Reclamation (60 page)

Arla opened her eyes. She saw her hand on the stone, but the awareness of it was superimposed over the sight of the rest of the room, all of it, seen from all angles. She looked up from the floor and down from the ceiling and out from all the walls. She felt the disturbances Jay’s breath made in the air and the heat from his body, and her own. She felt the gentle pressure where feet stood. She felt portions of the room stir, as she might feel her heart beat, or her lungs breathe.

Past all this lay another great space. She knew that, and she knew it was at the same time far beyond her and immediately within reach, and … Arla leaned toward it.

There was someone else out there. She could hear them crying in that distant vastness.

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!

Arla gathered herself together and willed herself to look toward the plea.

It was like looking out the view wall toward the stars. Arla felt the old vertigo rock her mind.

Over here, over here, over here!
cried the other voice.

Arla knotted her resolve and looked harder. The stars here were connected with strands of scarlet light, into a vast web that was even bigger than her new, expanded perspective. Yet some part of her knew that if she reached, if she stretched, she could encompass all this as well, see it from every side as she saw the room. The vacuum was darkness without form. This darkness would have form, if she shaped it.

The idea delighted her. She reached toward the web, spreading herself wide to surround it.

Welcome! Oh welcome home!

Light suffused her, as if all her pores had become eyes. Joy came with it, riding on the pulses of light that fed into her.

“Who are you?” Distantly, she felt her mouth move. The question took a long time to travel through her awareness to where the light touched her.

I am the Mind. I have waited very patiently for you to come back to me. You will see. I have been very careful with myself. I am all in readiness.

“I have never been here before,” she said, hoping it understood her tone to be gentle.

Not you yourself, but the Eyes were here even before I was. They had to come back. I have waited for you to come back. It has been so hard to be blind and alone.

Sorrow washed through her, and bereavement. “Can you see now?” Arla asked gently.

Yes! Yes! I can see everything you see. Will you not look farther?
Again, the pathetic eagerness. The voice belonged to a child that wanted to show how clever it could be.

“I’m not sure I know how to look farther,” she told the Mind. “You must think me very stupid.”

You do not need to know. That is what I am for. You only need to see. This is how.

And Arla knew. She knew, had always known, would always know.

She looked, and she saw. She saw herself standing with Jay in the chamber. She looked at a different angle and she saw a cluster of Vitae stretching a clear film across a corridor threshold. At a different angle, their transports crawled over pulverized stone in the shadow of a broken wall. She looked at yet another angle and she saw … ruination.

Smoke, fire, and smoldering ashes arched up the sides of a crater. Lumps of stone and glass fused to her line of sight, making blurred patches in her vision.

“Nameless Powers!” she cried. “Nameless Powers preserve and forbid! What have they done!”

“Arla?” She didn’t look away from the smoldering crater, but she still clearly saw Jay reach out a hand toward her. “Arla, what’s happening? What has who done?”

Her shoulder shrugged impatiently. “I can’t see Aienai Arla! I can’t see Mother, or Eric. Where is Eric?”

Look here, and here.

Little Eye held Roof Beam’s hand as they struggled to keep up with Nail, half-clambering, half-wading through the marshes. At the same time, Eyes Above hunched in front of her hearthstone while Storm Water fed fresh charcoal into the flames. At the same time, Eric rattled past in the back of the sledge while Teacher Heart drove the team through a landscape obscured by foul black smoke. Both of them had headcloths wrapped so that their faces were shielded from drifting ash.

“Arla,” said Jay again. “Arla, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said. With a little effort, she separated a piece of herself to focus on her own body. “I’m all right. I’m …” A thought surfaced. “Can I show him what I’m seeing?”

Yes. That is part of what the Eyes are for.

And Arla knew how it could be done. She focused on the crater. The Mind took the sight and gave it to one of the shadows behind the chamber wall. Arla watched the chamber and she watched the shadow’s image paint itself behind the smooth wall. It formed itself from a film of the liquid held in the tubes. She looked at the smoking crater, and looked at the image of the crater on the wall and looked at Jay looking at it.

“Where is this?” asked Jay hoarsely.

“Narroways,” said Arla, even though she hadn’t known a moment ago. “The Vitae dropped a …” The words surfaced, from the stones or the Mind or her own memory, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. “An incendiary device. A clean bomb.”

Jay laid his hand on top of the image. Arla saw the lines of his palm, the prints of his fingertips and the flat white blobs where his skin pressed against the wall. “What you create you may some day be forced to destroy,” he said, but he didn’t speak Standard. Her ear heard gibberish, but the Mind did not. The Mind knew and so Arla knew, had known, always would know.

“But how?” she whispered.

There are others here who speak that way. I have been listening. I have neglected nothing.
Arla saw a quartet of Vitae faces, leaning far too close to her.
These are they.

Then Jay was a Vitae. Jay was Aunorante Sangh. She tried to feel horrified, or angry, but she couldn’t. She could only feel delighted with herself and her newfound vision.

“Arla,” said Jay. “What else can you see?”

“Everything,” she said, and a warm rash of confidence filled her. “I can see everything.”

Jay’s breath quivered in the air. He rested lightly on her surface as he leaned toward her body. “Can you see Contractor Kelat?”

You can. Look here.
Arla saw another chamber, almost a twin to the one she encompassed. In this one stood colorfully robed Vitae. They laid scanners and analyzers against the walls and argued over what they found. Arla knew that if she reached, she could hear them. If she wanted to, she could be as aware of that room on the other side of the world as she was of the one where her body stood.

A black-robed man (Contractor Kelat, she knew) stood with a trio in blue. They bustled around a capsule that reminded Arla of the one she had carried across Amaiar. Curious, she reached toward the room until she cupped herself around it. She looked down from the ceiling and inside the capsule; she saw her sister.

“Trail?” She strained her awareness, trying to feel her sister, but the capsule isolated her. She could feel nothing but the restless Vitae.

“You see Broken Trail?” asked Jay. “Show me.”

Yes. Let us show him!
The Mind’s eagerness was so infectious that Arla didn’t even hesitate. She looked hard at the chamber around Broken Trail until its image replaced Narroways’ devastation on the wall in front of Jay.

A broad grin split the Skyman’s face. “Too late,” he said to the image. “They’re too late, Kelat! We’ve won!” His voice dropped to a husky whisper and he struck her wall lightly with the side of his fist “We have!”

The Vitae won?
thought the part of Arla that was still lodged in her body.
No. We came here to stop them. To save Trail.

What does it matter?
crowed the Mind.
They will let us work! They will let us see and hear and move again! We will be alive again!
Pure, innocent joy raced through her until Arla felt she might drown in the sensation, but she couldn’t stop drinking it in. She was free, she was limitless and infinite in her vision and knowledge. All that lacked was work. All she wanted was to be told how to use her sight.

This despised one asks in what way she may serve?

A discordant jolt ran through her. The thought hadn’t come from the Mind, but from her own memory. Her heart in her body, distant and small, skipped a beat. She was free as long as she served. That was what the Teachers told the Notouch. That was what the Notouch told each other, and now it was what the Mind told her, with such joy she could barely endure it, let alone deny it.

“But it’s a lie,” she whispered fiercely. “It’s still a lie!”

No, no, don’t be afraid,
called the Mind.
Don’t go. Don’t leave me here alone and blind.

Jay faced Arla’s body. “It is no lie, Stone in the Wall,” he said with the Vitae’s incorruptible calm. “Now, I need you to secure this chamber. Close the hatches and make us safe.”

The Mind sent a wave of sorrow through her.

“I can’t,” she said, and a tear prickled the corner of her eye. As the Mind fed the information into her she delivered it to Jay. “I am an Eye. I can see and show and know. I can move nothing macroscopic. You require a Hand.”

Eric?
Arla thought a little dazedly.

“A telekinetic?” asked Jay.

“Yes.” Arla couldn’t stop herself. It felt so good to answer his questions. She wanted him to ask more. She wanted to stretch herself out until she filled the entire world and saw all the heavens. She wanted him to ask her something difficult, something that would make her, make the Mind, make her, have to think hard. She wanted …

This despised one asks in what way she may serve?

No!
howled the Mind.
Not That is not how it is!

Its pain was nearly as blinding as its joy had been. Arla’s body shuddered.

But I am right,
she whispered inside her own, infinitesimally small mind.
I am.

“Where is Eric Born now?” asked Jay. “Can you see him? Can you get a message to him?”

She could do it. Easy as breathing she could do it. She already knew how. But …

But …

“Arla?” Jay stepped closer to her. She felt his breath on her skin and her walls. “Arla, do it.”

You can do it,
the Mind urged her.
It’s easy.
From a great height, she saw Eric through ash-filled air. He leaned out of the sledge, pointing up a rocky, thread-thin canyon. The dome canyon, she realized. He was almost to her.

Show him how easy it is.

But I do not want the Vitae here. I do not want to serve them. I do not want to serve anyone!

No! No! Not again!

Grief and fear raced through her, shaking her heart and soul. The Mind was remembering and its memory could fill the whole world. There had been centuries of bliss. The Hands and Eyes worked and the Mind worked for them and although they numbered in the hundreds of thousands, there was still more to be done than they could manage. There was always some new task, something new to see or think about. Endless work, endless joy in it.

She saw the Realm as a whole world then. Ancient as it was, it still shone emerald and sapphire and ivory in the light of a single golden sun. Its people knew no barriers to their wishes, because they had made the Eyes and Hands with as much love and craftsmanship as they had used when they made the Mind. Eyes, Hands, and Mind worked together in harmony and joy until the Eyes and Hands became angry. They were furtive and talked among themselves of the end of service, even while a whole new world was being built with limitless possibilities for new work.

They made me move!
the Mind cried.
They made me move the world and it was ruined and then they died! They all died!

Don’t do this, don’t do this again!

“No,” Arla said, but she wasn’t sure what she was saying no to.

“Arla, I need Eric Born here. You will send him that message.” Jay’s fists clenched, face a tight mask. “Where is he?”

He’s looking at the tether marker. He’s outside now. You can see him.

She saw him, distant and foreshortened, but knew what she saw all the same.

“Do it!” shouted Jay.

She saw him too, with his bald head and poorly dyed hands. She remembered the weeks she’d lived without orders, and then she remembered all the years of doing what she was told yet thinking what she wanted.

She balled up all those memories of mud and muck and groveling service, of knowing there was nothing else for her children and their children, if they should be able to bear their own, and she threw them all into the Mind.

She felt it cringe. But it was not done. It threw to her the memory of struggle in the wreckage of a world under a pair of suns that scorched the Realm with light that couldn’t even be seen. The surviving Hands and Eyes pulled together with the others bred for service for a time. The Mind was busy, but grimmer, for that was how the service was. New life had to be bred. The World’s Wall had to be built to create a livable place in the deepest trenches of the old ocean before the last of the atmosphere was gone. A home had to be grown and shaped there. The people had to be shaped, too. Too much of the technology had been lost to do that totally microscopically. People had to be culled. They had to.

But they did not want to do what was needed, and there was a war. The Hands and the Eyes died or fled, one by one, until the Mind was left alone in stillness and darkness. Because service was refused, because what had to be done was not done.

You can’t want that again!
the Mind cried.

Arla didn’t. She felt a shame as dark and deep as any that had ever forced her to her knees.

…
the others are trying to tell you that your genetics are the final determinant of your existence … I find it hard to believe that somebody so carefully constructed has no idea of their junction … they told us as long as we kept the Words and the bloodlines true …

No, please,
begged the Mind.
Do not do this to us. Let us work. Let us have life again!
She saw Eric and Heart wading through the rubble inside the dome.
Show him! We can show him!

And she saw Eric again. Heart stood a nervous watch while Eric knelt in front of the hatchway and laid his hands on top of it. She felt his power gift reach out across her skin, and the hatchway opened.