“Until at last,” Mercald went on in full flight of quotation, “the Boundless was many, myriad, and the differences were everywhere. Then did the Boundless hear the crying of its parts which were lost in the all and everything. ‘Woe,’ they cried, ‘we are lost’.”
“I should think so,” muttered Beedie. “What a thing to do to oneself.”
“So it was the Boundless created Bounds for its parts and its differences, and places wherein they might exist, that the differences might have familiarities in which to grow toward Boundlessness once m ore ...”
“And a good thing, too,” said Beedie. “Now, what has that to d o with not believing in Daudir the Demon?”
Mercald shook his head at her, provoked. “Obviously, this chasm is a familiarity, a Bounded place which was created for us by the Boundless. We are the differences who live here. If it was created for us by the Boundless, then it can have nothing to do with Demons or devils or anything of the kind. All of that is mere superstition and beneath our dignity as people of the chasm. Doctrine teaches that all differences are merely that—differences. Not necessarily good or evil.” He then fell silent, climbing a little slower so that the other two drew away from him
“Try not to tread on him,” said Roges. “All the really religious Birders are sensitive as mim plants. You touch them crooked, and they curl up and ooze. As judges go, Mercald isn’t bad. He’s true t o the calling.”
“You speak as though some might not be,” she said, surprised.
“Some are not. I come from Potter’s bridge, and we had Birders there as judges I would not have had judge my serving of tea for fear they’d condemn me under chasm rule. It was pay them in advance or suffer the consequences, and those among us too poor to pay suffered indeed.”
“Wasn’t it reported to the chasm council?”
“Oh, eventually. Before that, however, there was much damage done. In the end, it was only three of them were judged by their fellows and tossed over, two brothers and a sister, all corrupt as old iron.” He moved swiftly to one side of the stair, reaching out toward a ropey root that hung an arm’s length away. It was dotted with tender nodules, the green-furred ones called root mice, and he cut them cleanly from the root to place them in the pouch at his belt. “Enough for the three of us,” he said. “And some left over for breakfast .” He knelt, peering through the railings. “Ah. Look there, Bridger. In that little hole in the biggest root along there, see—behind the three little ones in a row.”
She knelt beside him, searching until her eyes found the waving claws, moving out, then in, then out once more. “A crawly-claw,” s he whispered. “Do you suppose we could get him?”
“Do you suppose we should? With a judge following after? We’re not Hunter caste.” He was laughing at her, she knew, but at the moment she didn’t mind.
“I caught one once,” she confessed, blushing at the memory of her illicit behaviour. “A little one. I had to hunt all up and down the root wall for enough deadroot to cook it, but it was worth it. Isn’t it all right if we’re out on the root wall?”
“We’re not on the root wall. We’re on the stairs. And there’s likely t o be a party coming up or coming down past us any time. No. Likely h unting a crawly-claw would take longer than would be prudent.”
“It’s true. They pull back in and disappear, and you have to b urrow for them. Well, all right,” she agreed. “But we’ll keep an eye out for any wireworms. And if we see any, we get them, whether there’s a Hunter around or not.” Beedie had never had enough fried wireworms, and there were never enough in the market to satisfy her appetite, even if she had had enough money to buy them all.
Mercald had caught up with them, evidently restored to good humor by his time alone. He moved ahead of them now, after admiring the crawly-claw and quoting in great details several recipes for preparation of the beasts, and they continued their downward way. Beedie, her legs accustomed to hard climbs by hours each day spent in spurs, did not feel the climb, but she noticed that both the others stopped from time to time, wriggling their legs and feet to restore feeling numbed by the constant down, down, down.
They had not come far enough yet for the quality of light to change much. It was still that watery green light the Topbridgers knew as daylight, full of swimming shadows cast by the leaves as they moved in winds from outside the chasm. Beedie remembered the light on Nextdown as being less watery and more murky, darker. She had heard that on Midwall and Miner’s bridge, lanterns were used except at midday, and of course on Bottommost they were needed at all times. She had heard, also, that the eyes of the people on Bottommost were larger, but this might well not be true. Surely travelers from Bottommost would have come to Topbridge from time to time, but she had never noticed any strangers with very large eyes. They went on. A group of chattering Porters passed them going up, followed not much later by a second group, their legs hard and b ulging with climbing muscle. A Messenger swooped by on flopperskin wings, calling to them as they went, “Luck to the quest, Bridger ...” before fairing away out of sight in the direction of Potter’s bridge. The light began to tail; the stairs became hard to see. Far below them lights began to flicker in a long line, stretching from the root wall out across the chasm in a delicate chain, growing brighter as they descended. They stopped at the railing to look down, hearing the voice behind them without surprise, almost as though they had expected it.
“What took you so long?” asked Mavin. She stood in the shadow, half-hidden behind a fall of small roots, almost invisible.
“We had no wings, ma’am,” said Roges, grinning at Mavin with what Beedie considered astonishing familiarity.
“Fair blow Maintainer. Well, I had hoped to tell you of a sideway by this time, some kind of trail or climb around Nextdown. I’ve looked. Up the wall and down it, behind the roots and before them. Nothing. What was there has rotted away and been eaten by the wireworms long since.”
“So we must go to Nextdown after all,”said Beedie.
“Where needs must, sausage girl. However, we’ll not do it without a little preparation. There’s a house full of Banders near the stair—the very house your Aunt Six told me you used to occupy, Beedie. Evidently all the Bander kin from upstairs and down have come to fill it full, and every window of it has eyes on this stairway. They’ve been warned we’re coming. There’s talk of assault and the taking of a Birder hostage. So, lest harm fall ...”
“Lest harm fall?” questioned Mercald, fearfully.
“We shall commit a surprise. As soon as we figure one out. However, why don’t we have something to eat first. Have you supplies, Maintainer?”
“Fresh root mice, ma’am. And things less fresh brought from Topbridge. We can have a cold supper.”
“No need for that. There’s a cave in the wall, just here, behind these roots, and a pile of deadroot in it enough to warm twenty dinners. There is also a convenient air shaft which guarantees we will not suffocate in our own smoke. Even if all this were not so near and so convenient, I would want it to be a good bit darker before we attempt to go past that Bridgers House. So we might as well rest a while and enjoy our food.”
“We saw a crawly-claw, Mavin. I wanted to hunt it, but Roges said the Hunter caste might catch us at it.”
“Are they especially delicious, girl?”
“They are the best thing next to wireworms. Even better, sometimes.”
“Then we’ll have to try and hunt one down, somewhere along the way, Hunter caste or no.” She wormed her way behind the bundle of roots, showing them the way into the cave. The sight of it surprised them all, for it was lit with one of the puffed fish lanterns glowing softly to itself in the black. Snaffled from Nextdown by a strange bird, said Mavin with some amusement. There was also a vast pile of deadroot, looking as though it had fallen there rather than been gathered in. Roges set about building a fire, laying his supplies ready to hand on a spread sheet of flopperskin.
“I didn’t know there were caves in the root
wall.” Mercald was indignant, as though the existence of anything he did not know of was an affront to his priestly dignity.
“I think your people have become so caste-ridden, priest, that they do not use their humanish curiosity any longer. You have no explorer caste, do you? No. Nor any geographers? Your adventurous young are not encouraged to burrow about in the root wall?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking,” Beedie interrupted. “Bridger youngsters climb about from the time they can walk. I did.”
“Always under supervision, I’ll warrant. Always learning methods or perfecting skills. Well, it doesn’t matter; it’s only a matter of interest to me. In looking for a way around Nextdown, you see, I have found a number of curiosities, and I merely wonder that the people of the chasm seem unaware of them. For example, there is another cave somewhat below us which happens to be occupied by a strangeness.”
“Occupied?” Roges looked up from his folding grill, interested. “Someone living in the wall? A Miner, perhaps?”
“A person. He tells me his name is Haile Seiklik; by profession, a theoretician; in actuality a stranger, an outlander, not belonging in this chasm at all. He tells me he has come here for difference, for where he was before was same. I invited him to join us for supper.”
Roges made a face and turned to his pack for another handful of the root mice. He was slicing them into a pan with bits of dried f lopper meat and a bulb of thickic. He did not comment. Mavin watched their faces, interested in the ways they received this news: Mercald fearfully; Roges with housekeeperish resignation; Beedie w ith delight. “How wonderful! What is he, Mavin? I don’t know what a theo— a theor whatever is.”
“I’m not at all certain, sausage girl. That’s why I invited him. He looks hungry, for a start, so I presume a theoretician is not anything practical like a Harvester or a Bridger. He is living in an unimproved cave, so I presume it isn’t something useful like a Miner or Grafter. There is a sort of dedication in his expression which reminds me of you, Mercald, but he has no regalia at all.”
“What is he doing, then? In his cave?”
“So far as I can tell, he sits and thinks.”
“Only that?” asked Mercald, scandalized.
“Only that. He’s being fed by the slow-girules. I saw two of them come in and leave him a few nodules while I was there. They talked at him, and he talked back at them, and they purred.” She smiled again, then held up one finger. “Shhh. I think I hear him on the stairs.” There was a slow tread on the stairs, interrupted by frequent stops. Beedie ran to the cave entrance and peered between the roots, seeing a dark shape silhouetted against the lights of Nextdown, below them. “I know why it does that,”said a voice in a tone of pleased amazement. “It’s obvious.”
“You know why what does what?” asked Beedie, coming out onto the stairs. “Why what does what?”
“I know why it feels colder here than it does up above, among the trees. They always say it is because we are closer to the river, here, with more moisture in the air. Nonsense. We’ve come down a long way. There’s more atmosphere, more heat capacity, and the thicker air cools us faster. That’s all. I hadn’t thought about that until now. Interesting, isn’t it.” The person turned toward her, not seeing her. “Different. Not the same at all.” He moved blindly toward the place in the roots from which she had emerged, feeling his way between them to the firelit space beyond.
“Who’s they?” asked Beedie. “I never heard ‘they’ say that, about the river and the moisture.”
“They,” said the man, moving steadily toward the fire and food, “You know. Them.”
Beedie had no idea about them. She shook her head and followed him, seeing Mavin grasp him by one arm and lead him to a convenient sitting stone. He was dressed all in ragged bits and pieces, and his face was one of mild interest, unfocused, as though he did not really see any of them even while he took food from Roges’ hands. He had shaggy, light hair and a wild-looking moustache and beard which drooped below his chin, wagging gently when he spoke. The colour of his eyes was indeterminable, somewhere between vacant and shadow. After a long pause during which no one said anything, he murmured, “Perhaps it was some other place they said it about. That it was cooler lower down. Because it was wetter. Perhaps that was it.”
“What other place was that?” Mercald asked, suspiciously. “Nextdown? Midwall?”
The man chewed, swallowed, spooned another mouthful up before considering this question. “Oh, not any place very local, I’m afraid. Elsewhere, I think. Before I came here at all.”
“You came from elsewhere,” commented Mavin. “Perhaps from the place the ancesters of these chasm dwellers came from? Or from the southern continent?”
“Elsewhere,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the rock around them, as though he had permeated it recently. “It started with liquids. They didn’t understand liquids. Local geometry is non-space-filling. Icosohedra. Triginal bipyramids. Oh, this shape and that shape, lots of them. More than the thirty-two that fill ordinary space, let me tell you. That’s why things are liquid, trying to pack themselves in flat space, and that’s what I told them.
“They couldn’t deal with it. They wanted order, predictability, regularity. Silly. Local geometry can be packed, I said, just not in flat space. So, I said, give them a space of constant curvature and they’ll pack. All they did was laugh. I took some liquids to a space of constant negative curvature to show them it would crystallize, and it sucked me up. One minute, there. Next minute, somewhere else. Somewhere different, thank the Boundless. Boundless. That’s a local word for it. Picked it up from someone off the stairs out there. Boundless. Good name for it.”
“I’m sure the Boundless would be gratified at your approval,” said Mercald, much offended.
“Shhh,” calmed Mavin. “The man’s a guest in our midst.”
“They said every place was like the place I was. Infinite replications of sameness. They called it translational symmetry. Well, I determined to find difference no matter what it took. So I left there and came here. It’s different here. It’s local. Rx>f and feh on translational symmetry.”
“I thought you said you got here by accident,” said Beedie, trying to make sense out of the person. “By some curvature or other.”
“Yes. Both. Hardly anything is mutually exclusive when you really think about it. You can’t look at things too closely. The more precisely you look at one thing, the more uncertain the others get. If we locate me precisely here, how I got here becomes increasingly unsure. Tell you the truth, I don’t remember.”
“ ‘Reality has many natures,” said Mercald in his most sententious voice.
“That’s the truth,” said the theoretician, focusing on the priest for a moment before drifting away again.
“That’s the truth, so far as it goes, at least.” He chewed quietly to himself, smiling at his own thoughts. “Surfaces,” he murmured. “Edges. Reality has edges.”
“That’s the truth,” Beedie muttered to herself. “So far as it goes.” She glared at Mavin. “What did we need him for?”
“Need? Well, sausage girl, what do we need you for? To make life more interesting. He’s different, isn’t he?”
Mercald circled the theoretician in slow, ruminative steps, eating, staring, eating. At last he said, “What do you mean, reality has edges?” Receiving no response, he repeated the question, finally driving it through with a kick at the stone the man was sitting on. “Edges?”
The theoretician put his plate down, picked up a length of root from the floor of the cave. “You see this? This is a system. It has surfaces. It has extent. It has size and corners and edges and impurities and irregularities.” He put it down, searched for a stone, found one. “This one, too. Here’s another. Not the same, not the same at all. And another one yet. All local. Everything’s local. Local.”
The other three looked at one another, Mercald kept on with his circling; at last it was Roges who said, “So?”
&nb
sp; “Not to them! Oh, no, not to them. To them, everything is the same. In all directions. For ever. No edges. No corners. They used to scream at me. ‘What do you do about surface states?’ As though that meant something. I thank the Boundless for the surface states. Show me something, anything without surface states! Anything at all! There’s nothing like that in reality. But they didn’t understand. Just went on inventing ‘ons. Palarons. Plasmons. Phonons. Exitons. Vomitons and shitons soon to come. Feh.”
Beedie murmured,”I don’t know, Mavin. It seems to me we ought to let him go back to his cave and start worrying about the Banders.”
“Banders,” screamed the theoretician in a sudden expression of fury. “Infinite lattices. Homogeneous deformation. Idiots.”
“I really think it’s something religious,” said Mercald to Mavin in a thoughtful voice. “There’s a fine kind of frenzy about it. Of course, it might be heretical, but it sounds quite like doctrine.” He regarded the theoretician almost with fondness.
“We’ll take him with us,” said Mavin. “If he wants to go. Thinker, do you want to come with us?”
The man shook his head, then nodded it, reaching into the general pan for the last of the fried root mice. “If it will be different where you are going. I’ve modeled this place. There’s nothing left to do here.”
“He means he has realized it,” said Mercald with satisfaction. “I’m beginning to understand him. It is definitely religious, after all.” He stroked the theoretician’s shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the feel of the rags. “I’ve got an extra shirt I can lend him.”
“Ah,” said Mavin. “I’m glad you find him sympathetic, Mercald. I wonder if he has any practical use at all.” She stretched herself on the cave floor, seeming, to Beedie’s eyes, to flow a little, as though she shaped herself to the declivities of the place. “Thinker, will you solve a problem for me? Give me an answer?”