Quibble, 13. Faith
Abducting Quibble, the Zero Alnasl tempts her to break her promise to Nish.
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13. Faith @Alnasl
The sun had not yet cleared the mountains: the few clouds shrouding their peaks shone anemone pink, but the mountainside on which I stood atop the cliff overlooking the Dazed monastery was still bathed in soft gray light. I saw Quibble. There. She left the monastery by the gate facing westward to the sea and walked downhill through the long meadow. Touching my amber glass, I squinted to judge the distance to the ground below, its relative altitude and apparent slope. Then I popped.
Quibble was striding through the tall grass and calling out – “Titania!” – when I popped in, several yards away, and dropped about a foot and a half to the ground. She skanced the pop’s momentary brilliance and turned, but seeing it was me, she walked on and called again for the cow.
“That way,” I said, pointing southeast.
“Oh, the creek. Of course. Thank you, vision.”
I was pleased she no longer called me “Zero.” Proper distinction makes some difference with Zeros. When Aladfar took me into his tutelage, he said he was a silence and I should always call him that, regardless of what I learned of his true sympathies. “And none of this ‘lord’ nonsense!” he had enjoined.
I paced through the tall grass well behind Quibble. Dew flecked her leggings, deepening the lion’s-pelt tan to a rich brown. I would rather have walked alongside her, but I wanted to see her clearly, and as I intuited the day ahead of us might be difficult, I thought it best not to tax my focus and strength with too much resort to my amber.
Numberless, I believe you know what an effort it takes to see the world clearly and wholly – to recognize each thing distinctly as itself, not a shadow or a reflection of another thing. For Dazed it is constant work, so they say, and even Adroit occasionally struggle with it, especially if what or whom they’re thinking about isn’t at hand to be seen. But in truth Dazed and Adroit are fortunate: their trouble is only in their minds, picturing the seen Without in their thoughts. For us Zeros, the problem is physiological. They may call me a vision, but my sight Without is not perfect. At a distance I see quite well without my amber, and neither sunlight nor moonlight baffle me as they do some Zeros. Up close, though, things get fuzzy, their hues flatten. Within a little more than an arm’s length, all becomes rough shape and primary color. Then I’m functionally blind.
To me, Quibble seemed clear-eyed. I knew well what hopes Vega harbored for her, but on this matter, in the councils of Vega and Aladfar, I had learned to express no opinion. I listened and obeyed. Privately, though, I didn’t entirely know what to make of Quibble. I wondered whether she was fit for the task Vega conceived. The question I pondered wasn’t whether Quibble could do it – the council now debated that, belatedly it seemed to me – but whether she would. I worried Vega’s faith in her was misplaced. As for Utopia, Its faith was unknown, but It cautioned us: “An excelsior is not a tool.”
We found Titania beneath a stand of mountain-ash not yet come into blossom, a place the cow favored for the nearby water and the understory’s succulent foliage. Her hide was mottled, with long hair, and her nose was a pale bluish-pink. Quibble grasped one of the short horns at her crown and led her out of the trees.
“Hello, Titania,” I said. The cow gazed at nothing. “Time for your milking.”
Quibble hummed to herself as we walked uphill on either side of the cow, then she broke off and asked, “Can you milk a cow, vision?”
I held both hands before me and looked at them. Even with the fingers splayed, they were only dark brown smudges. “I believe I’ve lost the knack,” I said.
“I thought Zeros were as nimble as anything! Maybe all you want is practice. You can give it a try, don’t you think? Titania won’t mind.”
“It’s the hot time now,” I observed, changing the subject. “You’ve learned a great deal in a short while. I imagine studying the Adroit’s mystery has helped.”
Quibble was quiet. Letting her keep her discretion intact, I went on: “Be careful with Definition. She’s suffered much.”
“I know. She told me all about Index.”
“Knowing her story isn’t the same as living it, Quibble.”
We spoke no more until we reached the monastery and brought the cow into the byre. Quibble lit a lamp. As she forked and hauled hay, I ran my hands over the smooth flank of the placid draft ox, Puck, and told her of the first time I saw One’s rectification. I admit my voice trembled slightly with awe, perhaps not so much at the memory itself as what I meant by recounting it to her. Aladfar himself had been moved to tears when he recounted to me the first time he saw a rectification, long ago, when he was a vision.
“Nothing is as sacred as One’s transcendence,” I concluded.
“Sacred, eh?” Quibble said with a small snort. “I don’t know about that. The One died, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve seen that, vision, and it wasn’t pretty. We lost Preface the last labor in the cool, you know. Cate said she drowned in her own phlegm.”
“I’m not talking about a case of double pneumonia,” I shot back, incensed at the insignificance that comparison implied. “It’s not simply death, as you and I will ever experience it. Rectified, One abandons earthly dream, the incomplete and finite dream, and One joins the eternal dream, which is perfect.”
“I don’t believe that,” Quibble remarked. She crouched on the milking stool and massaged Titania’s udder to let the milk down. “Don’t you think life’s hard enough without striving for perfection? Even when it’s all over and done with – then more than ever! You can keep your heaven, vision. All I’ll need is knowing my people remember me well. ‘The love will have been enough,’ the scrivener says.”
I almost challenged her – “Doesn’t the scrivener also say ‘there is a land of the living and a land of the dead’?” – but I checked my tongue. Much as I wanted to tell her certain things, hard things, in light of her lack of faith it was best not to say them. Nor was it the right occasion for argument. I’d been foolish to let Quibble draw me into one, knowing her penchant for it. At times she called herself “disputer,” and it was a mantle she wore proudly. She claimed not to share Indication’s academic approach to matters, but faith didn’t appeal to her either. It was too settled an outlook for her to live by.
She hopped up from the stool. “All right, vision, Titania’s primed. Let’s see if you remember this.”
I gave Puck’s flank one last pat and stepped towards Quibble, holding my amber and my breath now that we’d come to the crux. She gave me a quizzical look, nodded at the stool. I took her hand in mine, returning her gaze. With my other hand, I withdrew the amber from my cloak.
“When you see One’s rectification,” I said, “you’ll understand.”
“Maybe.”
She started to step away, but I held her fast. Her face brightened. Looking down, she saw the gleaming amber, how it outdid the lamplight. Sudden clarity jolted her and she tried to jerk her hand away.
“No, Alnasl! I’m not supposed to go—”
We popped.
The two – Zero and Adroit – melted into glow, vanishing. The multicolored light rushed together, no sooner taking their shapes than forsaking them, converging from all directions as if hurtling towards the center of an imaginary sphere. The infinitesimal cut in reality closed with a snap. They were gone.
Startled by lightning and thunder in the byre, Titania kicked over the pail. Milk trickled out into the hay and dirt. Then all was still and silent. That was how Marginalia found it, two hours later, when she came to see what in kindness could be keeping Quill with the morning’s milk.
“—alone. Take me back! This instant!”
Dark huddled around us, and in it Quibble, angry. I’d known she would be.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I know you made your adroitness a promise.”
I turned. I walked off into the pitch black Within, my amber flaming before me. I didn’t look back. Quibble would either follow me or stay behind in the dark.
I passed an arc. The chamber beyond was empty. I stopped in the center, beneath the tarry-not. Hearing Quibble’s footsteps behind me, I dimmed my glass to just a shade above extinction. Quibble called out: “Vision? I can’t see!”
“Yes, you can. Give your eyes time to adjust.”
A long moment passed. Then Quibble placed her hand in mine and obscured the amber’s little light.
“This is kidnapping,” she said. “Is that what you are, vision – a kidnapper?”
I was silent.
“Why?” she said.
“Questions of some import need answering. We must go alone. Your adroitness would only darken the glass.”
“What questions?”
Desirous though I was to bring Quibble into confidence, I told her nothing more. She knew what a risk I had taken to bring her Without. A debt was due: she would have to trust me now. Aladfar and Vega had their test; this was mine.
I led her to the chamber’s wall, and we circumnavigated to a spot five yards from the next arc. I released her hand, crouched, felt for the cloak on the floor, and then rose, brightened my amber a bit, held the cloak out to her. “Put it on,” I said.
“It’s a Zero’s cloak!”
“Quietly, Quibble! This is a touch-and-go errand.”
“I’m going incognito?”
I sighed. “Tell her the rules,” Aladfar had said. “She must know how to act with the array. Rectification needs decorum.” Now I weighed how much more to tell her.
“We’re going to the Arc of Summary,” I said. “We’ll join a quorum of sixteen Zeros, a total array of kindness and control. The silence Aladfar will perform the One’s rectification. Only Aladfar may speak. Mark I mean it well: say no word! We must not interrupt the One’s rectification. He has one chance. The veil lifts once, never again.”
Quibble threw the cloak around her shoulders. “I understand,” she said.
“Put your arms through the sleeves. Always keep your right hand in the pocket.”
“As if touching an amber glass?”
I brought my amber to a yet fuller glow and looked into Quibble’s eyes. She gave me a very frank stare: Yes, I know about that.
Saying nothing, I led her on through five more arcs. We came to the night-door, traveled through it. More chambers, more arcs. Time was short: we hurried along.
Suddenly Quibble halted. “Unity will come for me! Any passing control—”
“Unity does not abide here,” I told her. “There are orbs, true, but only at the Arc of Summary, only at the behest of silence. You need have no fear.”
“There are no Ones here?” Quibble said.
“There is One at the arc. The far side of the spiral, past the arc, is a crossroads for Zeros. Night-doors there take us hive to spiral and back. This side is used only by Zeros coming from Without to join a total array and witness One’s rectification.”
“From Without?”
“Before seeing silence rectify One, we spend time Without.”
After a while, Quibble said, “You have your mysterious questions, vision. Fine. What about my questions? You know I’ll have them.”
Of course, I thought. Ever curious.
“We’ll share my amber glass.”
I stopped, took Quibble’s forearm, lifted her hand away from the glass. Between us, cupped in my palm, my round amber radiated, lighting us from head to foot. I let go of Quibble. “Now, if you will, touch the glass again,” I said to her. “All right. Now, try to return what I’m giving you.”
My vision flowed through the amber. Quibble gasped and gazed up at me, her differently colored eyes shining.
“What do you see?” I inquired.
“I see you, but also myself. I’m fainter than you are, but I’m bright. Shrouded in a soft amber light.”
“You’re seeing yourself through my eyes.”
“And what do you see, vision?”
The reverse, I said to her through the glass.
She drew a deeper breath, then another and another. Her breathing grew labored and her torso began to shake with the effort. Then her eyelids softly fell, half-closed; her grasp on my hand weakened. All at once her legs gave out beneath her and she fell.
Comprehending what was happening, I let the amber die and with my free arm embraced her. “Quibble!” I called out, once only, then thought better of speaking aloud. I bent my knees and sank to the floor, cradling her. Her breaths grew softer, more even, but still she didn’t speak, and my panic transformed to greater fear. Had I harmed her? I asked my amber what it knew, whether this sort of collapse could be expected. It told me nothing. Then I heard Quibble’s voice: Vision, light the glass.
I did so. She struggled up from the floor. Once she was firmly on her feet, I let go of her hand, stepped back. She looked at me, eyes wide in apology but also something like amusement. Then the look changed to concern.
“Don’t worry, vision. It’s happened before. Anxiety.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” My voice was less steady than I intended it, and my amber rebuked me: Avoid entanglements, Alnasl. She’s your protégé, not your child.
We resumed walking together, chamber to chamber, in silence, this time slower. At last, losing patience with my misgivings, I said, “Perhaps this is unwise.”
“Getting cold feet, kidnapper?” she scoffed.
“If we can’t share the amber—”
“Kindness! We can. I told you, it’s nothing. An anxiety attack. They happen. You just took me by surprise, speaking through the amber like that.”
“It’s called intoning. Zeros often intone, even—”
“—even when you don’t touch each other’s glasses.”
I said nothing but privately marveled she knew that secret. Who told her? Vega? Alsephina or Rasalased? I resolved to have words with them. Didn’t they know better? Or was it not a secret, after all, but somehow known among Ones?
No One or Zero told her, my amber said. She learned it on her own. She— It flashed briefly but fiercely – a communiqué from Aladfar: The array is all here, vision, but for you. Where are you?
Close, I replied.
Trouble?
No, I said, unwilling to explain, and whispered to Quibble: “We’re nearly there.”
She has more intuition than you give her credit for, the amber concluded.
Beyond the last arc, where the array waited, soft blue light mingled with gray – faint moonlight – which hung in the chamber like a mist. I dimmed the amber and held my hand out to Quibble as we passed the arc. She took the hand with a glance.
The look wasn’t wary like a skance. Dazed and Adroit seem to regard things and even people as if they’re about to slip away, disappear any moment. But Quibble’s look was open, inviting. She was unafraid. She was like a blank page waiting to be written on, wanting the ink – the mystery of words which caught yet freed the spirit.
There, I thought. That’s it. Her singularity.
“Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth,” Vega had said, quoting a scrivener. Now I realized she was right: seeing this fearlessness in Quibble, I also felt a stirring of faith in her. I would entertain doubt later, but just then, all doubt was brushed away.
I led her across the chamber, and we took our place in the total array before the Arc of Summary.