Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  ‘I may have to go down to the Coast and sort things out with Molly.’

  He registered my non-answer and smiled. ‘That information could be useful, now there’s some progress here. It’s a good thing that you still have access to the Company.’

  Starlight shifted on the floor of the Wellhouse dome. The air near the Wellmouth was cold, dark. Easy to be confident here in Tathcaer, I thought, but there are so many other factors; so many things that can still happen …

  More soberly, Doug said, ‘Ascertain, if you can, what part young Rachel played in authorizing today’s attack. I need to have the full facts at my disposal when I enter the protest at home. I think that, despite current events, I shall still protest …’

  I couldn’t hide it: I knew it then, knew it when I stood on Kumiel six hours later in the cold dawn, waiting for the Company shuttle. What drove me to leave was not a desire to find out what was happening on the Coast, urgent though that might be. I left because it would be too humiliating to have to say to Ortheans, in Tathcaer or in Keverilde, Corazon Mendez has succeeded where I have so far failed.

  24

  A Mortal Coldness

  Corazon Mendez herself led me down the shuttle’s cabin to comfortable seats and flasks of coffee. That sleek white hair was immaculate, black coveralls with hardly a crease; and her face showed no strain. She said, ‘You’re aware, no contact at all can be made now with the T&A site at Kel Harantish?’

  The seats were soft. I drank, set the flask back in its socket as the F90 thrummed into flight. The angle of ascent was sharp. Rising up to hi-orbit, then dropping down to the Coast; profligate with fuel, but taking hours rather than the two days flying over the Inner Sea. PanOceania can afford it.

  Cory Mendez settled seat-webs across us. Attempting humour, she said, ‘I’m sorry your expected disaster failed to materialize, after the strike.’

  ‘Cory, for God’s sake! I warn you, I’ll register the strongest possible protest at home, and I’ll make it stick. When something goes wrong here the Company will want a scapegoat, and I’ll do my best to make certain that it’s you.’

  There was a smile on that lean face. To do her justice, she tried to hide it.

  ‘It’s a catastrophic failure of judgement,’ I said at last. ‘You can stop hostilities temporarily, but – Christ, I sound as though I want a disaster. It’s not so. Cory, I’m terrified of what’s going to happen on Orthe now, and that’s the truth.’

  She nodded twice, those sharp blue eyes on me; had a smile that might be humour or sympathy. ‘I think you underestimate the effectiveness of being brutal. You’d let matters go on until there was no other option but a major hostile incident, and one all the worse for being delayed. I don’t deny the strike resulted in casualties. That’s cauterization. We can’t allow what we would have had – war with an alien population who’ve got their hands on hi-tech weaponry.’ Now her smile was entirely conscious of irony. ‘Your Coast farmers wanted to know about CAS and projectile weaponry. Very well, we’ve just given them an object lesson. It’s far more effective than Clifford’s diplomatic bleatings. Some situations can only be resolved through fear.’

  The shuttle tilted, power roaring, reaching up towards the edge of the atmosphere. Six miles below us that blue globe turns.

  ‘They’re not children, to all be scared of fire because one burned its fingers.’

  ‘Lynne, that’s exactly what they are.’

  As I looked round the cabin at Cory’s officers at their consoles, I felt desperately isolated. ‘You’ve acted on your own authority. Will Molly Rachel back you up? If she’s been in protective custody in Kel Harantish, she won’t necessarily have heard what’s happened. Better have a good explanation ready.’

  ‘We have to have order.’ Cory’s face, that lined face, sharp as a bird of prey, was open and honest now. ‘We saw the early years of the Dispersal, Earth falling apart because suddenly there was a universe full of inhabited, reachable worlds. The Companies are the thread that ties us together now. PanOceania can’t afford violence on worlds where it has an interest. Lynne, I spoke to some of your Ortheans in Tathcaer. Their attitude is the same: they’d sooner win, as I would, by the wrong means, than not win at all. Do me the credit of believing that when I say “win” I don’t refer to military battles?’

  The shuttle tilted back to level, slowing, and I knew we would shortly dock and refuel at the orbiter. I didn’t meet the older woman’s gaze. What now? Leave Doug to mediate in the Hundred Thousand, put some Company man like David Osaka in Morvren Freeport; there’s Carrick V settled as another Company market. Research into Witchbreed artifacts can go ahead unhindered. Working towards some hypothetical break-through … And what happens to me? Self-pity aside, it’s a good question; I’ve messed up at least two careers in these past few months, and it looks as though it’s all been for nothing.

  ‘Kel Harantish …’ Cory looked thoughtful.

  ‘I can give you a considered opinion on that,’ I said. ‘If Dannor bel-Kurick, the Emperor-in-Exile, has been fighting – it’ll be over contact with Earth technology, and I think there are groups there powerful enough to overrule him. Molly won’t be in any danger if, say, Calil bel-Rioch is protecting her.’

  ‘The faction in that settlement that supports the Company is strong enough?’ Mendez queried.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to find Calil as Voice of the Emperor again. Or, in all but name, Emperor herself. All that worries me is that Molly and the others may have been caught in the city when fighting broke out, and handled it badly.’

  ‘It may not be as straightforward as I previously indicated –’ She paused. Metallic echoes thrummed through the ship as we docked. Then as we waited she said, ‘It was unwise to risk on an open comlink, particularly when the equipment you were using is the property of the government envoy. This is another reason why I requested your presence. Your knowledge of the archeological background.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I believe that Representative Rachel is in the settlement,’ she said. ‘One of her last transmissions before loss of contact had to do with the Old Technology. She indicated they might have had a conceptual breakthrough.’

  ‘Rashid’s team –’

  Cory linked her fingers, and the thick silver rings clinked together. ‘That was a deliberate lie. Rashid Akida and several of the research personnel were not among the people evacuated up to the orbital station. There’s a high probability they’re still with Representative Rachel.’

  She loosed the seat-web, preparatory to going to the comlink to authorize the refuelling. ‘A conceptual breakthrough on Golden science – all the more reason to protect Company personnel by keeping the peace, if Carrick V is going to be a major market for us.’

  I watched her walk across the cabin to speak with her officers. The level hum of power and the shuttle interior’s warmth were soothing, too soothing for the couple of hours’ sleep I’d had; time began to slip. Half-awake, half-asleep, I expected every chime of the comlink to announce some dream-parallel of Mendez’s announcement – was that really only twelve hours ago? – from the Hundred Thousand, Doug Clifford saying how temporary this temporary peace had turned out to be …

  I sat up, made a mental effort to stay awake. Panic suddenly made me breathless. Is it possible to become too awake? I saw the shuttle clearly, heard the signal of completed fuelling, and at the same time felt the surge of memories – memories resisted because I knew them to be delusion – and in an instant experienced the full force of vision –

  The sky is cold; palest blue. Wind cuts like ice. The light on the horizon is silver, as if Orthe’s dawn came at once from all quarters of the horizon. The light is silver. Against it, silhouetted, the ramps and towers and terraces of a great city; that great city, Archonys.

  ‘Speak,’ she says. ‘Do we have the trick of it yet; do we have the secret?’

  The language of the slave race falls from those thin lips easily, and it s
hould not, but how else could we comprehend her? And I know that thin and high-boned face, with honey-yellow eyes; that pale gold-dusted skin and floating mane: she who is given the name of Zilkezra of the High Lands, Zilkezra of the Golden, sister of Santhendor’lin-sandru.

  She says, ‘You have laboured long and hard for it, and for us, and for love of us, and have not yet succeeded?’

  ‘We have that knowledge,’ I tell her. ‘We have worked, we understand it, we give it to you freely. That ancient light will take Archonys, but that great city will not die alone.’

  Her hands on my shoulders are cold. She turns me to face those others gathered here, on the great terrace above the Six Lakes. Hawk faces and golden eyes and slender bodies in metalmesh robes, and I must lower my eyes. Their gaze upon me is a mortal coldness. And they are more beautiful than the silver dawn.

  ‘Now you see, ‘she says, ‘this that we created from the beasts of this world to be Our servant, this has served us well. This child of Orthe has given our revenge into our hands. ‘And she says, ‘Let them in future time grub in the dirt, I will make death their only crop. Let this be a cold world, a sterile world, let it blaze back the sun’s light like a star; let nothing move on the face of it but the cold wind, and the dust of cities, and the dust of men.’

  The light on the horizon is silver, older than Time; an ancient light, the brilliance of annihilation. Yet more beautiful stand Zilkezra and the Golden of Archonys; we who are but their made children, their slaves, we stand appalled at that beauty which we desire. How many of us, in other lives, will deny all but our slavery? When Orthe is a world of telestres and hiyeks, will we deny that some of us loved the Golden, worked with them, for them; and for love of them created that destruction, as some of us for hate created their sterile deaths? –

  Vision gave way to an uneasy calm. I put it behind me, as I put all such experiences behind me now, and tried to think of what might be occurring below, as the Company F90 shuttle raced the dawn-line down to the surface of the Harantish peninsula. Could only think of Corazon Mendez’s phrase and the Company research team: ‘a conceptual break-through on Golden science’. And in what area of Golden science it might be.

  Cory Mendez took the seat beside me. ‘Jamison reports dry storms in the Harantish area, suggests breathing-gear.’

  ‘What does he say about the base?’

  ‘The excavation site is deserted. The F90s are on autolock.’ She steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them; silver rings dented her skin. Her gaze was abstracted. She said, ‘I wish communications were – more reliable.’

  Windlasses creaked. Del’ri-fibre ropes thrummed in the wind as the platform inched lower. White sky blazed over white earth; heat sucked the breath from my mouth. Dust stung the side of my face, particles sharp as glass, and I squinted up through the eyeshields at a robed figure gripping the platform’s rail. As the wooden structure grounded, grating on the rock at the base of Kel Harantish’s walls, I saw three other figures: guards in brown scale-mail. The first figure stepped forward, peering at us through veils of white dust.

  ‘Kethrial-shamaz shan’tai!’ called Pathrey Shanataru. He linked six-fingered hands across his podgy belly, that was now swathed in fine-textured black-and-golden robes. He inclined his head in my direction, then included Cory and Jamison: ‘You are expected, which I think you may know. Come into the city.’

  Cory Mendez slipped the air-tube from her mouth, coughed at the dust in her throat, and said, ‘Is Representative Rachel in the settlement?’

  Pathrey’s dark eyes shifted. Veiled as they were against the dust-storms, their expression could not be easily read.

  I glanced at the guards. ‘Is there still fighting going on?’

  ‘No, shan’tai Christie.’ A sly smile spread over his rotund features. ‘I am bid, by the Empress-in-Exile, to welcome you, and bring you to her.’

  Cory raised white brows at Empress. In Sino-Anglic, she said, ‘We’ll have to go in. It should be safe enough.’

  Pathrey Shanataru stood aside to let Mendez and her junior officer Jamison walk on to the lift-platform. I saw Pathrey note the presence of CAS weaponry. He made no open protest. Only, as I joined them, he stood so that his face was not visible to the Peace Force officers, and spoke quietly enough for the wind to mask his words.

  ‘You must be cautious, shan’tai Christie. We Harantish are not the same now. I think sometimes –’ and he stopped, and said no more.

  ‘Is Molly Rachel in the city? Pathrey –’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Shan’tai, it should not be I who tells you.’

  Corazon Mendez stood foursquare on the platform as it lifted, no thought for the gulf of air below. Dust whitened her uniform. She towered a head taller than Pathrey when she leaned over to us.

  ‘Shan’tai –’ the polite term came unfamiliar from her lips ‘– I warn you, it’s ill-advised to procrastinate. The Company is in a position to demand the full facts.’

  It is? I thought. The small Orthean male nervously brushed away dust that the wind lodged in his robes. He gazed out at empty air. I knew in an intuitive flash what he would say.

  ‘I am sorry for this,’ Pathrey Shanataru said, ‘and I should not tell you, she should, she will be angry … Your Representative Molly Rachel is badly hurt.’

  Cory demanded, ‘How badly? What is the extent of her injuries? What medical care has she received?’

  Fear and intuition together made me look at Pathrey, at those shifting dark eyes. It came to me, that this might be bad enough to put Molly out of action for – weeks? months? But I need her here, need her to restrain Cory’s Force. Hell, I never thought I’d say that!

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked.

  ‘You will be brought to her, shan’tai.’

  Cory said, ‘Make it fast.’

  The wooden platform jerked to a halt, hung swaying above emptiness. The Harantish guards dismounted and steadied it as we climbed down on to the city’s roofs. Pathrey hurried us without pause across the expanses of white stone, up steps, down ramps; past roof-houses first lost and then disclosed by the whirls of dust. I found the air clearer at this height, slipped the air-tube out and took a breath, smelling dry earth and sun-warmed stone, and somewhere something rank.

  Pathrey dropped back a step, letting Cory and Jamison walk ahead between the guards. I said quietly, ‘Is it Calil bel-Rioch who’s Empress-in-Exile?’

  ‘Calil bel-Dannor.’ A smile vanished somewhere in that fat brown face, and his unveiled eyes were small, dark, and brilliant. ‘It became necessary to disclose that shan’tai Calil is in fact the daughter of Dannor bel-Kurick, abandoned in the lowest levels of Kel Harantish in childhood, and so,’ he said with a disarming satisfaction, ‘fully entitled to succeed him as Empress, after his unfortunate final, fatal illness.’

  ‘What a fortunate coincidence that it should be so.’

  He caught the dry tone, smiled; and there was something in that expression of ruefulness, of bewilderment. ‘She’s … changed. Ah. Shan’tai, ignore what you see now. The fighting is not long over.’

  He spoke to the guards, and one stayed outside the small roof-house which we now entered. Corazon ducked her head to enter. I saw her speak to the burly Jamison, who checked his wristlink, and remained with the Harantish male. The other guards, pale-maned females so alike as to be a twin-birth, lifted up the heavy trap door.

  I preceded Cory down the del’ri climbing-web into the chamber below. Despite common sense, I waited to hear the trap slam behind me – it didn’t. Cory Mendez and Pathrey Shanataru climbed down. It being comparatively dark, it was not until I had stood for a moment on the stone-tiled floor that I saw the stains. Great patches of black liquid that seeped down into the gaps between the tiles and stained the plaster walls. In the dim light, the smeared print of a six-fingered hand was plain on one wall. Curving smears of black on the floor led to bundled del’ri mats in the far corner of the chamber …

  ‘Shan’tai.’ Pathrey Shanatar
u held open the trap door set in this floor, disclosing a flight of stone steps.

  Corazon Mendez walked over to the heap of del’ri mats, boot-heels clicking on the tiles. She bent to lift one corner. I saw how her mouth quirked; expectant, sardonic. She let the corner of the matting fall back.

  ‘Knives and swords are messier than CAS,’ she remarked, in Sino-Anglic.

  ‘Shan’tai.’ Pathrey, insistent, at the trap door. I couldn’t catch his eye. I was suddenly aware of the heat, of that smell that (to human senses) is not quite rot. Disgust lodged in my throat, sour as vomit. I walked over to him and down the stone steps.

  Five levels below, the stone walls changed to chiruzeth. My legs ached, and my eyes also, with straining against the gloom. The dust-storms outside dimmed the mirror-reflected light. Black stains spattered the stairway. I saw no more bodies.

  ‘Pathrey …’

  ‘Dannor bel-Kurick was not without friends,’ Pathrey said, leading us down another flight of chiruzeth steps. The air felt cool. The blue-grey walls held a luminosity only seen in peripheral vision. Neither Pathrey nor the guards stumbled as Cory and I did, and when he turned his face to me, I saw his dark eyes were unveiled and deep.

  We went down, down steps sharp as if newly cut, for all they must date back to the days of the Empire. Through chambers whose walls were carved with bas-relief images, some glint of light striking from a curve or angle. The air seemed full of swirling, grainy particles; smelled of scorching, and that hidden corruption. Exertion left me panting for breath, heart hammering, muscles trembling.

  The last flight of steps ended at the beginning of a wide, low-roofed chamber. I stepped down on to the chiruzeth floor. The light was dim. By chance I looked to the left. A pale-maned Harantish male lay beside the wall, face buried in the crook of his arm. The black that stained the floor was not shadow. I took a step in that direction and then stopped: what seemed like movement was the crawling of beetle-like insects on his naked back. They rustled.