Am-heh crouched under the edge of Aokigahara, the Sea of Trees, waiting for the woman. He hoped she could find them a Realm with many mortals in it. He was hungry for souls, and the power they would give him to vanquish the other immortal.
He heard the creak of a door. She was coming out. Rising to go meet her, he felt the pulse of his strange body quicken. She would be an interesting traveling companion. But what was this? She had turned. She was marching directly toward him!
Am-heh frowned. The woman had told him she was blind. This did not fit at all. Not at all. He hated surprises. They were often dangerous.
As she drew nearer, he could hear her counting, and relaxed. She had memorized her route to the house, and was retracing her steps in reverse. That was all.
Nearly to the trees, she pulled off her conical hat and tossed it away. Now here was a surprise: her hair was different from the others. It was golden. Sure enough, she was wearing the cloth blindfold.
“Sorry that took so long,” she said. “Doctor Wu has gotten very attached to me, I'm afraid. I had to convince him I was ready to go exploring without him.”
“I was wondering if you had changed your mind,” he said, wondering what could convince a healer to let a blind woman go out into the unknown without an escort. She must be resourceful, he thought.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked. “Let's do this quickly, like a band-aid, before Wu changes his mind and calls me back. Give me your hand.” She reached out. “Hmm. We have to do something about those nails.”
FLASH.
The Sea of Trees disappeared. The brilliance of the Realm transition faded and they found themselves on a wooden dock. The screams of seagulls pierced the morning breeze that was whipping up little whitecaps on the swell of the harbor.
“Where are we?” Am-heh asked her, forgetting that she was blind. But she wasn't, not now: her eyes were uncovered and open. A deception revealed? Or an effect of the transition? He wondered.
Kemushi scanned their surroundings. “Portsmouth, in Britannia,” she said. “England,” she added, answering the question she saw on his face.
“The home of the English? Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. I was born a few kilometers from here, at Southwick,” she said. “Don't let Wu's nickname fool you. I love the Japanese, but I'm a Brit through and through.”
An arresting sight out in the water snagged his gaze. Am-heh lifted a hand to point at it. “What is...” He stopped, staring at the hand. His claws were gone! The hand was pink, with trimmed nails that would be useless in any fight.
The hand emerged from a tube of dark blue cloth. He was no longer clothed only in his fur. He looked down at himself. A starkly white shirt penned in by a dark brown waistcoat and knee-length frock coat ended in light brown trousers that enclosed his legs all the way down to buckled shoes.
Baffled by this transformation, he turned back to Kemushi. Her kimono and wooden clogs were gone, replaced by a high-breasted cream-colored dress that gathered under her breasts, emphasizing them disturbingly, before dropping to narrow shoes that would be little help in snow or rain puddles. Her golden hair was drawn back in a loose bun that managed to permit stray curls to fall upon her forehead. Her left hand was gripping a small tan handbag.
“Why do we look different?” he asked her. “Is this your doing?”
“Hah!” she laughed. “Do I look like a tailor? It's the reformatting. Haven't you ever done a Realm transition before?”
“Yes,” he answered, frowning. “Victor brought me from Khem to Japan. But he never mentioned that your teleportation would cause a change in structure. Very dangerous! For a pre-Transcension species your people are inventive, but reckless.”
“Oh good grief! There's no danger, since we're not really here.”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, not really here? Of course we're here, or we would see nothing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes you take your roleplay way too seriously, has anyone told you that? Personally, I'm not one for fancy dress, but I think it's done you a world of good.” She reached into her handbag and offered him a mirror. “Here, see for yourself.”
Apprehensively, he snatched the mirror and held it up before his face. He was aghast at what he saw! His handsome brown snout and sharp fangs had vanished, replaced by a tiny pink nose set above a mouth filled with pathetic little things that could barely be called teeth. The fur on his face had shriveled to sideburns that barely covered his cheeks. He barely noticed the hat, slightly conical, but not pointed.
“Arrgh! I'm hideous!” He wanted to howl his dismay, but was afraid to learn what had happened to his voice.
“You're fine,” she assured him. “It's better this way. You'd attract too much attention walking about with a hound's head, anyway. Think about it.”
“I don't care!” he snarled, although he knew she was right about blending in while hunting. “I want my own face back!”
“Relax,” she said. “Nothing's lost. Whenever you go back to Khem, the computer will reset your avatar back to the original.” She plucked the mirror from his manicured fingers and replaced it in her handbag. “What were you pointing at when you got distracted?”
For a moment he was unable to answer, caught up in the mystery of her 'avatar' and 'computer' remark. The word avatar was straightforward: the incarnation of a god. But he had a hard time relating it to the word computer, which appeared to mean something or someone that performed calculations.
He had the feeling this was something important. Perhaps, too important to ask about directly...and reveal his ignorance. With an effort of will, he relaxed his frown and lifted his hand again. “I was wondering what that is,” he said.
She looked out over the water. “Oh, that. It's HMS Victory. You know, Nelson's flagship. We're in the Empire or the Regency period, I'm not sure which. I never was very good at History, I'm afraid; my specialty is Physics.”
Only a titanic effort kept him from howling when he heard her words. Had they moved in Time as well as space? Could even a primitive, pre-Transcendent species be smart enough to develop time travel...and at the same time be stupid enough to risk random alterations of their own history? He was shocked speechless.
“How...” he began, then swallowed and groped for calm. “How can you know its name when by your own admission you don't even know what part of history we are in?”
She looked at him strangely. “You are odd,” she said. “I know I'm no historian, but what kind of Brit would I be, if I didn't even recognize the Nelson Chequer?”
“The what?” He was lost again, adrift in a sea of strange words.
She gestured at the huge wooden object, striped with alternating bands of black and yellow that paralleled the waterline. “See the black squares in the yellow stripes? Those are gun ports for the cannons to shoot out of. They were originally painted yellow, to blend in with the yellow stripes on the ship's hull. That made it harder for enemies to count the guns she was carrying.”
Ah. So he was looking at a vessel. The Children of Nuit no longer needed such things. And it was a warship. “Concealing one's weapons is wise,” he agreed. “But you say they were repainted?”
“Admiral Nelson did that,” she said. “He directed all ships under his command to paint the gun ports black, so that they would be easy to recognize. It also had the effect of making his ships more intimidating; from a distance, it always looked like the ports were open and ready to fire. Other navies of the period imitated it, even the Americans.”
“I understand, I think,” he said. “But why is it called the Nelson Chequer?”
“Now you're just jerking me around,” she said, frowning. “Black and yellow squares. Classic checkerboard pattern.” She shook her head. “Your roleplay's getting on my nerves,” she told him. “Make believe is all very well, I suppose, but it gets tiring, telling you things you already know.”
Am-heh scowled at her. “I don't understand. I already told you I'm not from your planet. Ho
w could I possibly know all these details?” He was losing his temper, he realized, but at the moment he just didn't care. She was maddening! “Especially when you can move us around in space and time! How can your race be so advanced and so...so stupid at the same time?”
Now she scowled. “Maybe we should go back to the Enclave, after all,” she said. “I think you need some time with Wu. If you can't stop roleplaying, not even for a second, you're going to drive me crazy. I thought you were looking for someone. That's what you said, remember? But this alien act is just getting too old for me. You have to get real, or I can't handle it.”
Am-heh opened his mouth, then closed it again. His head was pounding and his hands clenched into fists. He was this close to simply Devouring her. But he sensed that he was on the verge of learning something important...or throwing the chance away. There was a mystery in her attitude. It was not insanity, and it concealed something very different about her people and her world.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to relax. He opened his eyes. “Let me explain something to you,” he said, letting the words come out almost as a sigh. He took another breath. “I am not roleplaying, whatever that is. I never have. I don't even know how. When I ask you something about your world, or your species, or your language or your history, it's because...I...do...not...know! Take a moment and try to believe that. Because what you're doing, assuming that I am lying, not believing anything I say, that is driving me crazy, as you put it.”
He closed his mouth and watched her thinking about what he had said. The next few seconds would determine whether her usefulness to him was at an end.
Chapter 53: Kemushi: the three-sided coin
Gamers and Gods: AES Page 60
