When all had entered, the music started. The first sound was a single note plucked on a string—but the cavern sang it back from a dozen directions, amplified into an orchestral richness. The woman leading me tightened her grip on my hand in excitement. The echoes had barely died when a second tone came from a flute stationed somewhere across the room, and soon we were bathing in a lush shower of flute-notes, multiplied a hundredfold.
I would have been happy just to stand and listen as the notes began to overlap and form a complex, three-dimensional canon. But a second person took my other hand and they began to lead me on into adjoining chambers, each with its own sonic signature, so that the music sounded different depending on where you stood. The pungent fumes were making me feel a little dizzy and detached from my body. As the music became more and more complex, I could no longer tell where it was coming from, and disorientation took over. The people around me were moving rhythmically in a kind of dancing motion. Whirled along with them, I gave up trying to tell where my feet were, and what was close or far.
I must tell the rest in a sequence, though in my memory it all happened simultaneously, in an endless second. As I found myself enveloped in music, a revelation struck me like a blow: I could hear the shape of the cavern around me from its echoes. It was as if I were processing sound waves as I do light, my brain assembling them into a pattern. Every shape sang to me its nature—in one chamber I heard the rounded cauliflower cavities of the walls; in another, sharp crystalline cubes; stone pillars fluted like fabric; soft sandy mounds. It was profoundly emotional to suddenly understand what I had been missing, as if I had been deaf all my life. It was akin to seeing again. But there was one thing missing: myself.
I had lost all perception of how I fit into my surroundings. No longer was I in a particular location. Internal and external sensations merged, as if I had no edge, or a changing edge. I was a conscious space that filled the chamber around me. I remember thinking I could pass through a ring like a silk scarf and resume my old shape on the other side. It was strange but elating, and in the moment it felt deeply meaningful.
What makes one space me and another not-me? It was an absurd question.
Something was tugging at the edge of my mind, like a memory I could not quite bring into consciousness, from deep in my childhood. For a moment I could smell the beloved water-gardens of my cousin Bdiwa Ral, and feel a strong hand engulfing mine. I felt my father’s presence very close, an almost tactile sensation. He was thinking of me, drawing me to him, but I did not want to be the person he imagined me to be, so I pulled away, as I have so often done in life. It gave me a familiar pang of separation.
A long time had passed, and none at all. What brought me back was the realization that I had lost all sense of scale. I was in a space like the inside of a geode, all crusted with crystals—yet I could not tell if the crystals were the size of a salt grain and very close, or as massive as a building and far away. For some reason, this filled me with terror. I needed to know how large I was—something I had always known without the slightest doubt—and nothing around me gave a clue. The terror sent me recoiling back into my body with a painful snap, like a rubber band resuming its shape.
The music had stopped and the cavern around me was empty. I thought they had all gone home and left me. On hands and knees I crawled over the stone floor, not knowing where I was heading, till I caught a familiar scent on a current of air. It was not one of the perfumes, but a wholesome smell of cooking food. I got up, waving my hands before me, and edged toward the smell till I heard a person moving a pot lid. “Who is it?” I asked, forgetting the Torobe protocol of saying my name.
“It is Hanna,” she said.
“Hanna! Thank God you are still here.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
I realized I was. “Why are you cooking here?”
“Why should I not? This is my kitchen.”
It took me several seconds to realize she was in earnest; I was back in her house. I grappled with another wave of disorientation before realizing I must have passed out in the Echo Sculpture, and they had carried me back. “How long was I out?” I said.
“Not long.” She handed me a steaming bowl of grain, and went to check on the baby. I sat struggling with my confusion, trying to assemble my memories before they all vanished like a dream.
When Hanna returned, she asked, “Dost thou wish to speak of it?”
I did, badly. I felt an urgent need to describe what I had experienced, to communicate how important it had been, but words were pitifully inadequate. My first instinct was to explain in analogies, but they were all culturally bounded and meant little to her. Then I thought I ought to strip out all but the sensory experiences, and realized that also was inadequate, because the emotional component was so fundamental; in fact, I think the emotions were a kind of sensory information—my wordless limbic system speaking directly to my cortex.
After several abortive attempts, I gave up. “I have no idea what happened,” I said.
“Thou must speak to Dagget-Min,” she said.
* * *
I did speak to him soon after. But he would not tell me what I had experienced. “What did it seem like to you?” he said.
“It felt like I was halfway between existence and nonexistence,” I said.
“Nay,” he replied, “thou was touching the layer of all existence.”
“But I didn’t exist there,” I said, then immediately contradicted myself. “No, I must have existed, since someone must have been having those sensory experiences. Is it possible to be pure consciousness?”
“Nay,” he said. “Awareness is unbounded, undifferentiated, and is present in all things. It doth not distinguish between ‘I’ and all else, because it dwelleth in everything. Consciousness is a manifestation of awareness that is bounded and particular. It is concentrated in a single place and time, and is limited to a single point of view. Consciousness continually reacheth out toward awareness, to join it, but it cannot without giving up what it is. The grain of salt cannot experience the brine without dissolving.”
He spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone that I realized he was teaching me practical knowledge, though my culture saw it as the most recondite philosophy. He was simply giving me the benefit of his experience, not a speculation. Dagget-Min is a person who has cultivated a skill through practice—the skill of sensing something we only guess at.
What is it, this Awareness, this Ground? He says he cannot tell me; I can only find out for myself. But I am not sure I can pay the price of remaining here in sensory starvation much longer. Every time I wake to darkness it becomes more intolerable. I think I am close to an important discovery, perhaps more important than anything I have ever learned—yet if I could escape tomorrow, I would.
chapter eight
To Sara’s dismay, the scientific faculty embraced the idea of teaching Moth to see. With the planet under embargo, an experiment on Moth promised the next best opportunity for some interesting data. The only faction opposed was Sri Paul’s group of Corroborationists, who worried that meddling with the natives’ blindness might infect them with objectivism.
Sara’s misgivings were more about the invasiveness of the cultural interference. But when the issue reached Director Gavere’s office, none of these concerns turned out to be relevant. There, the argument was entirely between publicity and security.
Mr. Gibb loved the idea. In fact, he already had a script in mind. “Epco gives a child the miracle of sight,” he said, framing his hands to conjure up the inspiring scene. “The material will be golden.”
Until Epco’s rivals get ahold of it, Sara thought. Then the script would be, “Is she just a human guinea pig?”
Atlabatlow’s script was predictably paranoid. “Our sight is the only strategic advantage we have over the natives at the moment,” he argued. “While they still don’t know our powers, it is also an advantage in hostage negotiation. It would be foolish to reveal our hand.”
In the end, Director Gavere approved the experiment if, and only if, Moth would sign a waiver of copyright. It was up to Sara to explain to her the legal rights and potential profits she was giving up.
Once again full of qualms, Sara went to talk to David. “Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “It won’t work anyway.”
“What won’t work?”
“Teaching her to see.” He gestured Sara into his office. His worktable was heaped with notes and diagrams; he had clearly been researching the subject. Settling in his chair, he said, “From what I can tell, Moth’s problem isn’t in her eyes; it’s in her brain. That’s where the biggest part of the job of seeing is done. People aren’t born with the neural connections for sight ready-made; they are laid down over the first few years of life, in response to visual stimuli. For some reason, Moth never formed those connections in infancy. Even if the visual centers of her brain are still intact, she will almost certainly be agnosic: able to see, but unable to make any sense of it.”
Sara was surprised at the disappointment she felt. Consciously, she had been full of professional reservations. Now, she became aware that part of her had been hoping it would work. She had spent a lifetime trying to learn other people’s worlds and ways; just once she had wanted to give her world to someone else. She said, “So your advice is not to do it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You think it won’t work, but you want to try anyway?”
“What can I say? We might learn something. Besides, there’s always the chance I’m wrong. Moth is young, her brain is still malleable, and she’s motivated to learn new skills. We’ll never know if we don’t try.”
When Sara presented the waiver to Moth and tried to explain what copyright was, she found that Moth was following a script of her own.
“I know ’tis part of the test, that you will try to dissuade me,” she said. “It is my part to be steadfast. I will do whate’er thou require.” She was sitting cross-legged on the sofa in the Embassy, munching on a bag of snacks and looking quite unlike the heroic persona in her imagination. Her unruly black hair was bunched up in a clip behind her head, but tendrils were escaping in every direction. Sara was on the edge of laughing when she felt a terrible misgiving about the situation.
Moth noticed her silence, and said, “Sara? Have I not guessed aright?”
Sara sat down to face her. “Moth, this is an important decision. It’s not likely to work. But if it does…”
If it did, they would be able to show her a sunrise, and a candle burning, and frost. She would discover the sky, and the stars, and space itself. She would be remade in the image of her teachers.
“Sara?” Moth said uncertainly. “What is it?”
Sara took her hands and gripped them tight. “This may change you, Moth. Not just you—it may change all of Torobe.”
“Well, that’s a mercy!” the girl exclaimed. “Torobe is dead and dull. They think no big thoughts, dream no dreams. What lies there for me?”
“Your home. Your family. Your past. Someday, you’ll want that.”
“Nay, I want to be different. I want to be like thee.”
Sara felt the terrible burden of her illusions. “No, you don’t.”
“I do. If I pass thy test, and learn to use thy powers with wisdom, then perchance I will be free to go off and be a Waster, like thee.”
Sara knew she had to put a stop to this. And yet …
“What ill may come of it?” Moth said. “If I cannot learn to see, then I am no worse off. But if I do, much good may follow.”
Sara wanted to believe that it was Moth’s decision, made freely and in full understanding of the consequences. That was what she was bound to obey.
“If you truly think you understand, and have made your decision without any pressure from us, then you need to press your finger to this scanpad,” she said.
Bravely, Moth held out a greasy finger. Sara read her the waiver and asked the obligatory questions, and Moth affirmed her agreement.
* * *
The next day, the experiment began.
Moth had spent a lifetime disregarding visual stimuli the way Sara disregarded floaters or tinnitus, and now the girl would need to pay close attention to a hitherto meaningless distraction. Sara coached her until her face was set with concentration as she tried to maintain focus on the “blotches.”
Sara, David, Bakai, and Mr. Gibb were the only ones in the room with Moth, though others were watching the transmissions from Gibb’s headset. David started out by showing her the simplest visual stimulus he had been able to think of, a placard that was half white, half black.
“Do you see this pattern?” David said.
“Aye, I think so.”
“Half of it is what we call white, and half is black. If you can see the difference, touch the dividing line.”
Moth only looked perplexed. “How?” she asked.
It was Bakai who intuited her problem. She came over and picked up Moth’s hand, holding it before her face. “This is your hand,” she said.
Moth looked at it in surprise, then tried moving it to and fro, smiling in amusement as the image of her hand responded.
“Now touch the line between light and dark,” David prompted.
Her finger hovered in space, at a point midway between herself and the placard.
“No,” said David, “touch the placard.”
She had no concept of depth. Sara took her hand and guided it forward till it touched the chart. Then Moth moved her finger to the dividing line between white and black. Her movements reminded Sara of a child playing with a servo mechanism. The image before her was not really her hand. It was merely something that she could trigger into moving as she moved.
David’s other placards held parallel lines, converging lines, and other geometric shapes designed to test her visual acuity. Moth caught on quickly how to follow an outline with her finger. The last placard was in bright color, and she stared at it, concentrating.
“’Tis … beautiful,” she said.
“Just wait, Moth,” Sara said. “We’ll show you things a thousand times more beautiful.”
When the tests ended, Moth closed her eyes to rest, but still was dissatisfied. “What use are these games?” she asked.
“Be patient,” David said. “We had to test how much you could see. You’ll have to practice simple tasks before you can get to the complicated ones.”
“I see nothing,” Moth complained. “There be quaint figures, but I still cannot hear your thoughts, nor tell the future.”
Laughing, Sara said, “Where did you get that idea?”
“I have observed thee many times,” Moth said. “Thou will say, ‘Such and such a person is coming,’ and sure enough they do. Or ‘Someone hath moved the table,’ and when we come to it, it is moved. You live always a few steps ahead of now.”
Sara and David exchanged a bemused glance. Moth had been misconstruing the evidence. But which of them would have done any better, asked to conceive of a sense they didn’t have? “There’s actually some logic to that,” David said. “Moth needs to come into physical contact with something in order to know it, but sight brings us that information at a distance. You could say that sight collapses space, making distant things near. And so it collapses time, as well.”
“You can also read minds,” Moth said.
“What?” Sara protested.
“It is true, Sara. Oft hast thou marked what I was thinking, just by seeing me.”
“That is because your face gave you away, Moth, not because I could read your mind.”
“Pray, what is the difference?”
“Sig
ht is a skill, Moth. It’s like playing a musical instrument. When you get good at it, it will bring you information. But you’re going to have to practice.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “That’s all?”
“Yes,” Sara said. “That’s all.” She turned the swiveling chair Moth sat in to face her. “Moth, open your eyes. Can you see me?”
Moth looked uncertain, so Sara picked up the girl’s hand, showed it to her, then held it to her own cheek.
“Doth this pattern symbolize thee?” Moth asked.
“Yes, in a way.”
“Where doth it end?”
Sara was at a loss. David murmured, “She’s having trouble separating foreground and background.”
“Oh, I see!” Moth said. “Thou art the part that is changing.”
Sara laughed. “Good enough.”
Next they tried to lead her on an exploratory walk around the room, introducing her to chairs, walls, and people. Her steps were more timid and shaky than they had ever been. Finally she gave up and closed her eyes; then her tension subsided, and she moved normally back to the chair. “I beg thy forbearance,” she said. “It is too distracting; I cannot tell where I am whilst minding the mirages.”
Sara squeezed her hand encouragingly. “You did well, Moth. Don’t worry, you will get used to it.”
She had no idea how optimistic she was being.
In the days that followed, Sara became the teacher of a curriculum that she knew, but had never learned. There were no books or lecture notes to follow. How she had come to understand the concepts in the first few years of life, she didn’t know. The course might have been called “Introductory Seeing.”
What came to Moth from her eyes was an undifferentiated jumble of light, movement, and color. She could sense it, but not make sense of it. So Sara started out as with a language, teaching her nouns. She began by setting down a coffee cup on the table in front of Moth and saying, “Cup. Go ahead, feel it so you can relate its shape to the way it looks.”
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