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Page 23.
16. Starbath
 Moments later Jared Fallon stood amid roaring traffic on the City’s main street, Olympic Avenue. Here some people stood on the sidewalks, talking. Bars and restaurants were full, holiday-full, though it was still night, but New Year’s Day was coming into full swing around the city.
Though lost in a crowd, Jared felt lost as if he were the only human being on the planet. He stood for a while, sweating on a curb. It had been a close brush. Although he was sure he would never really understand fully what pushed the events in the city along their track, he felt its mystery and its evil, something unholy, something more powerful and earthy than all the power and the codes and the ideals of the Galactic Union or the Star Fleets.
He must call Mbe, and he had no tech assist, not to mention djia. He hoped Stella was all right. Time for a drink. He spied a sign, Bar, and pressed his way over through the jostling people. He put in a call with the automat, then stopped at the bar while waiting for a return call.
Soon, the bartender, an Achernarian with a gold-striped gown of white silk and a turban, whispered in Jared’s ear with a smacking, sour-smelling voice: “Telefox.”
Jared turned, holding his drink. “But who would know to reach me here?” He took the man by the arm. “Who is it that wants me?”
“A Mr. Abebe, Sir.”
“Oh. Oh yes, of course. Did he mention my name?” Jared tried to sound as casual as possible. He put a furtive hand to his eyes; they were wet and his face red, but he did not look to suspiciously upset.
“He asked for a Mr. Jared Fallon, Sur; described this Mr. Jared as a young gentleman of your description, dressed in uniform as you are, and wearing a long black coat, as you are.”
Who is tracking me? “Let me talk to him.”
They handed Jared a com button, and he spoke to the man on the other end. Of all people, it was Mbe. “Situation is desperate.”
Jared’s stomach dropped out; had war been declared?
“Jared, report for duty at my office, in Center House, immediately. Big trouble. I can’t and don’t want to talk now. Mobs are tearing the Assembly apart. We’ve lost Exterior, I’m afraid. Hurry. Meet me at a little funeral ceremony for Eystrigg. We’re gathering there now.”
Jared virtually fled from the bar, out into the street.
Night scent and dew and mystery and earth on a quiet back street. Somehow, his spirit was relaxed and detached. He hung over a trap door by the strands of what he had been conditioned to desire—life, advancement, and so on—while what he really wanted was to let go and drop through that trap door entering into the world beyond it.
He looked up and saw the stars above.
To be a star! To burst forth, like a supernova, streaking across the heavens with fire, one creature in a sea of many others, all moving along their self-lit paths of darkness, moving with the speed of darting fish, except in human eyes that saw them as fixed dots of light!
Trees and shrubs were settled into the night all about. To be a plant, and share in that slow silent motion and be unmoving to human eyes only—to be great, as a human is to the darting ant, only greater and faster on a scale of light years. A bush, like a wave frozen before the delving bow, the corner of a house; a tree, running slim from the earth, expanding and blooming all in one fast motion, and quickly returning to its primeval dust, all in the span of many poor human lives; a thin-stemmed flower, moving at the beck and call of the winds in the night darkly near the earth…
The air was crisp. The wind blew cool, faint, fragrant breaths like perfectly-mixed liquors or precious snow jewels. Cool-sided grass blades on hard ground tickled Jared’s hands. They touched his neck and the back of his ears softly.
Jared was still. He was a silent, crusted rock at
Starbath. Dreams of escape, of peace…
the bottom of a dark, voiceless sea, amid waving dancing shapes, while the gods swam about oblivious to him and to themselves, the gods of here and then, the gods of then and there, gods of past, present, and future, gods of many pasts, many presents, many futures. He lay there, letting his roots sink deeper, deeper into the ground. His mind rose on a thin stalk into the high waters, and he was wondering when the stalk would break so that he could be free, but it would not break, and he knew then that he would have to get up and keep his appointment.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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