Treason Page 0,72

see that no matter how tired we get, no time has passed, so we think we must be wearing out early. But think-- doesn't it feel as if we've been traveling forever? Maybe our bodies are fine, and it's time itself that's gotten a little sluggish."

"Lanik, I'm too tired even to understand you, let alone think about what you said."

"Rest, then," I said to Father.

Father drew his sword and lay on his left side, so his right hand, which held the sword, would be free to move into action the moment he awoke. He was asleep in a moment.

I also lay on the grass under the trees, but I didn't sleep. Instead I listened to the rock. Listened through the barrier of living soil and the voices of a million trees, and heard:

Not the voice of the rock, but rather a low, soft, almost unthinkable whisper, and I couldn't understand. It seemed to speak of sleep, or could that have been my own mind? I tried to hear the cries of the dying (though usually I tried to shut them out) and this time I heard, not a crush of voices crying in agony together, but rather distinct, low calls. Tortured, but slow. Tortured and hating and fearing but endlessly delayed and separated and distinct, and against their rhythm my own heart was quick, racing, panicking, and yet I was at rest and my heart beat normally.

I let myself fall into the soil, which gave way only reluctantly until I was down resting against the rock. Stones slid away behind my back; deep roots slithered off to let me by; and then harsh rock gave way and cushioned me gently and I heard:

Nothing unusual at all. The voice of the rock was unchanged, and what I had heard near the surface was gone.

I was confused. I hadn't merely imagined what I heard before, and yet now, next to the rock, all was as it had been in Schwartz a few weeks before.

I rose again, listening all the way, and gradually the song of the earth changed, seenud to slow, seemed to separate into distinct voices. The earth, too, seemed more sluggish to part and let me by. But at last I was on the surface, my arms spread, floating as always on what could only seem to me to be a slightly-thicker-than-normal sea.

Father was standing, watching me, the expression on his face indescribable. "My God," he said, "what's happened to you!"

"Just resting," I answered, because there was little else to say.

"You were gone, and then you rose up out of the earth, like the dead coming back out of the grave."

"I forgot to tread water," I said. "Don't worry about it. I had to find something out. I-- Father, in Schwartz I learned to do some things. Things that could never be exported through an Ambassador, because they're a way of-- thinking, and talking to-- things that other people never think of talking to."

"I'm afraid of you, Lanik. You aren't-- you aren't human anymore."

I knew what he meant, but still it stung to have him say it. "That issue was decided when I sprouted tits and Homarnoch declared me a rad."

"That was--"

"Different," I said, finishing his sentence. "Because then I was less than human, and now you think I'm more. But neither one is true, Father. I was human all along, either way. This is just one thing that can happen to a human, one thing that a human being can do. Not a god, not a devil. A human."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm a human, and I can do it."

"You were gone for nearly an hour it seemed, forever it seemed, Lanik. How did you breathe?"

"I held my breath very tight. Father, forget what you saw me do. Let me tell you what I learned. There's something about the soil here. Something that slows things down, or makes it seem that way. It's as if-- I don't know. As if there's a bubble, enclosing us and the earth and trees around us in a sphere, and inside that bubble, time goes slower. Or no, that doesn't work. It's as if time goes faster for us. We walk farther, we do a day's worth of walking, and yet to the world outside, only a few minutes have passed. While we're inside, all the rest of the world seems to go slowly, but it doesn't. It's the same as always."

"If we really walked as far as it feels like, that's one