Foreigner (4 page)

In his youth, Dybo had been fond of scatological insults. His age and his office had changed that, but, as Afsan entered the private room at the back of the imperial dining hall, it sounded briefly as though the old Dybo was back. “Why, Afsan,” declared the Emperor, his rich voice filling the large chamber, “you look like a pile of hornface droppings.”

Afsan responded in kind. “Ah, my friend, but one of the few joys in being blind is not having to be constantly reminded of what it is that you look like.”

But it turned out that Dybo wasn’t really looking to engage in a humorous exchange. “I’m serious,” he said, pushing up off his dayslab, which was angled over the food table. “Your tail is dragging like a dead weight and your skin is grayish. Are you sure you didn’t pick up an infection because of your accident?”

“No, it’s not an infection,” said Afsan. “I’m afraid I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Dreams,” Afsan said. “Bad dreams.”

“What about?”

Afsan leaned back on his tail. His whole body seemed weary. “There’s a dayslab two paces to your left,” said Dybo.

Afsan found the angled marble sheet and lowered himself onto it. “Thank you,” he said. He seemed too tired even to settle in comfortably.

“What are your bad dreams about?” Dybo asked again.

The words came out as protracted hisses. “I’m not sure. Just disjointed images, really. Trying to listen to people I can’t quite hear, for instance, who maddeningly stay just out of reach.”

“That does sound frustrating.”

“That it is. And every night it’s a different dream. I lie on my floor trying to sleep, but the dreams keep waking me. There’s always some point at which they become unbearable and I wake with a start, my heart pounding and my breath ragged. It happens over and over throughout the night.”

“Maybe you need to eat more before you go to bed,” said Dybo. “I never have trouble sleeping.”

“I’ve tried that. I’ve gorged myself before retiring in hopes of forcing torpor, but the dreams come nonetheless.”

Dybo slapped his belly. Although it was substantially reduced from its once-legendary girth, he’d put back a good hunk of what he’d lost before the challenge battle with the blackdeath. “I imagine your idea of gorging is something less than mine. Still, I take your point. Are you still sleeping only on odd-nights?” Just about everyone, except the very young and the very old, slept only every other night, but Afsan had long had the habit of sleeping on the night that most people were awake.

Afsan shook his head. “I’ve tried altering my sleep schedule: I’ve slept even-nights, I’ve tried sleeping every night, and only every third night. Nothing has helped.”

Dybo grunted. “Have you consulted Dar-Mondark?”

“Yes. I’ve been seeing him every ten days so he can check on the healing of my injuries. He’s better with broken bones than with something as mundane as sleep. He simply said I’d eventually be so tired, my body would force itself to sleep.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Dybo. “But if I can apply a lesson you taught me, that would be dealing with the effect rather than the cause, no?”

Afsan found the strength to click his teeth lightly. “Exactly. The real problem is the dreams.”

Dybo was silent for a moment. “Have you tried the talking cure?”

“The what?”

“Afsan, you’ve got to have that apprentice of yours — what’s her name?”

“Pettit.”

“Her. You’ve got to have her read to you on a wider range of subjects. The talking cure is all the rage, so they tell me. A savant named — oh, I never can remember names. Moklub, Mokleb, something like that. Anyway, she’s worked out this system in which people simply talk about their problems and, poof!, they go away.”

Afsan sounded dubious. “Uh-huh.”

“Really. She calls herself a, a — what was the word? A psych-something. Means a healer of the mind, apparently. There was a fellow from Jam’tool ar who came clear across Land to see her. He was constantly depressed. Said he felt as if the weight of his tail were hanging off the front of his head instead of his rump. Turned out that as a child, he’d stolen some jewels from his Hall of Worship. He’d completely forgotten doing that, but not only did talking with Mok-whatever help him recall it, he was even able to remember where he’d buried the stones. He dug them up, returned them to the Hall, walked the sinner’s march, and apparently feels better than he has in kilodays.”

“I haven’t stolen any stones.”

“Of course not. But this Mok-person says there are always hidden reasons for why we feel the way we do. She could help you uncover whatever it is that’s causing your bad dreams.”

“I don’t know…”

“Ah, but that’s the whole point! You don’t know! Give it a try, Afsan. You certainly can’t go around looking like something a shovelmouth spit out.”

“I thought I looked like hornface droppings.”

“Depends on the light. Anyway, I need the old Afsan back. Can’t run this crazy government on my own, you know.”

“Well…”

Dybo raised a hand. “No more objections. I’ll have a page round Mok-thingy up and send her to you this afternoon. You’ll be at Rockscape?”

“No, I’ve got to see the healer again this afternoon. Send her tomorrow.”

“Very good.”

“One thing, though,” said Afsan. “If I’m sleeping when she arrives, tell her not to wake me. I can use the rest.”

Dybo clicked his teeth. “Fine. Now, where’s that butcher?” The Emperor’s voice sang out. “Butcher! Meat! Meat, I say! My friend and I are hungry!”

Inside the ark, flames licked the ceiling. For once, the interior of the alien ship was brightly lit. For once, Novato saw — really saw — what it looked like.

Its blue walls appeared green in the fierce light of the flames. Their perfect smoothness was unmarred, even after all these millennia. Here and there columns of geometric markings were incised somehow into the obdurate material.

Novato was terrified, her breathing ragged, her claws glinting in the roaring flames.

Calm
, she thought.
Be calm.

She couldn’t douse the flames — the water in her canteen would do little against an oil fire. But the fire couldn’t really spread, either. She’d done tests on the blue material; no matter how much she heated it, it never burned. No, the blaze would exhaust itself once the oil had been consumed.

The heat was tremendous.

Novato put a hand to the tip of her muzzle, covering her nostrils. Thunderbeast oil normally burned cleanly, but with so much going up at once there was an acrid smell.

She couldn’t stay here. Quintaglios had learned much about air recently; Novato knew that open flames consumed some part of it that she needed to breathe. To remain here was to risk fainting, and although the material of the ship would not burn, Quintaglio flesh most certainly could. She backed away from the dancing flames, away from the light, into the darkness, the all-consuming darkness of the vast and empty ship.

She couldn’t hear anything except the thundering of her heart, the crackling of flames, and the clicking of her toeclaws against the floor. Turning, she confronted her own giant shadow, a shuddering silhouette on the far wall. Next to it was an open archway. Novato stepped through, the heat now on her back and tail, the normal coolness of the ship’s interior a welcome sensation on her muzzle. Her shadow moved with her, dancing along the wall like a living tapestry.

Left or right?

Why, right, of course.

No — left.

Left, yes, that was correct. Left.

She turned and took two steps forward. Her shadow disappeared as everything faded to uniform blackness.

Novato placed her left hand on the wall. Her claws were still extended. She tried to retract them but they would not return to their sheaths. So be it. She let the fluted cones lightly scrape along the wall as she began down the corridor. The sound of the spluttering flames gradually disappeared.

And then, a bend in the corridor.

Should there be a bend here?

Yes. Surely yes
, she thought. A bend to the right here, one to the left not much farther after that.
Be calm!

Total, absolute darkness now. No trace of light from the fire. She removed her hand from the wall and held it in front of her face. Completely invisible. She closed her inner and outer eyelids. No difference. Utter, complete, soul-devouring blackness.

Novato walked slowly, afraid of losing her footing on the too-smooth, slightly angled floor.

The ship groaned.

She stopped dead, held her breath.

Again: a moaning sound, coming from all around her.

She touched her hunter’s tattoo and then her left shoulder, an ancient gesture of obeisance to God.

Once more: a low, sustained, mournful sound.

The ship … alive? Alive, after all this time?

Impossible. It had been buried millions of kilodays ago. Novato hadn’t realized her hands were shaking until she tried to bring them together.

Groaning, rumbling — like, like
digestion
. As though she’d been swallowed alive…

But then she slapped her tail loudly against the floor.

Be rational
, she thought.
Rational.

She’d heard this sound before, but never so clearly. Most of the ship was buried in a cliff. As the day wore on, the rocks of the cliff’s face heated and expanded. Their shifting against the unyielding hull caused sounds like these. She’d never been so close to the outer hull when the shifting had occurred, but that must be it. It
must
be.

She touched her teeth together and shook her head.
If Afsan could only see me now
…

Afsan, so rational, so logical. Why, he’d click his teeth until all the loose ones had been knocked out if he saw Novato being so foolish…

But then it hit her.
If Afsan could see me now?
Afsan sees nothing, nothing at all.

Novato began walking again, her claws still unsheathed, although she was certain — certain! — that should she now command them to, they would slip back into her fingers, out of view.

She thought again of Afsan. Was this what it was like to be blind? Did Afsan feel the kind of fear she felt now, unsure of every step, unaware of what might be lurking only a pace away? How could one get used to this? Was he used to it? Even now, even after all this time?

He had never seen their children, never seen the vast spaceship Novato was now within, never seen the statue erected in his honor in Capital City.

And never, except that one wonderful time when he had come to Pack Gelbo all those kilodays ago, had he seen Novato.

Of course he must be used to the darkness. Of course.

She continued through the void, the image of Afsan giving her strength. She felt, in a strange way, as though he, with all his experience in navigating in darkness, walked beside her.

Her footfalls echoed. The ship moaned again as its rocky tomb heated further.

Suddenly her left hand was touching nothing but air. The corridor had opened into another corridor, running perpendicular to it. Novato exhaled noisily. Her teams had marked every intersection with a circle of paint on the wall, color-coding the various paths through the ship’s interior. Of course, she couldn’t see the colors — or anything else — but surely she could find the circle. She felt at shoulder-height. Nothing but smooth, uninterrupted wall, until — yes, here it was. A roughening of the wall surface, a round area of a different texture. Dried paint.

Novato scraped the paint with her claws, catching tiny flakes of pigment on their tips. She brought her fingers to her nostrils and inhaled deeply.

A scent, faint but unmistakable: sulfur. Yellow pigment. Yellow marked the corridor designated major-axis 2. She stopped, picturing the layout of the ship. Yes, major-axis 2 … that made sense. She had been going the wrong way, but she knew how to get out from here, although it would require more time. She would take the right-hand path here, and in what — a hundred kilopaces? — she’d come to another intersection. Another right and then a left and eventually she’d be back at the strange double-doored room that led outside.

She paused for a moment, relaxing. Her claws slipped back into their sheaths. The panic of moments before was forgotten. She stepped…

A flash of light?

Light?

Here, inside the ship?

Madness … unless a firefly or glowgrub had made its way into the interior.

She looked in the direction from which she’d seen the flickering.

Nothing. Of course not. Why, hadn’t Afsan once said he still occasionally saw little flashes of light? The mind hated to be deprived…

There it was again…
.

Novato brought the side of her head right up to the wall and stared into the darkness.

The ship was old, inconceivably ancient.

But there it was once more, a flash of greenish-white, gone almost before she’d even noticed it. A line of geometric shapes, flashing in the dark. Incredible.

Novato wanted to mark this spot so she could find it again. She undid the neck chain that helped hold her sash on, then lifted the wide loop of leather over her head and set it on the floor in front of the flashing symbols on the wall. The sash settled with little clinks as its brass and copper ornaments touched the deck.

Alive. After all this time, at least some small part of the ship was alive.

Novato went down the corridor as fast as she dared in the darkness, anxious to get a fresh lamp and return to examine whatever she had found. Finally, she caught sight of a pale rectangle of light along the corridor: the double-doored room. The inner door was wide open; the outer one jammed half-closed, just as it had been ever since her son Toroca had first entered the ship three kilodays ago. Novato shouldered her way through, cool night air pouring in from outside. The fit was getting tighter all the time; eventually the growth that would go on until her death would prevent her from squeezing into the ship.