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He was lost in confusion.
He asked himself: Does it matter, really, whether we are human or something else? We are what we are, and what we are is far from contemptible.
No. No.
Better than anyone else he knew what the monkey-beings of the jungle were like. He had looked them straight in the eyes, and had seen the beastliness there. He had been seized around the throat by a powerful furry tail and nearly done to death. He had heard their cackling gibberish. With all his soul he detested them; and with all his soul he prayed that the artificials had been lying, that there was not even the most distant of kinships between his people and the monkeys of the jungle.
He told himself fiercely that he and his people were human beings, just as Koshmar insisted. But he wished he could be as sure of that as she seemed to be. He wished he had some proof. Until then he must live in doubt and torment.
The People shared Vengiboneeza with other, smaller creatures, some of them very troublesome.
The monkeys of the jungle occasionally entered, dancing along the high ledges and cornices of the nearby buildings and tossing things at those below — pebbles, pellets of dung, little prickle-edged scarlet berries that burned like hot coals. Serpents with ruffled green mantles behind their heads were everywhere, coiling sleepily between rocks, but now and again uncoiling to hiss and strike. The girl Bonlai was bitten, and also the young warrior Bruikkos, and both were ill for many days, feverish and pain-racked, despite the medications and spells that Torlyri used on them.
Salaman, prowling between two slope-roofed three-sided alabaster buildings a hundred paces behind the main tower, came upon a slab in the ground with a metal ring set into it, and made the mistake of tugging on it. The slab lifted easily, and immediately a horde of gleaming iridescent blue-and-gold creatures no larger than a thumb came swarming up from the depths of the earth. Their eyes were huge and glittered like fiery red jewels, and their clacking little jaws were sharp as blades. Salaman endured a dozen bites, from each of which blood began to stream. He yelled in pain and Sachkor and Moarn came ru
Each day brought some new a
All in all, though, the city was not an unpleasant place to be. There were some who said that life here was almost as good as dwelling in the cocoon. And others declared that life in Vengiboneeza, for all its little a
One day in the fifth week of their stay in Vengiboneeza, Koshmar called Hresh to her and said, “Tomorrow you and Konya will begin to explore the city.”
“Konya? Why Konya?”
“Did you expect to go out alone? We can’t risk losing you, Hresh.”
That was maddening. He had assumed that when Koshmar finally sent him out into Vengiboneeza he would be able to move at his own pace, thinking his own thoughts and poking his nose wherever he felt like poking it, without having to put up with some great hulking impatient warrior who had been given the job of protecting him. He argued, but it was useless. The sapphire-eyes folk, Koshmar said, might have filled the city full of deathtraps; or perhaps the outlying districts were occupied by the screeching monkeys, or some new kind of noxious insect or reptile with a poisonous bite. He was too valuable to the tribe. She would take no chances. One of the warriors would accompany him. Either that, she told him, or he could stay in the settlement and let the older and stronger men do the exploring without him.
Hresh was wise enough now to know when he could try to oppose Koshmar’s decisions and when it was best simply to abide by her wishes. He let the issue drop.
When morning came the day was warm and bright, with low-hanging mists quickly burning off. “Which way do you plan to go?” Konya asked, as they stood in the plaza before the great tower.
Hresh had no plan. But he peered in his most serious way to the right and to the left, as though deep in contemplation, and then pointed his forefinger straight ahead, toward a broad and awesome boulevard that seemed to lead to one of the grandest sectors of the city.
“That way,” he said.
In the begi
To Hresh it was like entering an enchanted world. He was dizzy with excitement and his eyes flickered so wildly from one thing to another that his head began to throb. He wanted to take in everything at once, in a single greedy gulp.
He saw buildings everywhere whose grandeur and massive forms took his breath away. The Great World seemed almost still to be alive. Any moment, he imagined, sapphire-eyes or vegetals or sea-lords might come sauntering out of that building of swooping parapets over there, or this one that rose in delicate filigreed arches that looked like frozen music, or that one of the yellow towers and wide-jutting wings.
“In here,” he called to Konya. “No, this one! No, this looks better yet! What do you think, Konya?”
“Whichever you want,” the warrior said stolidly. “They all look good to me.”
Hresh gri
But very quickly Hresh found out that it was not like that at all.
Many of the buildings that appeared so amazingly well preserved on the outside were mere ruins within. Some were empty shells, containing nothing more than a trickle of ancient dust. Others had collapsed inside so that one floor lay piled upon another in chaos, and it would have taken an army of strong diggers to penetrate the mounds of debris. In others, seemingly intact facades and cabinets came apart at the lightest touch, dissolving into clouds of dark vapor when Hresh approached them.
“We should be going back now,” said Konya finally, as the purple shadows of afternoon began to gather.
“But we haven’t found anything!”
“There’ll be other days,” Konya told him.
It was intensely embarrassing to return from the expedition empty-handed. Hresh could scarcely bear to look at Koshmar’s face as he made his report.
“Nothing?” Koshmar said.
“Nothing,” said Hresh, mumbling sheepishly. “Not yet.”
“Well, there’ll be other days,” said Koshmar.
He went out nearly every day, except when it rained. Usually it was Konya who went with him, sometimes Staip; never Harruel, for he was too huge, too overbearing, and Hresh told Koshmar bluntly that he would never be able to accomplish anything with Harruel breathing down his neck. Hresh would have preferred not to have Konya or Staip with him either, but Koshmar absolutely forbade that, and grudgingly he had to admit that she was right not to let him go off into the city alone. Hardly anyone else in the tribe knew how to read at all, let alone how to interpret the chronicles. If anything happened to him the People would be left helpless, cut adrift from all knowledge of the past and any hope of comprehending what the future might hold.