By noon, it was possible to see a dozen or more groups all riding slowly toward the hills. It seemed that every tribe on the plains, and even those from beyond, were sending their tribute to the Gods. The nearest party was now close enough for him to make out faces and even tribal markings. There were no threats, not even signs of recognition or salute. They simply rode parallel to each other, no party acknowledging that the others existed. That night, the fires on the plain were like stars in the sky. All six of the Ashak-ai stood and stared, overawed by the sheer size of this migration.
Halfway through the next day, there was no longer the slightest doubt that the end of the journey was in sight. Every group of riders was converging on the same narrow pass that wound up and through the first line of hills. There were now so many riders that there was a certain amount of congestion around the mouth of the pass. It was almost the time of single shadows when the Ashak-ai mounts were finally able to start picking their way up the narrow path. The path proved to be little more than a rock-strewn, dried-out watercourse that twisted andj turned between steep barren slopes and around folds in‹ the hillside. Dust and the smell of animal apprehension hung in the air. The mounts stepped gingerly on the un* even surface. Both humans and animals felt very close to something infinitely strange and infinitely powerful.
There was an alien sound in the air, a high-pitched hum somewhat reminiscent of the nightwhine of the air beetle. Then the noise grew louder and louder, and it was nothing like any sound Harkaan had ever heard. And then the thing appeared around a turn in the trail, and the noise, frightening as it was, became completely secondary. Harkaan had no word for it. He was sure that no the point where they could continue to be afraid. Numbness had descended and gripped them. They had no alternative but to continue up the pass and into the unknown.
Nothing in the world had prepared any of them for what they saw when they crested the top of the pass and started down the other side. There was no doubt that it was the Valley of the Gods. The valley itself was a perfect place, long and broad, with a bright stream meandering down its length and a flat, irregular floor covered with a lush layer of meadow grass. It could have been a paradise except for the God that floated above it.
The God was huge. Harkaan found that he simply didn't have the language to describe its size. It shouldn't have been possible for such an enormous bulk to hang there in the air, just at the height of a tree. Its vast pair o shadows covered the whole center section of the valle floor. As far as Harkaan could see, the God was predom inantly made of metal-yet that was impossible. There was no way that so much metal could exist in the same place at the same time. The most metal that Harkaan had ever seen were the tiny arrowhead slivers that were kept] in the Lodge of the Spirits. It was all the metal that th Ashak-ai owned, and they considered themselve~ wealthy.
If anything, the God resembled a giant platee. It was roughly the same flat disk shape as the spinning weapon, but where the platee was smooth except for the jagged cutting edges, the God was covered in all manner of blisters and irregularities. Long complex pylons extende from its outside edge, and lights burned on its dark, underside. Some shone steadily, while others pulsed in! swirling random rhythms. There were a multitude of. colors, and some of the beams looked as if they were; somehow more than light, as if they were solid.
Harkaan was startled by the sound of impatient mounts; he felt as if he were being jerked out of a trance. The riders behind him were pressing forward. It was much too late to turn back or bolt. He dug his heels into the sides of his mount and started down the track, down Into the Valley of the Gods.
Three
"Poor little bleeders."
Topman Rance leaned back in the angle of two plasma ducts and braced his foot against a third, making himself as comfortable as possible. Over at the far end of Receiving Hold 3, the first of the new intake were starting to emerge from the lock that led to the sterile area. They looked like corpses in the blue light that spilled out from the lock, and they moved as if, to a man, they were demoralized and completely terrified. Arms were wrapped around chests and hands covered genitals, a few fingered their freshly shaved heads, and all peered uneasily into the shadows as if they expected some new awfulness to fall on them at any moment. Back in those shadows, Rance nodded. He liked them like that. Once the fight and the pride had been juiced out of them and they were about to jump out of their skins, they were also ready for him to rebuild them.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing on any star vessel was the noise. It was never quiet. There was a constant dull cacophony of sighs and booms and deep metallic groans. Discharging energy snapped and crackled, and escaping gases whistled and shrilled. Water dripped, and totally unknown things grumbled and murmured. Those who spent their lives on starships never thought of them as cold machines. It was like being inside, even being a part of, a vast living organism. Receiving Hold 3 on its own was quite enough to awe any newcomer. It looked like a place where gods might dwell, a huge cathedral space enclosed in a frame of arching power conduits like giant pillars and the meshed complexity of the plasma transmission. It was a place of dark, menacing spaces and mysterious blackness. It was also big enough to accommodate a dropcraft or an e-vac. At the opposite end, the towering bulkhead doors opened directly onto the emptiness of space.
"If those poor bastards knew that, they'd probably shit on the spot."
Rance remembered the first time he'd seen empty space. It was a moment he'd never forget. He'd been almost as raw as these suckers.
A plasma throwoff crackled and flowed down the wall. The whole intake cringed. Rance knew that it was almost time to show himself, but he held off for a few moments to give the debris in their minds a little longer to settle. As if it wasn't bad enough that they'd been ripped from their families, their culture, and their planet — from everything that might give them a familiar bearing-they'd also been given the datashot. The datashot may have been ultimately efficient, a complete education and military training in a single electric moment, but it was also ultimately cruel. Even the longtimers didn't like to talk about their moment of datashot. Men who'd spent a lifetime in combat and seen a dozen sets of friends killed, men who needed only the slightest of excuses to wade knee-deep in blood atrocity, still feared the memory of the datashot. All that one needed to know to be a ground trooper of the Therem Alliance was fused into the brain in a single jolting instant. The horror was a side effect of unimaginable pain. The machines that made the interface and the creatures that operated them had no idea that the agony they caused was quite literally unbearable. The illusion was one of the body being exploded into fragments. The spine would snap in a thousand places, the skull would be shattered, and bunches of nerves would be torn out by the roots as waves of burning images seared the passages of the mind. After the pain there was another horror. Suddenly, there were pictures inside each recruit's head like a new mind. They seemed to come from nowhere, memories in which the rememberer didn't exist, memories to which he had no right. The troopers knew things that there was no reason for them to know. They prayed that they'd go mad and that they'd stop trying to make sense of it all. Rance shook his head. After twenty years, the memory was still too close.
An atmosphere line valved off an excess of pressure with a shriek. The intake moved closer to each other as if looking for some kind of mutual protection. That was also good. It was never too early for them to start banding and forming ties. No one else was going to look after them. They were all out of the lock now, all twenty replacements, shaved and sprayed and irradiated. Even the bacteria of their home planet had been taken from them.