Foreigner

*24*

Afsan spent most of his days now in consultation with Dybo and members of the imperial staff, preparing for the arrival of the Others. They had developed a plan for defending Capital Harbor, and the engineers and chemists were now hard at work devising the equipment needed. Still, Mokleb had impressed upon Afsan that the talking cure could not be interrupted, so every second day, for one daytenth, Afsan left the palace office building and came out to Rockscape.

“Remember one of our early sessions in which you discussed your childhood with Pack Carno?” asked Mokleb.

“No,” said Afsan. Then, “Wait—yes. Yes, I remember that. Goodness, that was ages ago.”

“Very early in the therapy, yes. Remember you said you had wished there had been other people like you, others who would have accepted you.”

“I suppose I said that.”

“You did. I keep verbatim notes.” A rustling of paper. “Afsan: ‘It didn’t seem fair, that’s all. It seemed that somewhere there should have been people more like me, people who shared my interests, people to whom my mathematical skill was nothing special.’ ”

“Mokleb: ‘But there was no one like that in Carno.’

“Afsan: ‘No. Except perhaps…’

“Mokleb: ‘Yes?’

“Afsan: ‘Nothing.’

“Mokleb: ‘You must share your thoughts.’

“Afsan: ‘It’s gone now. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.’ ”

Afsan shifted uncomfortably on his rock. “Yes, I recall that exchange.”

“Well, I know whom you were thinking of, Afsan. I know precisely whom you were thinking of.”

“Oh?”

“In a much later session, you mentioned the visit of Empress Sar-Sardon to your home Pack of Carno.”

“That’s right. I didn’t know it was Sardon at the time—guess I was too young to understand such things—but later I learned that it had been her. But, Mokleb, I can assure you that Sardon wasn’t whom I was thinking of.”

“No, of course not. Now, this is crucial: are you sure it was Sardon?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely sure? There’s no chance that you witnessed the visit of some other dignitary? The provincial governor, perhaps? Or a lesser palace official?”

“No, I’m sure it was Sardon. I remember the blood-red sash; only members of The Family wear those. Why do you ask?”

“Do you know what kiloday that was?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“It was 7196.”

“Really? Then I would have been—”

“Less than a kiloday old. Much less, in fact, for, according to palace records, Empress Sardon visited Carno on a tour through Arj’toolar in the sixth tenth of that kiloday.”

“Fascinating.”

“Do you remember anything of your life before that?”

“It’s hard to tell. I’ve got lots of memories, but as to which: first, I can’t say.”

“Do you remember the creche?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember clutches of eggs in the creche?”

“You mean while I was still living in the egg chamber? Goodness, that was a long time ago. Other clutches of eggs? No. No, I can’t say that I—wait a beat. Wait a beat. Yes, I—now that you mention it, I do remember one other clutch. Eight eggs, laid in a circle.”

Mokleb shook her head. “That’s incredible.”

“Oh?”

“You were part of the second-last clutch to hatch during that hatching season, were you aware of that?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s true. The bloodpriests keep meticulous records, copies of which eventually end up in the census bureau here in Capital City. There was one other clutch that hatched after yours.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. And it hatched eight days after your own clutch did.”

“Eight days? But that would mean…”

“That would mean you have a memory from when you were just eight days old—maybe earlier, even.”

“Is that normal?”

“Who can say? No one has really studied early memories before.”

“Eight days, you say. It seems incredible, but I’m sure I remember those eggs. Not well, you understand—the memory is dim. But I’m sure of it nonetheless.”

“Do you remember anything before that?”

“Like what?” Afsan clicked his teeth. “Like breaking out of my eggshell?”

“Yes. Do you remember that?”

“Oh, be serious, Mokleb.”

“I am. Do you remember that?”

“I—no. I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve seen eggs hatch before. In the very creche I was born in, for that matter, when I paid a return visit to Carno kilodays ago. So, yes, I have mental pictures of eggs cracking open in that creche, of little birthing horns piercing shells. But of my own hatching? No, no memories that I’m aware of.”

“And what about the culling?”

“The culling by the bloodpriest?” Afsan shuddered. “No. No, I do not remember that.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s something I wouldn’t be likely to forget.” Afsan seemed shaken. “I saw a culling once, you know. During that same trip back to Carno. I came through the wrong door into the creche. Most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Babies running across the sands, and a bloodpriest, his purple robe swirling around him, chasing them down, swallowing them whole, his gullet distending as each one slid into his stomach.” Afsan shook his head.

“Did you say purple robe?”

“Yes—that’s the color bloodpriests wear, at least in Arj’toolar, and I’d assume elsewhere, too.”

“A purple robe… swirling around him.”

“Yes, you know: swirling, flapping up.”

“Flapping. Like wings of cloth?”

“I suppose.”

“Like a purple wingfinger?”

Afsan pushed off his rock and got to his feet. “Good God.”

“You saw a bloodpriest once as an adult. And we’ve already established that you have a memory that’s at most from your eighth day of life. The culling of your own clutch of eggs would have taken place on your second, third, or, depending on the availability of the bloodpriest and on whether the alignment of the moons was appropriate for the sacrament, your fourth day of life. Are you sure you don’t remember it?”

“I tell you I do not.”

“Forgive me, good Afsan, but I suggest that you do remember it.”

Afsan spread his arms. “You can see my muzzle, Mokleb. I’m sure it’s as green as yours.”

She held up her hands. “I meant no insult. I don’t mean you can consciously remember it, but that subconsciously, perhaps, you do recall it.”

Afsan sounded exasperated. “Surely a memory that can’t be recalled consciously is no memory at all.”

“I’d have agreed with you before I began my studies, Afsan. But events from our past do affect our present actions, even if we can’t voluntarily summon up the memories.”

“That makes no sense,” said Afsan.

“Ah, but it does. If does indeed. Have you ever wondered why Quintaglios fight territorial battles to the death, when animals do not? Animals are content to engage in a bluffing display, or to quickly determine who is the strongest without drawing blood. Although we call ourselves civilized and refer to the animals as wild, it’s we who don’t stop when instinct tells us we should.

Instead, we fight with jaws and claws until one of us—even if it is a friend or creche-mate—is dead. Why is that? Why do we do that?”

“I admit that question has puzzled me.”

“And me as well—until now. Afsan, we’re traumatized.”

“Traumatized? The kind of injury that leaves one in shock?”

“Forgive me; I’m using the word in a slightly different way. I’m not referring to physical injury, but rather to emotional injury. Something that causes lasting damage to the mind.”

“Traumatized, you say? By what?”

Mokleb’s tail swished. “By the culling of the bloodpriests! Each of us was once part of a… a family, of eight siblings. Each of us had brothers and sisters. We hatched together, we spent a day or two or three becoming used to each other, impressing each other, bonding with each other. And then what happens? An adult—a male, the first we’ve ever seen—swoops in and chases us, and seven of the eight die, gulped down by the bloodpriest. We see it happen, see our brothers and sisters devoured. You said that, even as an adult, watching a culling was the most horrifying thing you’d ever seen. Imagine the impact, then, of that sight on a child! And imagine, too, the guilt that goes with the eventual realization that you lived only because you outran your seven siblings, that the price of your life was that they died horribly.”

“But I don’t recall my culling!”

“Not consciously, to be sure. But it’s there, Afsan, deep in your mind, beneath the surface, shaping your perceptions, your mental processes. You said, in that early therapy session, that there had been no one in Carno who shared your interests, no one to whom your mathematical skill might have been nothing special. No one… no one except, you said, and then you trailed off. No one except your dead brothers and sisters, Afsan! They would have been more like you than different; you learned that by seeing your own children. And you remember your brothers. You remember your sisters. All seven of them.”

“That’s impossible…”

“They are there, in every one of your fears and bad dreams. You said my interpretation of your fear of Saleed was nonsense. You were afraid that he would dispatch you—the very word you used—just as he had dispatched his six other previous apprentices, to make room for the eighth and final apprentice you were sure must come. You said that couldn’t possibly be related to the culling of a bloodpriest, who likewise judges youngsters, dispatching seven and only keeping the eighth. It couldn’t be related to that, you said, because you hadn’t learned about the culling until after you’d left Saleed. But you already knew about the culling. You’d seen it with your own eyes! You’d seen your seven brothers and sisters die, and it’s the memory of the seven of them that haunts your dreams. Fourteen arms clawing at your own—the arms of seven siblings who died so you could live. The voices calling out ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘we’—seven long-forgotten siblings, a part of you, yet separate, seven voices that no matter how hard you try, you can no longer hear. The birthing sands, soaked with blood—the blood of your dead brethren. And swooping over it all, a purple wingfinger, representing the ravenous bloodpriest!”

Afsan staggered back on his tail, his breathing ragged. “Maybe. Maybe.”

“It’s true, Afsan. Face it! What’s the one purely joyous thing your life, the one thing that gives you no trepidation, no fearl?”

“I don’t—”

“Your relationship with Novato, isn’t that right? The only thing that calms you, relaxes you. You told me yourself that you used to fall into peaceful sleep by imagining her face. Of course you chose that image! She’s the one thing in all your life that is untouched by the culling of the bloodpriests. Indeed, she represents for you the very opposite, for the egglings she and you jointly created were exempted from the culling. But everything else—from your old fear of being replaced as Saleed’s apprentice to your guilt over the reinstatement of the bloodpriests—is related to that long-buried memory of seeing your seven brothers and sisters devoured so that you could live.”

“I told you, I don’t feel guilt over the reinstatement of the bloodpriests.”

“Don’t you? Do you remember when your bad dreams began?”

“You’ve asked me that before, and I’ve told you.”

“Yes. Two kilodays before we began our therapy. During the time when the bloodpriests were in disrepute. During the time of mass dagamant. During the time when Dybo was being challenged by his brother.”

“Yes.”

“And what was your role in all that?”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at…”

“Yes, you do. You came up with the solution to the challenge against Dybo. And what was that solution?”

“That he and his siblings… oh, my God—that he and his siblings undergo a culling, that they be chased around a stadium by a giant blackdeath, just as the hatchlings in a normal clutch are chased and devoured by a bloodpriest.”

“And what was the result?”

“Six of Dybo’s siblings were devoured.”

“Devoured because of your suggestion.”

“No… no, it was just…” Afsan was shaking, his whole body convulsing. “No, it was the only way. Don’t you see? The only way—”

“You engineered a culling. You, in essence, became a blood-priest. You, whose low mind remembered the culling your own clutch had gone through, who later had stumbled onto another culling in progress, children swallowed whole in front of your eyes, you became a bloodpriest…”

“No…”

“And six died, on top of the seven siblings of yours who had already died so you could live.”

“There was no other answer…”

“Exactly! You lamented that yourself when we discussed your dagamant aboard the Dasheter. Living our lives should not require killing others of our own kind. ‘By the very Egg of God,’ you said, ‘it shouldn’t!’ ”

“That’s right! It shouldn’t.”

“But it does! Starting right in the creche: those of us who are alive today live because seven of our siblings died. And to solve the challenge to Dybo, you yourself, who hated the necessity of death so that others could live, you became a bloodpriest.”

“No. We used a blackdeath…”

“A blackdeath is a dumb brute. You engineered the replay of the culling. You were responsible. You were the bloodpriest.”

“No.”

“And now you must face that truth. Do you see it, Afsan? Do you see it?”

“I can’t see anything, Mokleb.”

“Because your mind refuses to see. Even with working eyes, your mind refuses to look upon what you have done, what you have become.”

Afsan’s voice was growing shrill. “I don’t believe you.”

“Think! Most people are traumatized once by a bloodpriest, when their own clutch is culled. You’ve been traumatized three times: first at your own culling, then when you stumbled into Carno’s creche as an adult, and finally again when you engineered the battle with the blackdeath—when you became that which you feared most. When you became a bloodpriest!”

“Shut up!” screamed Afsan.

“You became a bloodpriest, Afsan. In your own mind, that’s what you are.”

“Back off!” shouted Afsan, his claws coming out into the light. “Give me room!”

“A bloodpriest!”

“You’re invading my territory!”

“That’s the real trauma, Afsan—that’s what’s preventing you from seeing! The shame of what you became. In your own eyes you’d become evil, and now those eyes refuse to see.”

Afsan was bobbing from the waist. “Back off! Back off now!”

“You refuse to see!”

“Back off before I kill you.”

“The trauma!” shouted Mokleb.

“No!”

“Face the trauma!”

“I’ll kill you!” Afsan’s voice had changed to a low, guttural tone, an animal’s tone. “I’ll kill you!” he shouted again. And then, low. slurred, a voice from deep within his chest: “I’ll swallow you whole!”

He bobbed up and down in full dagamant, enraged, wild, a killing machine.

Mokleb turned from Afsan, hiding her eyes so that she would not be drawn into the madness. She ran as fast as she could from Rockscape. Behind her, Afsan continued to bob up and down, up and down, unable to sight anything to kill.