Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  ‘T’ans s’aranthi.’

  Jaharien Rakviri walked on to the terrace. His step was soundless. Several other Rakviri were with him; males and females with dark manes and opaque eyes. Not Cassirur Almadhera, though; nor Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen.

  ‘S’an Jaharien.’ And I wondered how much he’d heard. This one we’d better take with dignity, I thought. Since I judge dignity is about all we’re going to be left with …

  He looked at Molly first, and then at me, not hiding his satisfaction.

  ‘It seems I was wrong.’ There was a kind of joy in his abnegation. He stood brushing shoulders with the younger males and females, and they crowded close. ‘Wrong to let you come to this telestre. T’ans, I gave you guest-right. I revoke it. Leave Rakviri. That’s all I have to say.’

  At this hour? How are we supposed to travel to Morvren? Skurrai-jasin across desolate heathland by night – impossible!

  I was proud of Molly Rachel. She made none of those protests, only inclined her head slightly, after the Orthean manner, and said, ‘We’ll leave now, s’an Jaharien.’

  The discordant music from the end of the terrace rang in the cold air. There was a smell of cooking, at this hour of second twilight. Frost formed on the glass. Jaharien tugged his dark robe more closely round his burly shoulders.

  ‘You’ll leave in the morning,’ he said.

  Judging by Molly Rachel’s face, she didn’t like that humiliating charity any more than I did. She said, ‘Thank you, s’an.’

  ‘In the morning,’ Jaharien said, ‘because I won’t ask any of this telestre to put themselves in danger by taking skurrai-jasin to Morvren at night. No other reason than that.’

  He turned his back on us and walked away, the other Rakviri Ortheans walking with him; and the hiss of their bright robes on the stone floor died away into silence.

  We left when Carrick’s Star was a searing white line along the eastern horizon. I saw Molly exchange a few words with a sullen Barris Rakviri. When she climbed into the skurrai-carriage beside me, she was too preoccupied to talk. I didn’t see Cassirur or Haltern – And that’s probably just as well, I thought. It would strain my professional courtesy, to say the very least.

  As the skurrai-jasin jolted down the rough track, Molly Rachel swore. She sat for a moment with head bowed, arms resting on her knees, skin dark against beige coveralls; and then she straightened, sighing.

  ‘Goddammit –’ And glanced sideways at me, and shrugged. ‘That’s two. Two chances gone: Kel Harantish settlement and this telestre. How many more chances am I going to get?’

  Two unsuccessful attempts at getting functional Witch-breed technology … I can’t think of it in Company terms, now.

  ‘You talk as if it was just machinery –’

  ‘That’s all it is.’ Her face went blank. ‘It may be based on some alien perception of the universe, it may not; either way, it’s nothing but technology. Get that clear.’

  There are unbidden memories in my mind: the dead images of a long-dead race.

  Deliberately businesslike, Molly said, ‘We’re going to have a couple of busy days. I’ve been in contact with Pramila Ishida: the team will be coming down from the orbiter now. And I’ve got to have something I can give them to work on.’

  As long as there are Ortheans blocking the Company from Witchbreed technology, I thought, I don’t have to take any decisions. But what happens if – when – we find someone who’ll co-operate? What do I do then?

  Orventa Twelfthweek Eightday: the Freeport city streets are white with frost. Walking up from the Portmaster’s office to the Residence, I smelt on the air the hot sharpness of burning lapuur-wood in street braziers. Four days. Four days now, and the alien beginning to be comfortable, to fit like old clothes – or is it clothes I’ve outgrown?

  Sun shone through the hanelys-creeper. Its iron-black sharp stems linked the walls of telestre-houses, forming a canopy overhead. A few wild becamil had made a nest in the right-angled junctions of the plant. For a moment there was no sound but their high-pitched humming. Then, as the avenues opened out into a square, I heard a noise.

  Skurrai being harnessed to stout carts stamped and hissed. The larger marhaz raised their snake-muzzles and cried. Ten or fifteen Ortheans, mostly young males and females, were working; strapping loads on to tri-wheeled carts with rapid efficiency. The winter sun brought steam rising from the mud, and shone on crates and becamil-cloth sacks. I stepped back as a cart rumbled past, and felt its heaviness in the vibration of the earth.

  ‘Give you greeting,’ I said to a small, pale-maned female, as she turned from watching the cart on its way to the docks. ‘What’s happening here, t’an?’

  Whiteless eyes were slowly lidded. Then her gaze cleared. She nodded, and rubbed dirt from her six-fingered hands.

  ‘T’an s’aranthi,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’d heard there were offworlders in the ‘port again – Brovary! Tallis! you overload that and I’ll – that’s better.’

  A winter haze made daystars into ghost-images, blotted out by a swooping flight of rashaku.

  ‘We’re sending a jath-rai coaster along to Ales-Kadareth in Melkathi,’ the Orthean female went on. ‘Last year was a bad harvest for them. I doubt this year’ll be better.’

  The names bring back a summer long gone, and words spoken by – Ruric Orhlandis.

  ‘Someone said to me, once, that, if it wasn’t against all custom, Melkathi province should be made to have half the number of telestres that it does have – and then it might be able to support its population.’

  ‘You know Melkathi?’ She pushed a wisp of mane away from her face with the back of her wrist. ‘I’m Mezidon, by the way, Anrasset Mezidon Rakviri. Yes, there’s some truth in what you say.’

  ‘There’s no truth in it at all!’ a new voice interrupted. ‘The telestre boundaries haven’t changed in two thousand years, nor should they ever!’

  I turned, to see a young male Orthean leaning against a crate. He wore boots, britches, and sleeveless slit-backed jacket; and harur-blades on shoulder-baldrics.

  He demanded: ‘Who are you, to say what Melkathi’s telestres should do?’

  He’s young, I thought. Not long out of ashiren. A thin, intense boy; with satin-black skin and a cropped red mane. When he shifted off the crate and walked towards us, he had the controlled grace of a harur-blade fighter.

  ‘Give you greeting,’ I said, amused. ‘My name is Lynne de Lisle Christie, t’an.’

  His stunned eyes met mine. A sudden pulse of adrenalin made me cold. Even an offworlder couldn’t mistake it: his face came alive with hatred.

  ‘T’an Asshe is here from Melkathi to assist with the relief ships.’ Mezidon glanced back and forth at us both.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the boy said, ‘this – animal – knows Melkathi. And Melkathi knows you, Christie S’aranth.’

  The people nearby stopped loading carts and stared, hearing his voice. Mezidon Rakviri looked embarrassed: ‘Asshe, I’m sure the s’aranthi meant no harm; and it’s a thing we’ve often said about Melkathi ourselves.’

  He ignored her, his eyes fixed on me. ‘Shall I tell you who remembers Christie S’aranth? I’ll tell you. Those who were there when Sulis SuBannasen died by poison, by her own hand. Those who were there when T’An Commander Ruric Orhlandis burned Orhlandis telestre. When the T’An Suthai-Telestre Suthafiori declared Orhlandis not to exist, and scattered its people across all the Hundred Thousand –’

  ‘And that has what, precisely, to do with you?’ I asked.

  He stared at me with an adolescent defiance I was hard put not to laugh at. And then with his next words it wasn’t funny at all: ‘My name is Pellin Asshe Kadareth – now. I was born Pellin Asshe Orhlandis.’

  But you could only have been a baby –! when Suthafiori declared all Orhlandis children must be adopted n’ri n’suth into other telestres. You could only have been a child. But I can’t comprehend the loss, for an Orthean, of land he has lived on, in past-memo
ry, for a hundred generations …

  ‘T’An Ruric burned Orhlandis,’ he said, anger sharpening that unlined face, ‘but you made her do it!’

  His arrogance and ignorance caught me on the raw.

  ‘T’an Asshe, let me tell you something. You don’t have the right to hate me, or to say one word about Ruric Orhlandis. You never knew her. I did.’

  ‘You made her betray the Hundred Thousand!’

  I have memories of her, that dead woman; she with her black skin and mane and yellow Witchbreed eyes. That narrow, merry face … T’An Commander and travelling companion, friend to the envoy; she who had Shiriya-Shenin’s ruler killed and the envoy disgraced for it. And I see her trapped and filthy in the burning Melkathi heathland, remembering her branded exile in the prison in Tathcaer, and even I cannot say, that was not justice.

  ‘T’an Asshe … she could do nothing but what she did, believing as she did. It could have been any telestre that happened to. Yes, and it could have been any offworlder.’

  Twenty or so people were listening now, others having come out of the Rakviri city-house; Mezidon Rakviri winced whenever Orhlandis was openly mentioned, and the others grinned broadly at scandal.

  ‘You were the first,’ Asshe said. ‘Well, I will revenge Orhlandis on you, t’an S’aranth, if I do nothing else with my life. It’s a gift of the Goddess; who could have thought you’d return?’

  The sun cast his shadow on the cold earth, that thin dark boy. Violence was in him, savage and ridiculous and entirely pragmatic. To be hated so bitterly hurts. I wanted to laugh, to cry. Empathy rose strongly in me: looking into unveiled eyes I could feel the heft of sharp metal, feel how hard this frost-bitten earth would be to fall on; taste blood … At the same time anticipated how these Rakviri would disarm him before he could attack; and, standing in that winter light, I wanted to put my arms round him and hug him like the boy he was, say It isn’t her fault, she hurt you as badly as she hurt me, she’s dead now, it was all ten years ago. The empath’s sense of multiple possibilities. As so often, it left me incapable of any action.

  ‘It’s not advisable to make threats, t’an Kadareth.’

  The voice startled me out of immobility. I looked round, amazed, at the stocky figure of Blaize Meduenin. And belatedly thought, That’s the connection between four days ago and now: he must be the one of the Morvren triumvirate responsible for getting Rakviri’s ships to Melkathi …

  ‘I knew Sulis SuBannasen when she was T’An Melkathi.’ Blaize’s mouth twisted in wry humour. ‘She hired me to kill the Earth envoy – the S’aranth. And it was her choice, when her plotting with Kel Harantish was found out, to go to the Goddess as she did. As for the T’An Commander Ruric – boy, you know nothing of that year.’

  Pellin Asshe said sulkily, ‘If not for the S’aranth, T’An Commander Ruric wouldn’t also have turned spy for Kel Harantish; I’d still live with the earth I loved.’

  The fair-maned male frowned, his scarred face bewildered, surprised into defending me: ‘It was not done at the S’aranth’s direction.’

  ‘She was the cause!’

  ‘We were all the cause.’ Nictitating membrane slid down over the Meduenin’s eyes. ‘Don’t waste your blame on that, boy, when it’s now you should worry. Work to see it doesn’t happen again.’

  Pellin Asshe never took his eyes from my face. ‘I spoke in anger, t’an Christie, forgive me. I mean you no harm.’

  My legs felt momentarily unsteady, and I reached to grip Blaize’s arm; hard and muscled. His eyes cleared, watching the boy walk off between the carts. Loading resumed. I looked at Asshe’s retreating back and thought, I wasn’t afraid – until you apologized.

  ‘I’ll see he goes back with the jath-rai to Kadareth.’ Blaize looked at me, all but shuffled his feet, and then unwillingly smiled. There was an ironic awareness of our last meeting. ‘What else was I to say – S’aranth?’

  The years have deepened the creases in that scale-patterned skin, have faded the blue-purple burn scar; but there is still the same Blaize Meduenin who hunted the envoy, helped her across the Wall of the World, abandoned her in the wilderness, and became in later days kinbrother to her kinsister.

  Caught between then and now, I felt the knot of acrimony inside me loosen a little. If I were to talk to you now, what could we say to each other?

  He turned back to the loading; and I left, feeling relief and resentment in about equal measure.

  I walked on into the city-island’s interior, to the Residence; passing through that small telestre-house’s courtyard, and up steps to the first floor. Inside, lozenge-shaped windows cast patches of sunlight on the walls. The light emphasized the dust, and the air of a place that is shut up ten months out of the twelve. David Osaka was sitting at a table on which stood an old model data-net, tinkering with the display in the holotank, and studying the offprints pinned on the wall above. I paused beside him.

  ‘Is the comlink with the orbital ship working now?’

  He shrugged. ‘We’re having to use a heavy-duty infrared laser system for ground-to-orbit, and put the ship in geosynchronous orbit.’

  ‘Dear good God! Use industrial lasers for comlinks?’

  He leaned back, brushing the fair hair out of his eyes. He has the impatience of the young, I thought. Or is it that he picks up my dissatisfaction here?

  He said, ‘We’re having comlink problems all over – on-world and ship-to-ship. Can’t bypass the background interference except under the most local conditions. But all this government equipment is outdated. We could end up using shuttles for communications.’

  The coin-cords rattled as Molly Rachel pushed through the curtain in the door-arch. She nodded a greeting to me; picked up on his remark: ‘We don’t have that big an energy-reserve; the situation is ridiculous. Dave, see if you can find Doug Clifford, will you? I want to know if government records can shed any light on the problem.’

  ‘Sure.’

  As he left, she padded across to the window and stood gazing out. ‘Clifford’s spending far too much time over at the Almadhera’s quarters.’ She ticked off names on her long dark fingers: ‘Bekily Cassirur Almadhera. Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen. Blaize Meduenin. I know he claims they’re influential people here … I don’t think the Company can rely on him at all.’

  I said nothing. The daystarred sky shone beyond the thick glass. Distantly came the rumble of skurrai-carts, voices calling, the metallic tones of rashaku. Now on the verge of spring season, Hanys, when jaih and jath-rai are fitted out for trade-voyages …

  ‘Any word from Rakviri?’ I thought, She won’t have given up on Barris that easily.

  ‘Nothing. And no approaches from other telestres.’ The Pacifican woman turned, hearing human voices, and footsteps coming up from the lower rooms. ‘You’re only just in time for the meeting.’

  The Residence’s upper rooms began to fill. Faces I’d become familiar with on the ship out from Earth, the Company’s research scientists – and now, as I took my place round the table with them, they seemed curiously stolid, graceless; eyes forever wide and staring, thick-fingered hands, manes shaven … that double image that comes with being an empath, and seeing through eyes that are never entirely your own …

  And then they came back into focus. Pramila Ishida, the Representative’s aide, quiet-voiced and round-faced; and beside that young Asiatic-featured Pacifican woman was a tall black medic, Joan Kennaway. An older, sharp-faced Pacifican woman, Chandra Hainzell, seated herself on a couch-chair with two more men from Research: Dinu Machida and Jan Yusuf. Beside them, stiff-spined and looking as though he hated every minute of this, I saw the head of the team, Rashid Akida.

  ‘I realize this face-to-face meeting is unusual,’ Molly Rachel began, ‘and that none of us have comlink-access to the resources of our departments right now. That’s the first point I want to raise – have we got anywhere analysing the communications interference?’

  A sea mist was pressing against the windows
, and the damp air was not warmed by lapuur and ziku-wood braziers. I could see on the faces round me the longing for a Pacifican environment: heat, light, technology. I wouldn’t have turned it down myself.

  David Osaka came in at that moment, Doug Clifford following; and there was a small disturbance while other tables were shoved together, and people’s seats rearranged. Two or three of the younger team members sat cramped in window embrasures. It’s a far cry from an all-screen holo-image conference.

  ‘We’re discussing comlink problems,’ Molly said. ‘Dinu?’

  Dinu Machida, a stocky Sino-Indian, spread a printout across the two tables. ‘First, I’ll have to deal with weather patterns. You can see the problems we’re having with satellite surveys. The interior of the southern continental landmass is more or less permanently covered with cloud. Also, considerable areas on the northern continent: here, and here …’

  Far north of us. Into the Barrens, and beyond, where I’ve never travelled.

  ‘You’ve tried infrared,’ Molly prompted.

  ‘Naturally. Comes up featureless. It’s –’ He looked round, obviously itching for a holodisplay-tank. ‘Can I explain the seasonal climate pattern? Take this “Coast” area on the southern continent. A steady influx of winds from the sea, bringing a corresponding monsoon season, then a steady outflow of air from the centre of the continent, and consequently a very long dry season –’

  ‘Hold on,’ I interrupted. ‘Dinu, I can see a few other people as bemused as I am. For the non-specialist – what are you saying about the climate? And what does it have to do with communications?’

  He brushed black hair out of his eyes, and sighed. ‘The Coast is an example. It’s too hot for its latitude. There’s a climate anomaly, and it’s far from being the only one.’

  I caught Doug Clifford’s eye then, and began to think: I know what this is leading towards …

  ‘At a guess,’ Dinu continued, ‘I’d say the land surface of the interior has to have an extremely high albedo, to reflect back that amount of solar radiation; hence the greenhouse effect and the cloud-cover … There are only two geological areas that have that high an albedo – a reflective surface. Deserts and ice fields.’