Facets of the Nether

by William C. Tracy

  Another shiver went down her body, bringing a wash of color with it. Slowly, her claws shrank and separated into smaller fingers, while the strip of light on her head disappeared as a snout pushed out, darkening to black, and growing tiny scales. Dark and knowing eyes emerged from under ridged brows.

  The green and purple suit stayed, but was now a part of her body. Only the diadem did not change, resting on the top of her head.

  Before them was the same sort of sleek, black-scaled creature as had been presented in the Assembly as a servant of the Life Coalition. Her body was lithe, like a cat stretched up on its hind legs, but the face reminded him of pictures Sam had seen on Earth of Chinese dragons, long and sinuous, with mobile tufted ears.

  “You’re an Aridori,” Inas shouted, then clapped a hand to his mouth. He was wound tight as the spring in Sam’s pocketwatch, and Sam put one hand out to him, uncertain if it might trigger another attack.

  Crominu Vaevicta took one more step toward Inas, and he leaned toward her, as if trying to breathe her in. “This I am,” she said, and her words were physical sounds instead of the Nether’s mental translation of a Nostelrahn. “Yet I have spent several cycles as the most populous species of this facet.” The Effature raised a hand toward Wor Wobniar. “It serves as good relations to feel what the other species feel.”

  Sam looked at the well-dressed beings in attendance. Some seemed interested in the change, as far as he could tell from the Nether’s translation, but no one called the Effature out. A pair of Lufvurn, their long bodies wrapped around a column, bent their smooth heads together to discuss in a high-pitched stream of clicks, the words too quiet for Sam to hear.

  “The others know of my species,” the Effature said, coming closer. “I spend time as each, in a rotation. I am out of schedule to change, but then, this is an unprecedented event.” Her hand rose, long fingers extended for Sam to take. Hesitantly, he did, unsure what to do. Did they shake hands here? The Effature intertwined her fingers with his, gently squeezing, then released. “Please, tell me what you call yourselves.”

  Sam and Inas introduced themselves, and gave a little information about the species in their facet of the Nether. The Effature nodded along, her expressive snout indicating familiarity with a few of the species. She cocked her head at the Benish, Pixies, Sureriaj, and Lobhl. Sam recalled some piece of history Majus Cyrysi must have told him that those species were the more recent introductions to the Assembly.

  “You may call me Vaevicta,” she said after they finished. Then she looked from side to side at her attendants, and Sam marveled at the iridescent sheen on her scales. The Aridori were a handsome species, if this was how all of them looked. “You have seen individuals of the Nostelrahns, Praveadi, Caraakn, and Lufvurn while you have been here.” Various members of those species made motions of respect as the Effature named them. There were at least twenty of each in attendance, interspersed—or in the Lufvurn’s case, twisted around—the many stone columns that held up the roof. The Nostelrahn’s wore universally drab clothing, perhaps to counter that they spoke with color. The Praveadi wore shiny bracelets, pendants and rings on their stick-like legs, reflecting the light from glowing rocks placed high on the columns. Most of the Caraakn had large tapestries draped over their broad backs, which turned into elaborate collars for their rear heads, each sheet of fabric richly detailed with representations of scenes Sam guessed were from their homeworld. They featured lots of open plains. The Lufvurn wore nothing save their bright colors, looking like kaleidoscopes whenever they moved.

  The Effature continued after introducing several of her highest-ranking attendants. “The Aridori stay to themselves, and largely keep to the section of the city farthest from the center. Theirs—ours—has been a long road, working to improve the others’ view of them while perfecting techniques to cope with the swell of emotion that accompanies change.” Here she stopped and gave Inas a long look. “There are still some who choose the hard path that once led us to conflict, though they are few these days. I hope to see a generation of my people where none seek the heightened thrill that comes with change. Too much of it drove my kind to ignite war.”

  “Since you are Aridori, was that why we could tell you were female, rather than Wor Wobniar’s gender?” Inas asked. His eyes were bright, almost feverish.

  “The Effature is female whatever form she takes,” Wor Wobniar told them. Xyr head flaps switched from Sam, to Inas, to Vaevicta. “My species does have a female gender, one of five major ones recognized. You might call me a…‘pruner.’” Wor Wobniar took a moment to come to the correct word, the lights on xyr head flashing in patterns as xy thought. “One who regulates the growth and health of the species.”

  Sam worried how much his recent change affected Inas, though meeting another of his kind seemed energizing. Was it better than the funk he’d been in since returning from the Life Coalition? The Effature spoke as if the Aridori had bettered themselves since the war. Maybe she could undo what the Coalition had done to Inas.

  Does she remember the war? How old is she?

  “How is dear Palmoran?” Vaevicta asked. “I had hoped he would come himself. It has been far too long, though I suppose he has more trouble in your facet, with the oppression of Aridori there.”

  Sam squinted at the sheen of green and purple on the Effature’s chest. So like Palmoran’s robe. “Was the Effature’s costume inspired by the Aridori?” he asked. “Is it left over from before the war?” He was missing something.

  Crominu Vaevicta laughed, a deep hearty laugh, and several other beings made sounds of amusement, though Sam couldn’t tell whether they understood the joke.

  “Palmoran? Take after an Aridori?” Vaevicta’s snout opened in a smile, taking in him and Inas. “You could say that. He is my other instance.”

  Sam gasped as memories flickered through his head, connecting little moments he’d thought odd, but not enough to comment on. How had Palmoran stayed hidden so long?

  Inas brushed past him. “Why didn’t I see that?” His voice was still louder than normal, his movements jerky. It was like his metabolism had gone into overdrive, or he’d drunk a pot of coffee. Sam’s hand crept up to catch at Inas’ sleeve, but he pulled it back. What if he had suddenly found a group of humans—true humans, not Methiemum—alive here?

  “Are there more Aridori in positions of power? How have you stayed sane so long? I have so many questions for you.” Inas was almost nose to nose with the Effature. She was of a similar height to him.

  Vaevicta laughed again, and took Inas’ hand, twining her fingers through his as she had done with Sam, but now the gesture looked more intimate, and Sam frowned.

  I am not jealous of an alien monarch, who just happens to be Inas’ same species.

  How did Aridori reproduce, anyway?

  “Such a curious mind! I hope most of your questions will be answered eventually,” the Effature said, then grew serious. “I promise we will talk soon, but for now, we must discuss the actual reason you are here: the prophet’s vision of the coming Dissolution.” She dropped Inas’ hand and her striking eyes—a deep, dark purple, Sam noticed—fastened him in place. “Xy foretold you would be of the House of Matter, though it was thought lost. Is this true?”

  “I think so, and I think I can also hear the House of Time,” Sam said. “It’s new to me, but the more I learn about my aspect, the more I can tell it’s not like the others.”

  “So, another prophet in addition. That is as much confirmation as I need for now,” Vaevicta said. “My houses of the maji are in an uproar since Wor Wobniar told them the news. Poor dears. They wouldn’t know what to do without me.”

  Sam saw Inas’ eyebrows lift, mirroring his. They exchanged a glance. The maji were her ‘dears?’

  “Where are the other houses?” Sam said. “Shouldn’t the heads be here? Don’t they report as a Council?”

  “So many questions.” The Effature watched Sam, and he stared back, entranced. “Things work differen
tly here, young majus. I am the ultimate law. The maji do my bidding, and though they have some agency, mine is the only edict here.” She waved a hand at the expanse of her palace. “You will not find them in this place, save in rare circumstances. More likely, they are on the homeworlds, tending to problems they are better suited to fixing.”

  “You have no crime here?” Inas asked. “No events the maji can help with?” He folded his hands over each other, dry washing. Sam recognized that gesture.

  The Effature shook her head, the furry tips of her long ears shaking. “We have those things, but I am the one to deal with them. Most problems have no need of maji, if one is inventive. Best to save their notes for truly difficult problems, on the four homeworlds.”

  “Four homeworlds?” Inas asked, and he drooped for the first time since seeing the Effature. “I was hoping…” But Vaevicta was already shaking her head.

  “Just as in your facet, I suspect, the Aridori homeworld has been lost. There are no Aridori maji, something that has been consistent for many, many centuries.”

  “But, he is a majus,” Sam blurted. “Or an apprentice at least.”

  For the first time, the Effature looked surprised, and she took a long look at Inas. “An Aridori majus? Truly?” Inas nodded. “Perhaps we do have more to speak of than Wor Wobniar’s doom and gloom. What of your other instance?”

  “She is held captive by a fundamentalist group in our facet,” Inas answered, his face darkening. “This is why we can only stay briefly before returning.”

  “I see,” Vaevicta said. “Then we shall not keep you. But she is also a majus?”

  “She is. I always thought there must have been Aridori maji before the war,” Inas said, “but in our facet, they would have been hunted down. I thought…here…”

  “The war came here as well,” Vaevicta said, her expression turning cold. “It was a terrible time, but the species in this facet did not commit genocide. They discovered ways to determine our species, and found the hidden assassins by process of elimination. It occupied every species for many cycles.” She paused, then glanced at the others in her court. They were all paying attention.

  “Walk with me. Wor Wobniar should also come. Xy will need to take you this way.” The Effature indicated Sam, then led them deeper into the huge building, past her throne and into dark corridors lit by occasional shining stones embedded in the columns.

  “Our species was rounded up after the war,” Vaevicta told Inas, while columns marched past on either side. The building seemed endless. “The other species, and the maji, found ways to contain us.”

  “I know some of those,” Inas muttered, and Sam pictured the box the Sathssn kept their assassin in. How long had they kept Inas in one?

  “Here, those who did not fight to the death were put in areas with only one way out and guards trained in containment. There were many more battles, though this time within our species. The two communities—those of the Pillars and of the Blessed—have vastly different ways to control the emotion felt after changing. It has always been a topic with the capacity to split the Aridori into warring groups.”

  “That’s terrible,” Sam said. There were too many times in Earth’s history when people were forced into segregation or suppression. The Effature was dancing around some descriptions, but he thought he could fill in the blanks.

  “But some were left?” Inas asked.

  “Enough,” the Effature answered. “The ones who remained—the Pillars—were largely of one mind as to how to control the urge for emotional response. They took it upon themselves to craft their social programs to reflect only one style of control, even to the point of choosing their mates so their children would be less likely to search out violence.”

  “That’s eugenics,” Sam protested, horrified. “They couldn’t have known that, not for certain.” There was a lot Vaevicta wasn’t saying.

  “And you are an expert in Aridori reproduction?” Sam hunched in at the rebuke. But then the Effature sighed. “You are correct. There were many failed…experiments, but the remaining population was determined not to repeat the circumstances that brought them to that point. They made certain each generation followed the traditions they had set down.”

  They were silent for a while, columns looming as they walked, gray and still, as if in judgment. Sam marveled at the Effature’s history lesson. In his facet, no one knew anything of the time of the Aridori War.

  “Over the cycles, the population chose again to interact with the other species,” Vaevicta said. “Their guards agreed to let them mingle if they chose.”

  “But they must have been looked down on,” Inas said, and the Effature nodded. After so long separated, that would have been hard to avoid.

  A certainty was creeping over Sam, from hints here and there about his Effature—Palmoran, and from the way Vaevicta spoke.

  “You were there, weren’t you?” he asked. “You lived through this time. Did you live through the war?”

  Vaevicta was silent for a long time, and Sam thought she wouldn’t answer.

  Then: “Yes, I was. And you must know Palmoran did too, as he is my other instance.”

  “I’ve seen other Aridori who’ve been alive since the war,” Inas volunteered, and Sam stared at him.

  Was he going to share that with me at some point?

  “They were completely insane, and forgive me, but you don’t seem that way.” Inas was breathing heavily, and his teeth clenched. “How can an Aridori live that long and stay sane?”

  “You wish all my secrets today,” Vaevicta said, her tone icy. Inas folded under the glare, looking down and away in a display of subservience. Sam had never seen him do that before.

  “Forgive me,” Inas said. “I’m being impertinent.”

  The Effature waved an elegant hand. Sam realized he couldn’t hear her footsteps. Her feet were bare, each with four, long toes. She was completely silent as she walked.

  Which makes a good assassin. The thought crept into Sam’s consciousness.

  “You are being impertinent,” Vaevicta agreed, “but this is an uncertain time, and many changes are coming, if one listens to Wor Wobniar.”

  Sam looked back. The ever present click-click-click of the Nostelrahn’s clawed feet was in sharp contrast to the Effature’s silence. Xy had given them space to speak with Vaevicta, though xyr head flaps showed xy was paying close attention.

  In answer, the Effature tapped a finger against the diadem—the same one Palmoran wore—embedded above her brow. It was the only thing not to change when the Effature became an Aridori in shape.

  “This is the source of my continued sanity, even at my age. I believe you will find Palmoran the same, though without easy access to shifting his form, I doubt he remembers nearly as much as I do. I assume he has not shown his species.”

  “He has not,” Sam confirmed. “I don’t think he’d be the Effature if he revealed that. Some people in our facet aren’t even convinced Aridori are real.”

  “They…we are the creatures of nightmares,” Inas said. “I thought my family was the last of us, until I met the old ones. My parents, and their parents, have spent centuries hiding from everyone else, pretending we are Methiemum—like Sam,” he added at a look from Vaevicta. “It’s so deep in our bones that my other instance and I had never changed shape until two months ago.”

  Vaevicta peered down her snout at them. “Fortunate you came with your friend, then,” she said, and her pace slowed as a wall loomed up in front of them, dark and wide. A little ways off, there was a round doorway, like the one into which they’d entered the building. “You and I will talk about our species and what can be done,” she said to Inas. Then she nodded at Wor Wobniar.

  “The discussion of Aridori is always difficult,” the Nostelrahn prophet grated to Sam. “Therefore, while that happens, I can show you the House of Time.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ancient Restraints

  - Stories of the Aridori have been in our s
ociety ever since the war, beginning with fact and gradually descending into rumor and speculation. Every few cycles, they spring to life again, as if there is some motivator keeping these night fright tales in our social consciousness. Is this simply because people enjoy a good scare when they know it cannot be true, or are there real factors involved, generating these stories? Perhaps another faction or community is gaining legitimacy by propagating them.

  Part of a philosophical treatise by Punala Traelfa Tinala, in service to the government of the Fiery Sea Archipelago

  Enos roused from a deep and peaceful sleep, looking over the prone forms of the other Aridori with bleary eyes. The majus lights high on the walls brightened into morning, and someone was banging on the sealed door.

  “Right now, it is time for you to show yourselves to the Coalition leaders,” a voice called. Was that Dunarn? Enos stretched. She’d had such…vivid dreams about Sam. She couldn’t stop the smile that stretched her mouth.

  “Come on, come on,” Zhaddi said, shuffling to the door. They were furred today, like a Festuour, though not nearly thick enough through the body. Their head was also wrong, closer to the sleek, scaly black of the Aridori. Enos saw the others were similarly up and moving toward the door. She followed them.

  “Not going to resist?” she asked the others.

  Putra shook their head. “With a chance to observe the leaders? We will behave for this. We rarely see them. Such delicious movement—new parts and gestures to copy. There will be others around, too.”

  “Strange that they call for all of us,” said one of the three Aridori with no names. A dissenting opinion reached up from within Enos. Voices sounded on the edge of her comprehension, like the echoes of the Symphony behind the shield the Life Coalition controlled. Enos pushed them back down. They did not have a say in what she did.

  Yet you use our substance.

  Enos stopped while the others went through the door. The voice had been clear, but now was lost among mumbling rantings. Enos drew in a deep breath, listening for the Symphony, and to the other Aridori talking about new sights and smells. Anything to get that voice out of her head. Her heart thumped in her chest. Was it even her heart any longer, or had that been a piece she stole? She couldn’t remember.