But the hunger you describe—that blade jutting from the skin, the weathering as of a hillside often struck by storm, the hollowness—it sounds beautiful and familiar.
When I was a girl, I loved reading. An archaic pastime, I know; the index and download are faster, more efficient, offering superior retention and acquisition of knowledge. But I read, antique volumes handed down and fresh-replicated books: How strange to uncover things in sequence! And so I read a comic book once, about Socrates. In the comic book, he was a soldier—he was, that part’s true, I asked him—and one night, as his fellows lay down to sleep, he started thinking. He stood, immobile, lost in thought, until the dawn—at which instant he found the answer to his question.
It all seemed very romantic to me at the time. So I left my pod and wandered upthread and far away, far from the chatter and the mutual observation. I found a hilltop on a small world, breathable but barren, and I stood there like Socrates in the comic book, lost in thought, weight on one foot, and I did not move.
The sun set. The stars rose. (They are a rose, right? Or something? Dante said that.) I realized that as my ears grew used to the silence, I could still hear the others: Our chatter swarmed the heavens; our voices echoed from the stars. This was not how Socrates stood, or Li Bai or Qu Yuan either. My isolation, my experiment, had caused a small sensation among those who cared for me, and for whom I cared, and that sensation spread. Lenses and eyes turned upon me.
I was, I think, thirteen.
I received suggestions: philosophy textbooks, meditation guides, offers of practice and alliance. They crowded round. Whispers in my ears: Are you okay? Do you need help? You can talk to us. You always can.
There were tears. Other organs bind that process too, weeping—they keep our eyes clear and minds sharp, but chemistry is chemistry; cortisol, cortisol.
It feels harder to write than it should. It feels easier to write than it should, as well. I’m contradicting myself. The geometers would be ashamed.
I sent them away.
Each being’s entitled to her privacy, so I refused to let them see me. I was the only person on that tiny rock, and I made the world go dark.
Wind blows. High places grow cold at night. Sharp rocks hurt my feet. For the first time in thirteen years I was alone. I, whatever I was, whatever I am, tumbled first up, into the stars, then down to the broken land. I dug into the soil. Night birds called; something like a wolf, but solitary and larger, with six legs and double-banked eyes, padded past.
The tears dried.
And I felt lonely. I missed those voices. I missed the minds behind them. I wanted to be seen. That need dug into the heart of me. It felt good. I’m not certain how to compare this to something you would know, but, imagine a person melded to a Thing, an artificial god the size of mountains, built for making war in the far corners of the cosmos. Imagine that great weight of metal all around her, pressing her down, giving her strength, its hoses melding with her flesh. Imagine she shears the hoses off, steps out: frail, sapped, weak, free.
I was light, hollowed, hungry. The sun rose. I found no revelation. I’m not Socrates. (I know Socrates, I served with Socrates, and you, senator . . . But I digress.) But I walked on, from that place to another, and from that to another in turn, until, years later, I came home.
And when Commandant found me, slid inside me, said, there’s work for those like you, I wondered if all Agents were like me. They weren’t—I found that later. But we’re all deviant in our different ways.
Is that hunger? I don’t know.
No friends, though? Blue! That’s not at all what I would have thought. I don’t know—I suppose we see you all curling around campfires singing old struggle songs.
Have you been lonely?
I hope the tea’s well. Good? Well. I’ll look for you next in a more public forum.
Yours,
Red
PS. I hesitate to write this, but—I’ve noticed my letters run long. If you’d rather I grow more concise, I can. I don’t want to presume.
PPS. Apologies for the imprecision of my salutation—I think salutation’s what Mrs. Leavitt calls that? I forgot what name the Strand 8 C19 Londoners gave that shade of blue on imported porcelain. Would have used it if I remembered.
PPPS. We’re still going to win.
* * *
As the prophet says: Everybody’s building them big ships and boats.
The emperor reigns uphill, flanked by his mummified co-rulers’ temples, each served by their own high priest. Stone steps and highways link peak to peak along the ridge. Great cities grow and glow. Downslope spread the farms, and beneath those, against the shoreline, unprecedented as pomegranates in local logic, a seaport.
Coastline trade occurs, of course, and reed boats ply the highland lakes. Quechua sailors and fisherman know the shapes of the wind, can sail through any storm, rate themselves equal to any wave. The western ocean’s horizon has always seemed a wall to them: Beyond this rests the world’s end. But a genius who has spent his life counting the paths of stars and collecting bits of storm-cast wood and weed upon the beach has a theory that another land waits across the water. Another genius, a decade older than the first, has discovered a method for knotting reeds far stronger and more durable than any her mothers made; with it, a team under her direction could build a boat large enough to carry a village.
What good is a land across the water, young men asked the first genius, when we have no way to get there? As soon grasp for the moon.
What good for coastal fishing, young men asked the second, is a boat that can carry a village?
Fortunately, geniuses understand that young men are often fools.
So they sought the wisest being they knew: Each, separately, climbed the many thousand steps to the mountain peak, and on audience day they knelt before the current emperor’s great-grandfather, mummified upon his throne, gold- and jewel-bedecked, radiant with age and command, and offered their gifts to him. And the secret priests who wait behind the emperor’s thrones are not young, nor are they all men, and they can frame two points into a line.
So the great-grand-emperor’s word goes out, and so a port is built, and sailors flock, beckoned by adventure. (Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives.) They will sail together, to a new world. They will sail, together, to a land of monsters and miracles. Currents will bear their massive fish-tailed ships across, freighted with silver and tapestries, with knot work and destiny.
Red knots reeds with fingers callused as wood. She was one of the second genius’s earliest students, she nudged her to seek the great-grand-emperor’s aid and held her elbow as they climbed. She is no warrior here, no general; she is a woman taller than usual, who emerged from the woods one day naked and alone and was sheltered. She knots and weaves well, because she has learned. When she has finished this ship, the production model, large enough to hold two villages at least—then it will sail, and she will sail with it, because someone needs to tend the knots if they break.
She plays a tenuous game, this strand. As she knots and thinks to herself, she decides she would describe it using terms from Go: You place each stone expecting it may do many things. A strike is also a block is also a different strike. A confession is also a dare is also a compulsion.
Will the people of Tawantinsuyu brave the ocean their murderers will one day call the Pacific, and, finding the swift currents, travel to the Philippines, or even farther, as others have traveled before? Will they, crossing waters so unfished that all a woman need do to eat is dart her hand beneath the waves and pull the fish up wriggling and silver, find new civilizations and make conquest, or common cause? Will this alliance and trade, stretched across the Pacific, save Tawantinsuyu when Pizarro’s grotesque sails belly up from the south? Will, at the least, early contact with Eurasian plagues strengthen these people against them?