The D’neeran Factor (90 page)

All time was a single piece to Gaaf, a seamless tissue. There were events, but it did not seem to him that they marked a progression. The events might as well have coexisted all together: until the very end.

There was:

A day of rain like the rain Gaaf remembered from the poor fields of Tarim on Co-op, the water coming down in a curtain like a solid substance. Without being able to see anything because of this cataract, he entered, with the others, a building that grew out of the rain. The water poured down with such power that inside it could be heard pounding the structure's roof, though the building was substantial. Gaaf was dizzy with the stench of the aliens. There were hundreds of them here, spots of gaudy color in their overdecorated garments, though they sat in shadow on long benches. Only the foremost portion of the great chamber was brightly lit, and there, set well to the back of a deep platform, were two black cubes. The human beings were taken to the front of the hall and given cushioned seats. A being dressed in scarlet came to the edge of the platform.

“I am Balee of Ell,” he said, and began to speak or to declaim, and presently Gaaf realized that he was attending some kind of memorial service for Rubee and Awnlee of Ell. When Balee was done, music began: a kind of irregular drone punctuated by scrapes and squawks. More beings came onto the platform, until it was filled with them. They were masked, and they glittered and dripped with jewels.

Suarez sat at Gaaf's right, and Castillo beyond Suarez. Gaaf heard Suarez whisper, “Those stones real?”

Castillo breathed, “Find out.”

Balee of Ell said, “And this is the story of the Fate of Relell.”

Gongs sounded, setting up vibrations in the walls, the furnishings, the bones. The beings on the platform moved in the stately ritual of the Fate of Relell.

“On a day,” said Balee, “Relell of the tribe of Relell in the land of Ell set forth with his selfings and all his kinsmen to settle on the far shore of the land of Naa. For in that time the coast of Ell was torn by great storms, and against those storms the Master of Chaos aided none, but watched.

“And Relell and his selfings and all the people went forth in fair ships well made, yet scarcely were they out of sight of land when the ship of Relell's selfing Uprell foundered, and all who traveled in it were lost. Yet when the people looked behind they saw that the storms were worse than before, and so they could not go back; yet when they
looked before them they saw the Master of Chaos. Therefore they went on.”

There was a good deal of noise on the platform-stage. Balee's voice was amplified, the stiff robes of the players crackled and swished, they chanted and cried out, and the droning went on, too, interrupted by other raucous noises. Under cover of all this Castillo and Suarez talked softly together. Gaaf leaned toward them, trying to appear as if he did not.

“Where do they keep it?”

“We'll find out.”

“Find out where it is from the air.”

“It won't be enough.”

“Mark one, though.”

“And they came after great peril and loss to the shore of the land of Naa, and it was summer. Yet the Master of Chaos had caused the season to sicken, and though summer it was cold, and nothing grew in all that fair land. And so when the people sought to plant the seeds they had brought, the seeds died in the ground, and nothing lived and all the land was barren. And there was an end to the food that had come on the ships, and there was great suffering. And the Master of Chaos walked among the people of Relell and watched, yet he did not signify amusement, but was grim and did not answer those who cried to him.

“The winter came, and Relell, though starving, was gravid, and his time came upon him and he brought forth a selfing whom he named Senu; for he wished the Master to be unaware that the youngling was of the land of Ell or the tribe of Relell or that he was the selfing of Relell, and thus he hoped that Senu would be spared. But the Master came to him as he suckled the babe, and it died at Relell's teat, and the Master watched. And Relell cried out to him, but the Master did not answer, and disappeared.

“At length the winter passed and spring came, and of those who had set forth from the land of Ell, only the twentieth part remained, and they had scarcely strength to hunt or fish. Yet they did, for they said to one another, ‘Now at last the winter is past, and surely now the Master will cease to discourage our endeavor.' And they grew stronger; but one day there came storms and wind. The wind blew down their huts and blew away their ships and weapons, and they
ran from the waves that came onto the shore. And Relell with his last strength tied himself to a tree so that he might not be washed away.

“But then he looked out to sea, and on the sea he saw a wave as big as a mountain, and he knew that his end had come. And in the wave he saw the lineaments of the Master of Chaos, and he cried out to the Master of Chaos, ‘Why? It was a brave undertaking done correctly. What is the reason for these things?'

“But the wave overcame him and he was swept away and drowned, along with all the people. And when all of them were gone the Master of Chaos looked down and said, ‘There was no reason.' Yet he did not signify amusement.

“And so,” said Balee abruptly, “it is until this moment,” and everything stopped.

After that the players went one by one to the black cubes and took off their jewels and laid them on the cubes. They grew into blazing heaps which Castillo watched with concentration; Suarez's mouth was open. Then it was over.

*   *   *

There was:

One more standardized tour of a manufacturing facility. Gaaf was on the flight deck again when the
Avalon
landed near it. Castillo and Suarez talked. Gaaf listened, and as he listened there filtered into his comprehension, too slowly for alarm, the reasons Castillo used the
Avalon
for local transport rather than accept the transportation the aliens offered. One reason was that here they could talk among themselves. Another was that this way they could build up detailed maps of where they had been so that, if they wished, they could come back to a place quickly.

Gaaf was not sure what that meant.

They got off the ship and there were greetings. Here were Biru and Brinee, and here also were the other beings of the official party of escorts, the devils who shadowed Castillo and the others. Here were the beings who managed this particular facility, and at their heels something else: a small furred bright-eyed creature on all fours, with a kind of embroidered saddle on its back. It made ambiguous noises the translator could not render into Standard.

The factory was built in a brown countryside. There was warmth in the sunlight, and Gaaf did not know if this country
was always brown, or if it was only not the season of growth. The factory made no pretense of fitting into its surroundings. It had cupolas, and its enameled facade was indigo and maroon. Gaaf's bitter youth on Co-op had convinced him that all factories ought to be underground. The Uskosians were proud of this one, though; it pleased them; they talked as if they were amused by its effrontery.

Castillo acted amused.

They went through the factory and the thing with the saddle got interested in Gaaf. It sidled up to him, pranced around his feet, tripped him up. He kept thinking it would bite him, he dodged it, he made tentative kicking movements, and finally he ducked into a dark passageway to escape it. It followed him. So did Brinee, who found him leaning against a wall, sweating, trembling, and cursing the beast in a whisper. His agitation was apparent even to nonhuman eyes, and Brinee shooed the thing away.

Brinee said, “I am sorry. It is only a pet.”

Brinee stood between Gaaf and the end of the passage. Gaaf looked past him longingly. Where were the other human beings?—he had to catch up with them. But he could not bring himself to walk toward Brinee in the dark.

Brinee said after a while, “My far-kin Awnlee had such a one as a child. He loved it dearly.”

Gaaf knew which of the dead aliens was Awnlee. Hanna's mental cry of anguish at his death had been perceptible to all of them.

The passageway was murky as the middle of a night. Something seemed to tug at the leg of Gaaf's trousers; he looked down in a frenzy, kicking. But there was nothing there.

“Are you well?” Brinee said.

Gaaf passed a shaking hand over his face and said, “This is hell.”

The word came out of the translator in unadorned Standard. Neither Ell nor any other Uskosian land had an equivalent concept or a comparable word.

“Ell?” said Brinee. “No, today we are in the land of Ree. Let us join the others.”

Throughout the rest of the tour, Gaaf felt animals snapping at his ankles. There were never any animals there, though.

The factory produced fine liqueurs the color of ripe
grain. There were jars and jars of them stacked, shelved, crated, awaiting shipment.

Castillo tasted the liqueurs and nodded. He said to Suarez, with no attempt at concealment, “Mark two.”

The aliens had no idea what he meant. Gaaf was beginning to guess.

They were given certain gifts, as Castillo had predicted. Half a dozen jars of the exotic liqueur; a pyramid of spun-crystal many-colored balls that made sweet sounds when the wind blew over them; stiff ceremonial gowns and masks in primary colors; a handful of other things; not much.

“They took a fortune in presents to Earth,” Ta complained aboard the
Avalon.

“They expect a return before they do that again,” Castillo answered.

That was enough to satisfy Ta, but Gaaf, emboldened by this rare communicativeness in Castillo, said, “Did they come out and say that?”

“Hinted.”

“That's a hell of an attitude,” Ta said, aggrieved.

Wales said, “The funny thing is we've got what the Polity was going to give them right down in the holds.”

Some of them chuckled, but Gaaf did not see the humor in it.

“Don't say so when they're around,” Castillo said. “Not a word.”

They were traveling toward a city in the heart of Ell where they would be welcomed by an agrarian guild. Suarez said before they landed, “Won't be much here, I guess.”

“You never know,” Castillo said. “There's something they want us to see later, some kind of museum. Might round us out, if it's as good as I think it is. It's time we went. Long way to Gadrah. Back to Omega, a good six weeks; a week to Heartworld sector; then another five. Three months. We might pass the Polity on the way, I guess,” he said, and the smile came again.

They had now been on Uskos for two Standard weeks, and Gaaf had thought himself adjusting to it. By that he meant that he had learned to blank out the nonhuman landscapes, beings, language, and artifacts. He clung instead
to the interludes on the
Avalon
as if they were life, and all the rest a dream to be endured. In this life a single image suddenly stood out, clear if not technically accurate. It was the course Castillo projected: a course through the waste of Outside, then into and out the other side of human space to another void. In the middle—to be crossed with casual haste, touching nothing—was all the space Gaaf had ever known before: Earth and Fleet's headquarters at Admin, the amusements of Valentine, the roiling network of Polity culture, even the outposts to which Oversight ministered, even (God help him) Co-op. And everything outside that was barren: a few alien civilization that were patches of terrifying light; and Gadrah, the unknown.

He put his head down on his knees because he felt faint. “You sick?” Bakti said.

He mumbled, “I don't feel so good.”

“That's a joke,” Suarez said. “The doctor gets sick.”

He thought of saying:
Maybe we can catch what they have here.
But he did not, because he suddenly did not want them to have an overriding reason for wanting a physician aboard.

He still had his head down at the landing. He said, “I have to stay here. I can't sit through one of those God damn shows the way I feel.”

“I don't know if I can get through another one either,” Wales said, but they were indifferent.

Castillo said, “If somebody's here, at least we don't have to secure the ship. Just keep your eyes open.”

“Yes,” Gaaf said.

They were down and the others filed out to the farmers' guildhall and a dignified spectacle of sowing and reaping, to the some-kind-of-museum which might be—what? Mark five? Mark six? Mark the last, anyway.

Gaaf did not raise his head until they were gone. When he did he had real difficulty doing it, because of the fatigue that dragged at his bones all the time. From the flight deck he saw that the sky outside was gray. The town of Elenstap was spread out before him on a series of gracefully folded hills. Many of the structures in it were brightly colored, so that it presented a festive air. But the colors all ran together, and it was not a human spectacle, and Gaaf shrank away from it, back into the dimness of the
Avalon.