by Diane Duane
“And well met,” the Stationmaster said, as if under its breath, “on the journey.”
Rho half-turned, both delighted to be saluted with the Avedictory for the very first time, and bemused by the tone, which sounded as if the being for some reason didn’t usually care to be heard using it. But the Stationmaster was already threading its way off among the bluesteel tubes toward some other data input pad.
Standing there in the bustle of the open concourse, Rho paused, then shrugged a hand and headed for the 200 gates.
***
The observation deck was not (as Rho had half hoped) a solitary experience. People were transiting into the small dedicated landing space almost constantly, and no sooner had Rho himself appeared there than the hex under his feet was flashing and vibrating to tell him to get off it.
He spared this no more than a moment’s notice, though, and simply did as the gating hex wanted him to… because immediately upon appearing out in the open Rho was half deafened by the untempered roar of what he’d come up here to hear.
The broad space around Rho was quite barren—the solid roof of this building paved in the same shining white floor-substrate as the interior spaces of the Crossings, and devoid of any kind of furniture. Visiting beings who’d already left the landing area were wandering about across the wide expanse, some of them pressed up against the forcefields at the edges of the roof and gazing out at the broad cityscape beyond, a low spiky forest of glass and blue-metal towers, spilling nearly to the horizon in all directions.
But Rho wasn’t interested in the landscape. Indeed he barely noticed it as he slowly moved out into the center of that wide space and stood still, his face turned up toward the sky. His senses were already being overwhelmed by light and sound—or at least what his mind and body insisted on experiencing as sound. The voice of Rirhath B’s great star was all around him, tearing through the atmosphere in pulsing waves of ionizing radiation and splashing into him, the sleet of its neutrons tearing ceaselessly through him and everything else in their path. Even here, three times as far away as Wellakh was from its primary, the intensity of the star’s actinic light set the cloud cover above nearly on fire with green-white fluorescence. Even the great depth and density of Rirhath B’s atmosphere could stop only so much of the incoming torrent of brute power.
Rho stood there and just let the vast deafening blast of power wash over him. What the star was saying wasn’t so much spoken as shouted. He had yet to hear Thahit itself in this way, but by comparison it would surely seem like a whisper. Trembling in the downpouring onslaught of light and other radiation, Rho felt tempted to laugh at his desire to commune with something so vast and insensately powerful. But I’m a wizard now, he thought, and I’ve always wanted to do this, so now that I can—
Still, he was shy about it, and briefly put the moment off. After all, he had an excuse. Listen before you talk, his father always said. So Rho stood there with his eyes closed—not needing mere physical sight for what he was doing—and listened for some minutes more, trying to hear patterns; established and carefully-monitored pattern being the heart of the business of stellar management.
The star itself for all its ravening power was actually quite settled. Its own well-established cycles beat through it, as easily felt for Rho now as a Wellakhit pulse. The sound of multimillennial certainty was wound deep into them. This star’s changing cycles of magnitude and other radiation output had remained steady for tens of thousands of centuries. If he got any information about them from the blast of data pouring down on him, it was a sense of business-as-usual about it. Maintenance isn’t anything this star needs, he thought. Which was a relief: the sheer power of it would have made its management a challenging task.
But Rho kept on listening because doing so felt sheerly ravishing—though he could hardly bear the intensity of what he felt. Everything’s changing, he thought. Just yesterday I probably couldn’t have borne this. Even the Speech still hurt sometimes…
He had been so small when he first began to learn the Speech from his parents as a language of discourse, and first found out how it was not to be able to bear something. Rho had learned the words readily enough, but all through that early time he’d felt as if something was wrong with them, something was missing. The glances he’d caught his parents sharing over his head had meant nothing to him then.
Now of course he knew what they’d been thinking. Sometimes young ones destined for wizardry could feel the lack of the enacture property in the stripped-down version of the Speech that served merely for communication. Mostly this was seen as a positive indicator, a sign of good things to come. But at the time Rho didn’t feel positive about it at all. Every time he said a word in the Speech he could feel something itching at the back of his head, trying to happen. And the older he got without wizardry being offered him, the more he and his parents independently began to fear that it never would be. Seeing how it troubled them when he talked about his discomfort, Rho learned to keep to himself this sense that the whole world was saying to him every day, You are incomplete, there’s something missing about you and you’ll never make it right!
But he also kept silent about his distress because he’d begun to understand the looks the courtiers and staff leveled at him on the days when he complained openly about the emptiness of the Speech. The officers and politicians attached to the royal household were starting to perceive him as potentially a permanent non-wizard, and therefore both a liability and a tool or weapon that might be used against the King or Queen.
Horrified, Rho quickly schooled himself to start acting “normal”. He worked to move with an imitation of his mother’s certainty or his father’s grace, and to keep his face very still… like someone completely untroubled. The effort of it was endlessly wearying, and it hurt him—though not so much as the thought of endangering the King and Queen would have. And if Rho seemed intent on making sure that every word proceeding from his mouth where other people could hear was in Kings’-speak, the formal recension of south-continent Wellakhit spoken in the court by everyone who lived or worked there, well, he was content to let them think he was being studious about the official language… not that whenever possible he was avoiding the other because speaking it hurt.
Now, though…! Now he stood out under the light of a stranger-sun, gazing up at it, his eyes watering a bit—not even a Royal-house Wellakhit could look unblinking at such a ferocious star—and was able to say to it, without any pain at all, “Dai stiho, mighty cousin: how do you do?”
It took a little while for an answer to come back. Stars have business of their own, and even thought takes a bit of time to travel such a distance. But Rho felt himself regarded from that distance—stars notice when they are noticed—and after a little, the answer came back, vast, leisurely, and thoughtful: I, Kishif, burn. And what of you?
Rho shivered all over at the sound—or the feeling in his bones—of a piece of the living world speaking to him; and a huge piece at that, gigantic almost beyond grasping and crammed with raw power. “I, uh,” he said. …And Rho laughed at himself. There he was, the son of the Sunlord of Wellakh, reduced once more to grunting.
“Kishif my cousin,” he said in the Speech, “I burn as well. If much more slowly.”
Long may it be so, Kishif said.
“And for you also,” said Rho.
For a little while he stood there while beings of many species walked and scuttled and slid and floated around him, paying him little or no attention, and he and Kishif chatted—if so small a word as “chat” can be applied to a conversation with a star—about how her atmosphere was feeling and whether the SunTap power source rooted in it was irking Kishif at all, and what Rho was doing there. Kishif inquired politely enough how her very distant cousin Thahit was doing (for regardless of the preconceptions of smaller beings, stars are highly social creatures and can easily tell when a wizard has been collegially affiliated, even sporadically or at a distance, with another stellar body).
Rho told her in a general way how Thahit was getting on—having the pattern data from the simulator to judge by—while trying to bear up against the immensity of the physical and mental reality of the tremendous being he was dealing with, the great weight and age of her. They spent a while asking and answering, Kishif apparently attempting to get a better feeling for the difficulties and challenges of an unstable star, Rho trying to clarify matters without becoming too specific (for it occurred to him that he wouldn’t like to violate Thahit’s privacy). And it was only when Rho’s skin began to feel a bit hot that he realized that this discussion should probably be brought to a close, as his hereditary internal shielding against ultraviolet could only do so much about exposure to a blue-white giant.
“Most excellent Kishif,” he said, “with regret, I think I must retire.”
The response took a few moments to come back. Yes, of course, you’ve much to do, Kishif said, Starsnuffer to foil, the usual sort of thing. Come back again when you’ve got matters sorted… And she trailed off in a huge offhand mutter (or shouted mutter) of power and turned her attention to something apparently pertaining to her corona.
Rho blinked and staggered a little as he came back to full consciousness of what was going on around him. It’s not really that easy, he thought, talking to stars. Even when they’re well-balanced and friendly… Suddenly he understood why his royal father looked so wrung out and weary sometimes when he came back in from Sunplace’s highest terrace, where he went to work with Thahit alone.
***
“Are you all right?” said a voice from right behind him.
Hastily Rho turned and found himself looking at another hominid. There was no telling what world it came from—no surprise, in a facility this large. The hominid was a biped like him, and four-limbed; its hair was much shorter than his, and its skin was a peculiar sort of pale pink color. It had longer-than-shoulder-length hair that was surprisingly close to the red-gold color of his father’s, and it was dressed in a tightly-woven one-piece garment with a surprising number of pockets all over it.
The being had spoken to him in the Speech, and so he responded in the same. “Yes,” he said. “I was thinking of going in: the heat is beginning to be an issue.”
“Just the heat?” the being said, and laughed. “How are you even out here without a protective suit?”
“Well, how are you so?” Rho said, looking the being over. “I can see none.”
The stranger reached into a pocket and did something with one hand: twiddled a control, perhaps. Around it a faint skin of pale rosy light could now be seen shivering. “New model,” the being said. “Selective plasma sine/wavicle occultation.”
“Oh indeed,” Rho said, interested. That was a fairly advanced technology, one of many to come out of the research-and-development side of the Interconnect Project—one of many ways to do small-scale shielding on planets that needed temporary protection from their stars. “I didn’t know they had spun out personal implementations of that already.”
“Put enough valuta behind it and things happen faster,” the being said, and flashed a slightly mercenary smile at him. “Saw some news feed that said the tourist authority based here commissioned them for travelers passing through to rent.”
“Handy,” Rho said. “Such would certainly make it easier for visitors to visit other sites of interest on the planet.”
“True,” the being said. “I guess there must be some. They probably get a little tired of being in the Crossings’ shadow all the time.”
Rho tilted his head in agreement while saying in thought to his Aethyr, Can you tell me who this may be?
Privacy lock obtains, said one of the Aethyr’s many voices, a dryly informational one. Genetically of the stream of hominid heritage widespread in the Tashammeh Arm of the galaxy, said another.
In the back of his mind Rho was promptly shown a map of his home galaxy, concentrated on a region just beyond the spur arm in which Rirhath B was located. A series of bright pointers flashed into existence, displaying numerous starsystems in that area. Sexual cognate: species-orthodox female. Species: Archanin with post-initial species diaspora genetic alterations. Physiology type BCAIFDFEHH. The ten-character descriptor system that Rho knew well from his father’s interstellar consulting work would break down into numerous subtypes, but he didn’t need to get into that right this minute: “oxygen-breathing land-dwelling hominid” summed it up well enough.
Public-information data stored in the Crossings transit system shows a recent origin here, said another voice, and one of the congeries of stars scattered across that view pulsed softly. Its label said Phaleron, and the view pushed in to illustrate the three hominid-inhabitable worlds in the system, a singleton planet and a two-world gravitically-conjoined pair—
“Sorry,” the being said. “Did I say something wrong?”
Rho blinked and realized he was going to have to remember that normal people would have no idea he was communing with the Aethyrs, and the being— The Archaint, he corrected himself. She. —wouldn’t have been out of line if she’d taken offense. “No, not at all,” he said, “apologies, I’m still—adjusting.” He didn’t feel a need right this moment to say what he was adjusting to.
“Oh,” she said, and smiled again. “Good, I wouldn’t want to offend anybody when I’d hardly just got here.”
“Not at all.” He’d long been schooled not to smile too readily at people he’d just met, but this once, for an alien, he didn’t see a point in being overly stringent about it, and returned her smile.
Present intrapersonal emotional/intentional dynamic: curious, said one of his Aethyr’s quieter background voices, so quiet that Rho almost missed it. Overtly interested. Distress level: medium.
Rho blinked at that. Most of the Aethyr’s voices seemed more assertive about expressing themselves. This one he had to strain a bit to hear. Not always easy when all this data is vying for my attention. I’m going to have to learn how to filter everything down… Meanwhile, show some interest, for pity’s sake, don’t be self-centered! “You’re perhaps between transits on your way to somewhere else?”
“Uh, no, not as such. I was looking for someone, and not finding her, and I needed a break. Came up here for some fresh air.”
He had to laugh at that, as it took a very specific type of physiology to consider Rirhath B’s air “fresh”. “I mean,” she said, “in life these days you get used to being stuck inside so often, that outside is kind of a treat…”
There was an odd thread of sorrow behind her words. Lonely, Rho thought. She sounds lonely… If there was a tone of voice Rho knew, it was that one. “If you’ve had enough of the freshness,” he said, “perhaps you want to come back inside with me. I had thought some refreshment might be pleasant.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” she said. The expression she was now wearing, if she’d been a Wellakhit, was one that would have suggested she was trying to master herself emotionally. “And I’ve got some time to spare. Let’s go in—”
She paused, then laughed. “I don’t even know your name.”
Even at this distance from home, old habits learned on Wellakh meant he was not going to give a chance-met stranger more detail than necessary. “Rho.”
“I’m Avseh. Let’s go in, Rho.”
***
Directly across from the 200 gate hexes was an open-seating area provided with what looked like every kind of seating furniture known to sentience, as well as a smart-floor area that would create custom seating for you on the fly. At the kiosk, Rho spent some moments of bewilderment trying to get to grips with the huge range of offerings laid out on the menu displayed across the surface of the counter. Finally he chose a flavored water with tailored additives that analyzed your body chemistry as you drank, so that the water shifted its aromatic-ester composition as you ingested it to a flavor state described by the advertising described as “nonstimulating and mildly agreeable”.
“Only mildly?” Avseh said, tapping the
image of some sort of pink juice drink and then pausing to dig around in the carrybag she wore slung over one shoulder.
“I wouldn’t like to overdo it so early in the day,” Rho said as he dug around in his pocket for one of his own credit plaques.
“Oh, no, no, Emissary,” said the Rirhait as it waved at the drinks disposer and floated the containers up to the counter. “The charge is handled.”
“What?”
It wreathed a few eyes at him in amusement. “The system sensed your instrumentality as soon as you walked up. Your charge and your companion’s went on the the Crossings infrastructure account as per usual. Unless you require a charge reversal—”
“Ah, no, of course not. My thanks.”
“Not at all, Emissary,” said the Rirhait behind the counter, and waved all its upper legs at him in a good-natured way as it turned back to its work.
Rho discovered as they took their drinks and walked over to their seats that he was actually trembling with the residual thrill caused at being so addressed by a being who had never seen him before and might never see him again, but nonetheless recognized him as a wizard. It was heady stuff.
He realized Avseh was staring at him as they sat down. “Um, sorry,” Rho said hurriedly, “did I do something culturally unacceptable, perhaps you would have preferred to pay for that—”
“What? No! But—you’re one of them?”
“‘Them?’”
“A wizard.” She went unusually pink in the face.
“Yes,” Rho said, and did his best to keep his disbelief at being able to say it out of his voice. He kept feeling as if one of the Aethyrs might suddenly descend in glory from more central regions and announce that there had been a horrible clerical error and Rho wasn’t meant to be a wizard after all. But no, surely they’d never be so cruel—
“Really,” Avseh said, looking at him strangely.
“Yes, really. And since you recognize me, your world then is one where the Great Art is practiced in the open?”
