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Hello!" and she laughed, shook her head with confusion, and changed over to
English, though strange phrases kept tumbling into it in her excitement.
"You're safe?" she demanded. "Am I still dreaming. Are you all right? I got
you into trouble you didn't bargain for when I dragged you into my problems,
didn't I? I'm awfully sorry. I "
"Keep it in English!" Sawyer broke in. "I can't understand Khom! We're all in
trouble and we'll have to help each other out." He touched the soot-stain on
her cheek. "What's been happening to you?"
"The Isier guards came," she said simply. "We knew they would, of course. They
burned grandfather's house and we just got away in time. They're still hunting
for me. Probably they'd have found me already if this attack on the city
hadn't started. Were you involved in that? Do tell me what's been happening to
you!"
A crisp phrase from behind her made Klai turn. The old man was smiling at
them, but his blue eyes stayed cool and wary. He stroked the stable cat with
unvaried smoothness, but what he said made
Klai pull herself together and turn Sawyer to face the old man.
"Zatri is his name," she said. "He's my grandfather, and he's a wonderful man.
He says there isn't much time to waste. I told him about the Firebird and what
Nethe said back there on the steps, before the Goddess came. The Firebird's
something we don't know about, but grandfather thinks it may be very
important. He wants to know what's been happening, but there may not be time
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for much talk. The Sselli are beginning to swarm up into the city, and we may
have, fighting in the streets too close for comfort. Grandfather hopes you may
have some information we can use."
"What sort of information?" Sawyer asked.
Klai repeated the question and the old man's eyes gleamed as he leaned
forward, speaking in urgent syllables.
"For a thousand years," Klai translated soberly when he finished, "the Isier
have enslaved our people. We aren't allowed freedom of any land, not even
freedom to think or to learn. To the Isier we're simply animals. Grandfather
thinks this may be our chance to put an end to their rule. "He wants you to
know he wouldn't have risked the lives of his men when they rescued me from
the
Isier, not even to save his own grandchild, if he hadn't hoped I'd brought
back some sort of information we could use, from wherever I'd been. Well, I
didn't. But he thinks maybe you might."
"Wait a minute," Sawyer said. "Tell him I'm with him if he wants to make
trouble for the Isier. I
got into this in the first place to stop the looting of uranium from Fortuna.
I know a lot more about that than I did. I want to get back to Earth and
finish my job. I'd like to stay alive, too.
I'd just as soon you did." He smiled at her. "But I wouldn't interfere with
the Isier now, even if
I could. Without them, who's going to prevent the Sselli from killing us all?
Have the Khom any defense against them?"
She shook her head, gave him a troubled glance. "From what I hear, not even
the Isier can actually destroy them. They seem to be a little oh, overawed,
terrified by the Isier. But not when they're in a frenzy, like right now. I
don't know what's going to happen."
"I wish I knew a little more about those savages," Sawyer said. "Surely you've
developed some way to deal with them, or you'd all be dead."
"But they're new!" Klai said. "They only began to trouble us when the Isier
Well went dry. We Khom aren't supposed to know about that, of course, but my
grandfather was a Temple slave for a long, long time, and he knows all sorts
of secret listening posts in the Temple. We even know why the
Isier fear the Sselli.
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"Sselli means well, younger brother, but with a strong sense of hatred and
rivalry. The Isier say the Goddess committed some frightful sin in allowing
the Well to die. Now the whole race is being punished. The Isier originated
down below in the lower world, the Under-Shell. It's forbidden land. Nobody
ever goes there. But soon after the Well died, lights began to shine down
there, and then the Sselli started to wander up the floating islands and make
a lot of trouble. They're invulnerable, like the Isier themselves. The theory
is that a new race of potential gods is being reared in the Isier homeland, to
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