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They approached Cave of the Ridges at dawnbreak, moving through a split in the basin wall so narrow they had to turn sideways to negotiate it. Alexandra saw Trek-Jush detach guards in the thin dawnlight, saw the for a moment as they started their scrambling up the cliff.
Alexei turned his head upward as he walked, seeing the tapestry of this planet cut in cross section where the narrow cleft gaped towards the blue-gray sky.
Em-Cro pulled at his robe to hurry him and said: "Hurry! It is already daylight."
"The men who climbed above us, where are they going?" Alexei whispered.
"To the first daywatch," she said. "Hurry now!"
A guard left outside is wise, Alexei thought. But it would've been wiser still for us to approach this place in separate bands. Less chance of losing the whole troop that way. He paused in the thought, realizing that this was guerilla thinking, and he remembered his father's fear that the Romanovs might become a guerilla house.
"Faster," Em-Cro whispered.
Alexei sped his steps, hearing the swish of robes behind. And he thought of the words of the keros from Rasputin's tiny A.O. Bible.
"Heaven to my right, Hell to my left and the Angel of Death behind me." He rolled the quotation around in his mind.
They rounded a corner where the passage widened. Trek-Jush stood at one side motioning them into a low hole that opened at right angles.
"Quickly," he hissed. "We're like rabbits in a cage if a patrol catches us here."
Alexei bent for the opening, followed Em-Cro into a cave illuminated by thin gray light from somewhere ahead.
"You can stand up," she said.
He straightened, studied the place: a deep and wide area with a domed ceiling that curved away just out of a man's handreach. The troop spread out through shadows. Alexei saw his mother come up on one side, saw her examine their companions. And he noted how she failed to blend with the Szganys even though she wore identical garb. The way she moved---such a sense of power and grace.
"Find a place to rest and stay out of the way, child-man," Em-Cro said. "Here's food." She pressed two-leaf-wrapped morsels into his hand. They reeked of spice.
Trek-Jush came up behind Alexandra, called an order to a group on the left. "Get the doorseal in place and see to moisture security." He turned to another Szgany: "Knat-Tharn, fetch some glowglobes." He took Alexandra's arm. "I wish to show you something, weirding woman." He led her around a curve of rock towards the light source.
Alexandra found herself looking out across the wide lip of another opening to the cave, an opening high in a cliff wall----looking out across another basin about ten or twelve kilometers wide. The basin was shielded by high rock walls. Sparse clumps of plant growth were scattered around it.
As she looked at the dawn-gray basin, the sun lifted over the far escarpment illuminating a biscuit-colored landscape of rocks and sand. She made a mental note of how the Dyuni sun seemed to leap over the horizon.
It's because we want to hold it back, she thought. Night is safer than day. There came over her then a longing for a rainbow in this place that would never see rain. I must suppress such longings, she thought. They're a weakness. I no longer can afford weaknesses.
Trek-Jush gripped her arm, pointed across the basin. "There! There you see proper Drikas."
She looked where he pointed and saw movement: people on the basin floor scattering at the daylight into the shadows of the opposite cliffwall. Despite the distance, their movements were plain in the clear air. She lifted her binoculars from underneath her robe, focused the oil lenses on the distant people. Kerchiefs fluttered light a flight of multicolored butterflies.
"That is home," Trek-Jush said. "We will be there this night." He started across the basins, tugging at his mustache. "My people stayed out overlate working. That means there are no patrols about. I'll signal them later and they'll prepare for us."
"Your people show good discipline," Alexandra said. She lowered the binoculars, saw that Trek-Jush was looking at them.
"They obey the preservation of the tribe," he said. "It is the way we choose among us for a leader. The leader is the one who is the strongest, the one who brings water and security." He lifted his attention to her face.
She returned the stare, noted the whiteless eyes, the strained eyepits, the dust-rimmed beard and mustache, the line of the catchtube curving down from his nostrils into his stillsuit.
"Have I compromised your leadership by besting you, Trek-Jush?" she asked.
"No, you did not call me out," he said.
"It's important that a leader keep the respect of his troop," she said.
"There isn't a one of those sandlice I can't handle," Trek-Jush said. "When you bested me, you bested all of us. Now, they hope to learn from you the weirding way, and some are curious to see if you intend to call me out."
She weighed the implications. "By besting you in formal battle?"
He nodded. "I'd advise against this because they'd not follow you. You're not of the sand. They saw this in our night's passage."
"You Szganys are a practical people," she said.
"Yes, we are." He glanced at the basin. "We know our needs. But not many are thinking deep thoughts now this close to home. We've been out overlong arranging to deliver our spice quota to the free traders for the cursed Guild----may their faces be forever black."
Alexandra stopped in the act of turning away from him, looked back up into his face. "The Guild?! What do they have to do with your spice?"
"It's Phes's command," Trek-Jush said. "We know the reason, but the taste of it sours us. We bribe the Guild with a monstrous payment in spice to keep our skies clear of satellites and such that none may spy upon what we do to the face of Dyuna."
She weighed out her words, remembering that Alexei had said this must be the reason Dyuni skies were satellite-free. "What is it you do on the face of Dyuna that none are welcome to see?"
"We change it, slowly but with a certainty, to make it fit for human habitation. Our generation will not see it, nor our children, nor our children's children nor the grandchildren of their children, but it will come." He stared with veiled eyes out over the basin. "Open water and tall green plants and people walking freely without stillsuits."
So that's the dream of this Re-Phes Holstein, she thought. She said: "Bribes are dangerous, for they have a way of growing bigger and bigger."
"They grow," he said, "but the slow way is the safe way."
Alexandra turned, looked out over the basin, trying to see it the way Trek-Jush was seeing it in his mind. She saw only the grayed mustard stain of distant rocks and a sudden hazy motion in the sky above the cliffs.
"Ah-h-h-h," Trek-Jush said.
Was it another patrol vehicle? No, it was only a mirage, another landscape hovering over the desert sand and a distant wavering of greenery and in the middle distance a big wurm traveling to the surface with what looked like Szgany robes fluttering on its back.
The mirage faded.
"It would be better to ride," Trek-Jush said, "but we cannot allow a maker into this basin, thus we must walk again tonight."
Maker: the Szgany word for wurm, she thought.
She measured the import of his words, the statement that they could not allow a wurm into this basin. She knew what she'd seen in the mirage----Szganys riding on the back of a giant wurm. It took heavy control not to betray her shock at the implications.
"We need to return to the others," Trek-Jush said. "Or else my people might suspect i dally with you. Some are already jealous that my hands tasted your beauty when we struggled last night in Simen Basin."
"That will be enough of that!" Alexandra snapped.
"No offense," Trek-Jush said, and his voice was mild. "Women among us are not taken against their will.....and with you...." He shrugged. "....even that convention isn't needed."
"You will keep in mind that I was a duke's lady," she said, but her voice was calmer.
"As you wish," he said. "It's time to seal off this opening, to allow relaxation of stillsuit discipline. My people need to rest in comfort this day. Their families will give them little rest on the morrow."
Silence descended between them.
Alexandra stared out into the sunlight. She heard what she had heard in Trek-Jush's voice---the unspoken offer of more than his countenance. Did he need a wife? She realized she could step into that place with him. It would be one way to end conflict over tribal leadership----a female correctly aligned with a male.
What of Alexei, in that case? Who could tell yet what rules of parenthood prevailed here? What of the unborn daughter she'd carried these few weeks? What of a dead Duke's daughter? She allowed herself to face fully the significance of this other child growing inside her, to see her own motives in permitting the conception. She knew what it was----she had given in to that profound drive shared by all creatures who are faced with death----the drive to see immortality through progeny. The fertility drive of the species had overpowered them.
Alexandra glanced at Trek-Jush, saw that he was studying her, waiting. A daughter born here to a woman wed to such a one as he---what would be the fate of such a daughter? she asked herself. Would he try to limit the necessities that a Bala Garrasaid must follow?
Trek-Jush cleared his throat and revealed then that he understood some of the questions in her mind. "What's important for a leader is that which makes him a leader. It's the needs of his people. If you teach me your powers, there may come a day when one of us must challenge the other. I would prefer an alternative."
"There are several alternatives?" she asked.
"The Soaeaeodomo," he said. "Our Mother Baba is old."
Their Mother Baba!
Before she could probe this, he said: "I do not necessarily offer myself as a husband. This is nothing personal, for you are beautiful and desirable. But should you become one of my wives, that might lead some of my young men to believe that I'm too much concerned with pleasures of the flesh and not enough concerned with the tribe's welfare. Even now they listen to us and watch us."
A man who weighs his decisions, who thinks of consequences, she thought.
"There are those among my young men who have reached the age of wild spirits," he said. "They must be eased through this period. I must leave no great reasons around for them to challenge me. For I would be forced to kill and maim among them. This is not the proper course for a leader if it can be avoided with honor. A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob."
His words, the depth of their awareness, the fact that he spoke as much to her as to this who secretly listened, forced her to re-evaluate him.
He has stature, she thought. Where did he learn such inner balance?
"The law that demands our form of choosing a leader is just law," Trek-Jush said. "But it doesn't follow that justice is always the thing a people needs. What we really need now is time to grow and prosper, to spread our force over more land."
What is his ancestry? she wondered. Whence comes such breeding? She said, "Trek-Jush, I fear I have underestimated you."
"Such was my suspicion," he said.
"Each of us apparently underestimated the other," she said.
"I would like an end to this," he said. "I would like friendship and trust with you. I would like that respect for each other which grows in the breast without demand fo r the huddlings of sex."
"I understand," she said.
"Do you trust me?"
"I hear your sincerity."
"Among us," he said, "the Soaeaeodomo, when they are not the formal leaders, hold a special place of honor. They teach. They maintain the strength of God here." He touched his breast.
Now I must probe this Mother Bab mystery, she thought. She said: "You spoke of your Mother Baba....and I've heard words of legend and prophecy."
"It is written a Bala Garrasaid and her offspring hold the key to our future," he said.
"Do you believe that I am that one?"
She watched his face, thinking: The young reed dies so easily. Beginnings are times of such great danger.
"We do not know," he said.
She nodded, thinking: He's an honorable man. He wants a sign from me, but he'll not tip fate by telling me the sign.
Alexandra turned her head, stared down into the basin at the golden shadows, the purple shadows, the vibrations of dust-mote air across the lip of their cave. Her mind was filled suddenly with feline prudence. She knew the cant of the Missii Zashchitnyye, knew how to adapt the techniques of legend and fear and hope to her emergency needs, but she sensed wild changes here----as if someone had been in among these Szganys and capitalized on the Missii Zashchitnyye's imprint.
Trek-Jush cleared his throat.
She sensed his impotence, knew that the day moved ahead, and men waited to seal off this opening. This was a time for boldness on her part, and she realized what she needed: some dor or-redkom, some school of translation that would give her.....
"Adob," she whispered.
Her mind felt as if it had rolled over within her. She recognized the sensation with the quickening of the pulse. Nothing in all the Bala Garrasaid training carried such a signal of recognition. It could be only the adob, the demanding memory that comes upon you of itself. She gave herself up to it, allowing the words to flow from her.
"Ibm persoebo," she said, "as far as the spot where the dust ends." She stretched out an arm from her robe, seeing Trek-Jush's eyes go wide. She heard a rustling of many robes in the background. "I see a.....Szgany with the Book of Examples," she intoned. "He reads to or-Los, the sun whom he defied and enslaved. He reads to the Sodik of the Trial and this is what he reads?
Mine enemies are like green blades beaten down123Please respect copyright.PENANA274sg3xduD
That did stand in the path of the tempest.123Please respect copyright.PENANAOo0PjTy5L1
Hast thou not seen what our Lord did?123Please respect copyright.PENANAE35BfdVpJQ
He sent the pestilence among them.123Please respect copyright.PENANAuEUqJESCiM
That did lay schemes against us.123Please respect copyright.PENANAnSn5ibTAF4
They are like birds scattered by the huntsman.123Please respect copyright.PENANANIc4TRCyc4
Their schemes are like pills of poison123Please respect copyright.PENANAnsmdlWnxbH
That every month rejects."
That did stand in the path of the tempest.123Please respect copyright.PENANAOo0PjTy5L1
Hast thou not seen what our Lord did?123Please respect copyright.PENANAE35BfdVpJQ
He sent the pestilence among them.123Please respect copyright.PENANAuEUqJESCiM
That did lay schemes against us.123Please respect copyright.PENANAnSn5ibTAF4
They are like birds scattered by the huntsman.123Please respect copyright.PENANANIc4TRCyc4
Their schemes are like pills of poison123Please respect copyright.PENANAnsmdlWnxbH
That every month rejects."
A trembling passed through her. She dropped her arm.
Back to her from the inner cave's shadows came a whispered response of many voices: "Their works have been overturned."
"The fire of god mount over thy heart," she said. She thought: Now, it goes in the proper channel.
"The fire of God set alight," came the response.
She nodded. "Thine enemies shall fall" she said.
"Be-ro doeko," they answered.
In the sudden hush, Trek-Jush bowed to her. "Soaeaeodemo," he said. "If the Kroe-ririd grant, then you may yet pass within to become a Mother Baba."
Pass within, she thought. An odd way of putting it. But the rest of it fitted into the cant well enough. She felt a cynical bitterness at what she had done. Our Missii Zashchitynyye seldom fails. A place was prepared for us in this wilderness. The prayer of the koros has carved out our hiding place. Now---I must play the part of Allakh, the Friend of God....Soaeaeodoemo to rogue peoples who've been so heavily imprinted with our Bala Garrasaid soothsay they even call their chief priestess Mother Baba.
Alexei stood beside Em-Cro in the shadows of the inner cave. He could still taste the morsel she had fed him----bird-flesh and grain bound with spice honey and encased in a leaf. In tasting it, he had realized he had never before eaten such a concentration of spice essence and there had been a moment of fear. He knew what this essence could do to him....the spice change that pushed his mind into prescient awareness.
"Be-ro doeko," Em-Cro whispered.
He looked at her, seeing the awe with which the Szgany appeared to accept his mother's words. Only the man called Ros-Starn seemed to stand aloof from the ceremony, holding himself apart with arms folded across his trunk.
"Diae aeodro rem komsa," Em-Cro whispered. "Diae vimro rem komsa. I have two eyes. I have two feet."
And she stared at Alexei with a look of wonder.
Alexei took a deep breath, trying to still the tempest inside him. HIs mother's words had locked onto the working of the spice essence, and he had felt her voice rise and fall within him like the shadows of an open fire. Through it all, he'd sensed the edge of cynicism in her----he knew her so well!----but nothing could stop this thing that had begun with a morsel of blood.
Terrible purpose!
He sensed it, the race consciousness that he could not escape. There was the sharpened clarity, the inflow of data, the cold precision of his awareness. He sank to the floor, sitting with his back against rock, giving himself up to it. Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future----the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present, and the one-eyed vision of the future----all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.
There was danger, he felt, of overrunning himself, and he had to hold onto his awareness of the present, sensing the blurred deflection of experience, the flowing moment, the continual solidification of that-which-is into the perpetual-was.
In grasping the present, he felt for the first time the massive steadiness of time's movement everywhere complicated by shifting currents, waves, surges, and countersurges, like surf against rock cliffs. It gave him a new understanding of his prescience, and he saw the source of the blind time, the source of error in it, with a sudden sensation of fear.
He realized that the prescience was an illumination that incorporated the limits of what it revealed---at once a source of accuracy and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw.
What he saw was a time nexus inside this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action----the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand----moved a gigantic lever across the known universe. He saw violence with the outcome subject to so many variables that his slightest movement created vast shiftings in the pattern.
The vision made him want to freeze into paralysis, but this, too, was action with its consequences.
The innumerable consequences---lines fanned out from this cave, and along most of those consequence-lines he saw his own corpse with blood flowing out of a gaping knife wound.
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