Moon-Flash (26 page)

They worked down the length of the long, curved shelf, dusting, removing covers, removing the fine, fine blanket of dust that had crept even beneath the tightly fitting covers. And all along the control shelf, Kyreol saw again and again the tiny patterns of colored lines.

The number of lines and their positions changed constantly; there might be two lines paralleling, or as many as ten radiating outward from a point. The colors seemed to vary as arbitrarily. The colors themselves were amazingly diverse.

Did they go look at a forest,
Kyreol wondered,
to know all those shades of green?
Or did they just invent them, the way we invented—

Numbers. Letters. That’s what she was looking at. Instructions, code letters, words as simple as “on” and “off,” in an alphabet of color.

She made a sound of wonder and despair, staring at the huge panel. It would take a hundred years to translate color into language—especially when the language itself was of another world. But the alien didn’t seem dismayed. It was humming gently, surveying the board, its eyes still the deep, lustrous purple-black.
It understands these things,
Kyreol thought.
Its people don’t fly between planets, they fly between stars. They must have met other aliens, recognized many kinds of languages
 . . .

The alien stretched a finger toward the panel, moved a switch.

A thousand lights blazed along the panel, halfway up the wall. Kyreol caught her breath and shouted, “You made it work!”

The alien yipped, startled. Its children sang.

TERJE SAT on a rock in the dark, watching moonlight shiver into fragments across the water. It was very late; the Healer had been asleep for hours. The moon was beginning to set behind the Face. Regny hadn’t returned from the Outstation yet. If he didn’t come soon, Terje thought, the moon would disappear and they would miss each other in the dark.

The moon. His eyes were dragged to it. Its light seemed to melt against the black line of cliff as it sank, turning the Falls a milky white. He saw the Moon-Flash in his mind, the lick of fire that had awed him as a child. It made the Healer’s dream seem even more perplexing.

“How?” he wondered aloud to the murmuring River, “can I chant to a supply ship?”

He stirred restlessly, wishing Regny would come. Regny would expect him to be asleep; he wasn’t sleepy. He was wide awake, his veins full of night, his brain running like a squirrel with unanswered questions. Kyreol. The Healer’s dream. What he,
Terje, was going to do. Dreams. Were they sometimes more hope than truth? How much longer would the Healer live? How much did Nara know of what had happened to Kyreol? Where was Regny?

He picked a broken seedpod out of a crevice in the rock and plopped it in the water. A hand came down on his shoulder.

His skin jumped. “Regny—”

“I am so tired,” Regny said. “I wish I could turn into something else.” His voice sounded heavy, ragged, though his breathing was steady. “What are you doing awake? Is the Healer— Did he—”

“He’s sleeping,” Terje said. The last glowing bit of moon sank; Regny’s face became little more than a solid patch of darkness. He tried to see it anyway. “Did you talk to Nara?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what?” Terje said, numbed by his silence. “What did she say?”

“The ship to Xtal never made it. But—” He was gripping Terje’s wrist, talking quickly, and Terje realized slowly that he himself had moved, had spoken. He was halfway down the rock. “Whatever happened, happened fast, but they managed to send a distress signal just before they vanished. I told Nara about the Healer’s dreams of Kyreol. She cried. She said if the Healer dreamed Kyreol was alive, she is alive. She said perhaps the ship crashed on one of Niade’s moons; the signal was so brief no one could tell for sure, but they were in that area. The Dome had been thinking the ship might have destructed in flight, or fallen toward Niade and burned itself up in
the atmosphere. Even so, they sent out a couple of search and rescue ships, but they weren’t sure where to look. Now they’ve got something to go on—” He had let go of Terje’s wrist; his hand was between Terje’s shoulders. It was a long time before Terje could speak. The River blurred and blurred again under his eyes; his fingers were trying to knead implacable stone.

“She’s all right,” Regny said gently. “She must be. The Healer said so.”

“Dreams.”

“His dreams are true. You know that. Even I know.” He paused as if wondering why Terje took no comfort in that. “He was the one who knew she was in trouble in the first place.”

“Regny—”

“She had a bad feeling about the trip—they both did, I think, Nara and Kyreol, but—”

“She said she would see me again. She said that.” He slid off the rock, sat on the bank with his back against it, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, then heard the River’s voice again, the River of dreams, the River of the dead. They would have to give the Healer’s body to the River; the water would wrap itself around him, bear him on his final journey. His throat burned again.

“Regny—”

“Have you eaten anything? Do you want me to—”

Terje opened his eyes. “Please,” he begged. “Please listen to me.”

“I thought I was,” Regny said bewilderedly. “What’s the matter?”

“The Healer had a dream—”

“About Kyreol?”

“No.” A predawn breeze stirred across the dark water, carrying cold, familiar smells. “He dreamed about the new Healer.”

Regny grunted softly. “He can die in peace, then. That amazes me, how the Riverworld takes care of itself. Who did he dream of?”

“Me.”

Regny was so still for a moment he might have vanished in the dark. When he spoke, his voice made almost no sound. “What?”

“That’s who he saw. Me.” He lifted his head, straining to see Regny’s face. His own voice shook. “I don’t—I don’t know what—I don’t feel it—”

“That’s crazy. It makes no sense. He’s a dying man, catching at a bit of hope. He’s delirious—he thinks you’re still part of the Riverworld, that you never left—”

“You didn’t say he was crazy when he dreamed Kyreol was in trouble. He was absolutely right. Regny, I’m scared. Can I say no to a dream? Do I even have a choice? Or are his dreams mirrors—mirrors of the future?”

Regny breathed something inaudible. He bent down next to Terje, pulled something out of his boot. A light flared between them; they could see each other’s faces. Regny’s looked as though it had been carved out of the hard black stone of the Face.

“What did he dream?”

“That I—I held the River in one hand and the Moon-Flash in the other. He said it meant the River had chosen me. The Moon-Flash! Regny, how can I—”

“You can’t. If that’s not what you want. You’d have to want it. In your heart. Wouldn’t you?”

Terje felt himself relax a little. “I would think so. That’s what frightened me. That he saw something I couldn’t see, but that his seeing would make it true anyway. There’s never been a Healer in my family. Kyreol was always the one with all the good dreams . . .”

“I still think,” Regny said softly, “he just invented some hope for himself, so that he could die without feeling he failed the Riverworld.”

“Maybe. But his mind seemed clear. He said he knew you.”

“What?”

“I mentioned you—that you’d helped me and Kyreol go downriver. No more than that. But he recognized you when I said your name. He said he saw you many times at rituals. He thought you were a ghost, wandering in and out of the Riverworld. You looked like a hunter, but your mind—your thoughts were different.”

He heard Regny swallow. Regny was silent; they both were. A bird cried softly, once. Terje touched his eyes again, felt the tears slide under his fingers.

“It’s too much,” Regny whispered. “It’s too much. Do you want to return to the Dome?”

“I can’t leave him. Korre’s mother said—she said—a day or two at the most.”

“Then you go back. I’ll stay for the rituals. You can’t worry about both the Healer and Kyreol.”

“He knows all the rituals. The burial ritual. The ritual for the new Healer. There’s no one to perform them.”

“That’s not your concern,” Regny said. “You don’t know them either.”

“No.” He leaned back, his face quieter. “I don’t know what to say to him when he wakes and looks at me. There’s no time to teach me anything, anyway. He’s too sick.”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

“I do worry. When he’s gone, what will become of the Riverworld without a Healer?”

Regny was silent again. He ran his hand through his hair, sighing. “I don’t know. I do know that all this shouldn’t have fallen on your shoulders.”

Terje shrugged slightly, as if settling a burden. Regny rose, giving him a quick pat on the way up.

“Come on. Let’s go downriver where we can build a fire. You need sleep, and I’m starving.”

*

TERJE WOKE at noon the next day. He lay without thinking, watched the green leaves overhead tremble against the blue sky. They sifted the light, loosed it in patches of gold on the sand. He remembered, briefly and intensely, waking with Kyreol beside him on the River, farther down. The air had been that warm, laden with gold. Kyreol had leaned over, out of her dreams, and kissed him, betrothed as she was
to Korre, and he had known then that she would never return to the Riverworld.

Kyreol.

The Healer.

He turned his head, saw the River.

He got up, sighing, brushed the sand and leaves off his face, and walked straight into the water until it rose above his head and he floated on it, letting it carry him like a twig until he was finally awake. Then he waded out, ate a handful of nuts, and walked back upriver to the Healer’s house.

He sat at the Healer’s side, drinking tea, waiting for the Healer to speak of his dream again. But Icrane’s mind was roaming earlier years, when Nara was with him and a tiny Kyreol brought him shells and flowers and small stones, chattering like a bird.

He said abruptly, interrupting his own memories, “I sent them dreams, so they won’t grieve.”

Terje put his cup down carefully, feeling a cold finger of wonder down his spine. “How can you know?” he whispered. “Can you be sure they’ll dream your dreams?”

The Healer smiled. His face was grey-black, sunken, slick with sweat, but his eyes were peaceful. “Everything is one. We are as close as dreams, always. You know that.”

“I don’t dream like you do. I have simple dreams.”

“Kyreol was always with you.”

“What—”

“She dreamed for you.”

“She—” He paused, blinking, groping at the Healer’s
meaning. “She won’t stay with me here,” he said finally.

Icrane only said tranquilly, “I know.”

Terje felt something deep in him grow hard and crystal-clear, focusing his thoughts.
I won’t leave her. Not for this. Not for anything.
He didn’t speak, but Icrane saw the change in his eyes. His smile only deepened a little, as if he were pleased.

“The world,” he said, his voice so fragile each word sounded new, “dreams, and the dream is the World. You will know—all that you need to know.”

The hardness in Terje snapped. He leaned forward, his face against the pallet, felt the Healer touch him. “I don’t,” he pleaded. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know herbs or teas, or what happens in the betrothal caves. I don’t know the words to any ritual. Dream again. The Riverworld must have a Healer. I’m not a healer. I belong to the Dome. Dream someone else. I’m ignorant; I don’t have any gifts; I don’t dream the future—I’m not the one the Riverworld needs. Dream again. Please.”

“I did,” Icrane said. He smoothed Terje’s hair affectionately. His voice came from very far away, from another dream, another place. “Don’t be afraid. Everything is simple. Look—” His hand slid down next to Terje’s cheek. “Look,” he whispered. Terje raised his head.

He moved a moment. His bones were stiff, as if he had been kneeling at Icrane’s side for hours. The trembling began as he rose. Korre’s mother, stirring soup, dropped the spoon in the pot with a clatter.

She moved swiftly, bent over the Healer’s body. Terje stepped away, went to the open door. He felt, gazing at the sunlit River, the young men fishing, the women washing clothes, as if he were a stranger not only to the Riverworld, but to the entire planet. There must be, he sensed, a special burial ritual for a Healer. But what it might be, he had no idea. All ritual, he realized slowly, had died with Icrane.