Interim Errantry

by Diane Duane

  “What’s a joke?”

  His laugh this time was more sardonic. “Me,” he said. “All of this. Might as well be a joke, ‘cause if we don’t laugh, we’re all going to cry.”

  “What’s cry?” the sibik said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kit said. “I don’t think you’ve got the plumbing. Anyway, you comfy there?”

  The sibik in his lap shifted a bit and wrapped some more tentacles around his legs. “Now I am.”

  “Okay,” Kit said. “So once upon a time there was this guy—”

  “What’s a guy?”

  “A person,” Kit said. “A human being. One of my people.”

  “All right.”

  “So there was this guy, and he lived in a house not too far from a river—”

  “What’s a house?”

  Kit smiled, realizing that this was going to be one of those storytelling sessions. But he’d had enough of these with Ponch over the years to know that all you could do was just keep on answering the questions until the audience ran out of them. Sometimes it took a while.

  “A house is a kind of building where you stay most of the time, eat and sleep and so on,” Kit said. “My people live in houses, in a lot of places.”

  “Okay,” the sibik said. “I know what that is. My people had a house.”

  Had, Kit thought, with yet another pang of sorrow. “And one time the weather got bad and it was going to rain a whole lot, and there was going to be a flood.”

  There was no “What’s a flood?”, so Kit paused. “You know what a flood is?”

  “A lot of water,” the sibik said, with profound distaste. “Everything floats away.”

  “Okay, good, you get it. Well, when the people who know about weather realized that was going to happen, the local government put out notices on TV and the radio and the Internet telling everybody—”

  “What’s a government?”

  Kit could just hear some of the suggestions his pop would make. “Uh, the people in charge of making sure that the things people need to share work right.” At least that’s the theory.

  “Like giving people food?”

  “Uh, yeah, sometimes.”

  “Good, I’m still hungry, may I have a cracker, please?”

  “Aren’t we asking nicely,” Kit said. “Very good.” He fished out another saltine, which the sibik accepted gravely and stuffed into its eating orifice. Five crackers… “Anyway, the government sent messages to everybody saying that the rain was going to flood everything and they should leave and go up to high ground where the water wouldn’t reach.” He paused. “You with me so far?”

  “I have been with you for some time,” said the sibik with a peculiar dignity; and Kit shivered with the thought that he might be hearing someone else whispering through the words.

  “Right,” Kit said, his throat getting tight for a moment. He ahem-ed a little to clear it and went on. “Well, the guy we’re talking about heard the news, and he said to himself, ‘This sounds like it’s going to be really bad, this flood. But I trust God—’”

  “What’s God?”

  Kit laughed and covered his eyes. “Uh, yeah. You know about the One?”

  The sibik actually drew away from him and stared at Kit in astonishment. “Of course.”

  “Okay. God is the One, more or less. Or the other way around. Anyway, this guy said, ‘I trust God, God’ll keep me safe and see me through this.’ And then he felt better.”

  “This would be a good time for another cracker,” the sibik said.

  “Of course it would,” Kit said, and gave the sibik another, and looked sadly at the emptying package. Four…

  “So then it started to rain,” Kit said. “And there was more and more water, and it got deeper and deeper. All the ground down by the river got flooded. And then water started rising up from where the river was, and flooding everything nearby. And pretty soon it rose up so high it was all around the guy’s house. And some of the people from the National Guard—those are some people whose job it is to protect other people in their area,” Kit added hurriedly, because he could feel the sibik twitching with the next question—“they drove by his house in a big vehicle. And one of them shouted to him, ‘Hey buddy, the water’s not gonna stop rising. So come on with us, jump in our truck and we’ll get you out of here!’ And the guy said, ‘No, it’s all right, God’s going to see me through this, I’m okay. You go ahead and help someone else who needs it.’ So when they realized they weren’t going to be able to get him to go with them, the National Guard people went away.”

  “The crackers are going away too,” said the sibik, not entirely mournfully.

  “Yeah, I see that,” Kit said, and gave the sibik another. Three… “So all that night the flood waters kept rising, and they rose so high that they came in the doors and the downstairs windows of the guy’s house, so that he had to go up to the second floor. And later that day some people came along who were from the Coast Guard. They usually take care of people who go out on the water on purpose. Now, though, because it was an emergency, they came along in a boat—” Kit paused. “You know what a boat is?”

  “It goes on top of the water,” said the sibik. “My person has a small one he plays with.”

  “Well, imagine a bigger one, like twice as long as this stone, okay?” Kit said, indicating the seat of the Stone Throne. “And maybe twice as wide, with room for people in it. So the Coast Guard people came and called to the guy in the house. They said, ‘Buddy, come on, the water’s going to be rising all night and all tomorrow and the day after; you can’t stay here or you’ll drown! Get in the boat and we’ll get you out of here.’ But when the guy looked at them, he thought, ‘I don’t know—this doesn’t look all that much like God saving me.’ So he called back to the Coast Guard folks from his upstairs window, and he said, ‘It’s okay, God’s going to see me through this, so I don’t need a lifeboat! You should go on ahead and help somebody else.’ And they couldn’t get him to come with them, so they revved up the motor of the boat and went away.”

  “Like the crackers…”

  Kit took the hint and gave the sibik another one. Two… “So then the water rose and rose even faster than it had before. And it got so high that it started coming into the man’s house through the second-floor windows. So to get away from the water, the guy climbed up on his roof—”

  “What’s a roof?”

  “Uh, the top of his house.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, he sat there for a while, and late in the day he heard something noisy in the sky, and he looked up and saw a helicopter coming. That’s a flying craft,” Kit said, feeling the sibik start twitching again. “It came from the local TV station—”

  “What’s a TV station?”

  Kit covered his eyes for a moment. “Something you don’t need to know about. Have a cracker.” One… “Anyway, a man from the TV station leaned out of the helicopter and yelled to the guy who was sitting on top of his house, ‘Buddy, we thought everybody was evacuated from here! The water’s going to keep rising, so here, climb up this ladder and we’ll get you out of here!’ But the guy said, ‘No, it’s okay, I have faith in God, He’s going to see me safely through this! You go ahead and help someone else if they need it.’ And they couldn’t convince him to come with them, so the helicopter flew away.”

  The sibik sat looking at the last remaining cracker. Then it said, “What happened to Buddy next?”

  Kit sighed. “Well, the water rose and rose, and it rose over the top of the guy’s house, so he had to swim away. But he couldn’t keep swimming forever, so finally he sank in the water and he drowned. And after he was dead, there he was all of a sudden standing before the One. And he was very disappointed: the guy, I mean. He said to God, ‘You know, I had faith in you! I waited for you to save me, to see me through! What went wrong?’”

  Kit snorted softly, partly because his Pop had at this point in the story. “And the One said to the guy, “Well, I
sent you a truck. I sent you a boat. I sent you a helicopter. How obvious do I have to be?…”

  The sibik rustled. The sound might have been laughter.

  On the other hand, Kit thought, it might have more to do with the last cracker— On which all the sibik’s eyes were presently fixed.

  He sighed, pulled the cracker out of the cellophane sleeve, and handed it over to the sibik.

  The sibik munched it up. “And then what happened?” it said.

  Kit stared at it for a moment… then began to laugh helplessly as he looked out toward the plain and the gating complex. “I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly. It’s how what’s going on here might end, if somebody doesn’t do something!” Kit rubbed his face, feeling his eyes start to sting again. “And that would be really sad, because whether everybody’s of one mind or not, when it comes down to dying or living, in a situation like this, life is better!”

  And his shoulders sagged and the breath went out of him. “Life’s just better,” he said, almost inaudibly.

  A moment or so later he realized the sibik was looking at him very intently. “What?” Kit said.

  The sibik was regarding the cellophane that was tightly crumpled up in Kit’s fist. “Is that good to eat?”

  Kit stared at the cellophane. “Uh, not for me. You want to try it?” He held it out.

  The sibik took it from him in two tentacles and introduced it carefully to its eating stoma, nibbled at it. Then it said, very clearly, “Bleah,” and spat it out.

  All Kit could do was laugh.

  “Can you take me home to my person now, please?” the sibik said.

  Kit glanced at the gate-monitoring matrix display in his manual. All was quiet, and it wasn’t as if he couldn’t do maintenance on the gates from anywhere in this neighborhood. “Sure, why not?” he said. “Up you come.”

  He boosted the sibik up onto his shoulders and let it hang onto him with its tentacles. “Don’t strangle me again, now!” Kit said as it settled in place. “I breathe through this throat.”

  “What’s a throat?” the sibik said.

  Kit sighed. “Yeah, that would’ve been the cause of that problem…”

  It was just then that Cheleb popped out of his puptent, glanced around with an air of concern, and spotted Kit. “Cousin, how long been here? Didn’t Djam say to wake me? Shouldn’t be on shift now!”

  “Chel, don’t worry about it, everything’s all screwed up since last night,” Kit said. “And you had three shifts one after another yesterday, nearly. Djam probably just forgot to mention. But would you take over monitoring now? I have to take Wandering Boy here back to his people.”

  “Feel free,” Cheleb said, eyeing the sibik with some concern. “Surprised to see him back.”

  Kit rolled his eyes. “Crackers.”

  “Crackers?” the sibik said brightly.

  “Not the slightest chance,” said Kit. “You are going home.”

  In the event, the sibik’s second rehoming was quite anticlimactic. Its young Tevaralti, whose name was Besht, was asleep when Kit arrived; it was possible that he’d already been asleep before the sibik had left. The youngster’s parents, when called to the front of the large communal tent structure they were sharing with fifty or so others of the transient Tevaralti, had certainly been surprised to see Kit again, and more than happy (though with some scolding of the erring pet) to take the sibik off Kit’s hands. However, the slighter-built of the three parents—possibly the mama, though Kit wasn’t sure about that; he might have it backwards—gave Kit a look that suggested she (if it was a she) might be about to scold him, too. “It keeps asking us for ‘crackers’—!”

  “I’m so sorry about that,” Kit said. “I’m sure he’ll get over it…” And he said dai stihó to them all, and got away before anyone started bringing up any more embarrassing details that were somehow going to be his fault and that he was going to wind up having to deal with.

  The long walk back to the stone circle left him feeling pleasantly tired, and what with one thing and another he was weary enough when he returned to simply say to Cheleb, “I’ll see you in the morning.” Kit took himself straight back to his puptent, got undressed, stretched out on his bed with a pile of pillows behind him and a bottle of water and some of Ronan’s beef jerky, and lay there for maybe an hour blissfully doing nothing more challenging then eating and drinking and reading The Eagle of the Ninth, letting the stress slowly drain out of his mind and his muscles. As he started to feel drowsy, Kit interrupted this process only long enough to reach for his phone and text his pop.

  BUSINESS AS USUAL TODAY, OR AS UNUSUAL. WATCHED ALIEN MOVIE WITH WORK BUDDY WHO LOOKS LIKE CHEWBACCA, VERY INTERESTING CULTURAL EXPERIENCE BUT NO ROOM TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU HERE, WILL WAIT TILL I GET HOME. THINK GEORGE LUCAS HAS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, THOUGH. RETURNED LOST PET TO OWNER AGAIN. ACTUAL LOSTNESS OF PET IN QUESTION, THIS GUY JUST THINKS I’M A SOFT TOUCH—

  Kit was tempted to mention Ponch, but he paused and then didn’t do it. It wasn’t actually as if something whispered in his ear, don’t, but after a second the idea simply began to seem somehow unwise. Finally Kit just added to the text, NIGHT NIGHT, and hit “send.”

  He dropped the phone on the floor beside him and picked up the manual, once more paging through to Nita’s profile. It was grayed out, and simply said, Scheduled rest period, unavailable; estimated time of next availability, six hours.

  Sounds about right, Kit thought. “Wake me up when she comes online, would you?” he said to the manual.

  The page grayed down further; a small box appeared saying CONDITIONAL ALARM NOTED: OPERATIONAL.

  “Thanks,” Kit said to the manual, and dropped it on the floor beside the phone. He picked up Eagle again and started reading, but realized a short time later that the reading had been broken by a couple of those “long blinks” that are actually five or ten minutes apart. He closed the book and dropped it on top of his manual; then reached down to flip Eagle’s back cover open and see when the library wanted it back. FEBRUARY 3—

  Whoops, Kit thought. Really overdue now. Except that when I get back with it, it won’t be… He let the cover fall shut again and flopped back among the pillows. “Lights down,” he said in the Speech.

  Down they went, and he was asleep in minutes.

  NINE

  Monday

  Minutes later, it seemed, Kit’s eyes snapped open and he was staring at the ceiling. It was very strange. The waking position, the lighting, were all nearly identical to yesterday’s. Yesterday might almost never have happened.

  Kit lay there blinking as he realized that what he’d just had was his least favorite kind of sleep—the kind that left you feeling like you hadn’t had any at all. He rubbed his face and moaned, feeling somehow vaguely cheated. It also didn’t help that he had to go to the bathroom really badly.

  He got up and put on his clothes, and once again made his way out to the short-transport pad, where he jumped to Ronan’s gates, used the toilets there, and ducked into the shower. As he came out, he ran into Ronan strolling across the plaza. “How are things going over here?”

  “Transit numbers are down a bit this morning,” Ronan said. “Some of the transport streams are beginning to slow a bit. Looks like we’ve actually crossed the three-quarter stage for the people who are going to go, so the upstream feeds are cutting back a bit on the inbound traffic.” He looked across at the transients’ camp with a sorrowful expression. “Meanwhile, what’s going on with you? You look terrible.”

  “I had a weird night,” Kit said. “You know how that is when you fall asleep and when you wake up again it’s as if it’s only five minutes later? Or not even five minutes later. And it just doesn’t seem fair somehow.”

  “I know all about that,” Ronan said. “I had one of those earlier the week. Nasty buggers, always takes me another night’s sleep to recover. And God forbid you get two nights like that in a row. You might as well just be shot and put out of your misery right there.” He shoo
k his head. “How’s the beef jerky?”

  “That was really good,” Kit said. “If you’ve got any more…”

  “Running a bit low, but I can spare you some.”

  “You are a true friend,” Kit said.

  “Don’t forget handsome and a devil with the ladies,” Ronan said.

  Kit laughed at him. “Like you let anybody forget it,” he said. “I’ll see you later on.”

  He made his way back to the short-transport pad and then to the stone circle, feeling better every minute, in fact almost human again by the time he got back there. There was just something about having had a shower, especially one of the extremely aggressive Tevaralti ones, that made Kit feel altogether better.

  Yet he couldn’t quite get rid of the feeling that something else was going on too. Something had shifted, and Kit had no way of describing to himself just what that was. It was inexplicable, the feeling: not as if something was about to happen, but as if it already had. There was a lightness about it, like what he’d felt on seeing Thesba not in the sky. Yet there Thesba was—it could be seen setting in the west, bloated by atmospheric magnification but paled by being up in daylight and so close to the horizon—and he still felt light.

  Reaction, Kit thought. Or something. Because actually everything’s the same… He looked across the field to where the transients’ encampment was right where it had been, a vague blot of dark almost-unseen movement.

  He shook his head and made his way back to the Stone Throne, where Djam had his manual interface spread out as usual. When Kit sat down by him, Djam said, “You know, after what we watched yesterday… I had this idea.” He actually looked slightly guilty.

  “Yeah?” Kit said, mystified by the apparent guilt.

  “Well,” said Djam. “There’s this version of The Faded Liver that… well, a lot of people don't know about it, because it's kind of controversial. Maybe even a bit scandalous.” His gaze shifted briefly from side to side, as if he expected some of those people to turn up right now.