Foreigner

*4*

By now, Afsan’s eyes had grown back to full size, black orbs filling the once-empty sockets. His lids had sagged for so long that they’d developed permanent fold marks that showed as yellow lines now that they were filled out from underneath.

And yet, despite his new eyes, Afsan still could not see.

After his lunch with Dybo, Afsan walked the short distance to the imperial surgery and once again opened his lids so that Dar-Mondark could look at his new eyes.

“And you still can’t see anything?” said Mondark.

“That’s right.”

“Not even vague shapes? No hint of light? Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Your eyes look fine, Afsan. They look like they should work.”

Afsan’s tail swished gently. “When I was young, I once traded some time tutoring mathematics for a toy boat that I was enamored with. The boat was beautifully carved from soft stone and looked correct in every way. Only one problem: when I put it in a pond, it sank. It was good at everything except the one thing that defined its purpose.” He tipped his head. “Eyes that do everything well except see aren’t of much value, are they?”

Mondark nodded. “That’s true. But, Afsan, your eyes are seeing: they are responding to light. Now, yes, perhaps there is some problem with the way your new eyes are connected to the rest of your body. But as far as I can tell, your eyes are fully restored.”

“Then God is having Her revenge on me,” said Afsan, his tone only half-jesting. “A cruel joke, no? To give back eyes, only to have them not function.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps nothing, Doctor. I’m not a medical expert, but clearly there’s something wrong with the nerves that connect my eyes to my brain.”

“In ordinary cases of blindness, I’d concur. But this isn’t ordinary. Your eyes are responding to light, and they’re tracking as though they can see. They would do neither of those things if there were extensive nerve damage.”

“But I tell you, I’m not seeing anything.”

“Exactly. Which brings us to another possibility.” Mondark paused, as if reluctant to go on.

“Yes?” said Afsan impatiently.

“Do you know the word ‘hysteria’?”

“No.”

“That’s not surprising; it’s a fairly new medical term. Hysteria refers to a neurosis characterized by physical symptoms, such as paralysis, that don’t seem to have any organic cause.”

Afsan sounded suspicious. “For instance?”

“Oh, there have been several cases over the kilodays. A person may lose the use of a limb even though the limb appears to be uninjured. And yet the person simply stops being able to move, for instance, his or her right arm.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Well, it does happen. It used to be if your arm stopped working, they’d hack it off in hopes that the regenerated arm would function. Sometimes that worked—if there had been damage to the nerves in the arm. But sometimes the arm would grow back just as dead as it had been before.”

“But surely the paralysis would have been caused by a stroke or something similar.”

“Ah, there’s the rub,” said Mondark. “When paralysis is caused by a stroke, it affects general parts of the body. Oh, the right arm might be completely paralyzed, but there will also be numbness in the right leg, and perhaps the right side of the face. But in hysterical paralysis, only the arm seems dead. The loss of sensation is quite abrupt, beginning, say, precisely at the shoulder, and affecting no other part of the body.”

“Go on,” said Afsan.

“Well, there are also cases of hysterical blindness: eyes that are in working order that simply no longer function.”

“And you think that’s the case here? That my blindness is caused by… by hysteria?”

“It’s possible. Your eyes physically can see, but your mind refuses to see.”

“Nonsense, Mondark. I want to see. I’ve wanted to see since the very day I was blinded.”

“Consciously, yes. But your subconscious—? Well, this isn’t my area of expertise, but there is a doctor who has had some success curing these matters, Afsan. She’s helped several people regain the use of arms or legs.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Afsan. “If my eyes are malfunctioning, the problem is physical. It’s that simple.”

“Perhaps,” said Mondark. “But what have you got to lose by visiting her?”

“Time,” said Afsan. “I’m getting old, Mondark, and there is much that I wish to accomplish still.”

Mondark grunted. “Humor me, Afsan. Meet with this person.”

“I have been humoring you. I’ve been coming here every ten days to let you look at these useless eyes.”

“And I thank you for that. But consider how lucky you are: almost no one who loses eyes gets them back. To give up now would be a horrible mistake. If there’s a chance—any chance at all—that you might be able to see again, you owe it to yourself to pursue it.”

“I owe it to myself to be a realist,” said Afsan. “That’s the principle that has guided my entire life. I’m too old to change now.”

“Do a favor for an old friend, Afsan. Indeed, do yourself a favor. At least arrange a consultation with Nav-Mokleb.”

“Mokleb?” said Afsan, startled.

“You’ve heard of her?”

“Well, yes. Dybo has been after me to talk with her as well. Says she might be able to do something about the bad dreams I’ve been having.”

“Those continue to plague you?”

“Yes.”

Mondark’s tail swished across the floor. “That settles it. Go to Rockscape. I’ll contact Mokleb and send her out to see you.”

“Dybo already has her coming out tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” said Mondark. “Who knows? Maybe she’ll be able to cure both your bad dreams and your blindness.”

There was no need for Novato to wait until morning; working inside the alien ark could be done as easily at night as day. It was even-night, anyway, the night upon which Novato usually did not sleep. She went to find Den-Garios, an old friend from Capital province who had long worked with her on the exodus project. They fetched two fresh lanterns and re-entered the ship, moving quickly down the corridors.

Soon they were at the intersection marked by the circle of yellow pigment on the wall. Beneath the yellow circle was the ark-maker’s own numerical designation for this intersection. And there, down the perpendicular corridor, just as she’d left it, her sash. Heart pounding, she jogged over to it.

“Right here,” said Novato, pointing at the wall. “This is where I saw the flashing.”

Garios was about Novato’s age. He had an unusually long muzzle that gave him a melancholy look, and eyes that were small and close together. He peered at the wall. “I can’t see anything.”

“No,” said Novato. “The lamp flame must be drowning it out. Here.” She stepped close enough to proffer her lamp to Garios. “Take this and walk down that corridor and go around the bend.”

Garios set down the roll of leather he’d been carrying, dipped his long muzzle in acknowledgment, and did as Novato had asked. In the darkness, Novato pressed the side of her face against the wall. Nothing. Either the flashing had stopped, or perhaps her eyes hadn’t had enough time to adjust to darkness.

She waited for a hundred beats, then tried again. Still nothing.

It had been daytime when she’d been here before. Daytime and the flashing was happening.

Now it was night, and there was no flashing.

That made no sense. One lit lights at night, doused them during the day. This was exactly the opposite.

Suddenly she thought of the matrix of black hexagons on the ship’s roof. They conducted heat from the sun somewhere, but only during the day, obviously. Could this have been where that energy was channeled?

She called Garios back. He came, holding the pair of lamps in front of him, two long shadows following behind.

“I can’t see the flashing anymore,” Novato said. “Hold the lamps steady, please. I want to examine this wall.”

Novato turned her back so that Garios couldn’t see what she was about to do, then she forced her claws from their sheaths. Keeping them out of Garios’s view, she felt along the wall, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

There.

A seam.

A juncture where two plates were joined.

No one had ever found a seam before. The whole ship appeared to have been made inside and out from one continuous piece of blue material.

Novato used her middle fingerclaw to trace the seam’s height. It came to a right-angle intersection and then continued along about a handspan below the top of the wall. By the time she was finished, Novato had outlined a rectangle going almost from floor to ceiling. Its width was about equal to Novato’s arm-span.

“No wonder we missed that,” said Garios, his little eyes peering intently. “It’s difficult to see, even with two lamps.”

Novato nodded. “Maybe this panel was originally painted differently from the rest of the wall,” she said. They’d found colored dust in the ship that seemed to be dried pigment that had peeled off the walls; the blue material wasn’t porous, so paint probably didn’t stick to it well even under the best of circumstances.

“And where exactly did you see the flashing?” said Garios.

Novato’s sash was directly below the middle of the rectangle. She pointed to the panel’s center.

“May I?” said Garios.

Novato scuttled out of the way. Garios came in, a lamp in each hand, and peered at the wall. “Maybe,” he said at first, and “Maybe” a little later. Then: “Yup, there it is. God, it’s hard to see! But there are little bits of glass inlaid into the wall here, absolutely flush with the wall material. A string of those geometric shapes the ark-makers used for writing. Seven, no, eight shapes. A word.” Garios sighed. “I guess we’ll never know what it said.”

“ ‘Emergency,’ ” said Novato. “Something like that.”

Garios sounded surprised. “What makes you think that?”

“Have you ever been on a hunt that’s gone badly? Lots of injuries? When healers arrive, they prioritize whom to treat. Those who have the most critical need for attention are tended to first. Of all the things on this ship, the only one that we’ve seen any sign of still working at all is this panel, whatever it is. It’s obviously the priority now that a little power is somehow trickling into the ship. I’m no sailor, but I suspect Keenir would say that if he had to prioritize things aboard a ship, lifeboats, fire-fighting buckets, and other emergency equipment would be the most important.”

Garios grunted, not convinced. He had brought plans of the ark with him. He set his lamps on the floor and proceeded to unfurl a chart, kneeling down to read it. “According to this, there’s just another one of those multi-bed rooms on the other side of this wall. Now, yes, the wall is thicker than normal here—it’s about a third of a pace thick. That’s not unusual, though. There are lots of places where the walls are even thicker. But surely there can’t be any lifeboats stored behind here. Whatever is back there can’t be very big.”

Novato nodded. “Let’s see if we can get the panel off. It must open somehow.”

“Maybe it’s a sliding door, like the others we’ve seen.”

Novato’s tail swished in negation. “Those doors are recessed and apparently normally were moved by an arrangement of gears that must have required some power to operate. No, if I’m right—if this is a hold for emergency equipment—it’ll be designed to open without any power.” She paused. “If you were one of those five-eyed creatures, how would you open something?”

Garios looked at the floor. “Well, I’d only have one useful limb—that long trunk—so the method would be something that you or I could do with one hand. And, let’s see, those creatures only came up to about here on me.” He held a hand at the middle of his chest. “They’ve got a lot of reach with those trunks, but I imagine if they wanted any real leverage, they’d have to fold the trunk over.”

Novato nodded. “So, if we’re looking for a handle, it would be in the middle of the panel, right about here.” She pointed.

“But there isn’t anything there,” said Garios.

Novato, ever the empiricist, pressed her palm against the center of the panel. Nothing. She tried again, leaning all her weight against it. As soon as she stopped, the panel popped forward as though it had been on springs. Garios surged in and grabbed one side of the heavy sheet. Novato took the other side, and they lowered it to the floor. From the back they could clearly see the little array of glass inlays that had caused the flashing.

A shallow closet had been revealed. Inside were three metal boxes. Each had embossed on its side the same word Garios had traced out on the wall panel. The boxes had handles sticking out of their sides. Novato pulled on one of the handles, and the box came out of its holder. A tail of flexible clear strands stuck out of its back connecting it to the rear of its holding compartment, but as Novato pulled a little harder, the strands came loose. At the end, they were bundled together in a little plug, as if they’d been designed to come out this way.

The box itself had clamps on its side, holding the lid securely on. Novato had seen clamps like this several times aboard the ark. They required an uncomfortable backward bending of the fingers to undo, but she’d gotten the hang of it over time. She opened the box.

Inside was orange dust.

Garios loomed in for a peek. “Rust,” he said. “Whatever was in there decayed long ago.” He backed away.

Novato put her hand in the box and wiggled her fingers, looking for any fragment that hadn’t completely decayed. The orange dust felt strange. Warm. A lot warmer than it had any right to be. And it wasn’t sharp like iron filings. Rather, it was soft, like talcum, and slightly heavier than it looked, as if the material was very dense. Novato didn’t bring it too close to her face; she was afraid of inhaling the powder.

Just dust, that’s all it was. Ancient dust.

She knelt down and upended the box onto Garios’s floor plan, hoping there would be something inside all the dust. But the orange grains just sifted out; it seemed to be a uniformly fine grade. The dust made a good-sized mountain in the center of the plan. Individual grains spilled toward the sheet’s edge.

Disappointed, Novato turned her attention to the two boxes still embedded in the wall. The second one had apparently been damaged in the ark’s crash and its contents had long since escaped through a crack in the container’s bottom. The third box was rusted or fused to its holder. They tried again and again for an extended period, but no amount of tugging by either her or Garios could dislodge it.

Novato sighed and turned around.

What the—?

The mound of orange dust was no longer centered on the floor plan. In fact, the center of the plan was completely clear and the mound was now half on and half off the sheet of leather.

It must be flowing downhill, thought Novato.

And then she realized that wasn’t right at all.

The dust, the ancient orange dust, was flowing, all right, but it was flowing uphill, heading toward the corridor that led to the double-doored room.

“They weren’t just dumb animals, were they?” said Captain Keenir of the Dasheter, his tail swishing back and forth across the beach. “They were people.”

Toroca pointed at the body of the Other, lying in a pool of blood. “That one was wearing copper jewelry,” he said.

“And the one we, ah, encountered was also sporting jewelry,” said Babnol, who had removed her sash and was using it to wipe her face clean of blood.

“The braincases were bigger than those of any animal,” Toroca said. “So, yes, they were people, of a kind. Thinking beings.”

“And we’ve killed two of them,” said Babnol, shaking her head. “I—I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. It was as though the sight of the—the thing was enough to trigger dagamant. I felt as if my territory had been invaded. My claws popped out, and then everything became a blur. Next thing I knew, Spalton and I were standing over the dead body.” She paused. “What was left of the body, that is.”

“You didn’t feel the same thing?” Keenir said to Toroca, almost imploringly, as if seeking absolution.

Toroca’s tail swished. “No. The appearance of the Other was startling, but it didn’t trigger any rage in me.”

“You’re unusual, of course,” said Babnol matter-of-factly. “You’re free of the territorial instinct.”

“True.”

“Something about these Others sets off that instinct,” said Babnol. “The sight of them, or maybe their pheromones. Something.”

“It wasn’t pheromones,” said Keenir. “The one Toroca and I saw was downwind of us.” He looked out over the waters. “The sun is setting. We should get back to the Dasheter.”

“What about the bodies?” said Toroca.

“What do you mean?” asked Babnol.

“I mean, what do we do with them? Do we just leave them on the beach?”

“What else?” said Keenir, aghast. “You’re not suggesting we take them back to the ship as food?”

Toroca wrinkled his muzzle in disgust. “No, of course not. But we should do something with them.” He leaned back on his tail. “If we’re going to have any further contact with the natives here,we’ve got two choices. Either we try to explain to them what happened—offer our apologies and let them do with the bodies whatever they normally do. Or we hide the bodies and hope that suspicion for the disappearance of these two individuals never falls on us.”

Babnol looked at Toroca. She was an unusual Quintaglio herself, having retained her birthing horn into adulthood. The fluted cone cast a shadow across her muzzle. “I suggest we simply hightail it back to the Dasheter and get as far away from these islands as possible. They’re evil, Toroca.”

Toroca looked surprised. “Evil? That’s the same word the captain used before you joined us. In any event, we’ve got to explore these islands; that’s the whole point of the Geological Survey. But as to whether we, ah, admit involvement with these deaths…”

“Don’t do it,” said Keenir. “How could we explain what we did? We can’t even fathom it ourselves. No, we’ll take the bodies back out in the shore boats, tie rocks to their ankles, and dump them overboard when we’re far from shore.”

Babnol’s voice was distressed, and her tail moved in agitated ways. “I don’t feel right about doing that.”

“Nor do I,” agreed the captain. “But since we don’t know anything about these people, it’s best we not make our initial presentation of ourselves to them as… as…”

“Murderers,” said Toroca.

Keenir sighed. “Yes.”

Toroca’s turn to sound uncomfortable. “If we are going to take the corpses, please don’t dump them overboard. I’d like to, ah, study them.”

“Very well,” said Keenir. A pause, and then, his voice heavy: “Let’s fetch them.”

And they set out to do just that. The one that Keenir had killed was still nearby. Wingfingers were picking at the gaping wounds, but they took flight as soon as the Quintaglios approached. Spalton and the captain carried the corpse to the shore boat and began paddling back to the Dasheter. Toroca and Babnol covered the bloodstained ground with clean sand, then headed down the beach. They came to where the vegetation jutted into the water and made their way through the growth until they arrived at where Babnol and Spalton had encountered their Other.

“Uh-oh,” said Babnol, her head swiveling left and right.

The second body was gone.