Foreigner

*5*

Word of the talking cure is spreading, apparently. I’ve received an imperial summons asking me to take on a new patient. I’d hoped that the subject was going to be Emperor Dy-Dybo himself. I thought he might be having emotional difficulties, stemming from the challenge to his leadership two kilodays ago. True, he’d acquitted himself well in the battle with the blackdeath, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were residual problems. After all, he did see six apprentice governors die in front of his eyes, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, he’d had to chew his own arms off.

But, no, my new patient isn’t quite that highly placed in the government. Still, Sal-Afsan should be an interesting case nonetheless. I’ve been reviewing what is generally known about him. Afsan is middle-aged, having hatched some thirty-four kilodays ago in Pack Carno, part of Arj’toolar province. Extremely gifted intellectually, he was summoned to Capital City at the age of thirteen to be the latest and, as it turned out, the last in a series of apprentices to Tak-Saleed, the master court astrologer.

Afsan has certainly lived an interesting life. He was aboard the sailing ship Dasheter when it made the first-ever circumnavigation of our world. He is credited with figuring out the true nature of the Face of God, and with discovering that our world is doomed to break up into a ring of rubble. Originally his idea was denounced as heresy, and the late Det-Yenalb, Master of the Faith back then, used a ceremonial dagger to poke out Afsan’s eyes in punishment. But an underground of Lubalite hunters declared that Afsan was ‘The One,’ the great male hunter that Lubal had prophesied as she lay dying. Afsan’s hunts—before he was blinded, of course—were indeed spectacular: he killed the largest thunderbeast ever seen, defeated a great water serpent, and even brought down a fangjaw.

Because of this, all eight of Afsan’s children by Wab-Novato were allowed to live. The bloodpriests, an order closely allied with the Lubalites, refused to devour any of The One’s egglings.

And now, apparently, this remarkable fellow is having nightmares.

I’ve long suspected that genius and madness were closely allied. Well, I’ll soon learn whether the individual pushing us to the stars is merely troubled, or, as some of his detractors have always claimed, completely insane…

Rockscape had lost some of its appeal. Oh, visitors to the Capital still trekked out to see the ninety-four granite boulders arranged in patterns, spread across a field of tall grasses by the edge of a cliff overlooking water. No one knew exactly when the boulders had been laid out in these designs, but it had been in a time before written history.

Still, Rockscape seemed insignificant compared to the ancient spaceship unearthed by Toroca in Fra’toolar. That giant ark was millions of kilodays old. Rockscape, even if it was the oldest known Quintaglio settlement, couldn’t compete with that.

Nonetheless, Afsan continued to visit Rockscape most days, using it as an open-air classroom for his students, and, when alone, as a restful, isolated spot for quiet contemplation.

Except, of course, he was rarely alone. His lizard, Cork, was usually with him, lying on its favorite Rockscape boulder, warming in the sun. Afsan also had a boulder he was partial to. He was straddling it now, tail hanging off the back, his sightless eyes turned toward the cliff’s distant edge. He could hear the pipping calls of wingfingers as they rose and fell on the air currents and the sounds of crickets and other insects in the grass. Although he was a good piece north of Capital City’s harbor, Afsan could also make out the identifying drums and bells of ships and occasionally the shouts of merchants arguing over what constituted a Sair trade for newly arrived goods. There were many smells, too, including a salt tinge to the wind and a rich variety of pollens and lowers.

“Permission to enter your territory?” called a voice Afsan didn’t recognize.

He turned to face where the words had come from. “Hahat dan,” he said. “Who’s there?”

The voice grew closer but the wind was blowing the wrong pay for Afsan to catch any whiff of pheromones, so he couldn’t tell whether his visitor was male or female.

“My name is Nav-Mokleb,” said the voice, now, judging by its volume, no more than fifteen paces away. “Late of Pack Loodo in Mar’toolar province.”

There was no need for Afsan to reciprocate with introductions, there were few blind people in Capital City, and his sash, half black and half green, the colors of the exodus, removed any possible confusion about which blind person he might be, even if one didn’t know that he frequented Rockscape. Still, with typical modesty, Afsan identified himself, then bowed concession and said. “I cast a shadow in your presence, Nav-Mokleb. Dybo said he would send you out to see me.” Dybo had referred to Mokleb is female, yet she was still downwind of Afsan, so he’d had no idea of that himself.

“It’s my pleasure to serve,” Mokleb said. Then, after a moment, I hear, ah, you are having difficulty sleeping.”

Afsan nodded.

“And I received word today from Dar-Mondark that your eyes have regenerated, but you still cannot see.”

“That, too, is true.” Afsan was quiet for a time. “Is there anything you can do for me?”

“No.” said Mokleb at once, “nothing at all.” She raised a hand to forestall Afsan’s objection, then clicked her teeth, realizing bat Afsan couldn’t see the gesture. “Don’t misunderstand me, though. The talking cure can indeed help you, but I do nothing. the problem is within you, and so is the cure. I just facilitate the process.”

Afsan scrunched his muzzle. “I don’t understand.”

“What do you know about psychology?”

“It’s the study of the mind,” said Afsan. “The ancient philosopher Dolgar is often thought of as its founder.”

“That’s right,” said Mokleb. “But Dolgar was way off base. She thought of the head and tail as being discrete repositories for opposing forces in our personalities—the artistic and sensual residing in the head, and the strong and insensate in the tail.”

“Yes, I remember that,” said Afsan.

“That’s an outdated view, of course. Oh, there are two opposing forces—the high mind and the low—but they reside in our brains, not various parts of our bodies. The high mind contains the conscious, the understood, the learned—that of which we are aware. The low mind consists of instincts and base impulses, of drives; it’s the province of the subconscious. The struggle between high and low mind produces the personality.”

“But surely the high mind is who we really are,” said Afsan.

“No. The high mind may represent who we want to be, or who the church says we should be, but we are just as much our low minds as we are our high; the low mind shapes our behavior, too.”

“But if the low mind is unknowable, then it’s as if it didn’t exist,” replied Afsan. “Dolgar’s contemporary, Keladax, said nothing is anything unless it is something. In other words, a concept without material reality is meaningless.”

“Ah, indeed,” said Mokleb. “Perhaps I’ve spoken imprecisely. The low mind is normally unknowable, but together we can explore it. Just as the far-seer allowed you to learn things about the heavenly bodies that previously had been secret, so my technique allows us to see that which is normally hidden. There, Sal-Afsan, if you are willing to undertake the journey, in the part of yourself that you don’t really know, the part that is suppressed and hidden, that’s where we’ll find the cause of your problems.”

It looked like the ark was melting.

The alien ship still jutted from the cliff face, but the rocks immediately beneath it were now the same blue as the ship itself, as if melting residue were flowing down the steep slope. Except the ship wasn’t melting at all—it still had sharp edges. And yet the blue stain on the cliff continued to grow.

Novato scrambled down the precipice like a green spider, using the web of climbing ropes attached to the cliff by metal spikes. She was overtop of plain downrock layers, but about fifteen paces below, the web crossed the lowest lobe of the amorphous blue. She continued down, tail hanging off her back, until she was over the blueness.

The coarse ropes of the web normally shifted slightly in the breeze, but here they seemed to actually be stuck in the blue material coating the cliff. Novato negotiated her way to where the blue stopped and the cliff face was exposed again. She ran her fingertips over the join between the rock and the blue material. She’d expected the blue stuff to have stood slightly proud of the cliff, the way rivulets of sap do on a tree, but it seemed, if anything, to be recessed. Still, that could make sense: the blue material must surely have been liquid before it hardened. It would naturally have flowed into the declivities in the wall of sandstone.

But if the material had been fluid before it had congealed—the melting-wax analogy still seemed appropriate—it was completely dry now. There was no tackiness to it at all, no sense that it had ever been anything but solid.

The stuff had to be leaking out of the ship, so the blue material surely only formed a thin veneer over the rock. Except for the orange dust that had marched outside, nothing had left the ship, and even if the material comprising the blue coating was only eggshell-thin, there still was much more of it than the total volume of all the dust grains.

Novato lowered herself farther down the climbing ropes, moving with difficulty over the part where the ropes had become mired in the blue material. She was at eye level with one of the spikes that anchored the ropes to the cliff face. But this spike was now completely surrounded by blue stuff. Proof, she thought, that the blueness had originally been liquid: it had flowed right around the spike, which was buried in the rock except for its flared head.

Here, at the spike hole, it should be easy to see how thick the blue coating was. Novato was wearing a tool belt, held up by her tail. She used the splayed end of a hammer to grab the spike’s crown. She bent her legs up and planted her feet flat against the vertical cliff face, then used the strength of flexing her knees to lever the hammer.

It took several yanks, then suddenly the spike popped free, Novato flying away from the cliff like a rappeller. She dropped her hammer and the spike, and they skittered down to the beach far below. The climbing web, no longer anchored by the spike, billowed away from the cliff. Novato held on tightly, twisting and turning with the ropes. At last she regained control and maneuvered over to the spike hole. It was hard to get a good view inside; whenever she brought her face close, the shadow of her head put the hole in darkness. But at last she managed it.

It was blue all the way down.

It was just barely possible that the spike had been loose enough in its hole to allow the liquid blueness to trickle in and harden there, but in a flash of insight Novato realized that that was not what had happened at all. She would confirm it later by digging into the sandstone right at the edge of the blueness, but even now she knew what was going on.

The blueness wasn’t a stain, wasn’t a congealed liquid that had dripped off the spaceship.

No, the blueness was the cliff itself. Somehow the entire cliff face was slowly turning into the same incredibly strong material from which the ancient spaceship was made.

By the time Toroca and Babnol returned to the Dasheter, the body of the one Other that Keenir and Spalton had brought back had already been laid out on Toroca’s dissection table. During the various voyages of the Geological Survey, Toroca had collected many biological specimens, and in this room—a cabin converted to a laboratory—he often dissected animals. It was here that he’d examined the body of a diver, the Antarctic swimming creature built on the wingfinger body plan that had first suggested to him the idea of evolution.

In the center of the room was a worktable, its top made of two wide wooden boards that gently sloped toward each other. The boards didn’t join in the middle, though. Rather, there was a small gap to allow body fluids to drain into a ceramic trough underneath.

Toroca had intended to let each person have a look at the body, this likely being their one chance to see an Other up close. He was surprised at the vehemence of the response, though. Individuals were emerging from his lab with claws extended, and one—old Biltog, the Dasheter’s longest-serving mate—came out with a distinct bobbing motion to his steps. Over the protests of those who hadn’t yet seen the corpse, Toroca barred further access to the room. Anything that aroused even a hint of territoriality could not be permitted. Toroca had always been haunted by the story of the Galadoreter, the ill-fated vessel that had blown back to shore near Parnood, its decks littered with the rotting corpses of its crew, many of them still locked in the death struggles that had killed them all.

It was well into the evening, but this was even-night, the night that Toroca and half the crew were supposed to be awake while the others slept—another precaution against triggering the territorial reflex—so he decided to begin his dissection by lamplight.

The Other’s shoulder bones and several of its vertebrae had already been exposed by Keenir’s jaws. Toroca picked up a scalpel, but hesitated before making an incision. He’d dissected hundreds of animals before but although he’d studied Quintaglio anatomy, he’d never carved into the body of a person. And even though its skin was yellow instead of green, this clearly had been a person; the copper jewelry it wore reflected the flickering lamplight.

When a Quintaglio died, a series of rites were performed, including a service at the Hall of Worship, five days of mourning, and the laying of the body at a prescribed funereal site so that it could be reclaimed by nature.

But this Other was being denied whatever customs his people had concerning death. Indeed, assuming they’d made good their escape, the Others wouldn’t even be sure for some time that this one was dead, and only eventually would conclude that his disappearance must be proof of his demise.

Toroca didn’t feel right about treating this body as a mere specimen. He put his scalpel down and made a brief trip to his cabin to fetch his book of Lubalite prayer. Finding an appropriate passage, he spoke softly over the body:

“I mourn the death even of one unknown, for the chance to make that stranger a friend has come and passed. In heaven perhaps our paths will cross, and although we were not acquainted in life, perhaps there we will hunt side by side. Your journey will be a safe one, stranger, for we are both formed from the hands of God.”

Toroca was silent for a moment afterward, then picked up his scalpel and went to work.

The Other’s skeleton was similar to a Quintaglio’s. Its arm articulated with its shoulder the same way a Quintaglio’s did, and the vertebrae had similar processes on the superior surface for anchoring the back muscles. Toroca rolled the body on its side and carved into the upper chest. Most carnivorous reptiles had two types of ribs: large ones projecting off the vertebrae and a secondary set along the belly, attached to the back ribs by ligaments. The Other had such chest riblets; indeed, by pressing his fingers into the skin, Toroca was able to count the same number of vertebrae, back ribs, and chest ribs as one would find in a Quintaglio.

Before examining the lower body, Toroca spent some time on the head. Here, there were some subtle differences in structure. The neck muscles weren’t as strong as in a Quintaglio. That made sense, since the jaws were much less pronounced, meaning the neck had a smaller weight to support. And the eyes had a scleral ring of bone, something that blackdeaths and other carnivorous reptiles had, but Quintaglios lacked. Also, the Other’s snout had several hornlets and bony knobs, making it look more like a blackdeath’s head than the smooth head of a Quintaglio.

Toroca repositioned the corpse so that he could work on the lower abdomen. The riblets would have made a simple ventral incision difficult, but, as in Quintaglios, there was a gap between the front and rear rib sets, covered only with skin, muscle, and ligaments. Toroca made a long vertical slice there, and then intersected it with a deep horizontal cut. He peeled back the four resulting flaps of skin, exposing the belly cavity.

There was something hard and blue-green inside.

A gizzard stone? Surely not in a carnivore! And surely not so big!

And then he realized what it was. In shape and size it was just like those of a Quintaglio, but the odd color had prevented Toroca from immediately recognizing it.

An egg.

An unlaid, unhatched egg.

But this Other had appeared to be male; it had a dewlap sack. Had it been eating eggs?

Toroca tilted the creature onto its side and examined the flaps covering the genitals. No doubt—this was a female. Perhaps both sexes had dewlaps. Amazing.

He gently repositioned the corpse and reached into the opening he’d made in its belly. His hands were slick with bodily fluids so he was careful not to lose his grip as he pulled out the egg. Along its major axis, the orb was just a bit longer than Toroca’s handspan.

There was another egg behind it.

Toroca carefully set the first egg on the floor, lest the rocking of the ship knock it from his dissecting table. He got the second one out as well.

There was a third egg behind the second. He removed that one, too. Behind it were shards of a fourth egg, and an interior pocket smeared with yellow egg-fluid: that egg had been smashed inside the body, probably when Keenir had propelled the Other to the ground.

There were no signs of additional eggs.

Quintaglios normally laid clutches of eight. Assuming this Other wasn’t anomalous, these people only had four eggs to a clutch.

The three intact eggs were fully formed, with tough, soft shells, as if they’d been ready to be laid. Indeed, Toroca wondered whether the Other they’d encountered had been walking the beach looking for a suitable spot to deposit her eggs. If that was the case, then the eggs were probably still alive. He’d heard stories of eggs being rescued from the body of a dying female.

Toroca hurried off to find leather blankets to wrap the eggs in.