Faded Sun Trilogy Omnibus

by C. J. Cherryh

  And with every bank but two alight, with the thunder of machinery working, Melein spun in a swirl of white robes and pointed the finger at the she’pan Abotai with the blaze of triumph in her eyes.

  “Ai, tell me now, Mother-of-elee, that I have no claim, tell me now that this place is yours, Mother of wars, Devourer of life! Now take the machine from me, elee!”

  The elee stepped forward, stopped, at the edge of the light, her white face and white mane and metal robes agleam with it.

  “The machines,” Melein continued, her arm outstretched, “hold what I have given them, assume the pattern I built, as it was, as it was, elee she’pan. It holds the past of Kutath and the past of my own kindred, not, elee she’pan, not of Kutath; the Mysteries of those-who-went-out are within the net as well, my working; and it speaks the hal’ari, elee she’pan.”

  “Ele’et!” the elee cried.

  “I am here,” the machine responded, but it answered in the hal’ari, and the elee seemed shaken by that.

  “Duncan,” Melein said.

  There was silence then, save for the machines. “Sov-kela,” Niun murmured, touched Duncan’s arm, received a distressed look, to which he nodded, indicating, the circle to which he was summoned. “Leave the dus, sov-kela, for its sake.”

  Duncan entered the circle, and the dus stayed. “I am here,” he said.

  “This is the shadow-who-sits-at-our-door,” the machine answered. “An-ehon remembers.”

  “Kel Duncan,” Melein said. “Are you mine?”

  “Yes, she’pan.”

  “I have need of a ship, kel’en. From here, it would be possible for you to contact humans. Do you think they will come to your request?”

  “To take it?”

  “That you will do for me too.”

  There was a moment’s silence. There were five of them who felt that pain; and Niun swallowed heavily, trying to remain in contact. Duncan nodded assent; Melein reached to the board nearest and made some adjustment, looked back again.

  “You have only to speak,” she said. “An-ehon, give kel Duncan access for a transmission.”

  “He has access.”

  There was a moment when Duncan stood still, as if paralyzed; dus-sense purged itself, grew clear.

  “SurTac Sten Duncan code Phoenix to any human ship, please respond.”

  He had spoken the human tongue. Niun understood; Melein would; there were no others, and the Kel and the elee shifted nervously. Duncan repeated his message, again and again.

  “Flower here,” a human voice returned. “Duncan, we copy; what’s your location?”

  And another voice, supplanting it, female: “Duncan, this is Boaz. Where are you?”

  Duncan looked at Melein; she nodded slightly.

  “Shuttle one, this is Flower.” It was a different voice, older. “Boz, don’t jeopardize your position: keep silence. You may draw fire.”

  “Tell them otherwise,” Melein said.

  “This is Duncan. The cities will not fire, if you do not provoke it. I can give you my location. Boaz, is a shuttle out?”

  “We have two. Galey’s down here; you know him, Sten. We’ll come in if you’ll let us. No firing. Where are you?”

  “Terms,” the voice from Flower cut in. “What guarantee of safety? Duncan, are you speaking under threat?”

  “Your name is Emil Luiz, sir, and if I were under threat I would not give you a correct answer. —Boz, from the ruins nearest Flower, southeast to some low hills; you’ll see pillars, Boz, and a city within the rocks. Do you know that site?”

  “We can find it. We’ll be there, Duncan. Be patient with us.”

  “Understood, Boz. You’ll be safe to land. You only.”

  “Cease,” said Melein.

  “Transmission ceased,” the machine echoed.

  “Aliens,” Abotai hissed. “You deal with aliens.”

  Duncan pulled his veil aside, and there was a void in the dus-sense; a cry went up from the elee, for it was the face of the image. He seemed not to regard it, but looked at Melein. “Is there else,” he asked, “she’pan?”

  “When they come,” she answered.

  “Aye,” Duncan said, and the void persisted, a gap and a darkness where Duncan had been. A touch fell on Niun’s shoulder; it was Hlil. He felt all of them, Ras, Rhian, Taz. Only Duncan was not there, for all that Duncan returned to him, and looked nakedly into his eyes, and stood among them.

  “Veil yourself,” Niun said, “sov-kela.”

  Duncan did so, and he and his beast went aside, into the other room, among the others who waited.

  * * *

  They rested . . . must, finally. Galey sucked in great breaths from the mask, bowed over, uninterested in the rations the others passed among them. A drink of water, that he took, and bowed down with his head against his arms. His knees ached and his temples pounded. He rubbed at eyes which ran tears that never stopped.

  More such to go: the city of the mri dead . . . that one next, he reckoned.

  “Sir,” Kadarin said. And when he responded lethargically: “Sir . . .”

  He looked up, rose, as the others scrambled to their feet. There was a ship coming. He stared at it, blank, and terrified; and there was no place to go, no concealment in the vast flat: it was coming low.

  One of their own. He blinked, no less disquieted, heard the same realization on the lips of Magee and Kadarin.

  It was coming for them, coming in fast.

  * * *

  “Treachery,” Nagn hissed, her color gone white around the nostrils.

  Suth sat still, his hearts quite out of phase, stared at the screens on which shuttles and Santiago were moving dots, all his calculations amiss.

  “Bai,” Morkhug pleaded.

  Suth faced his sled about. His attendant crouched in the corner, attempting invisibility. Suth considered, regarding his mates who looked to him for decision . . . suddenly keyed in the control center, where a contact to Saber-com was maintained continuously.

  “Bai Koch,” he requested of his own younglings, and slowly calmed his breathing, suppressed the racing heartbeats with reason. The human face suddenly filled his screen: Koch, indeed: Suth knew him by the ruddiness and white, clipped hair.

  “Bai Suth?” the human bai asked.

  “You are undertaking operations without consultation, bai, contrary to agreement.”

  “No operations; maneuver. As you have an observer near the world, as you have received transmission, as we have. We are moving more reliable monitoring into position. We confess surprise, bai Suth; we are not yet ready to address policy.”

  “What action are you taking, bai?”

  “Meditating on the matter, bai Suth.”

  “What is your installation onworld doing?”

  A hesitation. “What is yours doing?”

  “We are not in contact. They are pursuing previous instruction. Doubtless they will not act beyond those instructions.”

  “Ours likewise, bai Suth.”

  Suth sucked air. “Is your intention to accept this offered contact, reverend ally?”

  There was a second hesitation. “Yes,” Koch said.

  Suth’s hearts left synch again. “We . . . urge the bai to enter urgent consultations with us.”

  “Most assuredly. You are welcome aboard.”

  “We also . . . must contact our onworld mission.”

  Koch’s face remained impassive. There was a slight flaring of his nostrils; what this meant in a human was disputable.

  “We advise you,” Koch said, “to stay clear of Kutath; we do not mean to have lives endangered. We should take very seriously any approach to Kutath, bai Suth.”

  “We wish to send a shuttle to your ship.”

  “I have said that you are welcome.”

  “I am entering arrangements. Favor, bai Koch, maintain a full flow of data to our offices.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Favor.”

  “Favor,” Koch murmured in turn, and faded
.

  Suth sucked a deep breath, puffed it out with a flutter of his nostrils. “They wish me aboard.”

  “Bai?” Tiag mourned, visibly disturbed.

  “Secure ship,” Suth said. And when they delayed in confusion: “Leave onworld to onworld; secure the ship. Saber . . . is here.”

  * * *

  “Enough,” said Melek in horror; Magd killed the message which played over and over in the recorder. There was the thump of the pumps in the silence, the furtive scratching of some night-wandering crawler at the plastic dome.

  They were alone, they two, senior. They had killed their assistants, a grim matter of economics. They hungered almost constantly in their terror; and Magd looked on Melek with continual fear. It was next, when it came to seniority.

  “There is a way out,” said Melek.

  “I am listening.” Magd’s belly hurt. It really existed on short rations, pampering Melek, beginning to die slowly in the hope of living longer. Its skin flaked; its joints were whitening. More than anything it desired to please; its thoughts were nightmare, of hunger on the one hand, being refused survival by the elder Suth if it dared leave its post; of slaughter at Melek’s hand, merciful and more immediate. It could not think. It wanted life, clung to hope, scrabbled after this one, that Melek itself offered.

  “Orders,” Melek said, “require we observe and find this youngling Duncan. That we stir up the mri and destroy this youngling if we find it. This is our way out. Listen . . . listen, youngest! Will this message have gone out and Shirug not know? Is not our time shortened here? They will send us orders; we finish here; we finish. Then we can come back; then Eldest will welcome us and make us favorites, feed us of his own cup. Both . . . both of us. If we do this for him. If we finish.”

  Magd had no inner confidence. Magd’s hearts labored and its mouth was dry, its tongue sticking to the membranes, so that water and soi were the only coherent desires. Magd knew the trap: that yielding food to Melek, Magd was no longer strong enough to resist, no longer keen-witted.

  “Yes,” it said, desperate, paid anxious attention as Melek brought up charts on their screens.

  “Here,” Melek said, indicating a place near hills. “This is the place. We must be ready; we must work out all the details. You will lead in, youngest.”

  “Yes,” it said again.

  It would have agreed to any instruction.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was an hour for sleeping. Perhaps some within the elee city did so, but none within the hall of the elee she’pan, nor anywhere about it. Niun sat still, at the feet of Melein, his dus and his companions by him, while certain kel’ein, mostly hao’nath and ja’ari, walked the corridors of the city, wandering by twos and by threes, to observe the things which passed among the elee. None offered them violence. None challenged them, or alarm would have been raised in the halls of Ele’et, and blood would have flowed: it did not; and the most part of the Kel sat quietly in attendance on the she’pan.

  “You must call them back,” said Abotai of the kel’ein who ranged the city corridors. “They must not—must not harm Ele’et.”

  “They do not,” Melein said softly, and stilled any protest of Sen or Kel with an uplifted and gently lowered hand. “And we go where we will.”

  “Understand . . .” Abotai’s lips trembled, and she held the hand of the Husband who sat beside her. “More than lives . . . these precious things, she’pan of the mri.”

  “What things?”

  Abotai gestured about her, at the hall full of carved stones, flowers in jade, ornate work over every exposed finger’s-length of surface, works in glass, statues in the likeness of elee and mri and lost races and beasts long forgotten, whether myth or truth. “Of all Kutath has made, of beauty, of eternal things . . . they are here. Look—look, mri she’pan.” Abotai slipped from her ornate robes a pin, passed it to the youth Illatai, who sat in a chair near her. He leaped up to bring it, but Niun gestured abruptly and intercepted it. It was a translucent green stone, the likeness of a flower even to veins within the leaves, and a drop of moisture on a petal. He handled it most carefully, and passed it to Melein.

  “It is very beautiful,” Melein said, and passed it back at once the same route it had come. “So are live ones. What is that to me?”

  “It is an elee’s life,” said Abotai. “A sculptor spent his life to perfect that flower. Everything you touch . . . even to the stone-work under your feet . . . is the life of an elee, a perfection. Ele’et is a storehouse of all the millions of years of the meaning of Kutath, not alone of elee. You are here, wrought in stone, written in records, as we are.”

  “You are generous, then. A manner of pan’en, a holy thing. We shall tread lightly on it, this stonework. But we care nothing for it.”

  “It is all here,” said Abotai. “All the goodness of the past. All perfection. Saved.”

  “For whom?” Melein whispered. “When the sun fades and the last lake of the last sea is drunk, and the sand is level . . . for whom, mother of elee?”

  “For the Dark,” said Abotai. “When the Dark comes . . . and all the world is gone . . . these things will stand. They will be here. After us.”

  “For whom?” Melein said yet again. “When the power fades, when there is not even a lizard left to crawl upon your beautiful stones—what is the good?”

  “The stones will be here.”

  “The wind will erode them and the sand will take them.”

  “Buried, they will survive any wind that blows.”

  “Will it matter?”

  “They will exist.”

  Niun drew in his breath, and there was a murmuring in the Kel.

  “Is that the end,” asked Melein, “of all the races and the civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here? Leave us out of your pan’en, she’pan of elee. We want no part of it. Consumer of the world’s substance, was it this, was it this for which you ate all the world and let the ships go . . . to leave a few stones to say that you were here?”

  “And what gift do you leave?” Abotai pointed to the kel’en by a serpent pillar, at Duncan. “That, and the beasts? Aliens, to come here and see these things, and steal them, or destroy them?”

  Duncan had looked up, and for a moment, a brief moment, he was back with them, a touch of pain in the dus-sense.

  “He,” said Melein in a still voice, “is more to Kutath than you, or your children, or the fine trinkets you have made to amuse the Dark. You gave me a flower in stone to touch, and it was the life of an elee. Duncan, kel’en, shadow-at-my-door . . . come here. Come here to me.”

  No, Niun pleaded with her in his mind, for Duncan had borne enough, had more yet to bear; but Duncan rose up and came, and sat down again at Melein’s feet, his dus settling disconsolately against him. Melein set her hand on his shoulder, kept it there, while Duncan lowered his head. “He is not for your-touching,” Melein said. “But he is our gathering, elee she’pan, and far more precious than your stone flower.”

  “Abomination!”

  “There are builders and there are movers, mother of elee; and in the great Dark—the builders have only their stones.” She touched Duncan’s shoulder, rested her hand there. “We went out, to find a way for all to follow. The great slow ships in which generations were born and died . . . took Kutath as far as our generations could reach; there was no hope, so few the ships, so many those left behind, on a world with no means left for ships—your doing, elee. But the ships of humans, that leap the Darks so blinding-swift—one such, only one: and perhaps eyes will live that will see these pretty stones of yours. And desire them. And scatter them, perhaps, that all the universe will wonder at the hands that made them.”

  “No,” Abotai hissed.

  “Then close your eyes, mother of elee. You are bound to see things you will not like at all. We do not serve to your service any more. And first, a ship, ai, kel’en-my-brother’s-brother?�
��

  Duncan looked up. The edge of his veil was damp and his eyes filmed. “Aye,” he said.

  She bent and kissed his brow. “Our Duncan,” she murmured, and whispered: “If Eves of humans come into our hands, take or give: I pass them to you. I do not ask more of you than the People need. And you will not do less.”

  “She’pan,” he, replied.

  Time passed, that the elee murmured together in the edges of the hall, that elee brought food and drink, and offered to them; but they were not guests, and would not take. Elee ate and drank; those of the People that hungered, drew what they needed of their own supplies, and if cups of water tempted them, pride forbade, and the law. They took nothing, not one.

  And suddenly it came, the machine voice out of the other hall, advising them of movement in the skies of Kutath. Melein sprang up, all the People rising. “Stay,” she bade them, and went with Sen only; and in the frightened whispers of the elee, the Kel settled back again.

  “It has come,” Niun said, hearing from the other room the advisement that it moved their way. He reached out, touched Duncan’s sleeve. “Sov-kela?”

  The void in the dus-sense filled, slowly, remarkably calm.

  “We ought to go out there,” Duncan said. “Not have them come in among elee; no knowing what could result of that. I should be out there, myself.”

  “So,” Niun agreed.

  “And you. If you would.”

  “I shall ask that,” Niun said. Other dus-sense came to them, Taz, anxious and concerned; Rhian, who moved to join them and sank down on his heels, silent, solid.

  Ras came. “Are you well?” she asked, touching at Duncan’s arm; and Duncan murmured that he was. Strange, Niun thought, that there was affinity between these two, but there was; and Hlil drew near, who had no love of tsi’mri things . . . but he had lost his distaste regarding Duncan. Taz moved to them. Always so, Niun thought, on Kesrith, that we and the beasts sat together; one never wondered there, whose was the need. There was a numbness, a blessed lack of pain; the slow song of dusei—then disturbance, a sense of distance, of looking heavenward.