"Yes," she said, looking down at the pendant with satisfaction. "We are of the same faith. Now all will go well for us."
He smiled a little at her superstition, but was glad it gave her comfort. As he went to sleep he knew she was awake, lying looking into the darkness full of the stink and the gentle breath and presence of the animals. When the cock crowed before daylight he half-roused and heard her whispering prayers to her amulet in the tongue he did not know.
They went on, taking a path that wound south of the stormy peaks. One great mountain bulwark remained to cross, and for four days they climbed, till the air grew thin and icy, the sky dark blue, and the sun of April shone dazzling on the fleecy backs of clouds that grazed the meadows far beneath their way. Then, the summit of the pass attained, the sky darkened and snow fell on the naked rocks and blanked out the great bare slopes of red and gray. There was a hut for wayfarers in the pass, and they and their mules huddled in it till the snow stopped and they could begin the descent.
"Now the way is easy," Estrel said, turning to look at Falk over her mule's jogging rump and his mule's nodding ears; and he smiled, but there was a dread in him that only grew as they went on and down, towards Es Toch.
Closer and closer they came, and the path widened into a road; they saw huts, farms, houses. They saw few people, for it was cold and rainy, keeping people indoors under a roof. The two wayfarers jogged on down the lonely road through the rain. The third morning from the summit dawned bright, and after they had ridden a couple of hours Falk halted his mule, looking questioningly at Estrel.
"What is it, Falk?"
"We have come—this is Es Toch, isn't it?"
The land had leveled out all about them, though distant peaks closed the horizon all around, and the pastures and plowlands they had been riding through had given way to houses, houses and still more houses. There were huts, cabins, shanties, tenements, inns, shops where goods were made and bartered for, children everywhere, people on the highway, people on side-roads, people, afoot, on horses and mules and sliders, coming and going: it was crowded yet scanty, slack and busy, dirty, dreary and vivid under the bright dark sky of morning in the mountains.
"It is a mile or more yet to Es Toch."
Then what is this city?"
"This is the outskirts of the city."
Falk stared about him, dismayed and excited. The road he had followed so far from the house in the Eastern Forest had become a street, leading only too quickly to its end. As they sat their mules in the middle of the street people glanced at them, but none stayed and none spoke. The women kept their faces averted. Only some of the ragged children stared, or pointed shouting and then ran, vanishing up a filth-encumbered alley or behind a shack. It was not what Falk had expected; yet what had he expected? "I did not know there were so many people in the world," he said at last. "They swarm about the Shing like flies on dung."
"Fly-maggots flourish in dung," Estrel said dryly. Then, glancing at him, she reached across and put her hand lightly on his. "These are the outcasts and the hangers-on, the rabble outside the walls. Let us go on to the city, the true City. We have come a long way to see it…"
They rode on; and soon they saw, jutting up over the shanty roofs, the walls of windowless green towers, bright in the sunlight.
Falk's heart beat hard; and he noticed that Estrel spoke a moment to the amulet she had been given in Besdio.
"We cannot ride the mules inside the city," she said. "We can leave them here." They stopped at a ramshackle public stable; Estrel talked persuasively a while in the Western tongue with the man who kept the place, and when Falk asked what she had been asking him she said, "To keep our mules as surety."
"Surety?"
"If we don't pay for their keep, he will keep them. You have no money, have you?"
"No," Falk said humbly. Not only did he have no money, he had never seen money; and though Galaktika had a word for the thing, his Forest dialect did not.
The stable was the last building on the edge of a field of rubble and refuse which separated the shantytown from a high, long wall of granite blocks. There was one entrance to Es Toch for people on foot. Great conical pillars marked the gate. On the left-hand pillar an inscription in Galaktika was carved: REVERENCE FOR LIFE. On the right was a longer sentence in characters Falk had never seen. There was no traffic through the gate, and no guard.
"The pillar of the Lie and the pillar of the Secret," he said aloud as he walked between them, refusing to let himself be overawed; but then he entered Es Toch, and saw it, and stood still saying nothing.
The City of the Lords of Earth was built on the two rims of a canyon, a tremendous cleft through the mountains, narrow, fantastic, its black walls striped with green plunging terrifically down half a mile to the silver tinsel strip of a river in the shadowy depths. On the very edges of the facing cliffs the towers of the city jutted up, hardly based on earth at all, linked across the chasm by delicate bridgespans. Towers, roadways and bridges ceased and the wall closed the city off again just before a vertiginous bend of the canyon. Helicopters with diaphanous vanes skimmed the abyss, and sliders flickered along the half-glimpsed streets and slender bridges. The sun, still not far above the massive peaks to eastward, seemed scarcely to cast shadows here; the great green towers shone as if translucent to the light.
"Come," Estrel said, a pace ahead of him, her eyes shining. "There's nothing to fear here, Falk."
He followed her. There was no one on the street, which descended between lower buildings toward the cliff-edge towers. Once he glanced back at the gate, but he could no longer see the opening between the pillars. "Where do we go?"
"There's a place I know, a house where my people come." She took his arm, the first time she had ever done so in all the way they had walked together, and clinging to him kept her eyes lowered as they came down the long zigzag street. Now to their right the buildings loomed up high as they neared the city's heart, and to the left, without wall or parapet, the dizzy gorge dropped away full of shadows, a black gap between the luminous perching towers.
"But if we need money here—"
"They'll look after us."
People brightly and strangely dressed passed them on sliders; the landing-ledges high up the sheer-walled buildings flickered with helicopters. High over the gorge an aircar droned, going up.
"Are these all…Shing?"
"Some."
Unconsciously he was keeping his free hand on his laser. Estrel without looking at him, but smiling a little, said, "Do not use your lightgun here, Falk. You came here to gain your memory, not to lose it"
"Where are we going, Estrel?"
"Here."
"This? This is a palace."
The luminous greenish wall towered up windowless, featureless, into the sky. Before them a square doorway stood open.
"They know me here. Don't be afraid. Come on with me."
She clung to his arm. He hesitated. Looking back up the street he saw several men, the first he had seen on foot, loitering towards them, watching them. That scared him, and with Estrel he entered the building, passing through inner automatic portals that slid apart at their approach. Just inside, possessed by a sense of misjudgment, having made a hideous error, he stopped. "What is this place? Estrel—"
It was a high hall, full of a thick greenish light, dim as an underwater cave; there were doorways and corridors, down which men approached, hurrying towards him. Estrel had broken away from him. In panic he turned to the doors behind him: they were shut now. They had no handles. Dim figures of men broke into the hall, running at him and shouting. He backed up against the shut doors and reached for his laser. It was gone. It was in Estrel's hands. She stood behind the men as they surrounded Falk, and as he tried to break through them and was seized, and fought and was beaten, he heard for a moment a sound he had never heard before: her laugh.
A disagreeable sound rang in Falk's ears; a metallic taste filled his mouth. His head swam when he raised it, and
his eyes would not focus, and he could not seem to move freely. Presently he realized that he was waking from unconsciousness, and thought he could not move because he had been hurt or drugged. Then he made out that his wrists were shackled together on a short chain, his ankles likewise. But the swimming in his head grew worse. There was a great voice booming in his ears now, repeating the same thing over and over: ramarren-ramarren-ramarren. He struggled and cried out, trying to get away from the booming voice which filled him with terror. Lights flashed in his eyes, and through the sound roaring in his head he heard someone scream in his own voice, "I am not—"
When he came to again everything was utterly still. His head ached, and still he could not see very clearly; but there were no shackles on his arms and legs now, if there ever had been any, and he knew he was being protected, sheltered, looked after. They knew who he was and he was welcome. His own people were coming for him, he was safe here, cherished, beloved, and all he need do now was rest and sleep, rest and sleep, while the soft, deep stillness murmured tenderly in his head, marren-marren-marren…
He woke. It took a while, but he woke, and managed to sit up. He had to bury his acutely aching head in his arms for a while to get over the vertigo the movement caused, and at first was aware only that he was sitting on the floor of some room, a floor which seemed to be warm and yielding, almost soft, like the flank of some great beast. Then he lifted his head, and got his eyes into focus, and looked about him.
He was alone, in the midst of a room so uncanny that it revived his dizziness for a while. There was no furniture. Walls floor and ceiling were all of the same translucent stuff, which appeared soft and undulant like many thicknesses of pale green veiling, but was tough and slick to the touch. Queer carvings and crimpings and ridges forming ornate patterns all over the floor were, to the exploring hand, nonexistent; they were eye-deceiving paintings, or lay beneath a smooth transparent surface. The angles where walls met were thrown out of true by optical-illusion devices of crosshatching and pseudo-parallels used as decoration; to pull the corners into right angles took an effort of will, which was perhaps an effort of self-deception, since they might, after all, not be right angles. But none of this teasing subtlety of decoration so disoriented Falk as the fact that the entire room was translucent. Vaguely, with the effect of looking into a depth of very green pond-water, underneath him another room was visible. Overhead was a patch of light that might be the moon, blurred and greened by one or more intervening ceilings. Through one wall of the room strings and patches of brightness were fairly distinct, and he could make out the motion of the lights of helicopters or air-cars. Through the other three walls these outdoor lights were much dimmer, blurred by the veilings of further walls, corridors, rooms. Shapes moved in those other rooms. He could see them but there was no identifying them: features, dress, color, size, all was blurred away. A blot of shadow somewhere in the green depths suddenly rose and grew less, greener, dimmer, fading into the maze of vagueness. Visibility without discrimination, solitude without privacy. It was extraordinarily beautiful, this masked shimmer of lights and shapes through inchoate planes of green, and extraordinarily disturbing. . All at once in a brighter patch on the near wall Falk caught a glimpse of movement. He turned quickly and with a shock of fear saw something at last vivid, distinct: a face, a seamed, savage, staring face set with two inhuman yellow eyes.
"A Shing," he whispered in blank dread. The face mocked him, the terrible lips mouthing soundlessly A Shing, and he saw that it was the reflection of his own face.
He got up stiffly and went to the mirror and passed his hand over it to make sure. It was a mirror, half concealed by a molded frame painted to appear flatter than it actually was.
He turned from it at the sound of a voice. Across the room from him, not too clear in the dim, even light from hidden sources, but solid enough, a figure stood. There was no doorway visible, but a man had entered, and stood looking at him: a very tall man, a white cape or cloak dropping from wide shoulders, white hair, clear, dark, penetrating eyes. The man spoke; his voice was deep and very gentle. "You are welcome here, Falk. We have long awaited you, long guided and guarded you." The light was growing brighter in the room, a clear, swelling radiance. The deep voice held a note of exaltation. "Put away fear and be welcome among us, O Messenger. The dark road is behind you and your feet are set upon the way that leads you home!" The brilliance grew till it dazzled Falk's eyes; he had to blink and blink again, and when he looked up, squinting, the man was gone.
There came unbidden into his mind words spoken months ago by an old man in the Forest: The awful darkness of the bright lights of Es Toch.
He would not be played with, drugged, deluded any longer. A fool he had been to come here, and he would never get away alive; but he would not be played with. He started forward to find the hidden doorway to follow the man. A voice from the mirror said, "Wait a moment more, Falk. Illusions are not always lies. You seek truth."
A seam in the wall split and opened into a door; two figures entered. One, slight and small, strode in; he wore breeches fitted with an ostentatious codpiece, a jerkin, a close-fitting cap. The second, taller, was heavily robed and moved mincingly, posing like a dancer; long, purplish-black hair streamed down to her waist—his waist, it must be for the voice though very soft was deep. "We are being filmed, you know, Strella."
"I know," said the little man in Estrel's voice. Neither of them so much as glanced at Falk; they behaved as if they were alone. "Go on with what you were about to say, Kradgy."
"I was about to ask you why it took you so long."
"So long? You are unjust, my Lord. How could I track him in the Forest east of Shorg?—it is utter wilderness. The stupid animals were no help; all they do these days is babble the Law. When you finally dropped me the man-finder I was two hundred miles north of him. When I finally caught up he was heading straight into Basnasska territory. You know the Council has them furnished with bombirds and such so that they can thin out the Wanderers and the Solia-pachim. So I had to join the filthy tribe. Have you not heard my reports? I sent them in all along, till I lost my sender crossing a river south of Kansas Enclave. And my mother in Besdio gave me another. Surely they kept my reports on tape?"
"I never listen to reports. In any case, it was all time and risk wasted, since you did not in all these weeks succeed in teaching him not to fear us."
"Estrel," Falk said. "Estrel!"
Grotesque and frail in her transvestite clothes, Estrel did not turn, did not hear. She went on speaking to the robed man. Choked with shame and anger Falk shouted her name, then strode forward and seized her shoulder—and there was nothing there, a blur of lights in the air, a flicker of color, fading.
The door-slit in the wall still stood open, and through it Falk could see into the next room. There stood the robed man and Estrel, their backs to him. He said her name in a whisper, and she turned and looked at him. She looked into his eyes without triumph and without shame, calmly, passively, detached and uncaring, as she had looked at him all along.
"Why—why did you He to me?" he said. "Why did you bring me here?" He knew why; he knew what he was and always had been in Estrel's eyes. It was not his intelligence that spoke, but his self-respect and his loyalty, which could not endure or admit the truth in this first moment.
"I was sent to bring you here. You wanted to come here."
He tried to pull himself together. Standing rigid, not moving towards her, he asked, "Are you a Shing?"
"I am," said the robed man, affably smiling. "I am a Shing. All Shing are liars. Am I, then, a Shing lying to you, in which case of course I am not a Shing, but a non-Shing, lying? Or is it a lie that all Shing lie? But I am a Shing, truly; and truly I lie. Terrans and other animals have been known to tell lies also; lizards change color, bugs mimic sticks and flounders lie by lying still, looking pebbly or sandy depending on the bottom which underlies them. Strella, this one is even stupider than the child."
"No, my L
ord Kradgy, he is very intelligent," Estrel replied, in her soft, passive way. She spoke of Falk as a human being speaks of an animal.
She had walked beside Falk, eaten with him, slept with him. She had slept in his arms…Falk stood watching her, silent; and she and the tall one also stood silent, unmoving, as if awaiting a signal from him to go on with their performance.
He could not feel rancor towards her. He felt nothing towards her. She had turned to air, to a blur and flicker of light. His feeling was all towards himself: he was sick, physically sick, with humiliation.
Go alone, Opalstone, said the Prince of Kansas. Go alone, said Hiardan the Bee-Keeper. Go alone, said the old Listener in the forest. Go alone, my son, said Zove. How many others would have guided him aright, helped him on his quest, armed him with knowledge, if he had come across the prairies alone? How much might he have learned, if he had not trusted Estrel's guidance and good faith?
Now he knew nothing, except that he had been measurelessly stupid, and that she had lied. She had lied to him from the start, steadily, from the moment she told him she was a Wanderer—no, from before that: from the moment she had first seen him and had pretended not to know who or what he was. She had known all along, and had been sent to make sure he got to Es Toch; and to counteract, perhaps, the influence those who hated the Shing had had and might have upon his mind. But then why, he thought painfully, standing there in one room gazing at her in another, why had she stopped lying, now?
"It does not matter what I say to you now," she said, as if she had read his thoughts.
Possibly she had. They had never used mindspeech; but if she was a Shing and had the mental powers of the Shing, the extent of which was only a matter of rumor and speculation among men, she might have been attuned to his thoughts all along, all the weeks of their traveling. How could he tell? There was no use asking her…
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