10

The Chronicler

            Dragon and I were reunited the evening of our eventful day with the Justiciar, and she looked only a little less agitated. “I have extended my pact with that devil!” she announced unbidden. I felt like pulling her into another hug, but at the same time, I couldn’t really understand her reaction. She must have guessed some of these unspoken thoughts, for she murmured close enough so I could hear, “I suppose I did not stay on Earth long enough to understand . . . convenience.”

But when I asked her what she was talking about, she only waved me off with “Oh, nothing, nothing,” and rubbed her eyes. So I finally did pull her to me. After a minute of deep sighs, she looked up, black eyes huge and deep, “I can see the sweetness Leila so appreciates.”

I smiled a quiet thank you and started to massage her shoulders, “Tell me something. Where am I supposed to write up this encounter I bore witness to?”

“When we get back to Pallas House, I will show you. In the meantime,” she whipped out a palm-sized little black box and tried to press it into my hand, “You can talk it through on this.”

“Talk?” I returned the object.  “I don’t think so.”

“You cannot talk through writing? How interesting.”

The exchange had provided the moment of levity she needed. I felt her relax under my hands.

We returned to Zyss the same day, but we didn’t stay. “Time for you to join Leila, and for me,” Dragon shot me an oddly shy glance and slipped out before finishing her sentence. Everything was ready for a second journey even as we stepped in the door of the Pallas-compound. When we stepped back out to the roof, Goal and Socorro were waiting inside the glider. I embraced the elder and took the baby from her waiting Pallas kinsman.

I did not give her up that night.

We arrived late in Eden Hamlet. The house was different. It looked like a real house, a big villa close to a lake, something that could have come from Earth. I was taken up two flights of stairs to a room also strangely reminiscent of Earth, and my guide did not insist on taking the children elsewhere. I told him to let Leila know I was grateful, then prepared to get as much rest as was possible with Socorro and Goal alternately demanding my attention.

The next morning, Goal and I woke up early and slipped away as quietly as possible. She took me down to a huge kitchen and dining room facing the eastern sun, a bright and lovely morning sanctuary that beckoned with some promising scents. We found our evening guide there, and this time he introduced himself, “Hello again, I’m Pallas Kyet. And you are Raymond, Leila’s friend.” He looked like a toasted version of Lady Ciani, with a distinct indigo undertone, wavy hair auburn and long, his eyes the same black as the coffee he was offering. I experienced the sensation of coming face to face with an Alien again, and did my very best to suppress it. But once I got over the alien part, I noticed how handsome our young host was. Come to think of it, he reminded me of a young Robert Plant with that wild curly hair flying about his head. “I hear you and Dragon have been over to the Islands.”

“Leila is here?” was the first casual thing I could think to reply.

He nodded. “Been here on and off since she returned home. I think she plans to move here. She wants to see you.”

I accepted a proffered hot drink and he said with a distinct Alnese timbre, “Choctea.” When I sipped it, I knew I would have to get used to it, and couldn’t come up with a single thing to say or do. My young host rescued me with a suggestive, “I hear you’re a musician?”

“I . . . was one.” Before the junk started to outweigh the band.

“My mother belongs to Lann, but as she says, there is a relationship between music and math, so is it any wonder I turned out the way I did?”

I looked at him blankly.

“Lann is what you would call physics, or astrophysics. I was supposed to follow in her footsteps.”

“But you’re turning into a musician?”

He nodded.

“What do you play?”

“Keystrings. And I dance. You?”

“Bass. Guitars. But in the band it was bass.”

Goal piped up behind us, “You’re not gonna talk shop, that’s just too boring!”

“Ai, little cousin!” Kyet turned around, swooped her into his arms and started to turn round and round. Goal’s giggles told me that she was used to his horseplay. When he stopped, she cried, “Oh, let me down!” And she started to squirm vigorously in his arms.  “Not until you let us be boring,” he struggled, trying to maintain his grip on her as she started to move all over him like a feisty kitten. She went still, “You can be boring now.” She said it in her most regal tone, making clear that she was granting us the good favor. He grinned back and let her down, and she started to hunt around the kitchen.

“Here,” he pointed to a pancake-like confection on a stove. “I’ve been preparing it especially for you.”

“As a bribe for him, you mean.” But she snapped the plate to her and looked quite pleased.

“I thought I’d give you the grand tour,” Kyet directed at me.

The house had four stories. The ground floor held several large rooms that looked like a cross between Alnese clan-halls and the earthly living and sitting rooms more in keeping with the villa’s design. The second and third stories were replete with the living quarters I had encountered in Zyss—two or three connected rooms clustered around a walk-in closet and comfortable bathroom. Kyet didn’t show me the fourth floor. “My uncle works there, and my mother,” was all he casually dropped as we passed a narrow, spiraling staircase. He was much more interested in showing me his collection of music paraphernalia, among which I found a Fender guitar just like the one I had left behind on Earth. I wondered if that was truly a coincidence.

“Is this like a Pallas summer villa?” I mused while examining the bass.

“You could say that. Uncle Eden had it built about ten years ago, a year after Goal was born. He worked out the arrangement with Thor house, about the land, and some of the Thors even came over and helped build it. My mother uses it most. She practically lives here, ‘to get away from distractions,’ she says. Dragon and Uncle Eden use it frequently, too.”

With her sixth sense, Goal had known immediately when the baby had woken up, and had slipped out to go get her. When she rejoined us, she had already prepared a morning bottle. Before I could, Kyet swooped both baby and bottle from her and sat down cooing at Socorro. After he had coaxed her into accepting what was offered, he commented, “This kid has your eyes. Coffee-colored, like mine.”  He cooed some more and then resumed, “I’ve always wanted to go to Earth for the music, but with the skin it’s a hassle. The only reasonable dye would be as dark as Dragon, and then I’d still look weird. I suppose I’d fit into Brazil. Not a bad place to start.”

I tried to picture him with Dragon’s skin. He was right about the overall effect.

“Do Alnese often go out and build houses like this?”

He thought about it.

“Started when it got warmer. All that land just sitting there, all these changes just waiting to be explored . . . ,” he looked quite dreamy.

“I have to write up something soon.”

“Ah yes, and why don’t you start by telling me what got under Dragon’s skin?”

He started to rock Socorro gently, and I went over to him to pick her up. After a few minutes he realized my silence was deliberate.

“I know she went to the islands to observe Uncle Eden.  I know he’s a justiciar,” he said encouragingly.

I threw him a long look, “Maybe she didn’t.”

“He . . . took care of somebody else?”

Else?

He broke eye contact, “I see.” It was a low murmur, almost a whisper. I scanned the room for Goal. She wasn’t paying us any particular attention. Kyet’s face resumed the dreamy quality of deep thought. When he came back out of it, he motioned towards his suite’s door and said, “I’ll show you where you can work for now.”

We climbed up the spiral staircase to the top floor and turned down a long, narrow hall. The staircase continued up, and an undercurrent of curiosity tugged at me as we stepped out into the hall. Mostly empty rooms jutted to our right and left. Kyet stopped at the third, where a long, flat desk on slender, gently curved legs greeted us. “One of Leila’s,” he informed me with a proud little smile. I recognized her style. Behind it a counter ran the length of the wall, rounded the corner to a sky-light window that could be propped open. The machinery on the wall didn’t look too strange, though I couldn’t read any of the lettering.

Kyet waved me to what looked like an ordinary office chair and bade me sit in it, “It’ll read your body and adjust itself, and from now on it’ll be ready for you.” Even as he spoke, I could feel subtle, comfortable changes. He disappeared and came back with what looked like a little laptop computer. When he snapped it open, that’s exactly what it turned out to be, a laptop with an English-based keyboard. He fumbled to place it on a corner of the desk and adjusted a little socket in the wall until a thin laser-light made contact with it for a few seconds, “You can chronicle in your language for now. The CPU will translate. When you’re ready to switch, you can use this one.” And he brushed over a corner of the elegant, slim desk. A second, built-in screen and keyboard with the funny Alnese characters emerged.

“Do these things do music, too?”

“Yeah. Leila told me about your newer computers. I’ll rig yours for the programs you’re used to.”

We were so immersed in our joint exploration that we didn’t notice the woman who came into the room until Goal crawled back out from under the desk and squeaked, “Auntie!”

“Ah,” Kyet sat up, “Ray, meet my mother, Vaideh of Pallas, or Pallas Vaideh, as we say here.”

His mother nodded a greeting and readied herself just in time for Goal’s enthusiastic embrace. “Actually, in this house, it’s Vai. So you’ve come. Have you seen my cousin yet?” I could see the family resemblance with both her son and Leila. Long, curly black hair cascaded wildly about her dark face and dark eyes. Unlike Kyet and even Leila, though, she was a little on the pudgy side. She extricated herself from Goal and moved closer to me, “May I see the little one?”

She examined Socorro with a satisfied grunt, “Finally, a kid that takes after me! I’ve been waiting a long time for one like her!”

I could see Kyet roll his eyes mockingly, “What a heartbreak I turned out!”

“Indeed!” She sounded dead serious. “So, has my son at least extended proper hospitality?”

I nodded.

“And this fool thought she would have peace and quiet in Eden Hamlet.” She still sounded serious.

“I’m a quiet man.”

“So gossip tells it, but I will make my own determination. You,” she shook a finger at her son, “What did you do to Dragon? The woman looks like she’s half out of her mind.”

“It wasn’t him,” I pre-empted.

Her eye-brows arched up, then down again. “Islanders!” This time the grunt sounded decidedly dissatisfied.

“Eden, actually.”

“An Arthmin matter,” clarified Kyet.

“Is that why he wants me to escort her about and introduce her to cousin Medece? I don’t have time for this nonsense!” She shook her head, “You’d think an O’bonne planetologist studying our legal system would pick up a thing or two, wouldn’t you. She’s been shadowing him since winter, and she’s surprised when he has to kill someone! And she has Dragon eyes!”

Kyet observed behind us, “I don’t think Ray has the faintest idea what you are talking about.”

I ignored him, “Her reaction does seem . . . intense.”

“O’bonne moralists! Who needs them!”

“Will you stop insulting a Pallas guest!”

We all fell silent. Presently, she raised both shoulders in an emphatic shrug and asked me, “Were you working right now?”

I shook my head.

“Well then, now that you’ve interrupted me, I’ll get some breakfast. Why don’t you all accompany me?”

It seemed a good idea, so we did.

*

My O’bonne guide made a whole selection of O’bonne information available to me in English. A lot of the material took the form of transcribed talks given at one time or another by Dragon’s O’bonne predecessors on Alnos. Some I found particularly instructive. Here’s one that caught my eye because it described the very people I had just been introduced to:

Alnese Martial Orders:  Some Reflections on their Regulating Functions in their Society  Talk presented by cultural planetologist Ndinzi Nyemba at the 280th biannual meeting of the Cultural Planetology Society, Anno 4093, at the First O’bonne University.

In recent years, Mutaka (4013), Makalanyone (4028) and Tebe (4055) have all attempted functional analyses of Alnese quasi-religious orders. Mutaka ascribed only a religious function to them and has written extensively about their regulation of religious ritual on Alnos. But as Makalanyone and Tebe have since pointed out, orders like the Order of Tchen, to which all of Alnu’s medical personnel belongs, or the Alnese Astrophysical Society, the Order of Lann, hardly fit Mutaka’s analysis. And even the Order of Pallas-Métis, deeply involved in the Alnese pantheistic religion though it may be, does not fit the model proposed in that first analysis. I propose that Alnese orders help organize Alnese society and codify behavior through their activities, activities to which, significantly, adolescents have initial access.

            As far as we know, Alnese orders are fairly loosely constituted, quite in contrast to Alnese clan structure. Most orders have a specific founder and have woven an elaborate mythology around his or her figure. Membership is open to anyone for any order; aspiring members simply need to show an interest in the occupational activity of the order in question. However, maintaining membership is by no means easy. Only worthy followers of the exemplary founders deserve to remain, and the pressure to equal or outshine saintly founders is even more acute for positions of leadership and control. Of course, the more prestigious and established the order, the greater the need to excel.  

In the interest of saving time, I shall limit my comments here to one particular group of Alnese orders, the half-dozen or so martial orders I have investigated for the last two years. Alnese martial orders evince an almost paramilitary social organization. They are much more hierarchical than most other organizations on the planet, though of course they still have a few of the famous features of Alnese anarchism. The Order of Arthmis is the planet’s major martial body, and members (called “Arthmin”) are consistently called into action when foul play overwhelms clan elders, who usually resolve disputes. The lowest ranked Arthmin are its cadets and new recruits, followed by journeymen, full members, temporary ‘lieutenants’ whose tenure ranges from four weeks to four years, and finally, the titled “Justiciar” or permanent leader of a particular troop ranging from 32 to 64 members.

A Justiciar commands complete obedience, whereas everybody else can expect what could be termed “reasonable” obedience from lower-ranked individuals. A Justiciar’s title is earned and inscribed with permanent tattoos over the course of four to eight months on the title-holder’s body. In a manner typical of all things Alnese, lieutenant positions are constantly rotated as specific needs or missions come up. A first lieutenant usually holds that position for four years, while second lieutenants typically assume leadership roles over eight of their fellow Arthmin for four or eight months. Lieutenants or deputies therefore have no permanent claim to power, and cannot lord it over their colleagues for too long.

Arthmis includes an elite corps that functions almost independently, Mythras, the so-called “second wave”. Mythrans typically take over when the decisions and judgments of Arthmis have been challenged or ignored. They also frequently concern themselves with matters involving planetary security and dealing with visitors from other worlds. Mythras bestows its own permanent title, the title of ‘Legate’, but follows Arthmis organization in every other respect.

Martial orders have considerable executive powers in matters of public behavior. They carry out investigations of suspected crimes and mete out justice in accordance with Alnese laws and traditions. As most of you already know, Alnos has no jails. Most judgments involve making aggrieved parties whole, with most convicts agreeing to appropriate restitutions. Serious crimes only have two possible outcomes: Banishment or death. Typically, Alnese convicted of serious crimes are sent “into ice” to fend for themselves. How much time they must remain in the arctic banishment zone and how much training and support they get to survive their time in ice depends on the severity of their offenses. In part, this “shunning” is meant to teach the consequences of anti-social behavior. Those who refuse to comply or try to return before completing their ice penance are killed. Death sentences are also carried out for very serious crimes like murder, particularly if a victim’s family requests it.  

 Of course my detractors will immediately point out that Alnese society lacks the characteristic paranoia associated with the presence of powerful police societies. Their point is well taken. I suspect that the strong Alnese family and clan structure, at the core of all social relations on Alnos, circumscribe the power of the martial orders even in matters not already defined as personal rather than public. Unraveling the Byzantine complexity presented by the interplay between clans and orders on Alnos are my current challenge as I continue my analyses.

            Thank you very much for your patient and attentive reception of these few speculative remarks.