Empire of Bones (22 page)

/
have seen all too little of this place
, the
raksasa
countered.
And much of that was in my avatar's
form. Like you, I should like to see something of this colony
. She fell in beside him as he strode through the gate and then they progressed down the street, unseen and unspeaking.

The first thing that struck Sirru about Varanasi was its lack of diversity. This was only to be expected in an embryonic
desqusai
colony, but it seemed strange to him nonetheless. He thought sadly of Khaikurriye: so vast, so multiplicitous. Three thousand castes in the Western Quarter alone, most of them so ancient that only whatever might lie in the heart of the Core knew their origins, some of them less than a million years in the making.

The Core constantly changed and refined, tinkering with the levels of genetic structures in its unending attempt to achieve an optimal aesthetic; observing, pruning, and cross-matching in its efforts to maximize the mixture. It was a little strange to be surrounded by this particular form of
desqusai
: everyone looked alike. No one had claws, or multiple arms. He had seen no one resembling the scaled, tailed people who took care of the low-level city tasks.

Whatever lived at the heart of the Core had been produc-ing new phenotypes for so long that the original purpose had probably been lost, Sirru thought, and then realized that yet again he had entertained a forbidden thought. But the sup-pressants were almost gone from his system, and heresy brought only the faintest sense of unease. Yet it occurred to him to wonder just how free he really was. The suppressants might be gone, but cultural conditioning, social mores and ex-pectations—all these would remain. He had already made a fool of himself by talking to a dead house. Despite his initial confidence, he wondered just how capable he was of under-standing this new world. Was this what freedom of thought involved? It was starting to seem more like freedom of doubt.

Walking beside him, Ir Yth glanced up absently, and frowned. Carefully, he steered his reflections back to more conventional channels.

To the Core, this colony of Tekhei was no more than an odd little plant in the corner of a vast, carefully tended garden. Still, Sirru reflected, it was fortunate for Tekhei that it
was
a
desqusai
world and had the wisdom and experience of an an-cient caste, however lowly, to guide it. Some of the more avant garde projects had proved rather… excessive—to the feelings of the EsMoyshekhali, at any rate. What about that case of the latest
she'tei
colony, where half the denizens of the planet had been forced into a mass breeding program? Or the instance of that little world out on the Fringes, where the atmosphere had been renovated according to
iri'thain
standards and the popu-lation had been treated to lung transplants? At least Tekhei didn't have
that
to look forward to.

The city also appeared charmingly small—no more than a few large temeni, really. There were many plants, but they were silent. Sirru found this sad. Occasionally he whispered to a wall as he passed, but it seemed that Ir Yth was, annoyingly, right—the city was quite dead.

Sirru began to feel a pleasant, almost nostalgic melancholy. The temples and towers and houses reminded him of skele-tons from which all the flesh had long since fallen away. The somber, earthy colors reinforced Sirru's dark vision. Yet the city was not silent—on the contrary, it was cacophonous. Sirru was bombarded from all sides by continual scraps and frag-ments of speech. The place was a turmoil of unconcealed emo-tion, a bath of pheromonal discourse.

At first, he found this exhilarating. Such naked honesty, unmodulated by any consideration of refinement, courtesy, or reticence—how could anyone have any secrets here? And then he remembered that they could not hear one another. It was like being an infant at a party, a perpetual eavesdropper. Among the deaf, he was the only one who could hear.

The lack of inhibition was almost arousing. Beneath the wrap of the robe, his skin flushed and grew warm.
lean say any-thing
! A child stepped out of a doorway. Filthy, half naked, it stared wonderingly up at the passing alien, and Sirru turned, smiled, and walked backward for a step.
You can never lie to
the young. They feel too much what you do not want them to feel
.

Ir Yth's rudimentary fingers closed over his arm like a steel trap.
What are you
doing?
You will
endanger us both
! she mod-ulated furiously.

He had let his disguise slip a little. Sirru laughed and caught the outraged
ra^sasa
around the waist.
It is a
garden, nothing more, with strange paths and stranger fruit
. The suppres-sants were definitely gone.

It was invigorating. Ir Yth gave him a furious glance as he let his disguise fall further. A wrin-kled old woman stared, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. With a curious reluctance, Sirru resumed the disguise.

He figured it shouldn't take too long for the communica-tions network to become established. Sirru had decided, upon reflection, that he had been wise not to be too ambitious; he did not want his continued development of the colony to come too quickly to the hostile attention of Ir Yth. It was for this reason that he had placed the first steps of the network on an experimental basis with the
hiroi
—he couldn't afford to let his impatience jeopardize the seed. And he did not want to in-volve Jaya just yet; best to be sure.

Sirru, bringing his attention back to the present, saw that they were heading down through a series of narrow passages toward the glittering band of the river. He was assailed by odors and sounds: hot oil, dung, some kind of pungent smoke that his system recognized as a mild narcotic. Crowds pressed them on every side, giving the Rasasatrans no more than ca-sual glances as their perceptions slipped off the modulation.

Their behavior was puzzling: the men all seemed to be chewing, and sometimes spat out a stream of what was surely blood. Were they ill? Sirru scraped some up with a finger and discovered it to be a pungent, spicy substance. Small stalls seemed to be selling it, wrapped in a large green leaf. It tasted strong and interesting. He was tempted to filch some from one of the stalls, but reluctantly abandoned the idea. He was not a thief, after all.

Despite its occasionally baffling aspect, Sirru was beginning to feel comfortable in the city; it was not so unlike home after all. He had begun to find the isolation of the ship more than a little oppressive: no siblings to sleep among, each knowing the thoughts of the other… Only the ship, immense and ancient and sorrowing, and the spiny disdainful presence of Ir Yth. But now he was among
desqusai
once more, even though they were not precisely his own kind. He could come to find that liberat-ing. He saw a woman looking over her shoulder, her face puz-zled. To her, at the moment, he was no more than a passing shadow. They stepped through the dead streets and out onto die great curve of the river. Sirru smelled weed and mud and decay. He slowed and stopped, sending a plea to Ir Yth.

The river was made of light. It swallowed the sun, so that the great walls of the city and the sky and the stone beneath his feet all appeared bleached of color. The river sang to Sirru, moving him almost as much as had the
desqusai
themselves. It sang of impermanence and the wheel of life, and he did not know how it was that it could speak to him, except perhaps through the pain that it had accumulated during its long history.

Sadness settled through him. It was the first thing here that made him feel insignificant, and he welcomed that. But de-spite the fertile appearance of the river mud, it would not be a good place for the seed. The seed needed somewhere colder. Urgency pressed him. He'd have to do something about that, and soon.

The seed was already starting to grow.

Glancing up the steps, he saw that someone was being car-ried down to the river: a woman on a litter.

Small filmy curtains hung from four gilt pillars. At first, he thought she was dead, but then he saw that she was merely very still. The bearers set the litter carefully down at the bottom of the steps and stood re-spectfully back as their burden rose. The woman was wearing a simple cream-colored sari edged with golden embroidery. Jeweled chains formed a complex bondage about her body— from nose to ear, from wrist to elbow. Ruby studs in her ears caught the sunlight like fire and struck sparks from the lapping water. Slowly, and with some ceremony, the woman descended into the waters of the Ganges. Sirru sent questions at Ir Yth.

"Who is that?"

/
believe that the person is an
apsara.
I have seen them before, when in my avatar's form
.

Memories of Anarres snatched at his heart. So, they had such a function here. He said, "Why is she immersing herself like that?"

/
have no idea. Perhaps it is for purposes of cleansing
.

"Really? That water doesn't look very clean…"

He was sure that Ir Yth was thinking,
What can one expect from
desqusai? He added, "I didn't know they had
apsarai
here."

Apparently it is common. For pleasure, I understand.

"And what about the other sexual functions? Status defini-tion, or the conveyance of information? Or interpretation, like Anarr—like someone I know? Perhaps that woman is a courtesan-interpreter." He tried not to sound too hopeful.

There are no other functions, apart from reproduction or pleas-ure. Sexual intimacy here is
limited to one of those two roles
. Ir Yth radiated disdain.

"Well!" Sirru said, nonplussed. This colony never ceased to surprise him. But then he wondered if Ir Ydi was telling the truth, or if she was still trying to prevent him from communi-eating with anyone else.

Undoubtedly, that was the case. And indeed, an
apsara
would be the ideal person to initialize the network, if it reached a stage where it could be extended from the
hiroi…We
filed away the
apsara
's pheromonal signature for future reference.

The
apsara
had finished bathing and resumed her place on her litter. She was carried back through the streets, riding in state ahead of a little procession as it returned home. Sirru care-fully noted which temenos the
apsara
entered and marked the path between the
apsara %
house and the temple, just in case.

It was late afternoon now, and the heat blanketed the city. Sirru relinquished his disguise with a sigh as he stepped through the echoing gate of the temenos. One of the
hiroi
that haunted the tiers of the building had fallen. It lay to one side of the courtyard, twitching a little. Its round, sorrowful eyes were closed and a thin thread of blood trickled from one con-voluted animal ear. Sirru gave it a passing glance, and smiled.

9. f'thaikurriye/ Kasasatra

Anarres passed old, dead temeni, long abandoned by their clades. The domes of the temeni were blackened and desic-cated, as if by fire, and they sagged. Some of them had seeded, and their shattered domes petaled out toward the hot sky. The marks of spores lacerated the nearby buildings and the warm air smelled of a smoky dust. Anarres wondered vaguely whether any of the seeds had been kept, planted elsewhere by clade remnants, and lovingly tended into new homes. The temeni must be quite big by now, if so. The ground was bar-ren; Anarres examined her feet fastidiously from time to time. She was not sure quite what precautions the Core might have made to hinder progress into the temeni of the Naturals.

Perhaps it reasoned that their reputation was enough to keep outsiders away, but Anarres' clade used to tell her stories at night of the things that lived deep in the Core, the creatures that glided through its labyrinthine walls, and she gave a sud-den shiver.

She had been walking for some time when there was a rip-ple in the waters of the canal. Anarres frowned, trying to see down into the oily, sluggish water. At first she thought it was nothing more than a trick of the light, but then she saw that it was a definite shape, moving purposefully toward the wharf and leaving a wake of dark water behind it. Anarres stepped quickly back. She had no idea what forms of
kiwi
might thrive in this deserted part of the city. The Core occasionally set its more experimental projects loose, presumably in order to see how they interacted with the environment. Generally, if
hiroi
couldn't sense you, they left you alone…

Anarres touched the scale implant beneath her collarbone in an automatic gesture of protection. The scale flushed cold across her skin. A long, jointed arm slid over the lip of the canal and probed the air. Anarres stood very still. Segmented legs brought the body of the thing onto the bank, and with a rush of horror she realized what it was:
irHazh
, a hunter-mater from the deep Marginals. EsRavesh kept them for sport, and he had once taken her to a pit fight. Remembrance of the two jointed bodies locked together in mutual destruc-tion returned to haunt Anarres now.

The
irHazh
was huge, at least twice the size of Anarres herself. A cylindrical, plated body terminated in a raised tail. A thick curtain of mandibles, running the length of the crea-ture's body, drifted upward like waterweed, tasting the air. The scent that emanated from it was rank, like rotten meat, but underneath it Anarres could discern the base notes of a horribly familiar odor: her own.

Her first thought was:
EsRavesh
. He'd sent the thing after her, to dispose of someone who knew too much. Anarres took a deep, slow breath and held it, but a shiver of fear ran down her spine. The scale trapped the fear, suppressing it. The crea-ture was still tasting the air, searching for her. Then the thing turned swiftly in her direction. It moved forward in a rush, but Anarres was already running, sprinting across the ruined ground and scattering the dust beneath her flying feet. She could hear the
irHazh
scuttling after her, the rattling plates and the hissing bellows of its breath. A wave of sensations flooded over her, muted by the scale but still discernible: de-sire, rage, a lust for death and blood.