by Mary Gentle
‘Warning?’ I said.
‘I’ll tell you a fable, t’an, and you draw the moral.’ She glanced at me. ‘Meeting you isn’t the first time I’ve heard the name of S’aranth. When I first came to the Coast as a mercenary – oh, I was an ashiren, no more – there was a Commander, a woman of the Hundred Thousand. An exile. She was crippled, she’d lost an arm.’
The young female’s face was serious. Is she old enough to remember that long-ago summer in Melkathi?
‘I’d heard, yes. Ruric Orhlandis died, in exile.’ I don’t think my voice was quite controlled.
Haldin Damory said, ‘Ah, but that’s it, t’an, she didn’t die – she was killed. An assassin killed her, in the trade-quarter of Kasabaarde. And now draw the moral: I hear talk in this Goddess-abandoned hole, and I hear there are still people who’d willingly see offworlders, and friends of offworlders, killed. That death was a long time ago, but things aren’t different now.’
Shall I ask what she said about the S’aranth, those many years ago? Ask: was she bitter, driven into exile from her beloved Hundred Thousand, did she hate me for the part I played in that? No. Whatever was said, I can’t change it now.
‘There,’ Haldin Damory said. She dropped back a pace, and I saw her check by line of sight that two of the other mercenaries were not far from us; and then I saw what she’d seen. A head taller than any of the Coast Ortheans, walking where the sun cast a shadow on to the paved way from the overhang, and entirely alone – Molly Rachel.
‘Lynne!’ she called. She looked past me. ‘Are Pramila and David here? Has Rashid arrived yet?’
‘No. I wasn’t told he was coming.’ I stood and waited for her. ‘How were the Barrens?’
‘We kept to high-level aerial survey. The readings didn’t tell us much. Then I got your transmission. Lynne –’
Of all the tribal Ortheans I met in the Barrens, I can remember only O’he-Oramu-te, the Woman Who Walks Far. In that place of tundra and Witchbreed ruins, will she even be alive now?
‘– this place!’ Molly scratched through loops of her tangled black hair, and slowed that long-legged stride. She stared out across the pit, at the opposite cliff-wall honeycombed with chambers. She pulled down eyeshields, blinked. An ashiren, two or three years old, stopped and stared up at this dark giant; and then ran when Molly smiled at kir.
‘I must say, we’ve been marking time,’ I said. Thinking, Don’t ask me why, Molly, please.
She stepped close to the edge of the walkway. At her feet, a sheer drop; empty air, and then – isolated in the centre of the pit-floor – that chiruzeth dome and pillars.
‘It was the last act of Empire,’ I said, unwillingly sharing her fascination. ‘The generation that saw Elansiir destroyed, built this. But they destroyed themselves, fighting; left only the Ortheans …’
‘That’s it, that’s what we’ve got to have.’
We turned to go back down the walkway, Molly ducking to avoid catching her head on the del’ri-cloth awnings of the market stalls. Ortheans pointed as we went by, commenting in a variety of Coast languages. There was the ring of hammers from a metalworker’s stall nearby.
‘Can the hiyeks help us get into that?’
I glanced up at her. ‘It’s the incredible balance – Kel Harantish with the technical knowledge, the siiran with the food and water. I honestly don’t know whether you’ll get the hiyeks to risk it.’
‘It all comes back to Kel Harantish,’ the Pacifican woman said.
‘And I don’t think you’ll get back on negotiating terms with them in a hurry.’ That pleased me: the thought that I don’t have to block the Company here, circumstances will do it.
‘Lynne, whose side are you on?’
‘Ah, now, if I knew that …’
‘Joking aside. I know Doug Clifford’s against ninety per cent of what we’re doing here. It’s you I can’t make out.’
‘You’ve been talking to young Pramila.’
‘I’ve been talking to you.’
Sunlight dazzled me, shining into the walkway. I put my eyeshields back on. The market stalls wouldn’t stay open long, it was rapidly becoming too hot. I looked out at a steel-blue sky peppered with daystars.
Deliberately putting her off, I said, ‘It’s a barter economy here. They exchange promissory notes on the next siiran harvest. Taking into consideration they pay mercenaries too, it’s no surprise there isn’t a hiyek on the Coast not chronically in debt. Of course, Kel Harantish uses that to stir up dissent. The last thing they want is for the Coast families to unite …’
Molly looked down, shook her head, watching me. The light made silver curves of her round features. She walked with one hand always near the CAS-IV holster.
‘They use mercenaries because there’s a taboo on personally attacking the bloodline, and all the hiyeks are more or less inter-related.’ Which the Pacifican woman would know; but it was only an attempt at distraction.
The crowd was thicker here, and we were stopped at the edge of a group of ashiren watching glass-blowers at work. Molly and I stood for a moment looking over their heads. Groupings of ashiren that would, when their city time was over, become raiku.
‘How do I get into that?’ Molly gazed out at the chiruzeth dome and pillars, and the guards. Then she looked down at me, and with an abrupt change of tone, said, ‘My father was of the Masai. My mother was Aruna. She had a choice. She could die alcoholic, because the old life couldn’t be lived, or she could take. She took. She went to the University of Melbourne, and then to Tokyo. Lynne, sometimes cultures change. It’s that simple.’
I listened hard, and I heard nothing at all defensive in her tone. I said, ‘Change imposed from outside.’
‘It comes to the same thing.’ She squinted up at the brilliant sky, and fingered the eyeshields that hung round her neck. ‘My mother taught me what she learned when she was a burri – a baby. Sooner or later one culture goes under, so you don’t give up, you take. These people here, the hiyeks, they’re capable of learning that.’
The crowd thinned a little, and I walked on. Aware of Haldin Damory and the two mercenaries, never far away. That honeycombed cliff towered above. I walked slowly towards the Pacifican quarters further round the curve of the wall. After a few seconds, Molly Rachel’s long stride caught up. She walked beside me.
‘You’re looked tired.’ Concern in her voice, and something else; something inflexible. She said, ‘Lynne, if you want to go back to the orbiter, not just back to Morvren-base, that’ll be all right, I’m certain that you’ve found what we want, here – if I can get to it. And I won’t need you in the negotiations. This isn’t your specialist area.’
I can’t believe that I didn’t see this one coming.
‘There’s no necessity for me to return –’
‘– immediately. No, of course not. You could just as well go in a day or two, Lynne. Go with Clifford, when he goes back. That’ll be in the very near future.’
The sun was a brilliant glare, drowning daystars. I stopped to wipe my forehead, and try to control uneven breath. I ached. Angry with myself: I won’t let myself be used and thrown out!
‘Molly, I think you’d benefit, still, from having the advice of someone with experience of the area –’
‘But you haven’t. Not the Coast.’
Worn flagstones were hot underfoot, too hot to stand still for long, and so I walked on, thinking, Douggie isn’t going to like the news of his imminent departure, and I –
I can’t be a restraining influence on the Company if I’m not involved in Company negotiations.
A wind stirred the dust on the city floor. It rattled against the del’ri awnings. Three young ashiren pushed between Molly and me, running; thin limbs and ragged meshabi-robes.
Morvren Freeport, the orbiter, and then what? A ship back to Earth? Because there’s no need for a special advisor if you know as much – or as little – as she does about the Desert coast and Kel Harantish …
I licked my
lips, tasting dust. On an optimistic estimate, two days, to save my position here?
‘T’an Christie.’
Both of us turned. It was Haldin with one of her mercenaries, a crop-maned male. The male said in accented Rimon, ‘I have a message, t’an, passed to me to give to the s’aranthi. There are people here who wish to speak with you.’
Molly frowned. ‘From other hiyeks?’
Haldin Damory snorted. The mercenary spoke with the sardonic humour of the young: ‘They say they’re from Quarth, come down the Coast by jath-rai. T’ans, if you were to ask me, I’d say they come from a different port – from Kasabaarde. Or if they don’t that’s where their report will go back to. Kasabaarde, and the Brown Tower.’
12
Dreams of Gold and Silver
What I’m doing here sickens me.
That thought came quite suddenly, following the Pacifican woman under the chiruzeth overhang, back along the walkway. It felt cooler. I pulled off the eyeshields.
No, I thought. It’s the self deception that sickens me. While I stay here, I have to act for the Company. What good am I doing Orthe? What good am I doing myself?
Molly Rachel’s stride took her ahead, and I followed, climbing the gradual incline. The mercenaries checked doorways to inner rooms. I stopped for a moment, short of breath. White sun glared from the city’s far wall, where figures moved like flies, and I trudged on again, higher up, further round the pit-wall.
If it wasn’t me it would be someone else –
That’s no excuse. It never was.
And I had to smile, thinking, These qualms of conscience have come only when I’m on the verge of losing my post here anyway.
Shadow lay under the chiruzeth overhang in a black curve. My lungs burned with the effort of climbing. Haldin Damory glanced back, with a look of concern. At intervals the overhang widens out – or rather, goes back deeper into the rock cliff itself. The Pacifican woman stopped in that shadowy, low roofed space; staring round at the featureless archways. No wind stirred those ragged del’ri curtains.
‘Shan’tai Haldin.’
Haldin approached her. I stopped, gratefully, a few paces away. Young ashiren playing pebble-games scattered as they saw us. I caught sight of one child’s thin cheek marred with a raw ulcer, another with suppurating membraned eyes.
Just maybe I’m right about the Hundred Thousand; we could trade with the telestres with Witchbreed and it wouldn’t change their lives. But here – how can we not trade, not change? Knowing what culture shock, what disruption; still …
The close heat and shadowed twilight made me dizzy. Aching, hot; all the discomfort of alien air, protein, gravity. And ten years less resilient now.
Molly Rachel said, ‘One of you fetch Pramila Ishida, I want her here for this, and –’
‘Doug Clifford,’ I put in, saw her hesitate, then accept.
When I came to Orthe I thought I knew what I had to do, if not how to do it. Now I don’t even know what I should be trying to do.
The Pacifican woman said speculatively, ‘Traders from Kasabaarde?’
‘From the Hexenmeister,’ Haldin said. ‘– S’aranth?’
In the dream, a woman stood before me. She had the bleached skin of the Coast, and a rough dark mane coming down from complex braids. In her forties (and I younger, then). And held between brown-robed servants, her shirt torn, her eyes unveiled and so wide that the whites were visible.
I spoke to that ancient Orthean male, the Hexenmeister, who stood beside me: ‘I have heard that those whom you – question – are not unchanged by it. Some say it’s possible to recognize them forever after, because of what they become.’
‘T’an, you can hurt her greatly and she will perhaps tell you the truth, and perhaps a lie. I will hurt her not at all, and to me she will tell only the truth. But –’
‘But?’
‘But it is true she will be changed.’
That subliminal hum that underlies the Brown Tower intensified the silence. Aphasia, amnesia, blackouts, idiocy; all the possible symptoms of brain-damage – oh yes: changed.
The woman looked at me with a desperate appeal. I couldn’t even recall her name.
‘Yes,’ I consented. ‘Question her, master.’
The Hexenmeister of Kasabaarde watched me with black, bright eyes. And I dreamed that we went down into the maze of the Brown Tower, among the masked and brown-robed servants, to a cool dry hall lit with faintly blue iridescence, and sarcophagus-machines.
‘Havoth-jair!’ I cried as I woke, stumbled; Molly Rachel caught my arm, and Haldin’s mercenary turned swiftly to survey the low-roofed space. The sky beyond the overhang was molten brass. The air stifled. Loud voices echoed back from the walkway.
Not dreaming (but it has, I remember, been a recurring dream for many years); not dreaming, but caught between one step and the next into memory –
False memory.
‘It wasn’t me! I didn’t give him permission to question her.’ Bewildered, I found the young woman’s arm round my shoulder, half supporting me. ‘Her name. Her name was Havoth-jair.’
Rachel looked down at me, frowning. ‘Are you all right? Can you stand? Good. Lynne … you’re not going to like me saying this, but I’ve seen this coming on.’
I pushed her hand aside, still unsteady. Her skin was slick with sweat. Details of the dream were already fading.
‘Lynne, it’s on your record. You had an extremely bad reaction to hypno-tape implants. Now you’re where everything triggers off those old implant-data memories. I think you’d better go back up to the orbiter. The help you’ve given has been invaluable, but I won’t make you stay here and crack up.’
Her words had a slight reverberation: sounds echo between these chiruzeth walls. Chiruzeth: cloudy blue-grey. I want to sit down, I need a drink – I’d even drink their fermented del’ri-grain. I need to know what’s happening to me.
When I rubbed my forehead my hair was plastered down with sweat. Pulse hammering: rapid and unsteady. I walked a few steps, hearing the echo of my boot-heels. The vast emptiness beyond the edge of the walkway shone bright: sun and dust and air. I turned, facing – as I must – that young woman.
What hurts most is that her concern is genuine.
‘It isn’t that –’
Suddenly and simply, I knew two things. The first and more obvious: it was no use remonstrating, I would condemn myself out of my own mouth. And the second was that this was not hypno-tape psychosis.
I’ve been through that, I thought. I’d recognize it again. I’m in a mess, sure, but that isn’t the reason – thank God.
A laugh bubbled up, uncomplicatedly cheerful. Unreasonable to be so happy, knowing that – but I do know: I’ve had long enough to know how I function. With a macabre humour, I thought, I may be having hallucinations, blackouts, false memories, and paranoia, but it’s okay. If it isn’t that identity-destroying reaction to hypno-implants (I dread that above all things) then it’s okay. …
Something of that must have come through in the way I laughed. Molly Rachel looked at me dubiously and said, ‘I could be wrong.’
‘Believe me, you are.’ That irrational joy was still with me. I saw, further down the walkway slope, the approaching figures of Doug Clifford, Pramila Ishida, and David Osaka, with one of Haldin’s mercenaries. ‘We seem to be all here. Shall we go and talk to these traders from “Quarth”?’
Haldin Damory indicted one of the curtained archways. Molly blinked.
‘I … er … well –’
I beamed, walked past her into the inner room close by, so dazzling her with bonhomie that she didn’t tell this troublesome woman she had no right, officially, to be present. There are advantages to being thirty-eight and in one’s right mind.
Inside, in mirror-light that cast strange shadows, a group of five Ortheans were seated round one of the low metal tables. I let the Pacificans crowd in behind me, and Molly do the standard introductions. Five of them, four males and one fema
le: none of them old.
A thin Orthean male rose to his feet. He wore a plain brown meshabi-robe, and carried no weapon; what was visible of his pale mane was shaven down to white fluff. And he wore a mask. A half-face mask, with some translucent glass or crystal in the eyeholes. Such masks are common on the Coast in summer – and in Kasabaarde all year round.
When he had introduced himself as Annekt, I said, ‘Quarth? Give you greeting, shan’tai Annekt; I think you’re out of your way. I think you mean Kasabaarde.’
Molly Rachel winced at that high-handedness. The Pacificans froze in the action of seating themselves round the low table. Doug Clifford coughed.
Only that curved pale mouth visible: the thin male’s face was unreadable.
‘We’ve sailed by way of Kasabaarde’s trade-quarter. Many do.’ Annekt’s voice was husky, with an indeterminate coast accent.
‘And when you sail back, what will you say to the Hexenmeister of Kasabaarde about Company offworlders?’
Molly seized my elbow. ‘Sit down!’ she hissed. I had little option, and half fell on to one of the padded metal benches.
The Orthean remained standing for a moment. I saw that his long six-fingered hands moved nervously. And then I saw answering small gestures from the seated traders. Communication.
‘You’re quite right,’ Annekt said mildly, ‘that all the traders of the Coast commonly bring news and rumours to the Tower in Kasabaarde. I shouldn’t wonder but that the Hexenmeister knows of your arrival here.’
Molly glanced round, momentarily helpless. Pramila settled in next to her, and David Osaka seated himself awkwardly on the end of another bench. It was a shabby room, the painted images on the plaster chipped and fading. I saw Doug Clifford exchange a greeting with the other traders and sit down.
The lattice grid of the inner doorway opened, and Haldin Damory re-emerged. She gestured. One of the young mercenaries served arniac-tea, handing the bowls to us, but placing them on the table before the Kasabaardean traders. Molly passed her wristlink over her bowl, and I saw Haldin stiffen – an insult to a mercenary’s efficiency, to check for poison.