by G. Howell
I nodded and pointed at the computer sitting on the polished wood, casting its steady glow. “If that could be made with moving parts like that, they would number in the millions of millions. If you know how, you can make it do an incredible number of things, but getting that knowledge takes a very long time. Think of it… like an apprenticeship, a? To use one of these you need an apprenticeship. And there are a lot of different kinds of devices like this that you need to know how to use.”
Water lapped on a shoreline out in the darkness. Somewhere along the other end of the ship a Rris sneezed. Both the Mediators were trying to absorb what I’d told them, but I felt that it was like a Marketing Executive trying to explain routing tables or logical thinking – there just wasn’t the grounding.
Jenes’ahn twitched her head like she had a bug in her ear and looked at Chaeitch. “He’s told you about this before?”
He waggled his hand in a shrug. “A. And I think I was just as confused, but as you learn more about it some things do start to make sense. I can almost understand what Mikah’s occupation was about.”
A frustrated-sounding growl like a rasp grating over metal escaped Rohinia. “Very well, we can start simply. Mikah, tell us about one of your days. We will question anything we don’t understand. You will explain it.”
“A day?” I asked, dubiously.
“A,” he snorted. “Begin in the morning and describe step by step what you did during the course of the day. It should be fairly straightforward.”
Hours later, the moon had started its descent and I’d just finished trying to explain what breakfast cereal was.
------v------
Compared with the voyage to Open Fields in the Ironheart, we were taking the long, scenic route. It wasn’t a matter of just aiming the pointy end of the ship in the direction you wanted to go and hanging all the sheets out, there were things like winds and currents to worry about. Half the time we seemed to be going in a direction that wasn’t remotely connected to where we wanted to go. South, South-west, north... wherever the captain thought best. That meant days passed while we navigated first the waterway down from Season’s Door and then pinballed our way across the lake.
The days were bright, with clear skies and warm breezes only partly cooled by the expanse of water they blew across. Once a storm prowled across the horizon and lurked there for some hours; grumbling thunder drifted in from distant thunderheads riding a grey-purple haze while the sunlight warmed the part of the world we were in and the winds took us past and away. Sunlight was good: the laptop could get a charge while I sat around, basked in the warmth and watched Rris sailors make the boat go by pulling on lots of ropes. There really wasn’t much else for passengers to do. So I lay on the warm cabin roof, gazing up at a mast and the crosshatching of rigging stretching far overhead where pale sheets billowed and boomed against a blue sky. I watched Rris crew clambering around up there. They took it carefully; a good deal more cautious than human sailors I’d seen. That wasn’t surprising: their hands weren’t as good at gripping as mine were and their feet were even worse adapted. In fact they wore these wrist bracers with solid iron hooks that they used to hook ropes and other holdfasts while scrambling in the rigging.
Other passengers did their own things. The Guards we’d collected from the embassy staff in Open Fields kept to themselves, playing games of chance, talking, sometimes fishing. Chaeitch and the others sprawled around the sun-drenched deck in dozing heaps of savannah-and-stone-colored fur. They’d found places like I had, out of they way of the crew, and settled down to the monotony of ship days either snoozing or quietly talking. I reflected on that, thinking back to business lounges full of travelers desperately spending every available second hammering away at various input devices and comparing that image to these Rris executives, one of whom was flat on her back in a patch of shade, tongue lolling from the corner of her mouth, and snoring like a ripsaw. This was a slower world, but there was more to do.
At night we anchored. When the dusk was in its final stages of turning to dark and it was already too dim for me to see well by, the ship would drop anchor in some sheltered bay or cove. They were isolated places, full of silence; bordered by lake, sky and wilderness and without a sign of habitation anywhere. I scared the hell out of a few of the Rris when I took the opportunity to bathe by just striping off and diving over the railing into the dark waters. I could hear voices raised in argument on board while I swam out into the darkness under the waking stars. I floated out there in the inky water for a while, watching the pale orange fireflies of the ship’s lamps against the black shoreline. When the cold water started to get too much I headed back, hauling myself up the anchor cable, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Mediators met me with barely concealed annoyance; Chaeitch and Rraerch with a towel and amusement.
A few evenings we stopped at places that could be called civilization. A couple of them were decent-sized towns with established harbors, but a others were little more than clusters of buildings with a stone and/or wood jetty thrust out into the lake. At those places scruffy cubs raced down to the lakeside to stare at the ship while their elders were eager to try and trade whatever goods they could: food, drink, tools and trinkets and any kinds of news. They were disappointed that we weren’t a proper trading vessel, but they still provided fresh food which was welcome after the salted and smoked provisions the ship carried. The lack of refrigeration limited what could be carried on even short journeys.
After the evening meal my time was occupied by the Mediators. And they wanted me to explain my world.
That was… frustrating. The first few nights I’d felt I was trying to push the tide back with a broom; everything I tried to tell them required explanations, and then those explanations needed expounding upon. Every little thing that’d been normal in another world was completely beyond their experience: light switches and alarm clocks, electricity, mass transit, hot coffee and fast food, an infrastructure where everyone can connect to everyone else, where you never needed to be out of touch. I had to explain all that. I had to explain why you had to be careful crossing the street lest some graying twen-cen throwback in a semi-legal gasbox didn’t mow you down. And then the Rris thought those vehicles sounded great; why were they proscribed? What was carbon dioxide? What was a rain forest? A dust bowl? An ice cap? How could a government allow that? Why didn’t the Guilds remove them? What about other nations? Everything branched off into something else and I just didn’t feel that I was making any headway. But they weren’t stupid: they could and did learn, even if the words I was using weren’t part of their tongue or even pronounceable by them.
So, on those warm nights we sat under the stars while I described a day I’d had a long time ago. Chaeitch and Rraerch lurked in the background, lazily listening to my tale and the Mediators’ questions. Occasionally they were able to provide some translation services when there was some technical issue I’d covered with them in the past that the Mediators were having trouble grasping. Of course the laptop was there, to show them aspects of my world. When words couldn’t do it, the images were there. Whether or not the Rris could make anything out of the images was something else.
And there were always music and movies.
I’d started with one movie as a demonstration, as a crash-course into some aspects of my culture, but as the journey progressed and those late-evening lessons continued, it became a bit of a routine to finish up with some entertainment of one kind or another: music or a video of a movie or series. The Mediators listened or watched intently, as if trying to learn by osmosis. Sometimes they asked me to translate or explain. Other times they just absorbed. I had to wonder how much of it was sinking in? Wouldn’t it just be a blur of colors and noise, of outlandish clothing and incomprehensible concepts? They couldn’t recognize individual humans: just hair and clothes, details of features escaped them. The compression of time and space through j
ump cuts confused them. Many scenes were chaotic and busy, filled with artificial detail that just didn’t exist in their lives. Try walking through supermarket isles some time: the storm of information from colors and logos and texts sends your brain into an overload mode that shuts down a lot of sensory input. Did this happen to the Rris? They didn’t perceive detail as well as I did, I knew that, but I knew they were very good at picking out moving detail. Very much like a cat would take an interest in a bit of string or something small moving in the grass. Perhaps there was some filter in there that dealt with that sort of thing.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. At any rate, they worked their way through everything that took their fancy. Insects swirled and circled through the cone of flickering light thrown out from the laptop, batting against the glowing screen as the Mediators watched videos: documentaries and sitcoms and movies and amateur videos of all sorts and descriptions. They went through the music library, sampling available tracks from all genres and eras, everything from classical compositions and opera to modern rock and thumping tronics. Sounds never before heard in this world drifted out across the dark lake waters, causing crew lurking on the peripheries of the light to prick up their ears and crane to see what was happening.
I sat and watched with them, not in the best of moods. The Mediators pushed my buttons with an ease that was preternatural, and I was still pissed at what had been done to me and about the arrangement I’d been manipulated into. Also, the stuff on the screen did dredge up memories, jagged shards that stabbed up through the insulating murk of time. Twice I was jolted back to the present by a nudge from Chaeitch and found myself facing expectant faces and a question I hadn’t heard asked. I noticed the Rris who knew me were keeping a close eye on me but they refrained from saying anything.
So, we’d watch a film or listen to music until the moon was riding high and the batteries were running low. When they were done I’d turn off the laptop and there would some more discussion for a while before we’d drift off to our quarters. The cabin they’d given me was close and stuffy in the summer heat. Even with the window open it smelled of wood and damp and lots of Rris. And the bunk was way too short for me. I suffered one night of sweating and thrashing in that coffin. The second night I took myself and a single blanket up on deck. It wasn’t raining, it was warm, and a lot of the ship’s complement seemed to have the same idea. I found a spot on the cabin roof, which was only marginally harder than the bunk had been, and lay back to watch the stars.
I fell asleep watching a strange universe reeling overhead.
------v------
On the last day of our journey the sky was lost behind a pale haze like watery milk washing across a deep, turquoise bowl. The overcast of thin cloud didn’t so much block the morning sun as diffuse it into an uncomfortable, encompassing glare. Occasional patches of blue made brief appearances, appearing across the flat sky like ink blotches seeping through rag paper and then fading again with just as little fanfare. The warm air was muggy, but there was enough of a breeze blowing across the deck at the back of the ship to take the edge off it. It blew from the lake, carrying the smell of water; swept across the sails; it set the sheets of canvass to billowing and booming; it riffled through the edges of my sketchbook pages.
It was a thoughtful gift her Ladyship had given me. The paper was a beautiful creamy rag of excellent quality and undoubtedly very expensive. The charcoal sticks were encased in wood - almost like pencils but again, certainly a great deal more expensive. I’d used it extensively over the past couple of days, filling the pages with sketches and trying not to waste any space. I’d been trying to catch forms and shapes: parts of the ship, the headlands and shore in the distance, the peculiar figures and forms of the sailors as they hauled at the rigging, but my mind kept drifting. While I sketched I kept finding myself working over what’d happened again and again. When I looked at what I’d put down on the paper, it wasn’t... I shuddered and turned the page over. I was too wound up and that was leaking through onto the paper. Again. I looked around for something else. The helmsman was at his station, braced against the wheel but still looking relaxed. There were interesting lines there where the radial spokes of the wheel closed in on him.
“May I join you?” Chaeitch was standing nearby. Not too close.
I shrugged. “It’s almost a free country.”
He clicked his teeth together and hesitated before seating himself on the warm wooden deck beside me. For a while he went through the little ritual of loading, tamping and lighting his pipe. I concentrated on the scene before me and with a corner of my awareness listened to the booming and creaking of the sails, the calls of the crew, the sound of water against the hull while he puffed the thing to life. For a while we sat quietly. He blew streamers of smoke into the breeze and watched through slitted eyes as they were whisked away into the blue.
“You’ve been… very quiet recently,” he said eventually, carefully. Testing the waters.
I shrugged. “I think I’ve been worried what I would say.”
He gave a growl that I could hear, flashing white teeth around the pipe stem. “Your artwork... is that helping?”
“A little,” I said as I sketched lines, trying for the relaxed slouch of the Rris at the wheel with the curve of sails and ropes behind him.
“May I see what you’ve done?” he asked.
My hand twitched in the midst of a line. “That may not be a good idea,” I said, but he’d seen the twitch. From the tail of my eye I saw his glance flick from my hands to my face.
“There is something wrong?” he ventured.
“It’s… they’re not very good,” I hedged. “I don’t really want to show them.”
The carved stone bowl of his pipe lifted as he clenched teeth. He knew something wasn’t right, but he didn’t press. “A,” he finally snorted and leaned back. “Your decision. But if they were like the ones you did for her Ladyship you could sell them. Make yourself famous.”
That actually clawed a laugh out of me. Chaeitch favored me with another sidelong look again and went back to puffing on his pipe as he changed the subject. “We should be back in Shattered Water tomorrow sometime.”
“A,” I nodded as I kept sketching. The talking screwed up my visualization centers, but… hell, he was trying to be friendly. “It’ll be good to get home,” I said.
“Home?” he flashed teeth at me in a copy of a smile. “Home now, is it?”
My hand stopped again. I stared at the paper and reran the past few seconds in my mind. “That’s… disturbing.”
“It’s that bad?” Chaeitch asked carefully, sounding as if was having regrets about having said anything.
“It…” It meant that memories of what was normal were fading. It meant I was sinking deeper into this bizarre world; that it was becoming more than just a passing experience. “It’s not something I thought would happen.”
He took some thoughtful puffs. I caught whiffs of the sweet-smelling weed smoke as it drifted by me, before it was broken apart and stolen by the wind. “Huhn, that is bad,” he growled and I caught the joking tone.
The helmsman scratched vigorously at an ear and shifted his weight from one foot to another, muscles shifting beneath the furry hide as he moved. His tail flicked and ears twitched lazily up at calls from up front. “You know,” I said reflectively, “there was a time that a sight like this would have been unbelievable to me. I think I’d have sooner believed I was going insane than accept it. Now I keep finding moments when all this is almost normal. I think that frightens me.
He breathed another trail of smoke. “But still, you’re looking forward to returning home?”
I hissed through my teeth. “A. Mainly because at the least I’ll be away from those two.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “Huhn,” he coughed and a few seconds later made an uncertain noise, “Hurr,
about that.”
“What about that?” I asked warily.
“Ah,” he hesitated and his ears wilted, “they will be lodging with you.”
“You’re joking.”
“Actually, no. They want at least one of them to be at your residence at all times…”
The charcoal stick in my hand snapped. He stared at it, his pipe dangling from his mouth and his ears down. “Sorry, but they have insisted.”
“That’s… they can’t,” I said stupidly. To Rris, the hearth, the home, was about as close to sacrosanct they came. To invade someone else’s property was considered rude in the extreme. Someone had told me that one time, after her little home had been invaded. “That’s not right.”
“No,” he agreed sadly. “But, they are Mediators. I think if it wasn’t done this way, they would simply move you to a Guild house.”
“Do you think anyone would miss them if they were to fall over the side…”
“Mikah!” he cautioned. “Don’t even start with that.”
“Yeah, they probably would,” I growled. “So, I’m supposed to house these Guild spies. I’m supposed to feed and clothe them also?”
“I imagine the Palace or Guild will reimburse,” he replied and still looked anxious. “You aren’t going to make this into a problem, are you?”
“There’s not much I can do, a?”
He waved a ‘no’.
“Huhn,” I grumbled, studying the lines I’d drawn on the creamy paper. “I’m sure Tich is going to be thrilled at having some other spies in the house.”
