They pushed the doors open and stepped in. Behind them, the doors immediately closed, and they found themselves facing a curtain, which Gabriel cautiously pushed aside.
Gloom.
They stood there for a moment and let their eyes get used to it, gloom and the smell of wetness and growing things. It was surprising when you had just come in out of the general aridity of the dome's corridors. Very faint lights, like distant point sources, and a very pale glow as of midnight in a summery place, shone down from the ceiling, partially blocked away by the gently moving shadows of leaves and branches. The leaves were real, not projections or holographic illusions. Trees and ferny, bushy plants of every kind stood around in huge containers, bending up against the surprisingly high ceiling before curving down again. Creepers, here and there starred with pallid flowers, hung down and brushed against Gabriel's face as they made their way into the room. The place was filled with a faint spicy fragrance that he could not identify.
Enda sniffed and said, 'Galya. It is a wonder they can get it to grow here. Someone involved with this place must be a very skilled gardener. Can you see yet?' 'Pretty well.'
'Then see if you can find us a table.'
There was one available not too far away. They sat down, and Gabriel reached out idly to the tiny star- shaped lamp that sat in the middle of the table. The lamp was a little round ornament more like a stone with a light inside than anything else.
Enda looked at it curiously. 'Yes, there is a resemblance, is there not?' she said as Gabriel went into his pocket and came up with the luckstone, turning it over in his fingers and comparing it with the table light. 'This one is more polished. The beaches of the world from which these come must be a wonderful sight at night if they all glow like this.'
From out of the darkness a sesheyan came looming to stand over their table and said, 'From out of the night wanderers come: in His image they seek refreshment: let them but say what that might be.' 'Chai,' said Gabriel, still feeling some need for something to settle his stomach. 'White, please.' 'I will have the same,' Enda said.
They looked around them as the sesheyan went away. This place was certainly perfect from that species' point of view: dim enough to be easy on their eight sensitive eyes that were used to the deep multicanopied rainforests of Grith or Sheya. Somewhere off to the side, what might have been a bird whistled something very mournful, a minor-key tune of endless variation.
'Bebe bird,' said Enda, sitting back in her chair, pale in the dimness of the room, her eyes great dark pools. 'And galya. It is indeed a wonderful evocation of the place.' 'Is it always this dark down at ground level?' Gabriel asked.
'Darker,' said Enda. 'And hotter. The one thing they have spared us is the heat, which this time of year would be stifling near the equator. Dimness the sesheyan eye must have for its comfort, but as regards the heat, I think they can take it or leave it.'
Their chai came, and they thanked the sesheyan who brought it. He vanished almost without seeming to move, despite the fact that Gabriel's eyes had already become much more night-adjusted. Just a swirl of wing, a breath of silent breeze, and he was gone. Gabriel shook his head in admiration. 'Wish I could have moved like that,' he said.
'They are adept,' Enda replied. 'It is a great wonder to see, down in the little settlements around the forest cities near Angoweru and Uyellin, how one moment a clearing will be empty, nothing but a great dim space roofed over high above with layer over layer of leaves and darkness,.and suddenly there will be a hundred sesheyans there, or a thousand, chanting the Wanderer's Song.' She shook her head, looking upward around her. 'This is a worthy evocation. All unlike what you will find elsewhere on the planet.'
Gabriel had seen the many VoidCorp-owned facilities scattered across the face of Iphus and he felt no great desire to go anywhere near them, despite the frantic way in which they touted their entertainment facilities and so forth on the Grid. 'Not much like this, in other words.'
Enda shook her head. 'Oh, doubtless there are places that are physically as pleasant, but I would think there would not be many of them. Besides, without the scent of freedom, how much will the galya matter?' She pursed her lips.' 'Slavery is made no more tolerable by cool shadow or birdsong in the trees.' '
' 'Nor is Vec't'lir's wisdom more desirable merely for suffering's sake: or the Hunter's takings more valuable for their scarcity,' ' said a voice directly above their heads.
Both their heads jerked up. The tall shadowy form stood there with arms and wings akimbo, his four foremost eyes looking down on them. Gabriel took a long breath before moving, and he noticed the red stripe down the sides of the beishen.
'That is how I heard it some time ago from Devlei'ir,' Enda said, 'though the meaning was likely to change from moment to moment, as always with his stories.' She pulled out the third chair at the table. The sesheyan sat down and looked from Enda to Gabriel. 'I could swear I know your voice from somewhere,' Gabriel said.
'Yes,' said the sesheyan, folding his wings neatly about him and the chair so that he was little more than a blot of shadow. But a glint from the little star-stone and Gabriel's luckpiece caught in and on the front four eyes. 'And I remember your voice, as well. You called me brother.'
The idiom was perfectly human, and Gabriel blinked. 'Not as gracefully as you would speak to me, I'm afraid,' he said. 'So you would be Ondway.'
'That is my name in trees' shadow: under the Hunter's stars I have another,' Ondway said. 'You will have been talking with Delde Sola, otherwise the odds of your being in this spot are fairly low.'
'If I had known of it, I would have come anyway,' Enda said. 'This is a welcome change from the more ordinary places and general climate of Iphus.'
Ondway dropped his jaw in a grin at that. 'If an atmosphere-stripped rock such as this may be said to have a climate,' he said, 'then you are right. Will you tell me why Delde Sola sends you to me? Though I do have some idea.'
'We wouldn't mind somewhere quiet to stay for a while,' Gabriel said.
Ondway sat back in his chair and resettled his wings, folding his arms over them. 'I would need to know something of the reasons for your stay,' he observed. 'The reasons for needing quiet, I should say.' 'Don't you look at the Grid?' Gabriel said. 'I'm a celebrity, much pursued by my public.' Ondway chuckled at that. 'Should the Concord come looking specifically for you,' he said, 'I fear we could do little to protect you.'
'That's not what I'm asking. It's not the Concord that concerns me at the moment.' 'Is it not?' That seemed to take Ondway a little by surprise.
Enda tilted her head to one side, back again. 'There seems to be other interest in our doings,' she said. 'From a quarter that may lie-well, not exactly a thousand kilometers away from here.' Ondway swore softly, and Gabriel's eyes widened a little at the sound of it. It was the same hiss that Enda occasionally used. He had thought it was fraal. 'I take your meaning,' Ondway said.
'We have little concrete proof of this,' Enda said. 'Suspicion only at the moment. But there also seem to be other factions, or fractions, involved as well, and those we do not understand. Some of them are very frightening, and I would not willingly speak of them in a public place.'
Ondway waved one finger up at the ceiling. 'Their coverage is not as complete as they think,' he said. 'It is 'off when they least suspect it. At other times, we stage events for them so that they will think they're getting what they need.' That drop-jawed smile again. 'Will you want to be staying out of sight for very long?'
'No more than ten or twenty days. Our ship requires some repair, as well, but after that...' Enda glanced over at Gabriel.
'We'll be going back to Thalaassa,' he said, then tried to hold his face still, because he had no clear idea why he'd said it.
'For what purpose?' Ondway asked, rather abruptly, Gabriel thought.
'Trade,' Gabriel replied. 'Light electronics, that kind of thing. And possibly some mining after our cargo bay's put right.'
'Mining possibly,' said Ondway. 'There might be some way you might find your way back to Eraklion, but from this system to Thalaassa you would hardly trade.' 'Why not?'
'There is no trade with them any more,' Ondway said, 'not from Grith.' Enda looked surprised. 'Why? What happened?'
'The two worlds have forbidden such. Oh, not openly,' Ondway said. 'Such restriction of trade would be frowned on by the Concord, which those two worlds are presently studying to please, when they are not also
