"This dismantling of mri sites," said Nagn, "is said to be progressing. Human information is not always accurate.”
"Lie, Nagn. The word is lie. Humans deceive in false statements as well as actions; but we work with this particular action… indeed, we work with it”
Morkhug puffed her nostrils uneasily. "I still dislike it. One threat gone; the mri sites; and I do not see the human advantage in this.”
"Unless they lie," Nagn said.
"Impoverished mri," said Tiag, "must take service with someone. Or die, of starvation.”
"Question," said Nagn. "Do humans assume they will take service with them?”
Suth hissed. It was insanity, that regul adults sat here contemplating trues and maybe-trues regarding human minds. They learned. They all began to think in mad terms of shifting realities. He gathered a stylus from the board before him, held it between his palms and rolled it "Observe, mates-of-mine, the flat face of the stylus. Where does it exist? Has it a place as it spins?”
"In fractional instants," Nagn said.
"Analogy," said Suth. "A model for imagination. I have found one. The place faces all directions for an instant, a blur of motion. Human minds are and are not so many faces that they seem ready to move in any direction. They are composite realities. They apparently face all directions simultaneously. This is human motive." He laid the stylus down. "They are facing us and the mri simultaneously.”
"But action," said Tiag. "They cannot act in all directions forever.”
"They act for themselves. What is of value to them?”
"Survival," said Nagn.
"Knowledge," Suth said. They state that they are destroying the sites.”
Nostrils flared and shut in rapid alternation.
"I accept no data from humans," Suth continued, feeling the palpitation of his hearts. "Mates-of-mine, among forgetful species, this is the only sanity. Among species which imagine, this is the only alternative. I have set a sane course. I made appropriate motions by human request, to avoid unprofitable developments. Humans state that they are destroying the sites; potentially true. They omit to state that they are gathering knowledge. We know that they are using the elders of Flower as additional personnel. They have stated so, and if this is a lie, I do not find motive in it.”
"We are letting them destroy armaments we had counted useful to us," Morkhug objected.
"No," said Suth. "We do not do that. Our base… will not do that”
"Nothing, sir.”
Luiz leaned against the side of the cushion to the right of Brown and shook his head sorrowfully. Brown's eyes stared back at him with a bruised look… the man had not left this bridge, not he nor any of the rest of the military crew had rather bedded down here near controls; the night shift was sleeping on pallets over against the storage lockers, and everyone kept movements quiet for their sakes. They had a full crew, with everyone awake; half on turn and turn about; and the men had given more than duty, monitoring scan, helping science staff with the rapid filing of data, the breakdown of delicate instruments and equipment, frantic storing of whatever might be damaged in a violent lift. There was no panic aboard; fear… that was an abiding guest.
They were alone, for the first time truly alone, save for intermittently, a shuttle closer to Kutath than the big warships dared be; and Galey's mission, down with them.
They hoped, at least There was no contact with Galey. Harris's mission could find them if they were following the agreed sequence of sites; and the next thing they could look for was either holocaust or a progress report.
That they would delay to bring Boaz back… that, if it rested with her, they would not. Luiz scanned the master chart which plastered the pinup board… lingered on second site, where at best reckoning, she was. Eleven major targets. Even the young men had to come in for relief, somewhere in that world-spanning chain of targets; and then she would. He hoped so. If nothing went wrong before then.
"I don't expect word," Brown murmured, evidently reckoning he was obliged to say something. "Takes a while, to get there, to lay plans, a lot of things, sir. Could be quite a while.”
It was, he reckoned, a kindly attempt at comfort; he felt none.
Beyond the pillars of carved stone, the city Ele'et sat, a fantastical combination of glass and stone, aglow in the fading light Kel'ein murmured with wonder; and Niun gazed on it thinking on his youth, on evenings spent in the hills above a regul city, looking on lights in the twilight, and dreaming dreams of ships and voyages and war, and Honors to win.
He looked on Melein, who walked among the Sen who had come with them, for all his wishing otherwise. She had no words, none, but she had simply set out with them, and what she would, she did. The Holy reposed in safety; she and her sen'ein, fifteen including Sathas himself, walked in the blackness of more than a thousand kel'ein, and said nothing of how they should take this place.
He had not far to reach for companions; they were near as the dusei, moving here and there throughout the column; he summoned, and they came, those not by him already, even to Taz, who was devastated by his fortunes. "Stay close," he bade them all, and at Duncan especially he looked. "You have the other gun, sov-kela; and I would you stay nearer the she'pan. These are tsi'mri.”
"Aye," Duncan murmured. The incongruity did not draw a flicker from him. They were two, Niun thought, who had known the old war, on different sides as they were; who knew the Kesrithi law distance-weapons for those who would use them; the mercenary Kel had lost its compunction in such matters.
"They must know we are here," said Hlil.
"Doubtless," Niun said.
Nearness made the rocks of the hills take on strange form in the sunset, twisted shapes, joined by aisles of stone and glass; shapes shaped by hands, he realized of a sudden, the whole face of the hills hewn into abstract geometries, as the pillars had been hewn, with glass facing the intervals; hills, whole domes of rock the size of edunei… carved in elaborations the north side of which the sand-laden winds had eroded, and the size the size of it ... only a tenth part was alight
"Gods," he murmured, for suddenly their number seemed very small, and the sky leaden and full of enemies.
Ward-impulse prickled in the air; something started in the sand before them, and another. Soon a whole cloud of burrowers fled in distress, and the sands rippled beyond that. It was as if the very sands hereabouts lived, writhing like the mutilated stones.
Water. Outspill from the city.
And dus-sense grew more and more disturbed. "Do not loose it," he bade those about him. "You understand me. The beasts are not to be loosed.”
There was murmured agreement.
"Nor the Kel," said Melein, startling them. "Take me this city. Do not destroy it. Do not kill until you must.”
"Go to the center," he wished Melein. "You must have care.”
To his amazement she did so, without demur. He drew breath, surveyed the place before them, which balked them with a maze of walls and no streets, nothing of accesses, nothing of pattern.
He led them straight on as the wind would blow, with contempt for their barriers and their building and the logic of their structures. He led them to a great face of glass, which showed within a hallway, and carven stones, and great carven boulders rising out of the very floor, prisoned and changed in this tsi'mri place.
He drew his gun, unfired in years, and with wide contempt, burned an access. That fell ponderously, that shattered with a crash that woke the echoes and scattered glass among the carven stones. Warmth came out at them, and moisture-bearing air.
They walked within, glass ground under their boots, the dusei snorting at the prick of slivers which let blood. His own let out a hunting moan that echoed eerily through the vast halls, and found direction, guiding them all. He kept his gun in hand, and with a wave of his arm sent a flood of kel'ein the width of the hall, to find out all sides, all recesses of the carved monuments. They were beyond the glass now, and the floor echoed to their tread, itself patterned in mad designs.
And figures stood at the end of the hall, glittering with color, gods, the colorsl As one they stopped, staring at hues of green and deep blue and bright colors which had no name, none that he knew the robes of mri-like folk who had no color, paler even than Duncan's pallor, whose manes were white and long and shamelessly naked, the whole of their whiteness bejeweled and patterned.
He had walked alone into a regul city, which shared nothing at all with mri. He had the face for this, and walked ahead, with the dus beside him and comrades about him, wondering what they would do, whether challenge, whether panic and bring forth weapons.
They ran.
Weapons ripped from sheaths with one thousand-voiced rasp of steel. "No!" he said. "But keep your weapons in hand.”