by Mary Gentle
‘Perhaps,’ I said, suddenly short of breath, ‘it isn’t possible to comprehend Golden science without having their world-view. That we caught a glimpse of in Rakviri telestre.’
If the Pacifican woman had been an Orthean, her eyes would have veiled over at that moment. She said, ‘No. I think that’s false reasoning. It’s just a matter of time before Rashid comes through. I’d hoped it would be in less than a year, its team have got the whole resources of Earth’s data-nets at their disposal – but I’ll be happy if we get a result in under two years.’
She shrugged, then, and added, ‘If you want to look at the interior of that dome in Maherwa, the maintenance-entrance, I’ve put it on the shuttle data-net. Oh yes, before I forget, call the orbiter. They’ve got a blip for you, from your department on Earth. Lynne, about these talks in Kasabaarde –’
‘Have you got any idea what’s going on here? If we’re not careful, it won’t be hiyek fighting hiyek, it’ll be the south continent fighting the north!’
The woman shifted, stretching her shoulders that were hunched against the heat. A voice hailed her from the T&A site, and she called something over her shoulder to them, and then turned back to me.
‘Lynne, please. Stop panicking. David and Pramila are keeping me advised. No Orthean is going to risk a major war with an Earth presence on-world, and if there are a few minor incidents – well, they’ll defuse tension.’
We’re talking about casualties here! I opened my mouth to protest, but Molly got in before me: ‘I grant you it’s not ideal, but I’m taking the long view. If we can keep hostilities to a minimum until harvest season, then we’ll have won. Lynne, when these people see what T&A can do to their crop-yield, they’re not going to need to fight.’
Anything can be a weapon. Isn’t that what Sethri-safere told me?
‘I’ve had David’s report on the Tower and the Hexenmeister,’ Molly added. ‘I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out. That place might be a very useful source of information. Lynne, I want you to shuttle down here to me. If the talks are breaking up, I could do with an update on that; and I could use your advice on dealing with the Harantish caste-system. How soon can you get down here?’
It is four hundred miles and I’m tired – with a weariness not purely physical. I feel overwhelmed by the Pacifican view of this situation. I thought, But there are more hiyek-families on the Coast than are present in Kasabaarde now – suppose I were to speak with them? Sethri said also, the hiyeks have no unity. It takes a lot of organization to fight a war, and if that could be undermined somehow … Get the south-east Coast hiyeks to back out of this …
Girl, you sound like Kasabaarde. And Kel Harantish. Isn’t that the principle they’ve used to control the Coast hiyeks, these two thousand years?
‘Not tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll come down to you the day after, Stormsun-20.’
The holotank faded to clear.
I sat back in the seat, the padding coolly enclosing me. Pramila’s restless footsteps were loud outside the port. I leaned over to key in the orbiter-comlink, and record hi-speed transmission of the message-blip that Molly mentioned. The systems took so long to mesh that I thought the Freeport infrared must be out – at last I banked it in the shuttle’s data-net.
‘All right?’ Pramila Ishida queried, wiping her forehead as she walked through the shuttle-port.
‘Yes. Sorry. I didn’t intend to keep you waiting.’ I put my version of a security seal on the banked message-blip, and keyed out.
Pramila leaned on the back of the bucket seat. Because I’ve seen that demure face almost always turned aside, refusing eye-contact, I think of her as a subdued person. Now she raised her head, green eyes direct.
‘Lynne, I need you to answer a question. I can’t ask Molly or David or – I need to ask you.’
Do I want to learn what’s preoccupying this young Pacifican woman? I’ve never seen myself as the maternal, confidential type. I managed, ‘What do you want to ask me? Does it have to be now?’
‘This is private. The opportunity might not …’ Determination was plain on her face. ‘Your old reports. Your First Contact with Orthe. It’s in the records. In north Roehmonde, in a city called Corbek. There was an Orthean male, called Falkyr –’
‘Sethin Falkyr Talkul!’
I haven’t thought of that name in years. But if I recall anything, it’s that panic moment when I first realized: I can’t remember his face. Can recall detail, those whiteless and slanted brown eyes, and the texture of bitter-dark mane, but not his face.
And how often over the last two days have I seen Pramila in the company of Sethri-safere? Falkyr … too long ago to think about, he and I were arykei, in a far northern province of the Hundred Thousand.
‘Pramila … We used to say, in the Service, that it was better for such things to happen with one of the truly alien species. Hominids are too close, too nearly the same, and not quite ever alike. Like monkeys, a caricature of humanity.’
‘He’s not a caricature!’ She scowled.
‘That’s you,’ I said as I got up from the bucket seat, and stretched. ‘And that’s partly because you’re an empath: offworld personnel are. Nine out of ten alien hominid races will look at you and me and feel – revulsion. Pure and simple. No matter what you feel for them.’
She smiled to herself, and then at me. ‘Revulsion isn’t what I feel.’
She surprises me, this small Pacifican woman. No protests about it being unnatural, in any sense.
Pramila said, ‘I just wanted to know that I, that I’m not a freak. That I’m not the only one ever to have felt …’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re not the only one to feel that way.’
Don’t look so pleased, don’t look as if it were some great adventure; it’s no less troubling than human emotion. And much, much stranger. Or do I mean, as strange, no less and no more?
‘But when you –’
The holo-signal cut across her question. She reached down and keyed in reception. The signal was blurred, coming in weakly, and half-drowned by crowd-noise; and I could hardly make out the flustered voice of David Osaka: ‘You’d better get back fast!’ he repeated. ‘I’m in the middle of a riot here –’
The trouble with kids is that they panic. David’s too inexperienced, I thought. And found my mouth was dry.
The old, low masonry buildings of the trade-quarter were surrounded by chaos. Bodies pressed against me from all sides. I shoved a way through the crowd by force. Hiyek-Ortheans staggered past, loaded with baggage – or is it looting? – and heavy reptilian brennior-packbeasts hissed in protest. A riot? Or are they evacuating the city? Or already fighting –?
I caught Pramila’s arm, pulling her under the arch of the Westgate entrance to the inner city. Male and female Ortheans shouted, calling across the alleys in a babel of noise. I saw some in the robes of Order Houses at the gate, standing back in despair from the mob.
‘– David be at Su’niar –?’ Pramila, her mouth close to my ear, warm breath feathering the skin. I nodded, pushed between a Rainbow Cities male (his fox-face painted with a scarlet and blue mask) and a group of south-Coast hiyek. Pramila followed. The shadow of Westgate’s arch fell across us.
The press of bodies moved me forward, and I staggered; caught an arm to stay upright, and looked into a white face under a wire-tangle black mane. The Barrens! I thought, but the nomad male was gone. I pushed through into the inner city. For the first time since its founding, there was no taking of weapons, no ritual of entry.
Silence …
White dust in the alley round Su’niar House was trodden down to packed earth. The awnings that had shaded the steps hung in tatters. Rubbish was scattered on the ground. Storm-light shone on two lone figures, David Osaka and Doug Clifford, emerging from the entrance to the underground chambers.
‘What happened?’ I looked from one to the other. David shook his head. His fair hair was grimy, lines of strain showing on that Pacifican face.
&n
bsp; ‘The hiyeks … they wouldn’t let the Order House ration out food any longer. They just took it. They rioted –’
Doug walked down the steps. As David moved aside with Pramila, Doug said, ‘It’s likely that messages arrived from down-Coast cities. To say that the jath and jath-rai ships are prepared for war. The hiyek-families are leaving.’
The storm-light brightened, easing to the haze of late afternoon. Our shadows were watery on the white earth. Douggie’s eyes were dark with exhaustion, and he swayed slightly where he stood.
‘I’m talked out, Lynne. I’ve said it every way it can be said – the only way my government can get Orthe declared a Protected world is if the Aid situation is taken care of internally. In plain terms, the Hundred Thousand will have to feed the Coast – they won’t listen.’ His voice wavered on the last word. ‘Is it so difficult to understand? This is the perfect excuse for PanOceania to move a peacekeeping force in!’
So it is, I thought. Movement caught my eye. A young male sat in the dust at the side of the Order House steps. Fragments of blue ceramic bowl surrounded him, and with total concentration his six-fingered hands fitted shards together. The complex braiding of his mane was coming unbound. And then I saw that he didn’t wear the rags of the inner city’s mystics, but the meshabi-robe and woven rope-belt of the Order Houses.
Faint daystars littered the sky over the white domes. A thread of smoke rose, growing blacker.
I said, ‘Where are the telestre-Ortheans now?’
Shouts and calls came from the quayside, echoing under the sandstone arch of Harbourgate. I led the way through the gate. Dazzled for a second by bright lapping waves, the swaying masts of jath ships. Beyond the harbour arm, a faint olive-coloured mass was the first island of the Kasabaarde Archipelago. And, blue on blue, the immense pylons of the Rasrhe-y-Meluur faded into haze.
‘There’s the Meduenin,’ Doug said, pointing into the crowd round the nearest ship.
Voices were raised at the foot of the jath’s gangway. As I approached, I saw Cassirur Almadhera gesture extravagantly; her back to me, that crimson mane tumbling from its braids. And there, Blaize Meduenin, looking like some shabby captain of mercenaries grown old in service, instead of one of the Morvren takshiriye. The warm wind lifted that fair mane. His head was lowered: I recognized that bullish look.
‘– according to your experience, the “alliance” wouldn’t last,’ Cassirur burst out. ‘But there’ll be no war between hiyeks, now they’re turned on us instead!’
She was careless of age, or Earthspeaker’s dignity.
‘And the church offers nothing at all!’ Blaize said. ‘Tell me, Earthspeaker, what wisdom has the Tower given you, to take home to the Wellhouses? What will the Tower say when the hiyeks burn the land around us? You and the Hexenmeister, we’ll have no help from either of you!’
‘That’s not important. What matters now is that the hiyeks have offworlders as their allies. And where are those offworlders now? Kel Harantish, with the Witchbreed! I tell you we’re fighting the same war that Kerys Founder fought, to keep the land-wasters from the Hundred Thousand, to keep the telestres alive!’
The middle-aged Orthean woman’s voice attracted stares. Now some of the Morvren people had seen us, and were beginning to look in our direction. I would have faded into the sandstone-wall background if I could. Blaize at that moment looked up and saw me. Nictitating membrane slid down over his pale eyes, flicked back; and that burn-scar twisted a smile into something monstrous, anger replaced by ironic amusement.
Cassirur spoke, a warning note in her voice. Pramila Ishida reached out and gripped my arm. Her fingers tightened. A group of hiyek-Ortheans watched us from the side of a jath-rai, moored a few yards further down the quay. A yellow-maned male was walking down the gangway.
‘Leave while you can,’ Sethri-safere advised, speaking so as to be heard over the bustle and noise of departure. ‘The truce is ended. Even the inner city is unsafe now. Outlanders, your people won’t thank you for what you’ve done here, but they sent you to do the impossible, and now they’ll have someone they can blame.’
His Morvrenni accent was atrocious. Are you baiting them, I wondered, or is that genuine sympathy? In an Orthean it wouldn’t surprise me.
Without warning, a young male (whom I have seen with Cassirur, I realized) stepped out of the crowd. He swung clumsily. I flinched. It seemed he only struck Sethri a glancing blow, open-handed. The Desert Coast male looked round absently, tried to take a step back, and his legs folded and he fell. Pramila swore. A shout came from the jath-rai – one of the hiyek males. Jadur? Sandstone chippings flew past me, Sethri called something, and the Ortheans on the ship lowered winchbows. In a dead silence, Sethri got to his feet. I wanted to laugh at this playground violence – laughter choked in my throat, held back by a hammering pulse.
Dazed, I looked for the winchbow-bolt on the quayside, but it was trodden underfoot. The metal dart had scarred the sandstone wall two yards from my side. And then I looked up to see the yellow mane of Sethri on the jath-rai’s deck, Jadur complaining volubly to him.
Did we think we could restart the peace talks? Folly. And I thought, God forbid, how can we choose sides between them?
The Freeporters gathered round Doug, and I saw David Osaka speak to Cassirur. Pramila, silent, gazed down the dock at the Coast jath-rai. I shook my head. For the moment this is familiar, I stand with Ortheans who have faces I know – from the telestres of Kerys-Andrethe and Beth’ru-elen and Meduenin …
A hand gripped my arm, a hand calloused with swordfighter’s hardened skin.
Mind still running on the past, and forgotten faces, I said, ‘Is Rodion here? Or back on Meduenin telestre?’
When I turned to him, his half-ruined face had an expression I couldn’t identify. He was still breathing rapidly, from the argument and from that swift, anonymous violence.
‘I thought you’d know – S’aranth. Rodion’s dead. She died in her year of exile.’
A decade ago? Rodion, whom I knew as an ashiren, called Halfgold for her pale skin and mane and yellow eyes – Ruric’s child. Rodion Orhlandis, carrying Blaize’s children, condemned to a year’s exile after that Melkathi summer … Rodion, in my mind always a young woman, as I last saw her. No need now to try to imagine what she might be like in her twenties, no need at all.
God prevent me being – is it glad? – over the death of my friend, Blaize’s arykei.
Blaize Meduenin, in a quite different tone, said, ‘I thought you knew. I would have told you. You and she were close.’
That shaggy yellow mane of his is beginning to grow too long; the whiteless blue eyes are veiled against the dust of the inner city. He wore empty harur-harness – and moved as if that left him half complete. And once you came to me, called me kinsister, and asked if I thought the Orhlandis child, Rodion, would ever look at a shabby, out-at-elbows mercenary …
I said, ‘I’m sorry.’
He frowned, the scar turning into something fierce. ‘She died here, in Kasabaarde. She was a mercenary with my troop. Wounded in a hiyek-war we had, a few miles east of the city.’
Words deserted me: I want to say, I’m sorry you had to come here, to remember, how it must hurt … And I would like to know how soon after that it was that Blaize Meduenin left the Medued Guildhouse, and entered Haltern Beth’ru-elen’s service. Oh I would like to know.
The acid brilliance of the sun stung my eyes.
‘It’s ironic,’ I said. ‘Isn’t her mother supposed to have died in this very city?’
Thus I approach, sideways and quietly, the subject of amari Ruric Orhlandis. How can I tell the Hundred Thousand that their ‘traitor’ is Hexenmeister? How can I not tell Blaize and Hal that Ruric is alive?
‘Hal – I –’ Scar tissue made a sardonic curve at one corner of his mouth. It was not a smile. We stood there in the late sun, and he looked dazzled. His voice was unsteady. ‘S’aranth, shall I tell you something about that? The Orhlandis woman didn’t
die, she was assassinated. Because she might have been a danger to the Hundred Thousand, alive. Hal had her killed. Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen.’
He hit every syllable of the name with a kind of dreamy precision.
‘Took him time to tell me about that. Can’t trust an exile, you see. She could have raised an army against us. And now it isn’t her, it’s those Shadow-begotten Anzhadi … Hal won’t like hearing that.’
He looked at me, and his face twisted. Alien and unreadable, somewhere between grief and laughter. I have not thought, had time to think, what hopes have been destroyed here today for him, and for the other Freeporters.
‘What will you do now?’
‘I don’t know.’ And then he did smile: humour and defiance in it.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve been in the Freeport takshiriye all these years, and don’t have any ideas what to do.’
‘For a copper coin I’d leave it all. Turn mercenary again. I understand that, Christie.’
He sat down on the quay wall, heavily, and squinted up at the hazy sky. I stood beside him, staring down into the black and green depths of the harbour. The heat kept even the rashaku in their burrows. Voices rang, and jath creaked, and there was the smell of the sea.
‘We should have done better, here.’ He looked up. ‘Christie. Eight years gone … Why did you never come back? That was the last word I had from you, when you left. That you’d return.’
Because it is this man, his face vulnerable, because for some strange reason I have always felt I owed Blaize Meduenin honesty, I tried to find a truth for him.
‘There was another life to go to. And – no, I know what it was. I knew that, if I came to Orthe, I wouldn’t leave it again.’ Surprised, I added, ‘I don’t think I realized that until a few days ago.’
He stood, resting his arm round my shoulders. I turned to fit into the shape of him, conscious of how natural it seemed; of his warmth, of the arrhythmic pulse of his blood.
‘I’ve thought of you,’ he said, ‘kinsister.’
That isn’t the word I want to hear – but it’ll do to be going on with. I smiled to myself, caught an answering humour in his face. A gust of warm air blew along the quay. Del’ri-cloth cracked, tied loosely over stacked cargo. Late afternoon light turned the world sepia, as shadows took on an evening slant. I rested back against Blaize’s arm and shoulder. Heat sapped strength. Just for a minute, to let someone else carry the weight … Yesterday morning, Stormsun-18; this evening, Stormsun-19; fifty hours, give or take a few, and so much has happened –