Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

And she was gone.

***

Kit stood there for a while after her departure, still with his back turned to the gate complex and the stone circle, letting the strangely-scented wind ruffle his hair in the near-darkness and cool him down again. He was definitely tired enough to sleep now: it seemed likely that he might be able to grab at least a few hours before he had to go on shift. I’m going to be sort of wired when people start turning up for this picnic or whatever we’re having, but I guess for that there’s always that canned cappucino. Good thing I brought a lot of it…

He stood quiet and let the wind whisper. It wasn’t as strong as it had been earlier. Morning’s coming, Kit thought. There wasn’t a lot of sign of it just yet: the latitude here was close enough to Tevaral’s equator that morning and night seemed to come very suddenly by comparison with the slower twilights of Kit’s latitude on Earth. The cloud overhead had thickened, so that everything above was shut away. All the plain before Kit was drowned in a strange slowly-lightening half-gloom, in which nothing was certain. Even looking down at his own hands in that light they looked indefinite, almost insubstantial.

Kit laughed down his nose at himself and turned to go back to the circle and his puptent.… and stopped.

Something was standing there, between him and the circle and just four or five meters away, looking at him.

A hot-cold wave of adrenaline ran through Kit’s body at the sight of it. His first impulse was to reach for his back pocket, where his wand normally rode when he was bothering to carry it. But it wasn’t there, and whatever was standing and watching him… just stood there and kept watching.

It was astonishing how hard it was to see whatever was examining him. Yet Kit knew right down to his bones that his inability to clearly make out any details about the being looking at him had nothing at all to do with the lighting. And though he wanted to see clearly, his eyes were flatly refusing to do so. He could make out an upright shape, longer than it was wide, broader in its top half than its bottom. But beyond that—

Kit blinked, rubbed his eyes. His vision didn’t improve. Past the being who watched him, the stones of the circle were perfectly clear, silhouetted by the soft light of the electric campfire that Djam had brought out with him. But the being itself remained a mere tangle of shadow in an upright shape. And not even that, Kit thought. Shadow would be more definite than this.

He couldn’t think what else to do, so Kit simply said, “Dai stihó. I’m on errantry, and I greet you.”

The tangle of indefinite there-ness regarded him.

“Mamvish was here,” it said.

There was something extremely peculiar about its voice, or rather, about the way it used the Speech. It wasn’t that the phrasing was in any way unusual. But the sound of the words themselves seemed to strike Kit’s ear differently, as if there was a great deal of meaning underneath the bare statement that was somehow being held in reserve. And the voice seemed somehow almost to be coming out of the ground—a mineral sort of voice, seemingly having nothing to do with sound-producing organs or air. The whole effect was incredibly unnerving.

Still, no point in just standing here being unnerved, Kit thought. “Yes, she was,” he said. And as he spoke he suddenly remembered the group of people from the three other Temal species that he’d seen while he and the rest of the inbound group had been passing through the Crossings. Kit was now sure, without knowing exactly how, that this was a member of the remaining Temal species, the one for whom there was no name but “Fourth”.

“When?” the Fourth said.

The sound of the voice left Kit shivering, though he had no idea why. It wasn’t as if he felt threatened by the being. It was strange, yes, but he’d experienced a lot of strange since his Ordeal. This, though—this was different, somehow. And he couldn’t even describe to himself exactly how, which made matters worse.

“Only a few minutes ago,” Kit said. “Maybe five. Is there something I can help you with?”

A long silence followed. Kit got the sense that the Fourth’s attention was focused on him in some way he’d never been looked at before, something profoundly revelatory in ways he couldn’t understand. It made him very, very uncomfortable. But even in his short wizardly career Kit had withstood the regard of beings of terrible power who were intent on his immediate destruction, and whatever this felt like, it didn’t feel like that. This felt like curiosity; and yes, danger, in some mode or other. But it was danger that meant him well—so strange a concept, in this intensity, that he could hardly get his head around it.

“Kiht?” he heard Djam calling. He wasn’t on the Stone Throne any more: he’d come out with a wizard-light hovering over his shoulder to see what was going on behind the circle. And then he caught sight of the Fourth. Djam stopped as if struck still, and stared.

The peculiarly indefinite figure didn’t move, but Kit knew it had briefly turned its attention to Djam. Then, a few moments later, that attention was back on Kit again. He could practically feel it on his skin, like a heatlamp, except that the sensation had nothing to do with heat or cold or anything else so mundane. Kit’s nerves tried to work out how to render the sensation and then apparently simply gave up, so that he felt nothing but a vague dull tingle along the front of him.

“Pathfinder,” the Fourth said, as if musing… but not so much for Kit’s benefit: for someone else’s. Not Djam’s, though.

“Sorry?” Kit said. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

The Fourth leaned toward Kit just a little. That gesture he felt more clearly now: a pressure, almost a test. As if something was saying, Can you take it? Can you take this?

Kit frowned at that and leaned forward against what was pushing him: pushed back.

For a long, long few moments there was no response. Kit just kept pushing back. Then suddenly the pressure let up, so that Kit staggered when it was released. He was aware again of that strange dangerous attention bent on him; but something about the quality of it had changed. It seemed somehow more multiple; as if the attention of more than one being was bent on Kit now.

“Yes,” the Fourth said. “You know half the way. The other half will know the other half.”

A huge odd silence drew itself around the two of them… or however many of them there were. And then the Fourth said: “Yes yes.”

And without any further sign or movement, it was gone.

Kit swayed where he stood. Djam hurried over to him, braced him from one side and looked at him in concern. “Cousin, are you all right?”

Kit nodded and rubbed his eyes, and was astonished to find that his hand was shaking. “Yeah. I think. Wow was that weird.”

“You are just ordained to be having one of those interesting days, aren’t you?” Djam said.

Kit blinked his eyes a few times: they suddenly felt very tired. “Yeah, I’d say you’re right there.” He stared at the spot where the Fourth had been. “Djam, were you seeing what I was seeing?”

“When I figure out what I was seeing,” Djam said, “I’ll let you know.” He bubbled softly in his throat. “Pity Cheleb wasn’t here too so we could all compare notes. His night vision’s better than mine.”

“I don’t know whether broad daylight would’ve made any difference,” Kit said. “I think maybe my species just isn’t equipped to see those guys.”

“Most of ours wouldn’t be,” Djam said. “If that was a Fourth—”

“It was.” Kit was as sure as if the information had been communicated to him directly.

“They have a paraphysical extension into a higher-numbered dimension. Supposedly part of their nervous system and some of their physical components are positioned out there.” Djam waved a hand in an indefinite way, as if trying to suggest in which direction the fifth through eleventh dimensions were located. “And because they’re not all here here—meaning in our own dimension—your eyes and your brain can’t understand some of what they’re seeing. So they just make the best guess they can…”