Full Vessels (7 page)

He just wished the people had not stolen his
pretty rocks. A lot of them were regular smooth river rocks, but
there had been a blue one streaked through with sparkling yellow
that he really liked. And another with bands of purple and red.
Maybe he would find another one of those blue rocks. If not, the
Creator would probably make more of them in the next world.

Ingrid sat erect as they reclaimed their
seats. She waited until everyone gave her their attention before
speaking. “I intend to take the conversation in a different
direction than what we’ve heard so far. No offense intended to
Griff, Mel, or Drake, but their presentations reeked of complaints.
Weariness of life informed my vote to die, but I generally approve
of the Creator’s work. I have no problem with the worlds
themselves. My only objection is to immortality.

“I stopped being an effective Observer tens
of Iterations past. Making myself care grew into a labor beyond my
strength. When I started to seek out comfort instead of insight, I
became unfit for duty. It’s a simple case of wear and tear. I
imagine a torn O-ring appreciates the dignity of being retired and
replaced so that the host mechanism may continue.

“Before my usefulness lapsed, I studied a
wide array of things. One in particular represents the soul of my
work. I approach every world as a battleground of ideologies.
Iteration one gave us primitive tribes. Iteration two showed us
communistic villages. The city-states of Iteration three surprised
everyone. Then the islands of four. Five introduced us to machines
and large-scale agriculture. Six had desert nomads. Seven was our
first diversely-featured world, featuring elements from every world
before it. Eight gave us the internet for the first time.

“I could continue for hours. My point is that
each world presented something new, or a new combination of old
things. The interactions drew my attention. Every time two things
come into conflict, the potential for discovery exists. Sometimes
you can only learn about something through contrast with other
things.

“How many of us loved the second Iteration
the first years? Its beauty lay in the contrast with the previous
world. Once the horrors of our past were more distant, we all came
to despise the monotony of life in villages where nothing serious
ever happened. The juxtaposition taught us more than the
experiences in isolation ever could.

“The greatest conflict happens not within our
minds, but between the people of a world. All of you know I love
warfare. I've waxed poetic on many occasions about the contest of
wit, strength, endurance, determination, and skill. No doubt
everyone is tired of hearing about military strategy. Should that
not be the case, feel free to let me know later.”

Ingrid almost smiled before resuming her
remarks. “Warfare remains my favorite form of contest to observe,
but all forms of cultural conflict provide valuable insights.
Possibly the most profound of these is the struggle between
cultures primarily practicing virtue ethics and cultures primarily
practicing consequentialist ethics.

“For the benefit of anyone not familiar with
the terminology, virtue ethics emphasize individual character while
consequentialist systems hold that the ends justify the means. I
have a particular fondness for virtue ethics, but these systems are
less enduring than the alternatives. My eventual conclusion was
that virtues were too rigid. They couldn't adapt to innovations as
easily.

“Of course, others would argue – probably
will, knowing Elza – that adhering to strict morals is a tactical
weakness. My counter is that the strategic advantage outweighs the
tactical disadvantage. Cultures with higher trust waste less
effort, which allows members of society to further cultivate their
better traits.

“The problematic innovations are things like
sabotage, terrorism, and guerrilla warfare. The most effective
response to such distasteful methods is disproportionate
retribution, especially when the targets are innocent members of
the enemy population.

“Thus, the best part of the people dies or is
abandoned in favor of the worst. There is a lesson there. Either
the people choose the wrong virtues. Or survival – of the person or
the ideal – isn't the ultimate good. Which took me entirely too
long to realize, considering the fact that I regularly witness the
end of universes.”

Ingrid folded both hands on the table.
“That's all I have to present.”

Kerzon leaned forward, face dead serious.
“I'm going to beat Drake to it. You're obviously afraid of
Elza.”

Across the table, Drake erupted into a
staccato squirrel giggle. “Screw you, Kerzon.”

Kerzon winked. “You'll have to buy me a drink
first.”

When Drake's expression became contemplative,
Jerome turned to Elza. “What are your criticisms this time?”

“Ingrid gave a coherent presentation free of
obvious fallacies. I see no reason to belittle the only person who
hasn't wasted my time.”

Griff snorted. “After the way you ripped me
yesterday, you better criticize something.”

“Go ahead,” Ingrid said, “I'm actually
curious about what you might say.”

“If you are going to insist, then I suppose
there is one thing. I question the significance of your
observations. You investigated a minor intersection of ethics and
sociology. That seems worthy of a conversation over a bottle of
wine, but hardly something worthy of presentation as your ultimate
contribution.”

Ingrid sank back into her chair.

“Any other questions?” Greg waited a full
minute. “Then I will see all of you tomorrow.”

She ground the seeds with two rocks, her back
to the group of raucous men and subdued women. Lude lounged among
the hunters, pride beaming from his broad face, no doubt reflecting
upon his conquests of the day. First he had killed a dozen unarmed
men. Then he had received a public reward in the form of an amorous
Ingrid throwing herself at the new top man.

Ingrid knew a lot about pleasing men. She
knew how to tease their expectations prior to the act. She knew how
to control the tempo to bring them close to completion, then bring
them back from the edge, to approach and hold back until a single
squeeze of her insides caused them to explode. She knew how to
flatter their egos with words and expressions.

Lude was well pleased as he reclined in the
soft grass.

No doubt he had expected a less enthusiastic
reception from the women after ambushing their men at a peace
meeting. Instead, he had been courted and bedded as a hero and now
relaxed as his new woman cooked a meal for him, apparently eager
for the status of being owned by the top man of the tribe.

When the seeds were finely ground, she swept
them into the mixture of water and acorn flour and stirred. She
poured thin patties onto hot rocks pre-greased with the fat of a
doe. Then she returned her attention to the meat being smoked above
the fire in a wicker basket. She had cut the meat as thin as
possible with a flint blade, then pre-cooked it closer to the
flames using green wood skewers. Now it smoked while wrapped around
a mash of starchy root vegetable that would bring a hint of
sweetness to it.

To Ingrid's mind, even more impressive than
cooking an entire meal herself was coordinating everything to
finish at the same time. The men would be able to eat bread and
meat and squash all at once in a great feast.

Bree, one of the other women, approached the
fire, her sullen eyes fixed upon Ingrid.

“Leave,” Ingrid said.

“My son is hungry.”

“Your son is a boy. These mighty hunters eat
first.”

Bree's discontented gaze drifted to the pile
of cooking discards hidden beneath the doe's hide. She bent to
touch the remnants of a green plant, her fingers stroking the hairy
stalk. Bree's eyes flashed up to Ingrid's, her jaw going slack.

“This food is not for your son,” Ingrid said.
And Bree nodded, a kaleidoscope of fear and hope rising to her
face. The woman may not be the most competent at the fires, but she
knew enough to distinguish poison hemlock from carrot.

When the food was done, Ingrid portioned it
out on rough wooden planks and presented it to the men – Lude first
and then the other men in order of decreasing size. Each of the men
took the offered plate and devoured sweet and savory meat, cubed
squash, and crisp bread. Ingrid brought forth an obsequious smile
as she watched them eat meat sweetened by hemlock root, squash
cooked with leaves of hemlock, and bread filled with hemlock
seeds.

A single mouthful should be sufficient to
kill a man. Each of the men consumed more than a single bite of
their feast. Ingrid studied the various men as she wore her false
smile and shifted her grip on the flint blade's handle. She
recognized most of the hunters in the group. They had eaten among
this tribe in the past as honored guests and hosted hunters from
Ingrid's tribe in turn. Those she didn't recognize were young,
except for one. That lone stranger crouched among the others,
studying everything around him with a vicious intensity,
occasionally joining in the revelry of his peers to make some
comment or other that drew forth bursts of laughter.

Killers, all of them. She would have
permitted their actions to go unpunished if they had done the
killing in an honorable manner. Instead, they used trickery to take
down unarmed men – men who considered them brothers.

Ingrid's smile-lines deepened as the men
began to show symptoms, falling down or cradling their heads.
Dizziness came first. Then weakness. Then the breath stopped. She
observed the first stages, bending over the men to look them in the
eyes and slice their throats before the poison could complete its
job.

She saved Lude for last. His breath already
came shallow when she met his eyes. “You are killed by a woman,”
she whispered as the sawed his neck open. “This is what happens to
kin-slayers and backstabbers.”

Around the perimeter of the camp, the other
woman stared at her in silence. They could not be happy at the
deaths of the men when that meant their tribe no longer had any
hunters. Nor could they be sad at the deaths of those who had
killed their lovers. Emptiness, she decided. That was what she read
in their expressions.

As she watched, the women startled, their
eyes looking past Ingrid. She turned to see one of the men sitting
up. It was the one she had not recognized before. He looked around
at the corpses of his comrades and laughed. He winked at Ingrid.
“Now that was something else. I've been watching people a long time
and never saw something like that happen. What did you feed us,
woman?”

Ingrid studied the unbroken flesh of his
neck. She remembered slicing it, freeing rivers of red to stain his
beard and chest. No blood lingered anywhere on him. She blinked.
“Observer.”

His smirk melted into perplexity. “You
too?”

“Did you encourage Lude's attack?” She hefted
the blade in her hand.

“You're the one causing trouble. I just watch
the people.”

Ingrid studied him a minute, unable to read
past the bored apathy he projected. “Watch the people somewhere
else. This is my tribe.”

“I'm the man here. I'll stay if I want. Might
make you my woman too.”

She squinted at him, head tilting to the
side. He looked like he knew how to fight. Of course, so did she.
“Try.”

For a moment, his eyes weighed her. Then he
shrugged. “I've got more interesting things to watch.” He got to
his feet and backed away from her. “What is your name, woman?”

“I'm called Ingrid in this tribe.”

He continued backing away. “I'm Kerzon. Maybe
we'll meet again some day.”

As they exited the conference room, they
encountered a press of bodies against the windows once more. Hess
slipped past the crowd to exit the hotel's main doors and turned
his face upward to stare with everyone else. The light of day shone
clear and bright everywhere but for the plume of gray rising from
the mountain and stretching downwind like a hazy streak of dust on
the heavens.

“We might wanna check on our boat,” Erik
said.

Rather than wait for the stables to saddle a
horse for them, they went by foot, skipping the zigzagging roads to
jog along steep animal trails. Their haste ended after Hess broke a
leg in a concealed hole. Erik continued forward more cautiously,
leaving Hess to catch up after he healed.

They rejoined the road when it became obvious
whatever their shortcut saved them in distance it cost them in
time. Over an hour after their departure, they came into view of
the harbor and stumbled to a halt. The schooner and yacht were
gone. More, half the fishing boats from the day before were
missing.

Erik scowled at the sight before them. “Now
what?”

“We take the steamship.”

“You talkin 'bout the one fresh outta
coal?”

Hess shrugged. “We'll have to fix that. Until
then, at least we know no one else will be stealing our ship.”

“You expect us to row a fucking tugboat?”

“Don't be an ass. We'll burn wood. Or steal
coal.” Hess turned in a slow circle. “We'll need to stage our fuel
somewhere.”

“Leave that to me,” Erik said.

“It needs to be -”

“Fuck, Hess, you think you know better than
me how to hide shit? Maybe we're tied with swords, but no one's got
smuggling on me. I've been hiding all sorta nefarious doings from
the people for as long as I've been alive. Storing some wood ain't
nothing compared to concealing a room full of screaming school
kids.”

“Don't hurt anyone.”