House of Reeds

Up-River The Parus-Takshila Rail Line

A jarring bump woke Gretchen from a heat-induced doze and she looked around, momentarily disoriented, feeling the usual swaying motion of the train replaced by a clattering roar. The compartment shook, grit spilling from the lacquered ceiling, and across from her, Maggie hissed in annoyance. The Hesht shook her latest paperback in the air, shedding a cloud of dust to sparkle in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the passageway door. Parker, his shoulder jammed in between the window-frame and the leather-backed seat, continued to snore.

Yawning, Anderssen stretched and peered out through a grimy, soot-stained pane of glass. The daily express train from Parus to the northern cities was rattling across a wooden trestle bridge under a placid cerulean sky. A vast brown flood rolled past under the girders and ceramic rails – at this point, the Yellow Phison was nearly a mile wide – curling around ancient stone buttresses. She could see debris caught in the current below; brush, something like a dead cow with six horns – a molk according to the flora and fauna booklet – cellophane bags, drifts of river weed.

The train passed unexpectedly into shadow and Gretchen looked up. For a moment, her eyes had trouble focusing on the size of the edifice blocking out the sky and then she gasped aloud.

"Hunt-sister?" Magdalena put down her malinche and leaned across Parker. A glossy black paw swiped at the window, clearing away a decade's accumulation of sweat-oil and scale-shell. "What…hssst! Builders of the Ark of the Fathers!"

An enormous gleaming arch supporting a flat 'crossbar' rose from the middle of the river. Brown water surged around leviathan pillars. Blue-green moss clung tenaciously to a surface shimmering like abalone shell. The railway bridge ran straight as an arrow under the vault, passing slightly closer to the eastern buttress. Gretchen craned her neck, staring up, and guessed the flat top of the arch was nearly four hundred meters high and six hundred from end to end. The 'crossbar' flared out in a jagged lip. The obviously shattered edges were in striking contrast to the smooth, elegant proportions of the rest of the mammoth structure.

What could have broken off? Everything else seems so sturdy…

The part of her mind which could puzzle out the surviving fragments of a broken Tcho-Tcho pot from the midden debris of a late Khmer burial site stirred. She looked east and then west, staring at the banks of the river. A cold chill washed over her and she flinched away from the window. Far in the distance, on the northern horizon, a long blue smudge marked the rampart of the low hills ringing the city of Takshila.

"Hrrrr…" Magdalena paged through her guidebook. "Ah! The 'Arch of the Risen Dawn,' " she rumbled in her deep voice, "the largest standing remnant of the Haraphan civilization which once ruled all of Jagan, nearly a million years ago. Huh – doesn't say what it was…"

Gretchen swallowed, staring at the lumpy hills in the distance. All the land they'd passed through since leaving Parus was depressingly flat farmland, lined with tiny roads and hedges of dusty blue-gray brush. Every few kilometers, the whitewashed buildings of a village – each sitting atop a substantial hill – broke the monotony. The fields spiraled out from the villages, following shallow canals cut through brick-red soil.

"It was a bridge." Her voice sounded strange, as if it rang from a great distance.

Magdalena's ears twitched back and she made a disbelieving sound.

"Once," Anderssen said, rubbing her thumb against the dirty glass, "it vaulted a swift white river plunging through a rocky gorge or steep hills. The Haraphan builders drove the pillars into the sides of the canyon and laid their road atop…" She peered outside, but the train had rattled on, leaving the slow muddy river behind. "The roadway is gone, shattered as the land wore away, carried down to the sea by the waters of the Phison, or torn up for building material. Only the bridge itself remains – the Haraphan engineers built to last."

Maggie closed her guidebook, nostrils flared. Her hackles were stiffening. "Eeee… can…can the land change so much, in this million years?"

Gretchen nodded, still cold, and she shrank into her seat, tugging the field jacket around her. The dusty, hot compartment now seemed small and sad and terribly fragile. A queer sensation of weight – building in her thoughts since they'd climbed the endless flights of stairs up to that first horrible little hotel room in Parus – now settled fully on her.

Everything is ground down here by age, even the land. Everything. Leaving nothing but finely ground dust. What I'll be, soon enough… Anderssen felt terribly sad – not for the Haraphans, so obviously wiped away by the inexorable progress of history – but for herself, knowing Duncan, Tristan and Isabelle would be unrecognizable when she saw them again. And how much longer will my mother live? She's not young, not anymore… Is this artifact worth anything?

Parker continued to snore, his mouth slightly open. Gretchen hugged the jacket tighter. She had a sinking feeling the kalpataru would be nothing more than a can full of rust.

"Here isss room." The Jehanan rental agent inserted a cross-shaped key into a lock at the center of a hexagonal portal. Gretchen stepped through the opened door, duffel bag dragging from her shoulder, and stared around at a long, empty chamber. Soot-stained windows lined the northern wall, looking out over the jumble of Takshila and its seventeen hills. The floors had once been lacquered wooden parquet, but years of wear had left some sections black and others an eroded white.

"There isss cleaning deposit," hissed the rental agent's voice through Magdalena's translator. The slick showed a mouth full of pinlike teeth. "For asuchau. Very dirty."

Magdalena nodded dolefully in agreement and pressed a stack of Parusian shatamanu – trade coins – into his claw.

When the agent had yielded up the key and a stack of paperwork with colored stamps, waxed sigils and handwritten signatures affixed, the Hesht spun the door closed and coughed in amusement. "See, Parker? He agrees!" Mockingly, she chanted: "If we lose deposit, your hide will pay me back!"

"Sure…" Parker stuck his head in the nearest door opening off of the main room. "Toilet? Filled with sand…just like Maggie likes it!"

"That's the bathing room," Gretchen said absently, staring out one of the window panes. "The toilet will have urea crystals in the cracks between the floor tiles."

Her calves hurt and her hip was throbbing. The apartment tower – a khus in the local dialect – stood among a cluster of equally tall buildings just to the east of the city center. As in Parus, there were no working elevators. The steam-powered express train had left them at a station on the southern fringe of Takshila. Getting a taxi had proved impossible – where Parus had benefited from an influx of imported Imperial vehicles, the northern city seemed almost untouched by the signs of Mйxica commercialism so apparent in the south.

Having no way to identify an honest porter from a thief, they had carried their bags through the streets to the apartment tower themselves. A seemingly short distance on their one map had become several miles of pushing through strange-smelling crowds and dodging carts and wagons drawn by lizardlike beasts of burden. That had been unpleasant.

Maggie slunk in and out of all the rooms, before testing the windows. Each opened along a grooved track, but years of pollution had jammed them shut. The Hesht grunted, running an extended fore-claw through the black gum sticking the window panes closed. "Den needs a good scrubbing – but Parker would be welcomed among his gods by smoking this…"

Takshila was strewn with seventeen famous hills, and circumscribed to the south and east by a tributary of the Phison. The largest of the hills – a stolid limestone outcropping rising above neighborhoods of tightly packed buildings – stood in full view, bathed russet by the late afternoon sun. At first glance, the massif seemed untenanted and empty, but as Gretchen let her eyes rove over the whitened cliffs and straggling trees clinging to the rocks, she realized the entire top half of the hill was a single enormous building.

So this is the House of Reeds. Anderssen slid the work goggles down from her forehead and clicked up a magnification mode. Now, without the grayish-yellow haze permeating the city air softening edges and obscuring vertical walls, she could see dark windows piercing the hill, staircases climbing shoulders of barren rock, arcades of pillars, and the ornamental trees filling terraced gardens. Quite large…doesn't seem so old, though.

Puzzled a little – her first impression of the city was of relative newness, particularly in comparison to Parus, which had fairly reeked of hoary age – Gretchen began scanning the rest of the city within her line of sight. Skyscrapers, more of those odd curved boulevards, wide streets…hmmm…each hill is circled by radial roads…ceramacrete buildings…

"Ha!" She laughed aloud and pushed her goggles back up. Turning around, she found Parker watching his self-inflating floor pad deploy itself. Maggie was banging around in what had to be the kitchen, though Gretchen wasn't sure she wanted to see what passed as a Jehanan kitchen. "Mags – this big hill to our north is the House of Reeds, right?"

"Yarrrrr," responded the Hesht. She emerged from the kitchen with a hooked steel blade as long as her forearm. Parker's eyebrows rose in alarm and he backed quietly away to stand near the front door of the apartment. "You wanted a hunting lie close to the prey, yes? Well, there it is. All rocky and grim-looking as any citadel of the slave-lords of Magdag…"

Gretchen made a face. "Slave-lords? What have you been reading? Is that a cutlass? Why do the Jehanan have…never mind."

Magdalena sniffed ostentatiously, whiskers twitching and went to the nearest window. The hooked blade proved to be near enoughin size to allow her to pick out the gummy debris clogging the window tracks without getting her claws dirty. The Hesht began rattling the window back and forth, trying to make it open properly. Making a face at being so ostentatiously ignored, Anderssen turned to the pilot.

"Parker – would you say this is an older city than Parus?"

"This place?" Parker had a tabac out, but seemed wary of lighting up while the windows were still closed. "Not as old, I guess. Kind of funny, since Parus is so filled with the comforts of home – buses, aerocars, three-d sets, personal comm, six kinds of Imperial beer… – didn't see any of that here."

Gretchen nodded brightly, running her hand across the nearest wall – smooth ceramacrete – just like the dorm buildings at university. "We have to be careful," she said, considering the material. The layers of bonded polycarbonate were almost imperceptibly flaking away. "According to Petrel's guidebook, Takshila has some of the oldest buildings on the planet. More than just the monastery over there. I think this apartment building is one of them."

"This place?" Parker looked around. "But -"

"You thought the buildings in Parus looked old because they were made of crumbling brick, and not more than five, six stories high. Crowded together, blackened with soot from wood-fired stoves – all those things say old to us. To humans. Right?" She gave him an expectant look.

Parker spread his hands questioningly. "Hey – not an archaeologist! Pilot. Pilot. I fly aerocars, shuttles, old-style air-breathing jets, drink too much, smoke too much, always ready with the clever quip. Figuring out historical strata or long-term habitation chronologies is not in my job packet!"

"Hah!" Magdalena jiggled the wooden window-frame and the panel moved smoothly in the newly cleaned track. Once open, the window allowed a gust of cold, bitter-tasting air into the apartment. "Eeeww…an entire planet of leaf-smoking herbivores…" She slammed the window shut again, looking aggrieved. "I wear a breathing mask from now on. We'll need one of these windows open for cameras and aerials."

Gretchen ignored the Hesht muttering to herself. "Think about the societal-crash, Parker – some of the cities, like Parus, were obliterated by atomics. They've been rebuilt new but with the materials at hand; fired brick and wood and ceramic tile. This building is ancient – I'd guess Takshila wasn't hit with a nuke during the collapse – so it's built from materials the old civilization had mastered. The cues we're used to following? They're reversed here!"

"Sure, I get it." Parker gave her a puzzled look. "Is that going to matter?"

"It might." Gretchen made a face at the pilot, annoyed he didn't share her interest.

"Well, let me know when it does, right?" Parker began unpacking his sleepbag and personal effects. Anderssen looked around to see if Maggie was interested, but the Hesht was already arranging a nest of communications equipment and blankets and coils of cable and other, unidentifiable tools around her. As promised, the technician had already mounted a camera in the open window, pointing across the sprawling city at the hill.

Feeling stymied, Gretchen zipped up her jacket and leaned on the windowsill, watching the cityscape below. Why didn't I take that post-doc position at the Ney Arkham institute? Why?

The sun was low in the sky, almost vanished into the layer of smog hanging over the city, and the air at the thirty-third floor level was getting chilly. The hill holding the monastery of the mandire was still glowing with the light of sunset, while the darkened neighborhoods at its feet were beginning to sparkle with lights. From a height, the city didn't look as dangerous and dirty and crowded as it had felt in the heat of the afternoon.

Anderssen stood at the window for a long time, watching the city slip steadily into night. Then her stomach growled and she shivered, turning away.

"We should get some food."

"Hrrr…yes. I should go hunting." Maggie looked up from her equipment, most of which was now humming and chirping to itself. One of the v-panes showed an infrared view of the massif. Figures could be seen coming and going along the narrow staircases.

Parker turned from the open window, flicking the stub of a tabac out into the empty air. "I can go, kitty-cat. I know what we all like – assuming I can identify the basic food groups in the street vendors' stalls. But grease, bread and meat should be about the same everywhere."

The Hesht shook her head as she draped a stained and mended rain-cloak around her shoulders. "Not wise, cub. I'm beginning to get the smell of these scaled-runners-underfoot. Humans are not welcome in Takshila. Didn't you hear them hissing and lashing their tails when we were walking from the station?"

"Yes," Gretchen said, kneeling by her own pile of gear. "This dialect's not working so well with the translator in my earbug though…could you make out what they were saying?"

Magdalena's tail twitched from side to side. "Distrust – envy – fear – hatred, they all smell the same, even if the pelt is different and one clan says 'hhrrruukh' when the other says 'hhrrruuch.' I will go out – they have not seen my kind before – I'll be no more an oddity than a stray Hikkikit going to market."

"A Hiki-what?" Parker glared at the Hesht. "I think you're making up the names of things now. That is supposed to be what humans do for a living!"

Magdalena bared her incisors and hissed dismissively at the pilot. "Read the guidebook – there are more races on Jagan than the Jehanan. I will return soon."

"Wait, wait, wait…" Parker found his own jacket and goggles. "I'm coming with you. I'm almost out of my delicious 'bitter leaves' and we're not going through that whole 'me-having-no-smokes' business again. Look, I'll wear my potato hat – no one will be able to tell I'm human!"

"Maggie -" Gretchen raised a quieting hand. "Let him go. Comm me when you're back and I'll open the door so you don't have to lug the key around."

Gretchen slowed to a halt, feeling sweat trickle down her back, and looked up at the ribbon of dirty brown sky visible overhead. She clicked her teeth, turning on the comm built into her earbug and goggles. "Magdalena, I'm lost again. Can you tell me where I am?"

For a moment, there was only the spitting hiss of static – something in the local environment threw out an inordinate amount of interference on the bands used by their work radios – and then Anderssen could quite clearly hear Parker coughing violently. A wicked chainsaw-starting sound drowned him out and then Magdalena's voice was filling her ears.

"Kit kit kit…always getting lost on the way home from the watering hole…ah…you're not on scope here either. Can you see a landmark?"

"No…ifI could, I'd know where I…what is wrong with Parker? He sounds like he needs new lungs again."

Maggie laughed. "He…he is trying to smoke the local leaves. They are very strong, I think! Stronger than Parker – he is lying on the floor now. Hrrrr! What a funny color he is!"

"Great," Gretchen muttered under her breath. "Check his medband – but if he has a seizure, there's no doctor."

There was momentary silence on the channel. Anderssen moved into a doorway, finding even a little sun too much in the all-encompassing humidity. Lucky it's so cool up here in the hill country, she thought miserably. Not like Parus, where it's really hot.

The streets of Takshila came in two flavors – wide, curving and lined with broad-leafed trees, apparently part of the citywide network of ring-roads radiating around the seventeen hills, and narrow and twisty. While getting from the apartment tower to the monastery hill itself seemed simple enough from thirty-three stories up, the lack of aerocars meant Gretchen had to use her own two feet for the day's business.

The close, hot air put Gretchen on edge. The impassive, alien faces of the Jehanan did not make her feel welcome. The tension on the main streets was bad enough – today, she could feel hostility sharp in the air – but the side lanes were claustrophobic. There were doors – but they were all closed and locked and seemed very solidly built. In her experience, that meant a district where the fall of night meant footpads and murder and thievery. By day, it all gave her a stifling impression of being a rat in a maze – with no cheese in sight.

"Parker will live," Magdalena's voice boomed in her ear, making Anderssen jump. "Good there is no carpet here for claw-sharpening, or it would be ruined. These fierce leaves have wrestled our smelly cub to the ground and pinned his ears right back."

"Can you find me?" Gretchen tried to keep her voice calm. No gang of murderous locals had come along in the past five minutes, but a twitchy feeling between her shoulder blades was convincing her they would very soon now. She could hear noise ahead – bouncing back and forth off of the buildings – and it sounded like lots of people. Lots of angry people. The thought of continuing down this narrowing lane filled her with dread.

There was muttering and the clicking sound of Magdalena's claws on her comp panels. "No. Your locator signal keeps hopping in and out of its hole. If you get to a clearing, or a sunny rock exposed to the sky…"

Anderssen took a steadying breath and her fingers drifted to the medband on her wrist. She could feel her heart speeding up. Right. Time to retrace my steps – if I could remember which way I'd come! Stupid machines, why do they…Her thoughts became still for an instant. Wait. Remember…how do you unravel a knot you can't untie? You close your eyes. Let your fingers – or your feet – find the way.

Then doubt assailed her. Why should her feet, mended workboots and all, know their own way back to the apartment building? Because Green Hummingbird would say you'd left a shadow on the world while you were walking and if you were quiet, quiet as a desert mouse, you could catch hold of that shadow and follow it home.

The jarring sound of a clanging gong joined the angry, buzzing noise filling the air in the alley. Gretchen thought she could hear the trampling of hundreds of huge clawed feet on cobblestones. The sway of flickering, scaled tails. She knew how that felt, to have a long counter-balancing tail, to have stiff three-clawed feet digging in the sand as she ran.

Just like the Mokuil. As I was, if only for a moment…

Anderssen was surprised by the clarity of the memory, the fierce feeling of the Ephesian sun burning on her face, thin, bitterly cold air biting at her throat. The events she'd suffered through on Ephesus Three were muddled now, both by Imperial memorywipe and time, but every once in a while something surfaced, sharp and clear as broken glass. For the last year and a half, she'd done her best to ignore the hallucinogenic visions.

But now – here in this hot, alien labyrinth – the memory felt useful.

Suspicious, she looked at the houses lining the lane with sharp interest. Her moment of connection with the denizens of dead Mokuil had only been momentary – an hour, if that long – and suddenly Anderssen was sure the creature she'd shared footsteps with was not so very different from these Jehanan. The Imperial survey notes said the Jehanan had come to Bharat from another world – some kind of interstellar migration – had they crossed the void from lost Mokuil, wherever that might be?

Did – could – Green Hummingbird know I'd step into their footsteps again? Such a coincidence seemed impossible. Anderssen set the hypothesis aside in her mind. No data. Nothing but a queer feeling. Not enough…

But sometimes an irritating feeling – a sense of things being out of place – was all she'd needed to find something lost, a missing bit of evidence, a bone, a stone, whatever she needed to find in the rubble of the dig. Gretchen pushed away from the wall and clicked the channel to the apartment open.

"Maggie, I'm going comm silent for a bit. Watch for my locator signal."

She shut down the earbug and then went through the gear on her belt and body-webbing, turning off everything running on a fuel cell or power chip. Then she closed her eyes again and stepped out into the lane, fingertips outstretched, feet firmly planted.

The sounds of trilling and squeaking and drumming in the air around her changed, shifted, fell from chaos into order. Gretchen breathed steadily, her attention focused on counting – a simple series of numbers, no more, no less – and let her feet, her hips, her arms shift minutely, bit by bit, until she felt perfectly comfortable.

After a long time, the sounds changed again and she felt cooler – had the sun been obscured by clouds? – but the buzzing noise resolved into voices piping and squealing. Children? Delicate fluting voices. Not adult Jehanan, for sure. The gong continued to sound, a stately voice calling out into some open space. A park? A square? Wheels were rattling on stone, that was very clear, the constant passage of wheeled carts and rickshaws. A commercial street beside a square. A temple, a school, someplace where the young are taught to sing.

The moment of cold passed and Gretchen felt the sun touch her shoulders and hair. Clouds are gathering. It will rain. Someone passed her in the passageway and she could feel – not hear, no, the moving creature said nothing – a sensation of pardon me as it passed.

Gretchen turned away from the unseen square and street and school, feeling the air push and press at her, and began walking. The sun was warm on the side of her face. Plaster brushed dustily under her fingertips.

She continued to count and walked more confidently. The lane turned and turned again, and then she was walking down a flight of steps. She could hear a saw cutting through wood, smell sawdust and hear the chatter of workmen laboring over their daily business.

Parker groaned in pain and rolled over on the blanket. He stared, eyes bloodshot, at Magdalena's back. The Hesht was working on the windows again. Four of the panes were open, letting a cold, damp breeze eddy through the barren apartment.

"Wha' you doing?" The pilot's mouth felt fuzzy and bruised at the same time. "Di' I pass ou'?"

"Hrrr… You're sicker than a cub who bit a spinytail on a dare. Drink your water."

A half-full water bottle stood on the floor beside Parker's sleepbag. Gingerly, he moistened his mouth. That seemed to cut some of the horrible taste, so he took a longer swallow. "Gods, Mags, it is fucking cold, can't you close a window?"

The Hesht looked over her shoulder, yellow eyes sharp. "No. Crawl under your hide and turn on the bag heater. Packleader needs running three-d camera, infrared, sensor readings – all the eyes of the hunt we have – on the hill. Business, remember? Hunting, remember? No – you're coughing bile and cheese on nice clean floor while I work. Hrrr…stupid leaf eater."

Parker stared around, realizing the room had changed considerably since he'd shaken a local tabac out into his hand. The cig had smelled all right – a little sharp – but nothing like some of the things he'd smoked over the years. Came in a fancy cardboard box with advertising on every square centimeter. A stick of flavored chicle had been stuck in a cellophane wrapper on the back and the front had a little mini-manga which folded out. All completely confusing, of course, as Parker hadn't taken the time to learn the Jehanan script, but the tabac had seemed safe.

Of course, after inhaling he couldn't remember anything until opening his eyes in a pool of his own stomach lining. He forced himself up onto his forearms.

"Where's the boss?"

Maggie shook her head and wrenched the window pane she was working with violently. The glass made a shivery sound and cracked diagonally. The Hesht made an irritated hissing sound and groped around with her spare hand to find some sealotape. "Packleader will talk to us later."

"Why? Did something go wrong?" Parker levered himself up. The room began to spin.

"Wrong? Hssss…puking kitten, has anything gone particularly right since landing? No – the whole planet smells like your urine, nothing works, there are no soft beds and even the freshly killed meat tastes like hides-in-the-grass-and-bites-your-tail. Hrrr! Wrong? Hrrr…"

Parker nodded woozily, elected to say nothing and collapsed.

Shadow passed over Gretchen's face, her footsteps echoed down some kind of tunnel for thirty or forty paces and then she came out into a quiet space, half in shadow, half in the sun. She could smell rain gathering when the cooking smoke wasn't too thick – but for the moment, in this place, the sun was shining clear. A strong smell of wood smoke, hot tile, yeast and metal tickled her nose.

The feeling of the air pressing her, guiding her in a direction, evaporated. Anderssen opened her eyes, disappointed, sure she was not back at the apartment building. That didn't work worth a damn.

Two lanes came together in a jumble of archways and a looming wall of square-cut stone. Ahead, she could see a half-open door and beyond that, a sunny garden filled with red and blue flowers. The sound of a treadle clacking away filtered out of the upper air. To one side, to her left, was an alcove where the heavy stone wall came to an abrupt end.

A curving surface, cool and blue-green, shone in the sunlight. For an instant, as she first became aware of the fragment, Gretchen thought she was staring into the ocean depths, light bending and scattering among rippling waves, the image of the sun broken into dozens of reflections, each wavering in time to unseen currents. Then she blinked and there was only a smooth, solid surface glowing in the midday light. A section of wall rising above her head and an arm's reach to the left and right.

"Oh…" Anderssen stepped forward, nudging her work goggles up into her hair, stripping away her gloves, and gently – as gently as she'd ever lifted up one of her children – she ran her hand just over the surface of the – ceramic? Glass? Steel? Care urged her not to touch the unblemished surface, while hard-earned caution held her breath and kept her balance canted away from the object.

As her hand moved, the smooth surface seemed to ripple, just as water would move under a breeze, and then settled back into its accustomed shape. At the same time, a very faint tone belled out from the curve, filling the whole alcove with a wonderfully soft sound. "…That is beautiful."

A raspy, whispery voice grumbled behind her: "You stand before the moving waters."

Gretchen became still, wondering for a split second if the sound had been her own voice, or something she was thinking, and then turned around.

A Jehanan was squatting against the plastered wall opposite the curving surface. Most of the body was in shadow, though feet and hands were caught in a shaft of sunlight. Its scales were finely grooved and pale around the edges. Like most of the natives, it wore only a leather harness holding enameled signs of rank, and a long staff of dark wood lay against one shoulder. The creature's hands were broad, with long, strong-looking fingers. Gretchen's eyes flitted across a muscular, triply-ridged upper chest, splay-toed feet stained with dirt, and settled on tiny chips of stone and soil ground in and around the claws of both hands.

"Hello," she ventured, wondering if she'd trespassed onto someone's shrine. Guiltily, Anderssen stepped out of the alcove and into the lumpy floor of the lane. "Your pardon, I did not mean to intrude on your…meditations."

The Jehanan's head turned, regarding her. The eye-shields were plain and unadorned, shrouding deep cavities where two dark, glittering eyes caught a little of the bluish reflection from the curving wall.

"Your race is called Mйxica," the creature said in a deep, slow voice. "I have studied your old tales from time to time. Only once or twice have I seen your kind, but they did not strike me as being a quiet people. You – are you a male or a female? No matter – came quite unnoticed until you stood between me and the waters."

"I…am a human – that is the name of our race as a whole – but I am not of the Mйxica, who are a tribe, or clan, who rule us."

"This is clearer." The Jehanan rose and in the laborious act of motion, Gretchen realized the native was very old and female. Anderssen also felt a twinge of alarm – the native's command of Nahuatl was quite good for someone who had only met one or two humans before – and wondered what exactly the chances of her encountering such a being were. "You did not disturb until you spoke. Of truth, I was…" A sibilant hooooo interrupted. "…resting old eyes. Without interruption, I would remain until the still waters came, and then -" More trilling. "- the sun would be resting too."

"Do you…" Gretchen paused, her eyes drawn back to the elegant gleaming curve. "This is not a Jehanan artifact, is it? This is something from the time before your people, from the -"

The old native made a deep-throated sound, a booming hiss, and clashed her claws together to make a rattling, chiming noise. Alarmed, Anderssen jumped back, eyes darting for an exit. The creature seemed surprised by her reaction and shrank back. Clawed hands seized the staff tightly. Then the Jehanan relaxed, and there was more trilling.

"Pardon, pardon, pardon…" The long, angular head shook from side to side, eyes downcast. "I speak the name of those before – as they have made the sound – no alarm was meant, no bellow of challenge." The head rose. "Human voices small, ours large. You speak of the Ha-ra-phans, if there is no mistake."

"Yes, this section of wall, is this all which remains – like the bridge across the Yellow Phison, the Arch of Dawn?"

The lean old head, jagged with blunt horns, made a very passable human-style nod. "No more than shell-fragment, caught up in brick and plaster, stone and wood. Left behind in the fury of a new world. Long time this was buried. Entombed. Held-in-shell."

The Jehanan settled onto her haunches again and reached out with the staff to trace the edges of the curving surface. "Beyond this is house of sitting and eating and drinking. Many times, as a soft-scale, I sat there. Sometimes – if my busy, chattering mind were still – I felt warmth in this wall, pleasant, comfortable. But nothing catches the wiggling attention of a short-horn. Only last year did plaster give way and show what lay within."

Gretchen sat as well, intrigued. "Had you seen a Haraphan artifact before? Are they rare in this district, or common? Is there more of this one – perhaps hidden below the ground, or inside these other walls?"

"Hooo…" The Jehanan let out a long, trembling note through its nostrils. "Such a sharp bite asuchau thoughts have, fixing on the tasty prey, winnowing away skin, cracking bones… Is anything left when you are full? Scraps of ligament? Splinters? A single lonely scale on bone-dry plate?"

Anderssen flushed, embarrassed. Remember to respect the native religious observances, but don't think they haven't eyes to see what we really want. The Honorable Doctor Kelly told her that in first year. Then she heard a half-hidden, swallowed trill and realized the creature was laughing at her. "Is there more than this section?"

"No." The Jehanan paused, and then shook her head in what seemed to be conscious imitation of the human mannerism. "I sit here. The light moves with air, clouds and sun. My people…" She paused, settling in upon itself. "Were spade to strike soil, mattock the wall, chisels and hammers the plaster, what might break under clumsy claws? Would they care? No, they would trample on without thought."

Gretchen rubbed her chin with the back of her hand, thinking. "Don't people come along this way – see the wall? Wonder what it means?"

"Do they see what you see, asuchau with sharp thoughts?" The Jehanan cocked her head to one side. "See what I see, when my gaze rests on shimmering waters? They do not care. Our people are tired after so long, after so many struggles, so many defeats. They wish to feed, to sleep, to mate. No more. Rarely do they look aside from their path, much less to the heavens."

"You sound…" Anderssen paused, trying to remember the first time she'd heard that particular lament – from my grandfather, of course! – and then laughed, realizing she'd muttered the same thing, more than once. "…like anyone watching the young, of any species, of any time."

"Perhaps." Gretchen wasn't sure, but there seemed to be a peevish, grumpy tone in the creature's response. "Truth, despite."

When the Jehanan fell silent, Anderssen said: "May I ask you a question?"

The long head lifted, which she took for assent. This thing could probably just bite my arm right off with those teeth… Why not stick my head right in?

"What is your name? What do you do? For a living, I mean."

"Ssss…You dig in the marrow! Rude creature! Hooooo…Will you trade?"

Gretchen nodded, though a little voice warned her to tread carefully in matters of names, even with a stranger she'd never see again. "I will."

The Jehanan made a chirping, warbling sound, then shook her head. "No…your tongue is doughy and soft, sadly congealed. I am…perhaps 'Malakar' is close. Yes, memory agrees. A gardener. I once turned the soil, weeded away the pernicious, tried to see if young shoots would grow strong in the sun."

Anderssen bowed politely, as her grandmother had taken pains to teach her, and replied. "I cannot choose a Jehanan name which will suffice, but in my tongue, I am Gretchen. As you suspect, I am a digger-into-buried-things-which-ought-to-be-left-alone. But I try to be careful and sure of hand, and not break anything."

The Jehanan trilled in laughter, bobbing her long head. "How often have you made good that promise? Once? Twice? Ever?"

Gretchen felt a flash of irritation at the mocking tone, but couldn't convince herself the assertion wasn't true. "Things always seem to break."

"Then keep claws -"

A sound interrupted the old Jehanan – cascading out of the sky, echoing in the archways and rebounding from the tall white buildings – a hollow, extenuated hhhhooooooooo…Malakar's long head rose, nostril flaps widening and, hissing like a leaky tea kettle, she rose again, leaning heavily on the staff.

"What is that?" Gretchen turned from side to side, fruitlessly trying to gauge direction.

"Time passes," the Jehanan rasped, pointing overhead with her staff. "See the sun?"

Anderssen covered her eyes against the ruby-tinted blaze of light shining down into the alcove. The Bharat primary was now visible in the triangular opening between the eaves. Noon already? A wasted morning, then, getting lost… Now how do I…

"Your pardon!" Gretchen caught sight of the Jehanan's tail flicking around a corner and ran to catch up with the gardener. The native paused. "I won't keep you for more than a moment, honorable one. But…do you know how I could reach the intersection of panca-sapta and trieka?"

"Hooo…" Malakar eyed her up and down again, hissing softly. "Tall teeth indeed. You do not seem so rich or so powerful to have such a khus." A clawed hand scratched dirty scales. "Are you lost?" Gretchen nodded. "Entirely."

The Jehanan's nostrils twitched. She looked down the passageway, then back at the human, and then down the passage again. Laboriously, Malakar shifted herself around, the butt of the staff clanking on the ground. "Not polite to let guests wander and die in confusing city. I will show you the way."

Gretchen was short of breath and wheezing after fifteen minutes of following the old Jehanan up out of the maze of the city. Not only was Takshila located at considerable altitude in comparison to the lowlands around Parus but the gardener was quite spry. Despite being half blinded by sweat, Anderssen took care to note they had left the street level and climbed a flight of stairs – through a dark, musty shop selling carpets and between two buildings – to reach a flat rooftop.

"This is how the locals travel?" Gretchen looked around in appreciation.

Malakar nodded, indicating a landscape of domes, flat roofs, racks of drying, freshly dyed cloth and trellises covered with brightly colored flowers. "Streets below for commerce, for wagons, for hauling. This path is for sensible people."

"Not usually including humans, I'd imagine." The archaeologist adjusted her hat. Out of the humid tangle of streets, the air was cooler and the sun hotter. She surveyed the horizon and was immediately disgusted to see the base of the monastery hill less than a kilometer away to the north. I was probably about to step out at its foot… So much for Green Hummingbird's vaunted finding-the-path. The cluster of skyscrapers soared against a cloud-flecked sky to her left. Doubtless, Magdalena can count my nose hairs now.

"You see? There is your destination." The elderly Jehanan pointed towards the apartment building with a long, tapering snout. "By ancient law, stairs which ascend to rooftops are public thoroughfares. Then you must pass between buildings. You see?"

Gretchen saw. While the rooftops of the buildings were filled with tub gardens, cages holding plump gray birds and covered patios, the intervening walls were topped by walkways of brick or wood. Sometimes lined by railings, sometimes not.

Without waiting, Malakar set off towards the cluster of finlike apartment buildings. Anderssen hurried after, trying not to gawk at the private patios on either side. There were a very large number of Jehanan out sunning themselves, either on blankets or on wooden frames, and none of them paid her any mind as she walked past. She was both relieved and wary. The hostile air prevalent in the streets around the train station was absent, but there was still a tense feeling in the air. As on the stairs, the gardener set a swift pace.

After another twenty minutes of clambering up and down flights of stairs and rattling along splintery walkways, the rooftops ended at one of the wide boulevards. Malakar paused, peering left and right. "This panjir-road leads to the khus you seek," Malakar said, rumbling voice slightly raised.

They descended to the level of the boulevard, and Gretchen became distracted as they turned right up the street. The curve of the roadway – seen intermittently through the throng of swift-moving Jehanan – kept drawing her eye. There was something odd about the trees shading the sidewalk. She stopped, staring at a planter. The tree itself seemed very old – the roots had cracked the pavement all around, lifting up concrete in tilted slabs – and the branches reached out almost level across the road, casting deep shade over a constant stream of carts drawn by brawny Jehanan runners.

Drifts of leaves had collected in the gutter along the edge of the road, but – and this was the oddity which had drawn Gretchen's eye – the surface of the road itself had not split or broken open like the concrete. Keeping an eye out for onrushing wagons, she brushed back the leaves. Beneath her fingers, a smooth black surface gleamed up.

"All these larger roads, they're Haraphan?" She looked up at the gardener, who was running both claw-hands across the ridged trunk of the tree. "They liked curved paths and surfaces?"

"Hoooo… yes. They say the straight is dangerous." Malakar tapped her staff against the disintegrating concrete. "Sturdily made, their things are. Last a long time, longer than anything made by our feeble claws."

Gretchen studied the native's face and the gardener seemed weathered and weary, more like the tree than the languid, soft-shelled youths loitering in the shop doorways, narrow heads wreathed in pipe smoke. "Do you know stories about the Haraphan civilization? Do records survive from that time? In stone or metal or…"

Malakar said nothing, regarding the human stonily. Her leathery lips twitched back, exposing rows of blackened teeth. Gretchen flinched and bowed automatically – still on her knees beside the invincible roadway – and pressed her forehead into the pavement. "Your pardon. Thank you for showing me the way home."

"Huuuu…" The gardener made a thoughtful hooting sound, then rapped her staff on the ground again. "As I say, they last, perhaps longer than we."

Then, before Gretchen could respond, the old Jehanan strode away without another word, the dark gray-green scales on her back dappled with sunlight falling through the branches of the ancient trees.

Anderssen watched the gardener go, then realized she was alone on a public thoroughfare, surrounded by thousands of busy Jehanans. Some of them were now staring at her – suspiciously, she thought – and keeping a wide berth as they passed. Whatever polite grace the gardener had lent evaporated in her absence.

Layers upon layers, she thought, turning towards the apartment building. Did she mean records of the Haraphan civilization still exist, perhaps when the equivalent Jehanan history has been lost? Or…does she mean the Haraphans themselves still live upon Jagan?

Anderssen kept her head low as she headed home, hoping to avoid notice. In comparison to the placid rooftop gardens and industrious, half-seen workshops, the public street was very loud and dirty and filled with agitated, angry natives. The barking sound of runner-cart horns drowned out everything else, even the hissing shouts and complaints of the drivers.