Gene Wars #01 - Hammerfall by C. J. Cherryh

Author:C. J. Cherryh [Cherryh, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Technology & Engineering, Science, Life on Other Planets, Women, Nanotechnology & MEMS
ISBN: 9780061057090
Google: Dr5lyY3aZXgC
Amazon: 0061057096
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Sixteen

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The book of an au’it may not be opened except by an au’it and it may not be read to the people except an au’it read it. If a village wishes to know what is in an au’it’s book, let them ask the au’it.

—The Book of Priests

THE PRIESTS CAME TO THE ILA’S TENT WITH THEIR besha-drawn carts, and the chief priest, a haughty old man, strode angrily past Memnanan, went into the Ila’s tent and came out again with his hauteur aimed solely at the junior priests and with a very chastened demeanor toward Memnanan.

“We are,” the chief priest said, every word labored, “to take the library in our charge. Where shall we dispose it?”

“Men of mine will guide you down,” Memnanan told him, and with a nod of his head toward Marak: “He has the Ila’s authority in this matter.”

The priest looked at Marak in dismay, and turned to the junior priests to give orders. Aui’it came out, bearing books; and so priests went in, and servants, so that it became a hand-to-hand stream, loading the leather-bound books into their arms, one to the next past the veils and curtains of the interior, and servants passed books on to priests and soldiers outside, and they laid them carefully onto carts which would have fared very well on the pavings of the city. Now, with the increasing loads, they bogged in the wet sand around the Ila’s Mercy, and required the beshti to labor to move them. “Not so many in a load,” Memnanan said, and added under his breath, “fools.”

“To the outside,” officers shouted as they filled each cart. Memnanan sent an officer down with precise instructions, while Marak and his companions sat on mats in the shade of the awning and rested, truly rested in the bawling confusion. Norit slept longest, curled up in a knot. Hati waked and sat sharpening a knife. Neither of them had use in what proceeded. Marak himself let his head down and catnapped in what should have been the heat of the day, but was in fact cool and pleasant.

Important men and women arrived at the tent, and Marak lifted his head, overhearing that rumors were suddenly rife in the camp, regarding caravans leaving. “Caravans may indeed leave,” Memnanan told them. “And if I were you I’d see to my herds, and have the beasts watered before the Mercy grows crowded.”

Priests’ white robes were now brown-edged with soil from the spring, dusty and stained by the moldering dye of the books; but on they worked, better men than they looked, in Marak’s estimation.

The aui’it labored with them so far as loading the last carts, and two of them in their red robes went with the carts, down the sole straight road that led from the Mercy through the camp, and if rumor was not now running the circuit of the camps, nothing less than a star-fall in their midst would rouse curiosity.

Servants hung about in the doorway of the Ila’s tent with worried looks on their faces.

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