Then she glanced up again and met Dairine’s eyes, and once again Dairine felt the shock of looking out, looking in, mirrors reflecting in mirrors. “But this one saw that one before,” she said to Dairine. “And not within the Commorancy.”
Dairine became aware that the “older-and-wiser types” were watching her and expecting her to produce some useful result. She took a breath. “Yes,” Dairine said. “And this one, also, has seen that one before.”
“When?”
“Not long ago,” Dairine said. “And not from within the Commorancy, either. From within that one.”
The Yaldiv stood there shifting uncertainly from leg to leg, a rocking motion. “Yes,” she said. “There was a glimpse of strangeness. Other eyes, a world in strange shapes, strange colors. Why are these here?”
Dairine glanced at the others. Anyone have any suggestions?
You’re the only one of us she knows firsthand, Kit said. You’d better run with it.
She turned back to the Yaldiv. “To see this one,” Dairine said.
“Why?”
I really need a few moments to think about this! “To tell the story may take a while,” Dairine said, “as the story told before the King does.”
Dairine saw the shiver that went through the Yaldiv—a shudder that literally shook her on her legs. It was strange, considering the fervent way all the Yaldiv in the hive had seemed to willingly worship that bloated shape on the dais. Maybe—
No, don’t get ahead of yourself. “That one should be at ease,” Dairine said, “and this one will be, too, while the story is told.” She sat down cross-legged on the cavern floor.
Spot came spidering over to Dairine and crouched down beside her. Look, Dairine said silently, keep an eye on her bodily functions while I’m talking. If I get near some dangerous topic, I want some warning.
All right, Spot said.
Very slowly the Yaldiv lowered herself to the floor, folding her legs underneath her and resting the huge claws on the floor at what passed for their elbow joints. As she did this, the others slowly sat down, too—those who could. Filif stayed as he was, and while the Yaldiv was watching them do that, each after his fashion, Dairine saw Spot put up a transparent display above his closed lid. It can’t be seen from the other side, he said. Here are indicators for brain activity, general neural firing, and the rates for all three hearts. But as for what the readings will mean …
She was going to have to take her chances with that. “Tell these of this one’s life,” Dairine said, hoping she was getting the pronouns in the right order.
“This one is a Yaldah,” the Yaldiv said. It was apparently the female form of the species noun. “The Yaldat are the mothers of our people. We are the engenderers of our City’s defense. To be a Yaldah is our destiny, and our glory.”
This sounds too familiar, Dairine thought. The language was much like some of the stuff she’d read in the mid-twentieth-century unit of last year’s history class. “Destiny.” Half the time the word’s just code for “what someone else wants you to do without asking any inconvenient questions.” “What does this one do in the City?” Dairine said.
“What most Yaldat do,” said their guest, and then she did the first casual thing Dairine had seen any Yaldiv do: she lifted one claw to comb back the scent palps on one side, like someone absently brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Feeding meat to the newly hatched grubs who are past their first food. Cleaning away their leavings and molted-off skins until their shells grow. Yaldat tend the hatchlings until they are large and strong enough to be taken away and trained in their work, or the way of warriors… or vessels.”
Vessels was a different word in the Yaldiv language than the simple female form. And the it pronoun simply meant that the creature using it was just a thing, of no value except as it contributed to the glory of the Great One.
Dairine opened her mouth to ask another question, but she didn’t get the chance. “Now these must tell this one of themselves,” the Yaldiv said. “These have come to the City wearing shapes that are not their own. And to mimic a City person’s smell—that has been done in the past by invaders from outside, the Others.”
“These simply did not wish those in the City to be frightened,” Dairine said. “The strangeness of these could make a Yaldiv fear.”
“The strangeness does not frighten this one,” the Yaldiv said. “It is also—” She stopped.
“Also what?” Dairine said.
The Yaldiv was gazing at the cavern floor with those dark eyes. “Also not the same…”
Dairine glanced at the readouts that Spot was privately showing her. The hearts’ rate had increased nearly threefold in the past few minutes. She looked up into those dark eyes again, met them, and held them. “There’s no reason to fear,” Dairine said.
The pause was so long that Dairine broke out in a sweat, wondering if she’d misstepped. But the Yaldiv looked down at her with eyes that somehow managed to show more than fear. There was anger there, too.
“There’s every reason,” the Yaldiv said. “For when one says the wrong word, the dangerous word, in the wrong hearing—little time passes between the last breath and the first bite of another’s jaws on the meat that was one’s body.”
“Whatever else these may do,” Dairine said, also angry now, “these are not going to eat that one.” And then a little exasperation crept into her own anger. “And these can’t just keep calling that one ‘that,’” Dairine said.
The Yaldiv looked at her in complete noncomprehension. “What else would this be called?”
“There is something,” Ronan said suddenly, “called a name.”
The Yaldiv looked from him back to Dairine. “A name?”
“A name,” said the one inside Ronan, “is the word by which one calls a creature that is different from all other creatures. A creature that is its own unique self.”
Though as far as mere sound went there was no difference between Ronan’s voice and his guest’s, the Yaldiv started up, terribly shocked. She wheeled about swiftly to stare at Ronan, and then began to back away. Bumping into one of the mochteroofs stopped her, but still the Yaldiv stared.
“This one also it knows,” the Yaldiv said. “This voice… It is Death to hear this voice, this word from beyond the outside! It is worse than Death!” She was shivering. Now she began to crouch down again, her claws uplifted in desperate supplication. “There is no such place as the Outside, nothing but the City and the One who rules it! Let the Great One forgive this unworthy one! It did not mean to speak the evil word; it will be faithful to the Great One’s trust—”
Ponch got up from where he’d been sitting watching all this, and trotted over to the Yaldiv. Bizarrely, he started licking the claws that were now lifted up to hide the mirror-shade eyes.
The Yaldiv slowly stopped shivering. Dairine watched her turn her attention to Ponch. Stealing a glance at Spot’s display, she saw the heart-rate indicators dropping little by little. The dark eyes looked down into the doggy ones.
“This one is not very like you,” she said after a moment, glancing back at Dairine.
“That one is Ponch,” Kit said. “Ponch is a dog.”
Ponch is my name, the dog said. That’s me. It’s good to have a name.
“Why?”
Because that way people can call you and tell you they want to give you things! He went romping back over to Kit. Like this!
Ponch started bouncing around and barking. Dairine resisted the urge to cover her ears. Even though this was a big cavern, the noise was deafening, and it echoed. Kit looked at Dairine in helpless amusement, reached into the dog biscuit box, and got one more biscuit out. “Opportunist,” he said. “Ponch! Want a biscuit?”
Oh, boy, oh, boy! Ponch barked, and whirled around in a circle a few times, and then jumped up and snatched the dog biscuit out of Kit’s hand. To Dairine’s total astonishment, he then ran back and dropped it in front of the Yaldiv.
She looked at it in surpr
ise. “What is that?”
Food! Ponch sat down and looked at the Yaldiv expectantly.
She reached down a claw and prodded the biscuit. “This is meat?” she said.
This? Not even slightly, Ponch said. But it’s nice!
The Yaldiv looked quizzically at Ponch. Then she reached down, picked up the biscuit, and nibbled at it with a couple of small mandibles.
“It is pleasant,” she said. She finished it up, then settled herself down again. Dairine sneaked another look at Spot’s readout. A lot better, she said to him. She’s calming down now.
That’s what happens when you have a name, Ponch said, and lay down near her, panting a little from all the bouncing and spinning around.
“This one supposes… if there is no harm… then there might be a name.” She still sounded very uncertain.
“Is there something the ones in the City say when they call this one to do something?” Kit said.
She glanced up. “They say it is unworthy of notice,” the Yaldiv said. “They say it is always the last one to be called.” Was that a touch of bitterness?
The last one, Dairine thought. She glanced down at Spot, who was still running analyses of words he had seen on the walls. He showed her a word, in both the Speech and the Yaldiv written language.
“Memeki,” Dairine said.
The dark eyes met hers again. “‘The last,’” she agreed. “It would not be a strange calling.”
“When one has a name,” Dairine said, “one’s not an it anymore. One is called you.”
She shivered again. “Another strangeness,” Memeki said. “This word also you has heard.”
“Sorry,” Dairine said. “Not enough explanation. When it speaks of itself, and has a name, it says, ‘I.’”
Memeki began to shake harder. Dairine swallowed and kept on going. “Like this. I see you.” She pointed first at herself, then at Memeki. “We—” She gestured at the others, then again at Memeki. “We see you.”
The trembling didn’t stop, but Memeki looked at them all, and then down at Ponch, who had rolled over on his back in front of her foreclaws, and now lay there exhibiting his not inconsiderable stomach. “And I—” She stopped. She lifted her claws, dropped them again.
“This one is afraid,” she said, so softly that they could barely hear it. “It knows this word. It never thought anyone else might.”
After a moment, Dairine said, “Tell how you know the word.”
Slowly Memeki made that palp-grooming gesture again, like pushing hair aside. “Often it wished when it was younger that it could achieve such merit as some of the Yaldat had,” she said. “But to serve the Great One personally is not an honor offered to many. And those Yaldat who had achieved such merit, they said it could never happen to this one; for this one was not fair enough to ever attract the King’s attention. This one came to believe them, and stopped hoping for more. It was content to serve in the grubbery, giving the young ones food in the less meritorious way. Such was honor enough.” She glanced down at Ponch, who was now lying there with his eyes closed.
“Yet there came a night when the City was closed as always,” she said. “And this one rested, as all rest when Sek is not in the sky. And in the time of rest, this one heard a voice.” She looked again at Ronan, and once again that tremor started to shake her limbs. “The voice was like the second voice that… you used to speak just now. It came from everywhere, and nowhere. It used the words you use, that this one had never heard before. It said, ‘You—’” Again she struggled to get the words out. “‘You can be far more than this. You can bring your people out of this place, this life, to something far greater. Will you do it?’”
The Yaldiv’s trembling was getting worse. “This one did not know what to answer. But the voice that whispered in the night said, ‘The ones who will show you the way will come. They will not be like you. When they come, listen to what they say. One will say the word you need to hear.’”
Memeki went quiet for a moment, looking at them. “The voice made this one frightened,” she said. “So many forbidden words… This one went through that next day in terror, thinking that those words might force their way out. For they were strong, and clamored to be spoken. They shouted night and day inside this one until it thought that Death was close to it! But nothing happened.”
Memeki still sounded frightened, but now a kind of wonder grew in her voice as well. “Then without warning came the day when what had until then seemed impossible nonetheless did happen. The Great One honored it. Everything was changed. And the rest of the Yaldat said, ‘See how merciful the Great One is! Even to such a one, whom all thought would be the last to be chosen, if it ever happened at all.’ This one became honored even among the workers and warriors. All of those said, ‘Here comes another of those who defend us from the evil Others; the mighty ones, the weapons in the Great One’s claw!’”
Memeki lifted her claws in a gesture more like the one that the warriors had used to greet one another. “But it was too late,” she said, dropping her claws again. “The words of the voice that spoke in the night, and were now inside this one, began to grow as swiftly as the Great One’s favor had. And even the mighty honor the Great One had bestowed on it began to mean little, almost nothing. It began to think that it was—” Memeki paused, then said in a rush, “That it was no one’s weapon. That it was for much more than that. That it was—” Her voice dropped like that of someone whispering heresy. “That it was itself. That it was an I.”
Dairine held her breath.
“And that I was for something else entirely,” Memeki said. She was breathing like someone who’d run a race, as if she was ready to fall over from the strain of saying so short a word. “And now comes strangeness, yet more strangeness. The eyes that… I have seen, which are not Yaldiv.” Memeki looked at Dairine. “And the voice that— I know— the one I heard whispering in the night, and that no one else could hear.” She got up again, and went over to Ronan.
He sat very still as she approached him, and as the huge claws lifted. Memeki drew very close, peered into his face. Ronan, and the Champion, gazed back.
“Hod the Splendid,” said Memeki.
Ronan blinked.
“How do you know that name?” the Champion said.
“Before, I didn’t know what a name was,” Memeki said. “Now I know. That word was something the voice whispered to me in the night. Are these, then, also your names? Regent of the Sun, ruler of the third Day and the fourth Heaven, avenger of the Luminaries, Guardian of the Divided Name?”
Ronan nodded very slowly. “Messenger of Messengers,” he said, “chief Prince of the Presence, Winged like the Emerald, the Providencer.” He raised his eyebrows as he looked up at Memeki. “The creature with those names is within me. We’d say, ‘Those are my names.’”
“I thought so,” Memeki said. “The voice said that one was to be asked. So now I ask… you. What comes next? For my people’s sake, I must know. What is the word that must be heard? What must I do to become what the voice says I must?”
Ronan sat there looking stunned. “I don’t know,” the Defender said through him. And he looked helplessly at the wizards around him.
“There were other words still,” Memeki said. Her sudden eagerness made it sound as if just saying the word “I” out loud had broken a dam somewhere inside her, so that all kinds of things were starting to spill out. “The voice said: ‘You are the aeon of Light; you are the Hesper. You must find the way. But without the word spoken, there is no path, only darkness; until it speaks itself, only the abyss.’”
No one said anything.
Memeki kept looking from one of them to the next. Finally Dairine said, “You’ve asked us hard questions. We don’t know the answers. But we’ll help you find them.”
“It may take a while,” Ronan said.
Memeki settled down again, and combed that wayward palp back into place. “I will wait,” she said. Then she looked up. “The way we came out of t
he City… I can go back that same way, before morning? No one will know?”
Ponch opened an eye and looked up at her. I can take you that way, he said. Nobody will know.
She looked down at him, admiring. You are very wise.
Out of the corner of her eye, Dairine caught a glimpse of Kit hiding a smile. “I can rest here meanwhile?” Memeki said. “I am tired. This has been a day full of strangeness.”
“Not just for you,” Dairine said, getting up. She went over to Memeki and patted her on the shell. “Rest,” she said. “Nothing will happen to you here. We’ll take care of you.”
The strange eyes dwelled on her. “Yes,” Memeki said. “You will.”
A tremor went through Dairine. The voice had sounded exactly the way Ronan’s voice did when the One’s Champion used it.
Dairine turned away. After a moment or two, Memeki started to lean a little to one side. Quietly Dairine went over to look at Spot’s display. The hearts’ rates were dropping quickly; the Yaldiv’s neural activity was sliding down almost to nothing.
Dairine straightened, looked at the others as the readings bottomed out. She’s gone out like a light, Dairine said silently. It almost looks more like a hibernation state than our kind of sleep.
Yes, the Champion said. She’ll be that way for some hours, I think. I’ll stand guard while you others get back to your rest.
“You’re out of your mind,” Kit said. “Who could sleep after that?” He let out a breath, then Ponch’s nose came over his shoulder. Kit sighed and reached into the box for one more dog biscuit. “We found her. We’ve talked to her. She’s the one!”
Without any possible doubt, the Champion said.
“But what do we do now?”
Ronan shook his head. “He already said, he didn’t know.”