Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Mother, dressed in the travel garb of a Lady of the Court, sat turned at three-quarters but with her head fully facing the imager. In the depth of view, she was the most forward. Her smile, broad; her eyes seducing the viewer; her red hair captured in midnight, as if she had just then tossed her head to look at the artist. Her left arm draped Little Hugh’s shoulders; her right hand covered Donovan’s on the table. Greystroke’s hand rested on her shoulder. They were all smiling, playing at the time the role of chance-met strangers; but Méarana thought they were smiling, too, because they were happy.

Hugh’s eyes and his smile were directly for Bridget ban, and no mistake, for he was turned in her direction. Donovan and Greystroke smiled into the viewer, but in the drift of their eyes, they, too, looked on Bridget ban; Greystroke, because he had placed her in his line of sight to the imager; Donovan, because though he faced one way he glanced another.

He had been the Fudir back then, Méarana reminded herself. Donovan had not yet been awakened, and the others were then uncreated. She wondered what it meant that he had kept this hologram until now; and wondered if the other three had copies as well.

Of course, Hugh’s bitterness notwithstanding, the Fudir had not run out. He had, more accurately, run off. He had reasoned that what had to be done he had to do alone. It had been no more an act of abandonment than throwing oneself on a hand grenade.

But that had been a different man. The wreckage that now called itself by Donovan’s name was timid where the Fudir had been bold. He had fled into the Corner of Jehovah on the mere realization of Méarana’s identity. She had tracked him down then—more accurately, she had lured him to her.

Returning to the common room, she replaced her harp in its case, slung it over her shoulder, and slipped out of the suite.

But in making her way to the rear exit—and to the Eastern Cape Toll Gate—she passed by the hotel’s exercise rooms and, glancing therein, saw the scarred man running in the simulator. She watched him for a while, knowing a certain relief that she did not examine too closely. Then she slipped the door open and quietly entered.

The track was a multi-belt surrounded by a hologram of scenery. The scarred man ran through an urban landscape and the belt conformed itself to it, taking him uphill and down and around corners. He ran with ferocious concentration, oblivious to everything but the sim and his own body, and it seemed to Méarana that he bulked a bit larger than usual. His face was set harder. His arms and legs appeared muscled.

But it was only a seeming. Physically, he was unchanged. It was the same skin; the same skeleton. The muscles had always been there. Yet, what informed the body seemed more substantial, like a big man wearing a smaller man’s clothes. She lowered herself onto a nearby floor mat and sat cross-legged. Without conscious thought on her part, the harp found its way to her hands.

He had programmed the running boards for random hazards, and so vehicles and other pedestrians appeared in his path, coming out of side streets or doorways or simply moving more slowly, causing him to dodge and weave and, in one case, pirouette gracefully around a matron with three dogs on leash. Méarana’s fingers picked out a running beat on the strings, hunting for the melody that would capture this determined running machine.

He turned! And the sensors in the simulator shifted the direction of the treadle by ninety degrees as he ran up an alleyway to all appearances directly toward the harper.

Startled, Méarana rolled to the side; but of course the onrushing approach was only an illusion created by the rolling belt.

The scarred man skipped a beat, and slowed his pace. Then he pointed at her and a grin split his features and he laughed.

It was a horrid, flaccid laugh. It reminded Méarana of the voices of people she had heard talking in their sleep. She plucked a staccato chord. “You must be the Brute,” she said.

The scarred man nodded in time to his running.

“Donovan and the Fudir have sometimes complained of sore muscles in the morning,” she said. “A sign of age, they thought. Now I know why.”

The Brute smiled again and made a flip with his hand.

“Who cares about them, right? You’re mute. You don’t control the voice, they told me.”

“Aaaasleeeeb,” the Brute moaned.

“When Donovan and the Fudir are asleep you can speak, a little. You must have some access to the speech center of your brain or you’d not be able to communicate with them.”

The shoulders rolled in a great shrug. “Naaaad maa shaaaab.”

“You don’t know about brains and paraperception, is that it? All you’re good for is combat and physical exertion?”

Another smile and a thumbs-up.

“I understand. If it’s all you’re good for, at least you’re good for it. You’re… Don’t take this the wrong way. You’re the animal part of Donovan’s soul, aren’t you?”

The Brute scowled and there was something red behind his eyes. Then he tossed his head, a great deal as a horse or a dog might do it. “Easy, fellow,” she said. “Each of us is an animal—sensation, perception, emotion, and action. There’s an ‘I’…” She plucked a chord. “…that simply touches the strings and hears… An ‘I’ that doesn’t know music, but only sound . An ‘I’ that thinks, remembers, and imagines, but does not conceive. Am I making myself clear?”

The Brute shrugged and gave a half smile. He raised his right hand and pinched his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

“But the ‘I’ that only hears the sounds and the ‘I’ that understands the music… Those are the same ‘I.’ The animal and the person, we’re one. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have them split apart.”

The Brute wiggled his hands. Then he held up all ten fingers and splayed them.

“Split ten ways? Donovan told me there were only seven.”

The Brute scowled and seemed to count on his fingers. Then he shrugged, held up all ten fingers and wiggled them, following up with a “who knows?” look. His eyes retreated and worry crossed his features.

He slowed to a modest pace, cooling off. The simulation vanished from around him and a series of numbers appeared above the hologram platform, to which the Brute paid no mind. He counted again on his fingers; then, held up seven as firmly as a row of spears. But then three, followed by a shrug.

“I don’t understand.”

The belt stopped, and the Brute came and sat beside her. Méarana flinched and pulled back, and the Brute hung his head.

Méarana stroked the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. But you are a little scary.”

The Brute grinned and shook his head. “Uh lod sgairee. Sbozabee,” he moaned. A lot scary. Supposed to be.

The harper returned his grin. “Sure, who would be afraid of a fluffy bunny?”

The Brute rocked with silent laughter. But when he subsided he reached out and took her chin in his hand and stared into her face.

The animal body, she knew, had been trained in every martial art that muscle memory could hold. She knew that, should anything alarm him, he could with a flick of his wrist snap her neck. There had been the Xiao family in Main Tooth, in the Out-in-back of Dangchao, that had kept a pair of hunting poodles. And one day their son of four, in all innocence, had poked them the wrong way, and the devoted pets had become killers. That the Brute could speak in a limited fashion made him somehow more frightening.

“Bready,” he said. “Uh’d dye voryuh.”

But the harper did not know what he meant.

When she led him back into the suite, she found the other three in the common room and in a state of consternation over their absence. They unleashed a cacophony of demand, worry, and rebuke.