He opened his mouth again, but the woman—it shocked him a little, and he wondered that it did not shock him even more—was suddenly beside him. A split-second before she had been ten feet away.
“You have much to learn,” she said. “First, though—remember not to speak. It isn’t necessary. Simply frame your thoughts. There’s a little trick to it. No—keep your mouth closed. Think. Think your question.”
Her lips had moved slightly, but merely for emphasis. And surely normal vocal cords could not have been capable of that unearthly sweetness and evenness of tone, with its amazing variations and nuances. Miller thought, “Telepathy. It must be telepathy.”
They waited, watching him inquiringly.
The woman said, silently, “Think—to me. Frame the thought more carefully. The concepts must be rounded, complete. Later you may use abstracts but you can’t do that yet. All I can read is a cloudiness. …”
Miller thought carefully, word by word, “Is this telepathy?”
“Still cloudiness,” she said. “But it’s clearer now. You were never used to clear thinking. Yes, it is telepathy.”
“But how can I—where am I? What is this place?”
She smiled at him, and laughter moved through the group. “More slowly. Remember, you have just been born.”
“Just—what?”
And thoughts seemed to fly past him like small bright insects, grazing the edges of his consciousness. A half-mocking, friendly thought from one of the men, a casual comment from another.
Brann
, Miller thought, remembering. What about Brann? Where is he?
There was dead silence. He had never felt such stillness before. It was of the mind, not physical. But he felt communication, super-sensory, rapid and articulate, between the others. Abruptly the rainbow-haired woman took his arm, while the others began to drift off through the prism-leaves and the golden trees.
She pulled him gently away under the tinkling foliage, through the drifts of colored mists. Brushing violet fog before them with her free hand, she said, “We would rather not mention Brann here, if we can avoid it. To speak of him sometimes—brings him. And Brann is in a dangerous mood today.”
Miller looked at her with a frown of concentration. There was so much to ask. In that strange mental tongue that was already coming more easily to him, he said, “I don’t understand any of this. But I know your voice. Or rather, your—I’m not sure what you’d call it.”
“The mental voice, you mean? Yes, you learn to recognize them. It’s easy to imitate an audible voice but the mental one can’t be imitated. It’s part of the person. So you remember hearing my thoughts before? I thought you were asleep.”
“You’re Tsi.”
“Yes,” she said and pushed aside a tinkling screen of the prisms. Before them stood a low rampart of light—or water. Four feet high, it ran like liquid but it glowed like light. Beyond it was blue sky and a sheer, dizzying drop to meadows hundreds of feet below. The whole scene was almost blindingly vivid, every lovely detail standing out sharp and clear and dazzling.
He said, “I don’t understand. There are legends about people up here, but not about—this. This vividness. Who are you? What is this place?”
Tsi smiled at him. There was warmth and compassion in the smile, and she said gently, “This is what your race had once, and lost. We’re very old, but we’ve kept—” Abruptly she paused, her eyes brightening suddenly with a look of terror.
She said. “Hush!” and in the mental command there was a wave of darkness and silence that seemed to blanket his mind. For no reason his heart began to pound with nervous dread. They stood there motionless for an instant, mind locked with mind in a stillness that was more than absence of sound—it was absence of thought. But through the silence Miller caught just the faintest echo of that thin, tittering laugh he had heard before, instinct with cold, merciless amusement.
The prism leaves sang around them with little musical tinklings. From the sunlit void stretching far below birdsong rippled now and then with a sweetness that was almost painful to hear. Then Tsi’s mind relaxed its grip upon Miller’s and she sighed softly.
“It’s all right now. For a moment I thought Brann … but no, he’s gone again.”
“Who is Brann?” Miller demanded.
“The lord of this castle. A very strange creature—very terrible when his whims are thwarted. Brann is—he cares for nothing very much. He lives only for pleasure and, because he’s lived so long and exhausted so many pleasures, the devices he uses now are not very—well, not very pleasant for anyone but Brann. There was a warp in him before his birth, you see. He’s not quite—not quite of our breed.”
“He’s from the outside world? Human?” As he said it Miller knew certainly that the woman before him was not human, not as he understood the term.
But Tsi shook her head. “Oh, no. He was born here. He’s of our breed. But not of our norm. A little above in many ways, a little below in others. Your race—” there was faint distaste and pity in the thought, but she let it die there, unelaborated.
“You can’t understand yet,” she went on. “Don’t try. You see, you suffered a change when you came. You aren’t quite as you were before. Were you ever able to communicate telepathically?”
“No, of course not. But I don’t feel any different. I—”
“A blind man, given sight, wouldn’t realize it until he opened his eyes. And he might be dazzled at first. You’re at a disadvantage. I think it would be best for you to get away. Look there, across the valley.”
She lifted an arm to point. Far off across the dazzling meadows hills rose, green in the sunlight, shimmering a little in the warm, clear light. On the height of the highest a diamond glitter caught the sun.
“My sister,” Tsi said, “has that palace over there. I think Orelle
