2
"The city is a desolation." Miniaan slipped out of shadow into the clearing, where the others waited for her without a fire; she was shaken, short of breath. No longer young, she had hurried on the ten-mile return journey from Vestoia through high-noon heat of jungle. "I could not even find the house where I was born. Oh, Pakriaa—Paul—of every ten houses, seven are empty. The streets are dirt and rubbish. No one knew me. Well, that's not strange. Those I met supposed I was a stranger, probably from the east. But the ones who were suspicious did not challenge me—they slipped into their sorry houses and stared at me through the cracks." She sat down in weariness, wiping sweat from her scarred head and shoulder. "Word of what I said will travel quickly. But not one followed me here. I made sure of that."
Arek asked, "Have you had anything to eat?"
"No, I—only walked through the streets.... Doc, some had English words—a few, badly spoken. No one could pronounce d at the beginning of a word, and they had absurd turns of speech I don't understand. One woman said to me, 'One fella goddamn skirt belong you what name?' I thought she was asking about this skirt I made in the old fashion, but then we spoke in the old tongue: I found she only wanted to know who I was and where I came from. It seems that now, under Spearman-abron-Ismar, they indicate—what word do I want?—social—social levels——"
"Castes?"
"Castes, that is it, Paul—they indicate castes by the color of a skirt. In the old days there were only two castes—soldiers and voluntary laborers, not considering the family of Lantis or the slaves at the bottom. Now there are—oh, ten, twenty, I don't know. Those who work at the dye pots must never do anything else, and they can look down on the workers in hides; this woman was a maker of arrowheads and despised both.... I told her (and some others) that I was a stranger from a distant village, and I said I had heard by rumor of other gods and giants, who would come one day soon to talk with Spearman-abron-Ismar—yes, they call him that, Spearman-male-issue-of-Ismar. It frightened her: she made excuses and ran away. I told it to another, an old woman, who broke out cursing and weeping. She said, Oh, no more of them! No more——' And sat down in the street and scattered dust on her head."
"Did you see—him?"
"No, Paul. I saw the palace—changed, with new tall doors. There were soldiers at the entrance, so I did not dare go near. They wore a headdress—it was the old bark fabric, I think, but a shape I never saw. I saw the great stockade—always the biggest thing on the shore of North Lake—still in repair; there was the same sluice, to wash away the blood of the meat slaves. There is still a ferry near it, where the crossing is narrow at the lake's inlet; I could see across—streets and tree-sheltered houses. And outside the city I saw a mound, very foul. Once the city was clean. There was a boy playing near it—ran when he saw me, but I caught him and asked him about that mound. I could hardly understand his gabble. It seems that nowadays in Vestoia children have reason to be afraid of grown women. When we could talk he told me the mound was the grave of the False Empress, the Wicked One—everyone who passes is required to defile it. A law."
Pakriaa laced her wrinkled hands at her throat, smiling at Christopher Wright, quoting a few of his own words: "'The laws are living things: let men guard them against crippling and disease.'"
Nisana asked, "What is next to do?"