A feeling came to me, as of a vast whirlpool turning around and within me, both majestic and swift. I looked down into it, and saw the immensity of distance it plummeted, its spiral flow growing smaller and smaller till it was no larger than a keyhole. Then I was being drawn into it, and allowed myself to drop, spinning, deeper and deeper, till I was the size of an atom in a maelstrom of dizzying proportion.
At the very bottom of the vortex there was light, and my mind yearned for it after all this time in darkness. Yet I found it was not a light I could see by; it had no source and illuminated nothing, but filled me from within till I shone. It gave me such a feeling of joy and belonging that my spirits sang.
“Follow the wonder,” said Dagget’s voice close by. “Follow the awe.”
There was awe—and reverence, too, for the immensity of what lay around me, and the light that animated me. I felt that I had merged with something immeasurable, and in it was everyone I knew and everything I had experienced, as close as a hand-touch, all united in a joyful moment that would last forever. There was warmth, and fragrance, and love.
“Keep together,” Dagget said. “Do not let it fill you, or you will burst. Thou art a thing with a skin, an inside and an outside. Feel thy body-anchor.”
Dagget’s words brought me back to awareness of the breath in my lungs and the beating of my heart, the bag of flesh I occupied. I was back in the cave, cold and cramped and blind. I was back in my trivial, tiny existence after having felt completion and totality. A sharp grief of separation tore through me, and I gave a sob of loss, sitting there on the ground. Dagget stroked my shoulder and whispered comfort.
“I’m sorry,” I said when I gained control of my emotions again. “It was overwhelming.”
“Aye,” he said, “some feel it so. To them, it is ever a danger that they will lose themselves and dissolve in the flow. It will be your task to resist.”
“I don’t want to resist,” I said.
“Thou hast not lost the Ground,” he said gently. “It is still here, around thee, at all times. All thou hast lost is awareness of it.”
“How do I recapture it?”
“That,” he said, “is a later lesson. For now, we must return.”
I felt that an enormous time had passed, but when we returned to Torobe, people had barely noticed our absence. I returned to Hanna’s house and slept for hours.
* * *
“Thou hast learned the first lesson,” Dagget said when I went back to see him. “How to find thy way into the Ground.”
I felt I had learned no such thing, and told him so. “Find my way? Without you, I could never return to where we were.”
He answered patiently, “All thou dost need to know is what to shun, and what to seek.”
I realized that the long journey through the cave was trivial in his mind; what mattered was what came after. Lowering my voice, I said, “You mean, avoid the thing I dread, and go toward the thing I long for? I would have done that anyway. It’s just instinct.”
“You would be surprised how many cannot follow their true instinct. Even you might find it harder to distinguish than it first seemed. There are no directions in the Ground—no up nor down, left nor right. There is only the good direction and the ill.”
It sounded strangely moral when he said it that way. It had already occurred to me that if I had fit the experience into a different cultural construct, I would be talking about having touched God, and the devil. My experience was not new. Generations upon generations of humans must have sensed the Ground, but come back describing it in their own culture-bound ways. I was struck again by Dagget’s pragmatism. He had taught me a moral compass through life, but spoke as if it were a mere problem in navigation.
“Thou hast also learned to preserve thyself from dissolution in the flow,” he said. “It will take practice, but the first step is done.”
I was still dissatisfied. For all I knew, my brain, starved for input and hallucinating on fumes, had created an elaborate illusion. I needed to know whether Dagget had experienced the same thing I did. “Did you have the impression of a whirlpool with light at the bottom?”
“Light?” he said, puzzled.
I realized there was an insurmountable linguistic barrier. Even if he had experienced light, he had no way to tell me.
But for that matter, how could I be sure that the experience I call “light” is what any of my sighted friends experience? Perhaps we are all going around using a single word for a collection of nonidentical experiences; how would we ever be the wiser?
I tried again. “There was a moment when I felt as if all the people I knew were there with me, and all the places I had been, and all the moments I had lived.”
“Aye,” he said, “that is so. In the Ground, all times are present at once, and all places. It is not many places, it is one. And so all people who ever lived are also there, but not as separate beings. Separation is the illusion; in reality, we are all one, the same, together, manifestations of Awareness. In the Ground we cannot travel, because it is all one place. We cannot go back in time because it is all one moment, now. It is an eternal event, always happening.”
All I could say was, “When can I go back?”
“When do you wish to go back?” he said.
“Now,” I said.
“Let us set out, then.”
The second time was utterly unlike the first. I saw no whirlpool this time; rather, I followed the feeling of sublimity until I found myself in an immense place like a multifaceted, n-dimensional prism, at the intersection of a thousand planes, where each surface was the reflection of another world. It dwarfed me; in fact, I had no dimension myself. I felt sure that by turning sideways I could fit through a crack into another plane at right angles to all the ones I knew. If only I could align myself with the infinitely complex geometry of the place, I could slip into a reflection.
It was completely bewildering, and just as I was starting to feel panic at the sensory overload, I remembered Dagget’s instruction that there were only two directions in the Ground. So I did the equivalent of closing my eyes: I ignored the visual imagery of planes and prisms, compelling as it was, and tried to navigate by my sense of emotion. It was like being in Torobe, finding my way without sight, but here I could sense the feel of home, the smell of memory, the snatch of a haunting song, the tug of love and hate. All of them were there, some more powerful than others. One “direction” called me with a thousand hearts of longing and desperation, another with a poignant sense of loss and regret, a third with urgent worry, a fourth with pinching resentment. I wanted to join them all, but as I turned my attention to the loudest, I felt a tug of familiarity and knew that Dagget wanted me back. I focused on the smell of pipe smoke I associated with him, and the familiar wisdom he radiated, and soon I was sitting beside him in the cave. He was holding my hand.
“Thou did forget thy body,” he said to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still elated and dizzy with the experience. “There were so many people, so many places.”
“Did thou feel the call of thy home?” he asked.
For once, his question did not quite hit the mark. I realized the problem: the word “home.” “I have had so many homes,” I said.
This answer made him thoughtful. I realized that I had said something as incomprehensible to the grounded people of Torobe as if I had spoken of prisms and planes. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I was the one who had misunderstood. When he said “home,” did he mean the assortment of places I had made my bed, or something deeper? Was there a place that was my true home?
“I think perhaps I have not found my home yet,” I said.
“That may be,” he said. “There are many habitudes, but only one home.”
* * *
A memory has come back to me, shaken loose by my experiences with Dagget. When it first surfaced it was muffled, like a sound heard through plugged ears. Then there was an abrupt clearing, like ears popping, and it rushed int
o my consciousness, flashback-vivid. It must be a memory the mentationists suppressed, because it is about Orem.
In it, my cheek rests against the gritty cement floor. The room is hot, and the acrid smoke of a burning city hazes the air. I try to sit up, and find my hands are tied behind me. My right elbow throbs, and I remember the sickening pop the tendon made when they twisted it behind me. My eyes are swollen and my throat is raw from tear gas.
I am in a cinderblock room with one small window high on the wall. It is twilight, and the low, sooty clouds are lit with the reflection of the fires. By the glow of the burning city I can see that the room has been ransacked. Nothing is left but a built-in rope cot with a cornhusk mattress, a broken mirror on one wall, and a dented mechanical typewriter lying in a corner.
A syncopated patter of gunfire nearby makes me recoil. My nerves are hypersensitive. Sitting cross-legged, I force myself to close my eyes and breathe evenly, to summon my dova. I repeat the apathi focus-phrases: All control is ultimately self-control. The world has no power over me if I have power over my mind. Gradually, the discipline forces back my panic, and my thoughts clarify.
My fear is probably exaggerated. Orem is prone to eruptions of violence, but they are rarely aimed against outsiders. The kithpacks hate each other far more than they hate us. The fact that I am not dead already proves that someone knows who I am and values the alliance with Capella I can offer. There is every reason to be hopeful. I know the Oreman psyche, and that knowledge is my weapon.
A tickling behind my ear invades my detachment. Tiny worms like nematodes are the ever-present vermin of Orem, filling the ecological niche of insects. I have fought to keep them out of my clothes and hair ever since arriving here. This room is probably infested with them. I can feel them squirming against my scalp, but with my hands bound I cannot scratch. Breathing out, I try to detach myself from the itch and revulsion—not to deny it, but to acknowledge it and rise above.
Later, a gray dawn noses in the window. The gunfire has died down. The sound of voices outside my room breaks into the silence. I do not stir as they unbolt the door, but merely sit on the floor as if meditating.
There are two of them, both men. On their left temples is tattooed an open bird claw about to grasp the eyeball, a packmark I do not recognize. By their clothes they belong to one of the wild hillpacks. That means they will be superstitious, conservative, and militaristic. Possibly deferential to authority.
“Do you know who I am?” I ask coolly.
They ignore me. Not deferential, then. They are checking the room for invisible dangers. At last the older one, a man with yellowed teeth and a stubbled face, says, “Rise in respect for the Hunter of Men, Katarka.”
My obedience is not quick enough, and the younger man sweeps out his machete and brings the flat of the blade down on my shoulders. It is exactly the same motion he would have made to sever my head. I stagger to my feet. Under my breastbone is a spot of quivering panic. I can no longer delude myself that I know what is going on. To these men, I am not an emissary of the Capellan Magisterium; I am a female body, anonymous and unimportant.
When the next two men enter the room, the first two kneel, each placing his forehead on one knee in a posture of obeisance. The second pair is as roughly dressed as the first, but have an air of mastery. One of them is a wiry, balding man who, without any obvious deformity, gives the impression of having been crumpled and broken. The other visitor stands in the shadows, so I cannot see him clearly.
With the guards still crouched on the floor, the twisted one comes forward to inspect me. When he catches me looking at him, he makes as if to strike me, and I drop my eyes. “This is the one who is kith to the king of the outworlders,” he says.
“What is that on her forehead?” the man in the shadows says.
“A stone eye, Great Hunter,” Twisted replies. “Only the outworld sleeks have them.”
The other man mutters a warding charm.
“It is just a caste stone,” I say. “It is inoperative outside my home world.” Ordinarily, I do not explain, in order to keep people guessing. But now their fear is dangerous to me.
They pay no attention. They exchange some words in one of the badland country regional dialects. The Great Hunter Katarka calls his companion Scarinau. I have never heard either name, despite having kept track of the rival factions on Orem. Laocata, the kithmother I have dealt with, did not fear anyone from the badlands.
Scarinau turns back to me. “You will send a message to your kith-king. You will tell him to send us weapons, many weapons, and supplies to make them work.”
“I cannot do that,” I say.
“Then you will die.”
It is just a statement of fact: if I serve no purpose, I will be disposed of. Quickly, I say, “I would like to help you. I cannot get arms, but there are other things I can ask for.”
“What things?”
Scarinau has a wily look. I realize that he might be ignorant and superstitious, but he is an opportunist. This is a man I can communicate with.
“Let me speak to my staff,” I say.
Great Hunter Katarka comes forward from the shadows. He is a magnificent barbarian, younger than Scarinau, muscled and athletic. He says, “Your tame little man-slaves were disgusting creatures, so sapped of life force they tried to talk instead of resist. We put them out of their misery.”
I cannot show the shock and grief I feel; he will see it as weakness. I must focus on the fact that I am alone now. There will be no help from home, and no Capellans working for my release on the planet. But I might still have Oreman allies. “Where is Laocata?” I ask.
“She cursed me, so I cut her tongue out,” Katarka says. “Then she shook her fist at me, so I cut her hand off. Then she looked at me, so I put her eyes out. She was a pampered degenerate, not even fit to hunt.”
Laocata was the most powerful kithmother I knew. If he is telling the truth, it will embroil the country in a bloody feud by her powerful kithpack—none of which seems to concern Katarka.
“What good are these outworlders?” he says to Scarinau.
“They have many riches, Hunter of Men.”
“Their riches only corrupt. It is nobler to hunt the old way.”
“Let me deal with her, then.” Scarinau gives me a crooked leer.
On the whole, I would prefer to contend with Scarinau. But in some situations underlings are of little use. Katarka’s ignorant savagery revolts me, but he is the one I need. I have to gamble, and do it quickly.
“Tell him the truth, Scarinau,” I say softly.
“What?” Katarka says alertly.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Scarinau says.
“Yes, you do,” I say.
I turn to Katarka as if we were standing in a council chamber. “Our satellites can make the name of Katarka echo around this world. It can echo in praise, or in infamy.”
There is a perfect silence for several seconds. I can hear the blood rushing past my ears.
“Pull out that stone eye,” Katarka orders.
The two soldiers rise to obey. The older one takes a tool like a pair of pliers from his belt.
“It won’t come out,” I say. “It’s anchored to my skull.”
“We’ll send it to her kith-king,” Katarka says. “It will be better than a finger or an ear. Everyone has fingers and ears. Only she has a third eye.”
The younger soldier pushes me up against the wall, my arms still pinned behind me. I start to talk, to bargain, but he grips my jaw hard to keep my head immobile. I see the other man coming, the pliers gripped in his dirty hands, and I struggle, kicking out. The jaws of the pliers grate against the metal setting of the caste-stone. The first pull does not budge it. He presses my head back against the wall with the heel of his hand, and grips the pliers as if to pull a nail from wood. On his second tug, I feel unbearable pressure; then the metal roots break free of bone, the stem rips from my flesh, and he holds the device up, bloody and b
roken. A warm stream blinds me, and my legs give way.
Later, I wake in a fever-hot room. My skin feels pasty with the mix of sweat and dust on it, and my mouth is parched. The wound in my forehead has become infested with maggoty, squirming worms feeding on the dried blood and flesh. The sensation is maddening, but with my hands tied behind me there is nothing I can do about it.
When the guard comes in, I beg for water and a doctor. He brings the water in a dish, and I have to lap it up like a dog. Later, he brings the doctor—or rather, a streetcorner witch-doctor who makes no attempt to dress the wound, and thinks the word “antibiotic” is some sort of Capellan mockery. “It’s infested with worms,” I say, on the edge of delirious hysteria.
“Good worms,” he says in a rough badlands accent. “Eat bad flesh, leave the good.”
“What if they get inside my skull and start eating my brain?” I say.
“Think bad thoughts to keep them out,” he suggests.
I would cry if I could spare the moisture.
After that, the universe contracts into a room-sized ball, and within that ball I am no longer a person, just a concentration of fever and thirst.
At one point the ghastly image of a face stares at me—reddened eyes, cracked lips, surmounted by a black and oozing wound. Frightened, I step back, only to realize that I have somehow crossed the room and am looking in the remains of the broken mirror the pillagers left on the wall. In my feverish state, I think they have made the mirror testify falsely, part of their wicked propaganda magic. They want to convince me that I am the person in that mirror.
Then one delirious night, I wake from a nightmare with the sensation that someone else is in my room. It is not one of my captors; I am sure of that, because I smell the cleansing smoke of sage. I feel a gentle touch on my forehead, and know it is the goddess Witassa who has come to my aid. She is standing there at my bedside, hacked by axes and still triumphant. The wound in my forehead then seems to glow with a sanctified heat. I whisper a prayer, the most heartfelt I have ever uttered. She does not answer, but I know she means me to turn suffering into strength.
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