Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  ‘Full consultations with Representative Rachel took place, and her agreement was given; as was that of the British government for use of refuelling and docking facilities on Thierry’s World –’

  Doug Clifford’s hands froze on the comlink controls. He stared at the silver-haired woman’s image, at her self-possessed expression. ‘That’s a lie. That’s a lie on both counts. Oh, that stupid woman. How could she do this? How?’

  The Peace Force Commander added, ‘Provisional consultation took place on Earth before we left, and approval was given for this type of action.’

  ‘Shit!’ I couldn’t key in a contact. Cory wants this between herself and the WEBcasters, I thought, and none of us saying the wrong word; has she really done this without consulting Molly? Has she really done this?

  The ’link babbled, WEBcasters vociferously interrupting each other to question her. Blips would already be shuttling back to Earth in FTL drones. I had to stand up, to pace across the room; and at the window I stopped and looked at the sky above the courtyard. At the blue sky and the skeins of daystars. Such a clear sky, and now so dangerous.

  ‘If the hiyeks have any hi-tech weapons, they’ll use them now. Any minute, any second –’ I swung back to face Doug. ‘I want to go to the orbiter. I want to go up there and tell them no, the Company doesn’t have our support, no, the government didn’t agree to their using the base on Thierry’s World, no –’ Anger, shame, and such outrage it left me breathless.

  ‘Here are the satellite transmissions.’

  I went to stand beside him. The WEBcasters and Mendez were tiny figures in the corner of the tank. The main holo-image shone with the acid-white light of the Coast – have the storms gone now, of all times? – that light that shone on ochre earth and the far-distant foothills of the Elansiir mountains.

  Reshebet, is it? A curve of chiruzeth marks the sea wall. Now you can hardly see it for rubble, rock blasted in from the low ridges that used to line the canals; and in that rubble are the tilted hulls of jath ships, that metal shining, but dimmed with dust. Hoop-masts are twisted, jath-rai driven up one on the other by the force of the blasts. The canal that runs to the harbour is choked with wreckage and all the low shacks collapsed; the waters of the canal flooding out on to the barren land around, and sinking down and leaving no more than a shadow of water on the earth … Bodies lie in the incandescent sun: Ortheans sprawled under tumbled rock, or floating face down in water; and now as the image moves a little inland there are crowds (seen from above, foreshortened), some moving, strung out along the track beside the canal; some still and silent; there a man holding an ashiren, there two pale-maned females, and there, and there.

  ‘The strike was aimed at purely military targets,’ Corazon Mendez said, in voice-over. ‘Casualties have been kept to a minimum. I ordered the F90s to make a low pass over these ports at 21.40 and again at 21.50 as a signal to evacuate the local population from the harbour areas.’

  Doug’s hand closed round mine, unconsciously gripping hard enough to hurt. His face had gone a sick colour between yellow and grey.

  ‘The civilians are the only military targets on the Coast –’ That from a WEBcaster, the dark-haired Roxana Visconti.

  ‘By this action now we will have prevented greater use of force,’ Cory Mendez said. ‘Had more than a small fraction of the invasion fleet reached the northern continent, more severe action might have been necessary, which the use of punitive force at this stage has prevented.’

  Though I tried, I couldn’t get the satellite transmission to show me more than that one image. I wanted to know if the harbours were all as devastated; wanted to know how many jath ships had been caught in the destruction. ‘How the hell could we do this! The Company can’t just –’

  ‘They have,’ Doug said. He turned away from the holotank, looking at the dusty telestre-house room, the brazier and couch-chair and satellite-maps pinned to the walls, and his face was blank with bewilderment. He said, ‘They can, because they have the power to do so. And now am I supposedly to go to the T’Ans here and inform them, “my government supports what the PanOceania multicorporate has done in attacking Orthean people, and therefore I support it”?’

  I said, ‘The Company’s always bitching about how NuAsia grabs territory, how ChinaCo does; don’t they see this makes them look like any other multicorporate?’ I abandoned the holotank. ‘Doug, you don’t have a choice; if you don’t go along with the Company, they’ll put pressure on at home to have you removed.’

  ‘Then I’m very much afraid that that is what they will have to do.’

  Too cold, too shocked, I couldn’t take it all in. There is the sky over the roofs of Tathcaer, an evening sky as clean and clear as any other, and the brilliance of Carrick’s Star; and now to wake up this one particular evening and find everything changed –

  Doug, neatly fastening the cuffs on his overall, said, ‘Some authority is going to have to inform the T’Ans and the takshiriye what’s happening on the Coast now. You’re the representative of PanOceania. I’m here on behalf of the government. I suspect that Commander Mendez is well aware that our duty –’

  ‘We weren’t consulted, we weren’t told, we’re not responsible – Douggie, I don’t believe even that Molly knows. I can’t contact anyone on the Coast. This is Mendez acting on her own.’

  To outsiders, we will be called responsible. Government envoy, special advisor …

  ‘It won’t be a great deal of time before we hear from the WEBcasters,’ Doug said. ‘Did it look as though public feeling is going to be in favour of what’s happened here? I’m familiar with WEB personnel. If they’re shocked, groundsiders will be appalled.’

  Outside, I could hear the evening bustle of Tathcaer, smell the smoke of cooking-fires; and I realized, I can’t predict now what the telestre-Ortheans will feel about this. Which is more terrible, that an enemy burns Melkathi, or that that enemy has suffered the use of s’aranthi weapons?’

  ‘The government will be called responsible,’ Doug Clifford said. He took a breath. ‘I want to turn around and say I agree with all your condemnations, I am ashamed to be part of this administration. If there was anything I could do to condemn this, I would do it. All I can do is stand helplessly by and watch the mechanism grind on.’

  The thought of crossing six miles of Tathcaer to the Citadel was exhausting in itself, and as for what explanations would have to be made to Howice and Khassiye and Bethan, to Blaize and Hal, Cassirur, Romare Kerys-Andrethe …

  I said, ‘We’ve got to try and stop this here. Now. We’ve got to get these people and the hiyek-families to make peace now.’ And then, as we left the room, I said, ‘But Douggie, have you thought? How will we react if what Mendez has done does put an end to the fighting? Does that make her right?’

  Starlight shone down through the slot in the roof of the great Wellhouse. That light of Orthe’s summer stars, mixed with the glowing yellow of becamil-wax candles, shone on the braided manes of hastily-dressed Ortheans where they stood or sat on the stone tiers, shrouded the entrances to that domed, shadowed amphitheatre. Male and female voices rose in a babble; there was the wail of ashiren. In a moment’s quiet came the whirr of rashaku wings and apprehension became tangible: what message from Melkathi, now? The clamour of discussion rose louder.

  ‘Attacked the harbours?’ Cassirur Almadhera exclaimed, outraged.

  ‘Bombed the harbour entrances to make them impassable to shipping.’ Doug faced the group of T’Ans on the lower tiers of that stone amphitheatre. He stood with his head high; he looked beleaguered and defiant and (though no outsider would see it) ashamed. I moved to stand beside him, before that impromptu council of accusing faces – now they had the news, they seemed determined on wringing us dry of facts.

  The starlight robbed Cassirur’s mane of scarlet, made her face an ashen mask. Her hand dropped to Hal’s shoulder, where he sat below her on the next tier.

  ‘Mother of the Wells! To fight, yes, but to destroy –�
�� She stopped. Earthspeakers care for all land. Romare Kerys-Andrethe, dark and self-satisfied, muttered something to her, and then turned aside, speaking with the blunt and soldierly Bethan T’An Kyre. That Orthean woman frowned.

  ‘How dare you act without consulting us?’ Haltern made to stand and sank back, pale with anger, ill with it; and Cassirur’s hand tightened on his shoulder, that Earthspeaker’s sensing touch. He ignored her whispered warning. ‘Is that a measure of precisely how much your people take note of the Hundred Thousand?’

  ‘Independent action –’

  He overrode Doug. ‘Taken against us. Against Ortheans.’

  That got attention from a group of three: Howice T’An Roehmonde whose face held a frown of private concern (Roehmonde being far enough north not to worry just yet, but soon); the elegant and caustic Khassiye Reihalyn, T’An Andrethe; and Geren Hanathra, Geren Shipmaster, now T’An Ymir. That last looked at me with hatred.

  ‘They’re hiyeks,’ Howice T’An Roehmonde protested. His plump fingers wound together nervously. ‘Hiyeks and lovers of Witchbreed abominations – what does it matter if s’aranthi kill them?’

  ‘Because if they can do that to the Coast,’ said Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen, ‘they can do it to us. Isn’t that right, t’an S’aranth? Christie, am I correct? Pardonable violence against hostile local forces, leading to the imposition of a garrison to see that there’s no fighting anywhere; Coast or Hundred Thousand; am I right?’

  ‘Hal –’

  ‘Am I right?’ The white mane flew, his voice cracked with anger; and those small brilliant eyes veiled with membrane. ‘Ortheans have gone to Her at offworlder hands, that’s what you’ve told us; how long before it happens again, in Melkathi, and how will you tell hiyek from telestre?’

  I couldn’t tell if he meant land or people; and language being so ambiguous, perhaps his thought was too. He sank back into the becamil robes protecting him against the summer night’s air. Doug and I stood together on the lower tier by him, and as I looked up I saw how we were surrounded by condemnation: Cassirur and Bethan gazing down, Romare and Howice and Khassiye Reihalyn on the tier above them.

  ‘Tomorrow’s the solstice,’ I said. ‘Naming day, Mid-summer-Eightyear. Tomorrow one of you will be T’An Suthai-Telestre. Why do you think we’ve been so concerned to get this news to you? Nothing compels us to tell you. Listen to me –’

  ‘Listen to the PanOceania Company,’ Khassiye Reihalyn said, studying the gold studs between his fingers instead of offworlders; speaking with malice.

  ‘No.’ I took a breath. The becamil candles wavered in a breeze from the upper archways, and that yellow light shone on them: picking out gems on the hilts of Khassiye’s harur-blades, shining on Haltern’s white mane, on Bethan’s dark skin; making half-shadowed masks of Romare and Howice’s expressions. And I remember, ten years ago, a night council in a room in the Citadel …

  Geren Hanathra stepped down one tier. Light shone on his yellow mane, on that hardly-aged face. He said, ‘If I had known what I brought from the Eastern Isles that year, I should have drowned you like vermin. Yes, stand here, S’aranth! Stand as she did, amari Ruric Orhlandis; betray us as she did –’

  ‘Unfair.’

  The voice was weak, but it was Haltern’s; looking up with pale and whiteless blue eyes; meeting my gaze with something of the old ironic humour.

  ‘She has been a friend to us, Geren; and the t’an Clifford also. And that on occasion when it was not to their advantage, I admit it.’ He smiled. ‘Better if you hadn’t, Christie. It makes it harder for us to see you offworlders as nothing but enemy, all Shadow. Or harder for some of us … I am too old to lie to myself, and make anger cover what I feel, although I have tried.’

  In the silence that followed, the voices of the other Ortheans in the Wellhouse rang across the stone tiers; and a female in north-province Earthspeakers’ gear came over to speak with Cassirur Almadhera; and a Peir-Dadeni rider took Khassiye Andrethe aside. I sat down on the lowest stone tier beside Haltern, and gazed up at the other T’Ans.

  ‘You know me. You know Doug and me, and we know the Company. You won’t trust offworlders now, and I don’t blame you, but I’ll tell you this: the only way to stop the Company getting a foothold in the Hundred Thousand is to make peace in Melkathi. Take the excuse for intervention away. You must do that.’

  A new voice said, ‘Then it’s not us you should talk with, t’an Christie, but the Coast families that are burning Melkathi.’

  It was Nelum Santhil. His face showed strain, but the rationality was back in those dark eyes. He looked as though he’d slept in the crumpled Melkathi robes he wore. One six-fingered hand held a curling strip of parchment: a message from the rashaku-relay. Quite deliberately he walked down the stone steps and seated himself on the tier beside me.

  ‘I’ll go to Melkathi with you and the t’an Clifford,’ he said. ‘Christie, you don’t trust me, but I care more for Melkathi province than SuBannasen or Orhlandis did. I can talk to the hiyeks. The Melkathi telestres … we know about poverty. About failing harvests. About famine, and plague. Help me to get to the Anzhadi and I’ll talk to them about peace.’ He paused. ‘I am not to become T’An Suthai-Telestre, I know that, so it doesn’t matter if I am absent tomorrow –’

  ‘It’s against all custom!’ Romare Kerys-Andrethe protested.

  Cassirur returned from talking with the northern Earthspeaker in time to say, ‘Custom’s a guide-rope and not a chain. T’An Christie, will the hiyeks in Melkathi have heard what’s happened today in Reshebet and the other harbours?’

  I looked at Doug. He lifted a brow. ‘If they happen to have an illegal comlink. As yet I’ve picked up nothing in the way of unauthorized transmissions.’

  ‘If not …’ Cassirur’s eyes veiled, dark, ‘then they will not know until a jath ship reaches them, if it ever does.’

  ‘The hiyeks will not suddenly become our friends because of this,’ Romare said. ‘I hold with your opinion, Earthspeaker; best lull them into peace and then send them to Her. Or will that bring offworlder ships down on us?’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Doug conceded.

  The stolid female in zilmei pelts and skurrai leather, that I knew vaguely to be Bethan Ivris T’An Kyre, said in heavily-accented Ymirian: ‘T’Ans, weren’t there new telestres founded in Peir-Dadeni, some five hundred years gone? Let these others, these hiyeks, go north into the Barrens, over Broken Stair; or west into the wilderness. Let them make telestres there by Her will. The kazsis flowers where the vine is trained. So in ten generations they will be of the telestre, as we are.’

  Nelum Santhil looked up at her. ‘Is there land, or only wilderness? Can anyone live there?’

  Cassirur interrupted: ‘The hiyeks have lived too long with Witchbreed science. Will you send them into the Witchbreed’s ruined cities now, will you have them bring back the Empire? Who knows what lies undiscovered in the Barrens?’

  Nelum Santhil and Bethan Ivris ignored her, and I looked at the two of them, this mountain woman, and this male from the arid city Ales-Kadareth. I almost wanted to laugh, seeing how the T’Ans of the prosperous telestres looked affronted. What would Suthafiori have made of these two outsiders? She might well have overruled Ymir, Rimon, Roehmonde, Peir-Dadeni, if she thought it made better sense …

  ‘Word from the t’an Meduenin,’ Nelum Santhil said, at last holding up the ribbon-message that he had been absently winding and unwinding in those dark six-fingered hands. ‘Blaize Meduenin sends word, he has spoken with one Jadur Anzhadi of the Coast, taken a prisoner near Keverilde telestre. This shan’tai Jadur speaks of the destruction of Reshebet.’

  Excitement flickered on all those Orthean faces. So the Anzhadi do have an illegal comlink, I thought. They know what Cory’s done. Is it coincidence that Jadur is one of Sethri’s raiku? Is he a prisoner or a would-be envoy?

  Nelum handed the ribbon-message across to Hal, who peered short-sightedly at the script.

&n
bsp; ‘If we can speak with the Anzhadi now,’ Nelum urged, ‘they and the hiyeks back on the Coast have suffered greatly. Let’s make what offer we can, while that shock’s new. T’An Christie’s right. There must be no excuse for offworld intervention.’

  Geren and Howice and Khassiye broke out into protest, interrupting each other; Cassirur bent over Hal’s shoulder to read the message, pointing, speaking excitedly; Nelum Santhil obdurately blocked her objections. Bethan enthusiastically spoke to other s’ans who, attracted by the shouting, moved down several tiers to speak with the T’Ans. Doug urbanely cut Howice T’An Roehmonde off in mid-argument. It was minutes before I realized, in the middle of it all, that my wristlink was signalling for attention.

  I stepped aside from the group, on to the Wellhouse floor. A few yards from where I stood, the black Wellmouth gaped, and I felt a chill come up from the water fifty feet below.

  ‘Christie here.’

  The distance-thinned voice said, ‘Corazon Mendez. I’m sending a shuttle to pick you up from the settlement at 08.00 localworld time.’

  ‘Now hold on just a minute –’

  Corazon said, ‘I don’t have time to argue. You’re special advisor to the Company, Lynne. I have the authority to co-opt personnel.’

  Cory’s an old hand at this, knows not to antagonize Company staff, so why –? And then I thought, If I didn’t know Commander Mendez better, I’d say this was fear.

  The clipped tones went on: ‘I’m taking a squad down to the Kel Harantish settlement and I may need an expert on xeno-psychology. That’s you, Lynne. Meet the shuttle on Kumiel Island at 08.00.’

  The wristlink blurred: empty channel. I stood staring at the black Wellmouth, not really aware of what I saw. If Cory Mendez is this concerned … what has she heard from Molly Rachel in Kel Harantish? What else can happen?

  ‘I intend to travel down to Keverilde,’ Doug said as he extricated himself from the crowd of Ortheans on the stone tiers. He was flushed, slightly ruffled; above all, determined. ‘Who was the call?’