Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

The boy threw himself back down on the mesh in frustration. Zell selected a bottle from the shelf. He shook it, unscrewed the top, and stepped over to the hammock. He moved the coral plug back and forth under the boy’s nostrils.

“Oh!” the youngster said and immediately opened his eyes wide.

Zell bent over him and leaned close to his ear. “I would like to speak with the core voice.”

The boy hesitated. Zell gave him a second whiff of the contents of the jar. The boy’s brows shot up and he stared ahead. For a time, only the creaking of the gondola and the breathing of the two observers could be heard. Bayarma grabbed the Standor ’s arm. That too felt good.

“Who are you?” Zell asked.

“Vilu of Falkhaan,” the boy replied.

“Who is with you, Vilu?”

“A… a spirit.”

Bayarma held Qala’s arm tighter; whatever had happened to the boy, was inside the boy, most likely had affected her as well.

“Who is this spirit?” Zell asked, moving his hands carefully to repeat what the boy had said. Just asking the question sent a chill through the cabin. The word Vilu had used was not mazh , an ascended soul. He had said jatma , a noncorporeal being. The term was derived from maat , a Candescent.

“I do not know him,” Vilu replied. “He scares me. He is confused.”

Zell walked back and selected another bottle. He ran the stopper under the boy’s nose. This time Vilu relaxed.

“I would like to talk to the jatma ,” Zell said.

There was a long pause, the quiet broken only by shouts of the crew from outside the thick walls, and the groaning of the balloon overhead.

“I… am… here,” the boy finally said in a different voice. “I do not want to be.”

“How did you get here?”

“I do not know. I just went to sleep.”

“Where?”

“In my room, in my bed. I was drawing… a… comic.”

The boy’s small hands moved tentatively, trying to find counterparts in the Galderkhaani vernacular for what he was trying to say. Suddenly, Vilu’s body became agitated. The Standor started toward him but Zell held up a hand.

“What is happening?” Zell asked.

“Someone else—hello?”

“Is it your mother?”

“No,” the boy said. “ Hello? Can you help me?”

The little body began to tremble as if it were cold. Zell pulled a blanket from a rack, threw it over him, shook his head at Qala when she tried to approach again.

“Describe what you’re seeing,” Zell said.

“A circle… of… light. A ring. There are things moving in it.” The boy began to wince. His eyes narrowed, fluttered. “Blinding—”

“What kinds of things are in the ring?”

“Things! Creatures! Get me away from here!” the boy yelled. “Please! Mother, please!”

“Why are you afraid of the things? Is your mother there?”

“I don’t know! Get me out of here! Get me someplace! I don’t know where I am… the way out! Please! ”

“Zell, please—” Qala said.

“Boy, I must know if it is the ring or the… or being lost that frightens you?”

“Lost!” he cried.

Vilu started to sob.

“Stop this,” Qala said. “At once, Zell.”

Zell returned at once to the first bottle and brought Vilu out of the trancelike state. The boy blinked several times. A few lingering tears rolled from his eyes. He used the edge of the blanket to wipe them away.

“I can see now,” the boy said, blinking hard and looking around. “But I am still here… in Galderkhaan.”

“You are not Vilu, then?” Zell asked.

“I told you who I am!” the boy protested.

“So you did,” the physician said, smiling. “But you are safe now,” he said. He was still holding the vials so he touched the young boy’s cheek with his own, then stood facing Bayarma. He did not say anything. He just watched her.

“What is it?” Qala asked.

“Hold her,” Zell said.

The woman was just standing there, regarding Zell with a strange, vacant expression. She did not react when Qala put strong fingers around her upper arms.

“What is it?” the Standor asked Zell.

“The open vials,” Zell answered.

“You did this on purpose?”

“Of course. I did not want her to suspect.”

“Will she be all right?”

“She is not all right now ,” Zell pointed out. “And we can’t help either of them without an examination.”

“But you’ll stop it if—”

“Yes, yes,” Zell said, mildly annoyed. “All I have to do is replace the stoppers and she’ll come back.”

“You’re sure.”

“Remove the flame and water ceases to boil,” Zell said. “Nature is constant.”

Qala knew Zell well enough to know that he liked to push his patients, but it was always with a goal of healing, and then learning how to heal others, so the Standor didn’t protest. Bayarma continued to look at him without seeing him. Then her brows lowered as if she were concentrating. Her breath came more quickly.

Zell came a little closer, leaned toward her ear. “What are you feeling?” he asked her.

“There… is something… still within my… my…” she said.

“Your what?” Zell said.

“My soul,” she replied.

“Zell, what’s happening?” the Standor asked.

“A miracle,” Zell told his superior. “These two unrelated Galder­khaani somehow have the same—it isn’t a delusion, Standor. They share some kind of alien energy, the same internal entanglement, though the power in Bayarma is extremely faint.” Zell switched the vials to one hand and put his other arm around Bayarma’s waist. “Take the boy, please, Standor .”

Carefully releasing Bayarma to Zell, Qala walked to the hammock and opened her arms to Vilu. The boy hesitated, then went willingly and held her tight. Zell led Bayarma to the hammock and lay her down. He took the second vial and moved it closer.

Almost at once, Bayarma tensed and a sense of unrest filled the room. It was nothing that Qala could isolate, no physical change in her ship, no sudden movement by the two visitors. But it was there.

“You feel it too?” Zell asked the Standor.

“It’s like a storm coming toward us,” Qala said softly.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” the physician remarked. “Out at sea and moving toward land, causing unrest in the air.”

“But there are no warning horns,” Qala said.

“Not as such, no,” Zell agreed.

Shouldering Vilu, the Standor went to the door and looked out, over the outer wall of the airship. She squinted toward the sea, past the great flutes suspended parallel to the bottom of the airbag, tubes that whistled loudly when storm winds blew through them. She did not see what she expected. Seabirds were clustering in a linear formation toward the vessel. Thyodularasi were breaking the surface in an increasingly synchronous movement from the shore toward the horizon. Farther out, the fish had stopped leaping.

When she looked back in the cabin, Qala saw Bayarma breathing more heavily and beginning to perspire. The physician was watching her.

“The jatma is not present in this one, not anymore,” Zell said. “Just a shadow, some kind of tenuous fiber triggered by the compounds.”

“I don’t understand,” Qala said.

“As we watch the alien energies, they are watching us.”

That sent a fresh chill through the Standor .

He used the first vial to restore Bayarma to equilibrium. At once, her breath came more naturally and she began to relax. Then he took both vials away and stood back.