Quibble, 43. Relic

Cate holds a grudge. Rasalased reveals the surreal destiny of Zeros. The array of kindness searches for Quibble. Nish struggles for clarity.

43. Relic @Definition

“You said your watch would be careful!”

“It was.”

“Not careful enough!”

That said, Cate fell silent and stared at the book in his hands. Though Hottest was now upon us and he sat in the copious light pouring through the library windows, the old man was huddled in a wool blanket.

The silence, leaning against a bookcase, frowned. Then he assented to the vision, who withdrew a red glass.

“No!” I said.

Ignoring me, Alnasl stepped towards Cate. I scrambled to get between them, and Alnasl halted.

“I said no! You will not, vision. By edict, control is not to be used here.”

“There is precedent,” the vision countered.

“How dare you tell me there’s precedent?”

“Desist, vision,” the silence said. “She’s right. As the lady said, we came for aid. I apologize, Definition. Will you permit the use of a kindness?”

“Cate?”

“Fine,” the Dazed muttered.

I tried never to pity Indication for his lameness, though I was responsible for it. Once, Cate’s temper had been the terror of the monastery. Hobbled, now he was helpless to do much more than yell at people. Yelling already failed with these Zeros, he likely thought, and being silent was all he had left.

Alnasl popped out. In the confines of the library, the pop’s echo rebounded as if in a small chamber Within. A few seconds passed, and then Vega popped in where the vision had stood.

“You have a lot of nerve,” I said to her.

“Nish, it’s fine,” Cate put in.

“I’m not talking about you. The lady knows what I mean.”

“I do,” Vega admitted. “I will answer for it, Definition, but I can’t do so just now. Time is of the essence. If the vision’s theory is correct, we’re in a race with the adept of utter control Asuja to find Quibble. After Alioth’s demise, we can well believe the adept will kill her if he wins her amber.”

“Giving her that glass,” I observed, “you put her in his sights and at his mercy.”

“I gave her a means to defend herself against many foes, maybe the only means. But that’s beside the point now. I didn’t expect a foe with such an advantage. Illusion! We must move decisively. If Indication knows where she went, if he can even guess—”

“If I knew where she went, I wouldn’t tell you,” Cate said flatly. “Trance me, if you wish, but you’ll get no more. I can answer any kindness with discretion. Control, for me, is only pain. Silence, you may even try. Do your best or your worst.”

I turned and knelt by his chair. “It may mean her life,” I implored.

“Where is Quiddity?” he asked.

I heard the smallest gasp. “With 10-Utopia,” Vega said.

Cate looked up sharply at first the lady of kindness and then the silence. His gaze lingered on Aladfar. “Then why should I trust either of you?” he said.

I expected the Zeros to make an argument, even if a poor one. So I was surprised when Vega turned and strode to the library door, saying only to Aladfar, “We’re losing time.” He fell into step behind her.

I rose to follow, but reaching the door, I turned back. “You’d tell me?” I asked.

Cate snorted. “You said never to mention her again. Which is it, Nish? Are you her adroitness or not? Or are you Quote’s now?”

Walking out and slamming the door, I was again surprised to find the two Zeros only a few paces ahead of me. They whispered in a corner of the arcade.

“We can’t take her with us,” Aladfar was saying when I joined them. “She’ll get herself killed – or one of us! She’s a liability like this.”

“We can’t just leave her,” Vega said. “There’s no telling what she’ll do.”

Aladfar thought a moment, then scoffed. “Oh, come on! She’d never do that.”

“Over Alsephina? Don’t bet her life on it.”

Grasping the subject, I stared off down the arcade towards the adept’s corpse, by which Rasalased sat. She still held Alsephina’s hand, but she had ceased crying. Alnasl sat on the stones too, a short distance away, as if keeping vigil.

“Leave Rasalased with me,” I offered. “I’ll look after her.”

Both Zeros stared absently at me. Then the lady of kindness led me aside and sat with me on a bench.

“Would you?” she asked, the faintest tone of a plea in her voice. “Definition, stay with her constantly. Take her arm in yours. Touch her often, remind her you’re there.”

“Touch a lady of control?” I said, astounded, though in the next moment it struck me that earlier, unthinkingly, I’d touched Alnasl, and he hadn’t reacted with aversion.

“Yes, touch her. She’ll understand.”

“What are you scared she’ll do?”

Vega leaned close. “Pop and self-sunder,” she murmured. “I doubt she’d try it if you’re touching her. I don’t think she’d even want you to see it. But it is the risk, I think, so you’ll be assuming it, too.”

Realizing the gravity of my charge, I gave Vega a Zero’s assent. I’d done this just once before, when she commanded me to care for the newly Dazed who were delivered to the monastery. Even then, I thought assenting a silly custom, absurdly formal. Now, it seemed the only right way to answer the lady.

No sooner had Vega returned my assent than she rose and popped out. Aladfar followed. A few Dazed were yet idling by the chapel doors. I hurried across the cloister to them and instructed them to bear Alsephina’s corpse into the chapel, once I escorted the lady of control away. Then I went to Rasalased. Kneeling, I said to her, “Come, lady. The Dazed will look to her now. Come with me. Dine with us.”

Rasalased wiped her eyes with the hem of her cloak, then filched in the pockets of Alsephina’s cloak, taking out glasses and slipping them into her own pockets. Rising, she let me lead her away. She threw not a glance over her shoulder. I thrust my arm in hers and laid my other hand against her elbow. She trembled, huffed, and I realized she was on the verge of laughter, though it was also mingled with fresh tears.

“Is that what you were colluding with Vega about?” she said. “Never fear, Nish, I’m not about to pop myself to pieces!”

“Then make sure I don’t,” I found myself saying. “I’m scared out of my wits. My adroitness could be anywhere from here to the Pyramid of the Sun. She’s being hunted by a phantom Zero she thinks is a friend. Stay with me, all right?”

Rasalased nodded.

Hearing Alnasl’s pop-out behind us, I was grateful to be rid of all the Zeros save one. “I’m so sorry,” I went on, unsure what to say but desperate to change the subject. It occurred to me that Zeros never addressed people by abbreviations, but Rasalased had called me Nish just now, so I ventured, “Sal and Seph?”

“Yes!” the lady answered, chuckling. “Sal and Seph!”

In the hall, we sat well apart from everyone else. Cate didn’t appear. He’s going to sulk with his book, I thought. Before serving the Dazed, Ell brought us bowls of broth. By the strong smell of garlic, I guessed she and Nell had used too many ramps, and a taste confirmed it. I sputtered and exclaimed, “Kindness!”

Rasalased kept her left hand in her cloak and sipped broth shakily with her right. “It’s fine,” she said, then something I couldn’t catch under her breath.

“Add water, and spoon some of the ramps out,” I said to Ell, waving her away.

A minute passed in silence.

“I don’t wish to be indelicate,” I began, “but I’m not sure what rites—” I stopped, gathered my thoughts, tried again. “What’s the right thing for us to do for Alsephina?”

“There’s no edict, and we never discussed it,” the lady of control said. She closed her eyes, then opened them with a sniff and a smile, saying, “Cremation. And Seph says she’d like it if the Dazed sang a service. She always liked hearing Ones sing.”

Oh, kindness! I thought. She’s cracking up!

“I know what it must be like, still hearing her voice,” I said. “I dreamed my boy was speaking to me just the other night. I hadn’t heard his voice in years. I didn’t think I ever would again, but I suppose love’s never done with you.”

Rasalased looked at me blankly. With a start – “Oh!” – she took her hand from her cloak and held it out to me. On her fingers rested an amber glass.

“Touch it,” she requested.

I did so. Before me appeared my own face – I knew it from peeking at Quibble’s mirror – and, faintly overlaying it, the face of Alsephina. “Definition, hello again!” said the ghostly Zero. I abruptly pulled my hand away, then gaped in disbelief.

“Her amber, Nish. She put herself in the glass. All Zeros do. We put ourselves in our ambers all the time. We can’t even see without them. When a Zero dies, a relic stays in the amber – personality, memories, knowledge, all the Zero thought and felt while communing with the glass. Seph isn’t dead, not really. She’s here. I can see her right now. Don’t feel sorry for me. I have no idea what it’s like to lose someone else forever.”

“Will the am—” I stuttered. “Will Alsephina stay with you now?”

“For a while. She entrusted me with it, you see. I’ll mirror with a protégé, newly zeroed, and give the amber to them.”

“So, as an amber passes along, Zero to Zero,” I theorized, “it collects you?”

Rasalased smiled. “Like Utopia collects Ones.”

“And when Quibble touches her amber?”

“She sees and hears Meissa, and kindness knows who else. A strong relic shines bright. I imagine Meissa outshines all the others.”

I thought about that, then what Aladfar had told me of the Numberless. The two sets of facts didn’t seem to square up. “If Numberless go insane in ambers,” I asked, “why don’t the relics of Zeros?”

“The amber goes to a new Zero, so the relics it carries have a new way to see the world,” the lady of control explained. “But an amber and a Numberless form a closed loop. The world can’t enter. No other Zero can enter. And when the Numberless dies, the amber dies, so every relic it carries dies, too. That’s why we never zero Ones, ever. We’d be killing what’s left of our own.”

“And so,” I said after giving that a mulling over, “creating an excelsior, half One and half Zero, is ... what?”

“A great risk!” Rasalased told me. Then she added, a bit slyly, “It was the only way Quiddity would agree.”

We laid Alsephina’s pyre in the west meadow, downhill of the monastery. Some Dazed grumbled at the first song’s interruption, but spirits rose as they sang vespers in the light of the setting sun before the burning pyre. Prosody and Derivation, two young Dazed, spoke of singing vespers there every first song at the hottest.

For all her initial shock at losing her faithfulness, Rasalased grieved stoically, no doubt comforted by Alsephina herself.

“It was a lovely memorial,” she said afterwards.

I squeezed her hand.

“We had forty-two Fears together. It was a lot more than we ever expected.”

As we entered the monastery by the west gate, Ellipsis came tottering up to me with a message: “Quote wishes to see you, Adroit.”

Of course, I thought. We’d been lucky so far: Quote had returned unexpectedly early from hunting – or whatever he’d been doing – but he hadn’t inserted himself into the day’s hubbub, offering unwanted advice and making himself the center of attention. I wouldn’t indulge him. And just now, I didn’t want to rehash our quarrel, whatever he had to say to me about it, nor was I going to make Rasalased a party to it.

I gave Ell a noncommittal response, then ushered Rasalased to an unoccupied cell in the women’s dormitory and made her comfortable for the night.

We had a visit only from the silence that night, late. He and Vega had traced our trip by cart down the forest road to the Adroit consensus, then gone a few miles farther to the cliffs facing the ocean. There was no sign of Quibble, but control was scattered haphazardly throughout the valley, conducting their own search. Vega and Aladfar had met an array of adepts, who popped out without attacking them. Fighting kindness was not control’s priority now.

“They know about the phantom,” Aladfar said. “The fall of Alioth seems to have put a scare in them, but I’m not comforted by it. Asuja staked a claim to Quibble, but his claim is only good if he finds her first. He’s looking as tirelessly as we are.”

All three Zeros returned, luckless, at dusk on the first study. Vega and Aladfar had scouted all the land west of the monastery. Returning from the seaside cliffs, they’d split up to explore the valley’s sides, Vega going north, Aladfar south. There were more encounters with arrays of control, but again they were given a wide berth. Supposing, with Meissa’s amber, Quibble had keys to all the night-doors en route to Egg 17, Alnasl had retraced his steps there and reported to Utopia, who tasked a Sibling to venture off-course in aid of the search. On his homeward journey, Alnasl visited the sites to which he’d taken Quibble during her training.

“But who knows how far afield her amber can take her?” he said now, shaking his head. “We never planned a rendezvous at a fallback position. Kindness, how was I so naive?”

Hearing this, for once I grasped what was going on in Alnasl’s mind. He felt he’d failed Quibble – and indeed he had, I thought. He was starting to realize his earnestness and faith were blinding obstacles, like mirrors he held before himself. They had shown him what he wanted from Quibble and how to get it, but they obscured her desires and feelings, and now he was at a loss to guess what she would do. All the Zeros were.

Throughout the discussion, held in the kitchen over a late supper, Cate was silent and hardly looked at the Zeros. I thought his temper still had the better of him. But after they left – Rasalased and Alnasl to comb the forest between the monastery and the Adroit consensus, Vega and Aladfar for a search Within – Cate changed the subject.

“I asked you a question,” he said. “Quill or Quote? I expect an answer.” When I got up and began clearing away dishes, Cate lifted a crutch and slapped it hard on the tabletop. “No! You’re not going to hide behind grief anymore. I won’t have it! Maybe it is no affair of mine, Nish, but you need to decide this for yourself.”

“I’m not adroit with Quote. It was a mistake.”

“Are you adroit with Quill, then?”

“I’ll do everything I can to save her.”

“That’s not what I asked. Don’t quibble.”

We exchanged stares, then laughed. I set down the stack of dishes and sank into my chair, giving myself up to my laughter, but in no time it yielded to sobs, then a wail I was helpless to hold in. Cate let me cry in peace.

At last, composing myself, I skanced Cate apologetically and said, “I don’t know anymore. When I chaperoned Rasalased, I called Quill my adroitness without giving it a thought. That hasn’t left me alone for a minute since. But what does it matter how I feel? Quill made it clear she doesn’t want me. Doesn’t that settle it? Why pine away?”

“I see. Nish, you’re the finest, best person I know. I think of you as my daughter now, and you know that’s no small thing. When Quill first came Without, I hoped—”

Cate broke off, tears welling now in his eyes. He looked at me with the frankness for which I’d always wished, and in his gaze I saw grief for a loss greater than any I’d yet guessed.

He tried to go on: “I hoped I’d find—”

He couldn’t finish.

With a jolt of clarity, I understood. “Quiddity,” I whispered.

Cate looked aside and brushed his tears away.

“But she was One.”

“She became One. She wasn’t born to it. She was born here.”

Now that the last piece of this puzzle was in place, I understood the reasons for the Dazed’s silence in the face of Asuja’s threat to Quibble. He hated the Zeros as much as I did, and he had as much reason to mistrust them, perhaps more.

“Vega broke a promise to you, not just Quibble?” I said.

“Aladfar did. When Quiddity went Within, I knew someday she’d be rectified. The silence swore I’d see her again before it happened. You said I can’t learn from my mistakes. I learned from a mistake once, and I’m still learning from it now. Losing my daughter, I learned what love really is. It’s not burying yourself in grief or pining away. It’s not staying at someone’s side, whatever comes. Love is making choices. Sacrifices. You’re a fool to believe Quibble doesn’t love you. After all the Zeros’ talk of a phantom and utter control, haven’t you put two and two together?”

I gave the Dazed an uncomprehending stare.

“You said she was preoccupied all the time,” he went on. “She behaved as if she was in trouble she couldn’t handle.”

“Yes, but she said—”

“Forget what she said. Don’t you know better than that?”

“You weren’t there! You didn’t see her face. You didn’t hear how she spoke to me. She was cruel, vicious, like she was letting out something she’d bottled up.”

“Nish, she was bottling up panic. She was scared enough, knowing Alioth would come sooner or later. Then Asuja entered the picture – an enemy she didn’t understand. She had to protect you somehow. So she did what she had to do to make you leave her and not come back.”

I looked down at my lap. “I’ll believe that when I hear it from her own lips.”

Cate sighed. Though I didn’t skance him, I knew he was shaking his head. “Vega gave Quibble a mirror to help her know herself,” he said, “but maybe you need one.”

He took up his crutches and stood. He was almost at the door when I said, “You can see her. Quiddity isn’t lost to you, Cate. She’s with Utopia. You can see her avatar in the hub of Egg 10.”

“I don’t know if I could bear it,” Cate admitted. “Do you believe the lady of control? That Quiddity agreed?”

“And went willingly to be rectified? Yes, I think I do.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” the Dazed said.

Then his crutches tapped away into silence.

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rem

I won a poetry contest! It’s the first literary award of any sort I’ve won in seventeen years, and the winning poem’s appearance in Frontier Poetry breaks a years-long dry spell for me in publishing my poetry. I’m very grateful to the editors for ushering this poem into the world, perfectly paired with an image of a lotus! Read it here.