Threes, she thought, a preponderance of triangles. Three castes. The silhouette of the edunei. The three-way intersection of streets. Buildings of slanting walls and ground-plans which made sensible geometry if the wings were divided triangularly. She shivered, recognizing an underlying geometry of alien perceptions, another thing than underlay the dualities that underlay human architecture, human relationships, human sex, either-or, up and down, black and white, duality of alternatives. The minds which built this had thought otherwise, had seen differently. Never the right questions, she thought with a tightness at her stomach.
In any situation were there three alternatives? And the great edunei; always the edunei, where mri had lived in human/regul space never such streets, such buildings, asprawl in triangular multiplications. Mri had used the edunei; huge ones, by report, far greater than Kesrith and those were dimmest echoes of the edun of the saffron city; mud-walled echoes. Residences, presumably here as there.
And what were these outer buildings, this disorderly sprawl centering about the edun?
The triangularity was the same. The flavor was not The logic was not. The life within the self-contained edunei and in this sprawl. . . could not be the same.
"Not mri," she said aloud. "The makers of this were not mri." And when Galey and Kadarin gazed at her as if she had lost her reason; "It's not the ruins we need. Duncan was right all the way in the other city; and in this one ... no dead. Deserted, as he said. I advise we get back to that shuttle. Out in the land. There are the ship's lights ... by night they'd be quite visible.
"Boz," Galey said, "what are you talking about, not mri?
"Didn't Duncan tell us the truth once? And again here; these cities are not where we find the mri. What is mri is in those machines, and we can't get at it; and what's out here in these streets is of no use to us. These buildings are no use. We're already taking one chance, staying out here. Take a further. Go all the way. Find the mri; there may be something here we can't afford to find, whoever made the outer city. A logic we can't deal with. A language we know nothing of.
Galey stared at her, and cast a glance about the buildings, his masked face contracting in a grimace of distress. Perhaps even to his eyes things fell into new order; he had that kind of look, that of a man seeing something he had not
"What are we into?" he asked. "Boz, are you sure?
"I'm sure of nothing. But I suggest we take our chances on the known quantity. That if we go looking long enough ... we might turn up something that doesn't follow the rules we know, even what little we know. And what do we do then?"
"What do we do with the mri?
"We get a contact We try the names we know. We get back into the range of Duncan's mri and we turn on the lights.
Galey's eyes slid aside to Kadarin, back again. "That totally breaks with the orders I have.
"I know that
"We rest here the night; we'll go back tomorrow morning, if that's what we're going to do.
"Now." She shivered with the thought. "My old bones don't like the thought of a night walk; but how much time can we have? If we delay here, then we're giving up time; and if it comes to waiting on the mri then time is the only thing we have to use, isn't it?
Galey sat still a long moment, staring at nothing in particular. Finally he looked at Kadarin. "You have a word in this.
"What works," Kadarin said. "What works and gets us home with it done.
"It's on my head," Galey said. "Say that I ordered you, all the way.
"Kel'anth," Bias whispered. "Watch says they are coming." Niun sprang up from morning meal and excused himself through the Kel which scattered for their weapons. He walked along beside kel Dias, out into the dark before dawn and a stiff wind out of the south; his kel-sword he had with him, and his dus determined to follow, inanimate and living accouterments. He tucked his veil into place and felt somewhere not far from him the other dus, and Duncan, heard running steps this way and that through the camp, messengers dispatched to the other tents, to advise them of outsider approach. Hlil came up beside him, matched his pace. Ahead of him the watch stirred out, from the seeming of a rock on the crest of the eastward dune, a robed kel'en unfolding to stand and point mutely toward the east, to the dim showing of dunes in the starlight.
The Kel spread out along the crest facing that darkness, where the hint of shadow moved far, far off. Niun found himself, as he ought to be, the center of the line, with Hlil at his right hand and the dus at his left Duncan was not far from him ... he and his dus had no right to stand so near center; he turned his head to see, and found him by Has, in second-rank, orderly and with second-rank distributed evenly as they ought, accepting of that presence second-rank's business, he reckoned, disturbed-turned his face again to the dark and waited, the dus which touched him beginning a vibrating song, incongruous here, this over-confidence. It sang against him, such that only those nearest might hear at all, so deeply that it shuddered into bone and flesh, numbing, soothing. For a moment there was awareness of the mate a few paces behind; of Duncan, anxious; and Ras, a bleeding shadow; of Melein awake in another tent and an exultation so fierce it pulsed in the ears; of sen'ein calm, kath'ein love, the sleeping peace of children camps and kel'ein scattered around about them, far across the dunes. Farther still, dus-sense, contact with others
He shuddered suddenly, disrupted the gnosis, pulled out of it from deeper than he had ever fallen within it. Duncan's manner with them ... no restraint. No barriers. The song reached to others, to sweep them in also. "Yai!" he said. It stopped, and the dus threw its head, brushing against him. There were others out there, beyond the dark and the shadow which had taken on distinction on the opposing crest, that flowed down it, weapons and Honors aglitter in the starlight
Hao'nath; that was apparent by the direction of them; and by the way they came, their intent was plain, for warriors walked long-striding, with hands loose, at random intervals and not by order.
"Ai," someone murmured nearby, the whole Kel relaxing; a current of joy ran through the dusei like a strong wind.
Other masses appeared on the horizon, signaled by the first breaking of daylight, the appointed time. One in the east, one southeast, and north. . . perhaps.
The hao'nath were coming upslope now, hasting somewhat in the nearness of the camp. Rhian sTafa led them, center to center, and Niun came out to meet him, unveiled as Rhian unveiled, embraced the older kel'anth gladly. The Kels mingled, kel'ein who had come to know each others' faces, finding each other again with a relief strangely like a homecoming, for veils were down and hands outstretched.
There was for the moment lack of order; and in such chaos Niun turned, looked for Duncan, who had likewise unveiled, conspicuous among the others as the dus by him. He turned and looked back down the slope, and saw others coming as the hao'nath had come, easily and without hostility, the second and the third tribes, with the fourth now a shadow against the coming dawn.
'They are coming too," he said to Hlil, overjoyed, and at a sudden and cold impulse from the dus by him he turned again, toward Duncan, abruptly as if a hand had caught his shoulder.
Rhian had paused there, only looking at Duncan and Duncan at him, and Niun cuffed at the dus to stop that unease from building. but Rhian turned his back to walk away.
"I am not sick," Duncan said, audible to all about them. "Sir.
Rhian turned again, and Niun's heart lurched, for all he approved that answer, for all he had some faith in the hao'nath himself. Rhian tilted his head, looked Duncan up and down, and the beast by him as well.