Travellers, she thought gratefully. They’ll lend me food. But instinctively she peered back and around her for an escape route should that prove necessary — and found two other silent men moving in on her from behind.
9
If one man says whore and another hears hoar, of what use is it? Speech, no matter how eloquent, is not communication. If one man draws a star and another sees a cross, of what use is it? Pictures, even if they contain color, even if they move, are not communication. If a man caresses a woman and the woman feels the blade of a knife, of what use is it? Touch, no matter how deeply felt, is not communication. For a communication to happen, the construct in one mind must be duplicated by another mind.
TRADITIONALLY GETAN MESSAGES were carried by travellers and, if speed was essential, by Ivieth runners or by the flags and lights of the towers. Over difficult terrain some of the modern towers were connected by wire. But fantastic change was upon the land.
Kaiel neurophysiologists, curious about the electric field of the brain, had hit upon a trail that took them to mechanically induced electromagnetic radiation. Effects barely measurable by beetle-leg jerking first led to organized experiment and then to increasingly sophisticated instrumentation. Suddenly the Kaiel leadership found itself with the beginnings of a message network several orders of magnitude swifter than the network of every rival.
Hoemei was a member of the team assessing the most rapid way to exploit what they all knew would be a temporary advantage. He spent days at the communications command center in the Palace among the shelves of coils and electron jars puzzling over transcripts of rayvoice calls.
His main center of interest was the Njarae coastline, listening for echoes of his brother.
Hoemei’s electromagnetic eye took in the whole of the immense Njarae Sea. His agents were established at fourteen key points. Over the weeks as he attempted to shadow Joesai, using that problem to feel out the potential of this machine, he became increasingly fascinated by what he was seeing with his new toy. Joesai remained invisible — but the view!
He found himself watching game players who thought they were hidden. They had no reason to suspect that their huge board had been connected by spies in instant communication. The Mnankrei were poising themselves for a lethal strike against the Stgal. In his notes it all came together.
Even Aesoe would be hard-pressed to believe their boldness because such a plan broke too many rules. And Joesai; innocently Joesai had entered the focal center of their game, unaware of the fury rising distantly at sea.
Hoemei stood at a circular window of the Kaiel Palace, his back to the electrons that leaped across hot wires through net to dock, his mind flickering with images of far places superimposed upon the image of his city. Kaiel-hontokae had been built on the ruins of the Arant to guard against the return of heresy but, instead, had been possessed by questions which led to newer heresies.
Truly the Palace has magic eyes, he thought. Would those eyes deliver the power to rule the world they saw? Before he descended from this high room he spoke to each member of his staff so that they all tasted his joy in their competence. Hoemei wandered home through the walled maze of the city, deep in his own mental maze.
Kaiel-hontokae had roving streets, paved in stone, which turned upon themselves or stopped abruptly in stairs or reached a deadend at the gate of some wall-building. The wall-buildings were enormous three-storied structures that completely enclosed areas where commercial activity was taboo. Each such palisade had its own name. There was the Bok of the Fountain of Two Women, the Bok of the Kaiel Palace, the Bok of Seven Mourners, the Bok of Sudden Joy, the Bok of Many Trees, the Bok of the River Rapids.
His feet found a path home while his mind tested the passageways that power could open to a priest, leading him to light or to lightless labyrinths. These thoughts meandered along twists and turns until they returned to Noe where they were content to rest in comfort upon the shifting images created by his memories of an enigmatic woman.
I will need Noe’s counsel, he thought. She knew the Mnankrei better than any other member of his family.
Hoemei had been enjoying his days alone with Noe in the stone mansion on the hill. Gaet was away. Joesai and Teenae were far away. Their absence gave him time to explore this woman whom he had never understood, who was never in a hurry to be understood, who alone of the women he knew relished power.
Noe possessed more useless skills than he had ever known existed — patter that pleased but meant nothing, sailplane gliding, flower arranging, rock reading, staig poetry, dream analysis. She had learned her sexuality as a temple courtesan honoring men who were preparing themselves for Ritual suicide. She indulged herself outrageously in things like the body sculpture that had given her those delicate folds of skin along her ribcage which Joesai teasingly referred to as her “handles”. There was no end to it.
When Gaet first brought her home to their bed, Hoemei had thought of Noe as a scatterbrain. But she had her own direction. If she indulged in luxury, she was also a master of such stoic arts as cross-desert hiking. Was it style she craved? Her only consistency was style. Even hardship was raw material for her style.
He shook his head. There was a gulf between them. He was the disciplined product of the creches where a child demonstrated his abilities quickly or was sent to the abattoir. Hoemei had never been given a second chance nor had he needed one. Noe was a pampered child of riches.
How alien they remained. When he entered the courtyard of the mansion she was placing a bowl of profane flowers called blooded-teeth. An excited bee had found the bouquet. Lovers were said to forget all quarrels near this aroma. Hoemei was touched. The gesture could only have been meant for him. She smiled. “My love.” And hurried on her way to the kitchen without kissing him.
He lingered near the flowers, fragile white petals with red rims, guarded by a stem of poisoned spikes. He sniffed, then followed Noe’s scent, faintly grinning. She was like a flower, herself.
She fixed him an appetizer of baby-liver pate on crunch bread. That was so like her. She always had delicacies around regardless of the expense. “I discharged all of our due-debts today,” she chatted.
“You can slaughter a whole day that way.”
“But I arranged it so that I visited half my constituency while I did the money rounds,” she said smugly.
“What did they have to say?”
“The usual problems. We’ll have to find a means to get more water up to the Kalkenie. And you?”
“How would you kill an underjaw beetle?”
She laughed. “Step on it.”
“Millions of them. You know about such things. I don’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m about to make a fateful prediction and some policy decisions to be registered and witnessed for the Kaiel Archives. The outcome will drastically affect my kalothi rating one way or another. My unconceived children will live or die by this decision.”
She looked at him sharply. “Gaet and Joesai and Teenae should be here!”
“No. The decision has to be made tonight. And you are the perfect person to advise me. You know the rituals of genetic modification.”
“Only what Joesai has taught me.”
“But you are good at it. And your mother ran trading fleets against the Mnankrei. You have a feel for those wind riders.”