Book of Days: asher553

Okay, LJ brain trust, I need your help!

For those of you who've been reading my story (yes, both of you), this is your chance to provide some input. And if you haven't been following it, that's OK! I just want a title. Here is the story, currently close to 10,000 words: The Queen's Courtesan.

I haven't been entirely happy with the title and I've toyed with the idea of changing it ... but so far, haven't been able to decide on anything else. So, feel free to pick one of the choices or share your own idea.


[Poll #849135]

Thanks!

[The Queen's Courtesan - our story so far: http://asher813.typepad.com/fiction/ ]

The universe had closed around it like a wound.

The memory of her death was now blessedly opaque; the conscious mind had blotted it out with the rough, unfeeling tissue of oblivion. Blessed be the Merciful, for the gift of forgetfulness.

But the void was still there, and it would never go away. This was not the creative void of the cosmos or the womb, but a different and malignant emptiness. No breath was drawn but had Lhior's absence engraved on it; no draught of water was taken but had Lhior's loss dissolved within it.

Even now, Khalfid winces at the memory. Even now, she cannot look at another woman without remembering the one whose embrace was everything. Making love with her, and sharing the intertwining of their souls, had taken Khalfid into another dimension and another world - a world so vast it could encompass even the barren landscape of the lifeless, nameless rock they called their home.

You are not you,
not even a star;
you are a hole through which
I see only shining. ...

Khalfid remembers the lines from an obscure Human poet; their child had written the verses down, first in translation and then in the original language. She can smile now, knowing that she still has something left of Lhior: their child. The child Lhior bore, the child whose face reflects Lhior's features - but the spirit, perhaps something of the girl's spirit is Khalfid's own.

She knows how tempting it would have been for her to cling to the girl, to turn the restless, inquisitive child into a surrogate for Lhior - and she knows too how destructive it would have been for the child. And after all, Khalfid's role as a bondmother was not to nurture - that was Lhior's domain - but to guide the growing girl into the greater world. And so, she held the girl at a distance.

The homeworld is the soul's cradle - but one cannot remain in the cradle forever.

It was a quote the girl had come across in one of her books, and one she recited endlessly. The first time Khalfid had heard it, she thought it was a verse from one of the Gilkesh classics, perhaps The Way of Power or the Cypher, but she'd been wrong.

The girl never gave much of herself away. Following the construction accident that had killed her birthmother - a strange accident it had been, too - she'd grown even quieter, but her work in school never suffered. Her fierce intellect and her interest in alien cultures stayed as keen as ever. She studied hard and trained assiduously in the school's gymnasium, where the girls were exposed to their mandatory hour of Standard Gravity - the only place on the planet with artificial gravity - to prepare them for the unlikely possibility that they might one day journey to the Homeworld.

And now? She's out there somewhere now, Khalfid thinks.

Her steps are listless and fluid as she paces the floor of the small domicile. She gazes at the walls, at Lhior's belongings in a corner still untouched, at the pictures of Lior and their daughter on the walls. She thinks about what might have been and weeps without tears. She closes her eyes, and - from her home deep below the surface - looks up at the imagined stars. As if reciting a mantra, she repeats their daughter's name.

Joli. Joli. Joli. ...

Hoping to resume work on "The Queen's Courtesan" soon, either during or after my San Francisco visit.

(Random fact for you apostrophe-watchers: The Site Meter I've installed on the site strips the apostrophe from the story title, so that it reads "The Queens Courtesan". I feel like I ought to start writing a sequel called "The Bronx Concubine" ...)

(The Queen's Courtesan: our story so far.)

***


She's not sure when she became separated from the group. All the hallways feel familiar ... but the hallways all look the same. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks she ought to be panicking by now, but for some reason she's calm. Tranquil.

She's not sure what level she's on, whether it's higher or lower than the school area. Did she get on the elevator with the rest of the class? She can't remember.

The girl appears just around the bend in the hallway. She is older than Urkni, not a grownup but mature, confident, and reassuring. She is elegant and beautiful, and she makes Urkni feel tingly in a way she can't quite describe. There's a radiance that seems to come from her eyes, and a sense of peace.

She looks at Urkni for a long moment, silent and smiling gently, as if waiting for Urkni to initiate conversation.

"Can you help me? I'm lost," Urkni manages at last.

The stranger steps forward and touches Urkni's arm. "Oh, no you're not," she says reassuringly. "You're found. Come with me. I want to show you something fun. I know you'll like it! You'll see ... it's a lot more exciting than muscial chairs."

***

The abandoned laboratory is utterly prosaic. Many years ago, the colony on Planet 138 was the site of some very important scientific research for one of the Kathrite clans. Nowadays, no one is sure what it was, exactly, that was being studied; all that is certain is that Planet 138 hasn't been part of the big picture for a long time. The colony's population has remained roughly stable, or perhaps declined a little, and the lecture halls and workshops in the sector have been gradually converted to warehouses or meeting-halls, or simply left vacant. In the old days, the sector was strictly off-limits to the general public. Now, it's not: nobody has a reason to go there, but then, nobody has a reason not to go there, so it's a perfect place to go without attracting attention.

Urkni doesn't know any of this, but by the time she gets there, she knows she'll never ever be able to find her way back to Miss Orizhend's class on her own. The part of her mind that was worried an hour ago has now cried itself hoarse and is has given up on trying to change the course of events; it has resigned itself to looking for comfort wherever comfort can be found.

The stranger - who still hasn't given her name - rests her hand reassuringly on Urkni's shoulder. "Don't be afraid. We're all friends here." The mention of the word "afraid" makes Urkni realize that, come to think of it, she has been feeling something very much like fear; but she's glad to be able to let go of it now.

They are standing at the doorway to a room about the size of her old schoolroom, but it feels a lot different. There are voices - friendly voices, talking, chattering, perhaps telling stories. She can't make out any of the words, but it feels comforting. It feels like home. The older girl walks through the doorway, not looking back, and Urkni follows.

The lamps are off. Instead of artificial light, a single candle in the middle of the floor provides illumination. About two dozen people, young and old, are seated on the floor in a circle around the candle. When Urkni enters the room, conversation hushes and all eyes turn to her. "Welcome, sister," several voices say.

The light of the candle throws dramatic shadows against the walls. From a dark corner of the room, a silver-haired woman steps forward. "Welcome, sister," the woman says, looking at Urkni. Her manner is solemn but reassuring. In the woman's gaze, Urkni has a feling of being taken seriously. It is a good feeling.

Following the older girl's lead, Urkni takes a spot on the floor at the edge of the circle. The woman, who is obviously the leader of the group, stands silent for a long moment.

***

"Once, long ago, people knew the way. But the way was lost. And people became lost. Look at us now - look around. Where is the happiness? Where is the peace? Where is the hope? Where is the love?

"We've all heard the legend of how Eve was driven out of the Garden by the angel Lilith. So, too, has the spirit of life been driven out of the Universe. We are wracked by conflict and burdened by suffering in our daily lives - and each day, it seems, we sacrifice another little piece of our souls. And for what? We work, we strive, we suffer, we grieve - but our lives are empty.

"Friends, sisters, our generation has lost sight of the great Unity. Like the debris of a dying star, we are drifting farther and farther away from one another, losing energy, losing light. Dying, slowly dying.

"Only one thing can bring us back, and that is the realization of the great truth: the truth that we must live for something greater, for this universe is not our real home. These rocks we live on, these bodies we inhabit - they are prisons. They do not belong to us, nor we to them.

"Our destiny is to return to the Source. This Universe was created from nothing, and it will grow, and then it will turn inward and return to the great Void from which it came. So too with us: like the Universe, our calling is to return to the great Void. Then we will be one with the Cosmos for all eternity.

"One time soon, all created beings will understand this wisdom. But most are not ready for it yet. For now, the secret must remain with a trusted few - those enlightened souls that can grasp the greatness of this sacred calling. We are few, but we are many. We are here, and we are everywhere. We are Gilkesh, and we are among all the sentient races. We are the messengers of rebirth and redemption. We are Singularity."

***

The leader stands silent, her eyes closed, perhaps in a trance. Then a low murmur rises from the group, and resolves itself into a hum, and then into a slow, rippling chant. Urkni can't understand most of the words - they seem to be in another language, yet there's a familiar sounding phrase here and there, and she feels the meaning of the chant hangs just beyond her grasp. She starts humming along with the tune, then repeating the sounds she hears, she's afraid she's getting the words wrong but she wants to sing so badly she doesn't mind if she makes mistakes.

Now she doesn't care if she ever goes back home again, or if she ever sees the silly schoolroom again or not. Now she realizes it doesn't matter if she ever sees her stupid friends again, and anyway, they were never really her friends. This is where she belongs.

Someone blows out the candle, but the song continues. Now, nothing else matters: only the song, and the promise, and the endless night ahead.

OUR STORY SO FAR:
http://shoshanna813.blogspot.com/2006/02/gone-into-night.html


[This dialog is a draft for a section of my story. I'm posting it here but I'm not sure where it will go in the story, so it's pretty much out of sequence. Dess and Joli are talking about hyperspace travel. Joli is a social-sciences person and not much into the "what's under the hood of my spaceship" questions. Dess is the physics geek.]

"Okay, I know I'm not too bright about this kinda stuff," Joli is saying. "Explain this hyperspace thing one more time?"

"Well, there are other universes parallel to this one - maybe infinite numbers of them - and some are almost identical to the one we're in right now. When you make a hyperjump, you leave one universe and enter another. Jumping allows you to pick the point in spacetime where you enter."

"But if I'm going into another universe like this one ... why don't I run into another one of me?"

"It's like musical chairs. At the same time that you're making your hyperjump, the 'other you' is making a jump into still another universe."

"Hmm. I think I see. But in musical chairs, you're always short one chair."

"That's true! And when you hyperjump, there's always a small chance that the 'other you' is making a different decision. So theoretically, there's always the possibility that you might meet her. Hypertravel is never completely predictable."

"Dess, we've both hyperjumped lots of times ... it seems weird to think that you're not the same person I saw before my last jump."

"Well, think of it this way: I'm not the same person you saw yesternight, either. Or an hour ago. I've changed - and so have you. The universe is always changing, and we change with it."

"Can you change the past and future with hypertravel?" Joli asks.

"You don't need hypertravel to change the future. You do that at every moment, with every choice you make in life. But I think I know what you're asking. Suppose you traveled to the future - say tomorrow - and then you threw a pair of dice. You might see an eight on your dice, but if I stayed where I was, and waited until you arrived, I might see you roll a three or an eleven. Why? Because you - the 'you' that I saw leave - are now in a different timeline.

"Now," Dess goes on, "suppose you traveled to the past. Let's say you went back in time, and ... " She's about to say, " - and killed your mother" because that's the example people usually use; but she stops herself, because she doesn't want to bring up painful memories for Joli. So instead she says, " - and, uh, did something to change the future, maybe you visited your mother when she was young and convinced her not to have babies. That wouldn't make you stop existing, because nothing you could do in the new timeline would affect anything in your own past."

There's a long pause. Dess has a moment of dread, because she's afraid Joli is goiing to ask her whether her mother is alive in another universe. And Dess doesn't know how she's going to answer that one. But that's not what Joli asks.

"Are there people from our future out there? And why haven't we seen them?"

The question catches Dess off-guard.

"Hmmmmm. Well, remember, they wouldn't be our future, exactly ... "

Dess is stalling, and Joli knows it. "But they'd be from a future like ours, right?"

"Yeah," Dess says quietly.

"So where are they? Has anybody seen a Gilkesh spacecraft from, say, 500 years in the future?"

The answer, as far as Dess or anybody else knows, is no.

"Well," Dess says awkwardly, stalling again, "there are limits on how far you can travel in hyperspace. Even our best ships can't travel five hundred years into the future."

"But in the future they'd have better technology, right? So why haven't they ever come to us?"

"Maybe they're just not that interested. We're their past. Maybe they're not all that interested in where they came from."

"But isn't everybody?"

This time, the silence is total. In a way that neither one can articulate, Joli's question has revealed a fundamental difference in their natures.

With no answer from Dess, Joli breaks the silence.

"Well, maybe they can't. Maybe they're stuck inside some kind of space-time bubble or something."

Dess thinks about this. "Yeah," she says at last. "Or maybe we are."