A World Too Near (28 page)

Peering into the habitat of Morhab the Gond, she saw what looked like pillars holding up the ceiling. Coming closer to one of them, she found that it was a stunted tree, broad-trunked and leafless. Here was a sparse forest appearing to spring from the floor, a floor that couldn’t nurture any real forest; it was a hard surface below a layer of debris and dust. Perhaps Lord Inweer had created a simulated native environment for his favorite engineer, just as he had for his favorite concubine.

That was well to remember: She was a whore. This next part shouldn’t be difficult.

A light glowed in the inner recesses of the den. She made her way toward it, wending past the squat trees, worn smooth and shiny in places, as though from long handling. Off to one side she thought she glimpsed pale shapes among the trees. Morhab’s family.

Although the floor was heavily littered with rubbish, the path toward the light had been worn clean by frequent travel. She followed it. In this inner region, the reek of offal vied with rot, smells that stuck in her throat.

In a clearing just ahead, she saw a Gond resting. He was surrounded by well stone computers. The light from the screens spilled into the stunted forest, illuminating one tree in particular, one splotched with dark red. The flickering light lent a surge to the red stains, as though they still held some essence of life, of Gao. May God have mercy on him, she thought.

Johanna entered the clearing. There Morhab lay prone along a limb of a particularly massive tree, a startling feat for one of his bulk. His face and wings glowed from the screens of his stone wells, fixed to the branches by wire cages. She had never known that Gonds climbed in trees.

Morhab, who had been resting his chin on the smooth bark, watching his screens, turned to watch her approach. “Johanna,” he said, his voice throbbing low.

She gave him the briefest of nods. “Chief Engineer.”

“Johanna. So pale. Not well? Perhaps not sleeping peacefully?”

It was true that her dreams were salted with nightmare images. Some of Gao’s broken body. But some too, of the Tarig. Not that she would ever tell Morhab anything so personal as a dream.

“Do you dream, Morhab?”

“Of you.”

Heaving his massive body into a curve, he slid the lower part of his body backward toward the trunk of the tree. With surprising agility, he coiled himself around the trunk, moving in a slow, controlled slide to the ground.

He lay propped up against the tree trunk, his head at the same height as her own, his limpid eyes focused on her.

His well screens filled with numerical runes, lending a purplish twilight to the clearing. He noted her gaze. “Yes, Morhab’s collection of knowledge. All is here. All that you worked so hard and so uselessly to uncover.”

“Since nothing of importance went missing, why did you slaughter Gao?”

Morhab tucked his wings closer, creating a soft, crinkling sound. “Killed himself. Perhaps you can say why he did, Johanna. Did he love you, beg you for respite, pine for you in secret? Did you pretend to find him interesting, only to humiliate him at the last?”

She knew they weren’t talking about Gao. “No. I was drawn to him, and he to me. Being human, perhaps I mistook the protocols.”

“You mistook nothing.” He waved at the screens, and they darkened to black, flaring now and then with sporadic bursts of numerals. “Yes,” he said, pleased with his numbers, “it is all here. My obsession. The proportions of Ahnenhoon. Did you think you could take what I have spent twenty thousand days assembling?” Without waiting for her to answer, he went on, “The Repel has an ancient story, going back to the Age of Nascence, when the lords first created the sways and preserved them from the vile Paion. The fortress once was comprised of the centrum alone. Then came the watch, the sere. As the Paion strength waxed stronger over the archons, the lords created the outer terminus, which the grandfather of my grandfather helped to design. My predecessors recorded their work. Still, it was never a matter of maps. It is all mathematical, Johanna. A concern of ratios and proportions and the correlations between shape and time. The fortress is designed to change, to confound visitors, and this is the supreme puzzle and mystery of my life, even though I know more about Ahnenhoon than any other creature of the All who is not a lord.”

He smiled, open-mouthed. “You knew that. You sent Gao to steal.”

“Yes.”

His smile elongated. “So, a small, pure truth. There will be more.”

“Or you will bleed me on a tree?”

A sigh gusted from his great mouth. “You do make me sad. You think I am a monster.” His voice went quiet, sending a chill through her. “Come closer to me.”

Father in heaven. Hallowed be. She walked toward him, stopping an arm’s length away. In his short beard lay pieces of his last meal. She noticed for the first time that his horns were covered with a delicate fuzz. He was not satanic, she told herself, he was not. Mary, Mother of grace. Deeper in the chamber, a plopping sound announced that they were not alone.

He stared at her and rustled his vestigial wings. “Your scent,” he said. “Insulting.”

“Then stop trying to frighten me.” How, she wondered, could he possibly smell her sweat with the load of rot in the air?

“If I wished to frighten you, would we be talking now? I show restraint, Johanna. Restraint.” He grimaced for a moment, and from the folds of his skin came an extrusion of liquid that spread over his hide, turning it glistening. “Formerly, I mistook your scent as signaling pleasure in my company. But now I know my human smells. The fear smell. You always feared me. Why?”

Johanna thought quickly. “Your large form intimidates.”

“And?” He waited.

“The horns. They look . . . dangerous.” Her mouth had gone dry. You are a beast of hell.

“Dangerous. Intimidating.” He murmured, “Sometimes. I would have you know other sides of Morhab the Gond. Are you ready for your instruction?”

She nodded.

“First, as to your plot with Gao. Know that I am not a political being. I am scientific and mathematical. I have no interest in outside affairs. So I do not care why you seek to destroy the engine, woman. I do not ask you to tell me what you would not reveal to Gao. I am no traitor, but your plots do not alarm me. Being an ignorant woman, you can do little against the machine.

“Know, Johanna, that the future of your habitat is dire and certain. Your unfortunate land is condemned, and must give way to ours. That is the pattern of the future, and the bright lords only know why. Useless to thwart them. This being so, you must give up your meddling. Undertake no further attempts to intrude on my workmanship or my private knowledge. I do not fear what you may discover, for you, like Gao, are supremely uninformed. But I would not suffer your indignities to my stone well files or my private theories. Do you submit to this injunction?”

“Yes.” She knew there was more, and waited.

His voice lowered to a rumble that passed for a whisper. “You have thought me dangerous, political, and vengeful. There you have been wrong. I am emotional. My kind”—here he glanced toward where rustling sounds still persisted in the dim chamber—“are practical and remote. But I have lived among many sentients, and I have learned their ways. I no longer crave the company of my nest mates. I have craved your company, Johanna.”

His eyes darkened. “It could have been mutually pleasant.” He folded one wing into a wedge and scratched the back of his head. “You could have come for conversation long ago, but you despised me, all the while leading me to believe that you found my company inspiring. That was deceit. Now I propose that we begin again.” He fell toward her, rolling easily onto the floor to spread full length; then he humped along, pulling himself toward a broken limb that lay felled nearby. He heaved himself up, and spread along its length. “Sit here by me.”

She watched with revulsion as he slithered across the floor. Finding a place on the limb, she sat as close to him as she could bear.

As he clung to his perch, his body sagged down the sides of the branch, his chin resting on the branch. “Now you will talk to me.”

“What shall I say?”

“No, that is not how it will be, Johanna. When I say talk to me, I mean talk without constraint or limits. Tell me your heart.”

“My heart?”

“Your feelings. What you think about when you lie in your nest at night. What you never share with others.”

“I have no thoughts like that. I am a simple woman.”

“Johanna.” He paused, making sure he had her attention. “I will have this intimacy. It is the price you pay for my silence with the lord. Be assured that I could demand very much more.” He drew himself up into a lecturing posture, gesturing with his little hands. “Begin with what you do in a day. Everything. From first waking. Leave nothing out. I wish to participate, to know what thoughts are in your mind with each undertaking.”

But she didn’t want him to know anything about her, much less such details. “Surely that is of little interest to one of such intellect.”

“I have keen interest. Provided that you withhold nothing.”

“I don’t have feelings about mundane tasks.”

“Now, that is untrue. You are an expressive, sensitive creature.” He watched her for a moment, breathing heavily through his mouth, emitting a foul miasma. As she hesitated, his voice turned to a low growl: “Make it worth my while so that I do not take you to my nest.”

While her mind searched for something intimate—but not too intimate— to tell him, he said, “To become bestial would destroy our emotional intimacy. But if you anger me, I will ask my nest mates to indoctrinate you. I would not approach you before you understood our ways.”

A brief vision of herself in a Gond nest set Johanna talking.

She talked slowly, haltingly at first. What emotions did one have in getting dressed or eating a meal? Over the next two hours, Morhab led her to understand that emotions were never far from even the most ordinary tasks. She found a shadowy world of feelings that formed the background of her awareness. Morhab was patient, but relentless. Under his probing questions, she spun out the hours of her life, closing her eyes to remember the emotions that went with each thing. She hadn’t realized the fine details of her inner life, nor that she in fact lived on two levels. Morhab taught her that she did.

The Gond listened with respectful attention, and at times, rapt excitement, when he would whisper encouragement and guesses of what she might reveal next. It was worse than disrobing. Morhab was indeed an emotional creature, and an observant one: He watched her for any sign of withholding.

By the end of their session she had revealed her love of Earth and her hatred of the machine. These were things that Morhab knew or could guess. But she carefully avoided the subject of Titus’s expected return, or that she had summoned him with her message so long ago. Nevertheless, Morhab was very interested in what she felt for her former husband. It was then that she spun lies, because she didn’t know what she felt, and hadn’t known, for a long time.

The strain of lying and also telling the truth left her drained and sick. At last he released her with the instruction to come back tomorrow.

She wondered if the Gond’s nest could be any worse.

That ebb she brought a blanket to her forest so that she could lie in darkness. Pai spread her own blanket nearby. There was no moon or stars. Lord Inweer hadn’t gone that far with her forest cell, but she was content with the prospect of a clean, dark night. Tears came—for herself, for Gao.

Pai crept close, reaching out to pat her shoulder. “Find a peaceful ebb, mistress. It is over now. Do not go back to the engineer.”

“I see him again tomorrow, Pai.”

Pai voiced her astonishment. “Then he holds a threat over your head.”

“Yes.” Johanna looked into the dark forest to locate SuMing. She had made her camp farther off. Johanna was relieved to be free for a moment of that blameful look. If she could banish the girl, she would, but these were the servants it pleased the lord to assign her. She had always understood that they were her jailors as well as her servants. That Pai had grown to love her was only an accident, a cherished stroke of fortune.

“You bear more than your share of sorrow,” Pai said.

“Thank you, Pai, but everyone has their burden, I am sure.”

“But you have lost your daughter and husband both, though they still live. That is a heavy sorrow. Forgive me for speaking of them.”

It was a relief to speak of them to someone who didn’t take a prurient interest in confidences. “My daughter has never answered my missives.”

“An ungrateful girl, to behave so.”

“No, not ungrateful, Pai. The lords stole her away, blinded her. And I live with one of them. It cannot be forgiven. I leave it to God to forgive me.”

Pai made a two-fingered sign by her right eye. “God does not forgive.”

“Mine does.” That was the only thing left to hold onto.

Pai lay down next to Johanna, looking up at the black sky. “I know you grieve for what the engine will produce. The engine will pull the life from your world, and draw it into ours.”

Stunned, Johanna said, “Oh Pai, you know?” She looked around in the darkness to be sure SuMing wasn’t lurking.

“There are rumors of the engine,” Pai said. In a gesture of startling intimacy, she brought her hands to the sides of Johanna’s face. “Why should we destroy your home? It’s not right. I wouldn’t blame you if you tried to prevent it.”

Johanna let go of a pent-up breath. So, Pai knew. And didn’t condemn her. That was a small but sweet consolation amid her troubles. “I am done with the engine.”

“Morhab holds this knowledge over you,” Pai whispered. “The stinking beast.”

Around Johanna the forest hung blackly. “I am in hell,” she said.

Pai put an arm around her. “No, mistress. This is not hell.”

If it wasn’t, then Johanna didn’t want to know what was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Red for the navitar, gray for the Nigh,
Blue for the storm wall, fifty fathoms high.
Amber for the steppe lands, silver for the bright,
Copper for the gracious lords in their city heights.
New sways up the Nigh, strange lands down,
A ship keeper sees them all,
So traveler, where bound?