Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [32]
Reynald looked away with an embarrassed expression that made him seem much younger. "Then he is a very lucky man."
Cesca felt sorry for him, even mildly attracted to him, but her impending marriage with Ross Tamblyn was unbreakable, despite her secret feelings for Jess. Adding Reynald to the equation would make the already complicated situation intolerable.
Still, though nothing had been resolved, Reynald seemed generally happy with the discussions. He bowed again. "Before I return to Theroc after this long peregrination, allow me to extend a most heartfelt invitation to you, or any other Roamer you choose as your representative, to visit our spectacular worldforest. Sooner or later, you must get tired of empty space."
"Space is never empty, if you know what you are looking for." Cesca clasped his hand warmly. "Still, I look forward to seeing it someday."
15 NIRA KHALI
Perched at the top of the world, Nira Khali curled her toes around the frond and stood balanced, without a care and unafraid, even so high up in the sky. She had not yet taken the green, had not felt the worldtree song pulsing through her blood or seen the green tinge darken in her skin. Nevertheless, she trusted the worldforest with all her soul.
Her skin was dusky brown, but soon she would bear the photosynthetic pigmentation that would show everyone that she had been accepted by the magnificent trees. An acolyte for most of her young life, she understood the way of the forest, communed with the enigmatic interconnected mind even though the trees couldn't hear her directly. Not yet.
For her day's assignment, Nira read aloud in a rich, dramatic voice, engrossed in the stories from ancient literature that the Caillié colonists had brought with them. She sensed that the trees liked these stories of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. She had read several different versions of Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, as well as myriad retellings by Howard Pyle, John Steinbeck, and a succession of others. There were many inconsistencies among the legends, but Nira didn't think the trees were confused. The forest mind actually enjoyed contradictions and discrepancies, and occupied a portion of its slow semiwaking consciousness pondering the implications.
Nira served the worldforest by reading to the trees, but she also delighted in the opportunity to learn for herself. From childhood, she had spent years keeping records of where missionary green priests were distributed around the Spiral Arm, bearing treelings, spreading the forest.
Young acolytes were taught to tend the forest. They nurtured the smallest potted treelings prepared for transportation off-world; they cared for the largest ancient sentinels, plucking off old fronds and picking bark clean of parasites. Nira preferred reading aloud, and she thought the trees enjoyed it as well. When she talked to the trees, even while she was doing menial tasks, Nira always kept her mind open and her ears cocked, listening for an answer. One day, when she was a green priest, she would hear the voice.
Barefoot and bare-chested, acolytes wore only loincloths, exposing as much skin as possible to the trees. Human skin was a sensitive receptor, an interface with the worldtrees. Whenever Nira climbed to the canopy for her daily work, she stroked the fronds, pressed her chest against the trunk. She had shorn her dark hair close to the scalp, as most acolytes did, leaving only a fuzz on the crown of her head. All her hair would fall out as soon as she took the green.
Since childhood, she had recognized her destiny to become part of the ecological web of the worldforest, which grew year after year. Before the Caillié had been brought here long ago, the worldforest had been only an isolated group of semi-intelligent trees on a single planet. There, because it had no way to grow intellectually, or experience new things, the worldforest had languished in isolation for thousands of years.
However, when the settlers came, a girl named