Stavros looked down in confusion. What have I done?
Ghirra awaited his twin’s response, his handsome face grim as he eyed Stavros guardedly.
He doesn’t like me much either, noted Stavros with a creeping satisfaction that faded as he began to wonder if this was proof of some involvement between the Master Healer and his Terran colleague. He pushed this inappropriate worry from his mind as Aguidran guided her brother back to the table with a firm hand. She slipped the cloth bundle from his grasp, set it back on the table and urged him to continue the unveiling. Ghirra hesitated, disapproving, then did as she bade him. He folded aside the corners of the fabric to reveal a ragged triangle of sparkling lavender rock.
Stavros sensed the familiar slippage inside his head. He gripped the hard edge of the table, seeking reality reinforcement, then stared at the rock and back at his hands that had been so recently struggling to describe a rock. And not just any rock. A rock of exactly this color and crystalline formation.
That rock! That’s lithium! It has to be!
At his side, Liphar molded a gasp into words. “Guar rek!”
Aguidran nodded gravely.
The rock was as Megan had described it: pale, coolly glittering against the soft fabric and polished wood, very beautiful.
Ghirra must have lifted it from Clausen’s pack. Why did he bring it here?
Stavros glanced up to find the Master Healer studying him with that same speculative gaze that his sister had pinned him with a moment earlier. He felt like a moth on a specimen board and returned Ghirra’s scrutiny purely out of self-defense.
Apart, he had seen brother and sister as opposite extremes: stem Aguidran who was never heard to laugh, and handsome Ghirra, always with a smile and a gentle word for the world. But seeing them together, it seemed that they drew in toward some invisible center to mirror each other more exactly. Ghirra now, taking on some of his sister’s hard-edged gravity, came to share the power of her presence. Stavros was forced to consider him seriously, even to wonder how he could not have done so before. He had never, as Susannah had suggested, gone up to the Physicians’ Hall to observe the Master Healer at work.
Because you’re a jealous fool, that’s why…
Stavros waited, half resentful, half abashed. Finally Ghirra picked up the triangle of rock. Reaching his long arm across the table, he set it down between the linguist’s hands.
“Do you know what this is?” he demanded softly.
The precision of his English wording unsettled Stavros’s resistance further. He eyed the healer tentatively, reluctantly impressed. “I think so. I think it’s a lithium ore.”
“Lithy-um,” Ghirra repeated. “Yes. She said this.”
Liphar reached to touch a hesitant finger to the rock. “Guar rek,” he murmured lovingly.
“Guar rek?” Stavros had not heard the phrase before.
But Liphar was lost in his contemplation of the rock. He cupped both hands around it protectively, smiling into its crystalline facets.
“This is old words,” said Ghirra with gentle dismissal. “Priest words. Now we say ‘gorrel.’ ”
Gorrel. Food? Gorrel rek. Food of the goddesses? Oh, come on. Yet a sure instinct told Stavros that here was a mystery ripe for revealing. “Old words?” he asked.
“The PriestWords,” Ghirra repeated, and this time Stavros heard the phrase differently, as a true descriptive rather than a dismissive. “They are from long time ago.”
A root language, preserved like Latin through the priesthood, though bearing less resemblance to the modern tongue than Latin did. The “old words” must be very old indeed. The seemingly alien and untranslatable words imbedded in many of the songs and rituals had led him to suspect as much, but he thought it curious that no one before Ghirra, not even Liphar, the priest-in-training, had been either willing or able to confirm his theory. His estimation of the Master Healer rose another large notch. “ ‘Guar’ means ‘food?” he asked. “The rock is the Goddesses’ food? I don’t understand.”
Ghirra sucked his lean cheek, clearly seeking an improved translation. “SisterBread.” he stated at last. His shoulders hunched loosely and dropped. “Old words.”
Liphar’s nervous fingers had returned to their telling of the malachite bead on his wrist, but his concentration remained with the rock. Old words! Stavros reined in his excitement. If he could just keep the information coming, at some point it would begin to make sense. A key to translating all those untranslatables could be a key to the origins of the Sawl mythohistory. “I’d like to know more about these ‘old words,’ GuildMaster. Can you enlighten me?”
But Ghirra straightened away from the table without answering and came around to straddle the end of Stavros’s bench. So close, he was a substantial presence. Though the healer was as lean as any Sawl, Stavros could imagine in him, as in his sister, a physical strength to contend with. Stavros half turned to face him, sharply aware of Liphar at his side and Aguidran leaning against the table with folded arms. He slid a hand along the edge of the bench to push against Liphar’s thigh.
Liphar glanced up, distracted from the rock by the sudden silence and the tension in Stavros’s grip. “Ibi…” he began placatingly, but the Master Ranger hushed him brusquely.
Ghirra reached, wrapped the rock in his lithe surgeon’s fingers and held it up for emphasis. “What does he with this?”
Stavros swallowed. Ghirra’s manner implied no threat, but rather a moral imperative to tell the truth. “You mean Clausen?”
“Clauzen, yes. Why does he want this?” The Master Healer set the rock down on the bench between them and sat back a little, folding his arms in an exact reflection of his sister behind him. “You know this?”
Stavros met the healer’s direct, thoughtful gaze, then dropped his head in relief. At last! He knew he could make this man understand. “Yes, I know. I was just trying to explain to Aguidran…
“Explain to me.”
Now that there was a chance the full implications of his news might be understood, Stavros dreaded the moment when those implications took hold in the healer’s consciousness. He imagined the reproach and horror and rage. He nodded weakly and plunged in. “That rock, the substance in that rock, the lithium, is very valuable on… where I come from. We don’t have very much of it there and we need it for our… industry. Here on Fiix, it would seem, there is a lot of it. Danforth’s probe… his, ah, studies told him that from the distance of my home world.” He paused. Ghirra was listening intently, nodding encouragement. His expression told Stavros nothing of what he understood and what he did not.
Stavros sighed, a release of long-stored tension. “Emil Clausen works for a company—that’s sort of like a guild—a group of powerful men. They sent him here to dig up all this rock and take it home with him, where it will make both him and them a great deal of profit.”
“All.” The healer refused himself the laziness of incredulity.
“Every ounce and gram he can get his hands on.” Stavros sighed again, though it felt almost like a sob as the words began to spill out unconsidered. “And he’s not going to go after it with a wooden pick and shovel, believe me. He’ll bring huge machines in here that can extract every last molecule of lithium and anything else he happens to want from this planet’s crust, and the parts they don’t dig up, they’ll use as a trash heap or a spaceport or a parking lot—”
Ghirra raised a restraining hand. “Please. I do not understand this.”
Stavros took a breath but barely slowed. He could not now, until he had purged himself of the burden of this dreadful knowledge. He swung his leg over the bench and stood. The movement was a release. “Imagine the land all tom up, the Dop Arek shredded for as far as you could walk in a hundred cycles. Imagine parched mountains of rubble, the growing fields reduced to dust, the air unbreathable, watercourses rerouted, polluted. Imagine noisy, dirty shanty towns and cities springing up all over like diseased fungi. GuildMaster, you won’t recognize this worl
d when Clausen gets through with it. He’ll make it unlivable. He may even try to round you up like a herd of hekkers and pack the whole population off to some other planet!” He paced to a stop in front of Aguidran, pointing up at the invisible sky. “Which is why we can’t allow him to tell anyone out there that he’s made his lithium strike on Fiix!”
The Master Ranger sucked her cheek impassively.
“He would not do this in his own Caves,” Ghirra murmured.
Stavros laughed harshly, pacing again. “It’s already been done. Long ago, by those before him. There’s nothing left on Earth except more people than you can imagine, all choking to death on filthy air in buildings built from the resources of other planets.”
Ghirra was struggling with an understanding. “Suzhannah say to me one time about a box. This box has words inside. Knowing.”
Stavros stopped pacing. “Knowledge,” he corrected reflexively as his estimation of the Master Healer rose yet again. Ghirra was making the connections even faster than he had hoped. “The box is called a computer,” he added.
“Also she say the box… the computur, talks. It talks words to friends far away.” Ghirra waited for Stavros to nod his agreement, then added cannily. “But the… computur does not talk now.”
“No. It’s broken, from the storm.”
“Clauzen cannot talk to these far friends now.”
Stavros blinked, but no, he had heard the healer correctly. Hope surged through him once again. First Megan, now this remarkable Saw. Allies were appearing out of nowhere just when Clausen seemed to have won the battle without even a skirmish. He wanted to shout for joy and relief but contented himself with matching Ghirra’s slow, intelligent smile. “And we’ll have to make sure it stays broken until we can figure out a way to stop this man. I was just working that out with Aguidran.” He could not hold back his astonishment any longer. He faced Ghirra earnestly. “GuildMaster, what made you suspicious? About the rock, I mean, and Clausen? How did you know?”
Ghirra picked up the rock and weighed it on his palm. “I know nothing. But this rock… I see Clauzen wants it very much.” He rotated his hand and the chunk of ore flashed lamplight. He glanced up at Aguidran as if seeking her approval of what he was about to say. “But also we need the SisterBread.”
“Yes,” breathed Liphar, who had been listening with increasing confusion and dismay. He recited a line of what his tone suggested would have been a prayer, if the Sawls had prayers.
“ ‘The Sisters gave to us, ah… before the wars,’ ” Stavros translated roughly, “ ‘… their bread, that we might live, ah… survive’?” He looked to Ghirra for confirmation. “Is that right? What does it mean’? How can a rock be bread? Why do you need lithium?”
“That is many questions, ’TavrosIbia,” Ghirra replied. He rose from the bench, looking pensive. “Suzhannah would not say about this.”
“You asked her?”
“Yes.” Ghirra was studying him again.
Susannah’s still determined not to get involved, is that it? he wondered regretfully. Then I was right to keep all this from her.
“She has orders not to talk about it,” he lied.
“Ah, And you do not?”
“I do.” Stavros shrugged. “We all do, but…” The truth was, no one had thought such orders were necessary. He felt the sudden pressure of time. He wondered how long he would be able to keep his campaign against CONPLEX a secret and what Clausen would do to him if he found out. “Look, GuildMaster… Ghirra… you don’t have to tell me why you need the lithium if it’s knowledge you don’t trust me with. It’s enough for me to know that you need it, and that there’s more at stake than I even suspected.”
“Why only you?” Ghirra asked softly.
“What?”
“Why only you know this must not be?”
“Not only me, Ghirra. Megan has seen this happen on other worlds. She was set against Clausen and his company from the beginning. And we can bring some of the others around in time. But meanwhile…” His urgency pushed him onward, past all the answers he wanted, all the questions he was dying to ask. “If you will hear me out, Megan and I have a plan…”
34
“Taylor, I’ll put you in a walking cast when you’re damn good and ready for one, and not before! Do you want to limp like Quasimodo for the rest of your life?”
“Hell, no.” Danforth fretted while Susannah changed the dressings on his wounds. A bowl of herbal infusion steeped fragrantly beside the pallet, its thin curl of steam rising into the shaft of sunlight that fell across his bound and splinted legs. “All these locals running around doing who knows what to me… and you! At least you’re done with the tubes and wires!” he grumped.
“You have ‘these locals’ to thank for being compos mentis so quickly,” Susannah returned.
“And I’m grateful, so get me the hell out of here!”
Susannah sat back warningly, then began to pack her bandaging supplies away in a woven rush basket. Danforth’s big hands grabbed for hers and held them tightly. “Susannah, for the love of god, I really am grateful but I’m going nuts up here in this stone hole! I feel like I’ve died!”
“You nearly did,” she reminded him.
“Granted, but I’m alive now and I need to get out of here!”
Susannah laughed gently. “Taylor, we did miss you around here. Our impatience quotient has foundered drastically while you were away.”
He pushed her hands away from him. “Okay. Go ahead. Torture me. Sabotage my bloody career!” He struggled against the nest of sacking that supported his back. “CRI’s down, I can’t read shit in this lousy light, I haven’t the vaguest idea what’s going on outside…!” He tried to sit up, gasped and eased himself down, tight with agony. “Whew.”
“Tay. Please. In addition to breaking both legs, you nearly lost a lung.”
Danforth clamped his eyes shut in frustration and lay quiet for a while as Susannah continued packing. “He does have fine hands, that healer man,” he said finally.
“I know.”
Danforth sighed. “So how long, do you think?”
Susannah tried to sound encouraging. “You’ll have to stay on your back for a good while yet, but I don’t think you need twenty-four-hour care now that the fever and infections are gone. I’ll speak to Ghirra about getting you moved out of here. Question is, where?”
“I’ve got to be outside,” he insisted weakly.
“Well, Weng’s reestablished base camp under the Lander. I don’t know how she’d feel about you being around to distract Ronnie into playing nursemaid.” She patted his hand and gave his dark cheek a motherly stroke. “But I’ll see what I can do.” She rose, but he held her hand to stay her.
“Is it still clear out there? No clouds?”
She sat down again, smoothing the blanket with her free hand. “Some clouds, coming and going.” She did not want to tell him the exact nature of the clouds’ coming and going, for fear he would demand to be taken outside immediately.
“Ronnie told me there’d been some reports of thunderstorms?”
“Thunder, very far away across the plain. No storms.”
“Yet.” His breathing slowed as he slipped at last toward sleep. “You know, I had a lot of think time out there before the fever got me. Decided I’ve got to hit the problem of this place from a whole new angle. Tabula rasa.”
“I know what you mean,” she agreed truthfully.
“Patterns. Gotta look for existing patterns. Stop worrying about what it should be. There’s something missing from the model, some process, maybe unique, that I should have been looking for instead of trying to force it all into some familiar shape.”
“Ummmh.” Susannah eased her hand free as his hold relaxed. She stood, gathering up the bowl and dirtied dressings.
“Susannah?” Danforth murmured sleepily. “You happen to notice what direction the wind was coming from?”
She smiled at the big man lying as quiescent as a
child. “No, Tay, I didn’t. Around here, you’d best ask a ranger or a priest for that kind of information.”
And this unanswerable seemed at last to drag him into sleep.
As Susannah headed for the hotroom with her bowl and basket, Weng called from the narrow arched entry to Ghirra’s lab. “Something to show you, when you get a minute, Dr. James.”
“Be right with you, Commander.”
She found little Dwingen in the hotroom and put the sterilization of her equipment into his charge. She went back to the lab, where Weng stood in the middle of the floor, gazing up at the crowded bookshelves and stroking her chin as if she were a bearded old man.
Susannah slumped into Ghirra’s padded chair with a dramatic sigh. “Well, Emil was right about the kind of invalid Tay’s going to be. Can you deal with him down at the Lander, do you think? He can’t stand being left alone with nothing to occupy him.”
“Bring him down, by all means, if he’s well enough,” Weng murmured abstractedly.
Susannah decided that Weng was always at her most amenable when most of her brain was off in the higher reaches of contemplation. “Have you had a chance to think about our request to go with the trade caravan, Commander?”
Weng pointed up at the rows of dark volumes. “Do you have any idea what’s in all these books?”
“Yes. Those are the Birth Records.”
“Ah. Every birth is written down, then?”
“According to Ghirra, yes. And I’ve seen Xifa entering new births. It’s practically the first thing she does as soon as she’s sure the mother and child are delivered safely. It’s not exactly eugenics but they are very careful to avoid inbreeding.”
“Yes, I recall Dr. Levy mentioning that.” Weng’s black eyes narrowed. “I wonder how far back these records go.”
“Again, according to Ghirra, all the way.”
The Wave and the Flame Page 31