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  His speech lasted for what seemed hours, but finally it began to wind up. “He speaks now of Union,” Valcarenghi whispered. “He will be Joined, he is joyful about it, he has craved it for so long. His misery is at an end, his aloneness will cease, soon he shall walk the streets of the sacred city and peal his joy with the bells. And then Final Union, in the years to come. He will be with his brothers in the afterlife.”

  “No, Dino.” This whisper was Laurie. “Quit wrapping human phrases around what he says. He will be his brothers, he says. The phrase also implies they will be him.”

  Valcarenghi smiled. “OK, Laurie. If you say so …”

  Suddenly the fat farmer was gone from the platform. The crowd rustled, and another figure took his place: much shorter, wrinkled excessively, one eye a great gaping hole. He began to speak, haltingly at first, then with greater skill.

  “This one is a brickman, he has worked many domes, he lives in the sacred city. His eye was lost many years ago, when he fell from a dome and a sharp stick poked into him. The pain was very great, but he returned to work within a year, he did not beg for premature Union, he was very brave, he is proud of his courage. He has a wife, but they have never had offspring, he is sad of that, he cannot talk to his wife easily, they are apart even when together and she weeps at night, he is sad of that too, but he has never hurt her and …”

  It went on for hours again. My restlessness stirred again, but I cracked down on it—this was too important. I let myself get lost in Valcarenghi’s narration, and the story of the one-eyed Shkeen. Before long, I was riveted as closely to the tale as the aliens around me. It was hot and stuffy and all but airless in the dome, and my tunic was getting sooty and soaked by sweat, some of it from the creatures who pressed around me. But I hardly noticed.

  The second speaker ended as had the first, with a long praise of the joy of being Joined and the coming of Final Union. Toward the end, I hardly even needed Valcarenghi’s translation—I could hear the happiness in the voice of the Shkeen, and see it in his trembling figure. Or maybe I was reading, unconsciously. But I can’t read at that distance—unless the target is emoting very hard.

  A third speaker ascended the platform, and spoke in a voice louder than the others. Valcarenghi kept pace. “A woman this time,” he said. “She has carried eight children for her man, she has four sisters and three brothers, she has farmed all her life, she …”

  Suddenly her speech seemed to peak, and she ended a long sequence with several sharp, high whistles. Then she fell silent. The crowd, as one, began to respond with whistles of their own. An eerie, echoing music filled the Great Hall, and the Shkeen around us all began to sway and whistle. The woman looked out at the scene from a bent and broken position.

  Valcarenghi started to translate, but he stumbled over something. Laurie cut in before he could backtrack. “She has now told them of great tragedy,” she whispered. “They whistle to show their grief, their oneness with her pain.”

  “Sympathy, yes,” said Valcarenghi, taking over again. “When she was young, her brother grew ill, and seemed to be dying. Her parents told her to take him to the sacred hills, for they could not leave the younger children. But she shattered a wheel on her cart through careless driving, and her brother died upon the plains. He perished without Union. She blames herself.”

  The Shkeen had begun again. Laurie began to translate, leaning close to us and using a soft whisper. “Her brother died, she is saying again. She faulted him, denied him Union, now he is sundered and alone and gone without … without …”

  “Afterlife,” said Valcarenghi. “Without afterlife.”

  “I’m not sure that’s entirely right,” Laurie said. “That concept is …”

  Valcarenghi waved her silent. “Listen,” he said. He continued to translate.

  We listened to her story, told in Valcarenghi’s increasingly hoarse whisper. She spoke longest of all, and her story was the grimmest of the three. When she finished, she too was replaced. But Valcarenghi put a hand on my shoulder and beckoned toward the exit.

  The cool night air hit like ice water, and I suddenly realized that I was drenched with sweat. Valcarenghi walked quickly toward the car. Behind us, the speaking was still in progress, and the Shkeen showed no signs of tiring.

  “Gatherings go on for days, sometimes weeks,” Laurie told us as we climbed inside the aircar. “The Shkeen listen in shifts, more or less—they try terribly to hear every word, but exhaustion gets to them sooner or later and they retire for brief rests, then return for more. It is a great honor to last through an entire Gathering without sleep.”

  Valcarenghi shot us aloft. “I’m going to try that someday,” he said. “I’ve never attended for more than a couple of hours, but I think I could make it if I fortified myself with drugs. We’ll get more understanding between human and Shkeen if we participate more fully in their rituals.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Maybe Gustaffson felt the same way.”

  Valcarenghi laughed lightly. “Yes, well, I don’t intend to participate that fully.”

  The trip home was a tired silence. I’d lost track of time but my body insisted that it was almost dawn. Lya, curled up under my arm, looked drained and empty and only half-awake. I felt the same way.

  We left the aircar in front of the Tower and took the tubes up. I was past thinking. Sleep came very, very quickly.

  I dreamed that night. A good dream, I think, but it faded with the coming of the light, leaving me empty and feeling cheated. I lay there, after waking, with my arm around Lya and my eyes on the ceiling, trying to recall what the dream had been about. But nothing came.

  Instead, I found myself thinking about the Gathering, running it through again in my head. Finally I disentangled myself and climbed out of bed. We’d darkened the glass, so the room was still pitch-black. But I found the controls easily enough, and let through a trickle of late morning light.

  Lya mumbled some sort of sleepy protest and rolled over, but made no effort to get up. I left her alone in the bedroom and went out to our library, looking for a book on the Shkeen—something with a little more detail than the material we’d been sent. No luck. The library was meant for recreation, not research.

  I found a viewscreen and punched up to Valcarenghi’s office. Gourlay answered. “Hello,” he said. “Dino figured you’d be calling. He’s not here right now. He’s out arbitrating a trade contract. What do you need?”

  “Books,” I said, my voice still a little sleepy. “Something on the Shkeen.”

  “That I can’t do,” Gourlay said. “Are none, really. Lots of papers and studies and monographs, but no full-fledged books. I’m going to write one, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. Dino figured I could be your resource, I guess.”

  “Oh.”

  “Got any questions?”

  I searched for a question, found none. “Not really,” I said, shrugging. “I just wanted general background, maybe some more information on Gatherings.”

  “I can talk to you about that later,” Gourlay said. “Dino figured you’d want to get to work today. We can bring people to the Tower, if you’d like, or you can get out to them.”

  “We’ll go out,” I said quickly. “Bringing subjects in for interviews fouls up everything. They get all anxious, and that covers up any emotions I might want to read, and they think on different things too, so Lyanna has trouble.”

  “Fine,” said Gourlay. “Dino put an aircar at your disposal. Pick it up down in the lobby. Also, they’ll have some keys for you, so you can come straight up here in the office without bothering with the secretaries and all.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Talk to you later.” I flicked off the viewscreen and walked back to the bedroom.

  Lya was sitting up, the covers around her waist. I sat down next to her and kissed her. She smiled, but didn’t respond. “Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Headache,” she replied. “I thought sober-ups were supposed to get rid of hangovers.”
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br />   “That’s the theory. Mine worked pretty well.” I went to the closet and began looking for something to wear. “We should have headache pills around here someplace. I’m sure Dino wouldn’t forget anything that obvious.”

  “Umpf. Yes. Throw me some clothes.”

  I grabbed one of her coveralls and tossed it across the room. Lya stood up and slipped into it while I dressed, then went off to the washroom.

  “Better,” she said. “You’re right, he didn’t forget medicines.”

  “He’s the thorough sort.”

  She smiled. “I guess. Laurie knows the language better, though. I read her. Dino made a couple of mistakes in that translation last night.”

  I’d guessed at something like that. No discredit to Valcarenghi; he was working on a four-month handicap, from what they said. I nodded. “Read anything else?”

  “No. I tried to get those speakers, but the distance was too much.” She came up and took my hand. “Where are we going today?”

  “Shkeentown,” I said. “Let’s try to find some of these Joined. I didn’t notice any at the Gathering.”

  “No. Those things are for Shkeen about-to-be-Joined.”

  “So I hear. Let’s go.”

  We went. We stopped at the fourth level for a late breakfast in the Tower cafeteria, then got our aircar pointed out to us by a man in the lobby. A sporty green four-seater, very common, very inconspicuous.

  I didn’t take the aircar all the way into the Shkeen city, figuring we’d get more of the feel of the place if we went through on foot. So I dropped down just beyond the first range of hills, and we walked.

  The human city had seemed almost empty, but Shkeentown lived. The crushed-rock streets were full of aliens, hustling back and forth busily, carrying loads of bricks and baskets of fruit and clothing. There were children everywhere, most of them naked; fat balls of orange energy that ran around us in circles, whistling and grunting and grinning, tugging at us every once in a while. The kids looked different from the adults. They had a few patches of reddish hair, for one thing, and their skins were still smooth and unwrinkled. They were the only ones who really paid any attention to us. The adult Shkeen just went about their business, and gave us an occasional friendly smile. Humans were obviously not all that uncommon in the streets of Shkeentown.

  Most of the traffic was on foot, but small wooden carts were also common. The Shkeen draft animal looked like a big green dog that was about to be sick. They were strapped to the carts in pairs, and they whined constantly as they pulled. So, naturally, men called them whiners. In addition to whining, they also defecated constantly. That, with odors from the food peddled in baskets and the Shkeen themselves, gave the city a definite pungency.

  There was noise too, a constant clamor. Kids whistling. Shkeen talking loudly with grunts and whimpers and squeaks, whiners whining, and their carts rattling over the rocks. Lya and I walked through it all silently, hand in hand, watching and listening and smelling and … reading.

  I was wide open when I entered Shkeentown, letting everything wash over me as I walked, unfocused but receptive. I was the center of a small bubble of emotion—feelings rushed up at me as Shkeen approached, faded as they walked away, circled around and around with the dancing children. I swam in a sea of impressions. And it startled me.

  It startled me because it was all so familiar. I’d read aliens before. Sometimes it was difficult, sometimes it was easy, but it was never pleasant. The Hrangans have sour minds, rank with hate and bitterness, and I feel unclean when I come out. The Fyndii feel emotions so palely that I can scarcely read them at all. The Damoosh are … different. I read them strongly, but I can’t find names for the feelings I read.

  But the Shkeen—it was like walking down a street on Baldur. No, wait—more like one of the Lost Colonies, when a human settlement has fallen back into barbarism and forgotten its origins. Human emotions rage there, primal and strong and real, but less sophisticated than on Old Earth or Baldur. The Shkeen were like that: primitive, maybe, but very understandable. I read joy and sorrow, envy, anger, whimsy, bitterness, yearning, pain. The same heady mixture that engulfs me everywhere, when I open myself to it.

  Lya was reading too. I felt her hand tense in mine. After a while, it softened again. I turned to her, and she saw the question in my eyes.

  “They’re people,” she said. “They’re like us.”

  I nodded. “Parallel evolution, maybe. Shkea might be an older Earth, with a few minor differences. But you’re right. They’re more human than any other race we’ve encountered in space.” I considered that. “Does that answer Dino’s question? If they’re like us, it follows that their religion would be more appealing than a really alien one.”

  “No, Robb,” Lya said. “I don’t think so. Just the reverse. If they’re like us, it doesn’t make sense that they’d go off so willingly to die. See?”

  She was right, of course. There was nothing suicidal in the emotions I’d read, nothing unstable, nothing really abnormal. Yet every one of the Shkeen went off to Final Union in the end.

  “We should focus on somebody,” I said. “This blend of thought isn’t getting us anywhere.” I looked around to find a subject, but just then I heard the bells begin.

  They were off to the left somewhere, nearly lost in the city’s gentle roar. I tugged Lya by the hand, and we ran down the street to find them, turning left at the first gap in the orderly row of domes.

  The bells were still ahead, and we kept running, cutting through what must have been somebody’s yard, and climbing over a low bush-fence that bristled with sweethorns. Beyond that was another yard, a dung-pit, more domes, and finally a street. It was there we found the bell-ringers.

  There were four of them, all Joined, wearing long gowns of bright red fabric that trailed in the dust, with great bronze bells in either hand. They rang the bells constantly, their long arms swinging back and forth, the sharp, clanging notes filling the street. All four were elderly, as Shkeen go—hairless and pinched up with a million tiny wrinkles. But they smiled very widely, and the younger Shkeen that passed smiled at them.

  On their heads rode the Greeshka.

  I’d expected to find the sight hideous. I didn’t. It was faintly disquieting, but only because I knew what it meant. The parasites were bright blobs of crimson goo, ranging in size from a pulsing wart on the back of one Shkeen skull to a great sheet of dripping, moving red that covered the head and shoulders of the smallest like a living cowl. The Greeshka lived by sharing the nutrients in the Shkeen bloodstream, I knew.

  And also by slowly—oh so slowly—consuming its host.

  Lya and I stopped a few yards from them, and watched them ring. Her face was solemn, and I think mine was. All of the others were smiling, and the songs that the bells sang were songs of joy. I squeezed Lyanna’s hand tightly. “Read,” I whispered.

  We read.

  Me: I read bells. Not the sound of bells, no, no, but the feel of bells, the emotion of bells, the bright clanging joy, the hooting-shouting-ringing loudness, the song of the Joined, the togetherness and the sharing of it all. I read what the Joined felt as they pealed their bells, their happiness and anticipation, their ecstasy in telling others of their clamorous contentment. And I read love, coming from them in great hot waves, passionate possessive love of a man and woman together, not the weak watery affection of the human who “loves” his brothers. This was real and fervent and it burned almost as it washed over me and surrounded me. They loved themselves, and they loved all Shkeen, and they loved the Greeshka, and they loved each other, and they loved us. They loved us. They loved me, as hotly and wildly as Lya loved me. And with love I read belonging, and sharing. They four were all apart, all distinct, but they thought as one almost, and they belonged to each other, and they belonged to the Greeshka, and they were all together and linked although each was still himself and none could read the others as I read them.

  And Lyanna? I reeled back from them, and shut myself off, a
nd looked at Lya. She was white-faced, but smiling. “They’re beautiful,” she said, her voice very small and soft and wondering. Drenched in love, I still remembered how much I loved her, and how I was a part of her and her of me.

  “What—what did you read?” I asked, my voice fighting the continued clangor of the bells.

  She shook her head, as if to clear it. “They love us,” she said. “You must know that, but oh, I felt it, they do love us. And it’s so deep. Below that love there’s more love, and below that more, and on and on forever. Their minds are so deep, so open. I don’t think I’ve ever read a human that deeply. Everything is right at the surface, right there, their whole lives and all their dreams and feelings and memories and oh—I just took it in, swept it up with a reading, a glance. With men, with humans, it’s so much work, I have to dig, I have to fight, and even then I don’t get down very far. You know, Robb, you know. Oh, Robb!” And she came to me and pressed tight against me, and I held her in my arms. The torrent of feeling that had washed over me must have been a tidal wave for her. Her Talent was broader and deeper than mine, and now she was shaken. I read her as she clutched me, and I read love, great love, and wonder and happiness, but also fear, nervous fear swirling through it all.

  Around us, the ringing suddenly stopped. The bells, one by one, ceased to swing, and the four Joined stood in silence for a brief second. One of the other Shkeen nearby came up to them with a huge, cloth-covered basket. The smallest of the Joined threw back the cloth, and the aroma of hot meatrolls rose in the street. Each of the Joined took several from the basket, and before long they were all crunching away happily, and the owner of the rolls was grinning at them. Another Shkeen, a small nude girl, ran up and offered them a flask of water, and they passed it around without comment.