Tatja Grimm's World

glass simulated hundreds of faraway candles. Like a lot of primitive folk, the Termiters had their own subtleties.

Rey expected the threatened body searches would come next. Instead, the Tarulle people were gestured to sit before the altar. There was a moment of near silence after Guille was asked to open the crate. Now he could hear a faint buzzing that came from all around, the sound of the real termites. They were, after all, inside an enormous hive. He pulled up the lid of the crate, and the insect sound was lost behind the villagers’ soft chanting.

The high priests lifted the top sheets from the crates. These were color illustrations that would be inside/outside covers on normally bound editions. The color didn’t show well in the candlelight, but the Termiters didn’t seem to mind; the best pictures from previous issues were mounted in the walls behind the altar. The priests pored over the illos, just like ordinary fans thrilled with the latest issue of their favorite magazine. Before, Rey would have smiled at their enthusiasm. Now he held his breath. At least one of those pictures showed Hrala carrying a spring-gun; could that be blasphemy?

Then the tall priest looked up, and Rey saw that he was smiling. “Wonderful, friend Guille. There is new Insight here. We will pay double.” The others were lifting typeset galley proofs out of the crate and solemnly laying them on velvet reading stands. There couldn’t be more than a handful of locals who knew Sprak; did they preach from the stories? Rey let out a carefully controlled breath. It didn’t matter now. The Tarulle people had passed the test and—

—outside the hall, someone was shouting. The words were indistinct, but Hurdic. The priests straightened, listening. The shouts came louder; people were rushing up the steps to the hall’s entrance. The barricades slid aside and Seraph’s light shone on the arrivals: they were spear carriers from the pier. They rushed down the aisle, still shouting. Their leader was waving something over his head. Everyone was shouting now. Rey saw that Brailly’s men had slipped into a circle formation. Some of them were reaching into their jackets.

Then the newcomer reached the altar, and one of the priests—the old one with the gimp leg—gave an incredible warbling scream. In an instant, all other cries ceased. He took two objects from the guard and held them close to the candles. Strange reflections shifted across his face and the ceiling. … He was holding the main mirror and the diagonal bracket from Rey’s telescope.

How can he know what these are, much less think them blasphemous? The thought hung for an instant in Rey’s mind, and then everything went crazy. The old man threw the mirror to the floor, then turned on the Tarulle visitors and shouted in Hurdic. No translation was needed; his face was contorted with hatred. Spearmen ran forward, weapons leveled. Brailly tossed something onto the altar; there was an explosion and swirling gouts of chokesmoke. Rey dived to the floor, tried to belly crawl out from under the choke. He heard Brailly’s men fighting their way toward the entrance. By the sound of it, they had some sort of weapons— strip knives probably. There were screams and ugly ripping sounds, all against a background of coughing and nausea. It sounded as if all the villagers had thrown themselves into the fight. They could never get past such a mob!

He had underestimated the Printmaster. From out of the smoke and shouting came Brailly’s voice. “Down! We’re gonna blast!” Rey tucked his head in his arms. A second later there was a flash of light and invisible hands crashed upon both sides of his head. He looked up. There was blue light ahead! Tounse had knocked the barricade over.

Guille came to his knees. If he could move while the locals lay stunned. …

His poor ears couldn’t hear the rumbling; it came through his knees and palms. All around them, the hive was shaking. He saw now that the pillars near the entrance had been smashed. Avalanches of moundstuff—first small, then engulfing, spilled down from above.

With that, the tower collapsed on the Great Hall, and Rey saw no more.

Four

Consciousness returned in patches. There were unpleasant dreams. Something was banging his head; it wasn’t the knock of his alarm clock. They were dragging him feet first, and his head was bouncing off uneven ground. The dream faded to pleasant grayness, then came back in a new form: he was rolling down a hillside, the rocks cutting into his body.

Rey came to rest in foul-tasting water, and wondered if he would drown before he woke up. Strong hands pulled him from the water. Through the ringing in his ears he heard someone say, “There. A moment of sitting to catch the breath.”

He coughed weakly, and looked around. No more dreams: the nightmare was reality. He was sitting by a shallow pond, near the bottom of a pit. The edge of the pit was ten yards above his head, except on one side, where it broke low and gave a view of the harbor. He was not alone. There were dozens of people here: all that remained of the Science crew. They clustered around the newly fallen companion. Looking up at their faces, Rey saw hope in some, fear and despair in others.

“You’re looking bad. Can you talk?” It was the woman who had pulled him from the pond. She was in her late fifties, an Osterlai by her accent. Her clothes were neat but stained. There was a matter-of-fact friendliness in her voice. In a moment he would remember who she was.

“Y-yes,” he croaked. “What happened?”

The woman gave a short laugh. “You tell us. Five minutes ago it just started raining people. Looks like the Termite Folk have found new blasphemers.”

Rey swallowed. “You’re right.” And it was his fault.

Most of his companions were in worse shape than he. The Science prisoners were trying to help, but two of the Tarulle people looked freshly dead. Nowhere did he see Brailly Tounse. He glanced at the Osterlai woman and made a wan smile. “We came to rescue you.” He gave his captive audience a brief account of the sales landing. “Everything was going fine. I was beginning to think they might listen to us, that we’d at least learn more about your situation. Then they found the mirror from my telescope. How could they know what it was, much less…” He noticed the look on the woman’s face.

“And how do you think we got in trouble, my sir? We thought to do some observing from the peaks Inland. We had a twenty-inch mirror; the Seraph-seeing should be better here than—She broke off in surprise. “Why you’re Rey Guille!”

Rey nodded, and she continued, “So I don’t have to tell you the details; you’ve written enough about the idea. … I’m Janna Kats, Seraphist at Bergenton; we met once a couple years back.” She waved a hand as recognition slowly dawned on Rey. “Anyway. We dragged that mirror ashore, gave the Termiters a look. They thought it was great stuff, till they learned what we wanted to look at.” She laughed, but it was not a happy sound. “Lots of religions worship Seraph. You know: home o’ the gods and such garbage. Turns out the Termiters think Seraph is something like the gods’ bedroom—and mortals mustn’t peep!”

So that was how they learned what the parts of a telescope look like. “It still doesn’t make sense,” Rey said. “In everything else, they seem to be ancestor worshipers; I’ve sold them dozens of Interior fantasies. How did Seraph idolatry get mixed in?”

The question brought a fit of coughing from the little man sitting beside Kats. “I can answer that.” The words were broken by more rasping coughs. The fellow’s face seemed shrunken, collapsed; Rey wondered that he could talk at all. “The Termite Folk are intellectual pack rats. For three hundred years they’ve been here, picking up a little of this, a little of that—from whoever was passing through.” More coughing. “I should have seen through ’em right off; I’ve spent my whole life studying coastal barbarians, learning Hurdic. But these folks are so secretive, I didn’t understand what was driving them … till it was too late.” A smile twisted his thin face. “I could get a nice research paper out of what we’ve learned here. Too bad we gotta die first.”

Rey Guille had years of experience finding loopholes in impossible situations—on paper. “Maybe we don’t have to die. I never thought the Termiters were killers. If their religion is such a hodgepodge, they can’t take the taboos too seriously. You’ve been here for several days. Maybe they just want a graceful way out.” It really made sense. Then he remembered Brailly’s bomb, and continued more quietly, “If there’s anything they’d kill for, I think it would be what my people did to the Village Hall.”