The Novels of the Jaran (255 page)

It was so humiliating. Valentin lay stretched out on the bench behind her. He shifted, and she felt his shoulder brush her back. Right now she hated him, too, for the smirk she
knew
he had on his face. Anatoly sat to her right, but by keeping her gaze on her hands she could avoid looking at him. Her face burned.

“The original acronym for nesh was neural-enhanced simulate holo,” David was saying in answer to a question Anatoly had asked, “but oddly enough, it corresponded to Jewish eschatology….”

“Eschatology? I don’t know this word.”

Every time Anatoly spoke Ilyana winced, because his voice triggered the memory of him standing in the twilight of the ruined caravansary with flowers in his hands.

“The coming of the last days, of the end of the world.”

“Why should the world end?”

“Some people believe in a time of judgment, that the world will have a death just as each individual has a death.”

“But unless we are released by fire into the heavens to dwell with the gods, then we return to the earth again… I beg your pardon. You were speaking of nesh.”

She could hear David move his head because of the quiet snap of beads braided into his hair. “In ancient Jewish mystical traditions the soul was thought to have three parts. The highest part of the soul, called the neshamah, was believed to be not liable to sin and therefore immortal, that after death the neshamoah would preserve its individual existence. It’s more complicated than that, but in part because of the similarity of name, and in part because in the Jewish texts the scholars discuss the ‘treasury beneath the throne of glory’ and the existence of abodes that are beyond or on the borders of this world, a mystical movement developed based around the word ‘nesh.’ It flourished for about one hundred years after nesh first came into use and spread widely through what they then called cyberspace. The belief took root that somehow your nesh, your soul, was isolated and set free in that other place. There’s still debate over whether your soul, or your guise, or the part of you that travels in nesh, can live on in nesh after you die, and so on and so forth. That’s how the name stuck, or at least, that’s how some people trace the name.”

“It does,” muttered Valentin into his hands. “The soul returns to its original home.”

“What?” David asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did you have something to say?” Anatoly asked quietly.

To Ilyana’s surprise, Valentin heaved himself up and said sullenly but clearly, “The soul returns to its original home.”

“That is a common belief,” said David.

“Do you believe that?” Anatoly asked.

David chuckled, and Ilyana glanced up in time to see him smile and lift a hand as if he was warding something off. “I just collect information, I don’t debate it. I have no opinions. But I will say this: Whether because of what we created or what we tapped into, there are a lot more levels in nesh than any one person can explore in a lifetime. Who am I to say?”

“Then are you one of those people, as Valentin is, who claims that this world, the solid world, is only the surface?”

David smiled at Ilyana, trying to draw her in, and Ilyana smiled wanly back at him, not wanting to disappoint him. “That old canard. I think it’s founded on a misunderstanding of what reality is. The world system itself is made up of layers upon layers of complexity, grown out of billions of years of existence. Where I think that the view of ‘the surface world’ stumbles is forgetting that anything that is artificially constructed must have a maker.”

“Like the worlds? Or the stars?”

“More like Duke Naroshi’s palace. I have
faith
, Anatoly. The rest is quibbling. Obviously the world of nesh was artificially constructed, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have existed on some level before we knew of it, or could access it, or that it might not exist on levels we’re not yet aware of. But let’s get back to the palace. We’re going to go as a group to the map room. Anatoly, you can just look around. Ilyana and Valentin and I are going to be identifying arches. We established the chain of entry and exit yesterday, so let’s all set up and meet there.” He gave Ilyana another searching look, but she ignored him and moved to kneel in front of the latticework.

From behind her, David spoke again. “And as they say in old fairy stories, when you go into the haunted forest, ‘stay on the path.’ ”

As she placed her hands on the lattice, she felt Anatoly kneel beside her, damn him anyway; even though he was an arm’s length away she felt surrounded, entangled, in the field of energy that emanated from him. She closed her fingers over the lattice—

The web of light spread out beneath her, spanning oblivion. She took three steps, a half turn, and descended into a gateway which David had constructed, through which the others entered. No one else had seen the web, but she always entered through it. She did not know why.

She waited in the gateway, a street bordered by arches, most of them facades. One led into a facsimile of the Memory Palace (Ilyana wasn’t sure if David had somehow installed his copy of it in here or if it already existed here); a second, padlocked, into Valentin’s desert, and a third into the jungle which David had unwittingly created. After a while she got nervous. What if the others had already come through and were waiting for her on the other side? She stepped through the fourth open gate… and stopped on a circle of black marble that lay in the center of a round plaza that marked, as far as Ilyana could tell, the dome under which the company lived. A man paused at the edge of the plaza and looked back at her. It was Anatoly. He moved, and she stiffened, but he halted abruptly, raised a hand to acknowledge her presence, and walked down one of the avenues that led out of the plaza, disappearing as it curved out of view.

The map room had grown since she was here yesterday. Buildings that had been chest high on her yesterday were now up to her chin. She smelled the faint scent of cinnamon. The air was warmer, humid.

“Where is Anatoly?” asked David, and she started and turned, flushing.

Beside him, Valentin was smirking. “Why don’t you have any flowers, Yana, huh?”

“Shut
up
, Valentin, or I’ll make your life miserable.”

“Can’t make me,” he taunted, dancing away.

“Can, too, you little worm.”

David cleared his throat. “Valentin, what is the difference between an arch and a vault?”

“I dunno. The buildings are bigger.”

“Yes, I had noticed that phenomenon. Yana?”

“A vault is a three-dimensional extension of an arch. Why do you think the buildings are bigger?”

“They’re eating our life force,” said Valentin in an exaggerated whisper. “And growing.”

“Gods, you’re a pig today.”

“No piggier than you. What’s wrong? Don’t have the courage to give flowers yourself?”

She grabbed for his arm, but he jumped back, spun, and sprinted toward the edge of the plaza, laughing. To add to her humiliation, Anatoly reappeared along the western avenue and halted at the edge of the plaza.

“Valentin!” he called out. “Come here at once.”

Valentin jerked to a halt, froze, and oddly enough walked obediently over to Sakhalin.

“Yana,” said David when they stood alone on the plaza, “why do I get the impression that something is going on of which I’m not aware? And that it centers around you and Anatoly Sakhalin? Has he bothered you somehow?”

She hated her complexion. She knew her cheeks were flaming red. Like the Chapalii, she couldn’t disguise her feelings. “No.”

“I know you’re upset about the flower night.”

Oh, gods, he did know. She wanted to sink into the ground, and pulled up that train of thought abruptly, since for all she knew it might begin to happen, here.

“I’m not sure that it’s fair that you kids haven’t been allowed to attend any of the performances yet. Goddess knows, it must be hard, being confined in the dome, separated from your neighborhoods and your school friends—there isn’t anyone else your age here….” He went on earnestly, but she lost part of it, she was so relieved that he had misunderstood her.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. I’m a little lonely. I miss my friend Kori. And my other friends, too, but mostly her.”

“I know it’s difficult, Yana. Frankly, life doesn’t, in general, get any easier, although that doesn’t mean it necessarily gets worse. But you’ve had an incredible adjustment, you and your family, leaving Rhui and your whole life behind. That took a lot of courage.”

Yana cocked her head to one side and regarded him. “We left Rhui because that’s what my father decided to do. I don’t know what’s so brave about it.”

“Trust me, Yana. You’ve held up well. I think you’ve—well, never mind.”

“What?”

He hesitated, and to her surprise went on, though she felt that he thought he should not. “I think you’re the one who’s held your family together.”

She shrugged, uncomfortable, not sure if what he had just said was praise for her or an indictment of her parents.

“Sorry. It’s not my place to say anything.”

“Do you have any kids?” she asked, suddenly curious.

He shook his head and for an instant Ilyana felt like she could read him, felt as if she had picked up the words that he hadn’t spoken: regret mingled with wry acceptance.

“Were you ever, uh, married?”

“I had a partner for about two decades, and we discussed having a child but the time was never right and then we drifted apart. It happens.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Sorry for what? Losing her, or never having a child?”

“Uh, well, I guess both.”

He smiled a little. “I guess both, too. There’ve been a few other women but… well, one in particular, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

In jaran society, one never received a gift without giving something in return. This web of obligations and gifts held the tribes together. And anyway, Ilyana was flattered and amazed that David would confide in her.

“I’m supposed to have my flower night,” she said tentatively, and as if the words propelled her forward she began to walk. David kept pace beside her, not quite looking at her, hands folded behind his back. “But I don’t want to, even though I would be married by now in the tribes.”

David made a noise that signified that he was listening.

“So my mother gave flowers to Anatoly Sakhalin, but that’s not what she’s supposed to do, I’m supposed to, but I didn’t, so…” She couldn’t come right out and say it, and now she felt stupid. “Now I…feel funny, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know.”

“And the flowers signify…” He trailed off. Ilyana shot a sidelong glance at him and realized that he was blushing. It wasn’t obvious on him unless you knew what to look for, not like on her, but she was the one who was odd in being so light-skinned. “But he’s already married, Yana.”

“What does that have to do with it? Mama says that a girl is usually wiser to choose a married man for her flower night because he’s bound to be steadier and more experienced.”

“Oh, Goddess.” David clapped a hand to his forehead, now
really
not looking at her. “You’re not talking about…oh, I see. Umm, Yana, I’m not sure this is really an appropriate subject for us—”

“I know. I’m sorry. There just—isn’t anyone else to tell.”

There was a long silence.

“So what happened?” he asked finally.

“Nothing happened.” Immediately, Ilyana wished something
had
happened, then was relieved all over again that nothing had. “Except I told Mama not to ever do that again and Valentin told me that Anatoly Sakhalin told her not to ever do that to him again, that is, I mean, give him flowers and pretend I gave them to him.”

“Is this something they do in the jaran?”

She nodded.

“I can see that you might feel uncomfortable around him.” He cleared his throat. “And he around you, for that matter. Listen, maybe we should get on with our lesson. There’s a good set of barrel vaults down this way.”

They had walked partway down one avenue, the one David had named Palmyra Avenue for its rank of painted columns lining both sides of the road. Yesterday the columns had been about Ilyana’s height; now they looked twice as tall as she was. To her right a trio of low buildings stretched into a strangely elongated distance, bending away over the horizon although by all measures of distance they should have run into one of the other avenues radiating out from the central plaza. Banks of flowering plants flanked the buildings, claret and dusty gold and a pure, delicate orange, rows of color too diffuse for her to make out individual blooms.

Where the avenue, seamless and white as milk, picked up the gray stippling of granite, the columns gained lintels and evolved into a series of archways through which a new landscape beckoned: Wind skittered across a broad courtyard whose expanse was one huge mosaic of jewels. A scrap of white lifted from the ground and floated up, sighed down, and settled back on the ground, only to lift again as the wind picked up.

“What is that?” Yana darted through the archway just as David called after her, “Don’t go through there!” and she pulled up short and stared up, and up, and up, at the monumental palace that hulked before her, a vast building with two wings centered on a dome that filled the sky. Six slender towers soared up toward the heavens, ringing the great dome at equal intervals. Yana heard David’s footsteps, muted on the gloriously jeweled pavement.

“This isn’t a model at all, is it?” he said in a low voice. “It’s a gateway. I think… I would hypothesize, that we’ve entered the nesh palace, which has somehow become proportional once we left the avenue.”

Ilyana gaped up at the palace. It was so huge. It was also gaudy, stuccoed and painted in bright primary colors with a trim of gold and silver lacework along the columns, rimming the grand doorways, surmounting the tiered arcades that made up the front of the wings, crawling like vines in gold relief up the towers.

“An arch rotated three hundred and sixty degrees produces a spherical dome.” She stared up at the curved expanse of the palace’s blue dome, reflecting the sky.

“True. I think we should go back to the avenue and catch our breath. I feel a little safer there.”