House of Reeds ittotss-2

by Thomas Harlan

  "This will seem odd," she said, shrinking back into the cliff, trying to leave Parker as clear a shot as possible, "but each time I get lost in this city, I find you. Aren't you Malakar the gardener? You were meditating by the blue shell, down in one of the neighborhoods below."

  The creature's nostrils flapped open and there was a buzzing hum of sound. "Weak eyes do not deceive," the Jehanan said, cocking her head to one side. "You are the Disturber-of-Forgotten-Things – the one with such hungry thoughts. Now – hoooo – what would you be hungry for in this dilapidated old house?"

  "Isn't this the oldest building on Jagan?" Gretchen kept her hands down. She could hear Magdalena breathing over the comm link, and the red dot continued its frantic little dance on the creature's scaled hide. "I wanted to see for myself."

  Malakar's eyes, still nearly entirely in shadow, glinted. A long, clawed finger extended, pointing at her vest and belt. "Your little machines, they sing of this old shell? Tell its age? Even if no one living could swear such a truth?"

  Gretchen nodded slowly. "Sometimes. If the object is made of the proper kind of material. Wood or metal are best. Do you have something you would like me to test?"

  Malakar regarded her for a moment, seemingly puzzled. "Hoooo – when last we met, you could not properly speak without moving your foreclaws. Now you keep them to the ground. Odd and odder yet. Have you been injured?"

  "No. I'm -"

  Don't tell it anything! Magdalena whispered on the comm. Just let Parker flash it, and then you can get out!

  Gretchen sighed, looking down at the ground and taking a breath. For all her bluster and menacing shovel, the Jehanan did not feel dangerous. Not like it couldn't just wrench my arms out of their sockets or bite my head off.

  "Don't shoot unless I'm actually attacked," she whispered into her jacket collar.

  "What do you say?" Malakar leaned close, eye-shields half-lidded against the glare of the sun. "There are only bizen-grass shoots there, no one can…" The native grew still. Gretchen looked up, meeting wide green irises. "Hoooo…This old one is not imagining being watched by distant eyes? My old hide is itchy, as if a xixixit hung in the trees above a quiet lawn where I lay sunning… Am I too old, my mind troubled by phantoms? Tell me, hungry soft one, tell me if I suffer night-fears while my eyes are open?"

  Gretchen shook her head before realizing the creature might not grasp the cue. "My friends are watching us from the fin-towers. One of them has a weapon aimed at you. If you try to harm me, he will kill you before you can reach the tunnel."

  "Hooo…" Malakar settled back on her haunches. "Quick of eye and sure of hand, this friend. A long reach across eight pan to scratch my hide."

  "A machine – a weapon – firing an explosive, hide-piercing shell," Anderssen said, squatting comfortably. "Though in truth, you might lunge and strike me down as quickly as he can act."

  "Then we both end, hungry-thoughts, leaving only an unexpected feeding for the yi birds who roost on the crumbling shell of this house."

  "I do not wish to feed the yi birds," Gretchen said in a serious tone. "Not today."

  "No one ever does," Malakar allowed, a deep trill echoing at the back of her throat. "They are often hungry and must eat of the bitter naragga. Then here we sit, trapped as HГєnd and Gukhis were above the fiery pit, each unwilling to loose claw from claw and so save themselves."

  "Are you compelled to keep me here? Why not let me go?"

  "Hooo… Could such an old, wrinkled hide as mine take the punishment the Master of the Garden would mete out for letting an asuchau human tread these sacred halls? Oh, my eye-shields would bleed for such an affront!"

  Anderssen peered at the Jehanan, wondering if her translator were working properly. Something very much like cynical bitterness echoed in the words. I don't think this old creature cares overmuch for the 'Master of the Garden'… "Then let us make an equitable exchange – I will do something for you, and you will help me, poor lost human that I am, find my way home. As you did before, which was very gracious of you."

  "As I did?" The gardener blew a mournful note with its nostrils. "Gracious? You are oiling my scales like a short-horn wishing mating privilege! Hooo… I was not cracked from the shell to be impolite. A lost hatchling is everyone's business to see home safely. But you…you and your little machines…can you truly tell the age of a thing?"

  Gretchen nodded, trying to hide a relieved smile.

  Don't trust it… Magdalena muttered in her ear. The khaysan drifts in the river, pretending to be an old scratching log, waiting for an unwary kit to come all thirsty to the water…

  "I can try. What do you want to test? Is it far from here?"

  Malakar made a rumbling sound and rose up, joints creaking, using the shovel for a cane. A long arm reached out, and slung the leather bag over one pebbly shoulder. Metal clanked against metal. The long head turned, regarding her with a lambent emerald eye. "I will show you an old thing, as old as I have ever seen, if you wish to follow."

  Gretchen stood, brushing dirt from her work pants and held up the comp to the skyline. There was a warbling squeal in her earbug – the sound drowned out Magdalena cursing luridly and trying to warn her hunt-sister not to go into the cave!

  "I will."

  Anderssen's boots rang on polished stone, and she reached out to take hold of a railing embedded in the wall. Below her, the old Jehanan was treading carefully on terribly worn steps, testing each one with her weight before proceeding. They had spent a long time pacing down abandoned tunnels and descending broad curving rampways. Gretchen wanted to ask how deep they had come, but the gardener refused to speak, only stomping along with the leather bag over one shoulder, lost in her own thoughts.

  These chambers – they seemed vast, though Gretchen hadn't attempted a sonosound reading to gauge their size – swallowed the faint radiance of a single blue light carried by the Jehanan. They followed a smudged path across an endless dusty floor. Anderssen wasn't sure, but it seemed the ground was made of a polished ceramic.

  Someone has come this way before, she thought, feeling more and more oppressed in spirit as another vaulted doorway loomed out of the darkness before them. But only one set of footprints, I think, repeated over and over.

  They turned at the doorway and did not pass on into the limitless darkness beyond, but followed along the wall instead. Gretchen caught sight of a row of sconces, much like the ones in the tunnels above, but these were dark. They did not hold any of the blue eggs. Malakar's steps slowed and they entered a smaller hall, this one of a size Anderssen guessed a Jehanan might find comfortable. Vague shapes loomed in the faint light, and the scuffed path wound among piles of debris – broken machinery, if her eye encompassed the splintered wooden gears and cracked wheels properly – and into a still smaller passage. This, she thought, was an actual hallway and a far cry from the cyclopean proportions of the chambers outside.

  Her medband beeped quietly, the sound almost lost in the endless curve of the passage.

  "Malakar…" she whispered, afraid to disturb the tomblike silence. "This air is poor. You shouldn't stay long…my band can counteract the toxins in the air, but you…"

  "I have passed this way before. After a twelfth-sun passes one begins to hear voices, or see flashes of light where there are none. This is the place I wish to show you."

  The old Jehanan stood before a circular door in the wall. Gretchen blinked, realizing the entire hall was lined with similar openings. All were closed. Malakar leaned heavily against the wall, claws on either side of a recessed panel.

  "What is on the other side?" Gretchen unzipped the collar of her field jacket and tugged out two breathing tubes. Pressing one clip to her nose, she let the other rest against her chin. "Were these the first chambers cut into the hill?"

  "No…" the Jehanan sighed, slumping before the door. "There are other levels below, but the air is so poor, even the strongest takes ill and the weak die. Torches fail, and even the gipu" – she raised the glowin
g blue egg – "sputter and fall dark."

  Malakar brushed dust away from the panel. "When I was only a short-horn fresh from the egg, this was a busy place. Often I was brought here – the air had not turned, there were lights in the dark places, some of the elders even held conclave here, as their ancestors had done. But then the gipu began to fail and shadows spilled in from the walls. Foul air rose from below and everyone moved up and away, closer to the gardens, to the terraces."

  Another mournful hooo escaped the creature's slitlike nostrils. "Now my hide grows tight and brittle, and what was once clear in mind fades." A claw tapped on the door, making a sharp tinking sound. "The last Master of the Garden to tread these hallways is long still. The new Master sees only the sky, gardens, and bright chambers with tall windows. He cares only for the favor of the kujen and filling his claws with shatamanu. There is talk among the tough-hides of closing off these tunnels, filling them in, keeping the short-horns from mischief.

  "When I was fresh from the egg, this chamber was filled with gipu-light, almost as bright as day. Our voices were very sweet, when we sang…"

  The creature fell silent, crouched before the door. Gretchen waited patiently, sitting at the edge of the circle of light. The oxygen tube under her tongue made a quiet hiss-hiss sound as she breathed.

  "That's odd," Parker said, squinting at a portable holovee sitting on his stomach. He had been flipping through the channels, half out of his mind with boredom. The windows were dark; night had come, bringing heavy clouds, but no rain, only a tense, oppressive stillness. Inside, without the cold night wind to stir the air, the ozone-stink of the comps and surveillance equipment made the room feel stifling.

  Gretchen had failed to reappear on their scanners. Magdalena was certain the woman had been taken captive and horribly murdered. Parker didn't think so, but he was beginning to wonder what they would do if she were. Go in after her, I guess. But how would we find her in there?

  "Hmm?" Magdalena was in her nest, legs and arms curled across her chest, clutching her tail and staring at the ceiling. "You don't like the dancing monkeys here?"

  "The shows are fine. Unintelligible, but fine." Parker clicked back to the previous channel. "The Imperial 'cast channel is showing some footage taken by one of the Jehanan stations, with a translation running over the original voice track? But they don't match up."

  The Hesht rolled over, staring at him in mild interest. "So?"

  "So," Parker said, sitting up. "The news 'caster said the footage was of an anti-Imperial demonstration in one of the southern cities – the port of Patala I think. But that's not what the Jehanan narration said – they said the 'demonstrators' were some kind of local religious festival – one of those slice-of-life bits – but I guess down south they set things on fire to pay homage to their gods."

  "Huh. That does seem odd. You think the Imperial 'cast just got a bad translation?"

  "Maybe…" Parker scowled. I should have kept one of those rifles. I didn't and now we might need it and I don't have it.

  He set the holocast set aside and paced to the nearest window. Miserable, he wedged his shoulders in beside a thick bundle of cables running up to comm-scanning antennas mounted on the roof of the building. The city below was filled with faint lights – the flickering yellow glow of lanterns and candles, here and there the dull red of bonfires or forge chimneys – a far cry from the jeweled splendor of human cities. The hill of the mandire, in comparison, was entirely dark and silent.

  "Mags – how long are we going to wait for her?"

  "As long as it takes," the Hesht growled, lying back down and fiddling with her earbug.

  Parker heard a high-pitched whining sound and craned his neck up. A low layer of clouds blanketed the city, gleaming softly in the lights from below. An aerocar, he thought, feeling a sharp stab of envy. We need an aerocar – be easy to land on the top of the hill and snatch Gretchen from the jaws of death if we had an aerocar. If we had an aerocar, there would be something for me to fly. He scratched the back of his head, suddenly tired of waiting.

  "She's in trouble, kit-cat. We're going to have to go in there and get her. I'm going out."

  "To do what?" Magdalena's yellow eyes fixed on him. "We are supposed to wait."

  Parker picked up his jacket. "Get some things we might need later." When we have to bug out of town. I know we're going to have to leave all a'sudden, with the lanterns and whistles of the keisatsu shrilling behind us.

  The Hesht made a hissing sound, but did not stop him from leaving.

  "Somewhere below," Malakar said, rousing itself, claws rasping on the floor, "lie many rooms filled with pushta. Thousands of them, each filled with more words than a single Jehanan could read in a whole lifetime. Your clans must have such things, where histories, songs, stories of the old, are graven?"

  "Yes." Gretchen blinked awake, her interest sharpening. An old library? "Can you read them?"

  The old Jehanan shook her narrow head slowly from side to side. A long arm reached out and dug into the leather bag, removing a rectangular metallic plate. "These are pushta I stole long ago and hid in the terrace. I hoped to learn their secret, to open them up, to see the flowing words gleaming in my hands." Malakar scooted the plate across the dusty floor towards her. "They are ruined, as are the ones lost below in darkness."

  Anderssen picked up the plate with careful, gloved fingers and examined each surface in turn. A double cluck of the tongue cycled her goggles through a wide range of frequencies and light sources. Nothing was incised on the outside, but she could see an interface of some kind on one end and a recess where a long, claw-tipped thumb might press a control.

  "Did the pushta fail all at once," she ventured, "or one at a time, until none were left?"

  The old Jehanan hunched her shoulders. "Such knowledge was lost long before I hatched from a speckled egg. There was once a book, handwritten, on pypil leaves, which described a means of turning the glowing pages, but the leaf of the pypil does not last in dampness."

  "Did this fit into a machine?" Gretchen pulled a compressed air blower from the inside of her jacket and gave the stippled interface a squirt. Malakar's eyes rose at the puff of dust, and then frowned as Anderssen cleaned the rest of the plate with a swab. She looked up, wondering if the wrinkled expression on the creature's face was avarice or longing. I would be gnawing straight through the arm of such a slow creature!

  "I was frightened," the gardener admitted, hanging her head. "Some things I snatched from shelves and fled. Even when I was barely horned, the air in the deep was poisonous."

  Gretchen set the plate down and unwrapped a comp octopus she'd been carrying in her pocket. "Some of my kind," she said, making conversation, "are digging in the ruins at Fehrupurй. They say there was a planet-wide war six or seven hundred years ago, one which crashed a great civilization…"

  "Arthava's fire," the creature rumbled. "The credulous say he challenged the will of the gods, scratching at the doors of heaven, making edicts to guide all Jehanan to a right path in the place of the old religions – and they humbled him with quenchless fire and burning rain and deadly smokes which covered the land for an age. Foolish tales told by those who do not have the wit to look beyond their food bowl! No gods were needed to bring ruin upon us…"

  "The truth is known? Beyond this place, I mean?"

  Malakar hooted sadly. "Some learned men know. The kujen knows. He sends his servants to dig and pry in the dead cities, searching for trinkets… They have even been here, poking and prying! The Master tells them secrets he should not! Things entrusted to us… Worst, we have forgotten, or lost, the long tale of the clans, that stretching back to the earth which gave us birth, to the first shell cracking in the hot sun. But the Fire is still hot in our minds, sharp and hard." A bitter trill issued from the back of her throat. "Each time we look to the sky and see your shining rukhbarat race overhead, parting the clouds, we remember what has been lost."

  Gretchen plucked a set of leads from the o
ctopus and began testing each stippled point on the plate. All of them were dead. No current the octo can recognize. Better let the comp try. She wiggled the octopus's main interface onto the comp, tapped up a broad-spectrum power testing routine and set everything back down.

  "There are stories about the Arthavan period? When your people had aerocars and built the fin-towers and great highways? Before the Fire consumed your civilization? Were the pushta working in those times?"

  "Perhaps." Malakar scratched her claws on the floor, making doodles in the dust. The passageway seemed to have grown darker and Gretchen eyed the gipu with concern. The radiant egg was getting dimmer. "We recall fragments, scraps of shell and hide – there is only one history which can be read – and that is precarious, precious, and perhaps lost forever. But I do not know if that history is from the time of Arthava, or from before, when our race came to this world for the first time."

  Anderssen looked up sharply, one hand outstretched to hold her oxygen tube next to the gipu, which brightened visibly as fresh air hissed across its surface. "What remains? Another book?"

  The gardener twisted, pointing at the sealed door with a foreclaw.

  "There," she said, voice rumbling low, almost beneath the limit of human hearing. "A cruel jest – and a reminder to the great to tread warily in the world, for even the most glorious monument may be crushed beneath the stepping-claw of time." Malakar swiveled back, brushing scaly fingers over the plate wrapped by the softly humming octopus. "Pypil leaves erode, pushta fail, inscriptions wear away in the wind and rain, the memories of Jehanan fade… I can tear the pages of yourMйxica books with ease…but sometimes the simplest things endure."

  "Malakar, what is in the room?" Gretchen shivered. "Why is the door closed?"

  "There are paintings on the walls," the Jehanan said, sighing out a long hoooooo. "They show many scenes, but most striking are those of seventeen great ships descending from the sky. Golden Jehanan step forth and they are garbed like kings, like heroes. They fight terrible monsters and ferocious beasts with spears of lightning, laying low all who contest their dominion. Cities of emerald and silver rise from plain and mountain. They feast on the most savory food, they bear many young, they rule the world as gods. Oh, mighty is their aspect!"