“Would they do us harm?” she murmured between sips.
“Darkness is inimical to light by its very nature,” I whispered. “All the beings of darkness, also. Living man may dream or hope as he will, but he must walk in the light. The wise man chooses his way and does not thereafter put himself outside his own pattern.” This is the kind of thing the songfathers say, words to make one think one has been told something when, in fact, one has been told nothing at all. These are words to comfort children and strangers.
She barely nodded, the last effects of the drink draining away into exhaustion. “What you’re saying is … ”
She would not accept mere allusion. I bowed my head and spoke sense. “In the dark hours, a man should be at home beside the fire, speaking softly. See how all the animals and birds of day go to rest and to quiet; see how they lie hidden, how they whisper in their lairs. Are we less wise than they? Have we no hive, no hole, no cavern to hold us? And why would we choose to be elsewhere than in our homes?”
“We might choose for curiosity’s sake, perhaps,” said Trompe, in my language, though awkwardly. “A desire to know.”
“We become what we know,” I said bitterly. “If a woman wishes to stay alive, she must be careful what she knows.”
“Enough,” breathed Lutha in her weary voice. “I’m afraid we’re all too tired to appreciate the finer points of Dinadhi philosophy. What’s your name, by the way?”
I bowed. “Saluez,” I said. “Saluez of the Shadow. Your servant, madam.”
“Assigned to me? Us?”
“To clean the Famber leasehold. To fetch what you may need, any of you.”
She dismissed me with a gesture, as though I had not even been there. I did not know then that there were shadows on her world, too, that because I had used the word, her reaction was to treat me as one of them. One took no notice of them. Both my words and my veil confused her, mostly because she was so tired. She dismissed me and turned to the others, and for a time thereafter it was as though I did not exist.
Leelson existed, however. Leelson Famber had been with us on Dinadh for some time. She had things to say to him!
“As for you, Leelson Famber, I think you owe us an explanation! Me, particularly!” She spoke our language as though, once started on it, she lacked energy to change.
“My presence is more explicable than yours,” he said in his own tongue. “I came as legitimate lineage son of Bernesohn Famber—”
“You came without bothering to tell anyone at Alliance Prime!” Trompe exploded.
“Or your mother!” snarled Lutha. “Who is very busy just now advancing your Firster cause by despairing of your posterity and blaming it all on me.”
He looked at them, astonished, his expression gradually changing from irritation to understanding.
He sat down, drawing Lutha beside him onto one of the cushioned mud benches along the walls. “On my way from Kamir back toward Central, I overheard some crewmen talking of the vanishment of a homo-norm team in Hermes Sector. It reminded me of the last time that had happened, the Ularian thing a century ago. I knew great-great-grandpop had been looking into it; and I knew he’d disappeared here on Dinadh. It was, in a sense, on the way, so I decided to make a brief stopover on the chance he might have left some information here. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I thought I’d be back before anyone got in an uproar … ”
He made a gesture of annoyance. “And it certainly never occurred to me the Dinadhi would accept Leely as … as lineage son.”
Across the valley the forms swarmed, swirling outward from the cliff face. They would not be content with the far side of the canyon for long. I moved to the shutters and closed them, returning to my former place. The people in the room did not notice me.
Lutha made an impatient gesture to Trompe, as though saying, “There! See!”