diamond clear. Yet behind him purred the gravity motors which helped his
weighted troopers along. He reminded himself that they hugged the ground
to present a minimal target, that the space they crossed was
terrifyingly open, that ultimate purity lies in death. The minutes grew
while he covered the pair of kilometers. Half of him stayed cat-alert,
half wished Kossara could somehow, safely, have witnessed this wonder.
The foundations took more and more of the sky, until at last he stood
beneath their sheer cliff. Azure, the material resisted a kick and an
experimental energy bolt with a hardness which had defied epochs. He
whirred upward, over an edge, and stood in the city.
A broad street of the same blue stretched before him, flanked by dancing
rows of pillars and arabesque friezes on buildings which might have been
temples. The farther he scanned, the higher fountained walls, columns,
tiers, cupolas, spires; and each step he took gave him a different
perspective, so that the whole came alive, intricate, simple, powerful,
tranquil, transcendental. But footfalls echoed hollow.
They had gone a kilometer inward when nerves twanged and weapons snapped
to aim. “Hold,” Flandry said. The man-sized ovoid that floated from a
side lane sprouted tentacles which ended in tools and sensors. The lines
and curves of it were beautiful. It passed from sight again on its
unnamed errand. “A robot,” Flandry guessed. “Fully automated, a city
could last, could function, for–millions of years?” His prosiness felt
to him as if he had spat on consecrated earth.
No, damn it! I’m hunting my woman’s murderers.
He trod into a mosaic plaza and saw their forms.
Through an arcade on the far side the tall grave shapes walked,
white-robed, heads bare to let crests shine over luminous eyes and
lordly brows. They numbered perhaps a score. Some carried what appeared
to be books, scrolls, delicate enigmatic objects; some appeared to be in
discourse, mind to mind; some went alone in their meditations. When the
humans arrived, most heads turned observingly. Then, as if having
exhausted what newness was there, the thoughtfulness returned to them
and they went on about their business of–wisdom?
“What’ll we do, sir?” Vymezal rasped at Flandry’s ear.
“Talk to them, if they’ll answer,” the Terran said. “Even take them
prisoner, if circumstances warrant.”
“Can we? Should we? I came here for revenge, but–God help us, what
filthy monkeys we are.”
A premonition trembled in Flandry. “Don’t you mean,” he muttered, “what
animals we’re intended to feel like … we and whoever they guide this
far?”
He strode quickly across the lovely pattern before him. Under an ogive
arch, one stopped, turned, beckoned, and waited. The sight of gun loose
in holster and brutal forms at his back did not stir the calm upon that
golden face. “Greeting,” lulled in Eriau.
Flandry reached forth a hand. The other slipped easily aside from the
uncouth gesture. “I want somebody who can speak for your world,” the man
said.
“Any of us can that,” sang the reply. “Call me, if you wish, Liannathan.
Have you a name for use?”
“Yes. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Navy of Terra. Your
Aycharaych knows me. Is he around?”
Liannathan ignored the question. “Why do you trouble our peace?”
The chills walked faster along Flandry’s spine. “Can’t you read that in
my mind?” he asked.
“Sta pakao,” said amazement behind him.
“Hush,” Vymezal warned the man, his own tone stiff with intensity; and
there was no mention of screens against telepathy.
“We give you the charity of refraining,” Liannathan smiled.
To and fro went the philosophers behind him.
“I … assume you’re aware … a punitive expedition is on its way,”
Flandry said. “My group came to … parley.”
Calm was unshaken. “Think why you are hostile.”
“Aren’t you our enemies?”
“We are enemies to none. We seek, we shape.”
“Let me talk to Aycharaych. I’m certain he’s somewhere on Chereion. He’d
have left the Zorian System after word got beamed to him, or he learned
from broadcasts, his scheme had failed. Where else would he go?”
Liannathan curved feathery brows upward. “Best you explain yourself,
Captain, to yourself if not us.”
Abruptly Flandry snapped off the switch of his mind-screen. “Read the