Quest (22 page)

'We live longer than other people, Lord, because we
renew
our bodies as we grow older. Not many live as long as Herra, though, or remain so youthful.' Elder Sisters usually live the longest, she thought in sudden panic. Will I live long enough to see everyone I know and love die before me?

'What's the matter, Katia?'

'I have suddenly realised - how long I might live!'

She sounded so young and vulnerable that his heart ached for her. 'Can you know that?'

'Yes, barring accidents. Herra confirmed yesterday - was it only yesterday? - where my Gifts will lead me. I haven't grown used to the idea yet.'

'You will become an Elder Sister, like her?'

'Yes. One day. When I'm much older and wiser.'

He shivered; he didn't know why. 'Come and sit here by me, Katia. It's hard to talk to you across the cave. I can't even see your face.'

'I must not.'

'I wish I were indeed your God, for then I should command it.' He shivered again, and it was with apprehension, not cold. 'What will happen to me, now?' he murmured, suddenly overwhelmed by his fears. 'Katia, come here! I need you - need to touch another human being.' He had never made such a plea before in his whole life.

'I must not.' But her voice was less adamant. He was lonely and afraid, far from his people and the world he knew.

QUEST Shannah Jay 80

How would she feel if she suddenly found herself in one of his sky wagons, whirling through empty space? She remembered how desolate she had felt when first brought to Temple Tenebrak.

'Please. I need to touch someone. I feel lost. Come and sit by me, Katia.' Davred, who had never shared his thoughts and needs with anyone, found it natural to do so with Katia.

Silence. Then he heard her moving. She sat down beside him, careful at first not to touch him. 'Lord . . . ' she began.

Hesitantly he stretched out his hand and took one of hers, feeling its warmth against his cold fingers. 'I’m not a lord.

I'm just a friend and my name is Davred.' The hand trembled slightly in his. 'If the thought of becoming an Elder Sister is troubling you so much, should you not share your worries? Can you not discuss it - with a friend?'

Was she comforting him or was he comforting her? 'Lord Davred, I've never had a man as a friend. How should I know the ways of such a friendship?'

'Never?'

'No. Except for my grandfather, and Herra, I've had no friends, and with those two it's not the same, I think. I lived in the forest of the High Alder with my grandfather when I was young. The town was several kloms away. We rarely went there. My grandfather, Kensin, didn't like crowds. We just attended the festivals, which everyone had to do.

Sometimes we went to buy things at the market. The greatest celebration was in Spring, the Festival of Choosing.

Everyone had to attend that, unless illness prevented it.' A tear fell on his hand, but her head was bent and he was afraid to move closer, afraid she might move away again if he startled her.

'I never thought that they might
choose
me, Lord Davred, though I knew there was something wrong that day and tried to flee from it. I was paralysed with terror when the Sister laid her hand on my head. My grandfather moved back into the crowd, away from me. He had to, in case I ran to him. They would have shunned me if I'd refused to go with the Sisters. Shunned him, too, if he'd tried to interfere. But he didn’t try to stop me leaving. He believed in the Sisterhood, so he knew that I had to go.'

'They would have shunned you?'

'Yes. The High Alder is - it's not like Tenebron. They still live strictly by the old laws there. They revere the Sisterhood and there are no shrines of the Serpent. Or there weren't then. I don't know what it's like now, of course, but the Serpent isn’t as strong in any of the northern claims. And for us Aldrani, well - it's a great honour there to be
chosen
as a Sister of the God. You don't even think of refusing it. I ran away the day before the Festival, you know, but my grandfather brought me back. And the Sisters had to
still
me once I was
chosen
, or I'd have fled in terror. It's taken me a long time to grow used to the idea of becoming a Sister, a long time to accept the path I must tread.'

Gently he put his arm around her. 'You must have been very unhappy when you came to Tenebrak.'

'Very. I didn't know anything about other girls, or about city life, either. They laughed at me and cal ed me Kelandra Clod. They didn't even know the High Alder existed, you see, let alone where it was or what it was like. And they wouldn't listen when I tried to tell them about my home. So I stopped telling them. I wanted to die. But my body went on living.'

'Poor Katia.'

'Stupid Katia! When something is inevitable, it's foolish to fight against it.'

'How did you adjust? You seem very much a Sister now.'

'Herra helped me. A few years ago she prophesied one night in the temple.'

'I remember that. You call it the Great Prophecy now, don't you? I'd only been on the satellite for a few years at the time.'

'After the prophecy, Herra
chose
me again. Second Choosing, we call it. I even made the Triple Denial without realising what I was doing. So I became a Sister-Elect. After that evening, Herra took me in charge and taught me to accept my fate.' Katia sighed and succumbed to the temptation to lean against Davred's shoulder. 'She's not only
our
Elder Sister in Tenebrak, you know; she's
the
Elder Sister, the oldest person in the whole world - and the wisest. I'm
QUEST Shannah Jay 81

very lucky to have been in her charge. I couldn't have had a better teacher.'

Davred was stroking her hair. It was madness to stay next to him, but she couldn’t move, didn’t want to move. 'Tel me about yourself,' she begged, in an attempt to stem this madness.

'I come from an advanced world. That's what we call them. Advanced! I don't consider them advanced now. The word means only that people have a lot of machines to serve them and that most of them live in great comfort. The machines don’t make people any wiser. I was tested as a child, a bit like your Festival of Choosing, but it's done by machines. The results showed that I had exceptional intelligence, so I won a place on a very special programme on a university planet. I left my home planet when I was eight. I haven't seen my parents since, except on message cubes, though I met one of my brothers once, quite by chance.'

'What is a university?'

'A sort of advanced school where people learn many things - the history of the Confederation, how to make new machines, how to terraform a planet . . . '

'Terraform?' She had to stop the flow of incomprehensible words, which were building wal s between them.

'Reshape the surface of a whole world, to make it more suitable for people to live there - flatten the mountains, change the air and vegetation and so on.'

'Flatten mountains?' she whispered. 'Can you really do that?'

'Yes. Mountain terrain isn't usually very productive. And we need all the land, because we have too many people.'

'Why do you not limit your families, instead?'

'We do, but only half-heartedly. As a consequence, we're continually having to search for new worlds where the children's children can live. That's how we discovered Sunrise. But then we found we couldn't use it. If a world is inhabited already by sentient beings, our laws say that we must leave it alone. And usually, suitable planets are already occupied. That's why we have to terraform the unsuitable ones.'

'And you leave no mountains. How sad! Herra was right. Your people have stepped aside from the Path of Wisdom.'

'Because we level mountains? We have to do the most good we can for the biggest number of people. On University Planet there was almost no open land left. There were layers of tunnels below the ground as well. I rarely saw real daylight. By the time I left, they were trying to find another planet where they could set up yet another university.'

She shuddered. 'It sounds dreadful. One day, if it’s allowed, I'll take you to the High Alder, Lord Davred, and you'll see for yourself what you've missed. People need beauty and distant horizons, as well as food.'

He abandoned his attempts to convince her of the need to terraform mountains. 'I'd love to see your home, Katia.'

She sighed. 'I'm just dreaming. I shall never be allowed to return there. Tell me about your home instead. What was your university planet like?'

'Just buildings and people. Food was grown hydroponically - that means in water - under the ground, and almost the whole surface of the planet was covered in buildings. But it was exciting, Katia, so exciting! There was so much to learn.

I wasn't unhappy there.'

'It sounds a bleak life to me. I grew up in the forests. I can't imagine life without trees and plants and animals. Even Temple Tenebrak was difficult for me. When I lived with my grandfather, I was truly happy.'

'You were fortunate. But I wasn't unhappy, so you needn't pity me. I worked through my studies joyfully and after I'd finished, I applied to join Confex - the Confederation Planetary Exploration Bureau's Research Branch.'

'I can't even begin to understand what that name means.'

'The Confederation is - oh, call it a Sisterhood of advanced planets.'

'And Bureau?'

QUEST Shannah Jay 82

'A bit like one of your temples. A community of people with a special purpose. My bureau sends people across space in search of new planets.'

'Mmmm. And Research Branch? What is that?'

'Another group within the Bureau - a group of people who try to discover new knowledge in as many areas as possible.'

'What sort of new knowledge?'

'Knowledge about other planets, or about making new machines, or about curing illnesses.'

'You have Healers like us?'

'Not like Herra. Our healers work with machines or with drugs. We call them medics. It takes them much longer than you to heal a broken limb. I still can't believe what Herra did to me.'

'Then our Healers are better than yours, are they not, Lord Davred? Your people should research
our
ways - not continue in your own.' She tried to use the new words and concepts correctly.

'I'm beginning to think that. Even your methods of training students would be of great value to Confex. But who knows if Central would ever listen? I'm still surprised to find myself here on Sunrise, Katia. I could give no reason that my people would understand for coming here. I just - I just knew that I had to come, knew that I couldn't let Robler send me away.'

'You
knew
,' she corrected. 'Perhaps that's one of your Gifts, as it is Herra's. Those who are
chosen
always have special Gifts.'

'My people call me a potential Cathartic Agent - one who is capable of finding solutions to major problems. That's why they didn't want me to leave, why they tried to pull my lifeship back to the satellite. Well, one of them did. Robler, the man in charge.'

'So - you are from a community of people who seek new planets - and from a smaller group within that community who seek new knowledge of all kinds - to take back to a sort of Sisterhood of worlds.'

'You have excellent understanding.'

She chuckled. 'No. Just a well-trained memory. I shan't understand it properly until I know more about your ways, perhaps not even then, not truly, for I'll never see your worlds. And now,' she finished firmly, standing up in one fluid movement, 'we should go back to sleep.'

* * *

The next day they continued to talk. There was nothing else to do in the cave. They quickly became like old friends, falling silent when they had nothing to say, and not feeling the need to force conversation. Davred shared his emergency rations with Katia, but she pulled a face at them and said they were dead food. She shared her dried fruit, and its taste alone suggested that there was truth in her criticisms.

'This is wonderful,' he said, savouring each mouthful.

'That? It's only emergency stores. Wait till you've tasted fresh glowberry juice!'

That night she woke again to find him restless, unable to sleep. 'You're worse than the newest novice,' she scolded, but she went to sit beside him. She knew he was finding things strange and at times frightening. Again he put his arm round her; again she tried to keep the talk to light, impersonal topics. But eventually she succumbed to the pleasure of leaning her head against his shoulder.

After a while he turned her face towards him. 'Katia - I think I've fallen in love with you.'

She gasped and tried to pull away from him. 'Love is a thing which must grow between two people.'

'Knowledge that one loves a person can come at first meeting, like what you call foresight. Didn't you feel it too, when we first met?'

QUEST Shannah Jay 83

She could not lie to him. 'I felt something, an attraction.'

He stroked the line of her cheek. 'May I kiss you? Do your people kiss with the lips to show their love, my Katia? I want very much to show my love for you.'

She gave a shuddering sigh and stretched out a hand to touch his hair. 'Yes, Davred, they do. But I will do no more than share one kiss with you. I'm not ready for more. I am - I must be - a Sister.
Your
Sister.'

The kiss was lingering and sweet. Afterwards they stayed close together without speaking for a long time. As before, it was Katia who moved away. 'Now the Discipline of Sleep, Lord Davred. Or your leg will be slow in healing.'

'You're very strict, my Katia. And I don't like it when you call me Lord.'

'Go to sleep - my Davred.'

#####

The next morning Katia awoke, as usual, at dawn. After meditating, because she couldn’t
gather
alone, she sat dreamily contemplating the flame-tinted sky, lost in thought.

'It's beautiful, isn't it?'

Davred's voice made her jump. 'Oh! You're awake.'

'Indeed I am. Good morning, my Katia.'

She blushed a fiery red. 'Lord, you mustn't cal me that. It means - surely you know what it means.'