Strands of Reality
"Tsawlontu," said Kalinkey, healer of the Omaticaya, "Tomorrow, I have need to go on a journey. I will be gone for two or three days."
Her husband smiled at her, saying, "What journey is so important that it takes you away from me for so long?" He gently caressed her cheek with a finger of his prosthetic hand, and kissed her lips.
Kalinkey shivered with delight and swayed toward him, closing her eyes to the blue half-light of the gas giant in the night sky. In all her life, she had never become tired of the way Tsawlontu touched her. Truth be said, his attentions were even more welcome now than the first time they joined in tsahaylu, so many years ago.
When their lips parted, she whispered, "You are trying to distract me, so I do not go away."
"Is it working?" he murmured.
"Almost," she replied, causing him to chuckle softly. In a sudden burst of exuberance, he grabbed her by the hips and lifted her into the air, spinning her around and around so the world and the sky tumbled about her. "Stop it!" she shrieked, more with glee than terror. "You're making me dizzy."
When he lowered her to the ground, she clutched at him so she did not fall. "You're evil," she accused him, holding on tight. "I don't know why I love you so much."
"Well, it can't be my good looks," he quipped. "My brother Minkxetse got all of those."
"Nonsense," she replied, grabbing his large nose with one hand and tweaking it. "I think you are very handsome."
"I'm glad you think so," he smiled. "Now, about the answer to my question."
Tsawlontu loved the way Kalinkey switched from one mood to another, in the blink of an eye. He especially treasured the face she wore when she was serious, the one where she frowned slightly, making a faint crease appear between her brows. That was when he thought she was most beautiful.
"The clan is short of the berries needed to make tirea'tutee," she said. "If I do not get more, the women of the Omaticaya will not be able to celebrate Uniluke. If there is no Uniluke, there will be much trouble in the clan."
"But…" he started, knowing what she was about to say.
"The thickets close by have not flowered this season, so I must travel to Kelutrel, where I know there will be berries," said Kalinkey.
Tsawlontu was silent. He knew there was another reason why Kalinkey wished to travel to Kelutrel, a reason they never discussed. There were other thickets of berries, not so far away, that she could have harvested, but they did not meet her need. Instead, he held her closer, and kissed her forehead. "Take as long as you must, my love," he whispered. "But come back to me."
There was still the faint whiff of smoke about Kelutrel, despite the years that had passed since the fall of Hometree. Even though the earth all about burst with new green life, fire still smouldered deep within the trunk of the fallen forest giant.
Kalinkey knelt by a low mound of earth, covered with flowers. As she slowly cleared it of leaf litter, she talked, her voice low and soft.
"Sylwanin, my love," she said, speaking to the spirit of her long-departed sister of the tsumuke'awsiteng. Unlike other Na'vi, she did not need to be joined to the Tree of Voices for the dead to hear her. "I am to be a grandmother. Lissa, my daughter, mated last season – you would never guess who she chose. She chose Lu'iss, the tawtute who you knew from when I first came to be with the Omaticaya! He passed though the Eye of Eywa eight years ago, and loved her all this time, and said nothing." She chuckled, "You would not believe what I had to do to get him to declare his love."
She spoke of many of the Omaticaya, and those she knew of other clans, telling her sister of all of the happenings that occurred since the last time she came to Kelutrel. Kalinkey did not stop until the edge of the sun touched the horizon.
She touched the mound of earth once more, and reluctantly stood. Kelutrel was not a safe place at night, not any longer. Since it had been abandoned by the Omaticaya, packs of nantang would wander through, seeking prey animals to hunt, when formerly they stayed leagues away for fear of the Na'vi hunters.
There was one place, however, where she would be safe.
The cave where she had meditated on her numbers was much the same as last time she visited. The walls were still covered in mathematical formulae, which she had daubed just as the tawtute wrote them, while the pots of colour still sat neatly on the rock shelf where she had left them, ready to be mixed with water so she could paint again. It had been many years since Kalinkey had last played with her numbers here.
Kalinkey picked up the bowl she had used to mix her colours. "I remember when Sylwanin mixed black paint for me in you, little bowl," she said. "She was so worried for me, and it was the only thing she could do to help."
It was in this place that she most clearly saw the immensity that was the mother of all. Kalinkey did not know why – perhaps the walls of reality were thinner here.
She shut her eyes, visualising the Riemannian space she knew as Eywa, each shifting manifold a thread of spirit, glowing with the joyful intensity of life and love, each intersection of zeta functions a connection of souls. She flew above the immensity of them, like an ikran flew over the shining seas. No, she wasn't above the threads – she was outside them, even though she could see her own thread among them. That wasn't right – she couldn't see her thread, not with her eyes. Seeing was not the right word – there was no right word for what she was doing. Not in Na'vi, and not in English. She could only describe what she was perceiving in the language of mathematics, in formulae so complex that only a handful of beings in the universe could understand them.
Kalinkey felt for the small dimensions, the eight that could not be seen, the ones that hid just around the corner. If she twisted them, just so…the arrow of time reversed, flowing backwards, as she traced her own thread, and stopped.
There. A thread, tightly bound around hers – she could see it, see the richness of its spirit, how it glowed with passion and life, until it abruptly twisted away at right angles into a place where she could not follow.
If only.
Without thinking, she reached out, one fingertip lightly brushing the end of the thread. A brilliant light exploded in her mind, and Kalinkey knew no more.
"Kalinkey! Wake up!"
"Go away," she muttered. "Want to sleep." She was so tired. Couldn't they just leave her alone?
The owner of the familiar voice grabbed her shoulder, and shook it vigorously. "I said, wake up, you slug-a-bed! There is much to be done today, before we can return home."
Reluctantly, Kalinkey cranked her eyelids open. The morning sun was streaming through the cave opening, lighting up the whole space. She blinked several times, until she focused on a smiling face, sat up and screamed.
"Shhh, my sweet," murmured Sylwanin, holding her tight. "I'm here."
Kalinkey sobbed into her shoulder, "You're dead. You're dead. You're dead." Her entire body was shaking, and she couldn't breathe.
"It's just a dream," said Sylwanin, stroking her hair gently. "It's only the old nightmare. You saved me, remember? You and my sister both." She pulled away slightly, and took Kalinkey's left hand, placing it on her chest. "Neytiri gave me her breath, while you dealt with my wounds."
Kalinkey felt the puckers of long-healed bullet wounds, and saw a long faint scar all the way down Sylwanin's sternum. Someone had cracked her chest open, well over a decade ago by the state of the scar. Could have it been her?
"But I saw you dead," whispered Kalinkey, shaking her head in disbelief. "They put you in the ground."
"Does this feel like a dead person?" asked Sylwanin, leaning forward and kissing her gently on the lips. Kalinkey's eyes closed as tears flooded down her cheeks. Her lover's breath was sweet and warm, just as she remembered. When they parted, Sylwanin said, "You haven't had the dream for years."
Suddenly, Kalinkey tore herself out of the embrace, and ran outside.
"Kalinkey!" shouted Sylwanin, in vain, because Kalinkey couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Sylwanin didn't catch her until she found her kneeling at the edge of a clearing.
"It's not here," said Kalinkey, running her hands frantically over the smooth earth. There was no mound, and no flowers. "This is the place, but it isn't here. She isn't here. Where is Sylwanin? Where is my sister? She is supposed to be here."
"I'm here," said Sylwanin quietly from behind.
Kalinkey leapt up like a bounding nantang, and spun about. "I thought I lost you, Sylwanin," she whispered. She looked about, desperately swivelling her head from side to side. "Did the orderlies steal you away? Are they here? If they come we must hide, otherwise they will beat us."
A cold shiver ran down Sylwanin's spine. She remembered how Kalinkey had spoken of the time when she was held on 'Rrta in a pale green room, before she ever became one of the People. A time when tawtute in white clothes would beat her for breaking rules she did not understand.
"The orderlies can't come here, my love," said Sylwanin, in the most reassuring voice she could muster. "They are far away, on another world, on 'Rrta."
"We're safe?"
Sylwanin took Kalinkey's hand in her own, and was shocked to feel it trembling. "Yes, we are safe, my love," she said. She frowned deeply, wondering what to do. What would her mother do in a case like this? "Kalinkey, we came to Kelutrel to collect berries for tirea'tutee – if we work together as quickly as we can, we can be home tonight."
The trembling stopped. "Yes," said Kalinkey. "If we do not have the berries, the women cannot partake of Uniluke." She smiled sweetly, and squeezed Sylwanin's hand. "I like sharing Uniluke very much, with both you and Zha'nelle."
"Very well," said Sylwanin. "Let's get to work."
It was just after sunset when they arrived back at the place of the Omaticaya, their baskets full of berries. At least the women of the clan would not complain about the lack of tirea'tutee, thought Sylwanin.
She was still worried about Kalinkey. Although she had been calm the whole day, both collecting the berries and walking home, she babbled the entire time, talking about things in 'Ìnglìsì that Sylwanin did not understand – about manifolds, and zeta functions, and transfers of data as infinite series, and surfaces of Riemann. She mentioned Eywa frequently, about how their mother was not invariant in time as she originally thought, but could vary according to the tenets of string theory if you viewed her as an intersection of multiple complex planes.
Kalinkey had insisted on holding Sylwanin's hand all the way home. She gazed about the forest, as though she had never seen it before, even as she spoke about her numbers. Every now and then on the walk, she would stop, and tell Sylwanin with unshed tears in her eyes, "I'm so happy you're not dead."
Sylwanin did not stop until she led Kalinkey into the alcove of the Tsahìk. Fortunately, her mother was there, calmly knotting silken cords together in a complicated pattern to make what looked like a decorative collar.
"Why the serious face, my daughter?" asked Mo'at, dispensing with the normal greeting expected by someone entering her alcove.
"Kaltxi, Mo'at," said Kalinkey, tilting her head to one side, and then to the other, as though she was trying to see around the Tsahìk. "Sylwanin isn't dead. I thought you should know."
"The dream?" asked Mo'at, her voice concerned. She placed her knotwork to one side.
"The dream," confirmed Sylwanin. "Kalinkey has been confused since she woke this morning."
"Sit," she ordered. Once the pair were settled, Mo'at continued, "Did you sleep in Kalinkey's cave?"
Kalinkey replied seriously, "Reality is thin in the cave. It is easy to see our mother there."
"I'll take that as a yes," commented Mo'at, and sighed.
"I haven't seen her like this before," said Sylwanin, her voice anxious. "The time before, when I saw her in the cave, all those years ago, she was not like this. It wasn't nearly as bad – she was well the next day. You remember."
"I remember," replied Mo'at.
"Eytukan is still dead," said Kalinkey, staring at the back of her hand, and then turning it over and back again, repeatedly. "I thought he might be here as well, but he isn't, even though Sylwanin is here. Perhaps if I touched him, perhaps he would have been here, here like his daughter." She looked up, a single tear trickling down her cheek, "I'm sorry, Mo'at. I want you to be happy too." Kalinkey started giggling, almost sniggering, even as the tear faded away.
The Tsahìk of the Omaticaya said slowly, "The People should be warned. If they return to Kelutrel, they should stay away from Kalinkey's cave. I think she has seen something that is not meant to be seen."
"Are you placing it under taboo, my mother?" asked Sylwanin.
Mo'at nodded, and then smiled at her daughter. "Give her a sleeping draught, and take her to bed, with Tsawlontu. She should be close to both the people she loves the most. Perhaps all she needs is a good night's sleep."
"Yes, sa'nu."
News travelled quickly, in the mysterious and unexplainable way it did amongst the People. Waiting outside the Tsahìk's alcove were Tsawlontu, Lissa and her brother Stxeli'tstal, and Zha'nelle and Minkxetse.
Kalinkey went to her mate, and embraced him. "I love you," she whispered, and then frowned. "Where is your hand?"
"Both my hands are holding you, my darling," he said.
"I know, silly," she scolded. "I mean your other left hand, the metal one. The one that Zha'nelle gave you." She wriggled out of his arms, and went to her daughter, holding both her hands. "Lissa…you're here. I'm glad. I could not bear it if you and your brother were not here."
"I'm here, sa'nu," said Kalinkey's daughter. "She kicked me for the first time today. See, she is doing it again." She took her mother's hand and placed it on her belly.
"Oh!" exclaimed Kalinkey, as she felt her first grandchild move within her daughter. She smiled happily, and hugged her child. She did not notice Sylwanin whispering in her mate's ear, nor his puzzled expression deepening into worry.
Tsawlontu said, "Kalinkey, you must be tired. Come with us, with Sylwanin and me, to sleep."
"I am tired," announced Kalinkey, releasing her daughter. "The discontinuities in the manifolds might resolve if I rest a little while."
And then she closed her eyes, and started to count, as she was led away, murmuring the sounds of the numbers while her fingers flickered from one digit to the next.
The next day, Kalinkey was quieter, but still she was not right. If Sylwanin was away from her side for too long, she would become frantic, muttering 'she's dead' as she searched for her sister of the tsumuke'awsiteng, gradually increasing in volume until she screamed out the words.
The mood of the Omaticaya was sombre, as all worried for the sanity of their beloved healer.
One day rolled into the next. Slowly, ever so slowly, Kalinkey became less dependent on Sylwanin. She even returned to work, mixing potions, and dealing with the illnesses of the Omaticaya. Despite Sylwanin's concern, she never made an error in diagnosing a sickness, dispensing her medicines, or treating injuries. Indeed, when she wasn't treating patients, she was happiest in her alcove, rearranging the pottery jars and containers that held her drugs, or playing with the plox that Tsawlontu had carved for her son.
Sometimes, on the days when Sylwanin was most exhausted, Na'dia and Ninat would come to the alcove, and sing to her, while Sylwanin dozed. Kalinkey especially liked the Ukrainian nursery songs that Na'dia sang, for she would stop playing with her plox to listen.
The first time that she celebrated Uniluke with Sylwanin and Zha'nelle, Kalinkey wept with joy, almost bursting from the happiness that shone from her eyes.
Still, the clan knew she was not well, for she would often be found staring off into the distance, murmuring the 'Ìnglìsì words that made no sense, the words that described the realm of numbers.
A little more than a month later, a stranger came to the Omaticaya, flying her ikran with great skill and élan. When she dismounted, the sentry saw the swirling red, black and orange paint that covered the stranger's entire skin, the elaborately braided and beaded hair, and the strange compound recurve bow that was the signature of only one clan.
"You are a long way from home, Ikranaru," he said to the woman.
"Yes, I am," she agreed. "I have need to speak to the Tsahìk of the Omaticaya." Her voice was low and musical, the odd intonation she gave her words almost lyrical, as though she was singing a song that only she could hear.
The woman was conducted to Mo'at's alcove, without delay or question, for it was custom that a stranger to the Omaticaya could demand to see the Tsahìk on matters that had bearing on the clans.
When she entered the alcove, Mo'at rose to her feet, greeting the stranger with the standard words of welcome, "I see you."
The response she received from the stranger was unexpected. She chuckled, and replied, "I'm not sure that you do."
Her interest piqued, Mo'at asked, "Who are you?"
Kalinkey looked up from her plox.
Mo'at was with a stranger, a woman she had never seen before. The Tsahìk said, "I have brought a visitor to see you, Kalinkey. She has questions for you."
"You are real," said Kalinkey, addressing the stranger.
"Yes, I am," agreed the woman. "I am as real as the clouds in the sky, as real as the foam that is lashed from waves by the east wind."
"That is very real," said Kalinkey, returning her attention to her plox. "I am not sure I have met anyone quite that real before."
Sylwanin said angrily, "I thought we agreed that Kalinkey should not meet with strangers, mother. She is not well, and we do not know who this woman is."
"I know who she is," said Kalinkey unexpectedly, as she stacked her plox in a new, more pleasing pattern. "She is Zharr'n, Tsahìk of the Ikranaru."
The only one of the three women who was not surprised by this revelation was Zharr'n herself.
"Mo'at, Sylwanin," said Kalinkey. "You should go. There is no need to worry. I will be safe with Zharr'n." Reluctantly, the two women left the healer's alcove as they were bid, while Zharr'n settled down on to Kalinkey's treatment rug. She did not say anything, merely watching Kalinkey shuffle the plox around.
"They think I am playing with my plox," said Kalinkey, without looking up. "You don't."
"No," agreed Zharr'n. "I do have questions, though. I was hoping you could tell me about this." She raised her left hand.
Kalinkey looked up briefly, and then snatched her eyes back to the plox. "You have four fingers."
"Are you sure?" asked Zharr'n.
"You didn't always have four," said Kalinkey. "A month ago you had five."
"Then perhaps you can tell me why I can remember two lives. In this one, I am Zharr'n, a foundling whelped of unknown parents, adopted and raised by the clan of the Ikran People. In the other life, I was born tawtute, on 'Rrta. My name was Sharon Xiùlán King, and I came to Pandora as one of the Uniltìranyu. In both I am Tsahìk of the Ikranaru."
Kalinkey made no response, merely shuffling plox faster.
"Just what did you do?" asked the Tsahìk in a gentle voice.
She stopped moving her plox, and looked up again. "I touched Eywa, in the past, and changed reality."
"Can you change it back?"
Angrily, Kalinkey swept her hand across the intricate piles of plox, smashing them down into chaos. "That's what I'm trying to figure out," she replied irritably, "But the plox aren't giving me the answer I need."
"How is it that you remember," asked Kalinkey, ten minutes later, "When no-one else does?"
"I was communing with Eywa, on the ngrrtsyip in the cavern of the Ikranaru," replied Zharr'n. "When the change came, the strands of reality writhed and twisted. I could feel my core being torn apart, so I resisted. When it stopped, I could see my thread, both where it is now, and where it had been, and knew I had two lives."
"When I left the cavern, I found that I had not been hallucinating, and many things had changed with the Ikranaru. Some people were alive that had not been, some were dead, and some had never existed."
"I hope you lost no-one," said Kalinkey.
"None who were close to me were missing," said the Tsahìk. "Although many were subtly different – a slight change in their face markings, or perhaps a preference for different foods. The ones who were most changed were my sisters of the tsumuke'awsiteng – Tsa'peen, Lin'ta and Kimi – and those other former Uniltìranyu who came to be with the Ikranaru. They had no memory or physical sign of being tawtute, or that there ever was a clan called the Uniltìranyu."
"I returned to the ngrrtsyip, spending most of the next four weeks communing with Eywa to trace the changes, trying to understand what had happened, and how it could have occurred. The differences all circle around your thread, which is why I am here."
"What are the biggest changes you could divine?" asked Kalinkey curiously. She had not worried about the individual physical consequences of the change, instead being focused on the overall pattern.
"There is a new clan on a peninsula in the southern continent," said Zharr'n. "They are called the Ngultukru. Most of the threads who were Uniltìranyu are there now, and Hell's Gate is almost empty of tawtute and Na'vi alike." She took a deep breath, adding, "Time is a bit hinky, as though it hasn't settled down yet – for example, my mate Alìmtaw is older than he was – and I can't seem to get a fix on when the Battle of Vitraya Ramunong was actually fought. Depending on who I talk to, it can be anywhere from last year to twenty-five years ago, but the discrepancies don't appear to worry anyone."
Kalinkey nodded. She had noticed much the same thing.
"What worries me most, however, is something you should have seen, for the proof is right here, in this place. Na'diakhudoshin was never the palulukan woman from the stars. Instead, she collects fruit from the forest with her mates Ninat and Txep'ean, and teaches the dances of the clan to the children of the Omaticaya. The second tawtute war was not fought, the Uniltìranyu were not sent from 'Rrta, and the starships were never used as weapons to exterminate the tawtute."
There was no corner in the alcove, no place for Kalinkey to retreat and curl up into a protective ball. She shivered, and clutched her knees to her chest. "I had not realised," she said unwillingly, as though the admission was like a barbed thorn that left a drop of poison behind when it was extracted. "I did not look at Na'dia in that way, the way I first looked at Sylwanin." She swallowed, twice, before adding, "I had to stop looking at most people. It was sending me mad."
"Can you undo the change you made?" demanded Zharr'n. "The very survival of the Na'vi may depend on it."
"Yes, and no," replied Kalinkey. When she saw that Zharr'n needed a better answer, she said, "The event that was changed – it was a nodal point. Because it intersected with so many threads, when I touched it, the huge amount of temporal energy it released rippled up and down the timeline, making billions upon billions of changes. Even if I wanted to reverse it, the threads wouldn't snap back into the old pattern, but into an entirely new and unpredictable pattern somewhat like the old one, but probably one that was much worse. There are attractors of events have a far lower temporal resting energy - I mean, that are far more likely than what originally happened."
"Is it like the law of unintended consequences?"
Kalinkey nodded. "That's a simplistic viewpoint – the math is much more complicated, but it's essentially correct. I've been applying chaos theory to the problem of predicting a result. The most probable group of outcomes are variations of events where you or someone like you fail to take the starships, and the tawtute bombard this world with thermonuclear warheads from orbit, killing Eywa and ending all life on Pandora."
The bleakness of Kalinkey's words clubbed Zharr'n's spirit like sledgehammers, when some words that Kalinkey had said penetrated her awareness. "What do you mean, even if you wanted to?"
Kalinkey looked down at her hands, at the fingers that were flickering from one number to the next, almost without her thinking. She stuttered, "I d-didn't intend to d-do it. I just w-wished, if only for a moment. I missed her so much." She looked up, bit her lower lip, before speaking again. "N-none of the alternatives are any better – they just won't release the same temporal energy, no matter how far back I go."
The Tsahìk could see the guilt in the healer's face, and the tears welling in her eyes. If she pushed this woman over the edge of sanity, Zharr'n doubted that the Omaticaya would let her live to leave this place, no matter what her position. She spoke her words in her gentlest voice, the voice she had used to speak to her children when she calmed them from a nightmare. "Be brave, little one," she said, "I need to hear the words."
There was a long silence, a silence that stretched out for many breaths, before Kalinkey spoke.
"Sylwanin has to die, to undo what I did," said Kalinkey. "I don't care what the consequences are. I would rather die than lose her again." She sobbed once, and then the tears she had been holding back poured down her cheeks.
The Tsahìk of the Ikranaru took the weeping woman into her arms, and murmured comforting words to her. Strangely enough, Zharr'n did not despair. Instead, she was filled with hope, hope for the future of the Na'vi, for Kalinkey was acting out of love.
What was Eywa, if not love?