Day by Night Read online

  “It’s a game,” Velday said. “I knew it would happen. We intended it.”

  “Oh wise-as-a-priest,” Omevia said.

  “Mevi is envious,” Naine remarked. The two bird chariots stalked neck and neck. The crimson marker was now a mere staed away, and the pace had slowed. Seen through the lines of the marching robots and the stands of cacti, a fawn animation poured gently to and fro on the swell of the plain. Unaware of the coming of death, the anteline herd browsed among the mosses.

  Omevia smiled.

  “Ceedres is handsome, but I’m not the head of House Ond, nor ever will be. I don’t expect to claim all his attention. You perceive, Velday, I can be as outspoken as your sister.”

  “I take no offense,” Velday said. “This business goes deeper than that with Ceedres.”

  “He told you so.”

  Velday tossed the flagon to Uched Yune Ket.

  “Rein in,” Naine called—a tradition, for no reins were attached to these vehicles.

  The robots had halted, and light flashed on the narrow mouths of uptilting guns.

  * * *

  • • •

  The three round domes of the temple were supported on three cylindrical towers, fifty feet high, twenty in diameter. The towers were linked together by pillared walks below, pillared walkways above, woven between countless doorways. The cool and creamy brass of the buildings shed flakes of sunlight onto the ground and into the flowering moss trees which foamed about their bases. Structurally, the outer temples resembled each other in every respect. The same domes and parapets and links, the same carpet of luxurious lawns. All were situated just over the border of the Yunea, at the brink of the hunting land beyond the great estates. All emitted the same uncanny sound, a tinsely whispering on the air like the breathing of obscure and abstruse gods.

  The bird chariot kneeled before the pillars.

  Ceedres descended, and held out his hand to Vel Thaidis. But she ignored the courtesy and stepped unaided from the bird on to the emerald turf, into the deep fathoms of the god sound.

  They walked, unspeaking again, up the burnished avenue, and as they approached, the door in the nearer tower slid open to admit them. From the lawn they could make out the priest standing ready in the place beyond the threshold.

  It was a circular chamber, the foot of the cylinder, columned, otherwise bare and without decoration or window, lit only by the soft false sunlight of the temple which flooded from walls and ceiling. The priest itself, entirely manlike in presentation, except for the poreless plastum skin and hairless skull, opened its flexible hands in a token of greeting.

  “Welcome, Ceedres Yune Thar.”

  “Thanks,” Ceedres replied to the priest, nodding as if to a human. Above all, the Courteous Address was used before the robot priests, not by law but as a code of etiquette among the princely houses. Generally, though, the priests did not speak the names of visitors. Ceedres apparently expected her surprise. “He recognizes me since this temple relates to Thar lands. And yes, I’m frequently here. Did you suppose I had no need of solace?”

  “Not the solace of priests,” Vel Thaidis said.

  “Do you seek the Room of Prayer, Yune Thar, or the upper room?” the priest inquired.

  “Both, my priest.”

  The inner circle of the floor, on which they stood, began to rise; overhead, the effulgent ceiling folded itself away. The floor of the lower chamber presently became the floor of the second chamber above. They were in the Room of Prayer.

  In common with the majority of her class, Vel Thaidis had come to such rooms most regularly in her childhood. Because of this, they had for her always a tenuous, transparent aspect of holiness, almost of magic, which was the ghost of her childish awe overlaid on adult perceptions.

  The walls, painted with the symbols of a science intelligible to robots but not to mankind itself, the yellow globes on their marble stands, a hundred facsimiles of the eternal sun. In order to pray, one should cross to such a globe, embrace it between the palms, rest the forehead against the satin texture of it. In this posture, saffron waters would seem to fill the brain, until at last awareness swam automatically into the invincible aura of the gods, those protectors of men.

  Unease was dissolved in this bath, if it had ever existed. Serenity and security proliferated like streams over the anxious soil of the mind.

  It was not rare for the vision of a park or garden to enter the spiritual eye at such a moment, a scene of forests, waters; a sky of flying beasts, set over with panes of shade. This dream or revelation of paradise, discounted as optical illusion and childish myth, lost all credence with maturity, and was not often seen past the fifteenth year. Inexplicable, it was frequently explained, until quite explained away, yet another casualty of growing up.

  Ceedres was watching her. They were children of the same world and the same social echelon. He, too, would be primed to this chamber and its meanings, the naïve romance of childhood, despite everything, never quite dispelled.

  “Whether we credit it or not,” he said, “our religion comforts us. Do you understand, Vel Thaidis? I don’t need to believe the ancient myths of our culture to find peace here.”

  “A seeker of solace and peace,” she said. “You.”

  “My priest,” said Ceedres, “please tell my companion the truth—that I keep J’ara in this temple one Maram in every five.”

  “It is true,” said the auto-priest.

  Vel Thaidis pressed the tips of her fingers to one of the yellow globes. Its light shone up through her flesh, negating it, leaving only the lattice of her bones. This too was truth, the skeletal framework within the skin, the framework of lies which supported the skin of innocence.

  “I accept that you pray, Ceedres,” she said. Her voice trembled but she continued. “You have some reason. Did you bring me here to impress me with your sad and noble condition? You failed.”

  “I brought you to show you a mystery of the temple. The upper room.”

  “The upper rooms of the temples contain their energies. Only the priests go there.”

  “Here, the priest is generous.”

  “You mean you’ve found some way to override its function. But I’ve no interest in a storage chamber full of mechanisms.”

  “Beautiful Vel Thaidis, always your eyes firmly bandaged and your ears stopped. One Jate you’ll stand in such a room as this for the gods’ blessing on your marriage. Blind and deaf then, as now, no doubt.”

  She had an impulse to escape him then, more intense than all the impulses—to escape or to linger—that had assailed her before. But his timing was excellent, and he had caught her hand before she could speak or retreat. “Upward,” he said decisively to the priest, and immediately the floor rose again. The ceiling opened overhead and her heart lurched thickly at what she saw—an incredible blackness, into which the ascending floor was carrying them.

  What has he done? she thought. And how has he done it? Few could intellectually interpret, let alone actively tamper with the fundamentals of machines. And a son of Thar, a house ruined due to the collapse of its technology—surely, of all men, he would be the least capable of such a feat. As for the blackness, the arcanely accursed blackness into which they went, it opened like the mouth of uninvited death. The idea of the blackness overwhelmed her, and she shrank.

  “After the peace, the domain of panic,” Ceedres said to her.

  She turned to him as she had turned to him in the silent valley, as to an unavoidable reference point. And with the utmost cunning, it seemed to her, again he mimicked her face, her expression. Thus she beheld her own furiously controlled and staring fear grimacing at her. But then it came to her that the strong hand which remained clasped over hers, was cramped like a vise.

  “Yes, I’m afraid as you are,” he said to her. “Fear of darkness is common to our race, Vaidi. And fear is a harsh teache
r, though better than the wine of peace and reassurance. Why else do the priests keep it from us? Why else do I explore this dark? To know my fear.”

  “To be afraid. Let me go,” she rasped. Yet she clung to his hand, and now all the black poured down over them, over their heads, their eyes; into their mouths and across their bodies. She shut her lids almost at once. She could barely keep from screaming. But their handclasp held her from it, that, and her desperate anguish that here she must betray herself totally, and that on this assumption he had brought her.

  “Priest,” she faltered wildly.

  “He won’t answer you, not in this room,” Ceedres said. Then his fingers came lightly to her eyelids. “Have I misjudged you, Vaidi? Are you such a coward?”

  “Don’t call me by my familiar name.”

  “A coward has no right to honor, or to names.”

  Eyes shut, she heard his breathing in the blackness, matched identically to her own. To orient herself, to dismiss her ambience with the ambience of the dark, she raised her lids.

  It was no longer black. Above her, and all about, as if floating in immeasurable vistas of jet-black air, white brilliants blazed, bright as the sun, surely brighter. As if the solar disc were blanched and broken and scattered, in specks and streaks, chains and powderings of white fire, a petrified rain—but fallen where?

  She began to shudder, but her fear had passed.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Truly hell, perhaps. Or death. Or a shadow. Always I fear to come here. Always the fear dies quickly. But you’ve shared it with me. And you’ve seen me afraid, Vel Thaidis. Not many can say that.”

  “How brave of you to return to your fear with such diligence. And to include another in the game.”

  “Now,” he said, “we stop playing.”

  His voice ran through her in a sudden current, and as suddenly she realized that he told her no more than she knew. The darkness had stripped her of fear and apprehension, and so she had nothing left with which to deny him. She stood under the white fires and waited for his words, his touch.

  “Beautiful girl,” he said to her, “exquisite girl.” The fires swarmed in his eyes, so that the fires became his eyes. His face was sketched in bold outline on the black, brow, lash, cheekbone, the carven nose and lip, the jaw with its silver cleft, the muscular tendon in the neck even, the hollow of the throat.

  Fascinated, she gazed at the miracle of him, waiting.

  “Truce, then,” he said. He let go her hand which seemed dismembered by the loss. But his hands moved, warm and living, to her shoulders. “We fight no more.”

  What did it matter if her had discovered her, found her out? He had found her. What was more valid? She acquiesced.

  Some feet away, in the glittering black, the priest. But again, she could forget the priest.

  Ceedres leaned toward her and the sprinkled fires seemed to swirl and shatter, and tumble like leaves, and gutter out.

  Held by him and against him, and his mouth on hers, she relinquished herself instantaneously. As sugar dissolved in wine, so she was dissolved in the essence of what he was, becoming a flavoring, an accessory, no longer with identity. Initially, the delirium was wonderful to her, to dissolve, to sink, to become nameless.

  But when he let her go, as her hand had seemed dismembered, her whole body now seemed anchorless and bereft. She stared at him in shocked bewilderment, aware of what every parting, of flesh or mind, would be hereafter.

  “I asked you stupidly before, Vaidi. Blame my pride and forgive me. Be my wife.”

  He spoke very low, to disguise his indifference, perhaps.

  He had overwhelmed her. He could not have done it if he similarly had been overwhelmed. Of course, she knew, even as she knew the hour of her surrender. And of course she would give in to him, float nameless and obliterated, delivering her reason to him as she would deliver her reason to the gods in prayer. Ceedres was her god. To be happy, she must worship him, and let him destroy her, and take pleasure in it.

  He was bringing her back, lifting her again into the new landscape of his arms.

  She noticed the cleverness of that hold, supporting her, encircling her, so she should sense a flawless completion, like positions in a skillful dance.

  “And the priest is to witness me,” she said, from a throat that did not want the reality of speech.

  “What better?”

  “What indeed,” she said dreamily. “You have genius, Ceedres. It would be fitting to adore you. To bring you the gift of half of Hirz. To grudge nothing.”

  She saw his mouth smile. He had cause, she supposed, for some amusement. He leaned to her and kissed her again, and she let herself lie deeply in the kiss, the last kiss.

  When he raised his head, she spoke.

  “My answer is no. And your priest can witness that.”

  An interval of no sound and no movement. Then: “Vaidi, the game has finished. This is in earnest.”

  “So it is. So is my answer. No. And no and no. Forever and always, no to you.”

  “Eyes bandaged, ears stopped,” he said. “You can’t hear your own self crying out to me.”

  He released her, to let her hear, every artery and nerve, calling after him, through the dark.

  Tears spilled from her eyes, amazing her; it was not yet the hour for them: she was not ready.

  “Wed Omevia,” Vel Thaidis said. “She can bring you something.”

  “Not what I want.”

  “All my property, and not much of myself.”

  There was a second quietness, and in the quiet the air seemed to change, to solidify and harden, and when he spoke again, she saw the battle was over, ashes, and the very fluid of her blood seemed to become dust, and her veins like the dry chasms of Thar.

  “You lack one incomparable talent,” he said, “the ability to lie. Not to others, Vel Thaidis, but to yourself. Do you have any conception of what that lack has cost you? I think not. Enjoy your ignorance while you can. Descend,” he added to the priest, and the floor staggered and drenched them in unbearable light.

  She had won the battle, and might never be happy again.

  * * *

  • • •

  “A poor shot, Naine. A hunt master should do better.”

  The anteline buck lay on its side. Its three-year dappled hide, a shifting kaleidoscope of fawn, umber and pale olive, was further spotted by blood. Its eyes, under the polarizing membrane, were wide. The fountain of five-pronged horns had scraped savage furrows in the moss, as, at Naine Yune Ond’s profligate shot, it had crashed down in agony. The energy bolt had smashed its spine, it could only kick spasmodically and rake with its horns. Everywhere about it, dispatched by the robots’ swift and unmistaken missiles, its kin had slumped motionless. The sky and the slopes were curtained off by dust, the fume of trampled moss, the after-charge of the guns. Not for some while did the hunters come by and note the anteline, neither living nor dead.

  Naine had produced a dispatching knife from his chariot, but Velday pushed the blade aside. He whistled. One of the metal men loped forward, took Naine’s knife and went to the beast.

  Its eyes fluttered. Perhaps it looked for help, or simply worse and more prolonged torture. Then the steel sheared through its throat.

  Compassion had stirred in Velday. His own shots had been accurate. The vast kill for food he had no qualms at, but this unnecessary individual suffering he shunned. Yet, with the beast’s slaughter, everything was tidied for him, the J’ara spontaneously cleansed and restored.

  His thoughts returned with affectionate malice to Ceedres and his sister. He foresaw, with the optimist’s tunnel vision, the conclusion of the quarrelling and a new era of good will ahead. Beyond his declaration—I knew it would happen. We intended it—he had offered no explanation of Ceedres’ and Vel Thaidis’ absence, nor who had intended, or known,
nor precisely in connection with what. That he and Ceedres had devised the scheme, certainly he had not mentioned. That Ceedres had formulated the scheme alone and Velday merely agreed to it, Velday did not remember.

  The hunt robots were gathering up the kill.

  The slain antelines lay piled on gilded sleds. They had had no omen, when they grazed among the mosses, that this would be the end of their J’ara. Nor had Velday any notion as to what would be the end of his.

  * * *

  • • •

  Vel Thaidis came from the temple and glanced about her at the world, which was the same. The lower sun, the shimmering valleys and the rocky boundary of Thar ten staeds to the zenith.

  She was dizzy and faintly nauseated, her physical person no longer seemed to possess any center or wholeness—a whirling planet robbed of its gravity. Yet the tears had dried on her cheeks and behind her eyes. She had recalled she walked, not with friend or lover, but with an enemy.

  They went to the kneeling bird, and Ceedres handed her in, stepping up after her.

  Over the outer rim of the valley, five or six staeds away and to hest, the rose marker in the sky had been replaced by yellow parasols of dust and after-charge.

  Ceedres stood looking at this sigil of the hunt.

  At that second, a resonant music came filtering from one of the domes of the temple: a singing clock telling the time to the wilderness, the twenty-second hour, Maram, the sixth hour of J’ara.

  “They hunt will be over,” Ceedres said.

  She could not assume he meant to begin another conversation with her, and she said nothing. The dust parasols to the hest had a transparency now, a dilution, the fume settling as no further shots were fired. If she chose to remain with Ceedres here, the returning vehicles would intercept them, very likely in a matter of minutes. Perhaps Ceedres would take sour delight in that, in her discomfort. She did not remonstrate. She had assessed herself as beyond the triviality of discomfort and embarrassment. She had plunged to the depths, that was, the lowest nadir of misery and unreason she had yet known.