Work stopped on the shore. Folk looked up, everywhere.
It was coming their way. Elai’s heart turned over in her, but she stood her ground (the First of First would not run, would not show fear) with her fists clenched on the rim of the tower, her eyes fixed on this visitor.
It was coming down, carefully, not falling. Elai became sure of that. She turned, whistled to Sun, passed her distressed offspring who had dropped their game of tag with the calibans.
“ MaGee!” she shouted in anger, on her way down. “ MaGee–”
They kept to their side of the river, these intruders. Elai had a closer view of the ship as Sun carried her up and out of the river, the water rolling off her leathers, off his hide. Out of the tail of her eye she saw MaGee with Dain and a dozen others of her riders. They were all armed. She was. The spear she had in hand seemed futile, but she carried it all the same, to make these strange starmen figure where was their limit.
She tapped Sun, making him understand that she meant to stop. Sun took his time about it. The other riders drew even with her. And one of the starmen came out from the shadow of that shining ship–not much larger than her boat, this ship. It had flattened the grass in a circle about it. It was quiet now. The thunder had stopped. And they wanted to talk: that was clear too.
“MaGee,” she said, “see what they want.” And: “MaGee,” she added, making MaGee stop after she had slid down from behind Dain: “You don’t go with them.”
“No,” MaGee agreed, and walked out to that man, looking like a rider herself, lean and leather‑clad, her graying hair, her fringes blowing in the wind that whipped at them, that made the fine blue cloth the starman wore do strange small flutters, showing how soft it was. They were rich, the starmen. They had everything. They brought their ship to show what they could do, overshadowing the boat there on the shore. To impress. They could have come afoot. They had done that before. Or in their crawlers, that they used sometimes, that made noise and disturbed the ariels for days.
It was all show, theirs against hers.
She waited, spear held crosswise. Paeia was one who had come out, with her heir, grim and disapproving, waiting for mistakes. And MaGee went out to this starman and talked a while, just talked; after a time MaGee folded her arms and shifted her weight and seemed not to fear attack, but she looked down much and seldom at the starmen, saying things with the way she stood that seemed uneasy.
Then she came back, and looked up at her on Sun. “First,” she said, “they want to talk to you. To tell you they’re wanting to talk trade.”
Elai frowned.
“It’s this new lot,” MaGee said carefully, “they want some things changed. Trade would mean medicines. Maybe metal. You need that.”
“What do they want back?”
“You,” MaGee said. Elai’s eyes met hers and locked, honest and urgent. “I’ll tell you what: they want to make sure you grow the right way, starman‑like. To be sure you’re something they can deal with someday. When you’re like them.” Her eyes slid aside, back again. “That dark one–that’s Dr. Myers; from the Base; the light one’s Ebhardt–from Union. From Cyteen.”
“Is thata Unioner?” Elai had heard of these strangers, these folk of the ship that never came. Her books had them in them. She looked with narrowed eyes on these visitors. “Hssst– Sun.”
Sun moved forward, a sudden long stride. The starmen fell back in disorder and recovered themselves. “You,” Elai said, “you’re from Cyteen, are you? From outside?”
“Maybe McGee’s told you,” Ebhardt began.
“You want trade? Give you what, starman?”
“What you have too much of. What we don’t have. Maybe carvings. Maybe fish.”
“Bone’s ours,”Elai said. The starman was insolent as she had thought; she tapped Sun in his soft skin, beneath the collar, and the collar went up. They retreated yet again, and beyond them another figure mounted half up the access to their ship. “But fish, maybe. Maybe things you want to know, starman. Maybe you’d like that better. Maybe you sit behind that Wire and ask your questions. This land’s mine. Cloud’s mine. All this–” She swept her arm about, a pass of her spear. “My name’s Elai, Ellai’s daughter, line of the first Cloud, the first Elly; of Pia, line of the first Jin when they made the world. And you’re on my land.”
They backed up from her. “McGee,” one said.
“I’d move,” MaGee said equably, from somewhere to the rear. “The First just told you she’d trade, and where; and you don’t want an incident, you really wouldn’t want an incident at the foundation of the world. I’d really advise you pack up and get this machinery out of here.”
There was some thinking about it. “First,” one said then, and both of them made a downcast gesture and began a retreat with more dignity than their last.
They took the ship away. The calibans just stood and looked up at it with curious tilts of their heads, and Elai did, sitting on Sun–waved her spear at them, adding insult to the matter. Her riders jeered at them. Paeia looked impressed for once, she and her heir.
“Come on,” Elai said to MaGee, touching Sun to make him put his leg out. “Ride behind me.”
VIII
OUTWARD
i
Year CR 305, day 33
Fargone Station
Union Space
One saw all sorts dockside, military, merchanters, stationers, dockers, the rare probe‑ship crewman. This was new, and the dock crew stared, not unlike other crews, all along the long, long metal curve, in the echoing high spaces that smelled of otherwhere and cold.
“What’s that?” someone wondered, too loud, and the young man turned and gave them back the stare, just for a moment, stranger estimating stranger: but this one looked dangerous…tall, and lean, and long‑haired, wearing fringed leather and white bone beads of intricate carving. He had a knife, illegal on the docks or anywhere else onstation. That they saw too, and no one said anything further or moved until he had gone his way ghostlike down the line.
“That,” said Dan James, dockman boss, “that’s Gehennan.”
“Heard there was something strange came in,” another man said, and ventured a look at a safely retreating back.
“Got his dragon with him,” James said; the docker swore and straightened up, satisfying effect.
“They let that thing loose?”
“Hey, they don’t letit anywhere. That thing’s human, it is. Leastwise by law it is.”
There were anxious looks. “You mean that,” one said.
The place was like other such places he had seen–he, Marik, son of Cloud son of Elai. He explored it in slow disdain, gathering information, which he would go home again to tell; and all the same he was excited by this knowledge, that they could travel so far and still find stations like Gehenna Station, that the universe was so large. He was wary in it. Cloud had taught him how to deal with strangers, not letting them tell him where he ought to go and where not, and what he ought to see and what he should be blind to.
Only he left Walker in her hold, where there was warmth. She would not like this cold; it would make her restless; and the sounds would irritate her, and besides, enough people came to her. Walker was not bored, at least, and had gotten used to strangers, enough to give them the lazy stare they deserved and to go on with her Pattern, figuring this trip out. He told her what he could. She was working on it.
Some things he was still working on himself. Like what the universe was like. Or what starmen wanted.
There was a problem, they said, a world that they had found. There was life on it, and it made no sense to them.
A Gehennan sees things a different way, they said. Just go and look–you and Walker.
So they would go and see.