I would like to thank Beachzz (Marilyn) for use of ANOTHER fantastic photograph. Her work and her constant encouragement inspire as much of New Ruthenia as the whole of Nemaean culture, and so much of this work owes to that inspiration AND encouragement. The image I was given gracious permission to use is entitled "River Walk" and can be seen as accompaniment to her post "Walking," here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1611554&member ___________________________________________________________________________ **** “How do you feel?” Ilya asks, a full bell after the incident in the pilot’s bar, belowground. He stands beside Dorianna’s bed, feeling awkward and lost, feeling lost and impotent. A pilot, with a single touch has done all that the Cloister intends, and in its aftermath, Ilya can only stand morosely in the small recovery room. He is trapped in this moment, feeling like the too blond, too pale, too skinny son of an obscure aquaculturist. He is more than that, Aleo will argue, as he always does…but now, in subjective sense at least, this is all he is. It doesn’t matter that he’s wearing the black cassock of a Cloistered Brother, or that it’s crisp, starched collar bites at the soft flesh of his neck. Dorianna lies tucked beneath white covers of a sensor bed with her hair undone. Infusion patches line her arms as the bed itself reads the full range of her metabolic functions…sampling her at whatever intervals the nurses programmed into it. Telltales on the status screen mounted above the bed announce that it is assiduously uploading data to the hospital‘s central monitoring computer, and to the Cloister-house itself. Neat scrolls of data unwind on the screen in crisp, blue skeins of Cyrillic text, repeated in dot-dash binary. “I feel like I was just hit with an interplanetary skimmer, cruising at speed.” “You were interrogated.” “The Pilot…?” “By his standards, you’re unmodified…he’s never seen an unmodified human so he decided to hack your nervous system and see how you‘re put together.” A lie, but an easy one. “Unmodified,” she echoes with wry distaste. “I was recording when he….” “Recording?” Ilya cocks one eyebrow. “Yes. You cleared my buffer-lock, remember?” But it’s clear that Dorianna doesn’t see the line his thoughts have just taken. “I’ll need that recording,” Ilya says, pacing himself so that the words do not come too quickly. “I have reports to submit, and a full sense account would come in handy.” He wonders how he missed that particular trigger. But as an anthropologist, her recording gear is keyed to a different set of impulses, more subtle switches. Her triggers are set to the demands of anthropological work. Subtlety is key in this case, and Ilya is struck cold by the awareness that Dorianna has come armed with triggers too finely masked for even reader-adepts to pinpoint. Her brain, he imagines, is bumpy with more synaptic buds than is normal for a baseline human. And her small admission marks her as a newer danger than anyone has yet imagined. “I’m sure you will…” and still, her voice carries a wry and humorless tone. “Where’s Aleo?” “He was here earlier…now he‘s dealing with the pilots. Yelling at them, no doubt.” “He’s your lover, isn’t he?” There is nothing to hide, but Ilya doesn’t know how to answer the question. Though not unexpected, the timing is off. To anyone else, he’d simply nod, simply confirm any speculations, but with Dorianna here, perhaps as strange and threatening punctuation to her first visit, he can simply swallow through a throat gone abruptly dry. He can only nod. The intended words, the single “yes” congeals into a knot around which only dumb, wordless breath may escape. “I’m not here to hurt him, Ilya…or you.” “No one said you were.” “You did. You’ve been saying it since I’ve arrived. Every time you look at me, I can see it in your eyes. Fear. Dangerous fear.” “It isn’t that.” “Isn’t it?” She sits up now, slowly, as if the room has been set to spinning by the merest whisper of her movement. She closes her eyes, draws a deep breath, then opens them, meeting Ilya’s gaze. “I liked you, once…though I don’t know why. But more than that, we were friends…at least I thought so. When I left, I’d made promises. You didn’t say anything, didn‘t respond to anything I‘d said, and I spent years thinking that it was because you were hurt, that you didn’t want to see me go...that you didn’t believe I’d return But now I know otherwise, and all I can say is that I’m here for reasons that are mine, no matter what any official records may say. I‘ll prove it, if you need me to.” She pauses for a long moment, inhales, then closes her eyes again. “You need to know this,” she says. Ilya nods. “That isn’t enough is it?” Her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it, more plaintive. “How do you mean?” “Don’t play dumb. Look how you’re dressed…look what your job entails. You and Aleo are my keepers, you’re making sure that I don’t get hold of any sensitive information…anything that my government could grab hold of and use against yours. It’s what you think they’re up to. I’ll bet you’ve got a lifetime of files on me--backfiles…cognitive projections, or whatever it is that your thinkers come up with. And you’re here, looking down at me, feeling…oh, I don’t know what, but you’re feeling something, because that pilot wasn’t supposed to touch me, wasn’t supposed to risk an interstellar incident the way that he did. So do whatever you want with that recording…loose it if you need to.” And she’s right: disturbingly so, but Ilya doubts that she is right for the reasons that her words alone imply. He inhales, deeply, but remains still--willing the tension from his muscles, from his face. He feels a smile bubble across his face, and laughter follows. Misplace her recording? And then, he laughs aloud. “You’re a gem, Dashka…a good Centralist girl. In my place, you’d loose that recording wouldn’t you…you’d… what…round-file it?” It is her turn to laugh, a startled, cackling peal, and as quickly as the laugh erupts, it fades. “If that’s what needs to be done…if it makes the whole of Nemaea sleep better at night.” Silence. Ilya feels as if he has waded into the shallows of a deep and murky sea…another step might carry him too far. There is more at work in the Central Systems, the people there--the ones like Dorianna--are more formidable than the common, propaganda-fed masses. She touches his hand and the shock of her warm flesh is enough to snap him into a tense focus on the texture of her finger-flesh and the horrendous, devouring look of entreaty on her face. “I should rest,” she says. “But I want to talk to you…more honestly than we’ve spoken since I’ve been here. Will you allow that?” Feeling trapped--and not knowing why--Ilya nods. It is all he can do. “I’ll speak with Aleo as well…the two of you…together.” “That will be fine. But until then, you should rest.” She smiles and hunkers back against the cushion of her bed. She adjusts the covers across her lap and considers the tabs adhered to the flesh of her arms. A vague expression of amazed distaste dusts the lean contours of her features, and then she looks back into Ilya’s eyes. “No matter what’s happened or will happen, Ilychka…I’m happy to see you again.” He smiles. He slides half a step forward and touches her shoulder. “I have work, Dorianna…Dashenka. Please understand that.” The smile that meets his words is a soft one, startling. “I know. I have work as well…so we’ll do our jobs…but tomorrow, let’s talk. You, me, and Aleo. We‘ll just talk. Like Humans….” Ilya nods again. “Yes.” “You promise?” “I promise.” **** Ilya buries himself in concentration on reports, finishing the last before sundown. He left the hospital, and sequestered himself in Central Records until time-stamping the final report. He’s received no word from Aleo, which isn’t surprising. Aleo has journeyed to the Pilot’s Citadel to complete his half of this evening’s work. It’ll be some time before he returns to Cloister. He’ll return exhausted, most likely. Such is the nature of dealing with pilot-swimmers and their dour, half-logical superiors. And so, alone with his thoughts, Ilya sequesters himself in a walk through the flatlands beyond the Cloister-house. Though clear, the sky whispers with the promise of rain. He can smell it, he can feel it, and he is sure that clouds will roll in by nightfall. But the day is a good one for walking now, and so he walks. He thinks. About the pilot, about Dorianna, and it all comes back to him…the casual manner in which she has made her revelations. “I could be a bomb,” he imagines her saying. “I could have gone off today, and you’d have been powerless to stop it.” And as the thought fades to silence, loosing itself in the convoluted, tangle of his own conscious mind, he shudders again, hugging himself against an imaginary chill. “What are you?” he asks. “What do you want here?” But no one answers the questions. Only the wind rustles through redsage and willow grass. Nothing more. In the distance, widgets chatter and buzz territorial warnings to one another. And as the sun settles one diameter closer to the horizon, he turns on a heel and heads back to the Cloister-house. The questions echo, however, like capricious poltergeists trapped between his ears. What are you?” he wonders aloud. What do you want here? ****