WATCHER AKURA LED the three, with several attendants, into the main building and up a curving flight of stone steps. They crossed a mezzanine on the second floor, tiled with a pearl-like material, and continued down a short hallway. At the end they turned into a room that looked to Bandicut like a study in a monastery; it appeared to have been carved out of rock by running water. He felt an impulse to run his hands along the walls, to feel the coolness of stone that surely connected deep into the hill and the bedrock below.
Akura gave him a quizzical look, perhaps sensing his interest. She circled behind a curved table, and gazed at her visitors standing before her. When she first spoke, though, she addressed Sheeawn directly. He stiffened, listening, and the two went back and forth for a minute. Finally Sheeawn turned to Bandicut and Li-Jared. “Watcher Akura wishes to believe that you have come here to speak truth, and that you intend no harm. Does she judge correctly?”
Bandicut cleared his throat, intending a simple yes. But Li-Jared answered first. “Please tell the Watcher that indeed we mean no harm, and we thank her for hearing us. But—and this is important—we have urgent matters to bring before her people. By which I mean, all the people of Uduon.” He hesitated, and bonged thoughtfully. “Can you try once more to explain to us exactly what the Watcher’s role is . . . with your people?” Li-Jared waved his hands in frustration, struggling to articulate his question.
“In other words,” Bandicut said, “Who must she answer to? Is she a leader of all your people?”
Sheeawn translated, then came back with, “She is not the leader of all people, no. But she is a Watcher. Speaking to her is—” and he too fumbled for words “—speaking to a Watcher can be a way to speak to all the leaders, for all the people.” Sheeawn paused, his fingers close to his lips, as Akura said something more. “She wants to know, who do you speak for—you who come down from the sky?”
As he translated, the Watcher’s eyes gleamed a little brighter, and she leaned forward to hear their reply.
***
In painstaking steps, backed up by Bandicut, Li-Jared told Sheeawn and Watcher Akura how they had come from a far world—far, far beyond the clouds of fire that enclosed Uduon and its sun. How they had flown through that deadly nebula, to visit Uduon. “We came here following the track,” Li-Jared said carefully, “of a series of large rocks. Rocks that seem to have been launched—from here, not just into space, but at a target.” He paused, while Sheeawn translated that much. “And that target was another world, a world called Karellia.”
At that, Sheeawn froze. He looked perplexed and uncomfortable, and perhaps disbelieving. Li-Jared waited while Sheeawn translated. Akura raised her chin slightly, and she held out her hands, palms down, fingers outstretched. “Demons,” she said sharply. By now, Li-Jared recognized the Uduon word even before Sheeawn translated it. He gestured for her to say more.
“We have struck against the demons, yes,” the Watcher said. “We must defend our world.”
“I—I’m not sure I understand,” Li-Jared said. “Why have you struck—?”
“What would you expect us to do—wait to be attacked again? Wait for more cities to burn, when they send their torches down from the sky?” Akura’s eyes kindled as Sheeawn carried her words.
Li-Jared was dumbfounded. He blinked, rubbed his chest, licked his lips. He glanced at Bandicut, who seemed equally stunned. Bandicut asked, “These torches you speak of? Can you say more? When? How? Why do you think they came from Karellia?”
Torches? Li-Jared thought. What torches?
Akura told them. “The first torch appeared more than thirty years ago. It came out of the night sky, trailing fire.” She gestured with one hand, tracing a path against the far wall. “It was too fast to intercept, even if we had known the danger.”
Li-Jared waited, not speaking.
“It could have been a meteor, but the fire came before it entered the atmosphere. It was changing course. It was maneuvering to strike us. It could not have been more clear that it was sent to destroy.” Akura’s voice grew tight. “And it fell out of the sky, directly over our forest city of Turoness. And then—” She looked hard at Li-Jared as Sheeawn delivered the words. “It exploded.”
Li-Jared took a sharp breath.
Akura’s voice grew low. “And Turoness burned. As though fire had sprung down from the sky. The city burned, and burned.” She flicked her fingers sharply at Sheeawn as he conveyed the last.
“And you . . . believe . . . that this torch came from the world beyond the clouds?” Li-Jared said hoarsely. “From . . . Karellia?”
“We traced its path,” Akura said. “It came from the demon world. The one we cannot see, except through remote eyes that we send to the outer limits of the fire clouds. It came from, I guess, the world you call Karellia.” She paused. “I do not know what the demons call their world. But that is the only world our remote eyes saw, before they were lost in the fires of the cloud.”
Li-Jared worked his fingers, trying to clear his thoughts before speaking. “I believe there is only one inhabited world just on the far side of those clouds.” Demon torches? What could she be talking about? “And . . . is that when you started launching rocks back at them?” His head was spinning. He didn’t know of anything like that from Karellia—certainly nothing that would have been launched as an attack weapon without provocation.
“We buried our dead and rebuilt our city,” Akura said, her voice inflected with—not fury, exactly, but adamance. “And we wondered what could have been behind it. But four years later, there came another! This one did not explode—our defenses worked better, perhaps—but it crashed near another city, Maressato. This second attack was not as successful. But still, there was much damage—many died.”
“And then you attacked?” Li-Jared whispered.
“And then we confirmed the path back,” said Akura. “And then, yes. We struck back at those who had attacked us.”
Sheeawn was stammering now. He looked at the visitors and said, “I am speaking my own words now. I knew of the attacks . . . on our cities. I did not know of the rest.”
Before Li-Jared could reply, Akura said something else, and they went back and forth for another minute, which ended with Sheeawn sputtering to a confused silence.
Li-Jared stood open mouthed. Bandicut finally spoke, saying, “Did you . . . try to go to that world? Or to communicate somehow?”
That question, relayed to Akura, made her flare in anger. “How could we? We cannot fly near the clouds of fire, much less through them. Our remotes survived just long enough to send back images from beyond the obscuring layers.”
Bandicut was absorbing that, as Li-Jared thought, And that is why you fling rocks. You must do so with great accuracy. But the rocks are inert. They are not harmed by passage through the clouds.
Bandicut shook his head. He walked to the open window in the stone wall near Akura’s desk and gazed out at the hillside, rising steeply just outside. Then he turned and said, “You cannot know, then . . . that the world you’re attacking is filled with people much like yourselves?” He pointed to Li-Jared. “My friend here is one of them—although he has been away for a long time.”
Sheeawn sputtered that information to Akura. Bandicut waited to give him a chance to finish, and then continued before Akura could respond. “When I myself first saw the Uduon, my thought was how utterly similar the Uduon and the Karellians seemed. They—”
But now Akura was talking back rapidly, and Sheeawn was echoing something about the Uduon being nothing like the killer demons, and Bandicut fell silent, letting them finish. Li-Jared waited for a pause, before saying sharply, “You call my people demons. Have you ever met one, or spoken with one, before now? Why do you say this about us?”
“Who else besides demons,” Akura said, “would drop bombs on our heads without warning? And never even come to see what they had done? Or perhaps they are watching from the clouds, laughing, and preparing more.”
Preparing more? Li-Jared thought. I should hope not. Whatever it is we’re talking about. I have some serious questions to ask back home!
Akura continued, “We have long known that one day a great evil would descend from those clouds again, and threaten our people.”
Li-Jared started at that. “Excuse me? Did you say again?”
Akura straightened, and suddenly seemed more priestly. “In ancient times, yes, there was terrible sickness and famine visited upon us from the clouds. There are many stories.”
“Stories. Do you have actual records? Details?”
She made a sweeping gesture that seemed neither positive nor negative. “Stories recorded in scripture.”
Li-Jared thought furiously. Sickness from the sky, long ago? Could it have been a radiation event, perhaps? Some outburst from the clouds, or a change in the planet’s protective magnetic field? Or an ancient conflict, now forgotten?
Akura waved a hand to get his attention again. She spoke again—more slowly—and with a steely gaze fixed on Li-Jared. “The prophets,” she said—and by now Li-Jared could understand many of her words with the help of his own stones, even before Sheeawn translated them—“the prophets said that even more times would come when fire would rain from the sky, when the demons of the heavens would try to destroy us.”
“And you think—”
But Akura shushed him and continued, “The writings do not describe these demons exactly, but tell only of their deeds. And these deeds, these fiery torches from the sky, are exactly what was foretold.”
Li-Jared bobbed his head a few times. Could the prophecy have been foretelling future magnetic or cloud instability? he wondered. “But,” he said, “if your scriptures do not offer a way to identify the actual demons, Watcher, how can you know that you are attacking the true demons? How can you know you are not—?”
“Making a mistake? Attacking the wrong foe?” Akura made a burring sound that he recognized as disdain. “We tracked the torches all the way back to their starting point! We might not be masters of the stars, like you, but we got a good look beyond the clouds. We got an exact fix on the only possible body from which those torches could have come.”
“Watcher Akura,” Li-Jared protested, “my people are not perfect, but they are not murderers or demons!” At least I hope not!
She burred again, louder. “Who else would drop fire on the innocent?” She suddenly pointed a finger at Bandicut and cried, “And you! Where do you come from, claiming such innocence? You seem to have a great deal of knowledge. How did you come by such knowledge?”
Li-Jared sputtered for words. “My friend here is no demon. Nor am I. We have seen many worlds. On none of them have we seen people whom we would call demons. In fact—”
Akura interrupted. “The prophesies are clear, as they have been taught to generations of Watchers. Perhaps demons do not know themselves that they are demons. But that would not make them demons any the less.”
Bwang. “But—”
“I do not believe,” Bandicut interjected forcefully, “that you will find the Karellians to be like your demons at all.” He shot up a palm to insist on his turn to speak. “And I do not believe that they deliberately rained fire on you, much less that they intended to destroy you.”
Li-Jared winced at the idea. “My people,” he said the instant Sheeawn had finished translating Bandicut’s words, “have never traveled this far from home.” At least not in my time! “Do you not know, there is a halo of fire that surrounds Karellia, keeping my people close to home, just like the one that keeps you close to your world?”
“Then how is it that you are here, talking to me right now?” Akura snapped.
Li-Jared whistled a sigh and glanced at Bandicut. “Did we not just explain,” he said, “that we were brought by friends from other worlds—in a ship that can breach even those barriers? In a ship . . .” He faltered, trying to think how to put this.
Bandicut picked up the thread. “In a ship,” he said, “that came from an almost unimaginable distance to find you—and to try to put an end to this war.”
Akura appeared startled into silence. “Put an end? War?” she said finally. “Do you threaten us, then?”
Bandicut glanced at the attendants, who had stirred at that last. “Threaten you? No! But there is a threat to your world—a terrible threat!—and not the one you think you know. That’s what we’ve come to warn you of.”
Akura leaned forward deliberately, pressing her hands to the top of her table. “And just what threat is that?”
Bandicut let out a long breath. “This is going to take,” he said, “even longer to explain.”
***
As Sheeawn listened to the two visitors talk, he began to wonder if he had ever really woken up from last night’s dreams. The more he heard, and translated for Watcher Akura, the more unreal it felt. Great pathways through the sky, through some galaxy of stars, whatever that was—apparently a great many stars, in a great cloud—and things that went backward in time, and dangerous creatures that traveled forward in time—and thousands of worlds at risk . . .
None of this made sense to him. He knew of a few uninhabited worlds circling his own sun, or presumed uninhabited, because they had only been visited by remote probes. Beyond that lay the pulsing clouds of fire, and the demon world and its sun, and beyond that the few points of light that Uduon astronomers had detected that might be other suns. Even the demon world had never been seen clearly, only its orbit plotted. Or so the Watcher seemed to say. He had little knowledge of such things.
But these things the visitors were talking about? Crazy.
Still, he translated dutifully for the Watcher; and slowly he sensed her agitation grow. At last she burst out with, “How does any of this concern us? We have nothing to do with these ‘tides’ or ‘currents of time,’ if that translation makes any sense. We have nothing to do with any of these worlds you tell us about. We have just one concern, and that is defending our home against assault!”
The whole conversation momentarily stalled, with that outburst. Then the human, Bandicut, blurted that he agreed with her! The Uduon’s concern should be protecting their world. What the devil was he trying to do—confuse the issue? Bandicut started talking again, and now he spun an impossible story about how Uduon, by counterattacking, was in some crazy way laying itself open to worse attack. From the stars. From the past.
Furthermore, he said, if there were any demons in this entire matter, it was those things coming at them from out of time. They were terrible! He had met them, and fought them, and even with his wonderful alien spaceship, he was afraid of them!
Crazy.
Sheeawn looked back and forth, and suddenly he felt a powerful jolt, as if the stones had just kicked him in the head, because he suddenly felt vistas ballooning open in his mind. He reeled, stepping backward, as his mind filled with images and knowledge of space, and stars, and great ships carrying people of every description through space. And for just an instant, he glimpsed an enormous world filled on the inside with every kind of creature imaginable—and outside it, a sky-filling disk, a spiral of mist in the night, the galaxy that Bandicut kept talking about. He suddenly felt certain that what the visitors were telling him was true.
True? And the insidious creatures from the past? Were they true, too? Were they the real demons?
All this washed through him, then ebbed away, leaving him shaking. The Watcher Akura, her gaze directly on him, appeared to be pondering, as well. “Sheeawoon,” she said softly, “are you all right?”
He caught his breath, and tried to control his two thumping hearts, and finally stammered that he was.
“So,” she said, her voice taking on a commanding tone, “please tell our guests that they have presented us with a story that is quite extraordinary, and difficult to believe. I require proof. If there is none, I will conclude that they have woven this tale in order to deceive us—for what purpose, I cannot yet guess. Say that to our visitors.”
Sheeawn did. He held his breath waiting for an answer. When it came, he was so stunned, he almost couldn’t translate.
“Name a representative of your world to come with us,” said Li-Jared. “Or come yourself. We will show you what we have been telling you. We will take you beyond the wall of fire, to the world you call the demon world.” At this, Sheeawn nearly froze in terror. But Li-Jared seemed not to notice, as he continued, “We will let you meet those you believe are your enemies. We will let you question them. And let you tell them why you launch asteroids at their world.”
The visitor waited while Sheeawn translated all that.
Then a silence filled the room. Or rather, for Sheeawn the room was filled with the sound of his hearts pounding in his chest. After a minute, Bandicut made a coughing sound and extended both hands. Will you accept our offer? he seemed to be asking.
Watcher Akura’s face was unreadable. She gazed out the window. She gazed down at the table. She gazed at the visitors. “I did not . . . expect such a proposal,” she said at last. “I cannot speak for all of Uduon—no single Watcher can. I must confer with the Circle of Watchers. Any decision must come from them.”
It seemed to Sheeawn there was an element of dread in her words.
***
To Bandicut’s surprise, a conference of the Circle was something that could be called on short notice. It would be conducted remotely, but not by any comm technology that Bandicut would recognize.
Still, it would take a few hours to arrange. Ushered into an adjoining space to wait, the visitors were offered comfortable seating and more refreshments. It was getting late in a long, long day, and they were all tired; they welcomed a chance to stretch out on the long divans that lined this room. Sheeawn initially seemed to feel that he should try to explain what was going to happen in the meeting; but since he didn’t really seem to understand it himself, and he looked as worn as Bandicut felt, Bandicut urged him to rest. He and Li-Jared took a few minutes to use their own comm gear to confer with Jeaves back on the lander, and Ruall in orbit in The Long View. In the midst of all this, Bria reappeared, slipping out of one of the walls. She seemed occupied with her own business, however, and soon disappeared back into whatever dimension held her interest.
In due time, an attendant roused them. Bandicut had drifted off into a reverie of Charli, dreaming in an imaginary conversation how the quarx would have advised him. What would you do, Charli? He had to fight off grogginess and a deep heartache, as they were brought back into Watcher Akura’s office. The Watcher was not present at the moment. They were told to sit on a bench opposite her table. The room itself looked different. Doors had been opened on the window wall, revealing a steep hillside covered with broad-leafed foliage. What looked like the top of a tree leaned in through the open space. It appeared to grow out of the hillside, and somehow had bent to nose into the room once the doors were open.
Sheeawn consulted with an attendant and explained that it was called the Dusting Tree, and they would soon see what its function was. “It’s rooted deep in the ground, far down into the great—” rasp “—aquifer that winds throughout all of the lands.”
“Aquifer?” Bandicut asked, puzzled as to what an aquifer would have to do with a meeting of world leaders.
“A channel of water underground, connecting one region to another. I am told that this particular aquifer encircles the entire world. It is used for communication,” Sheeawn said. His wide-eyed gaze made it clear that this was well beyond his ordinary experience.
Akura came back into the room, clothed in a silver robe that fell from her shoulders like a cascading waterfall. “There is something you need to understand,” she said, the robe rippling as she took a seat, near the Dusting Tree. “We are about to undertake a joining of the Watchers, and there is a degree of risk in it—not just to me, but possibly to you as well. There will be—” and at this Sheeawn’s translation struggled “—connecting—” rasp rasp “—entities free in the air. They are intended for me, but they might reach you, also. Perhaps your protective clothing will help. I do not expect difficulties, but neither can I guarantee your safety. Do you still want to stay?”
Bandicut and Li-Jared looked at each other in bewilderment. Entities? It was only after receiving strong reassurance from their stones that they shook off their stunned silence and affirmed that, yes, they wanted to stay. Sheeawn, who looked most frightened of anyone in the room, also agreed—reluctantly, Bandicut thought. Bandicut had been about to switch on his mirror-suit, but when he saw Sheeawn’s courage, he refrained. Even without the mirror-suits being active, they were probably still better protected by their stones than this innocent Uduon they had so casually pressed into their service. Although, come to think of it, Sheeawn’s stones should provide similar protection.
Akura sat and smoothed her robe, and became quite still. All of the aides except two left the room, and the remaining two stood ramrod still by the door. Bandicut leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his stomach tightening. Akura raised her chin, gazing in their general direction, though she did not appear to be focusing on them. Her gaze, in fact, seemed far away. She turned her head toward the Dusting Tree and spoke a single clear word: “Koceta.”
“Come,” Sheeawn whispered.
A puff of dust spurted in a thin stream from a nodule on the nearest tree branch. It looked initially like a small cloud of coal dust; but as it floated toward her face, it suddenly turned white and swirled around her head like cream being stirred into coffee. The stream continued for about two seconds, all the particles turning to fine snow—and then, in an instant, it was all iridescent, a cloud of sparks wreathing her head.
A scattering of the particles drifted on air currents across the room. Bandicut fought an urge to switch on his air filtration; but he sensed the stones did not want him to. He felt Li-Jared stiffen beside him; on the other side, Sheeawn’s breath had become rapid.
Were these narcotic spores of some kind, intended to put Akura into a trance? He felt a no, and then at once he understood. Nano-shit, he thought. I’ll bet that’s what they are. Possibly he had murmured that aloud, because Li-Jared shifted slightly, as though trying to listen. Smart-dust. To make connections. He tightened his lips when the aides glanced disapprovingly at him, and spoke inwardly, hoping his stones might answer. /They’re going to mediate a long-distance connection, aren’t they—with other Watchers? Through the tree? Through its roots, through an underground network? Through the aquifers! That’s it, isn’t it?/ The stones didn’t speak, but they tingled with alertness.
The cloud of particles suddenly collapsed onto Akura’s face, and then into her face, for the briefest of instants glittering from beneath her skin. Akura gasped, and Bandicut thought he saw pain in her gleaming eyes. But his focus was broken by a tiny cluster of the particles suddenly dancing in front of his own eyes. They moved too quickly to follow. He felt a series of pricks in his face, like mosquito bites, and the particles were gone. And the room darkened, as though a shutter had irised down.
A rippling sensation fled to the back of his head, and then ran out to his fingertips. He felt a heightened sense of hearing—not of actual sounds in the room, but of murmuring voices as though he were hearing them in another space altogether. Gazing across at Akura, he saw a face that appeared ghostly in the gloom, with a streaking of iridescent dust around her eyes. Her gaze was extraordinarily distant; he doubted she was even aware of him. Her mouth was moving as though in rapid speech, but seemingly in silence, despite the murmur of other voices. Her hands were raised toward the Dusting Tree. He saw the tree shimmering, but only in this shadow view. Was that the ghostly presence of other Watchers he saw, far away? He wanted to rub his eyes, but resisted. Some part of his vision remained normal, and in the room nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
In the shadow view, Akura’s silent words came faster and faster. Twice, her gaze abruptly locked on Bandicut and Li-Jared, and once on Sheeawn. She started to make audible groaning sounds. The murmuring rose and fell. Bandicut was certain it was the sound of the gathered Circle of Watchers. He felt a burning in his chest, maybe from his own tension, maybe from the nano-dust.
How long this went on, he didn’t know. At one point he saw the gokat pop up in the shadow view—first in front of Akura, and then in the Dusting Tree. Bria appeared to gaze intently at the Watcher for a little while. Then, as quietly, she was gone.
Time stretched, and the murmuring went on. He understood none of it, except twice when he might have heard his name spoken, and Li-Jared’s. His desire to know what they were saying was something he at first held in abeyance; but gradually, as the conversation went on, the desire to know became excruciating. Was she persuading them of what she had been told? He could barely hold in his mind what it was they had proposed, but he badly wanted the circle to agree.
And then it simply ended. The tingling sensation was gone. His vision snapped clear, on a room that seemed no different from before, except for a fine, iridescent snow falling to the floor and evaporating.
Behind her desk, Akura was slumped in her chair, unconscious.