Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (24 page)

 
          
Poor
little devil! Maybe Rhu will learn something from this, too, about life on
University.

 
          
Is
that fair,
to
expose him
to that
kind of
hope
,
when his world is so narrowly circumscribed?
Life for him,
at
least, will
never change.
¹

 
          
But
for the present the recording proceeded smoothly, and they worked their way,
court by court, open space by open space, through the ruined city, with Dal—she
knew—describing his impressions on a voice-scriber set to a throat-mike so that
he could subvocalize and make his personal notes; Cendri making the record by
voice in the language of Isis for the use of such help as they might later have
from the students and assistants there, and Laurina handling the graphics
recorder which would provide visual holograph commentary on everything they had
seen that day.

 
          
The
sun had begun to decline downward, substantially altering the quality of the
light, when they came to the enormous open space at the very center of the
ruins, where the antique spaceship lay. Cendri approached it hesitantly,
against her will feeling something

 
of
the wonder and awe she had felt there last night.
Or had it all been hallucination, illusion, delusion, a kind of mass
hallucination? Tentatively, she glanced at the spaceship, at the faint light
she had seen in the ruins, but, though deep canyons of shadow lay across the
city, darkening the area around the spaceship, there was
no
sign nor
glimmer of reflected light.

 
          
Had
it
all
been illusion, then? She glanced at Laurina, and saw, in shock,
that a faint trace of the ecstasy and awe were outlined on her companion's
face. Laurina said in a whisper, "I wish I could be sure that
They
did not feel our presence was irreverent, Cendri."

 
          
Cendri
felt like saying a fervent, "Me, too!" But she knew this was
completely irrational. She glanced at Dal—had he too been touched by the wonder
of the site, by any trace of that contact?

 
          
Evidently
not;
Dal,
was murmuring into his voice-scriber,
transcribing his personal notes on each successive feature of the ruins. He
looked happy and completely preoccupied with what he was doing; but as Cendri
approached him, he broke into a grin.

 
          
He
said in their own language, "
Cendri,
is that what
it seems to be?"

 
          
"The spaceship?
Yes, of course."

 
          
"That
doesn't belong to the ruins. It's not more than three hundred years old, and it
looks in worse preservation than
they
do!"

 
          
She
had noticed that herself. She said, "As a matter of fact, it has been here
sixty-nine years, sidereal Unity time. It is the ship which carried the
Isis/Cinderella colony here."

 
          
"Hell
of a place to land a starship," Dal commented, voicing the thought Cendri
had had, "What do you suppose made them pick out a spot like this?"

 
          
She
could not comment on that without going into the belief of the Pro-Matriarch
that they had been guided there, and that would inevitably have led to some
kind of discussion of her own experience there. And unless Dal himself sensed
something in the area, she could not bring it up. He would call her imaginative,
superstitious ..
.she couldn't face that, not now.

 
          
And
if he does feel it, how will he be able to make his exploration of the ruins?
she
wondered. She herself could hardly force her dragging
feet to cross the great expanse of—was it stone?
Concrete?—around
the starship.

 
          
Dal
furrowed his brow and murmured, "What is it they call this place?"

 
          
"We-were-guided,"
she said, and he raised his brows and said,
 
"Extraordinary. I wonder what made
them think of
that?
That
 
would be your province, of course, alien
psychology___
" and
went a little closer to the
starship. "What a
very
strange place to land. I wonder why?"

 
          
Laurina
was moving around, slowly recording the ruins and the ship from all angles.
Cendri made a note of the time and angles, but her mind was busy elsewhere.
Faintly, dimly, like an illusion, a dream within a dream, she remembered the
night before, when a flooding warmth and joy had gone all through her....

 
          
Laurina
said, "I wonder, sometimes, if They are angry that after They had brought
us here, we did not do as They probably wished, and come to live with Them
here...."

 
          
Cendri
blinked at the question. She started to say, that was ridiculous, then realized
that Laurina's answer to that particular question could tell her as much about
the society of
Isis
as Dal could learn about the ruins. She
said carefully, "Why didn't you do so then? Live here inside the ruins,
that is?"

 
          
"I
don't know, Cendri; it was, of course, before I was born," Laurina said.
"Perhaps only the High Matriarch could tell you, for it was her
predecessor, I believe, who made the decision. I can only guess, as a
historian, that perhaps the buildings seemed, to them, unsuitable for human
occupation. Or it may be that
They
did not wish to be
disturbed except at their own time and in the proper way. It is obvious that
They
are much older and wiser than our people."

 
          
Cendri
decided not to think much about that answer now. A time would come when she
could sit down with one of her mentors on University and subject it to intense
semantic analysis.

 
          
But
it also occurred to her to think; Vaniya must have been alive
 
when the decision was made. Perhaps she
would know_____

 
          
Dal
came toward them, as they moved through the abandoned area of the spaceship's
landing, and went toward the remainder of the structures. He spoke directly to
Laurina.

 
          
"Have
you been inside any of the structures?"

 
          
Laurina
shook her head. She said, "I have been told that it is impossible to enter
any structure in We-were-guided."

 
          
Dal
frowned and considered. Then he turned resolutely to one high, towering
structure, and laboriously dragged himself up the high steps. Cendri crawled up
after him, and after a minute, Laurina, bracing the graphic-recorder console on
her arm by its strap, struggled up behind them. They crowded together on the
small platform at the top.

 
          
"No
doors," Dal said, glancing up into the dark expanse above them. "I
ought to find out what's inside."

 
          
But
when he pressed forward, he frowned, flattened himself, then said, "Come
feel this, Cendri."

 
          
She
touched it with gingerly fingers. "What is it, Dal? It feels like glass,
but I can't see anything."

 
          
"Unusually
clear glass, maybe," he said, "or some invisible material which bends
light around it—it's not transparent, though—" he pressed his face against
the unyielding barrier. "It just looks as if there's nothing there.
Extraordinary."

 
          
Cendri
nodded. "What is it, then?
Force-field?"

 
          
"How
should I know? I hate to try and use a laser on it; but somehow, sooner or
later, I've got to get inside one of these structures...."

 
          
"We
have some force-field disruptors in the equipment," Cendri said,
"They'll break almost any known kind of stasis field, if that's what it
is."

 
          
He
nodded, signalled to one of Vaniya's servants who was carrying assorted
equipment, and took out a small graduated series of force-field breakers. He
ordered Cendri and Laurina down off the platform, and aimed the disruptor field
at the barrier. There was a growing light and a painful subsonic whine, but no result.
Dal tried one after another of the field-breakers, but with equal lack of
results.

 
          
"No
luck," he said at last. "Whoever put that thing up there, they meant
it to stay. Maybe when we get a little further along, I'll pick one of the
smaller buildings and try to cut into it with a laser."

 
          
Laurina
said, hesitantly, "But suppose
They
do not want
us inside?"

 
          
Dal
turned on her, and he looked about to explode; but fortunately he remembered in
time where they were. He said, with careful patience, "If
They
don't want me inside, I'm afraid They will have to tell
me so Themselves."

 
          
"But
They
do not speak to men," Laurina said, looking
shocked, and Dal grinned. He said, "Then They will have to tell Cendri,
and she can tell me—all right, Laurina? Meanwhile, it's going to be dark fairly
soon. I knew all along it would take more than one day just to make preliminary
explorations. Shall we go back to the gates before it gets dark? I have lights
with the stuff, but it's been a long day and there's no sense in overdoing
it."

 
          
No
one moved, however, and Cendri realized that none of them were conditioned to
seeing a man make such a decision for an entire expedition. She said,
"Let's get going, then. Laurina, you know the way back, would you like to
lead the way?" And they started back toward the gates.

 
          
There
was still some light left outside the gates, and the sun was not wholly down.
On the shore below them, the women of the wrecked pearl-divers' village were
moving along the shore, gathering up what the tide had brought in from the
wreckage of their village and their world.

           
"They are fortunate,"
Laurina said. "A great deal of timber has been brought back by the
waves—look, they are hauling it up above tide-mark—and now not so many men will
need to risk their lives inland, cutting more timber and beams. We have had
great waves before, though never such an enormous one. Within a few days, some
preliminary shelters will be built, and by the next season, the houses will be
ready to live in, and the life of the village will go on. Although I suppose
the High Matriarch will order that the next watch-tower
be
built up higher, perhaps almost as high as We-were-guided."

 
          
Cendri
said in dismay, "You mean they'll go down and live there again?"

 
          
Laurina
looked grave. She said, "Yes, Cendri, they have no choice. We cannot
abandon the pearl-beds which were planted there, which have been there for a
generation now. Without our pearls,
Isis
has
nothing. A little gold from sea-water, a little magnesium, a few
biologicals—but it is our pearls on which we depend, and these and the other
villages down the coast are our lifeblood."