5. voice

[rickitikitarr]

[Ricki has been passed over in this week's event- he isn't nearly trustworthy enough for the powers this week to have to begun to reflect his way. So, in the absence of any other mayhem or hysteria, it's been sort of a dragging week for him.

His answer had been to ensconce himself firmly in one of the library back rooms, and to tear his way voraciously through another shelf of the history section. Which leads, quite late one evening, to him activating his feed to explain, in the hushed tones most appropriate for the small hours of the night;]

Some time in the early 1600s in Japan, a young woman had a rather illicit relationship with a Chinese pirate lord. The unlikely pair had a son who they christened Zhèng Chénggōng.

[His accent is so adept as to be potentially noteworthy.]

Our story finds him in the waters between Xiamen and Taiwan. At that time, Xiamen was a young port city, whose traded goods included silver, imported from Spain into China. This trade route was a ripe target for local pirates, in particular, for some reason, the Dutch. They snuck their boats in among the myriad of little islands at the mouth of the Nine Dragons, the Mekong River, or Cửu Long, we called it, where I was growing up. Zhèng Chénggōng, also known as Koxinga, succeeded in fighting about the nastiest kind of warfare you can imagine, for that era. The battles were nasty, but eventually the Dutch fled Taiwan, and the man himself had accomplished this while embroiled in some of the ugliest dynastic struggle imaginable.

A Ming loyalist, he had narrowly survived his own father's terrible betrayal to the Qing family- which I believe, though I haven't been able to ascertain this as being completely true- ended with his father's imprisonment and the then-Emperor being thrown into a well. Zhèng established a small province in the South of Taiwan, where his family held the territory for a little over twenty years, until some business with an illegitimate heir resulted in too much political instability, and the little province was reabsorbed into Taiwan proper.

Oh, here it is- it is rumoured that Koxinga's death was the result of a sudden fit of madness. He had ordered his guards to execute his son. The young man had apparently had an affair with a wet-nurse... of some relative or another, it isn't specific, and when he was disobeyed, Koxinga flew into the sort of rage that could stop a man's heart. He was only thirty seven. That's what one source says; the other just bluntly states malaria.

There was a statue of Koxinga in Xiamen when I was there last, though it may very well be torn down by now. I remember seeing the stonework, but never being aware of the proper story.

[And, now he is, and so is anyone else up late and listening on this drowsy, slow-drifting spacey night.]

It was whispered to me then, somewhat illicitly, that the man had been raised by freed Muslim slaves, and may have practiced that faith in secret, though the books all mention Confucianism.

I do wonder.

[He always feels most imaginative during the very witching hour of night.]

Comments

[rickitikitarr]

Right, I'd forgotten you have a son. Is he still around, or-?

[Curious.]

[routemistress]

[She puts the soldering iron down, picks up her comm and angles it to show Ricki a photograph pinned to a corkboard above her workbench: it's a small redhaired man in his forties, intensity written into every line of him, from his piercing blue eyes to his unsmiling mouth. He has the wiry, hardmuscled look of someone that's had to fight his life every step of the way - Iris has a touch of that herself, for all she carries it lightly and cheerfully.]

That's my Walter. I actually met 'im here - in this life. 'E used to be our Chris' warden - 'e's gone back to New York for now.

[rickitikitarr]

Right, right, I've seen Chris around.

[Not talked to him yet, but he mad an impression.]

It's funny, trying to guess who's a graduated inmate and who's not.

[routemistress]

Walter was too, 'e were Dick Grayson's inmate when I first came 'ere. Our Chris is second generation graduated.

[This amuses and delights Iris: a genealogy based on the shifting instability of Barge life is a wonderful and fitting paradox for her chosen descendants.]

They're generally the best wardens, to be honest.

[rickitikitarr]

It'd be nice to end up with someone without a towering morality complex.

[Though frustrating in its' own way, he's sure.]

[routemistress]

[She has to smirk at that, because she agrees.]

No, that really wouldn't suit you, would it? Would you put me into that category?

[rickitikitarr]

I don't really know you.

[He points out, with a little shrug.]

And I don't know what happened the other day.

[routemistress]

Very diplomatic.

[Iris' face isn't made for dry humour, but she does what she can.]

I wanted to show you why I don't 'ave leashes on my dogs, that's all. I didn't - you're better'n I thought at hiding, aren't you, my love?

[rickitikitarr]

You're a telepath? That's what I was feeling?

[routemistress]

More an empath, really. I can't read minds - well, not much, not human ones. Dogs are nearer me natural wavelength, though.

[rickitikitarr]

So when I touched your hand, what happened?

[He wants to know what she saw, what she took from it.]

[routemistress]

You ran off like a squirrel, lovey, and I 'adn't been expecting that. I weren't looking at yours, you know, I were just showing you mine.

[rickitikitarr]

That's not what I'm talking about. I mean you reached out, with some sort of mental muscle that other people just don't have-

[Looking for a blow by blow.]

[routemistress]

Humans mostly don't, no. Well, there's Jean, but even that's not quite the same.

Aye, I did. It's easier'n explaining, I s'pose, and you might've noticed I'm not a patient woman, sweetheart.

[She belongs to a species that naturally keeps in touch all the time: no matter how long Iris spends around humans, she never quite gets used to their interior isolation.]

[rickitikitarr]

Are you too impatient to explain now?

[Pushing, one last time.]

[routemistress]

I thought that's what I were doing? It's just 'ow my brain works, my darling. They say Gallifreyans originally only communicated that way. Me own theory is they only developed spoken language so they could lie in it.

[rickitikitarr]

Why don't you begin with what a Gallifreyan is?

[Originally he'd have guessed a nationality. He's thinking he was wrong about that, though.]

[routemistress]

Gallifrey's the homeworld of the time lords, petal. Big orange planet in the Kasterborous system. You won't 'ave heard of it in your time, I expect.

[rickitikitarr]

And that race developed the ability by touching consciousness, rather than using spoken words, which is akin to what you did to me.

[routemistress]

[She nods.]

We're descended from - they call 'em ancestral hounds. They're a bit like your Terran hyenas. We're pack animals by nature - much more'n humans.

[rickitikitarr]

And they were psychic as well?

[Trying to herd her back to that topic.]

[routemistress]

I'm not psychic - well, not like Jean or someone is. I told you. You're sitting there like every human ever does wondering if I know all your secrets - I probably couldn't if I tried, and I didn't try anyway.

[rickitikitarr]

Of course that's what I'm wondering. I didn't know such things were possible until the moment it happened. I've never felt my mind in relation to anything else before.

[It had been like the difference between touching the world, and seeing it on a screen, understanding his first sense of something outside himself.]

[routemistress]

'Ow could I ever be trusted with anyone 'ere if I went around doing stuff like that, Ricki? I'm sorry I startled you so bad. It's easy to forget how isolated humans are - I'm used to Cain and Babs and they're used to me and I forget other people aren't. I'm someone that reaches for contact 'cause I don't like being alone. But you don't poke in at what people don't show you. It's a violation.

[rickitikitarr]

Yes, it would be.

[And he'll just have to take her word for it, he supposes, that she couldn't, that she didn't. He lets out a little breath, and nods, ready to leave it at that.]