House of Reeds

Takshila District of the Molt

Humming softly to herself, Gretchen gently drifted her hand across the control surface of a Zeiss-Hanuman field camera. The lens and imaging body of the surveillance scope were mounted in a north-facing window. She was sitting cross-legged, watching the 60X image of the monastery with great interest.

On the v-display, a line of Jehanan elders was slowly climbing one of the external staircases cut into the rock of the hill. One by one they bent down and entered a T-shaped doorway near the summit. Some kind of domed building nestled in the rock, filling what the geodetic survey revealed was an old ravine. Gretchen was interested in this particular vignette because a similar number of monks made the same journey every morning. They did not return the same way. None of the penitents – if they were, in fact, performing a religious service – carried anything, as far as she could tell, and had dispensed with the usual leather harnesses and disc-shaped signs of status and rank.

A purification bath? she wondered.

She moved her hand again, and the camera scanned to one side. More cliffs pierced by tall narrow windows and occasional doors leading onto precarious walkways or steep sets of steps blurred past and she found the terrace Magdalena had labeled 'Southern Orchard' on the comprehensive three-d map their cameras, radar packs, and geomagnetic sensors were building on a base of out-of-date satellite photos. The orchard was filled with slender-trunked trees with perfectly rounded crowns. Gretchen's lips twitched into a faint smile – the ornamental arrangement of the naragga trees was the result of meticulous daily maintenance by a stooped old Jehanan and a swarm of children who carefully plucked wayward leaves from the trees and trimmed the stems with scissors.

"I'm amazed those trees are still standing. A dozen kids should have reduced the whole terrace to a desert by now."

Magdalena looked up from her comps – now laid out on a low wicker table Parker had found in the district furniture market – and twitched her ears lazily. "Perhaps the orb-trees grow quickly in this nnningurshimakkhul climate. Perhaps the kits are specially trained guardians who protect the world from being consumed by leaf demons."

"Ha!" Gretchen laughed, grinning at the Hesht. "You're in a good mood this morning."

"Hrrr… This ssshuma will be in a good mood when we find the gifting-bush and leave this nose-biting place."

Anderssen shrugged, looking at the northeastern sky through the windows. A pall of yellow-gray smoke filled the sky, drifting west from a huge district of chemical refineries. The noxious cloud choked the city whenever the wind turned. Magdalena had been particularly revolted to find the smog left a gummy residue on her fur.

"Any luck on getting the ground-penetrating radar to work?"

The Hesht shook her head and the tip of her tail lashed from side to side in annoyance. "There must be shielding beneath all the ornamental carving." She tapped a claw on one of her displays. "Each open window and door gives us a paws-breadth slice of the interior, but only for six, seven meters – then nothing. Without sensor relays placed inside the complex? No more than this."

Magdalena flexed her claws, letting them slide out of cartilage-sheaths, and tipped her chin at the three-d map. Three quarters of the surface of the hill had been mapped in painstaking detail by the array of sensors clipped to the windows or mounted on tripods. The far northern quadrant was still a mystery, though Gretchen intended to hike around to the far side in a day or so and mount their two spare cameras and radar packs on a rooftop, if she could find a suitable location.

Everything within the hill was also beyond their reach, at least while they observed from a distance. Sadly, the Company had neglected to provide them with antigrav spyeye remotes. Every indication pointed to a warren of tunnels and chambers and hidden rooms. The personage identifier system in Maggie's number three comp was counting silhouettes, facial pictures and stride lengths – when they could be captured on camera – and the count of inhabitants of the hill of the 'relentless ones' stood at four hundred so far.

Anderssen scanned her camera down to the 'Southern Entrance.' This was a broad, triumphal-style staircase vaulting up a near-vertical cliff from a warren of closely packed, shoddy-looking buildings at the foot of the hill. Age-eroded statues lined the stairs, which ended in a monumental gateway. The massive doors – probably made of the ubiquitous lohaja wood – were closed. Gretchen had yet to see them open.

She shook her head in consideration. "The south doors have to be for ceremonial occasions. There are drifts of leaves on the steps and a native avian is roosting in the crown of this topmost statue. We haven't seen any other location where there's traffic…no deliveries, no waste being taken out, nothing. So – do they leave? Are they a completely self-contained community?"

"An ark in the middle of a city?" Magdalena growled in disbelief. "What would be the purpose?"

"It's only a thought," Gretchen replied, standing up with a groan. "More likely, day-to-day business is conducted out of sight, through tunnels or even an entrance which is completely obscured by a building." She stretched, feeling her back creak in protest. "Do you suppose Parker can find me a real chair?"

"Hrrr! Shiny-backed lizards don't use human chairs! Learn to sit on comfortable floor like the Nisei do!"

"He found you a table…" Anderssen swung from side to side, trying to loosen up her stiff back. Time to get out of the house. "We've mapped enough of the rooftop walkways," she said, beginning to braid her hair into a thick ponytail, "for me to be able to reach the cliffs. When Parker gets back, I think I'll try making a circuit of the whole hill -"

The apartment door made a grinding sound and then recessed into the door-frame, allowing the pilot to stomp in with an enormous woven basket clutched to his chest. The top was packed with glass bottles filled with purified water.

"Konnichi-wa!" He called cheerfully. "Where can I put this down?"

Magdalena regarded a covered wooden bowl Parker had removed from the basket suspiciously. "This is supposed to be food?"

"Extra spicy," the pilot said, mouth already full of fried pakka dumpling. "G'head, that's yours – all raw and juicy, but with some peppers – well, I say they're peppers, dunno what the slicks call them. Meat, Miss Magdalena, real meat! And not skomsh either."

The Hesht's nostrils flared, but she removed the cover and sniffed the goopy contents with interest. The hackles rose on the back of her neck, then settled and she experimentally hooked one of the pieces of meat out with her little claw. Gelatinlike brown fluid dripped into the bowl.

Gretchen averted her eyes, hoping to keep her own lunch down. Parker grinned, a familiar-looking paper cylinder in one hand, his lighter in the other.

"That's not an Imperial-brand tabac is it? Is your medband on? Did you take an anti-anaphylactic?"

"Very funny," Parker replied, lighting the tabac and taking a tentative puff. His eyes widened, he coughed sharply, then inhaled again. "Ahhh…much more like the real thing."

"Is it real tabac?" Anderssen picked up the little cardboard box. The lettering was modern Takshilan block script, and the packet had all the usual gewgaws the city vendors used to flog their wares. In this case, a whistle was tacked to one side, enclosed in cellophane, while small paperboard cards with the toothy portraits of famous Gandarian racing lizard jockeys were on the other. For a moment, Gretchen had trouble making out the brand name of the tabac, but then realized the blocky, bold name was transliterated NГЎhuatl.

"You're smoking 'The Emperor's Teat,' " she said in a dry voice. "How does he taste?"

Parker snorted, laughing, and with tears in his eyes managed to choke out "Just like the real thing!" before going into a violent fit of coughing.

Magdalena looked up, still suspicious. "What are you hooting about, monkey?" She recoiled, suddenly aware of the cloud of tabac smoke coiling lazily in the air. "These leaves smell stronger than the last ones…"

"Great." Anderssen pinched her nose closed and picked up one of the bottles of fresh water. The pipes in the building were only capable of disgorging rust-red fluid which did, in fact, contain some H-two-Oh, but all three of their medbands flashed red when used to test the potability. Parker was of the opinion that "some water is provided with the bacteria." Gretchen was surprised the building water mains still worked as high up as the thirty-third floor. "I'm going out."

"Wait -" Parker rolled up, wiping his mouth. He looked quite pale. "Be careful. I saw something really strange while I was out getting groceries. It's hard to navigate roof-stairs with that basket, so I was walking back through the tanner's district – which is never terribly busy, unless you're delivering hides – and some buses went past."

"Real Imperial-style buses? With wheels and methanol engines?" Gretchen glanced at Magdalena. "Do you hear anything on your comm-scanner about that?"

The Hesht shook her head. Out of habit, she had set up a frequency-hopping comm wave scanner to listen for anything interesting. Unfortunately, the only comm traffic in the city was encrypted beyond the capability of Maggie's comp soft to decode. "Sometimes I hear chartered merchants chatting, if they're here sitting attendance on the kujen…"

"Anyway!" Parker raised his voice, giving both women a glare. "These weren't just Imperial-style buses; they were surplused Colonial Department of Education sixty-seaters. Repainted, of course, but it's hard to cover up the markings with only one coat of sprayon. But that wasn't the oddest thing – I mean, you know how hungry the market here is for modern transport, why not ship your retired school buses to the back of beyond? – what made me stop and stare was the buses were filled with Quarsenian jandars -"

"Which are?" Gretchen spread her hands questioningly.

"Which are tribesmen from the northern mountains," Parker replied. "Nasty-looking characters – mottled hides, felted armor, conical hats and ornamental spiked masks; they look like porcupines – these ones were armed to the teeth. They had rifles too, modern rifles – not those jezail-looking things some of the richer nobles carry."

"Why were they riding in buses? Where were they going?"

"How do I know?" Parker took another drag on his tabac, then blew a fat cloud of pinkish smoke towards the ceiling. "They were driving east towards the freight railway yards. The funny thing, though, was I saw a European on board the lead bus. He was giving the driver directions."

"A human male? There is a scheme a-paw for certain." Magdalena hooked another slimy chunk out of the bowl and popped it into her mouth. "Hrrr…these are delicious, Parker, what are they called?"

"Zizunaga, which is snake, I think. Anyway, boss, be careful if you go out. The streets were pretty empty. Something must be going on."

The well-maintained roofwalk Gretchen had been following ended in an irregular wooden platform lined with wide-mouthed ceramic pots. Each jar held a carved stone head surrounded by freshly planted flowers. The heads were recognizably Jehanan and their jaws yawned towards the sky, catching a fine mist of water spilling from the cliffs above.

A funeral offering? she wondered. Remembering ancestors, or placating their ghosts?

Gray limestone soared over her head, hung with trailing vines and thick, fingerlike succulents growing in crevices and clinging to tiny ledges in the rock. The walkway had been built up into a crevice, making a sort of elevated platform surrounded by a constant damp mist. Green-gray moss covered the wooden slats, making her footing tricky.

Gingerly, she reached out and touched the cliff face. The limestone was damp, beaded with water, and crisscrossed with sharp puckered ridges. Eight days of traveling and running around and finally I get to our destination. Hah.

Stepping carefully between the jars, Gretchen climbed up into the root of the crevice, gloved hands pressed against either wall. Trailing saprophytes brushed against her goggles. Cool water beaded on her face, a welcome relief from the usual soup of humid sweat she moved in. The narrow space ended in a still-smaller alcove – obviously worked by chisels at some time in the past – holding a lumpy-looking statuette.

A shrine? The planters and stone heads could be attendant ritual devices.

The god's features were entirely covered with moss. There were no tracks or traces of anyone coming to clean the votary, which made Anderssen grimace, realizing her boots had already left very obvious scars on the mossy stones. She turned around and carefully picked her way back to the platform. Once she was standing under the dripping vines, looking out through slowly falling sheets of mist, Gretchen was struck by the perfect quiet in the little ravine.

The usual sounds of the city – runner-cart horns, clattering machinery, the hooting voices of the natives singing, the pounding of hammers and the rasping whine of lathes – were swallowed by the mossy walls, or blocked by the mist.

"Quiet and still again," she mused, hands on her hips. One eye narrowed in thought. I keep finding these little pockets of solitude – but there's no quarrelsome gardener here. And there's no way up, or into, the hill in this place. A little disappointed, she left the shrine and headed back towards the last junction in the maze of walkways running hither and yon across the rooftops of Takshila.

Two hours later, Gretchen turned a corner, one eye on her hand-comp – which was displaying part of their map – and found herself looking at a short, arched passageway cutting through the base of a circular tower made of brick. Beyond the opening, a flight of stairs – broad and low, just as the Jehanan liked with their long, splayed feet – disappeared up into the hillside.

"Maggie? Do you have me on locator?"

Yes, hunt-sister, plain as blood on whiskers.

"Good. Mark this spot. There's a passage through a building – our map shows the walkway ending here in a dead end – and a staircase. Can you see that?"

There was a pause, and then Magdalena made a thoughtful hissing sound. No…from our angle there's only more cliffside. Must be hidden in a fold in the rock.

Anderssen tiptoed through the passageway, looked carefully up and down the staircase, then double-checked all of her equipment. "Am I still on locator?"

No. You've dropped off the display.

Gretchen nodded to herself and pulled a UV dye marker out of a jacket pocket. "The stairs below here are blocked by rubble – looks like a building collapsed and they just made a new wall out of the debris. Keep an eye on my comm signal. I'm going to head up, keeping quiet."

You should wait, Magdalena grumbled. We're far away. Let me send Parker to stand by at the entrance. Then, if a hostile clan pounces, he can come to your aid.

"I'll be fine." Anderssen peered upwards. The stairs disappeared into the side of the hill. "I'll be right back out and we'll be able to talk on comm."

Oh, I've heard many a kit say that before, just before they were snatched up by crag-wolves. The Hesht did not sound convinced at all. And if you don't return? How long should I wait before singing your death-howl and collecting the skulls of a hundred lizards for your memorial tomb?

"You will do no such thing!" Gretchen was appalled at the prospect. "If anything happens – if I'm not back in twelve hours – or you have to abandon the apartment, we'll meet at the train station, or if not there, then at the hotel in Parus. But don't worry, I will be fine."

There was a grumbling sound, but Anderssen ignored the protest, turned around to fix the location of the passageway in her memory and then started climbing, the pen tucked into her right hand.

A warbling, humming sound echoed down a hallway lined with perforated stone screens. Anderssen, who had been creeping along the left-hand side of the passage, keeping her head below the rosette-shaped openings, became completely still. She waited, expecting to see the bulky shape of a Jehanan come padding down the hallway.

Nothing appeared, though the warbling sound – rising and falling in a tuneless way – seemed to come a little closer. Gretchen moved forward to one of the supporting pillars and unclipped an eyeball from her vest. Rotating a ring-control to turn on the tiny device, she pointed the camera out through an opening.

The heads-up display on her right goggle lens flickered awake, showing her a close-up of a leaf. Frowning, Anderssen dialed back the magnification until she could see more than vascular channels and phylem. Most of her view was blocked by foliage, but something moved in her field of view and – after peering at the image for a moment – she recognized a large Jehanan foot covered with mud and leaves. As she watched, a spade scraped soil back into a hole.

Well, I doubt it can see me, she thought, stowing the camera again. Checking behind her in case a whole troop of ferocious monks with saw-toothed swords had crept up, Gretchen scuttled forward to the end of the hall. A partially illuminated passageway dropped down a concave set of steps into the terrace to her left – she caught a glimpse of the city skyline – and curved away into darkness on her right. Intermittent lights spotted the passage, falling from tiny sconces set at the junction of roof and wall. They were not candles, but some kind of bioluminescent pod held in a fluted ceramic shell.

Nervous the Jehanan digging on the terrace would notice her, Gretchen tapped her comm awake and peered at her locator band. Both devices had stopped working as soon as she'd entered the monastery. The ruined stairs had led her to a circular door much like their apartment entryway, though the triangular sections were permanently rusted into the wall recesses. Oddly, the first door had immediately led to a second, which, while in slightly better condition, was also frozen open. An empty passageway, wide enough for four Jehanan to march down abreast, had beckoned her into the heart of the massif.

After that, she had tried to keep to the left-hand wall, indicating each turn with the UV marker. With no data suggesting where the kalpataru might lie, she had concentrated on covering as much ground as possible while the mapping software in her comp measured each winding ramp, hallway, abandoned chamber and empty passageway she passed through.

Though she heard voices echoing in the distance once or twice, she had not encountered a single Jehanan. After hours of leaden silence, accompanied only by the echo of her footsteps, even the alien tonalities drifting in from the terrace were comforting.

Can't go left here, she thought, considering the glimpse of the city skyline. But if I did, I could squirt Magdalena all the mapping data in this comp…and check in. My dear sister is probably chewing her tail in worry.

The clomping sound of heavy, leathery feet made up her mind. The Jehanan outside was climbing the stairs. Gretchen flattened against the carved wall and tried to make herself perfectly still. A shadow blotted out the dim light from the doorway and then a blunt-horned Jehanan shuffled past, weighed down by a leather bag bulging with square-edged objects. Through slitted eyes, Anderssen watched the creature disappear down the hallway, and then breathed again when the long, angular shadow vanished.

Vastly relieved, she slipped down the stairs herself and out onto the terrace. The smoke-and fume-tainted Takshilan air felt brisk and clean after the motionless funk inside the hill. She glanced around the terrace and was puzzled to see quite a bit of earth had been turned near the low retaining wall facing the sprawl of the city. Odd gardener who isn't planting something… Maybe he was just weeding. Or harvesting. Or burying something to ferment. Or…

Ducking behind one of the thick blue-green bushes, she clicked her comm awake.

"Maggie? Can you hear me?" Gretchen whispered, though she was sure no one was within hundreds of meters. "I've managed to get outside."

We have you on camera, the Hesht replied, sounding relieved. Your locator just popped out of its hole. We're glad the mandire have not boiled the skin from your skull for a drinking cup.

"Good." Anderssen's goggles had darkened to shade her eyes from the sun, but she could see the apartment tower clearly. The whole western face was blazing with reflected sunlight, capturing the swollen red disc of Bharat in a long puddle of molten gold. "I'm bursting you all of the mapping data I've collected so…urk!"

A spade, smelling of earthworms and freshly turned soil, lifted her chin.

Gretchen looked up, swallowing, into the grim face of an enormous Jehanan. The creature's dark eyes seemed to spark with rage, and then the pebbled skin around the eyes tightened and the shovel shifted away from her neck.

"Hooo… You are a curious digger, aren't you? How did you get up here?"

At the same moment, Gretchen heard Magdalena say: Parker has the creature targeted with a spare rangefinder. Raise your hands if you want it blinded so you can run. The Hesht's voice sounded eager, and Anderssen could imagine the big black feline crouching in dimness under brambleberry bushes, claws flexed, waiting to pounce on an unwary truelk. She turned her head slowly, hands pressed carefully into the loamy soil.

A brilliant red dot was dancing in a handspan-wide circle on the side of the creature's head.

"Your pardon," she said slowly, amazed Parker's hands were steady enough to keep a bead on such a tiny target at such a distance. "We need not quarrel. I have trespassed, but I will leave immediately, without making any trouble."

"Oh ho, will you?" The Jehanan stepped back, squinting at her, and Anderssen realized with a cold feeling of shock that she knew the creature. "And if I think you should meet the Master of the Gardens, then what will you do?"

"This will seem odd," she said, shrinking back into the cliff, trying to leave Parker as clear a shot as possible, "but each time I get lost in this city, I find you. Aren't you Malakar the gardener? You were meditating by the blue shell, down in one of the neighborhoods below."

The creature's nostrils flapped open and there was a buzzing hum of sound. "Weak eyes do not deceive," the Jehanan said, cocking her head to one side. "You are the Disturber-of-Forgotten-Things – the one with such hungry thoughts. Now – hoooo – what would you be hungry for in this dilapidated old house?"

"Isn't this the oldest building on Jagan?" Gretchen kept her hands down. She could hear Magdalena breathing over the comm link, and the red dot continued its frantic little dance on the creature's scaled hide. "I wanted to see for myself."

Malakar's eyes, still nearly entirely in shadow, glinted. A long, clawed finger extended, pointing at her vest and belt. "Your little machines, they sing of this old shell? Tell its age? Even if no one living could swear such a truth?"

Gretchen nodded slowly. "Sometimes. If the object is made of the proper kind of material. Wood or metal are best. Do you have something you would like me to test?"

Malakar regarded her for a moment, seemingly puzzled. "Hoooo – when last we met, you could not properly speak without moving your foreclaws. Now you keep them to the ground. Odd and odder yet. Have you been injured?"

"No. I'm -"

Don't tell it anything! Magdalena whispered on the comm. Just let Parker flash it, and then you can get out!

Gretchen sighed, looking down at the ground and taking a breath. For all her bluster and menacing shovel, the Jehanan did not feel dangerous. Not like it couldn't just wrench my arms out of their sockets or bite my head off.

"Don't shoot unless I'm actually attacked," she whispered into her jacket collar.

"What do you say?" Malakar leaned close, eye-shields half-lidded against the glare of the sun. "There are only bizen-grass shoots there, no one can…" The native grew still. Gretchen looked up, meeting wide green irises. "Hoooo…This old one is not imagining being watched by distant eyes? My old hide is itchy, as if a xixixit hung in the trees above a quiet lawn where I lay sunning… Am I too old, my mind troubled by phantoms? Tell me, hungry soft one, tell me if I suffer night-fears while my eyes are open?"

Gretchen shook her head before realizing the creature might not grasp the cue. "My friends are watching us from the fin-towers. One of them has a weapon aimed at you. If you try to harm me, he will kill you before you can reach the tunnel."

"Hooo…" Malakar settled back on her haunches. "Quick of eye and sure of hand, this friend. A long reach across eight pan to scratch my hide."

"A machine – a weapon – firing an explosive, hide-piercing shell," Anderssen said, squatting comfortably. "Though in truth, you might lunge and strike me down as quickly as he can act."

"Then we both end, hungry-thoughts, leaving only an unexpected feeding for the yi birds who roost on the crumbling shell of this house."

"I do not wish to feed the yi birds," Gretchen said in a serious tone. "Not today."

"No one ever does," Malakar allowed, a deep trill echoing at the back of her throat. "They are often hungry and must eat of the bitter naragga. Then here we sit, trapped as HГєnd and Gukhis were above the fiery pit, each unwilling to loose claw from claw and so save themselves."

"Are you compelled to keep me here? Why not let me go?"

"Hooo… Could such an old, wrinkled hide as mine take the punishment the Master of the Garden would mete out for letting an asuchau human tread these sacred halls? Oh, my eye-shields would bleed for such an affront!"

Anderssen peered at the Jehanan, wondering if her translator were working properly. Something very much like cynical bitterness echoed in the words. I don't think this old creature cares overmuch for the 'Master of the Garden'… "Then let us make an equitable exchange – I will do something for you, and you will help me, poor lost human that I am, find my way home. As you did before, which was very gracious of you."

"As I did?" The gardener blew a mournful note with its nostrils. "Gracious? You are oiling my scales like a short-horn wishing mating privilege! Hooo… I was not cracked from the shell to be impolite. A lost hatchling is everyone's business to see home safely. But you…you and your little machines…can you truly tell the age of a thing?"

Gretchen nodded, trying to hide a relieved smile.

Don't trust it… Magdalena muttered in her ear. The khaysan drifts in the river, pretending to be an old scratching log, waiting for an unwary kit to come all thirsty to the water…

"I can try. What do you want to test? Is it far from here?"

Malakar made a rumbling sound and rose up, joints creaking, using the shovel for a cane. A long arm reached out, and slung the leather bag over one pebbly shoulder. Metal clanked against metal. The long head turned, regarding her with a lambent emerald eye. "I will show you an old thing, as old as I have ever seen, if you wish to follow."

Gretchen stood, brushing dirt from her work pants and held up the comp to the skyline. There was a warbling squeal in her earbug – the sound drowned out Magdalena cursing luridly and trying to warn her hunt-sister not to go into the cave!

"I will."

Anderssen's boots rang on polished stone, and she reached out to take hold of a railing embedded in the wall. Below her, the old Jehanan was treading carefully on terribly worn steps, testing each one with her weight before proceeding. They had spent a long time pacing down abandoned tunnels and descending broad curving rampways. Gretchen wanted to ask how deep they had come, but the gardener refused to speak, only stomping along with the leather bag over one shoulder, lost in her own thoughts.

These chambers – they seemed vast, though Gretchen hadn't attempted a sonosound reading to gauge their size – swallowed the faint radiance of a single blue light carried by the Jehanan. They followed a smudged path across an endless dusty floor. Anderssen wasn't sure, but it seemed the ground was made of a polished ceramic.

Someone has come this way before, she thought, feeling more and more oppressed in spirit as another vaulted doorway loomed out of the darkness before them. But only one set of footprints, I think, repeated over and over.

They turned at the doorway and did not pass on into the limitless darkness beyond, but followed along the wall instead. Gretchen caught sight of a row of sconces, much like the ones in the tunnels above, but these were dark. They did not hold any of the blue eggs. Malakar's steps slowed and they entered a smaller hall, this one of a size Anderssen guessed a Jehanan might find comfortable. Vague shapes loomed in the faint light, and the scuffed path wound among piles of debris – broken machinery, if her eye encompassed the splintered wooden gears and cracked wheels properly – and into a still smaller passage. This, she thought, was an actual hallway and a far cry from the cyclopean proportions of the chambers outside.

Her medband beeped quietly, the sound almost lost in the endless curve of the passage.

"Malakar…" she whispered, afraid to disturb the tomblike silence. "This air is poor. You shouldn't stay long…my band can counteract the toxins in the air, but you…"

"I have passed this way before. After a twelfth-sun passes one begins to hear voices, or see flashes of light where there are none. This is the place I wish to show you."

The old Jehanan stood before a circular door in the wall. Gretchen blinked, realizing the entire hall was lined with similar openings. All were closed. Malakar leaned heavily against the wall, claws on either side of a recessed panel.

"What is on the other side?" Gretchen unzipped the collar of her field jacket and tugged out two breathing tubes. Pressing one clip to her nose, she let the other rest against her chin. "Were these the first chambers cut into the hill?"

"No…" the Jehanan sighed, slumping before the door. "There are other levels below, but the air is so poor, even the strongest takes ill and the weak die. Torches fail, and even the gipu" – she raised the glowing blue egg – "sputter and fall dark."

Malakar brushed dust away from the panel. "When I was only a short-horn fresh from the egg, this was a busy place. Often I was brought here – the air had not turned, there were lights in the dark places, some of the elders even held conclave here, as their ancestors had done. But then the gipu began to fail and shadows spilled in from the walls. Foul air rose from below and everyone moved up and away, closer to the gardens, to the terraces."

Another mournful hooo escaped the creature's slitlike nostrils. "Now my hide grows tight and brittle, and what was once clear in mind fades." A claw tapped on the door, making a sharp tinking sound. "The last Master of the Garden to tread these hallways is long still. The new Master sees only the sky, gardens, and bright chambers with tall windows. He cares only for the favor of the kujen and filling his claws with shatamanu. There is talk among the tough-hides of closing off these tunnels, filling them in, keeping the short-horns from mischief.

"When I was fresh from the egg, this chamber was filled with gipu-light, almost as bright as day. Our voices were very sweet, when we sang…"

The creature fell silent, crouched before the door. Gretchen waited patiently, sitting at the edge of the circle of light. The oxygen tube under her tongue made a quiet hiss-hiss sound as she breathed.

"That's odd," Parker said, squinting at a portable holovee sitting on his stomach. He had been flipping through the channels, half out of his mind with boredom. The windows were dark; night had come, bringing heavy clouds, but no rain, only a tense, oppressive stillness. Inside, without the cold night wind to stir the air, the ozone-stink of the comps and surveillance equipment made the room feel stifling.

Gretchen had failed to reappear on their scanners. Magdalena was certain the woman had been taken captive and horribly murdered. Parker didn't think so, but he was beginning to wonder what they would do if she were. Go in after her, I guess. But how would we find her in there?

"Hmm?" Magdalena was in her nest, legs and arms curled across her chest, clutching her tail and staring at the ceiling. "You don't like the dancing monkeys here?"

"The shows are fine. Unintelligible, but fine." Parker clicked back to the previous channel. "The Imperial 'cast channel is showing some footage taken by one of the Jehanan stations, with a translation running over the original voice track? But they don't match up."

The Hesht rolled over, staring at him in mild interest. "So?"

"So," Parker said, sitting up. "The news 'caster said the footage was of an anti-Imperial demonstration in one of the southern cities – the port of Patala I think. But that's not what the Jehanan narration said – they said the 'demonstrators' were some kind of local religious festival – one of those slice-of-life bits – but I guess down south they set things on fire to pay homage to their gods."

"Huh. That does seem odd. You think the Imperial 'cast just got a bad translation?"

"Maybe…" Parker scowled. I should have kept one of those rifles. I didn't and now we might need it and I don't have it.

He set the holocast set aside and paced to the nearest window. Miserable, he wedged his shoulders in beside a thick bundle of cables running up to comm-scanning antennas mounted on the roof of the building. The city below was filled with faint lights – the flickering yellow glow of lanterns and candles, here and there the dull red of bonfires or forge chimneys – a far cry from the jeweled splendor of human cities. The hill of the mandire, in comparison, was entirely dark and silent.

"Mags – how long are we going to wait for her?"

"As long as it takes," the Hesht growled, lying back down and fiddling with her earbug.

Parker heard a high-pitched whining sound and craned his neck up. A low layer of clouds blanketed the city, gleaming softly in the lights from below. An aerocar, he thought, feeling a sharp stab of envy. We need an aerocar – be easy to land on the top of the hill and snatch Gretchen from the jaws of death if we had an aerocar. If we had an aerocar, there would be something for me to fly. He scratched the back of his head, suddenly tired of waiting.

"She's in trouble, kit-cat. We're going to have to go in there and get her. I'm going out."

"To do what?" Magdalena's yellow eyes fixed on him. "We are supposed to wait."

Parker picked up his jacket. "Get some things we might need later." When we have to bug out of town. I know we're going to have to leave all a'sudden, with the lanterns and whistles of the keisatsu shrilling behind us.

The Hesht made a hissing sound, but did not stop him from leaving.

"Somewhere below," Malakar said, rousing itself, claws rasping on the floor, "lie many rooms filled with pushta. Thousands of them, each filled with more words than a single Jehanan could read in a whole lifetime. Your clans must have such things, where histories, songs, stories of the old, are graven?"

"Yes." Gretchen blinked awake, her interest sharpening. An old library? "Can you read them?"

The old Jehanan shook her narrow head slowly from side to side. A long arm reached out and dug into the leather bag, removing a rectangular metallic plate. "These are pushta I stole long ago and hid in the terrace. I hoped to learn their secret, to open them up, to see the flowing words gleaming in my hands." Malakar scooted the plate across the dusty floor towards her. "They are ruined, as are the ones lost below in darkness."

Anderssen picked up the plate with careful, gloved fingers and examined each surface in turn. A double cluck of the tongue cycled her goggles through a wide range of frequencies and light sources. Nothing was incised on the outside, but she could see an interface of some kind on one end and a recess where a long, claw-tipped thumb might press a control.

"Did the pushta fail all at once," she ventured, "or one at a time, until none were left?"

The old Jehanan hunched her shoulders. "Such knowledge was lost long before I hatched from a speckled egg. There was once a book, handwritten, on pypil leaves, which described a means of turning the glowing pages, but the leaf of the pypil does not last in dampness."

"Did this fit into a machine?" Gretchen pulled a compressed air blower from the inside of her jacket and gave the stippled interface a squirt. Malakar's eyes rose at the puff of dust, and then frowned as Anderssen cleaned the rest of the plate with a swab. She looked up, wondering if the wrinkled expression on the creature's face was avarice or longing. I would be gnawing straight through the arm of such a slow creature!

"I was frightened," the gardener admitted, hanging her head. "Some things I snatched from shelves and fled. Even when I was barely horned, the air in the deep was poisonous."

Gretchen set the plate down and unwrapped a comp octopus she'd been carrying in her pocket. "Some of my kind," she said, making conversation, "are digging in the ruins at Fehrupurй. They say there was a planet-wide war six or seven hundred years ago, one which crashed a great civilization…"

"Arthava's fire," the creature rumbled. "The credulous say he challenged the will of the gods, scratching at the doors of heaven, making edicts to guide all Jehanan to a right path in the place of the old religions – and they humbled him with quenchless fire and burning rain and deadly smokes which covered the land for an age. Foolish tales told by those who do not have the wit to look beyond their food bowl! No gods were needed to bring ruin upon us…"

"The truth is known? Beyond this place, I mean?"

Malakar hooted sadly. "Some learned men know. The kujen knows. He sends his servants to dig and pry in the dead cities, searching for trinkets… They have even been here, poking and prying! The Master tells them secrets he should not! Things entrusted to us… Worst, we have forgotten, or lost, the long tale of the clans, that stretching back to the earth which gave us birth, to the first shell cracking in the hot sun. But the Fire is still hot in our minds, sharp and hard." A bitter trill issued from the back of her throat. "Each time we look to the sky and see your shining rukhbarat race overhead, parting the clouds, we remember what has been lost."

Gretchen plucked a set of leads from the octopus and began testing each stippled point on the plate. All of them were dead. No current the octo can recognize. Better let the comp try. She wiggled the octopus's main interface onto the comp, tapped up a broad-spectrum power testing routine and set everything back down.

"There are stories about the Arthavan period? When your people had aerocars and built the fin-towers and great highways? Before the Fire consumed your civilization? Were the pushta working in those times?"

"Perhaps." Malakar scratched her claws on the floor, making doodles in the dust. The passageway seemed to have grown darker and Gretchen eyed the gipu with concern. The radiant egg was getting dimmer. "We recall fragments, scraps of shell and hide – there is only one history which can be read – and that is precarious, precious, and perhaps lost forever. But I do not know if that history is from the time of Arthava, or from before, when our race came to this world for the first time."

Anderssen looked up sharply, one hand outstretched to hold her oxygen tube next to the gipu, which brightened visibly as fresh air hissed across its surface. "What remains? Another book?"

The gardener twisted, pointing at the sealed door with a foreclaw.

"There," she said, voice rumbling low, almost beneath the limit of human hearing. "A cruel jest – and a reminder to the great to tread warily in the world, for even the most glorious monument may be crushed beneath the stepping-claw of time." Malakar swiveled back, brushing scaly fingers over the plate wrapped by the softly humming octopus. "Pypil leaves erode, pushta fail, inscriptions wear away in the wind and rain, the memories of Jehanan fade… I can tear the pages of yourMйxica books with ease…but sometimes the simplest things endure."

"Malakar, what is in the room?" Gretchen shivered. "Why is the door closed?"

"There are paintings on the walls," the Jehanan said, sighing out a long hoooooo. "They show many scenes, but most striking are those of seventeen great ships descending from the sky. Golden Jehanan step forth and they are garbed like kings, like heroes. They fight terrible monsters and ferocious beasts with spears of lightning, laying low all who contest their dominion. Cities of emerald and silver rise from plain and mountain. They feast on the most savory food, they bear many young, they rule the world as gods. Oh, mighty is their aspect!"

Malakar fell silent again, claws scratching on the floor, raising tiny puffs of dust.

"But…" Gretchen wanted to pat the creature's shoulder, but had no idea if such an offering of sympathy would be properly understood. "There are no dates, no signs to tell when the murals were painted? Or even if they relate a true tale of your people?"

"Hoooo…" The old Jehanan raised her head wearily, seemingly spent. "We feel the truth in our bones, on our tongues, in the taste of the air, the bitterness of the Nem. Even the freshest hatchling knows without being told…Jagan is not our home. We are strangers here, picking for grubs in the ruins of our ancestors."

"The Nem fruit is supposed to be sweet?" Anderssen could see the signs of pain and loss in the creature's expression now. "Is it from your true-home?"

"Yesss…" Malakar's mouth yawned sadly, showing a forest of broken teeth. "The breath of life, the guardian, yielding a sap which folds back illusion from reality. There are many rituals concerning the Nem, but…there, in the room, there is a little painting of a trilobed fruit in one corner and the characters 'I like Nem, it is sweet to eat.' This old horn believes those words are true."

"Who painted the murals, Malakar? They weren't priests, were they? Not historians."

The Jehanan rubbed her long snout. "The roof is a little low and curved. We sat on the floor, listening to the shower-of-the-way. So many stories she told us, explaining all the bright pictures…"

"It's a school room, isn't it?" Gretchen kept her voice soft. "Children – hatchlings – painted the murals. But you don't know how long ago, or if they were painting something they'd seen themselves, or only read about in pushta or heard from a long-horn. That's why you wanted to know how old the paint is…"

Malakar hissed in despair, pressing her head against the floor. "How long have we been lost?" she wailed. "Where is our home – is earth gone? Did we flee? Are there sweet Nem somewhere, under a bright sun, not so cold as cruel Bharat which glares at us from the sky? Are we alone? All alone?"

Anderssen felt a chill wash over her; the translator in her earbug was running out of synch with the sobbing wail of the creature's words. She waited until the groaning voice fell silent again.

"Malakar, can we open the door? Do you remember how?"

"Huuuuuoooo…" The old Jehanan opened her eyes. "This door has stood closed for a long count of years… The last good Master bade it sealed. The painted colors were beginning to fade, to crack, like an old shell left out in the wind."

"Oh." Gretchen checked her comp, which was still humming to itself and trying to make the metallic plate wake up. "If the pigments and binding layer are breaking down, then opening the door might break the atmosphere suspension inside… The whole faГ§ade of the wall could crumble to dust." She stood upslowly, fearful of alarming the creature huddled on the floor, and stepped to the portal.

Dust and a surface layer of grime came away at her touch. Gretchen dug a sampler out of one of the pockets of her work-pants. Running the pickup over the surface cleared a hand's breadth section – and the material resembled the polished ceramic making up the floors and walls. "Probably not a metal," she muttered, watching the display on the sampler flash through an analysis sequence. "Looks solid though. Airtight."

The sampler beeped, displaying a list of compounds. Anderssen puzzled through the materials, then shook her head. "A layer-bonded ceramic – nearly as tough as steel and probably lasts longer in this environment. Unfortunately, it's holding cohesion pretty well. No noticeable surface degradation and I don't have an erosion matrix built up to gauge what wear there is."

Her eyes fell on the pushta under her octopus. "Malakar, wouldn't these books be even older than the room? I mean, if they came from…" She paused, wondering if she'd caught the translator in an error. Wouldn't be the first time! "Did you say your people came from 'earth'?"

"Yes," rumbled the Jehanan, now squatting, long arms folded over bony knees. "Another bit of shell we've not lost hold of… Our race was born on earth, long, long ago."

But Anderssen had plucked out her earbug, and the hooting, warbling voice had pronounced a word she knew. Her heart sank, knowing at least part of the answer to the creature's agonized questions.

The Jehanan word for 'earth' was 'Mokuil,' not AnГЎhuac, not Terra. A dead world, if Hummingbird spoke true, Gretchen remembered, filled with pity. Desolate and shattered, a vigorous race which had woken the Valkar and so been destroyed millennia ago. Leaving only corpses among which humanitymight hide, avoiding notice ourselves…

There was a soft beep from the floor.

She knelt and checked her comp. The first set of scans were complete. The pushta was inert, showing no response to external power. Cold and dead, broken by the weight of thousands of years of neglect. Organic analysis found traces of a bacterium particular to Jagan, one which ate and corroded metal, on the stippled contact points.

How sad, Gretchen thought, cradling the plate in her hands. Malakar was watching her, eyes hooded, shoulders hunched against the sides of her long head. The world ate away everything they wanted to save, leaving nothing but dust and empty, lightless halls. Even their great conquest turned bitter…Were they refugees from the destruction of their homeworld? Had they seen the Valkar rip aside the sky, seen their cities burn? How long did they flee through the dark, seeking a new home?

She looked up. "There is only one thing we know for sure. The child who painted that picture had tasted Nem untainted by the biosphere of Jagan. He or she must have come from race-home, from Mokuil itself. You've looked upon – touched – the work of the first of your kind to stand under the red sun of Bharat."

The creature lowered her head, clasping scaled arms over eye-ridges. A trembling, desolate hooting sound reverberated from the walls and fled down the empty hallway.