A World Too Near (21 page)

Tonight would herald a new accommodation between himself and his heart’s desire. At this thought, he pulled his wings tightly against his back, calming himself. For days he had lain in misery, rejecting his nest mates and reliving his mortification at the hands of the Rose woman. It was not that he especially blamed her for failing to appreciate his magnificence. Many sentients were prejudiced against beings of other sways, despite the Tarig braying about equality. Hirrin, for example, could not abide Ysli, as all knew. Rather, it was that the woman had drawn him toward her, affecting interest, arousing his matching interest. Otherwise he would never have presumed, she being a favorite of the lords, after all, and a human at that—sentients known for rigidity and intolerance. No, he would never have presumed. But now, he was helplessly snared by her. That would require snaring back.

As he rounded a corner, the sack lying at his feet almost rolled off. He slowed to a more cautious pace. His spy in Johanna’s chamber had come just an interval ago with the intelligence that Johanna was abroad. Plenty of time. She was on foot, after all, and he had his sled.

Johanna was close now. The drumming sound hammered at her, rushing at her like harpies.

She passed empty stone chambers, some of them huge. She wondered if the centrum had once housed many Tarig. Had the Tarig once needed halls in which to confer, to plan against the Paion? Had there been an era when the Tarig were not so confident? The thought led her back to an idea she had had before: that the Rose might persuade the Paion to a joint cause. However, the Paion came from someplace that was not the Rose, and not the Entire. If they were the supreme sentients in their universe, they likely needed no such help as humans could offer.

She hurried past a colonnade of pillars through which she spied a dark garden with fruited, black vines. Sometimes Lady Enwepe sat in this one. Enwepe—so lonely a figure, and seldom with Inweer. They didn’t love each other, she believed, but couldn’t know. Much of Inweer’s life was closed to her. She saw him only when summoned, at his sole pleasure. But he had a realm to govern, and a war to wage. More wars than he knew.

By the gold fire in her ring, Johanna found her way to the correct door. Gao had said one must select the right door to enter the engine containment chamber. Though Johanna knew some routes, this one was new to her. She opened one of the matching pairs of great doors and slipped through as the engine’s drumming became a roar.

Her first impression was of the soaring vault of the ceiling. Far away and high on the wall was the catwalk from which soldiers might aim defensive weapons in case of attack. Looking around her, she saw stonewell computers held in rows by racks. Between the racks, apparent paths stretched away to shadows. Her map would have to be very good. Gao had said it was—because Morhab had taken the trouble to learn the maze. Although the Tarig allowed no outside help with the engine and its containment chamber, Morhab took pains to study these things. This went far beyond Morhab’s duties in other areas of the Repel, where he provided for structural modifications to serve the servants of the Tarig: to modify their quarters, to create spaces that pleased Chalin, Hirrin, and Jout. All within strict parameters.

But Morhab was a creature obsessed with details; he collected vast files of arcane knowledge on things such as the history of Ahnenhoon’s architecture, its record of growth and alterations. The great chamber’s maze didn’t escape his curiosity. She and Gao had gambled that this was so.

Johanna waved her hand in front of the paths formed by the instrument racks, watching her diamond. Finding a direction that deepened her ring to amber, she set out.

It was working. Oh, Gao, she thought, well done.

She had never told Gao the purpose of the engine, or why the Entire so desperately needed the engine, to fuel the life of the All. Why the children of his children’s children would need the Rose to burn. He would never help her if he knew.

How ruthless she had become. As ruthless as Inweer. Perhaps, she thought, God chose a good partner for me, after all.

Her stone burned sodium-bright. She darted down a path to the left.

Peering into the chamber far below, Morhab caught a glimpse of movement. Why, the woman wore blue, a fine beacon to announce her whereabouts. Time then. Using all the strength in his delicate arms, Morhab pushed the sack onto the lift platform. He struggled to dislodge Gao’s body from the bag, a harder task than he had supposed. Finally it came free.

The miscreant’s body bore only a few wounds, but these had bled rather more than Morhab had planned for. The death must look like a suicide. The fall from the balcony should accomplish this, it being a drop guaranteed to produce breakage and blood.

He looked down on Gao’s surprisingly peaceful face. Morhab regretted killing him. Gao had come under Johanna’s spell; he had romanticized the woman, and taken gratitude to treasonous heights. Morhab could empathize. Still, Gao had known things he shouldn’t. He’d known of Morhab’s predilection for historical record, including records of things that were just as well to leave alone. So besides the theft of information, Gao could damage the chief engineer beyond repair. Thus he was dead, and thus he must fly from the balcony.

Producing a distinct whine from his sled’s motors, Morhab tipped the lift into a ramp over the railing, letting the body slide.

Coming to a cross corridor, Johanna held up the stone. It shone pure white. Not the way. She turned around. Not the way. Faintly, a spike of noise came to her, as though a mosquito whined nearby.

Minutes passed, as sweat trickled down her sides. The stone glowed with an ordinary, diamond gleam. Worry mounting, she pressed on, hoping to pick up the way again—but white, white, the diamond showed. The center of the cavern eluded her. She remained on the edges. In a blur, she passed racks of computer wells, all the same, all wickedly conspiring to spit her out to the sides of the chamber. Under the great balcony.

The perimeter of the cavern formed a corridor of its own, with many paths leading inward, none of them gold. She followed this corridor, worry giving way to panic.

A smell came to her—an earthy, sour smell.

The path angled to the right and she turned to follow, soon brought up short. On the floor in front of her a body lay, the skull caved in. Someone had fallen from the high balcony. Whoever it was wore the green silks of a clerk or steward. She approached, dreading to confirm what she suspected, that it was Gao. That their sins had been discovered.

She had always known that if the worst happened, she couldn’t protect Gao. She had told him as much.

His answer:
I have had a thousand days of happiness.

Noble Gao. She kneeled by his body, now certain of him. Yes, the worst had happened.

Did Gao, at this moment, know the next kingdom? Did the Chalin merit the grace of God? It depended on whether the Entire was God’s creation or Satan’s. Strangely calm, she wondered which it was.

She hoped that he hadn’t taken his own life. No, surely he was braver than that. She put a hand on his head and asked God to receive him. And to receive her, if that was what came next. She looked up to the catwalk. Something moved; a sled glided away.

The truth settled over her, bringing an icy calm. Morhab had taken matters into his own hands. Perhaps the engineer had planted false information in his computers to test Gao. Perhaps, indeed, he had seen through Johanna’s meeting that day with him in the gathering yard, concluding that Gao was the point of it all. Yes, she could imagine that this all had been doomed from the beginning.

However, the implications worsened. If Morhab meant to tell Lord Inweer, he would have brought the lord here as a witness when Johanna made her way into the chamber. Instead, Morhab had killed Gao, silencing him; warning her. So the creature had her at his mercy.

She thought for a long, slow moment about being at the Gond’s mercy.

Tempting, that jump from the balcony. If
she could be of no use to Titus, then why tarry here? She found herself at an exit door, and stumbled into the cold hallway. Finding a wash stall, she kneeled down and retched into the toilet aperture. At length she roused herself to wash her face in the basin.

Later, Johanna didn’t remember her return journey through the centrum. Her mind was dull, and her thoughts mere fragments. Creeping back to her bed, she lay awake the rest of the ebb, until the waxing sky ignited a halo of light around the fringes of her drapes.

Morhab drove back to his nest slowly, his mood climbing. Now Johanna would seek him out. He would make sure that she did so, and frequently. Though she would hate him at first, he would persuade her otherwise. After all, no one could wish to force their attentions upon another sentient. It was beneath his dignity to bear her disdain. No, she must be properly wooed, in ways appropriate to human females.

And she must teach him how to do it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There are no strangers on the Radiant Path.

—from
The Twelve Wisdoms

T
HE NEXT DAY WAXED CLEAR AND DRY, sandwiching the godder convoy between the golden tundra and silver sky. The dirigible of the Most Venerable floated far in front of the wagons, surrounded by smaller sky bulbs, including, Quinn supposed, the one he and Helice and Benhu had ridden down the minoral. If there had been suspicions after the argument in the wagon, perhaps they were forgotten now. Next to him on the driving platform, Benhu held the reins. Helice sat on the roof of the wagon, looking at the vast plain broken here and there by prairies of lavender grass. Sometimes she leaned back on her arms and closed her eyes, letting the rays of the bright fall on her face. She gloried in this place. It made Quinn uneasy.

Helice had destroyed his peace of mind. The chain cinched his ankle, dragging him down. Why had he agreed to bear this cirque into the new universe? The knowledge of the place, and the threat, should never have been Minerva’s alone. Perhaps with more resources, with the checks and balances of other corporations and governments . . . His thoughts fell away on that note. He had little faith in any congress of firms or bureaucrats. As a result, the decisions fell to him.

He thought of the people whom he might have turned to for counsel: Anzi, most of all. Su Bei, the scholar who’d set him on the trail of the correlates. Even the steward Cho, who had befriended him at great risk. But even if they were here, they couldn’t solve his dilemma of the chain. For that, Benhu had to summon Oventroe.

Reluctantly, Benhu had agreed, but had warned Quinn:
I’ll have to find a
navitar to take a message by ship. It could take a hundred days, a thousand days.

Do it faster, Benhu.

If the two of them had tolerated each other before, now they barely spoke. That suited Quinn, as long as Benhu produced his end of things.

When the bright softened into Twilight Ebb, the caravan halted to pitch tents and bring the sky bulbs to ground. Quinn helped Benhu lay a fire with logs of condensed resins that Benhu had lashed to the wagon in bundles. As they cooked an evening meal and the bright edged toward evening, a Ysli approached their fire and bowed.

“Brothers and sister of the Woeful God,” the Ysli said. “A word with Ren Kai, please, and if he will follow me.”

Quinn and Benhu exchanged glances. Benhu took the cue, saying, “Born in a minoral? Ren Kai and I are having our meal. Come back later.”

The Ysli smiled, revealing pointed teeth. “Zhiya was born in the Chendu wielding. No minoral.”

Benhu rose, his beard stuck with bits of food. “Pardon. Of course. You should have said so at once.” He turned to Quinn with a pointed look. “The Most Venerable requires your presence. Don’t keep personages waiting.”

Helice had by now taken alarm, but could do nothing except watch. Quinn followed the Ysli godman as he led the way through the milling camp.

So they hadn’t escaped notice, after all. It was too much to have hoped for, with Helice as careless as she’d been, and talk of knives and murder that night in the wagon when anyone could have lurked nearby. He devoutly wished that he had left her at the reach. And why hadn’t he? Because she would have fallen into Tarig hands? But perhaps she could have lasted at the reach with Benhu’s stockpiles of food—and bound strongly enough not to break free for enough days to allow Quinn to get a head start.

Now the grinning god had noticed him.

He watched the Ysli for some clue as to the mood of the summons, but the creature did not respond to attempts at conversation. Too soon they approached the dirigible.

On the ground it looked enormous, a big-bellied fish at least sixty feet long. Extending from the gondola of the airship was a ramp. It was clear he must walk inside, and he did so, summoning his stories and lies. He could still brazen it out. He’d done so many times in the Entire, by reading his interrogator, by not losing his composure.

He stood in a large central cabin where several Chalin servants watched him with keen interest. The Ysli led him to a forward hatch, opening it and gesturing him inside. Behind Quinn the hatch closed.

Occupying one end of the cabin, a woman sat in a nest of colorful pillows. He thought it was a woman, though her face looked large for her body, and mannish, except for bright red lips and gloriously long white hair that curled to her waist. They were alone.

When the Most Venerable spoke, the voice was deep, adding to the gender puzzlement. “Sorry about your supper.” The smile that accompanied this pronouncement held amusement more than regret.

The personage looked him up and down. “I suppose that by the time we’re finished you won’t much feel like eating. I’m Zhiya, by the way.”

His heart began to cool. This person didn’t look merely curious, or confused, or easy to beguile. “Venerable, have my companions given offense? Or have I?”

Zhiya chuckled. “Yes, you might say that.” She gestured with her short arms at a pile of cushions opposite her. “Too tall. By the bright, sit down before you give me a crick in my neck.”