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Copyright ©1992 by Paula E. Downing
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RINN'S STAR
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Sara Wojciehowski for her friendship and her help with this book; to my editor at Del Rey,
Shelly Shapiro, for her continued enthusiasm and encouragement; and to my husband and fellow-writer,
T. Jackson King, for his love in all the ways.
Chapter 1
IN THE DEPTHS of the asteroid Quevi Ltir, all valued the shadows of tier and fallway. Jahnel Alain
paused in the First Turning and looked behind her at the Faon emerging from the fallway leading
downward to the City. Her companions seemed strange in gray vacuum suits instead of their usual black
caped aals and pale bodysuits that mimicked the appearance of the alien Avelle who owned Quevi Ltir.
In the light gravity of the asteroid, the human descendants of the French colony-ship
Phalene
moved with
an Avelle grace in the asteroid's low gravity, with an Avelle liking for shadows. Instinctively, her
companions moved to the deep shadows along the walls, flowing past her in a double stream on either
side, rising toward the surface to battle at Avelle bidding. She floated in midcorridor, waiting for Sair
Rostand, her senior husband and kin-leader today in their kin-group, the Louve. She did not like the
choosing on this day, for all its necessity. She did not like it at all.
She puzzled over her uneasiness. It was not the imminent danger of attacking the miin's intruder ship now
hiding in a crater near the surface ruins—the Faon were brave enough and had fought in the City's tier
wars when Lejja, the Principal of Songs, bid them. Nor could she deny the necessity: as cleverly as
Koyil, the Principal of Laws, had managed his machines, the surface defenses had not driven away the
miin from Quevi Ltir. This next attack required guile and flexibility, the workings of a truly living mind, not
mechanical inflexibility. Nor could she deny the choosing of the Faon: her people owed a great debt to
the Avelle and were better suited physically to attack and feint on the asteroid surface. Yet still she
distrusted.
She grimaced at her reflections, uneasy about uneasy truths she had rarely questioned, a complexity
typically Avelle in its convolutions. I value the safety of shadows, she thought, but shadows can also
conceal dangers. What is Koyil's purpose in sending us? The Principal of Laws had opposed the rescue
of
Phalene
eighty years before, had remained adamant in that opposition. As well as she knew the
Avelle, she could not solve the puzzle today of the Principal's machinations—or, rather, suspected the
obvious. Could it be as simple as sending Faon to a slaughter? She thought about that, frowning.
The Avelle of Quevi Ltir had more reason than most to guard their hidden City. The Songs of the City's
walls told of an aging world long since left behind, that first Home-Space of the first Brooding now faded
even in long Avelle memory, where other shadows like these had birthed a proud and virile race with a
strength that had carried them to the stars. There for millennia the Avelle had warred with each other in
great Predator ships, an endless strike and counterstrike of craft and guile and naked force that expanded
the racial Home-Space from star to star in Carina star-cluster, a territory held by all but disputed at every
point. Among the Predators, the great starship
Quevi'ali
had won preeminent place in the wars for
centuries—but even the great could suffer chance misfortune, odd disaster, a tumbling from the heights.
Mortally wounded,
Quevi'ali
had fled its four pursuers to the very edge of Carina cluster, losing them at
last among a scattered spray of suns.
In Rhesaa star-system, a binding of twelve stars dominated by a great blue-white star,
Quevi'ali
's four
kin-alliances, called iruta in Avelle speech, sought a refuge to repair their ship and to rebuild their
breeding numbers, not only for
Quevi'ali
but for a daughter-ship; doubling their strength for the return to
the Predator wars. On a large asteroid circling a lesser companion of the blue-white star,
Quevi'ali
had
concealed itself beneath naked rock and begun a great building of a subterranean City. For decades, then
centuries, the Avelle brooding grew steadily, the original four iruta fracturing into a dozen new bondings,
each building its own great tier of two hundred levels, expanding outward and downward into the rocky
depths, tempering their strength in tier wars for territory and influence. Yet the Avelle of Quevi Ltir did
not rebuild their ship nor begin their daughter ship; instead, they lingered in their City past all accounting,
until even the Avelle servant classes, conditioned by gene and rank never to question their superiors,
wondered why the Song of Returning seemed forgotten.
For five centuries
Quevi'ali
had lain in its subterranean cavern, a dark hulk rarely visited. The Star
Leader, hereditary captain of
Quevi'ali
and the Principal vested with the charge of its rebuilding, found
other reason in the City for other affairs, without explanation. Among the six Principals who ruled Quevi
Ltir, the Principals of Law and Song rose to new influence, supplanting the primacy of the Star Leader,
and contested with each other, deftly building shifting alliances with Mind and Battle and Science, never
trusting the other, growing crafty and wise as they subordinated lesser kin-alliances to their purposes. The
tier wars grew dangerous and more frequent as the Principals contested, threatening extinguishment of
whole tiers and the ending of brood-lines, but still the Avelle did not rebuild their ships.
Then, in the fifth generation of the new Brooding, a stranger human ship named
Phalene
had entered
Rhesaa system, its fragile ship-world dying from radiation and meteor impact. For reasons only Lejja
knew, the Principal of Songs had ordered the Avelle upward and had rescued
Phalene
's human
survivors, taking the humans into her own tier and giving them two levels for their own, and defying the
other Principals to challenge her choosing. The resulting tier war was ferocious but short-lived, and
terrifying to the shocked humans under Lejja's protection; when Lejja prevailed by narrow victory, the
thirty survivors of
Phalene
swore kin-bonding to Lejja and, at her bidding, adopted Avelle ways to keep
their place among the kin-alliances of Quevi Ltir, forgetting the human that differed, becoming the Avelle
that preserved life and brood, naming themselves the iruta Faon.
Only in the names they took for their kin-groups within their iruta, memories of Earth in rock and water,
star and wolf and owl, did the first Faon keep a human heritage. As a new generation was born to the
Faon and as Lejja's kindred grew accustomed to the humans in their midst, Lejja permitted certain
liberties based on practicality. At her direction, Kiiri, the Science Leader, devised heavier gravity fields
for the Faon levels to ease Faon bone damage from the asteroid's low gravity; adjustments were made in
atmosphere and humidity and lighting to give the Faon a Home-Space more similar to their native world.
When limited parts of Avelle speech proved physically impossible for human articulation, Lejja permitted
the Faon to resume their own language and encouraged her Avelle to learn francais. As the third Faon
generation was born, Lejja openly promised the Faon their own Song among the Avelle, and
championed them against the continued malice of Koyil, and protected them and gave the Faon her own
strength.
A fourth Faon generation had now begun, with new children in the Faon levels. Jahnel thought of her own
daughter, Luelle, now three, and her infant son, Didier, and worried for them. Lejja was visibly aging and
her strength had begun to wane: was this bidding today the first failing of her protection? How to tell in a
society where even the Avelle could confuse themselves with their own subtleties?
Her father, Faon Leader Benoit Alain, had agreed to this, had agreed quickly. She distrusted that quick
agreement, doubting her father's judgment. They had contested, she and Benoit, all her life, but never on
essentials. She tightened her hands on her dis-rifle and shook her head slightly, as if to shake away the
doubts. When you are old and white-haired and maybe Faon Leader in your own right, she chided
herself, then nose-wrinkle and sniff and flip your wing-flaps: a nestling does not question his elder. But still
she felt uneasy. She watched more Faon emerge from the fallway, wishing for Sair.
Jahnel nodded to friends of the Hiboux and Etoile as they passed, touched hands briefly with Eduard and
Melinde, her co-husband and Sister-wife, then watched them follow the others around the Turning to the
gathering-room beyond. Her vayalim, her marriage-group, risked four of its six adults today, an unlucky
chance of the lot; only teenaged Evan and pregnant Solveya remained below in safety with the children.
The Avelle practice of multiple marriage gave strength to the Faon in a dangerous City, though some
Avelle of Lejja's tier still complained, even after eighty years, that all Faon adults entered vayalim as
breeding adults, an oddness the Avelle found unnatural. Three-quarters of adult Avelle remained in
servant class, nonbreeders ruled by vayalim kindred who repressed their inferiors’ sexuality with chemical
inhibition and conditioning, methods not readily available to the human Faon—nor wanted, though the
Faon did not voice that too proudly. But it was a difference easily concealed within the privacy of the
Faon's home-levels, a tolerance Lejja could permit the Faon and had permitted. Jahnel had grown up
with several parents and the company of a dozen siblings; it was a comfort to her that Luelle and Didier
would not be wholly orphaned if she and Sair, and Eduard and Melinde, died today.
She quickly shied from the thought, not liking to think of her beloveds’ deaths, not liking to think of her
children deprived of anyone. Uncomfortable beneath the dim central light of the corridor ceiling, she
moved upward to the shadow of the far corner of wall and ceiling, hovering there on the gentle push of
her belt jet. She stretched gracefully to a horizontal position and cradled her dis-rifle across her arms,
face downward, watching for Sair.
How to tell? she wondered. I am Avelle in mind and purpose, but even Avelle sometimes are confused
by their own inverts. Certainly I confuse myself at times, all by myself. I am confused today. Sair would
tease me if he knew; perhaps I will tell him so that he might enjoy the teasing. She smiled. You are late,
my beloved; I will tease you about that if you delay much longer.
What was Koyil's purpose—and why had Lejja agreed? Though generally truthful when flatly
confronted, the Avelle Principals knew the value of partial truth and often warred with deceit and multiple
purposes. Even Kiiri, the Science Leader who knew the Faon better than most, had his secrets and
would not answer some questions put to him. Kiiri had sought out Jahnel since her childhood, attracted
by something in her he would not say, or perhaps merely kin-bonding with Benoit's likely heir for its
possible future advantage to himself. Kiiri never did anything without a reason and his reasons were
always Avelle, turned on themselves, pointing in a half-dozen directions, maybe tangible or intangible,
maybe deliberate or impulsive, sometimes bordering on no reason at all. In her private thoughts, Jahnel
believed that not even Kiiri always knew which was what. Would Kiiri know what Koyil intended? And
how could she provoke him into telling her what he knew? She considered ways to provoke Kiiri, smiling
slightly.
The last of the Faon passed her, moving toward the Downlift and its access to the asteroid surface.
Jahnel bit her lip, vaguely irritated at Sair and his lateness, then saw her husband rise into view, Rodolphe
Tardieu of the Etoile beside him. Rodolphe had the overall leadership of the battle today with Sair as his
second, supported by kin-leaders of the other three kin-groups. An older man with proven ability,
Rodolphe had a calmness she trusted; she felt some of her tension relax. Sair saw her and waved, then
murmured some words to Rodolphe. The older Faon moved past Jahnel, nodding to her politely, then
vanished around the turn.
“You didn't have to wait,” Sair said, Jahnel smiled and moved to kiss him, but Sair quickly shied away,
“Niintua follows,” he warned her.
Jahnel promptly increased the distance between them to several meters and turned to face the fallway
exit. The Avelle did not understand the Faon's habit of easy embracing, and themselves touched closely
only in combat and mating. Blundering into an Avelle's body-field invited instant punishment, including
death if the rank difference was great. Faon children, like Avelle children, learned early about the dangers
of slash-attack; only later, when they understood the subtle rankings among the Avelle adults and had
gained the physical agility to extract themselves from bad mistakes, could they begin the play of
deliberate insult that Avelle rank-peers sometimes enjoyed in such invasions. But Niintua as Principal and
Battle Leader was beyond such friendly insult; even the other Principals took care to not tempt his
ferocity.
Niintua rose gracefully into view, his black wing-flaps spread slightly as he ascended on the fallway's
updraft, An Avelle's size belied his grace in low gravity: over three meters long from a squarish
pallid-skinned head to the double flange tipping a segmented tail, Avelle rode the air currents of the
fallways by sculling with their large and intricately muscled wing-flaps, deft in their maneuvers, capable of
flashing speed. In the beginning, both races had had difficulty accepting the physical appearance of the
other, the Faon alarmed by Avelle size and threat-displays, the Avelle struggling with attack instincts still
partially linked to visual clues. Both had tried to adapt to the other. With two clawed hands, a small
flexible lipped mouth, vestigial ears, and wideset dark eyes set centrally in the face for bifocal vision, the
Avelle vaguely shared a few human physical arrangements; the Faon had adopted dress and certain
postures in flight to mimic the Avelle. Later, in the tier wars, the Faon had devised infrared goggles to
lessen their visual disadvantage in Avelle lighting, and had fought with studded poisoned gloves to match
the poison of Avelle talons and tail-tip; both races took Kiiri's battle drugs to increase agility, reaction
time, and resistance to pain. The common defense of tier and Home-Space had kin-bound the Faon and
Lejja's Avelle in ways the more deliberate change had not—but still the Faon would always be alien in
ways irreducible, even to the Avelle of their own tier. How much more so to an Avelle of another tier and
kin-alliance, who had chosen to bind himself to Koyil and shared that Principal's loathing of everything
Faon?
Niintua's deep-set eyes flashed as he saw them, his reflective retinas gleaming redly in the dimness of the
corridor lights. The Battle Leader hesitated in obvious distaste, his small mouth drawn downward and
pinched, then glided forward, sculling with the flexible edges of his dark wing-flaps, two servant-guards
following him at a respectful distance. He flicked his segmented tail, flashed an edge of his wing-flap, and
hovered motionless in front of the two Faon, glaring at them. Jahnel and Sair returned the look
impassively, waiting on the Battle Leader's intentions. After a few moments, Niintua drifted forward
toward them, wing-flaps slightly spread, pressuring them. Jahnel promptly edged forward herself, pushing
back at him, for all it was unwise. She lifted her chin defiantly.
“Lejja has asked and we are here, Battle Leader,” she said. “Give your orders.”
Niintua flicked his tail irritably, his aversion to the Faon visible in the tenseness of his body, his obvious
temptation to slash-attack. Behind him, his servants hesitated, watching their master for direction, their
tail-tips twitching nervously. For five decades, Niintua had held his rank as Battle Leader with unbridled
ferocity, a cruelty unusual even among Avelle, and had long allied himself with the Principal of Laws,
becoming Koyil's creature with little independent will. Jahnel idly wondered if Niintua enjoyed his
subjection, relying on the Principal of Laws to control the violence in which Niintua reveled—and
wondered if Koyil found his ally an uncomfortable burden. When snaring a great-claws, Jahnel reminded
herself, thinking of the food animal common to both Avelle and Faon food tanks, wear gloves and extra
eyes.
Niintua gestured with a clawed hand. “The Faon sent too few,” he said harshly in Avelle speech, omitting
any courteous greeting.
“Ah, you counted,” Sair retorted. Jahnel threw him a quieting glance. Sair detested Niintua, believing him
careless of Faon lives in the tier wars—or, like his master, bent upon Faon deaths.
“That has been discussed,” she said calmly, “by all the Principals and all Faon. The Faon will risk not
more than one-third of our breeding adults in this new attack on the miin lander, but that forty we will
risk.” She raised her dis-rifle before her chest, saluting Niintua without mockery. “Command us, Battle
Leader.”
Niintua flicked his tail and pointed a clawed hand at her. “You will inform us what the miin do. Have you
swallowed the suval?” he asked, referring to Kiiri's new battle drug.
She scowled at him. “Not yet. When we leave for the surface, I will take it, as will the others who take
suval today. Kiiri has tested it only twice and found it has a distance limitation—and it wears off quickly,
Battle Leader. Would you waste Kiiri's new psi-drug on stirring speeches in the Downlift?”
The Avelle chose to ignore her sarcasm. “Still, you will inform us of what they do.” He moved forward
with purpose, and Jahnel and Sair quickly moved to the sides of the wide corridor, granting him the
passage he merited by his rank. As Niintua's servants followed, the Faon drifted inward again, decreasing
the distance between them until they edged on the aliens’ body-fields. The Avelle nearest Jahnel hissed at
her and flared his wing-flaps in angry display.
“I am a breeding female,” she told him sharply. “Mind your courtesy.”
The servant-guard hesitated, then spat a word at her. She bared her teeth, confusing the Avelle badly,
who lacked such gesture.
“Hardly,” she mocked. “But you leave your master unguarded. Do you so easily forget your duty?”
The servant flipped his wing-flaps indignantly and soared onward, then flashed around the Turning after
Niintua.
“Hmmm,” she said, wondering if she would regret her provoking later. “Niintua's servants grow bold.”
Sair took her elbow and drew her onward. “Niintua's kin-brood has always been bold, with few
courtesies to us. It means nothing.”
“You don't believe that, either,” she commented.
Sair shrugged. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, one year older than herself, Sair had a lean strength she still
found irresistible even after four years of marriage. Though she tried not to show partiality for courtesy to
her other husbands’ feelings, Jahnel could not deny the effects of Sair's glance, his smile, the way he
moved. She wished suddenly that she and Sair were alone in safety, for talk and unhurried lovemaking
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