uranian throne - episode three

the nebulee

by
robert gibson

[ + links to: Glossary - Timeline - Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav -
guide to published stories ]

[For the story so far, see: episode one: Dynoom; episode two: Hyala.]

Repeatedly, when we transmit one of our narratives, we have to explain to you Terrans the meaning of apparng.
  Apparng is what you would call context-awareness, if you had it. Presumably you would comprehend it, if you had it... but since you don’t, your clever-clever commentators are apt to say stupid things, such as:
  “Those boastful Uranians, how they go on. On and on about how impressed they are by the giant dimensions of their giant world. Admittedly it's big in comparison with Earth, but how can Uranus be ‘giant’ to them? It must be normal to them! It is their home, for goodness' sake! Fair enough if they were just making a comparison for our benefit. But their manner of expression makes it obvious that they’re not primarily doing that; rather, it’s their own awe-struck awareness they’re describing, in spite of the obvious logical point that any planet, to its natives, must seem the natural size for a world. What humbug!”
  Or:
  “They go on about how beautiful their women are, how handsome their men, how routinely tall their people all are… as though you’d notice wealth when everyone is rich. Since universal excellence is a contradiction in terms, this Uranian bragging is nonsensical.”
  To which we reply: apparng. Context-awareness. We have it and you do not – the ability for constantly fresh appreciation of what one has always had; the ability not to take what's given for granted.
  Of course you could not manage it. Your minds are not big enough. We, however, are able to swim consciously in our ocean of excellence, savouring every moment of its flow through our spiritual gills.
  All of which needs to be stressed here, otherwise you will fail to appreciate the evil genius of Dempelath.
  You must, in order the comprehend the huge odds he overcame in his rise to power, understand that in seeking to exploit backgrounder discontent he had to face the almost insuperable obstacle of apparng. The extent and duration of his triumph amazed our world.
  Admittedly, his plans were favoured by certain conditions in Olhoav, one of the few places on Ooranye where such a coup stood any chance at all…

Dempelath's confused young ward, Nyav Yuhlm, moodily stalked across the city floor.
  Because he remained every bit as physically alive, after the recent terrible blow to his self-image, as he had been before it, Nyav was not immobilised; his sullen thoughts did not weaken his firm plod, left boot, right boot, left boot, right boot, onward along the thoroughfare towards the Pnurrm.
In fact the glower of depression intensified the thump of his soles upon the city floor, as if to declare: "All right, so I’m only a backgrounder, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have aims."
  Unbeknownst to himself Nyav had begun the long climb out of the nadir of demoralisation into which he had been plunged by Dempelath’s psychological games. The interview with Hyala the previous evening had helped to restore a healthy perspective.
However, there remained the brute fact, the traumatic loss of belief in his foregrounder status. When that happens to somebody in adult life, "traumatic" is the word! You cannot blithely adopt that tranquil acceptance of backgrounder status which comes naturally to those who have been nurtured from childhood in its humble mode. Nyav thus felt and looked dazed, as one who droops, slack-shouldered, under the weight of some stunning loss. No longer was he able to hope that his life-story would contribute some colourful chip to the epic mosaic that formed the history of his world; henceforth he could only aspire to be one mere molecule of the cement which underlay that mosaic: one among untold supportive millions, all worthy but undifferentiated particles.
Yet, with every step he took, he took some heart from those millions. His glances dribbled courage back into him from the variety of his surroundings. Unconsciously he browsed the evidences of a mighty community. His gaze swept the towers and pipes, the crowded walkways and the swishing skimways, the shifting traceries of the built environment which heaped the heritage of foregrounder and backgrounder alike –
  There, that’s a good thought, he caught the idea consciously. My adjustment, it seems, is underway. My lot from now on is to be found amid everyday things: their noble specificity, their inexhaustible flecks of gold. And though I used to think life promised more than this, I’m surely better off without that illusion. Why bewail the loss of overblown dreams? Yet he still heard their wail.
  In order to smother the moaning echo of lost hopes, he must do more than accept his fate: he must embrace it. What he must make of his role as backgrounder was nothing less than a wholeheartedly good job.
  With that aim in view he raised his eyes to the gleaming stone pile with curved white wall which now bulked ahead, clearly visible beyond the reticular outlines of lesser structures: the Pnurrm.
  Make life up as you go along – and you might as well tempt Fate while you're doing it.
Not really a backgrounder thought, that, come to think of it. Oh well, then I'm an inconsistent backgrounder.
  Indeed, inside the Pnurm he intended to visit the cartographic headquarters of Olhoav, from which so many famous adventurers had issued their challenges to fate…
  Ah, those celebrated tales... But if that kind were all, it would not be for me; not now, not ever, given what I’ve learned.
  Fortunately, the challenges which bring renown are not the whole story.
  Nyav straightened his cloak, hitched his belt and, with the trace of a wry smile on his lips, climbed the steps to the gleaming portico of the refurbished Pnurrm.

Unnoticed among scores of visitors, he entered the building and descended the main ramp towards the colossal basement area.
  The view opened out beneath him, until he paused against the railing of the gallery which ran round the enclosed concourse. Leaning forward and gazing down, he surveyed the scattered professionals, the head-banded men and women who were wandering over the walk-on map. About fifty of them were in sight, busily assessing and altering the arrangements of the coloured blocks, the swaffr, upon that immense engraved floor.
Of greater interest to him were the less numerous, more briefly visible folk down there who were not wearing the official head-bands of the permanent cartographical staff: perhaps a half-dozen transients at any one moment, venturing into the centre space to deposit new swaffr and then turn to leave.
Nyav looked upon these free-mannered Wayfarers with a longing respect. “Wayfarer” (dathraa) - a word he liked to pronounce in thought - resounded in his mind to the hum of adventure… And now?
  He was here without the knowledge of Dempelath. That guardian who had robbed him of his former self-belief... and who therefore, in a sense, has destroyed me... had also, in destroying, bestowed a kind of melancholy freedom, that of having naught else to lose.  Well, then… What’s to stop me from my next step?
Nothing, only – he’d better not self-congratulate, better not pretend that this was a great turning of tables, or claim any triumphant self-assertion, or hope for any come-back against Dempelath. The very idea of opposing that unstoppable personality caused fumes of dread to billow in Nyav’s thoughts. Not in any way imaginable could he, Nyav, rank as an “opponent”. Conflict would be too one-sided. Besides, there was no need to envisage such a thing. Dempelath, having completed his experiments, could have no further use for his ward, and indeed would not care what any of his batch of victims did henceforth.
  Some great foregrounder will stop him some day, thought Nyav. As for me, I have my own life to live. It shall be a life unremembered by history, yet of infinite worth to me.
  With a lighter step he went down the ramp onto the floor of the Hall.
  At first he stood, not yet on the map, but on the margin of blank pavement four yards in width ran around the Hall’s edge. Dreamily aware of taking part in a great tradition, he opened wide his arms to take a pair of blocks from a stack by the wall. He then turned to face the great engraved floor. Now, where to place his blocks? Easy! Despite the immensity of the walk-on map, which represented the environs of Olhoav out to a distance of about fifteen hundred miles, his subconscious mind had already – while he had still been up on the balcony – assessed the positions and the meanings of all the other markers. Therefore he automatically knew where he could optimally place his own pair. One block was for direction, the other for destination.
  His lack of hesitation was part of the wonder of it all, part of the dreamlike grip of Wayfarers’ Trance which enabled him now confidently to walk “onto the map” and, within a couple of minutes, to place one block aimed across the Basin of Vnor, and the other at a point beyond that terrain. At no stage did he put conscious effort into what he did. A mere youth though he was, he was a Uranian of Era Eighty-Nine, that's to say an acculturated heir to millions of days of suave cartographic competence amounting to instinct, such as you Terrans will never know.
  Leaving without the exchange of a single word with anyone else, he retraced his steps back up onto the balcony, from which he glanced down again to view the addition he had made to the scene, and to confirm the end points of his chosen journey.
  Then he headed for the skimmer-bank.
  Its lockers are on the Pnurrm's ground floor. From one of these he drew out a green cloth bandolier: with that over his shoulder, anyone would know he ought not to be interrupted (without very good reason) until his Wayfaring was done.
Next he slid a skimmer from its cubicle. He pushed it along the corridor and out through a side door. He then bestrode the vehicle, pulled down the starting lever and set off, steering towards the edge of Olhoav.

Whether or not he lived to report the wilderness trip, it would not be wasted. That is the beauty of our culture of patrols: survival and non-survival of a chosen transect are both data of equal value. So-and-so arrives and returns; so-and-so does not; from a sufficient number of such Wayfarings, the cartographers plot the sfy, the safety-contours of their maps. A procedure wasteful of human life, you might think. Yet the alternative route, the path of understanding, is fraught with greater peril. The trouble with understanding is that it can lead all too easily to involvement, and on our world that can easily mean being dangerously influenced by non-human Uranian powers who are greater than we Nenns. Far better for our human identity to rely, pragmatically, upon the fluctuating lines of our sfy. From these copious and well-plotted safety-contours, statistical silhouettes emerge, not explanations but impressionistic shadows which commonly suffice as a system of alerts. Thus we skirt the dangers lying in wait on the plains of Ooranye.
For this system to work, our maps are updated on an almost daily basis. Their wavy, statistical contours of peril, which our strong city-states can reduce but never eradicate, require and ensure that Wayfaring as a vocation remains ever vital. It's the route to an inexhaustible supply of adventure for foregrounders and backgrounders alike. Foregrounders are naturally taken via Wayfaring along their paths of destiny towards the climax of a completed story-line, but backgrounders too can know that they're most likely helping the force and momentum of some story. Backgrounders can set off on their voyages with the satisfaction that “doing one’s statistical bit”, risking one’s life to gain a datum, is meaningful and honourable. Indeed their contribution is essential, like that of the extras in the crowd scenes of your Terran movies...
  This may be goodbye, thought Nyav with a quick side-glimpse of his own little dwelling. It had become visible to him during one protracted moment among the shifting views on his way to the city boundary. Dempelath had assigned him the most humble of nooks: just a bafract skin staked out in the curve of a city pipe at the point where it veered past a tower. Bafract: a translucent tarpaulin much used by the poorer elements in the city. An urban tent as befitted a backgrounder. It was enough; it enclosed its bit of space, standing out like a slightly swollen elbow-joint in the great pipe. Yes, the humblest of homes and yet, the thought flashed through Nyav’s mind, it could equally have been the home of a foregrounder starting in obscurity: for that was the manner of countless epics which head out from dimness to final glory. Could have been that, yes... A thought to shrug away.
  Shortly after his home had disappeared from view he skimmed past the line of watch-towers which marked Olhoav’s boundary.
  Immediately beyond this urban limit his awareness was inundated by the vast outside, cupped by the vault of sky. He shot into the agricultural zone and was enveloped in the halo of glowing vheic-fields, where the wealth-giving plants toss their millions of orange lamps in the moderate breezes which swirl around Olhoav, to form the sparkling cultivated belt called the flaon-scrorr.
Though this was not yet the wilderness, yet it announced to any Wayfarer’s mind the vastness and dimness which lies beyond those few bright miles of farmland. Gravitation towards the unknown is evoked by the two parts of the double word. Thus you feel, as well as know, that the relatively familiar settled flaon – the area of continuous cultivation - is surrounded by the scrorr – the land of outliers. Habitations shall become ever rarer as you traverse the flaon-scrorr, till they peter out into the boundless gralm, the granular loam that covers the entire ice-ocean of Ooranye.
  Because this voyage was Nyav’s first proper Wayfaring, he was all the more aware of the practical trade-offs which get to be second nature for the more experienced. For example: how high to fly. Desirable altitude versus undesirable conspicuousness. A skimmer’s ceiling is six yards, but in the exposure of the wilderness he felt more comfortable flying at three. So when the last farmstead had fallen behind him, he nosed down closer to the gralm. Hence its blotches streaked beneath his keel faster, with more flickery variation between the dominant liver-colour and those interrupting patches of green, purple, brown and black which give skimmer-pilots their sense of perspective and awareness of speed. The ground's flashing closeness put more stress on pilotage. Also, he was now unable to see so far off. Equally (he hoped) he could not from so far off be seen.
  After altitude, the next compromise concerned choice of speed. A skimmer’s maximum velocity in windless air is two hundred miles per hour. This of course needs to be reduced over complex terrain. Nyav hoped to accomplish his Wayfaring mission as fast as possible. However, when after some hours of flight he saw a line of dark, broad silhouettes in echelon formation ahead of him, he realized, with regret, that “this was it” – complication had arrived, and Fate was telling him he must slow. He therefore decelerated to one hundred miles per hour. Then to fifty.
  He was aware that by this time he must be in the Basin of Vnor, a vaguely definable low-lying area, so shallow and immense that it is not distinguishable as a feature to the naked eye, but believed to attract life in concentrations higher than average for the plains.
What he saw in front of him confirmed that reputation.
  With care he approached the oblique ranks of hlannad – bivalve boulders, up to twice man-high. Their presence must count as news; always, their arrival was unforeseen. In fact, in no area had the boulders’ migrations ever been witnessed. It was assumed that they rolled under storm-cover when the air’s opacity rendered them invisible.
  It should be easy enough to pass between them, Nyav assumed: the things were spaced at least ten yards apart. Nevertheless he must submit to yet another reduction of speed, for he knew that he dared not overlook a single quiver of movement from any hlann while he darted by. He knew this not only from travellers’ tales, but also from the tremor which now hunched his shoulders (Terran readers note: we Uranians don’t go in for laborious explanations as you do, but our instincts are sounder). Thus he duly slowed to thirty miles per hour, though he hated to do it, and, hoping for the best, tried to glance all ways at once as he came abreast of the hulking shapes.
  Thus he passed through the line, only to find himself skimming across a land littered with further myriads of the hlannad, with no end to them in sight. A disquieting scene, it became ominous when he noted that several of the bivalves were beginning to tilt their upper halves.
  Unpleasantly suggestive, like trunk-lids opening of their own accord, the movement was accompanied, and worsened, by a change in the texture of the boulders. As they proceeded to gape, their outer few inches became translucent while their stony inner surfaces wrinkled. This caused the Wayfarer's instinct to shout: It would be far better not to be here.
  Yet, surrounded as he was by the hlannad, for him to swerve from his committed route would be as dangerous, now, as to keep to it. So he pressed on, even as he witnessed more and more of the great bivalves tilt open their hinged tops, to reveal, through mouths increasingly agape, red interior glows a-throb with a threat to clamp nightmare upon the mind of a human witness; so how could he prevent them from taking that terror-hold? Some defence lay in knowledge of names: Nyav’s skimpy education had provided him with labels to attach to ominous sights, to tame fears with words, and thus, he brandished terminology in advance at what he next expected to see – the millipedal woochna that ought shortly to emerge from the hlannad mouths. "Symbiosis” was the label he could slap onto that arrangement, playing the survival-game.
  Reality, though, spoiled the game.

Something did come out, in the next few seconds, from a hlann close by, but the thing that emerged from the red maw was not a wooch: the out-squirming appearance had no legs. It appeared to consist of a sinuous bubble-cluster. As such, its status as a solid body was uncertain to Nyav’s shocked gaze. No traveller's tale had prepared him for this.
Watching the vagabond tongue lurch completely out of the bivalve, and flop to the ground, and begin to hump forward so as to cross the skimmer’s path, he unfroze and reacted, recoiling from the risk of flying directly over the bubbly worm: thus forced to swerve, he nevertheless immediately must be wary of other directions, in which, from the other opened boulders, similar bubble-lengths emerged, their sphere-composed flanks continually swelling and popping as they pulsed peristaltically across the surface of the plain in increasing numbers. At first they shone bright red to match the hue of the mouths from which they had fallen. Within half a minute, though, they began to turn milky white, whereupon Nyav finally realized that they were none other than the ground-clouds known as vuocna, never before associated with the hlannad. Subtract one mark from education.
  But after all they weren't doing anything to harm him, were they? And a Wayfarer should expect the unexpected. And, if not too many further surprises lay in wait, he might complete his transect, to return with a creditable haul of new; which should count as a point in his favour, though on the other hand it was possible that the news of this unique hlannad/vuocna migration into the Basin of Vnor had already been transmitted to Olhoav. Not too many scores of miles ahead (if his navigation was not at fault) there stood a televisual mast which transmitted views from a point deep in the Basin. Provided that the events he’d just witnessed had also taken place within observation-range of the mast, someone in the city should already have viewed pictures of them...  If not – if the action had not extended far enough to be caught on that camera – then the priority might yet be accorded Nyav the Discoverer. Within minutes, he would know.
It was a comfort to look forward in this way, whilst being forced to weave and dodge to avoid the vuocna infestation; it was helpful to care, or to pretend to care, about credit for personal achievement, although of course a backgrounder, by definition, stood no chance of being long remembered.
  Shortly, however, the awareness surged into him that he no longer cared one jot whether he were remembered!
What had now stolen the rule of his emotions was an urgent wish to be home. He did not like what was around him. His human vulnerability had risen in revolt, demanding in a rising scream that he get back among his own kind.
  A youngster’s first Wayfaring tends to be a tough experience. Besides, Nyav’s recent identity-trauma had weakened his mental fibre. With the consequent intensification of the challenge he faced, now his main reason to gaze forward in hungry anticipation of seeing the surveillance-mast was the desire to feast his eyes on something manufactured by human beings. Gone was his natural Uranian zest for adventure; or, if not quite lost, it was numbed, overborne by his sudden thirst for familiarity; and so he found himself longing for the human norm. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, precisely at this point the scene clicked up a further notch of strangeness.
  He had reached a region where the hlannad were all hinged shut. Their wormy clouds, the vuocna, were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had flowed back inside their host-boulders; perhaps they had gone somewhere else. Now, incredible though it seemed, the hlannad began to move. In broad daylight, without storm cover, the bivalve boulders rolled. Nyav could not remember hearing of such a sight having ever been witnessed by any human traveller. It was, however, happening now. All in one direction, across his path from his right to his left, the stony-skinned hulks had resumed their migration, and while he strove to master his astonishment he was forced to pay extra attention to his steering.
He thought: they must know he was here, they must know that he was seeing it all happen and that he would report it. So was one of them going to silence him? Or was their old, old custom broken, their previous secretive concern not to be seen in motion?
  Terran readers may demand to know, at this point, why Nyav did not try the radio. He had two transceivers: the one on his left wrist, and the one set into the narrow dashboard of his skimmer. Neither of them could have pushed a signal all the way back to Olhoav, which by this time was over a thousand miles away, but he might with luck have made contact with another Wayfarer or patroller if any had chanced to be within the device’s approximately hundred-mile range. Then, if a voice had answered, he could at least have shared the information he had gained. So, what stopped him from making the attempt?
  For two cultural reasons he did not give the option a try. Experiences over the aeons have inhibited us from using our radios when alone in the wilderness, because the anecdotal evidence piles up to the conclusion that radio messages are more likely to attract enemies than to summon help from friends. Therefore, caution in the use of transceivers has become an instinct with us all. That's the most general point.
The second reason for not trying it applies specifically to Wayfarers. If you commit yourself to a Wayfaring transect, you are undertaking a lone experiment to ascertain whether you, by yourself, can survive that journey. Involvement with others, while permissible, and in some situations imperative, is always likely to mean the abandonment of the experiment – and this was Nyav’s very first Wayfaring mission, in which he had set his heart to succeed.
  The time came when, to his profound relief, he reached the end of the herd of rolling hlannad. The open plain now stretched before him empty, except (as he now saw, freed as he was from the need to concentrate to avoid collisions) the televisual mast which, straight up ahead, had just become visible as a vertical needle on the skyline. With a surge of joy Nyav opened the throttle wide and accelerated the skimmer to top speed in the mast’s direction: so heartening was this confirmation that it was on his chosen route! Its camera was placed to record his passage; he'd be a useful datum; he was doing all right; the cartographers would show interest in the fact that he had got this far. Yes, it was worth the knowledge that he had escaped the boulders – not that the hlannad had tried to kill him - perhaps they did not like to kill - countless were the speculations, fading into the usual grey mist of the unknowable... but the main thing was, he, Nyav, could well finish his transect and get home.
  Closer to the mast, however, his eyes were able to pick out, just below the twenty-yard altitude of the summit, a blurry thing that made it look wrong. Closer still, the fuzziness became a moving white blob, slowly descending, like a man inching his way down a pole - but too fat to be human.
  The thing was a vuoc. The sphere-clustery fuzz reached the ground as he watched. It began rippling away. Nyav slowed his skimmer out of unwillingness to meet the distasteful object. Meanwhile, a practical point occurred to him. Could this cloudy straggler have remained behind the main herd in order to blind the camera on the mast? To preserve secrecy... But then after that deed why allow me, a witness, to escape? Or maybe the aim had been to wreck the apparatus permanently, sabotage rather than secrecy being the priority. Anyhow, he had better climb the mast himself, to check for damage.
  So he arrived at the fateful decision, to stop his vehicle, despite all the Wayfaring lore which says that to stop, during a mission, and to proceed anywhere on foot, brings a weight of disadvantages, more apparent to veterans than to a beginner.

He walked to the mast, grasped the rungs and began to climb.
  Half way up he paused and gazed around the horizon, which was now partly hidden in mist. Perhaps the hlannad horde had disappeared into that mist; or perhaps they would, in any case, by this time have vanished over the skyline.
We of Ooranye are normally very good at judging distances. The fact that Nyav in this case wasn’t sure, was a sign which boded ill. He failed to note it, however.  He continued upwards until he was able to peer into the transparent concavity of the televisual apparatus recessed into the top of the tower.
It was like looking in a window. He could see the surveillance room in the monitoring centre at Olhoav. The desks, the chairs, the screens, the officials about their tasks, were all sharply visible, though without sound; as he gazed fondly his mind’s ear supplied the absent sound: shuffle of boots, papers rustling, murmured remarks about the views on this screen or that... At any moment someone might come to his mast’s screen.
On the other hand it might be hours before anyone did so. Nyav sighed, and turned to descend. Of one thing he was sure: the apparatus was undamaged. The vuoc had done no worse than temporarily to smother the camera eye. It had done that, no doubt, so as to blank out the movements of the horde, which confirmed that the creatures were still determined to conceal their motion from human eyes.
  Why, then, was he still alive - he who had witnessed the truth?
  He thought about it all the way down, and by the time he reached the ground it was impossible for him to avoid the answer.  The vuoc, and/or the hlannad, did not need to silence him. They somehow knew that no such action of theirs was necessary. They knew, in other words, that he would never survive to tell the tale.
Yet why should he not get back safely?
  Ah, but put it the other way: why should he?
Leaning against the base of the mast, he stared about him at the limitless plain and the far-off mist, and helplessly allowed his mind and soul to be flooded with the blankness of immensity, not just realizing, but really realizing, where he was. Nyav at that moment embodied the virtue of apparng, context-awareness; a great virtue it was, but alas, here and now it was swollen to a fatally exaggerated degree.
  It was an elementary error, young man’s error to have thought too much about possible explanations, to have engaged with the giant world to that extent, thus inviting its riposte; the fencing skills of human reason are bound to be outmatched by the mysteries of Ooranye.
The time had therefore arrived for him to pay the penalty for his misfortunes and mistakes; a penalty which consisted of being answered – in fact of being given the ultimate answer, which is ALL; which is too much.  This is the fate we call nebulation.
As it took hold, the new nebulee staggered away from the base of the mast and, quite unknowingly, into easy range of its surveillance cameras. Reaching his grounded skimmer, he absently put out a hand and ran it over the vehicle. Then he dropped his hand to his side and walked on, without looking back until, after some fifty yards, he stopped again, drew his laser, gazed at it with a puzzled frown, dropped it onto the gralm and began to rotate, while his arms dangled and he gazed unfocusedly about the horizon.
Soon, with frequent stops he was wandering in a circle, as if in imitation of the curve of the world. At last he went back to his skimmer and leaned against it. He gazed across it at that mist-patched horizon which was tugging his soul from his body.
He had entered the game which no one can win.
  This ought to have been the end of Nyavyuhlm, backgrounder. According to all precedent, there should have been no reason for his tale to continue. Once you have become a nebulee, that’s that; your mind is blown and you might as well be dead. No cure for the condition is known to exist.

The day declined into evenshine, though the nebulee was absolutely unaware of the hours that passed. Presently the loneliness of the scene was breached by the presence of another Wayfarer. This newcomer approached on a skimmer from the direction of Olhoav.
  The vehicle slowed to a stop a few yards from Nyav, who gave no sign that he had seen it. Likewise he mindlessly ignored the young woman who alighted.
This new arrival advanced on foot, contemplating the blanked features of the nebulee, and wondering what realms were being inwardly surveyed by the unfocused eyes in that dazed countenance.
  She mused out loud: “If the gralm could speak, if the skies could speak… How did you get this way, Nyav?"
Listening to herself, she wondered what made her ask such a silly question, and, indeed, why she had been so silly as to come out here.
  Grimacing, she continued:
  "In case at some level you can hear me, I’ll tell you that when they showed me the pictures of where you were and how you looked, I felt a bout of non-acceptance coming on, non-acceptance of what has happened to you! And so, despite the fact that anyone in Olhoav from the Noad down would have told me not to bother about you, that there's nothing I or anyone can do, that it’s kinder just to let you fade off into the wilderness – I still wanted to flout all customary advice and to try what could be done."
She ceased the flow of words. Peering more closely still, she was able to spot a tremble of the young man's lips. All this while, the lad had been murmuring. She came closer, close enough to put her ear to those lips, and heard senseless monologue:
  “Flecks… spikes… blocks… brims... oahhh…”
  Syllables, clumping in word-groups (which rhyme in our Jommdan tongue). After a while the random drone subsided. Hyala put up her hand to touch the blank face and lift the chin.  “Well, so that was the last dribble, Nyav?" she remarked to the vacancy. "Like a tap, when the supply’s turned off: you jog it and you just get what’s left in the pipe, and then nothing.”
  More silence. Occasionally the nebulee blinked and turned his head as if in bleary search, but, each time, slumped once more.
  “So many ways,” remarked Hyala, “to end like you’ve ended, Nyav. You must have tried too hard to understand something that you met out here. Maybe you tried to work out some ecological detail, like who preys on whom... Or any other dead-end curiosity.” She shook his shoulder. “And here's another: why did I come here? You've got me doing it now... it’s time we made a move. Though I know you but slightly, I have decided to take you into my home.”

Continued in

Uranian Throne Episode 4:

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