Something about the Champion’s tone made Kit begin to wonder. Had the other Powers That Be been kept away from here on purpose, to make sure that the secret was kept? Don’t make a fuss, he could just hear the profound silences of the heavens whispering among themselves; don’t act as if anything’s going on there. Wait for the ones to get there who won’t attract undue attention, who can do the job without raising the alarm. Or at least not until it’s too late—
“Just one more to do now,” Filif said from the work area in the middle of the cave. “The mochteroof for Ponch. Then we’re ready.”
Dairine turned to Ponch, who was lying on the floor with his feet in the air. “While we were back on the mobiles’ world,” she said, “I saw things here, just for a moment, as if I were inside the Hesper itself. I guess those ‘personal’ coordinates will have changed now—if it’s a member of this species, it has to move around—but its other characteristics will be the same. Spot should be able to pass that set of coordinates to you. If you can read it your way, as smell instead of sight—”
I can do that, Ponch said.
Filif stepped back from his work, looking over the shining row of mock Yaldiv. “That’s it,” he said. “There are spares for Nita and Sker’ret when they get back; I’ve left them a note in each one on how to use them if they want to follow us. And the advice that possibly they should wait until we get back.”
“Fil,” Dairine said, “you’re a smart guy. Let’s suit up.”
Everyone got up and went to the mochteroofs that Filif had labeled for them. Dairine watched for a moment as Kit fastened Ponch into his. It was a goofy moment: the dog vanished, a large gleaming green-blue Yaldiv suddenly became real, and then started spinning around and around in the middle of the floor, trying to catch a tail that wasn’t there.
Half in and half out of his own mochteroof, Kit sighed. “Let him get it out of his system,” he said.
They all helped one another get into the shape-change routines. Dairine slipped into hers, held up her hands, and wriggled the fingers; the huge claws clashed. Behind her, Roshaun came over to examine the wizardry. “Elegantly built,” he said. “Filif is an artist.”
“Yeah,” Dairine said. For the moment she wasn’t so much paying attention to the artistry of the spell as she was to Kit, off on one side, and Ronan, off on the other, as each got into his own mochteroof. They were both looking at Dairine and Roshaun, and both of them were trying not to look like that was what they were doing.
I see it, Roshaun said.
Dairine made an annoyed face as she put Spot down. Filif had built a virtual shelf inside the mochteroof for him, so that Dairine could keep him close to eye level and still have her hands free. The problem is, she said silently, there isn’t a word for what we’ve got. Whatever that is.
“Friendship” might possibly suffice as a description, Roshaun said.
But it seemed insufficient. You know what I mean, Dairine said. And no one ever believes that’s all it is. Everybody starts trying right away to put their own labels on it. And then they run into the age thing.
Roshaun turned away to check his own mochteroof‘s status. And then start thinking the worst.
Whether there’s even the slightest evidence…
They both fell into an annoyed silence.
Filif—no longer a tree but a Yaldiv—glanced over at Ronan. “Are we clear outside?”
“No one’s within half a mile,” he said.
“Then let’s go,” Kit said.
They all filed onto the transit diagram that Sker’ret had left for them…
…and stepped out into the green light of day.
At least that was the way the mochteroofs rendered the infrared component of what Yaldiv daylight filtered down between the wrestling, striving trees. Dairine saw that the space between those trees defined a slightly meandering loop of pathway, broader than the one they’d first approached; this, in turn, flowed into the bigger path that would lead to their destination. Ronan glanced from one side to the other, the Champion in him making sure that no Yaldiv was in any position to see that they had appeared from nothing. Then he stepped aside to let Ponch and Kit lead the way.
The surface was fairly level even on the minor path. Once they reached the major one, it was easy walking. This was good, because within minutes they saw coming down the path toward them what Dairine was suddenly less than eager to get close to—a group of Yaldiv, some of them bearing leaves torn from the trees.
The wizardry is functioning correctly, Spot said. There should be no problems.
Dairine really hoped that was true. Kit and Ponch kept right on going, and the Yaldiv who approached them suddenly all moved to either side of the path. As Kit came up close to the foremost Yaldiv, they lifted their claws to him as he passed, even those who were carrying leaves in them.
“The Great One be gracious to these,” said the foremost Yaldiv.
Dairine could see that Kit wasn’t sure what the right response should be. He lifted his claws but didn’t say anything. On he went, with Ponch in tow, and the others followed him.
Soon they came to another group of Yaldiv, all smaller than their mochteroofs. Workers, I think, Dairine said silently. These, too, lifted their claws to Kit as he and the others approached. “The Great One be gracious to these.”
Once again Kit lifted his claws and passed by. No personal pronouns, I’ll bet, she heard Ronan say. “This” and “these,” not “me” or “you.”
Ahead of their group, Dairine could see some bigger Yaldiv coming, warriors. She watched a further group of workers reacting to them, and saw that the warriors simply lifted their claws and walked on. So far, so good, Dairine thought. Let’s see what happens when they meet us.
The warriors drew closer. Kit didn’t do anything right away, waiting for them to give him a lead. When they were perhaps five meters distant, the lead warrior looked at Kit and held its claws up in a slightly different way, crosswise instead of vertical. Kit held his claws up the same way as they passed. “May these do the One’s will,” said the lead warrior.
“May these do the One’s will also,” Kit said, and went by. Dairine started to relax as they went on, meeting more groups of workers and warriors. It’s not going badly so far, she said silently to Spot. I just hope they’re able to communicate in more than these rote phrases. Otherwise, we’re going to have a lot of trouble telling the Hesper why we’re here.
They walked on, examining their surroundings. It was hard to see much terrain through the trees, but they got a sense that they were approaching the city-hive as the path they were walking was joined by more paths from either side. The main path broadened out, and the traffic on it increased considerably, until they were all lifting their claws every ten seconds or so to salute some new band of workers or warriors.
This place could give you cramps in the arms pretty quick, Kit said. He was managing not only his own claws but Ponch’s as well, and he sounded a little uncomfortable.
Maybe we won’t have to do it inside, Filif said.
Dairine looked ahead. Over the bodies of the many Yaldiv who were now sharing the path with them, she could see the forest around them thinning slightly. Beyond it, the trees, no longer so gnarled and tangled, were starting to be replaced by bigger-trunked ones, darker-colored, leafless—perhaps stripped of their leaves by the depredations of thousands of Yaldiv. But then, as the trees lining the path began to give way to a much more open area, Dairine saw that she had been mistaken. As the line of Yaldiv immediately ahead of their group poured out from the narrow path into a space easily a mile wide, she found herself looking up and up at a structure she could hardly make sense of. A roughly conical central tower speared upward out of a wide, dark, shining surface in a random patchwork of beiges, reds, and rose colors. Hundreds of feet high it rose, toward a forest ceiling far higher and less claustrophobic than the one under which they’d been traveling until now. Close around the central tower, several smaller towers ro
se from the dark surface, which Dairine could now see and smell was tar—an immense pool of the stuff, all slicked with rainbowy oil. It was a city of paper, at least above ground; probably it had been built of the chewed leaves that they had seen the workers tearing off, and dyed with the unfortunate trees’ sappy blood.
Across the lake of tar and oil a number of causeways had been built; they were made of stones and rubble underneath, and paved with more of the chewed-leaf paper. Kit led the way in the wake of many, many more Yaldiv who were making their way toward the city in the fading light of day’s end. At the end of the causeway was a great tunnel guarded by warriors, and even from halfway across the causeway, Dairine could see the words written above it in the Yaldiv language.
THE COMMORANCY IS ONE THE COMMORANCY IS ALL
It seemed like weeks since she’d first heard the word. Commorancy. A home, a “place inside the walls”—
Every Yaldiv who approached the door was stopped, and there was an exchange of some kind between the entering Yaldiv and the guards. Other warriors were entering the tunnel in front of them, and Dairine watched to see what they did. They raised their claws crosswise in the same kind of greeting as had been used on the outer path. But at this distance, she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She hoped Kit could.
Kit came up to the warriors and saluted them. Before he could speak, Dairine heard two of the warriors chorus, “Within or without?”
“Within, absolutely,” Kit said.
The warriors stared at him briefly, their little scent-detecting antennae working. Then one of them waved him past. “Pass, and go about the Great One’s business.”
They walked through the guarded door. As they went, Dairine saw Ronan elbow Kit warningly with one foreleg. Don’t get cute!
Strikes me that the one thing it’d be smart not to lose around here is your sense of humor, Kit said.
They followed Kit in, and for a good while simply walked around and tried to get a feeling for the size and structure of the place. Dairine quickly realized that, on a first visit, this was going to be impossible. It was too complex. Tunnels led into tunnels, into archways and galleries; ramps led up and down between levels, up into the spire and down into dug-out galleries and arcades beneath ground level. We’d better not get lost, Dairine said silently.
I am saving everything we see and all the paths we walk to memory, Spot said. Even if manual functions are not able to build us a more complex map, at least we will know where we’ve been, if not always where we’re going.
At least Filif was right, Kit said, also sounding relieved. You don’t have to do the claw thing in here.
Probably there’s not a great deal of room for it everywhere, Roshaun said. And these people seem quite rigid, very regimented … so what can’t be done everywhere inside isn’t done at all.
Regimented is right, Dairine said as they walked. Look at all the rules.
Darkness had fallen as soon as they’d entered, but there was no need for artificial light: the Yaldiv saw by heat, and so everything glowed, or seemed to, more or less brightly. The walls were no exception. In infrared, their rough-paper patterning showed up every change in texture. But what also showed was a never-ending flow of words and phrases and instructions and diktats written on the tunnel walls in scent, and woven into the structure of them in mile after mile of papier-mâché bas-relief. Some of these were quite graceful, even beautiful… but the sentiments expressed made Dairine even uneasier than she’d been to begin with. The Commorancy is the world. The world is the Commorancy’s. Everyone should be like us. Everyone will be like us. All who will not are the enemy. Whoever is not with us is against us. There were hundreds of other mottoes and maxims, but they all came down to the same thing: the only purposes of the Yaldiv were to build the city greater or dig it deeper, to make more Yaldiv, to kill their enemies; and by doing all these things, to honor the Great One.
Three guesses who that is, Dairine said silently.
No need to guess, Ronan said. Dairine couldn’t see much of his expression, but the tone of his thought was more than usually angry, even for Ronan.
It’s all too familiar. It was the Champion’s thought this time, and though it, too, was angry, there was something challenging about the emotion. All too often I’ve seen this kind of thing, in other shapes and styles. The places where a species’ Choice has gone wrong and we’ve lost the fight.
But you keep coming back, Kit said as they kept walking deeper into the spire.
Someone has to, said the Champion. Someone has to go down to the souls in prison, down in the dark, and try to bring them the fire—even just a spark of it, just enough to light a candle and find the door. No matter how many times they’ve rejected it, no matter how many times It catches you sneaking in and chucks you out, we have to keep trying—
Through Ponch’s mochteroof, Dairine could see his head suddenly go up. Do you smell that? he said.
Dairine sniffed. It wasn’t so much a smell he was describing but a change in the air, and the Yaldiv senses in the mochteroof immediately knew what it meant. The guards have sealed up the door-tunnels for the night, she said. Unless we gate out, we’re stuck in here.
That’s no problem, Filif said. Even in here we should be able to find somewhere private long enough to gate.
But then something else started to happen. The workers and warriors, and the more slender Yaldiv whom Dairine had also started to spot in the tunnels, now all paused where they were. After a second, they all began to head in the same direction, deeper into the city.
Kit and Ronan and Filif and Dairine and Roshaun all looked at one another. When in Rome, Ronan said.
They turned and followed the others. The tunnels, like the paths out in the forest, widened as they went in deeper. Soon the group was hemmed in by other Yaldiv, pressing against them, starting to hum a chorus of sounds deeper and more rhythmic than the ones heard outside. Carried along by the wave of Yaldiv, the wizards were swept into higher-ceilinged spaces, wider hallways and colonnades—and finally through a tunnel opening into the biggest space of all.
It’s like one of those skyscraper hotel atriums, Dairine thought. The hollow space speared upward into what was probably the highest reaches of the city-hive. In the vast open space, thousands of Yaldiv were already crowded together, and still more were crowding in.
Kit plainly didn’t mean to be caught in the middle of them all, which was an idea Dairine approved of. He and Ronan started pushing and forcing their way closer to one of the farther walls of the great space. The other Yaldiv, workers mostly, let them pass. Shortly they found themselves close to the wall across from the tunnel by which they’d entered. The space was somewhat bowl-like, like their cavern. By being near the wall, they were slightly higher than most of the other Yaldiv. They turned to look out across the tremendous gathering … and saw what they had not been able to see before because of the crush and press of Yaldiv bodies.
The space was shaped more like an ellipse than anything else. At what would have been the farthest focus of the ellipse, on a dais maybe a hundred feet in diameter, lay a huge and swollen form, glowing with heat. Dairine instantly knew what it was from her earlier look at the species précis in Spot. It wasn’t a Queen; it was a King.
The original carapace of a Yaldiv body was now almost the smallest thing about it. The organic structures inside that carapace had long outgrown it, burst out of it, pushed it up and away; the whole original sloughed-off body, now split in two, clung to the top of the much-enlarged thorax like a little shriveled pair of wings. Down near the floor of the dais, the head of the King was almost invisible in the shadow of its vast bulk. The mirror-shade eyes were two tiny dots nearly lost in the upswelling of the vast, puffy body.
Near the head, on each side of it, stood a line of slender Yaldiv, smaller and lighter than the warriors. Handmaidens, Dairine thought, watching them come and go. She’d had a chance to check Spot earlier for some of the details on Yaldiv physiology, and imme
diately thereafter she’d really wished she hadn’t. These handmaidens, though, weren’t doing any of the things that had grossed her out. They were bowing before the head, feeding it, then moving away again. But Dairine found that this grossed her out differently—the mindless, endless munching of the mouth-mandibles as the handmaidens put food into it, bowed, moved away. She gulped and quickly turned her attention elsewhere.
It was hard. This whole gigantic space seemed to direct one’s eye back to the swollen thing lying at the heart of it, the apparition before which, as if before some indolent living idol, the whole mighty congregation of Yaldiv lay bowed down in abject worship. And of course I’m anthropomorphizing, Dairine thought. It’s not like your toenails or your spleen worship the rest of you. These guys don’t even see themselves as separate from the King. But the air was thick with feelings, and she was having trouble keeping her own reactions in order.
This was a problem that recently had been getting worse for her. Is this Roshaun’s fault somehow? Dairine wondered. Or something to do with Spot? Whatever the cause, the feeling of sheer evil that flowed off the King, and was reflected back to it by its worshippers, was horrifying to Dairine, and familiar. She’d felt it before, on the mobiles’ world, during her Ordeal. This was the sentiment behind the terrible gloating laughter she had kept hearing back then—the amusement of the Lone Power, darkly entertained by the pitiful struggles of mortal life in the universe in which It went from door to door selling Its invention, Death, to the unwary. But here there was something different about the silent laughter. There was a sense of smugness. There’s nothing more to do here, It seemed to be saying. Everything’s just the way I want it. Now all there is to do with eternity is take it easy and enjoy what I’ve accomplished.
It’s not the whole Lone Power at all, Dairine thought. It’s an avatar, like all the others. Maybe a more aware one. But, otherwise, it may not have a lot of autonomy.
A warrior with strange glowing patterns laid out on its carapace came forward and was joined by several others. It abased itself before the dais, along with its compatriots. The King never gave it even a glance, as far as Dairine could tell. Though whether it can move at all is the next question, she thought.