Archive-name: JourEntr/j918-151.txt
Archive-author: Elf Matheiu Sternberg
Archive-title: Reunion, part  6


Reunion 151 / 0918

     The water surrounded him; the sound of bubbles rose around him as
air that had followed him down found its natural course back to the
surface.  He had adjusted to the intense cold, and found pleasure in
just floating in the silent, crystalline water.  As he floated a
peculiar feeling swept him, a feeling that seemed to come more from
within his own brain then from anything outside.  He opened his eyes and
headed for air.

     As he broke surface, he looked around.  "Greta?"  She was nowhere
to be seen.  And he was no longer in the pool of water he had jumped
into earlier; he was in what looked like a fountain, only it was
obviously deep enough to hold his body.  It was also very still; only
his treading water disturbed the otherwise calm surface.  The fountain
was lined with ancient, dusty-gray granite stones, each square-cut to
fit against its neighbor, and each overgrown with ivy.  The day had been
warm and sunny; now clouds covered the sky and hid the overhead sun.  He
swam for the edge and pulled himself out, looking around; he stood on
the edge of some sort of open theatre, long disused and overgrown.  Much
of the stonework was cracked by the tenacity of nature pushing through
it.  Nickolai turned around; behind the fountain stood a great, curved
wall, and in English writing, obscured by the climbing ivy, it read:
 
     WHO CAN CONTROL HIS FATE?

                    - OTHELLO, ACT V, SCENE II.  Wm. SHAKESPEARE.
 
     "Not me," Nickolai sighed gently.

     "Perhaps not," a masculine voice said behind him.  "But that should
not stop you from seeing it."

     Nickolai turned around, surprised.  "Who are you?"

     "Call me Hal," the man replied.  "No relation to Hal Masters, of
course, but still... Hal."

     "Hal," Nickolai said, smiling.  "Three quarters of Hall?"

     "Something like that.  I'm here to keep your mind occupied."

     "For how long?"

     The man, an older man using a cane to stand, and dressed in a
flowing white robe that draped off of his shoulders, walked forward and
laid his hand on Nickolai's shoulder.  "It's been long enough."  He
smiled and turned his back, walking up the stairs and out of sight
through the theatre.  "Hey!" Nickolai shouted, to no avail as the
elderly man disappeared.  Nickolai ran after him.  Beyond the rotting
stone archway of the theatre the stone turned to sand and reeds grew up
out of the sand around him.  He ran, feeling a need to run now more than
a desire to catch the old man, and as he ran the sounds of pounding surf
caught his ear.

     He ran harder still, his lungs starting to burn, his body starting
to pound with his straining heart.  He ran fast, faster than he thought
he had ever run before, and when the reeds ended and the sand path
ejected onto the beach, he stumbled forwards, losing his footing and
falling forward into the sand.

     "Ooof!" he said, rolling before sitting up on his hand and knees,
shaking the sand free of his hair and his clothes. "Yech."

     "Oy!" a voice said to his right.  "Are you okay?"

     "Um... Yeah," he said.  "I think so."  Nickolai looked down at
himself, bewildered.  He was still wearing the t-shirt and jeans he had
worn on the walk to the Hall.  Only his shoes were missing.

     "Where did you come from?"

     "Right..."  Nickolai turned around, looking back at an unbroken
wall of reeds.  His appreciation for what was happening to him caught up
with the rest of his confusion.  "Let me guess.  There's no theater back
there, is there?"

     "What kind of theatre?" the voice, belonging to a male Ssphynx with
long, shaggy fur that leant him vaguely leonine look.  He smiled down at
Nickolai.

     "Stone.  Kinda old?"

     "Nope.  Lived here nearly eight centuries and I've never seen
nothing like that.  Where were you before you came here?"

     "The Great Hall."

     "Aye," the Ssphynx said.  "You're a long way from home then, aren't
you?  Name's Kedar."

     "Nickolai," Nickolai said as he accepted the Ssphynx's hand and
rose to a sitting position.  "Where am I?"

     "It's name is Gaerdim," the Ssphynx replied.  "I named it when I
found it, two centuries ago.  It was a dark and dreary day, I remember. 
Kinda like today.  So you came through the Hall.  Congratulations, son. 
I imagine you'd be wanting to head on back towards civilization?"

     Nickolai nodded.  Kedar continued, "Well, I'm afraid the nearest
SDisk is twenty kilometers from here, and you'll have to walk to get
there.  I wouldn't recommend you try it until tomorrow.  There's gonna
be a hell of a storm tonight."

     "Can you... can you tell where I could find shelter?"

     "Sure," the Ssphynx replied.  "Come on, I'll show you my home."  He
led Nickolai up the beach a short distance, in the direction opposite
where he had indicated the SDisk would be, and over a rickety wooden
bridge that had been erected so the Ssphynx could walk over the dune
without disturbing the sand.  On the other side of the dune sat a squat,
colorful home with a front porch facing along the line of the beach.
Apparently made of cement bricks and mortar, it had been painted with
ocean motifs; curling waves crashed towards the back of the house as
white seagulls floated over them.  Plants were hung along the length of
the porch, their long leaves dangling downwards from their pots towards
the ground.  "It's not much, but I've lived here for a long time."

     "How long?" Nickolai asked.

     "Almost eight centuries," the Ssphynx repeated.  Nickolai's mind,
boggled at the thought the first time, still didn't want to parse that
phrase correctly.  "You're the first person to come this way since I
moved here."

     "You've lived here all by yourself?"  Nickolai asked.  Alone for a
thousand years, out here, with nothing but yourself?  This male must be
mad!

     "That's right.  It's quiet out here.  No folks, not too many
machines.  Just me and my ocean."

     Nickolai nodded.  "Maybe I should head for the SDisk tonight.
It'll be cooler, and I wouldn't want to disturb your solitude."

     "Naah, that's alright.  You got kicked out here for a reason, and I
may be a hermit, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be a bad host."  The
Ssphynx grinned.  "Come on, I'll feed you some chowder I've got lying
around."

     Still wary, but appreciating the Ssphynx's company, Nickolai
decided to accept.  "I'd appreciate that," he said, his stomach suddenly
informing him of just how starving he really felt.

     "Well, if you're going to be a Pendorian, you've got to learn to
eat like one."  He led Nickolai in through a battered screen door, then
wandered over to a large metal pot (Nickolai thought "cauldron" might be
a good word to describe it) and dished out a large helping of brown,
meat-laden soup.  "Here," the old Ssphynx said.  "Eat."

     Nickolai accepted the bowl gratefully.  "What time is it?"

     "Nearing dark, I imagine."  The Ssphynx padded towards the window,
which had no glass, and peered out.  "And that storm's comin' in
somethin' strong.  Seeing as your my guest, can I get some help from you
to close up the storm shutters?"

     Nickolai nodded around a mouthful of hot soup.  "Yes," he finally
said after swallowing.

     "I appreciate it.  Eat fast, son."

     Nickolai did as instructed, and then he and the Ssphynx walked
around the house, latching down wooden storm shutters, pulling in the
potted plants, lashing down some larger items the Ssphynx had scattered
around his house.  From the look of the place, Nickolai could see old
trees towering a few hundred meters back from the shoreline.  The
Ssphynx had chosen some natural outcropping of sand and shell that
spread back from the dunes on which to build his home.  Behind the
house, Nickolai now saw, a stream flowed by slowly, bringing the house
fresh water.  A few droplets fell on his head as they tied a picnic
table down to a pair of palm trees that erupted from the sand.  "The
rain's begun," Nickolai said.

     "I felt it."  They ran into the house, and he Ssphynx closed the
door, throwing two heavy beams of timber over it to keep it closed.  "I
get these storms from time to time.  Tonight looks to be a real blower,
but I think we'll come through all right."

     The rain did indeed began to fall, at first lightly.  But then the
wind picked up and howled outside, and as Nickolai sat in the one chair
in the house and wondered, nervously, what he could do to pass the time.
"Tell me something, K..."

     "Kedar," the Ssphynx replied.  "Don't worry about it.  You're
probably the first living thing to hear it since I left civilization
behind.  Nice thing about Pendor.  It'll be millions of years before the
place gets crowded.  That's my ocean out there, even though it's the
size of all Terra's waters put together.  But nobody else lives on that
ocean.  It's mine alone."

     Nickolai nodded, thinking back to the day when he and Furry had
made love on the Vinyare' beach and he had been so impressed, so
wondrous that they had been alone, just he and Jofuran.  So alone in
fact that they had made love on a warm beach under a blazing sun and
nobody had been the wiser.

     But this, Kedar's kind of alone, was more than he could bear
imagining.  He was glad, at the end of their day, that he had had a
place to return to, with live people to talk to.  "Kedar..."

     "Aye?"

     "Why do you live all the way out here?"

     "Because when I was born Shardik broke a promise to me."

     Nickolai looked up.  "What kind of promise?"

     "He made a promise to let me be free.  But he also threatened to
kill me if I got out of line."

     "You, or all Ssphynx?"

     "All Ssphynx.  Son, there's something wrong with the Ssphynx brain.
It's hard to describe.  But it's a serious problem.  Ssphynxes weren't
programmed to be social.  Somehow a serious case of xenophobia lives in
all the first gen Ssphynxes.  Maybe it was our shape or something.
Doesn't matter what it was.  Of the whole hrair of Ssphynxes that
Shardik made, less than a thousand integrated into Pendor."

     Nickolai nodded.  "Where are the rest of the Ssphynxes?"

     "Oh, I imagine most of them made it back eventually.  I can't
imagine ninety percent of a species becoming lonely hermits, like me."

     Nickolai nodded.  "Why don't you come home?"

     "Habit," the old man said.  "I got my Nixie friend who comes by
once a year to give me stuff she thinks I'll need.  I lost count a long
time ago.  Only reason I know what time it is is Nixie tells me."  A
thunderbolt crackled outside, startling Nickolai.

     "How about you, son?  What makes you come this way?"

     Nickolai decided to start at the beginning and work his way all the
way through to today.  He explained meeting Jofuran, falling in love
with her, Shardik's deal, everything he could remember about that
fateful summer two years ago.  Then he progressed forward until he came
to today, when he walked out, or rather ran out, onto the beach.

     The Ssphynx nodded quietly during the whole thing, then stretched
and yawned.  "There's not much we can do about the storm outside.  I've
got some spare bedding and the like," he said, rising and tossing
Nickolai some blankets.  "I'm afraid there's not much more for you
except the floor."

     Nickolai nodded, laying most of the blankets out on the floor to
provide some padding.  The night was warm, like the day had been.  The
rain came down in torrents outside, and Nickolai eventually found sleep.

--
"Reunion"
The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., And Related Tales
are (c) 1989, 1993 Elf Matheiu Sternberg.  May be freely distributed by
cybernetic media; hardcopies are limited to single printings for
personal use.