[partim] Blake.

May 12

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He said it with a finality that debarred any further conversation.

L & L stuff is protected, so it wouldn’t have been online, and he probably didn’t make a backup either, for the same reason.

There probably wouldn’t be any more memory of Darker Island, except in Blake’s head and maybe some obscure corner of Blantyre, wherever that is.

“Are you going to be all right?” I said.

He leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes again.

“Emmett,” he said, “What do we have power over in this world?”

“What, absolute power?”

“Absolute power.”

“Well… nothing, I guess.”

“Nothing,” he affirmed. “Actually… some of those biscuits.” This last bit to the waiter, who’d found us and was hovering.

“‘Biscuits’?” the waiter repeated incredulously.

“Them fancy biscuits like what he has.” Blake pointed to the man who’d wanted to download his sister, who had a plate of faving viennois.

I tried to hide behind my menu.

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[partim] Scott the Alchemist 4.

May 10

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M/M (hyper) below cut… »

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[partim] Mori.

May 10

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The golem carried me through the twisty sublunar passages for a good deal longer than I might have liked; pain coursed through my foot each time the golem took a step—and golems are usually pretty careful about the things they carry, so I knew at this point I was in pretty bad shape.

Munk carried me through enough rooms, intersections, halls, and tunnels, each one unnervingly like so many before it, that I began to doubt the golem’s sense of direction. Surely they weren’t absolutely unerring? I tried to think back and recall whether I’d heard any stories about golems getting lost—no. But surely it’d look just like this—the unthinking automaton trudging onward forever in circles, never hesitating at any fork, even when it should be obvious it was retreading its own steps….

I was scared, and I didn’t want to say anything to the golem for fear he might turn around and take off in another direction, spending still more hours in the unending labyrinth.

Golem, golem, turning right,
In the caverns of the night—
What eternal passageways
Could lead us from this fearful maze?

I probably would have been able to handle this better if the whole place wasn’t so empty.

Just about the time I was considering to tell Munk to put me down and do something productive, like start digging a tunnel to the surface with his bare hands—he turned a corner and stopped.

We faced a short hallway, at the end of which was a kelvin guarding a red door.

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[scrap] Scott.

May 3

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Found this scrap in an old black notebook—don’t think I’ve posted it anywhere before. Might just come into the story later.

On my third week studying body-modification formulas, I knew I was getting close to my second breakthrough. The first one was a warmup, really; just a basic modification of a regeneration potion to grow extra body parts. It takes a couple days to get used to an extra pair of arms, but once you do get the hang of it, working in the lab is so much easier.

I made a couple of other, intimate, changes as well, which I figured Toby would like. But this second project was for Toby himself.

I wanted to ask him to live with me.

But he’s human.

Humans don’t live in this world.

Traditional transformation formulas are kind of random. You can reliably change, say, into a fox, but it won’t be any fox in particular: fur and eye color, height and weight all may vary. Normally this is a feature—several people can use the same potion and not look like a clone army—but I wanted to make Toby an identity for this world, without taking umpteen different shapechanging drinks, which wouldn’t be healthy anyway.

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[scrap] Shine.

Apr 6

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Another old scrap from an old notebook—

Thunder woke me up in the middle of the night, and Jan had already gone.  I rolled up my pack, figuring I’d get moving before the rain hit.  The donut shop at the edge of the park was open all night and usually quiet.

In fact there was nobody there but Jeff behind the counter.  He shaded his eyes as I came in—even though I was half asleep, my light was the brightest in the place.

“Hey Shine,” he said, reaching under the counter.  “The usual?”

“Yeah,” I said, taking my seat facing the wall.  He brought me a tray with a dozen jelly donuts.

It started raining.

“You know, tiger,” he said, sitting across from me.  “I’m sure you’d have a place of your own by now if you eased up on the food a bit.”

“Man,” I said, “I’ve told ya, you have no idea what it’s like when this light burns down.”

I tore into the donuts.

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[scrap] Kohath.

Apr 6

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Old scrap, from old notebook—

I sat on the curb with Loukas, waiting for the rain to pass.  The other wolf twirled the umbrella he held and talked… or rambled, rather, in his way.  I didn’t bother to listen–mainly he just goes on to hear himself speak.

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[partim] Piñata.

Mar 31

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The coughing shook me harder and I kept spitting up confetti for about four or five minutes before I ran dry.

The fit stopped shortly after, and I sank to hands and knees, exhausted.

I didn’t want to move.

I knew I had to.

And then, suddenly, I couldn’t.

The stiffness I thought was cold had permeated me, and now my joints wouldn’t respond.

A breeze picked up and I felt—or rather, I heard it rustle through my fur.

That’s not right.

I heard my hide flapping as the wind went past.

The wind started pushing me back. It wasn’t blowing that hard, was it?

My arms and legs scraped across the ground as I drifted across the sidewalk.

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[partim] Mori.

Mar 31

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I sort of lay there a while, trying to get over the pain in my foot. Munk came over and stood over me.

“All right, I think I’m not going to be able to walk any further from here,” I said.

The golem picked me up and started walking towards the gate of the arena. I didn’t know where exactly he had in mind to take me, but golems don’t get lost, so I trusted and shut my eyes to think about the pain.

After about five seconds I realized this was not the best use of my time. “You wouldn’t have anything for a broken foot?”

Munk turned around.

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[scrap] Taaq.

Mar 18

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It wasn’t long after I’d gotten up that the message came through—that annoying, steady, high-pitched beep in my head was probably one of the things I hate most about the network these days.

When I was younger, I’d learned that our great-grandparents didn’t have the network in their heads—it was something the Lunars and the Martians brought in from off-world. Back then, I still thought being connected to planets and planets full of aliens and strange sights was a great thing; these times I’d gladly give it up, but I have an obligation now.

The message was a reminder of that obligation. It wasn’t another little human from Earth wanting me interviewed for a school paper—it was an update from the diarists.

Usually it was just a reminder they were still working: “168 hours recorded, ready to process.”

Always “Ready to process.” They’d said I wouldn’t see much in the way of finished product from them during my lifetime—mostly it takes a finished life to tell the big picture, and recording me and my thoughts all the time takes a lot of time to work through anyway.

I turned out my lamp and rolled over on my back to watch what the alien diarists had put together. Off-worlders always just close their eyes to read the network, but the sky of Frontier is a dark enough background for me.

What they’d sent was basically a preface—for all the people who don’t know about Frontier, it was kind of a history or introduction to the world. But of course since it was for off-worlders, it started with the colonization of our world. I’d hoped there’d be more icebear history to survive—but I knew there wouldn’t be, not really. When I’d sat in the stifling hot classrooms in my youth, they’d not had anything before themselves. My mother’d taught me what she could, but she didn’t have anything past her own grandparents. Before that, I guess, we all lived solitary lives on the ocean.

Hah, the classrooms! I hadn’t thought about those in ages. The off-worlders all came, or at least originated, from Earth, a warmer and a brighter world. I don’t think any of them could actually survive on Frontier without all those superheated buildings of theirs, and the bulky clothing—I had to wear some of that, even in the heat—

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Kaido no Yume XI

Mar 7

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This is the old, old, old bit of story I mentioned earlier. Kaido no Yume was a story I started about a decade ago but which never saw completion. I found this chapter—which is the next after what I’d written so far—in one of my old notebooks. I believe the only other chapter written so far is the ending, and I don’t know where that is. Forgive the writing; I’d number this among my juvenilia—besides the style, some of the facts contradict later continuity. Hopefully the second draft, whenever I get around to it, will fix everything up.

After their audience, Kohath and the tigers went out again through the long tunnels, which were no longer dark now but glowed with an eerie, reflective radiance.

When they came out again into the moonlight, Kohath saw it was not the walls that were lit, but that they themselves were glowing with a subtle radiance.

Nyaiya cried out, “Ai, wuafo, your fur shines with rainbows!”

Kohath looked over himself. Sure enough, his pale blue fur divided the light that shone through it, surrounding him with a spectral aura. Nyaiya insisted on keeping a piece of it. — “The light will fade from us, but we can preserve a little” — so he let her cut a few strands of fur from his arm with a sharp claw.

“Before we leave this place,” Maro said, “it is customary to sing. Will you honor us?”

Kohath looked up at the moon, enormous in the sky, and suddenly felt homesick again. Somewhere, terribly distant, his home on a moon much like that was empty. He found he had already begun singing:

“My paws ache for the earth of my homeland,
and to walk on the roads I once knew,
So much time I have spent from my homeland,
and the ones that I love.  Haru—”

The song had a slow beat, which the tigers found and clapped to.

“My nose thirsts for the smell of my homeland…”

The kits joined in, and Kohath realized the music was not being translated for them, as they sang nonsense happily with the tune, and the gusto with which they went for the ending howl. Nevertheless, he went on through the final verse—

“My tail waves for the friends of my homeland,
and my brave brothers, fallen but true,
I’ll remember the love of my homeland,
For as long as I’m traveling, haru—”

On the final howl, hundreds of fireflies rose from the forest beneath them. Maro gathered up the kino cloth, he and Nyaiya both kissed Kohath, and they all went down the hill and back home.

 

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