Wayfarer - Satori Part 8

He sucked in his breath sharply, as if struck in the stomach. For a moment he held it, then let it all out in a sigh. Several times he tried speaking, but failed. Finally, though, he managed to murmur, "Yes. Yes, even then." His voice picked up strength. "Myali, something's driving you, and it's more than just a hunger for love. I ... I don't mean you don't want love. Of course you do. Everybody does. And when we're together I can feel your need and I try my best to ...

"But no matter how far I reach out, there's part of you I just can't touch. Part of you that's not there, as if ... as if it was always somewhere else, searching.

"I don't understand your need. It's deeper and more basic than anything I can deal with. It scares me because I know I can't satisfy it and I know it's capable of consuming me if I keep trying."

"So you're going south." Her voice was brittle with control.

He nodded. "I'm going south."

"Because you think I don't love you."

Karl dropped his eyes, as if looking in the gra.s.s for words he couldn't find anywhere else. "You still don't understand. It's not because you don't love me, Myali. It's because you can't."

Can't. The word beat at her mind. Can't let go. Can't just be. Can't love. No! she cried silently. No, it isn't true! I can! I just need time and understanding and ...

Can't, came the quiet voice in her mind. Look yourself and see. You know how. Look and see.

For a moment she hesitated, afraid to even try. Then with a mental shout of defiance, she plunged into her own mind. Down through the cerebral cortex she dove, down through the neopallium, deep into the archipallium. There, amid the thalamic, subthalamic, and limbic portions of her brain, in a place so ancient it had crawled through the slime of primeval swamps and bellowed up through the mists at a huge, glowing moon that still hung hot and close to its mate, she searched for the roots of can't.

She found her desire for Karl. The hot seething that rose up in waves when he touched her and they lay, moving together toward climax, washed over her and left her gasping in its wake. Pa.s.sion, yes.Love?

She looked farther and found the joy they had shared. That warmth at sitting together and listening to the song of a lizard in the evening. That bubbling, light feeling when she played a trick on him and he laughed. Friends.h.i.+p. Deep friends.h.i.+p. Love?

Growing more frantic, she cast about trying to find something, anything, that answered that quiet little question. If these things aren't love, she cried, what is?

What is? echoed back. She turned toward the echo and sensed something, a vagueness, a dimness.

Without thinking, she rushed toward it demanding, What is? What is? What is?

The darkness grew and surrounded her as she moved. Suddenly, she felt fear and tried to slow down or turn away. But it was too late. Looming in front of her was a curtain of such black intensity, she dreaded to touch it. With a cry of terror she hurtled straight at it and burst through to ...

Chaos. Hatred. Aversion. Anger. Cancerous frustration. All, all aimed at Karl. He was a millstone around her neck, dragging her down, tying her to earth when she was meant to soar. To be rid of him and his suffocating demands for love and attention would mean freedom. Good riddance!

No! she cried, horrified at the dark maelstrom. No! That's not me! That's not how I feel! The darkness is a lie Yet she knew that it was true. The darkness and the hatred were as much her as the light and the pa.s.sion.

But darkness was no more the source of the can't than light had been. It lay deeper yet. And now, unable to escape the vortex of the retreating question she chased, she tumbled helplessly inward to the place where all began.

She found herself in a vast stillness. Nothing moved, nothing stirred, no sound or vibration penetrated. It was a waiting, a brooding, an indifference so vast she shrank from it with greater fear and revulsion than she had felt for the darkness. Here was true limbo, uncaring, un-becoming, a vast nothingness, an absence of spirit and of meaning. This was the abyss within, the ultimate can't. And it filled the universe.

This can't be, she wailed. This mustn't be!

This Is, came the reply. This is the root of the can't. Here is where the foundation lacks, where the building falters and all tumbles into ruin. This is why you do not, can not, love.

Screaming despair into the infinite silence, she fled.

With one fluid motion, she was on her feet and moving across the Plain, westward toward the sun.

She heard Karl call out, even heard the pain in his voice, but there was nothing she could say that wouldn't increase it, so she didn't turn back. She walked and walked and walked.

Toward the sun. She knew she could never reach it, but she stretched out her legs to try. The farther the sun slid toward the horizon in front of her, the closer the dark crept up behind. Soon she was running, fleeing as well as pursuing things that couldn't be fled or pursued.

A swarm of darters flashed away from her, dipped and rolled. The Plain heaved and shuddered.

Beneath, in dark caverns, something stirred. Dunn-un-un-un echoed from the earth itself.

He stumbled and fell but never hit the ground because it dissolved and he tumbled into things that weren't there down, down, down seeking a something, a memory, a past, a laugh, pain, ripping at his mind and flinging it down, down, down he floated in fear, las.h.i.+ng at the shreds of childhood ripping at fading youth, dissolving manhood, who, what, where, was anything, something stirring, something he reached for, wanted, oh please let me touch, hold, be, please ... he reached, stretched, strained, missed as it withdrew, retreated before his desire, desperate he drove after, flinging himself into the dark, the hole in his soul, too late he saw the blackness, churning, smothering, oh HELP HELP HELP ...

It was dark. Huge shapes pressed in on him from all sides. Eyes, ears, mouths, tongues, lips. Hungry, the black pressed on him. He opened his mouth to scream and heard it, that cry in the night from his own throat.

Panting he pressed against the tree trunk, clinging to its solidity in the vagueness. Light! Must have light! In panic he dropped on all fours next to the little pile of ashes. He blew on it. A red glow. Light!

Hope! He blew again, adding a few dry leaves, a twig. Oh, light, light, catch on, he prayed. A flamelicked up along the edge of the leaf, a whole galaxy of bright stars splitting the heavens with their glory.

Light, light! Trembling, he fed it, coaxing it, pleading with it to live, to grow, to fill the world.

Finally he sat back, his eyes smarting, his face streaming sweat. He stared at the little fire, terrified to look up at the darkness. Light. Light to keep away the darkness at the center of his being. G.o.d, how it repelled and drew him!

What am I? he moaned silently. Why do I feel like I 'm not, and yet fear to be what I might be? A spy? How could anyone be something so ... so ... partial? Myali? No, I'm not Myali and yet her memories are more real than I am.

No! I'm real! He bit his finger, hard. Real! I feel pain. Or do I just dream I feel pain? Am I a dream?

Or a dream of a dream?

He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth, moaning softly. I am a spy. I have a mission. I am not a spy. I do not have a mission.

Can't go to sleep. Can't ever go to sleep. It's all there waiting if I sleep. Control. Must take control.

He fumbled in his pack for a moment and drew out a small box. Snapping it open, he gazed at the tiny round forms that filled it. Take one, he commanded himself. Take one. Stimulant. Keep you on top, in control. Take one.

He did.

Waiting for it to take effect, he dared a quick glance out at the night forest. He whimpered in fear at the depth of the darkness. It falls forever. Oh, G.o.d. Something's wrong. Something's so d.a.m.n wrong.

Myali's memory. Wrong. Shouldn't be that way. Should be simple, surface things, general information. Not. That. Deep. Not something that clutched and sucked and twisted, plucking and pulling at sanity and being. Remembering the darkness, he shuddered.

But the memory recalled something else, the thing he had sensed and desired and pursued. A warm wave of yearning washed over him. What was it? Why had it retreated? Where had it gone? I've got to know!

Beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Knowing. Instinctively he realized this was treacherous ground. Can I know? And what would it mean if I did know? Would knowing reveal something good? Or evil? Or nothing ...

He hesitated, his heart and mind skipping a beat. Nothing. Is that the key? What if I peel back the layers of my being, strip off one denial after another ...not a spy, not Myali, perhaps not even Dunn ...

Will I find anything at the core? Or does nothing lie at the end of knowing?

Is there no me?

There's a complication.

A Ronin found him and is trailing him. It seems to be intrigued by his mental mess.

And you?

Mystified. I've been trying to follow his thinking. It's chaotic. There are definitely three "personalities," or whatever, in his mind. I'd recognize Myali anywhere. The other one, the one who seems to be in charge, is the spy. Doesn't seem to be a real person, just some sort of set of instructions.

And the third one?

That's the fascinating part. It's very deep and very basic and almost impossible to get hold of.

Every time you reach out, it pulls away. He almost caught it once, when he found his name. But it escaped at the last moment. He wants it, though, whatever it is. Even when he's not consciously thinking about it, I can feel his mind searching, hunting, seeking. Father, I don't know why, but somehow it seems familiar.

So. Three.

Yes. And the question is, which is the real one?

No, Josh. That's not the question.He looked up, ready to add another stick to the fire, then checked himself. Uh, I can see the bushes over there. Couldn't half an hour ago. He blinked and gazed skyward. A definite lightening. Dawn coming.

With a sigh of relief, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Dawn coming. Night going. Good. The forest was bad enough. But the forest and the night ...

He opened his eyes and watched the growing light creep warily through the brush as if uncertain the forest was a safe place to be. Slowly, the gloom beneath the canopy of leaves changed from black to dark blue-green to light blue-green.

The long vigil had taken its toll. He felt tired again. Without thinking, he reached into his pack and pulled out the box with its pills. He opened it, then hesitated. Too much of this stuff is dangerous, he remembered.

A slight flicker among the trees to his left caught his attention. Something (living? dangerous?) moving there. The image of the Ronin from last night came to his fatigued mind. The tension tightened another notch. His hands shaking with weariness and dull fear, he quickly gulped a pill down.

He allowed his head to slump forward while he waited for the drugs to take effect. Gradually he felt alertness return, felt a rising flow of energy fill his body. But there was a metallic aftertaste of exhaustion clinging to it, a taste that only increased his nervousness. I'm winding the spring tighter and tighter, he thought. When does one more turn break it?

Finis.h.i.+ng a quick meal he rose, brushed the crumbs from his robe. He took the compa.s.s from his pocket and picked the direction he had to travel this morning. Last, he leaned down, broke the fire up with an unburned stick, stamped on the few remaining embers, and then shrugged into his pack. With a cursory glance around, he started off.

As he walked along, the mere presence of the sun, even if mostly screened by the forest, made his spirits rise. A memory flashed across his mind of Myali striding through different woods, not quite as thick, on her way to meet someone she loved very much. He tasted the delicious antic.i.p.ation she felt and it almost made the forest into a friendly, sheltering place. Myali was not afraid of the forest. On the contrary, she felt very much at home in it even though she'd been born on the Plain. It was living, and she was part of life. How could she not feel the kins.h.i.+p?

A sudden flood of light brought him snapping back into the present. A clearing. No, not quite. A sudden ending of the forest. And a hill. It appeared perfectly circular, perhaps twenty feet high and three hundred or more in diameter. No trees grew on it. A few bushes huddled near its crown. The rest was covered by a short bluish-green gra.s.slike growth.

Myali told him this was something relatively rare, but nothing to get excited about. There were hundreds just like it scattered all over the face of Kensho. It was at their bases that one could occasionally find smoothstones. If one was very, very lucky.

Dunn scrutinized the ground closely, wandering slowly to the left around the base of the hill. There!

He pounced on it as though the smoothstone was a living creature likely to scamper away.

Squatting, he gazed down at the thing in his hand. It looked like a stone, all right, but it was smoother and more regular than any stone he'd ever seen. About two inches in length, it was a slightly elongated ovoid in shape, a matte white in color. He ran his finger along its surface. Soft, it felt soft. And warm. He squeezed it. No, it wasn't soft. It just felt soft. Actually, now that he thought about it, it looked more like a skinny ceramic egg than a stone. Queer. Well, Myali has one. Now I do, too.

He was about to stand when a motion to his right, just at the point where the curve of the hill cut off vision, caught the corner of his eye. He hunched down farther, making himself as small as possible against the blue-green gra.s.s.

The black-clad Ronin stepped from the forest and began to climb the hill, heading in the north-northeast direction Dunn had originally been following. In a few moments he disappeared over the crest of the hill, descending the opposite side without so much as a look in any direction but the one in which he was going.Dunn sat down with a grunt. s.h.i.+t. The d.a.m.n thing's probably been on my trail all morning. d.a.m.n.

Said he was going to follow. Guess he meant it. Can I lose him?

His thumb absently rubbing the smoothstone he held in his right fingers, Dunn decided a slight detour farther to the west, before turning north northeast again, might be the best way to shake his follower.

Well, he thought, soon enough he'll realize I'm not up ahead of him any more. Then he'll double back and see if he can pick up my trail. But since I was tending east, a sharp move west might throw him.

Worth trying, he decided, remembering the sword and the speed of the creature from the night before. It would mean more time spent in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned forest-but the trees were better than the Ronin any day. Or night.

He stood and checked his compa.s.s. Just before he plunged back into the woods again, he looked down at the little white stone he still held in his right hand. Thanks, stone, he thought at it. Looks like you did me a good turn. If I hadn't looked for you, I'd still be heading north with that Ronin on my tail.

The greenness swallowed him.

IX.

Dunn trudged westward for about two hours. The land grew more and more rugged as he went, until he found himself scrambling up and down a series of ever steeper ridges. Judging from the fact that they ran north and south, directly across his path, he decided he must be approaching the foothills of the mountains shown on his map.

Finally, after a long and exhausting climb up a particularly difficult slope, he came to an open place at the crest. Several trees had been torn from the thin, rocky soil by a storm and now lay in a jumble, creating a view toward the afternoon sun. Clambering over the fallen trunks, he reached a clear spot in the middle and stopped to catch his breath. To the west he could see the forest rising in rolling waves that finally broke against a ragged line of distant blue mountains.

This is far enough, he decided, Ronin or no Ronin. Every muscle in his body ached and his legs were quivering with weariness. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. d.a.m.n pill must be wearing off, he realized.

He'd have to rest or take another one pretty soon. Either alternative worried him. He wasn't too sure how long he could continue to take the drugs without doing himself real damage. And if he rested ...

He cut the thought short with a shake of his head. "Let's see now," he said out loud to help focus his attention and keep his mind from wandering to that other thing. 'Time to turn north again. Make that northeast. Best get out the old compa.s.s and check." His voice dropped to a mumble as he rummaged about in his pocket for the compa.s.s. At the same time, he turned to his right to be facing as nearly north as possible.

From the corner of his right eye he caught just the slightest flicker of movement among the trees at the edge of the little clearing. Whirling to face the spot, he forgot the compa.s.s and grabbed for his laser wand. His eyes were faster than his hands. He saw the Face among the leaves. But by the time he had the weapon out and pointed, the Face was gone.

For several endless moments he stood frozen in place, laser wand thrust out, eyes staring. Nothing moved within the darkness under the trees. With a sob, he sank against one of the fallen trunks. Oh, G.o.d, he moaned. Now what?

The quick glimpse Dunn had caught of the thing in the shadows wasn't very rea.s.suring. The Face's features were certainly within the range of what was considered human. But then, he remembered, the Ronin's had appeared that way at first glance, too. The Face was square, strong, solid, with a firm, straight nose and a mouth permanently set in a line of stubborn determination. It had been too far away to determine the color of the eyes, but the hair had been short, curly, and reddish blond. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary there.

The problem was that he couldn't remember seeing anything but a face. There had been no body, human or otherwise, in evidence. When the thing had moved, it had gone instantly, soundlessly. Hardlythe way a creature with a body would have moved. A face without a body. Lurking in the shadows at the edge of a clearing. Myali, he asked, have you any idea what it could be? The question found no answer.

There was nothing in her memory to match it, nothing to help him find a way to deal with it. He'd have to handle this one completely on his own.

He waited for a while, crouched behind the fallen trunk, to see if it would return. When it didn't, he began to feel better. Maybe, he told himself, it wasn't there at all. Maybe I'm so d.a.m.n tired that I'm starting to see things.

Eventually he put away the laser wand and took out the compa.s.s and the map. He estimated a new course and set off, picking his way carefully along the crest of the ridge.

It was more than an hour later, just after he'd finally managed to convince himself that the Face had been nothing more than the random twitch of an exhausted mind, that he saw it again. This time it was ahead and slightly to his left, peering out from the depths of a clump of bushes. He stopped, rooted to the spot, unable to move or talk or even think. He just stared at it, his mind as blank as its gaze.

As suddenly as before, it disappeared. He almost fell in a heap. His mind was gibbering with fear and his body was shaking so hard he could barely stand. The drain on his system was too much and he could sense a great wave of utter weariness about to break over him. Frantically, he pulled off his pack and ripped it open. With trembling hands he dug around until his fingers found the firm roundness of the pill box. Twisting it open, he grabbed two of them and, ignoring the stern warning his conditioning and his common sense cried out, he shoved both into his mourn. He had no saliva. The pills made a bitter double lump in his throat and he had to swallow several painful times before he finally managed to force them down in spite of his gagging.

s.h.i.+vering with fear and swaying with fatigue, he stood there, waiting for the drugs to take effect.

Can't do this much longer, he told himself. These pills will kill me if I keep this up. Too hard on the body.

Too hard on the mind. He could feel the sense of warmth and well-being the drugs brought gradually spreading through his body. It's a lie, he reminded himself. A lie and a trap. It'll kill me as sure as the Ronin will.

Nevertheless, his confidence returned as the pills took effect. He was ready to set out again, to carry out his mission, to go to First Touch, to find and kill the Way-Farer. (When had he decided that? he wondered. And who had decided it?) Repacking his pack and shrugging it back into place, he checked the compa.s.s and began walking once more. His stride was firmer and surer than before, but his head kept swiveling to and fro, and his eyes tried to pierce the interior of every bush both to the right and left of his path. He was looking for the Face and he knew it.