“You know the Inquestral texts!” he cried, startled.

  “I have known a great deal in my time, Ton Davaryush z Galléndaran K’Ning,” she said.

  Davaryush ate.

  “And the previous Inquestor who ruled here,” he said.

  “Was he a fair Kingling? Did he oppress the people too much?”

  “I was his mistress.”

  Davaryush watched as she plucked the feathers of a roast jangyll, and laid them one by one in a neat pattern on the tray … and offered him the dusky meat, perfectly skewered.

  As the floater swung upward toward the sunlight, and the twin cities rose into view like crystal stalagmites from the water and jewel stalactites from the roof of the sky, Davaryush remembered Shtoma….

  He came to Shtoma in the cadent lightfall, his tachyon bubble breaching the gilt-fringed incandescent clouds like a dark meteor.

  … The thrill of a virgin utopiay ripe for the unmasking of its purifying flaw …

  He was two hundred and thirteen years old then, and at the height of his analytic powers. With the destruction of twelve deceptive utopias, experience had banished misgivings; he knew that every utopia must have its flaw.

  He remembered—

  Shimmering cloudbanks. An extravagant landscape growing as he fell, sharp-angled trees like giant pink spiders, with their ferric-based photosynthesizing pigment . ..

  Whimsical spiral dwellings of transparent plastic, jutting up at irregular intervals from the blanket of dense vegetation, crimsons and vermilions.

  The wind thrashing his translucent sphere as it adjusted to the gravity, cushioning his fall to Shtoma….

  What he had been told of Shtoma: how they had fallen into a pattern of ecological stasis, from which he must release them, whatever the cost. And this was no backward, back-to-nature, primitivistic planet, but a world whose technical sophistication rivaled his own homeworld’s. Exceeded it, even; for Shtoma alone, of all the planets in the Dispersal of Man, understood the secret of gravity control. For which they had no use, except for the manufacture of toys. And which they guarded with such miserliness and irrational fervor as to belie their much-vaunted saintliness, their notorious lack of greed and every other human quality—

  And the rumor that it was a utopia was more than could be tolerated.

  If it was a utopia it could be destroyed. He was a master iconoclast, a utopia hunter. And every utopia has its flaw• Otherwise, why was the Inquest necessary?

  … His bubble slowed itself, brought him down upon the field of rust-colored grass. An alien songsnatch haunted his ears. With a mindflick he deactivated the bubble.

  And an old man sang to him:

  Qithe qithembara

  udres a kilima shtoisti—

  “Soul, renounce suffering; you have danced on the face of the sun… .” Strange words, with opaque and patently sinful meaning. He said to the stranger, disregarding the greeting: “I am from another world. Who is it that addresses me?”

  The alien’s gaze chilled him. “You are Inquestor Davaryush of the Clan of Ton. Welcome.” Abruptly he beamed and stretched out his arms to embrace Davaryush. The Inquestor yielded ungracefully. This was no peasant then; he had misjudged.

  “I come to investigate Shtoma’s utopian possibilities, so that it may be considered for the honor of being named a Human Sanctuary,” the utopia hunter said. He did not blush at the lie; it came easily to him by now.

  “So! How delightful… .” The old man laughed; his eyes broke into a hatchwork of wrinkles. “I am Emad, your host. You must be weary. Come.”

  A man—poorly dressed and without a single attendant— had dared to address a Master Inquestor by name! The alienness of the world unnerved him.

  The clouds had parted to reveal the white dwarf sun, unnaturally close. The rough wind tousled the grass, blood-red and tall. Everything was wrong with this planet: it hugged its primary impossibly close yet had a standard atmosphere, its characteristics violated all possibility— Davaryush started to answer the man but he had turned, expecting him to follow.

  A stony path led to the first recognizable artifact: a displacement plate, incongruous metal in the red field. It was no primitive world! Despite the absence of war or slavery….

  And the house.

  He reeled with the vertigo of it—the crazy spiralings and

  swirlings of transparent walls, the cacophony of chiming and chirping that bombarded his senses. How could they live amid such a wilderness of sensual stimuli? Where was their discipline, their culture?

  Children and young people sauntered by. They showed no respect. They shouted at him “Qithe qithembaral” without respect.

  “You must forgive them,” Emad said, interrupting his dismay. “You are an offworlder, and … well, it is an especially exciting time for them now. It’s nearly time for the festival of initiation, and anything can spark their enthusiasm.** He spoke with no trace of criticism in his voice. How alien!

  “Your attendants?” Surely someone this important . .

  “No; neighbors, friends, relatives. Our houses are open, Davaryush.”

  What of the initiation ceremony? Davaryush thought. Perhaps therms some unspeakable rite here; perhaps thafs the flaw in the utopia. “I must rest now,** he said. “But after, I would see everything in your world: your games, your pleasures, your prisons, your criminals, your asylums, your places of execution.”

  Emad paused, as though he were translating something to himself. “Ah, yes. I have heard of madmen and criminals. I am not uneducated, Ton Davaryush.”

  They turned down a corridor of glass that swerved upwards into the air, and Davaryush felt a sudden dislocation, as though he had changed weight and down had become sideways, and he found they were walking upside down on the ceiling. “What is happening?”

  Emad laughed mildly. “It’s the same principle, you know, as the varigrav coasters. You must have seen them, our principal export—”

  “But why fool around with gravity inside your dwellings?”

  “Why not? Would you not be bored, if all directions remained constantly the same?”

  And the room.

  A large chamber perched on the point of a translucent pyramid in the sky.

  Davaryush saw on the far wall a huge capelike sheet of some sheer material, the room’s one adornment. Like a rainbow sail rippling softly in the room’s ventilating breeze.

  It was beautiful, he conceded, but bewilderingly complex, undisciplined, uncivilized.

  ‘This cape—what is it for?”

  “Oh. My wings,” Emad said.

  Davaryush knew then how addicted they must be to the varigrav coasters, those toys they had inflicted on the rest of the Galaxy. He looked at the old man. Was his sincerity merely stupidity, and not deviousness?

  For there was a toy, hanging on the wall as though it were a god.

  Davaryush felt sad already. After twelve successful missions he found himself still vulnerable to pity.

  For he was nothing if not compassionate.

  “I know you are thinking of Shtoma,” Lady Varuneh said.

  Davaryush was startled from his reverie. A light wind, salt-scented and damp, had permeated the darkfield and played with a few strands of Varuneh’s hair, white-streaked and flax-textured… . Ahead was the gate to Kallendrang, a diamond-shaped barrier set into the invisible forceshields. And behind, still distance-misted, the twin cities. The sky-foundations of Kallendrang disappearing into wisps of cloud. Mirrorspeckle windows twinkling like tiny stars. …

  In her way, the Lady Varuneh was still beautiful. A woman weathered and worn smooth by time….

  Slowly he said, “If you wish, you can restore the programming of the city’s forceshield, have it replay the dawn from my homeworld, mornings.” Vaguely he sensed that she had won some kind of victory. They were playing a colossal game of makrúgh, the Inquestral game of strategy and control; and the mysterious woman was gaining ground. He watched her.

  The woman had no right to know so much about his past. She must be an enemy. And yet he found himself drawn to her, as an insect of the night towards the flame.

  The false dawn pleased his eyes that morning. He breakfasted alone; then went to the audience chamber and issued some harmless routine decrees. He requisitioned a certain percentage of starships for the planet Keima—it seemed to be at the forefront of a new war. War was a game the In-questors played at constantly; for most could not be satisfied with the makrúgh of computers and boards and metal tokens. And of course, war honed the human animal for the good things of life. So it was prescribed in the In-questors* ideology; and so he had always believed, until Shtoma.

  Davaryush found the city’s thinkhive in a small chamber of the palace that had no windows. It was a room without curves, perfectly cubical, and walled with mirror metal. He entered.

  “What,” he said, “is the real reason for this planet*s existence?”

  To serve the Inquest. The voice echoed in his head. The thinkhive had access to all knowledge on the planet. But one must ask the right questions; for it was wily as an Inquestor, and yielded nothing until it had judged the questioner thoroughly.

  “Why is it that the people on this planet—with the exception of the twin cities’ population, who are all civil servants and bound to the Inquest—are in such a state of technological backwardness? Beyond the shipyards of Ung Angkier, the displacement plates come to an end. There are villages, each one stranded in the shadow of the dark mountain—”

  Come, come, Davaryush! What are you driving at? You know as well as I do that it is to the Inquests advantage for planets of such critical importance as this one to be kept in ignorance. How would it be, if one world could hold an entire Galactic community to ransom?

  ‘Tell me then why so little is known about the way the delphinoid shipminds are harvested and brought into the shipyards.”

  Everything is known, Davaryush. You haven’t asked, that's all.

  “So tell me.”

  In the mountains there is a culture of blind and deaf people, so mutated by the Inquest at the beginning of the period of Inquestred power. They hunt the delphinoids, thrust the brains into the Cold Rivers. … Their whole culture, their whole mythos, was manufactured by the Inquest. Their lives center around the capture of delphinoids; they have no time even for foodgathering. Nor can food grow in the emptiness of the Dark Country. So the Inquest created villages of feeders who supply them with food. But ‘in the mythos of the Dark Country, it is the gods, the delphinoids, who supply everything….

  But why ore they deaf and blind?”

  It is not in your interest for me to supply this inform motion.

  Davaryush felt cold fear then. He gathered his shimmer-cloak about his shoulders, even though the cold came from the inside and not from the perfectly controlled weather-makers of the cities. A thinkhive could not contradict an Inquestor, not unless … There was a truth here that gnawed at the very roots of the way things were….

  But it’s all very clever, Davaryush. For instance .. . fust in case there are genetic throwbacks, the mythos contains a puberty ceremony that involves eye-gouging. No sighted person could possibly remain….

  “And if—” Davaryush stopped to frame his question carefully. “And if one of the people in the Dark Country should escape?”

  It’s impossible.

  “All right. I know that between here and the Dark Country there is an impassable desert. I know it’s populated with al’ksigarkar, fanged creatures who eat flesh. I know there are stone-age men in the wasteland too, planted there for the sake of separating the civilized cities from the rest of the planet. But also we’ve had no contact with the people of die Dark Country for twenty thousand years, isn’t that so? Couldn’t some development occur—”

  Davaryush, Davaryush. Do you think 1 don9t see into the very heart of the Dark Country? That the Inquest did not provide me with eyes and ears even over the winds of Keian zenzAtheren?

  “I suppose so,” Davaryush said.

  And besides—the voice of the thinkhive continued— there are other built-in safety measures. For example: in the caverns where the dark people dispose of their dead, set into the cavern roofs, are robot drones. Their function is mainly to clean and vaporize the bodies and dispose of the organic slush, which sluices into the Sound and becomes part of the amino-acid soup which the delphinoids eat. . . . These drones have another function also, one that has not been exercised in twenty thousand years.

  “And that is—?”

  If someone should escape from the Dark Country, the drones will follow, hunt down, kill.

  “The Inquest is very thorough,” said Davaryush, admiration tempering his distaste.

  I am very thorough, the thinkhive corrected. Although the instructions of the Inquest left little room for error.

  For instance … 1 was entrusted with the creation of the dark people’s sign language. I was very clever with it. Do you know what word I gave for the drones who come and dispose of the dead, the drones who would chase and terminate any escapers?

  “I couldn’t guess,” Davaryush said. He started to leave.

  The thinkhive said: The drones are called … it translates as “angels,” I suppose. Isn’t that funny? In a sardonic sort of way, I mean. Oh yes, the Inquest gave me quite an appreciation for semantic niceties.

  SIX

  TO TOUCH THE LONELY WIND

  Still fog. Hot damp gusts of aloneness. And darkness, except for the patch of floor that Girl-before-Naming sat on.

  After a time she could not estimate, Stonewise touched her lightly, waking her from the light trance. He held her hand as she rose, giddy with the intoxicating scent of steam laced with Windbringer’s gall. Quick, quick, he signed.

  What is it? Should I go over to the bluff now? she signed feebly.

  No. Come with me. They are sending Windbringer home.

  Girl-before-Naming crept after the old one, her hand resting lightly on his back. Her eyes had crusted with the chemicals in the steam; they could not touch through the darkness. And her ears were clogged.

  After a while she felt the fog disperse. Now they were in a narrow corridor; her fingertips brushed against slickwet walls, grainy basalt. It was a passageway not often trod; even after all the years the tribe had lived in. this section of the caverns, the floor was rough and rubbed against the calluses of her feet.

  Please wait for me, she signed on the old man’s back. The skin felt like old leather from a Windbringer’s hide … they said the old man slept on hide ten Windbringers thick, he was so wise and so old.

  They took many turns. The corridor twisted like the tail of a Windbringer when it is first struck by the stunspears.

  And then she smelled wide space, and she knew by the gentle touch of a wind that she was in a vast chamber. And her ears, with the liquid drying from them, began to touch brittle windshapes that echoed around and around, as though rocks were falling far away. Her eyes were still crusted though; so she could not touch with them the gathering of people whose many odors she could smell on the soft wind. Many strangers. Young people, by the scent: other children-before-Naming, soon to be initiated and to learn their identities and the paths of their future.

  Suddenly a hand behind her crotch-shield, stroking her in a profane place. A throb shook her—

  Touch-brother’s fingers laughed against her skin. Dry fingers slipping on her steam-slicked back. She reached behind and smiled on his chest with the palm of her hand. KBs scent touched her nostrils, sweet and familiar.

  Glove-amps were being handed out.

  Then, the tickling touch of Stonewise as he addressed them all through the glove-amp’s circuitry….

  —Before Windbringer returns to the fragrant places above the darkness and reaches the home whence he sprang, we will touch him—

  Through her filmed eyes, Girl-before-Naming touched a shadowvast touchshape. Stretching on either side further than eye could feel. And when she raised her head she could feel no end to it.

  It quivered slowly as her eyes touched it, although the wind was subdued and could not have caused the quivering. It was alive. It was the brain of the Windbringer, half a klomet long, shorn from its sailsacs, plunged into the hunters’ forcenets, returning to its high home beyond the darkness—

  We will touch him, all together. You will all gain strength from this, for your respective trials, for the seekings after true dreams…

  (So the chamber must indeed be huge,) she thought (To contain Windbringer himself, to be a way-station on its journey to the land of angels.) Awe crept over her like a child’s fear of the dark, of not-feeling.

  —Now I activate all the glove-amps, not fust in the direction of teaching, but in the direction of communion. And you must know that when you are people-with-Names, and have truly become part of the living, you will return here often., and draw spiritual strength from the Wind-bringer who is at the root of our being—

  She felt Touch-brother’s hand tighten on hers. (Yes,) she thought (it’s clear that Vm going to be the hunter of us two. He’s more afraid than I am, more fit to wait and gather the food that appears out of the empty air than to swoop through darkness in a little airboat • • .) She clutched him. (I must be strong.)

  —Now reach out—

  Hesitantly she released Touch-brother’s hand and stretched out to touch the flesh of Windbringer… .

  And flinched at the unexpected heat. Then reached out again—

  Explored a furrow in the softness—warm, warm—a homewarmth almost, a—love—

  Then the touchings of the others invaded the feeling in her hands.

  A hundred crevasses of warmth. A hundred touching hands, linked together, together, caressing the soft warm, and there was no darkness here at all but touching everyone everywhere, the surface of Windbringer a warmth dispelling darkness—

  And with her ears she felt ecstatic windshapes that flew from the lips of the others-before-Naming—