Read Online The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: C. J. Cherryh
Tags: Fiction
Ads: Link
he protested their rough handling of their belongings; they maintained a surly silence toward him, a fevered haste, interspersed with a chittering among themselves, as they loaded baggage on the transport sled that was to carry it away; another vehicle waited, a passenger sled.
“Now, now,” one said, probably the extent of the human vocabulary he had troubled to hear, urging their haste; and only when Stavros himself appeared did the younglings assume decorum.
Even an elder human had his honor from the regul: they seemed to regard Stavros with a healthy fear.
But Duncan, when he looked back as they were boarding, chanced to look directly into the face of one of the younglings that bent, assisting them into the sled, and nostrils snapped shut and lips clamped, a look of hate that transcended species.
They were on Kesrith, among regul, who would be their companions and counselors in dealing with the evacuation of other regul who had made their homes here for centuries. They had come to take this world as conquerors, conquerors who, at least for thirty days, were only two, and vulnerable. The world had belonged to regul and to mri; and it was likely that certain of the crew of
Hazan
had called Kesrith their home.
It dawned upon him with immediacy that there could be more than simple racial or political hatred among regul toward their presence on Kesrith.
And perhaps there were many residents on Kesrith who had never consented to the treaty that disposed of their world and brought humans to it.
The inconvenience is minor,
Stavros had translated the bai’s assurance. Perhaps in the bai’s eyes it was minor: the regul were not supposed to be able to lie; but in the eyes of the regul younglings that attended them there was no lie either, and it told a different story.
While they were on Kesrith, they would be housed in a building called the Nom, in the center of the chief city of Kesrith, and they would be thus protected for the first and most critical days against the irritations of Kesrith’s natural atmosphere and the other minor inconveniences of the local climate: they would be expected to adapt.
And he saw Stavros’ face when they first broke out of the ship’s warmth into the wide world, and had their first sight of the place: hills, mountains, white plains, strangely lit by a ruddy pink sun.
For Stavros this was home, forever. His assignment was to prepare for other humans, to direct them after they had come, to build civilization again; and already Duncan was considering that five years here might be a very long time.
Regul, and alkali flats, and geysers, dust and mines and a sun that looked sickly and too large in the sky. He had been on half a score of worlds in his travels in the service, from bare balls of rock to flowering wildernesses,but he had never been on one so immediately alien as Kesrith.
Forbidding, unfriendly to humans. The very air smelled poisonous, laden with irritants.
If Stavros felt regret, he did not show it. He let himself be handled like a regul elder, already playing the part, and the younglings handed him down to the land sled that waited below. It was well after dawn, the sun a quarter of the way up the sky. There was, instead of the welcome they had expected—like most regul courtesies, carefully controlled and managed—a still and ghostly quiet about the port, as if they and the younglings were the only living things about the premises.
And far away, on the heights, was visible something that set Duncan’s heart to beating more rapidly, a clutch of fear at the stomach that had nothing to do with reason, for there was the peculiar silhouette of four slanted towers that formed a flat-topped, irregular pyramid.
A mri edun. He had known there was one onworld. He had seen pictures of the ruins of Nisren. He was unprepared for it to be here, so close. It overlooked the city in such a way that nothing that was done on the plains could be hidden from it.
It brooded, an ominous
“Now, now,” one said, probably the extent of the human vocabulary he had troubled to hear, urging their haste; and only when Stavros himself appeared did the younglings assume decorum.
Even an elder human had his honor from the regul: they seemed to regard Stavros with a healthy fear.
But Duncan, when he looked back as they were boarding, chanced to look directly into the face of one of the younglings that bent, assisting them into the sled, and nostrils snapped shut and lips clamped, a look of hate that transcended species.
They were on Kesrith, among regul, who would be their companions and counselors in dealing with the evacuation of other regul who had made their homes here for centuries. They had come to take this world as conquerors, conquerors who, at least for thirty days, were only two, and vulnerable. The world had belonged to regul and to mri; and it was likely that certain of the crew of
Hazan
had called Kesrith their home.
It dawned upon him with immediacy that there could be more than simple racial or political hatred among regul toward their presence on Kesrith.
And perhaps there were many residents on Kesrith who had never consented to the treaty that disposed of their world and brought humans to it.
The inconvenience is minor,
Stavros had translated the bai’s assurance. Perhaps in the bai’s eyes it was minor: the regul were not supposed to be able to lie; but in the eyes of the regul younglings that attended them there was no lie either, and it told a different story.
While they were on Kesrith, they would be housed in a building called the Nom, in the center of the chief city of Kesrith, and they would be thus protected for the first and most critical days against the irritations of Kesrith’s natural atmosphere and the other minor inconveniences of the local climate: they would be expected to adapt.
And he saw Stavros’ face when they first broke out of the ship’s warmth into the wide world, and had their first sight of the place: hills, mountains, white plains, strangely lit by a ruddy pink sun.
For Stavros this was home, forever. His assignment was to prepare for other humans, to direct them after they had come, to build civilization again; and already Duncan was considering that five years here might be a very long time.
Regul, and alkali flats, and geysers, dust and mines and a sun that looked sickly and too large in the sky. He had been on half a score of worlds in his travels in the service, from bare balls of rock to flowering wildernesses,but he had never been on one so immediately alien as Kesrith.
Forbidding, unfriendly to humans. The very air smelled poisonous, laden with irritants.
If Stavros felt regret, he did not show it. He let himself be handled like a regul elder, already playing the part, and the younglings handed him down to the land sled that waited below. It was well after dawn, the sun a quarter of the way up the sky. There was, instead of the welcome they had expected—like most regul courtesies, carefully controlled and managed—a still and ghostly quiet about the port, as if they and the younglings were the only living things about the premises.
And far away, on the heights, was visible something that set Duncan’s heart to beating more rapidly, a clutch of fear at the stomach that had nothing to do with reason, for there was the peculiar silhouette of four slanted towers that formed a flat-topped, irregular pyramid.
A mri edun. He had known there was one onworld. He had seen pictures of the ruins of Nisren. He was unprepared for it to be here, so close. It overlooked the city in such a way that nothing that was done on the plains could be hidden from it.
It brooded, an ominous
Similar Books
