North Wind (18 page)

“What happened? What did I do?”

Hafzan’s friends knew about the “new human.” They stared hard, passing informal comments freely. “Holeface” muttered one. “Lay off,” warned a Man boy. “In here, we’re all gamers.”

“You made out you’d never been in a mall before.” Hafzan accused. “Then you go and score a limit! Are you a spider?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A pro. A trapdoor user. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You won a free game,” said someone. “Wanna play? I’ve got some time. Shall we play?”

The young humans didn’t move. They glowered at Bella, still panting: their hearts thumping, eyes wild, faces glistening. Bella, the cripple, was not out of breath. She felt a rush of petty triumph. She wanted to do it over again. She looked at the weapon and the wrap in her hands. She had seen a demon, a big man, drop his weapon and run: fleeing in orgiastic terror from the unreal battlefield.
How can I have beaten them?
she thought.
I’m a cripple.
It was not horror of the deadworld, but another emotion she didn’t understand, that made her put her kit down.

“Anyone can have my time. I don’t want to play again.”

That evening Bella knelt on the edge of the congregation in the pillared hall, watching moving images of the Self in cheerful aspects of song and dance and courtship. She could not follow the simple story. Seeker-after-truth’s voice came out of the shadows, softly speaking English. “In Old Earth these days, they laugh at the idea of passive entertainment. The cult of watching puppets on a screen is dead, out there among the humans. They have other ways of enlarging their experience. Alien influence has affected the Enclaves people more than they know.”

He touched Bella lightly. They slipped away.

“I’ve been shopping,” announced Seeker-after-truth. “In the Connemara market.” The incunabula he collected came in odd forms. He had shown Bella obsolete record-media converted into jewelry, armor, knife-blades: inlaid in carved wood, fused onto wall-tiles, made into clothes and bedding. He tossed out a wide shawl that was woven from a fine, indigo-bloomed tape.

“Pure coralin, from before the first war! It’s a splendid find.” The material slipped through his fingers. “What’s recorded here? Who knows? My artisans will have to work on it. And you, librarian, what have you been doing with yourself?”

“Ah. And you want to tell.” The Seeker’s eyes were very kind. Though the locals called him a “holy woman,” he was no cleric. But in his strange way Bella felt that he was closer to the Self than any confessor she’d ever known.

“It was the deprogrammers,” he explained, formally. “I’d made them suspicious. I had to play a deadworld game in an arena, to show them I wasn’t still an Aleutian-lover. But I won. It was an imaginary battle. I’m an invalid, an isolate. I’ve never used a weapon! I don’t know why, but it was winning that felt terrible. I felt like a thief.”

He Puts Down His Weapons.
I wonder how that would go in Sanskrit?>

Bella found he was not exactly surprised to learn that other Aleutians had tried the games. He was isolate, but he understood something of what went on off the record, on Earth. But in the Seeker’s complicated smile he glimpsed a whole secret history: and dropped his eyes, alarmed. He didn’t want to know anymore!

Sanskrit names, taken from the sacred language of the Aleutians’ first patron, were traditionally reserved for the Three Captains and their original crews.

Seeker-after-truth told him gravely.

Suddenly he became less solemn. “The Zamanis are not bad people. They are bigots, yet scrupulous in their methods. Hafzan is just a bossy young brat. Your discreet handling of his challenge does you credit.” Formal English seemed to come to the Seeker as easily as the Common Tongue. He brought a paper packet out from the folds of his white wrapper. “Have a sweet? A gulabjam? They’re very good.”

The things looked like solid shit and smelled of dead flowers.

“Hard food won’t harm you, my child. It’s no more than a question of accustoming your insides, by degrees. You should make the effort, it is worthwhile.” He popped a sweet into his mouth. “Let me show you one of my best finds. It’s from an archive of a scientific journal: almost perfectly preserved, and so clearly coded! My staff were able to do a complete restoration. Take a look. There’s a whole article by Peenemünde Buonarotti—in English of course—that comes up wonderfully. I carry a copy with me everywhere.”

He opened a page on a flat reader-screen and pushed it over.

Bella pointed out diffidently,

The Seeker’s enthusiasm was so convincing Bella almost expected the screen to blossom into a magic doorway. Nothing happened. The black marks squirmed. With difficulty he could make them keep still. The Seeker touched the screen with a short, square-cut claw. “Deus Providebit Sibi Victimam Sacrifici,”
do you see it? Study it well. It has no place in the article. It’s one of the signs “Buonarotti” left it for me, on the trail I follow.>

Seeker answered formally. “The words are from an obsolete dialect. In English it would be ‘the Lord himself will provide a victim for the sacrifice.’ It’s a line from a Bible story. You will know of the Bible of course, though probably not at first hand. There are few satisfactory moving-image transcriptions from that collection, though in parts it is very fine, very fine indeed. The victim and the sacrificer, and God…. It is a triune you often find in their mystical records. Those three aspects seem to define the condition of selfhood, in local philosophy. In the Bible fable, someone called Abraham is ordered by God make a sacrifice. The sacrifice is to be the killing of his truechild, Isaac. He prepares to obey, but at the last moment God intervenes—satisfied by the gesture, apparently. It’s an odd story. Perhaps if it were translated into moving images you could explain it to me, librarian. But as to what Peenemünde means by that promise: I don’t know.”

He shut the reader with a sigh: and grimaced at his heap of scavenged relics.

The Seeker frowned at him.

Seeker-after-truth seemed piqued at the imputation. “Unfortunately,” he added in English, “Peenemünde Buonarotti’s university campus was contaminated in a radiation accident around the outbreak of the First Gender War. Whereupon, as you no doubt remember from
The Grief of Clavel,
she retired to the Enclaves and did no further scientific work.”

He’d become animated, excited to find an aspect of the Seeker’s quest that he actually understood. He retreated.

But Seeker-after-truth was following his own thoughts.

In the Seeker’s absorbed musing, he dropped his careful use of the “she” pronoun. Peenemünde became not a human but a person, a fellow scientist.

Seeker-after-truth started, as if he’d half forgotten the librarian was there.

Bella couldn’t resist the thought that this was probably because the device didn’t exist. He kept it to himself. he suggested kindly,

The Seeker gave Bella another of those long, penetrating looks that made the librarian feel small and stupid.

His tone was suddenly brusque, so that Bella wondered what he’d done wrong. The Seeker began to fold the coralin-tape shawl.

“I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with Hafzan Zamani. I will be leaving Trivandrum soon. You stay where you are, I’ll make sure that Yudi knows where to find you. But as we may not get another chance, we’d better talk about Sidney Carton.”

Bella started.

“Indeed. Sidney Carton,” repeated Seeker-after-truth, with a trace of a smile. “The halfcaste interpreter who helped you to escape. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but informally you’ve led me to understand he turned out to be a suspicious character?”

Bella had felt that Seeker-after-truth could not be interested in his silly story. He was sure that the great mystic had endorsed this impression. He must have changed his mind. He was watching Bella now with a keen and most un-mystical expression.

suggested the Seeker.

Bella tried to order his thoughts.

Bella drew a breath. Bella refused, even informally, to mention the “disguised prince” rumor.

The Seeker’s tone was neutral, but Bella had grown confident. understand
. To Sid and his boss, the Protest was a hideous waste of time. Sid knows too much about us, more than any local should. He described the homeworld to me, once. It was eerie. It was as if he had been there!>

very
dangerous…>