“I would have thought that one like you would have been most interesting of all to such a being,” Hasso said stubbornly.
The Lyhhrt said with a bit of sadness, “My people are not great explorers of the exterior world, Archivist. Their senses are dim and they cannot see unless they make themselves eyes. Because of my youth I am untrained and inexperienced. Only when I put myself in your mind do I know what you saw and felt, no more.”
“I would help that
being
find what it wants if I knew how, but in the meantime I am just afraid of offending it.”
“Evidently you have not done that so far.”
“It seems to be a bodiless energy being, and if it came from that ship I wonder why it needed one.”
“I am afraid we will not know until it tells you, Hasso.”
Tells me, indeed
!
“From your experience, it appears to want to know something about a world where people need flesh.”
And what do I know of the world, always imprisoned in my flesh
? Hasso leaned on his staff and looked out into the night.
After a few moments, the Lyhhrt said, :
Since we have spoken so much of this other Lyhhrt I must tell you something that you may not want to know.:
The dark tone of the thought made Hasso uneasy. :
Only if you must, friend.:
:When I first came here I was sure I had made a terrible mistake. Loneliness and fear are weak and simple expressions of what I felt ⦠and when I was finishing my work for Galactic Federation I thought I might really go mad in the particular way that isolated Lyhhrt do ⦠and then one day I heard a voice that was not one of madness, in the same way that you have been called by that ⦠being. But this was an Other. I was filled with joy. Yet â¦
:I am not altogether foolish and I did not accept its invitation at once. But after many days in which the Other urged me to give some acknowledgment, finally I answered. I refused to meet this one or have more than an informal change of thoughts, but I believed there was no one in the world happier than I ⦠alone no longer!
:Then, when I finally agreed to meet him he withdrew for some while and after a day or so he very carefully explained his circumstances. He was living inside a fleshly being, and this being had an acquaintance who would be glad to accommodate me
.:
Hasso gulped, and had nothing to say, or think.
:I tried not to be horrified, I was afraid to make him angry, and when I begged him to tell me why he chose to do this, he said that fleshers have more power and influence than we do in clumsy metal workshells that only frighten and repel others.
:
When he kept pressing me to join in this perversion I began to feel threatened and put distance between us very quickly, and I have been spending a whole year trying to calm myself. I have no proof but cannot help believing that the one here is the same.:
“Is that the person who warned you of an attack by Lyhhr?”
“No, that came from outworld. This one seems to be part of the attack plan, another part of the population altogether! And, Hasso, I came down here with you because I thought it was time to conquer my fear and make myself useful. And some day I might be able to cure myself of hiding in these stupid clothes, which are not quite as bad as living in a flesher's body.”
Hasso said fervently, “I hope that
being
who is so interested in âpeople' does not decide to inhabit one!” And added, “But you, friend, will you go home eventually?”
“I cannot tell you. But somehow I will find an Other.”
A clamor rose in the hallways and the lights went off, and then on again.
The TriV burst into light and sound with a flash image of two groups striking at each other with sticks. Hasso could not identify any of the combatants, but one of them fell with a bloody head. After that the screen blackened, a robotic voice said: BE CALM AND DO NOT PANIC, and clicked into silence.
“What's happening?” Hasso pushed the TriV's ON button but it remained dead, then pulled himself up and hurried to the esplanade doors to make sure they opened. “Come quickly, Lyhhrt, whatever is happening, I want to be out of this!”
Silence. The cloth-wrapped figure stood against the wall and did not move. “Lyhhrt, what's the matter, Lyhhrt!” Hasso was struck with horrible fear. Someone began to beat
on the door with a staff or weapon. With great effort Hasso stilled himself and opened his mind.
:It is Dritta! Please let me in quickly!:
He recognized her face through the spy-way and let her in. She was followed by Ekket, but Hasso did not have time to let his heart flutter. Both were carrying packed travel-cases. “What is going on?”
“Someone has tried to attack the Speaker for the Governors of Isthmus States, and there is such a great disturbance in all the Assembly Halls that my chief, Tharma, has sent me to bring you and Ekket away right now, along withâwhat is the matter?”
Hasso had crouched and taken off his helmet in order to part the clothing, and put his ear against the Lyhhrt's body. “One moment I was speaking to him, and the nextâ”
He could hear faint humming, but did not know whether it came from the machines or the pulse of a tiny heart. “There are small sounds, butâ”
“He fainted?”
“He stopped. One moment we were speaking together and then nothing ⦠.”
“You must come, Hasso.” Dritta was as firm in her way as her mentor Tharma. “My chief has ordered it and there is no more time.”
“No! I cannot go without him! He put himself at risk for me. Even if he is dead I must bring him.”
For a moment Dritta stood looking Hasso up and down, and Hasso noticed for the first time that she was slung with a heavy collection of stunners, zaps and serious firearms.
She went over to the wall, opened a door that Hasso had not known was there, and pulled out a small wheeled baggage-cart. “If we must, we will take him.”
She laid the soft-skin cases on the wagon for a bed and began to lower the Lyhhrt's standing figure. Ekket, who had been waiting in the corner with tear-filled eyes, came forward.
“Let me help,” and the two women set the Lyhhrt on the wagon with a great deal of both strength and gentleness. Hasso could not help wondering if the Lyhhrt might ever have appreciated being treated in this way.
“Come.” Dritta picked up the remote and slid open the glass door; the wagon with its burden followed the remote's signal on silent wheels. Hasso locked his helmet and came after Ekket, leaving his marble chamber without regret. The stars and moons glared down and Hasso did not turn his head for a glance. His spirit was with that clumsy heap of cloth and metal.
The esplanade tapered off down a ramp which was a collector lane from other rooms, but their occupants were either quarreling in the halls or had hurried away to avoid the conflict. Dritta said quietly, “This ramp leads to the underground station platform. We will not be travelling on a passenger train, I apologize for the inconvenience, but secrecy is safer. We will board a freight train that brings in food and building materials and takes away processed waste. We'll leave on the barge that carries it to Dead Moon Crater to be burnt, and the cruiser
Ocean Star
will pick us up from there.”
The air turned cold in the dimly lit tunnel at the end of the ramp, and the sounds were muffled, pattering clogs and sandals, the tick of Hasso's staff, and the thin skim of wheels on stone. The Lyhhrt was all too silent. If he had dared, Hasso would have stopped and lifted the Lyhhrt's body in his hands to breathe life into it somehow, but the thought was madness, and he hurried with the others.
Hasso had never needed to take an underground train and there were few of them in the world: membership in Galactic Federation had made Khagodi a traveling species willy-nilly. The cold vault looked old and dusty because of its newness. The dust came from hewn stones and the oily spills from the engines that brought them. “The train is coming,” Dritta said.
The railway car was a framework for carrying freight; and a pair of laborers hung tarpaulins over it to shelter the travelers and laid woven straw mattresses to carpet the splintered floor. When they were done, Dritta gave them money and they put their tongues out in thanks and crept away. Hasso spread his cloak on the floor of the car and Dritta placed the Lyhhrt's awkward metal-and-cloth body on it; then she reprogrammed the remote and sent the baggage carrier back to its home in the wall. “Nobody will trace us with that,” she said.
Hasso removed his helmet, got down on his good knee and gave his whole mind to the Lyhhrt. He did not notice when the train began moving.
Lyhhrt, Lyhhrt, you are a metal box of mind I cannot open ⦠.
Dritta crouched beside him. “He stopped speakingâandâperhaps living for no reason at all?”
“I must believe he is alive ⦠It is as if he has been struck dumb, paralyzed, there is a pulse, a whisper of something there ⦠. I'm afraid it is only the noise of his ventilators.”
“Can his shell support him?”
“Yes, if he is alive in it.”
“I've seen this effect from ESP attacksâbut none of our people have the power to attack a Lyhhrt that way.”
For a moment Hasso had a horrible fear that the being, who was all energy and no mass, might have become curious about the Lyhhrt andâ
But no, my friend told me a terrible secret, and it was perhaps one secret too many in this crisis. Only another Lyhhrt could do this ⦠“
Your chief may have told you of my suspicionâ”
“That there is another Lyhhrt in this area? Yes. She said it was her obligation to warn me of all possible dangers.” She touched her stunner and dipped her head. “I'm afraid I have no defense and no treatment for this condition.”
Hasso closed his eyes to keep the tears in and reached out for the touch and texture of Lyhhrt mind, friend or enemy, listened intensely but could hear nothing beyond his own heartbeat except the puffing of the steam engine and a faint whirr of circulation in the shell's vents. His back and leg ached fiercely, and he fought the pain desperately though he knew that it was foolish to believe that his touch or nearness would do good.
And felt something.
Again
.
Again began to feel the peculiar terrifying sense of
Other
that was nothing like the Lyhhrt sense of the wordâ
No no whatever you are leave me with my friend you have nothing to know here!
Once more his mind was magnified, clarified, every thought flung against his inner eye in a lurid intense glare, he was dizzy, disoriented, wanted to sink into sleep, lose consciousness, whatever would stop the attack, the red lightnings of terror inâhis mind? the Lyhhrt's?âfound, somewhere, the merest strength, as much as would press finger and thumb together, as much as might crack an eggshell, set himself against fear to look into the maelstrom the attacker had made of the Lyhhrt's mind, an abyss of hate where the icy cold waters of his world thrashed and spun ⦠.
Shivering with fear and at the same time savage with determination, Hasso let himself fall into the eye of the storm and made himself hover until his passion forced calm on it, searched for the small pulses of the heart and the minuscule impulses of the brain. After endless time they shimmered to life and the Lyhhrt's essence returned. His limbs vibrated slightly.
:Archivist ⦠:
“You are quite safe now,” Hasso said,
I think, I hope.
“Archivist ⦔ The word came through the voder with an odd warble.
“No, no, don't stir yourself. Rest.”
He hauled up on his staff to stretch and crouched again,
everything used up, opened his eyes and found Dritta beside him. She looked at Hasso, then at the Lyhhrt, who had become still again, and he saw that she had taken off her helmet. She said, “I think he must be sleeping now.”
Hasso moved away from the Lyhhrt, from whatever forces had opened his mind for him, or given him strength, and pulled on and locked his own helmet quickly, wanting only to keep his thoughts to himself. There was a question waiting at the edge of his mind that he could not ask yet.
Then he noticed that Ekket had been huddled in a corner, weeping. He was wordless, but Dritta crept over to her as quickly as the lurching and rattling of the car would let her. “What is upsetting you, dems'l?”
“Eki, I can't help myself, it was Gorodek tonight, telling the whole world through the TriV that because I was not found pregnant after his horrible attack I must be sterile!”
Hasso cried out, “He truly said that?”
“Yes,” Dritta said. “I tried to shut it off before he came out with it, but ⦔
Hasso said quickly, “You must not think anything of the sort, dems'l! If anyone is sterile it must be Gorodekâhe is old enough to be my father's father and he has no children!”