Seeklight

A child’s face. What was so different about that? He leaned closer, a lock of his hair falling down and inscribing an arc on the surface of the water. What was it that everyone else was able to see in it? He sighed and rocked back on his heels, his arms hugging his knees. Suddenly he scowled at what he saw as his gaze left the pool’s surface.

A sociologist was floating towards him over the water. It’s long, brilliant-white robes trailed down to the water but did not touch. The enormous wings were folded against its back to pass between the trees. The golden ring hovering over its head glowed brighter as it came into the shade. Sometimes they carried tape recorders with microphones, but this one had only a clipboard held to its pale hands.

“Go away!” shouted Daenek, his face darkening with genuine outrage. He had thought that only he knew of this place. “Get out of here!” He got to his feet with a green-slimed rock in his hand and threw it at the sociologist.

The rock passed through its middle without rippling the dazzling robe. “Good shot,” smiled the sociologist as the stone splashed into the far end of the pool.

“I don’t want to talk to you.” Daenek’s mouth tightened with disgust. “Dumb questions, anyway.” It wasn’t his first encounter with one of them.

The sociologist wearily expelled his breath. “Come on,” he pleaded. It had a very young face, a teenager’s, with pale, uncertain eyes. “I need it for my thesis.”

“I don’t care,” muttered Daenek, squatting back down.

Whatever a thesis was didn’t interest him.

The sociologist, hovering a few feet before the boy, said something under its breath. “Why can’t you be like the villagers?” it said aloud. “It’s easy to get data from people who are scared of you.”

Daenek looked up. “Is data the same thing as a thesis?”

“Maybe.” The sociologist half-closed its eyes and looked crafty.

“I’ll tell you if you answer my interview questions.”

“No.” Daenek’s lower lip bloomed into an obstinate pout.

“Some other stuff, too.”

“We’re not supposed to tell you things.” A whisper through clenched teeth. The sociologist looked around wearily. “They could flunk me for doing that, you know.”

Daenek remained silent, staring grimly at the water.

“Oh, all right then.” It descended and sat down beside Daenek—though he could still see a little space between the figure and the wet ground, except where one rock showed through the robe, like a little mountain surrounded by snow. The sociologist reached over its head and pushed the glowing ring forward to cast more light on the clipboard. “OK, first question—”

“No.” Daenek shook his head. “Me first.” The sociologist rolled its eyes upward. “Go ahead,” it said after a moment.

“Is there something different about my face?” The other’s face turned and looked at him in surprise. “How much do you know?” it murmured. Daenek shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know how much you know.” A sad smile formed over the sociologist’s lips. “You’re quite a student of the human condition, yourself.” It angled its head and studied Daenek for several seconds. “A little on the narrow side,” it said finally.

“High cheekbones. More than enough nose… Worried looking, too. Is that different enough for you?”

“Something really different,” said Daenek.

A few seconds of silence passed. The sociologist looked out over the pool’s dark water, then back at the boy. “Yes.” Its voice was muffled. “But I don’t know what it is. You’ll see it yourself, someday.”

Daenek answered the sociologist’s list of questions, a dozen or so having to do with what happened at the marketplace with the son of the subthane and the rotten fruit. The questions seemed unimportant—he forgot them in a few minutes—and he didn’t even bother to ask the sociologist any more about thesis and data. He remained sitting by the water long after the sociologist had floated back up into the sky and disappeared, and his thoughts were without words.

Chapter III

Three years passed before he heard the Lady Marche’s other language again. Daenek woke up in the middle of the night, hearing a strange voice singing somewhere in the house. He slid out of bed and carefully, making no noise, crept down the first few steps of the staircase that spiralled through the center of the house.

The Lady Marche was standing in front of one of the windows, but the little control at its lower edge had been adjusted so that it reflected her image, a perfect mirror. A little trunk that she kept locked in a downstairs closet lay with its lid flung back at her feet. The song, a woman’s voice sad and faint in the night’s stillness, came from a small cube nestled in the box. A dim radiance from the cube gave the scene its only illumination.