A Different Light (13 page)

The whisper ceased. "Jim?"

"Russell?"

"Yeah. Are you tied?"

"I can move my head."

"So can I. It might as well fall off for all the good it's done me." Russell sounded savage. "At least Leiko's on the way."

"Where are we?"

"I'm not sure, but I think we're under the Hall. I remember some stairs."

"Ysao?"

"He's not with us," Russell said.

"Ast did it," Jimson said.

"Yes," agreed Russell. Jimson heard his boots scraping against the stone. "I'm working my way over to you, babe. Back to back we should be able to untie each other."

Jimson tried to move his fingers. He could barely feel them through the numbing cords. "I don't think I can—" He stopped. Light shone down at them, dazzling through the darkness. Steps came down at them. Jimson's eyes adjusted slowly to the light. Russell lay a few feet from him. Ast, and a man, were standing over them. The light flared from a torch stuck in a wall sconce.

"This is Rahid," said Ast. "Our chief."

He gazed down at Russell with a measuring and speculative look. He spoke, and Ast translated. "I am chief of the tribe. You with the fire in your hair—you are the chief of thieves, are you not?"

"My name is Russell." Silence, broken by the scrape of boot heels. Russell was pushing himself towards the wall. He worked himself to a sitting position against it.

"That is not a name of our folk, and you do not look like us, or smell like us. Where are you from?"

"North," said Russell.

"Ast told us that you called upon something for assistance, before the Gods delivered you into her hands. Ysao will not say what this thing is, and we cannot make him speak. He is protected against us. Since he names you as his leader, I will ask you. Did you indeed call upon a thing for aid?"

"I did," said Russell, "
I
am no magician." Ast's eyes widened and she spoke very fast.

"So your Masters are indeed the northern magicians! What thing did you call?"

"I don't think I need to tell you," Russell said, marvelously tranquil. "The thing has been called. It will come."

"An air demon? A fire-breather?"

Russell shook his head.

"Red one, you have no such protection as Ysao."

Russell made a face like a shrug. "I am in your hands. But the thing comes, and only my voice can call it off." He looked up, as if measuring the thickness of the ceiling stone. "You will not have to wait long to know."

It's like watching a play
, Jimson thought.

"You can call it off," said Ast for Rahid. "Do you care so little about your own life?" Rahid bent close. There was suddenly a knife in his hand.

Russell remained calm. "My life will mean very little to me," he said, "if I return north without that for which I was sent."

"We will not let you steal our Masks."

"Then you will not have them long. The thing that comes is mindless and does not care what it burns. In the hottest fire, crystal and stone alike will melt."

Ast spoke to Rahid. He snapped a question at her. "How long before it comes?" she asked.

"The longer we talk, the nearer." Russell looked at Rahid. "The Masks."

Rahid shook his head before Ast could translate.

"One Mask—or the lives of all the people in this Hall, and beyond."

"There is no way—" Ast said.

"A way can always be contrived," Russell said mercilessly.

Rahid listened as Ast translated. His face was taut with worry and indecision. He spoke to Ast. Jimson heard the name
Athou
repeated several times.

Russell had heard it, too. "Is not Rahid chief of the tribe?" he said to Ast. "Surely, when the chief talks, no one will dispute him."

Ast translated this to Rahid. He frowned, and spoke to her at length. At last she turned to Russell and said, "Rahid will speak with the tribe. But this may take some time. Is there time to talk before the dragon comes?"

Russell said, "Did you destroy our packs?"

"No."

"Bring me one. I will speak to the beast."

Ast translated for Rahid. He shouted something up the stairs. There was a thump of feet, more shouts, more thumps, and then a panoply of shadow on the walls. Rahid disappeared and came back with the pack. He laid it at Russell's side, and then drew his knife again and cut the cords on Russell's hands and feet. "There are two of us," Russell said to Ast. She spoke. Rahid leaned over Jimson. The bonds around his ankles fell away. Then his arms were free. He tried to lift himself, failed, clenched his teeth, and pushed hard. His shoulders burned where they had been forced back. A line on his wrist was painfully raw.

Russell pulled the communicator out of the pack. "Leiko, this is Russell."

"Homing in, Pirate!"

"No!" Russell said sharply. "Hold off. I'll call you again. If I don't check back with you in one hour, come on down. Can you make a noise like a dragon over us, now?"

"Noise like a dragon? Are you having fun? Sure I can. Roaring off." Russell grinned and laid the communicator down.

"It will not come
now
," he said to Ast. "But if I do not speak to it again within a certain time, it will."

"I understand," said Ast. She spoke with Rahid. He nodded grimly, still holding the knife, blade upwards. "We will go upstairs now," she said. "You will walk behind us, and the guards will follow. Make no sudden moves." Now that the immediate crisis was over, Rahid looked more sure of his ground. He pointed the knife at Russell.

There were two guards at the doorway, each carrying long, metal-tipped spears. They moved aside at Rahid's command. The chief took the torch from the wall and started up ahead of them. Russell and Jimson fell in behind him. Jimson glanced at Russell. He was grinning, happy, gliding up the stone steps in easy strides. He caught Jimson's eyes on him, and chuckled.

The small sound unnerved the spearmen. One of them, the nearest, lifted his spear and laid the point of it in the small of Russell's back.

The redhead turned, smooth as a dancer, and caught the spear from underneath, just below the point. Still stepping backwards and up, he jerked it forward. The man flung forward, unbalanced. Russell's boot caught him crisply in the stomach. He gyrated backwards, yelped, tumbled against the other guard, and almost knocked him down. Russell held up the spear, then broke it over his knee, and tossed the pieces down the stairs.

As they climbed up into the temple, the roar began.

It started like the sound of a rushing wind, and filled the building, growing and growing, an enraged growling bestial scream. The men in their long dun-colored robes were falling down, covering their ears with their hands, wailing in fear. Boom it went, and the stones of the temple seemed to vibrate. Boom! BOOM. As it died leaving a wake of silence like doom, Russell walked across the hall to where Ysao lay, propped against the dais. Jimson followed him. He was slightly shaken, partly by the noise, mostly by its spectacular effect.

Ysao was looking not too uncomfortable. He was holding a food bar. "Interesting," he said to Russell.

"You've heard a dragon roar before," Russell said.

"A dragon—of course. Nice, very nice. I told Rahid that he would have to talk to you. Thank the luck these people are untrained, Russell, and that Rahid has scruples about questioning an injured man. What arrangement have you made?"

"Talking time," Russell said. "I told them I have a dragon on tap. If they give us any trouble, it will come and burn this hall."

"Talking time," repeated Ysao. "Yes. We need some talking time. I want a Mask to look at, Pirate. Can you get me one?"

"I think so," said Russell.

Jimson's ears were still ringing with the ship's sound. Around the hall the men of the tribe still lay prostrate and trembling. The Masks in their niches watched the scene as if it were a comedy played out for their amusement in the hall.
We are old,
they seemed to say.
Show us something new, strangers
. Jimson felt pity for the tribespeople. They've never heard anything louder than the desert winds—or, maybe, thunder in a storm.

I wonder what the Masks are thinking.

He could not help but think of them as living.

Like a person who has the upper hand, and knows it, Russell walked over the bodies to the nearest Mask, and took it down from the wall.

It was the representation of a woman's face, carved out of some cold stone—streaked milky-grey. Alabaster? wondered Jimson. Her hair was long, and it twined about her face, obscuring the whole left side of it below the eye. Ysao turned and turned it in his lap. At last he picked it up and placed it on his head. It looked monstrous there. He laid it back on his lap, looking pleased and also amazed. He smoothed the lovely stone with one hand.

Rahid came pleading to them, hands palm to palm in supplication, forgetting that they couldn't understand him. Russell took the Mask from Ysao and gave it to him.

"I suppose they're all like that," murmured Ysao.

"Like what?" said Russell.

"No wonder Ast was so strong, holding it."

They waited for him to explain at his own pace.

"The Masks are psychic resonators."

Around them now, the men were rousing. But no one moved in their direction. Most were backing away, back into the pillared hallway. Only Rahid remained, cradling the Mask, listening to the strange sounds. Ast stayed, crouching at Ysao's feet.

"You know about resonating crystal, Pirate?" Russell shook his head. "It wasn't discovered till after we got out into the Hype. It's rare. We don't know how to synthesize it. It's got a lot of uses, and a lot of forms. You can pattern it, and it will grow in that pattern. You can pattern it to diamond, if you have a diamond, and the proper form of the stuff. This form—well, I've seen two pieces of it. One is at Psi Center. One belongs to the Director of the Ships, on Nexus. With a piece of this stuff, you can increase the intensity and distance of telepathic communication. When psi talents were first being seriously investigated, it was theorized that we could extend telepathy from planet to planet, from system to system, even, so that telepaths light years apart might be able to send to each other. But they soon discovered that no telepath alive can focus more than a few kilometers. Except with resonating crystal. With this, I can send halfway around this planet. Maybe farther. And I can go as deep and as precisely into another mind as I need to. On Psi Center, they use it for surgery. And Psi Center would give damn near anything to have another piece. This is a treasure, Russell."

Russell asked, "How much would Psi Center
pay
for it, Ysao?"

"I think you could name your own price."

Russell blinked. "I'm not greedy," he said. "But I'd be a fool to pass that up. We can take one Mask to Psi Center, Ysao. And take a second to Roman De Vala."

Ysao said, "No. Nothing to Roman De Vala."

Russell said, "He hired me, Ysao. I don't break contracts."

"De Vala." Ysao's voice was tired and contemptuous. "Once this was his world. Let me tell you the story, Russell. Took me some time to remember it. The old star charts—we don't use them any more. Don't need to. You chart courses with the Hype mappings. But you remember what happened on Old Terra, when it got desperate there, not enough to eat, before the Verdians landed—before hyperdrive? They fought a war. Then they saw it wouldn't help to kill each other off, and they built a huge fusion starship fleet, and pointed it through spacetime normal to the stars. Some of those ships landed on New Terra." Jimson nodded. From New Terra colonists had come through the Hype to New Terrain. "Check the old star maps and you'll see it, Pirate—82 Eridani is close to Sol. One ship, or two, or half a dozen, I don't know, landed on Demea. The trip must have taken them a hundred years."

"Not that much," objected Russell.

"Fifty? That's a long time to be cooped up in a moving metal box with no sunlight, no fresh air, and the same damn faces every day, every night. Under those conditions culture rigidifies and stratifies. The biggest problem new colonists in the Clouds have is breaking out of the traditions they've set up for themselves on shipboard."

Russell said, "That trip is eighty years."

Ysao said, "But people live longer now, so it evens out. Imagine shutting yourself into that box with no knowledge of where you're going, or belief that you'll even get off ship alive! Remember, they had no telepathic screening then. When the people from Terra arrived on 82 Eridani, they'd turned very strange. The technology they'd brought with them wasn't up to the world they'd found—or else they weren't. Demea killed a lot of them and brutalized the rest. It took another hundred years before an X-team arrived. The X-team was pretty shaken at what it found. The culture had developed along classic lines: an exploited and degraded majority, and a privileged, corrupt, despotic minority. The minority knew who they were, and why, and even where. But the majority had lost all but the most mythic bits of history. I suppose that out of those myths they made this building and the Masks."

Russell said, clearly shaken despite himself, "It sounds ugly."