The Book of Night With Moon (45 page)

Of the catenary nothing could be seen but a faint wavering in the air, like weed in water: only the barest maintenance-trickle of power was running up it, not nearly enough to produce any light. Saash went to it and looked it over while Arhu gazed around him in confusion. "Who cleaned everything up in here?"

"Who do you think?" Rhiow said.

Arhu stared at her, completely bemused.

"They eat each other," said Urruah.

Arhu's jaw actually dropped. Then he laid his ears flat back and scratched the floor several times with one huge paw, the gesture of revulsion that many People make when presented with something too foul to ingest, either a meal or a concept. "They deserve what we did to them, then!" Arhu said. "They would have done that to
us
—"

"Almost certainly," Saash said. "But as to whether they deserve to be killed, I wouldn't care to judge: the Oath doesn't encourage us to make such assessments."

"Why not? They're just animals! They come running and screaming out in big herds, and try to kill you—"

"We have responsibilities to animals too," Saash said, "the lower ones as well as the higher ones who can think or even have emotional lives. But leaving that aside, you haven't been in their minds enough to make that assessment." Saash wrinkled her nose. "It's not an enjoyable experience, listening to them think and feel. But they're sentient, Arhu, never doubt it. They have a language, but not much culture, I think— not since their people were tricked by the Lone One. There are memories." She looked thoughtful. "Anyone can be delusional or believe lies that are told. But almost all the minds of theirs you might touch will have heard stories of how things were before the Lone One came— how their people really had a right to be called what we still call them as a courtesy-name, the Wise Ones; how they were great thinkers, though the thoughts would seem strange to us now… maybe even then. All very long ago, of course… but nonetheless, the Whispering seems to confirm the rumors. Now they have nothing left but a life in the dark… nothing to eat except each other, except at times when so many of them die off that they're forced to go up into the sun to try to hunt; and not being adapted to the present conditions here, those who try
that
mostly die, too. If the saurians hate us, they may have reason."

"I don't want to know about that," Arhu said. "We're going to have to kill a lot more of them if we're supposed to do whatever it is you have in mind. Knowing stuff like that will only make it harder." He stalked ahead of them, the epitome of the hunter: head down for the scent, padding slowly and heavily, eyes up, wide and dark in the darkness.

The other three went silently along behind him as they continued downward through the caverns, now slipping through unfamiliar territory and moving a little more slowly. Rhiow was still thinking of how she had seen the saurians eating one another, down there in the dark, with a ready appetite that suggested this kind of diet was nothing new at all. They would be seeing much more of that kind of thing, she was sure.
I should be grateful, maybe,
she thought,
that my emotions are so dulled at the moment, that everything seems so remote….

"So where are all the lizards that came out of the gates the other day?" Urruah said softly, behind Rhiow now.

"Maybe they all came out," Saash said, in an oh-yes-I-believe-this voice, "and they all died."

"I doubt that very much," Rhiow said. "Never mind. How was the catenary itself?"

"Structurally sound. But something is starving it of power, from underneath."

"Could it be reactivated later?"

"Probably," Saash said, "but I've got no idea whether the rules for reactivating it will be the same as they were yesterday."

Arhu had gone down and around a corner, ahead of them, out of sight, and Urruah paused for a moment, looking up. "Interesting," he said, coming over to Rhiow. "Look at the ceiling here."

Rhiow and Saash gazed up. "Very round, isn't it?" Saash said.

"One of those bubble structures you get down here," Rhiow said. "The water comes in through a little aperture and then rolls loose stones around and around inside the larger one. It hollows the chamber right out, as if someone blew a bubble in the stone. There are a few chains of them down here; they show on old Ffairh's map. He seemed to be interested in them."

They walked on down through the spherical chamber, up and out the other side, and went after Arhu. There was indeed another such chamber on the far side, and they went through it as well, down into the depression at the center and up again to the exit. Past this was a long, high-ceilinged corridor devoid of the usual stalactites and stalagmites, trending very steeply downward so that they all had to slow and pick their way as if they were coming down one side of a peaked roof.

At the bottom of the corridor, the tiny point of greenish light that they had been following vanished; then their vision caught its glow, diminished, coming from off to the left, and reflecting on the shadowy shape of Arhu heading around the corner and leftward as well. The sound of water could be heard again, soft at first, then getting somewhat louder: an insistent
tink, tink, tink
sound, almost metallic in the silence. "Are we still going to be following that catenary down the tree," Urruah said, "or is it another one?"

"Another. We pick it up"— Saash looked at her own mental "copy" of Rhiow's map— "another five or six caverns down, and a little to the east. Maybe a hundred feet below where we are now."

"I hate this," Urruah muttered, as ahead of them the light got dimmer, and they followed it doggedly. "All this stone on top of us—"

"Please," Rhiow said. She had been trying not to think about that. Now, abruptly, she could feel all the weight of it pressing on her head again.
As if I need this now! This isn't
fair—

Urruah looked up and suddenly stopped. Rhiow plowed into him and hissed; Saash ran into her but held very still, following Urruah's glance. Rhiow looked up, too.

"Is it just me," Urruah said, "…or does that look like a perfectly straight line, carved from the top of this tunnel all the way down?"

Rhiow stared at it—

The light ahead of them went out.

They all stood stock still, not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe.

No sound came from above but the steady
tink, tink, tink, tink…

And there were stumps of the stalagmites and stalactites back there,
Saash said suddenly,
but where were the leftover pieces? They should have been all over the place. And what about your stone bubbles? Where were the little stones that should have been left lying around?…

Rhiow licked her nose, licked it again. They stood there blind in the dark; even People must have some light to see, and the darkness was now absolute.

Arhu!
Rhiow said inwardly.

No answer.

Arhu!!

I'm trying to sidle,
he said silently,
and I can't.

But what for?
Rhiow said.

It's going to cause you tremendous trouble to try to sidle down here; there's too much interference from the catenaries, even when they're down,
Saash said.
Stay still. What is it?

There was a silence, and then Arhu said,
They're down here. I put the light out. They didn't see me.

In absolute silence, Rhiow and the others inched their way forward, going by memory of what the corridor had been like before the light failed. Rhiow's heart was hammering, but at least this time the light had gone out for a reason she didn't mind.

"They?"

I hear five of them breathing,
Arhu said.
They're not far away.

Rhiow and Saash and Urruah crept forward. Then something tickled Rhiow's nose, and she almost sneezed. It was Arhu's tail, whipping from side to side.

Which way?
Rhiow said, as soon as she got control of her nose again.

Straight forward. Then right. See that? It's faint—

It was: Rhiow could hardly see it at all. From ahead and to the right, and sharply downward, came the reflection of a diffuse light, reddish, seeming as faint as their own had. It leached the color out of everything: there was nothing to be seen by it but furry contours in dull red and black. In utter silence, they crept closer; and in her mind, Rhiow felt the familiar contours of the neural-inhibitor spell, felt for its trigger, that last word. She licked her nose.

Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink…

A pause, then a peculiar hissing sound, followed by the sound of stone falling on stone, breaking. And then the hissing voice, like another version of the sound they had heard first.

"Done…"

"Done. We have finished what we were told we must do in this work time."

"I'm hungry."

"There will be no food now."

"But we will eat later."

"How much later…"

"The Master will give us something in time. He gave us food not-long-ago."

"That was good."

"It was. And there'll be much more."

"There will be. When the work is done, there will be as much to eat as anyone wants."

There was a kind of sigh from all of the speakers after this. Arhu moved a little forward, during it, and Rhiow cautiously went after him, slinking low, knowing that behind her the others were doing the same. The source of the light was getting stronger, rightward and downward: Rhiow could now clearly see Arhu silhouetted against it. He was bristling.

"How much farther must we drive this tunnel?"

A silence, then
sss, sss, sss,
as if someone was counting. "Three lengths. Perhaps as many as four: there's another chamber to meet, upward, and another baffle to put in place. Then the power-guide that supplies that gate will be cut off, and the guide can be redirected to meet the others, below."

"Good, good," the others breathed.

"That will be the last one for a little while. All the others have been damaged by the sundwellers. The Master must restore them. Then we may begin work again, and finish the new tunnels, and wall up the old ones. It's for this we were given the Claw. The sundwellers will not come
here
again."

There was much nasty hissing laughter at that. Arhu took the opportunity to move forward, very quickly, so quickly that Rhiow was afraid he was slipping on the steep downward slope. But he was well braced, so that when Rhiow came up against him, he didn't move, and made no sound. Behind her, Saash and Urruah came up against Rhiow as well: she braced herself so as to put no further pressure on Arhu. The four of them looked around the corner, into the red light.

Another of the spherical chambers lay around the corner of the passage. Or at least it had been spherical to start with. One side of it had been carved out into a perfectly smooth rectangular doorway, breaking through into another chamber off to Rhiow's left as she looked through the opening. In that chamber, lying curled, or sitting hunched, were five saurians: two deinonychi and three smaller ones that looked like some kind of miniature tyrannosaur. Their hides were patterned, though with what colors it was impossible to tell in this lighting. On the floor in front of them lay… Rhiow stared at them, wondering just
what
they were. They were made of metal: three of them looked like long bundles of rods, some of the rods polished, some of them brushed to a matte finish. A fourth device was a small box that was the source of the red light, without it being apparent in any way exactly how the light was getting out of it— the surface of the box was dark, but brightness lay around it.

The mini-tyrannosaurus nearest the carven door had been looking through the doorway into the darkness. Now it turned away and picked up one of the bundles of rods in its claws. As it did, the bundle came alive with a stuttering, glittering light, dull red like that which came from the box, though in a sharper mode: sparks of it ran up and down the metal rods. The saurian clutched the rods in one claw, ran its other claw down one of the sills of the door. More of that red light followed the stroke, as if it had flowed unseen through the body of the tyrannosaur and up to the stone; from the stone, a fine powder sifted down, remnants of some slight polishing of the surface. The other saurians watched, keeping very still but looking intent. From the rods came a soft, tiny sound:
Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink…

The sixth claw…
Arhu said silently. Rhiow looked where he did, and saw that other claw, the "thumb," bracing the bundle of rods exactly as a human's thumb would have. Her tail twitched at the sight of a saurian using a tool, something half-mechanical and, from the look of it, possibly half-wizardly.
If an
ehhif
came in and found his
houff
using the computer,
she thought,
I bet he would feel like this….
At the same time, she found herself thinking of many a pothole crew she had seen on the New York streets in her time— one
ehhif
working, four of them standing around and watching him work— and suspected that she might have stumbled upon a very minor way in which her home universe echoed this one….

"There is nothing more to do here," said one of the saurians who sat and watched.

"Yes. Let's go back to where the others are and wait for them," said another.

The mini-tyrannosaur, though, kept polishing the doorsill for a few more strokes. "This work gives me joy," it said. "When it is done, the gates will all be ours and will be turned to the Master's plan. When all is ready, he will lead us up out of the chill and wet and darkness, as he has done with others in the not-long-ago, up into the warmth and the light, and we will take back what was taken from us. The sundwellers may take our places down here, if they like. But none of them will; the Great One says they will all die, and there will be such a feasting for our people as has not been seen since the ancient days. I do not want to wait for that. I want it to come soon."