Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  I straightened, moved away slightly, and nodded to Cassirur Almadhera as she approached.

  ‘It’s simple,’ Blaize said. ‘We can’t feed the Coast families. We can’t give up telestre land. We can’t stop the hiyeks attacking us. Give it three or four weeks – the beginning of Merrum – we’ll see hiyek ships off the Melkathi or the Rimon coast. And what will the s’aranthi do about that?’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to find out from Molly Rachel,’ I said, ‘as soon as I can shuttle down to where she is.’

  Cassirur said, ‘What else, t’an Meduenin?’

  He eyed the ageing, red-maned woman; hid humour at her formality. As if she had never raised her voice a few minutes before, he said politely, ‘Six years ago, the s’an Dalzielle Kerys-Andrethe died, and not one of us found it necessary to step forward and take up the Crown of the Hundred Thousand. Isn’t that necessary now, t’an Earthspeaker?’

  Before Cassirur could answer, a young male with Kerys-Andrethe features protested: ‘This Midsummer isn’t Midsummer-Tenyear.’

  Blaize’s smile was sardonic. ‘The Kerys-Andrethe have always liked formality. The rest of us know necessity when we see it. We need a new T’An Suthai-Telestre. And there are a hundred thousand telestres a Crown might come from.’

  Cassirur chuckled, then nodded decisively. ‘As soon as I’m back in the Freeport, I’ll get the Wellkeepers to send word out through all the provinces, tell the s’an telestres to come to –’

  ‘Tathcaer,’ Blaize said.

  ‘The city’s empty,’ she protested. ‘I doubt there’s been fifty people in Tathcaer these past five years!’

  ‘It’s where the T’Ans have always come, when it was necessary for there to be a T’An Suthai-Telestre.’

  The two of them spoke of rashaku message-carriers; but I was taken back in an instant to my last midsummer in Tathcaer, that white city that lies at the mouth of the Oranon River, that has been called (in jest) the eighth province – and that has stood deserted since the plague raged there one summer …

  ‘Come to Tathcaer,’ Blaize broke in on my memories. ‘You, the t’an Clifford, any other offworlders. We’re running out of time.’

  ‘Midsummer is at the end of Durestha, isn’t it?’ I touched his hand, the sword-callouses; looked up to meet that pale blue gaze. ‘I’ve got work to put in with the Company. So has Doug. I’ll meet you in Tathcaer before midsummer. There ought to be time.’

  Time enough to stop the avalanche? Time enough to stop the dominoes tumbling down? Ortheans jostled me, the crowd moving. An elbow caught me in the ribs and I winced, rubbing shoulders with bright robes. Faces were excited. I braced myself to peer over their heads, and heard Blaize call out to Cassirur, and then I realized what was happening.

  Two pale-maned Ortheans in Order House robes came from the gatehouse, carrying a del’ri-fibre basket between them. They set it down on the quay with a clash of metal, and began handing back to each telestre male and female their harur-nilgiri and harur-nazari blades.

  17

  In a Bright Day, In a Time Of War

  Company regulations state that shuttles must not fly with only one pilot aboard. Looking at the back of David Osaka’s head where he sat at the pilot’s console, I thought, Yes, but that leaves me with nothing to do for the next few hours …

  Which is an opportunity to read that message-blip from Earth.

  I keyed the holotank to exterior-view while I waited for the blip to decode. Kasabaarde was a brown stain on the earth, already fading into distance. Pramila elected to remain there, to continue observation. Not that there will be much to see, except hiyek-families leaving the city.

  This morning of Stormsun-20 shone sepia; and flashes of heat-lightning walked along the southern sky. We flew east over acres of stony ground. The few strip-fields were soon gone, giving way to ridges of rock, and to the angular network of canals. Land flicked past below like stills from a film – wide canals, small buildings that are entrances to siiran, infrequent “pits” that are cities at canal junctions, the seaports that lie where canals run out to the Inner Sea …

  It’ll take the hiyeks a week or more to get back to their home cities and siiran. It took Haldin and her people a month to bring me from Maherwa to Kasabaarde. And when it takes me only hours to fly back across this barren country – why then, in a very real sense, we don’t inhabit the same world, they and I.

  The ’tank chimed, cut exterior-view, and began to run the message-blip from the department.

  An image formed of a young man, leaning back in his desk-console. He had his feet up, and as the holo-record clicked on, raised a mug of coffee in casual salute. Acting departmental head Stephen Perrault of the Liaison Office. In the window behind him the sun shone, deep yellow in a dark blue sky.

  ‘… I’ve commented on the section-heads’ reports, this is an unofficial summary, right?’ He smiled. It aged him, made this bearded young man into something piratical. Which is not as fanciful as it might seem, considering Perrault’s character; and I can be forgiven for hoping he wasn’t coping too well in my absence, since I may need a job to go back to.

  His recorded image continued: ‘As far as summaries go, I can give it to you in a sentence, Lynne. While the cat’s away, the rats are at play. Nothing personal.’

  ‘Miaow.’ Perrault shares my sense of humour.

  ‘The north European Enclave project has had its completion date put back six months, that’s because PanOceania’s finance department is hooking us about. So the new housing camps aren’t going to be occupiable before next spring. I’m negotiating to get the section of the population that’s involved into temporary accommodation – but if we had any, we wouldn’t need the housing camps.’

  ‘Don’t let them screw you,’ I muttered. No matter that he couldn’t hear.

  ‘I’m also putting out feelers to NuAsia and ChinaCo,’ Stephen Perrault’s image continued. ‘I know that technically this office is part of Pan-Oceania, but Liaison has a legally neutral status, and we’re European-staffed.’

  Meaning that if you threaten to bring in other multi-corporates, it may bring PanOceania through with the finance? That’s not a safe game to play.

  ‘We got the tariff question settled in the last parliament, pushed the Bill through; so provided none of the other Enclaves reneges, we should have grain prices down by next July. Or October, if we’re lucky.

  ‘Nothing new on the fuel situation.

  ‘PanOceania’s taking out its linkman with us here in London. Replacing Singh with some kid who’s got no track record, so he’s somebody’s protégé. God help us.

  ‘One problem that’s come up after you left. The British government and PanOceania are squabbling over the demarcation lines of this department –’

  Damn it, I knew it; it’s not safe to push!

  ‘– want to put us firmly under Company control. I know this one comes up regularly, but it looks sticky. Hence the rush report. If we’re not careful, we’ll be eased out of our status as neutral arbitrators.’

  Stephen Perrault paused, drank from the coffee cup. By his grimace, it was cold. He scratched through fair hair and beard.

  ‘Sorry about this – late hours for a few nights. We’re fighting on two fronts, and if I have to come down temporarily on one side, it’ll be the government’s. Unless I hear different from you. I ought to redo this tape, I’m too tired to think … No time, if I’m going to get it on the FTL-drone. Listen, you notice they waited until you went offworld? They’re going to find out they underestimate the rest of us.’

  ‘The last thing you want to do is antagonize the Company,’ I said. The department’s status is ambiguous enough as it is – and it’s useful that way.

  Message-blips travel on unmanned drones that aren’t restrained by the limits of living flesh. Stephen would have sent this off ten or twelve days ago. I thought, I wonder how he’s holding out? Shit, they need me there!

  As he reached across to cut off the holo-reco
rd, Perrault added, ‘I’ll send reports regularly, as we arranged. Contact me when you can. Oh – word here is, PanOceania might have found something startling on Carrick V; true? Message ends.’

  That other life presses in on me. Memories of blue sky and cold wind and half-derelict office blocks in the London Enclave, and Perrault and the rest of my team; of days on the holo-link to governments in Westminster and York and Edinburgh, and to PanOceania in Melbourne and Tokyo. Does that put what I do here in perspective? Orthe, only a distant world in the Heart Stars, only Carrick V …

  I got up from the ’tank, blinking against the shuttle’s pale-green interior lighting. I have a responsibility here, put on me in a Wellhouse by a woman called renegade and traitor; put on me by my own actions, when I set foot on this world as First Contact. For the moment, Perrault will have to manage on his own.

  ‘Halfway mark,’ David Osaka announced. ‘Want to take over, Lynne?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll take it.’

  ‘There’s an anti-error repeat loop on the navigation systems,’ he added. ‘We’re still getting interference on location signals, but as far as I can make out, that’s where we’ll rendezvous with Molly.’

  I took over the console. Aware that, however unreal it seems to my imagination now, fifteen thousand feet below us there are jath-rai sailing east to Quarth and Reshebet and Nadrasiir, and the other Coast ports; crewed by Orthean men and women who look north across the Inner Sea with ever-hungrier faces.

  ‘The question is, what is the Company going to do about this situation?’

  Molly ignored the query, steering the groundcar over rough terrain. Balloon-tyres crunched on shale. Here the pale earth fell away in scree-slopes, and Carrick’s Star cast our shadows blue-black on the ground, and the mid-afternoon sky held only a handful of daystars at the horizon.

  ‘I don’t understand – why Tathcaer?’ she said at last. ‘That settlement’s been deserted for years. So have all the cities of the Hundred Thousand, except for Morvren Freeport. Logistically it would make more sense if they chose a T’An Suthai-Telestre in Morvren.’

  I leaned forward to key a control, and a panel in the dome of the groundcar retracted. Smell of sun on hot earth, and silence: the silence of a sterile land … ‘In Tathcaer, there’s a telestre-house for each one of the Hundred Thousand telestres. And there’s the great Well-house of Kerys Founder; and the Crown’s Citadel. That’s why they’ll go back there. Molly, I want to know what the Company’s going to do about the hiyeks.’

  ‘This is Reshebet,’ the Pacifican woman said. ‘This is what I wanted you to see, Lynne.’

  The groundcar slowed. Groups of young males and females were squatting outside low-roofed buildings. The wickedly sharp hook-bladed knives that hung at their belts were del’ri-harvest tools. Turned to butchery now? As we drove between the groups I thought, They’re farmers. That’s all. And so are the Hundred Thousand; this isn’t a war of armies –

  Reshebet swarmed like a hive of kekri-flies. Molly let the groundcar nose gently through the crowds of hiyek-Ortheans. Some took off their masks to stare at us, and the younger ashiren hung over the rails of the jath-ships that choked the canal here and called out to offworlders. Storm clouds massed on the northern horizon, and the sea shone like gunmetal.

  Narrow hoop-masted jath-rai and jath were jammed so tightly together that I couldn’t see canal water, only the decks; vessels sheltering behind the sea-lock wall from the coming storm. Shouts drifted up from the canal where it went inland, and I stood up in the groundcar, and saw great dun-coloured brennior on the walkways. The pack-beasts were harnessed by cables to jath-ships, straining with all their reptilian bulk to drag the craft northwards. I looked to the south and saw an endless train of hoop-masts and metal-weave sails glittering in the sun.

  ‘The hiyeks have been coming from inland for a week now,’ Molly Rachel said. ‘Same goes for all the coastal harbours. You can see I didn’t have any alternative.’

  ‘Alternative?’

  ‘I’ve sent a request through the orbiter’s comlink, asking that the nearest detachment of the Company’s Peace Force be seconded to Orthe.’

  She keyed power, and swung the groundcar away from the buildings, out on to rough earth again. No roads here, not even a footpath. All travel is by water. The ’car jolted, and a stab of nausea went through me.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Molly, you’re bringing troops in!’

  She frowned, concentrating on driving. ‘It’s a police station. Nothing more. They happen every day. You don’t think the Ortheans will fight each other with the potential threat of military technology hanging over them?’

  Carrot and stick. How many worlds have the Companies done this on? And on how many has it worked? And some small voice inside me said, An enforced peace is better than a freely-chosen war – isn’t it?

  Cool air circulated under the groundcar-dome. The exterior temperature reading was something unbelievable. I leaned back in the padded seat, squinting through the polarized plastic. Saw shale and rock, and the dust-plume of our arrival not yet settled. In the distance, moonscape mountains mark the beginning of the Elansiir. I have lived Orthean for too many days to be sped from shuttle-landing, across country to Reshebet, and now back to Kel Harantish in an hour – I haven’t adjusted.

  ‘What about Rashid’s people, in Maherwa?’

  Molly shook her head. Permanent lines marked her face now, incised deeply round her eyes. That black-wire hair was growing shaggy, and I saw she had pinned it down with two of the fragile del’ri-wood combs that Coast Ortheans use. Is Orthe beginning to touch her, or is that just for convenience?

  ‘Nothing!’ One dark fist hit the console: the groundcar swerved. ‘It is something we’ve never met before, some completely alien way of perceiving the universe – if we can’t understand Golden science, we should at least be able to reproduce it blindly! But all I get from Rashid is no. And none of these natives understand the concepts their ancestors used.’

  Now we drove parallel to a ridge, running into a brief strip of shadow, and emerged into level wasteland. The horizon shimmered, wavered, and dissolved. Streaks of mirage-water receded ahead of us. The white mesa of Kel Harantish hung in the heat, pulled out of shape like toffee; pocked with black windows like onyx eyes.

  ‘Lynne, do you understand Witchbreed science?’

  I turned my head, startled. ‘Me?’

  ‘If you were to tell me that somewhere in those fake memories that Pramila reported on, you had the slightest idea of how it functioned – I’d listen.’

  An octagonal hall in Rakviri: Whose hand will take the knife, under that radiant shadow?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Even if these delusions were the implanted memories I thought they were, or even if they’re based on data in the Tower Archives; then either way, the Hexenmeister wouldn’t pass on any knowledge of Witchbreed science. I don’t want to discuss it. I feel incredibly stupid to have let myself be tricked that way.’

  ‘Sorry. Lynne, I apologize; that was unfair.’

  The towering heights of Kel Harantish solidified from heat haze. The F90 shuttles grounded on the wasteland before it were dwarfed by the sheer massiveness of the walls. I saw movement: winches hauling rope-platforms up to the city roofs.

  ‘We might have time on our side,’ Molly Rachel said. ‘I’ve got the orbiter keeping a close eye on climate changes. It’s not long until the monsoon season. Ships won’t cross the Inner Sea in that. If that happens, and we sell T&A to the hiyeks, and with the Peace Force here …’

  The groundcar swung to halt by the nearest shuttle in a spray of shale and wheelspin. She grinned at me.

  ‘You’re so anxious to get PanOceania off this world. What I’ve done here will change your mind. I’ve got some things to see to – I’ll want your advice later. Pathrey Shanataru will show you what we’ve set up here.’

  She was out of the groundcar while the dome was still retracting, running up the F90’s ramp, hailing the human
s and Ortheans there. I got out of the car more slowly. Rock was hot underfoot. I stepped into the shadow of the F90’s hull. Voices are the only sound here: no wind through ziku or lapuur trees, no cry of rashaku …

  ‘Kethrial-shamaz, Christie.’

  A plump, brown-skinned Orthean left the group near the shuttle. Pathrey Shanataru. He bowed. His ragged meshabi-robe had gone, and so had the scale-mail, replaced by swathes of black cloth woven with myriad tiny gold threads. Amused despite myself, I thought, Not only seedy, but flashy too.

  Temporary T&A bases were set up here on the rocky earth. Standard issue, featureless metal and plastiglas domes, hardly larger than the shuttles that brought them. I could see, between them, the harbour: its surface like broken mirrors. And hear the lapping of the waves. I turned and walked as Pathrey led me, past the domes to the harbour. The pumps and sealed units of the desalination plants stood black against the glare. A linked series of them ran from the edge of the harbour nearest us, out along the harbour arm to the open sea.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘The last time I saw you, you were in hiding. You and the shan’tai Calil bel-Rioch – is she here, too?’

  The plump male smiled. His six-fingered hands flashed with jewelled rings.

  ‘The shan’tai bel-Rioch has friends.’ His shrewd brown eyes cleared. ‘All the friendlier now, since she could promise to bring back to the city all the engines and advantages of s’aranthi-offworlders …’

  It came to me that this middle-aged Orthean male was as excited as an ashiren, hugging to himself the triumph of their return, his and Calil’s. Does that mean an unguarded tongue?