Watchstar (9 page)

They drew together. Their minds flew out, held to their bodies by a cord of light. They touched terror and knew it was Sude. They drew back and were inside their bodies again.

Daiya pointed to a lump on the horizon.—He's behind that rock—she thought.—He knows we've found him—

—What do we do now—Harel asked.

—I'll go to him—Daiya responded.—I'll speak to him on the way. If he still refuses, fine, but at least we'll have tried—

She started toward Sude, sending a tendril of thought before her. She touched his mind, faint and distant. She clung to him, feeling him struggle. She held him as tightly as she could.—Sude! Why are you doing this?—

His wall was up; he was resisting her.

—Sude! You'll die out here!—

—I'll die anyway—he answered weakly.

—If you face your ordeal, you'll have a chance—she replied.—But you can't survive out here, alone. The Merging Ones will seek you out in time, and no other village would welcome you—She wondered if others had tried to escape the ordeal; she had never heard of any doing so. That must mean that those who had tried were dead.

His mind shook as she held it. His fear had stripped away his self-respect and his reason. She was holding a wild animal. She kept walking toward him, feeling her energy seep away as she clutched his mind. Claws dug into her brain.—I won't let you do this to yourself, Sude—she cried.—You must return—

Her nerves burned. He fought her; she fell to the ground, still grasping him. She felt him sigh. She held a limp and empty mind. She looked up and saw a small figure on the horizon near the rock, a tiny, defeated creature.—You're coming back—she sighed, relieved.

—You're determined to kill me, aren't you, Daiya—His words stabbed her.—Once you loved me, I'll try to remember that when I die. I can't fight you—

—Don't think that way—

—I'm a coward, I finally found that out, and cowards don't survive ordeals—He threw up his wall.

She sat up, wrapping her arms around herself, and waited for him. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up. Mausi stood there, frowning—I'm just as frightened as Sude is—the blonde girl thought.

—You didn't run away—

—What would be the point—Mausi asked.—Anyway, he's coming back, that has to count for something. The Merged One was testing him—She turned and walked back to the others, sitting down next to Oren.

The figure approaching her was growing larger. She realized her hands were shaking; she tucked them into her sleeves. She was worse off than Sude; she would have to face her trial with a dark spot still in her mind. It tempted her, infecting her with a desire to set herself above others, making her impatient with the arts of persuasion. She had tried to command her companions instead of reaching a consensus with them, wasting strength in battles with Peloren, who had the same flaw. She had forced her will on Sude.

She reached out quickly as he drew nearer, touching his mind. She felt him recoil.—Sude—she thought,—God was testing you, that is all. One who overcomes great fear is stronger in the end than one who never feels it. You must believe that—

He did not respond, but his wall was still down.

—It's true—she continued.—Look at me, Sude, you know my flaws, they are graver faults than yours. I believe you'll live—She gave the thought as much conviction as she could.

He put up his wall then and she could not tell whether or not he believed her. She got up and went back to the others. They sat silently, sacks tied to their backs, conserving their strength. She sat next to Harel, leaning against him as he put his arm around her. Her mind was divided, part of her wanting to stop time and keep things as they were, the other part wanting to be done with the ordeal.

And then Sude was with them again, too quickly. She shook her head and rose. Her eyes met Sude's; he turned away, his mouth twisting.

They stood together, then began to arrange themselves, circling one another, jostling and stomping until they were ready. They stood in a circle facing out, making sure no one would be traveling in the direction they had all taken here. Daiya was facing south; she oriented herself, fixing the direction in her mind. She would have to be able to find her way back, although that should not be difficult; they could always link minds during the return trip, guiding one another.

They stepped out, their paths the spokes of a wheel as they set out across the desert.

By evening, Daiya had traveled far. She had moved at a steady pace, glad that her hood and dark skin protected her face from the sun. The mountains had grown larger again; she was moving south, they ran southeast. She squinted, gauging the distance as she walked; the mountain range was curving a bit to the west of her; she would soon be walking parallel to it.

She had not sensed the minds of the other young people all day. Even Harel had been silent. Like her, the others were probably saving their strength. She was beginning to wonder why the passage was called an ordeal; a task, perhaps an effort. Except for the desert silence, the alien environment, it was not much worse than the times she had gone out alone to train. She gritted her teeth. It was not over yet; it could get much worse, in time.

Her stomach rumbled. She stopped near a cactus and opened it, her mind forcing her knife through the hard surface. She removed some of its water, shaped it into a ball, and brought it to her lips. She swallowed, then sealed the plant.

She went on, thinking about the village, longing for it. The Net nestled against her. She imagined herself returning home. There would be no feast then, just a quiet celebration with her family and one last night in her parents’ hut before she left it the next day for her own home. There were always a few empty huts. Usually the young people clustered together in a few of them, waiting until they decided on partners, courting one another. She and Harel would not have to wait.

She pondered this for a moment as she walked, wondering if she wanted to live with Harel right away. The doubt surprised her; she had never felt it before. Out of all the boys in the village, she had always been closest to him. His love had never wavered, even when she was infatuated with Sude; he had known that was a passing thing. She could not imagine feeling the same way about anyone else, so there was no point in waiting. Harel was good for her, and they would have a chance to grow together before beginning to raise their children.

She searched her mind: you're afraid because you won't ever be alone again, your thoughts and his will intertwine, you won't have those solitary moments to yourself. The words chilled her. It was true, and another reason why she should not wait, should not give herself a chance to indulge in that vice any more.

She tried to clear her head as she walked. This was not a time to think about separateness, or to invent worries about an uncertain future she might not live to see.

She stopped, looking around for a place to rest. It was light enough to walk a bit farther, but she wanted to stop, eat a bit of food, go to sleep. She did not want to be awake when the stars appeared, when the comet was visible, when dread came over her against her will. She sat down, took off her sack, and ate two figs, washing them down with a little wine. She would get up earlier tomorrow, make up the distance she had not traveled.

She reclined, resting her head on the sack, cooling her body until the air seemed warmer and her mind more sluggish. She drifted off; she moved between two cliffs, there was something unknown ahead, something dark and alien, cold and metallic, reaching for her with tentacles. She pushed past it and plunged into unconsciousness.

The sun was high. Daiya's shadow had shrunk, hiding under her feet. Her mouth was dry, her throat gritty. She gazed at the flat ground. She was a speck, exposed to everything. There was no place to stop, no shade, nowhere to hide.

Suddenly she was frightened. She saw herself sitting here for days, burned by Heaven's Fire, using up strength bit by bit just to keep herself alive, waiting for the moment when she would have to return to the others, and not knowing how she would know it. This would be an ordeal after all.

She gazed at the mountains. They were smaller; the range now twisted to the southwest. She tried to compose herself, slowing her heart, steadying her stomach. Her breathing was even. She turned toward the south. Desolation was before her.

Something bulged at the horizon. She squinted as she looked. The black spot grew larger, moving in her direction. Her heart thumped more rapidly. She climbed to her feet, watching the thing grow as it sped along near the ground. She felt terror; her insides twisted, making her gasp. It was a sign, part of the ordeal, it had to be. It came nearer. She saw its long runners, the dark dome over the metal body.

She screamed. Claws ripped at her brain as if tearing it in two. The dark spot flared into brightness as the suppressed past burst inside her and she remembered. The vehicle hovered near her. She threw up her hands, recalling Reiho. She was on fire. She screamed again, unable to bear it. The sandy ground rushed toward her as she fell.

8

Cool air bathed Daiya's face. A smooth curved surface pressed against her back; something warm rested over her body. She let out a moan and felt something against her lips. Water trickled into her mouth. She swallowed and opened her eyes.

The sky above her was deep blue, the sun dimmer. She blinked, trying to focus. She lowered her eyes; a silver sheet covered her. She raised herself slowly on an elbow, seeing before her a panel of small glassy gems surrounding a bare metal surface. She turned her head.

Reiho was next to her. She was inside his vehicle. She groaned and sat up, her head swimming. She thrust out her hands, pressing them against the cold surfaces of the craft. She was trapped, imprisoned. Her muscles tightened. She pushed against the surface to her right. It slid open and she fell toward the ground, into the heat, her head hitting her sack, which lay next to the craft.

She stumbled to her feet. Reiho was climbing out after her. She retreated, throwing her hands in front of her face. She cried out with both mind and voice. The desert swallowed the cry; Reiho's mind was deaf to her. He halted, swaying uncertainly from side to side like a reed.

She clutched her head; blood pounded through it. The Net glimmered; the shock of her memory's return had shaken it. She knew what the Merging Ones must be thinking: the desert had crushed her, she would die during the ordeal, maybe even before it took place. That was all that they could think. Had they caught a glimpse of Reiho, of his mind's solitude, they would see him only as an illusion, a symbol of Daiya's despair, an image of death.

His lips moved. He was speaking. She heard sounds, and tried to grasp them. She concentrated, attempting to understand him.

“I came back to explore the mountains,” he said. “I thought that there I would be far from any of your people. Then the sensors in my craft showed me there were people in the desert. I waited until you were away from the others. I thought you might need help.”

She dug her nails into her palms. Fire burned her bones. She shook; the pain in her head grew worse. The villagers were right; he was an illusion. If she gave in to it, she would die. She might die anyway.

“I told you I would kill you if you came back,” she screamed.

His eyes narrowed at her words. His hands became fists. He said, “I meant no harm.” It sounded like a threat.

“You're not going to destroy me,” she cried. She seized him, bound him with mental bonds, and lifted him high in the air with all her strength. She shook him as hard as she could while spinning him like a pinwheel. Then she threw him, dashing him against the ground.

He lay still for a moment. Then, slowly, he got up. His skin was unscratched, his bones apparently unfractured. She searched the desert frantically and saw an outcropping of stone not far away. She grabbed him again, raising him high, and threw him against the stone. Slowly he rose again; even his silver clothing was not torn. He staggered toward her, dizzy but uninjured.

Raging, Daiya went to him, seizing him with her hands. She glared into his eyes and punched him in the side. He blinked. She felt the solidity of his muscles. Her fingers hurt. She struck him again. He blocked her, grabbed her wrist, and with a twist threw her to the side. She grabbed his ankle and pulled. He fell on his backside, rolled, and sprang to his feet.

She got up. She reached inside his mind, gripping it, slowing his breathing and his heartbeat. She would make him die, she would kill him even if the effort killed her as well.

She squeezed his mind; her mental tendrils became claws clutching a wriggling mass. Then she felt his pain and fear:
why are you doing this to me, what have I done, stop, please stop
. He was not a stone, he was not an illusion. Deep inside him, she felt a person, a consciousness not unlike her own. She was becoming a murderer.

She withdrew. The boy fell to the ground and lay still. For a moment, she thought she had killed him after all. Then he stirred and opened his eyes, struggling to sit up. She searched him, expecting him to strike out at her; she prepared to dodge the blow. But even now she could not find hostility and hatred in him, only fear, bewilderment, and a stubborn determination.

She sank to her knees, sitting on her heels. Her eyes stung and she blinked away tears.

He caught his breath, filling his lungs with air. She searched her mind for words. At last she said, “You should not have come back. This is my time, my ordeal, don't you understand? You will kill me, you may kill my friends just by being here.”

“I mean no harm.”

“It doesn't matter whether you do or not. Perhaps the Merged One sent you here to test me, and I have failed, for I see you as a person and not a thing.” She waved an arm. Her voice and mind raced on, babbling. “I have thicker walls than others, I have a separate spot in my mind and soul, so God must test me more harshly than others. I should kill you, and I can't.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed hopelessly.

She felt his hand on her shoulder. He had crawled over to her. She pushed the hand away. She swallowed and wiped her face with her sleeve as she watched him.

“Is killing all you can think about?” he said. “You speak to me, and when I try to understand, you threaten me.”

“You do not belong here.”

“I could have killed you when I first came here. It was hard at first to see you as human, you looked so like a beast.”

She glared at him. She could not reply.

“Why did you faint when you saw me again?” he asked. “You were in shock when I picked you up. Luckily, I was able to restore you quickly. Perhaps I should not have bothered.” He raised his head, pointing with his chin.

“I had erased you from my mind,” she answered. “It was the only way I could keep knowledge of you from my village. But the old ones, the Merging Selves, saw I had a dark spot in my mind, though they could not see what it contained since I no longer held that knowledge consciously. Even then, they could have torn it from me, but they chose not to do that. What I did was a great sin. I held a secret. Now you are back, and God is showing me that there cannot be secrets, that I shall be punished.” She stared at the sandy ground. “I am condemned.”

“I don't understand,” Reiho said. “I am like you, my people and your people were once the same. Look inside my mind, I think and feel and live. It cannot be wrong to communicate with another, however different he may seem. You may fail often, but you must try.”

“It is wrong for us. You bring separateness into the world, you are divided from it, you live in the sky, you cannot mindspeak.” She picked up a small sharp stone and seized his hand, drawing the sharp edge across it. The rock made no mark. She threw it down. “Even your body is apart from the world.”

His mouth twisted. He raised an eyebrow. “You are wrong. Think a moment, think. You speak of separateness, you say it is a wrong; that is what your word sin means, isn't it?” Dimly she noticed that he spoke more fluently, without the hesitation she remembered. “Yet you willingly hold yourselves apart from my people, you divide yourselves from us, deny that you should speak to us, and think we should be killed. That cannot be right.”

“You twist things,” she cried desperately, almost believing him.

“I do not. It follows from what you have told me.”

She wrung her hands.

“We are human beings too. We are from Earth, our history tells us that, our records.”

She shook her head, bewildered. “Our legends,” he went on. She nodded, understanding that word. “We fled into space, we could not stay here. Human beings had become divided, and we were being killed. Although we took much of our knowledge with us, our records of that time are scanty. We went out from the earth, past the outer planets, far into space. I do not know how to convey the distance to you, but it was very far.”

“Thousands of paces? Millions?” She tried to imagine such a distance.

“Billions of paces. We went to the region we call the Halo which surrounds this planetary system, an area with millions of comets. Because comets are made up of water and other elements life requires, we knew our biologists could make one habitable, and they did. We chose one whose orbit would take us back around the sun, though in time we learned how to make it follow a path of our choosing.”

“That is your myth?” she asked, unable to grasp most of it. There was no God in the myth; the people acted like gods.

“Our history. At first we dreamed of returning, but after making our home in space, we came to think of it as our abode. Some of our people did return to Earth at times, but none ever returned to us, and Homesmind told us these explorers had died here. After that, we traveled far, even beyond the Halo. This is the first time in over two thousand years that we have come back to this system.”

“Years?”

“A year, a cycle of the seasons, I think that is what you would say.”

She nodded.

“I am very ignorant,” he continued. “Others could have told you of these things in more detail. I must do more research.”

She looked at him, suddenly suspicious. “Have you told your people of us? Have you kept the secret?”

“I have tried. Homesmind knows, It deduced it from my questions, but It will not speak of it to others yet. I cannot keep it to myself forever.”

“Who is this Homesmind?”

“The mind of our home, the mind of our comet.”

“You make it sound like a god.”

He shook his head. “It is not that. We ourselves built it ages ago. It began as a cybernetic construct made up of parts of our ships, but It has grown in complexity and Its nerves run throughout our home. It runs our life support systems, It keeps our records and knowledge, It too is another being, not-human and yet very human in that we created It. It is based on our humanity.”

Daiya snorted. “You cannot build minds, only God can do that. We are all pieces of God.” She sat up straight and frowned at him; she could not accept his blasphemy. Either he was lying, and doing it well, since his surface thoughts did not betray him, or the Merged One was testing her, speaking through his lips or making her hear untruths.

He sighed, as if noticing her rejection of his words. “As I have said, I cannot keep this to myself forever. Etey already suspects something, she may find out what I am doing soon.”

“Who is Etey?” Daiya asked.

“I do not have the word in your language.”

“Is she your lover, your partner, your sister, what?”

“In a way, she is all of those, and a parent, and a teacher.”

“She is like you?”

“She is much older and wiser.”

Daiya got up and began to pace in front of him. She was being distracted; it was as if his words and the questions that kept rising in her were charms, feeding her curiosity, drawing her into forgetfulness and death. She stiffened in shock. She had, for a moment, forgotten why she was here in the desert, forgotten the ordeal. She stopped pacing and looked down at him. He was watching her calmly.

“You must go,” she said to him. “You must leave me. Do you want me to die because you are here?”

He rose. He put a hand on her shoulder and stared at her until she looked down.

“Do you understand?” she went on. “I shall speak to you no more, I must prepare myself. If you do not leave, and someone else finds you, you'll die. Another will not hesitate to kill you, others do not have my weakness. Leave me.”

His hand gripped hers. “I shall do what I must,” he responded. “I am here to learn what I can. What I discover may be important, more important perhaps than what might happen to me or to you. Perhaps this is my ... what is your word? My ordeal.”

She pulled away from him. “Then I leave you to God,” she said fiercely. “I pray that the Merged One will strike you. You had better leave.”

“I shall leave when I have satisfied my curiosity.”

“Your curiosity is uncontrolled. You will never feed it enough. Leave this world.”

She turned her back to him, oriented herself, and sat facing in the direction she had traveled, wondering again how she would know when it was time to return. She felt the boy's eyes on her, then heard his footsteps crunching against the ground. After a moment, she turned. He was getting back inside his vehicle. He settled himself on a seat, the door still open, and rummaged among his things.

He was ignoring her demand. Quickly she slid the door shut. She seized the vehicle with all her strength and hurled it up into the sky, pushing it, throwing it high. She watched it grow smaller until it was only a speck against the clear blue atmosphere. She pushed it until it was gone, beyond the reach of her power.

She pulled her sack to her side and took out the wine. Her hands shook as she opened it and drank. Reiho had drained her energy; she was weak. She reached for some meat and gnawed at it nervously. Her mind sagged, settling around her like an old tunic. She finished the meat and put the wine away; they could not restore her energy.

The Net hummed, tendrils pulling her away from herself. She swayed, giving in to the pull. Her mind lifted above her body. She was a small animal in the desert, her body slumping against the sack.

The Merging Ones sang and their words fluttered, indistinct and indecipherable. She was lifted higher and higher until the whole desert lay beneath her. Seven tiny specks, no bigger than plants, perhaps no more important, lay on the sand, far apart, yet bound to one another by pale tendrils of light.

She brushed against the minds of the others. They spun, twirling the strands of light, darting in and out, merging for a moment: she felt the confidence of Harel, the passion of Peloren, the gentleness of Mausi, the playfulness of Sude, the artful cleverness of Oren, the stolid persistence of Tasso, and her own willfulness. They were bound together now.

She saw the village, familiar yet strange. She stood by the river and saw tiny huts with mud bricks and straw roofs; the huts suddenly became larger and more solid. She traveled along a path which seemed both wide and narrow. She was seeing with the others, no longer sure of which vision was hers and which was someone else's. The village vanished. She and the others were fragments being thrown back inside their bodies.