Quibble, 31. Lesson
Alnasl gives Quibble a hard lesson in the use and danger of a Zero's glass.
31. Lesson @Quibble
Dawn, having stolen over the mountains eastward, was breaking in the valley. A chill wind had blown through the night – this is the heat? I’d wondered – but now only a slight breeze stirred. Crossing the field between the outer ring of the consensus and the northeast hill in the crepuscular dusk, I’d found Nish and her crew already at work. Now, as I climbed the hill, I mused on Graph’s planned factory.
Realities Without beg a response to our pressing needs. Water, food, shelter, warmth. Isn’t anything more merely indulgence?
Says a scrivener! Meissa broke in. What about spiritual fulfillment, a life of the mind? Can you live without books? Now you’ve heard Cord’s cello, can you live without music?
I had music as One. We sang.
Was that music? Really? “One does not sing alone”? “When the song begins, One is not silent”? “One follows where the voices lead”?
We had consensus!
And no individuality.
You know, we’re going to have a real spat if you keep starting arguments like this.
If you don’t like it, don’t touch me all the time, the amber said.
It was true I couldn’t keep my fingers from the glass. In Cord’s closet I’d found a vest with pockets perfect for keeping it out of sight but within reach, and now in Zero’s habit I carried it in the right pocket – but the ease of touching it encouraged me to do so. My hand strayed to the vest pocket and fondled the amber without my noticing. Indeed fondle was the right word: after less than a day, I delighted in touching it. The glass was a mainstay in my hand, like the worry stone Nish kept. This, I reflected, is why Zeros never reveal their right hand. It’s adroit to the amber, faithful.
That’s partly it, Meissa said. They’re all but blind Without. Ambers give them sight.
No! Really?
Would I lie about that? Ask the vision.
The climb up the hill winded me. On its flat crest was an orchard; Alnasl stood at its edge. Nearing, I paused to catch my breath and then said, “Are you blind?”
“Yes.” He extended his arms at full length to either side. “That far, I see no more than color without my amber. A shape is there, but it’s only rudimentary. Farther afield, I see much better. That’s why Zeros call me vision.”
“And,” I intuited, “you can see farther and better with your amber than typical.”
“That too,” the vision said. “Did yours start speaking to you?”
“Yesterday. We carried on a long time at the mirror. Cord was upset I came back to work so late.”
“You didn’t tell Concordance?”
“I took my lumps. Vega said to be discreet.”
Satisfied, Alnasl said no more of it. I was thankful Vega acceded to my terms and I was continuing as the vision’s protégé. He already knew what I did and didn’t know, and how seriously I took matters. Now he looked down the hillside at the awakening consensus. I turned to face it, and we stood awash in daylight. Birds sang in the trees behind us. From this vantage, I saw why the Adroit had built their consensus so far down the valley from the mountain. Light came earlier to wake them.
Since Alnasl said nothing, I posed a trifling question: “Why does a Zero blink? I gather what it basically means: ‘I see you, I know you.’ But why?”
“A wise question to begin. Touch is trust, Ones say, but to Zeros, sight is trust. ‘I see you, I know you, and I trust you,’ we say.” Of a sudden, holding the index of his left hand in the air before me, he grew intense: “In a blink’s time, a Zero I face can uncover a lit glass and trance me. Remember that, excelsior.”
Alnasl’s retreat to his prior formality unnerved me. Is this another wall with him?
“I showed you negativity,” he went on, dropping his hand. “Now, please share your amber, and try it alone. You can do it, Quibble. It will help at first to close your eyes. To you it seems a bad thing, I know, but let yourself go Within. Forget sight – this isn’t adroitness, you’re not looking. Let your other senses take over, then simply tell the amber what you want. To begin with, a monosyllabic verb – ‘see’ – is good, quick.”
Taking the amber from my pocket, I cupped it in my palm, held it there with my middle finger, and slid my right hand into Alnasl’s left, retracting my finger so he could feel the glass. He tightened his grip. For a blink’s duration, I saw second sight, his sight superimposed on mine. Without became a palimpsest, everything blurring as if it now had shadows shut inside it. An apple tree a few yards away, a straggler at the orchard’s end, forked sheer from the base of its trunk to its crown, becoming two trees overlaying each other. Then I sensed the vision closing his eyes. The double trees coalesced. I shut my eyes and tried to settle into blindness, into seeking shadows in the dark Within.
For many moments, nothing of any note happened. Birds warbled. I breathed. In, out. Alnasl breathed. A bumblebee buzzed nearby. The ding of Graph’s hammer floated up to us from the smithy below. A gust of wind hit the hill, rustling the long grass and making me shiver. Above us, the gyrfalcon Chapter screeched. The birdsong around us got louder, and just beyond it, I heard the voices of Adroit in the field below. Nish raised her voice, arguing – oh, Nish, why must you be so definitive? Horses’ hooves clapped on cobbles in the consensus. Oil sizzled: a plunge of hot steel.
See!
Sensation burst from the amber, took speed, raced off. It looked like a membrane, an ethereal sphere expanding and popping away in a flash. In negative, I saw all it struck – all about us, tall grass flamed out, a red nearly magenta. The sphere flickered away, so quick I really saw but little – the crowns of the orchard’s trees and, gyrating on a thermal, Chapter’s wings, his tail feathers transformed to white and their white bands now a dark gray. As it fled, the membrane shrank like a fog of breath disappearing on a windowpane. Then it puffed out, nothing.
“A promising start!” Alnasl said. “Do it again. Look for focus. Negativity—” He raised his right hand, all the fingers outstretched, and yanked it from his eyes. “—flashes! Just don’t let it blur.” He lingered on blur, then exclaimed: “See!”
Hands, us, grass, earth, flowers, trunks, branches, control, leaves, falcon—
“Vision!” My eyes opened, drinking light. “Control!”
Alnasl’s grasp tightened to the point it hurt. “It’s all right, Quibble. Espy!”
I shut my eyes and let the rest of myself sense. Ding of hammer, birdsong, Definition’s voice. See! The membrane sped out from our clasped hands, and in the trees behind us, maybe thirty yards off and at least ten feet off the ground, I saw a red blur shaped like a person, perched in the crook between a tree’s trunk and its lowest branch. One arm was raised by its head – a branch, it held a branch – and the other was buried in its cloak. I loosened my fingers from Alnasl’s grip. He let me go, and I caught the amber before it could fall from my palm, held there a moment by sweat and friction. I returned it to my vest but kept a fingertip touching it. Then I turned around, peered in among the trees, and met hard eyes gazing intently out of a soft face.
“I see you, Alsephina! Come down from there!”
A pop resounded over the hill and, blazing, the adept of control stood before me. She blinked her eyes. I assented back.
“Good enough for now, Quibble,” said the vision. “Adept, we thank you.”
Alsephina popped out in a whirlpool of light and a sudden, hard clap – a sound, this close, like Graph’s hammer might make if it struck the steel cold. I turned to Alnasl, giving him a glare and a rebuke: “Did you think that was funny?”
“Wasn’t meant to be!” he rebuked in kind. “You ask the right questions, Quibble, but do you enter this in the right spirit?” He softened his voice a hair: “Think of it like a chess game. The enemy is closing in and you’re about to be checkmated!”
The vision’s last words came out in almost a whisper, and from that I understood how grave they were. I shrank inwards a moment, adjusting to his way of seeing things, and asked him, “Was Alsephina touching a red glass? Is that why she shone red?”
“Yes. But you can’t depend on that, Quibble. Popping in with control lit is only a momentary advantage. Against a vision—” Alnasl’s right hand flew out of his cloak, the amber within it so fiery his veins showed darkly through. “—it’s no advantage! You’re an excelsior, mightier than I am, even if you don’t know it yet.” His burning fist waved in the air, his voice rasped, and now he spat his words: “Therein lies your danger now. Zeros popping in on you won’t light control. They’ll wait, skulk, and hide. They’ll come out and light up when they have the high ground. You’ve got to be ready!”
Alnasl smacked his closed fist against the palm of his other hand so hard that the pain showed in his eyes. His force, enjoining me to fight for my life, shook me. I knew I was in peril, but not this much peril. Unbidden, Meissa intoned to me, Did witnessing my imprisonment teach you nothing?
That was utter control, Meissa. I don’t think I’m up against anything quite that dire!
Aren’t you? What of the Zero you saw hiding beyond the arc? Who was he?
Whether the amber was Meissa or not, it was right. Alnasl had kept something from me in the hub, talking with Utopia after I showed him that Zero. Now, if we were in earnest about my excellence, all the walls had to fall flat. I had to know.
“Vision, who was the Zero hiding beyond the Arc of Summary?”
“Certainly,” Alnasl said, pocketing his amber, “he doesn’t mean you well—”
“It’s about time I had candor from you!”
The vision pursed his lips. “Yes, it is,” he admitted. “His name is Lesath. I don’t know him, but I know what he is – a lord of utter control. There are very few, but the few there are—” He paused, let out a heavy breath through his nostrils. “I figured utter control watches you. I didn’t know for a fact until you showed me Lesath. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you scared out of your skin. Panic is never an ally.”
“I see. But Lesath hasn’t come for me. What’s his game?”
“I don’t know. Aladfar understands Lesath better, but even he knows little. This lord is wily.”
Alnasl seemed impatient to continue the lesson, but I still had questions for him, and now I was determined to get answers. “Does Vega have any news of Quiddity?”
The vision seemed to flinch. “Her inquiries are proceeding. Give her time.”
It seemed to me that Alnasl himself had plenty of time since I came Without, but I’d gain nothing by pointing it out to him. “Why do Zeros kidnap Far children?” I said.
He grew as grim as Imay had. “Where did you hear that?”
“From my friend the Far. So don’t think of denying it, vision.”
“No, I won’t deny it. But I will have you understand kindness abjures it, as do I. Have you ever seen a Zero child?”
“You don’t have children. It’s against edict.”
“We can’t have children,” Alnasl corrected me. “Zeroing sterilizes us.”
“So you take the Far’s children and zero them?”
“As I said, a cruel necessity. That’s why there are so few kind Zeros. The heresy, bound by its own edict against kidnapping, depends on the orthodoxy for perpetuation. That of course makes no sense to many an orthodox Zero.”
“Couldn’t you zero Ones instead?”
He frowned. “No, Ones can’t be zeroed. They become Numberless. Without an amber, a Zero can’t see well, and some can’t see at all. But without their ambers, Numberless lose all sensory perception. So they can’t let go of the glass. Their minds retreat wholly into it, and there they go mad.”
“So—” I stared at Alnasl, my eyes widening. “—you’re really Far!”
“My zeroing took all that from me.” A vague, lost look drifted over the vision’s face. “Sometimes a flash of something else returns, a memory or a habit. It leaves me, and my amber refuses to recall it. The glass insists I’m a Zero. It needs me to be a Zero.”
“It needs?”
“It’s dependent on its Zero to—” Alnasl said as the amber intoned, Do you think I like being trapped in here? I withdrew my fingers from my pocket. “—observe and sense the world. I’m sure you’ve noticed your amber has a personality?”
“Meissa.”
The vision recoiled with a surprised blink. “Vega gave you that amber?”
I was confused. “Can’t you tell which it is when you touch it?”
“It’s yours, Quibble, not mine. As long as you’re touching it, the amber speaks to you alone. Meissa’s personality isn’t the only one there, just the strongest. You may hear other Zeros, others who’ve had the glass.”
“Will I get their memories too?”
“That’s hard to say. Ambers can be cagey. Remember, you’re not dealing with a thing. You’re dealing with a person or perhaps many people together, a collective mind. It can become a jumble of voices, if you don’t remind the amber you’re in charge, you’re its conduit to reality. That might be why Numberless go insane.”
Now we continued the lesson. I took out my amber again.
There you are! it said.
I told it, Don’t interrupt unless you must, please.
Sharing it with the vision, I got it to espy the hilltop in negative. The trick was much easier than before; I was getting the hang of it. At last, I managed to do it with my eyes open, then to do it without intoning the command see. It still wasn’t instinctive. Alnasl suggested I try sustaining negativity.
“How? It’s like a pulse. It runs away.”
“Do it multiple times in quick succession,” he instructed. “Yes, I know it’s hard. Your amber can do it, though. You just have to acclimate to each other.”
I tried, but all I got was a disjointed series of negative flashes at uneven intervals. Alnasl released my hand. With a grumble, he took his right hand out of his cloak and opened it to reveal his own amber. “Maybe there’s something wrong with yours,” he said. “Let me see, Quibble.”
I turned over my glass. As soon as it fell into the vision’s palm, his left hand shot from his cloak – when did it go there? – and I was in his control.
There was no pain, only sudden fear. All about me vanished, swallowed by red light. In its midst Alnasl loomed large, towering. We faced each other in a silent cocoon cut away from Without, from all reality. When his voice came, intoned in the dream of control, it was calm, whispering.
Check, excelsior. Now, break free, if you can!
The thought had already come to me: Pain, touch, a thing. With effort, I stamped my left foot, sought the twitch in the ankle. It had nearly gone away in the last few days but now roared back. Between my mind and the pain, though, interposed Alnasl’s will. He drew me deeper into the dream. I clenched my fists, digging nails into palms. The red glow intensified. As Alnasl shrank into it, I began to hyperventilate.
Let me go! Please!
The red dream blinked out.
I hunched over, hands on knees. Alnasl’s hand, holding the control, dove into his cloak. It resurfaced with a large kindness. The abrupt change in dreaming disoriented me, but I straightened. My breaths came slow, deep. In, out, Alnasl intoned. Again the dream was total – only he and I occupied it – but I could feel earth beneath me. Then I couldn’t: I was rising in the air. As peace flooded into me, I realized the glass floating overhead was a yinman. My ankle’s flare-up faded to a dull throb, then left altogether. Alnasl’s form rushed off in the distance and disappeared.
When I returned to myself, I stood on the ground facing the Zero. I sweated from exertion, and my limbs ached with an overstretched feeling as if I’d just sprinted all the way up the hill. My breathing was steady and even, though. I had control. I held out my hand, open. Sighing, Alnasl surrendered my amber to me. His eyes, most of all, showed how disappointed he was. I wanted to cry but didn’t let myself.
“You’re conjoined with the amber now,” he warned. “Never give it up again!”
“It was foolish of me,” I conceded. “Is this how it’s going to be between us now? Everything’s a test? I liked you better as a friend.”
The Zero’s glare melted, and he exchanged assent with me.
“We’re still friends, Quibble. You brought me out of slumber, a wakeful dream. That was a kindness greater than you know. One good turn deserves another. I’m giving you hard lessons because they’re the best. Control will come for you. And if control doesn’t, utter control will. You don’t have time to work things out slowly. You’ve got to hone your instincts fast.”
His control blazed before me. I closed my hand on the amber and felt it grow hot, giving me all three desires at once – pain, touch, a thing! I escaped the dream. Cooling in my hand, the glass left only a vague tingle as if my arm had just woken.
“That’s good!” Alnasl said. “Enough for today. Practice your espying, and learn to sustain negativity. Meet me here tomorrow, at dusk, and we’ll go Within. Our next several lessons must happen there. Don’t worry, it’s a friendly spiral. But be ready!”
Descending the hill, reeling a bit from the alarm of Alnasl’s last dream of control, I espied in negative a few times, trying to speed up the process. Then I stayed my hand from the amber and took a minute to think alone, looking around carefully. I absorbed the reality of that patch of garden, this flower, that tree. Now they clung to a stubborn there-ness. Without, seen without the glass, refused to let me imbibe it all. Vega’s words about the seduction latent in the mirror came to me.
Espying is a pleasure, I thought, but is pleasurable necessarily better? Isn’t real better?
I think so! Meissa exclaimed. Again my fingers played with the amber, despite only a moment ago my keeping them mindfully free. But what is “real”?
“Real becomes not-real when the unreal is real” – is that your point?
Kindness, no! Espying gives you only a representation. Simulacra. Extraordinarily faithful simulacra, true. But what makes something truly real is the impossibility of representing it. Inevitably, somehow, simulacra reduce reality, no matter how faithful they are. I can espy without you, for example, but it doesn’t feel real at all. You make it real for me.
Because I’m alive?
Meissa laughed. You think I’m not? I’m as alive as you! What’s a body if not a thing?
Ah, but I have a mind, consciousness—
So do I, Quibble. I’m talking to you, aren’t I? Anyway, do you imagine consciousness for you is any different than it is for animals – your friend the falcon, say? Or for that tree?
Trees aren’t conscious, and you’re more like a rock.
Shows what you know about trees! And if I’m a rock, throw me away. Go on, toss me!
I admitted I couldn’t do that, but I objected to the unfairness of the test. I had no choice but to keep the amber. A Zero might be watching me even now, lying in wait, hoping I would do something just that foolish again. If I did, I’d be helpless.
Would you really?
Meissa didn’t explain this remark. We went the rest of the way home in silence.
We lay, Nish and I, staring up at the barest sliver of moon left, the sky dense with clouds like thin sheets of snow – translucent glass over the moon.