There was long silence, while Old One rocked to and fro. Finally he ceased, and held up a bony hand. “Sky-sees-her, the things you seek are here. We visit there. The images stand in the place where human Old Ones meet, and we have seen them. Sun watches over this place, yes, that is true. Your Bennett-man did not deceive you. But there are things here that will make your bones cold, storyteller. We do not speak these secret things. How will hisa Downbelow understand them? How will they bear them? Their eyes do not see. But this Bennett-man made warm your eyes and called you. Ah! long we wait, long, long, and you make warm our hearts to welcome you.
“Ssst! Upabove is not what it seems. The images of the plain we remember. I have seen them. I have slept by them and dreamed dreams. But the images of Upabove… they are not for our dreaming. You tell us of Bennett Jacint, and we tell you, storyteller, of one of us you do not see: Lily, humans call her. Her name is Sun-smiles-on-her, and she is the Great Old One, many more than my seasons. The images we gave humans have become human images, and near them a human dreams in the secret places of the Upabove, in a place all bright. Great Sun comes to visit her… never moves she, no, for the dream is good. She lies all in bright, her eyes are warm with Sun; the stars dance for her; she watches all the Upabove on her walls, perhaps watches us in this moment. She is the image which watches us. The Great Old One cares for her, loves her, this holy one. Good, good is her love, and she dreams us all, all the Upabove, and her face smiles forever upon great Sun. She is ours. We call her Sun-her-friend.”
“Ah,” the gathering murmured, stunned at such a thing, one mated to great Sun himself. “Ah,” Satin murmured with the others, hugged herself and shivering, leaned forward. “Shall we see this good human?”
“No,” said Old One shortly. “Only Lily goes there. And myself. Once. Once I saw.”
Satin sank back, profoundly disappointed.
“Perhaps there is no such human,” Bluetooth said.
Now Old One’s ears lay back, and there was an intake of breath all about them.
“It is a Time,” said Satin, “and my journey. We come very far, Old One, and we cannot see the images and we cannot see the dreamer; we have not yet found the face of Sun.”
Old One’s lips pursed and relaxed several times. “You come. We show you. This night you come; next night others… if you are not afraid. We show you a place. It has no humans in it for a short time. One hour. Human counting. I know how to reckon. You come?”
From Bluetooth there was not a sound. “Come,” Satin said, and felt his reluctance as she tugged at his arm. Others would not. There were none so daring… or so trusting of the strange Old One.
Old One stood up, and two of his company with him. Satin did, and Bluetooth stood up more slowly.
“I go too,” Bigfellow said, but none of his companions came with him to join them.
Old One surveyed them with a curious mockery, and motioned them to come, down the tunnels, into the further ways, tunnels where hisa could move without masks, dark places where one must climb far on thin metal and where even hisa must bend to walk.
“He is mad,” Bluetooth hissed finally into her ear, panting. “And we are mad to follow this deranged Old One. They are all strange who have been here long.”
Satin said nothing, not knowing any argument but her desire. She feared, but she followed, and Bluetooth followed her. Bigfellow trailed along after all of them. They panted when they must go a long way bent or climb far. It was a mad strength that the Old One and his two fellows had, as if they were used to such things and knew where they were going.
Or perhaps — the thought chilled her bones — it was some bizarre humor of the Old One to strand them deep in the dark ways, where they might wander and die lost, to teach the others a lesson.
And just as she was becoming convinced of that fear, the Old One and his companions reached a stopping place and drew up their masks, indicating that they were at a place which would break into human air. Satin swept hers up to her face and Bluetooth and Bigfellow did so only just in time, for the door behind them closed and the door before them opened on a bright hall, white floors and the green of growing things, and here and there scattered humans coming and going in the lonely large space… nothing like the docks. Here was cleanliness and light, and vast dark beyond them, where Old One wished to lead them.
Satin felt Bluetooth slip his hand into hers, and Bigfellow hovered close to both of them as they followed, into a darkness even vaster than the bright place they had left, where there were no walls, only sky.
Stars shifted about them, dazzling them with the motion, magical stars which changed from place to place, burning clear and more steadily than ever Downbelow saw them. Satin let go the hand which held hers and walked forward in awe, gazing about her.
And suddenly light blazed forth, a great burning disc spotted with dark, flaring with fires.
“Sun,” Old One intoned.
There was no brightness, no blue, only dark and stars and the terrible close fire. Satin trembled.
“There is dark,” Bluetooth objected. “How can there be night where Sun is?”
“All stars are kindred of great Sun,” said Old One. “This is a truth. The brightness is illusion. This is a truth. Great Sun shines in darkness and he is large, so large we are dust. He is terrible, and his fires frighten the dark. This is truth. Sky-sees-her, this is the true sky: this is your name. The stars are like great Sun, but far, far from us. This we have learned. See! The walls show us the Upabove itself, and the great ships, the outside of the docks. And there is Downbelow. We are looking on it now.”
“Where is the human camp?” Bigfellow asked. “Where is old river?”
“The world is round like an egg, and some of it faces away from Sun; this makes night on that side. Perhaps if you looked closely you might see old river; I have thought so. But never the human camp. It is too small on the face of Down-below.”
Bigfellow hugged himself and shivered.
But Satin walked among the tables, walked into the clear place, where great Sun shone in his truth, overcoming the dark… terrible he was, orange like fire, and filling all with his terror.
She thought of the dreaming human called Sun-her-friend, whose eyes were forever warmed with that sight, and the hair lifted on her nape.
And she stretched wide her arms and turned, embracing all the Sun, and his far kindred, lost in them, for she had come to the Place which she had journeyed to find. She filled her eyes with the sight, as Sun looked at her, and she could never be the same again, forever.
Chapter Four
Norway was not the first to come flashing into the vicinity of that dark, planet-sized piece of rock and ice, visible only as it occluded stars. Others had preceded her to this sunless rendezvous. Omicron was a wanderer, a bit of debris between stars, but its location was predictable and it provided mass enough to home in on out of jump… a place as nowhere as it was possible to be, a chance finding by Sung of Pacific long ago, used by the Fleet since then. It was one of those bits that the sublight freighters had dreaded, which jumpships with private business to conduct… cherished and kept secret
Sensors were picking up activity, multiple ship presence, transmissions out of this forever-night. Computer talked to computer as they came in; and Signy Mallory kept her eyes flickering from one to the other bit of telemetry, fighting the hypnotism that so easily set in from jump and the necessary drugs. She hurled Norway into realspace max, heading for those signals and out of the jump range with the sense of something on her tail, trusted her crew’s accuracy and aimed with the ship underway, the flickering few minutes of heart-in-throat transit near C, where all they had was approximation.