Faded Sun Part 42

"The hall floors are clean," Duncan remarked strangely, wiping dusty tears from his face, leaving smears behind. Niun looked down the corridors that radiated out from this hall, and saw that the dust stopped at the margin of this room: the way beyond lay clean and polished. A p.r.i.c.kling stirred the nape of Niun's neck, like dus-sense. The place should have filled him with hope. It was rather apprehension, a consciousness of being alien in this hall. He wondered where the dusei were, why they had gone, and wished the beasts beside them now.

"Come," said Melein. She spoke in a hushed tone, and still her voice echoed. "Bring the pan'en. You will have to carry it"

They unbound it from the sled, and Niun gave it carefully into Duncan's arms one burden that he would have been honored to bear, but it came to him that his place was to defend it, and he could not do that with his arms hindered. "Can you bear it, sov-kela?" he asked, for it was heavy and strangely balanced, and Duncan breathed audibly: but Duncan tilted his head mri-wise, avowing he could, and they went soft-footed after Melein, into the lighted and polished halls.

The shrine of the House must lie between kel-access and sen-. The Kel, the guardians of the door, the Face that was Turned Outward, always came first; then the shrine, the Holy; and then the sen-access, the tower of the Mind of the People, the Face that was Turned Inward, the Veilless. Such a shrine there was indeed, a small, shadowed room, where the lamps were cold and the gla.s.s of the vessels had gone ir-ridescent with age.

"Ai," Melein grieved, and touched the corroded bronze of the screen of the Pana. Niun averted his eyes, for he saw only dark beyond, nothing remaining in the Holy.

They retreated quickly from that place, gathered up Duncan, who waited at the door, shy of entering there: and yet by his troubled look Niun thought he understood: that had there been any of the People here, the House shrine would have held fire. Niun touched the chill surface of the pan'en as they walked, reaffirmation, a cleansing after the desolation in the shrine.

Yet there were the lights, the cold, clean light; their steps echoed on immaculate tiles, though dust lay thick everywhere outside. The place lived. It drew power from some source. Melein paused at yet another panel, and light came to other hallways ... the recess of the sen-tower, and on the right, that which had been the tower of some long-dead she'pan.

And most bitter of all, the access to the kath-tower, that mocked them with its emptiness.

"There could be defenses," Duncan said.

"That is so," said Melein.

But she turned then and began to climb the ramp of the sen-tower, where kel'ein might not follow. Niun stood helpless, anxious until she paused and nodded a summons to him, permission to trespa.s.s.

Duncan came after him, bearing the pan'en, hard-breathing; and slowly they ascended the curving ramp, past blockish markings that were like the signs of the old edun, but machine-precise and strange.

More lights: the final access of sen-hall gave way before them, and they entered behind Melein into a vast chamber that echoed to their steps. It was naked. There were no carpets, no cus.h.i.+ons, nothing save a corroded bra.s.s dinner service that sat on a saffron stone shelf. It looked as if a touch would destroy it: corrosion made lacery of it.

But there was no trace of dust, nothing, save on that shelf, where it lay thick as one would expect for such age.

Melein continued on, through farther doorways, into territory that was surely familiar to one six years a sen'e'en; and again she paused to bid them stay with her, to see things that had been eternally forbidden the Kel. Perhaps, Niun thought sadly, it no longer mattered.

Lights flared to her touch. Machinery lay before them, a vast room of machinery bank upon bank: like the shrine at Sil'athen it was, but far larger. Niun delayed, awestruck, then committed himself unbidden to stay at her back. She did not forbid, and Duncan followed. Computers, monitoring boards: some portions of the a.s.semblage he compared to the boards of the s.h.i.+p; and some he could not at all recognize. The walls were stark white, with five symbols blazoned above the center of the panels, tall as a man's widest reach. In gleaming, incorruptible metal they were shaped, like the metal of the pan'en that they bore.

"An-ehon," Melein said aloud, and the sound rang like a thunderclap into that long silence.

The machinery blazed to life, activated with a suddenness that made Niun flinch in spite of himself, and he heard the beginnings of an outcry from Duncan, one immediately stifled. The human stood beside him, knelt to set the pan'en down, and rose again, hand on his pistol.

"I am receiving," said a deep and soulless voice. "Proceed."

By the name of the city Melein had called it: Niun's skin p.r.i.c.kled, first at the realization that he had seen a symbol and heard it named, a forbidden thing . . . and then that such a creation had answered them. He saw Melein herself take a step back, her hand at her heart.

"An-ehon," she addressed the machine, and the very floor seemed to pulse in time with the throb of the lights. It was indeed the city that spoke to them, and it had used the hal'ari, the High Language, that was echoed unchanged throughout all of mri time. "An-ehon, where are your people?"

A brighter flurry of lights ran the boards.

"Unknown," the machine p.r.o.nounced at last.

Melein drew a deep breath stood still for several moments in which Niun did not dare to move. "An-ehon," she said then, "we are your people. We have returned. We are descended from the People of An-ehon and from Zohain and Tho'ei'i-shai and Le'a'haen. Do you know these names?"

There was again a flurry of lights and sounds, extreme agitation in the machine. Niun took a step forward, put a cautioning hand toward Melein, but she stood firmly, disregarding him. Bank after bank in the farthest reaches of the hall flared to life: section after section illumined itself.

"We are present," said another voice. "I am Zohain."

"State your name, visitor," said An-ehon's deeper voice. "Please state your names. I see one who is not of the People. Please state your authority to invoke us, visitor."

"I am Melein s'lntel Zain-Abrin, she'pan of the People that went out from Kutath."

The lights pulsed, in increasing unison. "I am An-ehon. I am at the orders of the she'pan of the People. Zohain and Tho'e'i-shai and Le'a'haen are speaking through me. I perceive others. I perceive one of the not-People."

"They are here with my permission."

The lights pulsed, all in unison now. "May An-ehon ask permission to ask?" the machine began, the ritual courtesy of one who would question a she'pan; and the source of it sent cold over Niun's skin, "Ask."

"What is this person of the not-People? Shall we accept it, she'pan?"

"Accept him. He is Duncan-without-a-Mother. He comes from the Dark. This, of the People, is Niun s'lntel Zain-Abrin, kel'anth of my Kel; this other is a shadow-who-sits-at-our-door."

"Other shadows have entered the city with you."

"The dusei are likewise shadows in our house."

"There was a s.h.i.+p which we permitted to land."

"It brought us."

"There is a signal which it gives, not in the language of the People."

"An-ehon, let it continue."

"She'pan," it responded.

"There are none of the People in your limits?"

"No."

"Do any remain, An-ehon?"

"Rephrase."

"Do any others of the People survive, An-ehon?"

"Yes, she'pan. Many live."

The answer struck; it went uncomprehended for several heartbeats, for Niun had waited for no. Yes. Yes, many, many, MANY!

"She'pan," Niun exclaimed, and tears stung his eyes. He stood still, nonetheless, and breathed deeply to drive the weakness from him, felt Duncan's hand on his shoulder, offering whatever moved the human, and after a moment he was aware of that, too. Gladness, he thought; Duncan was glad for them. He was touched by this, and at the same time annoyed by the human contact.

Human.

Before he had heard An-ehon speak, he had had no resentment for Duncan's humanity; before he had known that there were others, he had not felt the difference in them so keenly.

Shame touched him, that he should go before others of the People, drawing this with them self-interested shame and dishonorable, and hurtful. Perhaps Duncan even sensed it. Niun lifted his arm, set it likewise on Duncan's shoulder, pressed with his fingers.

"Sov-kela," he said in a low voice.

The human did not speak. Perhaps he likewise found nothing to say.

"An-ehon," Melein addressed the machine, "where are they now?"

A graphic flashed to a central screen: dots flashed.

Ten, twenty sites. The globe shaped, turned in the viewer, and there were others.

"There were no power readings for those sites," Duncan murmured. Niun tightened his hand, warning him to silence.

Melein turned to them, hands open in dismissal. "Go. Wait below."

Perhaps it was because of Duncan; more likely it was that here began sen-matters that the Kel had no business to overhear.

The People survived.

Melein would guide them: the thought came suddenly that he would have need of all the skill that his masters had taught him that first in finding the People, it would be necessary to kill: and this was a bitterness more than such killing ever had been.

"Come," he said to Duncan. He bent to take the pan'en' into his own arms, trusting their safety now to the city, that obeyed Melein.

"No," Melein said. "Leave it."

He did so, brought Duncan out and down again, where they had left their other belongings; and there they prepared to wait.

Night came on them. From sen-tower there was no stir; Niun sat and fretted at Melein's long silence, and Duncan did not venture conversation with him. Once, restless, he left the human to watch and climbed up to kel-hall: there was only emptiness there, vaster by far than the earth-walled kel-hall he had known. There were pictures, maps, painted there, age-faded, showing a world that had ceased to be, and the sight depressed him.

He left the place, anxious for Duncan, alone in main hall, and started down the winding ramp. A cnittering, mechanical thing darted behind him ... he whirled and caught at his pistol, but it was only an automaton, a cleaner such as regul had employed. It answered what kept the place clean, or what did repairs to keep the ancient machinery running.

He shrugged, half a s.h.i.+ver, and descended to Duncan startled the human, who settled back again, distressed and relieved at once.

"I wish the dusei would come back," Duncan said.

"Yes," Niun agreed. They were limited without the animals. They dared not leave the outer door unguarded. He looked in that direction, where there was only night, and then began to search through their packs. "I am going to take the she'pan up some food. I do not think we will be moving tonight. And mind, there are some small machines about. I think they are harmless. Do not damage one."

"It comes to me," Duncan said softly, "that An-ehon could be dangerous if it chose to be."

"It comes to me too."

"It said . . . that it permitted the s.h.i.+p to land. That means it could have prevented it."

Niun drew a slow breath and let it go, gathered up the packet of food and a flask, the while Duncan's words nagged at him. The human had learned well how to keep his thoughts from his face; he could no longer read him with absolute success. The implications disturbed him; it was not the landing of their own s.h.i.+p that Duncan was thinking of.

Others.

The humans that would come.

Such a thought Duncan offered to him.

He rose and went without looking back, climbed the way to sen-hall, thoughts of treachery moiling in him: and not treachery, if Duncan were Melein's.

What was the man?

He entered cautiously into the outer hall of the Sen, called out aloud, for the door was left open; he could hear the voice of the machine, drowning his words, perhaps.

But Melein came. Her eyes were shadowed and held a dazed look. Her weariness frightened him.

"I have brought you food," he said.

She gathered the offering into her hands. "Thank you," she said, and turned away, walked slowly back into that room. He lingered, and saw what he ought not, the pan'en open, and filled with leaves of gold . . . saw the pulse of lights welcome Melein, mortal flesh conversing with machines that were cities. She stood, and light bathed her white-robed figure until it blazed blue-white like a star. The packet of food tumbled from her loose hand, rolled. The flask slipped from the other and struck the floor without a sound. She did not seem to notice.

"Melein!" he cried, and started forward.

She turned, held out her hands, forbidding, panic on her face. Blue light broke across his vision: he flung himself back, crashed to the floor, half dazed.

Voices echoed, and one was Melein's. He gathered himself to one knee as she reached him, touched him: he gained his feet, though his heart still hammered from the shock that had pa.s.sed through him.

"He is well?" asked the voice of An-ehon. "He is well?"

"Yes," Melein said.

"Come away," Niun urged her. "Come away; leave this thing, at least until the morning. What is time to this machine? Come away from it, and rest."

"I shall eat and rest here," she said. Her hands caressed his arm, withdrew as she stepped back from him, retreating into the room with the machine. "Do not try to come here."

"I fear this thing."

"It should be feared," she lingered to say, and her eyes held ineffable weariness. "We are not alone. We are not alone, Niun. We will find the People. Look at yourself, she'pan's-kel'en."

"Where shall we find them, and when, she'pan? Does it know?"

"There have been wars. The seas have dried; the People have diminished and fought among themselves; cities are abandoned for want of water. Only machines remain here: An-ehon says that it teaches the she'panei that come here, to learn of it Go away. I do not know it all. And I must. It learns of me too; it will share the knowledge with all the Cities of the People, and perhaps, with that One it calls the Living City. I do not know, I cannot grasp what the connection is among the cities. But I hold An-ehon. It listens to me. And by it I will hold Kutath."

"I am," he said, dazed by the temerity of such a vision, "the she'pan's Hand." "Look to Duncan."

"Yes," he said; and accepted her gesture of dismissal and left, still feeling in his bones the ache that the machine's weapon had left; dazed he was still, and much that she had said wandered his mind without a tether to hold it ... only that Melein meant to fight, and that therefore she would need him.

A'ani. Challenge. She'panei did not share: the she'pan served by the most skillful kel'en, survived. Melein prepared herself.

He returned in silence to the hall below, curled up in the corner, ma.s.saging his aching arms and reckoning in troubled thoughts that there was killing to be done.

"Is she all right?" Duncan intruded into his silence, unwelcome.

"She will not leave. She is talking to it, with them. She speaks of wars, kel Duncan."

"Is that remarkable for the People?" Niun looked at him, prepared to be angry, and realized that it was a failure of words. "Wars. Mri wars. Wars-with-distance-weapons." He resorted to the forbidden mu'ara, and Duncan seemed then to understand him, and fell quickly silent "Would that the dusei would come," Niun declared suddenly, wrenching his thoughts from such prospects; and in his restlessness he went to the door and ventured to call to them, that lilting call that sometimes, only sometimes, could summon them.