Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra (57 page)

They
whisked along the near-deserted streets of Fierra. Over delicate arches and through brightly lit tunnels, past open markets and blocks of dwellings, along thoroughfares lined with glowing pylons they went—Talus and Treet accompanied by Preben and Mathiax. Treet could tell by the long sideways glances he was receiving from the others that they were dying to ask him some of the millions of questions that were bubbling up inside their brains like lava from a hot volcano. Mercifully, they let him sit quietly and watch the enchanted city slide past.

“There is the Preceptor's palace,” said Mathiax, pointing to a many-tiered pagoda rising from a clump of trees ahead. The evee slowed as it turned into a narrow lane, and the Preceptor's palace swung full into view, glowing, thought Treet, with a rosy luster like those floodlit castles that were so popular with the postcard crowd. The drive ended a few meters inside the grounds, and the vehicle stopped. The passengers got out and made their way across a wide, dark lawn, spongy underfoot with thick vegetation.

Two Fieri, one male and one female, met them at the open entrance to the palace. Both were dressed in a high-necked jacket with deep sleeves and a large triangular patch of bright silver over the heart. On the patch was a symbol Treet could not make out. It looked like a ring of circles, each one blending into the next, yet somehow separate from the others. The image appeared to be spinning so that each time he tried to look directly at it, the symbol blurred and shifted.

The male attendant held out his hand, and Talus placed the folded card on his palm. “Thank you for attending our request,” said the woman. She smiled warmly. “You will find our Preceptor awaiting you in the audience room. I will be glad to show you the way.”

“No need,” said Mathiax. “I know how to find it.”

“As you wish,” she said and waved them through.

The Clerk led them up three levels on a sweeping spiral staircase to an enormous room that took up nearly the entire third level. “This is the reception hall,” explained Talus as they trooped across the threshold. The interior of the hall was lit by several large columns of sunstone, which cast a soft, rose-tinted light all around.

Treet thought, upon entering the reception hall, that the room was empty, but then saw a tall, slender figure standing before heavy, floor-to-ceiling curtains worked in designs of green and gold. The Preceptor wore a short copper-colored robe over silver knee-length trousers. The robe was cinched at the waist by a silver belt; silver boots met the trousers at the knee. Yellow sunstone chips glimmered in a wide silver band around a graceful throat.

The Preceptor waited for them to come close, her long, fine hands clasped in front of her, gazing intently at them as they crossed the polished expanse of floor, their footsteps tapping the stone. She smiled as they came to stand in front of her, extending her hands to Treet, and then to the others in turn, saying, “I realize you must be tired. You do your leader a kindness by coming at this late hour. I won't keep you long.”

She stepped lightly to the curtain and pulled it back. The audience room was a small chamber concealed behind the draperies. They filed into the room, and the Preceptor entered, waving them to long, low divans arranged in the center of the room. She seated herself across from Treet and gazed at him with intense violet eyes that probed his directly. He realized that if he remained very long in this woman's presence, he would have no secrets left. Those eyes—hard and bright as amethysts, set in a face of intriguing angles above a straight, aquiline nose and a strong, almost masculine jaw—would pierce like lasers anything that did not yield instantly to them.

“I listened to your story,” she began. “I was much amazed by all you said.”

“You heard me?” It was a dumb question, but it was out before Treet could stop it.

She pointed to the badge still stuck to the front of his shirt. “My crystal is tuned to receive sympathetic vibrations. I heard every word.” She studied him for a moment, as if making up her mind about him. Then she said, “No one has ever come across the Daraq. The few who risk the journey die in the attempt. We find them, but always too late.”

“Others have come before us?”

“Not many. And not for a very long time. But the Protector went with you, and the Sustainer watched over you until we could send a balon to rescue you. Therefore, we can assume that the Infinite Father has a purpose in sending you here.”

Treet sat still. He had nothing to say on that score. The Preceptor continued, “We must find out what that purpose is so that we may fulfill it. Would that be agreeable to you?”

“Yes, of course,” said Treet. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay with us, learn our ways. My kinsmen Mathiax and Talus will guide you, and all of Fierra will be open to you. Then, when the All-Wise reveals His purpose, teach us.”

“That's it? That's all you want me to do?”

The Preceptor nodded slightly. “Yes. What more is required than that we fulfill our spiritual purpose?”

“Can I see my friends?”

“If you wish. Your love for your friends is commendable. But it would be better if you wait until each of your friends has spoken before the Mentors. However, this is a request I make, not a precept. You are free to do as you will.”

“Talus explained your request to me. I accept it, although I'd like to point out that I hold nothing over any of the others.”

“But they might hold power over you.”

Treet considered this, and rejected it. “No, there's nothing like that at all. I'd know about it, wouldn't I?”

“Perhaps not. Power comes in many subtle forms, some most difficult to recognize.”

Treet saw that he was getting nowhere, and decided to abide by the Preceptor's request. “I don't mind waiting. May I send a message to them?”

She shook her head imperceptibly. “They already know that each of the others has been saved and that all are being cared for. I know it is difficult, but have patience—you will all be together again soon.”

It occurred to Treet that he'd heard a similar promise recently; Supreme Director Rohee had mouthed words to the same effect, and look what happened. He had been lying. Was the Preceptor also lying? Before Treet could wonder further, she rose, signaling an end to the audience. Mathiax, Talus, and Preben, none of whom had said a word throughout the interview, stood and extended their hands. The Preceptor clasped hands and spoke a few intimate words with each one before they were ushered from the private chamber, back across the empty reception hall, and down the spiral staircase and out into the dwindling night.

It will be dawn in a few hours, Treet thought. And in a few hours I resume my career as a sponge.

He should have been ecstatic at the prospect of probing into the secrets of the Fieri—delving into exotic cultures was his life, after all—but there was something missing. Something had a name, and the name was Yarden.

He walked out onto the darkened lawn, heavy with bitter disappointment. He puzzled over the feeling and realized that subconsciously he had been hoping up to the very moment of their dismissal by the Preceptor that he would see Yarden. He would turn a corner and she would be there, or he would enter a room to find her waiting. The whole time he had been with the Preceptor, he had been hoping Yarden would step unexpectedly from behind the curtain.

Without knowing it, he had been waiting to see her. Now he knew that he would not—at least not for several more days. The thought depressed him.

By the time they reached the waiting evee, Treet was in such a black mood that he sat sullen and silent all the way back to Liamoge, staring blankly at the bright wonders of Fierra. They had, for the moment, ceased to hold any charm for him.

“The thing you keep
forgetting,” said Mathiax, looking directly at Treet, his fingers combing through his graying bead, “is that each and every Fieri is aware of the Infinite Presence at all times. We are permeated with this awareness—it informs all we do.”

Treet thought about this. Yes, in the last several weeks he'd certainly seen evidence of this awareness Mathiax was talking about. “I understand your religion is very important to you, but are you telling me that it even influences your technology?”

“Why not? Why should that be so hard to accept?” Mathiax leaned forward and tapped Treet on the arm. “Let's walk a bit further—it's good for the brain.”

They were sitting on an empty stretch of beach by the silver lake. They had been walking most of the day, stopping to rest and discuss, moving on when they reached an impasse in communication or came to a subject which required additional thought in order to translate it into terms Treet could properly understand. Mathiax was a quick and able teacher, and it had been his idea to take Treet out away from the city to walk along the lakeside for part of each day's session. “Less distraction,” he'd said. This gave Treet time to assimilate what he'd seen and heard before returning to Talus' pavilion.

In three weeks' time Treet had learned much about the Fieri. Most of it had to do with their simple religion. Apparently everything the Fieri did or thought was in some way rooted in this intense spiritual awareness Mathiax had been describing. The Fieri religion was not difficult; its central tenet could be summed up quite simply: A Supreme Being existed who insisted on concerning Himself with the affairs of men in order to draw them into friendship with Him.

That was the basic idea, plainly stated. The Fieri believed that this Being was a pure spirit who expressed Himself in many different personality modes or Aspects. They recognized any number of the Aspects—Sustainer, Protector, Teacher, Seeker, Creator, Comforter, Gatherer, and so on. But all were merely individual expressions of the One, the Infinite Father, as they called Him.

Treet got the idea that they were a little reluctant to pin the Deity down to one name or expression. They preferred a much more flexible and elastic approach. But although they spoke of Him in many different ways, depending on what they wanted to say about Him, it was always understood that to invoke one Aspect implied all the rest. The Infinite Father was One, after all, indivisible and ultimate in every sense.

This was the Fieri doctrine—not complicated or obtuse, but ripe with enormous implications. For once a person accepted the idea that the Infinite Father of the entire universe actually desired commerce with individual men, literally no sphere of mortal endeavor was untouched. Each and every thought and action had to be examined in light of an expressed partnership with an infinite and eternal patron.

These were not utterly new ideas, Treet knew. There were several Earth religions that espoused the same general themes. The difference here, as far as Treet could tell, was that the Fieri's beliefs had created a vital, thriving society of nearly eight million souls in love with truth and beauty and kindness to one another. Nowhere else he'd ever heard of had that happened on so great a scale.

In Treet's experience, personally and scholastically, theocracies produced miserable societies: stubborn, resistant, suspicious, intolerant, highly inequitable, and so hidebound they could not function in the face of change or conflict.

The Fieri had apparently avoided all that and stood at a pinnacle of social experience unique in human existence. They had discovered Utopia, had been smart enough to recognize a good thing when they saw it, and had worked at making the vision reality. For this they had earned Treet's respect and admiration. Orion Treet also recognized a good thing when he saw it.

The one item that puzzled him in all this, however, was how such a society could have developed at all, considering how they had originated. The Fieri were part of the same population of the colony ship that had landed on Empyrion in the beginning.

According to the colony's official historian, Feodr Rumon, a group of dangerous malcontents had been cast out, or had left of their own accord, but under protest. Exactly what had taken place wasn't clear; Rumon's
Chronicles
were slightly schizophrenic on this point. Still, the proto-Fieri had been forced from the safety of the colony and condemned to wander the wild wastes of Empyrion.

But the homeless nomads had somehow transformed themselves into a culture that in almost every respect surpassed the highest achievements of any Earth had ever seen. At least, in three weeks of scrutiny, Treet had not discovered any flaw. Theirs was a perfect society: no poverty, no disease, no crime, no homeless, no idle lonely old.

Now he and Mentor Mathiax walked along the coarse, pebbled beach of the inland sea the Fieri called Prindahl. The wide water shone flat and metallic beneath the white sun, quicksilver sea over which the knife-hulls of boats with sails of crimson and ultramarine raced, trailing diamonds in their rippling wakes. Closer in, the sky held the gliding bodies of long-winged birds, rakkes, diving and soaring, feathering the gentle wind to rise high and then plummet to shoals of sparkling yellow fish.

A little distance away, graceful Fieri children frolicked at the water's edge with their wevicats, dark and feral beside the angelic youngsters. Together the huge, lithe animals and their diminutive masters abandoned themselves to play, tromping the shallow water into foam, lost in laughter and the joy of the moment. The children's voices rang clear like notes struck from silver bells.

Treet watched the boats and the birds, creatures of the wind, so fast and free. He listened to the sound of the children playing. A pang of envy shot up in his bones, an ache for something he'd scarcely been aware of lacking: peace. Not merely the absence of tension or conflict, but the complete unity of body, mind and spirit, the total harmony of life in all its parts. That is what the boats and birds and children symbolized: creatures at rest within themselves and in harmony with their environment. Not fighting it, but accepting it, shaping it and being shaped by it to live in it and beyond it.