FIVE

In the back of the skiff Nick peered out the gaps in the reed tent. The uldia hid him there, as eager as he was to keep this trip secret. This trip to Oleel's pavilion.

The view of the River Sodesh was altered from a week ago when he and Zhen had traveled to the shuttle landing site. Today the river flowed in a broad channel, and the land lay uncovered on either side, still swampy in places, but busy with farming activity.

It had been an instant's decision. Nick had been walking through a glade in the palace compound. A boat appeared from under a bridge, and an uldia asked him if now would suit him to interview the chief uldia. A boat was waiting, with a privacy cabin in the stern, and no one around to observe. He found himself in the skiff crouching down to enter the reed enclosure. Perhaps his decision was propelled by the incident with the hoda and the wire cage, when Anton did nothing to prevent the mutilation, or perhaps it was the outbreak on the ship, or Maypong's new presence. He hesitated only a moment. He was convinced now that Anton wasn't competent. He'd hoped for Anton to succeed; he'd tried to help him. But it was Nick who should have been awarded that post.

The skiff entered a narrow channel, a dark tunnel with overhanging tree branches. The splashes of paddling slowed, and the skiff bumped into what might have been a dock. A hoda removed the forward side of the tent and gestured him out of the craft and onto a ramp.

They were in the deep shade of a small pier—nothing like the grand entrance he'd expected at Oleel's pavilion. But of course they took him to a back entrance. Two uldia escorted him down a narrow corridor that smelled as if it had been underwater recently. At points along the corridor, electric lamps lent a murky glow.

They ascended stairs of white granite, quickly gaining height above the Amalang River. Emerging into a fine hall, Nick saw the first extensive use of stone that he'd observed among the Dassa. Through stone columns and open walls, Nick looked down on the jungle, pressing closer here than at Vidori's palace.

After crossing a roofed bridge and passing through a portico, Nick found himself on a mezzanine overlooking a central courtyard. Sounds of running water filled the place, compounded by those of a small stream set into the stone floor. Here and there water cascaded down the walls and emptied into the floor streams.

Despite the immense size of the pavilion, he saw only three people in it beside himself: his two escorts, and someone waiting for him on the mezzanine. She was a tall woman, dressed all in glittering gray.

“You are Venning,” the woman said. She stood on the other side of the floor stream. And she was indeed a large woman, somewhat taller than himself. The size of her ear pendants were in ratio to her commanding face—the half-circles as usual, but inlaid with a milky white stone.

“Yes,” he said, “Nick Venning.” He didn't like their using the name that Zhen used, with those overtones of contempt. ‘Are you the Lady Oleel?”

“Did you think they lied, saying that we would meet?”

Nick looked at his escorts. “Not at all. My thanks to your people.” He was conscious that the woman likely could smell him. Not just uldia, but all female Dassa had a strongly developed sense of smell—to identify parentage of infants. He took a seat so that Oleel could sit. She chose a riser on his side of the stream.

Behind her was a glass box inside which river plants undulated in the circulating waters. The tank was in fact connected by ceramic pipes to other water features on the mezzanine, so that it was all one system, or appeared to be.

“You were the captain's chancellor. Before Maypong took your place.”

“She is helping us,” he replied, but heat rose in his face, to think that was how people saw it.

“Oh yes, you would think so. I see it… with different eyes.”

He was startled to hear her use a human idiom—an apt one. He realized they must learn to see things as the uldia did, if they wished to understand them, to calm their fears. Nick planned to address those fears—of why they had come, what they must do here, and if they offended, how they could be soon gone once their mission bore fruit. He would have Oleel understand their motives, and give her assurances that they would not linger to trouble her traditional view. This might win her support of their further access to the Olagong. Or at least remove her objections— to which he suspected Vidori catered.

She remained silent. His attention was taken by the glowing tank, with its pulses of green and purple photophorics that threw spots of odd color on Oleel's face. The plants might have been kelplike growths, except that they bulged in places.

“Do you like my fish, Venning?” Oleel gestured to her tank.

Nick had not quite seen fish there yet, but there was plenty of room for them to hide amid the plants.

“Very nice colors.”

Oleel walked to the river side of the mezzanine, looking down. ‘And do you like your quarters with the king?”

“He gave us a roof when we needed shelter. Until our job is done and our visit is completed. But we meant no disrespect to—others.”

“Others are upset.” She sat down on a riser. Because of the rushing stream between them, Nick had to strain to hear her words.

“It is customary,” she said, “when the chief judipon is infirm to allow the judipon to elect a younger man. Vidori does not allow such election. Thus the Third Power is weak, and the Olagong suffers.”

“We know nothing of these things, Lady.”

She went on, “It could be said that Vidori wishes to take another power, and that crippling the judipon with a man weak in pri makes them susceptible to royal commands.”

“You think the king has plans to seize further power.”

“I have not said so, Venning.”

“We have no views on these things, Lady We have our own goals: only to save our people and return to our home.”

“How can you save them by being away from them?”

Nick took a slow breath. She didn't know their story. And she must learn it. It was the only way she could believe they did not come in conquest. “Lady our people are sick and come in search of a promised cure.” There was no Dassa word for sick, so he used their term, weak in pri, or life currents.

“We made no promises.” Oleel's face was immobile. She had a way of speaking that used few muscles, giving the unsettling impression of ventriloquism. “We do not understand how a whole people can be weak in jm. Who can live without life current?”

“Someone did call us, Lady. Across the oceans of the sky. It came from those small moons.” He pointed upward.

“Made from metal,” Oleel murmured.

“Yes.”

“Fashioned by a thinking race,” she said.

“Is it wrong to think so?” But even the palace astronomers had long thought they were metal, not rock.

For a moment Oleel's face took on a gold tincture from the blooming of a biolume. “No, it is no sacrilege to think the Quadi could effect such wonders. They created the Olagong. And the Dassa. So your metal moons would not be so difficult.” She put her hand in the stream running across the porch, trailing her fingers. The stream continued to the edge of the mezzanine and spilled over, forming a waterfall.

“You look for chemicals to save you. Medicinals?”

“No, we think not. But we don't know what form their gifts to us will take.”

“Knowing so little, you chose to travel for years, far from home, perhaps to some disastrous end?”

He didn't like the sound of that last phrase, yet it was a fair summation. “We are that desperate.”

“You would not like to stay and inhabit the Olagong. With all our pri?”

Nick swallowed. “It would not save our people. We don't come for just ourselves. We must go home. We will go home.”

“I am glad to hear so.”

“Then I promise.” He thought this conversation was going very well. Oleel had just said she was glad. That was progress. If Anton had only seen how necessary it was to converse with the Dassa. All of the Dassa. Here was a woman concerned with possible expansionist motives of the newcomers. All very predictable.

“You think my pavilions fine, Venning?” Oleel had followed his gaze as he looked at the stone temple.

“I have seen nothing like it in Lolo.”

“It is built in the way of the Quadi. Like their first pavilion.” She rose, bidding him to follow her to the edge of the mezzanine.

Nick followed her lead, walking on his side of the floor stream, and looked down on the square below. No railings, in the customary Dassa building practice.

“See,” Oleel said, pointing. “The streams of our courtyard depict the dry season beds of the great braids. My compound depicts the sacred Olagong, with the highlands over there, and the major islets as quarters for my ladies. All as in the original compound, which the river has claimed.”

He nodded. “A fine layout. Very ingenious.”

She ignored this. “You may notice, my people do not favor building with quarry rock. Yet here is a compound entirely of stone. It is in honor of the Quadi way of stone huts, where the Dassa were brought to life and where the Quadi themselves lived before their efforts were shamed by the manifestation of the degenerates. So you can see how hard it is for us to believe that the Quadi offered to help you when you are degenerates of the same template.”

That was rather harsh, but it did not surprise Nick that she thought so—only that she had said so. “My lady—”

She cut him off. “You have in your midst a hoda raised up to high position. This would be the hoda Sen, who has, I have been told, a sharp tongue, and too much hair.”

Even though he despised Zhen, Nick didn't like this insult. “We have no concept of hoda, Lady We have abandoned slavery Women are not slaves.” He wanted to make that point clear in this society of women.

Oleel turned to watch the glass box of river plants. The ropy plantings were swaying with more agitation, as though nervous under her gaze.

“Sen is born to bear,” Oleel said, her face in profile taking on a green tincture from the water plants, which were in turn infused with sunshine from the open walls. “She may, even now, be growing bodies inside of her. You had permission to bring four humans to the Olagong. But how many did you really bring? How many might Sen bear?”

“Oh, Zhen is not pregnant,” Nick said, growing uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation.

“Do you promise?”

Nick opened his mouth to do so, then thought that it was unseemly for him to promise such a thing about Zhen, about any woman. And after all, he couldn't be absolutely sure of Zhen's sexual practices.

“I am sorry that you find Zhen disturbing. We keep her within the palace because of your wishes.”

“I do not wish her to be in the palace, thankfully.” Oleel had now turned from her tank and fixed him with a rock-hewn stare.

Oleel nodded to one of her attendants, and the woman came forward with a small bowl. From this, the attendant distributed a powder along the surface water of the tank, then withdrew several paces behind Nick.

As the powder settled into the water, all undulations of the river plants ceased.

“Does it occur to you, Venning, the difference between your people and mine? That we thrive and you do not? That you use your women for incubation and they produce offspring that do not thrive?”

“Well, that's not—”

“Have you considered how flawed is the human practice? Does this thought occur while you rush around looking for the long-departed Quadi to have left gifts for you?”

Nick struggled mightily with his temper. “We hold our women in more honor than you can imagine.”

“You hold your women. That is my point. No one holds women in the Olagong.”

“Except that the hoda are held,” Nick said, locking cold gazes with the woman.

Oleel's mouth flickered with a smile. It was not attractive on such a stern face. But in the next moment, Nick's attention was diverted by the water tank. The bulges in the plants had taken on a blush of pink, faintly phosphorescent. Then the round growths began to split and disgorge a milky fluid. One after another, the pods expelled an effluvium bearing seeds, small tadpolelike shapes. The dark specks drifted to the surface, collecting in a putrid murk.

Oleel glanced at the tank and its ruined plantings. “In the case of these specimens, their pri was imperfect. It was better that they burst than bear life.”

Nick was galled at her lecture, at her implied threats. He subdued his anger enough to murmur, “I regret we are not to have a proper conversation. Of respect.”

Oleel paused. Perhaps she had not expected him to acknowledge her rudeness. “Do you think, Venning, that the royal pavilion respects you?”

“Under the surface, everyone thinks their own thoughts.”

She nodded. “But few bring anger into a room? Which would you rather have, hidden or open?”

“Open anger can halt conversation, Lady.”

“Hmmm. I had not realized this.”

If she was playing with him again, he would surely leave.

“But now you know my heart,” she said. “I would have nothing come between us, such as hiding of true heart. You know that I abhor what you are. Now we can move to other things.”

“What other things?”

“Oh, whatever things you like.” Oleel's attention drifted back to her tank, and she said in a low tone, “But now we must cleanse this tank. Yes, somehow it has become ruined.”

As a hoda came to clean the tank, Oleel turned to him, saying, “Sometimes, it is possible for a degenerate to rise above shameful beginnings. Are you such a one, Venning?”

“I am what you see, Lady.” It was all he could think of to say.

“Oh yes. I do see.” She waved him away. “You will have more chances to rise. I will send for you.”

At last the uldia led him away. Nick was in turmoil, not knowing whether to be elated or furious. But, aside from her bitter words, he had learned important facts today And they would speak again, of other things.

He passed through a corridor where two uldia were embracing. His escort ignored them, but he frankly stared, as one woman put her mouth to the other's breast. There was no Dassa word for sex between two women, or two men. It was all the same, all sexual contact was sarif—the cordiality that bound them, and released them.

He tried to see it as social cohesion. But he was beginning to think he would never approve of it—not a value-neutral anthropological stance.

And now he was defying Anton. No, not neutral at all.

Anton was surprised at how fast Maypong could descend a steep ladder.

He hurried down corridors and ramps as fast as was seemly in the king's pavilion, and Maypong hurried to catch up. As he strode toward the great river steps forming the entrance to the king's pavilion from the Puldar, he tried to formulate a plan.

The king was boarding a lavish barge. Anton had seen this from a rooftop where he'd chanced to glimpse the preparations. If the king was going out, Anton was going with him. If Vidori wouldn't allow him to go abroad alone, then he'd go in good company, even if it wasn't polite or respectful—words that described the manner in which Vidori was controlling him.

“Anton, you are not dressed for noble company,” Maypong said, finally catching up to him.

“Humans don't wear silk,” he said, using an aphorism he made up on the spot.

“The king has not made us his guests for the river audience.”

“Maybe he will when he sees me.” He was counting on Vidori's unfailing courtesy.

They had entered the huge reception hall that fronted the king's compound and was open to the river through thick wood columns. A crowd was gathering here—nobles, soldiers, hoda.

Maypong caught at his sleeve, jerking him enough to get his attention. “So what will you do? Stand at the top of the stairs and look lonely?” Still breathing heavily from the chase he'd led her, she fixed him with a dark stare.

“No. I'm going to ask him if I can go along.” He turned and walked toward the porch.

“Which is very disrespectful.”

He kept going. “Which I can't know because I'm a foreigner.”

Anton approached the crowd. The wide expanse of stairs fell seven or eight steps straight into the river, as though made for a river god to ascend. The barge was drawn up, taking nobles on board, assisted by hoda.

As the crowd parted, Shim caught sight of him, eyes widening. She murmured in the king's ear, and Vidori turned to see Anton, who now stood with a considerable amount of empty space around him. Even Maypong had abandoned him.

He hadn't thought about what he would say, since he couldn't imagine what he would need to say His only plan was to pretend that he thought he was invited. It was brazen to do so, but for the first time Anton relished the idea of using his ignorance in his favor.

“I'm sorry I'm not dressed for the occasion,” he managed to say.

Vidori's forehead was wrinkled in some consternation. Waiting for some signal as to whether he was to be welcomed aboard or thrown into the river, Anton looked around as though admiring the barge.

Then the king smiled very broadly—his eyes not participating—and climbed a few stairs toward Anton. “You are late, Captain. Thankfully you have not missed us.” He waved Anton forward.

As Anton descended the stairs, he saw that Maypong had made her way down and was whispering to Shim, no doubt sorting out the protocols involved with this unexpected guest.

The sky was high and stacked with cumulus clouds, a searing white against the soft blue of the morning. Ghosts of the clouds shimmered in the water, magically keeping their position in the swift current.

In another moment Anton was enfolded by guards, nobles, and the general bustle as the congregation crossed a ramp and boarded the barge. The craft bore a tent in the middle, its fabric billowing. A line of soldiers held long poles at the ready.

Maypong was at his side. “Say little. Do nothing,” she spat at him.

But he could hardly stay silent if the king spoke to him. “Think of it as a learning opportunity,” he said. “You've said I need to learn.”

Her face was calm, too calm. He knew he'd have to mend some rifts with the woman. And with Vidori. He needed to make a point, but keep a friend—if an alien monarch could be considered a friend. Nick wouldn't like to hear that word, but Nick was no politician. Anton had never realized that aspect of the captaincy, the push/pull of leadership and diplomacy. Well, today was push.

Without ceremony, the barge was under way, as the guards poled them off the sunken stairs. As they did so, Shim came toward them. “The king will have Anton sit near him,” she said.

Maypong gave a lovely smile in response. As they rose she snarled at Anton, “Say little.”

He looked from one woman to the other. They both looked calm and rattled at the same time. Shim, her round face very pretty indeed, and Maypong, more petite, thinner of face. But he didn't think her diminutive in any other sense.

The king sat among nobles in the front of the barge, with the smallest of platforms serving as chairs. Vidori sat with one leg crossed over his lap, the other outstretched. It seemed the only way to sit in long pants on the risers, so Anton did the same. The women, in tunics, sat sidesaddle. No one brought infants today.

As was his custom, the king wore black and gray, and went armed. That and the presence of many soldiers lent a more martial air to the outing than the otherwise festive mood would suggest. The nobles had grown very quiet as Anton took a place among them. He wondered if his presence was upsetting them and if any of them guessed that Vidori had not invited him. Among these nobles, Anton noted the androgynous beauty of the men. At times he had to take cues from the hairstyle to distinguish them from the women.

Maypong sat beside him, her upper lip sweating but her face studiously calm. The king glanced at her. It was only for a split second, but he thought Maypong faltered under that gaze. He'd exposed her to some displeasure, and was sorry for it.

But for now Vidori had assumed a casual demeanor, and was talking animatedly with a few of the viven, the palace-raised. Among them were relatives of the king, including numerous brothers who lived in the palace, and his sisters, some of whom attended on him. There were many cross ties and relationships here, and now Anton was in their midst, needing to make conversation, he thought, despite Maypong's warnings.

He turned to the nearest Dassa man. “A beautiful day to be on the river, rahi,” he said.

The man looked startled to be spoken to. “It is the only day to be on the river.”

Maypong leaned in to say, “The floods have receded, and this ceremony honors the season, Anton.”

The viven had used no honorific. The Dassa never appended one to Anton's or his crews’ names. Shim said it was because they were not Dassa. She smiled when she said it, but the crew knew an insult when they heard one.

The center of the Puldar was shallow enough to allow the crew to pole the craft, which they preferred to do rather than using the graceless barge engines, a recent technological development, and one seldom used because of the Dassa distaste for the noise and smoke that resulted from burning ethanol fuel. The current was in their favor, and the barge poled along with muffled splashes, nearly submerged under the clamor of the forest, the restless cries of the near-Earth creatures that called this place home.

The king was speaking to him. “We shall have silks made for you, Anton. For next time.”

Maypong pounced. “Oh, rahi, humans do not ever wear silk, as the captain has said so many times.”

“Ah.” Vidori smiled at his companions as though to say, Who knows what the humans do? “But someday the green clothes will fall off.” The group laughed at this.

“We have more green clothes where these came from, Vidori-rah,” Anton said.

The smiles left the retinue. His remark had perhaps been clumsy, Anton realized. Into the silence, Maypong plunged: “But first the clothes will fall off, of course.” She had made it clear that Anton had not contradicted the king about whether the clothes would rot off. It was not elegant, but the group's tension faded.

Maypong's upper lip glistened in the sun. Anton felt sorry for her, but he was rather enjoying himself. He had to admit it was glorious to be outside, with the rains gone, and to have made clear to the king that he was impatient to make progress.

Maypong begged permission from the king to stroll with Anton so that he could better view the river, and they began a slow pacing of the barge's perimeter. Maypong was calmer now, and they walked for a time without speaking. A few others walked as well, and from time to time entered the silken tent where platforms were set up for meal preparation.

The river was filling with boats that now followed the barge, with much waving and calling back and forth. An iridescent bird skimmed over the water, scooping in its bill a load of water insects. Its sapphire plumage flashed in the sun, as achingly blue as Dassa silk, as Joon's gown the day he'd first seen her. Along the banks, woody vines plunged from trees into the river, like hoses sucking up water. Up and down them skittered beetles, reptiles, even monkeys, using the lianas as a pathway between river and canopy.

Maypong pointed ahead to the choppy waters where the Puldar poured its brown waters into the clearer, main river. “See,” Maypong said, “there is the great Sodesh. Today is an auspicious day for river viewing, the first proper day for the king to view the braids.”

Anton recited what he knew of the braids: “The Puldar, the Amalang, the Nool; tributaries of the Sodesh.”

“Yes. Vidori has the Puldar. The Amalang is Oleel's, in her realm of the uldia. The judipon have their pavilion upon the Nool. All are braided together to form the Sodesh, our life river.” She glanced at him as they walked. “That is the most you can know about us.”

“I'm sure there is very much more.”

“It is all there, Anton, in the braids.”

“Sometimes,” Anton ventured, “the rains make it all one river.” And of course, the flooding brought with it the rich soils of the uplands to enrich their farmlands.

Maypong dipped her head, her acknowledgment that he had said something less than stupid. As she did so, her earrings swayed, showing off the exquisite miniature scene of a bird in flight.

“It renews us, and reminds us that we are not truly separate from each other.”

They walked in silence for a time, past the kneeling hoda, facing inward toward the barge, waiting to be useful. As they walked, Anton saw that some of the viven had paired off, and were touching from time to time, in a casual but deliberate way, decidedly sexual. No one paid this the slightest attention.

He thought of the Princess Joon then, and as though reading his mind, Maypong said, “The Lady Joon would have come on the viewing today.”

“Why didn't she?”

“Did you not see her at the top of the king's stairs?”

Anton had not, but his attention had been utterly focused on Vidori and himself.

“She attends her father on the first viewing of the season. But she declined, seeing you.”

“Why?” He could imagine why. He hadn't seen her since their unsettling interview.

“Well, but she did not want to be seen with you, of course.”

He paused, thinking that now he had the answer to Shim's question about how the interview went. “Does she believe I haven't shown her respect?”

“Have you not?” Maypong looked pointedly at him.

Anton took a deep breath. “She offered … cordiality … that I could not accept.”

Maypong sighed. “Thankfully you have me as your chancellor at last.” She gazed out as they moved into the Sodesh. ‘Also, Oleel would not like the lady to share a barge with you.”

“Oleel is her uldia, and Oleel does not like humans. And,” he added, guessing, “Joon is afraid of Oleel.”

“Not afraid, but bound to her uldia because Joon's own mother is dead, and therefore her bond is all the stronger to her birth-water mother.”

“So she can befriend me, but not in public.”

“You begin to understand us, Anton.”

“God, I hope so.”

The barge continued its stately pace, gliding by the shoreline compounds, the poles rising glistening from the water and plunging down again. Near Anton, one of the poles rose from the water bearing a fulva husk, having speared a birth pouch of some creature—perhaps fish or fowl. It was jarring to remember that he was not in a normal place. That was Neshar: lulling, jarring.

Just as this thought came to him, the tent fabric blew away from one of its fasteners. Past the fluttering silk, Anton saw a Dassa couple lying on a raised platform. The woman's naked back arched at the pleasure her lover was giving her. Anton thought her partner was a man, but it was hard to tell with her knees in the way…

Turning from the view, Anton met Maypong's gaze.

She smiled. “Sarif”

“Right.” He knew what it was. But in full sun, on the king's barge, it was unexpected. “So that” —he gestured at the tent—” is for privacy.”

Maypong looked at him with a hint of amusement. “Certainly not. It is for shade, Anton. If one is going to remove one's clothes, of course.”

“Of course.” He wished she wouldn't smile that way, as though he still had not learned some simple lessons. The fact was, there was very little about Dassa sexuality that was simple. Joon—and her father—came suddenly to mind.

The fabric behind him whipped frantically, causing a hoda to come forward to secure it again against the struts.

A silence ensued. Poles dipped into the water. Curtains stayed tied down. He blurted out: “Joon and her father—are close?” Anton had been wanting to ask. Maypong was the only person he could ask.

She looked over at him, frowning. “The lady is his favorite, of course.”

“Favorite what?”

“Favorite daughter. Oldest child. What else?”

“Well, there is physical closeness.” The Dassa practiced incest, without any sense of shame. Even the women sought others in their compounds without regard to relation.

“This disturbs you,” Maypong said.

He paused, but there was only one answer. “Yes.”

“You must not think this way in the Olagong, Anton.”

She stopped. “Why is a daughter pleasuring her father disturbing?”

He sighed. Where to begin? It wasn't, of course, a matter of inbreeding, since sex and reproduction weren't even linked here; that was where all the problems between Dassa and human began. But incest was also a matter of power and trust…

“It's complicated,” he said.

“Not for us,” she murmured.

The bargemen poled mightily to keep the barge from swooping into the center of the Sodesh, a wide, glossy corridor stretching for kilometers toward the mist-covered hills.

He couldn't argue from an interbreeding standpoint. It was enough that the uldia saw to it that the right Dassa swam in the right variums. He tried the viewpoint of the difference in power. A mother has power over her son, so that sarif, or cordial sex, might be coerced psychologically. And this was even truer between a king and his daughter …

When he finished explaining this, Maypong stared at him. “Why would someone coerce sarif? How can it be cordial, if it is forced?”

“Maybe someone wishes to …” He searched for the Dassa word for dominate, then settled on, “to win a bad kind of respect?”

“But Anton, how can it be winning respect to receive something that is so freely available?”

“Or maybe,” he said, “someone doesn't wish to be—cordial, and the other person too strongly desires it?”

Maypong looked at him with troubled eyes. “Does this happen, among your people?”

“It is against our laws, but yes.”

She shook her head. “Some laws you should not need.”

How had she turned this into human moral lapse? They would never sort this out.

Anton saw Vidori standing in the prow, conferring with a bargeman. He could not admire him … and yet, somehow, he did. As he watched, he saw that the course was changed to make for the outlet of another river.

The viven had taken notice, and all attention was now focused on this new direction.

Maypong whispered to Anton, “It appears you will have your wish, after all.” Her face had turned serious.

The king, however, seemed in an expansive mood. He announced to the viven, “We will present the …” Here he used a word that Anton didn't recognize. “My visitors are curious, and it has been long since I took the pleasure of viewing it.”

“The ruins,” Maypong whispered. “The ancient site. The king is granting your wish, Anton. I hope it is worth it to you, given the high price, and the fact that there is nothing there.”

Anton watched as the barge approached the confluence with the Amalang River. Oleel's river.

Anton nodded to the king, making eye contact. Vidori smiled in ironic fashion, as though it were a game. But truly, Anton had no idea what Vidori's game was.

The barge navigated the currents with some difficulty, and then they were moving up the Amalang, a more narrow tributary, darker, greener than either the Sodesh or the Puldar. The waters cooled to turquoise under the cathedral branches of the trees, and the day faded to a golden green twilight. The viven were silent now, and the sound of the poles measured their progress with rhythmic splashes. The tent in the middle of the barge stood empty now, as the retinue grew somber and attentive in the realm of the uldia.

They passed the canoes of the uldia, women in gray tunics and sometimes robes who looked at them askance. And then the uldia fortress emerged in front of them, all in stone, and as large as the king's palace, though not as lovely. They quickly glided by the pavilion, not hailed or stopped by the gathering uldia who stared and pointed at them. The king looked steadfastly upriver, urging all speed on his barge captain.

They passed a large floating mat teeming with insects.

“River ants,” Maypong said.

The mat was composed of twigs and grasses, allowing, Maypong said, huge mounds of ants to scour the river surface for food. The ants were rather larger than Anton had ever seen, and he thought the river must feed them well.

It was an hour of steady poling, but they finally pulled up to shore, whereupon hoda stepped into the water to secure the barge with ropes.

Amid the flurry of activity, Anton asked Maypong, “What are the protocols, Chancellor?”

“Anton, you have asked to see this sunken place. Now you will see it.”

“There are no taboos, or things I should avoid doing?” He meant to see it all, now that he was being given the chance. At her blank look, he added, “The site is not considered sacred?” He wished Nick were with him, to see with expert eyes what would be their first glimpse of Quadi leavings, aside from the satellites.

On the shore, hoda were cutting back the dense sprays of ferns next to the river, to allow passage on foot into the interior.

“We have said so before, Anton. The Quadi left us, long ago. But we do not raise up creatures to be objects of too much veneration, as the human custom is.”

Worship. Gods. These were words she might have used, but didn't, there being none for these concepts in her language.

Vidori had already debarked, and was calling for Anton to join him on the shore.

He and Maypong did so, and they began a slow trek into the forest, the viven all following in a single line, stepping through thick mud but unconscious of the damage it did to brocaded boots. It was an outing, and their voices carried into the jungle, joining with the chatter of birds and hum of insects.

Once past the copious vegetation near the shore, they made their way with less effort into the deep shade of the canopy. Like Earth's tropical forests, the Olagong harbored abundant species of trees, and they loomed tall, reaching for the sun.

Vidori led the group, just behind several large hoda who cleared away any obstacles. He turned slightly to Anton as he walked. “It is not far. The Quadi site is where the river-bank used to be, in ancient times.”

“I thank you, rahi, for presenting these ruins. I take it as a special favor.”

“Yes, Anton. I would have you understand we do not hide messages. If there are things the Olagong hides, it hides them from us all.” He stepped over a fallen log. “Your air barges that always fly looking for things… they will have shown this as well, thankfully.”

Anton masked his surprise. He had known that the king possessed telescopes. Apparently he used them to great advantage.

They hiked in silence for a time. The architectural summit of the forest, hidden visually, registered its populations by a cacophony of sound and the tremblings of the under-story A bird swooped into the darkened glade around them. As it lit on a branch, Anton thought it looked like a kingfisher, but as it turned its profile it revealed deep serrated edges along its beak. Similar, but different.

Joon's phrase did haunt him.

Now the ruins were in front of them. One moment there was only jungle, and then Anton saw slumping stone walls, nearly obscured by vines and roots. It was a ruin of large proportion, partly submerged in the muck of the clearing. His eyes tried to match it to what he'd glimpsed of Oleel's pavilion, said to be a replica. Yes, there were the same pillars, and their sizes did seem commensurate.

The roof was collapsed into the footprint of the building. Out of the center grew a gigantic tree, its muscular roots spreading in all directions, clasping the ruin in a woody embrace. The roots followed the form of the collapsed blocks of stone, in a solid flow of wood.

Viven began to pick their way through the pile of stones, and soon Dassa were exploring with as much curiosity as Anton. With Maypong at his side, Anton climbed through the jumble.

Underwater half of the year, this site lacked dense vegetation. Yet the river had leached and scoured it, leaving nothing but lumps where hewn stone had been. It was melting away. The Quadi had chosen an unfortunate building material: limestone.

Maypong sensed his disappointment. “You hoped it would be full of Quadi things.”

Quadi things. Or Quadi meaning. But here was an edifice long erased. “I didn't know what it would be, Maypong-rah. I didn't think it would be so ravaged.”

He bent down to inspect a fragment of wall. Something had been etched into it. Using one fìnger, he traced the pictograph—for that is what it was. The tracings in the king's archives had captured some of these drawings hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands of years ago, before the river had carried the renderings away, a molecule at a time. He pocketed the fragment, for Zhen to analyze later.

Maypong said, “The first of the Dassa people drew these things. To record what they experienced.”

Yes, Anton had seen those pictographs, of boats, jungle, and animals. And one fragment had shown what looked like hands: appendages that had six digits, two thumbs—clearly, two opposable thumbs. But that was the only surviving drawing of the Quadi form.

As Anton continued to search, the viven grew bored, and hoda brought out packages from the barge. Vidori's retinue lounged on fallen pillars and slabs of stone and took a leisurely meal.

After a time, Anton found himself sitting on a collapsed section of roof. Maypong sat beside him quietly, honoring his subdued mood.

“It doesn't make sense,” Anton said.

“What does not, Anton?”

He picked up a shard of stone, crumbling it between his fingers. “The Quadi picked the worst possible building material. I'll bet they had a lot of choices.” An understatement, surely, for a race that could build humans.

Maypong nodded. “Metal is best. But the mines are far away, and transport is always difficult.”

He watched as a tree branch wiggled nearby. It was not a branch, however, but a snake hanging down, secured to a branch by its thicker back end. It was extremely long. Then, snapping its body toward a passing bird, it unhinged its jaw, caught its prey, and began swallowing it alive. Palace-born, Maypong seemed uneasy around the reptile, and they climbed down from their perch.

Anton murmured, half to himself, “It's as though they wished to remain unknown.” He helped Maypong negotiate through a jumble of rocks, and their hands gripped for a moment. She smiled. He looked at her, thinking that she was very beautiful, and that he hadn't much noticed before.

“I think that is true, Anton. They left us nothing of themselves.” She led him toward the place where the king was sitting. “If they had left many things, perhaps we would have made them revered beings. Instead of treasuring, as we do, the Olagong.”

Revered beings. Perhaps the Quadi did not wish to become gods. It was true that there were some among the Restoration crew who thought it unnatural that the Dassa had no religion, but Anton thought the Dassa simply had their own way of revering the world.

Up ahead he saw that the king was talking to a group that had just emerged from the forest.

When Maypong and Anton joined Vidori, they were facing a contingent of uldia.

Leading them was an uldia of perhaps middle age—by the iron-gray hair wound tight on her head. By her sheer size and demeanor Anton thought he knew who it was: the chief of the uldia, Joon's uldia, and the king's nemesis.

Maypong began pulling on Anton, urging him into the background. Anton whispered to her, “Leave off, Maypong-rah. She and I would have to meet sometime.”

Maypong looked at him. “You would rather not.”

Vidori noticed Anton then, and gestured him forward. “I was just explaining to the Second Dassa your curiosity for this place, Anton. But she does prefer that we not linger.” He looked to Shim. “That being the case, we must wind our way back to the river.” Shim started to herd the viven down the path, but Oleel's voice stopped her.

“Oh this, then, is the visitor who demands to go here and there, without regard to whose land may be damaged.” She wore a silver gown, hanging loose from her shoulders.

Vidori remained silent, making it necessary for Anton to answer. Maypong rushed in with, “My lord regrets any offense. Being a stranger, he may be excused at times.”

Oleel turned to face Maypong. “Does your lord have a tongue?” Her face was unlined, but lacking the Dassa beauty, traded for heft and strength.

Maypong produced a smile that looked chipped out of rock. The viven stood like flamingos, waiting for something. Waiting, perhaps, for Oleel to go away, for the king to be delivered from this circumstance.

“I have a tongue, Lady” Anton said. “My people feeep their tongues, although we do not always know what to say.”

Vidori smiled the slightest bit. “I know what to say.” He turned to Oleel. “I do beg your pardon, Lady. We will leave the ancient site to your care. It was full of mud, and has ruined a perfectly good pair of boots. But that is no one's fault but my own.”

Oleel's deep voice answered him. “They are hoda, your visitors. Who keep their tongues. That is what is troubling, of course. Not boots.”

“Yes, but it does not signify, since he can do no harm,” Vidori said. “Anton is as empty of guile as the river.”

Oleel smiled, showing teeth. “You are a poet, Vidori-rah.”

“I am a soldier.”

“Better to stay with arms than similes.”

“When I can, I do.”

“As to there being no harm, perhaps you did not know, Vidori-rah, being concerned with boots, that the visitor whom you call Sen is in a troubling state.” At Vidori's quirked eyebrow, she continued, “Oh yes, we have heard that Sen is bearing inside her a human spawn.”

Vidori's face darkened. “I do not think so, rahi.”

Maypong whispered to Anton, “This is so?”

Anton thought Oleel was lying. He stepped forward. “Vidori-rah, this is not the case.”

The viven around them were reacting with shocked looks and murmuring. Someone said, “Bearing? The creature bears?”

Oleel's voice rose above theirs. “Yes, you will see her stomach distend, and the thing will swell inside her, greedy for blood, making her sick. Somehow, the spawn will get outside. I do not speculate on how this happens, thankfully” She turned to the king. “It will be your problem when it occurs, I believe.”

Anton was growing angrier, both at the lie and at Oleel's terrible description of pregnancy. But he had no time to argue with the woman, for Shim was propelling them down the path, herding the viven, and trying to change the topic, all at once.

Vidori was saying his good-byes, leaving the clot of uldia behind.

The group tromped back to the river, less carefree than they were on the hike in.

“She is determined to be my enemy,” Anton said.

Maypong said, “Yes, because she is afraid of you. Because if it is proper to bear children of one's body there is no need for the variums and the uldia.” She lowered her voice. “But are you sure the thing about Sen is not true?”

He snapped at her, “No, damn it, it's not. No one is pregnant in my crew, on the ship or on the ground.”

She seemed mollified by his answer. But Anton thought the damage had already been done. Just the rumor of a pregnancy was a very effective reminder to the Dassa that the humans were extremely different from them. And extremely repulsive.

From the looks the viven were casting him, he thought that any good impression he might have made on them today was ruined by Oleel.

Ruins, indeed.