Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“The house is a fascinating part of the landscape. Quite amazing that it’s natural,” Gail said, looking to her husband.

The fifth person was Zekhe Gomesh. He had arrived a couple of days ago from Magaysch. Because of the short stays, people in every Land generally knew one another from before. Gomesh was an exception. Therefore, though shorter and older than Jack, for Linda he was the main attraction. Her animation was for his benefit.

“Jack’s colleague, Taylor,” she began (Taylor was the previous object of her interest, but he had moved to Tolzdamag), “says that houses may be of artificial origin. That they are too complex to have arisen naturally.”

“A well-known experiment,” replied Gail, “shows that during the hardening of lava that is saturated with gas, chambers may be formed of any size and shape and having walls as thin as you like. With a little technological effort, true, one can put together an object that resembles natural phenomena of the land, but that proves nothing. It is obvious that consumers have supplied these natural chambers with the embellishments of panes, sills, and doors. The practice has been discontinued, however, as ineffectual and too expensive.” Gail, though younger than Linda, looked more serious. She worked at the Godaab Office of the Census, so she had no difficulty obtaining a house with panes for her family. “Considering the number of uninhabited homes in the wood and on the steppe, it seems unlikely that someone constructed them all.” Gail had access to so much census information, it was hard to argue with her. “At the other end of the lake is a factory. Only partly occupied, because in many of its rooms are pools of toxic chemicals. Convincing proof, for me, that the factory is a natural, postvolcanic land formation. The chemical compounds are probably the remnants of eruptions, or else the water deposited them, just as it deposits sedimentary layers of other minerals. The average home is a simpler, smaller version of a factory. Therefore it is also natural. The poisoning of the lake is the result of those same volcanic processes, the same chemical compounds,” she concluded confidently.

“It’s cloudy,” muttered Zbigen. “This morning I thought we might go sunbathing by the lake.” He fingered his scruffy beard, feeling for pimples. When he found one, he popped it using a thumb and finger, with pleasure. There was pain, which increased, then came the sudden drop in pressure in the swollen tissue as the bit of yellow pus erupted, and after that, flowing slowly, a larger quantity of blood. He wiped the battlefield with his hand and sought the next pimple. “I like Godaab. The weather’s good here.” In Magaysch it was cold and rainy.

“You always talk nonsense,” Gail said, deflating him. “In Magaysch it was winter. Now it’s spring…”

“Genetic information, they say, is recorded in a sequence of units of some chemical compound, a biopolymer.” Linda was showing off her knowledge in front of Zekhe.

“Taylor says that?” asked Gail, and at the name of Taylor Jack shot her a look that didn’t go with his phlegmatic face.

“Yes,” replied Linda, unfazed. “He’s a biologist, and biologists call that sequence the Code of Life. I suppose the Significant Names might be called the Code of Death by analogy. Mine, for example, is Flo-Vor-Myz-Int-Udda.”

“And you have figured out their meaning?” Jack ran a hand over his bald spot, which was covered with a light fuzz. His fault was telling old jokes. He couldn’t help himself, though it confirmed the low opinion people had of him.

The meaning of a Name became clear only after the death of its possessor. Linda’s Name was “From fire caused by struggle caused by mind caused by the internal organs caused by lightning.” Which could mean death from a cold contracted in the course of a storm and leading to a fever and hallucinations, and during a hallucination one became twisted up in one’s bed sheets and, flailing, overturned a candle and started a fire. Or it could mean a severe electric shock that not only injured one’s body but also confused one’s mind, so that one could not find the way to safety out of the burning building. Or it could mean something else.

“A short polypeptide,” remarked Zekhe.

“What?” Linda didn’t follow.

“The Significant Name has only five units and therefore twelve possible positions for each. Biologists, on the other hand, deal with polymers that have a great many units, each of which can be an amino acid, and there are dozens of those.”

“Jack has a book that enacts itself as you read it,” she told him. She was on firmer ground there. “Many other books are nested within it. He got to one in which there were Names that had twelve units.”

“Twelve to the twelfth Names, that’s something,” muttered Zbigen. “No Name would be repeated.”

“I have a book like that too,” Zekhe put in.

Enacting books were popular. Thirteen versions of them were known. People liked seeing, as they read, the heroes come to life.

“I don’t care for it,” said Linda. “It’s unpleasant. I end up feeling sorry for their suffering, and guilty, because I know that they’re suffering only because I sat on the sofa and opened the book.”

“Do you plan to refurnish here?” asked Zekhe, changing the subject.

“I’ll repair the armchairs and get rid of the table,” said Zbigen. “Everything else is fine.”

“You’re not making yurts?” asked Linda. “More and more people are doing that. That way you have something of your own. It’s neater than a room, and in addition it’s manmade. I heard that yurts were invented for rooms without panes. Nowadays they’re also putting them up outside houses.”

“One should live in a house,” maintained Gail. Zbigen and she didn’t have to face a room without panes. “Anyway, yurts aren’t healthy. You get a draft from the ground…”

“You can weave a mat out of willows or hemp for the floor.”

“Are you buying a yurt?”

“Linda talked me into it,” said Jack. “We didn’t have the money to actually buy one, but all you need is canvas and those large scissors that tailors use.” He laughed. “So I decided to sew myself a yurt. It was only yesterday that I cut the pattern, one of the ones recommended.”

Zbigen nodded, impressed. He wasn’t good with his hands.

A warm, bright morning. The sun was still low in the sky, but it promised a hot afternoon. The gray sand that had been spread about by the feet of the beachgoers reached into the thin grove of pines. It was cool in the grove, damp. The water of the lake was dyed no color, had no stink or suds; the poison was more subtle—its existence invisible, therefore less convincing. This was probably the reason for the many NO SWIMMING signs posted along the shore.

Everyone planned to go to the beach, but Linda went before the others and took Zekhe, and he took his camera. She spread a blanket on the sand, took off her skirt, and carefully applied suntan oil to her skin. Her two-piece swimsuit had a flower pattern. Zekhe took pictures, chewed on one stem of dry grass after another. Jack would be bringing Gail and Zbigen soon.