Изменить стиль страницы

“Fortunately for Zenei.” Oelita was not hiding her skepticism.

“We learned how to duplicate the function of this machine.”

“No you didn’t. Your machine is no more than a genetically modified woman.”

“The end result is the same,” replied Noe stiffly.

“Then you follow the Arant? You don’t believe in the God of the Sky?”

The needling was successful. “The Arant were wrong!” Noe blazed. “They denied Original Conception. Even with such a machine, conception is necessary. We know God exists because this machine was part of Him.”

“Is She dead and Her parts scattered — a Finger here, a Womb there?” Oelita asked wryly.

Noe sighed. Was there no quick way to deal with ignorance?

They returned to the central hustle of Kaiel-hontokae, their conversation reduced to talk of men and sex. As the red twilight faded, dim alcohol torches were lit and Noe and friends decided it was time to wander toward the Chanting. They led Oelita past stalls where anything might be had. There were artists who showed their work and willingly carved into your flesh the design of your choice. A cabinet worker planed and polished while selling, potter joked with rugmaker, and og’Sieth waited to make you ornament or instrument out of metal. Oelita broke away to watch a craftsman building electron jars by ghoulish yellow electric light. Noe and her laughing male friend had to pull her away.

They arrived at the amphitheater before the Chanting began and seated themselves beneath the stars on benches carved from bedrock. The crowd joked. Men flirted with women they had never met before, and women teased men. Children were hushed. Newcomers arrived to display their finery.

“Look. See where Saeb enters! He’s here tonight!” Saeb doffed his helmet and smiled for those who had noticed him.

A party entered from below, taking honored seats. Instruments piped a welcome. “Aesoe’s group,” whispered Noe, pointing him out to Oelita. “Your patron. You could have no stronger ally! I have been commanded to introduce you to him tonight.”

Oelita craned her neck. He did not seem imposing at this distance. “Who are those women he is with?”

“Which ones?”

“They wear veils.”

“Those are only his Liethe whores. One of them has her teeth into our Hoemei.”

The music began like a faint whistling storm, building on piping reed instruments. The crowd hushed. Slowly eight male and eight female Kaiel, carrying torches and humming as does the wind blowing over the plains, ascended from two narrow underground tunnels. The procession moved by step and pause, step and pause. They were dressed only in cape and headplumes but the body designs that crawled in the flickering fire fully clothed them. All threw their torches simultaneously into the central pit, causing an explosion of igniting flames. As if by signal, eighty children flowed onto the stage, their bodies covered to hide their undecorated nakedness. Each wore a mask-piece which contained resonant chambers and flaring beaks to distort and amplify the voice.

Inexorably the Commandment Chant began its recitation of the laws of genetics — but in an astonishingly different form than anything Oelita had ever heard in theater. Throats swooped and boomed and danced in alien harmony, sometimes to soft effect, sometimes building on a rising timbre that shook the amphitheater with inhuman tone.

“What in the Sky?” asked Oelita so dumbfounded she willingly exposed her ignorance.

“Saeb has put God’s Voice into the children.”

“But how does he do that!”

“Don’t ask about it! Just listen!”

The celebrating went on all through the brief night. Noe moved her party to a temple that was nothing compared to the Temple of Human Destiny and only a third as large as the Stgal Temple at Sorrow. But it was intimate and quiet in its glory. Noe told Oelita that this was where Aesoe had commanded them to meet him.

He was already there. He waved his people away to allow Oelita access to his table and immediately set her up for a game of chess. Being senior to her he took God’s side, white, and opened with a classic Farmer to Child’s four. He smiled and waited. She moved. He followed her move instantly.

Noe settled down on cushions beside Oelita. Their male courtesan had been joined by a woman of the temples with shaved stripes along both sides of her head and platinum rings in the flesh of her right arm. Her eyes never left Aesoe. One of the Liethe appeared silently with juice for Oelita and disappeared. Aesoe’s party watched. Of them all, Oelita knew only Kathein.

Every move was received with attention. There were horrified comments when Oelita let her Child run free without protection of Black Queen or Horse. She ate both of Aesoe’s Priests and blocked him with a reach of her Smith. He counterplayed deftly. She had to hide her Child. It was the White God against the Black Queen. She was expecting to lose. Was this not the Prime Predictor who had the reputation for being able to see a hundred moves into the future? But she trapped him.

“Check,” she said, speaking her first word to Aesoe.

Aesoe laughed. It was checkmate. He waited for her to eat the White Child as was the custom — but she would not. That was her custom.

“Come,” he said. “I would speak to you.”

It was near dawn, and he insisted on taking her up to the Room of Ritual Suicide to watch the vast red circle of rising Getasun transform the ovoids of the Kaiel Palace into molten iron. Oelita waited. It was not right for her to speak first, but she was content to observe.

“You will be dealing with Hoemei. That is my wish. Drive a hard bargain with him. Drive a ruthless bargain and I will back you.”

“I want Scowlmoon, polished to a bronze sheen, for my morning mirror.”

Aesoe laughed. “You will not get it.”

“You only have a city with marvels of architecture, wealth, and land to give?”

“And very little of that is mine. I can’t change the religion of my people, for instance.”

“What if your wealth is not great enough to buy me?”

“Then you must ask the Mnankrei for their wealth.”

So much for that. She changed the subject. “It seems to me that you sent for me.”

“No. You came.”

“But you’ve been interested before I came.”

“And chose the wrong vessel to contact you! May Joesai die with no one to honor his flesh!”

“The first thing I will ask of you is that Joesai not be harmed.”

“So it is true what they say about you, that you collect the wretches of the world!” He laughed. “I give you Joesai, in pieces or whole. That I can do. Joesai is not the moon. What next?”

“You could start by telling me what it is that I am to negotiate with Hoemei?”

“Why, the terms of the surrender of Sorrow to the rule of the Kaiel.”

“That is not mine to give.” This man was mad!

“Tell me then, to whom should I speak?”

The Stgal are the priests of Sorrow.”

“Ah, the Stgal. I have made a study of whom they represent. They represent themselves. And who represents the people of Sorrow? There is only you, and while it is true that you are not a priest, little details like that have never bothered me overmuch. I’ll make an honorary priest of you. Marry into one of my families and I’ll make a genuine priest of you! You are Kaiel in your soul and don’t know it.” He smiled gently.

“What makes me Kaiel?”

“You doubt my word?”

“Yes!”

“Ho! So it is true that I can see some of what you fail to see? After our chess game I was despairing for my vision!”

“You taunt me! Which of my ways are Kaiel-like?”

“Perhaps your need for flattery?” he teased.

“I would know how I am Kaiel-like so that I might cleanse my soul,” she retorted instantly.

“Then you must abandon the self-aspect that makes you a political force,” he chuckled. “The very first thing about a Kaiel is that he is not a hereditary ruler, he is a hereditary representative. Who knows how this came about? It did. Tae ran-Kaiel understood it and formalized our custom so that now we all understand why the Kaiel have had victory where all others have failed. Tell me, if one of your people had a problem, would you know?”