s name was like a prayer, like a drug. It calmed the chorus of voices in her head. It gave her peace. She knew that the city was real, and she knew that it was good.

And so she had walked by day and slept in my arms at night, and she had slipped out of my embrace every morning to watch the sun rise in the east, the direction we were headed in.

She did not know what to make of me, other than knowing that my presence also calmed the voices, and so must be a good thing. I did not press myself upon her, as Marek and others had done. As Marek would still like to do: she saw his looks, and she understood the barely-masked messages behind his words whenever he spoke to her. She found me gentle and funny, two things I would never have have seen in myself. She was at her most peaceful with my arms around her at night.

There was one night, as we passed from cultivated, managed landscape into the wild lands that brought us to our debating place, when I was on watch and she had slept alone, as was her way, a little apart from the others, belonging to neither the Hays nor the Virtues.

Her head was singing, alive, and she could not settle, so instead she lay on her back on the stony ground and stared at the stars. Each one of them, she knew, had planets like Earth, and on these planets there were beings capable of lying on the ground and staring at the stars and wondering at the scale of it all. Even as she watched, a spark of light traced across the sky. A starship, or a satellite, or some other alien artefact.

She heard a scuff of a foot in the dirt nearby and then Marek was by her, squatting on his haunches, one hand resting on the ground to support him.

With his other he reached out, ran a finger down her jaw, her neck, hooking it into the top of her leather tunic. His fingernail was sharp against her skin.

She tried to move, but his finger kept her in place.

She did not want this. It made her head swirl and fill with angry voices. He had fucked her enough times in Angiere for it not to be a shock to her that he wanted to do it now, but she did not want it, did not want him.

“No,” she said, but he ignored her, freeing the top two buttons of her top, sliding a hand inside to squeeze her breast so hard that she gasped.

On his knees now, with his other hand he fumbled at his trousers, loosened them, and she watched as he grew hard.

She shifted, and took his slender dick in her hand.

With her other hand she reached down to her waist, to her belt, to where she kept her knife.

She held him tight and she held her knife to him so that he felt its hard edge, and she felt him suddenly go soft.

“!¡
panic | fear
¡! No...” he said, and the roar of voices in her head fell silent and she thought that they wanted her to cut, but she didn’t. She let go, and Marek scrambled away on all fours and then up on his feet, and the next day he walked as far away from her as possible, and she wondered if that was it, done, or if this was only the start of something.

I
T WAS A
time to confront demons for Hope, and one of her demons spoke in a soft whispery voice and had grey-green skin that hung in folds and ruts, etched with age. One of her demons was the ancient, one-eyed chlick she had first encountered at the Anders Bars Infirmary.

She had thought the chlick to be some kind of doctor, or scientist, visiting her, prodding and poking at her with strange implements, doing things with lights and jelly pads and wires that did things inside her head, filled her with colour and sound and scent.

That morning... the morning after the night when she had come close to cutting Marek’s penis from his scrawny body, she walked with Saneth, and she confronted the ancient chlick, asking, “What were you doing there? At the hospital near Angiere? Why did you keep me in a locked room and do those things to me? Why did you put the voices into my head?”

The chlick’s false eye turned to her. “!¡
teaching junior scholar
¡! This lauded one did not put voices into the scholar pup’s head,” she-he said. “This lauded one knew of the scholar pup’s nature and was impelled by our nature of being to learn more.”

“You imprisoned me.”

“!¡
factual reporting
¡! This lauded one did not !¡
ambiguous
¡! imprison the scholar pup,” said Saneth, before adding: “This lauded one chose not to release the scholar pup. Such judgements are made.”

They passed along a narrow trail, a pair of parallel ruts cut into the ground by the passage of wheeled vehicles, although that must be an occasional thing, judging by how overgrown the trail was. To either side, trees stood stark, their trunks bare where they emerged from the undergrowth, with no leaves until the canopy, some distance above them.

Hope didn’t like the woods. She felt exposed. She hugged herself, her skin goosebumping. She knew the chlick could talk rings round her if it chose to, and so she fell silent for a while.

“You said my ‘nature’,” she tried, after a time. “What’s in my head... is that what you mean?”

“!¡
approval of junior scholar
¡! What is it that is in the scholar pup’s head?”

Hope took time to think.
Voices
was the obvious answer, but was that what the chlick wanted her to say? “A presence,” she said, finally. “Presences. Always there, but when they rise up it feels like I’m being crowded out of my own head and I might get lost. Sometimes quiet, sometimes so loud it hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Sometimes they guide me. When I try to listen to them, like Dodge told me to. Steering me. Helping me decide what to do and where to go. That’s what’s in my head. That’s what it feels like.”

“!¡
approving
¡! Inside the head of the scholar pup is another world,” said Saneth. “!¡
factual reporting | awed
¡! Inside the head of the scholar pup is the essence of your kind, the
essences
. Everything that it is to be human. Your brain is like a connection to the Great All, a connection to the sum total of your kind, but that connection is to something within. !¡
frustrated | inarticulate
¡! The essence of the scholar pup’s kind is held within. Within the pup’s mind.”

Hope stared at the wrinkled alien. “People in my head?” she said, struggling to grasp what she was being told. “You put lots of people in my head?”

“!¡
disappointed | frustrated
¡! Not people,” said Saneth. “A species. All that is your kind. And no, this lauded one did not put them there, this lauded one merely studied what it is that the scholar pup is.”

“What am I?” asked Hope. “What did you find when you kept me imprisoned... when you did not set me free and studied me instead?”

“!¡
struggling to articulate
¡! In your head there is the summation of your kind,” said the chlick. “In your head there is the distilled essence of your kind. It is where your kind’s story has been told. In your head there is the spark of another world, an All for your kind. That is what this lauded one found. That is what has been sung in your head.”

S
HE WALKED, AND
she tried to let it all sink in, tried to understand. She carried humankind in her head. Little wonder that it felt crowded. Little wonder that they sometimes drowned out what it was that was
her
.

This was what had been sung in her head. Did Saneth mean that a starsinger had done this to her? She knew that Skids had spent time with a starsinger in Laverne, and so later that day she fell into stride alongside him.