“Thank the Admiral. It seems you impressed him.” She leaned across their glasses, her wide eyes inviting. “Say you’ll join the fleet.”
“I can’t . . .”
He saw her smile turning bleak, but he couldn’t tell her about Cyra and his father and the monopole.
“I just can’t . . .”
Angry tears had welled into her eyes. He bent across the little table, trying to tell her how sorry he was, but she brushed his reaching hand away with a blind slap that caught his glass and splashed his face with melonade. Without a word, she stumbled away.
Yet he did receive the scholarship. Riding the circumpolar tube to Crater Lake and the Academy, he felt lifted with an eager sense that he was in the doorway to an exciting new world, closer to space and Malili and the truth about the humanoids.
The old city swiftly dimmed his eager hope. Carved into the impact mountains where the old Navarch had withdrawn after Mansfort fell, it had ruled Kai for three hundred years, until the transplanet tubes were dug and the Bridge moved on to the twin polar capitals, Northdyke and Terratown. The centuries since had eroded all its ancient glory.
Founded by the Lifecrew while it was still a power, the Academy sprawled through the old Bridge district. Though the vaulted caverns held shadows of their old magnificence, the musty age of everything depressed him with recollections of those dead levels of the first capital where he had found the monopole.
Most of his instructors looked as age-worn as the damp-stained stone. Few had trained for space and none had been out to Malili. His courses began with dry repetitions of what he had learned at Greenpeak, and he found that his own training for space must wait until his last year.
Though he had expected Chelni, she did not enroll. A brief and stiffly spoken voicecard told him that she was leaving for the Zone with her uncle, to take a training position in the Vorn station there. She hoped he would decide to follow her into the fleet.
He listened twice to the card, hearing the troubled emotion beneath her forced and brittle tone. Disturbed himself, recalling all their years together, and depressed with the haunting uncertainties of his own future, he walked out through the air doors to the topside parade deck.
It was the middle of a winter moontime. The Dragon was a bright red spark, washing out all the stars around it. Though the windless chill took his breath, he crossed the deck to the far rail. The lake lay a full kilometer below him, contained in the crater basin by the old power dam that had always been the city’s life. Frozen now and dazzling with snow, it stretched flat and vast to the ragged black mountain rim. Malili blazed high above it, full and enormous, deadly and alluring, colder than the snow.
He stood clutching the frosty rail, gazing into the planet’s silver mask, thinking of the obscure promise of the monopole and the brooding enigma of the humanoids, longing, in spite of himself, for Chelni, until he began to shiver.
He was at the Academy nearly four years. On every birthday, a brief voicecard from the Zone brought him Chelni’s curtly worded hope that he would join the Vorns. Sometimes he was tempted to promise her that. The messages from Cyra and his father, almost equally rare and brief, told him so little that he began to doubt that the monopole had given up its secrets.
On the first day of his last term, walking to his desk in the required Kai lit class, he was feeling empty and disheartened. The bored instructor had droned the same lecture too many times to keep any meaning in it, and he had just learned that his space training was delayed again, because the classes were all filled by contracted fleetfolk.
Unexpectedly, the girl sitting next to him changed everything. She was tall and lovely, with light brown skin and long golden hair. When the instructor wanted her name, she rose to give him a grave little bow.
“Nera Nyin.” Her soft voice held a hint of musical power. “From Ili, Malili. Visiting Kai on a special student visa, and admitted to the Academy on a fellowship funded by Admiral Torku Vorn.”
She sat again. Breathless with his own excitement, he turned to study her calm profile.
A native Leleyo!
He could hardly believe it, because she looked so utterly unlike the naked nomads that travelers to the Zone had always reported. Slim and straight in the blue school uniform, she looked clean, and even chic, completely at ease. When he stood to give his own name, her gold-green eyes came to him with a probing candor that jolted him again.
He wanted to ask her a thousand things. About her people and their sacred trees and the stuff called feyolin. About rockrust and bloodrot and rhodo sources and possible humanoid probes. Through most of a month, her nearness tantalized him. Sitting close beside him every day, seeming absorbed in the dusty lectures, she spoke to nobody. Her aloof reserve kept her as remote as Malili.
Baffled, he asked the instructor about her.
“Just out of the jungle.” The tired old man peered sharply at him, as if to see why he cared. “Probably can’t understand much Kai. Allowed here, I believe, because the Admiral wants to develop native contacts. Get to know her if you can.”
“She’s hard to know.”
“They’re evasive. Seldom tell us much, and never the truth.” His pale old eyes squinted shrewdly. “If you want a good berth with the Vorns, get next to her.”
Though he felt far from certain that he wanted a berth with the Vorns, he waited next day for her to leave the lecture hall.
“May I—” Awe of her aloof beauty checked him, until suddenly she smiled. “May I walk with you?”
“Please.” Her voice was melodious and low. “I wish to know you, Keth Kyrone.”
Almost overwhelmed with his own delight, he got his breath to ask if she would like a melonade in the snack bar.
“I prefer Malili food.” Her Kai seemed fluent enough. “You might enjoy the difference. Would you come to my own place, off the campus?”
“I—I can’t.” The school still had rigid rules and guarded gates, relics of the old Lifecrew discipline. “Not without a liberty pass.”
“I brought a letter from your Admiral Vorn.” She seemed amused. “I think there will be no problem.”
There was no problem. With a dazzled smile for her and a searching look at him, the duty officer waved them through. On the pod, she began asking about the first Navarch and the founding of Crater Lake. What he said about the Black Centuries seemed to horrify her.
“People killed each other?” Her greenish eyes went wide. “Why?”
“The law of the ship had broken down,” he told her. “There was no Lifecrew then, and we hadn’t learned to cope with Kai. People were starving. Rival leaders took them to war. Fighting for water rights. For mining rights. Sometimes just for plunder or power.”
“But human beings don’t kill each other.” She shook her head, not quite believing. “That was long ago. I think your histories are not accurate. Human beings do not kill.”
“I’m afraid they did.”
To convince her, he told her about all the sprawled skeletons he had found on those bomb-sealed levels beneath Greenpeak.
“You went into such dreadful places? Still a child and all alone?” She seemed amazed. “No Leleyo would do that. But neither would we kill.”
She turned to face him in the seat, frowning thoughtfully. For one dreadful instant, he was afraid she had unfairly identified him with the murderers of old Mansfort, but then he saw that she was merely puzzled.
“We don’t understand your ways or your laws or your wars. That’s why I came to Kai. We had hoped for a long time that your strange nature would never matter to us, but now you have begun to frighten us, setting up your death-walls on our world and killing everything inside.”
She and Chelni, the stray thought struck him, would never be friends.
“I’m glad it’s you.” The risk of the words left him giddy. “You who came.”
“I’ve wanted to see Kai since I was a tiny child.” Her gold-green eyes looked far away. “Two Kai Nu came outside your Zone in a
great machine. It broke, and they were about to die. My leyo helped them get back inside their death-wall.”
“The Zone perimeter, you mean?”
“Your killer wall.” Cool scorn edged her voice. “Your shield of rays to kill small things in the air, and your autofiring lasers aimed at the sky, waiting to bum anything larger. I think you kill too much.”
11
Leleyo Native race of Malili. Apparently human, but immune to bloodrot and able to survive without machines.
Her apartment took his breath again. It was in a high-priced upper level of the West Rim district. One whole wall of the living room was an enormous thermal window overlooking the crater sea, which had thawed now to a wind-marred mirror, black beneath the purple Duskday sky and slashed with a glittering silver track beneath high, half-lit Malili.
“Home!” She paused a moment at the window, eyes lifted to the bright-clouded planet. “I long to be back.”
The lofty room was oddly empty of tables or chairs, the walls lined with books or hung with Kai art and artifacts.
“So much to gather—and nothing I can carry home. So much to learn!” She struck her forehead in comic dismay. “It hurts my poor head.”
They sat on cushions in the empty dining room. She offered wooden bowls of odd-shaped nuts and small red fruits, a wooden platter stacked with something that looked like sun-dried meat, or perhaps dried fruit pulp, a cream-colored liquid in a plastic flask.
“All safe for you.” She had seen his hesitation. “Sterilized and passed for import by your own inspectors at the perimeter station.” She made a wry face. “They killed the flavors, too.” She sipped from the flask before she passed it to him. He liked the faintly bitter piquancy and took a larger swallow.
“I wish to learn about the future of your Zone.” She selected an egg-shaped fruit for him. “Your father has worked with the Vorns, and they are your friends. Perhaps you can tell me how far into Malili your death-walls are to reach.”
“I don’t know.” He bit at the fruit and found it hard. “The Bridge and the Navarch have talked of a Kai Life Plan.”
“For us, the Leleyo Death Plan.”
Thinking of Chelni, he tried to defend the Zone and the Voras. Kai was dying. To stay alive, it must have thorium from Malili. In a fair exchange, it could oiler its science and culture, its high civilization.
“Civilization?” Her tone grew scornful. “Culture? By that you mean things. Things our rockrust would crumble to useless dust. We Leleyo have our own science and civilization, evolved to fit our world and our needs.”
“Anyhow,” he insisted, “our Zone is very small. Located on a mountain peak in a region your people seldom visit—”
“Don’t you know why?” Her greenish eyes flashed. “It’s because the fallout from your neutron bombs drifts far outside your death-wall, harming everything within hundreds of kilometers.”
“I didn’t know that—but we’ve another reason to be on Malili.” Gripped with urgency, he bent to peer at her. “We’re looking for signs of humanoids.”
Astonishment raised her golden eyebrows. “Aren’t they machines?”
“Powerful machines. Hunting us to suffocate us with a deadly kind of care. I’m afraid they’re overtaking us.”
“They’ll never trouble Malili, because the rust protects us.” Irony flashed in her eyes. “You Kai Nu must love machines, because you have them everywhere. Why should you fear one more?”
“We must have machines to survive at all on Kai, but ours aren’t rhodomagnetic. The humanoids’ are, and we’ve detected rhodo sources on Malili. Maybe the braintrees—”
“Our feyo trees?” She looked startled. “They’ve nothing to do with the humanoids.”
“Are you sure?” He watched her, trying not to let her loveliness distract him. “There’s a drug from the trees. Could it be the humanoids’ euphoride—”
“It is not.” She shook her head, gravely indignant. “The feyo trees are living shrines. Their blood is the life of my people. It comes from no machine, and its gifts are not for you Kai Nu—”
“Does it kill?” The idea stabbed him. “My mother died searching for a braintree.”
“Your people are too eager to die.” She paused as if in painful recollection. “You don’t belong on Malili—that’s what you never learn. On my first feyosan, when I was still a young child, my feyolan pointed out a spot where metal rust had stained and blighted everything.” Her soft tone fell. “That may have been your mother’s machine.”
Seeing him baffled by the hard little fruit, she took it out of his hand and pressed the end of it. With a gentle pop, the red rind split and peeled away, uncovering an orange-colored morsel that she pressed to his lips. He liked its tangy soursweetness; yet, with his eyes on her, he found that he had gulped the rich juice without really tasting.
“Since we’re going to be friends—” With a graceful shrug, she was shedding her blue uniform jacket. “I’m not used to your clothing.”
She had worn nothing under the jacket. He hadn’t seen a girl so far unclad since that day so long ago when little Chelni Vorn bared her flat-chested thinness for his inspection. The difference dazzled him.
“If you mind—”
Seeing his startled stare, she reached for the jacket. He caught his breath and found voice to say that he didn’t mind at all. Feeling as if his whole world had tipped, he tried and failed to pull his eyes away.
“You’re beautiful!” he whispered.
“I’m glad you like me.” She turned a little to display her golden splendor. “I thought at first you were not pleased.” She made a face of mock perplexity and let it fade into a frown of grave inquiry. “There is still so much I must ask you. About the Zone and your plans for more death-walls and your Lifecrew and these humanoids you seem to fear so much.”
He waited, trying to control his breathing, suddenly wondering. If she had come to Kai as a Leleyo agent, could she be the sort of spy his father feared? Intoxicated with her bared loveliness, he didn’t want to suspect her, yet—
“Let’s talk about these humanoids.” She was leaning toward him entrancingly, her wide eyes searching, so close he caught her faint, clean scent. “Do you really fear them? Or is the talk of them only a clever lie, invented to cover the killing of Malili?”
Disturbed, he tried and failed to look away from her allure.
“We are afraid,” he whispered. “A few of us are.”
“We’ve no machines on Malili,” she insisted softly. “What we fear is your death-walls, and the dust that drifts out of them.
But if fearing the humanoids could make you leave your stolen Zone—”
Her eyes shone with joy, contemplating that.
“They were real and dreadful on those old worlds.” He shrank a little from her loveliness. “Our ancestors were very lucky to escape them. I believe they’ve reached the Dragon. If you aren’t afraid, you ought to be.”
“Why?” She shrugged wondrously, limpid eyes wide. “I think they were invented to end the sort of troubles that threaten you on Kai. Perhaps you should invite them—”
“To let them end our freedom?”
“Shall we think of other things?” She gestured at the planer. “If you aren’t afraid to try a bite of binyaling?”
He couldn’t help thinking of the humanoids, but she was selecting a thin brown slab from the platter. Biting one end off with gleaming teeth, she offered the rest of it companionably to him.
“What is it?”
“You might, like it more if you hadn’t asked. Since you did, it’s a dried secretion from the binya tree. Poisonous originally, it functions to attract and kill wild creatures whose bodies then decay to fertilize the tree. We age it until the poison is only a flavor.”
Thinking of bloodrot, he shook his head at it.
“It won’t kill you.” A half-mocking challenge danced in her eyes. “Your own inspectors have tested it.”
Bracing himself, he bit the end her te
eth had marked. Though tough and nearly tasteless at first, the stuff became sweetish and richly meaty as he chewed. It had a slight peppery bite that he thought must be the poison flavor.
“I like it,” he decided.
“It was better before your inspectors cooked it.”
He finished the slab and took another, his appetite sharpening. She showed him how to peel the kela berries and told him the names of the nuts. When the dishes and the plastic flask were empty, she gathered them and glided upright, out of her uniform skirt.
“I like your lesser gravity,” she murmured. “Motion is so easy here.”
Her own motion dazzled him, but he tried not to let it overwhelm him. Waiting while she was gone into another room, he couldn’t help wondering again if she was indeed a spy. Suddenly he didn’t care.
The lights turned lower, she came flowing down again beside him. She had brought something bubbling and blood-colored in a hammered golden cup that was almost a twin of the one Bosun Brong had sent him. She raised it in both hands, closing her eyes and glowing with pleasure as she breathed its vapor. He caught an odd, sharp aroma.
“Feyolin,” she breathed. “I can share it with a friend.”
She sipped, with a tiny shiver that made her more alluring. He shuddered. Feyolin! Was it in fact euphoride, invented to kill the will of men? His first frightened impulse was to push the cup away, but she was leaning too close, her bare arm already sliding around him, her own fresh scent stronger than the heady odor of the cup. Suddenly, all the hazards he imagined mattered no more than those warning barriers he had passed in old Mansfort to find the monopole.
He sipped.
12
Euphoride Benign psychochemical developed by the humanoids to eradicate fear, frustration, and pain, creating absolute happiness.
He was never sorry. If feyolin was wrong, it swept him instantly into another moral domain, far beyond his old ethical limits. Fiery in his throat, it burned fast through his being, half agony, all strange delight. His senses were blunted for an instant, then incredibly sharpened.
The Humanoids- The Complete Tetralogy Page 34
