The D’neeran Factor (37 page)

We have been here so long.

so long

so long

no Watchsetters before Us have been out so long, and echoes of Home are faint and far and

probably unreal

the chronometer says nothing that means anything and realtime is etched in Our bones too long

too long

too long!

for five of the People five only.

I am Leader,
he thinks. He must do this often, daily, ritually, all of Us must. For all of Us begin to forget, for five are not enough.

Here, Leader. At Home, ah! At Home!

At Home he is Hearthkeeper's Fulfillment; as she is his.

Five is the least-shape. Five cohere; with difficulty.

We are exceptional

selected

trained

brutally

Explorers

Watchsetters

We

only five!

It would be better with twenty. With twenty it would be better. But so few can survive sundering. So few are so exceptional. There are not enough for liberality. We cannot spare three crews to augment one.

Thus will Renders rending space defeat Us in massed attack. Space is Home to them. They traverse it confidently, leaping through stars, unminding the void save in awe. Not horror.

Wildfire spins through stars, escaping.

Our craft is not the same physical entity as the First Watchsetter. It is blind to the horrible void which We only dare see through instruments, it is filled with memories, it is propelled by the promise of Homecoming; it has these things in common with the First Watchsetter, but also with the others. It is First because its crew traces an unbroken line to the First. The Apprentice of the first voyage of the First Watchsetter rose to Leader of a later voyage, and the Apprentice of that crew in time succeeded him, and so it went in ever-endless cycle through the years.

And all of Us are here.

It is an honored calling,
Leader thinks,
though in memory something else. Once

We flew in joy

in fascination

not by need

not in fear.

In common memory the forays share in the pleasure of creation, darkness and abrasion making one current of a complexity whose rewards were/are worth seeking but

it is all darkness now.

Here or there a world of beauty begs Us to stay. We cannot stay. We never stay. Wonders wait even in ice. They wait forever for Our return.

For this is the function of a Watchsetter and so has it been for a hand's-hundred years.

The Leader of the First Watchsetter Long-Ago remembering:

I was boy Apprentice lately tapped into the then/now of the First Watchsetter. Truly first for me; my first voyage. Left I Weaver at her loom. Left the mountain Nearhome, falling water. The Ordeal nearly broke me. Alone they said a little while. It seemed forever. Later the bond formed, one by one.

Then-Leader took Us dizzily through darkness. Mountain memories filled my eyes. Apprentice only, their good aid and hands. Knowing I will one day be Leader.

Weaving shuttle woven night. Ship the primal birth-sac. Air sweet-scented. Not mountain air. Long between stars. Not here: no globe cool enough. Not here: none warm enough. Here? No. None alive. They seek life, the Treecubs, leaf-lovers.

Barren rock. The universe is made of barren rock.

Always We were on the edge. Everywhere We went was new.

Rock.

We came on the edge to a brilliant star, beacon-lit. Its companion was shadow beside it. A shoal of planets, swarming. Some were near-stars, ripe with sullen heat. The rest were rock. Save for one, very-far-out, born by chance in the narrow rainbow strip where ice liquefies, gases volatize, the thick rich broth is jolted, transcends rock, and lives.

By chance.

Thick and rich and dark leaf-analogs coated rock. We went unwilling, questing, afraid. We breathed the air. The wealth of that air! The glory of its light! Objects peered from leaftops, bright-eyed. Treecubs, it may be. It may be that in some distant now they come to ground, grow savage, learn to leap into the dark.

The Treecubs were not here. Not yet.

We set the telltales carefully in caverns. The caverns shone with Our light like stars. I took their waters in my hand and tasted water pure as my Weaver's eyes. The telltales are skeins of energy, no more. Deep within this world is heat to feed them. We left them in darkness to wait. Sooner or later the Treecubs will come. Somewhere not-in-caverns they will call to their kind through Nospace. And the telltales will urgently fling forth warning; and dissolve.

We went to mountains, for my sake, which was Our sake. Air pure as my Weaver's hands.

It was not Home.

Afterward we set the relays, carefully. Which also will dissolve, once used, and used for nothing else. When they come here We will know.

It took a year to place the relays. I went Home then to Weaver. Not long. I left. Again. Again. At last I learned to be Leader, but Weaver died. Thereafter, soon, I too.

And this is what it means to be a Watchsetter. And this is why We honor Us.

*   *   *

This is not much of a brain, thought pseudo-Leader, and recognized the thin high note of hysteria. His. Not hers. But the sardonic despairing humor was not his.

She was, she must be, gone. He found no trace of her consciousness when he searched. She lived however in her cells and bones. The too-fragile hands were competent if he did not think about them. When he thought, they dropped things and trembled. When he was indecisive they flew to the soft heavy hair whose texture made his skin shiver.
Her
skin. The trim and rakish spacecraft was alive with noise. Her hearing was acute. The People barely heard at all. Sound cascaded on the alien ears. And was labeled, identified, and put away. Not by him. By, then, the residue of her that lived in flesh. It taught him when to eat. It taught him,
shuddering with revulsion, how to care for the alien organism. Thin slick skin. It slept more than he.

He thought, washing it, I hid from this. From the intimate secret needs of her body I shielded myself, revolted.

He had succeeded in the first-aim, the People's need. But did he own her body, or did it own him?

Leader, pseudo-Leader, Leader-in-her-thoughts stood helpless in her body in the command chamber of an artifact of Renders. Black-and-white soothed his eyes. Dizzy rainbow colors elsewhere. The color perception was finer than his, widely ranging, delicately discriminating. They did not have true-sight at all, most of them. Only Wildfire and her kind.

An uproar of sound jolted through him. Only a chime, her body said placidly, undisturbed. The ship announced another Jump in tones he did not comprehend. It made the Jump. By itself. He saw no change; he had opaqued the port so he would not have to see the great emptiness. The ship had the name of a planet.

The government of reason and logic. The rational use of power. They do not favor eccentricity, but old money buys the right. Few in numbers, highly stable, formidably strong. The balance of real and ideal. Hidden warmth and loneliness—

He had the information. But all mixed up with it were her opinions, her prejudices, and also the drawing-near to one man of that place.

Too much like the People's bonding.

Too different and distorted.

Do not think of that.

Serene numbers announced to him the journey's end was near. He had done nothing but show the craft where to go. It bore him majestically across great depths. He was distant from the process. It was not like the First Watchsetter, demanding intimate involvement of brain and hands. Her body accepted it, unquestioning.

Was she still here in some way?

The unperceived does not exist,
said an Explorer of long-ago.

You here!
Leader said. The body shuddered with relief.

His living, long-dead mentor answered:
I
am here.

I thought you left behind with Us
—

All of Us are here,
Explorer said.

But there was a note of uncertainty.

Pseudo-Leader sat abruptly on the floor. The knees were weak.

Feel,
he said. He meant the lightness, lack of weight, fragility; hair lightly brushing the slender neck; thin fabric over soft skin. The sensitive breast-pads, pointing forward, made him cautious. Naked feet; he couldn't bear her boots. He said,
You know well the invisible has real existence!

A matter of instruments,
said Explorer. His meaning was obscure.

The floor felt very cold to Leader's flesh. He said,
I
cannot find the answer to my question.

Explorer said:
Questions answer one another.

That is no answer. Is she here?

I was present at such an answer,
Explorer said.

Show me,
Leader urged. Although he was not sure the question—is she here? —was the question he ought to ask.

Explorer said,
I
wandered in the days before Watchsetters, the days of joy, though the question shadowed Us even then, having shadowed Us since eyes turned from forest to stars.

The question was answered/not answered in a place of dull red rock. The star was red, like that We seek; the light was red; all things were red in the light. A planet's spectrum showed as We approached a Home like Ours. It was the first. Life was rare and precious in the slow early days; microscopic, mindless; lichens at best. Mosses answer no questions. Here was more.

We came to ground eagerly through ruddy cloud. Descended on savannah, crushing copper shrubs. The things that ran away were thin and black as wiry sticks. Six limbs they had and ran like rippling water with queer grace.

They were pitiless though terrified, bestial, disconnected, lacking true-sight, separate from Us and from each other. They were Render-things, though they had not a Render's spark or skill; not yet. Thus was the question answered.

And We said: now We know. Life bends elsewhere toward Renders not Us. But We said: now comes another question. Are there some who are Our equals in thought and in skill?

The answer came not in my time.

Leader said,
It shaped mine.

The alien body twitched. He thought someone peered
over his shoulder. He thought miserably:
So was it with her when I hid. But is it the body remembering?

You know not who you are,
remarked Explorer.

I am Leader. Leader. Leader!

The instrument is the brain. Recall the purpose of the Rite,
Explorer urged.

Leader struggled to fix his thought. For Explorer always since infancy had been his guide to objectivity and cold reason.

He said in obedience,
The objects of the Rite were two. First, dissolution; and second, identity with Us.

It has not changed,
Explorer said.

I
never loved the agonies of the Rite,
Leader confessed.

You did,
Explorer said. He was afraid.

He was gone.

I did?
Leader said. But no one answered.

Wetness blurred his Render's eyes.

Renders fought with tooth and claw, savage, wielding stones. Later they bound the stones to wood. They fought the water-People ages long, broke the living eggs, devoured the young. Different, separate, hardly seeming native to this world, though they were: the People tried to claim them.

Symbolic,
remarked Explorer, and vanished again.

Leader thought in a kind of frenzy,
That is not a concept of Ours!

He huddled on a square of polished black, half or less than half himself. If she were here, surely he could find her. Her brain the instrument was limited, however. It bound his powers and defined him. If she was here she suffered the same limitations; therefore she could not hide; therefore she must be dissolved as the Renders in the claiming of the Rite had been dissolved (but all of them had died), as the Lost Ones had been dissolved (but all of them had died).

They had not let her die. What happened when a Render survived the Rite? Was that the true question?

Heartworld II
said, “ETA three hours,” but Leader did not understand it.

*   *   *

Time is slipped, blended, schizophrenic. Hanna admires her former self. A lizard owns her pretty hands. She thinks few names for anything; exists in the infant's timeless wordless universe of light and dark. She has been his parasite forever. He is faulty and disorganized, wherein lies her hope, if
hope it is. She does not think of hope. She thinks of blood, a deep contented song. Iledra would not know her for herself. She does not know herself. She is only
here.

*   *   *

It is the end of the day's last sad watch. True-Leader rises. Ship's midnight is full around him. We think of the task We fulfill: always. We think of the avatar-of-Leader, distant. Triumphant?

The leads that enter Leader's brain differ little from those of the past. His thoughts are those of the First Watchsetter. He thinks of power and distance, orbit and momentum; the gravitational complex like heavy stones that can be grasped in the hand, smooth and round and water-worn. In their polish shine the eyes of Sunrise. In his braincase, in Our skulls, are sockets drilled and shaped ubiquitous as eyes. We are the First Watchsetter. The ship is We. It thinks Our thoughts. Unlike Treecubs enslaving metal. We knew long-before. That:

Renders

their machines

are separate

primitive

stones bound to wood

inorganic

as their homes as their hearths as their hearts—

It is time.

Thy task, says Leader to Steersman. Steersman sunk in recorded memories of Home and bondmate and sweet clean skies stands dutiful. We say to him:
We know the call.