Quibble, 16. Amber
An orb bursts, and two factions of alarmed Zeros face off. Quibble and Alnasl set out to get answers.
16. Amber @Alnasl
I lost control. I was distracted – no. No excuses. Kindness help me, I lost control!
“Quibble!” I pleaded. She didn’t answer or look at me or flinch. Her face gleaned with sweat. Her eyes’ pupils, fixed on a faraway point, seared with a silver sheen. Then she spoke, and in her voice was an utter flatness of tone I’d never heard from her.
“A world of made is not a world of born. We’re together in a private loneliness. The door of night is set amid the stars. One’s eyes blink into nothingness. For to see the face is to know the person. For to know is to love.”
“Quibble!”
I slapped her across the face, harder than I intended. She recoiled, then her eyes gained focus and locked with mine. “I’m here,” she breathed.
“Oh, thank kindness!”
Heaving a cry of relief, I released her and stepped back. My amber pulsed weak light into the empty chamber around us as I sobbed, hanging my head in humiliation at my loss of control and my tears. Quibble came to me and pulled me into a hug. It took me a minute or more to compose myself. When at last we broke apart, the look she gave me was like the one after her anxiety attack, at once apologetic and bemused.
I must have returned a look of reproach. Her face broke into a wry smile and she said, “I think we got away with it, vision.”
For a moment, I was at a total loss. Then I barked, “Is this any time for a joke?”
Her brow wrinkled. It was plain she didn’t know what had happened. But how would I tell her, how could I tell her? I didn’t understand it in the least myself.
“The orb burst,” I said, beginning with the obvious.
“I didn’t mean to let it capture me, I promise. It happened before I could help it. Then I was stuck in the dream.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I lost control. I let my emotions overtake me.”
“Did I—” She frowned. “Did I ruin Epigraph’s rectification?”
I fought for clarity where there was none. “Quibble, what do you remember?”
“I was controlled. The orb had me. I couldn’t wake myself.”
“And?”
“I can’t really describe it. It’s all confused.”
I mused a moment. Yes, I thought, imagining what Aladfar would suggest, there can indeed be no secrets between us now, not about this. I held out my right hand, in which my amber was shining, and told Quibble to take it. She hesitated, then complied.
“Close your eyes,” I instructed, “and empty your mind of thoughts. Watch what I’m showing you. And don’t faint on me.”
I asked the amber for the memory. As it flowed into Quibble, she took in a gulp of air and held it, released it, took another. Slow, deep, even breaths. The glass replayed its memory from the moment Aladfar lit Meissa’s orb until the moment Quibble woke.
You and I will never transcend as he will. Attend to the rectification. As I looked back from Quibble to the scene in the Arc of Summary, I saw Aladfar take from his robes the crimson orb. Just as its glimmer emerged and in reflex Epigraph gazed on it, I realized my mistake in letting emotion rule me, and I intoned: No, Quibble! Look away!
But she was gone. Though I felt her hand in mine, clasping the amber, I no longer saw through her eyes – the ghostly second sight of the glass had vanished. Aladfar gently thrust the orb into the air above Epigraph’s head. It slowed, hung. Panic-stricken, I intoned a shout: Quibble! Nothing. The orb, now a red beacon, had claimed her.
Then the orb shone brighter, almost like lightning. The crimson glow at its center stayed, but around it a glowing kaleidoscope of colors began to swirl.
Alioth grasped Aladfar’s arm, harshly whispering, “There must be control!”
The silence stepped forward and stretched out his hand to the orb.
Chaos followed.
Diving inward, white light shot to the orb’s heart. Both kaleidoscope and natural color at once dissipated. For a fraction of a second, the orb shone palely, less like snow than a full moon. Then, flashing back to red, it exploded. By the thousands, minute shards sped outward like the light in a pop-in. Epigraph reawakened with a scream on his lips. When those slivers of glass reached him, they’d saw his flesh to shreds. But all the bursting bits of gossamer-glass suddenly vanished. Epigraph fell the few inches he had risen and collapsed on the floor. A ghostly relic, an afterimage of the orb, hovered in the air above him: first the ghost was a pale moon, then thousands of crimson glass shards shot out again.
Alioth released Aladfar’s arm. Control in hand, he turned to the One.
“No!” Vega exclaimed, rushing forward. In her left hand a blue flame flickered.
Epigraph fell quiet mid-scream and lay still, an empty vessel. Alioth did not dim his lit red. Stepping away from the rectified One, he raised the glass toward Vega. The chamber brightened with glass-light and resounded with pops as the total array split, controls taking formation with Alioth, kindnesses with Vega.
Alioth’s voice came cold and sharp: “Desist, lady. I’ve done my duty.”
My pleas to Quibble through the amber –Come here! Find me, Quibble! – received no answer. I tried to turn towards her, but I couldn’t move.
As if unaware what was happening around him, Aladfar only stared at his hand. Blood was dripping from three of the fingertips. He rubbed them with his thumb.
He withdrew his amber, then lit it. He brought forth no other glass. Backing off from Epigraph’s corpse a bit, he stood between the two arrays of Zeros. His gaze swept back and forth between them. His amber burned so fiercely that I could see the bones in the hand that held it.
“Silence!” he commanded. “Stop this madness! Stop it now!”
All their adepts obeyed, but neither Alioth nor Vega let their glasses die.
“There was no need for that!” Vega said.
“There was every need,” Alioth replied. “Examine the corpse, lady. See what the silence’s orb did to him.”
The lady made no move. “You know I cannot look away,” she said.
For a fraction of a moment, I thought of letting go of Quibble’s hand, revealing my lit kindness, popping to Vega’s side, and offering to assist by examining the corpse myself. Then my amber burned my hand like a hot ingot, my eyes pivoted to Aladfar like iron drawn to a magnet, and he intoned: Fool, what are you waiting for?
I can help.
No! Pop away! Get Quibble out!
Won’t that be suspicious?
Her cover’s already blown, or it will be soon. Hide her.
Where?
Seventeen.
The bursting orb’s afterimage echoed in my sight as I popped. Then I could move again. I turned to Quibble, took her by the shoulders, shook her, shouted her name.
Her eyes gleamed. Still dreaming, she began to speak: “A world of made…”
Taking her hand from the amber, Quibble opened her eyes and gaped at me.
“I was talking gibberish at the end,” she observed. “I don’t remember saying any of it. What do you suppose it means?”
“Your guess is as good as mine!”
“One’s eyes blink into nothingness,” Quibble repeated. “As the orb did.”
That seemed only a coincidence. I shrugged.
“I broke the orb,” she said, reaching her own conclusion. “But how?”
“I don’t know. Once you entered the dream, your vision was entirely lost to me. A lucky thing, too. Had I dreamed with you, the orb would have rectified me.”
“It didn’t rectify Epigraph.” Quibble’s eyes filled with fear. “Alioth did!”
I took her meaning. “Rectification is a mystery,” I said. “Aladfar was dreaming with the orb – the dream of silences – but even he doesn’t know when transcendence happens, whether it’s when the One dies or before.”
“Epigraph screamed when the orb burst.”
“But was that Epigraph?”
“How could it not be?”
“We’ll see.”
“What?”
I pondered a spell, silent. “The question before us now is how you broke the orb. I’ve got an idea who can answer it. But, coincidentally, if we go there, you may perhaps see One transcended.”
“Not again!” Quibble said sharply. “Vision, I broke my promise to Nish – look at what’s come of it! You had your questions and I had mine, but they’ve brought up more questions, that’s all. We should quit. You should take me home.”
“No!” I said. “We go on.”
As before, I turned and strode off.
At once, Quibble was at my side. After a while her curiosity got the better of her and she said, “Your amber does quite a trick, showing memories. How does it work?”
“Imagine your life’s a book,” I posited.
“And I can’t tear out a single page,” Quibble quoted, “but I can throw the whole book in the fire!”
I ignored her game. “You can read any page you want. The amber remembers the experiences of the Zero touching it. Its memories are replete in every detail: places, events, what people say, what you think and feel, all. And you can call up memories from the amber anytime you wish.”
Quibble was pensive. “You were very afraid,” she said.
I was hardly less afraid now. I didn’t tell her so. No need to frighten her with the specter of fiery glasses alight at our backs, chasing us. I hoped I was wrong about that.
“What I don’t understand,” she went on, “is how you keep track of what’s going on right now. The amber’s in your hand, lit. It’s remembering. But how do you keep all of its memories out of your head? I don’t think I could, hard as I tried.”
“The skill isn’t easily acquired,” I agreed. “Some, newly zeroed, struggle with it a long time. Some never master it. You can tell: they speak of the past in present tense, like ancient Ones. Like Epigraph did, until he chose to summarize honestly. ”
“Newly zeroed?”
I’d said too much. Quibble’s curiosity made me eager to tell her things, in spite of the caution I resolved to take. She seemed to me a blank page, and I wanted to write on her. Even now, it took effort not to answer.
“We should try it,” Quibble said, apropos of nothing.
“Try what?”
“You showed me the orb bursting. That’s one side of the story. Let me show you the other side, the dream. Maybe it’ll explain what happened.”
“Not a good idea.”
“Why not?” she insisted. “I can intone, and all that took was you intoning to me. Be honest: didn’t I take to the amber just like I took to Without? I’m a natural!”
“You are,” I admitted. “But it’s not that simple. You couldn’t describe the dream, you said it was confused. Are you sure you can recall every detail now? Perfectly?”
Quibble snorted. “My mind lets go of nothing.”
“A false memory might lead us to a false conclusion,” I went on. “Your emotions are another matter – that’s what really worries me. Now you be honest, Quibble: what was your emotional state in the dream? What did it make you feel?”
All I heard for a while were our footsteps. At last she murmured, “Scared out of my skin.”
“I thought so. The orb tried to rectify you. I’d be scared. Now, Quibble, if you let me control you, the amber might resurrect your memory intact. That’s a talent of vision I have with the glass. But think: the amber will remember all, including your feelings. It resurrects them. Do you want to relive that dream? And if you do, there is a risk you’ll slip back into it. Reliving a dream with an amber is akin to having the dream again. We have no idea yet what made Meissa’s orb burst. You could still be rectified.”
In the silence that followed, I regretted being so blunt with Quibble. None of this was her fault, after all. It was mine. “We’re going to an Egg,” I told her.
Quibble chuckled. “East Egg or West Egg? You’d be surprised the difference it makes to the folks on East Egg.”
“Call it Up Egg.”
“Aboveground?”
“In space.”
“Space?” Quibble said, puzzled.
“You’ll see.”
A moment passed. “Why don’t we just pop to Up Egg?”
“Into orbit?” I said, chuckling myself. “I don’t think so.”
“We’re going by night-doors, then? Could we just pop to the last one?”
“No. I can’t recall where it is.”
“But you said the amber never forgets!”
“It doesn’t know because I didn’t touch it at the last three doors. Nor have I ever popped to or away from them.”
“Vision! You’re keeping the doors a secret? From your own amber?”
“It will not always be my amber.”
“Oh.”
“We must save our strength now, Quibble. No more popping, only walking and night-doors. Actually, I’m glad of a walk just now. Shakes the jitters out.”
“It’s incredible!” Quibble said. “You’re between.”
“Popping? It’s a parlor trick, if you ask me.”
“No, I mean you, vision. Listen to yourself! The Alnasl I know never has jitters, or at least he wouldn’t admit it. He never rambles. He says the bare minimum, enigmatic as the sphinx. Now you’re downright effusive. And you cried, vision. I don’t mean just at the arc. After. I didn’t know Zeros could cry!”
I called on the amber for a mirror. My reflection floated a foot or so before me. It showed me someone I didn’t recognize.
I dismissed the mirror.
“Today has tried me sorely,” I said, “and we still have a journey ahead of us.”
A script leapt to mind: Truth becomes fiction when the fiction is true.
For as long as I’d known Vega, her talk of excellence was mere fiction to me. Now, an excelsior walked beside me and let me guide her. I had no doubt now Quibble could excel, though I didn’t understand her excellence’s nature. And whereas, before, she’d been like a bonfire on a faraway hillside, now she was close. I felt her warmth. In fact, I felt as if I stood too close to the fire.
I was more than myself now: I was also whatever she was making me. But I felt newly, strangely alienated. Was I anything more than memories in a glass? Zeroed, cut off from who I once was, how could I know what was fiction and what was truth?