“Something’s not right.” He shot her an accusing look. “You tell me what’s wrong.”
She frowned. “We left everything electronic behind—” She half turned to Kyoko, then caught sight of her own finger. Eleven thirty-three, the dial read.
“Oh, my goodness.” With a twinge of guilt at the waste, she pulled off the watch and flung it back as far as she could into the swamp.
The creature slowly moved aside.
“A Guardian,” Allison whispered. “Are we close, Seth?”
More Fractions glimmered from the water and the banks, passing back and forth on unknown errands. At times they signaled, but their style was difficult for Allison to read.
Hints of light began to poke through the foliage. Leaves parted and coral surfaces flickered on the banks. The boat rounded a final bend, and full sunlight hit Allison’s eyes. She squinted and waited for her eyes to readjust.
A coral mountain rose above the clearing. Allison craned her neck upward at the twisted mass, pitted with clefts and caverns.
Kyoko said, “Sora—”
“‘Ra, ra,’” her voice echoed back. Otherworldly silence remained; it, too, seemed to echo back.
Seth’s features took on the look of the times when he recounted commensal stories to Dave. “It grows over centuries,” he said. “Generations of Fractions, one by one.”
Carefully the humans picked their way among coral boulders and staring Fractions.
“Is it their ‘city’?” Kyoko asked.
“No,” said Allison, “those are just the Guardians.”
Seth led them to a tunnel entrance at the foot of the mountain. They stepped into the passage, which glowed orange as the outer light disappeared. The only sound was the muffled tread of their boots as their way wound farther and deeper into the rugged mass of coral.
The tunnel’s end broadened into a round cavern. Seth led them down to the center of the cavern, where he stopped.
Eyes. Allison stifled a cry. All about the coral surface, from every crevice, stared eyes; compound eyes, but eyes nonetheless, thousands of them. They were eyes of countless Fractions over the years who had come here, not to die, but to “conjoin” for the last time.
A stalk of coral extended upright in the middle of the cavern. It was pitted with fist-sized depressions.
“Now,” Seth whispered, “do exactly as I do.” He approached and placed his hand in one depression.
Allison felt her feet glued to the coral floor. She forced herself to remember that the SLIT station could still collapse at any time, unless it was already too late. She stepped down to the stalk and fit her hand into a stony niche. It felt warm at first, then numb.
The cavern seemed to expand into a giant hall, larger than the Meeting House, larger even than Shimuri’s Hall of a Thousand Cranes. Then odd memories came alive and crowded her senses; impressions of many times jumbled together, as though an electrode were probing her brain. One moment she was a child in Georgeville, setting off for school with her mother, the schoolteacher, whose face mirrored Allison’s own. The next, she was in a Meeting, or in the Tech Center, or talking to her infant son…
Then Joshua came back, as real as a holoview; his face just as she remembered, his hair flowing to the shoulders, like George Fox.
“Josh, I finished the assays on Gabe’s ferrite samples.”
“And?”
“It’s good ore, as good as Mawrford’s.”
“Too bad it’s so inaccessible.”
“But, Josh, we’ll start our own town.”
“A sixth settlement? Right at the jungle’s edge?”
“My folks will come, and the Braithwaites from Lanesbridge.”
“What’ll we call it?”
“Thorneville, of course.”
Allison felt a strange sense of relief. It hadn’t been as bad as she expected. Kyoko was right; you had to live with the dead, as well as the living.
The sight of a hand hit her, in almost microscopic detail. The wrinkled knuckles, the rigid veins stood out like carved granite. It was her own hand, she realized; the hand that had grasped the green flesh of a Fractional predecessor to Ghareshl, Thiranne and now Lherin; the hand that had pulled the creature from the river which churned wild.
“I know you now, Plant-spike.”
The thought was not Allison’s own. It spoke directly in her head, not in words, but in distilled concepts: knowing—plant-spike (label). She could almost feel the tip of a thorn of witch-vine, the commonest of thorny plants on the Tech Center hill. And yet, the thought seemed clearer and infinitely more subtle than any Transac exchange she had experienced with a Fraction.
She came to feel Seth’s presence, somewhere, as well, warm and familiar, caring but tense, and—something else? She wanted to lean on his presence, but hesitated, not sure why.
Was Kyoko here, too? Allison searched her consciousness, but fell back into swirling thoughts.
“Puzzlement. Uncertainty. What substance is this?” The One’s thought came through again, but not directed toward Allison.
“What…” Kyoko’s mind called as though from beyond the edge of the world. A feeling of unease grew into a wave of panic—a profound sense of the absurd, a draught of despair which Allison herself had sipped but never swallowed so deeply before, the despair of a man who devours his children because there is no more food left in all the universe. Allison pulled at her hand to break contact, but found that her physical body was somewhere else.
Kyoko called, “You took away…give it back…”
“Only impediments removed,” thought the One.
“Why…” Kyoko asked, a descending, echoing call.
“To examine your substance: human (blood-sharing) wave-form, first-approximation indistinguishable from these two.”
“Put it back, then,” she pleaded faintly.
No reply. Allison felt Kyoko’s despair subside to a muted frenzy.
“Who?” Kyoko asked now. “Who are you?”
“I am the One Organism, the Eye of Many Faces, the Seeker of All Things.”
More than ever, Allison was impressed by the sophistication of this contact, dimensions beyond Transac. She thought, “What things do you seek?”
“I seek the stars. I drink their energy waves to seek the source of their long lives.”
“Does our sky-object interfere with that search?”
No reply was forthcoming.
“We can readjust the sky-object,” came Kyoko’s faint thought.
The One’s presence withdrew, as though in a quandary. Allison wondered whether She might break off contact, then. With a sense of reluctance, the presence did return.
“Interference with My star-watch is negligible. The sky-object does emit human-seeming wave-forms which perturb My study of (blood-sharing) humankind.”
Allison was stung. How could they have missed this? The SLIT had been around for five years, but the human “wave-forms” had just arrived on Foxfield. Had the One deliberately led them astray?
Perhaps in answer, the One replied, “Human substance exhibits exceptional instability. I try both to avoid and to prevent destabilization of the subject.”
“Instability…why?” thought Kyoko.
“Source unknown. I theorize that human fragments evolved like ‘resonances,’ particles which materialize in space as matter-antimatter pairs. The half-particles forever seek to rejoin, but to join is to destroy one another.”
“But humans,” thought Allison, “also know a greater unity, a one-ness, as you do. In fact, we sense a Presence greater even than You which encompasses all beings…”
But Seth warned her, “Be silent.”
The One thought, “A Presence greater than the universe?”
No human responded.
“I perceive,” continued the One, “that human fragments envision such an entity which is in fact an inverted image of your own potential wholeness. This conception, however imperfect, makes communication possible between us.
”
“Then why do you destroy the sky-object?” Allison asked. “You will sunder human unity.”
The thought-storms swirled again, endlessly. Panic swept over Allison as she wondered again whether it was too late, whether the station was gone already. But the thoughts of the One took form once more.
“All things have finite probability over time. It is possible that I will collapse your sky-object. It is also possible that you humankind will destroy Me with stellar energy. Far greater than these is the possibility that you will destroy yourselves.”
The thought-storms began to recede.
“Wait,” called Kyoko, “come back; you have to give back the…”
Allison found herself staring at the stalk of coral in the dim orange cavern. She withdrew her hand; it prickled but showed no obvious puncture marks. She cast a furtive look upward. All about the coral dome the eyes were closed. She turned to Kyoko.
The citizen’s face was pale as marble. Her eyes stared, unseeing.
Allison touched her arm. “Kyoko? It’s all over; do you hear me?”
Kyoko absently rubbed her wrist and muttered unintelligible words.
“Kyoko, I can’t understand…wakarimasen.”
“Gone,” she whispered, “my inner balance. Ever since I was a child I—how can I go on?”
“The System will fix you—”
“Come on,” said Seth. “We can’t stay here; it’s late.”
“Oh, all right,” snapped Allison. “There’s plenty of shade in the jungle.”
“The bigger crawlers awaken by antinight,” he said. “They can’t tell you’re toxic without a taste, first.”
Allison bit her lip. “Come, Kyo,” she whispered, and she took the citizen’s hand to lead her back down the winding passage.
Wheelwright’s brilliance hit her as they emerged. With her free arm she covered her face as she pulled Kyoko down to the shade of the swamp.
“Allison,” Kyoko stated, more clearly than before.
“Yes, Kyo?” Allison paused at the stream bank.
“You know, Allison,” she went on conversationally, “there’s an object in my jacket pocket; it doesn’t look dangerous, but, things being as they are, it might be dangerous to myself.”
“What the—” Allison frowned. She fished into Kyoko’s pockets until she felt some thing hard. She drew out a flat, polished object the size of her palm. The dark oblong bore inlaid characters. As her fingers pressed the sides, a blade slid out, glittering. She blinked and turned it over curiously. A simple tool, but why…“Christ.” As the reason dawned on her she shuddered, and the knife slipped from her grasp. With a splash it vanished in the black water.
“Dōmo arigatō, yujin Allison.” Kyoko took one step more; then she fell, unconscious.
Seth helped Allison lift her into the boat. As Allison lit the gaslight, he looked down at the still figure with a curious mixture of surprise and pity. “She was so weak,” he mused. “The One took away her chemicals, and she fell apart.”
“No, she’s strong,” said Allison, as she felt the citizen’s pulse. “She managed to do without them for hours.” Though those hours had seemed but minutes to Allison.
“You managed. I manage all the time.”
“You’ve done it all your life. She’ll be okay, if we just get her back to the ship…” Allison averted her eyes. There was nothing more she could do, now, for her friend. She watched Seth shove the boat off from the shore. “Seth,” she asked, “why did the One take out her psychormones?”
“To see if she was really a blood-sharer, like us.” He pulled the oars with long strokes.
“It’s not easy for you, either, is it? To visit the Dwelling, so often.”
“Going to Meeting,” he said, “is harder still.”
Allison blinked at him. “Seth, wait a minute.” She grabbed the oar handles to make him stop and look into her face. “You believe what the One ‘said,’ don’t you? That all of our faith in the Light means nothing more than a mirror in the sky, turned down at us?”
He looked away.
“You think that? And yet all this time you’ve kept on going to Meeting as though it mattered, when inside—no wonder you never talk about it; no wonder you’re all half crazy at Coral Vale. You’re just like the off-world citizens, don’t you see? Were you afraid they’d find you out?”
She paused for breath. “Maybe the commensals can make it on their star-gazing. But we’re humans, and we need something more than that. If the One is right, if there really is no Presence beyond us, then there’s nothing for us, either; we might as well curl up and die. But suppose there just might be something beyond, even though we could never know for sure. Isn’t that what makes it worth living on?”
“The One knows better, Sonnie. She is eons older than we are.”
“Seth, love, what difference does that make? Is She infallible, just because She’s not human? When did you last think for yourself?”
XVI. Still Forms on Foxfield
The days which followed bore an air of unreality. Most off-planet citizens kept to their ship, still on emergency alert, while Foxfielders tried to keep up their daily tasks despite the invisible sword which hung above their world. But the days turned to weeks with no change except for the usual progression of summer crops and harvests. People relaxed and took up other pressing concerns, following the ancient instinct that what had not happened yet was not about to happen. Even Allison knew that, WEATHERCAST notwithstanding, the best way to predict rain was to put one’s hand outside the window.
The UNI-Foxfield dialogue was renewed with greater activity than ever, but its focus distinctly shifted. Citizens talked less about “reintegration,” and more about sending field teams to figure out the Dwelling, a process in which both Allison and Seth became increasingly involved.
Clifford watched the shift with bemused interest. “It’s a textbook case,” he would say. “Now that they’ve run up against the real power center, they’ll lose interest in us, thank goodness.”
But Allison noticed that his wrist was always bare when he said such things. She also sensed the hidden strain which remained among UNI officials, who now sought to settle the Foxfield problem as soon as possible in order to quench the flames of fascination which had spread abroad.
On one occasion she saw the tension break the surface. It was a conference session which included Lowell, the Fullers and herself as well as Silva and two senior Adjustors who rarely spoke. Their oriental features reminded Allison painfully of Kyoko; she still wondered what had really become of her friend since the shuttle last carried her away. The conferees sat in an alcove of the ship garden, amidst pine trees and shiny grasses which yielded pleasingly to the feet, unlike the rugged turf of Foxfield. Allison suspected the setting was meant to lull Friends with remembrances of their lost Pennsylvanian homeland.
Martha was speaking to the immigration question. “The Meeting feels,” she concluded, “that we can sponsor as many as five immigrants or immigrant families within the coming year. One household in Mawrford already has volunteered to take in such a family.”
“Five?” Silva’s voice rose slightly, as if she thought she had misheard. “Did you say five hundred per year?”
“Five, period—this year.” Clifford leaned forward above the translucent table covered with UNI figures and projections. “We’ll appoint overseers to supervise and inform Yearly Meeting of their adjustment to our community. Then we’ll see.”
Silva’s fingers clenched the table edge. “We need solid numbers, a plan for the future. If the Board finds that Foxfield is unready for immigration at this time, we’ll keep Special Status another year.”
“But we want to accept them,” Lowell objected. “We can’t just turn people away.”
Martha’s brow creased. “In good conscience, we can only take them so fast. They will find us strange, at first; they will need time to learn our ways and to become one with us.”
A senior Adjustor s
poke up. “Question dismissed.”
Silva’s face turned to stone, and she spoke in terse phrases for the duration of the conference.
Allison mentioned the incident to Rissa the next time she visited the ship for preventive cancer therapy.
“Of course she was upset,” the doctor exclaimed as she fine-tuned the magnetic resonance device. “You all made a joke of it, that’s why. Five immigrants, indeed—Mars alone takes in twelve thousand a year, and that place is desolate compared to Foxfield, no matter what Casimir tells you.”
“But what’s that got to do with us?” Allison settled herself into the examination chair.
“You?” Rissa sighed in exasperation. “Why don’t you negotiate, like any normal civilized people? For a few hundred immigrants, you could have had trade discounts, free stratogeysers, full-scale planetary development. Now, we’re scared to let anyone near this place.”
“Scared of us?” Allison considered this while her limbs grew numb before the treatment. “We can only absorb five, and five is what we said. Will you let no citizens come at all?”
“That’s nothing; citizens can always work around the System, if they’re sharp.”
That was not the real problem, Allison knew. UNI feared the expansion of floaters as much as Foxfielders feared UNI.
Rissa smiled sardonically. “Barbarians you are; bush people, actually. But we’ll tame you yet.”
Allison tensed momentarily, then reminded herself to stay calm as she watched the multicolored image of her organs revolve in space. She did not believe Rissa’s last remark; she herself would be too sharp for that. Besides, there were still enough folks like Seth whom the System had barely touched as yet.
The night sky was as clear as a glass bowl. Allison was pointing out the stars and constellations. “Seth, do you see that reddish star, Arcturus, and the ones around it? That’s the Charioteer, and Terra’s sun is at his foot. From Terra, our own sun would sit in the Whale…”
He was silent. Allison turned and asked on impulse, “Have you never wanted something from the stars?”
Seth regarded her levelly. “I’ve wanted you. And I’ve wanted a child.”
She stared at him. “You…what?” she whispered faintly.
Still Forms On Foxfield Page 22
