An infinity of beach, a shoreless dune-sea whose tides flowed endlessly
under the eternal wind ... Her ship moved over the sand in rippling undulation,
and she was not certain from where she sat, helmeted against the furnace of light,
high on its armored back, whether it was truly alive or not ...
“Input—”
An ocean of humanity. The crowds surged around her on the corner of two streets, pushing and
dragging at her like treacherous undertow. Machines roared and clattered past
her, clogging the roadways, filling her nose with their bitter reek and
battering her ears .... A dark-faced stranger dressed all in brown, peaked hat,
shining boots, caught at her arm; raised his voice in an unknown language,
questioning. She saw his face change abruptly, and he let her go ...
“Input—”
An ocean of night. An utter absence of light, and life ... a sense of macrocosmic age ...
an awareness of microcosmic activity ... the knowledge that she would never
penetrate its secret heart, no matter how often she came back and came back to
this midnight void of nothing, nothing at all ...
“... No further analysis!” She heard the word echoing, felt
her head drop forward in release, caught her breath as the end of another
trance wrenched her back into her own world. She sat back on her knees,
relaxing the muscles of her body consciously, in a rising wave ... breathing
deeply and aware of each tingling response.
She opened
her eyes at last, to the reassuring presence of Danaquil Lu smiling at her from
the rough wooden chair on the other side of the chamber. She controlled her own
body now during the Transfer; they no longer had to hold her down, tying her to
the real world. She smiled back at him with weary pride, shifted to sit cross
legged on the woven mat.
Clavally
ducked in at the doorway, momentarily blotting out the puddle of sunlight that
warmed Moon’s back. Moon twisted to watch her enter the second pool of light
below the battered window frame; Clavally dropped her hand absently to smooth
Danaquil Lu’s always-rumpled brown hair. Danaquil Lu was a quiet, almost a shy
man, but he laughed easily at Clavally’s constant whimsies. He struck Moon as
being somehow ill at ease or out of place here on this island, in these rooms
chipped from a wall of porous rock. Where he did belong she couldn’t guess; but
sometimes she saw a longing for it in his eyes. Sometimes she caught him
looking at her, too, with an expression on his face that she couldn’t name—as
though he had seen her somewhere before. There were ugly scars on his neck and
the side of his face, as though some beast had clawed him.
“What did
you see?” Clavally asked the question that was almost a ritual in itself. To
help her learn to control the Transfer, to master the rituals of body and mind
that guided a sibyl, they asked her questions with predictable
answers—questions they had been asked themselves as a part of their own
training. Moon had learned that she never knew what words she would speak in
response to a seeker’s questions. Instead she was swept away into a vision:
into a pit of blackness as vast as death ... into a vibrant dream world
somewhere in the middle of another reality. A mystical strand bound each
question to a separate dream, and so Clavally or Danaquil Lu could guide her
Transfer experience, lessen the terrifying alien ness with predictions of what
she would see.
“I went to
the
Nothing Place
again.” Moon shook her head, throwing off the maddening echoes of the dream,
shaking out the shadows that still rattled in her memory. The first things they
had taught her after her initiation were the mental blocks and disciplined
concentration that would keep her sane, that would keep her from overhearing
all the thousand hidden thoughts of the Lady’s all-seeing mind, or being swept
away into the Lady’s rapture every time anyone around her spoke a question.
“Why is it that we go there more than anywhere else? It’s like
under the eternal wind ... Her ship moved over the sand in rippling undulation,
and she was not certain from where she sat, helmeted against the furnace of light,
high on its armored back, whether it was truly alive or not ...
“Input—”
An ocean of humanity. The crowds surged around her on the corner of two streets, pushing and
dragging at her like treacherous undertow. Machines roared and clattered past
her, clogging the roadways, filling her nose with their bitter reek and
battering her ears .... A dark-faced stranger dressed all in brown, peaked hat,
shining boots, caught at her arm; raised his voice in an unknown language,
questioning. She saw his face change abruptly, and he let her go ...
“Input—”
An ocean of night. An utter absence of light, and life ... a sense of macrocosmic age ...
an awareness of microcosmic activity ... the knowledge that she would never
penetrate its secret heart, no matter how often she came back and came back to
this midnight void of nothing, nothing at all ...
“... No further analysis!” She heard the word echoing, felt
her head drop forward in release, caught her breath as the end of another
trance wrenched her back into her own world. She sat back on her knees,
relaxing the muscles of her body consciously, in a rising wave ... breathing
deeply and aware of each tingling response.
She opened
her eyes at last, to the reassuring presence of Danaquil Lu smiling at her from
the rough wooden chair on the other side of the chamber. She controlled her own
body now during the Transfer; they no longer had to hold her down, tying her to
the real world. She smiled back at him with weary pride, shifted to sit cross
legged on the woven mat.
Clavally
ducked in at the doorway, momentarily blotting out the puddle of sunlight that
warmed Moon’s back. Moon twisted to watch her enter the second pool of light
below the battered window frame; Clavally dropped her hand absently to smooth
Danaquil Lu’s always-rumpled brown hair. Danaquil Lu was a quiet, almost a shy
man, but he laughed easily at Clavally’s constant whimsies. He struck Moon as
being somehow ill at ease or out of place here on this island, in these rooms
chipped from a wall of porous rock. Where he did belong she couldn’t guess; but
sometimes she saw a longing for it in his eyes. Sometimes she caught him
looking at her, too, with an expression on his face that she couldn’t name—as
though he had seen her somewhere before. There were ugly scars on his neck and
the side of his face, as though some beast had clawed him.
“What did
you see?” Clavally asked the question that was almost a ritual in itself. To
help her learn to control the Transfer, to master the rituals of body and mind
that guided a sibyl, they asked her questions with predictable
answers—questions they had been asked themselves as a part of their own
training. Moon had learned that she never knew what words she would speak in
response to a seeker’s questions. Instead she was swept away into a vision:
into a pit of blackness as vast as death ... into a vibrant dream world
somewhere in the middle of another reality. A mystical strand bound each
question to a separate dream, and so Clavally or Danaquil Lu could guide her
Transfer experience, lessen the terrifying alien ness with predictions of what
she would see.
“I went to
the
Nothing Place
again.” Moon shook her head, throwing off the maddening echoes of the dream,
shaking out the shadows that still rattled in her memory. The first things they
had taught her after her initiation were the mental blocks and disciplined
concentration that would keep her sane, that would keep her from overhearing
all the thousand hidden thoughts of the Lady’s all-seeing mind, or being swept
away into the Lady’s rapture every time anyone around her spoke a question.
“Why is it that we go there more than anywhere else? It’s like
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