Martin, George R.R. - The Stone City

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The Stone City

THE STONE CITY

Martin, George R. R.

The crossworlds had a thousand names. Human starcharts listed it as Grayrest, when they listed it at all—

which was seldom, for it lay a decade's journey inward from the realms of men. The Dan'lai named it

Empty in their high, barking tongue. To the ul-mennaleith, who had known it longest, it was simply the

world of the stone city. The Kresh had a word for it, as did the Linkellar, and the Cedrans, and other

races had landed there and left again, so other names lingered on. But mostly it was the crossworlds to

the beings who paused there briefly while they jumped from star to star.

It was a barren place, a world of gray oceans and endless plains where the windstorms raged. But for the

spacefield and the stone city, it was empty and lifeless. The field was at least five thousand years old, as

men count time. The ul-nayileith had built it in the glory days when they claimed the ullish stars, and for

a hundred generations it had made the crossworlds theirs. But then the ul-nayileith had faded and the ul-

mennaleith had come to fill up their worlds, and now the elder race was remembered only in legends and

prayers.

Yet their spacefield endured, a great pockmark on the plains, circled by the towering windwalls that the

vanished engineers had built against the storms. Inside the high walls lay the port city—hangars and

barracks and shops where tired beings from a hundred worlds could rest and be refreshed. Outside, to the

west, nothing; the winds came from the west, battering against the walls with a fury soon drained and

used for power. But the eastern walls had a second city in their shadows, an open-air city of plastic

bubbles and metal shacks. There huddled the beaten and the outcast and the sick; there clustered the

shipless.

Beyond that, further east: the stone city.

It had been there when the ul-nayileith had come, five thousand years before. They had never learned

how long it stood against the winds, or why. The ullish elders were arrogant and curious in those days, it

was said, and they had searched. They walked the twisting alleys, climbed the narrow stairs, scaled the

close-set towers and the square-topped pyramids. They found the endless dark passageways that wove

mazelike beneath the earth. They discovered the vastness of the city, found all the dust and awesome

silence. But nowhere did they find the Builders.

Finally, strangely, a weariness had come upon the ul-nayileith, and with it a fear. They had withdrawn

from the stone city, never to walk its halls again. For thousands of years the stone was shunned, and the

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The Stone City

worship of the Builders was begun. And so too had begun the long decline of the elder race.

But the ul-mennaleith worship only the ul-nayileith. And the Dan'lai worship nothing. And who knows

what humans worship? So now, again, there were sounds in the stone city; footfalls rode the alley winds.

* * * *

The skeletons were imbedded in the wall.

They were mounted above the windwall gates in no particular pattern, one short of a dozen, half sunk in

the seamless ullish metal and half exposed to the crossworlds wind. Some were in deeper than others.

High up, the new skeleton of some nameless winged being rattled in the breeze, a loose bag of hollow

fairy bones welded to the wall only at wrists and ankles. Yet lower, up and to the right a little from the

doorway, the yellow barrel-stave ribs of a Linkellar were all that could be seen of the creature.

MacDonald's skeleton was half in, half out. Most of the limbs were sunk deep in the metal, but the

fingertips dangled out (one hand still holding a laser), and the feet, and the torso was open to the air.

And the skull, of course—bleached white, half crushed, but still a rebuke. It looked down at Holt every

dawn as he passed through the portal below. Sometimes, in the curious half-light of an early crossworlds

morning, it seemed as though the missing eyes followed him on his long walk toward the gate.

But that had not bothered Holt for months. It had been different right after they had taken MacDonald,

and his rotting body had suddenly appeared on the windwall, half joined to the metal. Holt could smell

the stench then, and the corpse had been too recognizably Mac. Now it was just a skeleton, and that

made it easier for Holt to forget.

On that anniversary morning, the day that marked the end of the first full standard year since the

Pegasus had set down, Holt passed below the skeletons with hardly an upward glance.

Inside, as always, the corridor stood deserted. It curved away in both directions, white, dusty, very

vacant; thin blue doors stood at regular intervals, but all of them were closed.

Holt turned to the right and tried the first door, pressing his palm to the entry plate. Nothing; the office

was locked. He tried the next, with the same result. And then the next. Holt was methodical. He had to

be. Each day only one office was open, and each day it was a different one.

The seventh door slid open at his touch.

Behind a curving metal desk a single Dan'la sat, looking out of place. The room, the furniture, the field—

everything had been built to the proportions of the long-departed ul-nayileith, and the Dan'la was

entirely too small for its setting. But Holt had gotten used to it. He had come every day for a year now,

and every day a single Dan'la sat behind a desk. He had no idea whether it was the same one changing

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The Stone City

offices daily, or a different one each day. All of them had long snouts and darting eyes and bristling

reddish fur. The humans called them foxmen. With rare exceptions, Holt could not tell one from the

other. The Dan'lai would not help him. They refused to give names, and the creature behind the desk

sometimes recognized him, often did not. Holt had long since given up the game, and resigned himself

to treating every Dan'la as a stranger.

This morning, though, the foxman knew him at once. “Ah,” he said as Holt entered. “A berth for you?”

“Yes,” Holt said. He removed the battered ship's cap that matched his frayed gray uniform, and he waited

—a thin, pale man with receding brown hair and a stubborn chin.

The foxman interlocked slim, six-fingered hands and smiled a swift thin smile. “No berth, Holt,” he said.

“Sorry. No ship today.”

“I heard a ship last night,” Holt said. “I could hear it all the way over in the stone city. Get me a berth on

it. I'm qualified. I know standard drive, and I can run a Dan'lai jump-gun. I have credentials.”

“Yes, yes.” Again the snapping smile. “But there is no ship. Next week, perhaps. Next week perhaps a

man-ship will come. Then you'll have a berth, Holt, I swear it, I promise you. You a good jump man,

right? You tell me. I get you a berth. But next week, next week. No ship now.”

Holt bit his lip and leaned forward, spreading his hands on the desktop, the cap crushed beneath one fist.

“Next week you won't be here,” he said. “Or if you are, you won't recognize me, won't remember

anything you promised. Get me a berth on the ship that came last night.”

“Ah,” said the Dan'la. “No berth. Not a man-ship, Holt. No berth for a man.”

“I don't care. I'll take any ship. I'll work with Dan'lai, ullies, Cedrans, anything. Jumps are all the same.

Get me on the ship that came in last night.”

“But there was no ship, Holt,” the foxman said. His teeth flashed, then were gone again. “I tell you,

Holt. No ship, no ship. Next week, come back. Come back, next week.” There was dismissal in his tone.

Holt had learned to recognize it. Once, months ago, he'd stayed and tried to argue. But the desk-fox had

summoned others to drag him away. For a week afterward, all the doors had been locked in the

mornings. Now Holt knew when to leave.

Outside in the wan light, he leaned briefly against the windwall and tried to still his shaking hands. He

must keep busy, he reminded himself. He needed money, food tokens, so that was one task he could set

to. He could visit the Shed, maybe look up Sunderland. As for a berth, there was always tomorrow. He

had to be patient.

With a brief glance up at MacDonald, who had not been patient, Holt went off down the vacant streets of

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