13'Sao-La
Dawn wandered the Ready Room like yesterday's ghost. He deleted its distraction one more time,
resumed his Kata-for-Personal-Fitness. He expended his last push-up, snapping his arms straight.
He squared on toes and palms.
"One hundred," 13'Sao-La breathed — and broke left, rolling, arms cradling head. Four times, two
more than an Enemy would expect. He faced the clean, rough floor. Hands and feet staged for
attack or retreat. Instead, he rolled another half-turn and started supine exercises.
Dawn's companion, recall, fought back against his dismissal. Yesterday suffused his count and
focus on form. 17'Kuna had bested four other challengers, including Mapilca's own Rollkeeper.
13'Sao-La flinched with each blow as it hammered the League into a whole new shape. Food arrived
twice. He ate only because readiness demanded it. More ollomani, mostly Unknowns, pushed his
count close to the number demanded by the roster. Everyone worked, patterning the Ready Room. All
main Katas wasted, unplayed. He groomed his mental lists over and over, though they hardly
mattered anymore. Evening brought dark to the windows. 17'Kuna relayed room assignments and sent
his roster gong-she. Freeing himself from slackening Rules, 13'Sao-La set aside the order. He
favored his own pad, drawn from his meager kit. He favored the Ready Room, most known of any place
in Ganj Dareh. As soon as solo, he deployed marbles, also from his kit, defining a defensive
perimeter far from both doors. He settled within this barrier.
The night gave him sleep to black out his fears, past and present. But a serialized nightmare
raided that sanctuary. It jolted him awake. The night pushed him to sleep. Repeat.
At first, his father bloated into a shining dragon-killer and his mother twisted into a demented
crone. She scuttled at the edge of her son's field of sight. He sat a prancing charger. A
piercing sadness clutched at 13'Sao-La — until a storm of black&white enabled him to see clearly.
Knight and crone dissolved.
For just a moment, a man and a woman posed off to the side. He, big-gutted, menaced her with the
back of his hand. She, wispy-haired and hollow-eyed, cowered, but didn't run. 13'Sao-La denied
the portrayal, stared it into morph.
Now, the Patriarch glowered from center stage, chorused by a flock of cowls. Now, the mother,
staunch and lovely, dared him back, then took herself proudly away. Now, young Isaac witnessed her
fade into a horizon dotted with faceless, multi-hued strangers. Now, the boy sank back into his
sect-defined home, suddenly peopled with lily-skinned ... strangers; even the man who now stood as
Patriarch lost his familiar. Now, the light in the world abated, dying to a spot around Isaac's
feet. Now, endarkened, he trudged through Unknowns, a veritable army of muddied skins, coaled
eyes, barbed fists, and cold sneers.
Once more, his dreaming body clenched with sadness ... and confusion ... and pain ... and ... and
vex. Vex smoldered beneath his ears in the hinges of his jaw. Then, anger flickered, streaking
his throat with fiery fingers. Finally, rage flared, seizing his neck muscles, ridging them until
they almost strangled him from the inside. Yet his skin reposed, a soft wrapper hiding, bottling
his anguish.
Black&white squalled again, washed his view clean. People popped back. Plain people, linked by
the sect's beliefs, set apart by practice. Motley, loose as gravel, a poor foundation for sweeping
judgments. Isaac summoned mud, flooded the scene with it, painted each figure with it, until
apparently the same, they excused his rage, gave it focus — but no outlet.
A crack of light broke the ground at his feet. He peered into the crevasse. Below, a landscape so
luminous that it sparkled, like a crystal of Truth. Teams spanned it, drilling and chanting and
exercising. Clear-eyed and -skinned, they focused on a common purpose. They worked by common
Rules. They rallied to a triad of leaders. Silhouettes at first, lanky, compact, and stocky,
these Governors turned into the light and beckoned to Isaac. They — Governors Sigma, Pi, and Nu
— lifted him out of the dark, welcomed him to the League, gave him a new name and a new Set of
Rules to live by, and delegated him to a Rollkeeper, the first of several.
13'Sao-La awakened. Crystal transmuted to pearl, dream to dawn. Somewhere in there, he had
surrendered to change. He had decided to drown his old adaptations in the New Order. He would let
17'Kuna, as the Governors' delegate, redefine his life again.
He curled toward another side crunch. A door handle rattled. He lunge-kicked to his feet and
oriented on the sound. The building's vehicle door screaked open. A bland-faced Voiceless stuck
his head in and blind-announced, "Delivery for the, uh, Rendezvous of Futures, it says here.
Equipment for a seminar named, uh, 'Broken Glass.'" No heed for 13'Sao-La, he vanished, and
transport automata rolled in, dwarf vehicles, hunched under mini-cranes and cargo beds. They said
"Excuse me, sir" and proceeded to set up a group carrel, with five chairs focused on a wide
curvescreen.
The Voiceless trailed them in. This time, he noticed 13'Sao-La. He twitched his face with a wry
grin, then shrugged it away. "We're late," he mumbled. "Parts came late. Crew came late.
Couldn't get here sooner." He turned away to stare at his machines doing all the work.
13'Sao-La damned this sad Voiceless as a Casualty, then dropped back down to complete his abdominal
exercises. Some things were more fundamental than even a world transforming around him.
The delivery proceeded. Carrels filled the central bay. 13'Sao-La drilled his body. Automata
courteously herded him into the entrance room. He worked on muscle tone and strength, on
flexibility and endurance. He let curiosity about the equipment fill in his thoughts, future
displacing past. Delivery complete, the Voiceless and his minions left, closing the big door
behind them.
13'Sao-La cut short his final stretch, the required end of the Kata-for-Personal-Fitness, then
hurried through the Kata-for-Hygiene in the building's sketchy bathing room. Finally, he strode to
a carrel. He reached across the half-circle table and awakened the keyspace.
A bounded Em-Deh entrance, it focused on Ganj Dareh, the direvnya out there beyond the windows. He
remembered it only as a blur on both sides of the qi-che route coming to this room. He idled
through the menus: three-level schematics of the topography, infrastructure, and buildings;
shadows cutting into public Beobachtung as it recorded the world; the buildings included in
something called "Common-Surveillance Program"; data about people, ages, cultures, numbers;
transport schedules; path and road guides.
Their new arena. There would be no ulama here, no games in sunken I-shaped courts. Instead ...
what? What skills would be needed here? What Rules would apply? What Katas still followed?
Later. Hatch this egg before him. The rest would come. The Governors would see to that.
13'Sao-La dropped into a chair and settled his pachcab hand in his lap. With his serving hand, he
brought the entrance back to its top-level menu. He settled in to study.
He hardly looked up when the others stampeded in, though he did regret having to share ... control
of the entrance, yes ... but even more, the sweet knowledge of their new arena.
