“If you can get your shamanistic friend off your mind for a little while,” I said. “I asked you to meet me here because I need your help,”
Ferni looked up, lips curving. “I have more to say about her, but I can give you a few minutes, Noomi.”
Ignoring the slur, I explained. “The Siblinghood has given me a problem.” I paused to think, rubbing my face with the back of my hand. I needed a shave. At age thirty-six, thirty-seven, maybe it was time to grow a beard. Which was simply a divagation, putting off the ridiculous, or the sublime, I had no idea which. I said as quickly as possible, “Somewhere within our reach there’s a being no one has ever seen, and this being knows everything.”
“What did you say?”
I repeated myself.
“The Siblinghood knows this?” Ferni, incredulous.
I sat up, removed the wet towel from around my head, and said, “I’m told the Siblinghood presumes this to be true.”
“Why, in the name of Chamfalow’s chief cook?”
“Well, this is the way it was explained to me: Mankind is in a very dangerous situation regarding survival as a race. Unlike every other presumably well-intentioned race, we do not have a racial memory…”
“You’re joking! The Gentherans have a racial memory? The Pthas had a racial memory? And the Garrick?”
“According to what I’ve been told, all of them do or did, yes.”
“Since one already knows a good deal of human history, one expects there must be a catch in there somewhere.”
“Isn’t there always? As I understand it, the memory in question would include everything back to the time our parental primate stepped down out of a tree. Maybe even farther back, to the first time we crawled out of the ooze. And, we must know it, not learn it. Know it so we feel it in our bones. Or membranes, if we didn’t have bones at the time. We have to remember war, not merely think about it. We have to remember struggle, and pain, and having beasts eat our children. Presumably, this inner knowledge would halt our tendency to do the precipitous, silly, and often very dangerous things that people reared in relative safety often do for stupid or prideful leaders, like sheep running ahead of a purposeful, nipping dog.
“The only hope of finding such a memory lies in our finding someone or something who knows everything, including the true history of the human race. The solution also requires that this thing or creature exist within our reach, since if it doesn’t, its mere existence is of no consequence to mankind.”
“Ah,” said Ferni, wiping steam out of his eyes. “And?”
“The problem they’ve given me is to find the being.”
“To presume there’s a being, then find it.”
“More or less, yes.”
“I presume there’s a pot of universal elixir sitting on the bench in the changing room; I think I’ll go find that.” Ferni snorted, getting water up his nose.
I didn’t reply.
Ferni said, “You’re serious?”
“Deadly serious. They told me it is likely the penalty for not finding it will be our own extinction, sooner or later, and not much later at that. Have you ever…have you ever seen recordings of the planet they call Hell?”
“Ugh.” Ferni ducked under the water, came up spluttering. “I’m a member of the Siblinghood, Naumi! I’ve never heard of any of this! Unless…could it be a Third Order thing?”
My eyebrows went up at this. “This plan or plot or whatever one may call it, is being implemented by a small secret group within your organization. Is there a secret group called the Third Order? If so, very interesting, because it’s not the first time they’ve fiddled with my life. They had something to do with my being at the academy in the first place.”
After a considerable silence, Ferni offered, “I know the name. Is it possible some kind of…spatial anomaly is involved in all this?”
“Well, if the thing exists, it has to exist somewhere. An anomalous location might explain why no one knows where.”
“I wonder if the old talk road would come up with anything?”
“The other four are meeting me on Thairy. That’s why I asked you to meet me here. There’s a quick route from here to Thairy. And to B’yurngrad, if you’re wanting to look up your shamaness. Just think, one day there from here, one day to Thairy from here. No lost time. Lucky Pthas to find the wormhole to end all wormholes…” I realized I was babbling and fell silent.
Fernwold steamed. “All this vapor is doing nothing for my powers of ratiocination. Assuming I have any. Do we know anything at all about this being?”
“The Siblinghood archives have several ancient stories that involve something or someone called the Keeper. Many of them were preserved by the Pthas, and that fact lends them additional credence. Some of the stories drop clues to the Keeper’s approachability. The number seven figures prominently. There are a few phrases common to most of the stories. ‘One person walking seven roads at once finds the Keeper.’ Or, ‘Seven roads are one road.’ Most of the stories are about untangling a difficulty or solving a problem…”
“And we want this Keeper because it, or he, knows everything?”
“It, I think. Knows everything. Yes.”
Ferni emerged gradually from the water, heaved himself out of the pool, and reached for a towel. “Tell me one of the stories.”
I gawked at him, then averted my eyes.
“Come on, Noomi! Presumably they told you some of the stories. Tell me one!”
“I can tell you one about a man and a fish,” I said.
Now it so happened that a man of Dabberding was walking along the River Rush one day when a fish spoke to him from the shallows along the bank.
“Hi there, you, man,” said the fish. “How is the world treating you?”
“Not well,” growled the man of
