“No doubt,” the tal Denisovan said with an understanding smile.
Vinnevra wrinkled her nose, took a deep whiff, and glared at me, but I was in no mood for her theatrics.
We stood on the edge of the plateau. For a moment, a breeze came up and scattered the insects, then—a profound stilness. I looked around at the others.
“What’s your name?” I asked the tal Denisovan.
“Kirimt,” he responded with a sweep of his hand. In turn he introduced the females, partners to the other males. One of the males did not seem to have a female in this group.
Vinnevra received these introductions with a haughty expression, unwiling as yet to admit any of them to her protected inner circle.
During al this I kept my eye on the Forerunner, and now he returned his attention to me. His focused interest made me uncomfortable; he seemed to look right through me. Then, his facial muscles altered slightly, his eyes crinkled up, and he bowed his head.
I had learned, during my time with Bornstelar, to pick up on some of the expressions Forerunners used, however strange and stiff their faces, and I thought I detected a hint of relief and something like pride. But this one was stiffer than usual, stiffer even than the Didact.
“With this group, the Librarian may have enough,” he said—or some word like “enough,” more technical.
Gamelpar held up his hand and climbed off the litter. He drew himself up straight, then took back his stick from Kirimt, who had carried it for him.
“Our capabilities are much reduced,” the Forerunner continued.
“The Master Builder’s security has suffered a great setback, but we who serve the Librarian have yet to regain our strength.”
The ape reclined on the grassy ground. Vinnevra and Gamelpar knelt down next to her, then leaned back on her great round bely and rested. The ape cocked her head, as if capable both of listening and understanding.
“What’s your name?” I asked the Forerunner.
“I am Genemender Folder of Fortune,” he said, blinking eloquently. Something about his eyes—the smoothness of that quick motion of the eyelids—disturbed me.
“Are you going to set us free and return us to Erde-Tyrene?” I asked. The question just popped out of me, and it reminded me that despite al I had experienced, I was stil young and more than a little brash.
“I wish that were possible,” he said. “Communication has broken down and many of our facilities have been damaged. Power stations everywhere have been sabotaged. There are only a few damaged stations left to supply the needs of the entire wheel. They are not enough—yet.”
The breeze had slowed and the insects returned. The Forerunner waved his long fingers, and suddenly they al moved off to hover in a bal several meters away. “I advise you to stay here with us until stability returns. There is food, shelter, and an explanation I hope wil satisfy al as to our intentions.”
After a few minutes’ rest, the Denisovans and the Forerunner urged us to get moving again. The Denisovans took the lead, skirting the humming bal of frustrated insects and walking in a loose line toward the middle of the plateau.
“Wil you ever alow us freedom?” I asked Genemender. “Or are we like those insects?”
A quick flick of expression—embarrassment?
“Not our choosing,” he said.
We pushed through the edge of the jungle and saw a clearing ahead, a flat expanse of short-cut green grass. Huts raised on stilts surrounded the clearing on three sides but not where we entered.
“Come with us,” Kirimt said. “This is where we live.”
The air at the center of the clearing shimmered and a silvery blue blob appeared, surrounded by a wal of tree trunks. From where we stood, it was hard to determine just how large the blob actualy was—its rounded contours were perfectly reflecting, in a distorted way, everything around it. Perhaps the blob concealed something else—perhaps it was what Bornstelar had caled a Dazzler.
The shadow-ape stood back for a moment with Vinnevra, but she supported Gamelpar, who now refused the litter. As he walked past me, arm over her shoulder, he said, “There is no other place to be. But we hear you.” And he gave me a direct gaze, one old soldier to another—neither exactly present.
Kirimt swung up his arm and jerked his head, let’s go, and I realized there was nothing more to say or do for the moment but comply.
The Denisovans escorted us over the lush grass to the huts. An empty hut waited in the middle. Al the huts were accessible through steps or ladders, but the shadow-ape lifted Gamelpar up and over the rail onto the porch. He stood there, gripping the bamboo rail, while Vinnevra and I climbed the rough-cut steps. From the porch we had a broad view of the clearing and of the Denisovans gathered below.
“Clean up, rest, and then we wil share supper,” Kirimt said.
Vinnevra wrapped herself in her arms and stooped to pass through the low door into the hut’s interior. Gamelpar seemed content to watch the shadows lengthen across the jungle and the clearing.
The ape reached out, gently nudged the old man’s hip with a thick-nailed finger, whuffed, then moved around to the left and vanished in the trees.
Vinnevra returned and took a stand beside Gamelpar. “This is my geas,” she said, “more than any other place, but something’s stil not right. We cannot stay here.”
“Not to your taste?” I asked, nodding at the hut.
“It’s very comfortable,” she said with a shake of her shoulders, though there were few insects at the moment. “That Forerunner—I do not smel him. I do not smel the others, either. I only smel the ape.”
I had noticed the same thing but did not know what it meant. I hardly knew what anything around here meant.
“My nose is old,” Gamelpar said. “I barely smel the ape.”
The hut’s interior was made of bamboo and wood slats. There were leafy beds, a smal rough table, and three chairs. A basin of stone supplied water that poured out of a bamboo pipe when it was lowered. I studied this mechanism with idle curiosity, drank some of the water, splashed it about my face, and took a leaf cup to the old man. He drank sparingly, then lay back on one of the beds, and was almost immediately asleep.
Vinnevra remained on the porch, where she knelt with her forearms on the rail. I saw her through the low door, silhouetted by glowing clouds.
Just after dark, Kirimt caled us to our supper.
Chapter Eighteen
WE CROSSED A dirt path to a larger log hal at the corner between two lines of huts. Thunder echoed across the mountains and we barely made it inside the hal before rain began to pour down.
The hal was almost fifty meters long and twenty wide. Tables had been set up in four long rows under a high arching roof woven from branches and vines. The drum of rain on the roof was almost deafening. The heat had gotten more intense and the air seemed wet enough to swim through. Stil, Gamelpar shivered as if with chil, enough so that Kirimt and one of the female Denisovans—I had a difficult time teling them apart—provided him with a roughly woven blanket.
Four more females carried in a palet and offloaded food onto a head table. I watched them with real curiosity, for they were not Denisovans, nor like Vinnevra and Gamelpar, and not at al like me.
Their heads were long, their jaws prominent but chinless, and they walked with a graceful lope. In some respects they reminded me of Riser, but larger.
When they were done, having delivered two palets, the table was piled high with bowls of cooked grains, fruit, and a thick paste that tasted of salt and meat, but was not meat—not any meat I knew, at any rate. A flagon of cool water and another flagon of what tasted like honey mead, but was purple, completed the repast.
We filed wooden plates, then gathered at a corner table to eat.
Gamelpar sat sidewise, his sore leg sticking out and swolen tight at the ankle. Yet he was not being tended to. Were we to be left to our ailments, as wel as biting insects? Was there some greater Lifeshaper plan at work here, requiring that we suffer more?
For the moment, after the food-bearing females departed, we three and the Denisovans were the only ones present—eight of us sitting in a space that could hold many more. The shadow-ape had not accompanied us.
But slowly others stroled in singly and in groups and took their places. The hal was finaly half-filed by at least a hundred humans.
My eye was far from expert but I judged they came in seven or eight varieties. They seemed to have no prejudices against each other and no problems either serving or mingling, as if out of long habit.
Vinnevra chuffed again, stil unimpressed. “How many of our People are here?” she asked Gamelpar, looking around with a pinched expression.
“Just us,” he said. I had always wondered about Vinnevra’s prejudice, the quick ease with which it rose up, the difficulty she had in tamping it back down—even in my case.
In the cities, someone divided humans against each other to control them.
I paused, wooden spoon lifted to my lips, listening to the inner voice.
This Forerunner is unlike the Master Builder. He fosters unity, not division. He may be strange and weak, but he is not cruel. Perhaps he alone of his kind remains and all the others are dead.
We had certainly seen enough dead Forerunners—and no other live ones.
Across the table, I met Gamelpar’s look when he peered at me, as if hearing similar words in his own thoughts. Again I wondered how the two of us could ever bring our ancient experiences, knowledge, and personalities together, without losing our own souls in the bargain.
Genemender entered with the last stragglers. For reasons I could not articulate, and not just the lack of smel, my queasiness only grew stronger.
“I see two of you have the Librarian’s mark, but one does not,”
said Genemender, standing behind me. I craned my neck to keep him in sight. “Chakas, you clearly remember Erde-Tyrene, do you not?”
I felt my flesh creep at the steady gaze of so many faces—so many kinds of faces. “Yes,” I said. “I would go back there if I could.”
“I believe the Librarian would have us al return,” Genemender said. “That is not yet possible. Eat, be strong . . . rest. There is much to be done here, and little time.”
Chapter Nineteen
SOMEBODY POKED ME in the shoulder.
I came awake in the middle of the darkness. My sleep had been heavy, dreamless—my weary body luled by the warmth of the ground and the hot, moist air.
I roled over, the cot rustling under me, and saw— A smal, gray-furred face peering down at me, almost close enough to kiss—which I nearly did. Riser!
I reached out for him but with a lip-pouching frown, he held up his hand—quiet!—and withdrew into the hut’s shadows.
“Are you living here, too?” I whispered, loudly enough to make Vinnevra rol over, but not to wake her.
Riser’s silhouette did not respond.
“I didn’t see any other Florians. . . .”
The silhouette waggled an arm as if in warning, and I felt a tingling chil—perhaps Riser had died after al, and this was his lost and wandering ghost!
But I caught the figure’s meaning and stopped talking.
He approached again and touched my face with his long fingers, showing how glad he was to see me. He leaned in as if to nuzzle my ear and spoke softly: “Dangerous here. Weapons and ships gone, broken. The one who hates the Didact, and his fighters . . . stil here, stil moving humans around like cattle. This place, right here . .
. not real! Ful of dead! You and me—”
Came a creaking as someone climbed the steps to the porch outside. Riser made another frantic gesture—do not reveal me!— then puled back, hiding behind a chair. I stil hardly believed I had seen him, heard him—could a ghost accuse others of being ghosts?
The Forerunner peered into our hut through the low door, carrying that ridiculous candle-lamp in his spidery hand. “It’s fortunate you and the old one made your way here and not to any of the other stations,” he said in a low voice, not to wake the others.
“Please come with me—outside.”
Somehow, I had lost al fear—Riser’s return, even if only as a transient spirit, had reawakened a perverse sense of adventure.
With a quick glance at the chair, I pushed through the low door and climbed down the ladder.
Genemender waited for me on the grass.
“Why are we so fortunate?” I asked.
“The girl responded to your presence with her own imprinted instructions,” he said, walking ahead of me toward the glistening shape a hundred meters away. The rain and clouds had passed and the trees and huts shone silvery and clear under the night stars and the sharp-cut arc of the sky bridge.
I jerked at a sound from nearby. The ape had returned sometime after we left the dining hal to lie down under tree-cover near our hut. She watched us with almond-shaped eyes, ful lips pressed together. Her nose wrinkled and twitched, sniffing the air, and she raised her arm, then waved her hand, as if dismissing something—or trying to warn me. Perhaps she had seen Riser as wel.
“Does the Lifeshaper know everything that’s going to happen?” I asked, trotting to keep up with Genemender’s long stride.
“Not al,” he said. “At least, I doubt it. But she has a remarkable way of moving us about—humans and Forerunners.”
I could not disagree.
“Your young female saw a human wearing Forerunner armor, having falen from the sky in a rescue pod. . . . Not at al normal or what one would expect, even here. Her people were long ago imprinted with the need to bring such curiosities to a station where we might evaluate them.”
“She almost led us to the—” I stopped myself. To reveal important facts is to share trust. Before I shared, I wanted to learn more from this peculiar host. “This wheel is a wreck, cities are destroyed—broken star boats everywhere,” I said. “How could she know where to go, with everything changing?”
“Yet you are here,” Genemender said. “Beacons send signals, and the signals are updated as circumstances change.”