“OK, I promise. I’ll do it before I sleep tonight. But, please tell me, so that I’ll understand it after I do.”
Mena thought a moment. Sighed. “Ok,” she said, “I guess it does no harm.” Crow’s feet crinkled around her eyes. “A Seer is born at a Gathering, so a Seer spans two Gatherings, so a Seer learns to See the way and lead others to the next Gathering. The Seer spans the Gathering past, to the Gathering next. Understand?”
Asach smiled, reaching for the pamphlet. “Clear as mud.”
They departed early next morning. Just Asach, and the boys. They made a detour through the market quarter, catching pre-dawn deliveries before the stalls were even open. The boys packed the rig full with water; dried fruits; dried meats; dried nuts; blankets; self-erecting shelters. They bolted extra fuel tanks to the outer hull, and extra solar chargers to the roof. They stripped out the heavy Plate in the driver’s door and the floor. A lot of tithe credits changed hands. They gulped tea at a teamster’s stall, then headed east.
Back at the house, Mena and Nejme traded off, sending the same message, over and over, by satphone, by telegraph, by ‘tooth, with no assurance that it would even get through to the remoteness of Orcutt Station: Asach Quinn comes, a friend of truth. Meet at Butterfield Wells. We beg you: do not avert your Gaze.
The swing from cold of night to heat of day was sudden, and incredible. Before dawn, they had to chip a haze of frost from the view screen. After sunrise, they peeled away every layer of clothing decency allowed. The boys hummed and bounced to internal tunes. Bonneville fell away. Heat shimmered on salt panne and desert varnish.
It would have been more comfortable to drive at night, and sleep by day, with reflector shelters to keep them cool. But they needed the solar boost. Once up to speed, while the sun was bright and the road was level, it saved a lot of juice. With it, Butterfield Wells was the turn back point; as far as the boys could go with any guarantee of getting back before running out of fuel. Without it, they’d be marooned. There was no traffic. They were utterly alone.
The desert varnish gave way to surface glaze: silty flats, the thin crust polished smooth. Mirage shimmered in the distance, showing what had been, perhaps millennia before: vast lakes of water; lagoons and islands; estuarine pools. If anything was alive out there, it did not move. Sometimes the breeze would carry the faintest scent of water; of aromatic herbs, blown like whispers across the desert from the far, far mountains.
They passed an adobe bubble, with a minaret barely taller than a man. Once a shrine, or a roadside mosque, now fallen to ruin. “Making good time,” said the driver. They drove on.
Eventually a tiny blob rose above the road at the horizon. It hovered, upside down, a reflection in the shimmering heat that floated above the pavement. For a good while, it stayed there. Then, it set, like a tiny moon, and a real blob, a right-side-up blob, grew in its stead. At first it was nothing. Then it was solid. Then they rumbled to a stop, at a tiny public square.
The lads were disconsolate. At first, they refused to leave Asach there. But Asach was adamant. “You have to go back. You have to get Ollie back to Saint George. You have to help him find Deela and the boys. You have to help him find out what happened to Hugo.”
They could not argue with that. They tried to leave water. Asach waved them off, indicating the miniscule fountain: a rusty pipe, sticking out from a concrete block, trickling cold, clear water into a grate, where it disappeared. They tried to leave blankets, but Asach wanted no more than the cloak. They tried to leave food, and Asach acquiesced.
“Go on,” Asach waved them off. “You’re burning daylight.”
Butterfield Wells, The Barrens, New Utah
The square was little more than a dusty crossroad with a water tap. Not so much as a tree, nor anything natively tree-like. There was a good deal of wind, and a windmill to power the water pump. They sat in its thin stripe of shade. Asach entertained three pleasantly grubby children by using one handful of pebbles to knock another handful of pebbles from a circle scratched into the gravel.
Each would giggle, then throw down a pebble with that universal awkward, jerky toss of children everywhere old enough to walk and talk, but not yet old enough to be truly helpful at very much. Then, as Asach aimed and tossed in reply, in delighted unison they would shout encouragement: “WANpela! TUpela! TREEpela!” In variably, Asach would “miss” at least once, and the ecstatic associated child would run in a little circle herself, hands stretched overhead, shouting “GOOOAAAL! Mi Winim! Mi Winim!”
The game went on and on. The children were tireless. Eventually, a boy appeared, slightly older. From where, it was difficult to say. There seemed nowhere to come from, and nowhere to go to. The Barrens appeared to be utterly flat, horizon to horizon, but it was their vastness that tricked the eye. There were actually folds in the ground big enough to conceal a rail car; slashes deeper than a building that raged with water when rain fell in mountains that were mere purple stains on the rim of the horizon.
The boy scowled at Asach. “Yu save long tok Anglis, a?
The girls stopped, unsure, then clustered nearer to Asach, who answered simply, “Yes. Do you?”
At this, the little ones erupted: “Me too! Me too! I speak Anglic too!” then ran around the windmill and giggled, playing hide-and-seek from behind the pole.
The boy scowled again. He was at best a year or two older than the others, but very serious. “Are you a pilgrim?”
With puckered eyebrows, Asach matched his earnestness. “I’m waiting for Collie Orcutt.”
This seemed to satisfy him for the moment, but he clearly felt the need to assert some kind of authority over the situation. He picked up a pebble, and with one vicious swipe from where he stood, hurtled it against the polished white stone still lying within the scratched ring. With a crack the white stone went flying across the gravel. He stalked over, picked it up, pocketed it, and said, “Mine now!”
The littlest girl, still clinging to the windmill pole, shouted, “That’s not fair!” She began to sob. “It’s my best one! It’s my favorite! It’s mine!” She stamped a foot.
The boy shrugged. Asach assessed the situation. Pulled a handful of stones from somewhere within the cloak. Opened one hand to reveal a child’s treasure of purple, pink, green, and speckled red. “Double or nothing,” Asach said. Eyes wide, the boy nodded.
Asach played skillfully—or rather, lost skillfully. By the end, the boy held all the colored stones; Asach held only the white one. “You win!” Asach said, folding the white pebble into the little girl’s hand. Unsuspecting and smiling, the boy counted and re-counted his new stash as the little girl bounced over to Asach’s lap. “I’m Jolly!” she announced.
“Yes, I can see that.”
“No, silly. My name is Jolly”
“Her name is Jo-lynn,” the second one said. But everyone calls her Jolly.”
“And what’s your name?”
The girl’s eyes widened in horror.
Damn, thought Asach. I forgot. Never ask a child’s name. She’ll think you are trying to steal her spirit.
“Never mind honey. Don’t be scared. I forgot. We—we do things different, where I come from. Names don’t mean the same thing there.”
The boy nodded, sagely, promoted to ally by his recent acquisition. “The Anglis, they don’t know anything.”
The horrified girl regarded Asach sternly. “What’s your number?” she blurted at last.
Mystified, Asach gambled. “Three hundred and fifty-seven.”
The horrified one giggled. Jolly peered up from Asach’s lap, little brow furrowed. “Are you a boy, or a girl?” she said.
Asach looked down, smiling. “What do you think?”