Darkness now, the shadow of Skywall shielding them from the sight of the dead village. Kelver felt a hand touch him. “Come on,” said Haller. “Starship captains don’t cry, do they? I’ve never seen you cry. We’ve got to do something. …”

  “What did you see, Darktouch, to make this happen? What nightmare has happened in the Dark Country?” Kelver said. He propped himself against the prickly stones. He forced his grief inside himself. He had done that before, when his father had died. It seemed easy when there was no hope.

  “I saw something beautiful,” Darktouch said in the voice that so closely mimicked his own. “The nightmare was in us, that we had gone out and killed the beauty, over and over, that it was our way of life, and that we could never know what we had done. …”

  “The Inquest will know the answers.” Kelver needed a purpose. He would grab at any purpose he could see now, no matter how farfetched. He needed a purpose to contain his despair, or it would come spilling out and engulf him… . “At the end of the Cold River, I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of klomets away, lives an Inquestor, Ton Davaryush z Galléndaran K’Ning. He sees everything on the world through the eyes of his thinkhives. He lives in the towers built upon the towers of towers”— they were words he had learnt as a small child, words that lent order to the universe—“but perhaps he cannot see everything. Perhaps he doesn’t know that something has gone wrong here, in a far neglected corner of his world. We’ve got to go out now, follow the Cold River to its end, find the Inquestors, tel-l them everything—”

  “How?” Haller was crying now. “We’re just children! What’ll we eat? They’ve burnt the nutrient tanks. There’s no food—”

  “Would there be food if we stayed here?” Kelver shouted. Then he got up and began walking briskly in the direction of the wasteland. He walked on. He did not look behind, although he could hear Haller scrabbling at his heels and the cautious, regular footfall of the girl Dark-touch. He moved quickly, trying not even to feel the splintered ground grow smooth as they neared the edge of shadow. He was remembering one of Darktouch’s thoughts: To be dark. Not to feel. And then the three children burst from the shadow into the glaring sunshine. The line of the Cold River seemed to erupt out of the height and blackness, shooting laser-straight at the horizon. The suns danced, oblivious of encroaching winter, and the sand dazzled like snow.

  Haller was close behind him. “You don’t have to follow me,” he said.

  “What else is there to do?” He felt Darktouch’s shadow on him, a little cool, but she did not speak. Haller went on, curiously calm. “There was one of the ghost people who came fleeing into the village once, remember? He told me that when they get hungry, out there, they sometimes hunt the al’ksigarkar, they beat them senseless and drink the living green juice from them.”

  “There’s no food. I suppose we’ll have to do that.” Dark-touch still hadn’t spoken. He turned to her now, hoping for a conversation that would drown out the deadness in him. “You’ve never told us everything, Darktouch. About the Dark Country, I mean. We’re all walking blind now, looking for answers to questions we don’t even know enough to ask.” He tried to touch her; again she flinched, as she always did. Again the twinge of envy crossed Haller’s face.

  Darktouch said, “You are not my Touch-brother. We were not linked together at birth by touch and smell. How can I…”

  ‘Tell us about it,” said Haller. Kelver saw how gentle she was, how hard it must be to speak kindly to Darktouch. He pitied her then. The three of them were all that was left of the only people he had ever known.

  As they walked, Darktouch talked. Haltingly at first, then more passionately, finding the words at last. Even Haller was awed. They walked for many hours, and the landscape never changed; always the limitless whiteness, always the line of the Cold River slung out on pylons, klomet after klomet, always the angry suns. In the shadow of the Cold River, a little strip of darkness, it was a little cooler, and they could find moisture sometimes, oozing down the pylons, although most of it evaporated before it reached their level. But they were hungry, and the day seemed never to end.

  … Now they ran, driven by a kind of madness made from hunger and despair. Or collapsed, half in, half out of the shadow, half cool, half burning, too tired to go on. It wasn’t real. Once they ran towards a glittering half-familiar village to find only the sand. Kelver was ready to kill an al’ksigark now.

  In time Darktouch told of the light on the sound, and Kelver could not even imagine such things. But he knew now how important he had become. If only he could reach the Inquest … after a day of the desert, he didn’t even think of it anymore. Only his love for the strange girl sustained him. They pushed on; finally night fell, chilly and brief.

  In the morning Kelver climbed a pylon and saw a pride of al’ksigarkar.

  First the whiteness, swallowing up all idea of distance and space, and then … a patch of green, field-furry, shivering closer like a huge amoeba. Kelver remembered—

  —vomit-green corpses, teeth-riddled, by the Cold River—

  And then the hunger. “They’re grazing now,” he said, “photosynthesizing with their huge mantles erect and spread out. But if we separate one of them out, it’ll be detached from the mob-mind and it’ll go rogue, it’ll attack us… He had climbed down now. The others clung to the cool of the pylon: Darktouch aloof, Haller all too accessible. From the shadow they could see only a strip of green almost at the horizon. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get there before we starve to death.”

  “But we’ll have to leave the Cold River behind!” said Haller.

  “We don’t have any choice!” Darktouch said, very quietly. She set off into the whiteness. Kelver could see her feet flinch from the smart of hot sand. He started to follow; Haller was last. He felt the suns on him now, saw also the Skywall Mountain far to his right, blotting out a third of the sky. His stomach was churning with hunger. He wanted to relieve himself and yet didn’t want to lose any more water. The firefur of his tunic was damp and had lost its luster. He walked faster, thinking of Darktouch, not wanting her too far in the lead in case—

  She was gone! He heard a scream from Haller behind him. “It’s haunted! The wasteland has killed her—”

  “Don’t be stupid!” He ran towards the spot, a hundred meters ahead, where he had seen her vanish. The footprints were already filling with fresh sand. They stopped. He kicked at the sand with his foot; there was a gleam suddenly, a flashing pain in his eyes, and then—

  Metal. A displacement plate. “She doesn’t know how to use them,” he said. “Powers of powers, she probably doesn’t know where she is at all, probably thinks we’ve disappeared. …”

  Kelver knew of the vast network of displacement plates that spanned the surface of the whole world. They’d been there since the Inquest’s beginning: but those in the wasteland had fallen into disuse, buried in the burning sands. Subvocalizing the right coordinates would be guesswork even to the experienced.

  “What can she have been subvoking at the time?” said jailer.

  “I don’t know. Quick, step on with me, we’ve got to stick together.” He scrubbed at the sweat-plastered hair that fell over, his eyes. “She must have been thinking of the al’ksigarkar . . In the back of his mind the thought was nagging, Why are the displacement plates here, who are they for, they must be old and disused now, who put them there, why hasn’t anyone been told of them— He clutched Haller’s hand tight and subvoked an image of the al’ksigarkar and—

  They popped into being with the white sand still streaming out in every direction, with the Cold River a black line at the sky’s edge, and ahead, a mad green carpet of shimmering green mantles and leaf-trembling tendrils and sharp teeth, glistening against the green fur like diamants—

  “Darktouch!” he screamed.

  The field of tendrils shifted, as though a windwave blew through them.

  “Don’t go near them!” Haller whispered. “They’ll go carnivorous—”

  Kelver backed away, back towards the displacement plate. “You have to help me. We have to grab one, with our bare hands, drag it^away before the herd senses our presence.” He saw Haller gulp, then nod. He crouched down. Haller followed him. They crept towards the green, holding their breaths.

  “That one.” He pointed, whispering. One al’ksigark was slightly detached from the group. They were ugly things. Its body was a mass of globs and spiderlegs and facet-rich patches that served as compound eyes, and its gaping toothy mouth was shadowed by the parasol-mantle, sprouting like a lotus leaf a couple of square meters, catching the sunlight.

  They were close now. The creature smelled of fresh-cropped grass and decaying meat. They were within arms reach. “Quick! The eye-things!” He tried not to look, balled his fist, and smashed hard into an eye-patch and another and another, and Haller did the same, until his hands were vegetable-oil-greasy and covered with faint iridescence from the light-sensitive membranes. The creature shivered, not having had time to switch into its active, carnivorous phase. If they didn’t move quickly the whole herd would come to life, swallowing them alive—

  “Drag it to the displacement plate—” They hefted together, wrenching the al’ksigark loose from its light roots, greenish rheum trickling into the sand . .. “Not now, Haller, later!” She was drinking the juice from it, gasping for air.

  Suddenly the al’ksigark wriggled loose, tendrils flailing, began to ooze around in circles. By smell or some other sense it began to totter towards the herd, trailing rivulets of thick liquid. Kelver jumped it. Its mantle began to contract, tightening around his waist and legs. With a bound Haller was on the creature, kicking wildly at its mouth and cavernous nostrils. Kelver smashed a rip in the mantle with his bare hands and rolled, thudding against the burning sand. Haller was stomping on the creature now, throwing up a slew of green mush and stringy internal organs.

  “Thank you,” Kelver murmured.

  “I love you,” Haller said. There was anger in her voice, though. They dragged the creature towards the displacement plate. Kelver was too hungry to control himself and began to gorge on the greenish organs, which tasted like a rank cheese slathered with syrup.

  ‘I’m too tired, I can’t make it to the plate—” Darktouch! he was thinking, his mind whirling.

  “Starship captains don’t get tired .. . remember?” Haller mocked him gently. He began to realize how close he and she had been, in their own disdainful ways. Even through his hunger he saw how much she loved him. They started to move, dragging the al’ksigark between them. He winced when it twitched. Behind them the pride swayed, rooted still, still drinking the sunlight in their thousands. “I know you’re thinking of her ” said Haller, “and I don’t care about that. It’s too late now. I don’t understand what she saw, why you had to get the Inquestors .. . but I know we still have to, because it’s our only chance to go on living. So come on.” They were within a meter or so of the displacement plate—

  A dozen of them had broken loose. A wailing, twittering yammer in the air. Tendrils slimy against his skin. He broke away. “Run, Haller!” They were standing on the displacement plate and he was willing it, subvoking with all his might, but the right images wouldn’t come, his mind was blank with terror, he watched as the creatures roared •and dribbled a pus of sputum and digestive juice, he watched Haller slip, spring to her feet, and—

  ‘‘Subvocalize, powers of powers, subvocalize!” she was shouting. “Don’t wait for me!” His mouth was wide open in horror—

  She writhed free, leapt on with him, the al’ksigarkar chattered and flapped their mantles and snapped at their legs with green claws, and then suddenly she turned and saw something and pushed Kelver with all her might, sending him sprawling, heat of the sand exploding against his bare arms and thighs, and then she started to yell something at him and there was a whooshing in the air and a lance sprouted from her and her cry was strangled, her neck hanging, snapped, her whole body tumbling onto the sand….

  A hideous keening from twelve al’ksigark mouths, yawning-wide and glistening with razor-jewel teeth … the al’ksigarkar scattering, dashing into the palpitating sea of green, a rain of lances whipping from above, and thunder of stomping human feet, a babble of guttural speech—

  He propped himself up. The creatures were falling, dropping out of the herd, and the rest were stampeding, scurrying up flurries of white sand. And Haller lay broken on the sand, the blood erupting from her….

  First Darktouch, now Haller! I’m alone! He got up, feeling dead as a servocorpse inside. The al’ksigarkar were gone, save for a dozen or so, neatly speared, some of them still jerking in their death-spasms. He didn’t want to know what had killed them, but when he turned around he saw them.

  Their faces first. The faces of al’ksigarkar, but without the nervous shivering of living ones. They were masks, and beneath the masks were naked torsos of people; muscly, hard torsos, completely caked in sand. One of them saw Kelver.

  “You—not al’ksigark!” the man barked. He strode close, and the smell of the rotting al’ksigark mask was almost unbearable. But Kelver was too deadened even to flinch from it. “Come,” said the man. He clapped his hands and a dozen of them ran forward to strip the bodies of the slain al’ksigarkar. They must have been hunting. “We not intended to kill your mate,” said the man more gently. “You are village people, no?” His lowspeech was hard to understand, full of harshly articulated consonants, and very archaic in its word-forms. “Come. We have saved you. Come. Come.” The man tugged at him, but Kelver resisted. He was trying to think an instruction to the displacement plate, but he was too confused to subvoke clearly.

  “You’re the ghost people,” he said. “The people who live off the wastelands… .”

  The man shrugged. Muscles rippled under his powdery covering. Kelver said, “I have to go back to the Cold River … I have to find the twin cities, I have to find the Inquestors, or something terrible is going to happen to all of us … please, don’t take me, leave me to go on my journey by myself…”

  “Cold River bad place,” the man hissed. “Come.” Brusquely he took hold of Kelver’s shoulder and nudged him forward.

  So it ends, Kelver thought. Me and my dreams of being an astrogator, of hobnobbing with Inquestors. …

  He looked at the Skywall in the distance, the blackness sandwiched with layers of mist until-it melted into the sky. He watched the ghost people dully as they slung the dead al’ksigarkar over their shoulders and began to march into the distance.

  Haller! Darktouch! his mind screamed. And then he saw that they were walking away from the line of the Cold River, and he lost all hope.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE PASSION OF YNYOLDEH

  Clouds parted: came a passionate purple rain, stifling the wonder-gasps of the audience. Shen Sajit’s face fell into repose, blurred by the gauze of raindrops that sent tiny rainbows darting, a huge holoface sculpted on simulated clouds. Davaryush reached the balcony, arriving late as was correct for a Kingling. As he and his train pushed through the mob towards the throne he struggled to retain his composure, and also not to seem too composed, for this was the commonest giveaway error among nervous In-questors. Taking his time, giving each footfall its proper weight, he descended the soft steps of the aisle.

  —If Varuneh is right about Ynyoldeh—

  He saw her now, or the dead girl that spoke in her name, reclining in the mechanical’s arms. It rocked her as a nurse might rock a baby, and she affected a languid, pouting pose. The other Inquestors sat at her feet, and Davaryush saw how they smiled openly, even in his presence, so conscious were they of victory in makrúgh.

  —If the thinkhive has obeyed my instructions implicitly, instead of reinterpreting them in its own devious fashion— Lady Varuneh had preceded him. He saw her now, among the palace ladies, far from the throne area that was the true arena of the evening. The metawolverine skin of her garment and the single flamedisk were austere, understated, compared to the other women’s clothing: some had masks of cloth-of-iridium with their features touched up with strings of miniature sapphires and pearls; others had their hair piled in mountains or forests, imitating a nature they had probably never encountered; their capes were spread out by artwinds, their skirts revolved about their waists by means of photon-powered motors and quivered with coruscatory kaleidolons. He had to smile a little … how inventive was their shallowness I How different from the woman who was his lover, who outshone them all in a single shapeless skincloak.

  —If only—

  He sat down now, outwardly quite detached, but observing the others. The Inquestors, flushed with victory, seemed moved by Sajit’s music, especially Ton Elloran; Davaryush did not care for it much. His taste was more vulgar than was thought fashionable, and he liked the florid symphoniae of Ont much better. He ordered more zul for the Inquestors, but made sure that his own was unfermented.

  “You are a good loser,” Kiembre or Siembre said, shuffling forward on their hoverthrone.

  “Attá heng ” Davaryush said listlessly. The fiamedisk of Varuneh’s hair danced above the field of headdresses in the ladies9 pavilion….

  “Oh, Daavye,” Ynyoldeh said, bringing her throne level with his, and affecting a stage whisper, “you seem to have lost all your feistiness .. . and I thought that being declared heretic would do you a world of good! You’re going to give up without a fight? The glorious scheme of bluffing to threaten the whole Galaxy?”

  Davaryush didn’t answer her. He motioned for more zul for the Lady Ynyoldeh, and then said, a trifle maliciously, “Oh, I am sorry, of course you cannot drink.”

  “You underestimate modern technology,” the girlcorpse said, her kohl-dark eyelashes fluttering. She sipped at the zul in an uncannily nymphlike gesture, her wrist bending with just the right angle of grace, her elbow crooked just so. “I’m a very elegant corpse,” she said. Then she expelled a gust of putrescence in his face, quaffing gracefully the while. Davaryush refused to be challenged. He turned to hear the music. Clouds like cetaceans leapt over the sea of cloud, sailing through hoops of rainbow-tinted cirrus, while other clouds shaped like mythological sailboats skimmed the fluffy waves.