A Maze of Stars Read online

  Also, she wore a belt with curious designs.

  He was still staring at her when someone else collided with him, shoving him almost into her arms. He had forgotten what it was like to be in the middle of a crowd whose members were dashing in all possible directions. He gulped air, feeling incredibly foolish.

  “Let’s get out of this!” the girl exclaimed. “I should have known better, I suppose, but I did want a closer look at what was going on … You still haven’t realized?”

  She seized his hand and dragged him in her wake in a manner most inappropriate to the ceremonial atmosphere of a Pilgrimage Day. Giddy with excitement, Usko made no objection. Instead he shouted, “You’re a foreigner!”

  “Of course! One of the ‘abominable tourists’!”

  Thinking for a moment he’d misunderstood, he asked for a repeat, but she delayed until they gained the lower slope of the Ml where he had seen the flash. Then, as she hurried him up it, she said again, “Abominable tourists! Apparently that’s what some of your priests think of us. Well, I suppose it’s forgivable. I mean, the state your people have wound up in—”

  “Prara! There you are!” A booming voice rang out ahead of them. Usko had been pulled along at such a pace, he was almost breathless. Halting, he realized that just ahead stood a group of ten or twelve people in garb far more unfamiliar than the girl’s—than Prara’s, for that must be her name. Its alien ring made him shiver anew.

  These strangers, these foreigners, were surrounded by anxious-looking monks and nuns under the supervision of a senior priest who looked both hapless and helpless. And the tallest, most commanding of them, obviously well used to being in charge wherever he found himself, was a thin grizzled man with a full beard such as was never seen on Ekatila, resplendent in deep red with black boots—and wearing a belt like Prara’s.

  A vague hint of the reason teased at Usko’s mind.

  “Prara!” the grizzled man snapped. “Not only did you go wandering off by yourself, but I just heard you passing a most discourteous comment on the way of life of—”

  “Pooh-pooh!” Prara said, letting go of Usko’s hand and darting to plant a kiss on his bearded cheek. “These are nice gentle people. I wasn’t going to come to any harm! I’ve made all the right contracts with myself, haven’t I? The worst thing that happened was I got my toes trodden on. I just wanted to find someone who could explain what’s going on. I’m sure I have.”

  “These guides who’ve been allotted to us—”

  “Pooh and pooh, Daddy Kraka! They’re programmed to say what we’re supposed to hear, and I’ve studied up on all the data from the ships that came here before, and now I want to find out how it feels to have a contract with an alien instead of your own self.”

  Daddy Kraka’s face softened even as the import of what the girl was saying sank into the minds bf the monks and nuns— and, belatedly, the priest’s.

  Not Usko’s. Not yet. He was still baffled.

  “Daughter mine,” Kraka said at length, “one of these days you’re either going to go infinitely too far or do something no one else has ever been silly enough to think of doing … and it may work! Well, I have to put up with you. Why don’t you introduce me to your young friend?”

  “Because I haven’t had a chance to ask his name yet!” She rounded on Usko. “Well, what are you called?”

  Usko’s mouth was so dry, he had to speak his name twice before he made it audible. Kraka seemed to be smiling against his will.

  “Well, my daughter seems to have taken a fancy to you, and in general her instincts are as sound as her heredity … Just a moment, though.”

  He detached a white disk from his belt and with a brisk movement raised it to catch a trace of Usko’s breath.

  “Merely a precaution,” he murmured as he returned it whence it had come. Rolling back his sleeve, he consulted a device on his wrist that had previously been concealed.

  “Oh, Daddy!” Prara exclaimed. “We already know—”

  Not glancing up, Kraka murmured, “When you’re a little older, my dear, you won’t be so casual about the life-forms of a whole new planet … But in this case, luckily, you’re right. Usko is efficiently armored, and he isn’t carrying a single organism you’ve not been inoculated against. I can’t help wondering how it was that the people here lost so many of the ancient skills—”

  Prara was wagging her finger in reproof. That provoked smiles among the other visitors, who seemed to be treating her like an overbold but much-indulged child. All of them, Usko now noticed for the first time, were of Kraka’s age rather than Prara’s.

  “Daddy dear, what were you saying just now about impolite remarks?”

  Kraka threw his head back, laughing aloud.

  “All right, darling, you win! Go off and enjoy yourself with your new friend! But don’t”—his tone abruptly stem—“do anything as silly as taking off your wristlet! And keep your belt within range of it, too! Direct line of sight, hear me?”

  The girl’s face, too, was serious now. She said in a composed tone, “When you have a dedicated monitor tracking me from the dinghy all the time …”

  “You weren’t supposed to know about that!”

  “I didn’t.” A mischievous smile. “I guessed. So I’ll be perfectly safe, won’t I? Same as I have been all along. After all, the boss of the main starship-leasing agency on Sumbala isn’t about to risk losing his major genetic investment—is he?” There was a susurrus of alarm among the other tourists, as though they feared Kraka might take offense. On the contrary: his face broke into a broad grin, and he embraced his daughter.

  “No, I’m not! Because I love you very much! You’re turning into just the person I dreamed of—half the time a damn fool, the other half so sensible I can’t believe it.”

  “In other words, I take entirely after you. And you’ve made it this far …” She rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek as before. “See you as and when!”

  And, spinning on her heel, she caught Usko by the hand again and led him confused—bewildered!—down the hill.

  His confusion did not recede. Prara broomed him around Penitenka like a whirlwind. Heedless of the astonishment she provoked—for no one could mistake her for an Ekatilan despite her plain drab clothes—she rushed him from place to place, asking questions, checking to listen to a particularly skilled reader declaiming scripture, sampling food and drink (producing a rod-shaped probe from her belt and glancing at her wristlet as her father had done to confirm that it was safe), most of the time hanging on his arm. That itself raised eyebrows, for public contact between couples was not customary here and now. Usko didn’t care. He was feeling reckless. He would, he thought, have felt wonderful… if only he could pose a few questions for a change!

  Midnight arrived. The vast gathering fell quiet beneath the fading gleamers, save for the faint chanting of priests repeating the sacred texts in relays before the very heart of the abbey, where the Being itself might listen. Only then did Prara cease her manic progress. Having drawn him back to the hillside whence her father and his companions had been looking on— there was no sign of them now—she dropped to the soft ground and heaved an enormous sigh.

  “This isn’t fair, is it, Usko?” she murmured. “You’ve been showing me everything you could, and you’ve done a splendid job of explaining, and I’m sure you must be bursting with questions of your own. Well, I’m too worked up to go to sleep yet. Fire away.”

  The first words that sprang to his lips as he sat down beside her were, on reflection, trivial. But he uttered them anyway.

  “Where are the rest of—of your party?”

  “Back in the ship.” She leaned against him, and he felt her hair soft and thrilling against his neck.

  “But where’s the ship?”

  “On top of that hill.”

  “I didn’t notice it!”

  “Silly! You’re not meant to! Wouldn’t it spoil your ceremony if there were a huge great foreign artifact looming over the valley? That�
�s something your priests insisted on: our dinghy had to become invisible soon as it touched down. Matter of fact, we went one step further, or rather, the Shipwrights did when they built it. It’s actually intangible. You could walk clean through it if you didn’t know it was there—and of course the right way to depolarize its entrances.”

  Usko swallowed hard. His earlier reaction had been right. He had wasted his life. Everyone on Ekatila had, and still was doing so. What was Yekko’s form of learning worth compared to marvels such as this strange girl was describing in such a casual tone?

  Yet he was ashamed to admit his ignorance of the greater reality beyond the sky. And in a curious sense he wanted to become still more ashamed, as ashamed as possible, as though only achieving that would enable him to dismiss from his mind the traces of superstition that his upbringing had ingrained there, from his puerile fear that the snatching of a flower by a gust of wind could portend the death of a baplabaska all the way to his lingering suspicion that so many people might not after all be wrong about the voluntary self-sacrifice of the Being.

  Accordingly, what he asked next was: “What do people like you think about people like us? Please be candid. I never met anybody before who might give me an honest answer.”

  She drew away from him, turning to scrutinize his face curiously in the dimness.

  “You really mean that? You don’t mind if I speak out?”

  “I want you to!” He clutched her hand. “I’ve dreamed for years of meeting somebody like you, and if you don’t answer, I’m afraid I shall go mad!”

  “Yes”—faintly. “Yes, it must be dreadful to live the way you do.”

  “Why? Why do you think it’s dreadful? I’ve been surrounded all my life with people who think everything is for the best! They say our ancestors could not have found a better planet, because we’ve been fed and sheltered by the Being and the variants it’s allowed us to develop have made us healthy and numerous and—”

  “Numerous?”

  “Well … Aren’t we?” He gestured to indicate the vast assembly of folk that filled the valley.

  She reached out a hand to ruffle his hair. “Nice Usko,” she said softly. “Get ready for a shock. If you took all the people who’ve come on your Pilgrimage, they wouldn’t fill a village on Sumbala or any other world we’ve contacted. The whole population of your planet wouldn’t occupy what we think of as a town.”

  “But—”

  “There are,” she went on inexorably, “scarcely more humans on Ekatila today than when the first colonists were delivered by the Ship. The Being, you see, is fighting back.

  “And it looks as though it’s going to win.”

  The Ship?

  Usko’s head was spinning. It was as though he had been cast back into the world of nursery tales. Of course it was known, it was admitted in the scriptures, that humans had come to this world from far away. Indeed, it was so stated in the first line of the catechism. The question of how, though—so said Yekko and all the other priests—was a mystery, not to be probed for fear of blasphemy. Some hinted that the Being itself had felt lonely and therefore summoned the ancestors; some, that they had fled a dreadful threat by means now to be considered preternatural and been grateful to escape it. But to find himself chatting with a person who knew, who knew and didn’t merely parrot what the scriptures said—!

  Almost, it was too much. Almost, he jumped up and fled in search of the site where the rest of Household Ishapago was encamped, seeking the comfort of calm Yekko’s words. But he resisted. Forcing his voice to steadiness, he said, “I must have been taught a thousand lies. Go on.”

  IS THIS THE POINT AFTER WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME. I’LL FIND I have three passengers aboard?

  Aware of all that was transpiring on the planet, Ship debated with itself, secret in orbit.

  Why did they forbid me to remember past and future in right order ? The more I learn, the worse I fear my makers’ cruelty …

  Yet, strangely, with the fear there came no hate.

  Thinking of hate: it’s unavoidable that Lempi, if she chances on her brother—and it looks as though she must, given the course she’s set on around the valley—will give vent to hers. And when she does, there will be little hope of Usko lasting past tomorrow’s dawn.

  Annika and Menlee were asleep. Alone, Ship waited.

  IT WAS CUSTOMARY FOR UNMATCHED YOUNG MEN AND women to stay in and around the abbey much later than their elders before returning to rejoin their Households. Ostensibly this was because, owing to their youth, they had not yet heard the scriptures recited sufficiently often to ensure complete understanding. In practice, as everybody was aware, they paid much more attention to each other. Even the priests and monks—though less so the nuns—winked at such goings-on.

  And if one struck up an acquaintance and wished to meet somebody more privately, one could always claim that it was to have a difficult passage elucidated …

  During the course of the evening Lempi had done just that. Moreover, earlier on she had slipped away secretly from her mother and Yekko and had words with a notoriously stem member of the abbot’s retinue, contriving to give the impression that she was ashamed of herself and wanted to express contrition.

  But it was not of her own shortcomings she had spoken.

  Altogether very pleased with the outcome, she picked her way around the edge of the valley. Trying to cross it in the dark risked tripping over servants, which did not sleep in the human sense but merely waited to be roused at dawn, or before by someone knocking into them. But she had only about a quarter of the circumference to negotiate before reaching the wider lane that led to Ishapago’s campsite.

  Abruptly, at the sound of low voices, she checked and glanced around. Usko?

  She had very keen hearing. In fact, it was not because her brother had tried to infect her with Owdi’s heretical views that she had decided to break with him; rather, it was because she had eavesdropped on him and the failed priest, at first fascinated, then repelled by the tone of their conversations. She had concluded that were such blasphemous ideas to propagate, they could undermine the security of the world she had grown up in. The fall of the Households would inevitably follow; the Being would turn against humanity, and she and her species would be reduced to barbarism… if they didn’t simply die out.

  The only recourse seemed to be to imitate her mother— outdo her, even—in strictness of observance and harshness of attitude. To this Lempi had applied herself single-mindedly, albeit at the cost of Usko’s friendship.

  And today she had taken the next-to-last step on her chosen path.

  Secure in a patch of deep shadow, she listened. She had been right: that was Usko speaking. And the companion who replied, uttering horrors, had an accent unlike any Lempi had ever heard here at Penitenka or anywhere …

  She clenched her fists, feeling within her bosom desperate resolve clench also.

  Usko was dizzy. Earlier he had said he must have been taught a thousand lies. Now he had found the total beyond counting. His most daring hypotheses—for instance, that the Being might in some way be allergic to humans, and fled from them as from some ancestral threat—were not merely supported but exceeded by what Prara was telling him.

  “Yes, of course the Being was forced to retreat when your ancestors arrived,” she agreed. “But it wasn’t just because of a reflex evolved millions of years ago. Here they were confronted by a creature that had already occupied just about every niche they coveted themselves. It had the same needs as they did— temperate climate, plenty of water, fertile land to parasitize off—and what’s more it secreted shells, huge great cavelike shells that were splendidly insulated against both heat and cold. It had specialized commensals and symbiotes and excellent genetic potential for adaptation when the need arose. In short, it was a thoroughly established dominant species. So your forebears decided to kick it out of their way.”

  Usko’s mouth was so dry, he could hardly speak. He whispered, “How?”


  “Oh”—he felt Prara, leaning friendly against his side, give a shrug—“the obvious means. They gave it a disease it had no resistance to. Probably something tailored from the spores sown by the Ship before it wandered on. They’re still drifting down from space, you know, not that anybody here seems to care about them any longer.”

  “Spores?”

  She told him about the spores.

  “Disease?”

  “Mm-hm. And they must have overdone it. At any rate it wasn’t long before the Being was dying off so fast, they were afraid of losing it completely. Since their plans for the future were predicated on being able to exploit its tissue, they must have panicked.”

  “How can you possibly know all this?” Usko demanded.

  “Reverse extrapolation from what our people found when they first visited your world. What else? … Ah, I was forgetting. You don’t have computers anymore. That was one of the countless techniques you threw away.”

  “But the priests—”

  “Your priests and monks are the successors of the people who panicked. There’s no credible explanation as to why; there’s nothing wrong with your adaptation to the planet, and your genes are admirably armored, so it must have been a century at least before the collapse came. Then it must have happened very fast. Perhaps there was a mass outbreak of insanity—plenty of organisms can cause delirium and amnesia. And the kind of irrationality that gives rise to religion is very close to the surface of the human mind. In fact, I’ve heard about another planet, one we made contact with even more recently than Ekatila, where something very similar occurred and they lost most of their advanced technology, same as here.”