Текст книги "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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"You can't get out."

The shock had robbed him of wits. For a moment he was not thinking. And then he walked down the hall to the main door and tried it. "Locked," he called back to the elf, who had joined him in his possession of the hall. The two of them together. DeFranco walked back again, trying doors as he went. He felt strangely numb. The hall became surreal, his elvish companion belonging like him, elsewhere. "Dammit, what have you got in their minds?"

"They've agreed," the elf said. "They've agreed, deFranco."

"They're out of their minds."

"One door still closes, doesn't it? You can protect your life."

"You still bent on suicide?"

"You'll be safe."

"Damn them!"

The elf gathered his arms about him as if he too felt the chill. "The colonel gave us a time. Is it past?"

"Not bloody yet."

"Come sit with me. Sit and talk. My friend."

"Is it time?" asks the elf, as deFranco looks at his watch again. And deFranco looks up.

"Five minutes. Almost." DeFranco's voice is hoarse.

The elf has a bit of paper in hand. He offers it. A pen lies on the table between them. Along with the grenade. "I've written your peace. I've put my name below it. Put yours."

"I'm nobody. I can't sign a treaty, for God's sake." DeFranco's face is white. His lips tremble.

"What did you write?"

"Peace," said the elf. "I just wrote peace. Does there have to be more?" DeFranco takes it. Looks at it. And suddenly he picks up the pen and signs it too, a furious scribble. And lays the pen down. "There," he says. "There, they'll have my name on it." And after a moment: "If I could do the other—O God, I'm scared. I'm scared!"

"You don't have to go to my city," says the elf, softly. His voice wavers like deFranco's.

"DeFranco—here, here they record everything. Go with me. Now. The record will last. We have our peace, you and I, we make it together, here, now. The last dying. Don't leave me. And we can end this war."

DeFranco sits a moment. Takes the grenade from the middle of the table, extends his hand with it across the center. He looks nowhere but at the elf. "Pin's yours," he says. "Go on. You pull it, I'll hold it steady."

The elf reaches out his hand, takes the pin and pulls it, quickly.

DeFranco lays the grenade down on the table between them, and his mouth moves in silent counting. But then he looks up at the elf and the elf looks at him. DeFranco manages a smile.

"You got the count on this thing?"

The screen breaks up.

The staffer reached out her hand and cut the monitor, and Agnes Finn stared past the occupants of the office for a time. Tears came seldom to her eyes. They were there now, and she chose not to look at the board of inquiry who had gathered there.

"There's a mandatory inquiry," the man from the reg command said. "We'll take testimony from the major this afternoon."

"Responsibility's mine," Finn said.

It was agreed on the staff. It was pre-arranged, the interview, the formalities. Someone had to take the direct hit. It might have been a SurTac. She would have ordered that too, if things had gone differently. High command might cover her. Records might be wiped. A tape might be classified. The major general who had handed her the mess and turned his back had done it all through subordinates. And he was clear.

"The paper, Colonel."

She looked at them, slid the simple piece of paper back across the desk. The board member collected it and put it into the folder. Carefully.

"It's more than evidence," she said. "That's a treaty. The indigenes know it is." They left her office, less than comfortable in their official search for blame and where, officially, to put it.

She was already packed. Going back on the same ship with an elvish corpse, all the way to Pell and Downbelow. There would be a grave there onworld.

It had surprised no one when the broadcast tape got an elvish response. Hopes rose when it got the fighting stopped and brought an elvish delegation to the front; but there was a bit of confusion when the elves viewed both bodies and wanted deFranco's. Only deFranco's. And they made him a stone grave there on the shell-pocked plain, a stone monument; and they wrote everything they knew about him. I was John Rand deFranco, a graven plaque said. I was born on a space station twenty light-years away. I left my mother and my brothers. The friends I had were soldiers and many of them died before me. I came to fight and I died for the peace, even when mine was the winning side. I died at the hand of Angan Anassidi, and he died at mine, for the peace; and we were friends at the end of our lives. Elves– suiltiwas one name they called themselves—came to this place and laid gifts of silk ribbons and bunches of flowers—flowers, in all that desolation; and in their thousands they mourned and they wept in their own tearless, expressionless way.

For their enemy.

One of their own was on his way to humankind. For humankind to cry for. I was Angan Anassidi, his grave would say; and all the right things. Possibly no human would shed a tear. Except the veterans of Elfland, when they came home, if they got down to the world—they might, like Agnes Finn, in their own way and for their own dead, in front of an alien shrine. 1987

THE GIFT OF PROPHECY

A shuttle landed on Aneth, third of the three which daily landed on the world's surface. There was a stir about this arrival as there generally was not, whatever the rank of those who attended the shrine. These were Shantrans, off the powerful high-tech world of An Shant . . . the last major power which resisted the amphictyony of the shrine.

With appropriate ceremony, the Shantrans paused in the Hall of Arrivals long enough to sign the Pact and join the Amphictyony, the Neighbors of the Shrine. They did so with frowns and hesitations enough to indicate a displeasure in principle; An Shant made few agreements. But this signature was the sole and indispensable condition of consultation with the Oracle . . . a militarily harmless accord. The Shantrans read it in detail and failed to find fault in any pact so easily broken, so lacking in enforcements.

That they bar none from access to the Anethine Oracle, it read, on pain of being barred themselves in future; to come to the aid of the shrine with armed force should any attempt to gain entry by force.

They walked away openly smiling, for they were not believers in the Oracle. They had come, nevertheless, to consult it, for reasons which were their own.

And the Anethines hastened to make them welcome, making themselves as agreeable as they showed themselves to all comers, believers or not.

Aneth desired above all to please.

Visions . . . and patterns . . . endless questions.

A tapestry of patterns, interwoven. . . . The mythic fates were weavers too, lives their thread, empires their pattern, uncaring patterners, heedless who or why; the pattern was all, had ever been, and all was pattern.

To perceive . . . to know . . . the ultimate design which shifted between thread and colors, almost to grasp—the Whole. . .

Time to cease.

There was a danger, a point past which humanness slipped the mind, when the knowledge itself became all, and the Eye was more powerful than the mind which must hold what it saw, when mind diminished in the face of design . . .

There was a point past which . . . not, not at all.

Maranthe tired of waking, and dulled her senses deliberately; began the withdrawal from life to shadows.

"Maranthe," the Voices began, reminding her of humanity, which she chose to forget. They persisted. A cup came to her lips; she drank, obedient. When the Shadows took her in their hands she walked, moved, performed necessary functions. At their whispering reminder, she ate, and they bathed her and laid her in her bed.

Then was utter dark. She did not dream.

She did not wake until the morrow, when she sat again with hands outstretched over the cold plates of the machine . . . and the Vision resumed.

The old woman sat surrounded by her machine.

Maranthe was—wholly—the machine. She saw, and smiled, forever, maddeningly smiled, her aged face rapt and her dimmed eyes fixed, lost in the power of the Vision. And Mishell envied.

Mishell did not speak of it. Possibly all the Servants of Aneth envied. Surely they must, for there was nothing on Aneth which approached the glory, the importance of Maranthe. Servants came and went, living and dying and being carried away. Maranthe was all. And there was no exit from Aneth, least of all for those sealed within the inmost enclave of the Machine. Only the visitors, who were never withinAneth, came, asked their single questions, departed. They went, and where they went Mishell could not imagine, could never imagine, sealed within white walls, silent, in silence. She had nothing of the Vision. They asked, these visitors, and what they asked Mishell could not hear. Only the Sibyl, only Maranthe—heard. Visitors went away to act, to pursue their lives and the fates the Oracle gave them—as Servants could never leave and never act, whose fate was to serve, tending Maranthe.

Mishell served. She guided the frail, bent woman from Machine to couch, from couch to Machine. With other Servants she fed her, bathed her, performed all minute and lowly things for her, who was the sole reason for their existence. Tiny, frail, blind, yet Maranthe smiled, constantly smiled while she waked . . . for long, long hours wrapped in the Vision, where Maranthe saw . . . and they could not.

In those hours, their own duty over, the Servants themselves must eat and sleep and dream. And in her dreams Mishell sought life. Armed only with the gray and white sameness of the Enclave, she built colors, and beauty, and tried with all her senses to attain to the Vision which was Maranthe's, which hovered palpably in the Enclave, a presence which seized and shaped, and gave them what dreams they knew.

It ended with waking. The world was cold again, steel and white garments and white plastics, and Servants moved soft-footed and whispering within it, for they must not intrude their small reality into the greater. Gently Mishell bathed Maranthe's wasted limbs, and gently folded the skeletal body into soft garments, and gently tucked her to bed.

And daily sat (or was it night?) through Maranthe's sleep, waking while the Vision was numb, and the walls were void and stark, the dreams dead within the Enclave's waking. There were other worlds; Maranthe saw them; they dreamed of them; the visitors came from them; but the worlds were dreams.

"It's a charade." The major paused with his hand on the rail of the boarding area, looking back at the port facility where the shuttle rested, with deepening regret. "Rational beings flock to this place. I find it incredible."

"Enough," the minister said, silencing him, and stepped from the in-terworld soil of the port onto the floor of the Anethine ground transport, committing himself.

The major glowered, shook his head, and followed. After him came the attendant clutter of aides and secretaries, with recorders and sensors surprisingly permitted beyond the outer ring of the oracular enclave. Cosean, the minister, prime in the third rank of the Shantran technarchy; Segrane, the major, from the military fifth; the aides and secretaries had no rank at all save as appurtenances to the minister and the major. An Shant risked as little as possible in the venture, augmented its delegation with expendables in expensive garb. The Confederate enemy had consulted the oracle; the military grew nervous on the matter: An Shant had determined to investigate any potential leak or exchange of information. Therefore they were here inconveniencing themselves with this farce.

They were seated. The automated vehicle began to move.

"Irresponsible," Segrane muttered, affecting nonchalance, his eyes shifting to this side and that while he faced ahead, relaxed. "Something could go wrong with these machines. And then where should we be stranded? I find their notion of security less than adequate." The barren plains of Aneth rolled past the windows, grassland and purple forest. The windows suddenly sealed, viewless, black. The major set his jaw and continued his surreptitious scan. The velocity of the car increased. There was perceptible descent, and aides and secretaries clutched in panic at cases. The minister sat still, outwardly calm. The angle of descent eased; the speed remained constant for a time in which the aides found occasion to investigate the console at the rear of the car and to call up informational lectures from the screen . . . time in which novelty eventually yielded to utter tedium, and aides and secretaries, enjoined to strictest silence, sat primly half-asleep, hypnotized by the smoothness of their passage and the soft hiss of air. Then abrupt deceleration: windows unshielded themselves on darkness, which broke into glowing colored bars and triangles whisking past in a distorted neon flow, broke again into view of a white, sterile concourse. The car braked smoothly; doors hissed open. Signs blinked, in Shantran and two related dialects of the colonial sequence which had populated An Shant. ENCLAVE SECOND RANK, the signs proclaimed in Shantran idiom. The boarding station at the port had been ENCLAVE THIRD RANK. It all seemed impeccably Shantran, as it could doubtless seem Confederate, or Tyrang, or Inush, or Syncrat.

Slippered Servants arrived, alike in their white garments, silent as their guests chose to be silent. Doubtless they, like the signs, could change. They took the baggage and led the way. RESIDENCE AREA 110, the sign advised, giving directions. The entourage walked, following the Servants. It was not far from the concourse, down a corridor of right-triangle arches. Doors opened, sealed again; the baggage was deposited; the Servants took silent leave. Major Segrane looked about him at blank steel walls, at sterile white plastic benches, at the Minister Cosean An Homin, his personal charge. He remained amazed that they had not been searched, that they had not been forbidden the recording and scanning devices. "There is," he observed to Cosean, "no evidence of scanning. But that means nothing."

"No. It does not." Cosean settled into a chair and opened his notebook. Segrane excused himself into the adjoining set of rooms, discovered that one of the aides had transferred his baggage there, that a nervous group of secretaries waited for instruction. He pettishly dismissed them to the rooms which lay further within the apartments assigned them, advising them to stay close about and to refrain from needless chatter; they departed in dutiful silence. He paced, realized that finally as a manner of communication to any spies, and settled into a chair, arms folded. The Confederacy had consulted the Oracle, credulity utterly out of character for a polity blood and bone akin to An Shant itself. Last of the holdouts against the Pact, save the Shantran Technarchy itself, the Confederacy had come submitting to the Pact and asking its questions, as any private or representative individual might join and come, who had the fare to Aneth and the requisite fee. Had the Confederacy consulted once and ceased, the Technarchy of An Shant would have found it amusing, a desperate move by the Confederacy to allay the fears of its citizenry, a sinking of Confederate morale before the rumors of war.

Twice . . . brought forth a more ominous possibility. Three times . . . Three times at such expense, in such rapid succession . . . indicated some manner of success; and that suggested something more sinister here than superstition, the exchange of data more substantial than hundred-year predictions. The Confederacy adopted a more aggressive stance, broke relations on its own initiative, embargoed ores the Technarchy vitally needed. War was in preparation; the Confederacy was absolutely right in that. Shortages mandated it. The preparations were far advanced.

And there was no doubt that information changed hands in Aneth . . . tiny questions from lovelorn and wealthy suitors, larger matters from greedy corporations, perhaps even reckless bits of gossip passed in sleeping quarters by consulting ministers to their companions. Doubtless the whole Enclave was a surveillance net, and information was the merchandise on which Aneth and its amphictyony flourished.

In that light, it was absolutely essential to know the weight and shape of that merchandise which had been made available to the Confederate representative. One went through the forms, however humiliating; one probed; one listened.

And signing the meaningless Amphictyonic Pact was the first such embarrassment. A direct attack on Aneth—that would loose havoc among the gullible; but there was no need at all to contemplate such a move, even if Aneth were passing valuable information. The gullible would continue to contribute to the process and the clever would find a way to use it. They sought information . . . eavesdropping with the sensors they had brought in their luggage—had yet found nothing. There had to be a limit to Aneth's patience. Taking recorders into the Oracle itself they would hardly bear . . . but information was apparently free for the gathering here in second rank enclave. It was to be wondered—where the limit lay The silence persisted, absolute. The major sat . . . walked, finally, out into the corridor of their suite, found the minister Cosean retired to his sleeping quarters. He strolled restlessly out the door and down the hall into the concourse, testing the Enclave's reactions. A Servant began to dog his steps. When he stopped, the Servant stopped, pretended to look elsewhere, and walked on when he walked. Segrane stopped, waited, and when the Servant looked back again, Segrane summoned him with an impatient gesture. The Servant came, soft-footed; bowed, smiled . . . human-looking. All the Servants were reputed to be of the human stock of neighboring Corielle.

"You speak Shantran?" Segrane challenged him.

"Yes, sir." The answering voice was perfectly modulated, soft and without irritance.

"And all five hundred thousand other dialects known to man?"

The Servant smiled slightly. "No, sir, this is the Shantran staff. There are five hundred thousand possible combinations of personnel."

"So there's already a Shantran staff. You must have researched us far in advance of our application."

"We're pleased by your notice, sir."

"We."

"The staff, sir."

"Did you research us?"

"Of course, sir."

"On whose advice?"

Again a slight smile. "On the Oracle's, sir."

The answer caught him by surprise. He scowled, suspecting humor at his expense. "And has the Oracle decided when it will see the minister?"

"The petitioner goes alone to First Rank at 2214 and returns by 0600."

"Impossible."

"Sir?"

"The minister is my personal responsibility. I can't permit him to go alone for such a length of time. What could possibly take so long about a question?"

"The conditions of audience are uniform and inflexible. There are other petitioners, sequestered in other areas of Second Rank; scheduling is therefore complex. The audience time is a very brief portion of that schedule. To ensure privacy, there must be time built into the program." Segrane began walking, the Servant keeping pace with him. He stared grimly at the floor, reckoning with increasing distress how little control they had of things.

"Who are these other petitioners?" he asked. "The Confederacy, perhaps?"

"I couldn't say, sir. The Enclave is partitioned in such a way that we ourselves are not in contact with visitors in other sections."

"Or politics? I'm sure you're well versed in that."

"We advise our visitors not to discuss external affairs with the staff. Aneth has no politics."

"None?"

"None, sir."

Segrane stopped, flicked a glance over the Servant, paused at the badge, continued back to the clear expressionless eyes. "You're very well trained . . . Jen. Is that your name, Jen?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"I shall compliment your service."

"All that you say to me is noted by my superiors. It's unnecessary to trouble yourself, sir. All staff-visitor exchanges are monitored to ensure satisfaction."

"Are you human, Jen?"

Jen flashed a broad smile. "Yes, sir. But without species politics."

"Where were you born?"

"All Servants are born within the enclaves."

"Your ancestors had outside origins." Segrane locked his hands behind him and began to move in the direction of his quarters, Jen walking beside him. "And the Oracle itself. . . maybe your ancestors built it too, the whole thing."

"No, sir. Hardly."

"You believe that tale about the Builders, eh?"

"It's true, sir. About the sixth millennium before founding of your calendar, the Builders occupied Aneth and built the vault and the Oracle."

"What did they look like, these Builders? Where did they come from?"

"The Oracle is their sole known artifact. We have no clue to either, sir."

"How convenient. Has no one thought to ask the Oracle?"

"You are a skeptic, sir. I detect it."

"Does the Oracle reject skeptics?"

"No, sir."

Segrane laughed, and stopped and faced the man . . . bland-faced and young, this Servant, like all other Servants in his white uniform, close-cropped hair, earnest, unoffending face. "You aresincere, aren't you? What's the story? Some Bellan archaeologists stumbled into this place two hundred years ago, and a Corielli team moved in on the find . . . sequestered themselves—with whose backing? Who paid for all this?"

"Initially a grant, sir, from fourteen worlds earliest involved in the research. The Enclave was established when the vault was opened and the Oracle was first activated. The value of the installation was immediately clear and the area had to be protected against exploitation for private purposes. Thus, the Enclave. Visitors' fees are now sufficient for its support."

"Corielle didn't build the rest of this."

"Ah, the Enclave, yes, sir; but the Oracle . . . no."

"The Oracle: person or machine?"

"Both, sir. That is, Oraclerefers to both or either."

"The name of this person."

"First Rank is a sealed enclave, sir. We don't know."

"Female, the rumor is."

"All First Rank is female."

Segrane was surprised into reaction. That fact the researchers had not uncovered. And what do they do for amusement? he wondered. The politics of the arrangement occurred to him instantly: no matings, no marriage, no intrigues of consorts.

"How do they," he asked, "find replacements?"

Jen shrugged. "Their dead arrive here. We send in the nextborn female infant of Second Rank. It's utterly random that way. We have no influence on it. The integrity of the Oracle is absolute."

"How many Oracles have lived and died since the Enclave began?"

"The bodies which come out are not distinguished by signs of rank, sir. We don't know."

"But there must have been more than one Oracle in two hundred years."

"One supposes, sir, that such is the case."

"And she makes her predictions . . . how?"

"She enters rapport with the machine."

"Precognition. Telegnosis. Prophecy."

"Yes, sir."

"Nonsense."

"We make no claims, sir. Only those who visit here and leave know whether they have profited. And visitors do come back."

"She spills what she knows from one client to the next."

"We advise all our visitors to reveal nothing in conversation in any enclave. Ask your single question, and depart; that's all that's required. I've given you information. I have asked for none."

"But you've researched us."

"Generally available knowledge, sir, for your comfort. We do maintain a library."

"And some do come here and talk freely."

"Yes, sir, but we do discourage it."

"Telepath. She probes minds."

"Telepaths are among our clients. Mindshielding is a refined art among them. Such skills are even practiced among nonsensitives—perhaps you have them, sir. I'm sure telepathic contact has been tried on the part of such visitors; they would know the result of their efforts. But if you should have any anxiety about the meeting with the Oracle, you have only to request to return to the port. It's not compulsory to continue."

"Fee nonrefundable."

"Indeed, sir. But few choose to withdraw."