Watchstar Read online

“Of course not. We don't live there, we live above the clouds.”

  She said, “You cannot,” and turned to leave him.

  “We do, we live there, that is my home.”

  She turned her head and saw Reiho lift his arm and point his finger. She looked up to where he was pointing.

  He was pointing at the comet.

  4

  Daiya awoke at dawn. The clearing was still clothed in shadows, but the sky was blue. Reiho was already up, standing in front of his vehicle. He held a small flat metallic object in his hand, passing it over the surface of the craft.

  She stood up and watched him, then turned to stir the embers of her fire. She scattered the burnt, blackened wood and covered it with dirt.

  She walked over to the boy. He stopped what he was doing and nodded at her. “Can you repair this thing?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, I have tools, and this shuttle can repair much of the damage itself, it's already doing so. Then I'll do what it cannot, and check things afterward.”

  She noticed that his words were more fluent today, though still heavily accented, and recalled that he had said something about learning her speech while asleep. “Then you will go,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you will not come back.”

  “I am not supposed to be here now.”

  She touched his mind. Again his form changed, becoming cylindrical and metallic. She sensed a wish: he wanted to return to Earth. They were both infected with curiosity.—You must not come back—she thought, pushing the words at him, but of course he could not read them.

  “There is something I must ask you,” she said, withdrawing her mind and seeing only the boy's body now. “It will sound strange to you, it's strange to me. When I look at you with my eyes, I see one thing, but when I sense you with my mind, there is something else where you stand.”

  Reiho drew his brows together. “What do you mean?”

  “Right now, I see a boy of flesh and bone. That's what my eyes see. When I reach out with my mind, I see an object, a thing like a machine, a body not of flesh but of metal, a thing which should not have life. That is how I first saw you.”

  The boy was silent.

  “Why do I see that?”

  “I'm not sure.” He peered at her closely. “Maybe it is because part of me isn't flesh. We are...” and he said a word she did not know.

  “Say that again, explain it,” she interrupted.

  “Part of us is not flesh and bone. My skin, for example, it is like skin, but it is actually made of a stronger substance.” He pulled at his arm with his fingers. “My muscles are supplemented by electrodes, my heart has been made stronger by artificial valves, even my eyes are shielded by a thin lens to protect them. I am also wearing a lifesuit to protect my body here.” He paused. “Perhaps that's why you saw me as you did. We are born as flesh and blood, but as we grow, we add these things to ourselves so that our bodies can live longer and survive in regions where otherwise we could not. Our implants are the last thing we acquire, just before we are ready to become adults.” He stretched out his hand to her. “But you can see that I'm still human in spite of it. We modify our humanness, we do not lose it. We originally came from Earth also, we're not so different really.”

  Speechless and sick with horror, Daiya stepped back, away from Reiho, away from the monster. From Earth, he had said: cast out was the way he should have put it. She trembled, feeling the sweat on her face and under her arms; the back of her neck prickled. Reiho was separate from other minds, separated from Earth, apart from Nature; he had mutilated his body in his separateness.

  He moved toward her and she threw up her hands, warding him off. “I should never have talked to you,” she cried. His face blurred. She blinked, suppressing her tears. Despair gripped her as she saw her world torn apart by these beings, these creatures who had been cast out and should have died.

  “I mean no harm, Daiya,” he said, using her name for the first time.

  She covered her face, wishing she had never told it to him. She moaned, trying to control herself, feeling that even the ordeal could not be as bad as this. She wanted to pull at the Net, call others, but she was afraid to infect them with this horror, this solitary blasphemer. She could not do it; better to bear it alone for the sake of the village.

  She felt his smooth dry hand on her arm. She pushed it away violently, then pinned his arms to his sides with her mind, holding him there. He struggled, then relaxed, staring at her with his dark eyes.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “You must leave, and you must never come back, you nor anyone else of your kind. Let me tell you something you had better know. Sometimes, in my village, a child is born with a mind like yours, a separate mind which can't ever master mindcrafts or have mental abilities, a mind which is born without them. Such children have to die so that they do not destroy us with their isolation. Do you understand?”

  She saw him swallow and knew he understood. She released his arms and he moved closer to his craft. “If you or anyone of your kind returns, we shall kill you, too. If you come back, I'll kill you myself. Already you have built a wall between me and my village, but I'll tear it down and you'll never do it again. If you come back, I'll kill you.”

  He slumped against the side of the vehicle. She touched his mind, wishing that she could impress him mentally with her will. She felt his resistance. He had heard her words, and understood them, but he did not feel their force. His thoughts of death were dreamlike; he did not seem to connect the idea to himself. He was still mired in his curiosity.

  She readied her mind to crush him, but could not do it. She had spoken to him for too long, had touched too many of his feelings. She could not strike. She thought: God, help me. It is in your hands now.

  She spun around and hurried quickly to the hillside, carelessly thrashing her way through the bushes, and began to climb the hill. She stopped near a tree and looked back.

  Reiho was still standing down below, watching her, the corners of his mouth turned down. She turned away and clambered up the hill.

  Daiya lay on the ground by the creek, listening to the water gurgle as it rippled over rocks. The fire near her crackled, as if defying the water. She twisted her body, her mind and muscles tired from the long day of exercises and training, of trying to forget what had happened.

  Unable to sleep, she found herself staring up at the sky, at the comet Reiho called his home. It was a fire burning in the heavens, dividing the night with its long tail. She thought of Reiho dwelling in the fire with his monstrous body.

  She wondered again if she should have killed the boy. But maybe she had done the right thing by sparing him. She had practiced restraint, as she should before an ordeal. He had been able to contact another on his world; if he had done that before dying, he might only have brought others seeking revenge to Earth, making things even worse. He would go, and that would be the end of it; he had said he was not supposed to be here anyway. She tried to forget that she had, for a while at least, treated the thing as a person. Even now, she found herself thinking of him as a boy, as a human being, though he was not that, he could not be that. The thought tormented her. The feeling and sympathy he had engendered were his most dangerous weapons. They had saved his life.

  She turned on her side and slipped her hands under her head. She tried to calm her mind, wondering how she could face her ordeal, worrying about how she could return to the village, infected by Reiho as she was. She could not think of that now, she had to sleep. She closed her eyes and relaxed her muscles, pushing herself into darkness and oblivion.

  Daiya stood at the top of the hill, gazing down at the clearing where the boy had been. The creature and his craft were gone. A gust of wind ruffled the small bushes in the clearing. Soon even the marks of the craft's runners would disappear from the ground.

  She thought: I must put it out of my mind, erase it. She shivered as she imagined her grandfather Cerwen peering into her mind and seeing the isolated sp
ot where Reiho was stored.

  Weary with fear and hunger, she sat down, resting her head on her knees. The sun warmed her back, relieving the stiffness in her shoulders. She felt twinges of curiosity. Why would Reiho and his people want to do such unnatural things to their bodies? How could they possibly live in a comet, which must be like living in the middle of a fire? What did the symbols in his book tell him? How did his craft fly through the air with no mind to hold it aloft? There were too many questions; every time she thought about him, there were questions, each one another step away from her people, away from the Merged One, another step toward the cold, black deep abyss of isolation.

  There was a mental discipline which could help her, but she did not know if she had the ability to make it work. It was a discipline used only in rare cases, when a person had suffered so grievously that only temporary forgetfulness could heal the hurt. She could take her memory back to the time when she had first seen Reiho's craft, then, carefully, erase every trace of him. The memories would return if she saw Reiho or anything that reminded her of him, but that could not happen; he was not coming back. The comet would seem only what it had been before, a mysterious omen.

  She had to try it; she had no choice. Her parents might not see her agitation as anything other than a normal disturbance for someone of her age, but Cerwen, or any of the Merging Ones, would notice it. If they caught even a glimpse of what she knew now, they would enter her mind to grasp the rest, and then she would be lost. She did not know what they would do to her after that. It might even be worse than facing the ordeal, where she could at least hope to live and become an adult member of her community.

  She closed her eyes. For a moment, she was frightened; doing this thing alone, without the aid of more experienced people, might be dangerous. She risked damaging herself without knowing if it was possible to hide such a bizarre event from others indefinitely. But it was that, she thought bitterly, or not returning at all, and even if she stayed away, the Net would pull at her sooner or later.

  She concentrated, returning to the past:

  the object fell from the sky, hovering for a moment over the hills

  a tiny light glowed among dark clouds, pulsing

  a metal cylinder waved its limbs over a blurred human face

  she touched his mind, he did not sense her

  she sat before the boy named Reiho, asking

  she peered at scratches in lines black against soft light

  she seized him and shot him toward the craft

  he was mutilated, mated with machines

  I'll kill you I'll kill you myself

  The images, clear and frozen, passed through her. She blotted out each one, pushing it below her consciousness.

  Daiya opened her eyes. It was growing dark; the sky was violet. She tried to stretch her legs, and groaned with the pain. She stumbled to her feet, her arms aching. Her legs were filled with sand. She stomped on the ground and flexed her muscles, trying to restore her circulation. Her heart fluttered; she slowed it to a steady beat.

  She gazed at the clearing below. There were two long lines, faint, half-covered by dirt, on the ground. She wondered what they were. She had come up on this hill but she could not remember why. She had been training, that must be it, so hard at work she had not noticed the time. She felt weak. She wobbled unsteadily on her legs, feeling as though she had not eaten for two or three days, maybe longer. But she had just come from the village the day before. She shook her head. Had she been training so hard she had lost track of time?

  As she looked at the clearing, a cold hand seemed to grip her. There was a dark, gaping, empty space inside her, making her numb. The shadows cast by the nearby trees were malignant, black cylinders with distorted limbs. It would soon be night; she would see the comet then, that mysterious omen with an obscure meaning. She wondered why she had thought of it now.

  She was trembling. Perhaps she was ill. She lifted a hand to her face; her forehead was dotted with sweat. She turned away and began to climb back down the hill.

  Daiya strode along the ground, the foothills to her right, her shadow made squat and fat by the sun overhead. Her legs seemed to move almost by themselves, propelled by her will. She was growing weaker, plagued by the dark feeling that had been hanging over her for the past two days, a feeling she could not dispel. Her mind seemed divided; there was a blank spot in it, a gap in continuity. She could recall only three days of training, though her body felt as though she had been without food for at least five or six days.

  Ahead, she saw a slender willow standing alone on the grassy plain. She went over to it and sat down. Dappled shadows danced on her tunic as a breeze ruffled the tree limbs above her. Even at a slow pace, she would be home by evening.

  As she thought of the village, her head sank. She was numb and empty. She tried to push the feelings away; she was tired and hungry, that was all it was. The black emptiness swelled inside her, darkening the day. The village seemed impossibly distant, beyond her reach, as if a high wall separated her from it.

  Her back pressed against the bark of the tree. She thought of rising, taking a sip of the water she had left, and going on to her home. Her arms were stiff, as heavy as granite; she could not move them. She thought of her ordeal and tried to see herself coming out of the desert, making her way back over the mountains to her home, alive, ready to celebrate and begin her life with Harel. The vision was unreal, without conviction. I shall die, she thought, I may die even before I leave the village again, I'm not ready, there's something wrong. Those notions had an air of reality, though she was not quite sure why she thought she would die before leaving the village.

  She sat, her will and body paralyzed. Something was holding her back from the village. The numbness was mingled with despair. She saw herself lying under the tree, her lifeless body an empty shell. That would solve everything, she thought, wondering exactly what it would solve.

  She stared at the waving grasses on the plain, surprised at how sharply she saw them, each tall blade distinct, yet rippling with the others, some of them a dark green, others paler, a few brown at the edges. She felt the uneven bark of the tree through her tunic. She lay down under the willow and began to slow her heart, curious about what it was like to die, hoping abstractedly that she would catch at least a glimpse of an answer before she joined the Merged One, or passed into nothingness. The threads of the Net were more tenuous; when they broke, the Merging Selves would know someone was gone, even her parents might sense it. It would be too late by then.

  She slowed her breathing and walled in her mind. As her heartbeat and breathing ceased, her mind would be pushed through that wall to ... what? She wondered how long she would be mourned. They would all be better off without her, even Harel. She pushed her mind under, waiting for her heart to stop, knowing she would slip into unconsciousness before it did, saving her from any last regrets. It would take one hour, maybe two, for her heart to stop, for her lungs to cease nourishing her brain with oxygen. She was calm. She drifted, sinking beneath the waters of a black tide.

  Light blazed before her eyes. She struggled, her mind seized by someone else. She gasped and choked. She threw out her arms; one hit something hard and wooden, the other struck warm muscle and skin. She sucked in air and began to cough; then she was shivering. Someone was rubbing her arms. She blinked, wondering wildly for a moment if she was still alive. The strong arms held her. A head loomed over her, framed by sun-reddened auburn hair. An arm was under her back, lifting her gently, propping her against the tree. She squinted, trying to focus. Her face was wet.

  —Harel—she thought.

  He sat next to her, rubbing her wrists. He pressed his ear against her chest, as if listening to her heart.—You could have died—his mind murmured.

  She kept her mind still.

  —Why—he seemed to cry at her.—Daiya, what's wrong, what happened—

  She shook her head, not knowing what to tell him. He put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned
against him, hiding her face in his pale blue shirt. She suddenly realized he was searching her mind.

  —No—she thought apprehensively, and felt him withdraw. She threw up her wall, wondering as she did so if she could tell Harel about ... what? What could she tell him? For a moment, she held an image of an almond-eyed face, alien and threatening; then it was gone.

  —You're so unhappy—Harel thought.—I see it, I feel it. Is it the ordeal, Daiya, is that what frightens you? What is it?—He held her tightly, as if afraid she would escape him.—What I felt inside you—he went on,—it was like being inside an isolate, it scared me, I don't understand it. I love you, you can't die—

  Even behind her wall, Daiya could sense Harel's agitation. She sighed. How could she expect him to understand something as alien to him as despair? She twisted around so she could see his face. His large blue eyes were watery; his long thick lashes were wet.

  She had to reach out to him, soothe him. Her jaw tightened; her lips were pressed against her teeth. She lifted a hand and touched his thick hair. She had to calm him.—It's only fatigue—she thought.—Exhaustion, and no food, and all those days alone, by the time I came here, I could barely move, and then I just couldn't go on, I didn't want to go on—

  She realized he was accepting her explanation. It was understandable, logical. It did not demand his acceptance of the notion that there were things so dark, so bleak, that they could break a person. She was tired and had succumbed; she would rest and she would be better. It was true, in a way. Now that she had failed at dying, she thought bitterly, she had to survive.

  —Thank God I found you—Harel was thinking.—I felt something, it seemed like another mind, but so weak I thought it was one of the children, someone who wandered away from the village and got lost. So I looked, and found you here—He paused.—Maybe it was the Merged One who brought me here, maybe it's a sign. We'll go through our ordeal and we'll have our home—His mind bristled with certainty, tickling hers.