The Ghost Sister (19 page)

Leaning over the rail, I could smell the salt in the water and the sourness of the rafts of weed which rode close to shore. Beneath the boat, a shoal swam fast on a carrying current, spirits flickering through the night seas. Some had already given up their brief lives, for the odor offish fried in a pan was now prominent, cooked by one of the boat's owners. I had heard that the islanders spend most of their year at sea and many live on the moored boats in preference to an existence within walls. It's always appealed to me, but it's a life that you have to be born into, to know the fierce tides and the sea roads.

My meditations were interrupted by the landwalker, who was announcing unwanted prophecy to his fellow passengers and had singled myself out as his audience. I tried to ignore him, wondering why it was always I who encountered these people while traveling. I'd had enough of prophecies, I thought, and once again I remembered the
mehedin
whom we had met on our way to the summer tower, seeming to foresee a child who would never come home. Was it this death that he had glimpsed, or Sereth's own, as she had feared? Whatever the truth, I did not want another foretelling and indeed I was spared. For soon, muttering, the landwalker ambled along the deck and vanished into the crowd at the stern.

Neither Sereth nor Hessan were anywhere to be seen, so I went to the bags as the stars turned on the tide of the heavens, and sat with my back to them. Idly, I began to spin fantasies around a girl strolling down the deck—partly to help me forget Morrac sleeping alone (I hoped) in some dark quiet room of Rhir Dath—but I didn't feel inclined to approach her. She was very young, and my preference is for those who are not so close to the sinister shadow of childhood. Anyway, I was tired. It wasn't long before I slept, and did not wake till morning, uncomfortable and somewhat stiff from my night spent sprawled across the baggage.

Collecting tea from a kettle steaming on a stove at the prow, I escaped the chaos of newly awoken people by going up onto the topmost deck. It was pleasant up there, with the sky a morning green and the sea so transparent that they blurred one into the other at the horizon. I went through the fighting exercises to ease the cramp from my muscles, slow flowing movements which discipline the senses as much as the body. I undertook the Tide of a Spring River, the Flight of Carrion Birds through Clouds, and Morning Rain in Winter sequences, and then I caught sight of movement behind the boat, a small silver head bobbing among the placid waves. Sereth, swimming. So I went back down to the lower
decks and helped pull her up as she climbed the jerking rope ladder up the side of the ship. She had wound her hair up in a knot at the top of her head, but it was still damp at the edges. She was shivering; the sea must have been colder than it looked. Together we walked to the prow of the boat. Pale, indistinct lights rode in the sea below the waterstars which appear in the summer seas of the north.

“Look,” Sereth said. She pointed to a cloudy shape rising out of the south. “Pemna. Bird Island. We have to call into Mora Port, and then we sail on to Tetherau.”

We passed the rest of the morning on deck, with little to do except watch the green waves and wait for Pemna's wooded crags to grow closer. We reached the island toward noon, and stayed on the boat as the family concluded their business beneath the overhanging eaves of Mora Port. Some passengers disembarked: the blue-robed woman, two tall men in rust-colored coats. I did not see the landwalker; presumably he remained below deck. I could see the tops of the crews'heads, small beneath the bulk of the boat, swinging up crates with practiced ease. Eventually, the boat was loaded and the ropes unhitched, and we sailed with care back up the narrow inlet.

Although I had thought that the morning would bear heat, I could see a bank of clouds over the hills east of Tetherau, massing dark against the clear sky. The air, which had been warm against the skin in the morning, had become cooler and moist, and a slight but rising wind lifted the sails of the boat, obliging her crew to tack her toward the coast.

“A storm coming?” I asked Hessan, who stood by me.

“Certainly rain,” he said. “It might change to storms this evening; we sometimes get them in summer. But we'll be docked in Tetherau by then.”

And indeed, the boat was making good speed toward the coast, trying to beat the weather. Pemna fell behind, hazy in the dampening air, and the little towers of Tetherau were
rising clear against the clouds. I began to feel a bit livelier; I don't respond well to heat. Excusing myself to Hessan, I went to find Sereth. She was in my earlier place, curled up asleep on the bags, and I shook her awake. She growled at me, not affectionately.

“Wake up,” I said. “We're nearly there, and it's going to rain.”

“How can it rain?” she grumbled. “It was so hot.” But she got up and came with me to watch Tetherau grow close.

Shu opened the door of the biotent and stepped inside. The biotent hummed gently to itself, and Shu realized for the first time how intrusive even this soft sound had become in comparison to the silence outside. Her own voice seemed very loud as she called, “Mevennen?”

There was no reply. Shu walked across to the area that contained Mevennen's bed, and hesitated for a moment before drawing aside the screen. The bed was empty. Yet Bel had said that she'd left Mevennen sleeping, and Shu hadn't seen her anywhere else in the camp. Shu had a sudden, indefinable sense of wrongness. She glanced across at the hatch that concealed the toilet. It was open; no one was in there. She stepped behind the screen and checked the other side of the bed then, feeling rather foolish, beneath it, in case Mevennen had fallen.

There was no one to be seen. But behind her, something moved. She heard a faint rustling, coming from the direction of the main table. The back of her neck prickled. She thought of the child, and a body slung over a saddle. Slowly, Shu turned. The biotent was empty. Then the rustling came again, and there was a faint sigh, like the wind in the grass. Warily, Shu walked around the edge of the table and stopped dead. Mevennen was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor.

“Mevennen,” Shu said in dismay, crouching down by her side. The woman stirred, and whispered something. “It's all right,” Shu said automatically. “Don't try and move.”

Mevennen ignored her. She reached out for the strut of the table and, with Shu's help, pulled herself upright. “Trying to get back to bed,” she murmured.

“I'll help you,” Shu said. She was not a particularly strong woman, but Mevennen's weight as she leaned on her seemed nothing at all; the Mondhaith woman had bones like a bird. Slowly, she led Mevennen back to bed. The woman was shaking. Her long hands, with their bright silver rings, trembled as she rested them on the covering. Shu patted her hands. “Mevennen, let me get you something. A sedative, maybe.”

“I had a fit,” Mevennen said. Her eyelids fluttered, and then she opened her eyes and stared into Shu's face with the stark gaze of nightmare. But she did not talk as though Shu were a ghost. She said, “It's getting worse. Shu, I know I pinned my hopes on you, but it isn't your fault if you can't cure me. Better you let me die. Better if Eleres
had
killed me, up there in the hills.” Even through the filter of the
lin
gua franca
, the emphasis was unmistakable.

“
Eleres
would have killed you?” Shu said blankly. “But he's your brother. He loves you, doesn't he?”

Mevennen started to cough, then, and it was some moments before she could speak. Shu put an arm around her shoulders, deeply troubled. At last Mevennen said, “He does love me. And he nearly did kill me. It wasn't his fault. Animals will do that when one of their own is sick or weak. It's just the way they're made.”

“But Eleres isn't an animal!”

“No, he's not. At least, not all the time. That's the trouble with us, you see. I told you. We're neither one thing nor the other, except for people like me. My family do care about me, and they don't want me to die—or the human part of them doesn't, anyway. But instinct tells them something else.

I'm sorry, Shu. You should never have come here. Maybe Bel was right. Maybe this world is cursed.” Mevennen's voice trailed away and her head rolled to one side. Soon she was unconscious. With a sick coldness in the pit of her stomach, Shu went to find Sylvian.

The biologist looked up as Shu stepped through the door.

“I need to talk to you,” Sylvian said. “About Mevennen.”

“I was about to say the very same thing. She's had some kind of fit. I think you should take another look at her.”

Sylvian nodded. “I agree. I've just had the results of some of the more in-depth cerebral scans back from the ship, and there's some really strange neural patterning.”

“Strange? In what way?”

“The neural signatures match the field output.”

“What field output?” Shu asked.

“From the biomorphic generator,” Sylvian said impatiently. “They're not complete. There's a partial matching, but it all looks fragmented, as though it's been scrambled.”

“Are you saying that that thing in the ruins is having some kind of effect on
Mevennen?
”

“Not exactly. I think there are structures in her brain which are genetically designed to receive the generator's input. I checked out the records, and apparently it's possible to modify neural links to improve the brain's receptivity to biomorphic information. The links are called Ronan's Receptors after the woman who discovered them—but in Mevennen, it's as though they've atrophied, or never developed properly.”

“So do you or I have these receptors?”

“We've got partial links, so we might be able to pick up some output, but we're not very receptive to whatever the generator's emitting. We're like Mevennen, basically.” Sylvian paused. “You know what I think, Shu? I think it might be the generator that creates the bloodmind.”

“
The generator?
” Shu stared at her.

“Remember that Mevennen told us about the 'magic book'that placed people in harmony with each other and the world? Her brother also spoke about that harmony, but in the context of the pack mind. They understand themselves, Shu, to a degree. They're closer to animals than we are. And they can lose self-awareness; they actually become like animals—a territorial, aggressive gestalt. There's got to be a reason for that, and I think the generator's a part of that puzzle.”

“So,” Shu said slowly, “if you're right, and the generator is a contributing factor to the bloodmind, then what will happen when we turn it off?”

Sylvian shook her head. “I'm not sure. The Mondhaith might lose their abilities—their pack aspect—and become fully human.
Nothing
might happen—my hypothesis about the generator is just a hypothesis, after all. The bloodmind might be genetic, as I said, or caused by something else entirely.”

“If it's the generator that's changed them,” Shu asked, “then why hasn't it affected us? Because we're like Mevennen and don't have the right neural receptors?”

“Presumably. But I couldn't say for sure. You see, Shu, I've done a whole range of tests on Mevennen, and I could give you chapter and verse now on what distinguishes her from her human ancestors. But what I don't have is any control information. We don't know how the neurology, or biology, of a 'normal'native functions.” She glanced down at the data sheet, and Shu frowned. Sylvian, who had been a plump woman when they arrived, had lost weight, and her fair hair had begun to look lank. The biologist added, “But I've got some good news, anyway.”

“What's that?”

“The ship's been running a series of diagnostic tests on the field emitted by the biomorphic generator and it's finally narrowed down the algorithms for breaking the reflexive power loop. I need to program up a model and run
the heuristics on that, but it shouldn't take more than a day or so. After that, we'll know whether we can turn the generator off or not.”

“Hold on,” Shu said in alarm. “Given what you've just been telling me, it's not a question now of whether we
can
turn the generator off, but whether we
should.
”

Sylvian looked doubtful. “That's a decision for Dia to make. But if it really does free these people from the blood-mind, surely it's worth considering? A child
died
, Shu.”

“I know that. We just need to think about it carefully. All of us,” she added firmly, “not just Dia.” She took a deep breath. “Getting back to Mevennen, the bottom line—if what you've just spent the last few minutes explaining to me is correct—is that we need to find a normal Mondhaith person and run some tests on him. Preferably someone who's closely related to Mevennen.”

The biologist pushed her hair wearily out of her eyes and sighed. “Yes. That hypothetical person is our missing link. But if what you and Bel say is correct, and most of the population behaves as though we're a figment of their imaginations, persuading someone to allow us to do blood tests and neuroscans is going to be a bit tricky. We need that information, though.” Her eyes met Shu's. “What if Mevennen dies, Shu?”

“That's not going to happen,” Shu told her, with a conviction she did not feel. “I know it's a problem. But I think I have someone in mind.”

Later Shu checked and rechecked the aircar, making sure that everything was sound. She possessed basic engineering skills, but her understanding of the vehicle was not advanced and she did not like having to rely on the
delazheni.
She watched uneasily as the digits of the biodevice glided across the control panels. The
delazhen
turned to her and said in its smooth, neutral voice, “Safety precautions have been successfully undertaken. Flight may proceed.”

“Thank you,” Shu said, wondering for the thousandth time how much the
delazheni
really understood, how great their self-awareness might be. Dia had compromised her principles in bringing them; they were perceived by the stricter Gaian sects as unnatural, the sad creations of an earlier age, but nobody denied their usefulness. The
delazhen
stepped back on its jointed legs and Shu turned to see Bel standing at the aircar's side.