SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 15: Dark Kwea (part 1 of 2)

The kwea at camp was rife with fear and sadness. Tull tried to help repack the wagon, but his overwhelming despair slowed his movements and dulled his mind. Scandal finished filling the bag with Little Chaa's parts, and afterward Ayuvah threw himself on the ground and wept for the better part of an hour.

Phylomon pulled Tull aside and walked with him into the woods, a few paces from camp. "You froze when you saw the Mastodon Men," Phylomon reminded Tull. "Could you have saved the boy?"

"No," Tull said. "He was already gone."

"Good. Then you do not bear the kwea of guilt," Phylomon said. "In the morning, we must track our mastodon. I want you to take Ayuvah away from camp tonight. The kwea of this place will be too much for him."

"Thank you," Tull said, blinking in surprise. Phylomon had executed so many men so easily that he'd seemed to be without compassion. Yet now he showed a surprising depth of empathy.

"I know what you think of me," Phylomon said. "It's written on your face. Believe me, I do care for you. I understand kwea, even though I am not like you. When I was young, it was common for men to take seritactates, drugs to enhance their memories. I say 'enhance,' yet that is not quite accurate. In those days, our memories were perfect, and a single treatment would enhance your memory for hundreds of years.

"In those days, I made the mistake of taking a wife—a woman much like Wisteria, a slender girl with brown eyes and hair as soft as corn silk. She did not live to be sixty years old. I married her because I was young and in love, and I thought that even though she would die of old age while I was still young, I would be comforted because I would always carry the memory of that love. I can recall perfectly every moment of every day I spent with her. The way her lower lip trembled on the day her mother died; the taste of a potato she burned when we had been married for three years and seven days; I can recall her exact words when she told me how to cook a rabbit when we had been married for twenty-two years, sixty-six days.

"On the twenty-sixth day of the month of Harvest, in 3111, a Ship came north from Botany bearing linen and oranges. I recall the smell of oranges on her breath the morning afterward as she kissed me. When she bore our first daughter, she developed a dark purple varicose vein on her right shin. I was once surprised a hundred years later when by chance, I saw that exact shape in the vein of a maple leaf where I camped by Fish Haven River. I recall later the smell of death on her breath when I kissed her good-bye at her funeral pyre. I remember perfectly the tinge of violet in her face as we dropped the torches.

"From moment to moment, only two things remain the same—my love for her and the devastating emptiness I have felt ever since I lost her. This is as close as a human can come to feeling kwea."

Ayuvah said, "I think that would be as bad as losing a brother."

"Oh, I've lost a brother too," Phylomon said. "A hundred and fifty years ago. We had grown apart for years, and I seldom saw him, and one day I realized that I had neither seen him nor heard from him for a decade. I traveled the land for six years looking for him, never really sure he was dead. The slavers killed him, I believe. He had a red skin very similar to mine. His symbiote was called a pyroderm, for it let him burn things with fire at will, and I keep hoping that someday I will find his skin half-buried, like the husk of a snake under a rock in the forest. Even after all this time, his symbiote will not have rotted away, you see. Yes, I have lost brothers, parents, children, lovers . . ."

Phylomon paused. He raised his eyes to the heavens, and Tull saw the blue man's fill with memories as unknowable as the distant stars.

Phylomon continued, "Among the Eridani whose warships circle our world, they say we are all a million beings struggling to become one man. Yet it only happens as we draw closest to attaining a single, pure emotion. They say there is only one hate. And there is only one joy. And there is only one ecstasy. And to the extent that we share that emotion in its fullness, we become one person. If you and your lover share perfect ecstasy, you are no longer separate people, but in the minds of the Eridani you have become one. We are not Eridani, thinking with a communal mind, but I am like you, Tull and Ayuvah, because I, too, feel. Yet I shall never feel emotions as powerfully as you." Phylomon stood another moment, reflecting.

"There is a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, and it is the seat of emotions. A Pwi has a much larger hypothalamus than a human, and the Pwi lead an emotional life so rich and complex that I—and possibly even you, Tull Genet——cannot fathom it.

"When a Pwi hunts near a rock and is frightened by a rattlesnake, the incident arouses such anxiety that for several hours he will tremble while the incident fixes in his mind, and the memory of the rock and the snake and the terror become inseparably linked, so that he will forever avoid that rock, fearing that the same snake will lurk nearby.

"The same man with an empty belly might find a tree with hazelnuts and fill himself. The tree and the pleasure of fulfillment become so intoxicating that for hours he holds it in his mind, until he can never think of passing that area without remembering the pleasure of the hazelnuts beneath the tree. It is a simple and valuable mechanism that helped Neanderthals eke out an existence on Earth thousands of years ago."

Tull gave a bitter laugh, wondering if Ayuvah could understand English well enough to follow the conversation. "You make it sound as if kwea is a blessing to the Pwi."

Darkness settled among the trees, and crickets sounded an unseen chorus. The smell of leafmould filled the air, and the light of Thor cast the mists of the forest in a greenish glow.

"To the Pwi, yes," said Phylomon "But not to you. They may feel more deeply than you do, but not in all aspects. You see, the Pwi are protected to some degree from the ravages of terror that afflict you, Tull Genet. Their brains secrete endorphins that diminish the worst terrors. They call themselves 'the Smiling People' because their brains are steeped in intoxicants supplied by their own bodies. But from the way you reacted to the Mastodon Man, I suspect that the Pwi endorphins your brain produces bind poorly to the chemoreceptors in your too-human brain. You are unsheltered from some harmful kwea. It is a common affliction among the Tcho-Pwi. Rarely do men like you thrive."

Tull had only met another Tcho-Pwi once—a small girl who was sickly; a girl with dull eyes who could not speak. "What do you mean?" His heart hammered. He knew what Phylomon meant.

"Being half-human and half-Pwi," Phylomon said, "you are slave to both sequential memories and emotional memories. Few of your kind are emotionally resilient enough to adjust to this. The fear and despair overwhelm them. Your father gave you the kwea you felt tonight. It is a powerful and dangerous thing. But you handle it well. I think it much more likely that you will be destroyed by love." Phylomon said these last words as if they were mere observation. "Yet I hope better for you. Sincerely."

Tull watched the blue man, so tall that he seemed deformed, alien. It was not surprising that such a man thought in alien ways. It was surprising that Tull somehow felt the man to be his brother under the skin.

Ayuvah and Tull both slept away from camp that night, but at dawn they returned. In a short ceremony, the party cremated what was left of Little Chaa. A flock of crows came and circled the smoke as it rose to heaven, and Tull could not help but feel that Little Chaa, released from his body, had called the crows to bear witness of his passage.

Wisteria spent her morning beside the party's wagon, wrapped in a blanket, nursing her scratches and bruises. During the night, no one had been able to see well how much of the food had been destroyed, but now it was plain that nearly every barrel, every sack had been ripped open, and much of the food was unsalvageable.

Tull helped clean up as best he could, scooping beans into broken kegs.

In some deep grass a hundred feet from the wagon, he found a bag of platinum eagles—at least a thousand of them.

"Where did these come from?" he asked.

Scandal answered quickly. "I brought them."

Phylomon offered, "A fortune like that will do you no good out here."

Scandal hesitated. "We're going to Denai," he said. "The inns there are famed for their cuisine."

"I had heard that they are only famed for their whores," Phylomon said. "The Craal slavers breed their whores for beauty, much as other men breed cattle. In over forty generations, not one of Denai's madams has been sold outside the city."

"Ayaah," Scandal blushed. "Well, let us just say that an innkeeper must know how to serve many kinds of dishes."