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  And he went by her and across the salon, his black clothes seeming blacker than any others in the room. At the door he paused to salute Olvia, who fluttered, holding up diamanté hands. Then he was gone.

  A burning fury filled Vitra. Her mouth became ugly as Vyen’s had been. Casrus asked too much of her, too much of them all, and worse, never asked for those things which they would freely and gladly have given. “Marry me,” he should have said to her. “Be my wife, entertain me; I’ll forget my madness.”

  She hated him, and she hated the worms, and she hated Vyen’s smug blandness, his vicious romantic eyes upon her face, watching the fury and the hatred bite deep in her heart.

  A comet passed. The room screamed into crimson.

  The beetles brought in Olvia’s silly dinner.

  * * *

  • • •

  Vitra’s personal dreams during the dregs of that Maram were swift and ferocious. Vyen had remained at Olvia’s palace, a thing which Vitra neither queried nor approved.

  Next Jate, about the thirteenth hour, she would return to the Fabulism chamber on Iu and begin work again upon her drama. Next Jate, there should be passion and upheaval enough, if only on a screen.

  Angrily she blew out the coldly golden light that burned by her sofa (in the dark, she needed no Maram-chamber). And she remembered how Casrus had left her, had not wanted her, thinking her purposeless and worthless.

  But I am not.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Part One

  At the seventeenth sun-blazoned hour, Maram commenced, the customary Time of Sleeping.

  To designate periods of sleep and wakefulness had, eons before, been considered necessary to the Yunea, over which the sun was fixed forever in the green sky. No sunrise, no sunset, no phase of darkness intervened. Maram was marked only by the singing clocks of the palaces, the striking clocks of the Slumopolis. Aristocratic sleepers retired to their shade-producing Maram-chambers, others kept wakeful J’ara, remaining active by the golden light of eternal day.

  The inhabitants of the Yunea knew no other style of life, and if their forebears ever had, the knowledge had been mislaid. The static-seeming sun remained, and the world turned, always face to face with the solar disc, so that geographical direction itself constantly altered, traveling onward in a circular motion. The palace of the Hirz, for example, was located during the first hour at the ninth station of Ne in hest, or hest-Ne. At the fifth hour, the hour Vel Thaidis had waited by the lake shore, the palace had moved into the thirteenth station of Dera, in the hespan half of the globe. Hest and hespa were the two circuitous directions of the planet. Otherwise, traveling inward meant toward the zenith, that area over which the sun directly stood in perpetual high noon. The center of the earth was inevitably a desert of classic, unrelenting barrenness.

  The vast Ring of the Yunea and its own inner ring of the Slumopolis ended well clear of this waste at the Zenith perimeter.

  Conversely, retreating outward six hundred to seven hundred staeds beyond the great estates of the Yunea, the Fading Lands, farthest from the eternal sun, sank away, uncharted and unvisited save by machines.

  At the seventeenth hour, the first hour of Maram, the Hirz palace entered the first station of hest-Ume; the palace of the Thars, twenty staeds away, had correspondingly entered hest-Aite.

  Soon, the beautiful aircraft of the Hirz, like a slender jeweled insect, glided up into the lower atmosphere and headed hespa.

  Seen from below, the craft moved swiftly. Seen from the craft, the ground appeared to drift by with a deceptive smoothness that suggested leisure. The short dry rain had fallen in the fourteenth hour; now the sky was clear almost as glass. The tawny green veldt of the Hirz estate alternated with its lush moss plains, dabs of heavy foliage and the glittering channels of aqua courses, the mineralized, glaucous man-fashioned near-water of this world. The lake itself, the glory of Hirz lands, presently drew away. Stony hills marked the boundary of the Thar holding.

  On the other side of the hills decline was already quite evident. Tracks of sand had encroached on its plains, a dusty, scabby undersoil pushed through rise and valley alike. Many aqua courses had evaporated, their previous positions indicated only in thirsty slashes where forests of cacti had feverishly rooted. Here and there were patches of dead plantation, wizened and shriveled from lack of moisture, all leafage and fruit long vanished. On a slope, a sapphire-colored machine, uncorroded, glinted in the sun, but did not perform any function. Technology had perished at Thar decades ago. Now year by year, moment by moment, even before watching eyes, it seemed, Thar died.

  Velday did not speak of it. That his sister viewed the wreckage beneath must be sufficient—it did not need words: the whole country displayed its plight with one desolate pleading nakedness. And Vel Thaidis did not look away. She had not traveled to Thar since she was thirteen, Ceedres seventeen, which was his coming of age. The same year old Yune Thar, Ceedres’ father, drank a painless drug in order to kill himself. Old Yune Thar had not been able to bear ruin. He left it instead as a legacy for his son.

  It was difficult for Vel Thaidis, however, to dwell on these things impartially. She looked at them with her new eyes, enlightened now, and rather than grow tender, she resisted, pushed compassion aside. If she loved Ceedres, she could not afford compassion for him also. So she thought of Ceedres and Velday as young boys, riding along the great Hirz beach, laughing in the sunlight, which gleamed on their bronze mechanical mounts and their bronze human bodies. And of herself, shut up to learn to play upon the Chame, in the house, her eleven-year-old fingers clumsy with resentment and the first intimations of loneliness.

  After an hour, the aircraft skimmed above a marsh, where giant shade reeds speared from pockets of debased mud, aglow like bloody gems. The marsh had been a river once. On its bank, the palace climbed in the traditional Yunean arches and pillared blocks of plastum marble and metal.

  The house had not lost it grandeur. The gardens were overgrown, yet still fresh and vivid, while beyond the shoulder of the bank stretched the last staeds of decent ground. But it was not much. And what there was had been kept vital merely by the spasmodic help of the Chures, the Onds; mostly by Velday’s passionate help which flowed into Thar unceasingly. Indeed, Velday stinted Hirz in order to salvage the dregs of Thar. Even now, two or three Hirz machines were visible at work on the land.

  The aircraft dipped down, flaring its gossamer-like wings and letting out its insectile legs. In the humming aftermath of flight, Vel Thaidis heard the tinny rattle of the marsh reeds in their slots of blood.

  Other craft stood about on the bank. She absently took in the insignia of Ket and a regular flotilla of Yune Ond air vehicles, Omevia’s butterfly among them. The robots and hunting equipment Velday had sent would already have arrived.

  At the fourteenth hour, as the dry rain had dusted against the lake, Vel Thaidis had had her hair re-tinted: black. It had been an instinctive gesture of war. Now she regretted it, plainly too late.

  Thar’s large lower salon echoed to the sounds of conversation and crystal ware, but not to the unmistakable tread of house robots. Ceedres was forced to serve his guests in person, which he did skillfully, as if it were his choice to do so, and not necessity. The ancient furniture, heavy and sullen, pressed against the walls as if it had withdrawn in disdain. Frescoes and painted windows had faded, and their colored reflections were dim. The fountain played into its marble basin, though no gilt mechanical fish wriggled any longer across the basin’s floor.

  Yet there were still wine and spirits in the cellars. Vel Thaidis stood between two columns, watching Ceedres move about from group to group, easy, gracious, bearing the flagons. She saw him also with her strange new sight, his unique profile against the zenith windows, the flex of the muscles in his arms as he poured drink into the antique smoky crystal cups of Thar. Everything was alarming to her. She braced herself in perplexity against h
is advance, as before she had only braced herself in dislike and irritation.

  Then suddenly he was in front of her, his arm lightly and briefly across the shoulders of Velday, as he extended to her the open formal hand of princely greeting. She took the hand, as she had done on frequent previous occasions, and was astonished that no tactile shock passed from his flesh into hers.

  “I observe the proprieties this Maram,” he said to her, “to disarm your fury, dread lady.” He had put down the flagons before approaching them. Velday had taken them up and poured for all three, with a movement as tactfully gracious as Ceedres’ own in serving the others. Bitterly, she acknowledged a quality that her brother gained in Ceedres’ vicinity, as if together they invented some extra dimension of manhood and nobility.

  “Did the tracking robots bring back good news?” Velday said, bridging her silence.

  “Antelines, fifteen staeds over the outer border of Thar. A generous herd, seven or eight hundred of them.”

  “Good hunting, then.”

  “Very good. And will you accept the role of hunt master, Velday?”

  It was a mere courtesy, since the hunt robots were from Hirz.

  “Not I. Give it to Naine Yune Ond, he likes to labor.”

  “Hunt mistress, then, to Vel Thaidis, if she will accept. One level head at least, for the love of life.” Ceedres looked at her directly for the first time, and his eyes, darker than her own, seemed to lift her forward and actually from her body. His gaze was intense, open, and therefore menacing. She felt he understood her dilemma quite well, for only the victor of the combat would dare to throw away his shield.

  “I accept,” she said.

  “Oh, but you hate to be in at the killing, Vaidi,” Velday protested.

  Ceedres assumed an expression that was his own. She wondered that Velday could miss its scorn, the utter assurance. Then the expression melted into a replica of Velday’s, merely slightly taken aback and amused. “Forgive me if I offended you again, Vel Thaidis. I haven’t seen you at a hunt since you were a child. Don’t let good manners impel you to agree.”

  “I said I accepted. After all, half the hunt machines are mine.”

  Velday turned sharply from her. She saw Omevia, drifted close on her gauzes, had overheard, and one or two more besides. But Ceedres’ eyes remained candid, remained the eyes of victory.

  “And does it,” he said, “insult you also to drink my wine?”

  She held the cup toward him.

  “Excuse me, I’m not thirsty.” He took the cup. By clipping and lowering her voice, she was able to control it. “Put the wine back in the jar, Ceedres. You can hardly afford to be wasteful.”

  She had not expected a particular reaction. It was virtually the same insult as twice before. Yet for an instant his candor faltered. Thus she perceived the candor itself was the shield.

  “I should have been warned by your hair,” he said, “shouldn’t I?” Then her heart jumped for he said generally to the gathering: “Naine, be my Hunt Master. Choose any female partner you wish, but this one. Vel Thaidis Yune Hirz has consented to be Mistress of the Hunt, and will therefore ride with me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The hunting chariots of Hirz, unlike the toy chariots for exercise, were not beast-drawn. Hollow, brazen bird forms, they rose up on sensitive, long-clawed feet and jointed legs, almost two and a half yards clear of the ground, to stride, kneel, leap and run in response to the relevant touches on their boxed controls. From the arched bird necks and the gilded rails the riders looked down across mathematically spaced lines of pedestrian robots, faceless metal men, inexorably advancing, seldom varying position or pace. Half a staed in front of these, and utterly noiseless, darted the vanguard of the hunt, the flying midges of spy kites, threading like needles through air and plants, their hair-fine fringes—nostrils, eyes and ears—flicking this way and that.

  The machines were capable of hunting alone; the presence of man was not essential. Men, indeed, provided an element of uncertainty, the risk of lost game, botched kill, imperfection and inefficiency. Yet men hunted in their striding vehicles behind the army of machines, as if afraid to be left behind, superfluous and unneeded.

  It had taken about two hours to reach the outer border of the Thar estate, the birds running at full speed. Even so, the desolation was grimly apparent. Black chasms empty of liquid, and the spilling powders of dust and sand. They had passed, racing, between the craning pillars of a dead plantation, a petrified fretwork against the sky whose talons raked the plum-green canopies of the chariots. And once the hunt strutted over a bone-pale bridge of ornate design, with a rusty swamp around its ankles.

  Nobody commented on these sights, or on the use of Hirz equipment. Naine whooped encouragingly and flagons were tossed, racer to racer, as they galloped on.

  The boundary came in a sudden cascading over of the land, a rocky cliff tumbling into luminous valleys. The hunting veldt beyond the estates was a wilderness. Forests had seeded randomly, tall cacti and curious mutated flora. There was little liquid, but here and there one of the antiquated shining aqua-towers would be revealed, a pool spreading over its reservoir in a flat green apron.

  The bird chariots bounded wildly, almost recklessly, but with faultless safety, down the cliff.

  Yet Vel Thaidis felt a momentary horror—more a premonition or an allegory of her own confusion than reaction to the descent itself.

  “We’re traveling too fast for your enjoyment,” Ceedres said, touching the box. It was the first thing he had said to her since their ride together began.

  “Don’t trouble,” she said.

  They had entered the shadow of the cliff, and glancing behind, missed the sun, for it had gradually dropped below the midpoint, half down the sky, and here, at the outer ring of the Yunea, for a few moments, the cliffs would hide it altogether.

  Ahead, the other chariots, the robot men and the kites, like bright waves which never ebbed. Below and beyond, fourteen staeds away, a rosy cloud rested thirty feet or so in the air. It was the marker left previously by the scouting hunt robots, the giveaway of the anteline herd roaming and feeding nearby. She thought: So everything hunted is betrayed by some marker, some trace, high in the air for all to see. She visualized her emotions, a crimson cloud above the chariot.

  “This contest between us,” Ceedres abruptly said, “it’s not of my devising.” She did not answer, staring back at the hidden sun, whose dazzle was gradually reemerging over the rock as the ground leveled behind. “A truce, Vaidi—pardon me, Vel Thaidis. What should I do to retrieve your good opinion of me, assuming you ever had one?”

  She said: “Why assume that?”

  The sun reappeared and struck at her with a knife-edged splendor. She looked away and saw, along the bowl of the valley, the gleam of a temple, and all the three bright hunting waves approaching it, far distant.

  “What then did I do, as a small child, to anger you?”

  “We’ve lagged some way after the rest,” she said.

  “Never mind. Won’t you answer my question?”

  “You made me Mistress of the Hunt. The hunt is almost a staed ahead.”

  “I slowed our vehicle on the cliff in deference to your concern.”

  He touched the box idly, and the bird chariot ceased to move.

  A vast stillness seemed to come down with the slanted sunlight, the cliff shadow folded under it. The sandy plain of the valley was freckled with musk-clovers, lending the stillness its own peculiar scent. The hunt was now remote, the far side of the gleaming temple. She felt the hugeness of the valley, the cliff. All things seemed to be drawing away, as the hunt had done, in slow glimmering, unebbing waves, leaving her at the center of an empty beach. So she found herself magnetized toward the one sure point of reference: the man beside her.

  “Deliberately you have kept me here,” sh
e said. “Why?”

  “To settle our differences, Vel Thaidis. For some years, this inexplicable venom has been on the boil between us; Vay is like my brother.”

  “Nothing need worry you then,” she said. “Let’s get on.”

  The green canopy colored his skin and fair hair. She had started to analyze his face, rather than look at it too thoroughly.

  “You’re anxious to attend the kill, the slaughter of the antelines by superior robots and careless, inaccurate men? No, you’d rather talk, even to me, perhaps. Set me a penance,” he said, “as the auto-priests used to do, with transgressors of particular laws. For I’ve transgressed some law of yours, lady, for certain.”

  She turned and gazed along the valley. The hunt had disappeared. She thought of the maimed antelines stumbling in their career of terror before the killing rain of the guns.

  “We’ll go to the temple, then,” Ceedres said. “Speak to the priest. You can ask him to punish me, whichever way you choose, for whatever it is I’ve done, or what you think I will do.”

  “Don’t—” she said, and paused, unable to grasp what she had intended to ban.

  “Don’t? Pleading isn’t for a daughter of Hirz. Is it?”

  Ashamed, she recognized her fear as marvelous, and that she did not want it to end.

  “Do as you wish,” she muttered. Disgusted at herself and the betraying hovering marker, and her surrender to the maiming shot.

  * * *

  • • •

  Velday laughed, as he caught the flagon Naine threw to him.

  Naine’s companion, Omevia, watched Velday under whitely nacred lids.

  “Such laughter, and your sister left behind.”