sere. On die north, while hills heightened in the background, bluffs declined to gentle slopes. Towers came into hazy view, grew clearer, loomed sheer above masts crowded along the wharfs; and Aliyat went ashore into Xenoknossos.
Warded by stream and fleet, the city had no need of outer walls. Along wide, clean streets, colonnades and facades rose intricately sculptured. Glass flashed in color patterns of contrasting simplicity. The effect was not busy but harmonious, airy, like trees and vines in wind or kelp in currents, undersea, strange to behold on a world that dragged so heavily. The raucous turbulence of human crowds was absent. Dwellers moved deliberately; even the looks and remarks that followed Aliyat were decorous. It was their voices that danced, twittered, strove, joined together—their voices and the sounds of instruments from places where they took their pleasure.
Not all was thus. Climbing a hill, she saw down to a camp outside the city, a wretched huddle of makeshift shelters. The beings within stood ominously bunched. Armed guards were posted about. Chill touched her. This must, somehow, be the reason she was called.
On the hilltop fountained the building she knew as the Halidom. Its stone had weathered pale amber. Nothing like its interwoven, many-branched vaults and arches, spiral wm-dows and calyx eaves, was ever on Earth. Imagination yonder had never ranged in those directions. When the images arrived, architecture, together with musk and poesy and much else, might well have a rebirth, if anybody still cared about such things.
S’saa accompanied her inside. A chamber vast and dim opened before them. The mighty of Xenoknossos had gathered, expectant, in a half circle before a dais. Thereon were those three, one of each sex, who reigned or presided or led. Hearing tell of them, Hanno had from space proposed dubbing them the Triad, but later those at Hestia thought a better word might be the Triune.
She approached.
That night she radioed back from the apartment lent her. She camped in it, really, as ill suited as the furnishings were; but it served. A window was unshuttered to warm darkness, the booming of a breeze. The small horned moon tinted clouds and cast ghostly shimmers on the river. Fires burned sullen among the squatters in the field.
Exhaustion flattened her voice, though her mind had seldom felt more awake. “We’ve been at it all day,” she said. “Not that the trouble is complicated in itself, but it involves beliefs, traditions, prejudices, everything that’s so knitted into a person— Think of a pagan Celt and a pious Muslim trying to explain, to justify, the status and rights of women to each other.”
“The Ithagene did have the wisdom to ask for an outside opinion,” Patulcius remarked. “How many human societies ever did?”
“Well, this is unprecedented,” Wanderer answered from the outback. “We never had any real aliens among us on Earth. Maybe in future we’ll benefit— Go on, Aliyat.”
“It’s how they breed,” copulating in fresh water, which must be still if conception was to result; a certain concentration of certain dissolved organic materials was essential. That set no more of a handicap, on a world where most regions were normally wet, than loss of the ability to synthesize vitamin C in the body had done for her species. “You remember, the city people use that lake in the hills behind town.” Holy Lake became the human name, for it seemed lovemaking was a religious rite in this society. “Well, throughout the hinterlands, most others have dried up to the point where they’re useless. The habitants have gotten together and demand access to Holy Lake till the drought’s over. It’s badly shrunken too, but enough is left for everybody if triples ration their turns.” Aliyat’s laugh clanked. “How that would go over with our race! But of course the Ithagene don’t think of it the way we do. What has the Xenoknossians up in arms is the thought of ... outsiders profaning their particular mystery, the presence of their, their tutelary spirit or god or whatever it is. The Triune told the countryfolk to go home and wait out the bad times. They shouldn’t breed anyway till the rains come again. But you know about the sacred Year- Births—”
“Yes,” Tu Shan said. “Besides, they live primitively, infant mortality is always high, they feel they must be fecund whatever happens.”
“The realm, this whole section of Minoa, is close to civil war,” Aliyat told them. “There’ve been killings. Now the, uh, tribes have jointly sent two or three thousand here, who insist that soon, come what may, they’ll go to the lake. Nothing can stop them, short of a massacre. Nobody wants that, but to give in could tear things apart almost as terribly.”
Macandal whistled low. “And we had no idea. If only they’d come to us sooner.”
“I don’t suppose it occurred to them before they got desperate,” Patulcius guessed. “If we don’t find a solution fast, I suspect it will be too late.”
“That’s why you went, Aliyat.” Macandal’s tone wavered. “I gathered, from S’saa’s hints, that it concerned this kind of thing, and you, with your experience— Don’t misunderstand!”
“No offense,” Aliyat said. “I did, I hope, slowly get a feel for what’s going on, and a notion. It may be worthless.”
“Tell us,” Svoboda begged.
If you could use human words for Ithagenean emotions and make sense, Aliyat thought, then the assembly next morning was appalled. “No!” exclaimed the le of the Triune. “This is impossible!”
“Not so, Foreseers,” she maintained. “It can be quickly and easily done. Behold.” She unfolded a sheet of paper. Copied thereon, a transmission from Hestia to a machine she had earned along, was an enlarged aerial photograph of Holy Lake and its vicinity. The Ithagene didn’t object to overflights, though none had ever accepted an invitation to ride. (Did some instinct forbid, was it a prohibition, or what?) She pointed. “The lake lies as hi a bowl, fed by rain and runoff. Here, a short way below, is a hollow. Let us clear it of trees and brush, then dig a channel through the hill above. Some of the life-giving water will drain out to fill it, while enough will remain for yon after the channel is closed again. There, out of sight of your people, the countryfolk can engender according to their own customs. For you this would be a huge undertaking, but you know of our machines and explosives. We will do it for you.” Hissings and rustlings filled the, gloom. S’saa must explain to Aliyat, patching out the native language with what human speech lo commanded: “Although they are reluctant, they would agree, lest worse befall. However, they fear the habitants will refuse, will take the proposal as a deadly threat. Knowing Kth and Hru’ngg, the leaders, I think this is true. For a life-site is not any pond; it is hallowed by ancient use, by the life it has given in the past. To triple elsewhere would be to set the work) awry. The rains might never return, or the violators might never have another birth.” Dismay struck whetted. “You don’t believe that!”
“Not we who are here, no. But those are simple upcoun-try folk. And it is true that not all bodies of water grant the blessing. Many do not, though surely they were tried at some time.”
“That is because—oh—oh, Christ, what’s the use?”
“Water flows from your eyes. Do you invoke?”
“No, I— You have no word. Yes, I invoke the dead, and the loss, and— Wait! Wait!”
“You leap, you raise your arms, you utter noises.”
“I, I have a new thought. Maybe this will serve. I must ask the council. Then I must... must doubtless go to the habitants and ... learn if it feels right to them.” Aliyat turned around to face the Triune.
For days heaven had been almost dear, an iron-hard blue, clouds nowhere but in the west. Heat lightning sometimes nickered yonder, and thunder muttered into windlessness. Now sunset reddened those reaches. Its beams struck through gaps and down valleys until they splashed the new tarn as if with human blood. Trees bulked black against h. More and more, the Ithagene gathered in their hundreds became masses of shadow, a wall around the water. Their singing beat like a heart.
Out of them trod the Eldritch Ones, three couples, for it was known that that was their nature. On their right walked the Foreseers of the City, lanterns aloft on poles to cast many-patterned light; on their left, torches flared and smoked among the Sower Chieftains. These halted at the marge. The six went onward.
Aliyat felt drowned turf crisp beneath her feet. The water lapped around her ankles, knees, loins. Warmth from the day remained in it, but a coolness was rising from below, a pledge to years unborn. “Here’s where we stop,” she said. “The bottom slopes fast. Farther on, we’d soon be over our heads.” She couldn’t fight back a giggle. “That’d make it bard to go about this dignified, wouldn’t it?”
“I am not sure what we should do,” Tu Shan confessed.
“Nothing much. We have our clothes on, after all. They don’t know how we make babies anyway. But we must take our time and—“ A sudden odd shyness: “And get them to see we love each other.”
His arms enfolded her. She pressed herself close. Their mouths met. Vague in the twilight, she glimpsed
