The Path of the Four

Killing me, that’s this bastard’s plan, Ariana thought. So much for just being a harmless prankster. He’s sabotaged the shuttle and I’m going to spiral into the sun.

But the image of Brother Chaos (it looked like a still photograph) was gone almost as soon as it arrived.

And Ariana could feel and know, in a way that only a “spacejack” could, that the shuttle was still right on course.

So all seemed normal, except the image of Brother Chaos being replaced on the navigation screen with motion picture imagery of her dead brother, Michael, standing in front of what looked like the same building from her dream, the six-sided building, a red and brown glass tower, and the angle wasn’t high and wide enough for her to see if the five gargoyles were still there, at the top of the building, along with the broken window.

(She had not shared an account of the dream with anybody, not Joe, Jafari, anybody on Vertex, not even Ab-Druh, to whom she had only spoken of a general interest in dreams.)

On the navigation screen, in front of the dream building, Michael Orlando held up a martini glass, in the classic stance of a toast, touching glasses –

-- With Akira Yamato, who stood next to Michael, holding a martini glass up to the dead brother’s. Yamato’s round, smiling, dimpled face and coffee cup ears popped up out of the top of the green, blue, and yellow Hawaiian shirt he wore, along with gray sweat pants and, in a typical touch for him, Italian shoes.

And then this image faded away, the navigation screen normal again, with the yellow outline animation.

“Babe! What just happened?”

“What are you referring to?”

The voice of the artificial intelligence over the shuttle’s wall speaker was cool and polite.

Therefore, Babe didn’t pick it up, whatever just happened, Ariana thought.

Maybe he didn’t pick it up.

“Babe, run a full diagnostic analysis on this shuttle’s systems.”

“Acknowledged -- All systems normal.”

No, Ariana thought. They aren’t. I didn’t just not go insane or start hallucinating.

She took a motorized screwdriver from the inside pocket of her brown leather jacket. She used it to get to the bubble memory circuit boards underneath the navigation screen.

Ariana studied the circuit boards, looking for -- What? There was no evidence of tampering. So, had Brother Chaos targeted a transmission right to this shuttle? From where, and why, and how? And how did he (or she or they or it, Ariana now thought in connection with Brother Chaos) know about the building in her dream, or was that just a coincidence? And faking an image like that, of Yamato and Michael.

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

She opened her eyes.

All the technical questions, and questions of motive, buzzed in her head.

But she was an engineer so she didn’t view disorder and confusion as the natural way of things.

The evidence was far from solid, but she decided her dream and Yamato’s disappearance were connected --

-- Or this “Brother Chaos” weirdo wanted her to think the two things were connected, which sort of amounted to the same thing.

She used the tool she held to put the bubble memory circuits boards back and then she put the motorized screwdriver back in her jacket.

So she needed to find out what the truth was about her dream that starred Michael, like a movie concocted by a demented, phantom filmmaker, crouching in the lower basements of her skull, and the impossible, irrational way this tied into Yamato’s disappearance --

Impossible. Fantastic. Maybe a little demented.

This little goal of hers, of private dream and public disappearance, was an irrational agenda in the rational social, political, and cultural regime of the Human “New Universal Age.”

Therefore, it was time to talk to an alien.

Ariana corrected herself. No. We Humans, we are the aliens on this end of the Corridors.

“Excuse me, Ariana?”

It was Babe’s voice again.

“What is it, Babe?”

“We’re on our final landing arch, and we’re just passing over something I think you would like to know about.”

“What is it?”

“I’m aware of you and the rest of Vertex management’s concern regarding the Lower Clan, so I thought you would like to know about--”

“Look. Just show me, OK? Switch to direct visual display.”

The navigation screen cut from the yellow outline animation to a video image of the Five Lands and the ultraviolet saturated dawn.

Moving from the Center Land toward the North Land, were at least two hundred of the Lower Clan, in long and swift and wooden boats, about half of them rowing with long oars, and half of them holding long and sharp spears, holding them straight up, and the spears glinted in the blue shadows of the Zah-Gre dawn.

“Crisis alert sent from joint Friendship Bureau/Human Security monitoring station on Golden Horizon to H.S. Headquarters on planet surface,” Babe said.

“Great,” Ariana said, not sure if the artificial intelligence program could pick up sarcasm. “I decide to go down for a little spiritual counseling and I end up in the middle of a war.”

“My memory bank has data on thousands of Earth’s wars,” Babe replied. “My analysis is that war is often inconvenient for many people.”

No shit, Ariana thought.

“Wait a minute,” Ariana said aloud.

For she saw the progress of the boats begin to slow and then halt. The way some group of Lower Clan gesticulated at each other suggested, to Ariana, that some type of disagreement seemed to have broken out.

Time passed, and before the Lower Clan disappeared from the navigation monitor, they began to turn around and head back to the Center Land.

“Human authorities have canceled the crisis alert.”

“Babe, I don’t suppose you know what just happened?”

“That’s right. I don’t know, but I can extrapolate from the available data. You know the Center Land legend of ‘the One Who Will Complete Us,’ of course?”

“Yes.”

“Like many things, there is the popular idea of the Lower Clan, and the reality of the situation. No culture or subculture is all savage, Ariana. As violent and as fearsome as the Lower Clan is, we just saw disagreement about plans and priorities, a characteristic of pockets of civilization. The disagreement was between the Clan members who wanted to continue to wait a little while longer for their ‘the One Who Will Complete Us,’ and the Clan members who are done waiting. The first group won the argument.”

At least for now, thought Ariana.

Ariana asked around in the Daily Market for where she could find Ab-Druh. She found an Outer Clan member selling hot dogs from Earth mixed with the grass from Zah-Gre’s “Between Spaces,” the wilderness areas that stretched between the villages. He told her that Ab-Druh was in Der-Ween.

“Go straight south and you can’t miss it. It’s right on our coastline. It’s a village of fishermen from my Clan.”

She rented a gwyr, the black and white creatures that looked like large versions of Earth house cats. She rented the animal at a stable near the Terra Hotel and began her journey.

Ariana rode out of the Old City and into the Between Spaces.

Each Land, as far she knew, had its own “Between Spaces.”

As she rode, she passed here and there Humans acting in ways she had not seen since she was a little girl, like from the period after the Time of the Two Wars, before the good works of the Better World Foundation and Akira Yamato began.

Two little blond girls, both in white dresses, had an argument that was all screams and snarls and shouts.

A tall man had the chiseled good looks and the strong chin of a film actor from Old Hollywood. He wore a leather vest but no shirt, revealing a muscular build that recalled the classical idea of Hercules. He stood by the side of a road, bawling. Ariana didn’t have to ask why.

Yamato. Just gone. Why?

Another man wore glasses and a tiny beard. He wore an “Animation Weave” T-shirt that displayed a peace symbol with the planet Earth in orbit around it. Ariana watched the familiar blue globe, with its familiar continental shapes, begin to cross the much larger peace symbol. This man held a da-gon in a tight grip. The monkey-like creature writhed, its tail changing lengths, and its color changing a thousand times, as Ariana rode past on the gwyr. The man with the beard stared at the struggling da-gon, his eyes narrow behind his glasses, and the lines of his mouth hard.

The village of Der-Ween was a small group of tents, the po-zahs, on a spot on the southern coast of the North Land. Ariana rode the gwyr into the village during the early evening hours.

Little fires blazed away here and there, besides two larger fires. Large, wooden racks straddled both large fires. On the top, center beams of the racks, rows of fish dangled, tied in place with bits of tough string. The Der-Ween villagers had punched through the cheeks of each fish and then looped the string up over the center beams.

The fish were purple. They had ten eyes, in two groups of five.

Ariana saw the fishermen all look over their shoulders at her, and then turn their heads back, ignoring her.

Hmmmm, thought Ariana. This is interesting.

A Zah-Gre stepped out of the shadows. He spoke Japanese, and then German, and then Ariana could speak with him because he spoke a language of her childhood—Italian.

“I apologize for our bad manners. But most in Der-Ween have a degree of sympathy with the Lower Clan indifference to Humans.”

“And you don’t feel that way, I hope,” Ariana answered back in Italian.

“‘All our joined in the Turning,’” he said, quoting the first line of the Garb Ock.

I’m going to try to make friends, Ariana thought.

“What is Der-Ween’s market for this fish, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“The Daily Market and the Terra Hotel.”

The Terra Hotel’s guests were almost one hundred per cent Human.

“Humans enjoy this fish?”

“Oh yes. They say it tastes like chicken and -- is there something called ‘steak’?”

“Yes. I’m from the space station. Not the hotel in the sky, Golden Horizon. The other one.”

“Ariana Orlando? We heard that you and Ab-Druh of the Inner Clan --”

His voice trailed off. He didn’t have any words to describe Ariana Orlando’s relationship with Ab-Druh. Neither did Ariana.

“Yes, I am she. I offer you the Human space station as an additional market for Der-Ween’s fish.”

The Italian-speaking Zah-Gre seemed to consider this. He tilted his flat top head, turquoise-furry face to one side and extended one cheek by pushing his tongue against it. Then he said, “What can you trade?”

“What would the Outer Clan of Der-Ween like?”

“Do you have any chocolate?”

Boy, do we, Ariana thought. No matter how often the food synthesizers break down up on Vertex, that’s the one thing they can always make.

“Yes,” she said aloud. “And we would be happy to trade.”

The Italian-speaking Zah-Gre went over to the groups of other fishermen and started to talk to them in the language of North Zah-Gre. From a distance, Ariana watched as news of the business deal she had just struck spread.

After a few minutes, other Der-Ween villagers went over to her, excited and friendly. They helped her off the gwyr, led the creature away, and, in rough pantomime, invited over to several different fires to -- visit, Ariana guessed. She didn’t understand a word any of them said. They only talked North Zah-Gre, and the Italian-speaking native had disappeared.

Ariana thought, Galileo, Einstein, and Hawking -- None of them could have known about an additional universal force, besides gravity: business.

It was all very nice, but there was somebody she was looking for. She asked for him.

“Ab-Druh? Ab-Druh? Ab-Druh?”

“I am here, Ariana.”

The small crowd of Outer Clan Zah-Gre parted, perhaps, Ariana thought, startled to hear the voice of the Inner Clan Zah-Gre, speaking English.

There he stood, tall, chubby, and smiling, but a quick moment later, the lines of his mouth turned to concern. Then Ariana realized the sad look she had been wearing and that Ab-Druh was the first in Der-Ween to react to that look.

Ab-Druh said a few words in North Zah-Gre, and all the fishermen went back to their fires and the cooking of their fish.

Ab-Druh walked up to her.

And waited.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

He nodded.

“I have been in the Between Spaces,” he said.

She wanted to ask, talking to the dead? She remembered the rumor Billy had reported to her.

“The po-zah I use in this village is right over here, Ariana.”

Through the flickering, dancing flame-born blue shadows of evening, Ab-Druh led Ariana to a tent, nestled among other po-zahs, a few yards away.

In Ab-Druh’s tent, a video panel leaned against the center post. Vertex was broadcasting an old interview with Akira Yamato. He was explaining how he had used artificial brain tissue and a microcomputer, and installed both in the skull of a concert pianist of world acclaim. The musician had, from a car accident, severe head injuries, and Yamato saved her intelligence, and her talent.

Ab-Druh touched the “off” switch on a corner of the video panel.

“I hoped you would come,” he said to the now dead video panel. He turned and looked at her, looking down at her only because of his greater height.

The cloth that made up the tent had a slight transparent quality. The light of the various fires outside came through the cloth of the tent, and the small, slit of an opening Ab-Druh and Ariana had walked through to enter.

“I hoped you would come and find me and we would talk.”

“Why?”

“We aren’t machines, of course, we Zah-Gre. We have emotion, and the cycles of birth, life, and death. But grief and loss are Human things.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“Can I sit?”

“Of course, Ariana.”

She sat on the dirt and grass and sand floor and brushed the hair out of her eyes with her hands. She could hear the tide lapping up to the coastline and the singing of the fah-teens. Ariana had seen the two-headed birds, flying back and forth, and in circles, over the village when she rode in.

Ab-Druh sat across from her.

“I’m twenty-seven years old now,” Ariana said, thinking for a moment that Ab-Druh had said he was one hundred. “I was two when the Pan-Asian War started, with China and Taiwan going at it. Who attacked who first? Nobody knows, for sure, still, right up to today. In a few weeks, the war spilled all over Asia. Alliances made, broken, remade. Hostages taken and some of them held for years, and some executed in a few hours. The first virtual reality motion picture was being shot in Tokyo: The Time-Traveling Samurai. It had International producers, and an international cast. A pilot pulled away from a Chinese combat bomber squadron and smashed his plane and himself into the on-location set. That brought the western democracies into the war: Germany, France, England -- and the U.S. Two years into the war, a cop in Boston, a cop named Jack Pierce pepper sprayed an antiwar demonstrator named Mary Martinez. A twelve-year-old boy named Christian Brand saw this, pulled a submachine gun out of his coat, and killed Officer Brand. That did it. Two U.S. Senators, Hannover and Morris, wrote a set of bills that, in essence, made disagreeing with U.S. involvement on the war a crime. President McClintock signed the whole package of bills into law. One morning, in Philadelphia, cops fired live ammunition, not rubber bullets, into a group of antiwar protestors, as a reaction to having dirty names shouted at them. One month later, a group calling itself the Universal Resistance League started doing bombings and assassinations to fight American involvement in the war: munitions factories, Marine generals, Navy bases -- So a foreign war and what amounted to a second U.S. Civil War went on, for almost ten years altogether. Finally, a week after my eleventh birthday, President Frederick Curry ordered American troops out of Asia, and signed a peace treaty with the Universal Resistance League. In another time, another era, another age, Americans would have vilified him for bargaining with terrorists. But the pollsters were telling ‘Blurry Curry’ that U.S. public support for the Universal Resistance League was close to sixty per cent. With the United States out, the Pan-Asian War petered out over the next few weeks.”

She paused and took a deep breath.

“But peace turned out to be hell. A long, unpopular war would knock the stuffing out of any country, even if the people fighting it did so on the other side of the world. It wasn’t much better in other nations. Crime, pollution, and other problems were as bad as they had ever been before, everywhere, in every state of the union. Then, there was a slow progress. It was thanks to the assistance and advice of the Better World Foundation, with Roger Brantley, and Akira Yamato, and the others. Earth came back to a better way, better even than before the war.”

She paused again.

“I spent my childhood in the shadow of daily hell the whole country, the whole world felt. I lived every day that way until a hope, a future came about thanks to Brantley’s Better World Foundation, and their boy genius Yamatao. We should have a few more decades with him, before we have to be without him. He’ll be forty in a few years. And now, Yamato’s gone, and I know it’s not rational, but I’m afraid everything is going to turn to shit again.”

“You’re crying.”

She touched her face, felt her tears, and looked across at Ab-Druh.

He held his arms open and across to her.

She crawled across to him, and the large native cradled the small Human in his arms, and Ariana cried.

“Of course, Yamato might still be alive,” Ab-Druh said after a few minutes.

“I know.”

“Or he might be dead.”

Ariana got the impression, for a moment, that she was under a big pile of blankets and it was a cold night outside, and all of this back on Earth and a long time ago. For a moment, she imagined the smell of hot chocolate milk, with a cinnamon stick in it, like Momma use to make, just for Ariana.

“In Zah-Gre, one life never holds up too much. Just enough.”

And Humans have depended too much on Yamato? Is that what Ab-Druh was saying? No, Ariana thought. There was no judgment in Ab-Druh’s voice, non-editorializing. He was just stating the way of things, and letting her draw her own conclusions. She didn’t have any conclusions to make, not now at least, about Ab-Druh’s cryptic, “too much, just enough” remark. However, there was some type of sliver of importance there --

-- She felt him stiffen. She lifted her head from the upper portion of his turquoise-furry chest that peeped out the top of his robe, and she looked at him, but he looked over her head, his face strained with listening, the black and glassy eyes all in an instant bottomless in their depth.

“What is it?”

Then she gave herself a reply to her own question.

She could still hear the tide, and the fires burning

--

-- However, the fah-teens, the two-headed singing birds, they had stopped their songs, although she could still hear the beating of their wings as they passed overhead.