Touching the Void

by R. J. Davnall

sound judgement." Taslin's stiff answer provoked a burst of laughter from Dora. The Wilder shot a puzzled frown at the other woman, but there was nothing stiff or rehearsed in the chuckle she shared.

  Utterly bewildered, Rel seized on the one fact he could draw simple anger from. "You are trying to manipulate me! That's-" What? There was no law against it, nor could he accuse her of complex deceit when she could just claim ignorance of the logic that made her behaviour unacceptable. He resisted the urge to curse, or kick the ground in frustration.

  "I wouldn't call it manipulation." Once again, the mirth had fled from her face with amphibian, slippery speed. "It's well-established that humans meet us with less suspicion and distrust if we take on attractive guises. Since my assignment with Dora required trust from the first, I attempted to maximise the effect."

  "How is that not manipulation?" Rel demanded.

  Taslin arched her eyebrow. "It doesn't seem to be working."

  Dora laughed, the sound shrill enough that somewhere nearby a bird answered. Rel opened his mouth, then closed it again, riding down the urge to laugh himself. Taslin's accidental delivery of the joke was perfectly timed. More to the point, her argument was unassailable. He wasn't sure whether to be more afraid of the understanding that stood behind her choice of appearance or her apparent fluency in First-Realm logic.

  Better not to press the matter. Ignoring Dora, he turned and resumed the walk into Vessit. Somehow, it didn't seem likely he'd be able to get Taslin to dress decently now.

  Rel's mood sucked at the last hour of the walk to Vessit like mud. Dry footing, blue sky and the first wildflowers of spring failed to shake his sense that the curious stares of the women drove him forward. At least, for a wonder, Dora abandoned her badgering.

  The town they entered was a far cry from neat, tidy Federas. Lacking local timber, Vessit was cobbled together from driftwood, beach stone and scroungings from the old city. The effect was striking, even riotous. A dwelling on the outskirts consisted of a waist-high, flared wall of lumpen stones in a dozen colours, topped by a flimsy structure of red-brown driftwood that rattled enough to make Dora jump when the wind struck it.

  Before they could go into the old city in search of Rissad, propriety demanded they present themselves to the local Four Knot, particularly since they had a Wilder of Taslin's prodigious strength in tow - she hadn't even flinched as they came within range of the town's Stable Rods. Finding the official in question looked likely to be difficult, since the streets were all but deserted, so Rel set a brisk pace as they headed for the Warding Hall.

  He was stopped short with a sinking stomach as Dora gave a fresh burst of giggles. Not good, if her mania was going to return with strangers around to see. Thinking quickly, Rel turned and said, "What's funny?" The words came out sharper than intended, but perhaps the sense of disapproval would quell her before she got too strange.

  No such luck. Her eyes twinkling, she sang out, "Rel and Taslin, sitting in a tree-"

  "Stop that!" It was all he could do to keep from jamming a hand over her mouth, so loud did her voice seem in the empty street. It would be a sorry farce if Vessit's Four Knot stumbled on them now and he had to explain that Taslin was a Wilder. Never mind trying to convince someone he'd never met that only a fortnight earlier, Dora had been the most ferocious Gifted in the First Realm.

  As if to underline the point, she tittered again. "But it's tru-ue. I've seen the way you look at her."

  Rel could feel his cheeks heating. Why couldn't she let it drop? Of all the things he'd had to put up with from Dora, this was the last he could have expected. Digging his fingernails into his palms only served to feed his anger, and he felt his lips twisting in a grimace. Fighting to keep his voice calm, and quiet, he said, "It's not true. You know it, and I deserve better than to have to put up with this from you."

  "There's no need to be like that, Rel." Dora's manner had stiffened, but only slightly. Behind her, Taslin stared at him with outright alarm on her face. Dora's tone was reproachful rather than angry as she finished, "It's just a joke."

  "No it isn't!" He punctuated the gesture with a sweep of his arm that made her flinch backwards, almost stumbling into Taslin. He stabbed a finger in the Wilder's direction. "She is not human. She is a monster, and the idea that I might be attracted to her is revolting. What the hell is wrong with you?"

  "What's wrong with you?" Dora rallied, eyes flashing, cheeks red. "You're the one who's being unreasonable here."

  "Yes, because you're well known for behaving like a bratty twelve-year-old." Rel caught himself short, aware that if he gave his anger free rein he wouldn't get it back under control. Trying to work the edge out of his voice, he changed tack. "Dora, this isn't like you. They've done something to you and you need to acknowledge that you've changed." He reached a hand up to squeeze her shoulder. "You need to trust me."

  She shoved his hand away. "Trust you? You are in love with her, and you're right, it is revolting. How can you keep up your duties like this? You're supposed to be against the Second Realm."

  "You need to remember you're not my Four Knot anymore." As the words left his mouth, Rel realised he'd overdone it. Vulnerable and confused as Dora was, the loss of the authority she'd cherished was the worst of her wounds from the second Gift. If he backed down now, though, it would be to capitulate to the repugnant suggestion about Taslin, and the thought alone left a rancid taste in his mouth. He spun on his heel before Dora's brimming tears washed away his resolve. "I came here to do a job. I'm going to go and do it. You can follow when you've calmed down."

  "Relvin-" Taslin's voice lacked its usual sharp edge, but he wouldn't have stopped for her even if she'd tried Compulsion on him. Long, stiff strides carried him down the street towards the dark shape of old Vessit while he tried to get his riled breathing under control. Dora had no right to talk about him like that and in the state she was in, she could hardly be relied on in the upcoming confrontation.

  No footsteps followed him, though every dark window lining the street seemed to watch him as he passed, staring in accusatory shock. Loose roof shingles clattered in the wind, keeping him on edge while the wind itself made his skin prickle with cold. Better to hurry into the old city than try to find the local Four Knot, now; he didn't want to be the one who had to explain what had just happened, and without Taslin in tow, the introduction was nothing more than a formality. Rissad could be escaping his captors even now. Time was of the essence.

  The streets stayed empty, but for a pair of matrons who treated him to the kind of hostile stare reserved by most people for suspicious strangers. Rel's stride stiffened further under their regard, enough that he stumbled, hating himself for it and cursing Taslin and Dora for making him so jumpy. As the locals turned a corner out of sight, Rel found himself hot-faced again for his weakness to Taslin's manipulation.

  Eerie though the cracked streets and crumbling concrete of the old city were, the knowledge that he was alone settled Rel's nerves a bit. Hunger began to tug at his stomach. Stiff as the breeze had been on the hill above the town, the streets of old Vessit funnelled it into a wind that found its way through every piece of clothing Rel had on. Grit stung his eyes and left him spitting the earthy taste from his tongue. The mere act of looking around, trying to spot landmarks remembered from the Clearviewing that had led him here, became a trial.

  In the viewing, Rissad had entered the caves leading to the Abyss through a tower that would have seemed modest by the standards of its time, but was now a monolith as daunting as any pre-Crash ruin. Brown and yellow brickwork quickly gave way to concrete and glass as the buildings reared up, higher and higher with each crossroads. Every concrete monster showed the scars of the Realmcrash, their glass cracked or missing, some leaning towards their neighbours, one whose upper storeys had collapsed leaving a shape like an imploring hand, reaching skywards in desperation.

  At street level, though, they were all too much alike. Rissad's path could have led through any of them. Rel found a p
ark that might have been the one he'd Seen Rissad crossing, now scattered bright yellow with the first daffodils of spring, but there was no way to tell which way the other man had gone from there. Resigning himself to a frustrating afternoon trying desperately not to blink against the wind, Rel opened his eyes and let the cold fingers of Clearsight pluck at his eyeballs.

  The city attacked with a thousand clues to past tragedy. There was a grimy smear along the side of the nearest building, perhaps thirty feet up, and Rel could pick out the silt-swirls left behind when the Realmcrash tsunami receded seventy years before. He shivered, trying not to look at the dents and craters lower down in the concrete; any bloodstains were long gone, but Clearsight ripped away the merciful veil of time.

  He pulled himself back to the task in hand, focussed on the tarmac at his feet. It, too, bore the signs of the wave that had killed the city, but searching the whole area for Rissad's footprints was a fool's errand. Nor could Rel find his route by peeking into the future; it would be too close to his own future for him to have any chance of seeing anything.

  Instead, he searched for the details that would pull his disorganised memories of the original Clearviewing into coherent order and tie them to the streets he walked through. Where the city had begun to heal, he found clues; a particular weed, grown bushlike and spreading through the shattered paving of a park path; the rusted remains of a car, its wheels nestled amid a blanket of dandelions. A nook where the daffodils were beginning to die back identified this as the park Rel had Seen Rissad crossing.

  Led by the sharp edge of trained memory, Rel took up Rissad's trail and headed roughly North, into the sunless grey canyons amid the highest towers. Clearsight remained unforgiving, telling him in exacting detail which cracks in the walls that loomed over him would eventually bring their buildings down. Silence became the ally that steadied his nerves; surely a collapsing building would roar enough warning to let him get away.

  Then Rel found himself in front of a doorway whose glass panels were smashed to jagged teeth, the metal frame twisted past moving. The shape matched the memory of Rissad's route. Bending to squeeze between the sharp edges of the entry, he suppressed a shiver and tried to watch the back of his own neck as it cleared the glass. His flinch as his sleeve caught on a shard almost impaled him.

  Inside, the lobby was a gloomy hole, speckled with reflections caught on odd shards of glass or bits of useless electronics. Rel's footsteps crunched and slipped on a floor that had probably once been slick marble and now lay hidden under a layer of dank silt. Clearsight showed him a maze of shadowed ridges that were the edges of footprints; Rissad's were easily identifiable for the flat leather soles that had replaced what little rubber scavengers had found and worn after the Crash.

  Deeper into the building, light became replaced by the eye-crushing sensation of watching atoms move by their own infinitesimal radiation. The walls swum with nauseating waves of static matter that made him feel as if he was reeling to the sway of a boat. When he came to the staircase down which Rissad's footprints led, Rel almost rolled down it.

  Below-ground, if anything, things got worse. As he adjusted to the chill pain of Clearseeing in darkness, Rel began to see the stresses that were slowly grinding the building above him to obliteration. Rogue strands of the future pushed into his vision; this wall would give, dropping that beam. Worse, he knew he could have estimated to the nearest ten how many tons of steel and concrete would fall as a result.

  He almost missed the moment