Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome (6 page)

At one point he pushed through a bristle-bladed hedge and found himself in a walled clearing. He looked up and saw the walls of the hedge rising above him for many meters. The clearing was carpeted with thick, bluish moss made up of tiny coiled filaments like wire springs. The sunlight striking through a thin place in the leaf canopy fell to the forest floor like heavy gold. In the center of the clearing lay a pool of deep blue-black water, filled from a spring which welled up from the center of the pool, splashing and sending ripples to the pool's outer rim.

The forest's discordant music, muted by the hedge walls, sounded far away. In the clearing, only the gentle plipping of the spring as it ruffled the water could be heard. Crocker stared at the water for a long moment and then began mechanically stripping off his clothes.

He lowered himself into the pool, feeling its chill refresh and revive him. He sank down into the ooze of the cool mud bottom and let the water close over his head, then kicked off and swam the length of the pool underwater, coming up for air when his head touched the far bank. It felt good to swim, to feel tight muscles relax as the knots loosened.

After a few minutes of swimming, Crocker felt wholly restored. He climbed out on the spongy bank and lay down in a patch of sunlight to dry off. The sun filtering down from the upper boughs warmed his skin, and he closed his eyes and went to sleep, his mind blank, unthinking, undreaming. He was part of the forest now—as much as any of her natural creatures. And, in his own way, just as wild.

Yarden watched as the
dancers whirled and spun on the grassy field before her, their shimmering clothing reflecting the sun's last rays. Three men and three women, each tracing a complex interaction of movements with each of the others, danced for an audience of a hundred or more rapt spectators. Several musicians sitting around the ring of observers accompanied the dance on their instruments: long, hollow tubes, curved into polished semicircles. The flutelike instruments emitted low, rich, mellow tones, and though the musicians were scattered throughout the crowd, their music formed a single, seamless stage upon which the dancers performed.

Never had Yarden seen such exquisite movement, so lithe and free and—there was no other word for it—holy. The music and the dance were one and the same expression, so beautifully did they complement one another: sound giving impulse to movement, dance giving visual emphasis to the music, and each doing what the other could not do, thereby creating a total experience greater than the sum of the parts.

Yarden stood entranced. She'd seen dancers perform before, of course—some of the best in the world—but never with such abandon—almost as if they were creating their intricate movements spontaneously, yet in complete harmony with the others, for each dancer moved as an individual and as a member of a larger body at the same time. She knew they must have performed together for years to be able to create such intricate and harmonious movement.

This appreciation made the dance all the more wondrous to Yarden. She knew the cost of such perfection and loved the dancers for their extravagance. She watched with total concentration, savoring every fleeting, endless moment as the dancers spun and leapt and turned, coming together, forming patterns, breaking apart to create new patterns, until all the field and music and spectators coalesced into a single, creative awareness, joined by the movements of the dance.

When the dance finally ended—the dancers breathless and exhausted, the music trailing off in whispers—the audience all exhaled as one, and Yarden realized that she, like all the others, had been holding her breath. She sighed, closed her eyes, and savored the moment, knowing that she had experienced true beauty and had been touched by it in a most intimate way.

She felt a nudge and opened her eyes. Ianni smiled at her and indicated the crowd, typical of Fieri gatherings, moving away silently. Yarden saw that the dancers, having gathered themselves together, were smiling at each other and talking together in low tones, their faces flushed with satisfaction and exhilaration. It seemed somehow wrong to Yarden that this performance should go unrewarded by the audience; there should be some recognition paid the dancers—applause, at least.

“I'll be right with you,” she told Ianni. Turning to the dancers, she approached hesitantly. One of the women in the ensemble glanced up as Yarden came near. She smiled and held out her hands in the Fieri greeting, but Yarden stepped close and put her arms around the woman. They embraced and Yarden said, “Thank you for sharing your dance with me.”

The woman pressed Yarden's hands and said, “It is our joy to dance. If you find pleasure in it, praise the Giver. He gives the dance.”

“Your dance is praise itself,” replied Yarden. “I will never forget what I've seen here today. Thank you.” She then rejoined Ianni, who was waiting for her a little way off.

“Why did no one acknowledge the dancers?” asked Yarden as they walked back across the meadow toward the Arts Center, a palatial edifice made of rust-colored sunstone, with numerous wings and pavilions radiating from a common hub. “Or praise them for their artistry?”

“Praise belongs only to the Infinite,” Ianni explained gently, as she had explained so often to Yarden since becoming her mentor. “Would you have us praise the vessel for its contents?”

“I don't know. It just seems that one ought to show some appreciation for the dancers, for their art, for the joy they bring in the dance.”

“The joy of the dance was theirs.”

“They shared it with us, then.”

“And we paid them the highest tribute—we honored the beauty of the moment, and respected the serenity of the performance.”

Yarden thought about this. “By leaving like that? Without a word, without a sound—just leaving? That was your tribute?”

Ianni, a tall, dark-haired woman, slender with long graceful limbs, folder her hands in front of her and stopped walking, turned to Yarden, and said, “We shared the moment together, and we took it to ourselves. We have hidden it in our hearts to treasure it always. What more can one do who has not created? It was not our place to judge, only to accept.”

They walked again, feeling the warmth of the day and the pure rays of the sun on their faces. After a time Yarden nodded, saying, “I think I understand what you are saying: the artist practices her art for herself alone, but she performs as an expression of praise to the Infinite Father for the gift of her art—a gift she shares with her audience.”

“Or with no audience at all.”

“Yes, I see. The audience does not matter.”

“Not to the performance, no. But if the audience is moved to praise the Infinite too, so much the better. Let praise increase! Of course, an artist is pleased when the audience is pleased. That is only natural. But, since she performs her art for herself and for the pleasure of the Infinite, the audience's response or lack of it is of no concern.”

“The only concern is how well she has performed.”

“Yes, whether she has used her gift to her best abilities. If she has, what does it matter whether she had an audience or not, or what the audience thought about the performance?”

Yarden understood, though she still thought anyone who could create such beauty as she had just witnessed ought to have more for their trouble than mute enjoyment, no matter how appreciative the crowd.

They continued on in silence until they reached the nearest of the outflung wings of the Arts Center. “Do you wish to return to the paintings?” asked Ianni. They had been viewing Fieri commemorative artwork in the gallery before their stroll of the grounds and their encounter with the dancers. Yarden looked up at the imposing entrance to the gallery and hesitated. “Or we could come back another time.”

“You wouldn't mind?”

“Not at all.” Ianni smiled. “One can only absorb so much.”

“And I've absorbed all I can. Now I need time to think about what I've seen.” She took Ianni's hand and squeezed it. “Wasn't it beautiful though? I never imagined anything could be so perfect, so right, so expressive.”

Ianni eyed her thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have an artist's heart, Yarden. Would you like to learn?”

Yarden shook her head sadly. “I could never dance like that.”

“How do you know? Have you ever tried?”

“No, but—” Yarden's eyes grew wide with the possibility. “Do you think I should try?”

“Only if it appeals to you.”

“Oh, it does. You have no idea how much!”

The
place where they brought Treet was an underground complex carved into Empyrion's bedrock, a cave with square-cut walls and passageways—the Cavern-level bastion of the Nilokerus. It was here that Hladik maintained the infamous reorientation cells: row upon row of stone cubicles, barely big enough for a person to stand upright or stretch out full-length. Each cell had independent heat and light controls so that one cell could be floodlit and heated to a swelter, while the one next to it was plunged into total darkness and bone-chilling cold, depending on the whim of the reorientation engineer.

Treet was dragged roughly from the Archives vestibule, through an endless succession of corridors and galleries until he was handed over to the keepers of Cavern level. He had kept his mouth shut and answered none of his captors' questions, since it was clear from the beginning that they had already decided what to do with him and anything he said would make no difference.

From the conversation of the guards, he gathered they thought him a runaway—someone who had left his Hage to lose himself in Dome's underground mazeworks, hoping perhaps to make contact with the Dhogs. They presumed he had sneaked into the Archives when they themselves had entered. It did not occur to them that he had been in the Archives all along. Neither did it occur to them that he might be a Fieri spy.

For that he was grateful. At least they considered him no more important than the typical runaway, which meant that he might be released sooner or later if he kept up his part of the charade.

“Your name?” asked the bored Nilokerus officer; glancing up from a green screen. He sat behind a large console and gazed at his prisoner with weary, watery eyes. The air in the caves was warm enough, but humid, and the stone was chill, making the atmosphere clammy and hard on the sinuses. “What is your name?”

Treet thought fast and said the first thing that popped into his head, “Stone.” He tried to make his tone properly contrite, still hoping he could yet convince them it was some sort of mistake.

“What were you doing in the Archives?” the officer asked, punching keys into the terminal before him.

“I—ah ...” Treet tried to come up with a plausible explanation. “I saw the doors open and I went in. I didn't know it was—what did you call it?—the Archives.”

The intake officer looked up. “Were there no guards to stop you?”

“I suppose they didn't see me.”

The guard gave a snort of contempt—whether for Treet's answer, or for the slackness of the guards on duty, Treet couldn't tell. “Hage?”

Treet said nothing. He was desperately thinking.

“Your Hage? Answer quickly.”

“Bolbe.” Treet blurted the name, and then gritted his teeth, hoping that he'd chosen a good cover.

The officer punched a few more keys. “No Stohn in Bolbe,” he announced. “What is your Hagename?”

Mind whirling frantically, Treet searched his memory for a name that might serve him now—a name he had heard in passing that could be documented. “Bela,” he said finally, with what he hoped was the right amount of resignation. Wasn't Bela the name Yarden had told him was the name of her Chryse keeper?

The officer shifted in his seat, tugging on his red-and-white yos as he punched in the name. “Yes,” he murmured at length. “Here it is. Bela. You are a second-order ipumn grader.”

Treet nodded and lowered his eyes.

“You will be returned to your Hage, Bolbe—”

Treet started to breathe a sigh of relief. His dodge had worked. Evidently, Bela was a common enough name.

The Nilokerus officer continued, “—after reorientation.”

“No!” shouted Treet. The Nilokerus loafing in another corner of the room looked up sharply. “Please, I've never done anything like this before. I'll go back gladly. I'm sorry.”

The officer gazed at Treet, hesitated. Would he let Treet go? With a shrug he said, “Standard directive punishment. No exceptions.” He motioned to a nearby guard. “Take him to J-5V. Begin reorientation at once.”

“No!” Treet screamed again. “Please! No!”

Two guards grabbed his arms and pulled him away; he was marched down one of the branching corridors and shoved into a cell. He heard the fizzling crackle of the barrier field as it snapped on, and he was left alone in the darkness of his cell.

Crocker came instantly awake,
fully alert. His sleep had been deep and long, but a part of his awareness remained sharp, even in sleep, so that he awoke when he heard the faint rustling in the dry vegetation on the side of the pool opposite where he slept. He did not move, but merely opened his eyes to see a fat, furry creature the size of a small but well-fed pig ambling out of the brush.

The sounds of the forest were hushed now as the denizens of the day settled to their nests; the forest's nocturnal population had not yet begun to stir. Night came quickly to the world beneath the leaf-roof of the forest, and Crocker gazed out across the evening-dimmed circle of his bower at the intruder, his pilot's eyes keen in the failing light. He watched the animal pause in its slow shamble to the water, raise up on short hind legs to sniff the air, and peer into the murk with tiny round eyes. The thing had stubby legs that curved under its bulk and a long, fleshy tail that it carried straight up in the air. Its face was long and pointed, like a rat's elongated snout, but its eyes faced forward and its ears were the velvet exclamation points of a rabbit.

The animal appeared happy with its survey of the glade and continued down to the water's edge. Crocker eased himself up on palms and toes and made his way around the pool, maintaining careful silence on the cushiony moss. He came up behind the creature as it poked its long muzzle into the water and slurped noisily. Crocker eyed his prey for a moment—the creature was totally oblivious to any danger—and then, gathering himself for the spring, pounced on the animal, his hands quickly finding its short neck.