by Mary Gentle
Molly Rachel said, ‘You don’t get that many ice fields on the equator …’
When the general laugh died down, and she’d grinned appreciatively, she said, ‘Desert, then. How does that tie in with the atmospheric disturbances in communications? Doug, is there anything in your records that illuminates this?’
Doug Clifford let the silence grow. A small, neat man; his hands clasped in front of him and resting on the table. All that self-mocking theatre was curbed now; I saw no humour on his face.
‘Not desert, in either case,’ he stated; and with a nod of acknowledgement to me, said, ‘You’ll have seen reports on an area north of here, that Ortheans call the Glittering Plain. You forget that this isn’t a “primitive” world. It’s a post-technological world. Post-holocaust, to be accurate. I suspect that what they call the Elansiir, in the centre of the southern continent, and the areas north of the Barrens, are fused bedrock. War damage. Plain and simple devastation. You will, I think, find that there is more than one contributory factor to the communications interference, but that the root cause of it is that damage, done in a war that destroyed this civilization’s high technology. Three thousand years ago.’
Ten years ago I stood on a scarp, north and west of the Freeport –
The sun reflects off something in the western distance. At first I take it for water, but it doesn’t end as water does. Where it touches the brown heathland, it ends in streaks. Sharp edges, like cat-ice on a puddle, like splinters. With the sheen of volcanic glass. Then Carrick’s Star clears the haze, and all that horizon blazes with unbearable light.
– overlooking what Ortheans call the Glittering Plain.
The silence that ensued in that upper room had a curious quality, because when someone from the Old World says that to a group of Pacificans, it inevitably raises certain historical tensions. And because the thought of damage great enough to change world climate on Orthe is awesome.
The discussion shifted, moving on to the first results from the demographic team’s surveys, and it wasn’t at all subtle how Douglas Clifford was excluded – Doug and, to a degree, myself. Inevitably. But none the less, it disgusts me.
When I could slip out (a short absence being advisable) I went down to the kitchens to boil Siir-wine, and taste the acrid hot liquid. Clifford’s l’ri-an – Ortheans apprenticed by their telestres to this temporary duty – clustered round the ovens, cooking, talking, playing ochmir. I heard the midday gongs sound while I was there, and stayed to eat, and to play three-handed ochmir with a young male and an ashiren.
‘Need any help up there?’ the young Orthean male said, as I conceded the game and stood to leave.
I smiled at that. ‘All I can get.’
He scooped triangular counters back into the becamil-cloth bag. ‘I hear you may be getting a message from Rakviri telestre soon.’
Chilled, I thought: Jaharien wouldn’t change his attitude – would he?
‘And where did you hear that, t’an?’
‘I heard it in a game.’ His inflection could have applied to ochmir, but it had all the Orthean connotations of intrigue, cabal, challenge, and art.
When I came back into the upstairs chamber, the thin-faced Rashid Akida was on his feet.
‘You’re giving us the go-ahead on Carrick V?’ he asked Molly. ‘Good. How soon will we have an on-world base?’
Pramila Ishida leaned forward. A slight woman, much the same age as Molly, and with an air of deference – she glanced at the Company Representative before she spoke: ‘The local humanoids seem reluctant to lease any territory to us, even on a short-term basis. This is a problem area. It’s riddled with traditional and religious prohibitions.’
Molly nodded. I thought she might bring me in on this, my knowledge being intended to cover such gaps in this ill-documented culture, but she ignored me. She put her long fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face, and glanced round at the assembled team.
‘I may be able to solve that one, if I can swing a small addition to budget. We could bring in one of the unit-construct bases the Company uses on water- or foul-atmosphere worlds. With a sealed-environment base, we can anchor offshore in the river estuary here. End of problem.’
You have to admire the thinking behind that. Even if the casual “small addition to budget” is a chilling reminder of PanOceania’s financial power.
Rashid Akida’s chin lifted. In his thirties, he spoke with the gravitas of a man twice his age. “If I may suggest … all things considered … looked at fairly … is this where you ought to base the team? If we could return to the Kel Harantish settlement –’
Molly cut him off. ‘That’s not possible.’
And then I knew what she would say next. It’s the obvious move for anyone looking at Witchbreed artifacts – even if they are defunct. The canals. The canal system on the Coast, that Kel Harantish controls.
‘The Desert Coast canal system is an example of Witchbreed science.’
‘The evidence is ambiguous,’ Rashid Akida protested. ‘Are you certain this isn’t just a charming irrelevance?’
He indicated a data-tank offprint.
‘From what I gather, the canals were built after the war, and the damage that occurred then. A brave attempt to set up irrigation after the climate changed. But the system is unfinished; it trails off here, to the west … and in the east it comes within forty miles of the Kel Harantish settlement and – stops.’
Molly leaned back. Her long fingers moved, rubbing against the grain of the tukinna-wood table. ‘The archeological teams reported the canals were Witchbreed constructs, and that should be enough to make us investigate.’
Time to be obstructive under the guise of being helpful, I thought. ‘I know why you haven’t suggested it before, Molly. Primarily because it may or may not be functional in any sense that we can understand. And, secondarily, because there are local political difficulties.’
Pramila Ishida spread out a demographic survey. As always, her eyes were lowered. She said quietly, ‘The Coast area is a poverty-line culture. They have a long history of raiding this more prosperous northern continent. My local contact here says this has reached such a point that negotiatory talks are being set up in a Coast settlement. The Company naturally wants to avoid on-world political conflicts.’
And who’s been talking with the takshiriye, then? I thought sardonically. With Douggie and the Morvren triumvirate …
The aquiline Chandra Hainzell said, ‘Isn’t the northern continent a more likely place to find functional technology? If this poverty-line Coast had tech, they’d be using it now.’
The sea mist began to clear, a watery sunlight shining through the lozenge-crystal windows.
‘It isn’t that simple,’ I said. ‘You’ve heard about the areas of war damage – I know we can’t survey them accurately because of the interference, but I’m of Doug’s opinion – and you must remember: these people have a very clear memory of where technology can lead. Where it did lead, in their case.’
Molly nodded. ‘Lynne’s right. These people … they’re not technophobic, as such. There are Witchbreed artifacts in the telestres. It isn’t that they can’t use technology. They won’t. I’ve a strong feeling they could build up a hi-tech civilization in a couple of generations, if they wanted to, but they won’t do it.’
Frustration showed on her dark, smooth features. Then she shrugged: ‘The reason’s obvious. Pramila says this northern continent is prosperous. Fertile. There’s a low population, too; they don’t need hi-tech. Or, I should say, they don’t need it with the urgency that these Coast Ortheans obviously do – if that’s a poverty-line culture, the Company’s got things to offer them, and that’s where we come in. We trade with them.’
For Witchbreed technology?
Oh yes, that’s PanOceania; and I’d wondered how long it would take the Rachel woman to put that at the top of her list of priorities.
‘I’ve got continuing investigations here,’ Molly conclud
ed. ‘Either way, whichever continent we concentrate on, I want results. I want to get an FTL-drone off through Thierry’s World soon. The quicker reports start getting back to home office on Earth, showing progress, the sooner we’ll be officially established here.’
Jan Yusuf, a wiry and suntanned man of indeterminate age, said, ‘The fact that there’s alien technology still extant here doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be able to analyse it.’
Rashid Akida verbally leapt on him. I stayed for a while, listening to conversations as the meeting broke up – listening, I suppose, for something more than blinkered interest. I didn’t hear any. When I saw Molly go out, I followed her down the outer stairs and into the courtyard. The sea mist clung, pearl-pale, to the roofs. The kazsis-vines that clung to walls were beginning to bud, and to bear the nodules that incubate kekri-flies. After the talk and claustrophobia of that upstairs room, it made me want to run and shout like a child.
‘Shit!’ Molly Rachel said. She put her hands in the small of her back and stretched, arching; and then pushed her fingers through that mass of dark frizzy hair. She squinted up at the mist-blurred roofs of the Freeport. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you keep Clifford under control?’
‘You didn’t go out of your way to conciliate him.’
‘No…’ She took a breath: kazsis, the dung of kuru rooting in the mud beyond the archway gate, the brackish dockside water. I looked past her to where a Pacifican – I recognized David Osaka – stood in the street with one of the kitchen’s ochmir players. Was that the l’ri-an I spoke with earlier?
‘You had a quarrel with Blaize Meduenin,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. She tucked her hands under her belt, an oddly Orthean gesture. ‘Lynne, you understand these people. You know what makes them angry, what makes them laugh … I think I’m beginning to see it myself.’
‘No one ever fully understands the alien. It’s not possible. That’s a hard saying, but it’s true.’
With a startling perception, she said, ‘But no one ever fails to understand a part.’
I looked up at the young woman beside me; her black angular height, that direct gaze.
She said, ‘All we’re going to take from them here is something they don’t use, don’t want – that they’re afraid of. They don’t need Witchbreed technology.’
I don’t agree with why you’re saying it, but … ‘That last is certainly true.’
David Osaka walked into the courtyard, glancing back over his shoulder. He said something to the Pacifican woman.
Molly frowned. ‘I can’t see everyone who just walks in off the street.’
‘He mentioned the name of Rakviri telestre.’
‘Send him in. You go upstairs and keep the meeting going.’
I sat back on the wall of the cistern, waiting; but the Orthean who entered the courtyard was not what I expected.
‘Achil,’ the Orthean male said. ‘Earthspeaker. Give you greeting, t’an s’aranthi.’
He stood barefoot in the muddy courtyard, looking at Molly, and finally at me. He was thin – almost at thin as a Desert Coast Orthean – and dark-skinned, and his mane was shaved down to gold fur. Impossible to tell his age. Brown cloth was knotted at the hip, a garment that didn’t cover his back, where the shaven mane went down to a vee at mid-spine; nor the sharp-angled ribs and paired dark nipples, Harur-blades hung from a plain belt. His eyes were wide-set in that narrow-chinned face.
‘What can I do for you, t’an Achil?’ Molly asked.
It was a shock to meet those unveiled eyes: clear as water. His expression changed, but whether it was amusement or disquiet, I couldn’t tell.
‘I have spoken before with s’aranthi,’ he said. His high-arched feet were bare; he seemed oblivious of the cold wind.
The Pacifican woman waited.
‘T’an Rachel, you have visited the Desert Coast?’
Her gaze flicked across to me, an exasperated look that plainly said: Is there anything they don’t find out?
‘Briefly,’ she confirmed. ‘T’an, I understand that you’ve come from Rakviri telestre; if there’s a communication –’
‘I have also spoken with the Earthspeaker Cassirur Almadhera, and with Barris Rakviri.’
Now the Pacifican woman was quite still. ‘Yes?’
‘You must understand, t’an, our place is with the land. With the earth. We are born of it, care for it, return on it. Protect it.’
Return on it … Sharp and real, I saw again the ruined city of the Barrens: heard that scarred mercenary talk of past-memories, of once-lived lives. Except in extremity, or among Earthspeakers, it is rarely spoken of.
‘“Protect”,’ the Pacifican woman echoed. There was a hardness in her tone. ‘What does this have to do with Rakviri and my Company?’
Something in her voice crystallized a realization. You don’t like the Ortheans of the Hundred Thousand, I thought. Just don’t like the culture. I wonder if you know that?
Achil said, ‘We have – long memories, I believe your people would say. And we know why we mistrust all Witchbreed science.’
‘Meaning?’
‘To be plain, t’an – our history is not your business.’
I looked over at that slight figure, standing in the mist-filtered sunlight; caught a glimpse of some private, tragic humour … and decided the pun was both bilingual and deliberate.
‘And Rakviri?’ I said.
‘I have been travelling down the Ai River, from Wellhouse to Wellhouse, and came to visit Rakviri some few days past.’
‘That isn’t what I asked, t’an Earthspeaker.’
For all efforts to anchor discussion in the practical, I could feel the atmosphere change. One forgets – because inexplicable – the very real effect of an Earthspeaker’s presence. Now I felt the cold wind, heard the creak of windvanes and skurrai-drivers shouting in the street outside; all with a sharp intensity. At the arch of the sky the mist was gone. Daystars shone like a scatter of flour. Carrick’s Star was bright. A rashaku called.
The Orthean male stepped forward and touched claw-nailed fingers to Molly Rachel’s forehead. She flinched. He stared into her face.
‘T’an s’aranthi, there are those who say time is not the same for us as it is for you. It may be that we remember our future, not relive our past. Seeing what you bring to Orthe, I have thought, perhaps, that there never was such a race as the Golden Witchbreed – until now. That you, in our future, are the Golden Empire that we foresaw …’
Molly stared back at him, silenced.
‘Then who left all those ruins laying around?’ I asked, acidly.
The Earthspeaker Achil laughed. Head thrown back, delight in the sound of it, but still a certain bitterness there. ‘T’an Christie, give you greeting; the Almadhera said that I should like you.’
Molly Rachel said flatly, ‘Why have you come here, t’an Achil?’
His head went up as he heard human voices from the first-floor windows. The light made the planes of his face harsh, animal, alien.
‘Why, to tell you this, t’an Rachel. Barris Rakviri is come into Shalmanzar Wellhouse for a time, as our custom is. And certain things that he kept with him in the Rakviri telestre-house have also come into Shalmanzar’s keeping. And will stay there. And I think that the Wellhouses will not, at this time, willingly admit s’aranthi.’
‘Damn them!’ the Pacifican woman said, as soon as he had passed the archway gate. ‘If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s alien cult-religions –’
She slammed both hands palm down on the rim of the cistern, the noise of flesh on brick like a gunshot in that small courtyard. A rashaku, startled into flight from the roof, swooped into the watery-blue sky.
I quoted an old Service cliché. ‘When diplomacy meets religion – diplomacy doesn’t stand a chance.’
‘It’s a pity you couldn’t charm that Earthspeaker with the S’aranth name, the way you did Jaharien Rakviri –’ Some remnant of shadow left her eyes. She made no mention of Barris
, or that pale octagonal hall. ‘Lynne, I’m sorry.’
‘I suppose the S’aranth name is as much a liability as an asset, now,’ I said. ‘And … Earthspeakers aren’t like other Ortheans.’
For a second it’s as if the sun-warmed stone of yard and buildings encloses me; as if I stand at the bottom of a well.
Molly Rachel raised her head, shutting her eyes briefly, and then gazed at the clearing sky. ‘I need to be here myself and push for access to telestres. But we also need to open up the Coast area on the southern continent. I can send someone down ahead of me –’
‘I’ll go.’
I can’t stay here in the Freeport. I have been trying to say that Orthe is strange to me but it isn’t. It’s as if I’d never been away – and I have, I’m not Christie S’aranth now, to think so is dangerous.
And then there is Blaize Meduenin … I need time to think it through.
Molly narrowed her eyes, studying me.’ You don’t really know the Coast. Still, none of us do. It’s not a well-documented area. And you can handle Ortheans.’
Not “well-documented”, no. Carrick V is a neglected world … Above me now in this pale stone courtyard are daystars. The sky is full of the Heart Stars that lie on the edge of the galaxy’s core. Look up: it is a crowded sky. Each world of those millions is crowded with life, and we, humanity, we cling to those Home Stars nearest Earth, and can’t pay attention to every backwater world that falls within our domain …
Until something unique is discovered.
The Pacifican woman turned towards the steps, going to the upper floor. The shadow of the house wall was cold.
As I climbed the steps with her, she said, ‘I want to get a foothold on the southern continent. Before things get complicated there. There are these talks coming up between the Freeport takshiriye and the Coast settlements … I’ve got one of the canal settlements in mind for contact – remind me: you haven’t seen the latest data on that.’