Selp

And down into the sea she’d gone, wracking her brains all the way in search of anything Iah might have decreed about the depths.

If only her sisters had been here with her, they could have pooled their knowledge with her. As it is, her own knowledge of lore is hopelessly patchy, a thing formed to be part of a whole, and never to function on its own. But there was only room available for one to descend with the new Become, this James, and Selp had fit the bill. The Become needed food, not firepower, and even a preform like Selp could produce food. She had made James promise—for whatever that was worth—to bring her back soon, and let her tell her people what lurked beneath the waves.

James had been quiet on the way down. She had thanked him again and again for not killing her, and he had seemed uncertain how to respond. After fifteen minutes of halting conversation he had made some gesture in the dark glowing pod and a window had appeared through which they could see the behavior of many Become who did not seem to notice them. Initially startled, Selp soon realized this for what it was—some form of Farsight—and reflected that it should not come as a surprise that the Become had honed their Farsight in ways her kin had never managed. She had watched, sitting stiffly in the strangely soft chair, chills making their way up and down her spine. These Become were different, but they knew Murd’s arts. She was not safe here.

Across the window, Become in modest dark suits paced about a grim white space divided by walls that did not reach the ceiling. When not talking to one another, they sat in front of beige boxes which invariably made them angry. A ghostly chorus laughed from nowhere every ten seconds or so, like the Commentary Group in a formal storytelling, but with no commentary, just this brittle amusement.

“Why are we Farseeing these people?” she had asked James. “Are they enemies?”

“It’s a show,” he had said. “For entertainment. Do you act for one another? Put on plays?”

“We perform histories,” she said. “Is that what this is?”

“Not . . . exactly. It never happened. Someone just made it up, for fun.”

Selp had marveled at that. When history failed to record the details of an event, Iah allowed for invention. There was room for infinite invention within the recesses of what was known to be true; what need was there to make a false event out of whole cloth? Her anxiety had further increased and she had not continued the line of questioning. She had merely sat and watched. Occasionally James laughed along with the chorus, which made it even more eerie, as though he would soon vanish and join their spectral, invisible ranks.

Now, Selp has a job to do. She is unsure whether this job accorded with Iah’s will, but she had no other choice, and this course of events had been presented to her as the alternative to an improper death. Surely there is a message in that.

The job is simple. The Become here need food, and Selp can provide it. They’ve set her up in a gigantic room gridded by metal trays. Here and there is a tray in which plants are growing, but most are empty. What Selp has been told is that the Become want seeds, so they can grow more plants. This is a novel dilemma to Selp: where she comes from, if you can’t find the plants you want, you move. She is trying to comply, but the task of making more seeds is a curious one, and all of her experiments so far have failed.

For now, to address the most pressing concern, she focuses on a task she knows she can execute flawlessly. She can, of course, produce food at will. Not seeds, because her band has never had the luxury of staying in one place for very long. But food is easy. There are great energies in the soul, energies that a Becoming can channel into wonders and horrors. Taking these energies of the soul and converting them into forms palatable to the flesh is the first trick any preform learns.

So Selp has stayed here, hour upon hour, willing herself again and again into the state of mildly heightened emotion necessary for foodmaking. It has not been difficult. Her recent memories—the pillar of light, her brush with death, descending to this still-fearful place which feels so far from Iah—provide a perfect palette of raw material.

She stares into an empty tray and calls up the memory of James—no, not James yet, just “the Become”—approaching towards her, of her grapple for the deadly lozenge, of her realization that her death would be useless—yes, there we are—

She is shivering involuntarily. Her teeth are chattering. Lisping Boltzmen, arrayed symmetrically around her, whisper barely audible non-words. She plunges herself deeper into the remembered moment, trying her hardest to forget that it was over, that she was saved. And then, there, at just the right moment, she performs a mental twist and steps outside of the memory entirely, outside of “Selp” and all her small troubles. She is, for a split second, not the sort of being that can be concerned with fear, or any other emotion.

And all the tension she’s built up, expecting some psychological defense mechanism and not receiving one, flails about in search of some way to resolve, to return to the tonic chord. It gets there the only way it can find, coursing along the path of Selp’s visual attention and coalescing into . . . a puddle of warm, grey, sludgy gruel.

A meal. At her best Selp can produce one every ten minutes.

There is a sound behind her. Selp turns and sees that the door to the large hall has opened. This is a surprise: she had been told that she would not be interrupted. No one is allowed in here, they had said, except for James and that other Become she had met, Miranda, with the low voice and the circles under her eyes.

But here is another Become, a peculiar one. He is male and walks slowly, awkwardly. There is an unsmoothness to his skin that resolves into a fine network of wrinkles as he gets closer. Selp involuntarily shudders: does he have some sort of disease?

“Hello,” he says, in a gravelly voice, as he continues to approach. “I’m sorry to bother you. You are Selp?”

Selp looks up at the crags of the Become’s face. The bright overhead lamps of the hall paint his face with a repetitive grating of light and shadow. “Yes,” she says, sounding as unperturbed as she can.

“It’s nice to meet you, Selp. My name is Hermes.” There is a forced kindliness in his tone, like the way Selp herself might talk to a very small preform. It rankles her, a bit.

“Do James and Miranda know you’re here?”

Hermes chuckles. Still that same forced good nature—less successfully brought off this time, with something undeniably weary and steely at the edges of the laugh. “No, but they wouldn’t object. I’m free to go most anywhere in this place. Without me, it would never have been here at all.”

Selp pauses, waiting for him to go on. He just stares at her. After a while, she can’t bear but ask: “Are you well?”

He blinks. “Well? I wouldn’t . . . exactly say that, no.”

“Your skin is . . .” She points at his bony hand, covered with wrinkles and lined with veins that protrude to an alarming distance.

“I’m old.”

“Old?” She thinks for a moment. “Ah . . . like a building that has been standing for a long time? A building that’s been chipped away at by storms?”

“Something like that, yes.” Hermes’ eyes have lit up oddly. Selp is not sure she is succeeding at communication, but perhaps it’s her failure that’s piquing the Become’s interest.

“Selp, can I . . . ask you about yourself? You are . . . from the world.” He gestures upward, toward the surface. “Not from this . . . this underworld.” Horizontal gestures now, toward the rest of the Sphere. “I am tired of the underworld. I want to be a part of the world.”

Selp flinches. Hermes’ statement is bizarre. Why would a Become envy her? And what is this distinction he is trying to make? Murd and her citizens live above the waves, too; are they “part of the world”?

There is no way to sate her curiosity but to agree to the Become’s request. And she has been starved for conversation since she got here. So she begins.

She assures him, as sternly as she can, that she is not qualified to tell him of the surface. That she holds a few pieces of a large tapestry, and not even contiguous pieces. That what she knows is piecemeal and in no way selected for importance. He listens carefully and seems—not impatient, no, but very eager. Finally, as they sit on a spartan metal bench, reclining against the blank white wall, under the harsh light of the ceiling lamps, she tells him:

Of the story of Selm and Herm, which every preform learns early.

Of Iah’s Core Dictates, 82 in number, which no one can forget.

Of her band, the last remnant of the once great nation of Ab, which once ruled the whole winding coast.

Of her own people, the Aron, who had lived peacefully in the Middle Isthmus, tending to old relics and texts, before Murd’s invasion.

Of how her distant ancestors fled to Ab, and of how Ab, that magnanimous country, received them with open arms.

The eagerness in Hermes’ eyes does not dim, and so she delves into the more esoteric, the more peripheral, the randomly assorted fragments of tapestry with whose preservation she had been tasked, never guessing that she would ever have to recite them like this, alone.

Of the great islands across the water, once inhabited, now sealed off, and sinful even to approach.

Of the water’s edge, dotted with innumerable hierarchs, Iah’s hands in a world He has forsaken, fearfully shaped like great prisms jeweled with hundreds of eyes, which stop foolish travelers from straying off the edge of the world into a place that still yawns and roils.

Of the Sun-Spurners, those Becoming who sleep in the day and rise at dusk, who lose touch with worldly things, but who can wield the terrible power of the night against the enemies of Ab.

Of the messages that can be read in the moon, and how they preserved the nation of Ab during the Endless March.

Of the Merkabah, the second moon, whose appearance in the sky would portend Iah’s return to His creation.

Of the Higher Calculus, by which the learned can inspect a sentence and discern whether it conforms to Iah’s will—with room for error, of course, as Iah yawns and we are small.

Hermes listens, nods, listens. Selp runs out of things to say before Hermes runs out of eagerness. She could, of course, expound upon any of these topics in much greater detail, but she does not see a reason to do so with this strange Become, who seems to have no appreciation for the texture of her knowledge, taking in every detail, the surprising and the quotidian, with the same wide-eyed fascination. She grows tired and wary.

“I’m running behind,” she says, and it isn’t false, though she would have still said it if it were. “I need to make more food.”

Hermes stands up slowly. He looks down at her for a long moment. “Can we meet again?” he asks.

“Sure,” Selp says, not feeling like she has much of a choice in the matter.

“I feel at home when you talk,” he says. “I think I am . . . one of you.”

And then he is off.