Starfire Saga, page 84
We all stood, staring, as Tynnanna and the other klawit herded the two men out of the circle, then toward the line of klawits that arced around us. Ustivet tried to run; the strange klawit, almost leisurely, knocked him over. When he scrambled to his feet, the herding went on.
Neither man asked us to interfere, though I knew from reading them that Krenigo wanted to. Just as they reached the arc of cats, Tynnanna turned his head and lifted the deposed Lord of the Vylk off his feet, his jaws soft, as if this were prey he would play with rather than dispatch. The other klawit duplicated Tynnanna’s actions with Ustivet.
The line of cats turned and ran lightly back into the forest, like wind passing through a stand of reeds. We stared after them, open-mouthed. Some of the men in the parade dropped to their knees, clearly having thought they would be next.
As I had when the cats brought me Tynnanna, we shook ourselves as if emerging from a dream. Many people began to talk at once. I turned to Jemeret. “Have you got any explanation for the klawit behavior?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never been able to explain it. When Tynnanna first came to you at Convalee, I didn’t know how or why, and I don’t understand it now—except perhaps in one way.”
“What?”
“As Glon and the water people proved, we are not the only ones the starfire talks to.”
His statement made some sense. The starfire spoke through the klawits. I realized that I’d thought that necessarily precluded it from speaking to them as well. Perhaps I was wrong about that. The starfire had told us that it chose the cats to speak through because their brains were less complex than human brains, but now I had guessed they were a telepathic species, and telepathy was a higher, evolved function. Some higher functions, then, did not involve complexity. The concept was bewildering to me, but hardly incredible. I remembered the protocanine Jessif saying to me so very long ago, “Do not mistake sentience for sameness.”
Once the Ilto and the Vylk were well on their way, we all went into the valley, where the Boru set about entertaining everyone. Ashkalin, Sandalari, and Coney had told the story of the influencing and the klawits. We all sang the Hymn for Peace, a hopeful starsong speaking of the ability to build a foundation on which power could be used to accomplish a desired end.
A line of dancers reached us and swept us up. We danced and sang and embraced each other into the night. I spent a few minutes of the celebration with each of my friends, laughing with Shenefta, congratulating Variel on a pregnancy that was just beginning to show, discovering that Sejineth and Shantiah had decided to ask for the bracelet at next year’s Convalee, sympathizing with and comforting Clematis. Sandalari and Clematis sang a waysong for Sabaran that spoke of a glorious, happy man, lost to us now, but never forgotten. Then the celebrating, briefly interrupted, resumed. I danced and laughed with Andriel, who took it all in with huge eyes. It went on and on, and being home was wonderful. Except that there was, again, an inexplicable, growing uneasiness that I was here instead of back out in the Com where, for powerful, unknown reasons, I was supposed to be.
In one quiet moment, while I was drinking clogny, which I let Andriel sip, she said to me, “It’s this,” and when I didn’t understand, she persisted, “This is what singing is. Not alone in the dark.” I hugged her hard. Then we were once again surrounded by the gentle riot.
As the celebration was winding down, Zunigar found me and said seriously, “I’d like to speak with you, Lady Ronica.”
I read him quickly, felt both determination and a strong sense of confusion, rose immediately and walked with him past several of the groups of people who were still gathered. Someone began to build up one of the dying campfires. I thought they might never stop celebrating.
Jemeret, sitting with Ashkalin, Tuvellen, and Sejineth, watched us walk aside, touched me curiously and gently, but made no demands.
“Lord Zunigar, what is it?” I asked him when we were far enough from the general crowd not to be overheard, even by augmented hearing.
He watched me closely. “We were on our way here, and I was scouting ahead of my men when I saw something in the foothills. It wasn’t anything I knew, so I went closer. You had some sort of—thing with you. You and the priestess put it together, and you spoke to it. What was it?”
I knew he’d seen the beam projector. I knew I could sting him at once and work a short while to make him forget it. I knew that was what Jemeret would have wanted me to do. I knew the dangers of any other action. I took his arm and said, “Come with me.” As we walked toward the temple, I used my sting to call Venacrona and Sandalari.
In many ways, it was another of those decisions that seemed so easy at the time and yet could have so many unforeseen outcomes. Unlike my long ago and much regretted seduction of Coney, this decision could affect the future of an entire world. But of course I didn’t think of it in those terms as Zunigar and I went lightly through the spring night to meet Venacrona and Sandalari inside the largest building in the village.
Venacrona, anxious about being called, hurried into the now dim assembly chamber where we waited, and Sandalari smiled tentatively at Zunigar. “What can we help you with, Lady Ronica?” the priest asked, his smooth brow remaining unfurrowed despite the concern I felt coming from him.
“Zunigar saw Sandalari and me with the beam projector,” I said flatly.
Sandalari’s bright blue eyes darted quickly to the Chief of the Resni and then back to me, but she didn’t speak.
Venacrona cleared his throat. “And you brought him in here?” he asked, as if unwilling to pose any other question.
“He is a tribal chief and a Councillor,” I said. “Certain information should probably be shared now.”
As if I’d called him—and I’d been careful not to—Jemeret was there, with Ashkalin just behind him, and I could see Coney in the hallway near the entrance. Jemeret’s face was cautiously expressionless. I felt no touch of his sting. He asked Venacrona, “What’s going on here?”
“The High Lady,” the priest answered, “believes there are certain things the Lord Zunigar deserves to be told.”
My lord’s steely gray gaze fastened on me for a very long time, and then he said, “My Lord Zunigar, will you forgive us for a few moments?”
The Resni chief started to nod and turn away, but I stung him to make him halt, and he did, looking curious.
I knew, with a sureness that I disliked at the same time I recognized it, that this time the confrontation was not going to be avoided. I swallowed hard and said, “Jemeret, you cannot stop the evolution of this world, any more than you can allow the MIs to stop the evolution of the worlds of the Com.” He flushed, fighting back his emotions. I had to keep myself from trying to read him, and I gathered so as not to react in ways I knew would earn his approval. I wanted his approval, but I also thought I was right, and somehow that had become more important to me. “I’m High Lady,” I said as strongly as I could. “The starfire chose me for it. The Samothen confirmed me in it. I believe it’s time for the chiefs of the tribes to be told the secret.”
He said nothing, an aura of iron rising around him.
Coney had heard enough of what we’d said to understand what was happening. Sandalari had begun to twist her hands in distress. Zunigar was clearly fascinated, and Ashkalin and Venacrona exchanged one look, but did not interfere.
Coney said gently, “We know now that talent arises in the Com, Jemeret. It won’t cease arising here because more people know something about the life that’s out there beyond the sky.”
I read Sandalari’s fear, Zunigar’s confusion, and at last reached to read Jemeret. I interpreted what I encountered as a blind fury that kept him from reasoning. The motionless silence stretched on until the tension became nearly unbearable. Then I spoke. “I believe they can handle the knowledge that Caryldon is not alone in the universe, and that the people of the stars are us.”
Then Venacrona suggested, “We could ask the starfire.”
“No,” Jemeret said, barely moving his lips. “This is not a decision to pray over.” We waited longer, and then he looked at me again. “If I don’t agree, will you still pursue this?”
I knew what an important question it was to him. He had made me High Lady, a position that carried with it some power as well as a title. He could argue with me now, but he couldn’t stop me. I had said I wouldn’t introduce the beam projector if he didn’t agree to it, and he had. I remembered all that I owed him—my sanity not the least of it; I remembered what he wanted to accomplish in the wider world in which most of humanity resided; I remembered the things he depended on me for here.
But I was High Lady in fact as well as in name, and he and I were not the same person. Sheridar couldn’t be counted on to keep the secret with the obsessive dedication Sabaran had shown, and there were too many other loose ends now: at some point the clandestine time we’d spent here instead of on Ashkalin’s ship, before we left for the Com, could come out; Zunigar had seen the beam projector; at some point the fabric of deceit that supported the secret would begin to break down. I believed overall in the strength and maturity of the people we had just stopped a war for, but sooner or later they might hear the stories of how it had actually happened, because Zunigar could not be certain others of his men had not also seen what he did. It was time.
I met my lord’s gaze. “Yes,” I answered him, “I’ll pursue it no matter where you stand on the matter.”
“In that case,” Jemeret said, “you have no further need for me here.” He turned on his heel and walked back past Ashkalin and Coney and out into the village.
I looked at Coney and Sandalari, surprised to find them blurred with tears I had to blink back. “I’m right about this,” I said to them, but it didn’t have the conviction I’d wanted to invest it with.
It was Ashkalin who said, not unkindly, “Then you should act on it, Lady Ronica. It came too quickly for him. I know him, and he’s fought it for so long that he simply can’t yield to it that fast or that openly.”
“And everything’s at risk, everywhere,” Sandalari added. “I think when he gave in on the projector, he knew somehow that things would have to change, but—” She drew her breath in, a little, ragged gasp. “—he loved this place so, the way it was.”
I brushed the tears away, and then I told Zunigar about the Com, and Ashkalin and Venacrona told him about all the ways in which the outer world affected what happened on Caryldon, about Sandalari and me, about Jemeret’s long absence when he was younger, about Sabaran knowing and conspiring. Then they fell silent, and I told him about the children we gave away, and Andriel, whom we had just brought back.
He took it well, his intelligence and natural diffidence overriding his initial shock. He was, after all, twice Sheridar’s age and comparably more mature. He nodded a few times, once even said, “That makes sense.” When we finally finished speaking, he asked Venacrona, “It’s like the end of innocence, isn’t it?”
“In a way,” the priest said, “but leaders sometimes do have to reach an end of innocence for the sake of the people they lead. Is it acceptable knowledge, Lord Zunigar?”
He said, “Well, bearable, at any rate. Lady Ronica, if I hadn’t seen the machine, would you have told me?”
“Perhaps. And perhaps not. I think some secrets should not be kept. This one was getting more difficult to maintain, and it’s easier to be told a secret than to discover by accident that you’ve been deceived to keep it.”
“Will you tell anyone else besides me?”
I avoided that question. “I have to go back out there again. There’s more work to be done.” And as I said it, I was again struck by the desire to get off Caryldon and back to the unfinished business we’d left in the Com. Coney and Sandalari seemed surprised at my saying it. “I think you and my Lord Ashkalin and Venacrona should tell the other members of the Inner Council, in case some of the people in Zunigar’s group saw more than he thinks they did, and before Sheridar lets something slip. He probably will, you know.”
Ashkalin shrugged, but when I read Venacrona, I knew the little priest agreed with me.
Someone touched me with the sting, and I realized that Andriel was calling to me again. The feeling she was projecting was one of forlornness, as if, having found me, she could no longer be patient about being separated from me. I tried to soothe her.
“When do you want to leave?” Sandalari asked me hesitantly. I could read from her a hope that we would stay here awhile; she was homesick.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I answered her. “Go get some sleep. Everyone needs rest more than anything else.”
“You, too,” Coney said. I nodded at him, suddenly weary, convinced that Jemeret would not forgive me for this. I trembled with an abrupt lack of confidence in my choice, a renewed need for his approval, and the fear that I’d thrown it away. I bid them good-night and left the temple.
Ashkalin caught up with me. “I’ll walk with you.” He paced me as I started toward the chief’s house, and I slowed my step.
“It was time,” I said. “The Samothen are very few, and they may need to know there’s more to life than just the Honish.”
“Some of us might start wanting to see what lies out there,” Ashkalin said softly. “Then we’d be even fewer. I think that’s one of Jemeret’s biggest fears.”
I knew he was watching me closely, but I couldn’t look at him. Over by one of the remaining campfires I saw Shenefta, yawning, but she noticed me and waved. I might have smiled distractedly at her. “Caryldon—this world—is very far from developing the technology that would take anyone off-world, and I don’t think the Com would give it to you—not if we—” I stopped.
“Whatever it is you want to do,” Ashkalin said, “I know it’s a formidable task. It’s the one thing I’ve never envied Jemeret. It’s the one reason I never tried—very hard—to take the leadership of the tribes. He’s been out there. I haven’t. And he has more power, to deal with—all that.” I didn’t know what the admission had cost him, if anything. I wasn’t reading him. “I don’t envy you for it, either,” he added.
“If we do it successfully, this world should be safe for a long time, no matter what we tell them here.”
“How?”
I groped for a metaphor, found one. “You know how, when Stronghome was built, they made the bridges on the mountain track so they could be blown up?” He made a small nod of assent. “Well, one of the things we want to do is blow up the bridges between the Com and here.”
“Ah,” the Chief of the Marl said, immediately seeing more than I’d just said. “Will you be able to get back?”
“We hope so.”
The idea hit me then, blossoming whole in my mind and wearing the face of brilliance, a beautiful unity that effectively masked the darkness and danger it hid beneath its surface. I would go back to the Com without Jemeret. That way, if I could not succeed in eliminating the Lume technology without losing all the ships, he would still remain on the world he loved, rather than marooned with me in a society he hated. I was convinced I had just hurt and disappointed him, and the idea of sacrificing the surety of my own return, while preserving his, seemed to be a wonderful way to make amends. I loved Caryldon very much, but he loved it more than I did, so I could give him this as a gift. It all seemed so reasonable, and I was, after all, very tired. I didn’t think to look any further.
I’m making excuses. What happened next in this story I’m telling is really simple. I made what I thought was a correct decision, and I didn’t know until much later that I wasn’t the one who made it. Oblivious as any talentless person, I simply acted, thinking it was all my own idea.
I took Keli and the shuttle, and I went up to Markover Station. I left Jemeret and the others on Caryldon, telling myself that I was doing it because he might not have been able to come home, and it needed him more than it needed me. I also left my nomidar, Tynnanna, and Andriel.
If I hadn’t been wearing my brow-crown—and if I hadn’t forgotten I had it on until I changed clothes in the ascending shuttle—I’d have left it, too, and everything would have been completely different.
XVII. Alone in the Com
It’s strange, when I think about how much time I spent in the dark, one way or another, that the time I spent brainless in the radiant tank on Orokell and Markover Station still has the power to frighten me far more than the time I spent in the rock chamber on Ananda. Perhaps it’s because I’d been responsible for putting myself in the tank, while I was neither responsible for, nor alone in, the rock chamber. I’m getting ahead of the story.
My reception on Markover was welcoming, even though Jasin Lebec, Lendo Dell, Sinet Coleby, and Mortel John were all surprised I’d returned with no one else except Keli. I wanted to be away—if possible through the first roll—before Jemeret realized I was gone. It would take a long time for him to get another Lumeship out into the far arm to pick him up, so I thought I’d have sufficient time to assess the present situation regarding both Dolen T’Kelle and the MIs. Perhaps I could even accomplish something.
On Markover, I exerted every bit of authority a Class A is capable of to move all of us onto the Detralume and out of Caryldon orbit in the first twenty minutes of my stay there.
Keli had asked no questions when I summoned her away from Andriel, and though I kept trying to soothe the child as I avoided our house to stay out of Jemeret’s way, she called for me until the shuttle rose beyond her range.
Now, of course, I can admit that at least one of the reasons I fled was cowardice. Like so many other strong and decisive women, I was plagued with self-doubt once my decision was irrevocable. Getting away was all I could think to do, and I did it without regard for anyone else’s feelings.
Once I was aboard the rollship, Sinet Coleby broached the question of why I’d done it. We had paused for a few moments on the bridge while the ship absorbed the roll coordinates and fed them to the Lume field generator. She studied me for a long time, running her slender fingers back through her thick, red hair. “Well,” she said at last, “you’ve come away without the others, which wouldn’t be overly disturbing, except that Jemeret stayed behind, too. I was certain he wouldn’t let you leave without him.”
