The Best of All Possible Worlds (13 page)

“Payback?” Lian replied, wrestling on the pack with the ease of years of experience.

“At least
I
can’t be accused of fraternization.”

“Neither can I. Nor cradle snatching,” Lian said, taking it up a notch.

“Tonio is not that young!” I snapped defensively.

“He is not that old,” Lian countered, amused.

“Okay. I’m sorry if you interpreted my entirely professional attempt to warn you about
being too friendly to Joral as a demonstration of inappropriate and frivolous interest
in your social life. I believed I was acting in the best interests of my colleagues.
Now, can we have a little détente here?”

Lian leaned forward, took hold of my face in both hands, and looked at me searchingly,
all the while on the edge of laughter. “You are wearing
kohl
for a field trip. Forestry fatigues, boots, and kohl. What’s that for, hmm? To impress
the elephants?”

Then Lian backed off, smirking, and left before I could think of a scathing rebuttal.

We had temporarily split up the team. Qeturah, Fergus, Nasiha, and Tarik were going
to continue along the settlements of the grasslands, using the shuttle. And you remember
Tonio, the guy who looked a little bit but not really like Ioan? It turns out he was
a ranger, off duty for the festival but still very much a civil servant. Qeturah seemed
to think it would be a good idea to ask Leoval to pull some strings and have him assigned
to us as a guide and extra security. One of those serendipitous things I’ve learned
not to question. So Lian, Dllenahkh, Joral, and I were going with Tonio on a side
expedition into the forest uplands to the north. It was a place too thickly wooded
for shuttles and too changeable for roads, so we were going to use a traditional,
efficient, and proven form of transportation: elephants.

I was excited at the prospect, but when we arrived at the mahouts’ village, I was
a little surprised.

“They’re a bit … small,” I said in puzzled disappointment, resting a cautious hand
on the shoulder of the elephant assigned to me. It wasn’t much taller than a large-sized
cart horse. It flapped its ears at me in a friendly fashion and winked its small,
long-lashed amber eye.

Lian smiled at my expression. “These are forest elephants. The savanna elephants are
the largest of the species and the ones you see most in the holovids.”

I was still excited. Big or small, elephants are elephants, after all. Just before
we mounted, when I was sure no one could see me, I quickly kissed the shoulder of
my beast and murmured, “Hey, sweetie.”

“Hey, darlin’.” That was Tonio, appearing suddenly by my shoulder. He gave me a laughing
look that suggested he was either amused by or attracted to women who kiss elephants
for no good reason. Or both.

When not under the influence of alcohol or fireberry, Tonio was witty, cheerful, and
sharp with a kind of suppressed electric energy. Even better, he was looking less
and less like Ioan to me. He wore a short hooded cape that was nonregulation but very
useful under the dripping trees, and occasionally, when he turned
his head a certain way, it framed his strong profile in a way that called attention
to his mouth. Well defined, curving, with a fullness to the lower lip that cried out
for a biting kiss—a very nice distraction.

And then I’d look away again to see Lian watching me and quietly laughing.

In addition to freely mocking me, Lian was generally more talkative than usual. “This
is where my mother’s people come from. There are legends of remote monasteries where
the monks walk on water and fly through the treetops.”

Tonio rolled his eyes, not with sarcasm but with pure mischief. “This is where my
father’s people come from, and there are tales of huge stone statues which point,
using one appendage or another, to the secret entrances of ancient temples. There
are also reports of intricate, anatomically correct carvings on the walls of those
temples which demonstrate the sixty-two approved sexual positions of the Marriage
Code.”

I looked away hastily, biting my lip against laughter. Lian would tease me about always
laughing at the things Tonio said.

Our first river crossing occurred within minutes. The elephants, being excellent swimmers,
got across quite happily by themselves, using their long trunks to snorkel through
the deep water. The two-legs passed dry-shod over a small footbridge of rope and wood,
and apart from the dubious joy of riding wet elephant, it worked very well.

The second river crossing was nothing like the first.

“Where’s all this water coming from?” asked Lian, looking at the cascading run in
dismay.

It was too flat to be called a waterfall but too steep to be an ordinary riverbed.
There were two footbridges: a high one placed well above the churning water, strung
from tree to tree upstream,
and a lower one whose planks were ominously wet, resting directly on the riverbanks.
The water flowed more placidly there, with greater depth and fewer rocks, but when
I got closer, I gulped. The bridge was not a bridge; it was a lookout over a huge
waterfall.

“We will take the high bridge,” the mahout announced.

Joral looked up at the loose sag of the swaying, fraying ropes. “The high bridge does
not appear to have been maintained for some time,” he noted.

“The low bridge is too dangerous,” the mahout insisted. “We will swim with the elephants.”

Ordinarily, I would say listen to the man. His land, his river, his elephants, right?
But that turbulent current was not at all reassuring.

Tonio shrugged. “I prefer to stay dry,” he announced, and stepped lightly onto the
low bridge. It gave a tiny sway, revealing that it was not wood but rope that connected
the bridge to the bank landings, but he reached the other side easily. Joral and Lian
quickly followed his example. By then, the mahout had ignored the general rebellion
against his advice and was swimming over with the elephants, paddling easily near
the head of his own beast. Dllenahkh looked at me, his eyebrow quirked in a “well,
aren’t you coming?” expression. Still with slight misgivings, I went before him onto
the bridge.

We were hardly halfway to the other side when we heard it coming, like thunder.

Dllenahkh’s quickening steps set the bridge swaying so that I stumbled. He took my
arm briefly to steady me and then urged me on with a light push. White water came
pouring down the slope, crashing toward us with terrifying speed. Panic kept my feet
moving as the wooden planks began to heave beneath me.
Still trying to move forward, I watched in helpless fascination as the water surged
over and under the bridge, tipping and twisting it vertical.

I remember the fall. The weight of my pack pulled me immediately backward and horizontal.
I looked down between my feet at the white froth of breaking water and saw Dllenahkh
move quickly, reaching for me, fingers sliding along my left leg and coming to rest
firmly around my ankle. Not the slightest hint of anxiety or surprise showed on his
face, so it took me a while to realize that he was falling too, a vast weight of water
following behind his back. He hauled me toward him, grabbed my belt with his other
hand, and hauled again, reeling me in. Then he looked beyond me with an expression
of intense concentration and pulled my head protectively against his shoulder.

We hit. Water is
hard
. I lost breath, memory, and finally consciousness.

I found awareness again
in a dream. I was riding my elephant through wooded marshes, dry savanna, and dim
green forest. He moved slowly, strongly, each step striking ground solidly yet gently.
Swaying slightly with his gait, I leaned over so that my mouth came close to the languidly
fanning giant ear.

Dark you are, and golden-eyed
, I whispered to the beast.

I lay on my stomach along his broad back and patted his huge head. He brought up his
trunk and found my face without seeing, gently touching my cheeks and forehead. The
skin of the trunk’s tip was soft, its dexterity handlike. His breath surrounded my
face like a hot tropical breeze. I smiled. I felt so comfortable. Then the gentle
brush against my skin vibrated strangely as if dragging over a patch rougher than
elephant skin, like scabbing on a nasty scrape. When did that happen?

I woke up—and I mean woke up, because my eyes were already open and waiting for consciousness
to return. There
was
a half-healed scab on my cheekbone. There was also a warm hand on my face. I instinctively
grasped it with my left hand as I blinked and tried to focus. Not one meter away,
lying like me on a thin pallet on the floor, was Dllenahkh. We had been given tunics
of roughly woven linen and light blankets of some material I could not identify. Dllenahkh’s
eyes were shut, his face perfectly blank, but it was his hand that rested on my face.
As I began to draw away, there was an impression in my mind of a golden eye that winked
and faded out.

“Wait.” Dllenahkh’s eyes were still closed, but it was his voice that spoke, the voice
of someone whose vocal chords have been unused for hours. “Stay still.”

I stopped moving, biddable in my drowsiness. Warm tendrils untangled from my nervous
system, withdrawing gently but swiftly like the leaf-brush of startled mimosa. I frowned,
feeling their absence like the niggling pain of a familiar but forgotten name.

Dllenahkh cleared his throat, sat up slowly, and said, “Thank you.”

I tried to speak, choked on a dry throat, and merely nodded.

He gazed at me sleepily, then looked around the room. There was a low table against
a nearby wall with two covered plates, two cups, and a pot. He slowly rearranged his
legs to sit on his heels before the table, poured the cups full, and handed me one.

“Drink. Your body needs water and energy.”

I took the cup with slightly shaking hands and drank deeply, reclining on one elbow.
It was both bitter and sweet and not really something I’d usually drink, but I downed
it as if it were the most delicious thing in the world.

Dllenahkh drank slowly. His eyes scanned my face and looked
me up and down in a cataloging fashion. “How do you feel? Are you in pain?”

I set down my cup, lightly touched the scab on my cheek, felt along my arms and ribs,
arched my back, and pointed and flexed my toes. “I think everything works. A little
sore, which is to be expected from being battered by water and rock. How about you?”

“I am well,” he replied.

“Is it you I should be thanking for the quick-heal?” I asked.

“In part. The adepts showed me how to link to you and guide your body in the healing
process.”

The adepts. Interesting. I would investigate that thoroughly—after increasing my blood
sugar level. I drained my cup and scooted to the table to pour out more, but I was
soon distracted by the covered dishes. When I took a peek, I found nothing familiar,
but the aromas were subtly tempting. I uncovered and offered a plate to Dllenahkh,
part courtesy, part bribe.

“Tell me everything,” I said.

I couldn’t remember much after that first icy plunge, which was probably a mercy,
because when Dllenahkh began to describe, albeit in a terse, unemotional way, how
we had been sucked down by the swirling currents, I began to shiver. I have no doubt
that whatever my injuries had been, I would have fared far worse had he not shielded
me from the hardest impacts. As for the adepts, apparently we had washed up at one
of the legendary monasteries via some underwater cave or passage or secret way that
lurked behind or beneath the falls. I wanted to feel excited about such a beautiful
cliché coming true, but mainly I felt hungry, worried, and very unsure about the place
we had stumbled into. This was not an Indiana Jones classic holovid; it was real life.

Dllenahkh had no such qualms. “I do not understand how they have managed it, but these
savants possess knowledge that goes far beyond the era when the taSadiri would have
arrived at Cygnus Beta.”

“Parallel development of theories and practices, perhaps? A kind of Newton–Leibniz
effect?”

He pondered. “It is a gross oversimplification to compare the discovery of calculus
to the evolution of some of the most sophisticated techniques of mind and meditation
the galaxy has seen, but I understand your point. Perhaps both branches of the disciplines
exemplify a natural progression in Sadiri thought.”

“How do you know so much about them already?” I asked.

Dllenahkh looked away from me, not wanting to lie but clearly not wanting to answer.
I finally got a clue. “Telepathy! And strong enough not to need touch for conversation.
That
is
something.”

Dllenahkh sipped his tea and made a noise that sounded almost like satisfaction. “They
have advanced the disciplines to a level even beyond what we attained in the monasteries
on Sadira.”

“Will they go to the Sadiri settlement here or even to New Sadira?” I asked shrewdly.

His eyelids lowered slightly, a dimming of his quiet enthusiasm. “They do not wish
to reveal themselves. Not even now.”

“Well, that doesn’t help anyone.” I sighed, feeling very tired. “Will they speak to
me, or am I too brain-dumb to be worth the effort?”

Dllenahkh smiled at that. “I believe they are being mindful of your condition. You
were unconscious when we arrived and have only recently awakened.”

“Very kind of them. Well, let them know from me that a light
is more useful on a high hill than under a bushel. And after you’ve thanked them for
their hospitality, ask them when we can go home.” I spoke as if the mission team was
“home,” and I suppose that’s what it had become to me by then.

I spent most of
the rest of that day in bed. While I was sleeping, Dllenahkh left the room to lodge
elsewhere, so I woke alone in darkness. I lay peacefully listening to the sound of
rainwater—or perhaps it was a heavy night dew—dripping from the eaves outside until
the sun came up and filled the room with light. Minutes later, someone arrived—a small
girl-woman dressed in a light woolen robe, her hair so closely cut that it was a mere
shadow on her scalp.