Shonjir By C.J. Cherryh

Yet there were the lights, the cold, clean light; their steps echoed on immaculate tiles, though dust lay thick everywhere outside. The place lived. It drew power from some source. Melein paused at yet another panel, and light came to other hallways… the recess of the sen-tower, and on the right, that which had been the tower of some long-dead she’pan.

And most bitter of all, the access to the kath-tower, that mocked them with its emptiness.

“There could be defenses,” Duncan said.

“That is so,” said Melein.

But she turned then and began to climb the ramp of the sen-tower, where kel’ein might not follow. Niun stood helpless, anxious until she paused and nodded a summons to him, permission to trespass.

Duncan came after him, bearing the pan’en, hard-breathing; and slowly they ascended the curving ramp, past blockish markings that were like the signs of the old edun, but machine-precise and strange.

More lights: the final access of sen-hall gave way before them, and they entered behind Melein into a vast chamber that echoed to their steps. It was naked. There were no carpets, no cushions, nothing save a corroded brass dinner service that sat on a saffron stone shelf. It looked as if a touch would destroy it: corrosion made lacery of it.

But there was no trace of dust, nothing, save on that shelf, where it lay thick as one would expect for such age.

Melein continued on, through farther doorways, into territory that was surely familiar to one six years a sen’e’en; and again she paused to bid them stay with her, to see things that had been eternally forbidden the Kel. Perhaps, Niun thought sadly, it no longer mattered.

Lights flared to her touch. Machinery lay before them, a vast room of machinery bank upon bank: like the shrine at Sil’athen it was, but far larger. Niun delayed, awestruck, then committed himself unbidden to stay at her back. She did not forbid, and Duncan followed. Computers, monitoring boards: some portions of the assemblage he compared to the boards of the ship; and some he could not at all recognize. The walls were stark white, with five symbols blazoned above the center of the panels, tall as a man’s widest reach. In gleaming, incorruptible metal they were shaped, like the metal of the pan’en that they bore.

“An-ehon,” Melein said aloud, and the sound rang like a thunderclap into that long silence.

The machinery blazed to life, activated with a suddenness that made Niun flinch in spite of himself, and he heard the beginnings of an outcry from Duncan, one immediately stifled. The human stood beside him, knelt to set the pan’en down, and rose again, hand on his pistol.

“I am receiving,” said a deep and soulless voice. “Proceed.”

By the name of the city Melein had called it: Niun’s skin prickled, first at the realization that he had seen a symbol and heard it named, a forbidden thing… and then that such a creation had answered them. He saw Melein herself take a step back, her hand at her heart.

“An-ehon,” she addressed the machine, and the very floor seemed to pulse in time with the throb of the lights. It was indeed the city that spoke to them, and it had used the hal’ari, the High Language, that was echoed unchanged throughout all of mri time. “An-ehon, where are your people?”

A brighter flurry of lights ran the boards.

“Unknown,” the machine pronounced at last.

Melein drew a deep breath stood still for several moments in which Niun did not dare to move. “An-ehon,” she said then, “we are your people. We have returned. We are descended from the People of An-ehon and from Zohain and Tho’ei’i-shai and Le’a’haen. Do you know these names?”

There was again a flurry of lights and sounds, extreme agitation in the machine. Niun took a step forward, put a cautioning hand toward Melein, but she stood firmly, disregarding him. Bank after bank in the farthest reaches of the hall flared to life: section after section illumined itself.

“We are present,” said another voice. “I am Zohain.”

“State your name, visitor,” said An-ehon’s deeper voice. “Please state your names. I see one who is not of the People. Please state your authority to invoke us, visitor.”

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