Rediscovery (12 page)

“There are a lot of very basic things that can be done,” one of the men said, “soil assays, water samples—”

“It’s the people that I want to find out about,” said a woman. “There seems to be an extremely sophisticated civilization here. Perhaps if the shuttle can’t land, and we can find some of them, they can help us—”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Elizabeth,” a man snapped, and, even then,

Leonie disliked him just from his tone of voice. “You can’t make judgments on the basis of a single structure. And who in his right mind would live up
here,
anyway? Even if we can get to that stone heap of yours, we won’t find out anything!”

“Sophisticated, I said, not technological,” the woman called Elizabeth protested.

“There’s a difference.”

“There’s a good deal that can be surmised even on the basis of one building,” said the man standing next to Elizabeth. “Houses don’t build themselves; and if that—well, I’ll use your word, Evans—structure that we saw isn’t a house, it’s something very much like it. And it’s an entire building, intact. Considering what archeologists have discovered from a few scraps in a garbage heap that’s been abandoned for millennia, I’d say there’s quite a bit to be learned from a whole building.”

Especially when there are still people in it.
Leonie heard the thought, but apparently no one else did, for the debate continued unchanged. And she caught another thought from her “host”—that this kind of senseless bickering over nothing was exactly what she and the man who had spoken of “useful work” had feared.
Cabin fever
was the term her host used, and
post-trauma stress syndrome.
Whatever in Zandru’s coldest hell
that
meant.

“A castle, I’d say,” Elizabeth said, with something her host recognized as a hint of hysteria, “or something serving the same purpose—”

“Oh, now that’s interesting; just what purpose does a ‘castle’ serve?” Evans said, almost jeering, and trying obviously to provoke some kind of outburst, but Elizabeth answered quite seriously.

She’s concentrating on trivia to keep from falling apart,
her host thought. Then, fearfully,
If only I could do that. I ought to try…

“It could be the residence of an important personage, or a place for a garrison of soldiers, a fortified place…”

“You’re anthropomorphising,” Leonie heard someone say. Leonie recognized the

word, from the memory of the mind through which she was hearing it.
A common
fallacy,
her host thought,
the habit of attributing human motives or purpose to inanimate
or nonhuman things.

But how else, Leonie wondered, could one think about anything, except in human

terms, if one was human? Nonhuman thoughts were forever unknowable; one could only make analogies from the human. Even if one had the Gift of telepathy with nonhumans, there was never any understanding of their thoughts, only their feelings and emotions.

“I say, if it walks like a duck, smells like a duck and quacks, the chances are pretty overwhelming that it is either a duck or something like a duck,” said another man. “The chances are it’s a structure for humanoid use; it’s on the right physical scale. If it’s not built by and for humans as we know them, the chances are that it was constructed
for
something like humans.”

The voices rose again in a babble she could not sort out, and Leonie took the

opportunity to find out where she was. The overworld was without landmarks, but she could see, far off outside the shelter, the rising structure of Castle Aldaran, with the old Tower which still formed a part of the castle.

The Tower
—

That reminded her of Dalereuth, and suddenly she was sick of the strange and

half-incomprehensible thoughts of these mad people. She wanted things she recognized, thoughts she could understand—

Then she was back in her body in Dalereuth.

She lay there for a moment, simply gathering her thoughts. Then she realized that her responsibility was by no means at an end.

Somehow I must get a message to Aldaran; there is a strange group of people

there, lost in the storm.

Perhaps she might come to regret this, but at the moment it seemed unthinkable

that a group of men and women, no matter how strange, should be left at the mercy of the storms of the High Hellers.

There was no one to ask for advice, even if she had been inclined to ask for it. So Leonie set in motion the pattern for all that followed.

She sat up in bed and reached for the fur robe which lay there. Then she stopped; she was always being accused of not thinking, but simply acting; and so she paused to think how she would do this.

After a moment she got out of her bed, thrust her feet into fur-lined house boots, and went out into the halls of the Tower, and up the stairs which led to the relay chamber.

A young girl in a blue technician’s robe reclined there in a chair, drowsily

watching a large screen of what looked like gleaming black glass. As Leonie came in, she roused slightly and asked, “Leonie? At this hour? What do you want? Are you ill?”

“No,” said Leonie, stopping to think about what she really did want. “Carlina, I have been out in the overworld, and there are strangers—”

“The overworld? But you are not trained—I think we must speak to Fiora,” said

Carlina. “I have no authority—”

Leonie repressed impatience. She was apparently more concerned about the fact

that Leonie had been out in the overworld—untrained—than the fact that great urgency must have driven her there!

“—oh, Fiora, there you are,” she finished, with a sigh of relief, as the door

opened, and Fiora, very pale in her crimson robes, came in. “I hope we did not disturb you.”

“No,” Fiora said, turning her blind face toward them. “But I always hear if

something moves in the Tower at an unaccustomed hour. Leonie, what ails you? Why are you not in your bed? It is very late—or perhaps I should say very early—to be here like this. And in your night-wear—”

She spoke as if to a small child and Leonie repressed her annoyance, for there was more at stake here than being treated like a child. The more she thought about it, the more important those strange people became. They were important to—to something.

And in truth, they did not seem capable of taking care of themselves through a

brutal Hellers storm. Someone must see to them.

She said, as seriously and soberly as she could manage, “Yes, I knew you were

the one to be told, but I did not know if you should be wakened. I have been in the overworld, Fiora, and I have seen something—”

She paused, overcome with the apparent impossibility of saying just what she had seen. Fiora sensed her hesitation and spoke a little irritably.

“Well, and so what have you seen, and what can we do about it?” she asked. “I

assume that you came up here because you felt we can and should be doing something.”

The annoyance in her voice robbed Leonie of the last of her caution.

She thinks I have had a nightmare, and not that I have done what I said
—

“Fiora, I felt that there was some sort of peril, or danger; I hunted for the source and I saw strangers,” Leonie said. “Strangers, lost in a shelter near Aldaran, at the mercy of the weather.”

Fiora’s interest rose a little. “Are they anyone you know, or anyone you have ever seen before?”

“No, and no,” Leonie answered, shaking her head, then as another thought

occurred, qualified, “I think perhaps I have been in contact with one of them before, through her music —a very strange instrument—”

Fiora dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “And these people are lost in a

storm?” Fiora asked. “You are certain? Near Aldaran?”

Carlina said, humbly, “She may be correct. I have heard on the relay from

Tramontana that a fearful storm is raging between Aldaran and Caer Donn.”

Fiora pondered that. “If there are strangers caught in it, we must send them succor of some kind.” She turned to Leonie. “You are certain of this? You would swear on your family honor that this is no childish nightmare?”

Leonie nodded. “They seem very—foreign,” she added. “I really do not think they

are capable of caring for themselves in a banshee-storm, Fiora. They seemed as—” she groped for words “—as helpless as a rabbit-horn in the desert.”

Carlina responded to Fiora’s nod of permission to act. “I will communicate at

once with the Keeper in the Aldaran Tower and warn everyone to be on the alert for these strangers.”

But Fiora had another question. “You said they were foreign. Are they intruders, invaders?”

She moved to stand before the screen, while Leonie said, “Not invaders, no. I felt they were lost, strangers, and that they had no intention of intrusion or invasion.”

“Well, I will trust your instinct,” said Fiora. “Your alertness may well have saved lives this night, and so I will not ask you why you were out in the overworld, Leonie.”

For some reason this made Leonie angry. What did Fiora think? That Leonie was

a wholly unlessoned child, that the overworld was a strange place to her, or dangerous?

Was she to do nothing without Fiora’s assent?

But she put aside her pride, remembering the bargain they had made, “I am sorry; I knew I was to try nothing without your knowledge, but truly, I thought this no harm. I

—I suppose I was missing my home, so far away, and my brother Lorill—”

She looked so miserable that Fiora said mildly, “No harm done, Leonie. Another

time, don’t go out unaccompanied; you know so little of the dangers of the overworld.

Now I will speak to the Keeper at Aldaran through the relays.” She took up her place before the great screen.

After a time Leonie heard her say—for though she did not speak aloud, Leonie

could read her easily,
Marisa? One of our novices here has been adventuring in the
overworld and has seen strangers in the storm you have there. Is it still snowing?

Yes, we have had eleven inches since it began and it shows no sign of stopping
within the next day or so,
came Marisa’s answer.
I
do not think I would be willing to go
out in such a storm, even in the overworld.

Well, Leonie is young and quite fearless,
Fiora said, and in spite of her reproof, Leonie thought there was a note of pride in Fiora’s unspoken voice.
She is a daughter of
the Hasturs, who has the ambition to become a Keeper.

Well, I will see to sending out a rescue party, as soon as the snow quiets,

responded Marisa.
And I will let you know about them
—
if they are there at all.

Oh, if Leonie says they are there, they are there right enough,
said Fiora.
I
know
her better than to think she would do this as a prank. And she is old enough to know the
difference between a nightmare and a true seeing.
She turned away from the screen, and back to the younger women. Once again, Leonie was struck by how easily and surely Fiora moved, though she moved in eternal darkness.

“You have the relays, Carlina. Destry will be coming to relieve you in an hour or two, I believe?”

“Yes, Fiora,” Carlina replied, nodding.

Fiora paused, turning her face toward Leonie, and said, “So much for that. We

cannot get any answer until it stops snowing a little and they can send out a rescue party from Aldaran. For the moment, Leonie, come with me. Tell me about these strangers, and what possessed you to do such a thing. Whenever you go out of your body, you should be monitored—did that never occur to you?”

She did not sound angry—only tired and a little worried. It was not a reproof as such. Leonie could not think of anything to say except, “No,
domna.”

Fiora sighed. “What am I going to do about you, Leonie? You have so much

talent, but you are so foolhardy!” she said, almost in despair. “You do not think these people are intruders or invaders, and yet you said they are foreign; tell me, what do you think they are, then?”

Leonie bit her lip, torn between confiding in her Keeper and sounding like a fool.

“I know it sounds ridiculous; but I think that these people are from—the moons. And before that—from beyond even the moons.”

She had expected Fiora to break out into laughter and would almost have

welcomed having someone ridicule her fears.
Chieri,
or Dry Towners, or even someone from beyond the Wall Around the World would be less frightening than these people with their alien thoughts. Instead Fiora looked grave.

“You would have no way of knowing this,” she said, after a moment of hesitation,

“but there was once a tale that—before even the days of the Gods—our own people had come here from another world. It is just an old tale, but what you say makes me

remember it.”

Leonie raised her head in mingled relief and alarm. “Then what I say is not utter folly? I know that there is no air on the moons and that no one could live there,” she said. “I felt such a fool when I said it.”

“No,” Fiora said, soberly. “Whatever it may be, I do not think it is folly. Whether welcoming them be foolish or not— well, that we will not know until these strangers are found. And that will be some time yet. Now go back to bed, Leonie, or if you are not sleepy,” Fiora added so quickly that Leonie wondered if the older woman was reading her thoughts, “then go and lie down and rest, or study, if you wish.” After a moment she added, “Whatever comes of this, I promise I will tell you, as soon as I know myself.”

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of howling winds and quarreling

colleagues, the snow had stopped. The shelter seemed a little more spacious since about half of those confined inside had rushed
outside
as soon as the winds died. Ysaye had remained indoors, huddled beside the fire, trying not to sneeze when the chimney failed to pull out all the smoke. She was afraid that she would never get the smoke smell out of her hair; she
knew
that she was never going to be warm again for as long as she lived.