She then hastened her pace and went on in front of him, past flowers, past the many jetting fountains, till she reached the raised round place where she sat, tucking her bare feet in under her skirt.
His thoughts were all a riot of amazed expostulation. This great queen, this conquest — for he could not help feeling her being here as one — was more poor and plain than the girls who herded the deer.
She looked straight up at him, insistent, troubled. ‘Ben Ata, there is something very wrong.’
Again the heavy sigh from him. ‘If you say so.’
‘Yes. Yes, there is. Tell me, your herds, your animals, have there been reports of illness?’
He now looked straight at her, serious, in thought. ‘Yes, there were reports. Wait though — no one seemed to know what was wrong.’
‘And the birth rate among them?’
‘It’s down. Yes, it is.’ Even as he confirmed her, he could not resist the jeer: ‘And what did the two nags have to tell you?’
‘They don’t know what is wrong. But they are low in spirits, all of them. They have lost the will to mate … ’ As the obligatory jest became imminent, she pressed on, dismissing it — and him, he felt, in wild rebellion at her — with, ‘No, do listen, Ben Ata. It is all the animals. All. And the birds. And as we know, that means the plant kingdom, too, or if not now, soon …’
‘Do we know?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Despite the feeble attempt at a jeer, in fact his eyes most seriously engaged hers, in responsible enquiry. He believed her. He was alerted, and ready to do what he could. This seriousness brought him down beside her, closer than before, but not as if he felt any likelihood of comfort or reassurance from her touch.
‘Are as many children being born?’
‘No, there are not. There has been a long steady decrease.’
‘Yes, and with us, too.’
‘Outlying parts of our Zone are lying derelict.’
‘Yes, and with us, too.’
They were silent a long while. Through the drenched air of the eastern sky, light struggled from the rising sun. The clouds were a pale wet gold, and a yellowish haze lay everywhere. The spice trees were spangled with rainbows and shafts of opaline light pierced the banks of fog rising from the marshes. The fountains splashed on water, and their noise seemed subdued by the general damp.
‘I suppose it is quite pretty,’ she said in the smallest of dismayed voices, and suddenly he let out a bellow of a laugh, but it was not unfriendly, far from it. ‘Oh, come now, it isn’t as bad as that,’ he said. ‘You’ll see, when the sun is up, and things have dried off. We have some very pleasant days down here, you know.’
‘I hope so! Feel my dress, Ben Ata!’
But this invitation put them back again. It was certainly not coquetry, and to be invited to feel her dress for any other reason affronted him. He took a fold of the dark blue stuff between thumb and finger, and pronounced it damp.
‘Ben Ata, we have gone wrong somewhere. Both our Zones. Badly. What are we going to do?’
His hand dropped away. He frowned. ‘Why don’t they tell us what is wrong, quite simply, and be done with it. And then we could put it right.’ He observed her very small wry smile. ‘Well, and what is wrong with that?’
‘I think we are supposed to think it out for ourselves.’
‘But why! What for! What is the sense of it! It wastes time.’
‘That’s not how things work — I think that must be it,’ she almost whispered.
‘How do you know?’ But as he asked, he observed himself that his question was already answered. ‘How long is it since you had an Order?’
‘So long that no one can remember. But there are old stories. And songs,’ she said.
‘Well, I certainly can’t remember anything. When I became king nothing of the sort was told me. When the Order arrived I remembered that they have to be obeyed. That I did know. But that was all.’
‘In my lifetime there has been nothing. Nor in my mother’s.’
‘And hers?’
‘Not for generations of the Mothers.’
‘Ah,’ he said, brisk and noncommittal.
‘You know, I think that things are very serious. Very bad. Dangerous. They must be!’
‘You think they are?’
‘Well, for us to be together like this. Ordered to be. Don’t you see?’
Now he was silent again. He was frowning. He sighed, without knowing he did, and it was from the effort of unaccustomed thought — he was not used to speculation on these lines. As for her, she watched him: this Ben Ata, the man who sat quiet, thinking, trying to puzzle out the meaning of their dilemma — this man she felt she could like. Respect. Again her hand went out and into his, in an impulse of friendliness, and his great hand closed over hers like a bird trap. It opened at once and she saw him look down at their two hands in incredulity. Then he gave her the most helpless, unhappy glance.
Now she sighed, briskly withdrew her hand, and stood up.
She turned her back on the yellow and gold skies of the east, and stared up past him into the sky. She was looking up at the peaks and heights of her own realm. ‘Ohhhh,’ she sighed out, ‘look … I had no idea … I did not have any idea …‘
The mountains of Zone Three climbed more than a third of the way to the zenith. She stood with her head bent back, gazing up at the towering lit heights there. The rising sun was making them blaze and glitter, and the sharp points of the uttermost peaks seemed to be heaped with clouds that shone pink and red and gold—but they were not clouds, these were the piled snows of a thousand years. And low down against this mass lay the dark edge, rock-fringed, fort-fringed, which was the edge of the escarpment she had ridden down only the day before. The vast plain that lay between the escarpment and the foothills of the plateau, which was itself the low base for the innumerable mountain masses of our land—this was not visible at all. One would not know it was there. The inhabitants of this low watery Zone could never imagine, gazing up at that scene of a hundred mountain ranges, the infinite variations of a landscape and country that were not to be seen by them at all. Al·Ith was standing there, her hands cradling her bent back head, gazing up, up, and she was smiling with delight and longing, and weeping with happiness as she gazed.
Ben Ata gazed at her. He was uncomfortable.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said gruffly.
Reluctantly, she returned her gaze downward, and saw him disapproving. ‘But why not?’
‘It is not right.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘We do not encourage it.’
‘What?’
‘Cloud gathering, we call it.’
‘You mean, people don’t look up at all that … that glory?’
‘It is weakening.’
