Most of all, such children become grateful for the many gifts of existence that others take for granted. I understand a little of how Davidge’s students become complete beings, able to become successful at whatever they choose to do, even if that choice is to become a meditative monk living in isolation and deprivation on Earth.
What then for Yazi Ro, one who can find dark on a star’s burning surface? If I do not have it and cannot take it, I do without and use this to make my dark darker still. When I made or repaired something with which to prolong my existence on Amadeen, I was not grateful or congratulatory for the means of survival. Instead I cursed the circumstances that made such survival necessary.
I look at the boots Haesni made. The tops are made of the same snakeskin, double layered and filled with seed down. The soles are made from many layers of snakeskin adhering to each other, glued together with some substance harvested from the land or sea. The residue from the smoke begins to affect my fingers, the skin burning. The back of my throat burns, as well.
I leave the boots on Haesni’s bed and walk toward the entrance to listen to the sea. The night brings no new storms, but the winds are still strong. At the door, my arms wrapped about me against the cold, Davidge’s first words to me make me smile.
I close the door, turn to look at the sea, and, staying well back from the edge, let the winds wash my face. For a moment I am caught in my thoughts, envisioning myself part of this harmony of being and universe wrought by an accident of war. As I am about to go back in the cave to retrieve my coat, far out over the sea I notice a point of light. Except for the overcast, I would think it a star. It grows brighter and brighter until I am driven back to my senses and run. Four, five steps and I jump for the path to the top of the cliff for cover as a shrieking roar races behind me followed by an erupting inferno that flings me against the rocks.
Half conscious, my arm covering my face, I turn to see a column of flames explode from the cave’s entrance. First red and orange, it rapidly becomes blue-white, the roar of it deafening. Ice, rocks, and frozen clods of dirt fall about me and I see another column of fire shoot from the top of the cliff toward the sky. Almost as soon as it comes to life, it dies. The stream of flame from the entrance weakens and sputters out, leaving an orange glow from the super-heated rock.
There is a sound behind me and I see Davidge and Kita in the rocks above sliding down the path. When he reaches me, Davidge goes down on one knee and studies my face by the remaining glow of the rock. His left cheek is scratched and a cut above his left eye is bleeding freely. Kita slides to a stop beside him. She appears unharmed but frightened. Satisfied with my state of health, Davidge slumps back and sits beside me. "I guess someone finally figured out how to set off that Thermex."
I look out to the sea, amazed that I am still alive. I wonder how much longer a reasonable person could expect this condition to continue.
TWENTY-TWO
Instead of slowing us down, the rocket attack speeds things up. Placing Kita in charge of the Timan investigation, Sanda removes itself from the expedition to head up the search for the missile-launching aircraft on Friendship, while that night the rest of us make for the First Colony Port and the Aeolus, ahead of schedule.
As we are secured in our suspension pods, the first of The Talman stories begins. I see the others, clad in their skintight blue vapor suits entering their pods. I let my gaze linger a moment on Estone Falna, then tear it away to watch the crew check seals and read monitors. Captain Eli Moss looks upon everything with contempt and mistrust, which to my mind makes him someone hard to trust. As Davidge’s agent, Ty purchases what trust there is by paying Moss half in advance. Why this arrangement satisfies the others I cannot say. Loyalty that is purchased is not loyalty.
When I bring the subject up to Davidge, he tells me not to worry about it and to make certain I have my pod programmed with The Talman. As the steward, the one nicknamed Reaper, punches in the program, he makes comments about holy joes, salvation, and the illusion of illusion.
Once in the slot, as our pilot put it, the jump behind us, the pods are locked and the cooling fields engaged. The fluid entering my body through the needle in my leg is supposed to protect me from the cold, but I begin feeling the cold and, after one last look at Falna, I remember just in time to close my eyes.
The program is already running and the distraction of the suspension process causes me to lose track. I think for the start and it begins to play from the beginning.
"Sindie was the world.
"And the world was said to be made by Aakva, the God of the Day Light…"
Relaxed, focused, without resistance, I absorb the intellectual, philosophical, political, and spiritual saga of my species.
Rhada and the Laws of Aakva.
Daultha, Aakva’s lesson of no laws, and the division of the Sindie.
Uhe, its new law of war, and the unification of the Sindie.
Shizumaat and the discovery of universe and talma.
The three books of Mistaan who invented writing and recorded the life and words of Shizumaat and Vehya as well as its own.
Ioa and the founding of the first Talman Kovah.
Kulubansu, who destroyed the Talman Kovah, and Lurvanna, who hid The Talman in the memories of its students.
Aydan who fought in the War of Ages and made war a science to achieve peace.
Tochalla and the rebuilding of the Talman Kovah.
Cohneret who did for love what Aydan did for war.
Maltak Di who unified the problem-solving sciences into talma, the science of making rules to step outside of rules. Faldaam, Zineru and its truths, and there is the Koda Siayvida and Ro, the Ovjetah who took talma and applied it to crime and law. And now I understand what Davidge meant when he handed Zammis a rock and asked it if the rock was a shark.
"The tool of the one who acts becomes the one who acts. The one who murders is no more responsible for the murder than the one who ordered the killing or the one who provided the weapon or provided the compensation. If I throw a stone and it kills you, I am not exempt from responsibility because it was the stone that killed you, not I.
"Before the law, the stone and I are one. Before the law the assassin and its master are one…"
Avatu who left Sindie with the generation ships, Poma and the founding of Draco, Eam and the colonization of new worlds, Namvaac and the Thousand Year War, Ditaar, the end of the war and the Formation of the Dracon Chamber. It plays again and again, and each time I learn more. Each time, though, as I reach the story of Ditaar, I think of the missing book, the Koda Nusinda, The Eyes of Joanne Nicole.
A flash of warmth against my face, a wash of heat all over my body, sounds, words, garbled and dim. There is a yellow light and I reach to my eyes, the muscles of my arm, palm, and fingers tight and painful. There is a crusty substance along the edges of my eyelids that glues my eyelids shut.
"Slow down, Yazi Ro," says the voice of Reaper, the steward. "Let me do it." I feel something warm and wet on my eyelids, a little extra dribbling down the right side of my head. They are blotted dry as the steward says, "Okay, you can open your eyes now."