Chapter #10Sulva's Purpose by: Seuzz   "You're not usually this careless, Kali," you snap at her.
"It's only a flower, Will," she snaps back. "From my mother's grave."
"The dirt came from a cemetery."
"Hallowed ground."
"Pious wishes. If every prayer was efficacious, every beggar would be a Stellae."
She turns on her heel and crosses her arms. You tell yourself she has some reason for anger: You've crashed in on her in the middle of one of her few remaining architecture jobs, and you're accusing her of almost letting something very bad happen when she couldn't have foreseen it. But, of course, you're also excited, for you are rather frightened.
"Kali, I'm sorry I yelled. I haven't even really explained it all."
"You certainly haven't, Will. If you can be civil about it, please do so."
You take a deep breath.
"Well, you couldn't have known what would happen. You know this business, it's almost all one-of-a-kind crises. But you left--" You catch yourself. "Min-jun was alone, and bored, and without having any idea what he did, he embodied a revenant in that African mask of yours. A revenant, Kali, and an animated one. It talked to him. And the revenant came out of that flower pot."
She turns and stares. "I had a haunted flower pot in my studio, is that what you're saying?"
You roll your eyes. "If you want to put it that way."
She snorts. "Well, it is a new one, I'll grant you that. And I've been looking for new story material--"
"And if you want a story, I can give you a story. Since you're having a hard time believing the one I just gave you."
She presses her lips together and looks at you skeptically from under half-closed lids.
You're in the offices of her client--a hot new software company that wants a new office park, and has the money for Kali's very expensive services--and you glance around. There will certainly be a security camera, though you can't spot it, but you feel you have to impress it all on her. "Lemme talk to you in the men's room," you murmur. "I've got something to show you." You can't imagine a restroom being bugged; and if you could you'd never be able to change in a public place again.
But you're paranoid enough that you keep your face to the corner of the bathroom after Kali has followed you unwillingly in, and keep your head ducked as you turn around to show her Will Prescott's face. "So you're remembering what it was like to be my student, and the kinds of trouble one could get into," she says, sounding unimpressed.
"This is my old face, Kali. My real old face. The one I came to you in was reversed, remember?" You flip your hand back and forth. "We couldn't undo it. But this is my original face. Still seventeen years old. I got it back last night."
"How?"
You tell her about the visitant, and how you absorbed it, and of the world and terror it escaped from.
"That's the reason Sulva brought him to me," you say. "I'm pretty certain. I wouldn't have recognized the signs up in your studio, if I didn't have--" You swallow. "Some pretty horrible memories to draw from. If I'm excited, it's because I'm scared, Kali. That was a big-ass thing Sulva did, which tells me it was a big-ass crisis that needed averting. I think I got it taken care of. But don't tell me 'It's just a haunted flower pot.'"
"I see," she says. "What I don't see is how even a possessed mask could have been the threat that you say your other self faced--"
You clench your fist. She notices.
"But your point is well-taken. I will have a long talk with Min-jun. I hope you didn't frighten him too badly."
"So do I. But I hope I scared him enough. I didn't have a katana, or I'd have shown him Miko's face."
She stares back, then chuckles.
* * * * *
She cuts her visit to the client short and accompanies you back up to Glasgow. Min-jun is just where you'd left him that morning--his bedroom--and you wonder if he took your admonition to not move a little too literally. Kali tells him only that she has returned early, and though she is very gentle with him, you can tell he thinks he's stored up a world of trouble. You're a lot more cheerful with him, and make a point of smiling and laughing all the time that you lounge with them in the kitchen. But he still seems very frightened.
So when dinner is over, Kali turns to you with a secret smile. "Perhaps you'd like to take Min-jun into the living room and tell him some stories of when you were my pupil, Will, and of the trouble you got into."
"She attracts us like flies, Min-jun," you say to him. "You, me, Joe. Troublemakers all. Kali, have you ever had a student who didn't almost blow up the world?"
"One or two," she says quietly, and you don't press it.
You gesture Min-jun to follow you, which he does reluctantly but without obvious fear, and sits where you point. "So, last night I showed you one of the things I can do," you say as you relax opposite him, crossing your legs. "I got a few more, but that's the main one. Anyway, Joe found me, like he found you, and he sent me to study with Kali. She was in Los Angeles at the time."
"Joe was how old?" he asks. Kali has asked you to keep him speaking in English, and you oblige.
"My age. But he started early, I started late, later even than you. I was in the process of trying to blow up the world, but Joe and Frank slapped the dynamite outta my hands and bundled me off to Kali's. But like I said, you saw what I can do. I'd started to do it. It's a long story, but we'll call it 'puberty'. You got hormones, Min-jun?" He reddens. "Yeah, I did too. My body was changing, and pretty radically. So I'm in Kali's apartment, and one morning I wake up looking like this."
Your clothes seem to billow out, but it's because you're shrinking. Min-jun swallows hard at the sight of Miko Toyotomi.
"You like her?" you ask with a dimple in your cheek. "Her name is Miko. I didn't show her to you last night, because I only wanted to scare you half to death, not all the way there. She's a Malacandran too. Also Catilindrian. Catilindrian, Min-jun. You know them?"
Now hard fear does show in his eyes. "Metal's uranium," he says in a whisper.
"That's right, and I think Miko's metal comes wrapped in a cesium shell. And she's Japanese, Min-jun. Isn't that just the cherry bomb on top? Would you like to meet her?"
He hugs himself.
"So I wake up in my bedroom looking like this. And guess who's in the next bedroom over. That's right, this girl, herself, in the flesh." You point to your face. "LA got hit with an earthquake that morning, but the seismologists could never pin down which fault it was. It was mine, of course." You lean forward to pinch his knee. "I'd much rather have done what you did than what I did. So forget about it. Listen to Kali, but remember that in a couple of years last night will just be a story to laugh over, like mine." You return to Nick Martin's form.
* * * * *
That breaks the ice with Min-jun, and he loosens up, and you don't even notice when you both switch to Korean. Kali does, of course, when joins you, but her initial bemusement soon turns to irritation. "He has to practice his English, Will," she chides you.
You snort. "Someone looking and sounding like her should be more cosmopolitan," you tell him, still in Korean, and continue in that language, to Kali's consternation and Min-jun's delight.
You discover he's quite blunt, even tactless, in his questions, asking about what you can change and how much and how it works. You tell him the basics of it all. It takes you a bit to realize who he reminds you of, and the realization is again due mostly to your renewed acquaintance with your high-school self. He's a lot like Caleb: inquisitive without self-consciousness, and plain-spoken. It makes you nostalgic, and you shift into your very old self. "This is what I looked like when I met Kali," you say. He turns shy for a bit, but being in your old body gives you some of your old adolescent sass, and you and he become fast friends after you race him back to Kali's office to play some games on her computer--and to surf for porn. You redden and refuse, though, when he asks you to turn into a girl and show him some real-life tits.
* * * * *
Evening deepens to night, and you beg off spending it there, and instead change into Nick Martin before catching a very late flight back to London. You tell Min-jun you'll see him in a few months.
Frank, naturally, asks about the trip, and you tell him all about it, even though you're rather exhausted. He listens with interest, but just grunts over it, since it's all over with. You change into Marta and go to bed and make love a couple of times.
The next morning he leaves before you do, for you've some errands to run before meeting him at the office. You're in Marta's form when you close the door behind you and set off for the bus stop. You've only gone a few yards when you become aware that you're being shadowed by a man in grey. He's not very good at it, either.
Possibly he's only interested in the pretty girl, but you pause before a plate glass window, to contemplate your reflection as you straighten your top and skirt, and to consider whether or not to confront him.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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