“You are the first of your people to visit Tethspraih.” The monk seated at the other end of the table was speaking forcefully. “As such, you must be the one to carry our teachings to your land. It is a great honor.”
“Yes,” added the middle savant. “Besides, you have no choice. You do not have to waste time and energy arguing about it because the decision has been made for you.” He smiled encouragingly, reassuringly. “That is the job of savants. To make the right choices for others. We prevent many headaches before they happen.”
“Then why are you giving me one now?” Simna ibn Sind had listened to just about enough. Avoiding Ehomba’s attempt to restrain him, the swordsman took a bold step forward and drew his blade. Sensing his thoughts, the pair of cockatells stopped eating and fell back to the far side of their cage. They remained huddled together there, their shimmering golden feathers quivering slightly as they were forced to listen to and absorb the blast of unfettered aggression from the swordsman’s mind.
Showing that they were indeed human, the savants reacted to Simna’s provocation by losing their seemingly everlasting smiles. But no one leaped from their chair or tried to flee. Nor did anyone raise a warning cry to the servitors stationed outside.
Instead, the monk in the center reached quickly beneath the table and brought out a most curious-looking device. The length of a man’s arm, it had a handle and a long tubular body that was fluted and flared at the end like an open flower. One finger curled around a small curve of metal set into the underside of the apparatus. Attached to the top was a small bottle or canister. This was fashioned of an opaque substance and Ehomba could not see what it contained.
Resting the wooden handle against his shoulder, the savant pointed the flowerlike end of the device directly at Simna. Exposed blade hanging at his side, the swordsman’s gaze narrowed as he stared down the barrel of the awkward contrivance. Not knowing what it did, he was unsure how to deal with the threat its wielder’s posture implicitly implied.
“Simna,” the herdsman told his friend warningly, “that’s enough! Stay where you are!”
The monk at the far end of the table spoke somberly. “It does not matter. Advance or retreat, the end will be the same.” His smile returned, though in muted form. “And you will be the better for it.”
“The better for it?” Simna glared furiously at the man, utterly frustrated by the unshakable composure of the smugly complacent trio seated behind the table. “I’ll be the better for
this
!” Raising the shining blade over his head, he took another step forward. Ehomba shouted a warning and Ahlitah crouched, instantly alert.
The monk aiming the device did not hesitate as he pulled the trigger and fired.
XI
T
he litah snarled warningly but held his ground. Ehomba instinctively drew back. As for Simna, he ducked sharply, frowned, and then straightened anew. To all outward appearances he was entirely unharmed.
The cloud of powder that puffed from the muzzle of the strange device was primarily pink with deeper overtones of cerise. It enveloped the swordsman for the briefest of moments before dissipating in the still air of the chamber. Simna sniffed once, twice, and then laughed out loud.
“A decent little fragrance. Delicate, not too strong. Reminds me of a girl I spent some time with in a town on the western edge of the Abrangian Steppes.”
“Good.” The monk lowered the contraption but did not set it aside. “I’m glad it brings back fond memories for you.”
“Very fond.” Simna grinned wolfishly at the savant. “Fonder than you’ll ever know.”
“That may very well be true. You are obviously a man of extensive appetites. Mine, I am not ashamed to confess, are more modest. In that respect I envy you, though I cannot say that my envy translates into admiration.” He indicated the swordsman’s upraised weapon. His two associates were watching closely. “What, may I ask, were you planning to do with that impressive-looking piece of steel?”
Simna looked down at the sword in his hand. “This? Why, I was going to . . . I was going to . . .”
His words trailed away along with his anger. He stared stupidly at the weapon, as if he had once known its purpose but had forgotten, like someone who finds a long-lost piece of clothing in an old drawer and cannot remember how it is to be worn. Slowly, he lowered the blade. His expression brightened when he remembered the scabbard that hung from his belt. Sheathing the metal, he looked back at the trio of inquisitors and smiled.
“There! I guess that’s what I was going to do with it.” The smile plastered on his face resembled that of several of the lesser sculptures that decorated the exterior of the rectory: bemused, but not vacuous. “I hope we’re not giving you good people any trouble?”
“No,” the woman told him confidently, “no trouble at all. It’s nice to see you right thinking. A lot less painful, isn’t it?”
“It sure is.” But even as Simna spoke, his lips seemed to be doing battle with his jawline. Small veins pulsed in his forehead and neck, and perspiration broke out on his forehead even though it was quite cool in the darkened chamber. Everything about his expression and posture indicated a man at war with himself—and losing. One hand trembled visibly as it attempted to clutch the hilt of the now sheathed sword. The fingers would twitch convulsively forward and miss, twitch and miss, as if their owner was afflicted with any one of several neuromuscular infirmities.
It was dispiriting to watch Simna take a step toward the table. One leg worked well enough, but the other hung back, obviously reluctant, as if fastened to the floor by metal bolts. The paralyzed grin on the swordsman’s face hinted at internal mental as well as physical conflict.
“Better,” the monk in the middle declared tersely even as he raised the singular device and pointed it in Ehomba’s direction. “As your friend can tell you, this won’t hurt a bit. A few weekly treatments and your thinking will be right as rain.”
“Yes,” agreed the man on his left. “Then you can choose freely whether to return to your homeland, or remain here in beautiful Tethspraih, or continue on your way. Whichever you do, it will be as a contemporary, right-thinking person, with none of the irritating emotional and intellectual baggage that so cripples the bulk of humanity.”
“I like my intellectual baggage,” Ehomba responded. “It is what makes me an individual.”
“So do unfortunately inherent human tendencies to commit murder and mayhem.” The woman succored him with an angelic smile. “But they do not contribute to the improvement of the person.”
Ehomba tried to duck, to twist out of the way, but it was far more difficult to avoid a cloud than a spear thrust. As the pallid vapor enveloped him he tried not to inhale, only to find that it was not necessary to breathe in the powder directly to experience its effects. The delicate fragrance was an ancillary effect of the substance, not an indicator of its efficacy. It sank in through his eyes, his lips, the skin of his exposed arms and ankles and neck, from where it penetrated to the core of his being.
While his feet remained firmly on the floor, he felt his mind beginning to drift, to float. Ahead lay a pillowed rosy cloud, beckoning to him with pastel tendrils while masking his view of the three savants. He was aware that they were continuing to observe him closely. If only he would let himself relax and fully embrace the mist, a great deal of the inner torment and uncertainty that had plagued him throughout his life would vanish, dispersed as painlessly and effectively as vinegar would kill a scorpion’s sting.
He fought back. He conjured up stark images of Mirhanja and the children that were faithful down to the smallest detail. He recalled the time he had been fishing in the stream the village used as its source of fresh water, and had stepped on a spiny crawfish. The remembrance of that pain pushed back the insistent vapor, but only for a moment. He recalled the specifics of discussions he had engaged in with the village elders, and arguments he’d had with his wife, and the day they had celebrated his mother’s eightieth birthday and it had rained on everyone and everything. He reviewed the minutiae of his journey to this time and place, assigning each an emotion and a day.
He did everything he could think of to keep his thoughts his own—even if they were not “right.”
“He’s fighting it.” Through the brume of befuddlement that threatened to overwhelm him he heard the woman’s voice. She still sounded confident, but not quite as confident as previously.
“His channels of thought are more deeply worn and solidly set than those of his companion.” This from the monk seated at the other end of the table. “Give him another dose.”
“So soon?” The senior of the trio sounded uncertain.
“We don’t want to lose him to irresolution.” The other man’s tone was kindly but firm. “It won’t hurt him. He’s strong. At worst it may cost him some old memories. A small price to pay for a lifetime of proper thinking.”
Benumbed within the fog of right thinking, Ehomba heard what they planned for him, and panicked. What memories might he lose if subjected to another dose of the corrective dust? A day hunting with his father? Favorite stories his aunt Ulanha had told him? Remembrances of swimming with friends in the clear water pool at the base of the little waterfall in the hills behind the village?
Or would his losses be more recent? The number of cattle he was owed from the communal herd? Or perhaps the knowledge of how to treat a leg wound, or bind up a broken bone. Or the wonderful philosophical conversations he had engaged in with Gomo, the old leader of the southern monkey troop.
What if he forgot his name? Or who he was? Or what he was?
The only thing that seemed to fight off the soporific effects of the powder was strong thinking in his accustomed manner. Behind him, Ahlitah had finally roused himself from his slumber. He could hear the big cat growling, but softly and uncertainly. Seeing his friends standing unbound or otherwise unrestrained, freely confronting the three unarmed humans seated behind the table, the cat was not even sure anything was amiss. When it came to the realization that all was not as well as it seemed, it would be too late for it to help. And a burst of thought-corrective powder from the big-mouthed apparatus might render its feline mind incapable of intelligent thought altogether.
No matter how persuasive or compelling the effects, Ehomba had to fight it off—for the sake of his friends as well as himself. The inimical darkness he knew how to combat, but the sweet-smelling pink powder was far more treacherous. It did not threaten death or dismemberment, only a different way of thinking. But the way a man thought determined who and what he was, the herdsman knew. Change that and you forever change the individual behind the thoughts.
Desperately, he struggled to keep rigid, uncompromising images at the forefront of his thinking. Cloying and insistent, the subtle aroma of the powder suffused his nostrils, his lungs, the essence of himself. It ate at his thought processes like acid distilled from orchids.
No!
he shouted to himself.
I am Etjole Ehomba, and I think thusly, and not thatly. Leave my mind alone and let my friends and me go!
“Definitely needs another dose.” The woman’s expression reflected her compassion and certitude. “Give in to the way of right thinking, traveler! Let yourself relax—don’t fight it. From the bottom of my being I promise that you will be a happier and better man for it.”
“A happier and better man perhaps.” On the other side of the fog that had enveloped him he believed he heard his voice responding. “But I will not be the same man.”
The senior of the trio sighed regretfully. “I would rather not do this. I hate to see anyone lose memories, no matter how insignificant.”
“It is for the greater good,” the savant on his left pointed out. “Society’s as well as his.”
“I know.” After performing a quick check of the small canister attached to the top of the contrivance, the monk raised the metal tube and for a second time aimed it in Ehomba’s direction.
The herdsman was frantic. The pink haze was no longer advancing on his thoughts, but neither had it gone away. It hovered before him like a fog bank awaiting a ship being thrust forward by the current, waiting to swallow him up, to reduce his individual way of thinking to the mental equivalent of zero visibility. Reinforced by a second burst from the long-barreled device, its effects would doubtless prove overwhelming.
Ehomba cogitated as hard as he could. Concentrated on bringing to the forefront of his thoughts the most powerful, most convincing images he could call up. Not right-thinking notions, perhaps, but those of which he was most soundly and resolutely convinced. He envisioned Mirhanja, and the village. He contemplated the stark but beautiful countryside of his homeland, the hunting and herding trails that crossed its hills and ravines. He conjured up the faces of his friends and relatives.
Taking careful aim, the well-meaning monk triggered the powder shooter. Thought-paralyzing pinkness blossomed in the herdsman’s direction. When it surrounded him he knew he would be the same, but different. Identical in appearance, altered within. He concentrated furiously on the pain of his own birthing, of the lightning strike that had killed an old childhood friend, of the way he and the other men and women of the village had spent all of a night debating how to deal with a visiting hunter who had availed the Naumkib of their hospitality only to be discovered attacking one of the young women. Strong thoughts all, couched in his own unique, individual manner of thinking. From the mouth of the device the salmon-hued haze approached as if in slow motion, like bleached blood.
He thought of the sea.
Behind him, the litah yelped. Another time, the herdsman might have remarked on the unusual sound. He had heard the big cat snarl, and growl, and snore, and even purr in its sleep, but he had never heard it yelp. It would not have mattered if Ahlitah had suddenly burst into traditional village song, so hard was Ehomba fighting to concentrate on his way of thinking. Had he identified it, that which had made the cat yelp would have surprised him even more than the uncharacteristic feline expression itself.
Ahlitah cried out because his feet were suddenly and most unexpectedly standing ankle deep in water. Cold, dark water that smelled powerfully of drifting kelp and strong salts. Nearby, Simna ibn Sind blinked and found himself frowning at something he could not quite put a finger on. Something was not right and, try as he might, he couldn’t identify it.
Behind the table, the three savants gaped at the water that had materialized around their feet. Where it was coming from they could not imagine. It seemed to well forth from the solid floor, oozing upward via the cracks between the stones, replacing vanished mortar. Oblivious to what was happening around him, Ehomba continued to concentrate on the oldest, most distinctive entity in his copious store of memories, one he could reproduce with the least amount of effort. He thought of how the sea tasted when sips of it accidentally forced their way past his lips while he was swimming, of the cool, invigorating feel of its liquid self against his bare skin, of the spicy saltiness that tickled his palate and the burning shock whenever any entered his nose. He remembered how its far, flat horizons provided the only real edge to the world, recalled the look of specific creatures that swam sinuously through its depths, saw in his mind’s eye the humble magnificence of the abandoned skeletons of creatures large and small that each morning found cast up on its beaches like the wares of a wise old merchant neatly set out for inspection and approval.
And as he remembered, and thought, the sea continued to fill the interrogation chamber, the water level rising with preternatural, impossible speed. It covered him to his knees, reached his hips. Behind him, the agitated litah rumbled and splashed. Having risen from their chairs, the three stunned savants were backing away from the travelers and wading dazedly toward the door. All around Ehomba, pink powder drifted down to the water and was absorbed, dispersing within the rising dark green depths like ground tea leaves in a boiling kettle.