And All Between (9 page)

Breaking away from Pomma, Teera ran to her nid and threw herself into it, burying her face in the silken comforter. “That other one, that D’ol Genaa.” Teera’s voice, choked with sobs and muffled by padded silk, was almost inaudible.

“D’ol Genaa?” Pomma asked. “What did she do to you?”

“Nothing,” Teera wailed, lifting her tear-wet face. “Nothing yet, but she wants to. She wants to kill me.”

“Kill you,” Pomma gasped. “How do you know? Did she say so?”

“No, but I pensed it. I pensed that she is very angry. I’ve never pensed anyone so angry.”

“But maybe it’s not you she’s angry at,” Pomma said, and in her agitation she used the coarse Erdling words without shame or shock. “And she won’t kill you. I’ve told you and told you that Ol-zhaan don’t kill people. And even if she wanted to, Raamo wouldn’t let her.” But Teera’s sobs continued until, at last, Pomma put both her hands over Teera’s mouth and said, “Please, please, Teera, stop—doing that. Stop making that awful noise.”

But even then Teera’s wails did not abate, until Pomma said that the crying was bringing back the pain of her illness and that she would soon have to eat a whole handful of Berries, if it didn’t stop. Teera quieted then and lay still, her breath coming in slow shuddering sighs. The shudders slowly diminished, the sighs became softer and more regular, and Pomma realized that Teera had fallen asleep. Picking up her pet, Baya, the lavender sima, who had been observing the whole scene wonderingly from the back of a chair, Pomma tiptoed out of the chamber and down the hall.

When she reached the doorway to the common room, Pomma stopped and peered carefully around the partly drawn door hangings. From this vantage point, she could see her brother Raamo engaged in conversation with D’ol Neric and D’ol Genaa. Except for the three young Ol-zhaan, the room was empty. D’ol Genaa was speaking, and her sharp clear voice carried easily to Pomma’s hiding place.

“I’m sorry about frightening the child,” D’ol Genaa was saying. “I see now that I acted too hastily. It is a fault of mine. It would have been much better to let Raamo speak to her alone. But if you will tell me what you have learned, I promise that—that I will not act hastily on what I learn. And as for betraying you—I do not know you well, D’ol Neric, but I know Raamo well enough to be certain that he would not be involved in anything evil. I will not betray a cause that Raamo believes in.”

“Very well then.” It was D’ol Neric speaking. “But for you to understand our purposes, we must go back to the beginning. To the beginning of the events that brought us here today. It began, for me at least, soon after the day of my Elevation to the ranks of the Ol-zhaan.”

Shifting her position behind the heavy tapestries, Pomma was able to catch a glimpse of D’ol Neric’s face. As he spoke, his lips were twisted by a kind of crooked smile that spoke of bitterness rather than of Joy.

“I came to the Temple thoroughly seduced and corrupted, as are all novice Ol-zhaan, by the fame and glory of the Year of Honor; but there is in my nature a strain of skeptical curiosity, and before long, questions began to arise in my mind concerning the life of the Ol-zhaan. I began to wonder why it was that the Kindar were taught that the Spirit-skills were strong and vigorous among the Ol-zhaan when, in fact, they are as rare among our holy colleagues as they are among any group of Kindar over the age of five years. It troubled me, also, when as a novice, I learned the true history of our race and of the terrible events that led to the destruction of our ancestral planet. I was troubled not so much by the knowledge of our past, as by the fact that the truth of it was kept from the Kindar. It seemed wrong to me that they should be kept in ignorance—that they were not trusted with the truth.

“And then one day quite by accident, I happened to overhear something that made clear to me the fact that my instincts had been right when they warned me that all was not well beneath the gentle sky of our beautiful planet.”

D’ol Neric paused, and in the pause, Pomma heard the voice of D’ol Genaa asking, “And what exactly was it that you overheard, D’ol Neric?”

“I was exploring in the high reaches of the Temple Grove, and I had discovered a small suspended chamber well hidden in a heavy growth of Vine. While I was yet inside the chamber, I heard voices approaching and concealed myself behind a heavy fall of tapestries. A group of perhaps a dozen Ol-zhaan entered the chamber. They spoke together softly, and the hangings behind which I was hiding muffled their voices, but I was able to recognize the voice of D’ol Regle for certain, and that of the venerable priest of the Vine, D’ol Falla. I was able to hear enough to determine that I was present at a meeting of a select and secret group who called themselves the Geets-kel. This was a little over a year ago, shortly before you, D’ol Genaa, and Raamo were announced as Chosen, and these Geets-kel seemed greatly concerned about the possible choosing of Raamo. Most of them spoke against his choosing, but one—I recognized the voice as that of D’ol Falla—insisted that he must be chosen whatever the risk because of the need to make use of his unusual Spirit-force as a Vine-priest. D’ol Falla seemed to feel that Raamo’s great gift of Spirit might be able to halt the withering of the Root.”

“But what
risk
were they speaking of?” D’ol Genaa asked. “What risk would there be in the choosing of Raamo?”

“The danger that he might, by means of his ability to pense, discover some secret known only to the Geets-kel and kept even from the rest of the Ol-zhaan.”

“A secret? What secret?”

“I am not certain. I could hear only occasional phrases, but enough to make it clear that these Geets-kel possessed some secret of such great importance that it threatened all life on Green-sky. Twice I clearly heard someone speak of an end to life as we know it. Of the exact nature of the secret itself, I could determine only that it in some way concerned the Pash-shan.”

At the word Pash-shan, Genaa gave a sudden start and then, for a long time, sat very still. Neric was still talking, explaining how he waited impatiently all through Raamo’s Year of Honor before he made himself known and asked Raamo’s help in discovering more about the Geets-kel and their terrible secret.

“When D’ol Neric first came to me,” Raamo said, “I did not know what to do. But then I decided that we should at least try to discover what it is that the Geets-kel know about the Pash-shan that is unknown to anyone else.”

“But what could it be?” Genaa said. “What could these Geets-kel know of the Pash-shan that is not known to the rest of the Ol-zhaan?”

Raamo shook his head. “We still do not know. Neric thinks that the Pash-shan, through the use of evil mind-force, may have gotten control of those who call themselves the Geets-kel—that they are somehow in league with one another. But perhaps it is only that the Geets-kel know that the rumors that speak of the withering of the Root are, indeed, true, and that the Pash-shan will soon be free to roam at will in Green-sky. Perhaps the Geets-kel have decided that if nothing can be done about it, it would be best to allow the Kindar to remain carefree and happy for as long as possible. But we, Neric and I, do not agree with such thinking. We feel that it would be best to let the truth be known, no matter how terrible.”

“But the Fallen child, Teera. How is it that she is here, and how did she escape from the Pash-shan?”

“That, too, is a long story,” Neric said. “Raamo and I decided to go ourselves to the forest floor to see if we might there discover any clues to the secret of the Pash-shan. We went secretly, of course, and without permission, during the afternoon of a free day. And while we were there on the forest floor, before we had time to make any other discoveries, we encountered the slave child and brought her here. But we do not know how she escaped, except that she spoke of forcing her way through an opening in the Root.”

There was a silence before Neric continued. “And now, D’ol Genaa, we shall see if I was right when I once told Raamo that you would not sacrifice pride and power for any cause. Now that you know our secrets—and the full extent of our transgressions—will you join us, or the Geets-kel?”

“You do not know me as well as you think, D’ol Neric,” Genaa said. “There is a cause for which I would sacrifice pride and power and much else besides. And that cause is the freeing of Green-sky from the curse of the Pash-shan. If you are correct in thinking that the Geets-kel are in some way in league with the Pash-shan, then my cause and yours are one. I will gladly work with you to uncover the secret of the Geets-kel.”

Behind the door hangings Pomma stirred uneasily. Puzzled and troubled by what she had overheard, she suddenly felt greatly in need of comfort and reassurance. Abandoning her vantage point along with all effort to make sense out of what she had overheard, she entered the common room and ran to Raamo, holding out her arms.

“Where is Teera?” her brother asked as she climbed into his lap.

“She is sleeping,” Pomma said. “She cried for a long time, and then she went to sleep, so I came back here to you.” As she spoke, she pressed her cheek against Raamo’s chest, comforting herself with his presence.

For a time the three Ol-zhaan said little, and then for a while Pomma grew very sleepy so that she was only vaguely aware that Neric, apparently thinking her safely asleep, had begun to speak again of troubling things, of the Pash-shan, and of how Raamo had been pretending that his Spirit-force was waning so that the other Ol-zhaan would be less wary in his presence and, by forgetting to mind-block, allow him to pense their secrets. And of how he and Raamo planned to make other trips to the forest floor.

Closing her eyes more tightly, Pomma tried to close her ears, and mind also, to the frightening things that D’ol Neric was saying. It was terrible to think that the Ol-zhaan were not what she had always thought them to be. That they were not—as she had been taught in the Garden—the great and good guardians of Love and Joy and Peace. Turning her mind away from the confusion and bewilderment of unthinkable ideas, Pomma managed for a time to shut out the voices of the three Ol-zhaan, and to sink deeper into the comfort of her brother’s arms.

But then, suddenly, she was once more aware of words and meanings. The voice was D’ol Genaa’s, and although it was as softly pitched as a whisper, there was something about it that felt like screaming. In spite of herself, Pomma was forced to listen.

“I am certain,” D’ol Genaa was saying, “that there will be a way to protect Green-sky from the Pash-shan. But I think you are right that we must first find a way to learn more about them. We must discover what it is that the Geets-kel know about them and much else besides. We know so little concerning them. We must learn the source of their power, and just what its limits are. We don’t even know what they actually look like.”

At that instant a startling idea occurred to Pomma, an idea that seemed, at the moment, to be an inspiration. If they knew, she thought, if D’ol Genaa knew that the Pash-shan are not long-fanged monsters at all, but only people almost exactly like the Kindar, she would have no reason to be so unjoyful about them.

Opening her eyes wide, Pomma sat up and said, “I know what the Pash-shan look like.”

The reaction of the three Ol-zhaan was all that she had expected, and more. They stared at her, startled, attentive and, it was easy to tell, very much impressed.

“Yes,” she said nodding firmly. “I know. They look just like Teera. I know they look like Teera, because Teera is a Pash-shan.”

There was a moment, only a very brief moment, in which Pomma felt proud and pleased to be the one to tell such important and wonderful news. But then she began to understand that she had made a mistake, a terrible unforgivable mistake. She began to realize that even though D’ol Genaa no longer thought that the Pash-shan were monsters, her anger towards them was unchanged. There was no change at all in the harsh and bitter rage that lay like a great wound beneath the faultless beauty of the young Ol-zhaan’s face.

T
HE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
were, for Pomma, a time of changes. A time when hours of worry and mind-pain alternated with periods of great happiness. And a time when certain changes occurred that were completely unexpected—fantastic, mysterious, and more than a little frightening.

The periods of worry and mind-pain came, of course, from the knowledge that she had broken her promise, and by doing so had put Teera in danger. It helped a little to know that Teera knew what she had done, and understood why she had told the secret. But the worry was still great and troubling.

Of course, Pomma had told Teera immediately, and Teera had understood why it had seemed reasonable to think that D’ol Genaa’s anger would go away as soon as she knew that the Pash-shan were human, and not monsters at all. That Genaa’s anger continued, that she seemed determined to think ill of the Pash-shan—or Erdlings—was still a mystery to Pomma, and to Teera as well. They spoke often of it, and of other mysteries, in the days that followed, while they waited for the next free day when the three Ol-zhaan were to return. Teera, in particular, seemed fascinated, as well as terrified, by the beautiful young Ol-zhaan.

“She is so beautiful,” Teera had said dreamily. It was the day after her frightening encounter with D’ol Genaa, and Teera was sitting on the floor caressing her pet, Haba, and talking with Pomma about the events of the previous day. “It seems strange that there can be so much anger and hatred in one so beautiful. In Erda people think it is shameful for the beautiful and fortunate to feel anger against the less fortunate. Aren’t the Kindar taught that such anger is shameful?”

“I’ve told you,” Pomma said. “All unjoyful feelings are shameful in Green-sky. There is not even a way to speak of such feelings, except to say you are unjoyful at someone—and even that is not really proper.”

“Then why is it that D’ol Genaa feels so much anger toward the Pash-shan?”

“I don’t know,” Pomma said. “Except when D’ol Neric was speaking of why the first Erdlings were shut up below the Root, D’ol Genaa said that perhaps it was because they—deaded people,” Pomma paused blushing, and then used the Erdling term—“that they had killed. And she said also that they stole children—the Fallen—and that they were flesh-eaters.”