“Yes,” Tu Shan said. “Besides, they live primitively, infant mortality is always high, they feel they must be fecund whatever happens.”
“The realm, this whole section of Minoa, is close to civil war,” Aliyat told them. “There’ve been killings. Now the, uh, tribes have jointly sent two or three thousand here, who insist that soon, come what may, they’ll go to the lake. Nothing can stop them, short of a massacre. Nobody wants that, but to give in could tear things apart almost as terribly.”
Macandal whistled low. “And we had no idea. If only they’d come to us sooner.”
“I don’t suppose it occurred to them before they got desperate,” Patulcius guessed. “If we don’t find a solution fast, I suspect it will be too late.”
“That’s why you went, Aliyat.” Macandal’s tone wavered. “I gathered, from S’saa’s hints, that it concerned this kind of thing, and you, with your experience— Don’t misunderstand!”
“No offense,” Aliyat said. “I did, I hope, slowly get a feel for what’s going on, and a notion. It may be worthless.”
“Tell us,” Svoboda begged.
If you could use human words for Ithagenean emotions and make sense, Aliyat thought, then the assembly next morning was appalled. “No!” exclaimed the le of the Triune. “This is impossible!”
“Not so, Foreseers,” she maintained. “It can be quickly and easily done. Behold.” She unfolded a sheet of paper. Copied thereon, a transmission from Hestia to a machine she had earned along, was an enlarged aerial photograph of Holy Lake and its vicinity. The Ithagene didn’t object to overflights, though none had ever accepted an invitation to ride. (Did some instinct forbid, was it a prohibition, or what?) She pointed. “The lake lies as hi a bowl, fed by rain and runoff. Here, a short way below, is a hollow. Let us clear it of trees and brush, then dig a channel through the hill above. Some of the life-giving water will drain out to fill it, while enough will remain for yon after the channel is closed again. There, out of sight of your people, the countryfolk can engender according to their own customs. For you this would be a huge undertaking, but you know of our machines and explosives. We will do it for you.” Hissings and rustlings filled the, gloom. S’saa must explain to Aliyat, patching out the native language with what human speech lo commanded: “Although they are reluctant, they would agree, lest worse befall. However, they fear the habitants will refuse, will take the proposal as a deadly threat. Knowing Kth and Hru’ngg, the leaders, I think this is true. For a life-site is not any pond; it is hallowed by ancient use, by the life it has given in the past. To triple elsewhere would be to set the work) awry. The rains might never return, or the violators might never have another birth.” Dismay struck whetted. “You don’t believe that!”
“Not we who are here, no. But those are simple upcoun-try folk. And it is true that not all bodies of water grant the blessing. Many do not, though surely they were tried at some time.”
“That is because—oh—oh, Christ, what’s the use?”
“Water flows from your eyes. Do you invoke?”
“No, I— You have no word. Yes, I invoke the dead, and the loss, and— Wait! Wait!”
“You leap, you raise your arms, you utter noises.”
“I, I have a new thought. Maybe this will serve. I must ask the council. Then I must... must doubtless go to the habitants and ... learn if it feels right to them.” Aliyat turned around to face the Triune.
For days heaven had been almost dear, an iron-hard blue, clouds nowhere but in the west. Heat lightning sometimes nickered yonder, and thunder muttered into windlessness. Now sunset reddened those reaches. Its beams struck through gaps and down valleys until they splashed the new tarn as if with human blood. Trees bulked black against h. More and more, the Ithagene gathered in their hundreds became masses of shadow, a wall around the water. Their singing beat like a heart.
Out of them trod the Eldritch Ones, three couples, for it was known that that was their nature. On their right walked the Foreseers of the City, lanterns aloft on poles to cast many-patterned light; on their left, torches flared and smoked among the Sower Chieftains. These halted at the marge. The six went onward.
Aliyat felt drowned turf crisp beneath her feet. The water lapped around her ankles, knees, loins. Warmth from the day remained in it, but a coolness was rising from below, a pledge to years unborn. “Here’s where we stop,” she said. “The bottom slopes fast. Farther on, we’d soon be over our heads.” She couldn’t fight back a giggle. “That’d make it bard to go about this dignified, wouldn’t it?”
“I am not sure what we should do,” Tu Shan confessed.
“Nothing much. We have our clothes on, after all. They don’t know how we make babies anyway. But we must take our time and—“ A sudden odd shyness: “And get them to see we love each other.”
His arms enfolded her. She pressed herself close. Their mouths met. Vague in the twilight, she glimpsed Patulcius and Macandal, Wanderer and Svoboda. The hymn from the shore reached into her.
A necking party in a pool, she thought craztty. Ridiculous. Absurd as real lovemaking, as everything human, everything alive. We’ve sailed from those stars blinking forth overhead, to stage a Stone Age fertility rite.
But it was working. It consecrated the mere, it kindled the magic. In peace would Minoa await the resurrection of the land.
“Tu Shan,” she whispered, straining against him, “when we get home, I want your child.”
31
“Joyful is the word that has come to us,” related the Allos whom the humans thought of as Lightfall. “Share it. From rendezvous has it fared, the closest rendezvous, 147 light-years yonder.” Many-branched fingers marked off a part of the sky, then closed on a point within. Made by a shape that looked so frail, limned against naked space as revealed in a transparency of the ship, the gesture became doubly strong.
The direction was well away from Sol, but not toward Pegasi. The Alloi had roved widely from the world that mothered their race.
“Rendezvous,” said Yukiko, perforce aloud and in a language of Earth. She was understood, as she understood what was communicated to her. However, difficulties and failures of comprehension were still many. That was inevitable, when minds could not translate directly what senses perceived, but must pass it through a metalanguage worked out in the course of years. “I do not quite identify your reference.”
“Starfarers have established stations, orbital about chosen suns, to which they report their discoveries and experiences,” Quicksilver explained. “These pass the information on to the rest. So do nodes of knowledge grow, and the beams between them form nets that piece by piece knit together.”
Hanno nodded. He had been aware of this; his explorations with Alloi companions had taken him near the vast gossamer web they had made to circle Tritos, while Yukiko was searching into their arts, philosophies, dreams. “There’s a primitive version in the Solar System,” he reminded her. “Or was, when we left. After they start receiving our ‘casts, they can upgrade it and join the community.”
“If they care to.” She looked out to where stars drowned in the icy cataract of their own numbers, and away again, with a slight shudder. What she and he had learned here gave scant hope of that.
Hanno was less daunted. “What is this news?” he asked avidly.
“A ship came to the rendezvous,” Lightfall told. “All do thus from time to time, that they may take in the fresh data; for the stations cannot well broadcast continuously to those who may be anywhere, at any velocity. Such of. our report on this system as had arrived by then determined the crew on proceeding next to Tritos. We have encountered them before; it is clear to us that the Xenogaians hold special interest and promise for them. May we have an image?”