We didn’t go there, though. Thu led me off to one side, down a narrow corridor, and into an even narrower room. There was a metal fitting on the far wall at eye level; Thu motioned to me to look into it, and when I did, I found myself looking through a narrow slit at the area outside the door.
“I found this more than a month ago,” said Thu in a low voice. “There are two of them by each of the original entrances—there were machines here at first to watch the doors, but those must have been stripped for parts after the old world ended.”
Outside was the same sandy desert I remembered, with the hollow descending toward the door. After a moment I caught sight of the dust cloud Thu mentioned, close by, and after another moment what looked like two tiny dark shapes just this side of the dust.
I stepped back, let Thu look. “Two of them,” he said after a moment. “That might be a good sign. Anyone planning violence would have sent more.”
“Might be a scouting party,” I said.
“True.” He watched for a while longer, then moved away and let me look again. The two dark shapes had become men on horseback. I watched them pass the first fence and then the second, and then, riding more slowly, come toward Star’s Reach. By the time they reined in by the second fence, I knew that they didn’t look like soldiers and didn’t really know how to ride. By the time they dismounted and separated, one of them holding the horses’ reins and the other walking toward us, I realized they were wearing what looked like ruinmen’s leathers, but it wasn’t until the one who came forward got within sight of the hollow in front of the door that I broke into a big grin and stepped back from the slit.
“We’re safe,” I said to Thu. “Ruinmen—I know one of them.”
We left the little room, and while he went down the stairs to let the others know, I turned off the switch in the trapped room, waited until the current went away, crossed the floor, and unlocked and opened the door. “Conn!” I shouted. “Right over here.”
He turned—he’d been looking at the antenna housings, kloms and kloms of them reaching west toward the afternoon sun—let out a whoop, pelted over and threw his arms around me, then drew back a bit. “And damn if you aren’t waiting here. Trey, you rascal! Did you know we were coming?”
“We saw the dust cloud most of an hour ago.”
“And—”
I could see a hundred questions in his eyes. “It’s Star’s Reach,” I told him. “There are messages from aliens. Pictures of aliens. All kinds of things.”
His eyes and his mouth both went round, and he let out a piece of hot language that just about blistered the air. He turned, then: “Dannel! Get over here.”
The other rider turned out to be another young ruinman, one I didn’t recognize. He was already on his way, leading the horses, who didn’t like the look of the hollow or the antenna housings and were lettng him know that. “What I want to know,” I said to Conn, “is what you were doing in Cansiddi.”
The astonishment on Conn’s face went somewhere else. “I made mister a year after you did,” he said, “and by then they’d closed the guild. Not enough metal in the ruins to keep new misters in work, they said, and of course they’re right. So I went to Cago and worked there for a few years, met Dannel there, and when word got to us from Cansiddi that there might be something big in the desert west of town, we up and headed this way.”
Dannel got the horses calmed down enough to finish walking over. “And when the Cansiddi misters opened your message, well, we weren’t first in line, but close. You’re Trey? Pleased to meet you. Everybody else is about a day and a half further back—we offered to ride ahead and make sure you and everyone else here knew—”
His voice trailed off, and I realized about then that he was looking past me at the door to Star’s Reach. Conn was staring the same direction, too, and if a bright yellow Cetan had come squishing out the door to offer them each a drink of nice cold gasoline, I don’t think they could have looked any more surprised.
I looked back that way, and of course it wasn’t a Cetan. “Hello, Conn,” Berry said. He had just come out through the door.
Conn closed his mouth, swallowed, and said, “So that was you—Sharl sunna Sheren?”
It’s a funny thing, but the people you spend the most time with are the ones who can change the most without you noticing. The moment I saw Conn through the slit in the wall, I saw how much five years had done to him, but it wasn’t until I looked back over my shoulder and saw Berry there that it finally sank in how much he’d changed during the same five years. He’d always looked like his mother, though it took me a good long time to realize that, but now it wasn’t something you might notice if you took the time to think about it. It was something you’d notice at a glance if you passed him in the street.
I don’t even remember what Berry said in answer. “Damn,” said Conn, and a moment later: “Well, damn.” Then: “If I’d had any idea who you were, I wouldn’t have had the guts to thrash you that time you got careless up in the tower we were stripping.”
“I’m glad you didn’t know, then,” said Berry. “That probably kept me from getting reborn later on.”
“True enough,” said Conn. Dannel, who had been watching the whole time with his mouth open, shook his head and said, “There’s a lot of people who are going to want to see you in Sanloo.”
“I know,” Berry said, a little grimly.
Dannel shook his head again, sharply. “No, I mean it. We were in Cansiddi when the radio broadcast what you said, and the next day that’s all anybody was talking about. Not just ruinmen—we were out buying food and gear during the day, and the people you’d least expect were talking about it, asking every ruinman they met if we knew you, that sort of thing. And talking about going to Sanloo, to see you—and to make sure that nobody tried anything stupid.”
“It was something,” said Conn. “When’s the last time you heard a barmaid say she was going to walk to Sanloo for something like that? Two of ‘em told me that, and both of ‘em said that anybody who gave you any trouble was going to get his whatnots cut off. You should have seen their faces. I honestly think they’d do it themselves, with the dullest knife they could find.”
“The thing you said about civil war,” said Dannel. “A lot of people were talking about that before then, but they were saying, well, what can you do? Now they’ve got another choice, and I wouldn’t want to be the jennel who tries to take it away from them.”
I looked at Berry, and he looked at me, and then at them. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “Still, I’m going to need to talk to some of the younger misters and senior prentices about the trip to Sanloo. I wouldn’t put it past some jennels to send some soldiers looking for me.”
“Easy,” said Conn. “We can get more people from Cansiddi if they’re needed, too. And more guns.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Berry. “Do you think those horses of yours want some water?”
They did, of course—we were standing in the middle of a desert, after all—and so I went and got a couple of pans of water for the horses and a bottle for the two of them, while Conn and Dannel peppered Berry with questions, some of them about himself and some of them about Star’s Reach. We talked a little more while the horses drank, and then it was time for them to head back to the rest of the ruinmen and let them know that we were ready for them. “We’ll be back with everyone day after tomorrow,” Conn said, swinging up into the saddle. “And I want to see those pictures of aliens.”
“I’ll have ‘em waiting,” I promised.
He laughed, and the two of them rode off. Berry and I looked at each other again. “Well,” he said. “That’s not something I expected.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say in response that didn’t sound stupid, so I simply clapped him on the shoulder, and we turned and went back into Star’s Reach.
It wasn’t until we were going back through the trapped room, with the lightning-smell lingering in the air and the black ma
rks on the floor where Jennel Cobey died, that it struck me all at once that one way or another, the next presden after Sheren was always going to come riding out of Star’s Reach. The only question was whether the presden was going to be Cobey Taggart or Sharl sunna Sheren, a jennel from a rich old Tucki family or a ruinman who happened to be a presden’s secret child, someone who was going to start the Fourth Civil War or someone who might just stop it before it could get going.
One way or another, I had to be around to make that happen. If Cobey had been a little smarter than I was, the day we first got here, my part in it would have ended with me bleeding to death from a bullet hole, and Berry’s story would have never have gotten past might-have-beens. Instead, it was Cobey’s story that never went any further, and I had to stay around so I could talk Berry into announcing himself as a candidate. Once that happened, my part in his story might as well have been over, and when he goes riding off toward Sanloo with a guard of young ruinmen around him, my part is over for good. I’ve learned and done a mother of a lot of things over the last five years, and I’m sure there are other things I can learn and do that I haven’t tried yet, but a farmer’s child from the Tenisi hills isn’t suited to anything they do in a presden’s court.
So that’s what I was thinking about as we went to get the others and then walked through half of Star’s Reach. By the time we were back in the common room, it was evening. Thu and Berry got to work on dinner, Eleen and Tashel Ban went back to trying to coax the computer into giving up another paper on the Cetans, and I sat back down at the table and tried to read the papers I’d been reading when Thu came to warn us about the riders. It was the long paper full of brackets and dots, the one that seemed to be talking about a sea voyage to a place a little like Star’s Reach, and first told us that the Cetans traveled to other planets in their system the way we did in ours, back before the old world ended.
I hadn’t read it since Tashel Ban first printed copies for all of us and handed them around, and any other time I’m sure I would have been lost in it within a page or two, but just then it might as well still be a bunch of Cetan magnetic pulses for all I got out of it. I kept on trying to read it, though, since the alternative was to talk about the decisions we’d have to make before the ruinmen arrived. I didn’t want to do that yet, and I don’t think anyone else did either.
So I stared at the pages until it was time for dinner, we all sat and ate as though it was just one more evening at Star’s Reach, and Tashel Ban and I washed up the dishes afterwards. We all gathered in the radio room to listen to the broadcast from Sanloo—there was nothing about Berry this time, just bits of news that didn’t seem to mean much—and then called blessings on each other’s dreams and went our ways. I sat up reading for a while, and once Eleen was asleep I wrote for a while and went to bed.
The next morning we’d all pretty much run out of other things to do, and were close to running out of time as well. After the breakfast dishes were cleared away, everyone stood around the common room, not quite getting to anything else, waiting for someone to say something. Finally I went to the table, sat down in my chair, and said, “Well.”
That was all it took, of course. The others came over and took their seats. I looked at each of them and tried to think of something to say.
Thu, the four free winds bless him, made that unnecessary. “Tomorrow,” he said, “or shortly thereafter, we will each have to decide where we will be going. Those of us who will be going, that is.”
“I plan on staying here for another week,” Berry said at once. “That ought to be enough time to arrange to leave safely and get to Sanloo.”
Thu nodded. “If you wish,” he said, “I would welcome the opportunity to go with you.”
Berry’s eyebrows went up. “That would be—very welcome.” He opened his mouth as if he meant to say something else, and stopped.
Thu laughed his deep laugh. “You are too polite to ask why. It is really quite simple, though. My work here is done, or nearly so, and Sanloo is convenient. And there is the matter of your safety, which—” He shrugged. “—for wholly personal reasons, is important to me.”
“Thank you,” Berry said, meaning it.
“My work here,” Tashel Ban said then, “isn’t done, or anything close to it, and I don’t expect to leave for a good many years, if ever. We’ve only succeeded in getting maybe a tenth of the papers on the Cetans out of the computer. All the raw communications are still in there, and there’s the matter of resuming contact with them—and beginning contact with the others, if it’s decided that that should happen. This is Meriga’s territory, so it occurs to me that the Merigan government should probably make that decision.”
He said it with a perfectly bland face, but Berry grinned and said, “If everything goes well, I think that can be arranged.”
“If everything goes well,” Eleen asked, “what will you do?”
“Ask Congrus to charter the guild that Trey proposed,” Berry said at once. “Once that’s done, nobody can challenge its right to be here and take care of communications with the Cetans and the others. After that, have the guild start sending messages to the Cetans right away, send a ‘yes’ to Delta Pavonis IV, and see about getting the Cetan solar power technology to the guilds that can start putting it to work.”
Eleen blinked. “I gather you’ve been making plans.”
“It seemed like a good idea,” said Berry.
“In any case,” said Tashel Ban, “my future is settled for the time being.”
“And mine,” Eleen said then. “The guild will need plenty of trained scholars, and it’s not as though there are many other places a scholar can find work.”
That left me, and I drew in a breath and said what I had to say. “I won’t be staying. I don’t know yet where I’ll go, but I expect to leave within a few days.”
They were all looking at me then, and I made myself go on. “Partly, my work’s done. I’m not a scholar or a radioman, and I don’t plan on becoming either—and once the extra metal here is hauled off, there won’t be much for ruinmen to do. Mostly, though, it’s Jennel Cobey.”
“It would surprise me,” said Thu, “if there was no trouble over that.”
“Trouble for me,” I said, “I can handle. I don’t want it to become trouble for the rest of you, for the guild we’ve talked about, or for Star’s Reach—and the Taggart family is important enough to make a lot of trouble for everyone, unless we all agree that I’m the one who killed him, and leave it at that.”
Nobody said anything for a while. “There’s got to be a better option,” said Berry. “I’m not willing to see you have to run for your life—not when it’s because you saved ours. If you can lie low here for a while, and everything goes well, I can protect you from the Taggarts once I’m inaugurated.”
“Maybe,” said Tashel Ban. “It depends on politics—which of the important families support you, how your allies and enemies sort themselves out in Congrus. They or one of their allies might also decide to take the risk of killing him, and pay whatever price they have to pay.”
I raised my hands. “It’s not worth risking. I’ve got some ideas in mind for what to do, but you don’t need to know those. As far as you know, I just up and vanished as soon as the ruinmen got here, and nobody saw which way I went.”
Berry didn’t like it, I could see that on his face, but he said nothing more. I happened just then to look at Eleen, just as she looked at Tashel Ban. She didn’t say anything, either, but the look told me something I’d been wondering about for a while.
We ended up talking about other things, mostly the guild that would be set up here at Star’s Reach and what Berry could and couldn’t do to help it along if he becomes presden, and before long it was time to cook another meal; we kept on talking straight through cooking the meal and eating it and washing up afterwards, too. We had a lot to talk about, no question, but there was more to it than that. Tomorrow the ruinmen will be here, and once that happens, this tim
e will be over for good. We’ll all remember it until we get reborn, but it’s like the time I was together with Tam, or the two years I spent digging in the Arksa jungle through the dry season and partying in Memfis through the rains: when it’s over, it’s over, and no doubt there’ll be plenty of good times later on but it won’t ever be the same.
We ended up talking straight through until dinner. Afterwards we all went to the radio room to listen to the broadcast from Sanloo, which didn’t have anything much to say but took the usual time to say it anyway. After that, we went our own ways, or mostly.
I started for the room where the alien-books were, and got about halfway there when Berry called my name from behind. I turned, and he walked up and took hold of my wrists and looked at me for a long moment with his face tight and unhappy.
“Trey,” he said, “if there’s ever anything you need—anything at all—get word to me and you’ll have it. No questions, just—you’ll have it. Understood?”
I nodded and thanked him, and he managed a smile, let go of me, and turned and went back toward his room. I knew when I thanked him that I wasn’t ever going to take him up on that offer, no matter what, and I think he knew it, too, but he had to make the offer and I had to accept it, because we’re ruinmen, and because we’re friends.
So I went the rest of the way to the room with the alien-books, and stood there for a while. I’d had some thought or other about reading a bit from one or another of the stories, but when it came down to it I wasn’t in the mood for that, or much of anything else. After a while I left, and went back to the room I’ve been sharing with Eleen. I didn’t expect to find her there, but there she was, sitting on the bed and looking miserable.
“Trey,” she said, “I told you back in Sisnaddi that I’d go anywhere with you. I meant that, and it still stands. I’ll go with you when you leave, if you’ll have me.”
I blinked, sat down on the bed next to her, and said, “No you won’t. You belong here at Star’s Reach.”
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