Authors: Joan D. Vinge
Moon
glanced up at her. “Maybe I can ...” She began to put her hair into braids. “Do
you have any off worlder medical supplies?” Blodwed shook her head. “How about
herbs, anything?”
“I can
steal Ma’s. They’re old—” Blodwed stood up expectantly.
“Just get
them.” Moon watched her go, confused by her willingness. She lifted the off
worlder hand again, feeling for the pulse in his wrist; caught her breath as
she saw the inside of his arm, crisscrossed with ragged scars. She stared in
silent disbelief, lowered his arm again carefully, wrist down. She kept her
hold on his hand as she sat waiting, and kept her mind empty.
“Here they
are.” Blodwed came back through the gate at last, carrying a skin-wrapped
bundle beaded with tiny bones and bits of metal. She opened it, spread it out
on the floor between them. “Neutron activation,” she said, waving her hands.
“Ma always says power words. Do you say power words, sibyl?” There was no taunt
in it.
“I suppose
so.” Moon picked over the leafy bundles of dried plants, sniffing at clear
plastic bags of seeds and flower heads. Her hope faded. “I don’t know any of
these.”
“Well, that
one’s—”
She shook
her head. “I mean, I don’t know how to use these.” KR j Aspundh had told her
about the Old Empire’s exploration service, that before they opened new worlds
for human colonists they had seeded them with a panacea of medicinal plants,
different series for different ecosystems. “In the islands we used a lot of sea
plants for curing.”
And
called them the Lady’s gifts
.
“I’ll have to ask—
you’ll
have to ask for me, input me; will you?” Blodwed nodded
eagerly. “Ask me their uses,” Moon gestured. “Remember what I say—exactly, or
it won’t do any good. Can you?”
“Sure.” Blodwed
grinned arrogantly. “I can sing all the landmarks of the trail song. Nobody
else can, any more. I can sing any song I ever heard on the radio even once.”
Moon
managed half a smile, stopped by the stiff bruise on her cheek. “Then prove it.
Ask, and I will answer.
Input
...”
Blodwed
cleared her throat, sat up straighter. “Oh, sibyl! Tell me . uh, how to use
these magic plants?”
Moon took
up a bundle of herbs in her hand, felt herself begin to fall backwards down the
well of
absence ....
Clavally
.
She came into the light again, to find a face
she knew, Clavally’s flushed and startled face, tousled hair, bare shoulders as
close to her as ...
Danaquil Lu
. She
saw Clavally pull a blanket up to cover herself hastily. She thought,
uselessly,
Danaquil Lu, I’m sorry ...
Clavally, it’s only Moon ...
But she could not affect their lives even
while she intruded on them so profoundly, to share her apologies or her
happiness at even this reunion; to ask their help, or to communicate in any way
at all.
But a
tentative smile formed at the corners of Clavally’s wide mouth, as though she
saw a message fill the window of Danaquil Lu’s eyes. She touched his cheek
tenderly, still smiling, and with knowing patience lay back on the bed to wait
...
“... No further analysis!”
Moon slumped forward, drained, felt
Blodwed’s quick hands catch her and keep her upright.
“You did
it! You’re not a fake—” Blodwed propped her against the cot and took her hands
away, suddenly leery. “Wake up! Are you awake? Where did you go?”
Moon
nodded, let her forehead rest on her knees. “I ... visited old friends.” She
wrapped her arms around her shins, holding on to the memory: the only warmth,
the only happiness she could remember.
“I know all
the herbs now, sibyl.” Blodwed’s voice pawed at her. “I’ll show you. Are you
going to cure him?”
“No.” Moon
raised her unwilling head, opened her eyes. “I’m going to bring a real healer
to use the herbs. But you’ll have to help me, give me whatever I need.” A nod.
Moon readied herself, knowing that if she simply had the strength to begin, the
Transfer would take her through to the end. Her body rebelled, refusing to
gather for another ordeal, but she knew that if she surrendered to exhaustion
now, it might be too late for the off worlder by the time she could start
again. And she was not going to watch another person die because of her. She
focused her attention on his face.
“All right,
ask me how to treat him. Input!” and she flung herself through .... Into a
white-walled anti-gravity chamber, where she watched a cluster of men clad in
pastel and transparent suits drift weightless, tethered to a table, arguing an
incomprehensible medical procedure. Beyond them, beyond the reinforced glass of
a wide window, she saw thick fingers of ice deepening beneath an eave, and
floodlights illuminating a field of drifted snow ...
“...
analysis
!”
She came back into herself, barely
hearing the dry rattle of the end sign inside her head. She smelled the pungent
reek of half a dozen strange herbs on her hands and clothing as she crumpled
forward. Mind fog hal oed her view of Blodwed’s peering face and the inert
blanket-bundle of the sick off worlder turning them to a holy vision.
Reassured, she found her hands and knees I and crawled toward the heater in the
room’s center. When the cloud of energy became so intense that her body could
not endure more, she let herself down at last, and slept.
Moon came
awake with the urgency of terror, stared at the unexpected walls that closed
her in. Stone walls—not the endless desolation of sky above a lifeless, stony
beach, where an executioner in black wore a medal as familiar as the face of
her only love ... She hid from the phantom behind a wall of fingers, pressing
the swollen soreness of her face. No, it isn’t true!
A soft
trilling intruded on her, expanding her awareness, pulling her back into the
stone-walled chamber. She lowered her hands, seeing the cluster of cages across
the room, and felt time’s flood sweep her into the present. Someone had moved
her to a pad of blankets. The animal stench had cleared, as though someone had
cleaned the cages out as well, and the air was strong with the smell of herbs.
No sounds reached her from beyond the locked gate; she guessed that it must be
far into the night. The animals stirred and rustled, tending to their own
lives, watching her with only half an eye now. “You know I’m just another pet.”
She climbed uncertainly to her feet, swayed a moment, seeing stars, before she
could cross the room.
The off
worlder lay under a half-tent of blanket, wrapped like a swaddled infant in
more covers. A pot of pungent herb-brew steamed on a hot plate by his head. She
kneeled down by the cot, put her hand against his face. Cooler, not really sure
that he was. “Please come back ...” Prove I have a right to be alive, and be a
sibyl. She bowed her head, pressed her forehead against the hard frame of the
cot.
“Have you
... back for me come, then?”
She looked
up, saw the off worlder struggling to open his eyes. “I—I never left you.” He
frowned, shook his head as though it didn’t make sense. “I’ve never away gone.”
She repeated it in Sandhi.
“Ah.” He
watched her through slitted eyes. “Then I’m not afraid. When ... when will we
go?”
“When?
Soon.” She smoothed his wiry hair, and saw him smile. ;^,. Not knowing what he
was asking, she said, “When thou art “‘* stronger.” She used the familiar form
unthinkingly.
“I didn’t
think you so fair would be. Stay by me ... until then?”
“I will.”
Glancing down, she saw the untouched mug of thick medicine broth on the floor
by her knee. She picked it up. “Thou must this drink.” She put her arm under
his shoulders, rolled him onto his side. He worked a hand free obediently, but
it could not hold the cup; she saw the livid scars along the inside of his
wrist again. She held the cup for him, helped him drink it down. Coughing took
him as he finished it, rattling in his chest like stones. The plastic mug
slipped from her hand and rolled under the cot. She held him tightly in her
arms, sharing her own strength with him, until the attack passed; and then a
little longer.
“Thou feel
... so real.” He sighed against her shoulder. “So kind ...”
She let him
slip back onto the cot, already asleep. She sat for a long moment watching him,
before she settled against the cot frame, resting her head on her arm, and
closed her eyes again.
“You are
real.”
The words
greeted her like old friends as she woke again, slowly raised her head from her
sleep-deadened arm. She sat back, disconcerted, blinking.
The off
worlder slumped against the wall, propped into place by a knot of blankets.
“Did I it dream, or ... did you to me in Sandhi speak?”
“I did,” in
Sandhi. Moon worked her fingers, felt the needles starting as circulation
stirred in her arm. “I—cannot it believe. You were so sick.” She felt a shining
warmth fill her. But the power came through me, and I healed you.
“I thought
you the Child Stealer were. When I was young, my nurse said she as pale as
aurora-glow is ...” He leaned more heavily on the heaped blankets. “But you’re
no ghost. Are you—?” As though he still half doubted his senses.
“No.” She
massaged her twisted neck muscles with her other hand, wincing. “Or I wouldn’t
so much hurt!”
“You’re a
prisoner too, then.” He leaned forward slightly, squinting his eyes were still
inflamed. She nodded. “Your face. They didn’t you ... molest?”
She shook
her head. “No. They haven’t me hurt. They—fear me; so far.”
“Fear you?”
He glanced toward the gate, and what lay beyond it. The distant sounds of a new
day out in the camp reached them like an echo of another world.
She lifted
her chin, saw him grimace at the wound on her throat, before his face went
slack: “Sibyl?”
She lowered
her head again.
“Gods, this
moves too fast.” He lay down again, resting on his side through another attack
of coughing.
Something
out of place caught the corner of her eye. She twisted, found a pile of
blue-black cloth trimmed with braid behind her, a jug, and a bowl of dried
meat. “Someone brought us food.” Her hands were reaching for it even as she
spoke. “Food—” not even knowing how long it had been since she had eaten
anything.
“Blodwed.
Hours back. I pretended to sleep.”
Moon took a
long drink from the pitcher, a creamy blue-white liquid that slid down her
parched throat into her shriveled stomach like ambrosia, “Oh—” Suddenly ashamed,
she lowered the pitcher, pushed up onto her knees. “Here.” She filled the
plastic mug, held it up to him.
“No.” He
put an arm across his eyes. “I don’t it want.”
“You must.
To heal, you need strength.”
“No. I
don’t—” The arm came down from his eyes, he lifted his head to look at her.
“Yes ... I guess I do.” He took the drink in his good hand; she saw scars on
that wrist, too. He caught her looking at him, raised the mug to his mouth
without comment and sipped slowly.
Moon chewed
a mouthful from a strip of dried meat, swallowed it whole before she asked,
“Who are you? How did you here get?”
“Who am I
...” He looked down at his uniform coat, touched it; his face changed with a
kind of wonder, like a man coming out of a coma. “Gundhalinu, sibyl. Police Inspector
BZ Gundhalinu—” he grimaced, “from Kharemough. They shot down my patroller, and
took me.”
“How long
have you here been?”
“Forever.”
He opened his eyes again. “And you? Did they you from the star port kidnap?
Where are you from—Big Blue, or Samathe?”
“No,
Tiamat.”
“Here? But
you’re a sibyl.” He lowered the cup from his lips. “The Winters don’t—”
“I’m a
Summer. Moon Dawntreader Summer.”
“Where did
you Sandhi learn?” Something darker than curiosity shadowed it.
Moon
frowned uncertainly. “On Kharemough.”
“You’re
proscribed, then! How did you back here get?” His voice broke, too feeble to
support the weight of an authoritarian demand.
“The same
way I left—with tech runners She slipped into her own speech without realizing
it; taken by surprise, indignant at his indignation. “What are you going to do
about it, Blue? Arrest me? Deport me?” She put her hands on her hips, clenched
with resentment.
“I’d do
both ... if I were in any position to.” He followed her doggedly from language
to language. But the righteousness drained out of him and left him limp on the
cot. He laughed, a hoarse, hating sound. “But don’t worry. Flat on my face ...
with the cosmic crud, and living in a kennel ... I’m not in any position.” He
finished the liquid in the mug, let it hang empty from a finger over the cot’s
edge.
Moon
refilled the mug and put it into his hand again.
“A
smuggling sibyl.” He sipped carefully, watching her. “I thought you were
supposed to be serving humanity, not yourself. Or did you have that tattoo ...
put on purely for business reasons?”