Allie's War Episodes 1-4(63)

It had been Kat, of course, who broke the silence.
“Why doesn’t SCARB mind our lack of sponsorship?” the Russian seer said. “Well...perhaps, cub, we do them the courtesy of not killing them out of deference for the preciousness of living light. You see, what you call ‘sponsorship,’ we call slavery...unless you know a way to own a seer’s aleimi without owning the seer? If so, please share it with the rest of us. You truly will be our savior then, oh holiest of Bridges!”
Some in the room hid smiles, but I also saw anger aimed in my direction.
“Would you like sponsorship, cub?” Kat asked then, her lips lifted in a cold smile. “Shall we call SCARB for you? Perhaps they mind your lack of sponsorship now, eh?”
Only later did I muster the nerve to ask Ullysa what aleimi meant.
Turned out, aleimi was the seer word for the light bodies I’d seen behind the Barrier, those structures and geometries I’d seen on Revik and other seers when he’d brought me into that other place. They also called it ‘light’ more generally, or ‘living light.’
Ullysa further defined aleimi as, “the ability to carry light.” When I asked if this was like ‘soul,’ she shook her head. She said that humans and seers were equal in soul, but they differed in this ability to carry and manipulate light. No direct translation of the word existed in English, she said. It was strictly a seer word.
I was learning that even their language had a Barrier component, meaning words that contained meanings that required an ability to see with the added structures in their light. Generally speaking, their words carried more compound meanings and nuances in general, with one of their words needing two or three to translate into English. Ullysa said more about this, about words being symbols and all symbols having unspoken layers that exist inside a shared cultural understanding. Since more than half of all shared seer understanding came from Barrier-consciousness—a split consciousness unshared by humans—translation of many of their core symbols to human language remained literally impossible.#p#分页标题#e#
I even understood this, in part.
I’m not sure how understanding it helped me, though.
Ullysa and I now stood in a cement, sound-proof bunker that had been built into the hill itself, complete with a firing range and rows of storage lockers that held everything from ammunition to plant seeds to casks of water and enough food for everyone in the building to eat for at least a few years. Ullysa jokingly referred to it as their “ark.”
She stood behind me, looking like a movie star even in protective glasses and with soundproofing mufflers over her ears.
“You should let Revi’ help you with this,” she said loudly over the sound-deadeners, repeating herself for the fifth time.
I nodded, staring at the target.
When Ullysa clicked at me, I glanced over at her face.
“Why will you not speak to him?”
“I really don’t want to bother him right now, Ullysa,” I said.
“Why?” the woman said, exasperated. “Because of Kat? You threw her at him, and now you complain when he uses her to cope with—”
“Hey!” I held up a hand. “Come on! I really don’t need to know about his ‘coping’ methods, if that’s all right with you...”
With Ullysa, I’d given up pretending I didn’t care where he slept.
That very first morning I’d woken up in Seattle, I’d entered the kitchen after my shower, wearing borrowed clothes and following the smell of coffee and faintly burned toast. There, Kat and two others, Ivy and the African-looking seer from the night before, looked up from where they lounged on barstools, leaning on a high, marble counter next to platters of eggs and toast. Ullysa followed me inside the kitchen, too, almost as though she’d been waiting for me to vacate the bathroom.
I avoided Kat’s stare, focusing on the eggs and trying not to notice that I could still feel Revik, like a faint scent in my light.
Briefly, hunger had overshadowed the other thing I felt.
All three seers looked up when Ullysa entered the kitchen behind me, but it was the African-looking one who focused right off on the empty space above my head, presumably noticing the same thing that had captivated Ullysa earlier. After scanning me thoroughly with a sharp gaze, she glanced at Ullysa with raised eyebrows, then at Ivy.
Ivy only smiled, making a shrug-like gesture with her hand before lifting a mug of coffee to her lips.
Kat gaped above my head in open disbelief.
“He’s awake,” I said. I met Kat’s eyes. “You can see him, if you want.”
Ullysa stiffened. Shock wafted palpably off her light.
The African woman and Ivy had exchanged looks as well. None of them spoke, but I felt their minds crackle around me. My words snapped Kat back to her usual hard demeanor.