As they crossed to the door, Teg noted that another protective system he had seen on his first tour of Ysai remained intact. It was a barely noticeable difference in the posts along the trees-and-hedges barriers. Those posts were scanlyzers operated from a room somewhere in the building. Their diamond-shaped connectors "read" the area between them and the building. At the gentle push of a button in the watchers' room, the scanlyzers would make small chunks of meat out of any living flesh crossing their fields.
At the door, Muzzafar paused and looked at Teg. "The Honored Matre you are about to meet is the most powerful of all who have come here. She does not tolerate anything but complete obedience."
"I take it that you are warning me."
"I thought you would understand. Call her Honored Matre. Nothing else. In we go. I've taken the liberty of having a new uniform made for you."
The room where Muzzafar ushered him was one Teg had not seen on his previous visit. Small and crammed with ticking black-paneled boxes, it left little room for the two of them. A single yellow glowglobe at the ceiling illuminated the place. Muzzafar crowded himself into a corner while Teg got out of the grimed and wrinkled singlesuit he had worn since the no-globe.
"Sorry I can't offer you a bath as well," Muzzafar said. "But we must not delay. She gets impatient."
A different personality came over Teg with the uniform. It was a familiar black garment, even to the starbursts at the collar. So he was to appear before this Honored Matre as the Sisterhood's Bashar. Interesting. He was once more completely the Bashar, not that this powerful sense of identity had ever left him. The uniform completed it and announced it, though. In this garment there was no need to emphasize in any other way precisely who he was.
"That's better," Muzzafar said as he led Teg out into the entry hallway and through a door Teg remembered. Yes, this was where he had met the "safe" contacts. He had recognized the room's function then and nothing appeared to have changed it. Rows of microscopic comeyes lined the intersection of ceiling and walls, disguised as silver guide strips for the hovering glowglobes.
The one who is watched does not see, Teg thought. And the Watchers have a billion eyes.
His doubled vision told him there was danger here but nothing immediately violent.
This room, about five meters long and four wide, was a place for doing very high-level business. The merchandise would never be an actual exposure of money. People here would see only portable equivalents of whatever passed for currency - melange, perhaps, or milky soostones about the size of an eyeball, perfectly round, at once glossy and soft in appearance but radiant with rainbow changes directed by whatever light fell on them or whatever flesh they touched. This was a place where a danikin of melange or a small fold-pouch of soostones would be accepted as a natural occurrence. The price of a planet could be exchanged here with only a nod, an eyeblink or a low-voiced murmur. No wallets of currency would ever be produced here. The closest thing might be a thin case of translux out of whose poison-guarded interior would come thinner sheets of ridulian crystal with very large numbers inscribed on them by unforgeable dataprint.
"This is a bank," Teg said.
"What?" Muzzafar had been staring at the closed door in the opposite wall. "Oh, yes. She'll be along presently."
"She is watching us now, of course."
Muzzafar did not answer but he looked gloomy.
Teg glanced around him. Had anything been changed since his previous visit? He saw no significant alterations. He wondered if shrines such as this one had undergone much change at all over the eons. There was a dewcarpet on the floor as soft as brantdown and as white as the underbelly of a fur whale. It shimmered with a false sense of wetness that only the eye detected. A bare foot (not that this place had ever seen a bare foot) would feel caressing dryness.
There was a narrow table about two meters long almost in the center of the room. The top was at least twenty millimeters thick. Teg guessed it was Danian jacaranda. The deep brown surface had been polished to a sheen that drank the vision and revealed far underneath veins like river currents. There were only four admiral's chairs around the table, chairs crafted by a master artisan from the same wood as the table, cushioned on seat and back with lyrleather of the exact tone of the polished wood.
Only four chairs. More would have been an overstatement. He had not tried one of the chairs before and he did not seat himself now, but he knew what his flesh would find there - comfort almost up to the level of a despised chairdog. Not quite at that degree of softness and conformity to bodily shape, of course. Too much comfort could lure the sitter into relaxation. This room and its furnishings said: "Be comfortable here but remain alert."
You not only had to have your wits about you in this place but also a great power of violence behind you, Teg thought. He had summed it up that way before and his opinion had not changed.
There were no windows but the ones he had seen from the outside had danced with lines of light-energy barriers to repel intruders and prevent escape. Such barriers brought their own dangers, Teg knew, but the implications were important. Just keeping the energy flow in them would feed a large city for the lifetime of its longest-lived inhabitant.
There was nothing casual about this display of wealth.
The door that Muzzafar watched opened with a gentle click.
Danger!
A woman in a shimmering golden robe swept into the room. Lines of red-orange danced in the fabric.
She is old!
Teg had not expected her to be this ancient. Her face was a wrinkled mask. The eyes were deeply set green ice. Her nose was an elongated beak whose shadow touched thin lips and repeated the sharp angle of the chin. A black skullcap almost covered her gray hair.
Muzzafar bowed.
"Leave us," she said.
He left without a word, going out through the door by which she had entered. When the door closed behind him, Teg said, "Honored Matre."
"So you recognize this as a bank." Her voice carried only a slight trembling.
"Of course."
"There are always means of transferring large sums or selling power," she said. "I do not speak of the power that runs factories but of the power that runs people."
"And that usually passes under the strange names of government or society or civilization," Teg said.
"I suspected you would be very intelligent," she said. She pulled out a chair and sat but did not indicate that Teg should seat himself. "I think of myself as a banker. That saves a lot of muddy and distressful circumlocutions."
Teg did not respond. There seemed no need. He continued to study her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.
"I did not expect you to be this old," he said.
"Heh, heh, heh. We have many surprises for you, Bashar. Later, a younger Honored Matre may murmur her name to mark you. Praise Dur if that happens."
He nodded, not understanding much of what she said.
"This is also a very old building," she said. "I watched you when you came in. Does that surprise you, too?"
"No."
"This building has remained essentially unchanged for several thousand years. It is built of materials that will last much longer still."
He glanced at the table.
"Oh, not the wood. But underneath, it's polastine, polaz, and pormabat. The three P-Os are never sneered at where necessity calls for them."
Teg remained silent.
"Necessity," she said. "Do you object to any of the necessary things that have been done to you?"
"My objections don't matter," he said. What was she getting at? Studying him, of course. As he studied her.
"Do you think others have ever objected to what you did to them?"
"Undoubtedly."
"You're a natural commander, Bashar. I think you'll be very valuable to us."
"I've always thought I was most valuable to myself."
"Bashar! Look at my eyes!"
He obeyed, seeing little flecks of orange drifting in across the whites. The sense of peril was acute.
"If you ever see my eyes fully orange, beware!" she said. "You will have offended me beyond my ability to tolerate."
He nodded.
"I like it that you can command but you cannot command me! You command the muck and that is the only function we have for such as you."
"The muck?"
She waved a hand, a negligent motion. "Out there. You know them. Their curiosity is narrow gauge. No great issues ever enter their awareness."
"I thought that was what you meant."
"We work to keep it that way," she said. "Everything goes to them through a tight filter, which excludes all but that which has immediate survival value."
"No great issues," he said.
"You are offended but it doesn't matter," she said. "To those out there, a great issue is: 'Will I eat today?' 'Do I have shelter tonight that will not be invaded by attackers or vermin?' Luxury? Luxury is the possession of a drug or a member of the opposite sex who can, for a time, keep the beast at bay."
And you are the beast, he thought.
"I am taking some time with you, Bashar, because I see that you could be more valuable to us even than Muzzafar. And he is extremely valuable indeed. Even now, we are repaying him for bringing you to us in a receptive condition."
When Teg still remained silent, she chuckled. "You do not think you are receptive?"
Teg held himself quiet. Had they given him some drug in his food? He saw the flickering of doubled vision but the movements of violence had receded as the orange flecks left the Honored Matre's eyes. Her feet were to be avoided, though. They were deadly weapons.
"It's just that you think of the muck in the wrong way," she said. "Luckily, they are most self-limiting. They know this somewhere in the damps of their deepest consciousness but cannot spare the time to deal with that or anything else except the immediate scramble for survival."
"They cannot be improved?" he asked.
"They must not be improved! Oh, we see to it that self-improvement remains a great fad among them. Nothing real about it, of course."
"Another luxury they must be denied," he said.
"Not a luxury! Nonexistent! It must be occluded at all times behind a barrier that we like to call protective ignorance."
"What you don't know cannot hurt you."
"I don't like your tone, Bashar."
Again, the orange flecks danced in her eyes. The sense of violence diminished, however, as she once more chuckled. "The thing you beware of is the opposite of what-you-don't-know. We teach that new knowledge can be dangerous. You see the obvious extension: All new knowledge is non-survival!"
The door behind the Honored Matre opened and Muzzafar returned. It was a changed Muzzafar, his face flushed, his eyes bright. He stopped behind the Honored Matre's chair.
"One day, I will be able to permit you behind me this way," she said. "It is in my power to do this."
What had they done to Muzzafar? Teg wondered. The man looked almost drugged.
"You do see that I have power?" she asked.
He cleared his throat. "That's obvious."
