Finders-Seekers

by Gayle Greeno

  “Oh, flu-flar and fardle!” she muttered under her breath, head twisted over her shoulder to make sure she’d not destroyed her handiwork.

  Koom gave a little sneeze-squeak. “Is that an obscenity?”

  “Not precisely,” Swan admitted. Her face flushed moist with exertion, and she longed to rub her hands over it. No, not until she’d finished and had thoroughly washed them. The chemicals were too dangerous. “I hate working with this,” she grumbled as she dragged the stool to the next pillar, its sculpted top sitting beside it on the floor. “Everything is heavy and awkward and I’m too short. And too round. Not to mention the fact that this system is hopelessly archaic. There must be something more efficient if we only dared ask someone.”

  With a baleful look, Koom wandered near, but not too near the copper urns, then sat. “Well, think how they make me feel,” he declared. “When you connect those things, it stings and smarts like a sea urchin if I let my mindspeech veer beyond this room. Thoughts hemmed in, barricaded, denied our outreach.”

  “Yes, and anyone who shouldn’t have access to our thoughts is denied it while we’re inside with this on,” Swan mindspoke back. She carried the copper urn to the top of the step stool, careful not to slop the copper sulfate solution, then went back for the long, narrow clay pot and the sulfuric acid bottle. Pulling the stopper from the bottle as she’d been taught, between her middle fingers, palm facing up and away from the bottle, she felt the grating of the ground glass stopper as she pulled it out, continued to clench it between her fingers so that any acid on the stopper itself stayed clear of her skin. She measured the sulfuric acid into the clay tube, then restoppered the bottle one-handed. Only then did she set the clay tube into the urn, watching it sink and settle but not overturn. Next she inserted the zinc rod into the clay container. Almost there, almost done. She added a dusting of blue crystals onto the top of the copper sulfate solution.

  “Besides, remember what happened to Crolius Renselinck and V’row?” She stood, waiting for Koom to acknowledge the truth of her words, even though the names were near one hundred and fifty years old. But the ghatti, as she well knew, did not forget.

  “But Magnus deWit and Ru‘wah had no intention of harming anyone, least of all Crolius and V’row,” Koom protested. “They simply wanted to ensure a purity of purpose and vision to the Seekers Veritas, and they feared a slackening of the old ways under Crolius.”

  Swan looked indignant, stroked at the purple and gold edging of her tabard before she spoke. “And there’s no harm in usurping power that has not been granted you? And when such a usurpment occurs, physical harm is often not far behind. Faction against faction, each believing in its own right.” Her eyes softened as he wove his way over to her, muzzle twisting at the smell of the chemicals, stroked once against her calves, tail winding around her knee.

  “I know, just as they did not believe us at first, that we could continue as a Pair. If we had not convinced them....” He leaned in place against her legs. “So peace, peace to us all, and to the sanctity of our thoughts at time. If Matthias Vandersma hadn’t discovered early on from the remnants of the old spacer machinery that an electrical current disrupted Kharm’s mindspeech, Crolius would never have thought of this device to protect against their overzealousness.”

  Unwinding the tail from around her knee, Swan started to go back to work, then paused, holding the tail in her hand. “It’s worse, you know. Far, far worse than what Crolius and V’row faced.” Her voice sounded distant, hollow with dread.

  “I know, I can sense it.” He knew the corridors of her mind too well, knew what fears lurked behind each door.

  “And we don’t even know what threatens us!” Swan mindspoke again.

  Koom’s head made an almost imperceptible movement, his lower jaw working. “You do not suspect Seekers and Bonds?” The thought left him aghast; he had found no hint of that within her until now, not behind any of the closed doors.

  “I fear everyone and everything, myself included. Who knows, mayhap the most innocent breeze carries our

  mindspeech and then who hears?” She stopped herself short, an almost superstitious fear of saying more overwhelming her. ”Let me finish this, and we’ll take a break, a silent break,” she amended aloud, ”outside in the fresh air, away from these smells, my promise.”

  She picked up the thread of her concentration, held her other thoughts at bay until she finished. Now, up the two steps ever so gently, pick up the urn, keep it level, no sloshing, lift it away from you. Holding her breath, she gained the top step and turned with slow precision, raising the urn higher and higher to clear the top of the pillar and then sink into the hole that held it. On tiptoe she connected the wires to the binding posts, one on top of the zinc rod, the other on the top of the urn. That one had a spring connection that kept the wire from touching the urn until she depressed a switch. The reaction still went on whether or not she used the switch, but no electricity would be transmitted through the wires that decorated the outer office walls until then. Inefficient, a waste, she thought to herself, and not for the first time. Unsophisticated, but it works.

  With a sigh of relief she almost scampered down the steps to heave up the sculpture which would go on top and hide the primitive galvanic battery. One more and she’d be done. Then, outside, away from all this for as much time as they could steal, though it would never be enough. The time would come when they would face the final meeting with Doyce Marbon and Khar’pem, as well-protected as she could contrive it but with no protection from her internal fears.

  The farewells were finished the night before, as was the final, private meeting with the Seeker General. Doyce knew that Swan Maclough had let Khar and her sift through her thoughts, Swan’s inner mindworkings; Doyce still had the nagging conviction that the Seeker General had not told her everything. Mindblocking was possible, but whether the older woman had done it on purpose to test her or simply to avoid things she could not even begin to face, Doyce wasn’t sure.

  A pro forma or, worse, had questions remained unasked that she was supposed to be aware of and voice, another test of sorts? She knew all too well about self-control and fear. Which kept the Seeker General from telling her the full story? Or, her spine iced at the thought, is the truth so fearsome that Swan Maclough is apprehensive I’ll refuse the mission if I know? What she had heard and surmised so far already gave her nightmares.

  “Khar, what are we missing?” She had ’walked the ghatta, hesitant to use the intimate mode in the Seeker General’s presence.

  Khar’s tail twitched, the tip flickering back and forth in an angry tattoo. “They don’t expect us to succeed. They think someone, that we, have to try, but they don’t believe we can do it. They’re convinced something worse will happen, something terrible, but they don’t know what. They want to warn us, but they don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Wonderful,” she thought back. “Two more sacrificial lambs. Why not stake us out somewhere and be done with it?”

  “You just slipped off the intimate mode like a Novie.” Dismayed, Khar flicked her tail hard, thump against the wooden floor.

  Strangely enough, Swan’s tense mouth creased in a wry smile, cheeks dimpling deeply. “Not a sacrificial lamb, but a catalyst, something which causes different and separate things to interact or react in your presence, yet leaves you uninvolved, unchanged—for better or for worse—by the process. I don’t know why, but you’ve always seemed like a catalyst to me, perhaps because of your past history.”

  “Not precisely a compliment.” Doyce clasped hands between her knees, and rocked forward, then back, hands clammy with nerves.

  “But by no means an insult, just an acceptance of the fact that unusual things happen around you, even if you’ve not always profited or grown from them. Such things have happened in the past, and that should be your guide, not to shut out or ignore those things in your background. And to remember that you shouldn’t always try to make yourself ‘responsible’ for t
hose happenings. A catalyst may ‘cause’ a certain action to occur, but it had no choice it was placed in proximity to those other things.”

  “And what things, unusual or otherwise, should I be looking for?”

  “You know from your years of study and research during your eumedico training that no individual fact is precisely as it seems, that the linkage of facts, the large and small, relevant and seemingly irrelevant, weave the pattern, form the steps in research, an experiment, in a history, and determine the final outcome. You have the sort of orderly mind that can look back and say, ’We have a, b, c, something lacking, e, f, another something missing equals the answer, and you’re able to sift through apparently unrelated, ordinary things to discover what the missing elements must be That is, if you look deeply enough, honestly enough, avoid preconceptions, allow both logic and intuition their sway.” Swan pressed the heels of her palms below her eyes, then massaged the ache in her temples. “It’s a gift that not everyone has. How it will aid you in your search, I dare not guess, but with your range of knowledge from the eumedicos and from your striving to find a meaning to life after your family died, you have a far broader background than most Seekers who join so young, so unformed by the world outside that all they know is Seeking. It’s all I know, and some days I curse my narrowness, but it’s all I have to work with.

  “And don’t ignore Khar‘pem, you’ve done that too much of late. Your Bonding should have been one of the best I’ve ever recorded; I thought so when I examined you both after the ’Printing and at the end of your training, but I don’t think your Pairing has lived up to its potential. Why is that, I wonder?”

  “We are true Bonded! We are a Pair, not like ...” agitated, Khar broke in, and Doyce half-leaped from her chair, heard it topple and fall as she grabbed at the ghatta, desperate to distract her, silence her before she said something unforgivable.

  But Swan continued, as serene as her namesake, before Khar could finish or Doyce interrupt. “Not like Koom and me,” she finished. “That’s correct. But Koom and I fit together in a more comfortable, more giving way, despite our ‘disablement’ of not having a Bond. You’ve never quite conceded yourself that comfort. But then, Doyce, have you ever established that with anyone—your mother, with you so palpably convinced her love was finite and unequally divided between you and your sister; your fellow eumedicos; or your husband, your child, your stepson Vesey; even Oriel? You nearly go the distance, but not that final step. Someday you may be forced to take it to see and fully live the final design in which you play a part.”

  Laying her hands palm down on the desk, Swan rose, then leaned forward placidly to peer over the top at the woman still half-crouched on the floor. “Now don’t go to den under my desk. Yes, you may go, so stop squirming. I don’t enjoy prying, but that, too, is my job at times. Lady bless and keep you. Lady bless and keep all of us, for that matter.” She waved a hand in dismissal and immediately set to work, tongue clicking, blunted, stubby pencil ticking the margin of a list, as totally involved with the tidy marking off of duties fulfilled as she had been moments ago with Doyce and Khar.

  “Go in peace, go well,” Koom’s voice rumbled in their minds. “May you someday feel what we feel for each other. Then you will understand she is not being harsh, not prying.”

  “We understand,” Khar responded with more civility than Doyce could muster as she tried to rise and exit with dignity. “We will succeed.” And she wondered precisely what the ghatta meant by that: in seeking out the truth of what had happened to Oriel and the others, or in discovering the true depths of their relationship. A bleak hope that it might be both.

  If the meeting with the Seeker General had served as a coda, this was a prelude, Doyce decided as she and Lokka trotted along Hight Street, pulling at the reins to test who was in charge. Doyce considered giving the mare her head, all the quicker to leave the capital behind. The Bethel’s carillon had heralded the fair-weather promise of a rose-hued sunrise, and the streets were already barricaded by sagging carts, overwhelmed wagons and barrows, produce, complaining chickens being unloaded, barrels and tuns, baskets and bales, everything that the human condition needed to buy or could be convinced to buy stood ready to supply the many shops and stalls of the trade quadrant.

  A beginning, but one more thread from the most recent ending remained to be tucked in place to prevent an unraveling of some sort, the way her mother had always rewoven the last thread back through the finished fabric, striving to make it lay flat, perfectly merged with the rest. Oriel is dead, nothing can change that. But my promise to him and by extension, to the Seekers, lives and I’ll honor it. No running, no hiding, she commanded herself, shaking the reins for emphasis. Lokka protested, tossing her head and jangling her bridle; Doyce reined her in and turned to look back down the rise toward headquarters, at the training and burial grounds, the box hedges and wooded patches, pillars of white marble stark and clean against the green. And through the living greenery, a glimmer of movement, tantalizingly brief but enough to catch her eye. Someone using the burial grounds as a shortcut... or a hiding place. “Khar! What is it? Who is it? Can you judge?”

  Khar stood on the sheepskin-covered pommel platform and stretched, back in a bowlike arch. “Company,” she noted conversationally.

  “No one was to see us off. That was the decision.”

  “Your decision, not everyone’s.” The ghatta’s whiskers twitched to test the morning air. “Saam and the others. Wait for me.” She jumped down and sauntered off, picking her way fussy-footed through the damp and puddles left by the street sweeps. Doyce sniffed the sharp, clean aroma of a new day and freshly watered streets fast being overlaid with the familiar smells of humanity at work.

  Five ghatti desperately strove to move as one: Chak, Per‘la, T’ss, Mem‘now, their bodies pressed tight around a steel-blue ghatt in the center offering physical support and encouragement. Saam limping along, under his own power, but in obvious agony, breath hissing through his nose. Chak and T’ss staggered to the right, then dug their shoulders against Saam and levered him upright on his feet. Every few paces one or another leaned centerward to push their companion on course again. Khar joined them, bow-stretched with rump and tail elevated, then sniffed Saam on each side of his face. The big ghatt dropped weakly to the ground, panting with effort, the others collapsing around him in weary relief.

  Doyce could mindspeak nothing of their brief converse, but it didn’t surprise her. No point in trying, really. In deference to Saam’s infirmity they spoke in falanese, the ghatti’s other “silent” language—all whisker flicks and twitches, eye movement, tail signs, imperceptible motions. Khar listened, head cocked, sniffed Saam again in farewell and bounded back, leaping to the platform and facing straight ahead. Lokka’s snort of disgust at the delay mirrored Doyce’s own.

  She saluted the group as Per’la reared back on her haunches, forepaws waggling in the air as if after an invisible butterfly. She looked for all the world like the embodiment of the silver ghatten that formed the knob on Rault’s teapot. Despite her claim of wanting no good-byes, Doyce smiled, found herself waving in return to acknowledge their leave-taking.

  “Saam wishes us well. Everything is still confused for him, little left, but he would share what he could.” Khar paused and licked a forepaw, rubbed it along her whiskers. “I don’t know what sense it makes, but it felt important to him. And he would not have us go without knowing.”

  Doyce traced a finger down the ghatta’s backbone, sliding along the sleek length of sunshine-burnished fur.

  “Dark, dark menace all around. Baneful eyes gleaming like a ghatt’s.” Khar recited, then changed to her normal voice. “Saam thinks he bit whatever it was, and he must be right. Thunderous noises, although he isn’t sure if they were all around him or only in his head. But most of all, the eyes, gleaming like that of a ghatt mad with mate-lust, nothing stopping him. And a smell that bit through his nose and choked him. A sharp smell that sliced through the scents o
f sweat and fear and pain and then overpowered every natural scent around him.”

  “Mayhap it’s a clue to you, but it still isn’t much to go on,” Doyce ruminated as they reached the outer gates and passed through. More carts and wagons formed a patient double line outside, waiting to roll forward to enter the capital. “But it seemed important enough for him to want to share it with us.”

  “There was more, but he couldn’t sort the feelings and the words. Only fussing himself, so I left. If there’s more, one of the others will send a message on.”

  “Khar, do you ... ?” She clamped down on the real thought and substituted something less treacherous, willing the shutters in her mind to close. “Do you think we’ll find what we’re seeking?” The question had really been: Khar, do you love me as much as Saam loved and still loves Oriel, as much as Koom loves Swan? But the corollary was how much did she love Khar, enough to let her see the deepest darkness of her heart and mind, the parts she battened down by sheer strength of will to hide her despair? She had begun to learn how in self-defense so long ago, even before she became a Seeker, before the formal training that allowed her to understand and to withstand the worst of the little ghatten Khar’s ceaseless and energetic good-willed probing. Always pull back before it’s too late, before you fail again or reveal the failings that lie within you. She touched the garnet rose on her right earlobe, then touched Khar’s smaller matching one. Everlasting. Was love everlasting with no one to share it? Could one preserve what one dared not use? The ghatta stretched and rubbed her chin along her hand, disrupting her thoughts.

  “We’ll know when we start Seeking.” Her tone rang playfully light, but with an underlying tension that matched Doyce’s own. Paw-dabbing at Lokka’s mane, the ghatta purred a message so that the little mare wouldn’t feel left out. The jauntiness came back into Lokka’s step and Doyce forced a whistling tune to match it. The sun rose higher, the road stretched straight and clear—at least for now—and they set off.