His reality, as he chose to have it.
He imagined the clay under his undamaged hands, imagined it malleable again and the face, the most perfect work he had ever done (but he would do others) gazing into infinity with a look of desire.
He felt the arms about him. He had gone limp within them, yielded to the motion; it had nestled him more comfortably, and there was dark cloth between him and the daylight, a woven fabric which scarcely admitted the declining sun; there was alien perfume in his nostrils; there was midnight cloth against his cheek, which rested on a bony breast as hard as the arms which enfolded him.
No, he thought to himself, trying to rebuild that warm bed in the studio. When he was aware, his hands hurt, and his ribs did, and the pain throbbed in rhythm with his heart and the movement of what carried him. He made no move. Horror occurred to him, that perhaps it took him away to commit some further pain on him, or to feed on . . . he knew nothing of ahnit, or what they did, and there was no rationality between human and ahnit.
There is no relevancy, he insisted to himself. It and Herrin Law were not co-relevant; and what it in its reality chanced to do to Herrin Law were overlapping but unrelated events.
He could choose not to feel it; but his self-control was frayed already by the pain. And he was not strong enough to prevent it, had not even the use of his hands.
Here was an external event; he had met one or his mind had betrayed him and conjured one. It had taken him up, and the three greatest minds on Freedom, he and Waden Jenks and Keye Lynn . . . had not planned this. Only he might have caused it. He had shaped his reality; and the shape of it suddenly argued that he had not been wise.
Or that something was more powerful, which was a possibility that undid all other assumptions.
Muscles glided, even, long steps; arms shifted him for comfort, adjusted again when the position hurt his ribs and he flinched. The pain eased and it kept walking. He heard nothing more of the human voices of the port, heard rather the whisper of grass, and his heart beat the harder for realizing that they had passed beyond help and hope of intervention. The pain had ebbed and exhaustion had passed and his betraying senses were threatening to stay focused, to keep him all too aware of detail he had no wish to comprehend.
It's not here, he tried to tell himself, testing the power of his mind; but sense told him that it was striding down a steep slope; that he heard water moving and smelled it . . . they had come to the river. It might fall, or might drop him, or even fling him in, and he could not catch himself. His hands throbbed, shot pain through his marrow—it shifted its grip, was going to drop him . . . .
He stiffened and slipped, tried to catch at its shoulder and could not, his hand paralyzed; but it caught him itself and slowly, a shadow between him and the sinking sun, its cloak still tenting him, eased him to the ground. He hurled his body frantically aside, to get away, but it knelt astride him and pressed his shoulder down, keeping him from going anywhere. He twisted his head. They were beside the water, on the riverbank. He looked dazedly at the brown current, staring in that direction and trying to think, muddled with pain and longing for the water; he had hurt his hand trying to use it. The pain was starting up again, headed for misery.
The ahnit got off him, a tentative release; he stayed still, not looking at it, reasoning that if he treated it as humans always did, it might treat him as ahnit always did and simply go away.
It moved into his unfocused vision, a mere shadow, and dipped water; it was only a shadow—he had achieved that much. But then the shadow moved closer and obscured all his view, like dark haze in the twilight; it leaned above him and laid a cold wet hand on his brow, so that he flinched. It bathed his face with light touches of leathery thin fingers. It leaned aside and dipped up more water and repeated the process. Let it, Herrin thought, and tried to stare through it.
Then it picked up his hand, and he flinched and cried out from the pain. It did not let go, but eased its grip. He stared into the midnight face, the wet dark eyes. Tried, with tiny movements, to indicate he wanted to pull his hand back; even that hurt.
"You see me," it said.
It was a rumbling, nasal voice. A rock might have spoken. It chilled him and he ceased even to reason; he jerked from it and hurt himself. Quickly it let him go.
"You see me," it said again.
He stared at it, unable to unfocus it. It reached to his collar, touched the brooch he wore there, forgotten. "You see this, you see me."
And when he had almost succeeded in unfocusing again, it unpinned the brooch that he had handled daily, that he had worn in defiance of others, thinking it a vast joke. It was no-color, like the ahnit.
"See it," said the ahnit, "see me."
He could not deny it.
"I have a name," said the ahnit. "Ask it."
"I see you," he said. It was hard to say. It was suicide. He gave up hope. The ahnit uncloaked itself, unclasping the brooch at its own throat, and baring an elongate, naked head, and a robed body which hinted at unhuman structure; it spread the cloak over him, bestowing oblivion, spreading warmth over his chilled body.
"Go away," he asked it.
It stayed, a shadow in the almost dark, solid, undeniable.
"Do they all begin this way?" he asked of it
"They?" it echoed.
"All the others who see you."
"No others."
"Leona Pace."
"They don't see. They look at us, but they don't see."
It had the flavor of proposition. Like a Master, it riddled him and waited response, conscious or unconscious of the irony. He searched his reason for the next Statement and suddenly found one. "My reality and yours have no meaning for each other."
"They talk about reality. They say they lose theirs and they're no longer sane."
"They obviously talk to you."
"A few words. Then no more. They try to go back; and they live between us and you. They just talk to themselves."
"From that you know how to talk to us."
"Ah. But we've listened for years."
"Among us." The prospect chilled. No one had known the ahnit could speak; or wanted to know; or cared. Humans chattered on; and ahnit—invisible—listened, going everywhere, because no one could see them. He shook his head, trying to do what the others had done, retreating to a safer oblivion; but he had been in the port, had tried to function as an invisible, and it had not saved him from shame.
Or from this.
"We've waited," said the ahnit.
It was Statement again. "For what?" he asked, playing the game Masters had played with him and he had played with Students in his turn. He became Student again. "For what, ahnit?"
"I don't know the word," it admitted. "I've never heard it" It made a sound, a guttural and hiss. "That's our word."
That's your reality; it has nothing to do with mine."
"But you see me."
It was an answer. He turned it over in his mind, trymg to get the better of it. Perhaps it was the pain that muddled him; perhaps there was no answer. He wanted it to let him go . . . wanted something, if the words would not have choked him on his own pride. The fact was there even if he kept it inside. Had always been there. He had denied it before. Tried to cancel it.
Truth was not cancelable, if there was something that could coerce him; and he had no wish to live in a world that was not of his making . . . in which Waden Jenks and his Outsiders, and now an ahnit limited his reach, and crippled him, and sat down in front of him to watch him suffer.
"What do you want?" he challenged it, on the chance it would reveal a dependency.