The Faded Sun Trilogy (104 page)

“Got to get at the core in there,” he said, laying a hand on the wall. “Simple job, I figure. We have a power source to worry about, maybe a lot of them. But the brain’s up there, and this is the spinal cord. Isn’t any coordination available without that. We blow these, and we can send cleanup teams out later, to do the job on anything left; without these, there’s no danger to orbiting ships, so we reckon. You hunt those other towers. I don’t think you’ll find much; but we make—”

Something scuttled across the floor; a dart of silver; North ripped out a gun and Galey seized his arm, his eyes making the object clear in the next instant as mechanical, a silver dome. It wandered aimlessly, came toward them, passed blindly as they stepped aside, sucking up dust.

“Maintenance,” Kadarin said in a shaken voice.

“Move out,” Galey said. “Don’t touch any switches and don’t fire at anything. Alert this thing and we’ll all be sorry.”

They parted in the directions he indicated to them, moving quickly, a rippling of lights and shadows. Dark then, as they probed the towers one by one, steps echoing high up in the building, descending again, all but the machine tower, where they assemble finally.

“Nothing,” Kadarin said. “Just service machinery.” The others agreed.

“Then set the charges at the stem of the second tower, at every level, and assume it’s shielded. —Kadarin. Come with me.”

Kadarin hastened after him, quietly, up into the spiral of the machine tower. They moved with caution, the light casting into reality only a portion of the spiral at a time and darkness following as swiftly after.

It opened upon a room eerily like the other place, the same grill-worked window, identical as if one mind, one
architect had conceived it. But this one was whole, lacking the crack, as if some all-powerful hand had healed it.

They walked with soft steps to the room beyond, found what had been in the other place. Galey cut off his light and motioned Kadarin to do the same, not wishing to provide any photosensitive alarm among the banks of machinery with a fatal stimulus.

“Could be a high-threshold audio alarm,” he whispered. “Lane set it off when he crossed that circle there on the floor. Avoid it. We set charges on every bank and make the least sound possible. Then we get out of here. A quarter-hour trigger. Right?”

“Sits right over the core,” said Kadarin. “Core’s right under this first unit here.”

“Likely.”

Galey moved in, set that charge himself, trod carefully down the aisles, Kadarin a gliding shadow as fast-moving as he.

They tripped a maintenance robot. It shot out of an aisle, a red telltale glowing on its side, jerked about, stopped, moved off on its own business.

And in feverish haste Galey fixed the last charge, walked back to the door, met Kadarin there. “Go!” he hissed.

They still walked, quietly, across the hall outside, entered the spiral descent, and ran it, met the others below.

“Done, sir,” he heard. He motioned them to move, and they crossed the foyer at a dead run, ran down the steps outside, were still running as they crossed the courtyard and took shelter in an alley among the lavender buildings, leaning there, their breathing harsh and hollow in the breathers, interspersed with hissing jets of oxygen.

It should not blow with great violence. The mind should go, the automations fail, whatever regulation the power sources needed likewise go. Quiet oblivion, likely noncontaminating power which would simply stop.

Suddenly it happened; the building disjointed itself on the left side, a dissolution with fire in the joints; a collapse, a sound which started with a dull clap and became a vibration in the bones. Galey flinched without willing it, every muscle taut, a sickness clutching at his belly as the collapse became an up-welling of dust, and the dust began to swell outward, carried away from them by the wind.

It comes,
he thought, expecting at any moment the flare of weaponry to protect the city, that might annihilate the shuttles, annihilate them, wake the world to war.

It did not.

The dust settled, some of it drifting aloft. There was silence. Behind him North swore softly.

“We’re alive,” Galey muttered, finding that remarkable. They still could not see the place clearly where the edun had stood, only that there was a great deal of dust, and that the tower was completely down.

“No way those machines do anything again,” said Kadarin. “We got it, sir, and no one’s dead.”

His muscles wanted to shake. He gathered himself up, shot a considerable jolt of oxygen into his breather and fought light-headedness. Another thing dawned on him, as it had during the walk to the site: that they were not alone in this land.

“We just sent up a considerable signal,” he said. “We’d better set better time getting back to the shuttles than we set getting here.”

There was no argument at that. They had fought mri in the wars; and the tendency of mri to ignore their own casualties was legend. Four men with handguns was no deterrent; they had not Boaz’s yellow scarf with them, not on this walk.

And he reckoned that with that thought at his heels he might last to the ships.

*   *   *

Elee clustered among their monuments. Chattering in tremulous voices, tall, pale bodies over-weighted in robes crusted with jewels and embroideries, manes . . . incredible manes, like white silk . . . flowing before the shoulders and halfway down the back, trimmed square or braided, on some making the ears naked, immodesty that sent a rush of heat to a mri face. Niun held up his hand, with more vast corridors before them and more elee scattered here and there about them and beyond; the Kel halted, and the elee nearest clung together in dread.

“You,” Niun said, pointing at one tall enough to be male, and at least not Kath: the robes masked bodies and faces were alike, delicate. “You, come and speak.”

The white face showed its terror, and hands clung to companions. The elee hesitated, and came with small steps like a frightened child for all his tall stature. It was strange face, mri-like, white even to the lips, and eyes of pale blue, shaded blue around the lids. Paint, Niun decided. It was paint. It livened the eyes, made their expression gentle and vulnerable.

“Go away,” the elee said in a faint voice, much-accented.

Niun almost laughed. “Where is your Mother?” he asked, expecting a flare of defiance at least at this question. But the elee slid a glance toward the farther corridor for answer, and at that all the Kel murmured in disgust. “Walk with us,” Niun said, and when the elee tensed as if to flee:
“We take no prisoners.
Walk with us.”

The elee looked in one moment apt to break with terror, and in the next assumed a smile, made a graceful gesture of his long hands and offered them the way ahead.

Niun looked at his comrades, looked at Melein, who had veiled herself in this place of tsi’mri. “Ask his name,” she said.

“Mother-of-mri, it is Illatai.”

Weapons moved. Tsi’mri did not speak to her, save in peril of their lives; but she bade them stay, looked at Niun. “Tell this Illatai he must take us to the she’pan of elee.”

Illatai glanced about him, at his folk who stood staring, and there was consternation in his face, the smile threatening to fade. The dusei stirred and moaned.

Tsi’mri, Niun thought, who even after so long, did not know mri. He considered, took the delicate sleeve of Illatai by its edge, and led him; the graceful man went with them, looked from one to the other with smiles for all they were veiled, nor did his eyes miss the beasts, nor the smile change. Niun let him go and let him walk as he would.

It was dream and nightmare, the halls of carven boulders and glass lit from glass structures of jewel colors, which light stained the floor of patterned stone and dyed the white manes and skins of elee and profaned Melein’s robes too. There was no word from the Kel, none, for here were tsi’mri, and they were too proud; but elee talked behind their delicate hands and shrank from their presence, hiding themselves behind their monuments and their
pillars of living stone and their jewel lamps. Here were columns rising to the ceiling, serpents wrought in gold, which crept up carven rocks and held the ceiling up, or crawled across it, writhing from this side to the other.

And beyond an archway of glass, and moisture-misted doors, a place where plants grew rife, and water flowed on stone walls and broke off glass panes. Plants bloomed, in warmth and mist. Vines hung thick, and fruit ripened, lush and full of moisture. “Gods,” someone said in the ja’anom mu’ara. It was on them all, the dazzlement of such wealth;
this,
Niun thought,
this was Kutath once, before the seas fled.

And more practical things: “Pumps,” Duncan muttered very low. That must be so, that they had sunk deep as the basins to draw up such plenty.

More glass, panels and screens, prism colors: he remembered rainbows, which Kesrith had had and Kutath had forgotten. Doors yielded to the forceless hands of Illatai; his smile persisted, his moving was neither quick nor slow, but fluid as the water streams. Beyond the doors more elee clustered, and here gathered to bar the way, creatures delicate as lizards, whose robes seemed of greater weight than themselves, more alive than they, figured with—he realized it now—flowers, and beasts, and serpents.

Beautiful, he could not but think so. Beautiful as humans were not. He stopped, and the Kel stopped, before the white out-thrust hands, the frightened eyes which threatened nothing and pleaded defenselessness.

So also Illatai, who hovered between, as if to beg reason of either side.

“We shall go through,” Melein said. “Say that to them.”

“No,” said Illatai. “Send. I shall carry messages.”

Niun scowled at that, signed at Hlil, and toward one of the delicate lights. Steel flashed, and crystal shards tumbled in ruin. The elee cried out in dismay, as out of one throat, and ward-impulse from the dusei began to build like storm.

“We go through,” Niun said, and the elee stood still, clustered still before the doors. Blades were ready. Rhian and Elan were among the first to advance, and the elee simply shut their eyes.

“Do not,” Niun said suddenly. “Move them.”

It was not to anyone’s taste, to lay hands on men and women who had chosen suicide. But lesser kel’ein
performed that task, simply moving the elee aside; and as for Illatai, he turned his beautiful eyes on them all and gestured diffidently toward the inner hall.

The hall beyond blazed with gold, with colors, with the green of living things; and one elee there was in silver and gold, and one in gold and one in silver, amid others in colored robes: a gasp attended their entry, and elee tried ineffectually to prevent them, thrusting white hands before edged steel: they bled as red as mri and humans.

“No!” cried an aged voice, and the one in gold and silver held up her hands and forbade her defenders. The gold and the silver stayed close by her, the gold male, the silver young and female, who seated themselves in chairs as the eldest did, whose unity tugged unpleasantly at the senses: chairs, as if they were all of such rank. The bright-robed younger folk clustered behind them.

“Who speaks?” Niun asked.

“She is Mother,” said Illatai softly, making a bow and gestures to either side. “Abotai. And mother-second, Hali. And Husband-first, T’hesfila. You speak to them, mri prince.”

He looked back in profound disturbance, such that the dusei caught it. An order like their own; and not: a Mother who was not alone, who—he suspected—was not chaste. Melein folded her hands, unperturbed. “Among elee,” Melein said as if she spoke in private council, “they have different manners. Abotai: you understand why I have come.”

“To take service,” the old elee said, and a frown came on her face. “You have thrown the world into chaos, and now you come to take service. Do so. Rid us of this trouble you have brought.”

Melein glanced about her, cast a look at the elee, walked to one of the monuments and traced the delicate carving of a stone flower which bloomed out of living stone. “Tell the bearers-of-burdens, kel’anth of the ja’anom, that her existence is very fragile. And that An-ehon is in ruins; likely ruin belts the world, into cities beyond the basins. Tsi’mri have come from outside. And doubtless she knows this. This delicate place . . . stands; it did not link itself to An-ehon in the hour of attack, no. It was apart. Protected.”

“Did the elee hear?” Niun asked coldly, though by the flickering of the membrane in the elee’s eyes he knew that they were understood.

“Do you not know me?” Melein asked.

“I know you,” the elee Abotai said, her old voice quavering with anger.

“And yet you let me in?”

“I had no choice,” the elee acknowledged hoarsely. “I beg you, send your war away. It has no place here.”

“Eighty thousands of years . . . .” Melein murmured. “Eighty thousand years of voyaging . . . and to hear that we should go away. You are of persistent mind, Mother of elee.”

“You will ruin us,” the mother-second cried.

“Listen,” said Abotai, and made a trembling gesture to her companions. “Show them. Show them.”

A young elee moved, stirred several others into motion, a glittering of jewels, a nodding of white heads so swiftly moving that Niun clenched his hand on his gun and watched well where hands were. Light and colors flared, an entire jeweled wall parting upon a screen which came alive with images . . . black, and fire . . . dead mri, a tangled field of corpses, an edun in ruins; an edun fell in fire, and figures ran, swarming like corruption over the dead . . .

—came closer, showing naked human faces.

—changed again, ships over ruins, and Kesrithi landscape.

And a human face dominated the screen, young and familiar to them. The Kel went rigid, and dus-sense lashed out. “No,” Duncan said beside him, and Niun set a hand on his shoulder. “No. This is nothing humans have sent.”

“Regul,” Niun said, loudly enough for Melein, and the possibilities set a great dread into him. Melein’s face had lost all humor.

“Open your machines to me,” she said.

“No,” the elee she’pan said. “Go fight from the dead cities.”