Starfire Saga, page 31
Jessif was surprised by feeling the probe. Not only could I read it, but her ears rose and she cocked her head. The speech simulator said, “That was interesting. Do it again.”
No one I had ever read had asked me to do it again. I felt a thrill go through me and tried not to let it leak past the shields. I projected the warmth again and augmented it with some reserve power. Jessif wriggled with delight.
“We are a species that responds in really meaningful ways to friendliness and love,” she said happily. “We think your Responsionists are right about that single tenet of their faith. Some of us are natural responders.”
I think humans, too, respond in really meaningful ways to friendliness and love.
“We are fierce warriors,” Jessif went on, pleased to be in a position to give me information in return for the projection which had so delighted her. “And fierce friends.”
“Are you glad to have gained sentience?” I asked her.
She was amused by the question. “Are you?”
To my complete surprise, I burst out laughing, and Jessif nearly shook with pleasure at having made me laugh. There was a true innocence, an utter lack of sophistication about her, that I somehow associated only with children, yet this was a fully adult, highly intelligent creature. I wondered about that.
Some of my bewilderment must have leaked past the shields, for she looked closely at me. “You are confusing sentience with sameness,” the voice simulator said in response to her input. “Not all sentient species will use sentience to be like human beings—so serious, so concerned with weighty matters and the futures of peoples.”
“You’re describing the MIs, not us,” I said, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Mortel John twitch, but he did not intervene.
“We do not see much difference,” Jessif said. “You believe you can mind-learn everything you need to know. We have always known that to be a false premise. But we would not expect you to learn from us.”
I thought about that casual statement for a long time after my conversation with Jessif was over. We would not expect you to learn from us.
If the protocanines were happy, the protodolphins were uncompromisingly joyous. In fact, they came to represent for me the epitome of joy. They seemed to have been barely affected by sentience, but we knew they had it because every so often they contacted the Com to argue a particular government policy of which we’d had no idea they were even aware.
To me, it was incongruous that they should be a mixture of carefree joy and astute political reasoning, but I gathered they found no mismatch. When I met them through their representative, Glon, from the terraformed planet Sargasso, which was ninety-two percent ocean, Glon was very pleased to see me, but clearly more reserved than Jessif had been. The protodolphins had an intricate language all their own, so only a translator was necessary, and I wore mine against my ear when Glon rose from a massive tub of water and balanced upward at my feet, nodding at me.
“I am very pleased you consented to meet with me,” I said.
Glon nodded again, emitting a series of high-pitched squeaks that my translator interpreted as, “It is an honor to speak with the new Class A, but it is also to our advantage. When you come truly into your own, your understanding will be of vital importance to us.”
“So you are meeting with me in hope of future gains,” I said.
“It is why most people do any things relating to the government,” Glon said with what I assumed was a trill of laughter. “Otherwise our natural tendency would be to avoid such institutions completely.”
“Are you saying that you would rather not be involved in politics at all?” I asked him.
“I am saying that any species with any values centered in natural things would ordinarily not care to be involved in politics.”
“Politics has been a moving force of civilization throughout all of history.” It was strange to find myself defending a process I thought myself above.
“So has warfare,” Glon countered, “and is not one of the primary uses of a Class A to eliminate war?”
I nodded, enjoying myself immensely. “Do you believe that another of my primary uses should be to eliminate politics?”
Glon trilled his laughter again, and my translator managed to convey something of a contradictory sadness in his voice as he answered. “Ah, Ronica McBride, if only you could. You have no idea how much happiness you could bring to the universe.”
The central chamber was lit by a hanging lamp with four lighted nibs, each with a transparent wrap of colored mica around it. The flickering of the four colors made dancing shadows across the carvings in the walls and on the sides of the altar, which lined the back wall. Sunk into the top surface of the altar were four depressions lined with metal, much like the bowls carried in rituals.
“What do I do?” I asked Venacrona.
“I can’t help you,” he said. “You must find your own way to call.”
I thought about that for a while. It seemed to me that the best way to let a totally alien species know I wished to speak with it was to recall, to the best of my ability, my only previous encounter. Filled with the confidence of previous interaction, I closed my eyes and reconstructed the scene on the ritual floor at Convalee, slowly building all the concrete details in my mind, including the exact way the starfire looked before it sent the tendril to take my wrist. Then, instead of waiting for it, I built in myself a thought that I wanted the tendril to come for me.
I heard Venacrona draw in a quick breath and opened my eyes.
The altar was alive with starfire, all four colors rising and dancing in the metallic depressions. I stepped closer to the altar and projected a desire to communicate, asking the starfire to speak to me. One long tendril reached out from the white, touching me in the center of the forehead as it had in the bowl of Convalee, and a tone seemed to form in the walls of the chamber, echoing like a bell. The tone had a strange sound to it, and for a few moments it was only a noise. Then I realized it had been a long, almost incomprehensible word, so drawn out as to be shapeless. The word was, “Tynnanna.”
The tendril withdrew and the starfire whooshed away as it had on the Day of the Fire, leaving the chamber darker and emptier, but somehow still charged with an energy I’d been unable to grasp and hold on to. I tried not to feel rejected, but I did. I turned and looked at Venacrona, who was watching me closely. “Did you hear it speak?” I asked him.
“How could I?” he asked in return. “The starfire stalk was against your forehead, not mine.”
I wanted to say that I had not heard the word in my mind, but in the chamber itself. I hesitated, however, because I felt lessened by my inability to make the encounter go as I’d wanted it to. It was, after all, an issue of control. I’d been reacting to things for so long now, going against everything I’d been taught, that I needed to know I could manipulate something again. I’d been sure this meeting with the starfire would be it, and I’d been absolutely wrong. I hated it, and I hated that someone else had seen me reach out and be rejected. I was swept by embarrassment, and then I was just plain angry. If I couldn’t control the experience, I would have to downgrade it.
“What did it say to you?” Venacrona asked me, still watching me closely.
“Nothing I could understand,” I said before I’d thought about it. “It seemed a waste of time.”
His surprise was so obvious that I had to look away from him. “I have never known an encounter with the starfire to be a waste of time before,” he said carefully.
And I snapped at him, as I hadn’t snapped at anyone since my first day with Variel, as I used to snap at Kray when he challenged me. I had wanted to be right just this once, and I’d failed. Somehow, in my mind, I thought that made me as worthless as the Com must have found me, to throw me out. I reacted to Venacrona as if he were deliberately rubbing it in.
“How fortunate for you!” I threw at him, turned and spun out of the room, down the steps past the assembly room, and out into the snowy day. Even as I did it, I knew it was unbearably rude, which is, I suppose, growth of a sort, since I used to say and do rude things all the time without caring.
It was only my first day in Stronghome; I didn’t really know my way around yet. As a result, I didn’t know where Shenefta or Variel were likely to be, and I wasn’t certain I could go to the tivong sheds without encountering Jemeret, for the storehouses and the animal sheds were all in the same area. So I turned and gathered and ran back along the track we’d entered Stronghome on, running full-speed for the entrance to the valley. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but at least I’d made the choice to do it. Sometimes we can see ourselves getting deeper into angry choices, and yet we seem almost to take pride in it. I was caught in it now, unexpectedly, awash in disappointment and self-condemnation.
And yet there was this prediction that I was to become the High Lady. Just as, I supposed, there had been a prediction that I was to have been the Com’s Class A, taking Jasin Lebec’s place.
I ran until I reached the crest of the pass, where the two track guards waited. They were startled to see me, but said nothing. I glanced away from them, up the sides of the vee through which the track passed, and gauged its steepness, the amount of ice on the bare rock cuts, and the snow, which could provide easier footing or could be treacherous.
Barely aware I was doing it, I unhooked the clasp of my cloak and let it drop to the ground. I could run with it well enough, but it would hinder me during the climb. I chose the side that looked more challenging, because exhaustion was a weapon I could use to combat the sudden, irrational combination of depression, anger, and helplessness into which I’d plunged myself. Still gathering, I started to climb, damping out the cold, forcing myself to stay alert and concentrate on every hand- and foothold.
It took nearly two hours to reach a spot where there was a ledge wide enough for me to sit down for a few minutes, and I flopped onto it gratefully, letting the gathering slide away, checking to be sure that my reserves were sound. They were about two-thirds full.
The view from the ledge was breathtaking, nearly beautiful enough to shake me out of my mood. The shoulder of the mountain slanted away toward the plain and the forest that covered parts of it. There were clouds massing in the south, from which I’d heard the Severance Storms came, the dark and roiling cloud banks building almost visibly, but still more than a hundred kilometers away. Above me the sky was a bottomless azure—somewhere in which lived everyone and everything I’d known before this world.
I couldn’t go back; I thought I had accepted it. But what had I here to compare with what I might have had? And why couldn’t I remember anything else? My last return of memory had been on the Day of the Fire, and there’d been nothing since then. It was as if I were stalled in that room after the graduation gala, unable to recall what had happened to me—or what I had done—next. There were times when I could tell myself to be patient and wait for it, and there were times, such as sitting on that high ledge looking out over a beautiful world, when I wanted to try to batter down the wall that separated my consciousness from the missing memory.
Just at the moment when I’d decided I would try to force my way through the barrier, despite the damage I might cause, I realized I wasn’t alone on the ledge, Tynnanna had dropped down beside me from higher up on the slope and now he butted his head against my arm, demanding attention and, incidentally, almost knocking me off my perch. I grabbed for him, twisting my hands in his coat, and he purred at once, as if I were petting him. As soon as I was stable on the narrow ledge again, I asked him, “What do you know about the starfire?”
The last thing I expected was an answer, but Jemeret’s voice said coolly, “If you want to know anything about the starfire, either Venacrona or I would be happy to discuss it.”
Even before I turned, I knew he was angry. It was a different anger from the cold inexorability with which he’d addressed Kowati at the Boru Court of Justice. It was hotter, more volatile, and while he was controlling it, he was letting it show, edged just slightly with the sting, so that I would feel it.
His face was unreadable when I looked around. “The starfire didn’t tell me to ask you,” I said, trying to match his tone with mine.
He seemed remarkably balanced and comfortable on the thin shelf, and I wondered how he had gotten higher than me without my seeing or hearing him—though I didn’t wonder how he knew where I was; he had doubtlessly sent out a sensory scout to find me. “From what I gather, the starfire didn’t say very much to you at all. I gather you expected more. I’m not sure what else would have provoked such childish behavior.”
I wanted to tell him that he had no right to speak to me that way, but he had every right, and we both knew it. If his power as a Class A hadn’t given it to him, his power as lord of my tribe would have—and if that had not, his power as the man who had braceleted me would have. Triply caught, I looked back out toward the gathering storm clouds again, unwilling to watch him being right when I was so very wrong.
“Ronica.”
I ignored him. He repeated it, his voice tighter. I ignored it again. He stung me, and my head whipped around toward him, the anger and indignation welling up in me to match the implacable purpose in him. The ledge was a dangerous place to explode, and there were three of us on it. That didn’t deter me. All of the day’s emotions, all the juvenile tyranny that had been so much a part of my life in the Com and had been so nearly successfully repressed—but not destroyed—here, rose up in me, and I sprang at him. He could have stung me to stop me, but instead he caught my wrists and turned me to press my back against the cliff, holding me there with his body, his heels at the very edge of the shelf on which we stood.
I hadn’t gathered, nor would I. Only when he knew he held me securely did he sting me, and, angry as he had been, there was no sign of it in his sting. Instead he flooded me with arousal.
I gasped, going almost limp against him, for he’d thrown the full power of his reserves behind it, smashing my anger and blowing it away in the face of sudden, overwhelming need. He held me tightly for a moment, then turned his body so that we were both securely on the ledge, my left shoulder and his right one against the cliff face. Only then did he withdraw the sting and allow me to recapture some of my equilibrium as the hunger faded. He released my wrists and took my face in his hands, his long fingers buried in my hair. All the anger was gone from him now, and his gray eyes, so close to mine, were level and serious.
“I don’t want to bully you,” he said evenly, “but you have to grow up. It’s imperative that you begin to deal in adult ways with frustration and anger. Hush.” I’d started to speak. I shut my mouth. “Now tell me,” he went on, “why it’s so much easier for you to react in a mature way when I’m controlling our sexuality than when you are.”
The quiet question jolted me. I’d made no connection between my uneasiness all day and the fact that he’d given the initiative to me in our lovemaking the night before, but the moment he said it, something rang true inside me. He watched—or felt—it register in me. And I said slowly, “Before you, I only ever slept with one man. I controlled it, and—” I forced the words out, ashamed, but determined that he should know. “—and I hurt him by it.”
I tried to look away from him, but he held my head still. “What has that to do with us?” he asked deliberately. “You don’t hurt me when you reach for me.”
“The past governs the present,” I said, slowing my heartbeat to try to keep my chemicals in balance.
“Only if we don’t think about it enough to master it,” he said. “You’re letting something that happened to an entirely different man affect what’s happening with me. That’s inappropriate.” He studied me for a moment more, seeing that I was listening, then glanced over my shoulder. “The storm’s moving in. We’ve got to start back. We don’t want to get caught out in it. After the first one, they’ll be easier to predict.” He held still for a moment, concentrating. Later, I realized he had been calling in the guards.
“How did you get up here without my seeing you?” I asked. “There’s a hidden trail.” He nodded upward, and Tynnanna, who had sat quietly on the ledge all during our exchange, now turned and bounded up the cliff as if it were no work at all.
“Wait.” I glanced down toward the wagon track, so far below us now, in some distress. “My cloak is down there, and the Midwinter Song prayers are in it.”
“The guards will bring it,” he said, as if it was already taken care of. “Come along.” I followed him up a few more feet of cliff face and then between some large shoulders of rock onto a barely visible but not difficult trail that wound its way farther up the slope and then descended on the other side, opening out onto the track as it went down to the floor of the valley.
We waited a few minutes for the guards to come around the curve of the road at a trot, and, sure enough, one of them was carrying my cloak. I took it from him, and Tynnanna bolted down toward the level ground of Stronghome.
IX. Governing the Present
Shenefta had told me that Severance Storms, which had only come once before in her lifetime, lasted from three to six days each, and that the location for the village had been chosen to keep the worst of them from destroying the buildings. Variel had told me that the best preparation for the storms was to be in your home, with food and things to do, adding with a blush, “And with someone you love.” Shenefta had teased her about that.
Tynnanna refused to come into the house with Jemeret and me. Instead he stood on the front porch, his tail whipping from one side to the other as we went in, and then I saw him dart away through the village as the first winds began to rise.
Jemeret sealed the door and went from window to window, making certain the latches would hold, while Numima slid the storm dampers into the chimneys in both the living room and bedroom fireplaces. I felt useless in the bustle of activity, so I pulled the Midwinter Song prayers out of my cloak and sat down on one of the couches to look them over. I’d barely gotten through the opening verse of the second song when the first blast of storm wind struck the house and seemed to shake it on its foundation.
