Civilization
The first duty of this day, as every day, was to speak with the Oracle. As every morning, Bentamin brought her a cup of tea, carried in his own hand. A courtesy, for there was a fully stocked kitchen in her apartment, and she wanted for no tea, common or exotic.
In addition to being well-appointed and staffed, the Oracle’s apartment, on the top floor of the Wardian, was the most secure in all of The Redlands. Not that the Oracle was a prisoner—no one would say so. Only, she needed to be watched over; and Civilization needed to be . . . shielded from her gifts.
Historically, Oracles and Civilization mixed badly. Not for the first time, Bentamin regretted that this particular talent had manifested in their population. It hadn’t been among those cataloged talents that had seen them banished from the homeworld, long years ago.
But there, many talents that existed now had not been cataloged, or even thought of then. Things, and people, changed, after all.
This morning, with the tea, he also carried flowers, Jasy having produced something very much out of the common way.
He thought they might please his Aunt Asta.
* * *
The head of housekeeping let him in, with a smile and a bow.
“She’s in the alcove, sir.”
Bentamin inclined his head.
“Thank you,” he said, and moved through the familiar rooms to the alcove, where the Oracle sat at a small table, surrounded on three sides by windows overlooking the civilization which needed to be protected from her as much as she needed to be protected from it.
When she had first taken up her duty as Oracle, she had used to meet him in other rooms—the parlor, the library, the kitchen. Now, though, it was the alcove always. Staff reported that she spent most of her days at this table, gazing down at the city below.
“Good morning, Asta,” Bentamin said, pausing by the side of the table. “I trust I find you well?”
“As well as ever I am,” she said, turning her head to smile at him. “Oh! Flowers. Now, whose?”
“Jasy,” he said, putting the little bouquet of pale blooms into her hand. “He’s coming along well, I think.”
“Jasy,” she repeated, running light fingers over the flowers. They purred slightly and followed her touch. “Sarrell’s?”
“His youngest.”
“Well, he is a very talented boy! Tell him that his Aunt Asta would like him to visit her someday.”
“I will,” he said, and thought that he actually might. Jasy was a kind boy who knew what was owed to kin. And while he was inarguably talented, he also had a core of cold iron which wouldn’t likely be influenced by his aunt’s—his grand-aunt’s—energies.
He put the teacup on the table by her hand and took the seat across from her, retrieving his own cup from the kitchen counter in his apartment, one floor down, where he’d left it.
He sipped, deliberately relaxing into the chair. Asta had returned to gazing out the window, one hand absently stroking her flowers.
“Do you have anything to tell me this morning?” he asked eventually.
Asta sighed.
“The dark has risen,” she said, turning away from the windows with visible reluctance. “The universe resides in its direst hour, though so few of us can know it.”
Bentamin sighed to himself.
The universe, according to Aunt Asta, had been increasingly at risk from the darkness for some numbers of years. Asta’s uncle, the previous Oracle, had spoken of the danger from time to time during Bentamin’s mother’s tenure as Warden. Over the last six years, however, Asta had grown increasingly more agitated on the topic, insisting that the darkness would eat them all—and now, it appeared that the universe had entered its inevitable moment of trial. It saddened him that Aunt Asta clung to this—delusion, as he must suppose it to be. Oracles were not, after all, immune to afflictions of reason—in fact, they were rather more susceptible, Seeing as they did down multiple lines of possibility.
Bentamin was no Oracle. He was, as his mother, the Warden before him, had been, only a very strong multi-talent. All the Wardens were so, and thus he was, very slightly, in comparison to Aunt Asta, Foresighted.
He had Looked, reasoning that so large an event as the end of the universe must be visible even to his limited Vision. He had Looked, more than once, and gained nothing for his Looking but several dreadful headaches.
That being so, the obvious conclusion was that Aunt Asta, Oracle to the Civilized, had acquired a delusion. These things happened. It was the Warden’s part to do all and everything to ensure the Oracle’s health, comfort, and peace of mind, until it became the Warden’s duty to remove the Oracle from their post.
In service of preserving the Oracle’s peace of mind, he inclined his head gravely and asked the approved follow-up question.
“How may the universe prevail in this, its hour of trial?”
“A hero must arise,” she replied, as she always did, “and do what is needful.”
Yes, well. Heroes, in Bentamin’s experience, were not precisely thick on the ground. He counted that a blessing, heroes mixing less well with Civilization than even Oracles.
Still, the third question, too, had to be asked.
“Will this hero arise from among us?”
“Us?” Asta was frowning down at the busy streets; she extended a hand to her teacup, picking it up without even glancing aside.
“From among the populations of The Redlands,” he clarified, and saw her brows draw closer.
“Oh. I do not See the hero, only a gleam of steel and gold among The Ribbons. Is this a hero, or merely the possibility of a hero? I do not know.”
The same answer, always ambiguous, that half persuaded Bentamin that . . . perhaps this struggle between the dark universe and their own might, after all, have some basis in . . . fact. Would not delusion, insisting that a hero arise, provide that hero to the deluded Sight?
This was an uncomfortable thought. If this were not delusion and the hero was to stand up from among themselves—Civilized or Haosa—it would then fall to the Warden to take the hero in hand once they had done what was needful, and sequester them, as the Oracle was sequestered.
For the good of Civilization.
Best for the hero, Bentamin thought, that they bought the continuation of the universe with their life.
He sipped his tea to the dregs, banished the cup to his kitchen counter, and considered the side of Asta’s face. She was not, he thought, seeing the streets below, but some inner landscape. That likely meant she had something more to tell him this morning, and his mandated hour was nearly gone. If she did not speak soon, he would be constrained to ask, risky though that was.
He cleared his throat. Asta turned her head to look—toward him, her face pleasant and her eyes unfocused.
“Great Ones will arrive among us,” she said matter-of-factly. “They desire of us a service.”
He frowned.
“Great Ones,” he repeated. “Dramliz?”
Before the Dust had claimed its long dance with The Redlands, dramliz had arrived, three times, to study the progress of their small-kin, the Least Talents, in the strange environment into which they had been introduced. Coincidentally, a new talent had arisen soon after the first such visit of dramliz, that inflicted a growing uneasiness in those who were not welcome—and the dramliz did not stay long among their cousins in exile.
To dignify dramliz as great, however—Bentamin did not think Aunt Asta would do so, even in irony.
“Not dramliz.” Asta interrupted his thoughts. “Greater than dramliz.”
That, he decided, was . . . unsettling. Had the dramliz evolved another level of talent, to which they stood as small-kin? Talents did evolve; new talents did arise, as they knew from their own experience. But, surely, any such . . . mega-dramliz—ah. No. The behemoth did not ask the mouse, but ordered. A service desired could easily be a service compelled.
He sat forward in his chair.
“The Reavers, they are not returning?”
One could scarcely call the Reavers great—at least not the Reavers they had seen before they had succumbed to their mysterious illness. The Reavers had been dangerous. But, in fairness, no more dangerous than their very own Haosa, in whom the Reavers had met their match.
But how if those sad, vanquished Reavers had been only small talents, in the context of their own lives? What if, lacking reports, with scheduled check-ins missed—what should the upper ranks do, but mobilize and come looking for their oathsworn?
The Haosa were formidable. Further, they had learned from the Reavers, or they were not the Haosa he knew them to be. Bentamin had no doubt that they had absorbed numerous new concepts, and were even now playing with them, as his cousin Tekelia styled it, thereby learning even more.
“The Reavers have been mown down, severed from their source. We will not see their like again.” There was a certain amount of savage satisfaction there, appropriate to an Oracle sitting in defense of Civilization.
Though there did remain the question of the source, of which the Oracle seemed dismissive. And it was not, Bentamin told himself, the Oracle to whom that line of questioning ought to be addressed, but to the Haosa. He would make it a point to do that. Soon.
In the meanwhile . . .
“Also,” Asta said, interrupting these thoughts, “another comes, in the train of the Great Ones, bringing static and disruption. She may be a tool to your hand, Bentamin. Or you may be a tool to hers.”
That was disturbing, too, in its way. He did not care to use others as tools, though he had done so in the past and doubtless would do so again in future. He liked being a tool set to another’s purpose even less. Still, that was of much less import than this other thing. Clearly, Asta had gone past his topic, and one disliked to insist . . . indeed, one knew very well what was likely to come from insisting. Yet, necessity was, and duty demanded.
“These Great Ones,” he said lightly, carefully. “What service will they beg of us?”
Asta laughed, picked up her bouquet, and raised it above her head. The flowers struggled briefly—and fell still.
“See the Great Ones beg!” Asta cried, as if addressing the gods themselves. “Oh, yes. Very fine. Very fine they are, indeed, in their supplications!”
She lowered the flowers, and waved them at him like a wand.
“Go away, Bentamin. I’m tired of you.”
Well, and he had known how it would be now, hadn’t he?
He rose and bowed to her honor.
“Good-day to you, Aunt. I will carry your message to Jasy.”
She said nothing, having turned again to the window.
He waited a polite minute, then went away, back to the constraints of Civilization.