Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

“The author meant that everyone on the Old Planets has at least one of these women as an ancestor, not that they had no others.”

“How can he know that? People were too busy surviving to track their ancestries.”

“He claims to have discovered an old Commonwealth fact: certain genes he calls sinlaptai are passed on from mother to daughter. They change a little bit with every generation. By counting the number of changes he can tell us how long ago the clan-mother lived.”

“Really…!”

“And by studying their distribution within the Old Planets he can learn where these clan-mothers lived.”

“Sinlaptai.”

“He says it’s an ancient term meaning ‘little thread shapes’ or ‘mighty Kondrians.’”

“Oh. Which are they, ‘little’ or ‘mighty’?”

“Both, somehow. He doesn’t say where Kondria is, either. Maybe the mighty Kondrians discovered the little thread shapes. I think he expected his readers to know the term.”

“Which means…,” said Hugh, holding his tea cup in both hands and sipping from it. “…you aren’t one of the readers he expected. What is his name?”

“Umm…” Méarana took the screen up again and back-scrolled to the title. “Sofwari. D. J. Sofwari, it says here. But if you’re asking why I’m reading it, the idea of twenty-seven clan-mothers intrigued me. I’ve been thinking on a song cycle.”

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Twenty-seven stanzas.”

“It’s a technique called ‘brute-think.’ Pick something at random and play with it until an idea occurs to you. I found this a few years ago, in a random search. I go back to it now and then and see if my muse has come up with something.”

I am become as duplicitous as the Fudir , Méarana chided herself. If the Hounds backsearch the household gods on Dangchao, they’ll find the record that it was accessed; but they’d not know if it was Mother or I who read it .

“Fudir’s engrossed in a story book called Commonwealth Days . Fairy tales. He’s chasing a dream far longer lost than your own, Méarana.”

“I haven’t lost my dream, Hugh. I’m still holding it.”

Hugh rose from his seat and gathered up his tea cup. “Lucy, be careful of relying too much on the Fudir. He’s a man who uses people.”

“Why, fash it, mon!’ Tis no small thing to be useful! Many men live their entire lives without achieving so much! He tricked you into leaving New Eireann during the Dancer affair; but that was best for everyone, yourself included.”

“Do you suppose that makes it better?”

“I heard the story from his own lips… Perhaps you should hear it there as well.”

“The problem with stories,” said Little Hugh O’Carroll, “is that life never ties up so neatly. Some ends are always loose.”

The Pup fell into a pensive mode, standing with cup in hand. Méarana studied him with a terrible intensity that eventually drew his attention back from the depths to which it had descended. “What?” he said.

“Nothing. I was looking for a man from a story.”

When they slid onto the Silk Road, Greystroke held the promised ceremony, and after dinner, Méarana played a range of music: ancient tunes by Paxton of Terra; the gentle “Fanny Poer” by the legendary blind harper O’Carolan; the savagely sarcastic “On, Ye Heroes, On to Glory!”; the elegiac song cycle “Green, Oh, Green” by Galina Luis Kazan of Die Bold. But most of all, she played snatches of tunes from the Dancer cycle. She chose passages of camaraderie—among Greystroke and the Fudir and Little Hugh—hoping with her strains to ease their strains. If she could not mold them into what they once were, she could at least remind them of what that had been.

Greystroke was a master of indirection, and this was true no less of his interrogations than of his appearance. Hugh was a bit more direct, as only an assassin can be; but he had learned during the guerilla on New Eireann how to lie low and wait things out. The Fudir knew this, and knew something about lying low himself. He spent his time reading Commonwealth Days , then passing on to Rimward Ho! and then to Customs of the’ Loon Tribes , all of which Greystroke had in his ship’s library.

“It appears that Donovan has given up the search for your mother,” Greystroke told Méarana one day in the refectory.

“Oh, he was never looking for her,” the harper allows. “He was only looking after me. It was an agreement he reached with Uncle Zorba.”

Greystroke’s lips quirked. He had some experience with agreements with Zorba de la Susa. “So Donovan is your chaperone? Your bodyguard? You know of his disability…?”

“About two-sevenths of it.”

If the precision puzzled Greystroke, he made no sign. From the samovar, he poured a cup of Gray Thoughts, a blend made especially for him by the tea masters of Peacock Junction. “I noticed you the other day with a medallion. I wonder if I could see it?” He carried the cup to the table and sat across from Méarana.

The harper hesitated only a moment. Donovan had been correct. Greystroke could sneak up on you in more ways than one. She pulled the medallion from under her blouse and handed it, dangling from its chain, to the Hound.

He studied it closely, tracing the abstract shapes on the obverse with his finger.

“Rude,” the Hound said after a moment, “but not without craft. This is the souvenir your mother brought back from Thistlewaite, the one you showed Gwillgi?”

“Aye.”

“But you and Donovan were making inquiries on Harpaloon, not Thistlewaite.”

“Mother told me that she bought the piece on Thistlewaite, but it had come from Harpaloon.” Méarana blushed. “I thought as long as we were there, I could find some matching pieces.”

O Vanity, thy name is Woman! What sort of person, in search of her missing mother, would pause to shop for jewelry? Surely, one who would blush to admit to it! That the same individual might also blush to lie to a League marshal only equivocates the sense. Hounds are always sniffing around after scents, but what they flush is not always what they think it is.

“It isn’t Harpy work, though…,” Greystroke ventured.

“No, none of the jawharries…”

“…it comes out of the Wild.”

“What?”

“Isn’t that what Jawharry Boo Zed told Donovan? Enjrun or Ōram or Eḥku, he wasn’t sure of the name.” Greystroke shrugged. “Somewhere out in the Burnt-Over District.”

One may also flush from anger. “Mother bought me that piece!” the harper said and reached for it as if it were Donovan’s throat.

But Greystroke paused and ran his fingers over it. Had he felt the writing on the back? Donovan thought it derived from the old Tantamiž script, though he had not yet identified the alphabet. But the Hound only grunted. “It’s broken off. The red stone once projected below the rim of the disc. Was it always thus?”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Méarana said, blushing.

“It looks a bit like a tornado.” He held it up to the light. Méarana could see the writing on the reverse when the light caught it. “The artisan brought out the grain of the gem to make it look like it’s whirling.” He handed it back to her and Méarana stuffed it quickly inside her blouse. “A red tornado in a black disc,” Greystroke mused. “On my homeworld, Krinth, tornados sometimes blacken the sky. And I’ve heard of white tornados on Ogilvy’s World—funnels of snow and ice that screech down from the arctic—and can flash-freeze a man in a moment’s passage. Maybe a red tornado is a hot one, volcanic.” He laughed, though not entirely with humor.