abide by it? To let the hjjks isolate us in our own little province? To cut ourselves off from everything else in the world?”
“That is unthinkable, yes.” he said.
“So it is. But you seem to take it very calmly. It hardly seems to matter to you at all.”
“Must we talk about these things now? It’s a sad day, Taniane. I’ve just seen my brother’s beloved mate lowered into the fire.”
She seemed to stiffen. “By the Five, Hresh, we’ll see everyone we know lowered into that fire. And then some day our turns will come, and it won’t be as pretty as it is in that little sermon you always preach! But the dead are dead, and we’re still here, with plenty of trouble to cope with. This request for a peace treaty, Hresh: there’s nothing innocent or friendly about it. It has to be a maneuver in some larger game that we aren’t able at this time to comprehend. For us to sign it—”
“Please, Taniane.”
She ignored him. “—would indeed be unthinkable, just as you say. Hresh, they want to take three quarters of the world away from us under the guise of a treaty of friendship, and you won’t even raise your voice?”
He said, after a while, “You know I won’t ever give my support to a surrender to the hjjks. But before I take a public position there’s more I need to learn. The hjjks are complete mysteries to me. To everyone. Our ignorance affects our dealings with them. What are they, really? Nothing more than oversized ants? A vast swarm of soulless bugs? If that’s all that they are, how could they have been part of the Great World? There may be much more to them than we think. I want to know.”
“You always want to know! But how will you find out? You’ve spent your whole life studying everything there ever was in this world and the worlds that went before it, and the best you can say after all that is that the hjjks are total mysteries to you!”
“Perhaps Nialli—”
“Nialli, yes. I’ve ordered her to speak with the envoy and bring me whatever she can discover. But will she? Will she, do you think? Who can say? She wears a mask, that girl. That girl is more mysterious than the hjjks themselves!”
“Nialli’s difficult, yes. But I think she’ll be of great help to us in this.”
“Perhaps so,” said Taniane. But there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.
The center of the city: the familiar confines of the House of Knowledge. A good place of refuge on a difficult day. Hresh found his assistants Chupitain Stuld and Plor Killivash there, huddling over some bits of rubble in one of the ground-floor offices. They seemed surprised to see him. “Will you be working today?” Plor Killivash asked. “We thought—”
“No, not working,” he said. “I simply want to be here. I’ll be upstairs. I won’t want to be disturbed.”
The House of Knowledge was a white slender spear of a tower, hardly a stone’s throw wide but many stories high—the tallest building in the city, in fact. Its narrow circular galleries, in which Hresh had stored the fruits of a lifetime of inquiry, coiled around and around, narrowing as they rose, like a great serpent coiled within the tower’s walls. At the summit of the whole structure was a parapet completely encircling the tip of the building to form a lofty balcony. From there Hresh could see virtually the whole of the great city that he had envisioned and laid out and brought into being.
A warm sultry wind was blowing. In his right hand he held a small silvery sphere that he had found long ago in the ruins of Vengiboneeza. With it, once, he had been able to conjure visions of the ancient magnificent epochs of the Great World. In his left lay a similar metal ball, golden-bronze in color. It was the master control instrument that governed the Great World construction machines he had used to build Dawinno, in a place where nothing at all had existed but marshes and swamps and tropical forests.
Both these globes, the silver one and the
“That is unthinkable, yes.” he said.
“So it is. But you seem to take it very calmly. It hardly seems to matter to you at all.”
“Must we talk about these things now? It’s a sad day, Taniane. I’ve just seen my brother’s beloved mate lowered into the fire.”
She seemed to stiffen. “By the Five, Hresh, we’ll see everyone we know lowered into that fire. And then some day our turns will come, and it won’t be as pretty as it is in that little sermon you always preach! But the dead are dead, and we’re still here, with plenty of trouble to cope with. This request for a peace treaty, Hresh: there’s nothing innocent or friendly about it. It has to be a maneuver in some larger game that we aren’t able at this time to comprehend. For us to sign it—”
“Please, Taniane.”
She ignored him. “—would indeed be unthinkable, just as you say. Hresh, they want to take three quarters of the world away from us under the guise of a treaty of friendship, and you won’t even raise your voice?”
He said, after a while, “You know I won’t ever give my support to a surrender to the hjjks. But before I take a public position there’s more I need to learn. The hjjks are complete mysteries to me. To everyone. Our ignorance affects our dealings with them. What are they, really? Nothing more than oversized ants? A vast swarm of soulless bugs? If that’s all that they are, how could they have been part of the Great World? There may be much more to them than we think. I want to know.”
“You always want to know! But how will you find out? You’ve spent your whole life studying everything there ever was in this world and the worlds that went before it, and the best you can say after all that is that the hjjks are total mysteries to you!”
“Perhaps Nialli—”
“Nialli, yes. I’ve ordered her to speak with the envoy and bring me whatever she can discover. But will she? Will she, do you think? Who can say? She wears a mask, that girl. That girl is more mysterious than the hjjks themselves!”
“Nialli’s difficult, yes. But I think she’ll be of great help to us in this.”
“Perhaps so,” said Taniane. But there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.
The center of the city: the familiar confines of the House of Knowledge. A good place of refuge on a difficult day. Hresh found his assistants Chupitain Stuld and Plor Killivash there, huddling over some bits of rubble in one of the ground-floor offices. They seemed surprised to see him. “Will you be working today?” Plor Killivash asked. “We thought—”
“No, not working,” he said. “I simply want to be here. I’ll be upstairs. I won’t want to be disturbed.”
The House of Knowledge was a white slender spear of a tower, hardly a stone’s throw wide but many stories high—the tallest building in the city, in fact. Its narrow circular galleries, in which Hresh had stored the fruits of a lifetime of inquiry, coiled around and around, narrowing as they rose, like a great serpent coiled within the tower’s walls. At the summit of the whole structure was a parapet completely encircling the tip of the building to form a lofty balcony. From there Hresh could see virtually the whole of the great city that he had envisioned and laid out and brought into being.
A warm sultry wind was blowing. In his right hand he held a small silvery sphere that he had found long ago in the ruins of Vengiboneeza. With it, once, he had been able to conjure visions of the ancient magnificent epochs of the Great World. In his left lay a similar metal ball, golden-bronze in color. It was the master control instrument that governed the Great World construction machines he had used to build Dawinno, in a place where nothing at all had existed but marshes and swamps and tropical forests.
Both these globes, the silver one and the
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