by Nancy Kress
Pek Sikorski walked up to the door. “We ask water, by the petals of the First Flower, O friends.”
No one could refuse a traveler water. No one ever did; it was enough to raise suspicion of being unreal. Enli knew the great struggle that must be going on in the souls behind the farm shed door. Risk harm from strangers (unthinkable only days ago) or fail to share reality and become unreal (but there was no shared reality anymore). The sweet air was painful in her lungs.
Pek Sikorski repeated, “We ask water, by the petals of the First Flower, O friends.”
No response. Then, slowly, the door opened.
It was a boy, still a year away from becoming a man, his skull ridges deeply creased and his new adult neckfur bristling sideways. He saw the Terrans and gasped, closed the door, opened it again in terror and compulsion. Enli strode forward.
“It’s all right, boy. They are Terrans, not monsters, and they won’t harm anyone. I am Enli Pek Brimmidin, from Gofkit Jemloe.”
The boy did not look reassured. He thrust a bucket of water out the door and tried to close it again. Pek Gruber’s huge foot intervened.
“We must talk to you,” Pek Sikorski said gently. “We bring news of the shift in reality and of the First Flower.”
From behind the door another voice said, “The First Flower? Open the door, Serlit.”
An old woman hobbled out, leaning on a dobwood cane. Enli had never seen her before, but she recognized her with relief. She was a grandmother’s mother, revered by every village or rich household lucky enough to have one. Ancient with years, perfumed with experience, the grandmother’s mothers had been left on World past their time in order to guide people toward the First Flower. They were usually tough as their canes and fair-minded as only those about to join their ancestors can be. She eyed the Terrans without fear, then Enli, and finally Essa, who had left the bicycles and crept silently forward.
“I am Adra Pek Harrilin. Who are you, and what have you to say about the First Flower?”
Pek Sikorski answered. “We are Enli Pek Brimmidin, Ann Pek Sikorski, and Dieter Pek Gruber. May—”
“And her?” the old woman said, jabbing her cane toward Essa.
Pek Sikorski turned to find Essa beside her, frowned, and said, “Essa Pek Criltifor. May your blossoms perfume the air.”
“May your garden bloom forever,” Adra Pek Harrilin said. “Now what of the First Flower?”
“Shared reality has gone away. You know this. We are here to tell you why, so you will not be so afraid. Shared reality perfumed the air from a living rock. We Terrans have seen this rock with our flying boat. It lay in the Neury Mountains. But we have seen the living rock die, as all living things must die. That gift of the First Flower is over, and we must all plant new ways to be kind to each other without shared reality. This is what the First Flower wishes.”
The grandmother’s mother studied Pek Sikorski. “How do you know what the First Flower wishes? Did She tell you?”
“No,” Pek Sikorski said, taken aback. Clearly, Enli thought, the speech Pek Sikorski had practiced so carefully had holes in it.
“If the First Flower did not speak to you, then you don’t know what She wishes. You saw the living rock die. How do you know when a rock is dead? Did it have petals to wither, or breath to cease?”
“N—no.”
“You say that if we know about the rock’s death, we will be less afraid. Why should knowing why shared reality stopped make us less afraid of its absence?”
Pek Sikorski stood dumb. Pek Gruber, Enli saw, was grinning. The grandmother’s mother eyed him sharply. Abruptly she opened the door wide. “Come in and have some water.”
An expensive, very fast bicycle leaned against the inside wall, and three pallets crowded the floor. On one sat a woman nursing a baby. Half-eaten dishes of zeli mush stood beside a pile of the fruit fresh from the field, along with some cari and a bowl of chopped dul.
“My granddaughter Ivi Pek Harrilin. My granddaughter’s son Serlit Pek Harrilin.” The old woman of course did not introduce the baby, who was not yet real.
And now never would be, Enli thought. Or else was realer than any of them, born, as they were not, into this strange new reality.
The granddaughter, looking scared, murmured flower greetings, which Pek Sikorski answered in her gentle voice. The boy, Serlit, passed out water. Enli drank hers gratefully.
“We live here now,” the grandmother’s mother said, “because there is no food in our village. No one will leave their houses to harvest the crops. Fools.” She sucked thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek. “Well, they are afraid and it is a very small village. But my family has come here, near the crops, to encourage them back to sense. So far it has not done so. But Serlit here harvests our zeli fruit, and borrows cari and dul from the others’ fields, and we eat. Perhaps the others will come soon.”
Borrows, Enli thought. Not steals. The old woman had accepted the shift in reality without losing her fairness. Enli’s spirits bloomed slightly.
Pek Sikorski said, “We are telling people what has happened, so they will not be so afraid. We travel to the capital to seek—”
“Yes, yes,” Pek Harrilin said. “Now share with me the true reality of what happened. You, Pek Brimmidin. You share reality with me.”
She waited, leaning on her cane, her black eyes bright in her wrinkled old face. Pek Sikorski’s face went red. Terrans’ faces did that, Enli knew, but she still didn’t know why. Pek Gruber grinned again.
Enli said, “What Pek Sikorski said is shared reality, mostly.” Unthinkable words, just a tenday ago! “Shared reality has gone away. Shared reality perfumed the air from a manufactured object, not a living rock, that lay in the Neury Mountains. The manufactured object is gone now, and so we must all plant new ways to be kind to each other without shared reality.”
“Gone?” Pek Harrilin demanded. “Where did it go?”
“It rose up into the sky far away from World.”
The ancient black eyes were shrewd. “You shared this reality? You saw the manufactured object rise up?”
“I did not see it go,” Enli said, “but I share the reality that it has risen far away into the sky. Yes.”
“It had wings?”
“No. It had … some sort of wingless way to fly. Like the Terran flying boat.”
The grandmother’s mother considered Enli carefully. “Yes,” she said finally, “you are sharing reality. All right, then—the manufactured object that perfumed us with shared reality is gone. We will have to make a new reality.”
But the enormity was suddenly too great even for the great strength of her old soul. Her skull ridges creased and the cane slid along the floor. Before she could fall completely, Pek Gruber caught her.
“Yes, yes, I am all right,” she gasped. “Thank you. I am just very old, and soon I will join my ancestors, praise the First Flower.”
Pek Gruber eased her to the pallet. She leaned against the shed wall. “Pek Sikorski, you do a good thing. But you must share reality—the true reality—with people. You must say what Pek Brimmidin has shared with me.”
Pek Sikorski’s face was still that curious Terran red. “I will. We travel to the capital to seek a sunflasher, so that all on World may share the reality.”
Silence hung in the shed. It seemed to Enli that the old woman was deliberately not looking at her granddaughter. The granddaughter pulled the baby, now replete and sleepy, from her breast and laid it on the pallet. She adjusted her tunic and stood.
“I am a sunflasher.” Her voice quavered; she was more frightened than her grandmother. Yes, Enli thought, she had so much more to lose. But she was brave. “I will go with you to the capital.”
The grandmother’s mother said, “You will sleep here tonight, all of you. Tomorrow Ivi will go with you to Rafkit Seloe. Serlit will stay here. You, girl, looking so hard at Serlit and he back at you, will you stay with me, too?”
Essa laughed. “No, grandmother’s mother. I go with Pek Sikorski.
She took me on a flying boat into the sky once.”
“Ah,” the old woman said. She closed her eyes. “I am very old. You have all tired me out. Let me sleep.”
Ivi Pek Harrilin motioned them outside. Beside the cookfire she said, “Will you eat? We have zeli mush, and I could pound some cari to bake.” Her voice still trembled.
“We have food on our bicycles,” Pek Sikorski said. “We will all share.”
They ate outside, sitting on the ground, four Worlders and two aliens. The sky darkened and the night-blooming flowers unfolded their petals, scenting the air. If she looked away from the Terrans and the farm shed, Enli thought, if she looked across the fields, she could almost think herself back in Gofkit Shamloe. With Ano, with the children, with the people among whom she had grown up. With Calin. Almost, she could think nothing had changed.
Beside her Essa’s clear voice spoke to Serlit. “Do you want to go for a walk with me?”
“Yes,” Serlit said.
“No,” his mother said. “Stay here.”
Everything had changed.
* * *
Enli watched Pek Sikorski and Pek Gruber walk into the darkness of the zeli field, led by Pek Gruber’s powertorch. She knew what they were doing, since they did the same thing every night. Pek Sikorski spoke for a long time into her comlink, describing everything she saw happening on World. Her words, she’d told Enli, went to the large metal flying boat far away in the sky. It took the words longer each night to fly there because they had to catch up with the flying boat, which was speeding away as fast as it could. Sending these words chasing after the flying boat seemed very important to Pek Sikorski, although Enli could not see why.
“Does Pek Kaufman answer you?” she had asked.
“Yes,” Pek Sikorski said bitterly, “but not with anything I want to hear.”
Enli had asked no more questions. The reality of the Terrans was even stranger than the one that had come to World. Pek Sikorski had agreed to share the true reality in the sunflasher messages, but Enli knew it was not the whole true reality. Pek Sikorski had not spoken a piece of reality: that when the manufactured object rose into the sky, it had been because the Terrans had taken it. And Enli had not said that piece of reality to the old woman, either. Was it a lie if what you said was shared reality, but not all of shared reality?
She sat thinking about this, slumped on the rough wooden bench outside the farm shed. Within, the grandmother’s mother, Ivi Pek Harrilin, and the baby all slept. Essa and Serlit talked softly; Enli could hear their murmurs through the shed wall. Probably they were holding hands.
Calin …
She sat sorrowing over Calin, over unshared reality, over what might have happened to Ano and the children, and so didn’t hear the people approach until they were upon her.
“Hit her out!” the woman cried, drunk with pel. Enli could smell it on the man just before he swung his thick stick. She had started to stand and the blow caught her on the chest instead of the head. The pain was astonishing. Enli fell, unable to breathe, against the wooden bench. It scraped along her upper arm but she scarcely felt that pain through the burning agony of her chest.
Essa. Serlit. Ivi and the baby.
“Go in!” the same female voice shrieked. Two large bodies stepped over Enli, kicking in the shed door. Someone screamed. Something fell heavily against the wall beside Enli’s head. Still she couldn’t breathe. She heard herself make noise trying: eueueueu. The baby began to wail.
“Nothing here but another bicycle,” a man’s voice snarled out the open door. “Another good one.”
“Then take that!” the drunken woman called and laughed, a high horrible sound.
“You, you would try, you’re nothing but a boy—” Another sickening thud against the inside wall.
Air was returning to Enli’s chest. She tried to raise herself on her arms. Essa, she must help Essa, Serlit, and the baby … She was a hand’s span up from the ground. Someone wheeled a bicycle over her body.
“Lieber Gott!”
The bicycle crashed on top of Enli, followed by three more crashes. The drunken woman began to shout incoherently. Enli felt Pek Gruber’s massive arms pull her upright.
“Enli! Are you all right?”
She didn’t have enough breath to answer. Pek Sikorski pushed past her into the shed. Pek Gruber laid Enli on the bench and rushed after his mate. Everything went dark, but only for a moment. She could hear the others moving round in the shed—how many, O First Flower, how many?—and over all, the high terrified wail of Ivi’s baby.
Enli struggled to sit. Essa exploded from the shed, rubbing her shoulder. She stopped short and stared at the ground, so that Enli looked, too.
In the light from four moons lay three people, each wrapped from shoulders to knees in pink mud. No, not mud—some sort of sticky thick stuff, like sap from dobwood trees. They wriggled on the ground like helpless infants. The two men looked terrified, their skull ridges so deeply wrinkled that it drew their eyes higher than Enli thought eyes could go. The woman had stopped shouting and lay completely still.
“Is she dead?” Essa whispered. “What is it?”
“I … don’t know,” Enli wheezed. Her chest still burned, but she could breathe again. Her arm was scraped raw where it had hit the bench. The pink sap must be one of Pek Gruber’s weapons.
Pek Gruber and Pek Sikorski came out of the shed, leading Serlit and Ivi. Ivi, carrying the yelling baby, seemed unhurt. Serlit’s tunic was torn at one shoulder and his arm hung limply. A great bruise covered one side of his face.
“Your arm is broken!” Pek Sikorski said. She ran to her bicycle to get her healer’s bag. Essa forgot the wriggling strangers in the pink sap and hovered around Serlit.
Ivi said to Enli, “What … what did the Terran do?”
“I don’t know,” Enli said. It was getting easier to talk. “The Terrans have many devices. Pek Gruber … tied them.”
“Tied them? With what?”
“I don’t know.”
Pek Sikorski returned, and Ivi thrust the baby at Essa so that Ivi could tend her son. Essa, looking startled, took the wailing bundle. Somewhere she had learned to tend infants; she walked up and down, patting the child on its back.
Enli suddenly felt her insides lurch. She staggered behind the shed and emptied her stomach. Leaning against the wooden wall, she took deep breaths of the cool night air until her belly calmed. When she returned, Pek-Gruber had dragged the three wriggling and terrified people in pink sap away from the circle of light of his powertorch.
Pek Sikorski looked up from putting salve on Serlit. She said sharply to Pek Gruber, “Did you—”
“No, no,” he said in Terran, “I will just leave them in the tanglefoam for the night. Let them think what they do and wonder what I will do.”
Pek Sikorski nodded and returned to Serlit. The baby had stopped crying.
“Ann,” Pek Gruber said. “No … Pek Harrilin, Serlit…”
“What?” Ivi said. “What is it?”
“In the shed,” Pek Gruber said in his awkward World. “I’m sorry. Your grandmother … she is dead.”
Ivi said, “She has gone to join our ancestors?”
“Yes. They didn’t hurt her. The body is almost cold. I think she just died in her sleep.”
“She has gone to join our ancestors,” Ivi said, and there was so much joy in her voice and in her face that Enli scarcely recognized her.
* * *
They held a farewell burning the next morning. There was no priest, but Essa and Ivi and even Serlit with his broken arm rose at dawn to gather hard woods, plus masses of flowers to burn with the body. Pek Gruber put something from his pack on the fire and it got very hot, consuming the body quickly. They all danced and sang flower songs. Ivi looked radiant. Her beloved grandmother had at last gone to their ancestors, happy and sound and safe.
Afterwards, tired from dragging logs and dancing, they sat in front of the farm shed, eating zeli mush. Iv
i looked into her bowl and said to Pek Sikorski, whom she found less strange than Pek Gruber, “Why?”
Pek Sikorski said gently, “Why what, Pek Harrilin?”
“Why did those people come to hurt us—Pek Gruber, what have you done with them? I forgot them completely!”
“They are gone,” Pek Gruber said. “I freed them from the … the pink ropes and made them run away.” The wording was odd; was that Pek Gruber’s imperfect World or was he, too, trying to share only part of reality? Enli didn’t ask. Ivi appeared not to notice.
Pek Sikorski repeated, “Why what, Pek Harrilin?”
“Why did those people come to hurt us?”
Serlit said, “Because they were drunk, my mother.”
“No,” Enli surprised herself by saying. “Not because they were drunk.”
Everyone looked at her. Enli realized she had been thinking about this for a long time. She said, “They came to hurt and steal because now they can. Without shared reality, they can. Just as Essa liked going in the flying boat. And Pek Voratur kept more profits for himself than he agreed to. And Serlit wants to go with Pek Sikorski and Pek Gruber and Essa to Rafkit Seloe. All of them, because they can, without shared reality. People do things just because the things are possible now. Because they can.”
Pek Sikorski was looking at her with sadness and love. It made Enli feel strange inside. “Yes,” Pek Sikorski said softly.
But Ivi had been caught by a different piece of Enli’s words. “Serlit? You want to go to Rafkit Seloe with … with these Terrans?”
“Yes,” he said shyly, looking at Essa.
“But I want you to go to the next sunflasher with me!”
“I’ll come back, Mother. But I want to go. I’m old enough, you know I am.”
Ivi looked helplessly at Pek Sikorski. Her mouth moved, stopped, moved again. “How … how do you … when reality isn’t shared, how do you…”
“You learn how, mostly,” Pek Sikorski said. The love and sadness that had been in her face were now in her voice. “Over time. It’s practice, partly. You will learn.”
Ivi looked at her son and bowed her head.
“Mother?” Serlit said.
