Jo Clayton: A Gathering Of Stones

A tall bony blonde woman with a set angry face was snapping out orders to a collection of Skinkers using motorized assists to load crates and bundles on the roller ramp running into the belly of her battered freetrader; now and then she muttered furious asides to the short man beside her.

“No, no, not that one, the numbers are on them, you can read, can’t you.” Aside to her companion: “Mouse, if that scroov shows his face round my ship again, I’ll skin him an inch at a time and feed it to him broiled.”

The little gray man scratched his three fingers through a spongy growth that covered most of his upper body; he blinked several times, shrugged and said nothing.

“Sssaaah!” She darted to the loaders, cursed in half a dozen languages, waved her arms, made the workers reload the last cart. Still furious, she stalked back to where she’d been standing. “Danny Blue, you miserable druuj, I’ll pull your masters rating this time, I swear I will, this is the last time you walk out on me or anyone else.”

“Blue wants, Blue walks,” the little man said. “Done it before, ‘II do it again.”

“Hah! Mouse, if you’re so happy with him, you go help Sandy stow the cargo.”

“I don’t do boxes.”

She glared at him, but throttled back the words that bulged in her throat, stalked off and stood inspecting the crates as they rolled past him.

Danny walked round a stack of crates, Felsrawg trailing reluctantly after her. “Hya, Kally, I’m back.”

She wheeled. “Where the hell you been, druuj!” Her eyes went wide when she realized what she was seeing. “Huh? You’re not Danny.”

“Remember lnconterza? Matrize Lezdoa the scarifier? I can go on.”

“Never mind. Someday you have to explain to me how you grew a head of hair and three extra inches and changed your face that much,” she glanced at her ringchron, “in nine hours.” She looked past him. “And where you got the baba there.”

“Be polite, Kally, Felsa’s no man’s baba. Woman’s either.”

“Hmp. You not giving me any excuse for leaving me to do your job, are you.”

“No. But I’ll contract an extra year if you give Felsa space onboard.”

“Guarantee no walking?”

“Guarantee. My word on it.”

“Deal. She got anything but what she’s carrying?”

“Nothing but a name. Felsa, I’ll have you meet free trader and shipmaster Kally Kuninga. Kally, this is one Felsrawg Lawdrawn. She doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, but she’ll learn.”

“You finished? Right. Get your ass over there and do your job. Mouse he’s been having vibrations which means we gotta get the hell out before the sluivasshi land on us.”

She looked Felsrawg over, head to toe back again. “She’s your problem, Danny. Keep her outta my hair and see she’s fumigated before you bring her on board.” She twitched her nose, swung round and stalked off.

Felsrawg snorted. “Bitch.”

“Sure. And if you say it to her face, she’ll laugh, then she’ll slap you down so hard you bounce. Come on. I’ve got work to do.”

Felsrawg found a quiet corner near a stack of empty crates where she’d be out of the way of the workers. Danny was right, she didn’t understand any of this, maybe she never would. She thought about that a minute and decided it was blue funk and not worth the air it took to say it, she might not know how those clink-clank slim-slam things worked, but she could see what they did. That’s all she needed. She looked at her slay rings, sniffed. I don’t know how they work either, but I got damn good at reading them. The sun was going down in the west, she thought it was the west, it felt like west, just like it did back home and the Kuninga woman was a gasht all right, but she looked normal, at least there was that.

The clattering stopped, the demons rode their metal carts across the hard white stuff that covered the ground and vanished behind some odd looking buildings. The rollerramp was folding itself up, squeezing together into an impossibly small package; it might not be magic, but it surely looked like it. Danny loped around like a Temu herder chasing strays, getting everything folded up and tucked away in that thing. Ship? It reminded her of an old tom swampspider after twenty years of mating battles, battered and molting, missing a leg here and a mandible there, but tough as boiled bull leather. She heard her name and stepped out of the shadow to wait for Danny who was coming to get her. It starts, she thought. Say one thing, it should be interesting.

Yaril and]aril went slipping down a long long slide and burst into brightness, glowspheres zagging across complex crystal lattices on a hot young world circling a sun in the heart of a hot young cluster. Aulis came zipping round them, cousins and strangers, seekers and linkers, greeting them swinging through wild exuberant loops yelling welcome come and see we thought a smiglar had eat you Yar000h Jar000h. Aetas came, younglings budded since they left, bursting with curiosity, wallowing in the explosion of joy, Afas came, trailing after Nurse Agaxes, laughing and singing their infant songs, absorbing the excitment, the joy, though they had no idea what created it. And Agaxes came, majestic and slow, swimming in on all sides, and, finally, finally, father-mother meld at last there shimmering, expanding, opening to absorb them, hold them within in a hot and loving embrace.

Churrikyoo moved.

Before the absorption was complete, it emerged from Jaril, fell into the lattice and went hopping away, matter become energy, stasis become motility, non-life become life.

Yaril and Jaril rest in the embrace of mother-father reading off memory into memory until the whole is transferred, then the embrace ends.

Father-mother go drifting off to digest and discuss the tale with their community-companions. Waves of joy flush pink and gold through them, their children who were dead are alive again, more than alive are triumphant and weighty with story, treasure beyond all other treasures, a meaty and complex narrative to be considered for meaning and style, taken bit by bit, balancing each bit by another, bit against whole, centuries worth of contemplation and dissection.

Surraht-Aulis whole and complete again, Yaril and Jaril emerge, go darting away to join a cluster of other aulis. They race through the lattices, chasing the radiant frog Churrikyoo, a new game for aulis, a wonderful game because no one can win, no one can touch the frog, only chase after it until he, she, they lose it. They play the old games too, merging and remerging, telling their tale into the auli legend horde. They are sad when they remember Brann, but they remember her less and less as the world turns on the spindle of time. They are home and valued, they are merging with their agemates, spinning a community of copulation and exploration, song and story, merging, emerging, remerging.

They are Home.

Knowing with all her body that the pocket reality was collapsing around her, Brann fell away from it and landed on her hands and knees in black sand. The Bay at Haven. Massulit lay on the sand beneath her. She closed her hand about it, pushed up until she was sitting on her heels with Massulit cuddled against her stomach.

Tak WakKerrcarr came over to her, reached a hand down to her and pulled her onto her feet. He pointed at Massulit. “I see you’ve got yourself a new playtoy.”

She looked at the sapphire, watched the star pulse for a breath or two. “You want it?”

“It’s not the kind of thing you can give away, m’ dear.”

She slipped the Stone into a pocket, rubbed at her eyes. “Yaro? Jay?” She remembered the Eating of the Geniod and was suddenly terrified, turned so quickly she stumbled and nearly fell; recovering, she continued to swing round, kicking sand into a storm about her knees; her arms flying out, her eyes wild. “Yaro? Jay?” Her voice cut through the twilight, agony in the syllables as she cried out again and again the names of her change-children. “Chained God,” she ,shrieked, “If you ate my babies…” She ran along the sand, past Trago who was kneeling in the wash of the outgoing tide ignoring them all, staring into the shinning heart of the Eye, past Simms and Korimenei who stood silent on the sand, watching the drama but outside it. “If you fed my children to that Abomination…” She stopped, glared at the mountain rising dark against the gegenschein, Isspyrivo the Gate. “If you took them, you DIEEEE!!!” She turned and ran back. “I’ll tear you,” she screamed as she ran. “I’ll feed you to rats, I’ll… I’ll…” She stopped where she’d started, swung round and round, flinging words to the wind, helpless to do anything but shout yet almost demonic in her rage. “I’ll DRAIN you…” Round and round. “Dead, dead! DEAD!”