Chelsea limped badly and kept touching the side of her face, but otherwise seemed to be recovering. Her harlequin orchid fenced her in tendrils, reminding Bened.i.c.k of a parent caging a stumbling toddler. Upon inspection, that was not a particularly rea.s.suring comparison.

"Are we prisoners?"

There was a sense that the orchids conferred-Bened.i.c.k had the sense of a tight, exclusionary glance, though whatever transpired had happened below his or his symbiont's threshold of perception. Then one of them said, "You are on the Captain's business. We will treat your wounds, see you nourished, and escort you to the edge of our sphere of influence. Will that suffice?"

With his peripheral vision, Bened.i.c.k saw Chelsea's faint nod. She chafed her forearms as if feeling the absence of her armor. Bened.i.c.k could not have agreed more. Being unprotected-in the face of the Enemy, and whatever Arianrhod could throw at them-worried him more than the threat of combat.

Bened.i.c.k said, "That would be kind. Are you taking us to your settlement?"

"Settlement?" Another pause, as if for conference. "We do not hive, as do animals. We are taking you through."

That seemed to settle it, and for a while Bened.i.c.k did not find many further opportunities for conversation. Instead, he concentrated on the jungle, on Chelsea-who was moving more fluidly as her symbiont effected repairs-and on the threats that might lie around every corner.

With the a.s.sistance of the orchids, the descent proceeded fast. After half an hour or so, he tried again. "How far down does your domaine extend?"

"We live in this shaft," one of the orchids said-the striped one, Bened.i.c.k thought, wondering if they had leaders. "There is no light above, nor water below. There, we cannot flourish."

Chelsea perked up, her matted hair breaking over her shoulders. She said, "Do you know what lies below?"

"Surveyors have journeyed south," one said. "We have charts. They are approximate, and may not be useful to you. They are enzymatic."

Chelsea and Bened.i.c.k shared a glance. "No," he said. "I don't think we would find those easily readable. Can you offer us a description?"

"We can show you." This time, Bened.i.c.k was certain it was the spotted orchid that had spoken.

"Show us how?" he asked.

It rustled. "On the television."

His symbiont had supplied a definition for the word the first time an orchid used it, so he knew his guide referred to a communications technology as obsolete as daguerreotype or the World Wide Web. Chelsea must have run the same research, because she said, "You're broadcasting on the electromagnetic spectrum?"

Rustling. Mammals, apparently, were pretty funny to a carnivorous plant. The striped orchid swiveled two faces at each of them and said, "We will show you."

The angle of their descent changed. Now, the orchids brought them closer to the shaft walls, slowing travel as the undergrowth thickened so close to the wall-mounted illumination panels. But they seemed to have not far to go. The orchids led them around one last enormous tree trunk and onto a sort of ledge dripping with thigh-thick vines, next to what appeared to be a vine-covered cliff face strangely unpunctuated by the ubiquitous trees.

The spotted orchid flipped two of its bladelike leaves forward, an impressive swivel, and used them to nudge between the vines. If Bened.i.c.k had his armor, he suspected sonar would map a s.p.a.ce beyond-but that suspicion was inadequate to the reality because, as the orchid spread wide its leaves, pushing the vines aside like drapes, flickering light spilled forth and a cavernous bay was revealed.

It was neither a room nor a cavern, but instead something like a hangar with flat video screens lining every wall of a s.p.a.ce approximately ten meters tall and over fifty meters deep. Many of them were cracked, smeared, some of those flickering and others dark-but more than half burned brightly, glimmering with transitory images.

The floor was covered with more overgrowth of the vines, while down the center of the hangar ran long, parallel ridges about a meter and a half high, humped up under the foliage. At random intervals upon them, three dozen or so orchids rested, dazzling in their array of shapes and colors.

Many swiveled a face as the striped and the spotted orchid and their two escorted human guests came within the chamber, but not all, leading Bened.i.c.k to wonder what exactly their sensory organs were and where they might be located. Some of the orchids were meters in length, shuffling arrays of tubers and blossoms with tens of heads. The smallest were no larger than a dog, and these had no blossom-faces at all.

They looked, but they did not come closer. There was some rustling of leaves and puffing of tubers among the orchids who accompanied them. Bened.i.c.k wondered what they might be explaining.

Studying the layout of the chamber, Bened.i.c.k came to understand that the humped ridges were rows of chairs, buried under vinous overgrowth. The orchids were only putting them to their intended purpose, although not in their intended fashion. He said, "It's a waiting room."

Chelsea shook her head, then made a face as if regretting the reflexive motion. Here, where the light was better, he could see that her right iris was clouded, but the raw acid burns beneath the flaking green foam that surrounded it were drying and growing over. It was only a matter of time before the eyeball healed, also.

"Transfer station," she corrected. "It's a terminal. What's through that way?"

She pointed at what Bened.i.c.k had thought to be the back wall. But now, when he squinted, he could see the dense, narrow lines of another wall of vines.

The striped orchid leaned a blossom over her shoulder. "A pressure seal," it said. Bened.i.c.k saw it shudder; from Chelsea's sidelong glance, she felt the trembling of petals beside her face. "The Enemy lies beyond. There was once another transit shaft there, but it is long failed and disa.s.sembled."

The orchid shuffled to the side and fanned all its petals and its blade leaves forward until its outline resembled a parabolic mirror. He knew he was projecting, but Bened.i.c.k could not help but read its body language as pleased and proud. "Look!" it said. "Television!"

Bened.i.c.k stepped forward to examine the images. Dramas, comedies, doc.u.mentaries, something that seemed to feature tiny screaming people running from a creature represented by a man in a poorly articulated costume-all in two dimensions, some of them low-definition in crudely unfocused images, some in images without color. Each one seemed to be broadcast in silence, until he realized that if one sat or stood beside one of the tiny, self-damping, unidirectional speakers that projected from the back of each chair, one could choose a channel. Some of the larger orchids were watching several screens at once, their awkward bodies arranged so as to surround multiple speakers and their blossom-faces twisted this way and that.

Bened.i.c.k stepped forward, momentarily captivated by an image of a bright wave of fast-moving water humping up, peaking, and curling over itself to break in a long, foaming tube. The sky behind was as brilliant as blood, and as he watched a human being, crouched on a narrow, colorful oblong, shot the length of the tube, just ahead of where it was collapsing into itself.

"What is he doing?" he asked, not caring if Chelsea saw his fascination.

"It's called surfing. That was on Earth," the orchid said. Bened.i.c.k could hear the foreignness of the ancient words in its tone, or in the hesitation before it said them. "That was all filmed on Earth. The shaft has a library. The oldest among us say the programming repeats after about seventy-two years."

Bened.i.c.k need not have worried about his sister. She was just as captivated, one hand stretched out as if she could reach the screen-reach into the screen, perhaps. "Is that what planets look like?"

"Parts of them," the orchid answered.

Her tongue flicked out the corner of her mouth. She said, very softly, "I always thought the thing about the sky being blue was poetic license. You know. Hyperbole."

Bened.i.c.k looked at his youngest sister and thought of Rien, and still could not manage to make himself take her hand, or even to put into words what he thought. Which was: I should like to see one someday, too.

14.

when we had a library

"But," I asked, "how will man be after that? Without G.o.d and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?"

"Didn't you know?" he said and he laughed. "Everything is permitted to the intelligent man."

-FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, The Brothers Karamazov

Walking beside Samael in the midst of the serpents and their wardens, Mallory tilted his head and said into Tristen's ear, "Does it seem accidental to you that we should find exactly these persons here, at exactly this time?"

"Providence," Samael whispered on his other side.

Tristen dropped his hand on Mirth's hilt. He made a low noise in the back of his throat. Snakes were deaf, so the trick was keeping his voice low enough not to attract the attention of Dorcas and her people, while making himself overheard by Samael. Fortunately, angels had excellent ears.

"Or some less divine intervention." The sword hummed to itself, satisfied as a cat. Had it brought Tristen to Dorcas intentionally? Was it that aware? He sighed and admitted, "Mallory was right."

Mallory snorted. "I've been trying not to mention it."

Samael arched up eloquent eyebrows and tipped his head, as if acknowledging Tristen a tiny victory. "Divinity may be in the eye of the beholder, Tristen Conn. What percentage of a G.o.d has to influence the course of events before one admits to divine intervention? By the way, I do not think these people like you very much."

Tristen didn't need to look around to be aware of the way the farmers held him in their peripheral vision with so much intention. He said, "If they are Go-backs, they have reason not to."

Mallory had come up close. "And if they're not Edenites?"

Tristen arched a look at the necromancer. "I haven't heard that term in centuries."

Mallory's lips bent and compressed. "You haven't been hanging out around a lot of Go-backs. You should get to know what you despise. You might find it enlightening."

"I think I've been sufficiently enlightened."

Mallory, the basilisk mantling one shoulder, said, "You didn't answer my question. If they're not Edenites, what reason have they to consider you an enemy?"

Tristen watched Sparrow's-Dorcas's-stiff back walking before him, and forced himself neither to turn nor look away. "I am old."

Mallory might not have understood, but Samael grunted acknowledgment. Because he was Samael, and Samael was old, too, Tristen did not need to explain what he meant. Time pa.s.sed, and given enough time, anyone could make enemies. Even-especially-a Conn.

The corner of Samael's mouth curled up behind his hair. "May the enemies you make be interesting ones."

"My father used to say that."

"Your father"-the smile made itself patent-"was an interesting enemy."

"Yes." Tristen rubbed his fingertips in circles against the heels of his hands, making his armor rasp. "I recall."

It felt like a walk to execution. That was not a comparison made idly; Tristen had made such a walk before, though not as the centerpiece of the display. Indeed, he had made it in some of the same company.

This procession was longer, though, leading them as it did the entire length of the valley between high, tattered, moss-hung walls. The mist breathed a pall of unreality over the scene, especially as they came up on the peach-and-gold-walled settlement ascending from it. Graceful green-barked limes and lemons framed the lower levels, and Tristen held his breath against the scent of their flowers. Some of the structures rose ten yards or more into the air, and the largest of them was topped by that enormous glistening blue-green globe-lit faintly from within-but the walls rippled softly with air currents, and in places flaps billowed open, showing men and women and others at work over looms or cookstoves within. They looked up as the procession pa.s.sed, and any that could left their toil and came to walk beside the slithering carpet of serpents.

The sound of wingbeats warned Tristen an instant before Gavin's weight struck his shoulder, so he was braced. The basilisk tossed a coil lightly around his neck for balance, and settled with a ruffle of feathers and a flash of the pale blue underside of his crest.

"Cloud forest," Gavin said. "Do you think they have coffee plantations?"

"Do you think they have outside trade?"

The basilisk's shrug brushed hard, warm feathers against Tristen's ear. When Gavin spoke again, it was colony to colony, through the seemingly innocuous contact.

"Do you think they could survive without it?" A hard squeeze of talons compressed Tristen's armored shoulder, sharply enough to give him concern for the integrity of his armor. The touch was followed by the quick flick of a beak through a lock of hair straggling free of his braid. "You walk like you're still carrying her coffin, Tris."

Tristen stumbled, staying on his feet without any particular grace. His head swiveled, so if Gavin's lids had not been sealed he would have been staring into the basilisk's eyes. "Excuse me? Whose coffin would that be?"

Gavin stretched out his neck and shook his head as if he meant to whip water from the feathers. "I just ... I knew that."

Of course you did.

There was no use nursing anger at the dead, and it wasn't Gavin's fault, whatever Tristen was coming to understand had been seeded in him. Tristen tugged the basilisk's tail tip with his other hand. He forced his voice light, unconcerned. The way he would have spoken to his father, without revealing vulnerability. "Considering the purpose of this mission is to bring back my granddaughter's corpse-"

Arianrhod. He should say the name, but that would be too personal. Too much of an admission.

But still. Arianrhod. Tristen rather thought Alasdair had made a special effort in her case, when it came to building his servitor monsters. Petty vengeance had been well within his father's capabilities, and using children to control their parents was an established family technique.

Knowing didn't lessen the ache.

Tristen bit the inside of his cheek, because he did not wish the locals to see him shake his head like a restive dog. They still did not speak, even when the others joined them, so the only sound was their footsteps-his and Mallory's and those of the escort-on the graveled path.

"So here we are in a funeral cortege again," he said, because they were coming up now on the cloth-walled chapel with its lofty minaret.

Gavin snorted. "Again?"

"You have some memories waking in you, don't you? Machine memories?"

"Machine memories are all I have," the basilisk answered. "Whoever you think you recognize, that wasn't exactly me."

"It wasn't exactly not," Tristen said. He didn't fill in the name-Cynric-that floated in his awareness, though. Only two sisters had called him Tris, and only one of them would have thought to preserve her ghost in a machine.

"Knowledge is not ident.i.ty," Gavin said. "Especially when the knowledge is shattered like a host of angels, and no person remains to give it context. That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind," the basilisk said, as they were brought inside the pavilion. "Just something I read once, when we had a library."

The interior of the pavilion was lit in cool colors by the light that fell from above and lay shadowless across the carpets and cushions arranged over the earth in a semblance of a floor. "They're nomadic," Mallory said, at Tristen's back.

Tristen permitted himself a nod to show he'd heard. "Take what you need, sow what you will later want, and move on. It makes them harder to find."

"Do not speak," Dorcas said. She walked away from them, steps springy across the carpet, and climbed a set of risers to a dais. The cobras, which had accompanied them inside, did not follow her. Instead, they closed the ring before Tristen and reared on long bodies, looking inquisitive with their threatening hoods folded tight. Beyond the ring of snakes, a larger ring of farmers waited.

At the top of the dais, under a canopy of green and blue ta.s.seled in ropes of gold, Dorcas turned to face him, looking down.