“We will talk more after I have crushed them in Valennen. If naught else, I must put on such show of might to hold the Tassui at my beck. I warned the legion again and again, if it did not leave it would be destroyed. Now my warriors are coming together. They will see Arnanak keep his word.”
Sparling stayed short-spoken and noncommittal, on Jill’s orders. The Overling must have gained some feel for human attitudes and expressions, and the man was better at outright concealing than at dissembling.
At the end of the feast, she turned grave and said, “I have to ask you about a thing. Could we three go outside?”
Arnanak was willing. Beyond the court, Jill tugged his elbow and pointed. “This way,” she urged.
He stiffened. “That path goes to a forbidden place.”
“I know. Come, a short ways.”
He yielded. They stopped out of view of the buildings. The suns were beneath the Worldwall, though not yet the ocean it hid. Shadows lay thick among dwarfish trees and shriveled brush. Overhead the sky was an ever richening blue, a planet stood white, Ea red. A breeze carried a ghost of coolness and rattled came stalks.
Arnanak’s eyes were green lanterns in the blackness under his mane. Fangs glinted when he said, bell- deep:
“Speak what you will, but be quick: for I have my own errand here.”
Jill gripped the comfort of Sparling’s arm. Her pulse fluttered. “What are the dauri, and what have you to do with them?”
He dropped hand to sword hilt. “Why ask you this?”
“I think I met one.” Jill described her encounter. “Innukrat would tell me naught, said I must wait for you. Yet surely there is common knowledge about them. I remember… hearing… somewhat.”
His tension lowered. “Aye. They are beings, creatures, not mortal. They are believed to have powers, and many folk set out small sacrifices, like a bowl of food, when a daur has been glimpsed. But that is seldom.”
“The food is no use to the daur. Is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean. Remember, my business is to learn about animals. The daur I saw was nothing magical. It was as mortal as you or I—a creature belonging to the same kind of life as the phoenix or the skipfoot, the kind of life which wholly possesses the Starklands, Yet it carried a knife. I saw the metal.” Did I really? “Arnanak, if the dauri were plentiful enough and far enough along to mine and forge metal, we humans would have discovered them. I think you gave it the blade… as part of a bargain.”
A leap in the dark. But, Christ, I’ve got to have guessed right!
Sparling added, “I told you myself, we came to, to these countries mainly to explore them, find out what they’re like. My fellows would be most grateful to anyone who gave them an important new piece of knowledge.”
Arnanak had stood quietly. Now he sprang like a panther to his decision. “Well,” he said. “The matter is not a dead secret, after all. I have told other Tassui somewhat of it. And I will keep you two till my hold on Valennen is beyond shaking.” He turned. “Follow.”
As they finished the short walk, Sparling stooped to whisper in Jill’s ear: “Then you’re right. An entire conscious race—and you figured out the truth.”
“Sh,” she answered. “Don’t talk English here. He might decide we’re conspiring.”
They reached the cabin. The sentries lifted spears in salute and stood aside. Arnanak unbolted the door and led the humans in. He closed it again immediately, before his watchers stepped back to where they could see.
Within, a pair of clay lamps cast dim light and monstrous glooms; for the windows, too high for peering through, were full of dusk. A single room lay roughly furnished in miniature. Shelves held blue-leaved vegetation, odd-shaped butchered carcasses: food for T-life. A rear door, latch on the inside, gave egress at will to the three who lived here.
Sparling choked on a gasp. Jill squeezed his hand.
Otherwise her attention burned at the starfish shapes. They scuttled back, letting out timid whistles and trills. The Ishtarian—the ortho-Ishtarian—reassured them with Tassu words, and at last they came to stand before newcomers who must be hideous in their sight.
“Hear the tale of my quest,” Arnanak said.
While he spoke, Jill stared and stared. Like most sophonts, the dauri seemed fairly unspecialized in body. She identified features, modified to be sure, she had seen illustrated in many works on T-biology. Inside those roughly spheroidal torsos must be skeletons arranged on a plan of intersecting hoops, with ball-and-socket joints for the five limbs. The top one, the branch, culminated in five fleshy petals which served both as chemosensor organs and as tongues to push food down into a pentagon of jaws. Under each petal was a tendril, an intricate set of fibers that received sound. At the ends of the arms, five symmetrical fingers could not grasp a shaft as firmly as man or Ishtarian, but no doubt were superior for an object like a hand ax. (Yes; Jill saw how their iron knives were hafted, and admired the ingenuity of Arnanak, who must have designed this.) The eyes at the roots of the arms were well developed, though strange to look into because the entire ball was self-darkening according to light intensity. Under the branch was a more primitive third orb, to co-ordinate visual fields which did not overlap. The remaining two eyes had changed into protuberances above the legs, whose varying shapes, colors and odors indicated that all three sexes were here represented. Otherwise, in this gloaming, the skin was dark purplish. In full tropical day it would be an almost metallic white—not too conspicuous, when many plants had the same protection.
Yes, remarkable but comprehensible, as T-life went… except for the minds behind.
And when Arnanak finished, and from a chest took out the Thing he had carried from the Starklands—
Both humans cried aloud. A crystalline cube, some thirty centimeters on a side, held blackness full of many- colored gleam-points. When Arnanak gestured, the vision changed, and symbols glowed now beside this spark, now beside that.
“Look well,” said the Overling of Ulu. “You will not see it again soon, if ever. It, and these dauri, go with me a pair of days hence, to hearten my warriors for our onslaught.”
A lamp had been lit in their room, and a bed heaped for Sparling, to rustle beneath feet when they entered. Oil burned with a piney fragrance, the air was merely warm, the window revealed the brightest stars.
“Oh, God, Ian, what a marvel!” Jill had not felt this caught up in splendor since—since—
His visage grew still more gaunt. “Yeah. But for what use?… Well, we’ll pass the information on.”
“We,” She caught his hands afresh. “You were here, to share it. Can I ever make you know what that means?”
“I, I’m glad I was.”
Borne on a tide, she said, “Ian, this is the first good I chance I’ve had to thank you. I never will be able to, not really, but I aim to try my damnedest.”
“Well, uh—” A side of his mouth bent upward, though he spoke almost uneasily: “Look, I should’ve insisted on separate rooms. If none’re available, and doubtless none are, I— Okay, I’ll go find my sleeping bag, wherever they’ve stowed it. Good night, Jill.”
“What? Good night? Don’t be ridiculous!”
He made as if to retreat. She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. After a second, he answered.
“Stop being this bloody honorable, man,” she murmured at last. “Oh, I’m fond of Rhoda myself and—You don’t have to say it, you didn’t expect a reward. But I want to!”
I do, I do. It’s been a starvishly long time. And, I don’t know, does revelation make a person horny? Anyhow, what harm, what besides kindness and caring, between two people who may never come back?
A wispy voice said through the drumbeats that there was a possibility her most recent sterishot had worn off. Go to hell, she told it. A thought flickered that the Sparlings had always wanted more children, but none were for adoption in Primavera. “I think I’m in love with you, Ian,” she said. “Already.”
NINETEEN
About the time that Ulu celebrated midsummer, Bel solstice, by dance, chant, drumbeat, and sacrifice, the
