Текст книги "Forge of Heaven "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

10

“NOTHING,” Marak reported to Hati, who begged him to silence all the voices and not to attempt the contact again—but he was more than annoyed, now, beyond the fact of a brutal headache. He rode, still, patiently along a sandstone ledge, Hati behind him. There was silence in heavens and the earth alike—the chatter was all hushed, now, everyone lying low.

No response from Luz, none from Ian. Auguste was ill, incapable of coherent answers if he had any beyond, “I swear I have no idea, omi.”

Now the system had blown up. By all he could determine, the Ila had broken into the system for a momentary contact with Procyon, which he had not managed to join quickly enough. Auguste, close to a relay, had fallen ill, and Ian and Luz were probably still arguing age-old grievances with one another. It was one of those times when the width of the desert was probably a good distance.

It would have been a good thing, except the haze in the west, that they had watched grow and grow—a cloud now towering into the heavens and spreading.

More, the wind had acquired a strange smell, a dank, rotten smell compounded with the tang of wet sand as the wind swept upward from the basin floor. There was no sight of the distant calamity. At any moment the gap might break wide. The sands nearest Halfmoon were being deluged with sea water, a widening pool, by now, churned deeper and deeper by falling water. The heavens failed to advise them how the catastrophe was progressing. Auguste, who had been advising him on his route, and who had promised him a way back no matter the weather, was afflicted and silent.

If the whole of the Wall at Halfmoon should go—suddenly—in one of the frequent aftershocks—what might they see on that horizon?

Much more than a cloud, he was sure, and meanwhile the silly beshti kept zigzagging their way down and down as if they had all the time in the world, ultimately headed to the pans, the sort of terrain that had made their ancestors lords of the desert. Down there was graze. And water. Could they not smell water on the wind?

The fools had no idea what they smelled. That it was all the water in the world threatening to thunder down in a kind of flood no beshta’s instinct could imagine; these beshti had no idea.

In the scales of the worlds above the world, this handful of recalcitrant beshti had become a dire problem. There might well be siege in the heavens. The long peace with the ondatmight be ending. The earth still shuddered from the last cataclysm, the broken pieces of its crust drifting across the heat of hell, and now the heavens threatened to go to war over an Earth lord’s whim and a feud breaking out between the Ila and Ian, one he had wanted no part of in its early stages. Let them shout and threaten, he had said, when it started. Let them spend the first wind of their anger.

He had in mind to spend a great deal of time in the desert. After that he might mediate. He had not planned on being the center of the argument.

They came easily down to the next terrace, he and Hati, following the still recent passage of soft pads on old dust. Beshti hardly went without a trace—but if that cloud went on spreading across the horizon and a deluge came down, adding to their hazards, the tracks would vanish, too. The young bull kept his stolen herd moving just enough. But let him get a head start, let the thunder and the rain add panic to earthquake, and the females, however reluctant now, might take out for the pans for good and all.

The beshti under them smelled change in the wind, too, and there was this about beshti: they stuck tighter together when things went badly. Their own pair sniffed the tracks and smelled the rocks, aware what they were tracking, uneasy in this shift of the wind, Hati’s female seeking others of her kind and his own old bull, smelling the scent of the young rebel, gaining a darker, more combative intent.

The terrace they reached was vast, having its own horizon, having piles of rock and growth of vegetation, some of which, grease-wood, grew taller here than it had on the unprotected plateau or the ridge above.

Their fugitives might be somewhere on this very level, somewhere beyond the spires of sandstone, the irregular ins and outs of the shelf and the obscuring growth of tall brush. The terraces and ledges that seemed from above to offer easy passage down to the pans proved, not unexpectedly, a constant frustration of dead ends and precarious edges, the most promising ways as apt to strand the herd with no way out but a long trek back the way they had come—toward them. At all disadvantage, they were still gaining on their quarry, and if the heavens could settle down and pay attention again, he still might get his needed information on their route.

But he could not wait for that help. Night was coming on, when the young rascal might not rest. The Ila had made a disastrous move. Now the sullen and strange tribes of Earth were making demands on Brazis that for some reason Brazis could not resist, and the whole untidy intersection of interests was increasingly threatening.

The Ila had had one of her notions go extremely wrong, in his best guess. He could sometimes prevail with the Ila: they shared certain views. They both knew the world as Luz and Ian had never seen it, and shared opinions Luz and Ian did not understand. He knew her ways and her attitudes, and he would offer to intercede, if anyone could listen. Luz was alone with the situation, alone with the Ila in the Refuge, he was aware of that, and knew the two of them had been entirely too friendly lately. Luz was in the Refuge, and Ian—Ian was likely off at the far end of the lake, in the town that had grown there. Ian, who had been Luz’s lover off and on for as long as the Refuge had stood, was currently not Luz’s lover, and a feud had simmered between Ian and Luz with varying heat for most of the last hundred years. It had started over Ian’s insistence on autonomy in his own work, unease in a relationship that had grown with Luz’s dislike and Ian’s support of the previous director in the heavens, who had had ideas coinciding with Ian’s, on the apportionment of scarce metals.

And now, it seemed, that old rift had led to uneasy relations with the director’s successor, Brazis, and Luz, of course, had found a sympathetic ear in the Ila. The two of them, disliking Brazis, complained of his continuation of the old director’s programs. Luz clung close to the Refuge, which the Ila never left, while, tired of the disagreement, Ian lately lived with Nai’ib, a mortal woman from the tribes, out on the Paradise shore.

Ian sulked, working on his rockets, his robots, machines that supported certain of his desert roads, and occasionally made his own forays into the eastern desert. Ian was consequently in closer contact and sympathy with the tribes than Luz had ever been willing to be, herself. The tribeswoman living with Ian was only one cause of the rift between them.

“Wasting his time,” Luz had complained to Marak two years ago, and asked if he had a better understanding than she did of Ian, the man who had been her lifelong partner. “What in all reason does he do out there?”

“He receives reports from the riders,” had been his observation. “He does the same as always. He tests his machines.”

Biology and mechanics, life and cold, scarce metal, which Ian hoarded for his projects and sought in the wreckage of villages and the Holy City itself, up on the Plateau. Such were Ian’s consuming passions. Luz was the theoretician, the planner, the builder—and oh, the Ila was a builder and a planner, herself, no question of that.

Now he feared they would see the result of all this diverse planning, disturbance in the heavens and this ill-timed schism in the Refuge—or a very well timed one, chosen to break out just now, when he was not at hand, when the heavens were besieged by angry allies.

But if Auguste was hurt in this assault, Ian had been quick to protect all of them whose watchers might be affected. Luz, who might well have figured by now that she had been deceived, would be busy reasoning with the Ila and trying to protect the relays themselves: that would be her first thought. Luz would banish until later, in her realization, the thought that flesh and blood might be in danger, might feel pain, might die. That was the way they were, Ian and Luz. It was why he attached himself more to Ian.

But now he asked himself if Ian drifting away to the Paradise shore with Nai’ib might be why Luz continued lonely and upset, and why she had fallen more and more into the Ila’s company.

That association had its inevitable outcome. Luz was betrayed, now, it seemed, by an expert at betrayal. And would she learn? For a century or two. Maybe.

But there was nothing he and Hati could do now but go on as they were and keep careful track of their lacework of escape routes, making sure no shortcut brought them back up to a dead end, if the worst suddenly happened at Halfmoon. Negotiate with the Ila, he might, but not with the earthquake.

And once they had the beshti back, if the heavens and earth wanted to quarrel for a century or two, they would still have the beshti, and the boys, and the canvas. Let them all do what they liked, Brazis and the Ila, Ian, Luz, and the rest. They were untouchable out here, give or take another hammerfall, once they got back to safety. There had been quarrels before. There had been long silences in the heavens. The ondatwere the problem. The one uncertainty. The threat none of them wanted to wake.

“We shall be soaked before nightfall,” Hati estimated. She tapped her beshta with her heel as it showed interest in a thorn-bush, and shortened up on the rein.

The beshta squalled a protest at this injustice, swayed from side to side under the taut rein and kept squalling to the heavens. The cliffs above echoed with her indignation.

And found a new source not so far distant. Beshti called to beshti, in the uneasy smell of the wind.

Then the old bull bellowed out, throwing up his head.

That brought a second distant answer, three, four voices, female. And a raucous challenge.

“Aha,” Hati said. “The young bull out there is worried now. We may get them yet.”

“Marak.”

A quiet voice from the tap, this. Ian’s. He was by no means sure he wanted to listen. His headache persuaded him it might not be safe.

“Marak, do you hear me?”

“Ian. We have very little patience for this.”

“Marak-omi, there’s trouble in the Refuge. The Ila has invaded systems aloft and killed her oldest watcher. She has demanded Procyon’s return to duty in your name. Luz has now entered her apartments and attempted to reason with her. The force of the Ila’s action has done damage to all the watchers.”

Forgotten, the beshti, everything, in the vivid imagination of the Ila’s establishment in the Refuge, the Ila and her aau’it and her guards, Memnanan still among them. Memnanan would be put in a very difficult position if the Ila bade him bar Luz from her premises.

Without hesitation, headache and all, he reached out for the Ila himself, the system being open for the moment. He did not do it as he wished, like a thunderbolt, but reasonably, quietly, well under control. “Ila. What have you done?”

“There you are, Marak Trin Tain. And how do you fare?”

“Well enough, until I hear earth and heavens are in an uproar. Why should you kill your watcher?”

“Why? Why not?”

Temper. High temper. “Ila, favor me with an answer. Why would you harm an innocent?”

“For your safety! For the safety of the world, with traitors in the heavens and the ambitions of the small, stupid men who protect them, now let loose to cause all of us grief! Be silent, Luz! Wewill tell him! Listen, Marak. Are you listening now?”

“I am listening, Ila.”

“This watcher of ours, this long-trusted watcher, thisinnocent, requested information of us regarding the watcher nanoceles. She said this was the request of the director, to investigate suspect development at another station. With this answer, she evidently, and on her own mischief, misdirected what details we told her to the very culprits at issue, who are complete fools, and who have now been detected, not only by every authority in their vicinity, but by Earth, which should have never been involved at all. The director’s establishment has lied to us, Marak Trin Tain. A watcher has misrepresented her authority and betrayed us to fools.Compton installed this treacherous woman when he was director, and that fool Brazis has allowed this liar to continue in her office for a decade, in a trusted post, when by now even remote Earth had gotten wind of her actions. How were we to know? Wherein are we at fault? Now they dare accuse us—us!—as if this were our initiation and our doing. Damn them, we say! We are outraged!”

As if she were the most innocent of parties. And who was to know the truth of it, once the watcher in question was dead?

“Ila.”That was Ian. “You should have told us the moment there was such a request made of you. Why should you keep it secret?”

“This person claimed it was investigatory, and that you were not to be brought in. How were we to know if your own watchers were in question? You, honest Ian, we did not doubt. But the watchers, who can ever know?”

Hati looked at him, that long-eyed sidelong look. She had heard. Hati had never trusted Luz, and least of all trusted the Ila at any time. It was a plausible story…if there had not been ages of history behind it.

“Now,”the Ila said, “someone has attempted to kill this Earth lord. We have not breached the Treaty. Their notion of our deception is utterly false; and they have attempted to blame this innocent boy of yours, while Brazis has done nothing to find him or protect him from these rival authorities. We, mind you,we have located Procyon with no trouble. He was injured in the attack on the Earth lord. He is attempting to get to safety with no help at all from Brazis, even in Brazis’s own territory, and now, now, of course, just as we locate him, Brazis leaps in and disturbs the contact. Ask what hope this boy has while the powers that rule him maneuver for advantage. Ask where he may be now, in whose hands, asked what questions. Brazis wishes to divert all our attention to a dead traitor. But where is the danger? In a dead watcher? We think not. We have all been lied to. We answered a watcher’s questions to control a breach in security; and now that Earth is offended, Brazis makes diversionary attacks on your watchers. Ask yourself, Marak, what does Brazis intend? Why did he give you no warning that this great quake was coming, when he has accurately predicted others? One might think Brazis was a fool and too compliant; but we, at least, have never thought he was a fool, or compliant in anything.”

Marak listened, and met Hati’s burning gaze the while. There was a small silence from Ian and Luz.

“I will find Procyon,” Marak said. The beshta under him, at a standstill, shifted uneasily, as, far distant, he heard a stone roll and saw it make a track down a sandy slope.

A very minor quake. But the minor shiftings of the earth no longer alarmed them, in the scale of things. The Ila and what was happening back at the Refuge had sent out tremors of their own. And a hapless boy was involved in things far, far older than his knowledge, where it was likely those in power had set him far down the list of their concerns.

“Ian,”Luz said urgently. “Come home. Come home,now. I need you.”

“I would, I assure you. But I’m trying to put together a mission to get Marak back.”

“I shall deal with my own situation,” Marak said. “Go home, Ian.” If Luz forgot she was angry at Ian, if she forgot about the tribeswoman, then she was truly alarmed, whether by what the Ila had just said, or by what she feared the Ila might have done without her knowledge, or at the situation she herself was in. If the makers were indeed loose in the heavens, with the ondatand the rest of the powers alarmed, there was ample reason for Luz to reconsider her quarrel with Ian and question her alliance with the Ila before everything slid to perdition.

“We are quite enough to deal with this,”the Ila said. “If we approach Brazis, we can settle matters without Ian.”

That might be, but Ian had heard that. “I’m on my way.”

“Nonsense,”the Ila said, irate, and pain lanced through Marak’s head.

He fired back, spiked the contact as high as he could, and gave the Ila as good as he got, reckless, for the moment, of Hati on the system.

Hewas as near a relay station as the Ila was near the center at the Refuge. Hethreaded his way through Ian’s contact and into the main systems.

And having done that, he broke through all the relays and onto the uplink. Auguste was not his target. Not at all. He used a different code, one he had known a long, long time ago.

“Brazis,” he said, in no mood now to temporize. “Answer me! Where is Procyon?”

THE SCISSORS HIT the floor. An orchid leaf fell. Brazis himself put a hand to his face and fell into the adjacent chair. The system shielded him, but the tap flash hurt to the roots of his teeth.

“Lord Marak,” he said. “I hear you. Enough! I hear!”

“Brazis.”Marak was clearly not in a reasoning mood. “Is there an outbreak of makers in the heavens?”

“No,” Brazis said, too-quick denial of what he could not wholly dismiss as a threat, denial to the wrong party. He amended that. “We don’t believe it’s actual. It’s a fear Earth has.”

“Where is Procyon and what has he to do with such things?”

“Lord Marak.” Brazis’s mind raced. The tap system was adaptive. It tried to cooperate. Even when the system had the spike mechanically damped, its inclination was to respond and attempt to go on working. “The Ila’s senior tap is dead, Marak-omi. Be careful. I hear you. Quieter, sir. Quieter. The system is bringing you through quite clearly.”

“Where is Procyon?”

Where is Procyon?encompassed a world of trouble. Marak had clearly reached the end of his patience. In answer to that question, he might know down to a quarter block on Blunt whereProcyon had been, but Procyon was not there, not now. Agents, racing to the area, had failed to locate him. Jewel, stationed with Reaux, reported Reaux’s men hadn’t snatched him…not that Reaux knew about.

“I don’t know where he is at this exact moment, lord Marak. I am alarmed by his situation. I do assure you we’re trying everything to find him.”

A small silence. “I find no response from him.”

“Nor do we.” It was the truth, and it could mean Procyon Stafford was unconscious, or dead. “We’re actively searching the system. We know where he was a while ago. He’s not there now. How are youfaring in the meantime, sir? Are you safe? We’re extremely concerned about your situation.”

“We are not in immediate difficulty, lord Brazis, but the stink of flood is strong on the wind, and the quakes continue, one after the other, bringing down rocks from the cliffs. I am not in great patience as matters stand. Now I hear trouble in your vicinity and trouble at the Refuge. Is there or is there not an outbreak of makers?”

“Earth fears there is. I entirely doubt it. Complicating our situation, someone has attempted to kill Earth’s representative, who was here investigating the matter, but—” Dared he be honest with Marak, who did not forget, or readily forgive? The ground he stood on was less steady than Marak’s. “I have a strong suspicion it was another Earthman who did it, a traitor who wants a foothold here, perhaps one of the man’s own allies. We have a complex and dangerous situation, and it may involve a ploy to establish someone’s power or presence here, endangering the Treaty.”

“And Procyon?”

“He was with the Earth representative when the attack happened. We believe he was injured and shaken by explosion. I ask you, lord Marak, be much quieter in the system. Don’t wreck us. Let us work. The Ila occupied the system and possibly harmed some of the taps. I don’t know Auguste’s condition now. You may harm him if you press too hard.”

A pause. “Well enough. But I intend to find this boy myself if you take much longer about it, I warn you, lord Brazis, I am short of time and short of patience. The system is our lifeline, and we are approaching a critical need for it.”

“I well understand that, sir. And I ask you, in all courtesy, report to us what you do find.”

Silence, then. Silence so sudden it left a burning sensation in his skull. Brazis rubbed his ears and found his hands were shaking.

He got up from the chair and exited to Dianne’s office. She looked up from her desk, clearly unaffected, except by the sight of him. Shehadn’t been within the system, that or Marak’s approach had been skilled and surgical, going straight where he wanted it…unlike the Ila’s blazing entry. Damned right, the Ila’s action had been a disruptive attack.

“Sir?” Dianne asked. “Sir, are you all right?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Fast inventory of the taps. Particularly Drusus and Auguste. Get them to check in.” He had a shuddering urge to sit down, but stayed on his feet. Dianne was already talking to the system. It had survived. The government still stood.

“Auguste’s lying down on his couch,” Dianne murmured. “Drusus has reached his apartment in the last two minutes. Both have severe headache.”

“I don’t doubt,” he said. So had he.

“Are you going to address the Council at all, sir?”

“No. Everything to my proxy. This is far too hot.” He had to sit down. His vision kept going in and out. He walked over to an interview chair and dropped into it.

“Shall I get you some ice water, sir? Do you need Dr. James?”

“No. Water.” Ice water sounded very good. He wasn’t sure, else. The system was under attack, and he had Magdallen, whose credentials he couldn’t completely verify—and he had Marak, who right now was in the middle of the wilderness, while the Ila claimed she was on Marak’s side. He by no means believed that.

And Luz urgently called Ian in to help her, a 40k trek by truck or beshta.

Help her do what? Silence the Ila, or keep the worldlink to the tap system from collapse?

Worse thought, could Ian possibly be heading into danger, an ambush at home?

He took a chance with his aching head and tapped into security. “Open the system, all relays.”

“All relays, sir, confirm.”

“You heard me. All relays. Do it but keep the damper in place.” If this kept up, if the Ila and Marak grew more insistent in their attempts to get in past mechanisms they likely knew far better than did the technicians managing the net, it could damage the wetware of the critical system, nanisms lodged in vulnerable human skulls—nanoceles that, in his own skull, were already busy repairing the damage, overheating his body, pushing his metabolism at the moment to fever heat.

Which pushed his blood sugar way low. He wanted an orange juice instead of the water, and asked Dianne to get it for him.

She brought him that and a thickly iced danish, taking a subjective eternity to do it. By the time it arrived he was shaking so he could hardly pick up the orange juice.

A GRITTY FLOOR, dim light, towering, dirty facades. Procyon had no idea how he had come to be lying in discarded plastic in system twilight with a hellacious headache, but he was.

Suddenly remembering cleaning robots—stupid robots that couldn’t tell him from the trash—he scrambled up.

He got as far as his knees before the pain in his forehead dropped him onto his elbows, momentarily blind. He crawled over against the wall to let his heart settle down and his vision clear. It did, and to his horror he found himself in a service nook facing a cleaner slot, one of those little gates where the service bots went back into the secret places of the station. He’d never paid attention to them. Now he remembered being dragged off inside. If things couldn’t fit in the slots, bots took them apart, ripped plastics, shredded metal.

But they weren’t supposed to take dead bodies, let alone living people.

Had it happened at all? Or was he hallucinating the whole thing?

He didn’t know how he’d gotten here. He felt heat in his face, heat running through all his body.

That wasn’t right. Like when he’d taken the Project dose, that was what it felt like, when he’d first acquired the high-tech tap and the visual machines. Beyond the fever, his head hurt, back to front and side to side, a lancing pain that slowly centered on his forehead.

He felt of his forehead, expecting blood. There wasn’t. Just a welt. And in a self-preservative moment of clear thinking, he wanted away from that cleaner slot, as far as he could get, in case he passed out again.

He got a knee under him, hands on the wall, and levered his way up to his feet.

There. Nothing broken. Hell of a headache. General sick feeling, from gut to diaphragm.

Then he remembered Gide.

He remembered talking to Luz.

And the Ila.

He immediately tried to make the blood shunt to contact the office. The effort sent pain through the roots of his teeth, total disruption of vision and sense that dropped him where he stood. He tried again, ignoring the pain, and it just wouldn’t happen. All he heard was the distant, constant noise of the street.

Then:

“Procyon.”

Luz. His heart jolted in panic and he braced himself for the white pain that was the Ila.

But the next sound was a man’s voice, a familiar, welcome voice.

“Procyon.”

“Marak-omi.” Relief and terror at once. He was on his rump in an alley in fear for his life and his continuance in the program, and Marakhad found him again, through Luz—Marak, who had every reason to be upset with his absence in this crazed mess. He staggered to his feet. “I’m very sorry, sir. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to get back to you.” As if he’d just missed a phone call. Fool. And his voice was shaking so he didn’t know if Marak could even understand him. “I have a small problem.” Twice fool. He’d promised Marak he’d be back before now. Before…

He couldn’t remember.

“I’m still trying to get home, sir.”

“Are you in safety now?”

“I think I’m fairly safe now, yes, sir.”

“What is Brazis doing about your situation?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He didn’t know how much Marak actually knew about Brazis, about the station, or by now, about the craziness that was going on. Marak’s question, What is Brazis doing? ricocheted off the completely unrelated fact that flashed into his mind, that some tremendous force had come past him in a doorway, from the outside, from the garden. Not his apartment. The ambassador’s.

Security had suffered a massive lapse—if it wasan accidental lapse. Gide hadn’t just blown up. Someone had fired past him. He’d tried to help Gide. And it wasn’t his fault.

Very big events were sailing over his head, and one lowly tap, even if he was Marak’s, wasn’t on that high a priority for survival—not in the scale of governments having an argument. Brazis assuredly wouldn’t risk the Project for him.

But Marak, who didn’t give a damn about most that existed up here…Marak was contacting him, like the Ila, through relays he was sure weren’t part of the public system.

“I think I’m in trouble,” he confided to Marak, trying not to shiver. “I think I’m in very serious trouble.”

“Explain,”Marak said, an order from a man for unthinkable ages used to being obeyed; and just as quickly, in the tones of any man having found something lost: “Hati, I have him. He says he is away from home and in trouble.”

Hati said something. There was a faint rumble.

“What was that, sir?”

“Thunder,”Marak said.

His own pain dimmed. “Have you shelter? Are you in danger?”

“Dismiss concern for us. Listen. You never should have been involved with this Earth lord. Now the Ila has found a way to reach you, Brazis knows it, others in the heavens may know it, and Ian and Luz certainly know how it was done. This is a dangerous situation.”

Another rumbling of thunder. He heard beshti call out, that rare and eerie sound, as he sat shivering next to an ominous gateway in an alley nook. His teeth chattered shamefully. But it was a comfort to hear those sounds, to settle his mind down on the world. “I am safe at the moment, omi.”

“Take no chances,”Marak said. “Avoid all disputes with the Ila.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. The tap had never hurt, not since his first days on the system, but now it ached from the base of his skull to the roots of his teeth, and his forehead stung as if he’d been burned. The relays out here seemed at the point of overload. So did he. He bowed his head into his arms, intending to follow Marak’s advice and not budge or use the tap until he had guidance.

The pain became too much. He lost whatever Marak had said. He lost Marak. He was blind, beset with flashing lights that floated in his vision.

“Procyon. Answer me. Where are you?”Marak again.

“Trying to figure that out, sir. A street—near where I live. I have a terrible headache. I’m trying to get home.”

“How far is that?”

“Not that far.” Complications in his situation recurred to him. The lost coat. The dark place. Earther authorities were looking to get their hands on him. “I think it’s night.” Night was when they took the lights down on the streets, to satisfy the human need for night, for change in the day. White light went down and neon came up, and then a person trying to get home could be a little less conspicuous.

Unless police happened to be watching his apartment. Police had been following him. He thought they had been following him. He had a memory, a quick flash, finding blood on his coat. He’d lost the coat, thrown it away, to avoid detection. What else had he done?

“Procyon, are you safe?”

“I think so, sir. It hurts. I want to let the headache go away. It’s hard to think. Give me an hour, sir. About an hour. I’ll get on home. I promise you I’ll be all right.”

AN HOUR ON, the attempt at contact died in a confused flutter of noise and lights, and Marak, sitting cross-legged on the ground, gave Hati a worried look.

“I cannot find him.”

“Brazis?”

“I have said all I shall say to Brazis.”

Twilight had come down, deep and strange. The contact he attempted kept fading out.

But the storm was coming on. Even near the relay, the signals might grow chancy.