who, believe me, were comical folk;
For to people’s surprise,
they both saw with their eyes,
and their tongues moved whenever
they spoke!”
Then, as the feast was hitting its stride, there came a rude interruption. Staccato flashes lit the northwest horizon, outlining the distant bulk of Blaze Mountain, drawing everyone to the balcony rim.
Duras passed before sounds arrived, smeared by distance to murmuring growls. Sara pictured lightning and thunder — like the storm that had drenched the badlands lately, drumming at her pain-soaked delirium. But then a chill coursed her spine, and she felt glad to have Emerson nearby. Some apprentices counted intervals separating each flash from its long-retarded echo.
Young Jomah voiced her own thoughts.
“Uncle, is Blaze Mountain erupting?”
Kurt’s face had been gaunt and bleak. But it was Uriel who answered, shaking her long head.
“No, lad. It’s not an erufshun. I think …”
She peered across the poison desert.
“I think it is Ovoon Town.”
Kurt found his voice. The words were grim.
“Detonations. Sharp. Well-defined. Bigger than my guild could produce.”
Realization quenched all thought of revelry. The biggest city on the Slope was being razed, and they could only watch, helplessly. Some prayed to the Holy Egg. Others muttered hollow vows of vengeance. Sara heard one person explain dispassionately why the outrage was taking place on a clear night — so the violence would be visible from much of the Slope, a demonstration of irresistible power.
Awed by the lamentable spectacle, Sara had been incapable of coherent thought. What filled her mind were images of mothers—hoonish mothers, g’Kek mothers, humans, and even haughty qheuen queens — clutching their children as they abandoned flaming, collapsing homes. The visions stirred round her brain like a cyclone of ashes, till Emerson gave her a double dose of traeki elixir.
Dropping toward a deep, dreamless sleep, she had one last thought.
Thank God that I never accepted Sage Taine’s proposal of marriage.… I might have had a child of my own by now.
This is no time … to allow so deep a love.
Now, by daylight, Sara found her mind functioning as it had before her accident — rapidly and logically. She was even able to work out a context for last night’s calamity.
Jop and Dedinger will preach we should never have had cities in the first place. They’ll say the Galactics did us a favor by destroying Ovoom Town.
Sara recalled legends her mother used to read aloud, from books of folklore covering many precontact Earthling traditions. Most Earth cultures told sagas of some purported golden age in the past, when people knew more. When they had more wisdom and power.
Many myths went on to describe angry gods, vengefully toppling the works of prideful mortals, lest men and women think themselves worthy of the sky. No credible evidence ever supported such tales, yet the story seemed so common it must reflect something deep and dour within the human psyche.
Maybe my personal heresy was always a foolish dream, and my notion of “progress” based on concocted evidence. Even if Uriel and others had begun to embark on a different path, the point seems moot now.
Dedinger proved right, after all.
As in those legends, the gods have resolved to pound us down.
Confirmation of the outrage came later by semaphore — the same system of flashing mirrors that had surprised Sara days ago, when a stray beam caught her eye during the steep climb from Xi. Using a code based on simplified GalTwo, the jittering signal followed a twisty route from one Rimmer peak to the next, carrying clipped reports of devastation by the River Gentt.
Then, a few miduras later, an eyewitness arrived, swooping out of the sky like some fantastic beast of fable, landing on Uriel’s stone parapet. A single human youth emerged beneath shuddering wings, unstrapping himself after a daring journey across the wide desert, skimming from one thermal updraft to the next in a feat that would have caused a sensation during normal times.
But heroism and miraculous deeds are routine during war, Sara thought as crowds gathered around the young man. His limbs trembled with exhaustion as he peeled off the rewq that had protected his eyes above the Spectral Flow. He gave the Smith a militia salute when Uriel trotted out of the workshop grottoes.
“Before attacking Ovoom Town, the Jophur issued a two-part ultimatum,” he explained in a hoarse voice. “Their first demand is that all g’Keks and traekis must head to special gathering zones.”
Uriel blew air through her nostril fringe, a resigned blast, as if she had expected something along these lines.
“And the second fortion of the ultinatun?”
She had to wait for her answer. Kepha, the horsewoman from Xi, arrived bearing a glass of water, which the pilot slurped gratefully, letting streams run down his chin. Most urrish eyes turned from the unpleasant sight. But Uriel stared patiently till he finished.
“Go on,” she prompted again, when the youth handed the empty glass back to Kepha with a smile.
“Um,” he resumed. “The Jophur insist that the High Sages must give up the location of the dolphin ship.”
“The dolphin shif?” Uriel’s hooves clattered on the flagstones. “We heard vague stories of this thing. Gossif and conflicting hints told vy the Rothen. Have the Jophur now revealed what it’s all avout?”
The courier tried to nod, only now Tyug had come forward, gripping the youth’s head with several tentacles. He winced as the traeki alchemist secreted ointment for his sun-and windburns.
“It seems … Hey, watch it!” He pushed at the adamant tendrils, then tried ignoring the traeki altogether.
“It seems these dolphins are the prey that brought both the Rothen and the Jophur to Galaxy Four in the first place. What’s more, the Jophur say the sages must be in contact with the Earthling ship. Either we give up its location, or face more destruction, starting with Tarek Town, then lesser hamlets, until no building is left standing.”
Kurt shook his head. “They’re bluffin’. Even Galactics couldn’t find all our wood structures, hidden under blur cloth.”
The courier seemed less sure. “There are fanatics everywhere who think the end is here. Some believe the Jophur are agents of destiny, come to set us back on the Path. All such fools need do is start a fire somewhere near a building and throw some phosphorus on the flame. The Jophur can sniff the signal using their rainbow finder.”
Rainbow finder … Sara pondered. Oh, he means a spectrograph.
Jomah was aghast. “People would do that?”
“It’s already happened in a few places. Some folks have taken their local explosers hostage, forcing them to set off their charges. Elsewhere, the Jophur have established base camps, staffed by a dozen stacks and thirty or so robots, gathering nearby citizens for questioning.” His tone was bleak. “You people don’t know how lucky you have it here.”
Yet Sara wondered. How could the High Sages possibly give in to such demands? The g’Kek weren’t being taken off-planet in order to restore their star-god status. As for the traeki, death might seem pleasant compared with the fate planned for them.
Then there was the “dolphin ship.” Even the learned Uriel could only speculate if the High Sages truly were in contact with a bunch of fugitive Terran clients.
Perhaps it was emotional fatigue, or a lingering effect of Tyug’s drug, but Sara’s attention drifted from the litany of woes recited by the pilot. When he commenced describing the destruction and death at Ovoom, Sara steered her wheelchair to join Emerson, standing near the courier’s glider.
The starman stroked its lacy wings and delicate spars, beaming with appreciation of its ingenious design. At first Sara thought it must be the same little flier she had seen displayed in a Biblos museum case — the last of its
