“Beautiful,” Kurt said, and it was. “Those buildings at the top—Afen, Bel called it.”
“Fortress. The Fortress of Nephane.”
“A fortress against what enemy? Humans?”
Again a little crease of a frown appeared between Kta’s wide-set eyes. “You surprise me. You are not Tamurlin. Your ship destroyed, your friends—dead, you say. But what want you among us?”
“I know nothing. I’m lost. I’ve trusted you. And if I can’t trust your given word, then I don’t know anything.”
“I don’t lie, Kurt Morgan. But you try hard not to answer my question. Why do you come to us?”
A crowd was on the docks, gaily colored clothing a kaleidoscope in the sunlight. The oars rumbled inboard as the ship glided in, making conversation impossible for the moment. Pan was poised near them with the mooring cable, ready to cast it to the men at the dock.
“Why,” asked Kurt, “do you think I should know my way in this world?”
“The others, they knew.”
“The . . . others?”
“The
new
humans. The—”
Kta’s voice trailed off, for Kurt backed from him. The nemet suddenly looked frightened, opened his hands in appeal to him. “Kurt,” he protested, “wait.—No. We take—”
Kurt caught him by surprise, drove his fist to the nemet’s jaw and vaulted the rail, even as the ship shuddered against the dock.
He hit the water and water went up his nose at the impact, and again when something hit him, the gliding hull of the ship itself.
Then he made himself quit fighting and drifted, wrapped in the darkening green of the sea, a swift and friendly dark. It was hard to move against the weight of the water. In another moment vision and sense went out together.
He was strangling. He gasped for air and coughed over the water mingling with it in his throat. On a second try he drew a breath and heaved it up again, along with the water in his stomach, twisting onto the stones over on his belly while his insides came apart. When he could breathe again, someone picked him up and wiped his face, cradling his head off the stone.
He was lying on the dock, the center of a great crowd of nemet. Kta held him and implored him in words he could not understand, while Bel and Val leaned over Kta’s shoulder. Kta and both the other men were dripping wet, and he knew that they must have gone in after him.
“Kta,” he tried to protest, but his raw throat gave out only a voiceless whisper.
“You could not swim,” Kta accused him. “You almost die. You wish this? You try to kill yourself?”
“You lied,” Kurt whispered, trying to shout.
“No,” Kta insisted fervently. But by his troubled frown he seemed at last to understand. “I didn’t think you are enemy to us.”
“Help me,” Kurt implored him, but Kta turned his face aside slightly in that gesture that meant refusal, then glanced a mute signal to Val. With the big seaman’s help, he eased him onto a litter improvised out of planks, though Kurt tried to protest.
He was in shock, chilled and shivering so he could hardly keep from doubling up. Somewhere after that, Kta left him and strangers took charge.
The journey up the cobbled street of Nephane was a nightmare, faces crowding close to look at him, the jolting of the litter redoubling his sickness. They passed through massive gates and into the Afen, the Fortress, into triangle-arched halls and dim live-flame lighting, through doorways and into a window-less cell.
Here he would have been content to live or die alone, but they roused him and stripped the wet clothing off him, and laid him in a proper bed, wrapped in blankets.
There was a stillness that lasted for hours after the illness had passed. He was aware of someone standing outside the door; someone who never left through all the long hours.
At last—he thought it must be well into another day—the guards brought him clothing and helped him dress. From the skin outward the clothing was strange to him, and he resented it, losing what dignity he had left at their hands. Over it all went the
pel,
a long-sleeved tunic that lapped across to close in front, held by a wide belt. He was not even permitted to lace his own sandals, but the guards impatiently took over and, having finished, allowed him a tiny cup of
telise,
which they evidently thought sovereign for all bodily ills.
Then, as he had dreaded, they hailed him with them into the A-shaped halls of the upper Afen. He gave them no trouble. He needed no more enemies than he had in Nephane.
2
Alarge hall was on the third level. Its walls were of the same irregular stone as the outer hall, but the floor had carpets and the walls were hung with tapestries. The guards sent him beyond this point alone, toward the next door.
The room beyond the threshold was of his own world, metal and synthetics, white light. The furnishings were crystal and black, the walls were silver. Only the cabinet at his left and the door at his back did not belong: they were carved wood, convoluted dragon figures and fishes.
The door closed softly, sealing him in.
Machinery purred and he glanced leftward. A woman in nemet dress had joined him. Her gown was gold, high-collared, floor-length. Her hair was amber, curling gently. She was human.
Hanan.
She treated him with more respect than the nemet, keeping her distance. She would know his mind, as he knew hers; he made no move against her, would make none until he was sure of the odds.
“Good day, Mr. Morgan—Lieutenant Morgan.” She had a disk in her fingers, letting it slide on its chain. Suddenly he missed it. “Kurt Liam Morgan. Pylan, I read it.”
“Would you mind returning it?” It was his identity tag. He had worn it since the day of his birth, and it was unnerving to have it in her hands, as if a bit of his life dangled there. She considered a moment, then tossed it. He caught it.
“We have one name,” she said, which was common knowledge. “I’m Djan. My number—you would forget. Where are your crewmates, Kurt Morgan?”
“Dead. I’ve told the truth from the beginning. There were no other survivors.”
“Really.”
“I am alone,” he insisted, frightened, for he knew the lengths to which they could go trying to obtain information he did not have. “Our ship was destroyed in combat. The life-capsule from Communications was the only one that cleared on either side, yours or ours.”
“How did you come here?”
“Random search.”
Her lips quivered. Her eyes fixed on his with cold fury. “You did not happen here. Again.”
“We met one of your ships,” he said, and his mouth was suddenly dry; he began to surmise how she knew it was a lie, and that they would have all the truth before they were done. It was easier to yield it, hoping against expectation that these Aeolids would dispose of him without revenge.
“Aeolus was your world, wasn’t it?”
“Details,” she said. Her face was white, but the control of her voice was unfaltering. He had respect for her. The Hanan were cold, but it took more than coldness to receive such news with calm. He knew. Pylos also was a dead world. He remembered Aeolus hanging in space, the glare of fires spotting its angry surface. Even an enemy had to feel something for that, the death of a world.
“Two Alliance ISTs penetrated the Aeolid zone with thirty riders. We were with that force. One of your deepships jumped into the system after the attack, jumped out again immediately when they realized the situation there. We were nearest, saw them, locked to track—it brought us here. We—fought. You monitored that, didn’t you? You know there were no other survivors.”
“Keep going.”
“That’s all there is. We finished each other. We suffered the first hit and my station capsuled then. That’s all I know. I had no part in the combat. I looked for other capsules. There were none. You
know
there were no others.”
An object was concealed in her hand. He caught a glimpse of it as her hand moved by her many-folded skirts. He saw her fingers close, then relax. He almost took the chance against her then, but she was Hanan and trained from infancy: her reflexes would be instant, and there was the chance the weapon was set to stun. That possibility was more deterrent than any quick oblivion.
“I know,” she said, “that there are no other ships, that at least.” Her tone was low and mocking. “Welcome to my world, Kurt Morgan. We seem to be humanity’s orphans in this limb of nowhere,—there being only the Tamurlin for company otherwise, and they’re not really human any longer.”
“You’re alone?”
“Mr. Morgan. If something happens to me at your hands, I’ve given the nemet orders to turn you out naked as the day you were born on the shore of the Tamur. The other humans in this world will know how to deal with you in a way humans understand.”
“I don’t threaten you.” Hope turned him shameless. “Give me the chance to leave. You’ll never see me again.”
“Unless you’re the forerunner of others.”
“There are no others,” he insisted.
“What security do you give me for that promise?”
“We were alone. We came alone. There was no way we could have been traced. There were no ships near enough and we jumped blind, without coordinates.”
“Well,” she said, and even appeared to accept what he said, “well, it will be a long wait then. Aeolus colonized this world three hundred years ago. But the war—the war—Records were scrambled, the supply ship was lost somehow. We discovered this world in archives centuries old on Aeolus and came to reclaim it. But you seem to have intervened in a very permanent way on Aeolus. Our ship is gone: it could only have been the one you claim to have destroyed; your ship is gone—you claim you could not be traced; Aeolus and its records are cinders. Exploration in this limb ceased, a hundred years ago. What do you suppose the odds are on someone chancing across us?”
“There there is no war. Let me leave.”
“If I did,” she said, “you might die out there: the world has its dangers. Or you might come back. You might come back, and I could never be sure when you would do that. I would have to fear you for the rest of my life. I would have no more peace here.”
“I would not come back.”
“Yes, you would. You would. It’s been six months—since my crew died here. After only that long, my own face begins to look strange to me in a mirror; I begin to fear mirrors. But I look. I could want another human face to look at,—after a certain number of years. So would you.”
She had not raised the weapon he was now sure she had. She did not want to use it. Hope turned his hands damp, sent the sweat running down his sides. She knew the only safe course for her. She was mad if she did not take it. Yet she hesitated, her face greatly distressed.
“Kta t’Elas came,” she said, “and begged for your freedom. I told him you were not to be trusted.”
“I swear to you, I have no ambitions,—only to stay alive, I would go to him—I would accept any conditions, any terms you set.”
She moved her hands together, clasping the weapon casually in her slim fingers. “Suppose I listened to you.”
“There would be no trouble.”
“I hope you remember that, when you grow more comfortable. Remember that you came here with nothing, with nothing—not even the clothes on your back; and that you begged
any
terms I would give you.” She gazed at him soberly for a moment, unmoving. “I am out of my mind. But I reserve the right to collect on this debt someday, in whatever manner and for however long I decide. You are here on tolerance. And I will try you. I am sending you to Kta t’Elas, putting you in his charge for two weeks. Then I will call you back, and we will review the situation.”
He understood it for a dismissal, weak-kneed with relief and now beset with new doubts. Alone, presented with an enemy, she did a thing entirely unreasonable: it was not the way he had known the Hanan, and he began to fear some subtlety, a snare laid for someone.
Or perhaps loneliness had its power even on the Hanan, destructive even of the desire to survive. And that thought was no less disquieting in itself.
3
To judge by the size of the house and its nearness to the Afen, Kta was an important man. From the street the house of Elas was a featureless cube of stone with its deeply recessed A-shaped doorway fronting directly on the walk. It was two stories high, and sprawled far back against the rock on which Nephane sat.
The guards who escorted him rang a bell that hung before the door, and in a few moments the door was opened by a white-haired and balding nemet in black.
There was a rapid exchange of words, in which Kurt caught frequently the names of Kta and Djan-methi. It ended with the old man bowing, hands to lips, and accepting Kurt within the house, and the guards bowing themselves off the step. The old man softly closed the double doors and dropped the bar.
“Hef,” the old man identified himself with a gesture. “Come.”
Hanging lamps of bronze lit their way into the depths of the house, down a dim hall that branched Y-formed past a triangular arch. Stairs at left and right led to a balcony and other rooms, but they took the right-hand branch of the Y upon the main floor. On the left the wall gave way into that same central hall which appeared through the arch at the joining of the Y. On the right was a closed door. Hef struck it with his fingers.
Kta answered the knock, his dark eyes astonished. He gave full attention to Hef’s rapid words, which sobered him greatly; then he opened the door widely and bade Kurt come in.
Kurt entered uncertainly, disoriented equally by exhaustion and by the alien geometry of the place. This time Kta offered him the honor of a chair, still lower than Kurt found natural. The carpets underfoot were rich with designs of geometric form and the furniture was fantastically carved, even the bed surrounded with embroidered hangings.
Kta settled opposite him and leaned back. He wore only a kilt and sandals in the privacy of his own chambers. He was a powerfully built man, golden skin glistening like the statue of some ancient god brought to life; and there was about him the power of wealth that had not been apparent on the ship. Kurt suddenly found himself awed of the man, and suddenly realized that “friend” was perhaps not the proper word between a wealthy nemet captain and a human refugee who had landed destitute on his doorstep.