The leaders snarled, and Enheduanna heard a clack as both posts spread their chrshnar in unison. “Hold!” barked Enheduanna, and strode forward between them, white fur glowing in the backlight as the beacon winked out again.

They opened their eyes for clearer vision, fully prepared to lunge, but a bizarre sight greeted them. They had expected—something. Stunners. Piercers. Shock-bolts. Poisons. Gas. Something from the centuries of recorded armed resistance. But these vermin merely—faced them. Some standing, some on their knees, but facing them, arms wide, palms forward, reaching overhead, bodies swaying side to side—some even swooning in their tracks, without a hand laid on them. Then one separated from the group, stepping forward slowly.

“Hold” snarled Enheduanna again, as the figure sank to its knees, clasping its hands in some incomprehensible gesture.

It Spoke; its voice reverberating for all to hear. “Behold! The Revelation of His Angels! It is the Prophesy! They are here!”

Enheduanna looked down at the jabbering thing. It had the strangest eyes. They were brilliant aquamarine, like manna in the early morning sun. How odd, thought Enheduanna, that this—thing—should bear the color of ar. Enheduanna gestured to the Warriors. “Take this one.”

The vermin parted, making no move, as the remaining Warriors guarded their retreat. All save one. It made no threat, but it dogged their steps. Its face was white as a Master’s in the opal glare; odd folds of skin draped and furled around it. One Warrior made to cut it down, but Enheduanna waved it off. “It’s only the vermin’s cattle. Let it come.”

They trudged down the slope, finding the path in time to shield their eyes as the beacon flared again. They listened to the vermin on the rim screech and wail their animal gibberish.

“It is the prophesy! It is the Revelation! Seer Laurel is born away by Angels!”

Oh crap, thought Asach, hood pulled down against the blinding green, so that only the faintest view of the treacherous way was visible, here we go.

11

Communications Update

What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence….Everyday language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it….Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Somewhere East of The Barrens, New Utah

They approached a city, and Asach paused in awe. It was not large. Perhaps two hundred hectares in all. It shimmered above the fields of reed, glowing green and gold in the morning sun. It appeared to be one enormous, integral structure, pockmarked with entryways: a sponge of ochre brick and glass, carpeted with green fuzz. No roads appeared to lead into it, save the one they were on: a narrow pavement of laterite, barely two hands wide, disappearing fore and aft into a tunnel of arching reeds. Asach realized that there could well be dozens of such tracks; hundreds even, hidden within the surrounding marsh and invisible to the ground-level eye. The others did not stop. Asach hurried to catch up.

But a city, indeed, it was, and had Asach’s sixth sense of that needed confirmation, it was soon to come. As they drew near, the paved track widened, and became lined with—industrial stalls, as best Asach could tell. The construction was the same: a low rise in ground, covered with young crop; one or more entryways; the doorways and, so far as Asach could see inside, the domed interior walls fashioned of what looked like glass; the floors and surrounds of laterite paving. Some forecourts included knee-high laterite benches with green-stained tops. Others had large, smooth, slightly concave, bluish-white circular surfaces, a double-arm span wide and a hand’s-breadth deep. Still others had stacks and stacks of pottery bowls, the size of two cupped hands, inverted beside laterite stair steps leading nowhere.

As they walked, some of these stalls were empty; others alive with activity, and Asach became aware of an industrial process. Enormous, silent versions of the white-haired creature that seemed to be in charge of Laurel’s progress delivered stacks and stacks of the fresh-cut reed to the work-bench stalls. There, wielding stone cudgels, others like them shoved and pounded the stalks until limp. The workbenches actually included narrow gutters at the top and base, which drained into larger versions of the bowls, that had one edge pinched into a pouring spout. Next, the now-limp reed was passed to the stone circles, where it passed under what looked like corrugated rolling pins that circled the dish, reducing the reed to pulp. Again, narrow channels drained juices into large spouted bowls. Then, bearers brought racks of bowls. Each bowl was filled, the pulp pressed flat to the rim. The racks of full bowls were then taken to the stair steps, where they were set out to dry in the dazzling sun. When partially dry, the reed-patties were turned out onto drying mats until they were hard. Lastly, the collected juices were poured into enormous ewers.

Reed-like, thought Asach, trudging along. Not reed, exactly. More like Spartina—salt grass. Or something else entirely. That intense aquamarine color—like blue-green algae. A giant algae? A fruiting algae? Like seaweed, perhaps, only on land? Absent-mindedly, lost in thought, Asach reached out and broke off a stalk with an audible snap. The hindmost Warrior swiveled at the waist in a shocking one-eighty-degree turn like an owl’s head, then leapt. Within three bounds its clawed fist dug into the small of Asach’s back while—something—scratched a thin line of blood at Asach’s throat. In sheer desperation, arched so far backward that the only thing visible was the vault of the sky, Asach shouted, as loud as possible with a hyper-extended neck, a bad imitation of the hairball-hacking sound the white one had used twice before to order restraint.

Unfortunately, what Asach actually shouted was an obscenity, but it so startled the Warrior that he took a half step back, even as Enheduanna called back “Hold!” This time, Asach caught the variation in inflection, repeated it perfectly—and then repeated it again with the error. The Warrior froze a moment. Then, suddenly, it leaned forward, eyes locked on Asach, and began hissing like a steam kettle. The other Warriors turned as one in that back-wrenching pose.

Now Asach froze. Slowly, palms forward Asach knelt, placed the broken stalk on the ground, then just as slowly stood. At this, all the Warriors began hissing. The white one was watching Asach intently. Asach was watching Laurel. The girl’s upper arm was bruised to pulp by the gripping hands of her rotating guard. She looked pale and terrified.

Asach decided to gamble all or nothing. It needed only one move to bend down, snatch up the broken stalk, and take the first two steps forward. Looking squarely at the first Warrior, Asach shouted again, in its own tongue, “Hold!” and started walking. The Warrior made to grab, but the white one waved it off. Asach kept walking, looking directly at the white one, then directly at Laurel, then directly at the white one again, the green stalk thrust forward.

“Hey Top,” called the one closest to Asach, “D’ya think it knows what it’s saying?”

“Nah,” answered the hand leader, “it’s just copyin’ the sounds. Like A Meat.”