Our tree had six such "floors," six annular rings spaced bulgy up the trunk… and above all that was a gigantic umbrella of leaves stretched almost fifty meters in every direction, soaking up sun to keep the tree alive. Barely a fifth of those leaves fell each year; the rest hung on, still doing their photon-collection job no matter how crispy they became with cold. Now and then throughout the winter, a leaf grew so heavy with ice that it snapped off its branch, dropped sharp and fast, then shattered like a glass dagger on some window ledge.
At one time, all twenty-four offices in the tree housed proctors; but that was before the plague. Now, Floors One and Two were empty, and I was the only person on Floor Three. Senior proctors filled up the higher floors… except for a vacant room on Floor Five. Chappalar’s office. I could have taken it but didn’t want to. Not even for the better view.
I supposed our new arrival, Master Tic, would claim Chappalar’s old office. He’d also take over Chappalar’s old duties… which might mean he was slated to be my supervisor.
Unless master proctors were too important to waste time riding herd on a novice.
Or unless I got some say in the matter myself; in which case, I’d pick one of the proctors I’d known for seven years, instead of some goggle-wearing outsider who thought he could step into Chappalar’s shoes.
(All right — Ooloms didn’t actually wear shoes. Just flimsy-dick things like ballet slippers made of ort skin. But you know what I mean.)
To find out who’d become my new mentor, I took the elevator straight up to Jupkur’s office on the top ring. Jupkur was Gossip Central for our building — not only did he know everything, but he blabbed it at the least provocation, all the while saying, "Well, I don’t like to talk…"
By luck, Jupkur was in: lying flat on his desk and staring at the ceiling. Don’t ask me why. Since the plague, our Oolom proctors had spent more than two decades immersed in our culture and adapting to our ways. God knows, they worked hard to fit in with our particular brand of Homo sap behavior. Now and then, though, you still caught them acting just plain alien, especially when humans weren’t around.
I found it kind of endearing.
"Welcome back, Faye," Jupkur said without looking in my direction. Ooloms were nigh-on eerie when it came to recognizing people by the sound of their footsteps. (They can even tell when you’ve bought new boots… maybe the only males in the universe who ever notice.)
"You missed an exciting night," he told me, still keeping his gaze on the ceiling. "The rest of us got to loiter till three in the morning, inventing theories of where you might be. Some hypotheses were extremely clever… even witty, though I shouldn’t brag. Then I tried to organize a betting pool, guessing the state of your corpse when the police finally found you. Alas, the others spent too long scrutinizing the rules of the wager; you turned up alive before anyone actually gave me money."
"Sorry."
"Ah well." He sat up and turned toward me. "I’m sure you’ll get in trouble again. We’ve all agreed you’re botjolo."
The word meant "cursed." Or "self-destructive." Which Ooloms considered the same thing.
"You’re so kind," I muttered. "Do you have a minute?"
"Of course. Although if you’re looking for guidance on official Vigil business, Master Tic is your new supervisor and I don’t want to valk him."
Valking was gliding into another person’s flight path. The Oolom equivalent of stepping on someone’s toes.
"That was one of the things I wanted to ask," I said. "Whether Tic was my new mentor. And what he’s doing in Bonaventure."
Jupkur winked at me… which didn’t look any better on him than it did on Oh-God. Some gestures just don’t transfer from one species to another.
"Master Tic is pursuing his own agenda," Jupkur said. "That’s one thing you can be sure of. He has a reputation in various circles… well, one doesn’t like to gossip."
"You love to gossip," I replied.
"True," he replied. "And what a treat you’re a full-fledged proctor now… I can reveal juicy tidbits about everyone in the Vigil, and it won’t be telling tales out of school. Do you know how long it’s been since I polished up my stories for somebody new?"
"Just tell me about Tic," I said.
"Well, now… Tic." Jupkur smiled. "Tic’s a master proctor, isn’t he? Which means he’s the cream of the cream, as you humans say. The best. The acme of perfection."
He kept smiling. Or should I say smirking? Seated on the edge of his desk, simpering like a man with a secret. A secret about Tic.
"So what’s wrong with him?" I asked.
"Think about his name, Faye. Tic. Hardly a conventional Oolom name. And not his original one, oh no. He began calling himself Tic a year back. It’s short for tico."
Tico = crazy. Mad. "So he’s saying he’s insane?" I asked.
"A raving screwball. A total loon. A person of addled wits."
"Why would he call himself that?" I said. "Is he nuts?"
"Faye," Jupkur answered, "Master Tic is Zenning out."
"Ahhhhhh."
To Zen out. The human phrase for a condition that sneaked up on some proctors if they lived long enough. A side effect of long-term link-seed use. These people had achieved a state of… well, damned if I know what went on in their heads, but they’d stopped functioning on the same mundane wavelength as the rest of us. If you’re a glass-half-full person, you could claim they’d reached a higher plane of consciousness; if you prefer the-glass-is-half-empty, you’d say they’d gone gibbering round the bend.
Except that they didn’t gibber. Zenned-out proctors acted happy enough. Blissful even. And when they deigned to pay attention to the world, they seemed keen witted and shrewd, full of insight. Brilliant, perceptive, intuitive, wise. Most of the time, though, they were cabbages. Not catatonic or delusional — just shifted to a set of priorities that didn’t mesh with the rest of us. Eating strawberries while being attacked by tigers, that sort of thing.
Or so the stories went. It’d been a long time since we’d actually seen a Zenned-out case on Demoth — the most elderly proctors had all died in the plague, and the survivors weren’t old enough to have their brains go soupy.
Till now.
"So," I said, "does this mean Tic is unstable?"
Jupkur shook his head. "Not the way you’re thinking. He’s just dancing to a different drummer, as you humans say. Not dangerous, but not very useful either." Jupkur hopped off the edge of his desk and shook out his gliders to get them to hang more comfortably. "Have a look at this."
He turned his back to me and spread his gliders wide like a triangular sail, point-down. In a moment, printed words appeared on the surface of the membrane — an effect that freaked merry hell out of me the first time I saw it. As I’ve said, Ooloms don’t have conscious control over their chameleon abilities; but Jupkur (at flamboyant expense) had coated the back of his gliders with pixel-nano under command of his link-seed. At parties, he could give himself moving tattoos… which he did at every opportunity. Flagrantly. And don’t ask me the subject matter.
A right tease, our Jupkur.
I looked at the writing on display, as he used himself for a projection screen. "What is this?" I asked.
"Part of a report," he replied. "From the coordinator of the team who are scrutinizing the trade talks between us and the Freeps. That was Tic’s last assignment."
I skimmed the words. About Tic. The phrase "inattention to duty" stood out… possibly because Jupkur was making it flash bright red.