3 x T

She stuck her head out the window of the coach. A city lay ahead. Its walls were visible for a long distance across the floodplain of the Margush?like the other towns in the valley, it stood on a hill composed of a couple of thousand years of its own rubbish. "What's the name of that place?" she called up to the driver.

"That is Mawsil," the woman replied.

"We're getting to know where we are," Kawar said. He confidently spoke to the driver. "Helmand is the next city ahead?"

But her answer caught him by surprise. "No," she said, "the next city eastward is the Holy City, where the two of you, fortunate as you are, will meet the goddess."

Kawar scratched his head. "That has to be Helmand."

"So it does," Magda said grimly.

"More interference, you think?"

"I wish you'd convince me otherwise."

"Thankfully, the problem is not really mine?it's hard for geologists to interfere in a planet's life."

"Yes, but what happens when the Purists in the Assembly start yapping about terrible Terran cultural imperialism and cut the Survey Service budget in half? You'll find it even harder to interfere when you never get near another non-Federacy planet again."

"The Chairman can tell the Finance Committee that even if there was interference here, it turned out well," Kawar said. "This world argues for interference, not against it."

"Does not blowing your brains out at Russian roulette argue for playing it?" Magda retorted. "This is just as much fool luck as the other?once you spin the cylinder, you don't know what's going to happen till it's over. And when things go wrong, that's too bloody late, and somebody else has to clean up the mess. Us, in this case."

Magda also had a picture of the Survey Service Chairman going against doctrine in front of an Assembly committee. She kept it with her other fantasies, like guitar-playing woodpeckers and tap-dancing trees. The Chairman, a career bureaucrat named Paulina Koch, habitually wore gray only because there was no blander color.

They spent the night in a fine hostel in Mawsil, then pressed on to the Holy City with a fresh driver and a new set of priestly "escorts." As Magda had since entering the Margush valley, she questioned the newcomers about their faith. "How is a new goddess chosen when the old one dies?"

The leader of the escort was so startled, he almost fell off his mount. "The goddess does not die. If she died, how could she be a goddess?"

"Forgive me, please; I am only an ignorant foreigner," Magda said for the hundredth time. She tried another tack. "Does the earthly vessel holding the goddess's divinity die? If so, how is a new vessel chosen?"

"The goddess is the goddess," the priest said. Magda spread her hands and gave up. She'd gotten similar answers from others she'd questioned, but kept hoping that as she drew close to the Holy City she could penetrate the mummery surrounding the locals' deity. That she kept failing deterred her only a little.

Peasants labored in the lush green fields. They turned Archimedean screws to bring water from the Margush into the irrigation canals. Windmills also helped in that effort; Magda saw a crew repairing one. She pointed to them and asked the driver, "How long have your people known that device?"

The driver obviously had never thought in those terms. At last she said, "As long as anyone can remember."

"Not what one would call precise, but expressive," Kawar observed. Magda's agreement was strained.

The road, which paralleled the Margush, bent slightly south. Magda saw what had to be the Holy City ahead. "That's Helmand," she said flatly.

Irfan Kawar leaned out the window. "It's certainly in the same spot, isn't it?"

Traffic was heavy. Most of the travelers were pilgrims, seeking a glimpse of the goddess. But there were others. A woman propelled herself past the Terrans' coach on a contraption halfway between a scooter and a pedalless bicycle.

"I've never seen anything like that before," Magda said to one of the priests in the band of escorts.

"Nor have I," he said. "Doubtless she plans to present the invention to the goddess in hope of being rewarded for it."

"Doubtless," Magda agreed sourly. She was starting to wish none of the locals would ever have any more new thoughts; her reports would be a lot easier to write.

The Holy City was packed with people, beasts, and wagons. Because of the crush, the party took almost as long to find its hostel as they had traveling from Mawsil. Magda and Kawar gulped sour wine while one of their escorts went back out into the heat and crowd to report their arrival. "Poor devil," Kawar said, putting down his mug with a sigh of relief.

Magda leaned back in her chair. "Now that we're here, I expect we'll be able to relax a while. It'll take days for the word to pass up through the hierarchy?and more days, it looks like, for anyone to get through the jam to do anything about it."

"Good," Kawar said. "That will let me take a bath. I itch everywhere."

"Me too. God, I'd kill for a good cold shower."

"Don't speak of such things. I've been trying to forget they exist."

The tub was made of caulked wood. Servants hauled bucket after bucket of blood-warm river water to fill it; whatever else it boasted, the Holy City did not have much of a drainage system. The locals also knew nothing of soap?hard scrubbing and perfume made up some for the lack.

The Terrans flipped a coin to see who would get the tub first. Kawar won. The bathwater, already slightly turbid from the Margush, was even murkier after Magda unbelted the robe that had long since replaced her coveralls and started fighting the grime that coated her.

There was some sort of commotion down the hall. Magda was doing a good job of ignoring it until a squad of iron-corseleted troops burst into the bathroom. She yelped and grabbed at herself. The locals had no strong modesty taboos, but she did not care to be on display for them, either.

She shook her head to get the wet hair out of her face and glowered at the soldiers, as well as one can glower from a tub. "What are you armored louts doing here?" Her voice held thirty degrees of frost.

The squad leader did not leer at her; on the other hand, her hauteur failed to impress him. He said. "Dry and dress yourself as quickly as you may. The eternal goddess requires your presence."

He folded his arms and waited. Magda did not think he was trying to humiliate her, only to see she did not run. Nevertheless, it rankled. To make him fidget, she dallied as long as she could, until Irfan Kawar called anxiously from the hallway to make sure she was all right. She reassured him and moved faster.

Outside the hostel, a musician blew a harsh blast on a trumpet made from a seashell. "Clear a path!" she shouted. "Clear a path for the servants of the goddess!" Taa-raaa! "Clear a path!"

As nothing else had done, the discordant music melted the crowds. "The goddess can work miracles," Kawar said, nodding toward the empty roadway ahead. Despite his flip tone, he sounded worried; the summons was alarmingly abrupt.

Magda laughed, as much to keep up his spirits as for her own. She had her own reasons for concern, which she did not share with Kawar. The horn call was eerily like the royal flourish the Leeuwenhoek had recorded so long ago. The culture had changed so much in other ways that she wondered at such a strange piece of conservatism.

She had studied the Leeuwenhoek's map of Helmand until she could have found her way around the town blindfolded. The Holy City's streets, though, were laid out in the same grid pattern that served most towns. It was nothing like the old maze. Nor was the building toward which the squad led the Terrans at all similar to the ancient royal palace. But Magda would have sworn it was in the same part of the city.