Watchstar (22 page)

A hand was on her back. Her head jerked up. She realized she had dozed off. The baby was crying. Her father stood next to her.

—I've cut the cord—Brun said. His thoughts were cold, stinging her. For a moment she did not understand him.—The child is a solitary—

Daiya gasped. She jumped up and went over to where Anra lay. Her mother was crying. Silla sat in the corner, her face solemn. Daiya spun around and went to the opposite corner. She picked up an old tunic lying there and brought it back to Anra. She took the baby carefully from her mother and wrapped her in the tunic.

Brun grabbed her arm, his fingers gripping her so hard it hurt.—There is no need for that—he thought.—We must bury it in the fields—

—No—Daiya thought. The word fled from her, striking Brun. He reached for the child. Daiya stepped back.—No—she thought more firmly.

—Have you truly lost your mind? She is a solitary—

Daiya backed away, still holding the baby. The child let out a cry.—I won't let you kill her. That boy you saw today, he is a solitary, yet he lived. Most of his people are solitaries. They can reason and feel. They have made a life for themselves. We might not like it, but it suits them. I won't let you kill her—

—You know our customs. Give her to me or I'll crush her mind now—

Daiya threw up a strong wall.—No. You'll have to fight me first. Just try—

—You worthless girl—Brun thought, his words burning her.—You have brought us nothing but sorrow, and now you bring us more. Don't we have enough?—

Daiya moved toward the door, still shielding herself and the baby.—I'll take her to the people of the comet. They can give her a home—

—You cannot—

—I will. At least she can live there. Isn't that better, Brun?—

Anra sat up on the mat, staring uncomprehendingly at Daiya. Brun turned away, unwilling to fight.—I do not understand the world any more—his mind murmured.—Nothing is as it was. We are being punished for giving birth to you. The Merged One should have called us all to the next world rather than let us live to see such things—

Daiya hurried from the hut. As she ran through the street, the baby began to cry in a piercing wail.

Daiya awoke. She stretched out her hand and felt grass. She opened her eyes. It was still dark. She tried to recall where she was, what had happened. She yawned; she was still tired. She stretched a hand over her head and smacked it against something solid. She sat up, turning slightly, and saw the shuttle.

She was rubbing her arm as the shuttle's door slid open. Etey climbed out with the baby. The baby was crying. Etey had wrapped the child in a piece of silvery material. “Are you all right, Daiya?”

Daiya remembered her journey here. She nodded silently.

“You came flying in here after sunset. You handed me this child and then collapsed. I checked you and you seemed to be well, just tired, so I let you sleep.” Etey turned the child against her shoulder and soothed her, rubbing her back. “I fed the baby a little while ago.”

“With what?” Daiya asked, looking dubiously at the small breasts under the lifesuit.

“The synthesizer made something up for her.” Etey perched in the doorway, then sat, letting her legs dangle. “Why did you come here as you did, with this child?”

Daiya was silent. Now that she had rested, she was sure she had been mad to come here. She wondered how she had ever thought Etey might help her. “This baby,” she said, trying to find the words, “this baby is my sister. My mother gave birth to her yesterday.”

“But why did you bring her here?”

Daiya sighed. “She's a solitary. You must know what that means. If she stays here, she'll be killed, that's what we do to isolates.” She realized Etey knew that, but was surprised at the violent grimace which distorted the woman's face. “I couldn't let it happen. Only a short while ago I would have said it was right. I would have followed my father to the fields and dug the grave. And if you had not been on our world, maybe I would have buried her anyway, even knowing what I do now, because there would have been no alternative. But I thought...” She twisted her hands together, rubbing at the streaks of dirt revealed by the soft light shining out of the shuttle. “There is no life for her here.”

A bird began to sing in one of the nearby trees. The sky above the foothills and mountains was beginning to grow lighter. The child was quiet, nestling against Etey's chest.

Etey said, “You want me to take her with me.”

Daiya folded her arms. “You must.” She narrowed her eyes, seeing Etey through slits. “She is someone from my world you can save instead of destroy,” she said bitterly, knowing that it was she, and not Etey, who had wielded the weapons.

Etey looked down. “She should be able to adapt to our world. Most of the physical changes in us are produced after birth, and are modifications of what we already have. But she is unlike us in many ways. Homesmind has altered our genetic structure, eliminating the worst conditions. It has modified our endocrine system so that our emotions do not so easily war with our reason, and we have more conscious control over our autonomic system. We all have several parents, not just two. We are very carefully planned.” She adjusted the silvery fabric around the child. “This girl will be something new in our world. She may in time come to feel like an outsider.”

“But you asked me to come with you,” Daiya replied. “She has more of a chance to be happy there than I do, she won't have known anything else. You have more reason to take her to your home.”

Etey sighed. “You are right. You too may still come with us, you know. I asked you before because I was sure you would die here if you did not, that is all. Life is better than death. Now you could come with your sister. You could watch her grow up. You could have a good life there.”

“I could not.”

“Better than here.”

“You're so sure of that, aren't you, Etey?”

The woman lowered her eyelids.

“I can catch your feelings. On the surface you think of bridging the distance between your people and mine, but what you really want is for us to become like you. You hold scorn for us inside, whether you admit it to yourself or not, and think us primitive. But we can dream the world as well as see it, we can ripen the wheat and fruit, shape the water, see through what is only visible with the eyes, and touch minds, while you must live blind and twist the substance of the world into strange shapes. Now we shall have knowledge too, and we may become something you can never be. We must find our own path.”

Etey was silent.

“I still have much to find out. You talk of a bridge between us. Isn't it already present? Your Homesmind has spoken to our minds here. Perhaps It will continue to speak to them, as you say It has to other such minds, so in a way our world will always speak to yours. Once you told me that Homesmind was the best part of your world.”

The woman leaned toward her. “Will you go back to your village?”

“I must. Things will change now. I must be honest, I don't know if they will be better or worse. The minds under the mountains spoke to me of growing conscious, something which seems only to make the world sharp and hard, soiled and empty. If they do not help us find new dreams, we shall die.”

“Perhaps nothing will happen,” Etey said harshly. “Maybe things will return to what they were. I shall tell you something, it may not matter very much. Sometimes I believe that the world, the universe, will one day be the province of Homesmind and all the other minds we built so long ago. I believe that may be why we have not located biological beings more advanced than we are. I sometimes even think that Homesmind has already sensed the presence of superior cybernetic minds, but has not communicated to us about them.”

Daiya tried to imagine that. No human being could hold as much as those minds did; it wasn't possible. She wondered if the day would come when all people lived on only in those minds, as the world had, she believed once, lived in God's mind. Perhaps this was what their myths had foretold.

“You're saying there is no purpose to human life,” Daiya said sadly.

“I am saying that might be our purpose, our end. We built the machines. They are a part of us.”

Daiya was silent. Birds whistled and chirped in the dawn. She put her hand to the ground, touching the grass.

“I shall have to leave very soon now,” Etey said at last. “I must get your sister settled. I shall help care for her. I do not think we shall ever come back.”

Daiya thought of Reiho.

Etey lifted an eyebrow, as if sensing her thoughts. “It is not as though we shall be gone. Through your cybernetic intelligences here, and through Homesmind you can speak to us, even if we are far from your world.” Etey paused. “Eventually, we will disappear from your sky. But I am going to try to persuade the others to keep us in this system, at least for a while. If they wish to go elsewhere, perhaps some of us will build a new world, though I think most of us will agree to stay at least for your lifetime.”

Daiya shrugged. “Perhaps you should go far away. We must decide things for ourselves, and your presence is destructive.”

“You may not always feel that way. If your world calls on us, we shall come back, but only then.”

The child let out a soft cry. Etey patted her. Daiya wondered if the girl would someday be grateful she had been taken from a world which would have sentenced her to death, or if she would grow alienated from the people of the comet.

She put a hand on the shuttle. “Tell Reiho...” She paused, not knowing what she wanted Etey to tell him. She swallowed. “Tell him not to forget. Tell him not to forget me.” She turned away. “I must go home.”

“Wait a little. I can give you something to eat before you go. You can spend some time with your sister.”

“No. It's better if I go now. Goodbye, Etey.”

“Farewell, Daiya.”

Daiya began to walk in the direction of the village. After a few paces, she looked back at the shuttle. Etey still sat in the doorway, holding her sister. She was a silent silver sentry with a solitary and a boy suspended in deathly sleep as companions. She caught a last trace of Etey's distant, calm concern. She held up a hand in final farewell, then continued on her way.

15

Daiya circled the edge of the fields, gazing at the narrow paths which had been trampled through the wheat. In the fallow fields, mounds of earth were strewn about over a few bones; she saw the newly covered graves of the dead Merging Ones. She found herself lifting dirt with her mind, tidying the graves, hiding the bones. She thought of her dead friends in the desert. Their bones would become part of the desert, as their minds supposedly became part of the Merged One. Daiya began to pray. She wondered if anything would hear the prayers. The words drifted from her. She imagined them floating above the clouds into black space, calling to the stars.

A few villagers roamed through the fields. They surveyed the damage, making a show of carrying on the life of the community. They began to clear away the torn-up wheat. Occasionally one would pause and stare at the ground. Their minds were silent as they worked; she caught no murmurings. In the distance, she saw others patching up the straw roofs torn by Etey's windstorm. She thought of the village as it had been. The future had been fixed and unalterable, continuous with the past.

A man looked up at her. Cerwen was with him, helping to clear the fields. Her grandfather watched her silently, then walked toward her.

Cerwen stopped a few paces away and stared at her, his mind as still as a warm summer day. His thoughts had softened, eroded by events. He tried to smile and could not.

—I am the oldest of the Merging Selves now—he thought.—I didn't expect such a thing to befall me. I am still too much of an individual to be in such a place, and now I must draw the others together and decide what we should do—

His mind reached toward hers and picked up her thoughts.—So the creatures have gone—he went on.—They strike at us and go, we are nothing to them—

—It isn't true, Cerwen. A grandchild of yours is with them, she'll live. Here, she would have died—

Cerwen slumped; she sensed his sorrow.

—They didn't mean harm, Cerwen. They didn't know what would happen. Blame me. If it hadn't been for me, perhaps we would still be as we were—

He shook his head—No, Daiya. Perhaps the Merged One sought to reveal these things through you. That is what I try to believe now, though at other times I feel certain that God has abandoned us—He looked at her sharply.—Why did you not leave with those creatures?—

She held out her hands, palms up.—I could not. My place is here—

—There is no place for you here. You have failed your ordeal, yet you are no longer a child—

—Things have changed. I must find my own place—

—Perhaps you should be judged—he thought angrily,—though I do not know what kind of judgment we could pass on you. There is no precedent—His mind rippled; thorns pricked her brain. The sharpness of his thoughts had returned.—We are lost. So many have surrounded themselves with walls, afraid to reach out, afraid of the power they realize is available to them. When the old ones died, other villages felt it, and now we cannot reach those others, though we have the power. I am afraid to see what they make of all this. Maybe they have erected their walls too. I do not know which I fear more, that we will separate ourselves from one another, or that we may seize the power and destroy ourselves. These are evil times—

An elusive thought, like a small bird, brushed near her. She tried to hold it and lost it. She waited, opening her mind, hoping it would once again alight.

—Let me live—she found herself thinking, feeling as though someone else was speaking through her.—Let me stay. Let everyone see that it is possible to live with this knowledge and survive. The ways of the village will be one way, my life will be another. Haven't we always believed that it was most important not to separate ourselves from other minds? Why should that principle not be as true now as before? Maybe the Merged One is testing us to see if we can follow that belief. It is easier to live as we all did when everyone believed the same things, but harder this way. If we reject this chance, we reject our most important belief—

—And perhaps now we shall war with one another, as men and women did in ancient times—Cerwen thought.—And many more may die, as so many Merging Ones did here. For many cycles we have lived our lives, and was our way so bad?—

It was the same question she had asked herself. She looked down at the ground, twisting her hands together.—I don't know, Grandfather. But we said we knew, and we did not. The people of the comet believe that one must learn, must not hide from knowledge, that learning is what minds must do. To cut oneself off from knowledge means one is cut off from the universe and its truth, and that must mean one would be separated from God as well. We lived all these cycles and yet we didn't know our own past—She looked up, gazing into his eyes.—We were unconscious, that is what the minds under the mountains say, as unconscious as we believed a solitary to be—

—We had our way. It served us. We survived. We had a truth—Cerwen put a hand over his eyes.—Perhaps you, and everything that has happened, are only a storm that passes quickly, making waves on the river, forcing it from its banks. But the storm passes, and the river flows on—

—Rivers can change course—

His hand dropped to his side.—I shall bring the other Merging Ones together, those who are left, and try to restore some purpose to our lives. Live if you must, but you will not live within the village, not as long as I am here—

Bitterness filled her. Her fingers clawed at the edges of her tunic, bunching the fabric.—Very well—she thought, trembling at the thought of exile.—You will not live forever, Cerwen—

He thrust a hand toward her.—You misunderstand me—She caught his thought: he saw her standing near the village, near it but not a part of it.—Stay near us if you wish. Enter town during the day if there is something you need or someone you wish to see. But you must realize that you cannot dwell within the village itself, there is no place for you. We have lived the way we have for too many cycles to change so quickly, to allow one with such separateness to live among us. Already we are fragile. Such an act might tear us apart. But at least we shall not insist that you submit yourself for judgment—He was speaking now for the other Merging Selves; she could sense the entwining of their thoughts with his own.

She forced a smile.—I see that I have already been judged—She drew back behind a wall, thinking: I shall make my own place, others may come to me.

—Are we agreed?—he asked.

She bowed her head, assenting. The Net lifted from her. She reached out with her mind, wanting to hold it. The Net was gone.

Cerwen turned and left her, alone.

Daiya stood at the bottom of the hill. A warm breeze caressed her face, sweeping dark curls in front of her eyes. The breeze dispersed; the air was still. She began to climb the hill's grassy slope to the grove of trees near the top. The sun was dimmed by a hazy sky. The air was thick. As she climbed, she recalled the last time she had come to this hill, with Harel, when she had been sure he would love her forever.

She reached the top and looked south toward the village. From here, she could see the huts, made small by the distance, the tiny flower and vegetable gardens, the public space in the center. The chickens, ducks, and pigs within the village were as they had always been; the pigs rooted, the chickens pecked at feed, the ducks waddled and ruffled their feathers. For a moment, she envied them their simple, thoughtless lives.

The public space was oddly empty for this time of day, occupied by only a few children sitting passively around a young man. The small figure waved his arms at the children, as if trying to explain something to them. Then he shrugged, got up, and walked away, disappearing among the nearby huts. A few people were sitting in their gardens. She saw Anra and Brun near their hut. Silla was playing in some mud.

Daiya looked west, toward the river bank. A few young people lay at the water's edge, not swimming, not even playing. One girl got up and stared at the flowing water.

The spirit of the village was gone. Daiya pulled idly at some of the clover around her, reaching out to pluck a golden wildflower. She decided to leave the flower where it grew. What have I done, she thought. Claws dug inside her abdomen. She leaned forward.

A vision came to her: She was walking toward the mountains, preparing to cross into the desert. Her body seemed light and insubstantial. She was ready to face the ordeal again, to struggle against the black deadliness once more. She would face it and live and win a place inside the village and things would be as they were. She waited for it to come to her. She stood among the stones that covered the bones of her friends. She called to the dark creature. She opened her eyes.

The darkness was with her on the hill. She faced it, waiting for it to swallow her. She stared through the mass as it swelled. It reached toward her with its thick pseudopodia. It flowed over the ground. It embraced her, resting around her like a heavy garment. She felt it trying to reach inside her and fill her with empty darkness. She resisted. The darkness faded, dissolving into black streaks and then nothingness. It was gone. It had no power over her. She could not go back. She was trapped in the world as it now was.

A figure was moving toward the hill. She recognized Harel. Her throat grew tight; her face burned. She wondered if she would ever be able to look at him again without feeling that sickness, that sense of loss.

He came to the hill and began to climb toward her. She wanted to jump up and ward him off, but instead she sat silently as he came closer to her. This hill was as much his as hers; perhaps memories had drawn him here as well. The thought made her lift her head with hope.

She put up her wall cautiously. He reached her and sat down, not quite close enough to touch her. His wall was up also.

She was afraid to send out her thoughts, thinking she would drive him away, while at the same time hoping he would leave. A lock of his hair curled over his forehead, resting on his left eyebrow. Her skin tingled; her heart throbbed painfully. How could so much change, while leaving this feeling the same?

Harel's mind brushed against her and she started, jerking her head around.—Daiya—he said solemnly.

She was silent.

—What will you do?—

At first she did not know what he meant. She looked out over the village, then back at him.—I'm going to live here—she found herself thinking.—I'm going to build my hut here under these trees. I'll plant a garden at the foot of the hill, and then I'll teach mindcrafts to anyone interested in learning them—

—What mindcrafts? You aren't old enough, you haven't mastered enough—

—I'll commune with the minds under the mountains. I'll learn as much from them as I can, and then I'll teach others, and we'll commune together. We'll see many truths, and try to learn how best to use the power the machines can give us—

Harel was trembling.—That vision—he thought, and she knew he meant the vision of the machines she had shown to the villagers.—It frightened me—

—You mustn't be frightened. They will only show us what we have forgotten. Even our legends were not entirely false. They showed us a part of the truth—She waved an arm.—I'll live here. You can too if you like—She made the thought casual, testing him. She let down part of her wall, knowing he could now sense her longing.

He looked down as she felt him push her suggestion aside.—I cannot, Daiya. You have become something too different. Someday I know you will look at me and feel that I would have bound you too tightly, kept you from things I think you will love more someday. I thought the ordeal would change you, make you decide to seek your dreams with us, make you more willing to become a Merging One, but I was wrong. I shall always be your friend, but I must live with the others, in the village, especially now. I must live the only way I know how to live. If things change, then they will change and I may follow, but I cannot lead—

He rose. She held out a hand to him but he retreated. He went back down the hill. A living thing struggled inside her, pushing against her muscles. It was still for a moment. She wondered when it would die. It was a little easier to watch Harel go this time, just a bit easier. The pains in her chest were not quite as bad. The thing inside her beat against her feebly, still struggling.

In the evening, the village once again lit its watchfires, so old a custom that no one could remember its original purpose. The people were stirring once again, trying to resume their disciplined lives, unable to tell if the resumption was permanent or only a brief respite before a confrontation with their new world.

Daiya, gazing down the hillside, saw two shadowy shapes draw near the hill. The two people cleared a space below, then lifted flat rocks and stones with their minds, setting them around the space. She touched their minds gently and recognized her cousin Kal and her friend Nenla. The two placed some tinder within the circle marked by the stones. The tiny pieces of wood burst into flame. They had lit a watchfire for her.

—Thank you—she thought gratefully before withdrawing. She smiled as she saw the pair throw on some kindling, then settle on a blanket, arms around each other, ready for sleep. She tried not to think about Harel.

She looked up at the sky, where the comet burned. It was another watchfire, marking a new boundary.

Slowly, she sent out her mind toward the mountain peaks below the comet. She drew on the machines for power. They hummed within her and voices whispered. The sounds soothed her. She could not make out the words. There was another mind with her. She reached out and touched Homesmind.

Her mind left her body and became a golden strand. She stood on the mountains and stretched toward black space, becoming a beam of light. The watchfires of heaven twinkled. She touched the comet.

—You are with me—she said to Homesmind.

Of course.

—Tell me what to do—

I cannot.

She shot through corridors, shimmering as she spun her way through Homesmind. Then she was in space again. The comet shrank, its tail becoming only a white scratch against the darkness. The sun became a tiny fire; the earth whirled past her. She fled from a banded globe and passed a small dark frozen world. She was lifted into darkness, borne by unseen arms.