Watchstar (4 page)

The boy suddenly opened his eyes, looking around quickly before he saw her. She sat down again, gazing into his dark brown eyes, noticing tiny folds over the inner corners of his eyelids which made his eyes look almond-shaped; only a few villagers had eyes like that. She prayed silently, wishing God would answer her.

The corners of the boy's mouth turned up; he was smiling. He wrinkled his nose, as if smelling something rank. Daiya rested her hands on her knees. Surely the Merged One would not condemn her for trying to reach out to a separate self before acting. Clinging to this shred of belief, she forced herself to smile.

“Reiho,” the boy said, pointing to his chest. “My name is Reiho.” She scanned his surface thoughts as he spoke. His accent was still strange, and he gargled some of the sounds, but his words were clearer.

“Daiya,” she answered. “My name is Daiya.”

“Accident,” the boy said, gesturing at his craft. “Have to repair.” He pulled at the silvery garment he wore; it was as tight as skin against his body. It separated, showing part of his hairless chest. “You speak old language, old speech,” he went on. “Implant give me some words, I learn more later with hypnotraining when asleep.”

She shook her head, not knowing what he was talking about. Even scanning his mind could not help her interpret those words. He pointed to his forehead. “Implant,” he said again. “Inside. You have no implant?”

Daiya shrugged. Since she did not know what he meant, she assumed she did not. She got to her feet. She needed time by herself, time to figure things out.

“You go?” he asked. “Find others?”

She felt his apprehension. “No,” she responded. “I'm by myself. I have to go now, I'll come back later.”

“More slowly,” he said, wrinkling his thick eyebrows.

“I have to go now,” she said carefully, motioning with her hands. “I will come back later.” She felt irritated with him as she spoke, wishing they could mindspeak instead of using this cumbersome method.

He held out a hand, obviously wanting her to stay. She drew back, then lifted herself off the ground so that she would not have to wade through the bushes at the bottom of the hill. As she landed on the hillside, she saw his mouth drop open. Good, she thought, wanting him to be a bit afraid of her; it might protect her.

She carefully approached the place where the boy was. She peered cautiously around a tree, almost expecting to see others of his kind in the clearing below.

He was still alone. Now that it was night, the top of his vehicle was transparent again. A light bathed the inside of the craft. The boy sat in one of the doorways, his feet on the ground. He held a thin flat rectangular object on his lap and was bent over it, peering at it as he bit into the bar of food he held in his right hand. She frowned, wondering at his strangeness.

She came down the hill slowly. She had still not called the village. She had put the boy out of her mind while she practiced physical and mental exercises, forcing herself to prepare for her ordeal. She was beginning to realize that the longer she waited with her secret, the harder it was going to be to tell it when the time came to do so; she would have to explain why she waited. That, she thought, must be why isolation was so dangerous, so feared.

Reiho looked at her as she picked her way through the bushes. She touched his surface thoughts; he too was glad she was alone. Again she saw him as cylindrical and machinelike, until she withdrew and saw him only with her eyes. “Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” she answered, accenting the word properly. She sat down in front of him, searching for something else to say. She pointed at the flat rectangle. “What is that?” The surface of the rectangle gleamed, lighting the boy's face with a yellowish glow.

He said a word she did not know. She gestured with a finger. “Say it again.” He repeated the word as she skimmed his mind; she grasped an image of a surface covered with symbols. “A book,” he said once more.

“What is a book?” she asked.

He stared at her for a moment. “Let me try to say,” he answered very slowly. “I have learned more of your speech while you were gone, Homesmind taught it to me...”

Daiya drew back, pulling her legs up to her chest. “There is someone else here!” she cried, in her panic shouting with her mind as well. Reiho seemed to hear only the words.

He shook his head. “No, I am alone. Homesmind is far away from here. I speak to It through my implant.” He pointed at his forehead. She searched his mind again, finding the small, pulsing light amidst the clouds of his thoughts, the light that was not part of his mind, but something else.

She withdrew. Confused, she wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. “You speak to another mind?” she asked.

Reiho nodded.

“One that is very far from here?”

He nodded again, pointing up at the sky.

She shook her head vehemently. He was a separate self, he could not do this thing. He was trying to frighten her. He could not see her own thoughts as she sat near him, nor could he know when she touched his mind, yet he wanted her to believe he could speak to a mind in the sky. “You cannot,” she said. “I don't believe it.”

“Through the implant,” he said. “I could not do it by myself. If you had an implant, I could speak to your mind, too.”

Daiya laughed. Reiho clutched his flat rectangle, looking startled. “You are primitive,” she said. “My people don't need such things to mindspeak.”

“Please, speak more slowly,” he said, raising a hand.

“My people do not need such things to mindspeak,” she said carefully.

The boy was still for a moment. His eyes narrowed. “You can read my mind?” he asked softly.

“It is too hard with you,” she answered. “You have no training, it is hard to read what you think, and you cannot touch my thoughts, so we must use speech.” She paused. “That does not mean I cannot grasp your intentions or feelings,” she added, just to be safe. She was about to explain that he was a solitary, without mental powers, but she decided against it. She would have to tell him that infant solitaries were always killed, and that might provoke him. She realized that if Reiho could not get back to his home, he would have to die. But if he did go back, he might return with others like himself.

She swallowed. The longer she sat here with him, the greater the distance from her village seemed to be. Yet she could not bring herself to leave. She was too curious; she would damn herself with her curiosity. “This Homesmind,” she said, thinking it was a peculiar name for anyone to have, “does he know you spoke to me?”

“It asked. I did not say, I said only that I wanted to learn the old language, your language.” The light from the rectangle's surface made his face seem sallow and drawn; his shadowed eyes were dark pools. “I am not supposed to be here. I said only that I was all right and I shall return when I repair my craft. I told It that I ... that I ... I do not have the words in this speech. I told Homesmind I wanted to learn this language to pass time. It is strange you still speak it.”

“Why should speech change, when the world does not? It is mindspeech that is important, we need words only for children.” Questions threatened to flood her mind as she spoke. How could a being from the sky know Earth's language? She suppressed the question. “You're not supposed to be here,” she went on, “so you told no one.”

He nodded. “That is true. We thought there was no one here, that you were all dead many ages ago.”

Daiya coughed, trying to choke back her laughter. “Dead! You come from the sky where no human being can live, to Earth, the home of all men and women, and you thought we were dead. You are very foolish, and your people must be ignorant.” She paused, thinking that he might find this rude, then saw that he had not understood the rapidly spoken words. “I've told no one about you either, at least not yet,” she continued. “I can't imagine what they would think of you.” She pointed at the rectangle. “This thing, this book, what is it?”

“It is words, writing.” He tilted it toward her. Just beneath the surface, she could see scratches and marks which seemed to form patterns. “I always keep a small library ... a small number of books ... with me. They are very small, tinier than the pebbles here, but when I put them in here"—he pointed at the rectangle as he spoke—"I can read them. If I wish to have other books, Homesmind can transmit them to me.”

She could not understand a few of his words, and wondered if it was because her speech was still new to him. “You look at these patterns?” She squinted at them. “What for? Is it an art?”

The boy stared at her. “You have no writing?”

“I've never heard of such a thing.”

“I shall try to say what it is,” he said very slowly. “These symbols, they are words, like the ones we speak or say. Each one of these stands for a word or part of a word. When I look at these signs, it is ... it is as if the person who put them down is speaking to me. I do not need the book, I could speak directly to Homesmind to learn what is here, but I find enjoyment in the words and their patterns. In a way, it is an art now, though long ago it helped people preserve learning.”

“People put down these symbols?”

He nodded.

“Why? Why doesn't this person tell you his thoughts? Did a friend of yours do this?” She stopped, trying to remember not to speak so quickly.

“This person was not my friend. She is dead for a long time, I do not know her. But her work is part of Homesmind, and with this book, I can read what she thought.” He pressed the edge of the rectangle; the light went out. He was now a black, alien form, lit from the back by the light inside the vehicle. She could not see his face. “This book is about history,” he went on.

“What is that?”

“About the past. It is about a long time ago. But it says little about Earth.”

Daiya peered at him. “You are very strange,” she said. “You look at patterns to tell you about the past. I don't understand you. What is there to know?”

“Do you know about the past?”

“Everyone does. There were those like us and those not like us and they fought long ago. Then there were only those like us.” She suddenly realized that Reiho's presence contradicted that statement. “And some have said that the ones not like us live in another place, but many consider that a heresy. I didn't believe that before.”

“What about after that?” Reiho asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to your people after that?”

“We are as we are. The passing of time is an illusion, a warp in eternity. What else is there to say?”

“What about your history?”

Exasperated, Daiya stood up. “I don't know what you mean. You look at signs and patterns on a surface and you ask what only a child would ask. We are as we are. We always were like this, we shall always be like this.” She was afraid to show the boy that she too had questions about her world, afraid he might see it as weakness.

“It does not change at all?”

“Why should it change? People die and children are born. The older ones tell us things and teach us, and we shall do the same.”

“But change is part of life.”

“We have always lived as we do. Your life is very distant from truth if you look for change.” She shook her head. “I must go, I have many things to do.”

He took her hand. Startled, she jumped back, pulling her hand away. His skin felt dry and smooth; his hand, oddly enough, had no callouses. “Do not go,” he said.

“I must.”

“I shall leave you alone. I am frightened, I will say it. I have not ever been in a place like this.”

She touched his mind and felt both his fear and his pride. He had struggled with his pride to make his admission. Earth's night covered him; the darkness hid unknown threats. A wild creature hovered near him and he did not know whether it would strike. That was how he saw her. She withdrew, annoyed but sorry for him as well.

“Very well,” she said softly. She turned and pointed to a spot several paces from the craft. “I shall build my fire there, and sleep there, but you are not to disturb me.”

“You may sleep in here, there is space. I will put down one of the seats for you.”

“No. I'll sleep outside.”

“I will not do anything, I will not even touch you.”

Daiya leaned closer to him. She sensed he did not really want her in the craft. Why had he asked? Perhaps he was trying to trap her. She searched his surface thoughts, but could sense no hostility.

“I must sleep outside, that is all,” she said. “I would not be comfortable in there. And you must leave me alone, or I'll go. Then you will be alone.”

His body stiffened and his mind became a coil. “Very well.”

She left him and went for wood to build her fire.

Something was near her.

Daiya swam into consciousness, releasing part of her mind from behind her wall. She touched another mind—it was Reiho's. Angry, she sat up quickly, blinking her eyes.

The boy was retreating, hurrying back to his vehicle. She looked down at herself. He had covered her with a piece of shiny cloth. She got up, pushing it from her, and ran up behind him.

He spun around, apparently startled. “I thought you would be cold, so I...”

She didn't wait for him to finish. She seized him with her mind, lifted him from the ground, and sent him sailing toward the craft, releasing him near the side. He fell against a large rock and rolled over, then climbed to his feet.

“Do you understand?” she shouted. “You must do nothing. Leave me alone.” She waited. He began to crawl back inside the vehicle.

“You are cruel,” his voice said in the darkness.

“I warned you.”

“You do not seem to understand a kindness.”

“Be careful of what you say.” She waited, ready to strike at him again.

“This world must have done this to you. Do not threaten me, you cannot hurt me.”

She realized she had roused his anger and his pride.

“Don't tempt me,” she said. “I can do more to you than you think.” She waited, for a moment hoping he would give her an excuse to destroy him.

The door of the craft slid shut.

Daiya turned away. She clenched her fists. Suddenly, she felt ashamed. Taking out her anger on the boy was as bad as taking it out on an animal—maybe worse. It would be kinder to kill him than to torment him like this. He might be an inferior being, but he had feelings like hers, and a mind that could reason, powerless as it was.