He dipped low then, realized belatedly that he would have to feel her touch on his bare skin, but she was already brushing him with her thumb: a chrism, and beyond the oil he felt her powerfully: her sorrow, her resignation, the length and breadth of her perspective, supported by years of living, of loss and laughter and watching life.
“She thought you a kindred spirit,” she said, meeting his eyes. “And told me that it didn’t matter how old you were, and how young she was, that you shared something deeper than what you both seemed on the outside.”
And what came out of him was, “She was right.”
The old woman nodded and smeared the ashes on his brow. Then she turned and opened the box, holding it to the wind, and gently poured it onto a breeze that bore it away with the perfume of flowers. The congregants watched, their silent goodbyes so powerful Jahir could feel it like a wave of coolth, the pain of it given away, eroded.
After that, the first few participants began to leave. Jahir looked down from the hill, wondering where Nieve would gambol now with the wind. She would have delighted in it, he thought. To dance like some sylph of the season, bringing the scent of new blossoms to unexpected corners.
“This is what it’s like for you, isn’t it,” Berquist said. He had not noticed her coming to stand at his side; he glanced down at her and found her looking into the distance. The wind had tousled her hair, left it loose to frame her face: one of its strands had caught on the chrism on her brow, a line of gold against gray.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“This is what you can expect,” she said, and raised her face to study his. “To stand like this at the funerals of the people you let into your life.”
Had her voice been accusatory or pitying, he might have flinched. But she said it with all the trained distance of a healer-assist, who dealt with suffering and death every day. “I am afraid so,” he said after a moment.
She nodded and assayed a smile, faint and sad but honest. “You… oh, it would be so easy to fall in love with you. You’re gentle and mysterious and courteous like something out of a storybook and—God, yes, gorgeous too.” The sound she made would have been a laugh, had she given it more of herself. “But that’s what we’ll always be to you. A risk and a short road, and this waiting for you at the end. And anyone who loves you has to be okay with that. With what we’ll do to you when it’s over.”
He stared at her, unable to speak.
“And I can’t. I couldn’t do that to anyone,” she said. “But for the pleasure I had thinking about what it would be like… would it offend you if I said thank you?”
“No,” he said. And then, because she had made him a gift, a great gift, he said, “If I gave you a moment’s pleasure for so little cost, I am grateful.”
That made her laugh, and then cry a little also. She wiped her eyes and said, “See, there you go again.” Shaking her head, she said, “I’ll see you next week.”
“Indeed,” he said. And added, “Alet?”
She paused, and he held out his hand. Startled, she looked at it, then up at him, asking permission with her eyes. He left his hand open and waited, and at last she came close enough to rest her fingers in his. He was gloved, but he felt her: deeply, her regret, her pain that death came too quickly for everyone, her commitment to barring it and her guilt that she couldn’t, not often enough. He breathed through her sorrow until he could keep her hand without trembling, then brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them.
She rewarded him with a frisson of delight that pierced the gray veil over her emotions.
“Alet,” he said. And then, “Jill.”
She flushed and took her fingers back. And then inclined her head, resting her palm against her heart. “Lord Seni Galare.”
He watched her go, a bright figure against the green lawn, the sun gilding her hair, saw her brush the back of her hand tenderly against her cheek.
“Life goes on,” Nieve’s grandmother observed as she joined him. When he glanced at her, she said, “Remember that, old alien, when you feel too much pain.”
Because she seemed disposed to speech, because she loved poetry, and because he had no recourse to wisdom here among the short-lived Pelted save that he turned to one of them for it, he asked, “But how can it be borne?”
“The same as anything,” she said with a sigh. “Day by day, and honoring them by learning what they had to teach you.”
Vasiht’h approached, sat beside Jahir, attentive.
“I buried her mother before her,” the Tam-illee went on. “And my sister besides. The only sense you can make of it, aletsen, is the sense you give it in your own heart. And like everything, you can choose to use those things to grow twisted or straight.”
“And if there is no path to the sun but a twisted one?” Jahir asked.
“Then still, you grow toward the light,” she said. She shooed them gently. “Go on now. Get back to living. None of us know the hour, so it’s no use pretending otherwise.”
Jahir bowed to her and headed down the hill, Vasiht’h trailing him. Once they’d reached the bottom, he glanced over his shoulder at the silhouette of the old woman in white, her face toward the sun.
“I don’t know about you,” Vasiht’h said, low, “but I don’t think I’ve got a wake in me after that. What do you say we go home?”
“I think I would like that very well,” Jahir said.
After that, they had finals, and he acquitted himself well despite the weight of the material and how hard he’d had to work to acquire it. During that last week of the term he found himself taking a great many walks beneath trees grown lush and dark and over fields that had lost their spring flowers to summer’s encroachment. These walks, he thought, were a gift from KindlesFlame and the Alliance’s technology, which made it possible for him to ramble far from any aid without fear for what his light-gravity adapted body could bear.
It was the same technology that had failed Nieve, and would fail all the Alliance’s peoples in the end.
He had attended funerals at home; they were an inevitability of a culture without advanced medicine, particularly among the young, the elderly, those attempting children. He had accepted those deaths as part of being Eldritch, as frustrating and heart-breaking as they were: the Queen would have brought technology to the world, had a xenophobic people been willing to accept it from outsiders.
Was the pain of that worse than the pain of having access to such wonders, and knowing that they failed? An Eldritch he befriended might pace him through centuries, and pass away after a thousand years of amity… or he might die as Jahir’s father had, centuries too young from a riding accident. Nieve’s grandmother would tell him—had told him—that a creature with a millennial lifespan might die at thirty, and a creature who would live only a hundred years might live all hundred, and there was no predicting either. She was right, he knew. But it was too hard to bear in his heart, where such decisions were made.
To love in the Alliance, he thought. Because inevitably there would be love.
At the end of the week he made an appointment with Khallis Mekora, his graduate advisor. When he arrived, she greeted him absently, waved him to a chair as she pulled up his record. “So, alet,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Summer term,” he said. “It seems a short one?”
“It is,” she said. “Sixty days instead of ninety. Most people use it to pursue research projects, electives or minors.” She glanced up at him. “You’re planning to use it for something, I assume?”
“I would like to,” he said. “I have chosen a concentration and I suspect I will need the summer to make up ground I might have lost on other classes this term.”
“Very good,” she said, shuffling through the interface. “And that concentration would be—”
“Medical,” Jahir said. “And the faster I move through it, so much the better.”
“Well,” Palland said, studying his data tablet. “On the whole, I say it could have gone
worse.”
Vasiht’h flicked his ears back. “That’s not exactly a glowing recommendation, sir.”
“Oh, hells, alet,” Palland said, tossing the tablet aside. “It’s not your fault. Not the way you’re thinking, anyway. You’re essentially pioneering psychic therapy. I have a notion how to put the research together, but the ways it keeps getting contaminated… you can’t really plan for that. The mind is still too complicated for any of us to deconstruct, no matter what we might know about the brain it sits in. Add the fog layer of esper abilities—which we know even less about—and it gets hairy.”
Vasiht’h flexed his toes and sighed. “But it’s still not much good.”
“You got useful data out of seven people,” Palland said. “That’s a good start. You can build on that in your next study.”
“My next study,” Vasiht’h repeated, ignoring his sudden dismay. He remembered his predictions for Jahir about the course of his research and feared he was about to hear every one of his suppositions confirmed.
Palland’s next words did not hearten him. “Oh yes. Seven people doesn’t make a useful data set. You’ll be repeating this study for a few years, I’m betting. Iterating it each time to get closer to a pure result.”
“A few years,” Vasiht’h said, suppressing a flinch.
“Did you expect any differently?” Palland said. “This is what research is, alet. It’s sifting results, tossing out the ones that can’t be used because you did something wrong or didn’t control for some variable you didn’t realize would be important. And then it’s repeating it over and over until you get something you can usefully generalize as applying to the population at large. Once you do that, then you can maybe start refining the results.”
“Refining them how?” Vasiht’h asked.
“Oh, say… you have data here for seven people all of whom are Pelted,” Palland said. “But you haven’t pulled the data out and looked for distinct results within each species because you don’t have enough data to do that with. You start getting hundreds of results, you can maybe start looking for trends. You didn’t have a Glaseah in your study, for instance. Does this psychic therapy work better on them because they’re also espers? Or is there some cancellation of the effect? That sort of thing.” Palland tapped the tablet. “I’m being conservative when I say this could take a few years. To be honest, if you’re really serious about this, you could make it your life’s work.”
“My life’s work,” Vasiht’h repeated. “To research the effects of dream therapy on people.”
“Yes,” Palland said. “It would be an amazing career, too. You’d be giving talks all over the Core, I bet.” He grinned. “You like traveling? It can be fun, jetting all over the Alliance to give lectures. Pretty good pay too.”
“That part doesn’t sound too bad,” Vasiht’h admitted.
“Well, think about it, and get me a plan for summer term,” Palland said. “Summer’s a good time to do this sort of work. You can afford to take a light course load since you’ll be working toward your degree with the directed studies. Now, aren’t you due over at the hospital?”
“Right, I’m picking up the last of the surveys,” Vasiht’h said and rose. “Thank you, sir.”
“My job,” Palland said, waving it off. And added, with too knowing a look, “This is the life you’re signing up for, Vasiht’h. Just so you’re aware.”
“I know,” he said, and did. Which was part of the problem. He left his professor’s office, agitated. It was one thing to look forward to being a professor teaching students, and another to realize that most of his time would be devoted to doing something he found frustrating or tedious (or both!) in order to earn the right to that classroom. And while traveling the Alliance on a lecture circuit sounded like fun, he wasn’t sure how he felt about making psychic therapy research his ‘life’s work.’ Especially if it worked. If it worked. With seven people to go on, he could be imagining it all, no matter how rigorous his methods.
He was not in the best of moods when he passed into the hospital lobby; distracted by his own thoughts and wanting only to collect the last few surveys from his subjects so he could go home and mourn. Though what he’d be mourning, he couldn’t be sure of. Increasingly he thought it was less the paucity of his study results and more his life… and how ridiculous was that, when this was the point where his life should be opening up, full of opportunities? Opportunities so exciting he was willing to work hard for them?
Something was wrong, and he felt it as an oppression. It was so involving that he almost bumped into Kievan First, who was waiting for him at the desk. Shaking himself, Vasiht’h said, “I’m so sorry, alet! I didn’t see you. I didn’t—”
“No, no, I’m fine,” the Tam-illee said. “I was hoping to catch you before you finished the study.”
“Ah?” Vasiht’h turned to face him more fully, frowning. “What’s this about?”
“I’m having a Renaming, and I was hoping you’d attend.”
“A Renaming!” Vasiht’h exclaimed. “You’re choosing a new Foundname?”
“I am,” Kievan said. “I thought for weeks about what you said. About how there was nothing wrong with mistakes, and changing your course if it was the wrong course. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought… that maybe I’m on the right course.” He squared his shoulders. “I think I needed permission to leave in order to realize how much I wanted to stay. So I’m renaming myself as a rededication. And I hope you’ll come, since you were the one who helped me see the path.”
“I may have helped you see the path,” Vasiht’h said, startled, “but you were the one who decided what it meant to you, and what to do—” He trailed off, because the Tam-illee was smiling, and it was a friendly, easy smile, and a little whimsical. It made him smile too. Grin, actually, wide and honest. “Of course I’ll come. Send me the time and place and I’ll be there.”
“Thanks, alet,” Kievan said, satisfied. “I’ll do that.”
All the way home, Vasiht’h floated on that encounter. When he got to the apartment, he hunted through the storage closet for a sheet of colored paper, bought for the occasional invitations and gifts. The u-banks were full of step-by-step instructions for paper folding, and using them he made a very credible image of the Goddess, with one sheet for Her upper body and forelegs and a second for the hindquarters and wings. She was bright red with gold stars and swirls—the only paper he’d had, but he thought it suited Her quite well. He put this effigy on the hearth and lit a stick of incense in front of it, then sat with his forelegs stretched before him and hindlegs neatly tucked beneath him, in conscious mimicry of Her pose. Folding his hands, he bowed his head and closed his eyes, and said a thank you. For Kievan, of course, but for all the things he’d been neglecting in the past months, having been too busy to visit the siv’t. And when he was done, he left the incense burning and made cookies, feeling confused but lighter in spirit than he had for days. He left the first cookie for Her.
Jahir came home a few hours later and immediately stopped at the door. “There is a smell, like myrrh.”
“And myrrh is?” Vasiht’h asked, curled up in the great room with his data tablet and a cup of kerinne.
“Ah,” Jahir said, spotting the trail of smoke in the air. “Incense.” He removed his boots and sat on the chair facing the hearth; Vasiht’h watched him, watched the pupils dilate in the honey-colored eyes as his friend studied the makeshift altar. That was a form of listening, he thought. To really look at something, to try to understand it. It’s what would make the Eldritch good at practice. Who wouldn’t be flattered by such dedicated attention?
At last, Jahir spoke. “The goddess… likes cookies?”
“Brains need a lot of carbohydrates to function,” Vasiht’h said. “And She does nothing but think.”
Jahir chuckled, a sound that was too tired for Vasiht’h’s taste, but it was a laugh. He hadn’t heard his roommate laugh since Nieve’s death. “I cannot argue the science
, having suffered through a semester of physiological psychology.”
“No, you can’t,” Vasiht’h agreed, pleased. “And there’s a cookie for you in the kitchen.”
“And if I eat it, will you tell me what prompted this?” Jahir asked.
Vasiht’h wrinkled his nose. “Not fair. How’d you figure out how to manipulate me?”
“You are very dedicated to feeding me,” Jahir said. And added, resigned, “And I have not been diligent about eating, and I know I have given you cause for worry. I am sorry, arii.”
Vasiht’h pursed his lips. Then said, “You’ll eat the cookie?”
“I’ll eat the cookie,” Jahir said, and rose to fetch it. He brought it back, with a very small cup of the leftover kerinne. For someone with an insatiable ice cream tooth, he was very sparing with other high-fat sweets. “So. The goddess? May I add She is very beautifully done.”
“Making Goddess effigies is very popular among us,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s part of honoring Her mandate to make things.” He set his cup down. “One of my research subjects told me today that I helped him. That was a good feeling. I wanted to show my gratitude properly.”
“This was an effect of the research?” Jahir asked, sampling the cookie.
“No, he was one of the subjects I had to discard. I contaminated him by talking to him,” Vasiht’h said. He glanced at the incense, still ember-red. “I remember being unhappy when I found out that I’d lost all the time and effort I’d put into him. I’m glad he showed me that I had my head in the wrong place about it.”
“Have you reached some conclusion about the research, then?” Jahir asked.
“No…” Vasiht’h said. “No. It’s not just about how I feel now, after all. It’s about what I want the shape of the future to be. What I want to spend my days doing. That part, I’m still not sure of. Starting a practice isn’t all blankets and cookies. It’s going to involve things I don’t like. The question I have to answer, then, is if the things I don’t like about research are worse than the things I don’t like about practice. I haven’t seriously started to explore those questions yet.”
Mindtouch (The Dreamhealers 1) Page 29
