Then she turned to face them triumphantly. ‘Yet instead of cultural conditions returning to norm we find that the Art of Attire is even more thriving, with new unpredicted features developing. Only one circumstance can explain this. Our original appraisal of Caean can be only half right. The impetus coming from the direction of Sovya is being reinforced by a second impetus coming from the opposite direction. By using the same kind of cultural mapping we have just established roughly whereabouts the source of this impetus lies.’
Amara’s hand went again to the terminal. A green stain began at the lozenge’s right-hand vertex in complement to the red stain, spreading until it met and blended with it, producing a spectrum gradated from buff orange to a murky mauve. ‘There is even a likely candidate planet. Selene, the last Caeanic planet in Tzist and – as it happens – the farthermost from Ziode. So there it is. We repair full-speed to Selene.’
Those who had not helped Amara to arrive at this conclusion stared in fascination at the diagram. There could be little doubt of the cogency of her logic. Remarkable as it was, the thesis answered the facts.
‘What do you think we’re going to find on this planet?’ Estru asked. ‘Not another Sovya, surely? That would be stretching things a bit too far, wouldn’t it?’
‘No,’ Amara said seriously. ‘I think both source-points must have originated in Sovya. I imagine what probably happened is this. I think Sovya must have been responsible for two different planetary settlements, one close to Sovya and the other much farther away: Selene, or possibly a now-abandoned planet near Selene. Having no contact with one another they will each have developed in their own way. We all know that there can be a thousand reasons why societies diverge – perhaps they sprang from different strains within the Sovyan culture, or possibly climatic conditions were unusual on Selene at that time. At any rate, when they eventually met it was to produce a society with mutually reinforcing impulses.’
Blanco rose to speak. ‘This is all very interesting, but on the subject of going to Selene, haven’t we hung around for rather too long already? It’s some time since we established the most important fact – that Caean is not a military threat to Ziode. Shouldn’t we be heading home with that news?’
A murmur rose from the group. ‘Captain Wilce is of the same opinion,’ Estru said, raising his eyebrows enquiringly.
Amara could see before her the inception of one of those divisive quarrels which end by making team-work impossible. She licked her lips.
‘I am well aware that there are differences of opinion on board this ship,’ she said in a hard voice. ‘By virtue of the special authority invested in me by the Directorate, I have already overruled the view that says we should go directly home. We are not going home until we have completed our researches in an exhaustive manner. There will be no further discussion of the subject.’
That should shut them up, she thought to herself.
Estru tried to remember if Amara had ever looked into the computerized mirror. He wondered what it would show in her case.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, he thought, who is the fairest of us all?
14
One person who was equivocal on the desirability of returning to Ziode was Realto Mast. During a harrowing interview Amara had dragged his story out of him and he had told her all about his sentence to Ledlide, his subsequent escape and the amazing qualities he had witnessed in the Caeanic suit worn by Peder Forbarth. She had listened superciliously, obviously believing only about half of it, and disdaining to make any comment.
Ever since he had been coquettishly trying to court Amara with a view to getting her to intercede on his behalf with the authorities in Ziode, convinced that she could arrange a pardon for him, or at least obtain a drastic reduction of sentence on the grounds of ‘patriotic services rendered’. She had offhandedly encouraged him in this belief, but was far from magnanimous when it came to keeping the score.
‘But you haven’t actually done very much, have you?’ she said severely when he taxed her on the subject, as they were about to land on Selene.
‘Well, there was that time I cleared up the data for you on Kurdoc,’ Mast suggested tentatively. ‘When your interpreters couldn’t understand idiom.’
‘Hm. That hardly adds up to getting out of twenty years on Ledlide.’
He became peevish. ‘Stop reminding me of that savagery. Instead of looking at the sentence all the time, you should measure my services against the offence, which was comparatively trivial.’
‘The degree of guilt has already been settled by a court of law,’ she told him primly. ‘I’m not prepared to discuss it. You’re in the market for remission, not a retrial.’
The bitch, Mast thought to himself as he went away. I’d like to… His thoughts tailed off, unable to imagine anything horrific enough to befall the research ship’s de facto matriarch.
Displaying by vidcast the ‘unfettered freedom’ status conferred on her by the Minister of Harmonic Relations on Verrage, the Callan settled on to a landing compound within the city of Yomondo. Within an hour Amara’s people were preparing for a sojourn into the city, and Mast disconsolately wandered down to the disembarkation bay, hoping to make himself useful.
No one took any notice of him. It was the same old story; he was not a trained sociologist. ‘Leave this sort of thing to the professionals, old man,’ a staffman had told him once, with infuriating condescension, when he had tried to attach himself to one of the team projects.
As soon as the bay doors were opened Mast went off to explore Yomondo by himself. As usual in Caean, there were no formalities at the spaceport, and no officials. The egress roads led directly into the city proper.
If Selene had initially presented any climatic or geological problems, then the planet must long since have been tamed. The air was warm and balmy. Yet there was an ambience to the place, a kind of lulled calm, that was offbeat and disturbing. The atmosphere was invested with a clear, purple twilight. The breeze wafted the scent of lavender. Odd twittering sounds came from all around, echoing from twisted towers and crazy air-ramps which made up the city’s skyline.
Mast searched for Selene’s sun. He found it – or rather, them – low over the southern horizon. A double star, the large one mauve, the smaller blue-white, both of them soft and fuzzy in outline. Which meant that Selene, in all probability, had seasons lasting centuries. The habitable planets of double stars nearly always had large orbits.
What was the season now? Spring? Summer? Autumn? Probably not winter, Mast decided.
Beyond the fringe of the city a forest grew. Mast could see the olive-green fronds waving like dark seaspray behind the twisted towers. Birds with glorious plumage of silver and lilac, gold and mulberry, shot out of that forest to go soaring, sweeping and hovering all over Yomondo, giving the city the impression of being a vast open-air aviary. The birds were of all sizes. Some were very big – Mast peered closely to see if any of them were human – and the smallest were tiny purple and pink humming birds, darting hesitantly hither and thither, their long curved beaks, made to dip into the nectar of orchids, craning forward as if pointing out mysterious messages.
Yomondo had a single flat floor of a pale lilac colour. Above it the twisted towers, the air-ramps, the tortuous corridors hanging in the air seemingly without proper support, made an open-plan framework. The nearest comparison Mast could find was that the city resembled a huge fairground, with helter-skelters, roller coasters, barkers and innumerable stage-shows taking place in the open air. The impact on the eye was indeed unexpected and bewildering. He could make no sense of the multifarious and apparently disjointed activities taking place. Was a festival in progress? Or was this, fantastic as it seemed, normal business?