Wave Without A Shore

XXII

He kept walking, a slow, a public process . . . incredible how long it took just to go the length of the building unsupported; or to try the next distance. He went the opposite way from the Residency, which was along Port Street, and necessarily toward the port, because there was no way off Port Street in this direction but that wire gate at the end. There were some students walking, three, four meetings to endure; but they passed without evidencing that they saw. He walked bent, because of the pain, and when he would reach a place where there was a surface to lean on he would rest. He was not, at present, rational, and knew it, but standing still hurt, and he was too ashamed to sit down. He had no idea where he was going, only where he refused to go, which was to Waden Jenks, or to the center of Kierkegaard where people could see him, or the University where he had to face people he had taught and people he had directed.

The port gateway was ahead; he did not want that either, but when he stopped, swaying on his feet and subconsciously reckoning how long he could stand without falling and how much strength he had . . . he conceived of himself wandering mindlessly back and forth, back and forth on Port Street between the Residency and the University until he dropped, too dazed to do otherwise.

He went for the port. Passed the vacant gateway, walked along the edge by the fence, leaning on it when he had to, shoulder against the wooden posts and wire, scuffling through the debris the wind gathered there, among the empty drums and stacked cargo bins. The stacks were the only privacy he had found. He dropped to his knees and leaned against the wire and curled up, trying to will the pain away, winced from the sight of his hands, which were knotted and swollen, at once so deadened and so bone-deep with pain that he could not let them hang down. He kept them tucked up, so that the blood did not throb in them so much. He rocked because motion comforted, even when he lacked the strength to walk.

It got worse. And worse. The numbness of the injuries wore off, and he sat still finally, in a haze of pain; the only comfort was the chill of the concrete and he stretched out on it three quarters on his face, simply trying to last through it.

He was thirsty; that, most of all. His lips were cracked and his tongue stuck to his mouth. He thought of places he could get a drink, one by one realized they involved witnesses. There was the river itself if he could walk that far, but he could not, at present. Once there had been the port market, but he was not sure it was open; what had been going on out here at the port, what had been going on in general, he had no clear picture because until now he had not wanted to know. He wished he could think. He was, he knew on one level, functioning on animal instinct; and it was keeping him going when perhaps he was going to wake up from this and wish he had not survived it. He had no idea what else to do but what he had done.

Waden perhaps expected him to come back, to plead for shelter; he reckoned that he could still do that. A sting of anger welled up in his eyes, but he had no tears. Keye . . . was with Waden. And there was no one else. Shivers began, convulsive and painful, which jerked muscles against damaged joints, and for a long time he lay as still as he could with as little thought as he could, only counting the intervals and trying to calculate whether the spasms were increasing or decreasing.

After that came a blur of time and misery. He heard machinery, once jolted awake in the apprehension that the moving of drums might crush him, because the booming and shifting of the loaders came nearer and nearer. Then it stopped, and there was nothing for a long time, but cold. The sky clouded, and the warmth of the sun diminished, even that He laughed at that final calamity, in which the whole universe conspired.

And he wept.

Finally, because a feverish strength had come back to him, and because the paving itself had begun to hurt his joints, he worked at getting to his feet again. Walked, following the fence which divided the port from Kierkegaard. Far across the pavement, diminished by distance, the alien machines conducted their business; and somewhere across the port, Outsiders settled into residence behind new fences. He saw the market, a scattering of small buildings and stalls, and his pulse quickened with hope, because some looked open, at least a few of them. He staggered in that direction, tried to straighten and walk normally, but he could not keep his steps from weaving.

Outsiders were among the shoppers, trading among the booths, strangers in no-color uniform; and citizens staunchly pretended not to see them while they were robbed of whatever the Outsiders wanted to carry off.

"Look at them," Herrin raged when an Outsider simply walked away from a merchant with a silver bracelet. "See them; they're here." But no one did; no one seemed to see him, standing out from the market on the pavement, filthy and disheveled. Only some of the Outsiders looked his way, and he went cold under those stares, hesitating to come in at all until they had decided to go about their business.

There were booths where food was sold, and drink; Outsiders clustered there, and some owners must have left, because some booths were wholly Outsider, with an Outsider tending grill and tapping the beer and passing it out as fast as it could come.

Citizens crowded together at one booth . . . where a harried woman tried to keep up with demand, where mugs were snatched as soon as they could be poured, and Herrin thrust his way into the crowd which melted about him, tried to get to his pocket where he had a little money, but his hands could not bear the pain. "I have money," he said to the woman at the counter. "I have money," because he was not an invisible, who could pilfer what he wanted. "If someone could get it from my pocket. . . ." But she paid no attention to him, just mopped at the crumbs on the counter and took an order from someone else. She set the mug on the counter, amber and frothing and wet, and he reached for it in desperation, with a hand that could not hold it; the owner did not stop him. "I want my beer!" the man shouted at the owner as if she had failed to deliver his order; and Herrin got his other arm to the counter, braced the mug between his wrists and got it to his lips. The cold liquid eased his mouth and throat. He found space about him; the crowd had simply melted aside and come at the booth from another angle, while he stood hunched and drinking with huge, bitter swallows, all the while feeling the heavy wet glass sliding from his awkward grip on it.

"Master Law," a female voice said, and someone touched him gently on the arm. He looked round into Leona Pace's eyes, a face surrounded by chestnut hair and a blue hood.

"Get away from me!" He dropped the mug, and it broke. He lurched away and stumbled, recovered and kept going. She did not follow. He fled, until he came to the corner of a building and leaned there, and suddenly found himself face to face with Outsiders.

He turned and ran, darted into another aisle, bent with pain and uncontrolled. Walkers evaded his touch, even when he stumbled and sprawled; he lay on the concrete and they simply walked around him.

One did not. He saw blue robes sink into a puddle of cloth, felt a touch. Leona, he thought, willing finally to surrender, because he knew where he was, and what he had become. He levered himself up to look into the face that looked at him, and saw blue skin like leather, wet and large black eyes, a nose—if it was a nose—that curved toward something like a mouth. A hand was on his shoulder; he began to shudder as it moved to touch his back. It spread the midnight blue cloak, which smelled of wild grass and country herbs and something dry and old; it enveloped him. He stared into a face . . . nothing at all human, with that hypnotized compulsion with which he looked at a model, the liquid black of the vast eyes, at midnight blue skin which took alien, symmetrical folds about down-arching nose and pursed, small mouth. The teeth were small and square, inverted lips parted upon them as if it might speak. His arm shuddered under him and he feared falling, being helpless with this thing, whose cloak was about him. Go away, he almost said, and bit it back; he did not see this thing, refused to see it.

Its arm across his back tightened and it pulled him over face-up; he resisted and stopped resisting in panic. He did not see it, refused this reality; and the other arm slid beneath his legs as it gathered him to its breast beneath the cloak. Panic assailed him, fear of being dropped in his pain—no one had handled him that way, ever, in his memory; in infancy, surely, but that was not in his memory—was not there, and did not happen. It was strong; he had never comprehended ahnit as strong. It rose with him without apparent effort, hugged his stiff body against it the more tightly and snugged the cloak about him, enveloping him in its scent, its color, its reality. He was aware of its powerful strides, of the sound of sane citizens it passed, of conversations which passed without interruption by a reality which was not theirs.

Help me, he might cry to them; but there was nothing there when they should look, nothing that they would want to see, only something which had been Herrin Law being swept away by something which had nothing to do with humans.

There was no pity, not for what they did not perceive.

There was no fighting this thing, for even by fighting he lost. He tried not to feel what was happening, nor to perceive anything about him; he retreated into his own mind, rebuilding the reality he chose, as he chose, which ignored the pain, which denied that anything extraordinary had happened this morning, insisted that in fact he might continue to be in his bed, to sleep as late as he chose. That if he chose to open his eyes—in his imagination he did—he would see the clay bust of Camden McWilliams sitting on the table as it had been, where it would go on sitting until he chose to do something with it.

His reality, as he chose to have it.

He imagined the clay under his undamaged hands, imagined it malleable again and the face, the most perfect work he had ever done (but he would do others) gazing into infinity with a look of desire.

He felt the arms about him. He had gone limp within them, yielded to the motion; it had nestled him more comfortably, and there was dark cloth between him and the daylight, a woven fabric which scarcely admitted the declining sun; there was alien perfume in his nostrils; there was midnight cloth against his cheek, which rested on a bony breast as hard as the arms which enfolded him.

No, he thought to himself, trying to rebuild that warm bed in the studio. When he was aware, his hands hurt, and his ribs did, and the pain throbbed in rhythm with his heart and the movement of what carried him. He made no move. Horror occurred to him, that perhaps it took him away to commit some further pain on him, or to feed on . . . he knew nothing of ahnit, or what they did, and there was no rationality between human and ahnit.

There is no relevancy, he insisted to himself. It and Herrin Law were not co-relevant; and what it in its reality chanced to do to Herrin Law were overlapping but unrelated events.

He could choose not to feel it; but his self-control was frayed already by the pain. And he was not strong enough to prevent it, had not even the use of his hands.

Here was an external event; he had met one or his mind had betrayed him and conjured one. It had taken him up, and the three greatest minds on Freedom, he and Waden Jenks and Keye Lynn . . . had not planned this. Only he might have caused it. He had shaped his reality; and the shape of it suddenly argued that he had not been wise.

Or that something was more powerful, which was a possibility that undid all other assumptions.

Muscles glided, even, long steps; arms shifted him for comfort, adjusted again when the position hurt his ribs and he flinched. The pain eased and it kept walking. He heard nothing more of the human voices of the port, heard rather the whisper of grass, and his heart beat the harder for realizing that they had passed beyond help and hope of intervention. The pain had ebbed and exhaustion had passed and his betraying senses were threatening to stay focused, to keep him all too aware of detail he had no wish to comprehend.

It's not here, he tried to tell himself, testing the power of his mind; but sense told him that it was striding down a steep slope; that he heard water moving and smelled it . . . they had come to the river. It might fall, or might drop him, or even fling him in, and he could not catch himself. His hands throbbed, shot pain through his marrow—it shifted its grip, was going to drop him . . . .

He stiffened and slipped, tried to catch at its shoulder and could not, his hand paralyzed; but it caught him itself and slowly, a shadow between him and the sinking sun, its cloak still tenting him, eased him to the ground. He hurled his body frantically aside, to get away, but it knelt astride him and pressed his shoulder down, keeping him from going anywhere. He twisted his head. They were beside the water, on the riverbank. He looked dazedly at the brown current, staring in that direction and trying to think, muddled with pain and longing for the water; he had hurt his hand trying to use it. The pain was starting up again, headed for misery.

The ahnit got off him, a tentative release; he stayed still, not looking at it, reasoning that if he treated it as humans always did, it might treat him as ahnit always did and simply go away.

It moved into his unfocused vision, a mere shadow, and dipped water; it was only a shadow—he had achieved that much. But then the shadow moved closer and obscured all his view, like dark haze in the twilight; it leaned above him and laid a cold wet hand on his brow, so that he flinched. It bathed his face with light touches of leathery thin fingers. It leaned aside and dipped up more water and repeated the process. Let it, Herrin thought, and tried to stare through it.

Then it picked up his hand, and he flinched and cried out from the pain. It did not let go, but eased its grip. He stared into the midnight face, the wet dark eyes. Tried, with tiny movements, to indicate he wanted to pull his hand back; even that hurt.

"You see me," it said.

It was a rumbling, nasal voice. A rock might have spoken. It chilled him and he ceased even to reason; he jerked from it and hurt himself. Quickly it let him go.

"You see me," it said again.

He stared at it, unable to unfocus it. It reached to his collar, touched the brooch he wore there, forgotten. "You see this, you see me."

And when he had almost succeeded in unfocusing again, it unpinned the brooch that he had handled daily, that he had worn in defiance of others, thinking it a vast joke. It was no-color, like the ahnit.

"See it," said the ahnit, "see me."

He could not deny it.

"I have a name," said the ahnit. "Ask it."

"I see you," he said. It was hard to say. It was suicide. He gave up hope. The ahnit uncloaked itself, unclasping the brooch at its own throat, and baring an elongate, naked head, and a robed body which hinted at unhuman structure; it spread the cloak over him, bestowing oblivion, spreading warmth over his chilled body.

"Go away," he asked it.

It stayed, a shadow in the almost dark, solid, undeniable.

"Do they all begin this way?" he asked of it

"They?" it echoed.

"All the others who see you."

"No others."

"Leona Pace."

"They don't see. They look at us, but they don't see."

It had the flavor of proposition. Like a Master, it riddled him and waited response, conscious or unconscious of the irony. He searched his reason for the next Statement and suddenly found one. "My reality and yours have no meaning for each other."

"They talk about reality. They say they lose theirs and they're no longer sane."

"They obviously talk to you."

"A few words. Then no more. They try to go back; and they live between us and you. They just talk to themselves."

"From that you know how to talk to us."

"Ah. But we've listened for years."

"Among us." The prospect chilled. No one had known the ahnit could speak; or wanted to know; or cared. Humans chattered on; and ahnit—invisible—listened, going everywhere, because no one could see them. He shook his head, trying to do what the others had done, retreating to a safer oblivion; but he had been in the port, had tried to function as an invisible, and it had not saved him from shame.

Or from this.

"We've waited," said the ahnit.

It was Statement again. "For what?" he asked, playing the game Masters had played with him and he had played with Students in his turn. He became Student again. "For what, ahnit?"

"I don't know the word," it admitted. "I've never heard it" It made a sound, a guttural and hiss. "That's our word."

That's your reality; it has nothing to do with mine."

"But you see me."

It was an answer. He turned it over in his mind, trymg to get the better of it. Perhaps it was the pain that muddled him; perhaps there was no answer. He wanted it to let him go . . . wanted something, if the words would not have choked him on his own pride. The fact was there even if he kept it inside. Had always been there. He had denied it before. Tried to cancel it.

Truth was not cancelable, if there was something that could coerce him; and he had no wish to live in a world that was not of his making . . . in which Waden Jenks and his Outsiders, and now an ahnit limited his reach, and crippled him, and sat down in front of him to watch him suffer.

"What do you want?" he challenged it, on the chance it would reveal a dependency.

"You've done that already," it said, and destroyed his hope. "Do you want a drink, Herrin Law?"

It was not innocent. He looked into the approximate place of its eyes in the dark, in its dark face, and found his mouth dry and logic on the side of its reality; it knew what it did and how it answered him. He defied it and rolled onto his belly, crawled to the water's edge and used his broken hands to dip up the icy water, drank, muddying his sleeves and paining his hands, then awkwardly tried to get himself back to a dry spot, lay there with his head spinning, feeling feverish.

Patiently it tucked the cloak about him again, silent statement.

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked. Curiosity was always his enemy; he recognized that. It led him places better avoided.

"I rest here," it said.

Worse and worse places. "Where, then?"

A dark, robed arm lifted, toward the west and the hills, up-river. The road ran past those hills, but there were no farms there; were no humans there.

I'll die first, he thought, but in this and in everything he had diminished confidence. "Why?" he asked.

"Where would you go?" it asked him.

He thought, shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing out tears of frustration. He looked at it again.

"I'll take you into the hills," it said. "There are means I can find there, to heal your hurts."

An end of pain, perhaps; it worked on him with that, as Waden Jenks might, and perhaps as pitilessly. "Do what you like," he said with desperate humor. "I permit it"

The ahnit relaxed its mouth and small, square teeth glinted. "Mostly," it said, "humans are insane." Herrin's heart beat shatteringly hard when he heard that, for what it implied of realities, and this reality was devastatingly strong. "Who broke your hands, Herrin Law?"

He was trembling. "Outsiders. At Waden Jenks's orders."

"Why?"

"So there would be no more statues."

"You disturbed them, didn't you?"

He rolled his eyes to keep the burning from becoming tears, but what he saw was stars and that black distance made him smaller still. "It seems," he said, carefully controlling his voice, "that raw power has its moment."

"Where would you go?" it asked. "Where do you want to go? What is there?"

He shook his head, still refusing to blink. There was nowhere. Wherever he was, what had happened to him remained.

Carefully it slipped its arms beneath him and gathered him up, wrapped as he was in its cloak. It folded him against its bony chest and he made no resistance. It walked, and chose its own way, a sure and constant movement.