House of Reeds

The Sobipuru Bus Terminal, Parus Near the Court of Yellow Flagstones

Clouds of exhaust fogged Gretchen's view of the city as the Tikikit bus slowed to a crawl. A huge crowd of Jehanan townspeople blocked the street, voices raising a huge, frightened murmur, claws scraping alongside the vehicle and clattering against the windows. Anderssen stared out in alarm, barely able to make out the stone awnings over the bus stands through the moisture on the windows. Torrential rain poured down, turning the street into a muddy river.

"Hoooo… Taste the fear in the air!" Malakar leaned at her shoulder, long snout pressed against the glass. "Such a crowded city this is!"

"This is much worse than last time," Gretchen said, feeling the bus shake from side to side as the crowd surged against the vehicle. A clamor of hooting and warbling made it hard for her to hear. "Everyone is trying to flee -"

"Should we leave the bus?" The gardener folded one claw over the other, eyes wide. "Where will we go? How will we pass through such a throng?"

"Our hotel isn't far," Gretchen said, wondering if they could manage to move through such an enormous press of people. A wild face appeared momentarily at the glass, a young Jehanan trying to scramble up onto the roof of the bus. The window made a splintery sound as his clawed feet scrabbled on the sill. "What else can we try? If we stay here, they'll push the bus over."

Anderssen took a breath, readied herself to plunge into the fray and patted Malakar on the shoulder. "Come on."

Chuffing exhaust, the Tikikit bus inched into one of the quays in the station. Hundreds of Jehanan, nearly every one of them laden with baggage, pots and pans, bedding, and wicker baskets filled with personal effects, overflowed from the waiting ramps into the road and packed the open floor of the station itself. Gretchen pushed down the stairs from the bus, shoving aside a Jehanan matron trying to claw her away aboard while shrilling wildly in an unknown tongue. Malakar tried to apologize, but had to stiff-arm a frantic male to keep from being thrown to the ground.

A stifling blanket of heat and humidity started to choke Anderssen before she'd taken two steps into the surging, agitated crowd. Her medband squeaked an alarm before being drowned out by the booming roar of thousands of panicky townsmen. She reached back, seized hold of Malakar's harness and started plowing forward, head down, shouldering natives out of the way on either side.

Claws scraped her face, clutched at her shirt and pants, then fell away behind. Malakar hooted mournfully, hands tight on the back of Gretchen's field jacket. Intermittent blasts of some kind of alarm horn shook the air. A sea of noise rolled back and forth over them, echoing from the vaulting roof and the awnings over the buses. The stench of the crowd faded, replaced by the smell of smoke and burning plastic.

Anderssen stumbled through a wood-and-glass door at the front of the bus station. Broad flights of steps littered with discarded goods – potted plants, shoes, smashed sun-hats, broken bottles and fallen, ripped paperbacks, sections of sod, torn clothing, harness buckles and straps – led down to the curving road. The huge crowd inside petered away to a few mournful souls sitting on the sidewalk, huddled in blankets or staring sightlessly at the sky, rain sluicing from their scales.

Despite the rain, a thick pall of smoke hung over the city, hiding the upper reaches of the ancient Khus.

Gretchen shifted her pack, checked her jacket and pockets. Malakar was still clinging to her back, panting, snout down. Water streamed from her long head.

"You all right?" Anderssen put her arm under the old Jehanan's shoulder. The human was soaked already, shirt clinging to clammy flesh, hair plastered to her forehead. "It's not far."

"This…this old walnut has never seen so many people in one place in all her life."

The avenue was empty. The usual throng of runner-carts and wagons and trucks was gone. A long, low building across the street was on fire, belching smoke into the rain. The gutters were already full, flowing sluggishly and spreading into huge ponds where debris blocked the drains. Gretchen searched for a landmark, realized the burning edifice was the train station and turned right. "This way."

They hurried down the sidewalk, feet splashing through oily pools, past abandoned stands advertising sweets, grilled meat, newspapers, religious votives and icons, all the paraphernalia of a living city. The kiosks were abandoned and empty, shutters banging against empty stalls, garbage heaped in drifts across the sidewalks.

The doors of the hotel were locked, drapes drawn tight behind barred windows. Gretchen banged on the wooden panel, her shoulder pinched with the effort of keeping Malakar upright. The gardener was staring curiously back down the lane, rain spattering on her long snout.

"Hello!" Anderssen called through the mail slot. "I'm a guest here! I have a room!"

"I think," Malakar whispered in amazement, "those were actual Araks who passed us! I've heard they're bloody handed savages from beyond the vale of Acare! They eat the flesh of their own kind – or whatever live prey they can catch. Did you see the necklaces of teeth?"

"No. Can you ask these people to open the door?"

After Malakar had hooted and trilled and generally sounded like a reasonable, polite lizard, someone peered out at them through the drapes and then, grudgingly, opened the door to let them in out of the rain.

"Very dangerous," the desk clerk declared, shaking his stumpy triangular head in dismay. "You do not know what kind of horrific creatures have lately been here! They threatened to chop down my door and eat the yolks of my eggs raw! While I watched!"

Gretchen nodded politely and dragged the gardener away and up the stairs before Malakar fell to discussing the proclivities of the mysterious Araks. Anderssen really only wanted to lie down in a real bed. Her stomach was growling with hunger.

"Hello?" The door to the room swung open and Gretchen winkled her nose, smelling burning tabac. She held Malakar back out of caution. "Is someone here?"

"Hrrr!" A rumbling growl answered and a disheveled black shape appeared out of the bedroom. Anderssen felt a tight band around her heart ease and sagged against the wall, so vastly relieved she could barely comprehend the pressure which had been dragging at her. "Maggie. You're alive."

"Hunt-sister!" the Hesht yelped in delight, seizing Gretchen in an enormous, bone-crushing hug. Then Maggie held the human out at arm's length, paws gripping Anderssen's shoulders. "You are whole and undamaged? We thought a ghost was whispering to us on the comm…"

"I know, I know." Anderssen hugged the Hesht back, sagging into her soft, plushy fur. Magdalena felt wonderfully warm and dry. "We tried to reach the khus, but there were troops everywhere… I'm glad you ran when you did."

"Hoooo!" Malakar made a pleased sound, long snout snuffling at Magdalena. "Your friend is not a human at all. Such strange, soft scales she has!"

"No," Gretchen stepped aside, wiping her eyes. "Malakar, this is Magdalena. She is a Hesht – another asuchau race – they live in great clan-arks which travel between the stars, but she works with me for the Company. Maggie, this is Malakar, she was a gardener at the House of Reeds; which is to say, she was a teacher-of-kits."

"Well met," Magdalena said, ears twitching forward. She bowed politely. "If you are a friend of the hunt-sister, then you are welcome to our pack."

"Hoooo…" The gardener seemed pensive, covering the tip of her snout in embarrassment. "I do not know if clever-thoughts counts me as friend or not."

Gretchen smiled crookedly. "We've chased each other over enough rooftops, I think we can say we are friends. You didn't turn me in to the Master of the Garden, though I haven't given you any answers to your questions."

Malakar nodded, emulating the Hesht's bow. Magdalena twitched her whiskers at Anderssen and winkled her plushy nose. "Parker is here too – but he has been hurt."

"Hurt?" Alarmed, Gretchen pushed past Maggie and into the bedroom, where she stopped and stared at the pilot, who was buried under a pile of quilts. "He doesn't look hurt to me," she declared. "He is smoking in my bed, and has plenty of colorful magazines filled with interesting pictures to entertain him."

"Hi, boss." Parker took a long drag on his tabac and offered her a pained smile. "They're for my health – the tabacs, I mean. A restorative! All these" – he gestured at the native magazines scattered on the coverlet – "are really Maggie's. I'm just trying not to move too much."

Anderssen leaned over him, eyeing the bandages taped to the side of the pilot's head, his neck and the visible part of his shoulder. "What happened to you?"

Parker grunted, his lips a little white. "The side of a train kind of, uh, hit me, boss."

"You are injured." Gretchen gently peeled back the top of the quilt. The pilot's chest, arm and side were a dark, angry purple under a layer of quickheal gel. She hissed, concerned. "How bad is this?"

"I can't walk," Parker said, watching her nervously. "My leg and arm are…uh…broken. The doc said I've got a concussion and I chipped some teeth." He grinned. Two of his bicuspids were jagged. "I'm kind of doped up right now, so I hope you don't need me to fly anything…"

Gretchen shook her head, looking pale. "You were hit by a train?"

"No." Maggie wrapped her arms around Gretchen's shoulders, holding the anguished human close. "We were in the train and there was a wreck. Parker can't land on his feet, so he used his side and leg and arm instead." The Hesht blew mournfully through her fangs. "We were lucky – many passengers were killed."

"Ok-ke." Anderssen patted the Hesht's furry arm and sat down in a chair beside the bed. Feeling dizzy, she put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. "Is…is there anything to eat?"

Malakar shifted in the doorway, looking expectant. "Even gruel would be welcome," the Jehanan said softly. "We had pies yesterday…"

"I will find food," Magdalena announced, bustling out. "Silly kits, going all wild and forgetting to hunt! You would all perish in a forest filled with fat juicy marmosets if I wasn't…" Her voice faded into the hallway.

"She doesn't even know what a marmoset is," Parker said from the bed in a sulky tone. "She never goes to get me food…"

Gretchen began digging in her pockets, hoping to find a threesquare but instead her fingers closed on her survey comp and she pulled the battered device out with a sigh.

"So much trouble you caused…" she muttered, staring at the blank-faced device. "And for what?"

Parker stirred, staring at her hopefully. "Did you find the tree of gifts, boss? Was it really a First-Sun artifact? Did you get me any presents?"

Anderssen looked up, running her hands over the comp. "Yeah, we found the kalpataru." She nodded at Malakar, who was now squatting in the corner, damp tail wrapped around her feet. "Malakar led me into the heart of the Garden and…it was real, Parker."

"What?" The pilot sat up slowly, eyes wide. "It was real? A real First-Sun device?"

Gretchen nodded, and then started to laugh. "All you had to do was see the thing and…it was so old, Parker. Like it had seen the first light of the first star to condense out of the birth-caul of the universe. You could just…feel the weight of millennia in the metal, pressing on the world around the device. It felt like so much time had passed, every atom had collapsed…"

"Oh." Parker took a drag on his tabac. "Sure, a feeling. Like, that time in the cave-shrine on Shimanjin when you felt where the little girl was, or…or when we were at the Resident's party and you felt the way to the door?"

Gretchen looked up, fixing the pilot with a sharp stare. "What do you mean?"

The pilot shrugged. "Just, you know…we've noticed that from time to time you can…um…you can tell where things are without seeing them, or, uh, you can find your way when there's just no way you could know the proper path…"

Anderssen made a face and avoided looking at him. In the corner, Malakar's head rose slightly, her dark eyes bright with interest.

"I'm lucky sometimes…"

"Sure, boss. Whatever." Parker pointed with his tabac at the comp. "So, did you get enough data on this eldest tree-thing to make the trip worthwhile?"

"No." Gretchen hefted the comp with a bitter expression. "There was so little time. I had this on broadband scan, but we were outside when the sky lit up – I'm sure this comp, and all the data, are minging dead. My medband went crazy with radiation warnings…and these little hand-helds aren't shielded against EMP flash."

"Crap." Parker stubbed out his tabac and held out a hand. "Lemme look."

Gretchen tossed him the comp and slumped back in her chair, watching the pilot wince with pain as he fiddled with the device. She was feeling worse and worse with every passing moment. Oh, Mother Mary, I nearly got poor Parker killed. I nearly got myself killed, I ran Malakar out of her home, dragged Maggie all over the back of beyond…for what? For a prize beyond price I had to destroy.

"Does look kind of fried," Parker admitted, turning the comp over. He pressed a tab on one side of the unit, popping the back cover free. The data cartridge fell out on his chest. "I've got a spare in my kit, can you hork it over here?"

"Sure." Gretchen got down on the floor and began rummaging in the filthy, oily mess of odds and ends in the pilot's spare duffel. "God, Parker, don't you ever clean this stuff up?"

"Never," he said, keying a self-test on the cartridge. "Rusts if you keep it clean. Gotta protect the tools, right?"

Anderssen found a working comp and handed it over. Malakar watched them intently, snout hidden behind crossed arms. Parker popped out the data cartridge in the new unit, swapped in the old one and thumbed the unit awake. The comp beeped, made a squeaky sound and the screen glimmered awake.

"See…might have something left to say." The pilot thumbed through to a diagnostic screen. "We'll just let it check itself out." He smiled wanly, tired just from using his hand. "Maybe we'll get a bonus after all!"

"We do not have gruel," Magdalena declared as she bustled in with a tray heavy with covered bowls. "But there are edible things to eat."

Gretchen accepted a warm plate covered with freshly cut vegetables, a bowl of murky-looking broth and hunks of brown bread. A little amazed at the Hesht's ability to produce something other than reprocessed threesquares, Anderssen made an amused face. "What, no chocolatl?"

"Do not complain, wet-nose, about the food on your plate," Maggie said testily, curling up on the end of the bed with a head-sized bowl of red meat swimming in a dark oily sauce. "Unless you have caught and skinned the prey yourself!"

"I'll bet these were hard to catch," Parker mumbled, mouth full of food. He waved something like a bright-green carrot at the Hesht. "Tasty, tho'. Is there butter for this bread?"

"No," Maggie said, lips wrinkling back from her fangs. "There is no butter. There are no cows on this planet."

"But they have cheese…" Parker's voice trailed away at the expression on the Hesht's face.

"Ahhhh…" Malakar breathed in the aroma of her bowl, which was filled with noodles slathered in black paste. Gretchen's nose twitched, assailed by an astringent smell of salt, pepper and garlic. "You are kujena of tasty foods," the Jehanan said, pressing her snout to the floor in respect. "I have not had such a delicacy in many years."

Maggie winkled her nose, watching the gardener inhale the noodles. "Gruel! Indeed."

The comp sitting beside Gretchen chirped to itself, announcing the completion of its tests. Parker and Malakar stopped eating. Anderssen put down her bowl of soup and picked up the device. The screen displayed her usual set of tools and interfaces.

Well, she thought, tabbing into the archive of sensor logs. What did we see?

Gretchen scrolled through the data, frowned, loaded some AI to process the raw feeds, frowned again, slid out of the chair and sat cross-legged on the floor. Without looking up, she took a notepad from her jacket pocket, found some writing pens and began making notes. Her soup grew cold. Magdalena turned onto her side, bowl empty of entrails, curled her tail over her nose and went promptly to sleep. Parker was already snoring.

Late afternoon sunlight crept across the floor, washing over Anderssen's back, and vanished as the sun passed into the clouds again. Malakar stirred after watching for a long time, picked up all the dishes and shuffled off into the kitchen. Anderssen's face remained tight with concentration, her brow furrowed. The comp hummed warmly in her hands. Her control stylus made faint squeaking sounds on the panel. At one point she took off her field jacket and carefully examined the durafiber surface for marks.

"Ahhh…" An hour later, Gretchen looked up with a grimace and stretched her back. She creaked and said "Ow!" before rubbing her sore muscles.

Malakar appeared at the doorway. "What did it see?"

"Nothing." Anderssen laid the comp down on the rug. She looked disappointed and relieved at the same time. "Nothing but dust."

"How can this be?" Malakar knelt beside her, leathery tail flipping around and out of the way. "I felt the air tremble with unwholesome power! Such strange lights there were in the old fane! Those technicians did not fall unconscious for no reason…did not your mind reach across thousands of pan in the blink of an eye, giving warning?"

"I did." Gretchen spread her hands on either side of the comp. Her face was impassive. "Yet, none of my instruments detected anything. All of this data just shows the kalpataru standing inertly in the shrine. No power fluctuations, no radiation emissions from the tree itself – nothing but the generator signatures of the kujenate equipment."

"Nothing?" Malakar rolled back on her heels, claws tapping her snout. "But -"

"We heard you!" Parker tapped his earbug, confused. "Both Mags and I heard you clear as day -"

"Whatever happened was beyond the capability of these sensors," Anderssen said, trying find the words to explain. "But I saw…" She paused, remembering something which Hummingbird had once said.

"A teacher once said to me: Every time we do something, anything – eat, sleep, read a book – we leave an impression upon the world. Usually, normally, the impressions are wiped away by new things happening – someone else comes into the room, opens the door, picks up the book – but if a solitary object has been in one place for a very long time, if the same things keep happening in its immediate presence, then that repetition leaves a mark, a memory, a shadow of substance upon the pattern of the world…that pattern can be enormously strong."

"Hoooo…" Malakar twisted her head from side to side. "You saw – experienced – what the divine tree had done in the ancient past."

Gretchen nodded, wondering how much to tell. The food she'd eaten lay in her stomach, undigested and heavy. I can't tell them everything – that the artifact woke to life, if even for an instant – what if they told someone else? The Company would tear down the whole city just to dig out the fragments of the thing…

She took a breath, and then said: "The gift of the kalpataru was to reveal the unseen, to reach across the abyss of space and yield up sight, sound, vision, allowing instant communication across thousands of light years. Over millions of years of use, the artifact gained such a massive pattern of repetition it began to twist the fabric of time and space around itself, even when there was no power to drive the ancient machine.

"I think…when the kalpataru first came into the hands of the Jehanan, great wonders were revealed to them, even though the device had failed thousands of years before they laid claw on the divine tree. So strong were those events, so much power had been loosed in its presence, the memory is immanent in the metal itself. If one of the ancient Jehanan was…sensitive…if the machine was disturbed by a power-source…then that Jehanan's mind would have been filled with stupendous, terrifying, ecstatic visions."

Gretchen felt a chill steal over her. And that was the salvation of Jagan. The beacon was damaged, unable to reach across the void to touch the sleeping thoughts of its makers, summoning them to feed upon the Jeweled-Kings and then the Jehanan. Not unless a truly powerful mind blundered into the trap. Oh Holy Mother, preserve me from gaining such skill!

"For some time – centuries? decades? – it seemed the kalpataru was still functioning. But there were only fragments of the past, only this…residue, repeating over and over. Mechanical sensors, like this comp, can't even detect the pattern. But my mind is…more sensitive."

"I knew it," Parker said quietly, watching her with wide eyes. "You were different after you came back from Ephesus. What…what did that old nagual do to you?"

"Nothing, Parker. Mind your own business." Gretchen glared at the pilot. "Go back to sleep."

"Wait a minute." Parker said, distressed. "What will the Company say about all this?"

"Nothing," Gretchen said, hands clasped around her knees. "I'm not going to tell them what really happened. I'll file a 'survey-found-no-evidence-to-indicate-First-Sun-artifact' and leave well enough alone. So, no bonus."

"Crap." Parker flopped back on the bed. "I break half the bones in my body for this?"

Anderssen said nothing, resting her forehead on her arms.

Oh, Sister of God, what am I going to do? The Company won't even pay us back for all the gear we lost… What a black hole this was.

Parker lit a fresh tabac with an angry gesture and puffed smoke at the ceiling. No one said anything.