The Ordinary (10 page)

“As what?”

His face had become sober, almost comical. “As getting along with Malin. And getting access to what these people know.”

A moment later Arvith knocked at the door again, to ask Jedda if she could come with him to talk to the Chanii steward, who spoke only Erejhen but had questions about what sort of comforts the Hormling would require. She excused herself to Himmer and he gave her a peck on the cheek. “Chin up,” he said in Alenke, “this place may not be half bad once we get used to it.”

Arvith led her down the stone stairs. Conversation with the house steward took place in one of the huge ground-floor rooms, a vaulted ceiling painted with a scene that was obviously emblematic, three richly dressed women, archaic clothing, nothing like the Erejhen wore today, seated on horseback in a broad open meadow, with a piece of stone sculpture in front of them. The meadow was fallow and bare, as though in winter, and the trees beyond had a sparse look, the sky a winter blue. The sky, the meadow, the horses, the ladies, were all rendered in startlingly rich color, an actual painted image, a fresco, if she recalled her art history correctly. Someone had climbed up there on some kind of structure to paint it. The notion made her vaguely nauseous, she had no notion why. The image continued to draw her eye throughout the conversation, Jedda answering the steward's questions, trying to explain cha, trying to explain what Hormling food was like. After a while the steward had heard enough, shook her head, and said, “We will give you the best that we have.”

With the session ending, Jedda asked a question of her own. “Who are the women?” she asked, indicating the ceiling.

“They are God's sisters,” Arvith answered; this word,
damzar,
had a prefix sound that indicated none of the other prefix sounds could change the meaning of the word, which gave his pronouncement an air of curious finality. She had never heard that sound used in conversation before, though she had learned it. “They are celebrating the dark festival at midwinter.”

“What is that festival?”

“It's called Chanii,” said a voice behind her. “You and I never learned about it because we never went far enough north.” She would have recognized that baritone anywhere, turned, and rushed to Opit and lifted him off the ground.

A display of affection is rare for a Hormling, but she had missed his odd face, his big ears that he refused to have altered to look like normal ears. He was over a hundred years old by now. He had been ninety when she last saw him, and tufts of hair were growing out of the lobes. He was dressed like an Anin trader, legged trousers, a blouse gathered at the waist with a belt. He had gotten stout and his cheeks were round as a baby's. “You're thinking how fat I've gotten,” he said.

“I can't spin you around like I used to.”

He chuckled as she settled him onto the floor. He nodded to the house steward and Arvith, who retired from the room, closing the tall wooden doors behind them. He settled her onto a piece of furniture that looked like a settee and sat beside her with both her hands in his. Odd to be only the two of them in this vast room. “I'm so glad to see you again. It's been such a long time.”

“I had no idea what had become of you, I searched for weeks around Telyar trying to find out where you'd gone.”

Opit was scratching one of his ears, looking at her as if he hardly knew where to begin. “It was necessary for me to get away without leaving many traces behind.” He sat there for a moment, studying his own hands, which he had withdrawn from her. A new ring on one of them, what looked like a ruby the size of a vending token. “I was in trouble with the ministry in Béyoton. My ministry, I mean, the Planetary Ministry. I had the feeling too many people knew me. And there were other factors, people I was working with at the time. Things I never told you.”

“You can tell me now,” she said.

“I can tell you part of it, at least,” he said. “The part you'll believe.”

“I think I can tell you part of it myself,” she countered. “If that will make things easier. You were working with a group of people assembled secretly by the ministries. You were studying this place intensively, all of you, trying to find a way to make contact with Malin. You were working on this urgently, in secret, long before the Orminy became involved. Knowing that a day like this one was coming, when we would try to send an army here.”

He looked at her in mild surprise. “That's pretty good. We weren't trying to make contact with Malin, though, because she had already made contact with us. We were trying to convince her to trust us. How much more do you know?”

“I don't know much,” she said. “I've guessed a lot. One hears things.” He would know what she meant.

“It was one of her Krii who contacted me. You've met some of them. They are officers in the Prinam. You remember that we were learning about the Prin when I left you in Charnos.”

“I've only had a few dealings with them since. The merchants I was trading with in Charnos were caught smuggling illegal technology by one.”

For a moment he looked like the teacher she remembered. “Have you drawn any conclusions about them?”

“They appear to run the place, as far as I can tell. But they have some connection to the religion that I've never understood. The mother-goddess.”

From his expression she could read nothing. He reflected on the ceiling above for a moment. “You've done very well,” he said. “It took me a while to figure that much out, even after I met the Krii.”

“A Kirin or a Kartayn?”

“A Kartayn,” he answered, laughing. “Though she did later tell me her true name.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She had me kidnapped, actually. Brun and I were riding north of Telyar; she had taken me to see the ruin of an old city that used to exist at the fork of the big river. The city was destroyed in one of their wars, but one of the towers is still standing at the site.” He used the Erejhen word
shenesoeniis,
which she translated in her head as “high place.”

“You saw it? You went inside it?”

“I saw it from a distance. Brun refused to go any closer, and as it was, we had already gone too close, though we didn't know it yet. The city is nothing but a mound with grass and trees growing on it, but the tower shoots up out of the mound, exactly like the tapestries. It must have been five-tenths high. There wasn't a soul in sight; this place is a sanctuary, Brun said, especially for the Erejhen, whose city this used to be.”

“Did she tell you the name of it?”

“Yes. Genfel. Genfynnel, to use the older name. She said the tower had a name, too, but she wouldn't say it aloud so close to the place. Brun is isn't usually superstitious, but she was on edge, that day.”

“I would give a lot to see that,” Jedda said. “I wasn't sure the towers were real until I saw the ones in Montajhena.”

“They are magnificent, aren't they?”

She simply shook her head. “Have you ever been inside one?”

He shook his head quickly. “No one goes inside them, except Malin herself. No one dares, not even her Krii, not even the Prin.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “We'll get to all that. But not now. I want to look at you.”

They sat in quiet for a while, studying each other peacefully. The day came down on her in the quiet, the whole long stretch of it. In her mind, she was watching the contented ships sinking slowly into the water, the placid ease with which the aircraft struck the surface, sank, and vanished. She was watching Tarma in the chair in the courtyard with the Erejhen guard commander in front of her. She said, “Thank you for changing the subject. I can't take much more revelation. It's been a very long day.”

“There's not much more you need, for the moment. Just that I asked that you be sent here, and I asked that you be detained. I need to tell you that.”

She felt a flash of anger when he spoke so directly, she almost wished he had chosen to deceive her instead. She spoke before she understood the anger, asking harshly, “Why would you do that? Why single me out?”

The phrase that translates in Nadyan-Alenke as, “single me out,” is horrific. It is akin to the highest curse in the Hormling polite vocabulary, “May you always be one of a kind.”

He flushed slightly. “I did it because I know you love this place. And I know you love your own people. And I hoped you would be willing to work with me here.”

She was angry because she was grateful, and she preferred never to feel gratitude. She was glad he had given her no choice but to stay, and she resented how glad his presumption had made her.

“Also because,” he added, “you're one of a handful of our people who has ever mastered the Erejhen language. The Erejhen will respect you for that.”

“You really don't have to give me reasons, Opit. Or to flatter me. I'm glad to be here, I would have chosen to stay if I thought I had the choice. Things weren't looking so nice at the consulate when Malin's soldiers arrived.”

“What do you mean?”

She told him Vitter's theory about Tarma, that she would have any knowledge of her own involvement in the debacle suppressed, by whatever means necessary. Her stomach turned over a little when she noted how easily he understood what she meant. “It's possible your friend was right,” he said. “It is, after all, easy to make a Hormling disappear. There are so many to replace the missing one.” He looked at her, bemused. “Here I was, a little concerned that Malin sent troops to take the place. Maybe she understood what might happen.”

“It was lucky she did,” Jedda said. “Were you with her today?”

“Part of the afternoon, yes. After she went to the consulate. She had taken note of you there, actually; she mentioned you.”

“She's really extraordinary.”

He had no answer for this at all. After a moment, with a look of concern that let Jedda know he thought of Malin in a personal way, as a friend, or so it appeared, he said, “She's almost heartbroken, tonight. So many more died than she meant.”

“Over 120,000,” Jedda said.

He shook his head. “No, not nearly. She sent all the hardware and military people back through the gate. But we are hearing that a number of soldiers died on the other side, the Enforcement rescue efforts were so clumsy.” He had a dazed look himself, now. “Maybe people we know, even.”

“She did this, you said. She sank the ships.”

“She and the Krii and Prin. She not only sank the fleet, she sent the whole lot across the gate to the Inokit Ocean. For us to deal with on that side.”

“And in two days, Irion will close the gate. That's what Malin told the Orminy delegate.”

“That's exactly what he will do.”

“He?”

Looking up at the ceiling again. “Irion.” He spoke simply and plainly. Jedda found herself suddenly afraid to ask more questions.

Opit had run out of time, anyway. He would have to say good night to her; he had other meetings this evening, but would certainly see her in the morning.

She spent the rest of the evening in with Brun and her children, glad of the distraction. It had been years since she spent time around a family, and she found the ease of the play, the noise and confusion, brought her a sense of peace. Brun and Jedda talked quietly, and at bedtime Jedda told ghost stories good enough to frighten the oldest boy. When the children went to bed, Jedda and Brun ate a light supper of baked fowl and vegetables and drank a bottle of good light wine. Easy and pleasant. Though from the windows, all night Jedda watched the lights of hovercraft streaming across the bay, a fleet of cargo and passenger vessels, hundreds, lights converging toward the horizon, the gate. The Hormling going home, frightened.

Finally she went to bed, and to her surprise slept soundly. When she woke next morning, she wanted to go for a walk. No one had told her she should restrict her movements, so descending the stairs to the forecourt, she drank a quick cup of the jaka and wandered into the open, feeling relief for the first time at the sense of space around her, as if the room had been too confining. She had never felt such a feeling before, in a genuine way, in all her years of travel here. Being outdoors always brought with it a sense of edginess, but this morning she was glad of the fresh air.

She walked down the narrow garden that led away from Chanii House, beyond it finding a series of landscaped terraces that ended below in a sheer cliff edge. This part of Kemur Island sat high above the waves; the harbor was on the other side. She wandered in the gardens for a while, smelling the strange sweet fragrances drawn out of the blooms and foliage by morning sun. She had been told the names of many of these plants more than once but had no mind for lists, she never remembered. As far as she could tell, most of what was here looked like what would be grown in any horticultural or botanical park anywhere on Senal. But the smells came to her so thick and rich, intoxicating. Why did she open herself to this world, and close herself to her own?

Delicious to do it, whatever the reason. To look up at the sky, to feel wind on her arms. To have no one at all in sight at times. To feel as though she might really be alone.

In the outermost garden one of the lamp shrines stood beneath a tree that wept branches over it, and she climbed the steps and went inside. Last night's lamp had been taken away, the lamp-stand vacant. She looked over it for the sign that Vitter had mentioned, the symbol that is God's name, but she found only two of the letters of the Erejhen alphabet side by side. She touched the dulled edge of the carving.

“Can you read it?” asked a voice in Erejhen.

Prickles along her neck, Jedda turned, her heart in her throat. “I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was here.”

“The shrine is open for anybody,” Malin said. She was seated against the back wall, on the floor, knees drawn up to her chin. Wearing a dark shift, the fabric changing color subtly, ripples of violet and indigo, as the breeze touched it. “A person is always welcome here.” She was trying to smile, though even when she did, there was something wary about her. “Can you read the letters?”

“Yes. This is a double yeth.”

“In older forms of our language, the double yeth recurs in many words. It was given to us as the name of God the Mother.”

“How would you say it?”

Malin said the word, a long
e
sound with a light high note at the beginning. “That's actually how my mother would have said it. These days the sound is shorter,” and she made the new pronunciation. Jedda heard the difference. An aspirate at the beginning, no note.

“What do you do to worship her?”

Malin was watching Jedda intently, but the question made her give a short, dry laugh. “I do my whole life to worship her.”

“I don't understand. Maybe my Erejhen is not so good.”

Malin shook her head. She had seemed so odd and awkward when Jedda had seen her before, taller than anyone around her, her looks so different than anyone else. But now, seated on the stone floor in her loose dress, white hair spilling on her shoulders, she had a different air. She was beautiful, Jedda thought. And tried to stop herself from going any further with the thought.

“Your Erejhen is fine,” Malin said. “I like to hear you speak. But you've asked your question of the wrong person. The answer is, we light the lamps at sunset and put them out at sunrise, so that there will be a light in the darkness.”

“The moon and stars don't count?”

“The moon and stars weren't always here,” Malin said. “Sometimes there was nothing in the night sky at all.” She cocked her head. “Now the sky has changed and we have a consistency of stars and planets and moons. We have your people for neighbors. Until tomorrow, when we close the gate again.”

“When Irion closes it.”

“Exactly.” She gave a graceful nod. “Our language is difficult, it's flattering that you've learned to speak it so well.”

“You speak Alenke equally well.” Uncomfortable standing, Jedda sat, crossed her legs, near enough to Malin that she could smell the woman's skin, a sweet scent like the moonflower in the consulate garden. “Who is Irion?” she asked.

The question made Malin laugh and throw back her head. She sat up, took Jedda's hand in hers, and something passed between them.

“Even Opit has never asked me that question. He's afraid of the answer, I think.”

“I'm not.”

Her face went suddenly inscrutable. “He is the one who will stand here until there is no more here,” Malin said. “That is who he is.”
That is his fate. His destiny is that way
. The one phrase echoed all those ways, and Jedda caught the resonance perfectly. Malin's gaze played over Jedda's face. “You have many, many more questions, don't you?”

“Yes.”

The woman's face softened. She let go Jedda's hand; Jedda had forgotten she was holding it. They were very still together.

“You may ask one more,” Malin said.

Jedda looked her in the eye. She had no hesitation at all. “What do you plan to do with us after you open the gate again? With the Hormling?”

Malin's gaze sharpened to a point. At the same time she receded from Jedda. She stood, abruptly but still gracefully, and Jedda stood, too, but still Malin looked down at her. “That all depends. You'll be there. You'll see.”

A sound in the air, a moment of dizziness, then the empty shrine. Jedda went to the door. No one was crossing the garden. No one was to be seen.

Jedda stared behind her. She touched the floor where Malin had been sitting. Was that warmth, fading from the stone? It was, wasn't it?

She went to the lamp-stand, stared at the double yeth. “She was real,” Jedda said. “She was here. We talked.”

But she was not here now. Jedda lingered only a little while longer before finding her way through the gardens to the guesthouse.

She contemplated the name of God the Mother, the double yeth, and modulated it using all the prefix sounds she knew, all the notes of music that could change a word here, and she began to understand: Permuted through only some of its forms, it could mean the first land, the first breath, the first space-time, the instant before the first moment, what underlies the rest. Eternity. It was the root of many of the words she already knew, or part of the compound that formed them. The sounds danced in her head. The first wind, the first wave, the first photon, the first child. There was a way to write all this but it was clumsy; the language was designed to be spoken, to be sung, to be remembered that way. To write the root word in the alphabet was simple, but the script to represent the prefix sounds was as complex as musical notation, and as variable, for it had to be exactly as precise in order to be useful. But the language, when spoken, flowed, and the mind, when able to assimilate prefix with word and to intuit the change that the sound made to the word, expanded.

When Jedda was a scholar of the three hundred spoken and written dialects of Alenke, she had tried to learn to think in the various dialects that were her specialty, to be fluent in the shift of thinking that was involved in a shift of speech. To speak one of the dialects properly was to think like a person who had spoken that way from birth. She had learned to think in Anin, but Erejhen remained closed to her, sentences that she had to construct in her mind, to rehearse before she spoke the words aloud, and yet, now and then, she would see through to a space in which the meaning of an Erejhen word and the word itself became inseparable and instinctive, and she would see for a moment the kind of thought that would be possible in it. Like today, hearing the name of God and realizing that the sound formed a part of so many other words she already knew.

She kept to herself that morning, not wishing to share her thoughts with anyone, curled in the down comforter feeling the cool breeze move through the open windows. Knowing that sooner or later a knock would sound on the door to end her peace, and so it did.

Opit stood smiling with a pot of something hot and a basket of warm bread. “Am I too early?” he asked. “I wanted to surprise you but I didn't want to catch you asleep.”

“No, it's fine, I've been awake for a while.”

“Keeping to yourself.”

“Enjoying the luxury of it. Yes.”

He set the pot and cups on a table by the window and she sat in the chair inhaling the scent of the fresh baked stuff in the basket. “Brun felt like baking this morning.” Opit offered Jedda a cup. “So we reap the benefits.”

“This is wonderful.”

An awkwardness followed, momentary but distinct. She looked at him and wondered what to say.

But he had come with an agenda and soon opened with his leading item. “There's a meeting this morning, and I want you to attend, if you're willing. If you decide to do it, you'll be there to help me translate, but you can only attend if you understand what we're here to do.”

She waited, feeling suddenly uncurious. The impulse to withdraw from such a direct statement was instinctive.

“This world has something we lack in ours,” Opit said.

“Our world has something that this one lacks, as well,” Jedda added, feeling a bit belligerent.

“You're referring to our technology, of course.”

She nodded.

He echoed the movement, gravely. “The same technology that's very nearly outsmarted us, that rebelled against us and started a war against us that we can't win.” He gave her a blank, emotionless look. “If the Prin have power over our war machines, they might have power over the ones we're fighting, too. Did that ever occur to you?”

“The two worlds can't be brought together.” She gave him a dull-eyed look. For the first time, she found herself wishing for the stat, which would have calmed the fear that she suddenly felt. “You can't be dreaming of something like that.”

“Why not?” His smile was serene, and unsettled her further.

She could no longer face him. He was not the person she had known, he was a stranger. She turned to the window. “These people will never accept being controlled by us.”

“I agree. The question is, will we accept control by them?”

She felt a tingle along her scalp, turned to his voice. He was simply standing there with one hand folded into another. “You can't be serious.”

“Can't I?” He stepped to the window himself now, looked down at the park. “We have everything to gain.”

“But how on Earth—Opit, tell me what's in your head, stop being cryptic. What can these people offer us? How would you possibly manage it?”

He shook his head. “You're acting as though this is my agenda.” Returning to his cup, he said, “It isn't. It's theirs.”

“Explain, please.”

He looked her in the eye, wryly smiling. “You know this country as well as any of our people, but even you, knowing what you know, continue to think of the place as primitive, as backward, in some way. But the truth's very different. The gate has been open a lot longer than we suspected, Jedda. These people have been watching us a long time.” He shook his head, took her hand, stroked the skin along the top. “They're way ahead of us.”

“Opit, my dear, I have deep respect for you, but I have to say, at the moment, that you sound as if you're losing your mind.”

He chuckled. “I suppose I do. But that's fine. If I'm right, you'll see, soon enough,” he said, scratching his pate where the hair was thin. He was looking old, could have used a session of antiaging with a tissue regression specialist. When he looked at her this time, she felt as if she still knew him a bit. Was the person still real when most of what she knew about him turned out to be lies? “Come to the meeting,” he said. “That's the first step.”