Probability Sun (30 page)

Grafton looked down at Capelo in disgust, then at Kaufman.

“Your brilliant physicist. Who you think should determine my military decisions.” Then to the MPs, “The brig is occupied. Lock him in his quarters.”

Kaufman opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He said nothing.

With that non-action, he knew, he’d just sealed all their fates.

TWENTY-FOUR

THE ROAD TO GOFKIT SHAMLOE

T
he road leading away from Gofkit Jemloe was wide enough for three bicycles. Enli would have preferred to ride ahead, faster than Ann Pek Sikorski could go, but she did not. Partly this was good manners, partly fear. She was safer riding beside Pek Gruber, and she knew it. Enli wanted to be as safe as possible. She wanted to reach Gofkit Shamloe—to reach Ano and the children—with as little trouble as possible. Pek Gruber, whose bicycle could go by itself even though now he was pedaling it, would have a
gun.
And probably other things as well, things Enli couldn’t name. Or even think about. She was glad Pek Gruber was here.

The head pain of shared reality had been better than the living pain of unshared reality. Enli, like most of World, would have instantly traded the new life for the old. Most of World, but not all of it. In Gofkit Jemloe, even in Pek Voratur’s household, there were those who seemed to like unshared reality. Those who liked to take from others without head pain. Those who liked to lie to others without head pain. And those who just seemed to like having thoughts that were private from, and different from, the thoughts of others. Like Essa.

The girl rode behind Enli, Ann, and Dieter Gruber. Enli could hear her singing, a faint soft flower song. And she was singing it alone, not joined by the other three, not in any head pain from not being joined. And smiling.

Was it because Essa was so young? Would the young be more comfortable with this new, frightening World? Then perhaps Ano’s children—noisy Obora, baby Usi, and quick, grave Fentil—perhaps they would all find it easier to live without shared reality. Enli hoped so. For herself, she wanted only to see her family safe, to be again with Ano. She wanted to be home.

The four rode along the sunny, deserted road through a glory of flowers. Bright yellow vekirib, carpets of gaily colored mittib, trifalitib in cool lacy clouds. No one but Enli seemed to notice the flowers, not even Essa. Would that change, too, and make a World without gardens? Enli didn’t think so. Blossoms were too important. They were gifts from the First Flower, they were beauty, they were love.

Calin had given her a vekir flower when he first came to Gofkit Jemloe.

Pek Sikorski broke the silence. She was the least used to riding a bicycle, and the least strong. She panted a bit as she spoke in Terran to Pek Gruber. “You know, Dieter, Terra’s past included thousands of wrecked civilizations, all of them decaying over time. This is probably the first time, ever, that a civilization has been wrecked during a single day.”

“Yes,” Pek Gruber said. He had been very quiet since Enli brought him to Pek Sikorski within the walls of Pek Voratur’s household, since he had seen how World was without shared reality. A quiet Pek Gruber was also something new.

Toward evening they passed a farm shed, conveniently nestled between the road and the fields behind it. Worlders all lived in villages and walked to their fields; a farm shed would hold only carts, plows, seeds, implements necessary to help the First Flower bring crops from the fertile ground. But people seemed to be living in this farm shed. The cart stood behind the shed, and there was a crude hearth beside the door, its cookfire still glowing under an iron pot. “Stop,” Pek Sikorski said. “There are people here.”

Pek Gruber said in Terran, “We should keep riding,
mein Schatz
. After we take Enli to her village, we still have to reach the capital.”

“No. Our job is to explain to people. These are people.” Through the sweat on her pale skin, Pek Sikorski’s face set in stubborn lines. Enli recognized them. The people inside would not, never having seen a Terran before.

“All right,” Pek Gruber said, resigned. “Get in place.”

At his insistence, they had practiced how they would approach strangers. Pek Gruber first; he carried the
weapons.
Next Pek Sikorski, who also carried something Enli hadn’t understood. Enli and Essa would stay back with the bicycles.

“What do you think will happen?” Essa whispered, as if sound could further disturb whoever was inside the farm shed. As if anything could.

“I don’t know,” Enli said. “Don’t sing anymore, Essa.”

“All right.”

Behind the farm shed lay fields of unharvested zeli. The zeli should have been brought in by now. Enli sniffed the air; yes, the crop was beginning to rot. She stood on her toes and craned her neck to see into the cooking pot. Zeli mush, and nothing else.

Pek Gruber called the stranger-greeting loudly in his heavily accented World, “We first bring our flowers to your home, O friends!”

No response.

“May your blossoms perfume the air, O friends!”

“Go away,” a voice called, high and frightened. A terrible thing to say to a stranger.

Pek Sikorski walked up to the door. “We ask water, by the petals of the First Flower, O friends.”

No one could refuse a traveler water. No one ever did; it was enough to raise suspicion of being unreal. Enli knew the great struggle that must be going on in the souls behind the farm shed door. Risk harm from strangers (unthinkable only days ago) or fail to share reality and become unreal (but there was no shared reality anymore). The sweet air was painful in her lungs.

Pek Sikorski repeated, “We ask water, by the petals of the First Flower, O friends.”

No response. Then, slowly, the door opened.

It was a boy, still a year away from becoming a man, his skull ridges deeply creased and his new adult neckfur bristling sideways. He saw the Terrans and gasped, closed the door, opened it again in terror and compulsion. Enli strode forward.

“It’s all right, boy. They are Terrans, not monsters, and they won’t harm anyone. I am Enli Pek Brimmidin, from Gofkit Jemloe.”

The boy did not look reassured. He thrust a bucket of water out the door and tried to close it again. Pek Gruber’s huge foot intervened.

“We must talk to you,” Pek Sikorski said gently. “We bring news of the shift in reality and of the First Flower.”

From behind the door another voice said, “The First Flower? Open the door, Serlit.”

An old woman hobbled out, leaning on a dobwood cane. Enli had never seen her before, but she recognized her with relief. She was a grandmother’s mother, revered by every village or rich household lucky enough to have one. Ancient with years, perfumed with experience, the grandmother’s mothers had been left on World past their time in order to guide people toward the First Flower. They were usually tough as their canes and fair-minded as only those about to join their ancestors can be. She eyed the Terrans without fear, then Enli, and finally Essa, who had left the bicycles and crept silently forward.

“I am Adra Pek Harrilin. Who are you, and what have you to say about the First Flower?”

Pek Sikorski answered. “We are Enli Pek Brimmidin, Ann Pek Sikorski, and Dieter Pek Gruber. May—”

“And her?” the old woman said, jabbing her cane toward Essa.

Pek Sikorski turned to find Essa beside her, frowned, and said, “Essa Pek Criltifor. May your blossoms perfume the air.”

“May your garden bloom forever,” Adra Pek Harrilin said. “Now what of the First Flower?”

“Shared reality has gone away. You know this. We are here to tell you why, so you will not be so afraid. Shared reality perfumed the air from a living rock. We Terrans have seen this rock with our flying boat. It lay in the Neury Mountains. But we have seen the living rock die, as all living things must die. That gift of the First Flower is over, and we must all plant new ways to be kind to each other without shared reality. This is what the First Flower wishes.”

The grandmother’s mother studied Pek Sikorski. “How do you know what the First Flower wishes? Did She tell you?”

“No,” Pek Sikorski said, taken aback. Clearly, Enli thought, the speech Pek Sikorski had practiced so carefully had holes in it.

“If the First Flower did not speak to you, then you don’t know what She wishes. You saw the living rock die. How do you know when a rock is dead? Did it have petals to wither, or breath to cease?”

“N—no.”

“You say that if we know about the rock’s death, we will be less afraid. Why should knowing why shared reality stopped make us less afraid of its absence?”

Pek Sikorski stood dumb. Pek Gruber, Enli saw, was grinning. The grandmother’s mother eyed him sharply. Abruptly she opened the door wide. “Come in and have some water.”

An expensive, very fast bicycle leaned against the inside wall, and three pallets crowded the floor. On one sat a woman nursing a baby. Half-eaten dishes of zeli mush stood beside a pile of the fruit fresh from the field, along with some cari and a bowl of chopped dul.

“My granddaughter Ivi Pek Harrilin. My granddaughter’s son Serlit Pek Harrilin.” The old woman of course did not introduce the baby, who was not yet real.

And now never would be, Enli thought. Or else was realer than any of them, born, as they were not, into this strange new reality.

The granddaughter, looking scared, murmured flower greetings, which Pek Sikorski answered in her gentle voice. The boy, Serlit, passed out water. Enli drank hers gratefully.

“We live here now,” the grandmother’s mother said, “because there is no food in our village. No one will leave their houses to harvest the crops. Fools.” She sucked thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek. “Well, they are afraid and it is a very small village. But my family has come here, near the crops, to encourage them back to sense. So far it has not done so. But Serlit here harvests our zeli fruit, and borrows cari and dul from the others’ fields, and we eat. Perhaps the others will come soon.”

Borrows
, Enli thought. Not
steals
. The old woman had accepted the shift in reality without losing her fairness. Enli’s spirits bloomed slightly.

Pek Sikorski said, “We are telling people what has happened, so they will not be so afraid. We travel to the capital to seek—”

“Yes, yes,” Pek Harrilin said. “Now share with me the true reality of what happened. You, Pek Brimmidin. You share reality with me.”

She waited, leaning on her cane, her black eyes bright in her wrinkled old face. Pek Sikorski’s face went red. Terrans’ faces did that, Enli knew, but she still didn’t know why. Pek Gruber grinned again.

Enli said, “What Pek Sikorski said is shared reality, mostly.” Unthinkable words, just a tenday ago! “Shared reality has gone away. Shared reality perfumed the air from a manufactured object, not a living rock, that lay in the Neury Mountains. The manufactured object is gone now, and so we must all plant new ways to be kind to each other without shared reality.”

“Gone?” Pek Harrilin demanded. “Where did it go?”

“It rose up into the sky far away from World.”

The ancient black eyes were shrewd. “You shared this reality? You saw the manufactured object rise up?”

“I did not see it go,” Enli said, “but I share the reality that it has risen far away into the sky. Yes.”

“It had wings?”

“No. It had … some sort of wingless way to fly. Like the Terran flying boat.”

The grandmother’s mother considered Enli carefully. “Yes,” she said finally, “you are sharing reality. All right, then—the manufactured object that perfumed us with shared reality is gone. We will have to make a new reality.”

But the enormity was suddenly too great even for the great strength of her old soul. Her skull ridges creased and the cane slid along the floor. Before she could fall completely, Pek Gruber caught her.

“Yes, yes, I am all right,” she gasped. “Thank you. I am just very old, and soon I will join my ancestors, praise the First Flower.”

Pek Gruber eased her to the pallet. She leaned against the shed wall. “Pek Sikorski, you do a good thing. But you must share reality—the true reality—with people. You must say what Pek Brimmidin has shared with me.”

Pek Sikorski’s face was still that curious Terran red. “I will. We travel to the capital to seek a sunflasher, so that all on World may share the reality.”

Silence hung in the shed. It seemed to Enli that the old woman was deliberately not looking at her granddaughter. The granddaughter pulled the baby, now replete and sleepy, from her breast and laid it on the pallet. She adjusted her tunic and stood.

“I am a sunflasher.” Her voice quavered; she was more frightened than her grandmother. Yes, Enli thought, she had so much more to lose. But she was brave. “I will go with you to the capital.”

The grandmother’s mother said, “You will sleep here tonight, all of you. Tomorrow Ivi will go with you to Rafkit Seloe. Serlit will stay here. You, girl, looking so hard at Serlit and he back at you, will you stay with me, too?”

Essa laughed. “No, grandmother’s mother. I go with Pek Sikorski. She took me on a flying boat into the sky once.”

“Ah,” the old woman said. She closed her eyes. “I am very old. You have all tired me out. Let me sleep.”

Ivi Pek Harrilin motioned them outside. Beside the cookfire she said, “Will you eat? We have zeli mush, and I could pound some cari to bake.” Her voice still trembled.

“We have food on our bicycles,” Pek Sikorski said. “We will all share.”

They ate outside, sitting on the ground, four Worlders and two aliens. The sky darkened and the night-blooming flowers unfolded their petals, scenting the air. If she looked away from the Terrans and the farm shed, Enli thought, if she looked across the fields, she could almost think herself back in Gofkit Shamloe. With Ano, with the children, with the people among whom she had grown up. With Calin. Almost, she could think nothing had changed.

Beside her Essa’s clear voice spoke to Serlit. “Do you want to go for a walk with me?”

“Yes,” Serlit said.

“No,” his mother said. “Stay here.”