The Persistence of Memories - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe by Jon Chaisson Page A

energy.
    Someone like Natianos Lehanna, he
shivered.
    “Goddess,” he mumbled to himself, moving away
from the others. He realized he was still twiddling that cigarette
in his hand, and decided to light it up.
    He was bothered by what he’d said earlier.
That voice he'd used on Caren...the one that had told her to be
patient. Where had he summoned those words? More to the point,
whose voice was it? It was of course his voice, but it did
not sound even remotely like him. It sounded all too calm, too
confident. He ruled out the Shenaihu side of his cho-nyhndah spirit
for the moment; he didn't think it had a voice other than a series
of angry grunts and bleats. This was something different. It was
ancient and sacred. And it scared the hell out of him.
     
     
    Saisshalé. Where had he heard that
name before?
    Poe let the name float through his thoughts
as he stared at the large vidmat on the far wall, slowly pacing
through the channels. It was just past eleven and all the networks
had switched over to NewsComm feed for the next two hours. It had
been almost two weeks, and the Awakening and the failed Ascension
were still hot topics. He'd fielded all kinds of questions from the
personal to the profane during those first days, and he’d responded
to each one with the scripted ARU report released to the public. He
had no reason nor the temptation to reveal anything else at this
time.
    Then Saisshalé appears, and all his
cho-nyhndah senses and emotions are set off at once. Irritation.
Anger. Disgust. Fear.
    Fascination.
    The man had appeared, and his spirit had
yearned to follow him without question.
    Call me Saisshalé .
    Grand Reptile, in Anjshé. A reference to an
old, forgotten vengeance god.
    Words spoken within had never resonated like
that, spiritually and physically. A name alone would not
have brought up his defenses, and yet somewhere deep inside, it was
a fearful name indeed. What manner of spiritual being was he? Poe
had tried to sense his presence — he'd grown accustomed to sensing
the difference between the warmth of a Mendaihu and the chill of a
Shenaihu — and felt nothing. He sensed less than nothing...he
sensed a void . The absence of both spirits. Perhaps he held
an altogether different kind of spirit. Not cho-nyhndah, and
certainly not the strange mix of yin-yang spirits that encompassed
them.
    What manner of spirit was this Saisshalé?
    He had come close to asking Chief Inspector
Farraway that very question during the Questioning sessions earlier
today. It had not been the right time though, and more importantly
he didn't want bring up something that could have been more trouble
than it was worth. Caren had taken him on and had put up an
honorable fight, and that was enough for now.
    He pulled out a cigarette from the nearly
empty pack on the coffee table and lit it up. This line of thinking
was threatening to keep him up tonight. He was too tired to do
anything else, yet still too shaken by the day's events to let it
go just yet. He took a long drag and looked out the long set of
windows that made up the eastern wall of the living room. If he
chose to, he could get off his ass and sit by those windows like he
always did. He would calm himself by watching the late night
pedestrians, the automated delivery transports, or just the
near-silence of an empty street. From the couch, however, he could
only see one thing, and it was not what he was in the mood for
looking at right now. The Mirades Tower glimmered from its hundreds
of lower office windows, still wide awake and watching everyone.
The damned place was hard to hide from sometimes.
    — vrddddddddit——vrddddddddit—
    The vidmat channel froze its image, small
white numbers flashing in the corner, asking if he wanted to answer
the incoming call. He rarely got calls on the vidmat this time of
night. Who would be calling him? Caren, perhaps? No, she always
reached him by comm. He let it ring one more time, just enough for
the vidmat to track the call.