x
No Plagiarism!BmxB2bj0IkwJgu9ZxLUFposted on PENANA Trek-Jush's troop returning to the s'yetche with its two strays from the desert climbed out of the basin in the first moon's waning light. The robed figures hurried with the stench of home in their nostrils. Dawn's gray line behind them was brightest at the notch in their horizon-calendar that marked mid-autumn, the month of Bedrock.
Wind-raked leaves strewed the cliffbase where the s'yetche children had been gathering them, but the sounds of the troop's passage (except for occasional blunderings by Alexei and his mother could not be distinguished from the natural sounds of the night.
Alexei wiped sweat-caked dust from his forehead, felt a tug at his arm, heard Em-Cro's voice hissing, "Do as I told you: bring the fold of your hood down over your forehead! Leave only the eyes exposed. Otherwise, you'll waste precious moisture."
A whispered command behind them demanded silence: "The desert hears you!"
A bird chirruped from the rocks high above them.
A stir passed through the troop's ranks. And again, the mouse-thumping pecked its way across the sand.
Once more, the bird chirruped.
The troop resumed its climb up into a crack in the rocks, but there was a stillness of breath about the Szganys that now filled Alexei with caution, and he noted covert glances towards Em-Cro, the way she seemed to withdraw, pulling in upon herself.
There was rock underfoot now, a faint gray swishing of robes around them, and Alexei sensed a relaxing of discipline, but still that quiet-of-the-person about Em-Cro and the others. He followed a shadow-shape---up steps, a turn, more steps, into a tunnel, past two moisture-sealed doors and into a globelighted narrow passageway with yellow rock walls and a ceiling.
All around him, Alexei saw the Szganys throwing back their hoods, removing nose plugs, breathing deeply. Somebody sighed. Alexei looked for Em-Cro but found that she had left his side. He was hemmed in by a press of robed bodies. Someone jostled him and said, "Excuse me, Mar-Vall. What a crush! It's always this way."
On his left, the narrow-bearded face of the one called Al-Goll turned towards Alexei. The stained eyepits and blue darkness of eyes appeared even darker under the yellow globes. "Throw off your hood, Mar-Vell," Al-Goll said. "You're home." And he helped Alexei, releasing the hood catch, elbowing a space around him.
Alexei slipped out of his nose plugs, swung the mouth baffle aside. The odor of the place attacked him: unbathed bodies, distillate odors of reclaimed wastes, everywhere the sour effluvia of humanity with, over it all, a symphony of spice and spicelike harmonies.
"Why are we waiting, Al-Goll?" Alexei asked.
"For the Mother Baba, I think. You heard the message----poor Em-Cro.
Poor Em-Cro? Alexei asked himself. He looked around, wondering where she was, where his mother had got to in all this crush.
Al-Goll took a deep breath. "Ahh, how good home smells," he said.
Alexei saw that the man was enjoying the stink of this air, that there was no irony in his tone. He heard his mother cough then, and her voice returned to him through the press of the troop: "How rich the smells of your s'yetche, Trek-Jush. I see you do much working with the spice---you make paper, plastics, and----explosives?!"
"You know this from what you smell?" It was another man's voice.
And Alexei realized she was speaking for his benefit in order for him to make a quick acceptance of this attack on his nose.
There came a buzz of activity at the head of his troop and a prolonged indrawn breath that seemed to pass through the Szganys, and Alexei heard hushed voices back down the line: "It's true then----Re-Phes is dead."
Re-Phes, Alexei thought. Then: Em-Cro, daughter of Re-Phes. The pieces fell together in his mind. Re-Phes was the Szgany name of the planetologist!
Alexei looked at Al-Goll, asked: "Is Re-Phes known also as Holstein?"
"There is but one Re-Phes," Al-Goll said.
Alexei turned, stared at the robed back of a Szgany in front of him. Then Re-Phes-Holstein is dead, he thought.
"It was Seppanen treachery," someone hissed. "They made it look like an accident---lost in the desert---a 'jigger crash......"
Alexei felt a burst of anger. The man who'd befriended them, helped save them from the Seppanen manhunters, the man who had seen his Szgany cohorts searching for two strays in the desert.... another victim of the Seppanens.
"Does Mar-Vell hunger yet for revenge?" Al-Goll asked.
Before Alexei could answer, there came a low call and the troop swept forward into a wider chamber, carrying Alexei with them. He found himself in an open space confronted by Trek-Jush and a strange woman wearing a flowering wraparound garment of brilliant orange and green. Her arms were bare to the shoulders, and he could see she wore no stillsuit. Her skin was a pale olive. Dark hair swept back from her high forehead, throwing emphasis on sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose between the dense darkness of her eyes.
She turned towards him, and Alexei saw golden rings threaded with water tallies dangling from her ears.
"This bested my Ros-Starn?" she demanded.
"Silence, Har-Ko," Trek-Jush said. "It was Ros-Starn's doing---he invoked the sorodde or-birbom."
"He is but a mere boy!" she said. She gave her head a sharp shake from side to side, setting the water tallies to jingling. "My children have been rendered fatherless by another child, have they? Surely this was an accident!"
"Mar-Vell, how many years have you?" Trek-Jush asked.
"Fifteen standard," Alexei said.
Trek-Jush swept his eyes over the troop. "Is there one among you who cares to challenge me?"
Silence.
Trek-Jush looked at the woman. "Until I've learned his weirding ways, I'd not dark challenge him."
She returned his stare. "But...."
"Saw you not the stranger woman who went with Em-Cro to the Mother Baba?" Trek-Jush asked. "She's an out-kraaem Soaeaeodemo, mother to this lad. The mother and son are masters of the weirding ways of combat."
"Lekom or-Goeb," the woman whispered. Her eyes held awe as she turned them back toward Alexei.
That legend again, Alexei thought.
"Maybe," Trek-Jush said. "It's not been tested, though." He returned his attention to Alexei. "Mar-Vell, it is our way that you've now the responsibility for Ros-Starn's woman here and for his two sons. His aeore----his quarters are yours. His coffee service is yours---and this, his woman."
Alexei studied the woman, wondering: Why isn't she mourning for her man? Why does she show no hatred for me? Abruptly, he saw that the Szganys were staring at him, waiting.
Someone whispered: "There's work to do. Say how you accept her."
Trek-Jush said: "Do you accept Har-Ko as woman or servant?"
Har-Ko lifted her arms, turning slowly on one heel. "I'm still young, Mar-Vell. It's said I still look as young as when I was with Lo-Han---before Ros-Starn bested him."
Ros-Starn killed another man to win her, Alexei thought.
"If I accept her as a servant, may I yet change my mind at a later time?"
"You'd have a year to change your mind," Trek-Jush said. "After that, she's a free woman to do as she wants---or you could free her to choose for herself at any time. But she's your responsibility, no matter what---for one year----and you'll always share some responsibility for the sons of Ros-Starn."
"I accept her as my servant," Alexei said.
Har-Ko stamped a foot, shook her shoulders with anger. "But I'm young!"
Trek-Jush looked at Alexei and said: "Caution is a virtue in a man who would be our leader."
"But I'm young," Har-Ko repeated.
"Silence!" Trek-Jush commanded. "If something has merit, so be it. Show Mar-Vell to his quarters and see that he has fresh clothing and a place to rest."
"Ooooooh!" she said.
Alexei registered enough of her to have a first approximation. He felt the impatience of the troop, knew many things were being delayed here. He wondered if he dared asked the whereabouts of his mother and Em-Cro but saw from Trek-Jush's nervous stance that it'd be a mistake.
He faced Har-Ko, pitched his voice with tone and tremolo to accent her fear and awe, said: "Show me to my quarters, Har-Ko! We'll discuss your youth some other time."
She backed away two steps, cast a frightened glance at Trek-Jush. "He has the weirding voice," she husked.
"Trek-Jush," Alexei said. "Em-Cro's father put a heavy obligation on me. If there's anything...."
"It'll be decided in council," Trek-Jush said. "You can speak then." He nodded in dismissal, turned away with the rest of the troop following him.
Alexei took Har-Ko's arm, noting how cool her flesh seemed, feeling her tremble. "I'll do you no harm, Har-Ko," he said. "Show me our quarters." And his smoothed his voice with relaxants.
"You will not cast me out when the year is over?" she said. "I know for true I'm not as young as once I was."
"As long as I live, you'll have a place with me," he said. He let go of her arm. "Come now, where are our quarters?"
She turned, led the way down the passage, turning right into a wide cross tunnel lighted by evenly spaced yellow overhead globes. The stone floor was smooth, meticulously swept clean of sand.
Alexei moved up beside her, studied the aquiline profile as they walked. "You do not hate me, Har-Ko?"
"Why would I hate you?"
She nodded to a cluster of children who stared at them from the raised ledge of a side passage.
Alexei glimpsed adult shapes behind the children partly concealed by gauzy hangings.
"I----bested Ros-Starn."
"Trek-Jush said the ceremony was held and you're a friend of Ros-Starn." She glanced sidelong at him.
"Trek-Jush said you gave moisture to the dead. Is that so?"
"Yes."
"It's more than I'll do...can do."
"Don't you mourn him?"
"In the time of mourning, I shall."
They passed an arched opening. Alexei looked through it at men and women working with stand-mounted machinery in a big, bright chamber. There seemed an extra tempo of urgency to them.
"What are they doing in there," Alexei asked.
She glanced back as they passed beyond the arch and said: "They rush to fill the quota in the plastics foundry before we flee. We need many dew collectors for the planting."
"Flee?"
"Until the butchers stop hunting us or are driven from our land."
Alexei caught himself in a stumble, sensing an arrested instant of time, remembering a fragment, a visual projection of prescience----but it was displaced, like a montage in motion. The bits of his prescient memory were not quite as he remembered them.
"The Sordoi hunt us," he said.
"They'll not find much excepting an empty s'yetche or two," she said. "And they'll find their share of death in the sand."
"Will they find this place?" he asked.
"More than likely, they will."
"Yet we take the time to...." He motioned with his head towards the arch that was now far behind them.
"....make....dew collectors?"
"The planting must go on."
"What are dew collectors?" he asked.
The glance she turned on him was filled with surprise. "Don't they teach you anything in the----wherever it is you come from?"
"Not about dew collectors, no."
"Hah!" she said, and there was a whole conversation in one word.
"I asked you what they are!"
"Each bush, each weed you see out there in the erg," she said, "how do you suppose it lives when we leave it? Each is planted most tenderly in its own little pit. The pits are then filled with smooth chromoplastic ovals. Light turns them white. You can see them glistening in the dawn if you look down from a high place. White reflets. But when Old Father Sun departs, the chromoplastic reverts to transparency in the dark. It cools with extreme rapidity. The surface condenses moisture out of the air. That moisture trickles down to keep our plants alive."
"Dew collectors," he muttered, enchanted by the simple beauty of such a scheme.
"I'll mourn Ros-Starn when the time comes for it," she said, as if her mind had not left his other question. "He was a good man, Ros-Starn, but quick to anger. A good provider, Ros-Starn and a wonder with the children. He made no separation between Al-Goll's boy, my firstborn, and his own true son. They were equal in his eyes." She turned a questing stare on Alexei. "Would it be that way with you, Mar-Vell?"
"We don't have that problem."
"But....
"Har-Ko!"
She recoiled at the hard edge in his voice.
They passed another brightly lit room visible through an arch on their left. "What do they make in there?" he asked.
"They repair the weaving machines," she said. "But it must be dismantled by tonight." She gestured at a tunnel branching to their left. "Through there and beyond, that's food processing and stillsuit maintenance." She looked at Alexei. "Your suit looks brand new. But it needs work; I'm good with suits. I work the factory in season."
They began coming on knots of people now and thicker clusterings of openings in the tunnel's sides. A file of men and women passed them carrying packs that gurgled heavily, the smell of spice strong about them.
"They'll not get our water," Har-Ko said. "Or our spice. You can be sure of that."
Alexei glanced at the openings in the tunnel walls, seeing the heavy carpets on the raised ledge, glimpses of rooms with bright fabrics on the walls, piled cushions. People in the openings fell silent at their approach, followed Alexei with untamed stares.
"The people find it odd that you bested Ros-Tharn," Har-Ko said. "It's likely you'll have some proving to do when we're settled in a new s'yetche."
"I don't like killing," he said.
"Thus Trek-Jush tells it."
A shrill chanting grew louder ahead of them. They came to another side opening wider than any of the others Alexei had seen. He slowed his pace, staring in at a room crowded with children sitting crosslegged on a maroon-carpeted floor.
At a chalkboard against the far wall stood a woman in a yellow wraparaound, a projecto-stylus in one hand. The board was filled with designs----circles, wedges and curves, snake tracks and squares, flowing arcs split by parallel lines. The woman pointed to the designs one after the other as fast as she could move the stylus, and the children chanted in rhythm with her moving hand.8964 copyright protection133PENANAdK3slj8Rpi 維尼
Alexei listened, hearing the voices grow dimmer behind as he moved deeper into the s'yetche with Har-Ko.8964 copyright protection133PENANAWeTFJkeF7I 維尼
"Tree," the children chanted. "Tree, grass, dune, wind, mountain, hill, fire, lightning, rock, rocks, dust, sand, heat, shelter, heat, full, winter, cold, empty, erosion, summer, cavern, day tension, moon, night, bedrock, sandtide, slope, planting, binder...."8964 copyright protection133PENANAAnQZjokO1U 維尼
"How can you conduct classes at a time like this?" Alexei asked.8964 copyright protection133PENANALmKepzLLhF 維尼
Her face went somber, and grief tinged her voice: "What Re-Phes taught us, we cannot pause an instant in that. Re-Phes who is dead must not be forgotten. It's the Chaksoba way."8964 copyright protection133PENANAQzwCm7wlTe 維尼
She crossed the tunnel to her left, stepped up onto a lodge, parted gauzy orange hangings and stood aside. "Your aeore is ready for you, Mar-Vell."8964 copyright protection133PENANA1wEMbxQE4P 維尼
Alexei hesitated before joining her on the ledge. He felt a sudden reluctance to be alone with this lady. It came to him that he was surrounded by a lifestyle that could only be understood by postulating an ecology of ideas and values. He felt that this Szgany world was fishing for him, trying to snare him in its ways. And he knew what lay in that snare---the wild dzikhad, the holy war he felt he should avoid at all costs.8964 copyright protection133PENANAoexwRwoEUe 維尼
"This is your aeore," Har-Ko said. "Why do you hesitate?"8964 copyright protection133PENANANZL0PwKmgy 維尼
Alexei nodded, joined her at the ledge. He lifted the hangings across from her, feeling metal fibers in the fabric, followed her into a short entrance way and then into a larger room, square, about six meters to a side---thick blue carpets on the floor, blue and green fabrics hiding the rock walls, glowglobes tuned to yellow overhead bobbing against draped yellow ceiling fabrics.8964 copyright protection133PENANALAuQ9SjiLR 維尼
The effect was that of an ancient tent.8964 copyright protection133PENANA4VfScXIxUQ 維尼
Har-Ko stood in front of him, left hand on hip, her eyes studying his face. "The children are with a friend," she said. "They will present themselves later."8964 copyright protection133PENANA4qRoylwgHc 維尼
Alexei masked his unease beneath a quick scanning of the room. Thin hangings to the right, he saw, partly concealed, a larger room with cushions piled around the walls. He felt a soft breeze from an air duct, saw the outlet cunningly hidden in a pattern of hangings directly ahead of him.8964 copyright protection133PENANATt0kwZpU9h 維尼
"Do you wish me to help you take off your stillsuit?" Har-Ko asked.8964 copyright protection133PENANAUmVIt5KZUY 維尼
"No, thank you."8964 copyright protection133PENANANVht4Jbh8f 維尼
"Shall I bring food?"8964 copyright protection133PENANARpjYkYWHUn 維尼
"Please do."8964 copyright protection133PENANAzBJlgP0xXf 維尼
"There is a reclamation chamber off the other room." She gestured. "For your comfort and convenience when you're not in your stillsuit."8964 copyright protection133PENANAxCT0tiQfJA 維尼
"You said we have to leave this s'yetche," Alexei said. "Why are we not packing our belongings?"8964 copyright protection133PENANAmveOTSysE6 維尼
"We will in due time," she said. "The butchers have yet to penetrate our region."8964 copyright protection133PENANA6KoZfa1n00 維尼
Still, she hesitated, staring at him.8964 copyright protection133PENANAhabAG6nmQK 維尼
"What is it?" he demanded.8964 copyright protection133PENANA1EMB7mRTvs 維尼
"You've not the eyes of the Ibod," she said. "A strange thing but not wholly unattractive."8964 copyright protection133PENANAGiAZz5soib 維尼
"Get the food," he said. "I hunger."8964 copyright protection133PENANAk5lfSIVPtH 維尼
She smiled at him---a knowing, woman's smile that he found disquieting. "I'm your servant," she said, and whirled away in one lithe motion, ducking behind a heavy wall hanging that revealed another passage before falling back into place.8964 copyright protection133PENANA5pZNXcTmTV 維尼
Feeling angry with himself, Alexei brushed though the thin hanging on the right and into the larger room. He stood there a moment caught by uncertainty. And he wondered where Em-Cro was....Em-Cro, who had just lost her father.8964 copyright protection133PENANACSSMQkz0zj 維尼
We're alike that way, he thought.8964 copyright protection133PENANA187n1QBaFS 維尼
A wailing cry sounded from the outer corridors, its volume muffled by the interfering hangings. It was repeated, a bit more distant. And again, Alexei realized someone was calling the time. He focused on the fact that he'd seen no clocks.8964 copyright protection133PENANA23226inFwb 維尼
The faint odor of burning kreozot bush came to his nostrils, riding on the ever-present stench of the s'yetche. Alexei saw that he had already suppressed the odorous assault on his senses.8964 copyright protection133PENANA6bPoBsmrlT 維尼
He wondered again about his mother, how the moving montage of the future would incorporate her----and the daughter she bore. Mutable time-awareness danced around him. He shook his head sharply, focusing his attention on the evidence that spoke of profound depth and breadth in this Szgany culture they had been absorbed into.8964 copyright protection133PENANACF10S5iaay 維尼
With its subtle oddities.8964 copyright protection133PENANA0XVRSSOdar 維尼
He had seen something about the caverns and this room, something that suggested far greater differences than anything he had yet encountered.8964 copyright protection133PENANAKCin1EyymX 維尼
There was no sign of a poison sniffer here, no indication of their use anywhere in the cave warren. Yet he could smell poisons in the s'yetche stench---strong ones, common ones.8964 copyright protection133PENANAuSg9NUKT6N 維尼
He heard a rustle of hangings, thought it was Har-Ko returning with food, and turned to watch her. Instead, from beneath a displaced pattern of hangings, he saw two young boys---maybe aged nine or ten---staring out at him with greedy eyes. Each wore a small kindjal type of crysnozh, rested a hand on the hilt.8964 copyright protection133PENANAdjAost5qkm 維尼
And Alexei remembered the stories of the Szganys---that their children fought as ferociously as the adults.8964 copyright protection133PENANAPEhaA9KPOs 維尼
137Please respect copyright.PENANA5LwnzfijrU
8964 copyright protection133PENANA46KNtwNDRx 維尼
137Please respect copyright.PENANAWkxaaKbg3R
137Please respect copyright.PENANAcwCPZSUDHO
137Please respect copyright.PENANA2pmtbxCfJg
137Please respect copyright.PENANAsJi1mwvPt0
137Please respect copyright.PENANA2gJqIkjgnz
137Please respect copyright.PENANAG8jnf6bylE
172.70.127.135
ns 172.70.127.135da2