Two groups had already left the Lap of Silong, slipping away in the dawn light, a few people, a couple of minule, heavy-laden. No bannered caravans.
Life in the caves was managed almost wholly by custom and consensus. Sutty had noted the conscious avoidance of hierarchy. People scrupulously did not pull rank. She mentioned this to Unroy, who said, "That was what went wrong in the century before the Ekumen came."
"Boss maz," Sutty said tentatively.
"Boss maz," Unroy confirmed, grinning. She was always tickled by Sutty’s slang and her Rangma archaisms. "The Dovzan Reformation. Power hierarchies. Power struggles. Huge, rich umyazu taxing the villages. Fiscal and spiritual usury! Your people came at a bad time, yoz."
"The ships always come to the new world at a bad time," Sutty said. Unroy glanced at her with a little wonder.
In so far as any person or couple was in charge of things at the Lap of Silong, it was the maz Igneba and Ikak. After general consensus was established, specific decisions and responsibilities were made by them. The order and times at which people were to depart was one such decision. Ikak came to Sutty at dinnertime one night. "Yoz Sutty, if you have no objection, your group will leave four days from now."
"All of us from Okzat-Ozkat?"
"No. You, Maz Odiedin Manma, Long, and Ieyu, we thought. A small group, with one minule. You should be able to travel fast and get down into the hills before the autumn weather."
"Very well, maz," Sutty said. "I hate to leave the books unread."
"Maybe you can come back. Maybe you can save them for our children."
That burning, yearning hope they all shared, that hope in her and in the Ekumen: it frightened Sutty every time she saw its intensity.
"I will try to do that, maz," she said. Then — "But what about Yara?"
"He’ll have to be carried. The healers say he won’t be able to walk any long distance before the weather changes. Your two young ones will be in the group with him, and Tobadan Siez, and two of our guides, and three minule with a handler. A large party, but it has to be so. They’ll go tomorrow morning, while this good weather holds. I wish we’d known the man would be unable to walk. We’d have sent them earlier. But they’ll take the Reban Path, the easiest."
"What becomes of him when you reach Amareza?"
Ikak spread out her hands. "What can we do with him? Keep him prisoner! We have to! He could tell the police exactly where the caves are. They’d send people as soon as they could, plant explosives, destroy it. The way they destroyed the Great Library of Marang, and all the others. The Corporation hasn’t changed their policy. Unless you can persuade them to change it, yoz Sutty. To let the books be, to let the Ekumen come and study them and save them. If that happened, we’d let him go, of course. But if we do, his own people will arrest and imprison him for unauthorised actions. Poor man, he hasn’t a very bright future."
"It’s possible that he won’t tell the police."
Ikak, surprised, looked her question.
"I know he’d made it a personal mission to find the Library and destroy it. An obsession, in fact. But he … He was brought up by maz. And …"
She hesitated. She could not tell Ikak his grave-secret any more than she could tell her own.
"He had to become what he was," she said finally. "But I think all that really makes sense to him is the Telling. I think he’s come back to that. I know he feels no enmity toward Odiedin or anybody here. Maybe he could stay with people in Amareza without being kept prisoner. Just keep out of sight."
"Maybe," Ikak said, not unsympathetic but unconvinced. "Except it’s very hard to hide somebody like that, yoz Sutty. He has an implanted ZIL. And he was a fairly high official, assigned to watch an Observer of the Ekumen. They’ll be looking for him. Once they get him, I’m afraid, whatever he feels, they can make him tell them anything he knows."
"He could stay hidden in a village through the winter, maybe. Not go down into Amareza at all. I will need time, Maz Ikak Igneba — the Envoy will need time — to talk to people in Dovza. And if a ship comes next year, as it’s due to, then we can talk on the ansible with the Stabiles of the Ekumen about these matters. But it will take time."
Ikak nodded. "I’ll speak with the others about it We’ll do what we can."
Sutty went immediately after dinner to Yara’s tent.
Both Akidan and Odiedin were already there, Akidan with the warm clothing Yara would need for the journey, Odiedin to reas-sure him about making it. Akidan was excited about leaving. Sutty was touched to see how kindly he spoke to Yara, his handsome young face alight. "Don’t worry, yoz," he said earnestly, "it’s an easy path and we’ve got a very strong group. We’ll be down in the hills in a week."
"Thank you," Yara said, expressionless. His face had closed.
"Tobadan Siez will be with you," Odiedin said.
Yara nodded. "Thank you," he said again.
Kieri arrived with a thermal poncho Akidan had forgotten, and came crowding in with it, talking away. The tent was too full. Sutty knelt in the entrance and put her hand on Yara’s hand. She had never touched him before.
"Thank you for telling me what you told me, Yara," she said, feeling hurried and self-conscious. "And for letting me tell you. I hope you — I hope things work out. Goodbye."
Looking up at her, he gave his brief nod, and turned his head away.
She went back to her tent, anxious yet also relieved.
The tent was a mess: Kieri had thrown around everything she owned in preparation for packing it. Sutty looked forward to sharing a tent with Odiedin again, to order, silence, celibacy.
She had spent a long day working on the catalogue, tiring, tricky work with the balky and laborious Akan programs. She went to bed, intending to get up very early and see her friends off. She slept at once. Kieri’s return and the fuss of her packing scarcely disturbed her. It seemed about five minutes before the lamp was on again and Kieri was up, dressed, leaving. Sutty struggled out of her sleeping bag and said, "I’ll be at breakfast with you."
But when she got to the kitchen, the people of the departing group weren’t there having the hot meal that would start them on their way. Nobody was there but Long, who was on cooking duty.
"Where is everybody, Long?" she asked, alarmed. "They haven’t left already, have they?"
"No," Long said.
"Is something wrong?"
"I think so, yoz Sutty." His face was distressed. He nodded toward the outer caves. She went to the entrance that led to them. She met Odiedin coming in.
"What’s wrong?"
"Oh Sutty," Odiedin said. He made an incomplete, hopeless gesture.
"What is it?"
"Yara."
"What?"
"Come with me."
She followed him into the Tree Cave. He walked past Yara’s tent. There were a lot of people around it, but she did not see Yara. Odiedin strode on through the small cave with a rough floor, and from that to the short passage that led to the outside by the doorway arch they could get through only on hands and knees.
Odiedin stood up just outside it. Sutty emerged beside him. It was far from sunrise still, but the high pallor of the sky seemed wonderfully radiant and vast after the spaceless darkness of the caves.
"See where he went," Odiedin said.
She looked down from the light to where he pointed. Snow lay ankle deep on the floor of the cirque. From the arch where they stood, boot tracks led straight out to the edge and back, tracks of three or four people, she thought.