Ascending - James Alan Gardner [5]
But no, she could not be younger than I. I was Mentally Alert, whereas the woman before me was already starting to lapse back into slumber. Her gaze was losing intensity; the fire that had flared up while she cursed me was now turning to ash. I tucked my hands under the woman’s armpits, lifted her up, and slammed her back against the tower’s glass wall. Uclod grimaced at the crack of glass bones on glass bricks…but I knew the wall would break long before this woman suffered the least bit of damage.
My people are more sturdy than walls.
“Wake up!” I shouted in the woman’s face. “Do not go to sleep again.”
“Why not?” Her collision with the wall had brought back the focus in her eyes, but her voice was sullen—like a cranky child who wants to remain in bed.
“Because if you stay awake,” I told the woman, “you will be able to lead a rich life wherein you accomplish great things.”
“Like what?”
“Like…” I looked about me for inspiration; seeing the open path down the center of the room, I remembered why I had awakened her in the first place. “We shall solve a mystery, you and I. We can discover who cleared the space from me to the door.”
“Oh, I saw that,” the woman said. “It was interesting. Sort of. I think…”
Her voice was fading. “Wake up!” I cried. “Stay awake and talk to me.” With a burst of fierceness, I thrust my silver ax close to the woman’s face. “Stay awake or I shall cut off your wallabies.”
“Missy!” Uclod said, staring at the ax. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I am attempting to make a friend.” Without letting him interrupt further, I turned back to the woman. “Talk to me. Talk to me about…about this interesting thing you saw.”
“There was an alien,” the woman replied with grumpy ill will. “A big white thing—like some animal, but bigger than a buffalo and it didn’t have a head.”
“Then where did it put its ears?” I asked.
“It didn’t have ears. Or eyes or a nose or a mouth. Because it didn’t have a fucking head. Have you heard a word I’m saying?”
“I am listening most attentively. This headless beast picked you up to clear a path to me?”
“It didn’t touch us,” the woman answered, “but we moved anyway. Everybody. We floated off the floor and out to the sides. Then the creature took away your body and when it brought you back, you were alive again.”
“But I was always alive. I am not so weak as to die from a little tumble.”
“You didn’t look alive,” the woman said. “But you got taken away and when you came back…”
Her voice faded again. I gave her another smack against the wall. “Wake up! Is it not interesting that I appeared dead but then was alive? Do you not wish to find this headless beast and learn the reasons for its actions? I am clearly enmeshed in Portentous Events and if you accompany me, we shall both…wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
I slapped her hard. She did not react. I lifted my hand to slap her again, but Uclod seized my wrist.
“Enough, missy,” he said. “You’ve knocked her out cold.”
I looked at the woman before me. She was beginning to slump to the floor—but not because I had battered her unconscious. I had not hit her hard enough to cause injury; in fact, I had not hit her hard enough to keep her awake.
And through all this, none of the others within hearing had opened an eye to watch. Too lost to care. The woman had been the most awake of them all; but she had not been awake enough.
Perhaps no one in this tower was. No one in this city. No one in the world.
Uclod eased his grip on my wrist and took me by the hand instead. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
I let him lead me away.
1 It is a custom of my people to suggest how others may remember our names: since our older citizens have Tired Brains, they need all the memory aids they can get. I was not actually named after a paddle—that would be very foolish, because I am a person, not a stick of wood—but the English word “oar” sounds much like my real name. (For those who wonder what Oar means in my own language, it translates to “extremely clever and beautiful person whom everyone