He remembered the moment Baiyaan had grabbed his hands when he was bleeding out on the Verdugo mountains. The moment when he had been pulled back from the brink of death. He had been shown an incomprehensible glimpse of something vast, something that connected all life, all worlds, all universes. He had said yes to all of that. He had taken the first step in becoming what Baiyaan was: a World Walker, a T’hn’uuth. The Roswell Manna had completed the process. Apparently. But Baiyaan felt almost as alien to Seb now as he had back then.
The only thing Seb felt utterly sure about was the alien’s basic goodness. That first encounter had involved a sharing of minds, a complete opening up by both of them. As the alien had shared his consciousness with him, Seb had become aware of a complex history, a far-reaching perspective reached over millennia. What he hadn’t found in Baiyaan’s consciousness was any hint of evil - no selfishness, not even an urge to convert others to his own way of thinking. Seb knew that his own personal code of ethics was far less firmly established. He had moved—was moving—away from a worldview that centered around his own ego, but it was a process, not some kind of achievable goal. Seb had been brought up a Catholic but had read enough outside that particular faith to believe Jesus wasn’t the only historical figure who had somehow emptied himself in order to become something greater. He had never thought about it more deeply than that until meeting Baiyaan.
The chains that secured Baiyaan’s wrists and ankles were iron. There was no padlock. Seb knew the restraints weren’t real in any physical sense, but the fact that his subconscious had placed them there meant that the alien was being held captive in some way.
“You chained him up?” said Seb, looking down at Fypp, then across the table at the others.
“Of course,” said Kaani.
Bok nodded slowly.
“We have little choice,” he said. “Baiyaan did the unthinkable when he acted unilaterally. We have heard his reasons, we have accepted you as T’hn’uuth, but now the council must decide.”
Seb felt his Manna interacting with Baiyaan’s. The sensation was so powerful, he couldn’t marshall his thoughts for a few moments. Baiyaan’s presence affected him profoundly. He had the same deep sense of peace, stillness, of rightness, that he very occasionally felt when in contemplation. And yet alongside this, he still felt confused, off-balance and plain angry about what was happening to the alien.
“He’s on trial?” he said.
Bok nodded. “Yes,” he said. “We—his peers—cannot let his conduct continue unchecked. The council must decide what, if anything, is to be done.”
Fypp took a couple of quick steps forward and, with a child’s natural athleticism, did a handstand. She walked back and forth on her hands for a few seconds, her saffron robes hanging down and concealing her face.
“Baiyaan has been interfering,” she said, her voice muffled. Briefly, she put all her weight onto one hand so she could move her robes away from her head, tucking them into her belt.
“He’s interfering in order to stop the Crozzghyooni’ii Nssstaa interfering.”
Seb wasn’t sure if Fypp had said a name or cleared her throat.
Kaani flicked a cold glance toward Billy Joe.
“He doesn’t seem to fully appreciate the irony,” Fypp said, overbalancing. She stopped herself falling by planting both feet squarely onto the piano keys, producing a chord of which Bartok would have been proud.
“Huh?” said Seb, which was the only response he felt capable of coming up with.
Kaani rolled her eyes, but Bok put a massive hand on her arm and looked over at Seb.
“Please excuse us,” he said. “We may be ancient, but age alone does not necessarily produce greater patience, or, indeed,” glancing pointedly at Kaani, “basic manners. You only recently evolved, so—”
Kaani sniffed dismissively. Fypp giggled again as she righted herself, then skipped back to Seb, reached up and held his hand. Seb looked down at her, then back to Billy Joe, whose silent presence seemed to dominate the space.
“You know the Crozzghyooni’ii Nssstaa as the Rozzers,” said Fypp. “Baiyaan’s species of origin. The ones who zip about all over the place, creating life, leaving Manna lying about to help kickstart a new species’ evolution.”
Seb regained a little composure.
“Sure,” he said. “The Rozzers. Yeah, I remember them. Hard to forget. Wanted to wipe out humans because we didn’t conform to their standards.”
“They,” said Kaani, drily.
“What?”
“They,” the witch repeated. “Humans. They didn’t conform to the Rozzer’s standards. Not we. You’re no more human than I am, T’hn’uuth.”
“That’s what you pick out as important in what I just said,” said Seb, feeling a dull flush of anger. “Not the fact that the Rozzers were about to commit mass murder. Would have committed mass murder, if I hadn’t stopped them.”
Kaani stood up and leaned forward, her knuckles cracking alarmingly as she placed her gnarled hands onto the table.
“And now we come to the crux of it,” she said, looking straight at Seb. “The reason the council has been convened. You ignored the covenant.”
“What covenant?” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bok’s voice rumbled. “Which is why Baiyaan, rather than you, is in chains.”
Seb let go of Fypp’s hand.
“Enough,” he said, with enough authority that everyone turned toward him. Fypp even managed to suppress the giggle that was threatening to burst out. “What is Billy J—, Baiyaan, accused of? And what, precisely, is the council?”
There was a brief silence. Then Bok spoke.
“May I?”
Kaani sneered at him. “Well, your people always were the diplomats, weren’t they?”
Bok seemed to pay no heed to her remark. He waited while Fypp and Baiyaan both sat down. He waited again until Seb pulled out the one remaining chair and joined them.
“The Rozzers are the universe’s oldest known species. Every form of intelligent life that has developed interstellar travel owes its existence to their ongoing stewardship. Before they began their program, species would evolve in ways that, more often than not, led to disorder, violence and, on occasion, war that threatened to escalate to a galactic level. Baiyaan is accused of—on your planet—preventing the Rozzers fulfilling the task they have performed for billions of years. He did this by creating you.”
Kaani interrupted.
“A T’hn’uuth should not be created. A T’hn’uuth should spontaneously evolve. We are wildcards, rare but natural genetic leaps. Baiyaan has done that which he asks us to prevent in his own species of origin. He has interfered. At least, he has if we continue to accept—” she waved a hand toward Seb, “—that, as one of us.”
Fypp stuck her tongue out at Kaani. “We already voted on that, you old witch,” she said, “and you lost. So drop it, okay?”
Seb noticed a different quality in Fypp’s voice, and the air seemed briefly charged between the two females as Manna facilitated different levels of communication. He sensed a struggle of some kind, but it was quickly over. Kaani looked away.
Bok spoke up again, his sonorous tones still measured and slow.
“As for the council, you are looking at it.”
Seb looked from Bok to Kaani, Fypp, and Baiyaan.
“The four of you?” he said.
“No,” said Bok. “The council is comprised of all known T’hn’uuth.”
It still took Seb a moment to catch on.
“Me?”
“You,” confirmed Bok, as Kaani practically snarled with displeasure. “And now you must be shown the facts. Then we will vote. A simple majority will settle the matter. It is not a question of guilt or innocence, as such. Baiyaan has taken action that altered the future of intelligent life on your world.”
Seb frowned. “You say it’s not a question of guilt or innocence, but what happens if the vote goes against Baiyaan
?”
Bok thought carefully before answering.
“You must understand what is at stake before I answer your question,” he said, finally. “We are the most powerful individuals in the universe. The Gyeuk is, perhaps, as powerful, but it is not an individual in the commonly understood meaning of the word. Also, as yet, it has shown no interest in interfering significantly in the affairs of what it refers to as the fleshbound. We, the T’hn’uuth, have brought peace to the more aggressive species.”
“How?”
“Merely by our existence in all but a handful of instances. Worlds that wage war on each other face our justice, which is simple. We disable their technology, after which it takes generations for them to recover sufficiently to resume their wars. By that time—without fail, up to now—no world, collective, or planet-cluster has had the stomach for it anymore.”
“And how does your justice apply to an individual? One of your own?”
Again, Bok waited for the right words before speaking.
“We rarely convene in this way, Seb. Our kind is solitary. We allow each other, if you’ll excuse the pun, space. On only one previous occasion have we experienced dissension. The council ruled against the T’hn’uuth in question, and she was returned to her planet of origin. Told never to leave it again. Exiled, if you will. Unfortunately, she ignored the council’s instruction in this regard.”
The huge dark figure was silent for such a long time, that—if Seb hadn’t known from his Manna that it was otherwise—he seemed to have lost the ability to produce sound. When he did speak again, the words themselves seemed heavy and difficult to articulate.
“A T’hn’uuth is too powerful a being to allow to go free. Her intended actions might have led to catastrophic consequences. She was…stopped.”
“It was our only option,” said Kaani. “Together, we can break the will of another T’hn’uuth, but the result of doing so is, as we discovered, permanent.”
“We killed her,” said Fypp, cheerfully.
10
“You killed a World Walker?” Seb felt a kind of cold horror at his core. He had assumed that beings as advanced as the T’hn’uuth would never kill. The shock he now felt was profound.
“Her death was not the outcome we intended,” said Bok. “Our attempt to remove her power was without precedent.”
“Seb,” said Fypp, “let me give you the skinny.” She had adopted a solemn expression which looked too deliberately cute to be genuine. She produced a piece of bubblegum from nowhere and tossed it in her mouth. Her playful nature was completely inappropriate, and yet it was as if she couldn’t sound a wrong note, whatever she said or did. Her incredible age was still making Seb’s head reel. Her childlike appearance and personality were, he knew, façades beneath which lurked a formidable power. He didn’t know how to respond to her, but he was on his guard.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“We are all T’hn’uuth,” said Fypp. “All of us started as regular members of our species. But in our formative years—your own experience is an exception—we were seen by other members of our original species as different. Fast learners, picked up languages, outsmarted our parents while our peers were still sucking on their moms’ titties.”
She laughed then. “I wonder how that particular image translated into your head?” she said. “Never mind. Our carers, parents, guardians, genetic observers, whatever…they didn’t know what to do with us. We were using Manna years before we were supposed to. Most of our societies separated us from our fellows, tried to study us. There wasn’t much to see for a long time. A very, very long time in my case.” Fypp grinned. “My home species doesn’t reach adulthood until they are between two hundred and two-hundred-and-fifty years old. We enter our final phase—our old age— at about seven hundred years old.
“It’s only in old age that an individual finally develops into a T’hn’uuth. Everything happens more quickly after that. Our relationship with Manna is the major change. Our Manna becomes able to make its own Manna. New, more capable, more adaptable Manna. That Manna goes on to create more powerful Manna still. Manna that can learn, that can develop. In that last stage, we are so far beyond our contemporaries that we are effectively a different species. Then we Walk. Between worlds. Between universes. We change, too. Our physical bodies are just our Manna’s memory of what we once were. We are no more fleshbound than the Gyeuk. The difference is, we are still individuals.”
“And the World Walker you killed?” said Seb.
“Wow. Same question again. Boring. I was getting to that bit. We couldn’t take away her power without taking away her. No separation. See?”
Seb saw. The communication going on simultaneously between his Manna and that of the other T’hn’uuth suggested a long, carefully considered and regretful process leading to the demise of the renegade World Walker. He knew that, despite Fypp’s outwardly flippant demeanor, it had been an agonizing decision which still troubled her.
“Thing is,” said Fypp, pausing while she blew a huge pink bubble, popped it and began chewing again, “you’re different. Kaani thinks you can’t be T’hn’uuth because Baiyaan cheated when he made you. We voted her down. But you should know your big strong silent hero here bolted T’hn’uuth status onto you without really understanding what might happen. He took a big old risk. Dintcha?”
She looked at Baiyaan, smiling. He made no response. She turned to Bok.
“Tell him, Bok.”
Bok considered his words carefully. Too carefully for Kaani, who spoke in his place.
“Your species was evolving too aggressively. Like all species where Manna use is exclusive, kept to a minority, you were heading for a situation where power becomes an end in itself. Yours is a species where, for the most part, individual success is sought and rewarded, often to the detriment of the common good. Galactic harmony does not follow when a species like that develops interstellar drives. The results are never pretty. But Baiyaan selfishly insisted there was something different about your planet. He kept going back. Eventually, he staged some kind of incident big enough to get the attention of your species. He buried enough of his own Manna to draw any Users to its location.”
“Roswell?” said Seb. He felt an answering affirmative from Baiyaan’s Manna.
“He was convinced humanity was ready for a T’hn’uuth to evolve. When—if—the appropriate circumstances arose, he wanted to expedite the process by giving the human T’hn’uuth the new Manna. He knew time was short. The Rozzers were on their way to your world.”
“To kill us all,” said Seb.
“You really take this stuff personally,” said Fypp, shaking her head in wonder.
Bok took up the story.
“Baiyaan came to you earlier than he had planned. He admits that. He claims you were the one, the genetic wildcard. Only, you were about to die.”
Fypp butted in. “So he weighed up the possible consequences and decided to risk it. How does it feel to be a science experiment, kid?”
Seb shrugged. “I’m still alive.”
He felt a sudden craving for coffee. A mugful appeared immediately, and he took a sip.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“Which part?” said Fypp.
“Why create me? Why didn’t Baiyaan stop the Rozzers himself?”
Fypp scowled at him. “This is getting boring,” she said. “Let’s vote.” She pushed her chair away from the table and swiveled it to face the piano. She began to push random combinations of notes down. Seb noticed, after a few seconds of discordance, that recognizable harmonies were beginning to emerge.
Bok sighed, a sound with such heft that the table rattled, spilling some of Seb’s coffee.
“He cannot be expected to vote without all the information.”
“He’ll never have all the information, will he? Just hurry it along. I want to learn how to play this thing.” She glanced mischievously over her shoulder while playing the opening notes of Forgotten Blues, a so
ng Seb had written.
“How—?” he said, as she abruptly changed up the melody, morphing it into the Loony Tunes theme. “Never mind.” He looked back at Bok. The sound of the piano decreased as if he had turned down the volume. Bok continued speaking.
“Immediately after Baiyaan set in motion your evolution into T’hn’uuth, he Walked to this location and summoned this council.”
Seb stared at the chains binding Billy Joe, then looked back at Bok. “Baiyaan summoned this council?”
The huge dark head inclined in confirmation.
“A new T’hn’uuth is an event that could never go unnoticed by us. Baiyaan wanted to plead his case before one of us went to investigate the newcomer. We gathered here immediately, then sent for you.”
“Immediately?” Seb tried to work out the timeline and failed. “It’s been two years.”
There was a peal of laughter from Fypp, who had settled into a medley of Beatles songs. “Two years? Some of us had much further to come than others. There are only so many games we can play with time and space, Seb.”
Seb remembered the sensation of timelessness before he had arrived.
How long did it take me to get here?
When the Rozzers had grabbed him, he had been away for days. Seb remembered the expression on Mee’s face that first time when she had walked through the door twelve days after his disappearance to find him playing the piano. She hadn’t known if he was ever coming back. He felt a slight twinge of guilt as he realized he’d barely thought of her since arriving. Even now, it was hard to fix on this memory. It felt like something that had happened to someone else. Or something he’d seen on TV. He realized Bok was speaking.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 100
