Is this true? You truly, have no idea what I am hinting at?
Not even a clue? Why, most of the inhabitants of the Five Galaxies — even the enigmatic Zang — know of the ship we seek. A vessel pursued by half the armadas in known space.
You have indeed lived in isolation, My rustic rings! My primitive subselves. My temporary pretties, who have not heard of a ship crewed by half-animal dolphins.
How very strange indeed.
Sara
WITHOUT DARK GLASSES PROVIDED BY THE HORSERIDING Illias, Sara feared she might go blind or insane. A few stray glints were enough to stab her nerves with unnatural colors, cooing for attention, shouting dangerously, begging her to remove the coverings, to stare … perhaps losing herself in a world of shifted light.
Even in sepia tones, the surrounding bluffs seemed laden with cryptic meaning. Sara recalled how legendary Odysseus, sailing near the fabled Sirens, ordered his men to fill their ears with wax, then lashed himself to the mast so he alone might hear the temptresses’ call, while the crew rowed frantically past bright, alluring shoals.
Would it hurt to take the glasses off and stare at the rippled landscape? If transfixed, wouldn’t her friends rescue her? Or might her mind be forever absorbed by the panorama?
People seldom mentioned the Spectral Flow — a blind spot on maps of the Slope. Even those hardy men who roamed the sharp-sand desert, spearing roul shamblers beneath the hollow dunes, kept awed distance from this poison landscape. A realm supposedly bereft of life.
Only now Sara recalled a day almost two years ago, when her mother lay dying in the house near the paper mill, with the Dolo waterwheel groaning a low background lament. From outside Melina’s sickroom, Sara overheard Dwer discussing this place in a low voice.
Of course her younger brother was specially licensed to patrol the Slope and beyond, seeking violations of the Covenant and Scrolls. It surprised Sara only a little to learn he had visited the toxic land of psychotic colors. But from snippets wafting through the open door, it sounded as if Melina had also seen the Spectral Flow — before coming north to marry Nelo and raise a family by the quiet green Roney. The conversation had been in hushed tones of deathbed confidentiality, and Dwer never spoke of it after.
Above all, Sara was moved by the wistful tone of her dying mother’s voice.
“Dwer … remind me again about the colors.…”
The horses did not seem to need eye protections, and the two drivers wore theirs lackadaisically, as to stave off a well-known irritation rather than dire peril. Relieved to be out of the Buyur tunnel, Kepha murmured to Nuli, sharing the first laughter Sara had heard from any Illias.
She found her thoughts more coherent now, with surprise giving way to curiosity. What about people and races who are naturally color-blind? The effect must involve more than mere frequency variations on the electromagnetic spectrum, as the urrish glasses probably did more than merely darken. There must be some other effect. Light polarization? Or psi?
Emerson’s rewq satisfied his own need for goggles. But Sara felt concern when he peeled back the filmy symbiont to take an unprotected peek. He winced, visibly recoiling from sensory overflow, as if a hoonish grooming fork had plunged into his eye. She started toward him — but that initial reaction was brief. A moment later the starman grinned at her, an expression of agonized delight.
Well, anything you can do—she thought, nudging her glasses forward.…
Her first surprise was the pain that wasn’t. Her irises adjusted, so the sheer volume of illumination was bearable.
Rather, Sara felt waves of nausea as the world seemed to shift and dissolve … as if she were peering through layer after layer of overlapping images.
The land’s mundane topography was a terrain of layered lava flows, eroded canyons, and jutting mesas. Only now that seemed only the blank tapestry screen on which some mad g’Kek artist had embroidered an apparition in luminous paint and textured thread. Each time Sara blinked, her impressions shifted.
— Towering buttes were fairy castles, their fluttering pennants made of glowing shreds of windblown haze. …
— Dusty basins became shimmering pools. Rivers of mercury and currents of blood seemed to flow uphill as merging swirls of immiscible fluid.…
— Rippling like memory, a nearby cliff recalled Buyur architecture — the spires of Tarek Town — only with blank windows replaced by a million splendid glowing lights.…
— Her gaze shifted to the dusty road, with pumice flying from the wagon wheels. But on another plane it seemed the spray made up countless glittering stars.…
— Then the trail crested a small hill, revealing the most unlikely mirage of all … several narrow, fingerlike valleys, each surrounded by steep hills like ocean waves, frozen in their spuming torrent. Underneath those sheltering heights, the valley bottoms appeared verdant green, covered with impossible meadows and preposterous trees.
“Xi,” announced Kepha, murmuring happily in that accent Sara found eerily strange-familiar …
… and she abruptly knew why!
Surprise made Sara release the glasses, dropping them back over her eyes.
The castles and stars vanished …
… but the meadows remained. Four-footed shapes could be seen grazing on real grass, drinking from a very real stream.
Kurt and Jomah sighed. Emerson laughed and Prity clapped her hands. But Sara was too astonished to utter a sound. For now she knew the truth about Melina the Southerner, the woman who long ago came to the Roney, supposedly from the far-off Vale, to become Nelo’s bride. Melina the happy eccentric, who raised three unusual children by the ceaseless drone of Dolo Dam.
Mother … Sara thought, in numb amazement. This must have been your home.
The rest of the horsewomen arrived a few miduras later with their urrish companions, dirty and tired. The Illias unsaddled their faithful beasts before stripping off their riding gear and plunging into a warm volcanic spring, beneath jutting rocks where Sara and the other visitors rested.
Watching Emerson, Sara verified that one more portion of his battered brain must be intact, for the spaceman’s eyes tracked the riders’ nude femininity with normal male appreciation.
She squelched a jealous pang, knowing that her own form could never compete with those tanned, athletic figures below.
The starman glanced Sara’s way and flushed several shades darker, so sheepishly rueful that she had to laugh out loud.
“Look, but don’t touch,” she said, with an exaggerated waggle of one finger. He might not grasp every word, but the affectionate admonishment got through.
Grinning, he shrugged as if to say, Who, me? I wouldn’t think of it!
The wagon passengers had already bathed, though more modestly. Not that nakedness was taboo elsewhere on the Slope. But the Illias women behaved as if they did not know — or care — about the simplest fact all human girls were taught about the opposite sex. That male Homo sapiens have primitive arousal responses inextricably bound up in their optic nerves.
Perhaps it’s because they have no men, Sara thought. Indeed, she saw only female youths and adults, tending chores amid the barns and shelters. There were also urs, of Ulashtu’s friendly tribe, tending their precious simla and donkey herds at the fringes of the oasis. The two sapient races did not avoid each other — Sara glimpsed friendly encounters. But in this narrow realm, each had its favored terrain.
Ulashtu knew Kurt, and must have spent time in the outer Slope. In fact, some Illias women also probably went forth, now and then, moving among unsuspecting villagers of the Six Races.
Melina had a good cover story when she came to Dolo, arriving with letters of introduction, and baby Lark on her hip. Everyone assumed she came from somewhere in the Vale. A typical arranged remarriage.
It never seemed an issue to Nelo, that his eldest son had an unknown father. Melina subtly discouraged inquiries into her past.
But a secret like this …
