Tongues Read online

  “Of course,” Enkiru said. “What other way would there be?”

  “Probably none.” In all Seamus’s experience with various galactic religions, there never was any objective proof that a deity would speak with a believer. “But then perhaps you are listening in the wrong way.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How do you imagine your god speaking to you?”

  “I’m not certain. I know there are many ways the gods speak. Portents, signs . . .”

  “And you have never seen any portents or signs?”

  Enkiru considered. “I suppose I may have seen many. I can’t say.”

  “But you never suspected your god was attempting to talk to you?”

  “I—I wasn’t certain. How could I be certain a god was speaking to me?”

  Indeed, Seamus thought. He regarded Enkiru, who was still looking at him with an expression of wide-eyed hope, as if he could solve all his problems. But how? The boy was ahead of his time, a true skeptic in a society that wasn’t ready for them.

  “Hanní?” Enkiru said. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,” Seamus said.

  “I know it’s improper to ask . . . but I would like to know . . . how does your god speak to you?”

  Your god. How could he answer that? Buddha, Allah, God, Tkltk . . . over the last decade he’d been an unwilling participant in a half a dozen faiths, depending upon the institution that had held his confinement contract. But none of them had been his god. None of them had ever spoken to him.

  “I—”

  “Hanní?”

  Could he tell him the truth? He’d told the truth on Menaus, a world that had never conceived of a society without rigid caste distinctions. They’d asked out of politeness for him to teach them English, and when he had, the utter absence of caste pronouns had led to some very uncomfortable questions . . . and ultimately, to a bloody rebellion.

  Ready or not, though, ten years later the caste systems on Menaus were weakening.

  It had to happen sometime. It took a cataclysmic jolt to a society’s ethos to move them forward. And that jolt usually came from an outsider trying to do the right thing for one individual.

  Enkiru was only one individual, but sometimes it only took one. Seamus took a deep breath. “I have no god,” he said. “No god speaks to me.”

  Enkiru’s eyes went wide. He got up and took a few steps back from Seamus. “You—you . . . but how? How can you have no god and still be hanní? How can you have no god and still speak the kamin-na?”

  Seamus couldn’t look the boy in the eye. “I didn’t, really. They were just words.”

  A series of emotions played on Enkiru’s face. Seamus had never realized before that betrayal looked much the same on every species’ face.

  Without another word, Enkiru turned and ran away. Seamus watched him go.

  He couldn’t just fade away, never to be seen again, much as he would have liked to. It was not a culturally appropriate thing to do.

  He thanked the villagers for their hospitality, and informed them that he would be leaving first thing in the morning. Enkiru was nowhere to be found.

  Hands shook him awake. Seamus opened his eyes. At first he thought it was Enkiru entreating him to wake, but when he blinked he saw that it was Alan, and he remembered. He’d disconnected from the android hours ago.

  “Dr. Martinez! Dr. Martinez! Come quick!”

  Seamus sat up, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “What is it?” he asked. His words came out slurred from sleep.

  “You have to connect to the android, now! The Onomayu village is on fire.”

  “What?” Seamus bolted out of bed then. Not bothering to dress, he followed Alan out of his room. Together, the two of them sprinted down the corridors of the retreat center.

  “What happened?” Seamus demanded on the way.

  “I don’t know.”

  They burst into the control center. Seamus wasted no time in buckling himself into the android’s harness. He activated the relays—

  —and suddenly he was in the Onomayu village, experiencing an odd case of déjà vu. Someone was shaking the android awake, roughly, just as Alan had woken him only moments before. It took several seconds for Seamus’s perception to acclimate to the android’s. At length, Seamus realized that it was not Enkiru who was attempting to wake him. It was one of the other Onomayu men.

  “At last,” the man who was shaking him said. “I was frightened you—”

  “What’s going on?” Seamus cut him off.

  “The worship hut is on fire,” the man said. “Come quick.”

  It was a very short trip from the dormitory hut to the center of the village where the worship hut lay. As Seamus emerged into the open air, he instinctively shielded his eyes from the glare of the blaze.

  The worship hut was completely engulfed in flames. The thatched roof sent tendrils of flames into the night sky of Onomayu. All six of the support beams with the carved faces of the Onomayu gods were wrapped in an orange glow that obscured the carvings.

  The entire village had come out to see the inferno. Men and women stood, naked, gazing into the flames. Some gazed in silent horror, some moaned, some sobbed silently.

  Seamus scanned the crowd. At first he could detect no sign of Enkiru. But then he spotted the boy, standing at the forefront of the onlookers. He gazed raptly into the flames.

  Seamus started toward him. He drew up beside the boy. Enkiru’s eyes flickered for a brief second as he noted Seamus’s presence, but he did not take his eyes off the blaze.

  “What happened?” Seamus demanded.

  “You helped me to hear. At first I was angry, but then I understood. Your No-god spoke to me. He’s been speaking to me all my life, and I never realized.”

  Seamus felt the words like a physical blow. He moaned softly; the sound of it was swallowed by the crackling of the flames. “Please, Enkiru, tell me you didn’t do this.”

  “It was the only way for them to hear, too.”

  Seamus shook his head. “No.” He fought down the urge to vomit. “No—” It was the only word that would come, so he latched onto it and repeated it, over and over again.

  Enkiru pulled his gaze from the inferno and turned to Seamus. Just as he did so, one of the support beams buckled, and a section of roof of the worship hut caved in. “I want to come with you.”

  Seamus stared at him in horror. “What?”

  “I want to come with you,” he repeated. “Be with you on your travels. There’s nothing for me here now.”

  “But—” Seamus shook his head. “You don’t understand. You can’t go where I’m going.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—you just can’t. I can’t explain it to you. Please, listen to me. This—” he indicated the blazing wreck of the worship hut. “This is not what I meant. You must understand . . . this is not the way to listen to the No-god.”

  Enkiru frowned. “You don’t understand?”

  “Understand what?”

  “Look at them.” He pointed to the sobbing villagers, to other Onomayu children crying in their parents’ arms. “They understand now. They finally hear me. This is my kamin-na.”

  Seamus could only watch as the fire continued to burn.

  Huntsberger found him on the observation deck, standing at the massive one-way window and gazing down into the valley. Seamus heard the reverend come in, but did not turn around to greet him.

  Huntsberger crossed the carpet and came to share Seamus’s vantage point. “Is the android back?”

  Seamus nodded.

  “And the boy—is he gone from the village?”

  Again Seamus nodded. “They banished him for life. He can never return to his home.”

  “Unfortunate. Still, I can’t say I blame them.”

  “I can’t, either,” Seamus said, and sighed.

  “I’ve brough
t you some good news.” Huntsberger raised a data pad he carried in his right hand. He handed it to Seamus. “A judge on Earth rescinded your sentence to eight years under an approved confinement contract, which you’ve already served. Congratulations. You’re a free man.”

  Seamus took the pad and stared at the document. His eyes read the words, but his mind failed to comprehend them.

  “Any ideas where you might go first?”

  Seamus gave up trying to read his release document. He lowered the pad. “Actually,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I thought I might stay here for a while.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll have hundreds of religious tourists arriving here any day looking for an authentic religious experience. Somebody’s got to teach them to listen to the kamin-na. They’ve got to know how to listen to it right.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. But may I ask what prompted this decision?”

  Seamus shrugged. “People still need a hanní.”

  The reverend nodded, and left. Seamus returned to looking out the window.

  About the Author

  Brian Rappatta’s short fiction has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, both online and in print. His recent publications include Shock Totem #1, Steampunk Tales #1, the first venue for original short fiction designed exclusively for the iphone, and the anthology Zencore: Scriptus Innominatus (the 7th volume of the Nemonymous anthology series, which was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Anthology). His novelette, “Tongues”, won 2nd place in the annual Writers of the Future competition in 2006. He is a graduate of the Odyssey Writers Workshop, where he studied with World Fantasy Award winner Jeanne Cavelos and #1 New York Times bestselling author George R.R. Martin.

  Tongues

  by Brian Rappatta

  Infinite Jester Publications

  Copyright 2006 by Brian Rappatta

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.