Gravity Dreams

I understood the 'now.' I'd coddled myself too much, but who was to say I still wasn't?

When I sat down with my plate of Dhurr pepper chicken and looked through the permaglass into the early afternoon, I found my eyes fixed on a blue heron that stood one-legged on the far shore, across the open water from the lounge. 'Do you attract herons?'

Aleyaisha glanced up from her plate of plummed dumplings and through the glass. 'Only when I'm talking to you.'

I laughed. 'You haven't seen one since then?'

'I haven't looked.'

'What have you been looking for?'

'You've been a Rykashan for nearly eight years objective ...' Aleyaisha offered, ignoring my question.

'Two thirds of that personal objective.' I took a sip of the steaming Arleen, enjoying it immensely, since tea isn't the same on an orbit station, even an earth orbit station with partial gravity.

'That's still quite a time, Tyndel. Nearly six years and you're questioning whether you belong and whether you should.' She sipped the beaker of pale green liquid. 'Why didn't you question so much when you thought of yourself as Dorchan?'

Because you didn't want to ... because you never sought the wider world? Because Dzin taught you to seek meaning in what is, rather than in what isn't? 'I wasn't raised to question. That came later.' I laughed. 'After Cerrelle unscrambled my brains and kicked my ego down to size.'

Aleyaisha peered intently into my eyes, exaggerating the gesture and expression. 'I don't notice any ego dwarfism.'

'You help, too.'

She raised her eyebrows, both of them, so comically that I nearly choked on my pepper chicken. 'Let's change the subject

... a little. What is the heart of Rykasha? What defines it? Have you thought about it?'

At times, you've thought about little else ... 'I suppose it depends on what you mean by the heart. Functionally, nanotechnology is the key to Rykasha, since it enables the whole structure.'

'You might call that the skeleton or the nervous system ...' mused the blonde.

The pieces fell together - so obvious. So obvious as to be simpleminded. Power beyond great power allows honesty and compels those in such a society to demand it.

'What are you thinking?' A tone of concern edged into her voice as she studied my face.

'About honesty. Why Rykashans have to demand honesty - and greater honesty for those with greater responsibility.' I sipped the Arleen, lukewarm rather than hot, but I wasn't ready for another mug of hot tea. 'That's your heart, if you want to call it such.'

An amused smile replaced the concerned frown.

'Because there's no workable alternative. High technology, and nanotechnology is effectively high technology, requires greater honesty if the society is to survive. Deception, even hypocrisy or excessive manners, is deadly for a society of people of power.'

'Oh?' Aleyaisha took another sip from her beaker, then the last dumpling from her plate. 'Why would that be?'

You know, but I presume I'm supposed to explain.'

'I don't know if I know. Your answer, that is.'

'It's hard to put in words. I'll try. There are but two checks on the abuse of power - greater power and the individual will of those who have power. As power is magnified by ability, the adverse effect of checking power through the use of greater power rises exponentially.' I paused. 'Maybe not exponentially, but the side effects grow larger more quickly than individual power grows because it takes a greater and greater concentration of power to check power that is abused. That means the only viable means of restraining power is by ensuring power is used responsibly. The only effective means that I can see is to ensure honesty - and Rykasha goes to great lengths to do just that.'

'You're assuming honesty reflects integrity,' Aleyaisha pointed out.

'I'm defining honesty in the sense of being honest with one's self.'

'Can't someone be honest with herself ... or himself ... and still deceive others?'

'The Authority does it all the time,' I riposted, 'by letting people believe partial truths, but the whole truth is there for whoever wants to look. Look at the needle ships. Space is enormous, and overspace has to be dangerous. I can tell that just from the training. Yet nowhere is that stated. There have to be ships that have never arrived, but there's no record, not that I can find. The problem is that most people can't or won't see it because of what they want to believe. But that's not quite the same as setting it up so that self-honesty is required to use power. That's really why you have Alicia and Tomas. Unfailing self-honesty is all that they have left - and honest pride in that honesty.'

'You think they're enforcers of some sort?'

'I know they are.'

Aleyaisha finished the last of the single beaker she had brought to the table. In the twilight, the great blue heron flapped off toward the depths of the marsh. 'You're quite a philosopher, Tyndel.'

I shook my head. 'It took me six years to puzzle it out. That's not great philosophy, not for someone who spent half a life in the halls in Henvor.'

'Most who spent that long there would never figure it out,

Tyndel.' Aleyaisha stood. 'You don't mind... I've a long day tomorrow.'

'I don't mind.' As I stood, I looked at Aleyaisha. 'Did I pass, honored examiner?'

She began to laugh so hard that her eyes teared. I couldn't help but join her. The couple in the corner stared, but we could have been alone for all that they were there.

Finally, she gasped. 'Tyndel... you'll do just fine ...' She shook her head.

'Why? It was obvious, once I thought about it.' Then, that was usually the problem - discovering what the real problem was - the step beyond Dzin.

'It was - but no one else has ever confronted it quite ... your way.' She shook her head. You are more of a Rykashan than most Rykashans. You denied that to begin with, and you still try to deny it'

'What does that have to do with being a needle pilot?'

'Everything,' Aleyaisha answered simply. 'Everything. You'll see.' She reached up and touched my cheek. Then she began to walk past the empty tables toward the door, and I followed. 'Even if I had been the one to meet you and bring you into Rykashan society, Tyndel - it wouldn't have worked. You were too honest for Dorchan society, and you're too honest for me.'

Except I hadn't been that honest. I'd been self-deceptive and focused on attaining the title of Dzin master rather than the understanding implied by the title. It had taken Cerrelle to change that, with an honesty that had been almost brutal in its directness. 'No one is too honest for you.'

She held the door for me on the way out. You're kind, Tyndel, but it's not so. I almost would have climbed into your couch that first time, because you were still hurting, and I wanted to comfort you. That kind of comfort isn't honest, and you knew it.'

'I tried to be honest.'

'I know.' Aleyaisha touched my cheek briefly, once more, before her hand dropped away as she stepped into the darkness beyond the lights, darkness that my eyes could penetrate as easily as if the full moon had shone. 'Good night, Tyndel. Don't forget to stop by medical before the shuttle liftoff.'

'I won't. Good night, honored examiner.'

'Your turn will come ...' A soft laugh followed her words.

'Perhaps.'

Rather than go back to an empty room, I took a long walk along the marsh path, well past the lounge and along the raised hump of ground that might have once been an ancient river levee. More Rykashan than most? What is a demon, a Rykashan?

Someone with nanites swarming through his system and powers beyond the ancients' imagining? Someone whose nanites triggered a Dorchan demon scanner or killed a passlet? Was being a demon as much a state of mind as anything? Being able to accept near-absolute honesty?