"Yes."
"The Ekumen sponsored that first ship. But it didn't sponsor another expedition from Terra, because the Unists had taken over. They cut communication with the Ekumen to a bare minimum. They kept closing ports and teaching centers, threatening aliens with expulsion, letting terrorists cripple the facilities, keeping them powerless. If a second ship came from Terra, the Unists sent it. I never heard anything about it, Yara. It certainly wasn't announced to the common people."
Accepting this, he said, "It came two years after the first ship left. There were fifty people on it, with a boss maz, a leader. His name was Fodderdon. It landed in Dovza, south of the capital. Its people got in touch with the Corporation Executives at once. They said Terra was going to give all its knowledge to Aka. They brought all kinds of information, technological information. They showed us how we'd have to stop doing things in the old, ignorant ways and change our thinking, to learn what they could teach us. They brought plans, and books, and engineers and theorists to teach us the techniques. They had an ansible on their ship, so that information could come from Terra as soon as we needed it."
"A great big box of toys," Sutty whispered.
"It changed everything. It strengthened the Corporation tremendously. It was the first step in the March to the Stars. Then ... I don't know what happened. All we were told was that Fodderdon and the others gave us information freely at first, but then began to withhold it and to demand an unfair price for it."
"I can imagine what price," Sutty said.
He looked his question.
"Your immortal part," she said. There was no Akan word for soul. Yara waited for her to explain. "I imagine he said: You must believe. You must believe in the One God. You must believe that I alone, Father John, am God's voice on Aka. Only the story I tell is true. If you obey God and me, we'll tell you all the wonderful things we know. But the price of our Telling is high. More than any money."
Yara nodded dubiously, and pondered. "Fodderdon did say that the Executive Council would have to follow his orders. That's why I called him a boss maz."
"That's what he was."
"I don't know about the rest. We were told that there were policy disagreements, and the ship and the Legates were sent back to Terra. However.... I'm not certain that that's what happened." He looked uncomfortable, and deliberated for a long time over what he was going to say. "I knew an engineer in New Alyuna who worked on the Aka One." He meant the NAFAL ship now on its way from Aka to Hain, the pride of the Corporation. "He said they'd used the Terran ship as a model. He may have meant they had the plans for it. But he made it sound as if he'd actually been in the ship. He was drunk. I don't know."
The fifty Unist missionary-conquistadors had very likely died in Corporation labor camps. But Sutty saw now how Dovza itself had been betrayed into betraying the rest of Aka.
It saddened her heart, this story. All the old mistakes, made over and over. She gave a deep sigh. "So, having no way to distinguish Unist Legates from Ekumenical Observers, you've handled us ever since with extreme distrust.... You know, Yara, I think your Executives were wise in refusing the bargain Father John offered. Though probably they saw it simply as a power struggle. What's harder to see is that even the gift of knowledge itself had a price attached. And still does."
"Yes, of course it does," Yara said. "Only we don't know what it is. Why do your people hide the price?"
She stared at him, nonplussed.
"I don't know," she said. "I didn't realise ... I have to think about that."
Yara sat back, looking tired. He rubbed his eyes and closed them. He said softly, "The gift is lightning," evidently quoting some line of the Telling.
Sutty saw beautiful, arching ideograms, high on a shadowy white wall: the twice-forked lightning-tee grows up from earth. She saw Sotyu Ang's worn, dark hands meet in the shape of a mountain peak above his heart. The price is nothing...
They sat in the silence, following their thoughts.
After a long time, she asked, "Yara, do you know the story about Dear Takieki?"
He stared at her and then nodded. It was a memory from childhood, evidently, that required some retrieval. After a bit longer he said definitely, "Yes."
"Was Dear Takieki really a fool? I mean, it was his mother who gave him the bean meal. Maybe he was right not to give it away, no matter what they offered him."
Yara sat pondering. "My grandmother told me that story. I remember I thought I'd like to be able to walk anywhere, the way he did, without anybody looking after me. I was still little, my grandparents didn't let me go off by myself. So I said he must have wanted to go on walking. Not stay at a farm. And Grandmother asked, 'But what will he do when he runs out of food?' And I said, 'Maybe he can bargain. Maybe he can give the maz some of the bean meal and keep some, and take just a few of the gold coins. Then he could go on walking, and still buy food to eat when winter comes.'"
He smiled faintly, remembering, but his face remained troubled.
It was always a troubled face. She remembered it when it was hard, cold, closed. It had been beaten open.
He was worried for good reason. He was not progressing well with walking. His knee would still not bear weight for longer than a few minutes, and his back injury prevented him from using crutches without pain and risk of further damage. Odiedin and Tobadan worked with him daily, endlessly patient. Yara responded to them with his own dogged patience, but the look of trouble never left him.
***
Two groups had already left the Lap of Silong, slipping away in the dawn light, a few people, a couple of minule, heavy-laden. No bannered caravans.
Life in the caves was managed almost wholly by custom and consensus. Sutty had noted the conscious avoidance of hierarchy. People scrupulously did not pull rank. She mentioned this to Unroy, who said, "That was what went wrong in the century before the Ekumen came."
"Boss maz," Sutty said tentatively.
"Boss maz," Unroy confirmed, grinning. She was always tickled by Sutty's slang and her Rangma archaisms. "The Dovzan Reformation. Power hierarchies. Power struggles. Huge, rich umyazu taxing the villages. Fiscal and spiritual usury! Your people came at a bad time, yoz."
"The ships always come to the new world at a bad time," Sutty said. Unroy glanced at her with a little wonder.
In so far as any person or couple was in charge of things at the Lap of Silong, it was the maz Igneba and Ikak. After general consensus was established, specific decisions and responsibilities were made by them. The order and times at which people were to depart was one such decision. Ikak came to Sutty at dinnertime one night. "Yoz Sutty, if you have no objection, your group will leave four days from now."
"All of us from Okzat-Ozkat?"
"No. You, Maz Odiedin Manma, Long, and Ieyu, we thought. A small group, with one minule. You should be able to travel fast and get down into the hills before the autumn weather."
"Very well, maz," Sutty said. "I hate to leave the books unread."
"Maybe you can come back. Maybe you can save them for our children."
That burning, yearning hope they all shared, that hope in her and in the Ekumen: it frightened Sutty every time she saw its intensity.
"I will try to do that, maz," she said. Then—"But what about Yara?"
"He'll have to be carried. The healers say he won't be able to walk any long distance before the weather changes. Your two young ones will be in the group with him, and Tobadan Siez, and two of our guides, and three minule with a handler. A large party, but it has to be so. They'll go tomorrow morning, while this good weather holds. I wish we'd known the man would be unable to walk. We'd have sent them earlier. But they'll take the Reban Path, the easiest."
"What becomes of him when you reach Amareza?"
Ikak spread out her hands. "What can we do with him? Keep him prisoner! We have to! He could tell the police exactly where the caves are. They'd send people as soon as they could, plant explosives, destroy it. The way they destroyed the Great
Library of Marang, and all the others. The Corporation hasn't changed their policy. Unless you can persuade them to change it, yoz Sutty. To let the books be, to let the Ekumen come and study them and save them. If that happened, we'd let him go, of course. But if we do, his own people will arrest and imprison him for unauthorised actions. Poor man, he hasn't a very bright future."
"It's possible that he won't tell the police."
Ikak, surprised, looked her question.
"I know he'd made it a personal mission to find the Library and destroy it. An obsession, in fact. But he ... He was brought up by maz. And..."
She hesitated. She could not tell Ikak his grave-secret any more than she could tell her own.
"He had to become what he was," she said finally. "But I think all that really makes sense to him is the Telling. I think he's come back to that. I know he feels no enmity toward Odiedin or anybody here. Maybe he could stay with people in Amareza without being kept prisoner. Just keep out of sight."
"Maybe," Ikak said, not unsympathetic but unconvinced. "Except it's very hard to hide somebody like that, yoz Sutty. He has an implanted ZIL. And he was a fairly high official, assigned to watch an Observer of the Ekumen. They'll be looking for him. Once they get him, I'm afraid, whatever he feels, they can make him tell them anything he knows."
"He could stay hidden in a village through the winter, maybe. Not go down into Amareza at all. I will need time, Maz Ikak Igneba—the Envoy will need time—to talk to people in Dovza. And if a ship comes next year, as it's due to, then we can talk on the ansible with the Stabiles of the Ekumen about these matters. But it will take time."
Ikak nodded. "I'll speak with the others about it. We'll do what we can."
Sutty went immediately after dinner to Yara's tent.
Both Akidan and Odiedin were already there, Akidan with the warm clothing Yara would need for the journey, Odiedin to reassure him about making it. Akidan was excited about leaving. Sutty was touched to see how kindly he spoke to Yara, his handsome young face alight. "Don't worry, yoz," he said earnestly, "it's an easy path and we've got a very strong group. We'll be down in the hills in a week."
"Thank you," Yara said, expressionless. His face had closed.
"Tobadan Siez will be with you," Odiedin said.
Yara nodded. "Thank you," he said again.
Kieri arrived with a thermal poncho Akidan had forgotten, and came crowding in with it, talking away. The tent was too full. Sutty knelt in the entrance and put her hand on Yara's hand. She had never touched him before.
"Thank you for telling me what you told me, Yara," she said, feeling hurried and self-conscious. "And for letting me tell you. I hope you—I hope things work out. Goodbye."
Looking up at her, he gave his brief nod, and turned his head away.
She went back to her tent, anxious yet also relieved.
The tent was a mess: Kieri had thrown around everything she owned in preparation for packing it. Sutty looked forward to sharing a tent with Odiedin again, to order, silence, celibacy.
She had spent a long day working on the catalogue, tiring, tricky work with the balky and laborious Akan programs. She went to bed, intending to get up very early and see her friends off. She slept at once. Kieri's return and the fuss of her packing scarcely disturbed her. It seemed about five minutes before the lamp was on again and Kieri was up, dressed, leaving. Sutty struggled out of her sleeping bag and said, "I'll be at breakfast with you."
But when she got to the kitchen, the people of the departing group weren't there having the hot meal that would start them on their way. Nobody was there but Long, who was on cooking duty.
"Where is everybody, Long?" she asked, alarmed. "They haven't left already, have they?"
"No," Long said.
"Is something wrong?"
"I think so, yoz Sutty." His face was distressed. He nodded toward the outer caves. She went to the entrance that led to them. She met Odiedin coming in.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh Sutty," Odiedin said. He made an incomplete, hopeless gesture.
"What is it?"
"Yara."
"What?"
"Come with me."
She followed him into the Tree Cave. He walked past Yara's tent. There were a lot of people around it, but she did not see Yara. Odiedin strode on through the small cave with a rough floor, and from that to the short passage that led to the outside by the doorway arch they could get through only on hands and knees.
Odiedin stood up just outside it. Sutty emerged beside him. It was far from sunrise still, but the high pallor of the sky seemed wonderfully radiant and vast after the spaceless darkness of the caves.
"See where he went," Odiedin said.
She looked down from the light to where he pointed. Snow lay ankle deep on the floor of the cirque. From the arch where they stood, boot tracks led straight out to the edge and back, tracks of three or four people, she thought.
"Not the tracks," Odiedin said. "Those are ours. He was on hands and knees. He couldn't walk. I don't know how he could crawl on that knee. It's a long way."
She saw, now, the marks in the snow, heavy, dragging furrows. All the boot tracks kept to the left of them.
"Nobody heard him. Sometime after midnight, he must have crept out."
Looking down, quite close to the arch, where the snow was thin on the black rock, she saw a blurred handprint.
"Out there at the edge," Odiedin said, "he stood up. So that he could leap."
Sutty made a little noise. She sank down squatting, rocking her body a little. No tears came, but her throat was tight, she could not breathe.
"Penan Teran," she said. Odiedin did not understand her. "Onto the wind," she said.
"He didn't have to do this." Odiedin's voice was fierce, desolate. "It was wrong."
"He thought it was right," Sutty said.
NINE
THE CORPORATION AIRPLANE that flew her from Soboy in Amareza to Dovza City gained altitude over the eastern Headwaters Range. Looking out the small window, due west, she saw a great, rough, rocky, bulky mountain: Zubuam. And then, soaring up behind it, the whiteness of the barrier wall, hiding somewhere in its luminous immensity the cirque and the caves of being. Above the serrate rim of the barrier, level with her eye, the horn of Silong soared white-gold against blue. She saw it whole, entire, this one time. The thin, eternal banner blew northward from the summit.
The trek south had been hard, two long weeks, on a good path but with bad weather along much of the way; and she had had no rest in Soboy. The Corporation had their police watching every road out of the Headwaters Range. Officials, very polite, very tense, had met her party just inside the city. "The Observer is to be flown at once to the capital."
She had demanded to speak to the Envoy by telephone, and they had put the call through for her at the airfield. "Come along, as soon as you can," Tong Ov said. "There's been much alarm. We all rejoice at your safe return. Akan and alien alike. Though especially this alien."
She said, "I have to make sure my friends are all right."
"Bring them with you," Tong said.
So Odiedin and the two guides from the village in the foothills west of Okzat-Ozkat were sitting together in the three seats behind hers. What Long and Ieyu made of it all she had no idea. Odiedin had explained or reassured them a little, and they had climbed aboard quite impassively. All four of them were tired, muzzy-headed, worn out.
The plane turned eastward. When she next looked down, she saw the yellow of snowless foothills, the silver thread of a river. The Ereha. Daughter of the Mountain. They followed the silver thread as it broadened and dulled to grey all the way down to Dovza City.
***
"The base culture, under the Dovzan overlay, is not vertical, not militant, not aggressive, and not progressive," Sutty said. "It's level, mercantile, discursive, and homeostatic. In crisis I think they fall back on it. I think we can bargain with them."
Napoleon Buonaparte called the English
a nation of shopkeepers, Uncle Hurree said in her mind. Maybe not altogether a bad thing?
Too much was in her mind. Too much to tell Tong; too much to hear from him. They had had little over an hour to talk, and the Executives and Ministers were due to arrive any minute.
"Bargain?" asked the Envoy. They were speaking in Dovzan, since Odiedin was present.
"They owe us," Sutty said.
"Owe us?"
Chiffewar was neither a militant nor a mercantile culture. There were concepts that Chiffewarians, for all their breadth and subtlety of mind, had trouble understanding.
"You'll have to trust me," Sutty said.
"I do," said the Envoy. "But please explain, however cryptically, what this bargain is."
"Well, if you agree that we should try to preserve the Library at Silong...
"Yes, of course, in principle. But if it involves interference with Akan policy—"
"We've been interfering with Aka for seventy years."
"But how could we arbitrarily refuse them information—since we couldn't undo that first tremendous gift of technological specifics?"
"I think the point is that it wasn't a gift. There was a price on it: spiritual conversion."
"The missionaries," Tong said, nodding. Earlier in their hurried talk, he had shown the normal human pleasure at having his guess confirmed.
Odiedin listened, grave and intent.
"The Akans saw that as usury. They refused to pay it. Ever since then, we've actually given them more information than they asked for."
"Trying to show them that there are less exploitive modes—yes."
"The point is that we've always given it freely, offered it to them."
"Of course," Tong said.
"But Akans pay for value received. In cash, on the spot. As they see it, they didn't pay for all the blueprints for the March to the Stars, or anything since. They've been waiting for decades for us to tell them what they owe us. Till we do, they'll distrust us."
Tong removed his hat, rubbed his brown, satiny head, and replaced the hat a little lower over his eyes. "So we ask them for information in return?"
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