The men on the spaceship Quetzal had a mission to perform, but everything
indicated it would be a simple matter to set up a refueling station on the
planet Gwydion. Advance explorations had already
determined that the inhabitants of Gwydion were few
in number and thoroughly amiable in their ways. In fact, such concepts as
anger, thievery, murder and warfare did not exist for them. All that remained
for the Quetzal
was to find a suitable site
and cement friendly relations.
But with the change of
season and the bursting of the countryside into blossom, strange things began
to happen. There was talk of a mysterious cycle and a day of danger. What was
the secret of the planet that the Gwydionites themselves
dared not mention? How would it affect their spacemen visitors?
Turn this book over for second complete novel
POUL
ANDERSON was
born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and was graduated is a physics major from the University of Minnesota. Writing was a hobby of
his, and he sold a few stories while in college. With jobs hard to find after
graduation, he continued to write and found to his surprise that he was not a
scientist at all, but a born writer. Best known for his science-fiction, he has
also written mysteries, non-fiction, and historical novels.
Poul Anderson lives in Orinda, California, with
his wife and young daughter. Novels of his published in Ace Books editions
include WAR OF THE WINGMEN (D-303), SNOWS OF GANYMEDE (D-303), WAR OF TWO
WORLDS (D-335), WE CLAIM THESE STARS (D-407), EARTHMAN GO HOME! (D-479), MAYDAY
ORBIT (F-104), THE MAKESHIFT ROCKET (F-139), and NO WORLD OF THEIR OWN (D-550).
Let the Spacemen Beware!
by
POUL ANDERSON
ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York 36, N.Y.
LET THE SPACEMEN
BEWARE
Copyright ©, 1983, by Ace
Books, Inc. All
Bights Reserved
The Quetzal did
not leave orbit and swing toward the planet until she got an all-clear from
the boat which had gone ahead to make arrangements. Even then her approach was
cautious, as was fitting in a region as little known as this. Miguel Tolteca expected he would have a couple of hours free to
watch the scenery unfold.
He
was not exactly a sybarite, but he liked to do things in style. First he dialed
Privacy on
his stateroom door, lest some friendly soul barge in to pass the time of day.
Then he put Castellani's Symphony No. 2 in D Minor with Sub-sonics on the tapester,
mixed himself a rum and conchoru,
converted the bunk to a lounger, and sat back with his free hand on the
controls of the exterior scanner. Its screen grew black and full of wintry unwinking stars. He searched in a clockwise direction until
Gwydion swam into view, a tiny disc upon darkness,
the clearest blue he had ever seen.
The
door chimed. "Oa," called Tolteca through the corn-unit, irritated, "can you not
read?"
"My
mistake," said the voice of Raven. "I thought you were the chief of
the expedition."
Tolteca swore, folded the lounger into a chair, and
stepped across the little room. A slight, momentary change in weight informed
him that the Quetzal
had put on a spurt of extra
acceleration. Doubtless to dodge some meteorite swarm, the engineer part of him
thought. They'd be more common
here than around Nuevamerica,
this being a newer system. . . . Otherwise the pseudogee
field held firm. The spaceship was a precision instrument.
He opened the door. "Very well,
Commandant." He pronounced the hereditary title with a curtness that approached
insult. "What is so urgent?"
Raven
stood still for an instant, observing him. Tolteca
was a young man, middling tall, with wide, stiffly held shoulders. His face was
thin and sharp, under brown hair drawn back into the short queue customary on
his planet, and the eyes were levelly aimed. However much the United Republics
of Nuevamerica made of their shiny new democracy, it
meant something to stem from one of their old professional families. He wore
the uniform of the Argo Astro-graphical Company, but
that was only a simple, pleasing version of his people's everyday garb: blue
tunic, gray culottes, white stockings, and no insignia.
Raven
came in and closed the door. "By chance," he said, his tone mild
again, "one of my men overheard some of yours dicing to settle who should
debark first after you and the ship's captain."
"Well,
that sounds harmless enough," said Tolteca sarr castically. "Do you expect
us to observe any official pecking order?"
"No.
What—um—puzzled me was, nobody mentioned my own detachment."
Tolteca raised his brows. "You wanted your men
to sit in on the dice game?"
"According
to what my soldier reported to me, there seems to be no doctrine for planetfall and afterward."
"Well,"
said Tolteca, "as a simple courtesy to our
hosts, Captain Uriel and I—and you, if you wish—will
go out first to greet them. There's to be quite a welcoming committee, we're
told. But beyond that, good ylem, Commandant, what difference does it make who
comes down the gangway in what order?"
Raven
fell motionless again. It was the common habit of Lochlanna
aristocrats. They didn't stiffen at critical instants.
They rarely showed any physical rigidity; but
their muscles seemed to go loose and their eyes glazed over with calculation. Tolteca sometimes thought that that alone made them so
alien that the Namerican Revolution had always been
inevitable.
Finally—thirty
seconds later, but it seemed longer—Raven said, "I can see how this
misunderstanding occurred, Sir Engineer. Your people have developed several
unique institutions in the fifty years since gaining independence, and have
forgotten some of our customs. Certainly the concept of exploration, even treaty-making,
as a strictly private, commercial enterprise, is not Lochlanna.
We have been making unconscious assumptions about each other. The fact that our
two groups have kept so much apart on this voyage has helped maintain those
errors. I offer apology."
It
was not relevant, but Tolteca was driven to snap,
"Why should you apologize to me? I'm doubtless also to blame."
Raven
smiled. "But I am a Commandant of the Oaken-shaw
Ethnos."
As
if that bland purr had attracted him, a cat stuck his head out of the Lochlanna's flowing surcoat
sleeve. Zio was a Siamese torn, big, powerful, and
possessed of a temper like mercury fulminate. His eyes were cold blue in the
brown mask. "Mneowrr," he said remindingly. Raven scratched him under the chin. Zio tilted back his head and raced his motor.
Tolteca gulped down an angry retort. Let the fellow
have his superiority complex. He struck a cigarette and smoked in short hard
puffs. "Never mind that," he said. "What's the immediate
problem?"
"You
must correct the wrong impression among your men. My troop goes out
first."
^What? If you think-"
"In combat order. The spacemen will stand by to lift ship if anything goes awry. When I
signal, you and Captain Uriel may emerge and make
your speeches. But not before."
For
a space Tolteca could find no words. He could only
stare.
Raven
waited, impassive. He had the Lochlanna build, the
result of many generations on a planet with one-fourth again the standard
surface gravity. Though tall for one of his own race, he was barely of average Namerican height. Thick-boned and thick-muscled, he moved
like his cat, a gait which had always appeared slippery and sneaking to Tol-teca's folk. His head was typically long, with the
expected disharmony of broad face, high cheekbones, hook nose, sallow skin
which looked youthful because genetic drift had eliminated the beard. His hair,
close cropped, was a cap of midnight, and his brows met above the narrow green
eyes. His clothes were not precisely gaudy, but the republican simplicity of Neuvamerica found them barbaric—high-collared blouse,
baggy blue trousers tucked into soft half boots, surcoat
embroidered with twined snakes and flowers, a silver dragon brooch. Even aboard
ship, Raven wore dagger and pistol.
"By all creation," whispered Tolteca at last. "Do you think we're on one of your
stinking campaigns of conquest?" "Routine precautions," said
Raven.
"But, the first expedition here was
welcomed like—like— Our own advance boat, the pilot,
he was feted till he could hardly stagger back aboardl"
Raven
shrugged, earning an indignant look from Zio.
"They've had almost one standard year to think over what the first
expedition told them. We're a long way from home in space, and even longer in
time. It's been twelve hundred years since the breakup of the Commonwealth
isolated them. The whole Empire rose and fell while they were alone on that one
planet. Genetic and cultural evolution have done strange work in shorter
periods."
Tolteca dragged on his cigarette and said roughly,
"Judging by the data, those people think more like Namericans
than you do."
"Indeed?"
They
have no armed forces. No police, even, in the usual sense; public service
monitors is the best translation of their word. No—well, one thing we have to
find out is the extent to which they do have a government. The first expedition
had too much else to learn, to establish that clearly. But beyond doubt, they
haven't got much." "Is this good?"
"By
my standards, yes. Read our Constitution."
"I
have done so. A noble document, for your planet."
Raven paused, scowling. "If this Gwydion were
remotely like any other lost colony I've ever heard of, there would be small
reason for worry. Common sense alone, the knowledge that overwhelming power
exists to avenge any treachery toward us, would stay them. But don't you see,
when there is no evidence of internecine strife, even of crime—and yet they are
obviously not simple children of nature—I can't guess what their common sense is like."
"I
can," clipped Tolteca, "and if your bully
boys swagger down the gangway first, aiming guns at people with flowers in
their hands, I know what that common sense will think of us."
Raven's
smile was oddly charming on that gash of a mouth. "Credit me with some
tact. We will make a ceremony of it."
"Looking
ridiculous at best—they don't wear uniforms on Gwydion—and
transparent at worst—for they're no fools. Your suggestion is declined."
"But I assure
you—"
"No,
I said. Your men will debark individually, and unarmed."
Raven
sighed. "As long as we are exchanging reading lists, Sir Engineer, may I
recommend the articles of the expedition to you?"
"What are you hinting
at now?"
"The
Quetzal," said Raven patiently, "is bound for Gwydion to investigate certain possibilities and, if they
look hopeful, to open negotiations with the folk. Admittedly you are in charge of that.
But for obvious reasons of safety, Captain Utiel has
the last word while we are in space. What you seem to have forgotten is that
once we have made planetfalL a similar power becomes
mine."
"Oa! If you think you can sabotage—"
"Not at all. Like Captain Utiel,
I must answer for my actions at home, if you should make any complaint. However,
no Lochlanna officer would assume my responsibility
if he were not given corresponding authority."
Tolteca nodded, feeling sick. He remembered now. It
hadn't hitherto seemed important. The Company's operations took men and
valuable ships ever deeper into this galactic sector, places where humans had
seldom or never been even at the height of the empire. The hazards were
unpredictable, and an armed guard on every vessel was in itself a good idea.
But then a few old women in culottes, on the Policy Board, decided that plain Namericans weren't good enough. The guard had to be soldiers bom and bred. In these
days of spreading peace, more and more Lochlanna
units found themselves at loose ends and hired out to foreigners. They kept
pretty much aloof, on ship and in camp, and so far it hadn't worked out badly. But the Quetzal. . .
"If
nothing else," said Raven, "I have my own men to think of, and their
families at home."
"But
not the future of interstellar relations?"
"If
those can be jeopardized so easily, they don't seem worth caring about. My
orders stand. Please instruct your men accordingly."
Raven
bowed. The cat slid from his nesting place, dug claws in the coat, and sprang
up on the man's shoulder. Tolteca could have sworn
that the animal sneered. The door closed behind them.
Tolteca stood immobile for a while. The music
reached a crescendo, reminding him that he had wanted to enjoy approach. He
glanced back at the screen. The ship's curving path had brought the sun Ynis into scanner view. Its radiance stopped down by the
compensator circuits, it spread corona and great wings of zodiacal light like
nacre across the stars. The prominences must also be spectacular, for it was an
F8 with a mass of about two Sols and a
corresponding luminosity of almost fourteen. But at its distance, 3.7 Astronomical Units, only the disc of the photosphere could be seen,
covering a bare ten minutes of arc. All in all, a most ordinary main sequence star. Tolteca twisted dials until
he found Gwydion again.
The
planet had gained apparent size, though he still saw it as little more than a
chipped turquoise coin. The cloud bands and -aurora should soon become visible.
No continents, however. While the first expedition had reported Gwydion to be terrestroid in
astonishing detail, it was about ten percent smaller and denser than Old
Earth—to be expected of a younger world, formed when there were more heavy
atoms in the universe—and thus possessed less total land area. What there was was divided into islands and archipelagos. Broad shallow
oceans made the climate mild from pole to pole. Here came its moon, 1600
kilometers in diameter, 96,300 kilometers in orbital radius, swinging from
behind the disc like a tiny hurried firefly.
Tolteca
considered the backdrop of the scene with a sense of eeriness. This close, the
Nebula's immense cloud of dust and gas showed only as a region where stars were
fewer and paler than elsewhere. Even nearby Rho Ophiuchi
was blurred. Sol, of course, was hidden from telescopes as well as from eyes,
an insignificant yellow dwarf two hundred parsecs beyond that veil, which its
light would never pierce. 1 wonder
what's happening there, thought
Tolteca. It's long since we had any word from Old Earth.
He recollected what Raven
had ordered, and cursed.
n
The pasture where the Quetzal had been asked to settle her giant cylinder
was about five kilometers south of the town called Instar.
From the gangway Tolteca
had looked widely across rolling fields. Hedges divided them into meadows of
intense blossom-flecked green; plowlands where the
first delicate shoots of grain went like a breath
across brown furrows; orchards and copses and scattered outbuildings made
toy-like by distance. The River Camlot gleamed
between trees which might almost have been poplars. Instar
bestrode it, red tile roofs above flower gardens around which the houses were
built.
Most
roads across that landscape were paved, but narrow and leisurely winding.
Sometimes, Tolteca felt sure, a detour had been made
to preserve an ancient tree or the lovely upswelling
of a hill. Eastward the ground flattened, sloping down to a dike that cut off
his view of the sea. Westward it climbed, until forested hills rose abruptly on
the horizon. Beyond them could be seen mountain peaks, some of which looked
volcanic. The sun hung just above their snows. You didn't notice how small it
was in the sky, for it radiated too brightly to look at and the total illumination
was almost exactly one standard sol. Cumulus clouds loomed in the southwest,
and a low cool wind ruffled the puddles left by a recent shower.
Tolteca
leaned back on the seat .of the open car. "This is more beautiful than the
finest places on my own world," he said to Dawyd.
"And yet Neuvamerica is considered extremely
Earthlike."
"Thank
you," replied the Gwydiona. "Though
we can take little credit. The planet was here, with its intrinsic
conditions, its native biochemistry and ecology, all eminently suited to human
life. I understand that God wears a different
face in most of the known cosmos."
"Uh—"
Tolteca hesitated. The local language, as recorded by
the first expedition and learned by the second before starting out, was not
altogether easy for him. Like Lochlanna, it derived
from Anglic, whereas the Namericans
had always spoken Ispanyo. Had he quite understood
that business with "God"? Somehow, it didn't sound conventionally religious.
But then, the secular orientation of his own culture made him liable to
misinterpret theological references.
"Yes," he said presently. "The
variations in so-called ter-restroid planets are not
great from a percentage standpoint, but to human beings they make a tremendous
difference. On one continent of my own world, for example, settlement was
impossible until a certain common genus of plant had been eradicated. It was
harmless most of the year, but the pollen it broadcast in spring happened to
contain a substance akin to botulinus toxin."
Dawyd gave him a startled look. Tolteca wondered what he had said wrong. Had he misused
some local word? Of course, he'd had to employ the Ispanyo
name for the poison. . . . "Eradicate?" murmured Dawyd.
"Do you mean destroyed? Entirely?" Catching
himself, slipping back into his serene manner with what looked like practiced
ease, he said, "Well, let us not discuss technicalities right away. It was
doubtless one of the Night Faces." He took his hand from the steering rod
long enough to trace a sign in the air.
Tolteca
felt a trifle puzzled. The first expedition had emphasized in its reports that
the Gwydiona were not superstitious, though they had
a vast amount of ceremony and symbolism. To be sure, the first expedition had
landed on a different island; but it had found the same culture everywhere
that it visited. (And it had failed to understand why men occupied only the
region between latitudes 25 and 70 degrees north, although many other spots
looked equally pleasant. There had been so much else to leam.)
When the Quetzals advance boat arrived, Instar had been suggested as the best landing site merely
because it was one of the larger towns and possessed a college with an
excellent reference library.
The
ceremonies of welcome hadn't been oveiwhelrning,
either. The whole of Instar had turned out—men,
women, and children with garlands, pipes, and lyres. There had been no few
visitors from other areas; still, the crowd wasn't as big as would have been
the case on many planets. After the formal speeches, music was played in honor
of the newcomers and a ballet was presented, a thing of masks and thin
costumes whose meaning
escaped Tolteca,
but which made a stunning spectacle. And that was all. The assembly broke up in
general cordiality—not the milling, backslapping, handshaking kind of reception
that Namericans would have given, but neither the
elaborate and guarded courtesy of Lochlann.
Individuals had talked in a friendly way to individuals, given invitations to
stay in private homes, asked eager questions about the outside universe. And at
last most of them walked back to town. But each foreigner got. a ride in a small, exquisite electric automobile.
Only a nominal guard of crewmen, and a larger
detachment of Lochlanna, remained with the ship. No
offense had been taken at Raven's wariness, but Tolteca
still smoldered.
"Do you indeed wish to
abide at my house?" asked Dawyd.
Tolteca inclined his head. "It would be an
honor, Sir—" He stopped. "Forgive me, but I do not know what your
title is."
"I belong to the Simnon family."
"No. I knew that. I mean your—not your
name, but what you do."
"I
am a physician, of that rite which heals by songs as well as medicines." (Tolteca wondered how much he was misunderstanding.) "I
also have charge of a dike patrol and instruct youth at the college."
"Oh." Tolteca
was disappointed. "I thought— You are not in the
government, then?"
"Why,
yes. I said I am in the dike patrol. What else had you in mind? Instar employs no Year-King or— No, that cannot be what you
meant. Evidently the meaning of the word 'government' has diverged in our
language from yours. Let me think, please." Dawyd
knitted his brows.
Tolteca watched him, as if to read what could not be
said. The Gwydiona all had that basic similarity
which results from a very small original group of settlers and no later
immigration. The first expedition had reported a legend that their ancestors
were no more than a man and two women, one blonde and one dark, survivors of an
atomic blast lobbed at the colony by one of those fleets which went a-murdering
during the Breakup. But admittedly the extant written records did not go that
far back, to confirm or deny the story. Be the facts as they may, the human
gene pool here was certainly limited. And yet—an unusual case—there had been no
degeneracy: rather, a refinement. Early generations had followed a careful
program of outbreeding. Now marriage
was on a voluntary basis, but the bearers of observable hereditary
defects—including low intelligence and nervous instability—were
sterilized. The first expedition had said that such people submitted
cheerfully to the operation, for the community honored them ever after as
heroes.
Dawyd was a pure caucasoid, which alone proved how old his nation must
be. He was tall, slender, still supple in middle age.
His yellow hair, worn shoulder length, was grizzled, but the blue eyes required
no contact lenses and the sun-tanned skin was firm. The face, clean-shaven,
high of brow and strong of chin, bore a straight nose and gentle mouth. His
garments were a knee-length green tunic and white cloak, golden fillet, leather
sandals, a locket about his neck which was gold on one side and black on the
other. A triskele was tattooed on his forehead, but
gave no effect of savagery.
His language had not changed much from Anglic; the Lochlanna had learned
it without difficulty. Doubtless printed books and sound recordings had tended
to stabilize it, as they generally did. But whereas Lochlann
barked, grunted, and snarled, thought Tolteca, Gwydion trilled and sang. He had never heard such voices
before.
"Ah,
yes," said Dawyd. "I believe I grasp your
concept. Yes, my advice is often asked, even on worldwide questions. That is my
pride and my humility."
"Excellent. Well, Sir Councillor, I-"
"But councillor is no—no calling. I said I was a
physician."
"Wait
a minute, please. You have not been formally chosen in any way to. guide, advise, control?"
"No.
Why should I be? A man's reputation, good or ill, spreads. Finally others may
come from halfway around the world, to ask his opinion of some proposal. Bear
in mind, far-friend," Dawd added shrewdly,
"our whole population numbers a mere ten million, and we have both radio
and aircraft, and travel a great deal between our islands."
"But then who is in charge of public
affairs?"
"Oh,
some communities employ a Year-King, or elect presidents to hold the chair at
their local meetings, or appoint an engineer to handle routine. It depends on
regional tradition. Here in Instar we lack such customs, save that we crown a Dancer each winter solstice,
to bless the year."
"That
isn't what I mean, Sir Physician. Suppose a—oh, a project, like building a new
road, or a policy like, well, deciding whether to have regular relations with
other planets—suppose this vague group of wise men you speak of, men who depend
simply on a reputation for wisdom-suppose they decide such a question, one way
or another. What happens next?"
"Then,
normally, it is done as they have decided. Of course, everyone hears about it
beforehand. If the issue is important, there will be much public discussion.
But naturally men lay more weight on the suggestions of those known to be wise
than on what the foolish or the uninformed may say."
"So everyone agrees with the final
decision?"
"Why not? The matter has been threshed out and the most logical answer arrived
at. Oh, of course a few are always unconvinced or dissatisfied. But being
human, and therefore rational, they accommodate themselves to the general
will."
"And—uh—funding
such an enterprise?" "That depends on its nature. A strictly local
project, like building a new road, is carried out by the people of the
community involved, with feasting and merriment each night. For larger and more
specialized projects, money may be needed, and then its collection is a matter
of local custom. We of Instar let the Dancer go about
with a sack, and everyone contributes as much as is reasonable."
Tolteca gave up for the time being. He was no
further along than the anthropologists of the first expedition. Except, maybe, that he was mentally prepared for some such answer
as he'd received, and could accept it immediately rather than wasting weeks
trying to ferret out a secret that didn't exist. If you had a society
with a simple economic structure (automation helped marvelously in that
respect, provided that the material desires of the people remained modest) and
if you had a homogeneous population of high average intelligence and low
average nastiness, well, then perhaps the ideal anarchic state was possible.
And
it must be remembered that anarchy, in this case, did not mean amorphousness.
The total culture of Cwydion was as intricate as any
that men had ever evolved. Which in turn
was paradoxical, since advanced science and technology usually dissolved
traditions and simplified interhuman relationships. However ...
Tolteca asked cautiously, "What effect do you
believe contact with other planets would have on your people? Planets where things are done in radically different ways?"
"I
don't know," replied Dawyd, thoughtful. "We
need more data, and a great deal more discussion, before even attempting to
foresee the consequences. I do wonder if a
gradual introduction of new modes may not prove better for you than any sudden
change."
"For
us?" Tolteca was startled.
"Remember,
we have lived here a long time. We know the Apsects
of God on Gwydion better than you. Just as we should
be most careful about venturing to your home, so do I advise that you proceed
circumspectly here."
Tolteca
could not help saying, "It's strange that you never built spaceships. I
gather that your people preserved, or reconstructed, all the basic scientific
knowledge of their ancestors. As soon as you had a large enough population,
enough economic surplus, you could have coupled a thermonuclear powerplant to a gravity beamer and a secondary-drive pulse
generator, built a hull around the ensemble, and-"
"No!"
It was. almost a
shout. Tolteca jerked his head around to look at Dawyd. The Gwydiona had gone
quite pale.
Color flowed back after a moment. He relaxed
his grip on the steering rod. But bis eyes were still
stiffly focused ahead of him as he answered, "We do not use atomic power.
Sun, water, wind, tides, and biological fuel cells, with electric accumulators
for energy storage, are sufficient."
Then
they were in the town. Dawyd guided the automobile
through wide, straight avenues which seemed incongruous among the vine-covered
houses and peaked red roofs, the parks and splashing fountains. There was only
one large building to be seen, a massive structure of fused stone, rearing
above chimneys with a jarring grimness. Just beyond a bridge which spanned the river
in a graceful serpent shape, Dawyd halted. He had
calmed down, and smiled at his guest. "My abode.
Will you enter?"
As they stepped to the pavement, a tiny
scarlet bird flew from the eaves, settled on Dawyd's
forefinger, and warbled joy. He murmured to it, grinned half awkwardly at Tolteca, and led the way to his front door. It was screened
from the street by a man-high bush with star-shaped leaves new for the spring
season. The door had a lock which was massive but unused. Tolteca
recalled again that Gwydion was apparently without
crime, that its people had been hard put to understand the concept when the outworlders interviewed them. Having opened the door, Dawyd turned about and bowed very low.
"O
guest of the house, who may be God, most welcome and beloved, enter. In the name of joy, and health, and understanding;
beneath Ynis and She and the stars; fire, food,
fleet, and light be yours." He crossed himself, and reaching drew a cross
on Tolteca's brow with his finger. The ritual was
obviously ancient, and yet he did not gabble it, but spolce
with vast seriousness.
As he entered, Tolteca
noticed that the door was only faced with wood. Basically it was a slab of
steel, set in walls that were—under the stucco—two meters thick and of reinforced
concrete. The windows were broad; sunlight streamed through them to glow on
polished wood flooring, but every Window had steel shutters. The first Namerican
expedition had reported it was a universal mode of building, but had not been
able to find out why. From somewhat evasive answers to their questions, the
anthropologists concluded it was a tradition handed down from wild early days,
immediately after the colony was hellbombed; and so
gentle a race did not like to talk about that period.
Tolteca
forgot the matter when Dawyd knelt to light a candle
before a niche. The shrine held a metal disc, half gold and half black with a
bridge between, the Yang and Yin of immemorial antiquity. Yet it was flanked by
books, both full-size and micro, that bore titles like Diagnostic Application of Bioelectric
Potentials.
Dawyd got up. "Please be seated, friend of
the house. My wife went into the Night." He hesitated. "She died,
several years ago, and only one of my daughters is now un-wedded. She danced
for you this day, and thus is late coming home. When she arrives, we will take
food."
Tolteca glanced at the chair to which his host had
gestured. It was designed as rationally as any Namerican
lounger, but made of bronze and tooled leather. He touched a fylfot recurring
in the design. "I understand that you have no ornamentation which is not
symbolic. That's very interesting; almost diametrically opposed to my culture.
Just as an example, would you mind explaining this to me?"
"Certainly,"
Dawyd answered. "That is the Burning Wheel,
which is to say the sun, Ynis, and all suns in the
universe. The Wheel also represents Time. Thermodynamic irreversibility, if you
are a physicist," he added with a chuckle. "The interwoven vines are crisflowers, which bloom in the first haygathering
season of our year and are therefore sacred to that Aspect of God called the
Green Boy. Thus together they mean Time the Destroyer and Regenerator. The
leather is from the wild areas, which belongs to the autumnal Huntress Aspect,
and when she is linked with the Boy it reminds us of the Night Faces and,
simultaneously, that the Day Faces are their other side. Bronze, being an
alloy, manmade, says by forming the framework that man embodies the meaning and
structure of the world. However, since bronze turns green on corrosion, it
also signifies that every structure vanishes at last, but into new life—*' He
stopped and laughed. "You don't want a sermon!'* he
exclaimed. "Look here, do sit down. Co ahead and smoke. We already know about that custom. We've
found we can't do it ourselves—a bit of genetic drift; nicotine is too violent
a poison for us, but it doesn't bother me in the least if you do. Coffee grows
well on this planet, would you like a cup, or
would you rather try our beer or wine? Now that we are alone for a while, I have about ten to
the fiftieth questions to ask!"
HI
Raven
spent much of the day
prowling about Instar, observing and occasionally,
querying. But
in the evening he left the town and wandered along the road which followed the
river toward the sea dikes. A pair of his men accompanied him, two paces
behind, in the byrnies and conical helmets of battle
gear. Rifles were slung on their shoulders. At their backs the western hills
lifted black against a sky which blazed and smoldered with gold. The river was
like running metal in that light, which saturated the air and soaked into each
separate grass blade. Ahead, beyond a line of trees, the eastern sky had become
imperially violet and the first stars trembled.
Raven
moved unhurriedly. He had no fear of being caught in the dark, on a planet with
an 83-hour rotation period. When he came to a wharf that jutted into the
stream, he halted for a closer look. The wooden sheds on the bank were as
solidly built as any residential house, and as handsome of outline. The
double-ended fishing craft tied at the pier were graceful things, riotously
decorated. They rocked a little as the water purled past them. A clean odor of their
catches, and of tar and paint, drifted about.
"Ketch
rigged," Raven observed. "They have small auxiliary engines, but I
dare say those are used only when it is absolutely necessary."
"And
otherwise they sail?" Kors, long and gaunt, spat
between his front teeth. "Now why do such a fool thing, Commandant?"
"It's
estheticaUy more pleasing," said Raven.
"More
work, though, sir," offered young Wildenvey.
"I sailed a bit myself, during the Ans campaign.
Just keeping those damn ropes untangled—"
Raven grinned. "Oh, I agree. Quite. But you see, as far as I can gather, from the first
expedition's reports and from talking to people today, the Gwydiona
don't think that way."
He
continued, ruminatively, more to himself than anyone else, "They don't
think like either party of visitors. Their attitude toward life is different. A
Namerican is concerned only with getting his work
done, regardless of whether it's something that really ought to be
accomplished, and then with getting his recreation done—both with maximum bustle.
A Lochlanna tries to make his work and his games approach
some abstract ideal; and when he fails, he's aptr-to
give up completely and jump over into brutishness.
"But
they don't seem to make such distinctions here. They say, 'Man goes where God
is,' and it seems to mean that work and play and art and private life and
everything else aren't divided up; no distinction is made between them, it's
all one harmonious whole. So they fish from sailboats with elaborately carved
figureheads and painted designs, each element in the pattern having a dozen
different symbolic overtones. And they take musicians along. And they claim
that the total effect, food gathering plus pleasure plus artistic
accomplishment plus I don't know what, is more efficiently achieved than if
those things were in neat little compartments."
He shrugged and resumed his walk. "They
may be right," he finished.
"I
don't know why you're so worried about them, sir," said Kors. "They're as harmless a pack of loonies as I ever
met. I swear they haven't any machine more powerful than a fight tractor or a
scoop shovel, and no weapon more dangerous than a bow and arrow."
"The first expedition said they don't
even go hunting, except once in a while for food or to protect their
crops," Raven nodded. He went on for a while, unspeaking. Only the scuff
of boots, chuckling river, murmur in the leaves overhead and slowly rising
thunders beyond the dike, stirred that silence. The young five-pointed leaves
of a bush which grew everywhere around gave a faint green fragrance to the air.
Then, far off and winding down the slopes, a bronze horn blew, calling antlered
cattle home.
"That's what makes me
afraid," said Raven.
Thereafter
the men did not venture to break his wordlessness. Once or twice they passed a
Gwydiona, who hailed them gravely, but they didn't
stop. When they reached the dike, Raven led the way up a staircase to the top.
The wall stretched for kilometers, set at intervals with towers. It was high
and massive, but the long curve of it and the facing of undressed stone made it
pleasing to behold. The river poured through a gap, across a pebbled beach,
into a dredged channel and so to the crescent-shaped bay, whose waters tumbled
and roared, molten in the sunset fight. Raven drew his surcoat
close about him; up here, above the wall's protection, the wind blew chill and
wet and smelling of salt. There were many gray sea birds in the sky. "Why
did they build this?" wondered Kors. "Close
moon. Big tides. Storms make floods," said Wilden-vey.
"They
could have settled higher ground. They've room enough, for hellfire's sake. Ten
million people on a whole planet!"
Raven gestured at the towers. "I
inquired," he said. Tidepower generators in those. Furnish most of the local electricity.
Shut up."
He
stood staring out to the eastern horizon, where night was growing. The waves
ramped and the sea birds mewed. His eyes were bleak with thought. Finally he
sat down, took a wooden flute from his sleeve, and began to play,
absent-mindedly, as something to do with his hands. The minor key grieved
beneath the wind.
Kors' bark recalled him to the world.
"Haiti"
"Be
still, you Oaf," said Raven. "It's her planet, not yours." But
his palm rested casually on the butt of his pistol as he rose.
The girl came walking at an easy pace over
the velvet-like pseudomoss which carpeted the diketop. She was some 23 or 24 standard years old, her slim
shape dressed in a white tunic and wildly fluttering blue cloak. Her hair was
looped in thick yellow braids, pulled back from her forehead to show a
conventionalized bird tattoo. Beneath dark brows, her eyes were a blue that was
almost indigo, set widely apart. The mouth and the heart-shaped face were
solemn, but the nose tipu'lted and faintly dusted
with freckles. She led by the hand a boy of perhaps four, a little male version
of herself, who had been skipping but who sobered when he saw the Lochlanna. Both were barefoot.
"At
the crossroads of the elements, greeting," she said. Her husky voice sang
the language, even more than most Gwydiona voices.
"Salute, peacemaker." Raven found
it simpler to translate the formal phrases of his own world than hunt around in
the local vocabulary.
"I
came to dance for the sea," she told him, "but heard a music that
called."
"Are you a shooting
man?" asked the boy.
"Byord, hush!" The girl colored with embarrassment.
"Yes," laughed Raven, "you
might call me a shooting man."
"But
what do you shoot?" asked Byord. "Targets? Gol! Can I shoot a
target?"
"Perhaps
later," said Raven. "We have no targets with
us at
the moment."
"Mother,
he says I can shoot a target! Pow!
Pow! Powl"
Raven lifted one brow. "I thought chemical weapons were
unknown on Gwydion, milady," he said, as offhand as
possible.
She
answered with a hint of distress, "That other ship, which came in winter.
The men aboard it also had—what did they name them—guns. They explained and
demonstrated. Since then, probably every small boy on the planet has imagined—
Well. No harm done, I'm sure." She smiled and
ruffled Byord's hair.
"Ah—I bight Raven, a Commandant of the Oakenshaw Ethnos, Windhome
Mountains, Lochlann."
"And
you other souls?" asked the girl.
Raven waved them back. "Followers.
Sons of yeomen on
my father's estate." /
She
was puzzled that he excluded them from the conversation, but accepted it as an
alien custom. "I am Elfavy," she said,
accenting the first syllable. She flashed a grin. "My son Byord you already know! His surname is Varstan,
mine is Simnon."
"What?—Oh,
yes, I remember. Gwydiona wives retain their family
name, son's take the father's, daughters the mother's. Am I correct? Your
husband—"
She looked outward. "He drowned there,
during a storm last fall," she answered quietly.
Raven
did not say
he was sorry, for his culture had its own attitudes toward death. He couldn't
help wondering aloud, tactless, *But you said you danced for the sea."
"He
is of the sea now, is he not?" She continued regards ing the
waves, where they swirled and shook foam loose from their crests. "How beautiful
it is tonight."
Then, swinging back to him, altogether at ease. "I have just had a long talk with one
of your party, a Miguel Tol-teca.
He is staying at my father's house, where Byord and I
now five."
"Not
precisely one of mine," said Raven, suppressing offendedness.
"Oh? Wait . . . yes,
he did mention having some men along from a different planet."
"Lochlann," said Raven. "Our sun lies near theirs,
both about 50 light-years hence in that direction." He pointed past the
evening star to the Hercules region.
"Is your home like his
Nuevamerica?"
"Hardly." For a moment Raven wanted to speak of Lochlann—of
mountains which rose sheer into a red-sun sky, trees dwarfed and gnarled by
incessant winds, moorlands, ice plains, oceans too dense and bitter with salt
for a man to sink. He remembered a peasant's house, its roof held down by ropes
lest a gale blow it away, and he remembered his father's castle gaunt above a
glacier, hoofs ringing in the courtyard, and he remembered bandits and burned
villages and dead men gaping around a smashed cannon.
But she would not
understand. Would she?
"Why
do you have so many shooting things?" exploded from Byord.
"Are there bad animals around your farms?"
"No,"
said Raven. "Not many wild animals at all. The land is too poor for
them."
"I
have heard . . . that first expedition—" Elfavy
grew troubled again. "They said something about men fighting other
men."
"My
profession," said Raven. She looked blankly at him. Wrong
word, then. "My calling," he said, though that wasn't right
either.
"But killing men!" she cried.
"Bad men?" asked Byord, round-eyed.
"Hush,"
said his mother. " 'Bad' means when something
goes wrong, like the cynwyr swarming down and earing the grain. How can men go wrong?"
"They get sick," Byord said.
"Yes, and then your
grandfather heals them."
"Imagine
a situation where men often get so sick they want to hurt their own kind,"
said Raven.
"But horriblel"
Elfavy traced a cross in the air. "What germ
causes that?"
Raven
sighed. If she couldn't even visualize homicidal mania,
how explain to her that sane, honorable men found sane, honorable reasons for
hunting each other?
He
heard Kors mutter to Wildenvey,
"What I said. Guts of sugar candy."
If
that were only so, thought Raven, he could forget his own unease. But they were
no weaklings on Gwydion. Not when they took open
sailboats onto oceans whose weakest tides rose fifteen meters. Not when this
girl could visibly push away her own shock, face him, and ask with friendly
curiosity—as if he, Raven, should address questions to the sudden apparition of
a sabertoothed weaselcat.
"Is
that the reason why your people and the Namericans
seem to talk so little to each other? I thought I noticed it in the town, but
didn't know then who came from which group."
"Oh, they've done their share of
fighting on Nuevamerica," said Raven dryly. "As when they expelled us. We had invaded their planet
and divided it into fiefs, over a century ago. Their revolution was aided by
the fact that Lochlann was simultaneously fighting
the Grand Alliance—but still, it was well done of them."
"I
cannot see why— Well, no matter. We will have time
enough to discuss things. You are going into the hills with us, are you
not?"
"Why, yes, if— What did you say? You too?"
Elfavy nodded. Her mouth quirked
upward. "Don't be so aghast, far-friend. I will leave Byord with his aunt and uncle, even if they do spoil hun terribly." She gave the boy a brief hug. "But
the group does need a dancer, which is my calling."
"Dancer?" choked Kors.
"Not the Dancer. He is always a man."
"But—"
Raven relaxed. He even smiled. "In what way does an expedition into the
wilderness require a dancer?"
"To dance for
it," said Elfavy. "What else?"
"Oh . . . nothing. Do you know precisely what this journey is
for?"
"You have not heard? I listened while my
father and Miguel talked it over."
"Yes,
naturally I know. But possibly you have misunderstood something. That's easy
to do, even for an intelligent person, when separate cultures meet. Why don't
you explain hT to me in your own words, so that I can
correct you if need be?" Raven's ulterior motive was simply that he
enjoyed her presence and wanted to keep her here a while longer.
"Thank
you, that is a good idea," she said. "Well then, planets where men
can live without special equipment are rare and far between. The Nuevamericans, who are exploring this galactic sector,
would like a base on Gwydion, to refuel their ships,
make any necessary repairs, and rest their crews in greenwoods." She gave Kors and Wildenvey a surprised
look, not knowing why they both laughed aloud. Raven himself would not have
interrupted her naive recital for money.
She
brushed the blown fair hair off her brow and resumed, "Of course, our
people must decide whether they wish this or not. But meanwhile it can do no
harm to look at possible sites for such a base, can it? Father proposed an
uninhabited valley some days' march inland, beyond Mount Granis.
To journey there afoot will be more pleasant than by air; much can be shown you
and discussed en route; and we would still return before Bale time."
She frowned the faintest bit. "I am not certain it is wise
to have a foreign base so near the Holy City. But that can always be argued
later." Her laughter trilled forth. "Oh, dear, I do ramble, don't
I?" She caught Raven's arm, impulsively, and tucked her own under it.
"But you have seen so many worlds, you can't imagine, how we here have
been looking forward to meeting you. The wonder of itl
The stories you can tell us, the songs you can sing
us!"
She
dropped her free hand to Byord's shoulder. "Wait
till this little chatterbird gets over his shyness
with you, far-friend. If we could only harness his questions to a generator, we
could illuminate the whole of Instarl"
"Awww,"
said the boy, wriggling free.
They
began to walk along the diketop, almost aimlessly.
The two soldiers followed. The rifles on their backs stood black against a
cloud like roses. Elfavy's fingers slipped down from
Raven's awkwardly held arm—men and women did not go together thus on Lochlann—and closed on the flute in his sleeve. "What
is this?" she asked.
He
drew it forth. It was a long piece of darvawood,
carved and polished to bring out the grain. "I am not a very good
player," he said. "A man of rank is expected to have some artistic
skills. But I am only a younger son, which is why I wander
about seeking work for my guns, and I have not had much musical
instruction."
"The
sounds I heard were—" Elfavy searched after a
word. "They spoke to me," she said finally, "but not in a
language I knew. Will you play that melody again?"
He
set the flute to his lips and piped the notes, which were cold and sad. Elfavy shivered, catching her mantle to her and touching
the gold-and-black locket at her throat. "There is more than music
here," she said. "That song comes from the Night Faces. It is a song,
is it not?"
"Yes.
Very ancient. From Old Earth, they say, centuries
before men had reached even their own sun's planets. We still sing it on Lochlann."
"Can you put it into Gwydiona for me?"
"Perhaps. Let me think." He walked for a while more, turning phrases in his
head. A military officer must also be adept in the use of words, and the two
languages were close kin. Finally he sounded a few bars, lowered the flute, and
began.
"The wind doth blow today, my love, And a few small drops of rain. I never had but one true
love, And she in her grave was lain.
"I'll
do as much for my true love As any young man may; I'll
sit and mourn all at her grave For a twelvemonth and a day....
"The twelvemonth and a day being up, The
dead began to speak: *Oh who sits weeping on my grave And will not let me
sleep?* "
He felt her grow stiff, and halted his voice.
She said, through an unsteady mouth, so low he could scarce hear, "No.
Please."
"Forgive me," he said in
puzzlement, "if I have—" What?
"You
couldn't know. I couldn't." She glanced after Byord.
The boy had frisked back to the soldiers. "He was out of earshot. It
doesn't matter, then, much."
"Can you tell me what is wrong?" he
asked, hopeful of a clue to the source of his own doubts.
"No." She shook her head. "I
don't know what. It just frightens me somehow. Horribly.
How can you live with such a song?"
"On
Lochlann we think it quite a beautiful little
thing." "But the dead don't speak. They are dead!" "Of course. It was only a fantasy. Don't you have
myths?"
"Not
like that. The dead go into the Night, and the Night becomes the Day, is the
Day. Like Ragan, who was caught in the Burning Wheel, and rose to heaven and
was cast down again, and was wept over by the
Mother—those are Aspects of Cod, they mean the rainy season that brings dry
earth to life and they also mean dreams and the waking from dreams, and
loss-remembrance-recreation, and the transformations of physical energy, and—
Oh, don't you see, it's all one! It isn't two people separate, becoming nothing,
desiring to be nothing, even. It mustn't be!"
Raven
put away his flute. They walked on until Elfavy broke
from him, danced a few steps, a slow and stately dance which suddenly became a
leap. She ran back smiling and took his arm again.
"Ill forget it," she said. "Your home is very
distant. This is Gwydion, and too near Bale time to
be unhappy."
"What is this Bale time?"
"When
we go to the Holy City," she said. "Once each year.
Each Gwydiona year, that is, which I believe makes
about five of Old Earth's. Everybody, all over the planet, goes to the Holy
City maintained by his own district. It may be a dull wait for you people,
unless you can join us. . . . Perhaps you can!" she exclaimed, and
eagerness washed out the last terror.
"What happens?" Raven asked.
"God comes to
us."
"Oh."
He thought of dionysiac rites among various backward
peopled and asked with great care, "Do you see God, or feel Vwi?" The last word was a pronoun; Gwydiona
employed an extra gender, the universal.
"Oh, no," said Elfavy. "We are God."
IV
The
dance ended in a final
exultant jump, wings fluttering iridescent and the bird head turned skyward.
The men who had been playing music for it put down their pipes and drums. The
dancer's plumage swept the ground as she bowed. She vanished into a canebrake. The audience, seated and crosslegged,
closed eyes for an unspeaking minute. Tol-teca thought it a more gracious tribute than applause.
He looked around again as the cermony broke up and men prepared for sleep. It didn't seem
quite real to him, yet, that camp should be pitched, supper eaten, and the time
come for rest, while the sun had not reached noon. That was because of the long
day, of course. Gwydion was just past vernal equinox.
But even at its mild and rainy midwinter, daylight lasted a couple of sleeps.
The
effect hadn't been so noticeable at Instar. The town
used an auroral generator to give soft outdoor iUumination after dark, and went about its business. Thus
it had only taken a couple of planetary rotations to organize this
^party. They marched for the hills at dawn. Already one leisurely day had
passed on the trail, with two campings; and one
night, where the moon needed.little'help from the
travelers' glowbulbs; and now another forenoon.
Sometime tomorrow—Gwydion tomorrow—they ought to
reach the upland site which Dawyd had suggested for
the spaceport
Tolteca could feel the tiredness due rough
kilometers in his muscles, but he wasn't sleepy yet. He stood up, glancing over
the camp. Dawyd had selected a good spot, a meadow in the forest. The
half-dozen Gwydiona men who accompanied him talked
merrily as they banked the fire and spread out sleeping bags. One man, standing
watch against possible carnivores, carried a longbow. Tolteca
had seen what that weapon could do, when a hunter brought in
an areas for meat. Nonetheless he wondered why everyone had courteously
refused those firearms the Quetzal brought
as gifts.
The ten Namerican
scientists and engineers who had come along were in more of a hurry to bed
down. Tolteca chuckled, recalling their dismay when
he announced that this trip would be on shank's mare. But Dawyd
was right, there was no better way to learn an area.
Raven had also joined the group, with two of his men. The Lochlanna
seemed incapable of weariness, and their damned slithering politeness never
failed them, but they were always a little
apart from the rest
Tolteca
sauntered past the canebrake, following a side
path. Though no one lived in these hills, the Gwydiona
often went here for recreation, and small solar-powered robots maintained the
trails. He had not quite dared hope he would meet Elfavy.
But when she Came around a flowering tree, the heart
leaped in him.
"Aren't
you tired?" he asked, lame-tongued, after she stopped and gave greeting.
"Not
much," she answered. "I wanted to stroll for a while before sleep.
Like you."
"Well, let's go into
partnership."
She
laughed. "An interesting concept. You have so
many commercial enterprises on your planet, I hear. Is this another one?
Hiring out to take walks for people who would rather sit at home?"
Tolteca bowed. "If you'll join me, 111 make a career of that."
She
flushed and said quickly, "Come this way. If I remember this neighborhood
from the last time I was here, it has a beautiful view not far off."
She had changed her costume for a plain
tunic. Sunlight came through leaves to touch her lithe dancer's body; the hair,
loosened, fell in waves down her back. Tolteca could
not find the words he really wanted, nor could he share her easy silence.
*We
don't do everything for money on Neuvamerica,"
he said, afraid of what she might think. "It's only, well, our particular
way of organizing our economy."
"I
know," she said. "To me it seems so . . . impersonal, lonely, each
man fending for himself—but that may just be because I am not used to the
idea."
"Our
feeling is that the state should do as little as possible," he said,
earnest with the ideals of his nation. "Otherwise it will get too much
power, and that's the end of freedom. But then private enterprise must take
over; and it must be kept competitive, or it will in turn develop into a
tyranny." Perforce he used several words which Gwydiona
lacked, such as the last. He had introduced them to her before, during
conversations at Dawyd's house, when they had tried
to comprehend each other's viewpoints.
"But
why should the society, or the state as you call it, be opposed to the
individual?" she asked. "I still don't grasp what the problem is,
Miguel. We seem to do much as we please, all the tune,
here on Gwydion. Most of our enterprises are private,
as you put it." No, he thought, not as I put Ü. Your folk are only interested in making a living. The profit motive, in
the economists' sense of the word, isn't there. He forebore
to interrupt.
"But this unregulated activity seems to work for everyone's mutual benefit,"
she continued. "Money is only a convenience. Its possession does not give
a man power over his fellows."
"You
are universally reasonable," Tolteca said.
"That isn't true of any other planet I know about. Nor do you need to curb
violence. You hardly know what anger is. And hate— another word which isn't in
your language. Hate is to be always angry
with someone else." He saw shock on her face, and hurried to add,
"Then we must contend with the lazy, the greedy, the
unscrupulous— Do you know, I begin to wonder if we should carry out.this project. It may be best that your planet have
nothing to do with the others. You are too good; you could be too badly
hurt."
She
shook her head. "No, don't think that. Obviously we are different from
you. Perhaps genetic drift has caused us to lose a trait or two otherwise
common to mankind. But the difference isn't great, and it doesn't make us
superior. Remember, you came to us. We never managed to build
spaceships."
"Never chose to,"
he corrected her.
He
recalled a remark of Raven's, one day in Instar. "It
isn't natural for humans to be consistently gentle and rational. They've done
tremendous things here for so small a population. They don't lack energy. But
where does their excess energy gof"^ At the time, Tolteca had bristled.
Only a professional killer would be frightened
by total sanity, he thought. Now he began, unwilling, to see that Raven had
asked a legitimate scientific question.
"There
is much that we never chose to do," said Elfavy
with a hint of wistfulness.
"I
admit wondering why you don't at least colonize the uninhabited parts of Gwydion."
"We stabilized the population by general
agreement, several centuries ago. More people would only destroy nature."
They emerged from the woods again. Another
meadow sloped upward to a cliff edge. The grass was strewn with white flowers;
here and there a tree stood, slender, full of gold blossoms; the common bush of
star-shaped leaves grew everywhere about, its buds swelling, the air heady from
their odor. Beyond this spine of the hills lay a deep valley and then the
mountains rose, clear and powerful against, the sky.
Elfavy swept an arm in an arc. "Should we
crowd out this?" she asked.
Tolteca thought of his own brawling unrestful folk, the forests they had already raped, and
made no answer.
The
girl stood a moment, frowning, on the clifftop. A
west wind blew strongly, straining the tunic against her and tossing sunlit
locks of hair. Tolteca caught himself staring so
rudely that he forced his eyes away, across kilometers toward that gray
volcanic cone named Mount Granis.
"No,"
said Elfavy with some reluctance, "I must not be
smug. People did live here once. Just a few farmers and woodcutters, but they
did maintain isolated homes. However, that is long past. Nowadays everyone
lives in a town. And I don't believe we would reoccupy regions like this even
if it were safe. It would be wrong. All life has a right to existence, does it
not? Men shouldn't wear more of a Night Face than they must."
Tolteca found some difficulty in concentrating on
her meaning, the sound was so pleasant. Night Face—oh, yes, part of the Gwydiona religion. (If
"religion" was the right word. "Philosophy" might be
better. "Way of life" might be still more accurate.) Since they
believed everything to be a facet of that eternal and infinite Oneness which
they called God, it followed that God was also death, ruin, sorrow.
But they didn't say much, or seem to think much, about that side of reality. He
remembered that their arts and literature, like their daily lives, were mostly
sunny, cheerful, completely logical once you had
mastered the complex symbolisms. Pain was gallandy
endured. The suffering or death of someone beloved was mourned in a controlled
manner which Raven admired, but Tolteca had trouble
understanding.
"I
don't believe your peole could harm nature," he
said. "You work with it, make yourselves part of it."
"That's
the ideal." Elfavy snickered. "But I'm
afraid practice has no more statistical correlation with preaching on Gwydion than anywhere else in the universe." She knelt
and began to pluck the small white flowers. "I shall make a garland of jule for you," she said. "A sign of friendship,
since the jule blooms when the growth season is being
reborn. Now that's a nice harmonious thing for me to do, isn't it? And yet if
you asked the plant, it might not agree!"
"Thank you," he
said, overwhelmed.
"The
Bird Maiden had a chaplet of jule," she said. By
now he realized that the retelling of symbolic myths was a standard
conversational gambit here, like a Lochlanna's inquiry
after the health of your father. "That is why I wore bird costume this time. It is her time of year, and today is the Day of the River Child.
When the Bird Maiden met the River Child, he was lost and crying. She carried
him home and gave him her crown." She glanced up. "It is a
seasonal myth," she explained, "the end of the rains, lowland floods,
then sunlight and the blossoming jule. Plus those
moral lessons the elders are always quacking about, plus a hundred other
possible interpretations. The entire tale is too complicated to tell on a warm
day, even if the episode of the Riddling Tree is one of our best poems. But I
always like to dance the story."
She
fell silent, her hands busy in the grass. For lack of anything else, he pointed
to one of the large budding bushes. "What's this called?" he asked.
"With the five-pointed leaves? Oh, baleflower. It
grows everywhere. You must have noticed the one in front of my father's
house."
"Yes. It must have
quite a lot of mythology."
Elfavy stopped. She glanced at him and away.
For an instant the evening-blue eyes seemed almost blind. "No," she
said.
"What?
But I thought ... I thought
everything means something on Gwydion, as well as
being something. Usually it has many different meanings—"
"This
is only baleflower." Her voice grew thin. "Nothing else."
Tolteca pulled himself up short. Some taboo—no, surely not that, the Gwydiona
were even freer from arbitrary prohibitions than his own people. But if she
was sensitive about it, best not to pursue the subject.
The girl finished her work, jumped to her
feet, and flung a wreath about his neck. "TTierel"
she laughed. "Wait, hold still, it's caught on
one ear. Ah, good."
He gestured at the second one she had made.
"Aren't you going to put that on yourself?"
"Oh, no. A jule garland is always for someone else.
This is for Raven."
"What?" Tolteca stiffened.
Again
she flushed and looked past him toward the mountains. "I got to know -him
a little in Instar. I drove him around, showing him
the sights. Or we walked."
Tolteca
thought of the many times in those long moonlit nights when she had not been at
home. He said, "I don't believe Raven is your sort," and heard his
voice go ragged.
"I
don't understand him," she whispered. "And yet in a way I do. Maybe. As I might understand a
storm."
She
started back toward camp. Tolteca must
needs follow. He said bitterly, "I should think you, of everyone
alive, would be immune to such cheap glamour. Soldierl Hereditary
aristocrat!"
*Those
things I don't comprehend," she said, her eyes still averted. "To
kill people, or make them do your bidding, as if they were machines— But it isn't that way with him. Not really."
They
went down the trail in stillness, boots thudding next to sandals. At last she
murmured, "He lives with the Night
Faces. All the time. I
can't even bear to think of that, but he endures it."
Enjoys
it, Tolteca wanted to growl But
he saw he had been backbiting, and held his peace.
V
They returned to find most of the party asleep, eyelids
padded against the daylight The sentry saluted them
with a raised arrow. Elfavy continued to the edge of
camp, where the three Lochlanna had spread their
bedrolls. Kors snored, a gun in his hand; Wildenvey looked too young and helpless for his gory
shipboard brags. Raven was still awake. He squatted on his heels and scowled at
a sheaf of photographs.
As Elfavy approached, his grin sprang forth; even to Tolteca, he seemed quite honestly pleased. "Well,
this is a happy chance," he called. "Will you join me? I have a pot
of tea on the grill over the coals."
"No,
thank you. I like that tea stuff of yours, but it would keep me from
sleeping." Elfavy stood before him, looking down
at the ground. The wreath dangled in her hand. "I
only-"
"Never come between an Oakenshaw and his tea," said Raven. "Ah,
there, Sir Engineer."
Elfavy's face burned. "I only wanted to see you
for a moment," she faltered.
"And I you. Someone mentioned former habitation in this area, and I noticed traces
on a ridge near here. So I went there with a camera." Raven flowed erect
and fanned out his self-developing films. "It was a thorp once, several
houses and outbuildings. Not much left now."
"No.
Long abandoned." The girl lifted her wreath and
lowered it again.
Raven gave her a steady
look. "Destroyed," he said.
"Oh? Oh, yes. I have heard this region
was dangerous. The volcano—"
"No
natural disaster," said Raven. "I know the signs. My men and I
cleared away the brush with a flash pistol and dug in the ground. Those
buildings had wooden roofs and rafters, which burned. We found two human
skeletons, more or less complete. One had a skull split open, the other a
corroded iron object between the ribs." He raised the pictures toward her
eyes. "Do you see?"
"Oh."
She stepped back. One hand crept to her mouth. "What-"
"Everyone
tells me there is no record of men killing men on Gwydion,"
said Raven in a metallic voice. "It's not merely rare, it's unknown. And
yet that thorp was attacked and burned once."
Elfavy
gulped. Anger rushed into Tolteca, thick and hot.
"Look here, Raven," he snapped, "you may be free to bully some
poor Lochlanna peasant, but—"
"No," said Elfavy. "Please."
"Did
every home up here suffer a like fate?" Raven flung the questions at her,
not loudly but nonetheless like bullets. "Were the bills deserted
because it was too hazardous to live in isolation?"
"I
don't know." Elfavy's tone lifted with an
unevenness it had not borne until now. "I . . . have seen ruins once in a
while . . . nobody knows what happened." A sudden yell: "Everything isn't written in the histories, you know! Do
you know every answer to every question about your own planet?"
"Of
course not," said Raven. "But if this were my world, I'd at least
know why all the buildings are constructed like fortresses."
"Like what?"
"You know what I
mean."
"Why,"
you asked me that once before. ... I
told you," she stammered. "The strength of the house, the family—a
symbol—"
"I heard the myth," said Raven.
"I was also assured that no one has ever believed those myths to be
literal truths, only poetic expressions. Your charming tale about Anren who made the stars has not prevented you from having
an excellent grasp of astrophysics. So what are you guarding against? What are
you afraid of?"
Elfavy crouched back. "Nothing."
The words rattled from her. "If, if, if there were anything . . . wouldn't
we have better weapons against it . . . than bows and spears? People get
hurt—by accidents, by sickness and old age. They die,
the Night has them—But nothing else! There can't be!"
She whirled about and fled.
Tolteca stepped toward Raven, who stood squinting
after the girl. "Turn around," he said. "I'm going to beat the
guts out of you."
Raven laughed, a vulpine bark. "How
much combat karate do you know, trader's clerk?"
Tolteca dropped a hand to his gun. "We're in
another culture," he said between his teeth. "A generation of scientific
study won't be enough to map its thought processes. If you think you can go
trampling freely on these people's feelings, no more aware of what you're doing
than a bulldozer
with a broken autopilot—"
They both felt the ground shiver. An instant
afterward the sound reached them, booming down the sky.
The three Lochlanna
were on their feet in a ring, weapons aimed outward, without seeming to have
moved. Elsewhere the camp stumbled awake, men calling to each other through
thunders.
Tolteca ran after Elfavy.
The sun seemed remote and heat-less, the explosions rattled his teeth together,
he felt the' earth vibrations in his boots.
The
noise died away, but echoes flew about for seconds longer. Dawyd
joined Elfavy and threw his arms around her. A flock
of birds soared up, screaming.
The physician's gaze turned westward. Black
smoke boiled above the treetops. As Tolteca reached
the Simnons, he saw Dawyd
trace the sign against misfortune.
"What is it?"
shouted the Namerican. "What happened?"
Dawyd looked his way. For a moment the old eyes
were without recognition. Then he answered curtly, "Mount Granis."
"Oh."
Tolteca slapped his forehead. The relief was such
that he wanted to howl his laughter. Of course! A volcano cleared its throat,
after a century or two of quiet. Why in the galaxy were the Gwydiona
breaking camp?
"I
never expected this," said Dawyd. "Though probably our seismology is less well developed than
yours."
"Our
man made some checks, and didn't think we would have any serious trouble if we
built a spaceport here," said Tolteca.
"That wasn't a real eruption, you know. Just a bit of
lava and a good deal of smoke."
"And
a west wind," said Dawyd. "Straight
from Granis to us."
He
paused before adding, almost absent-mindedly, "The site I had in mind for
your base is protected from this sort of thing. I checked the airflow patterns
with the central meteorological computer at Bettwis,
and the fumes never will get there. It is a mere unlucky happenstance that we
should be at this exact spot, this very moment Now we must run, and may fear
give speed to us."
"From a litde smoke?" asked Tolteca
incredulously.
Dawyd held his daughter close. "This is a
young planetary system," he said. "Rich in heavy
metals. That smoke and dust, when it arrives, will include enough such
material to kill us."
By
the time they got in motion, jogging south along a sparsely wooded ridge, the
cloud had overshadowed them. Kors looked past a dim
red ball of sun, estimating with an artilleryman's eye. His lantern jaw worked
a moment, as if chewing sour cud, before he spoke.
"We
can't go back the way we came, Commandant. That muck'll
fall out all over these parts. We've got to keep headed this way and hope we
can get out from under. Ask one of those yokels if he knows a decent
trail."
"Must
we have a trail?" puffed Wildenvey. "Let's
cut right through the woods."
"Listen to the for-Harry's-sake
heathdweller talk!" jeered Kors.
"Porkface, I grew up in the Emshaw.
Have you ever tried to run through brush?"
"Save your breath, you two,"
advised Raven. He loped a little faster until he joined Dawyd
and Elfavy at the head of the line. Grass whispered
under his boots, now and then a hobnail rang on a stone and sparks showered.
The sky was dull brown, streaked with black, the light from it like tarnished
brass and casting no shadows. The only bright things in the world were an
occasional fire-spit from Mount Granis, and Elfavy's flying hair.
Raven put the question to her. He spaced his
words with his breathing, which he kept in rhythm with his feet. The girl
replied in the same experienced manner. "In this direction, all paths
converge on the Holy City. We ought to be safe there, if we can reach it soon
enough." "Before Bale time?" exclaimed Dawyd.
"Is it forbidden?" asked Raven, and wondered if he would use his guns
to enter a refuge tabooed.
"No
... no rule of conduct. . . . But
nobody goes there outside Bale time!" Dawyd
shook his head, bewildered. "It would be a meaningless act."
"Meaningless—to
save our lives?" protested Raven. "Unsymbolic,"
said Elfavy. "It would fit into no
pattern." She lifted her face to the spreading darkness and cried,
"But what sense would it make to breathe that dust? I want to see Byord again!"
"Yes.
So. So be it." Dawyd
shut his mouth and concentrated on making speed.
Raven's
eyes, watching the uneven ground, touched the girl's quick feet and stayed
there. Not until he tripped on a vine did he remember exactly where he was.
Then he swore and forced himself to think of the situation. Without analytical
apparatus, he had no way to confirm that volcanic ash was as dangerous as Dawyd claimed; but it seemed reasonable, on a planet like
this. The first expedition had been warned about many vegetable species that
were poisonous to man simply because they grew in soil loaded with heavy
elements. It wouldn't take a lot of inhaled metallic material to destroy you: radioactives, arsenates, perhaps mercury liberated from
its oxide by heat. A few gulps and you were done. Dying might take a while,
prolonged by the medics' attempts to get a hopelessly big dose out of your
body. Not that Raven intended to watch his own lungs and brain go rotten. His
pistol could do him a final service. But Elfavy-
They
stopped to rest at the head of a downward trail. One of the Gwydiona
objected through a driedrout throat: "Not the
Holy City! We'd destroy the entire meaning of Bale!"
"No,
we wouldn't." Dawyd, who had been thinking as he
trotted, answered with an authority that pulled their reddened eyes to him.
"The eruption at the moment when we happened to be downwind was an
accident so improbable it was senseless. Right? The
Night Face called Chaos." Several men crossed themselves, but they nodded
agreement "If we redress the matter—restore the balance of events, of
logical sequence—by entering the Focus of God (in our purely human persona at that, which makes our act a parable of
man's conscious reasoning powers, his science) — what could be more
significant?"
They
mulled it over while the gloom thickened and Mount Granis
boomed at their backs. One by one, they murmured assent. Tolteca
whispered to Raven, in Ispanyo,
"Oa, I do believe I see a new myth being bom."
"Yes.
They'll doubüess bring one of their quasi-gods into it, a few
generations hence, while preserving an accurate historical account of what
really happened!"
"But
by all creation! Here they are, running from an unnecessarily horrible death,
and they argue whether it would be artistic to shelter in this temple spotl"
"It
makes more sense than you think," said Raven somberly. "I remember
once when I was a boy, my very first campaign in fact. A
civil war, the Bitter Water clan against my own Ethnos. We boxed a
regiment of them in the Stawr Hills, expecting them
to dig in. They wouldn't, because there were brave men's graves everywhere
around, the Danoora who fell three hundred years ago.
They came out prepared to be mowed down. When we grasped the situation, we let
them go, gave them a day's head start. They reached their main body, which
perhaps turned the course of the war. But that victory would have cost us too
much."
Tolteca shook his head. "I don't understand
you."
"You wouldn't."
"Any more than you would understand why
men died to pull down the foreign castles on our planet," "Well,
maybe so."
Raven wondered how much lethal dust he was
already breathing. Not enough to matter, yet, he decided. The air was still
clean in his nostrils, he could still see far across hills and down forested
slopes. The heavy particles and stones were not dangerous. It was the finely
divided material, slowly settling over many hectares, which could kill men.
Like
a mind-reader, Dawyd said to him, "The Holy City
will be almost ideal for us. Airflow patterns protect it too from the ash,
where it lies right under the Steeps" of Ko-lumkill.
The site was chosen with that in mind, even though our local volcanoes very
rarely erupt*. We shall have to wait there till the next rain, which may take a
few days at this season. That will carry down the last airborne dust, leach
from the soil what has fallen, wash the poison into
the, rivers and so into the sea, safely diluted. The City has ample food
supplies, and I see no reason why we should not avail ourselves of them."
He
rose. "But first we must get there,"" he finished. "Does
everyone have his breath back?"
VI
The rest of the journey was little remembered. They went
at a dogtrot, along well-kept trails, under cool leaves; they halted a few
minutes at a time when it seemed indicated; but toward the end men lurched
along in each other's arms. Three Namericans
collapsed. Dawyd had poles chopped and raincoats
spread to make litters for them. No one complained at the burden. Perhaps that
was only because no energy was left to complain.
When
he entered the Holy City, Raven himself scarcely saw it. He retained enough
strength to spread a bedroll for EI-favy, who
sprawled quietly down and passed out. He brought a cup of water for Dawyd, who lay on his back and stared with eyes emptied of
awareness. He even washed the grime and sweat from himself before crawling into
his own bag. But then darkness clubbed him.
When
he awoke, it took a few seconds before he knew his own name, and a bit longer
to fix his location. He rallied those drilled reflexes by which he could deny
to himself that he was stiff and aching. Shadow from a wall covered him, but he
looked straight up to the stars. Had he slept so long? The sky was utterly
clear; men were indeed safe in this place. The constellations glittered in
unfamiliar patterns. He could barely recognize the one they called The Plowman
on Lochlann: its distortion made him feel cold and
alone. The Nebula, dimming some parts of the sky and blotting out others, was
somehow less alien.
He left his bag, hunkered in the dark and
opened the packsack that had been his pillow with fingers too schooled to need
light. Quickly he dressed. Dagger and pistol made a comforting drag on his
flanks. He threw a wide-sleeved tunic over the drab route clothes, for it
flaunted the crests of his family and nation, and he glided between men still
unconscious, into the open.
The
night was very quiet. He stood in a forum, if it could be so named. There was
no paving in the Holy City, but thick pseudomoss lay
cool and full of dew under his feet. On every side rose white marble buildings,
long and low, fluted delicate columns upholding portico roofs where figures
danced on friezes. Their doorless main entrances
gaped wide atop mossy ramps, but the windows were mere slits. Colonnades and
wings knitted them together in a labyrmthine unity.
Behind the square that they defined stood a ring of towers, airily slender,
with bronze cupolas that must show a soft green by daylight. The entire place
was surrounded by an amphitheater, or whatever you wanted to call it: low
moss-carpeted tiers enclosing the city like the sides of a chalice. Trees grew
thickly on its top.
Down
here on the bottom there were no trees; but many formal gardens—rather, a
single, reticulated one, interwoven with the houses and the towers—held beds of
Terran violets and thomless
roses, native jule and sunbloom
and baleflower and much else which Raven didn't
recognize. Southward, above the rim of the chalice, those cliffs called the
Steeps of Kolumkill shouldered against the stars.
He was able to see much detail, for the moon She was rising in the west. Its retrograde path would take
it over the sky and through half a cycle of phases during half a night period.
Already it was a white semicircle, a degree in angular diameter, filling the
hollow with unreal light.
A
fountain tinkled in the middle of the forum. Raven had cleaned himself there
before he slept He crossed to its little moss-grown bowl and drank until his
mummy gullet felt alive again. The water gurgled back down a whimsical
drainpipe, a grotesque fish face. Well, why shouldn't there be humor in the
geometric center of sacredness? thought Raven. The
people of Gwydion laughed more than most, not
raucously like a Namerican or wolfishly like a Loch-lanna, but a gentle mirth which found something comical in the
grandest things. The water must come from some woodland spring, it had a wild
taste.
He
heard a noise and whirled about, one hand on his gun. Elfavy
entered the moonlight. "Oh," he said stupidly. "Are you awake,
milady?"
She chuckled. "No. I am sound asleep in
my bed in In-star." Treading close: "I woke an hour or more ago, but
didn't want to move. Not for a day, at least! Then I saw you here, and—"
Her voice trailed off.
Raven
directed his heartbeat to slow down. It obeyed poorly. "Someone should
keep watch," he said. "May as well be me."
"No need, far-friend. There are no
dangers here." "Wild animals?"
"Robots
keep them off. Other robots maintain the grounds." She pointed to a little
wheeled machine weeding a rosebed with delicate
tendrils.
Raven grinned. "Ah, but who maintains
the robots?"
"Silly! An automatic
unit, of course. Every five ■ years-local years, I mean, so it's
about once in a generation—our engineers hold a midwinter ceremony where they
inspect the facilities and bring in fresh supplies."
"I see. And otherwise no one ever comes
here except at, uh, Bale time?"
She
nodded. "No reason to. Shall we look around? Walking might get the cramp
out of my legs." She made the suggestion with
no trace of awe, as if offering to show him any local curiosum.
Their
feet fell noiseless on the moss, and its Springiness seemed
to remove much of their exhaustion. The buildings looked like faerie work,
there under the brutal mass of Ko-lumkill; but as he
reached a doorway, Raven saw that their walls were heavy and strong as the rest
of Gwydiona architecture. Within, light came from fluoros, recessed in the high ceiling; probably solar
battery powered, Raven thought. The illumination was dim, but there was little
to see anyhow: a gracious anteroom, archways opening on corridors.
"We mustn't go very deeply in,"
said the girl, "or we could get lost and blunder around for quite some
time before finding our way out. Look." She pointed down a hall, toward
an intersection whence five other passages radiated. "That is only the
edge of the maze."
Raven touched a wall. It yielded to his
fingers, the same rubbery gray substance that covered the floor. "What's
this?" he asked. "A synthetic elastomer?
Does it Tinp the whole interior?"
"Yes,"
said Elfavy. Her tone grew indifferent. "There's
nothing in here, really. Let's go up in one of the towers, then
you can see the total pattern."
"A
moment, if you grant." Raven opened one of the doors which marched along
the nearest corridor. It was steel, as usual, though coated with the soft
plastic, and had an inside bolt. The room beyond was ventilated through a
slit-window. A toilet and water tap were the only furnishings, but a heap of
stuffed bags filled one corner. "What's in those?" he inquired.
"Food,
sealed in plastiskins," Elfavy
answered. "An artificial food, which keeps
indefinitely. I'm afraid you won't find it very exciting when we must
live off it, but everything necessary for nutrition is included."
"You
seem to live rather austerely at Bale time," said Raven. He watched her
from the edge of an eye.
"It
is no time to worry about material needs. Instead, you grab a sack of food and
slit it open with your thumbnail when hungry, drink from a tap or fountain when
thirsty, flop down anywhere when sleepy."
"I
see. But what is the important thing you do, to which keeping alive is just
incidental?"
"I
told you." She left the room with a quick nervous stride. "We are
God."
"But
when I asked you what you meant by that, you said you couldn't explain."
"I
can't." She evaded his glance. Her voice was not perfectly level.
"Don't you see, it goes beyond language. Any language. Mankind employs several, you realize, besides
speech. Mathematics is one, music another, painting another, choreography
another, and so on. According to what you have told me, Gwydion
seems to be the only planet where myth was also developed, deliberately and
systematically, as still a different language—not by primitives who confused
it with the concepts of science or common sense, but by people trained in
semantics, who knew that each language describes one single facet of reality,
and wanted myth to help them talk about something for which the others are
inadequate. You can't believe, for instance, that mathematics and poetry are
interchangeable!" "No," said Raven.
She
brushed back her tousled hair and went on, eager now. "Well, what happens
at Bale time could only be described by a fusion of every language, including
those no human being has yet imagined. And such super-language is impossible,
because it would be self-contradictory."
"Do
you mean that during Bale you perceive, or commune
with, total reality?"
They
came out into the open again. She hastened across the forum, through the barred
shadow of a colonnade to the spires beyond. He had never seen anything so
beautiful as the sight of her running in the moonlight. She stopped at a tower
doorway, it cast a darkness over her and she said from
the darkness, "That's merely another set of words, Hatha. Not even a label. I wish
you could be here yourself and know!"
They
entered and started upward. A padded ramp wound around small rooms. The passage
was wanly lit and stuffy. After a silence, Raven asked, "What was it you
called me?" . "What?" He
couldn't be sure in the gloom, but he thought her face was stained with quick
color.
"Liatha. I
don't know that word."
Her
lashes fluttered down. "Nothing," she mumbled. "An
expression."
"Ah,
let me guess." He wanted to make a joke, to suggest that it meant oaf,
barbarian, villain, swinedog, but remembered that Cwydiona had no such terms. Since she looked at him with
enormous expectant eyes he must blunder, "Darling, beloved—"
She
stopped, shrinking back against the wall in dismay. "You said you didn't
know!"
The
discipline of a lifetime kept him walking. When she rejoined him he made
himself say, lightly, through a clamor, "You are most kind, peacemaker,
but I don't need any further flattery than the fact that you have time to spare
for me."
"There
will be time enough for everything else," she whispered, "after you
are gone."
The
highest room, immediately under the cupola, was the only one which possessed a
true window, rather than a slit. Moonlight cataracted past its bronze grille. The air was warm,
but that light made Elfavy's hair seem to crackle
with frost. She pointed out at the intricate interlocking of labyrinth,
towers, and flowerbeds. "The hexagons inscribed in circles mean the laws
of nature," she began in a subdued voice, "their reularity
enclosed in some greater scheme. It is the sign of Owan
the Sunsmith, who—" She stopped. Neither of them
had been listening. They searched each other's faces under the fericed-off moon.
"Must you go?" she asked finally.
"I have made promises at home," he
said.
"But after they are fulfilled?"
"I
don't know." He considered the stranger sky. In the southern hemisphere,
which was oriented more nearly toward the direction whence he had come, the constellations
would be less changed. But no one lived in the southern hemisphere. "I've
known people from one place, one culture, who tried to settle into
another," he said. "It rarely works."
"It
might. If there were willingness. A Gwydiona, for example, could be happy even on, well, on Lochlann."
"I wonder."
"Will you do something for me? Now?" His pulses jumped. "If I
can, milady." "Sing me the rest of that song. The one you sang
when we first met."
"What?
Oh, yes, The
Unquiet Grave. But
you couldn't—" "I
would like to try again.
Since you are fond of it Please."
He
hadn't brought his flute, but he sang low in the chilly light:
"' Tis I, my
love, sits on your grave And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips And that is all I seek.'
"
*You
crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips; But my breath smells earthy strong. If you
have one kiss of my clay-cold hps Your
time will not be long.'"
"No," said Elfavy.
She gulped and hugged herself, seeking warmth. "I'm sorry."
He
recalled again that there was no tragic art on Cwydion.
None whatsoever. He wondered what a Lear or an Agamemnon
or an Old Men At Centauri might do to her. Or the real thing, even: Vard of Helldale, rebelling for a
family honor he didn't believe in, defeated and slain by bis
own comrades; young Brand who broke his regimental oath, gave up friends and
wealth and the mistress he loved more than the sun, to go live in a peasant's
hut and tend his insane wife.
He
wondered if he, himself, was healthy enough within the skull to live on Cwydion.
The girl rubbed her eyes.
"Best we go down again," she said dully. "Others will soon be
awake. They won't know what has become of us."
"We'll
talk later," said Raven. "When we aren't so
tired."
"Of
course," she said.
vn
Rain
came the following
afternoon; first thunderheads hanked over Kolumkill like blue-black granite, lightning livid in their
caverns, then cataracts borne on a whooping east wind, finally a long slacking
off when the Gwydiona romped nude on turf that
glittered where sunbeams struck through the pillars of slowly falling water. Tolteca
joined the ball game, as vigorous a one as he had ever played. Afterward they
lounged about indoors, around a fire built on a hearth improvised from stones,
and yarned. The men probed his recollections with an insatiable wish to learn
more about the galaxy. They had tales to give in exchange, nothing of
inter-human conflict—they seemed puzzled and troubled by that idea—but lusty
enough, happenings of sea and forest and mountain.
"So
we sat in that diving bell waiting to see if their grapple would find us before
we ran out of air," Llyrdin said, "and I
never played better chess in my life. It got right thick in there, too, before
they snatched us up. They could have had the decency to be a few minutes longer
about it, though. I had such a lovely end game planned outl
But of course the board was upset as they hauled on
the bell."
"And what might that
symbolize?" Tolteca teased him.
Llyrdin shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not much
of a thinker, myself. Maybe Cod likes a joke now and then. But if so, Vwi has a pawky sense of
humor."
After the storm had passed, the party went on
to the spaceport site. Tolteca put in a busy day and
night investigating the area. It would serve admirably, he decided.
Though
Bale time was drawing near and the Gwydiona were
anxious to get home, Dawyd ordered a roundabout
route. The rain had laid the volcanic dust, but more precipitation would be
needed to purify the ground entirely. It would be foolish to retrace their path
across that tainted soil. He aimed for a shoulder of the mountains which jutted
out of the massif on the north, between the expedition and the coast. The pass
across it rose above timberline, and travel was rugged. They stopped for some
hours in the uppermost woods to rest before the final ascent. That was in the
middle morning.
After
he had eaten, Tolteca left camp to wash in a pool
further down the stream which flowed nearby. Glacier-fed, the water numbed him,
but after he had toweled himself he felt like a minor sun. He donned his
clothes and wandered restlessly in search of a fall he could hear in the
distance. A game trail led through the brush toward its foot. He was about to
emerge there when he heard voices. Raven and El-favy!
"Please,"
the girl said. Her tone trembled. "I beg you, be reasonable."
The distress in her shocked Tolteca. For a moment of rage he wanted to burst
forth and have it out with Raven. He checked himself. Eavesdropping was
ungentlemanly. Even if—or perhaps especially because—those two had been so much
in other's company since the first night in the Holy City. But if she was in
some difficulty, he wanted to know about it so he could try to help her, and he
didn't think she would tell him what the matter was if he put a direct question.
There were cultural barriers, taboo or embarrassment, which only Raven was
callous enough to hammer down.
Tolteca wet his lips. His palms grew sweaty and the
pulse thuttered in his ears, nearly as loud as the
stream that jumped over the bluff before him. To chaos with being a gentleman, he decided violently, slipped behind a
natural hedge and peered through the leaves.
The
water foamed down into a dell filled with young trees. Their foliage made a
shifting pattern of light and shadow under the deep upland sky. Rainbows danced
in the water smoke, currents swirled about rocks covered with soft green
growth, the stones on the riverbed seemed to ripple.
Cool and damp, the air rang with the noise of the fall. High overhead wheeled
a single bird of prey.
Raven
stood on the bank, a statue in a black traveling cloak. The harsh face might
have been cast in metal as he regarded the girl. She kept twisting her own gaze
away from his, and her fingers wrestled with each other. Tiny droplets caught
in her hair broke the sunlight into flaming shards, but that unbound mane was
itself the brightest thing before Tolteca's eyes.
"I
am being reasonable," Raven snapped. "When my nose is rubbed in
something for the third time running, I don't ignore the smell."
"Third time? What do you mean? Why are you so angry today?"
Raven
gave an elaborate sigh and ticked the points off on his fingers. "We've
been over this ground before. First: your houses are built like fortresses.
Yes, you tell me that's a symbol, but I have trouble
believing that rational people like you would go to so much trouble and expense
for something that was nothing but a symbol. Second: nobody lives alone any
more, especially not in the wilderness. I can't forget that place where it was
tried once. Those people were killed with weapons. Third: while we were looking
over the port site, your father made a remark about caves in the cliff being
easily made into Bale time shelters. When I asked him what he had in mind, he
suddenly discovered he had an urgent matter to attend to elsewhere. When I
asked a couple
of the others, they grew almost as unhappy 'as you and mumbled something about
taking insurance against unforeseeable accidents.
"What tore it for me was when I pressed Cardwyr for a real
explanation, a few hours ago on the march. He'd been so frank with me in every
other respect that I felt he'd continue that way. But instead, he came as near
losing his temper as I've ever seen a Gwydiona do. I
thought for a minute he was going to hit me. But he just stalked off telling me
to improve my manners.
"Something
is wrong here. Why don't you give us fair warning?"
Elfavy turned as if to depart. She blinked very
fast, and a wetness glinted on her cheek. "I
thought you . . . you invited me to go for a walk," she said.
"But—"
He
caught her by the arm. "Listen," he said more gently. "Please
listen. I'm picking on you now because, well, you've honored me with reason to
think you won't lie or evade 'when something is really important to me. And
this is. You've never seen violence, but I have. Much too
often. I know what comes of it, and—I have to do what I can to keep it
from you. Do you follow me? I have to."
She
ceased pulling against him and stood shivering, her
head bent so that the locks fell past her face and hid it. Raven studied her
for a while. His mouth lost its hardness. "Sit down, my dear," he
said at last.
Elfavy lowered herself to the ground as if strength
had deserted her. He joined her and took one small hand in his. There went a
stabbing through Tolteca.
"Are
you forbidden to talk about this?" Raven asked, so low that the brawling
of the fall nearly drowned the question.
She shook her head.
"Why won't you,
then?"
"I—"
Her fingers tightened around his palm, and she laid her other hand over it. He
sat cat-passive while she gulped for breath. "I don't know. We
don't—" Some seconds passed before she could get the words out. "We
hardly ever talk about it. Or think about it. It's too dreadful."
There
is such a thing as an unconscious taboo, Tolteca remembered through the tides in his brain, hid by the self upon the self.
"And
it's not as if the bad things happen very often, now that . . . that we've
learned how to take ... precautions.
Long ago it was worse—" She braced herself and looked squarely at him.
"You live with greater hazards and horrors than ours, all the time, do you
not?"
Raven
smiled very slightly. "Ah-ah, there. I decline
your counter-challenge. Let's stick to the main issue. Something occurs, or can
occur, during Bale. That's plain to see. Your people must have wondered what,
if they don't actually know."
"Yes.
There have been ideas." Elfavy seemed to have recovered
her nerve. She frowned at the earth for a space and then said almost coolly,
"We are not much given on Gwydion to examining
our own souls, as you from the stars seem to be. I suppose that is because
we're simpler. Miguel said to me once that he would not have believed there
could be an entire race so free of internal conflicts as us, until he came
here." She
spoke my name! "I
don't know about that, but I do know that I've little skill in reading my own
inmost thoughts. So I can't tell you with certainty why we so
loathe to think about the danger at Bale time. However, might it not be
that one hates to associate the most joyous moments of one's life with . . .
with that other thing?"
"Might be," said
Raven noncommittally.
She
raised her head, tossing the tresses down her back, and went on. "Still,
Bale is when God comes, and God has Vwi Night Faces
too. Not everyone returns from the Holy City."
"What happens to
them?" v
"There
is a theory that the mountain ape is driven mad by the nearness of God and
comes, down into the lowlands, killing and destroying. That would account for
the facts. Actually, I suppose if you forced every person on Gwydion to give you an opinion, as you forced me, most
would say this idea must be the right one."
"Haven't you tried to check up on it?
Why not leave somebody behind in the towns, waiting in ambush, to see?"
"No.
Who would forego his trip- to the Holy City, for any reason?"
"Hm. One
might at least leave automatic cameras. But I can find out about that later.
What's this mountain ape like?"
"An
omnivore, - which often catches game to eat. They travel in flocks."
"I should think a closed door and a
barred window would serve against animals. And don't you keep guard robots at
your sanctuaries?"
"Well, the idea is that the beast may be
half intelligent How could it be found on so many
islands, if it did not sometimes cross the water on a log?"
"That
could happen accidentally. Or the islands may be the remnants of an original
continent. There must at least have been land bridges now and then, here and
there, in the geological past."
"Well, perhaps," she said
reluctantly. "But suppose the mountain ape is cunning enough to get by a
guard robot That needn't happen very often, you see,
to cause trouble. Suppose it has gotten to the point of using tools that can
break and pry. I don't believe that anyone has ever really investigated its
habits. It usually stays far out in the wilderness. Only communities which he
near the edge of a great forest, like Instar,
ever glimpse a wandering flock. Remember, we are only ten million people,
scattered over a planet. It's too big for us to know everything."
She
seemed entirely calm now. Her gaze went around the dell, up the tumbling river
to the sky and the hunting bird. She smiled. "And it is right that the
world be so," she said. "Would you want to live where there is no
mystery and nothing unconquered?"
"No,"
Raven agreed. "I suppose that's why men went to the stars in the first
place."
"And
must keep looking ever further, as they suck the planets dry," Elfavy said with compassion tinged by the least hint of
scorn. "We keep the frontiers that we already have."
"I
like that attitude," Raven said. "But I don't see any sense in
letting an active menace run loose. Well look into this mountain ape business,
and if that turns out to be the trouble, well soon find ways to deal with the
brutes."
Elfavy's mouth fell open. She stared at him in a
blind fashion. "No," she gasped, "you wouldn't exterminate
them!"
"Um-m . . . that's
right, you'd consider that immoral, wouldn't you? Very well, let the species
live. But it can be eradicated in inhabited areas."
"What?" She yanked
her hands from his.
"Now,
wait a bit," Raven protested. T know you don't have any nonsense here about the
sacredness of life. You fish and hunt and butcher domestic animal^ not for sport but quite cheerfully for
economic reasons. What's the difference in this case?"
"The apes may be
intelligent!"
"On a very low plane, maybe. I wouldn't let that bother me. But if you're
so squeamish, I suppose they could simply be stunned and airlifted en masse to
a distant plateau or some place. I'm sure they wouldn't much mind."
"Stop." She raised herself to a crouch. Through the
close-fitting tunic, on the bare sun-gold arms and legs, Tolteca
could see the tension that shook her. "Can you not understand? The Night
Faces must be!"
"Brake
back, there," Raven said. He reached for her. "I only
suggested—"
"Let me alone!" She sprang to her
feet and' fled up the trail, almost brushing Tolteca
but unaware of him in her weeping.
Raven
swore, the word was less angry than hurt and bitter, and started to follow. That's plenty, Tolteca thought in a gust of temper, and stepped
forth. "What's going on here?" he demanded.
Raven
glided to a halt. "How long have you been listening?" he murmured in
a tiger's voice.
"Long
enough. I
heard her ask you to let her be. So do it."
They
confronted each other a little while. Shadow and sunlight speckled Raven's
black shape. A breeze blew spray from the fall into Tolteca's
face. He tasted it frigid on his hps, but a smell
akin to blood was in his nostrils. If he jumps me, I'll shoot. I will.
Raven let out a deep breath. The heavy shoulders slumped
noticeably. "I suppose that is best," he said, and turned
around to stare at the river. *
The swift end of the scene was like having a
wall collapse on which Tolteca had been leaning. He knew with horror that his hand had been on
his pistol butt, and snatched it away. Yleml What's happened to
me?
What
would have happened, if— He needed his whole courage not to bolt
Raven
straightened. Tour chivalrous indignation does you credit," he said sarcastically,
around the back of his head. "But I assure you I was only trying to keep
her from getting murdered one fine festival night"
Still
shaken, Tolteca grasped at the chance to smooth
things over. "I know," he said. "But you have to respect the
sensitivities of people. Different cultures have the damnedest geases."
"Uh-huh."
"Did
you ever hear why trade with Orillion was abandoned,
why nobody goes there any more? It seemed one of the
most promising of the isolated worlds that we'd come upon. Honest, warmhearted
people. So warmhearted that we couldn't possibly deal with them if we kept on
refusing their offers of individual friendship . .. which involved
homosexual relations. We couldn't even explain to them why it wouldn't
do."
"Yes, I've heard of
that case."
"You can't go bursting into the most
important parts of people's lives like an artillery shell. Such compulsions
have their roots in the very bottom of the unconscious mind. The people
themselves can't think logically about them. Suppose I cast doubts on your
father's honor. You'd probably kill me. But if you said something like that to
me, I wouldn't get resentful to the point of homicide."
Raven
faced him again, cocking one brow upward. "What are your touchy points,
then?" he asked dryly.
"Eh?
Why, well—family, I guess, even if that relationship isn't as strong as for a Lochlanna. My planet Democratic
government Not that I mind discussing any of those things, arguing about them.
I don't believe in fighting till there's a direct physical threat And I can entertain the possibility that my notions are
completely mistaken. Certainly there's nothing that can't be improved."
"The autonomous individual," Raven
said. "I feel sorry for you."
, ■ ■
He went on rapidly: "But there is
something dangerous on Gwydion, especially at that
so-called Bale season. I've learned that a certain animal, the mountain ape, is
generally believed to be responsible. Do you have any information about the
creature?"
"N-no. In most languages, 'ape' means a more or less anthropoid animal,
fairly bright though without tools or a true speech. The type is common on terrestroid planets—parellel
evolution."
"I know." Raven reached a decision.
"Look here, youll agree that action must be
taken, for the safety of base personnel if nothing else. Later on we can worry
about how to do it without offending local prejudices. But first we have to
know what the practical problem is. Could the apes really be the destroyers? Elfavy was so irrational on the subject that I can't just
take her word, or any Gwydiona's.
Ill have to investigate for
myself. You mentioned to me once that you've been on long hunting trips in the
forests of several planets. And I suppose you are better than I at worming
things out of people, especially when it involves their sore spots. So could
you quiedy find out what the spoor of the apes looks
like, and so on? Then if we get a chance we can go off and have a look for
ourselves. Agreed?"
VHI
There were no signs until the party was over the pass and
down in the woods on the opposite slope. But then young Beodag,
who was a forester by trade, spotted the traces and pointed them out to Tolteca and Raven. The trail was fairly clear, trampled
grass and broken twigs, caerdu trees stripped of
their succulent buds, holes where tubers or rodentoids
had been snatched out of the ground. "Be careful,'' he warned. "They have been known to attack men. You really ought
to take a larger party."
Raven
slapped the holster of his pistol. "This will handle more than one flock
of anything," he said. "Especially with a dip of
explosive bullets in it."
"And,
uh, more people might only alarm them," Tolteca
said. "Besides, you couldn't help us. We've both had encounters before
now with animals
on the verge of
intelligence, not to mention fully developed nonhuman races. We know what signs
to watch for. I'm afraid you Gwydiona don't, as
yet."
Beodag looked
a trifle skeptical but didn't press the point. It was assumed here that any
adult knew what he was doing. Dawyd and his men had
only been told that it was desirable to investigate the mountain apes, since
protection against their raids might be needed at the spaceport. El-favy, retreated into an unhappy silence, had not given Tolteca the lie.
"WelL" Beodag said,
"luck attend you. But I doubt you will discover much. At least, I have
never seen them carrying anything like tools. I've merely heard third- and
fourth-hand stories, and you know how they can grow in the telling."
Raven
nodded, turned on his heel, and headed into the forest Tolteca
hurried to catch up. The sound of the others was soon left behind, and the outworlders walked through a stillness broken only by
rustlings and chirpings. The trees here grew tall, with sheer reddish trunks
that broke into a dense roof of leaves high overhead. In that shade there was
little underbrush, only a thick soft mould speckled with fungi. The air was
warmer than usual at this altitude. It carried a pungent smell, reminding of
thyme, sage, or savory.
"I
wonder what makes that odor?" Tolteca
said. He had his answer a few minutes later, when they crossed a meadow where
lesser plants could grow. A thick stand of bushes had exploded into bloom,
scarlet flowers surrounded by bee-like insects, filling the area with their
scent. He stopped for a close inspection.
Tou know," he said, "I think this must
be a rather near relative of baleflower. Observe the
leaf structure. Evidently this species blooms a little earlier in the year,
though."
"M-m, yes." Raven stopped and rubbed his chin. The cold green eyes grew thoughtful.
"It occurs to me that the true baleflower should
be opening its buds very soon after we get back to Instar—which
is to say, just about in time for the Bale festival, whatever that is. In a
culture like this, bearing in mind the like names, that's no coincidence. And
yet they never seem to tell stories about the plant, the way they do about eveiything else in sight."
"I've
noticed that," said Tolteca. "But we'd
better not ask them bluntly why, not at least till we know more. When we
return, I'm going to send our linguists into the ship's library to do an
etymological and semantic study of that word bale."
"Good
idea. While you're at it, dig up a bush sometime when nobody's looking and have
it chemically analyzed."
"Very
well," said Tolteca, though he winced at the implications.
^Meanwhile,"
said Raven, "we've another project. Let's
go."
They
re-entered the cathedral stillness of the forest. Their footfalls were muffled
until their breathing seemed unnaturally loud. The trail of the ape band
remained plain to see, prints in the ground, mutilated vegetation, excrement.
"Pretty formidable animals, if they plow their way as openly as
this," Raven remarked. "They're as sloppy as humans. I daresay they
can move quietly when they hunt, however."
"Think
we can get close enough to spy on them?* Tolteca
asked.
"We
can try. By all accounts, they have little shyness toward men. Certainly we can
find some spot where they've stayed a few days and check the rubbish. You can
tell if a bone was split with a rock, for instance, or if somebody has been
chipping stone to shape."
"Suppose they do turn out to be what
we're looking for? What then?"
"That depends. We can try to talk the Gwydiona out of their nonsensical attitude—"
"It isn't nonsense!" Tolteca protested indignantly. "Not in their own
terms."
"It's always ridiculous to submit meekly
to a threat," Raven said. "Stop being so tender
with foolishness."
The
memory rose in Tolteca of Elfavy's
troubled face. "That's about enough out of you," he rapped.
"This isn't your planet. It isn't even your expedition. Keep your place,
sir."
They halted. A flush darkened Raven's high
cheekbones. "Keep a leash on that tongue of yours," he retorted.
"We're
not here to exploit them. You'll damned well respect their ethos or 111 see you in irons!"
"What the chaos do you know about an
ethos, you culture-less moneysniffer?"
"I know better than to—to drive a woman
to tears. You'll stop that too, hear me?"
"Ah, so," said
Raven most softly. "That's the layout, eh?"
Tolteca braced himself for a fight. It came from an
un-awaited quarter. Suddenly the air was full of shapes.
They
dropped from the trees, onto the ground, and threw themselves at the men. Raven
sprang aside and pulled his gun loose. His first shot missed. There was no
second. A hairy body climbed onto his back and another seized his arm. He went
down in a welter of them.
Tolteca yelled and ran. An ape laid hold of his
trouser leg. He smashed the other boot into the animal's muzzle. The hands let
go. Two more leaped at him. He dodged their charge and pelted over the ground.
Get his back against yonder bole, spray them with automatic fire—He whirled and
raised his pistol.
An ape cast a stone it had been carrying. The
missile smacked Tolteca's temple. Pain blinded him.
He lurched, and then they were on him. Thick arms dragged him to earth. His
nose was full of their hair and rank smell. Fangs snapped yellow, a centimeter
before his face. He struck out wildly. His fist rebounded from ridged muscle.
The drubbing and clawing became his whole universe. He whirled into a redness
that rang.
When
he came to himself, a minute or two afterward, he was pinioned by two of them.
A third approached, unwinding a thin vine from its waist His arms were lashed
behind his back.
He
shook his head, which throbbed and stabbed him and dripped blood down on his
tunic, and looked around. Raven had been secured in the same manner.,
The apes squatted to stare, or bounced about chattering. They numbered a dozen
or so, all males, somewhat over a meter tall, tailed, heavy-bodied, covered
with greenish fur and tawny manes. The faces were blunt, and they had
four-fingered hands with fairly well-developed thumbs. Several carried bones of
leg or jaw from large herbivores.
"Oa,"
Tolteca groaned. "Are you—are—"
"Not
too much damaged yet," Raven said tightly, through bruised hps. Somehow he found a harsh chuckle. "But
my pride! They
were tracking us!"
An
ape picked up one of the dropped pistols, fingered it and tossed it aside.
Others removed the men's daggers from the sheaths, but soon discarded them
likewise. Hard hands plucked and prodded at Tolteca,
ripped his garments with their curious plucldngs. It
came to him with a gulp of horror that he might well die here.
He fought down panic and tested his bonds.
Wrist was lashed to wrist by a strand too tough to break. Raven lay in a more
relaxed position on his back, squirming a little as
the apes played with him.
The
largest howled a syllable. The gang stopped then-noise and got briskly to their
feet. Though short of leg and long of toe, they were true
bipeds. The humans were hauled up with casual brutality and the
procession started off deeper into the woods.
Only
then, as the daze cleared fully from him, did Tolteca
realize that the bones, his captors carried were weapons, club and
sharp-toothed knife. "Proto-intelligent—" he began. The ape beside
him cuffed him in the mouth. Evidently silence was the rule on the trail
He
didn't stumble long through his nightmare. They came out into another meadow,
where an insolently brilliant sun spilled light across grasses and blossoms.
The males broke into a yell, which was answered by a similar number of females
and young. Those came swarming from their camping place under a great boulder.
For a moment the mob seethed with hands and fangs. Tolteca
thought he would be pulled apart alive. A couple of the biggest males knocked
then-dependents aside and dragged the prisoners to the rock.
There
they were hurled down. Tolteca saw that he had landed
near a pile of gnawed bones and other offal. Carrion insects made a black
cloud above it. "Raven," he choke, "they're going to eat
us."
"What else?" said
the Lochlanna.
"Oa,
can't we make a break?"
"Yes,
I think so. I've been very clumsily tied. So have you, but I can reach my knot.
If you can distract 'em another minute or two—"
Two
males approached with clubs raised. The reist of the
flock squatted down, instantly quiet again, watching from bright sunken eyes.
The silence hammered at Tolteca.
He
rolled over, jumped to his feet, and ran. The nearest male uttered a noise that
might have been a laugh and pounced to intercept. Tolteca
zigzagged from him. Another shaggy form rose in his path. The whole gang began
to scream. A club whistled toward Tolteca's pate. He
threw himself forward, down across the wielder's knees. The blow missed and the
ape fell on top of him. He buried his head under the body, shield against other
weapons. But his feet were seized and he was dragged forth. He saw two clubbers
tower across the sky above him.
Suddenly
Raven was there. The Lochlanna chopped with the edge
of his hand, straight across the throat of one ape. The creature moaned and
crumpled; blood ran from the mouth, bluish red. Raven had already turned on the
other. His arms shot forth, he drove his thumbs under the brows and hooked out
the eyeballs in a single motion. A third male rushed him, to meet a hideously
disabling kick. Even at that instant, Tolteca was a
little sickened.
Raven
stooped and tugged at his bonds. The apes milled about several meters off,
enraged but daunted. "All right, you're free," Raven panted.
"You have a pocket knife, don't you? Let me have it."
Several
rocks thudded within centimeters as he got moving. He unclasped the blade on
the run and charged the nearest stone-throwing ape, a female. She struck awkwardly
at him. He sidestepped. His slash was a calculated piece of savagery. She
lurched back yammering. Raven returned to Tolteca,
gave him the knife again, and picked up a thighbone. "They're out of
rocks," he said. "Now we back away very slowly. We want to persuade
them we aren't worth chasing."
For
the first few minutes it went well. He knocked aside a couple of flung clubs.
The males snarled, barked, and circled about, but did not venture to rush. When
the humans reached the edge of the meadow, though, fury overcame fear. The
leader whirled his weapon over his head and scuttled toward them. The rest
followed.
"Back against this tree!" Raven commanded. He hefted his thighbone
like a sword. When the leader's club came down, he parried the blow and
riposted with a bang across the knuckles. The ape wailed and dropped the club.
Raven drove the end of his own into the opened mouth. There was a crunch of
splintering palate.
Tolteca
also had his hands full. The knife was only good for close-in work, and two of
the beasts had assailed him at once. A sharp jawbone ripped across his
shoulder. He ignored it, clinched, and stabbed deep. Blood spurted over him.
He pushed the wounded creature against the other, which went down under the
impact, then rose and fled.
The
surviving males retreated, growling and chattering. Raven stooped, seized their
dying leader, and threw him at them. The body landed in the grass with a heavy
thump. They edged back from it. "Let's go," Raven said.
They
went, not too swiftly, stopping often to turn about in a threatening way. But
there was no pursuit. Raven gusted an enormous sigh.
"We're clear," he husked. "Animals don't fight to a finish like
men. And . . . we've provided them food."
Tolteca's throat tightened. When they came back to the
guns, which meant final safety, a cramp gripped him. He knelt down and vomited.
Raven
seated himself to rest. "That's no shame on you," he said. "Reaction. You did pretty well for an amateur."
"It's
not fear," Tolteca said. He shuddered with the
coldness that ran through him. "It's what happened back there. What you
did."
"Eh? I got us loose.
That's bad?"
"Your . . . tactics.. . . Did you have to be so vicious?"
"I
was simply being efficient, Miguel. Please don't think I enjoyed it."
"Oa, no. Ill give you that
much. But— Oh, I don't know. What sort of a race do we belong to, anyway?"
Tolteca covered his face.
After
a while he recovered enough to say emptily, "This wouldn't have happened
but for us. The Gwydiona give the apes a wide berth.
There's room for all life on this planet. But we, we had to come blundering
in."
Raven
considered him for some time before asking, "Why do you think pain and
death are so gruesome?"
"I'm not scared of them," Tolteca answered with a feeble flicker of resentment.
"I
didn't say that. I was just thinking that down underneath, you don't feel they
belong in life. I do. So do the Gwydiona." Raven
climbed erect. "We'd better get back."
They
limped toward the main trail. They had not quite reached it when Elfavy appeared with three bowmen and Kors.
She
gasped and ran to meet them. Tolteca thought she
might have been some wood nymph fleeing through the green arches. But though he
looked much the gorier, it was Raven whom her hands seized. "What
happened? Oh, I grew so worried—"
"We
had trouble with the apes," Raven said. He urged her away from him,
gently, with a rather sour smile. "Easy, there, milady.
No great harm was done, but I'm a mess, and a bit too
sore for embraces."
J wouldn't have done that, thought Tolteca
desolately. Harsh-voiced, he related the incident.
Beodag whistled. "So they are on the verge of toolmaking! But I swear I've never observed that. I've
never been attacked, either."
"And
yet the bands you've met live a good deal closer to human settlement, don't
they?" Raven asked.
Beodag nodded.
"That
settles the matter," Raven declared. "Whatever the source of your
trouble at Bale time, the mountain apes are not
it."
"What? But if they
have weapons—"
"This
flock does. It must be far
ahead of the others. Probably inbreeding of a mutation has made the local apes
more intelligent than average. The others haven't even gotten to their stage,
in spite of observing humans using implements, which I don't imagine these have
ever done. And our friends here couldn't break into a house. A shinbone is no
good as a crowbar. Besides, they lack the persistence. They could have overcome
us, and should have after the harm we did, but gave up. Anyhow, why would they
want to plunder a building? Human artifacts mean nothing to them. They threw
aside not only our guns but our daggers. We can forget about them."
The Gwydiona men looked uneasy. Elfavy's
eyes blurred. "Can't you forget that obsession for one day?" she
pleaded. "It could have been such a beautiful day for you."
"All
right," Raven said wearily. "I'll think about medicine and bandages
and a pot of tea instead. Satisfied?"
"Yes,"
she said. Her smile was shaky. "For now I am satisfied."
rx
Festival dwelt in Instar. Tolteca was
reminded of Carnival Week on Nuevamerica—not the
commercialized feverishness of the cities, but masquerade and street dancing in
the hinterlands, where folk still made their own pleasure. Oddly enough, for a
people otherwise so ceremonious, the Gwydiona
celebrated the time just before Bale by scrapping formality. CouVtesy, honesty, nonviolence seemed too ingrained to
lose. But men shouted and made horseplay, women dressed with a lavishness that
would have been snickered at anytime else in the planet's long year, schools
became playgrounds, each formerly simple meal was a banquet, and quite a few
families broke out the wine and got humanly drunk. A wreath of jule, roses, and pungent margwy
herb hung on every door; no hour of day or night lacked music.
And
so it was over this whole world, thought Tolteca: in
every town on every inhabited island, the year had turned green and the people
were soon bound-for their shijnes.
He came striding down a gravel path. The sun
stood at late
morning and the boy Byord walked with a hand in his.
Far and holy above western forests, the mountain peaks dreamed.
"What did you do
then?" asked Byord, breathless.
"We stayed in the City and had fun till
it rained," said Tolteca. "Then when it was
safe, we proceeded to our goal, looked it over—a fine site indeed—and at last
came back here."
He didn't want to relate, or remember, the
ugly episode in the forest. "Exactly when did we get back?" "Day before yesterday."
"Uh, yes, now I place it. Hard to keep
track of time here, when nobody pays much attention to clocks and everything is
so pleasant."
"The
City-gol! What's it like?"
"Don't you know?"
" 'Course not, 'cept they told my cousin a little about
it in school. I wasn't bom, last Bale. But I'm big
enough already to go with my mother."
"The
City is very beautiful," said Tolteca. He
wondered how children as young as this fitted into a prolonged religious
meditation, if that was what it was, and how they kept so well afterward the
secret of what had happened.
Byord's mind sprang to another marvel. "Tell me
Tsout planets, please. When I get big, I want to be a
spaceman. Like you."
"Why
not?" said Tolteca. Byord
could get as good a scientific education here as anywhere in the known galaxy.
By the time he was of an age to enroll, the astro
academies on worlds like Nuevamerica would doubtless
be eager to accept Gwydiona cadets. Gwydion itself
would be more than a refueling stop, a decade hence. A people this
gifted couldn't help themselves; they were certain to become curious about the
universe (as if they weren't already so interested that only the intelligence
of their questions made the number endurable)—and, yes, to influence it. The Empire
had fallen, human society was once more in flux. What
better ideal for-the next civilization than Gwydion?
And why count myself out? thought Tolteca. When we build our spaceports here—there'll
soon be more than one— they'll require Namerican
administrators, engineers, factors, liaison officers. Why shouldn't 1 become one, and live my life under Ynis and She?
He
glanced down at the tangled head beside him. He'd always shrunk from the idea
of acquiring a ready-made family. But why not? Byord was a polite and talented boy who still remained very
much a boy. It would be a pleasure to raise him. Even today's outing—undertaken
frankly to ingratiate one Miguel Tolteca with Elfavy Simnon—had been a lot of
fun.
When
earlier, one of the Namerican spacemen had expressed
a desire to settle here, Raven had warned him he'd go berserk in one standard
year. But what did Raven know about it? The prediction was doubtless true for
him. Loch-lanna society, caste-ridden, haughty,
ritualistic, and murderous, had nothing in common with Gwydion.
But Nuev-america,
now— Oh, I don't pretend I wouldn't miss the lights and tall buildings,
theaters, bars, parties, excitement, once in a while. But what's to prevent me
and my family from taking vacation trips there? As for our everyday lives,
here are a calm, rational, but merry people with a really meaningful,
implemented ideal of beauty, uncrowded in a nature which has never been trampled on. And not static, either. They have their scientific research,
innovations in the arts, engineering projects. Look how they welcome tlie chance to have regular interstellar contact. How could
I fail to fall in love with Gwydion?
Specifically,
with— Tolteca
shut that thought off. He came from a civilization where all problems were
practical problems. So let's not moon about, but rather take the indicated
steps to get what we want. Raven had an inside track at the moment, but that
needn't be too great a handicap, ex-pecially since
Raven showed no signs of wanting to remain here. Since Byord
was pestering him for yams of other planets, Tolteca
reminisced aloud, with some editing, and the rest of their walk passed
quickly. -
They entered the town. It seemed to nave become queerly deserted in their absence. Where the dwellers had swarmed in the streets
a few hours ago, they now were indoors. Here and there a man hurried from one
place to another, carrying some burden, but that only emphasized the emptiness.
However, though the air was quiet beneath the sun, one could hear an
underlying murmur, voices behind walls.
Byord broke free of Tolteca's
hand and skipped on the pavement. "We're going soon, we're going
soon," he caroled.
"How do you know?" asked Tolteca. He had been told some while ago that there was no
fixed date for Bale time.
Every
freckle grinned. "I know, Adult Miguell Aren't you comin'
too?"
"I
think I'd better stay and take care of your pets," said Tolteca. Byord maintained the
usual small-boy zoo of bugs and amphibia.
"There's
Grantherl Hey, Grantherl"
Byord broke into a run. Dawyd, emerging from his house, braced
himself. When the cyclone had struck him and been duly hugged, he pushed it
toward the door.
"Go
on inside, now," he said. "Your mother's making ready. She has to
wash at least a few kilos of dirt off you, and pack your lunch, before we
start."
"Thanks,
Adult Miguell" Byord
whizzed through the entrance.
Dawyd chuckled. "I hope you aren't too
exhausted," he said.
"Not
at all," Tolteca answered. "I enjoyed it.
We followed the river upstream to the House of the Philosophers. I never
imagined a place devoted to abstract thinking would include picnic grounds and
a carousel."
"Why not? Philosophers are human too, I'm told. It is refreshing for them to
watch the children, romp with them . . . and perhaps a little respect for
knowledge rubs off on the youngsters." Dawyd
started down the street. "I have a job to do. Would you like to accompany
me? You being a technical man, this may interest you."
Tolteca fell into step. "Are you leaving very
soon, then?" he inquired.
"Yes. The signs have become clear, even
to me. Older people are not so sensitive; the young adults have been wild this
whole morning." Dawyd's eyes glittered. His
lined brown face held less than its normal serenity.
"It
is about ten hours on foot by the direct path to the Holy City," he added
after a moment. "Less, of course, for a man unencumbered
by children and the aged. If you should, yourself, feel the time upon
you, I do hope you will follow and join us there."
Tolteca drew a long
breath, as if to smell the tokens. The air was alive with the blooming of a
hundred flowers, trees, bushes, vines; nectar-gathering insects droned in the
sunlight. "What are the signs?" he asked. "No one has told
me."
On
other occasions, Dawyd, like the rest of his people,
had grown a little uneasy at questions about Bale, and changed the subject—which
was a simple task with so much to discuss, twelve hundred years of separate
history. Now the physician laughed aloud. "I can't tell you," he said. "I know, that is all.
How do buds know when to unfold?"
"But
haven't you ever, in the rest of the year, made any scientific study of—"
"Here
we are." Dawyd halted at the fused stone building
in the center of town. It loomed square and bleak above them. The portal stood
open and they entered, walking down cool shadowy halls. Another man passed,
holding a wrench. Dawyd waved at him. "A
technician," he explained, "making a final check on the central power
controls. Everything vital, or potentially dangerous, is stored here during
Bale. Motor vehicles in a garage at the end of yonder corridor,
for instance. My duty— Here we are."
He
swung aside a door which gave on a huge and sunny room, gaily painted walls
lined with cribs and playpens. A mobile robot stood by each, and a bright large
machine murmured to itself in the center of the floor. Daywd
walked around, observing. "This is a routine and rather nominal
inspection," he said. "The engineers have already overhauled
everything. As a physician,
I have to certify that the environment is sanitary and
pleasant, but that has never been a problem."
"What is it for?" Tolteca queried.
"Do
you not know? Why, to care for infants, those too young to accompany us to the
Holy City. Byord is about as young as we ever dare
take them. The hospital wing of this building has robots to nurse the sick and
the very old during Bale time, but that's not under my supervision." Dawyd snapped his fingers. "What in the name of chaos
was I going" to tell you? Oh, yes. In case you have not
already been warned. This entire building is locked up during Bale.
Automatic shock beams are fired at anything—or anyone—that approaches within
ten meters. Any moving object that gets through to the outside wall is
destroyed by flame blasts. Stay away from here!"
Tolteca stood quiet, for the last words had been
alarmingly rough.
Finally he ventured, "Isn't that rather
extreme?"
"Bale
lasts about three Gwydiona days and nights,"
said Dawyd. He had fixed his stare on a pen and
tossed the sentences over his shoulder. "That's more than ten standard
days. Plus the time needed to walk to the Holy City and back. We don't take
chances."
"But what is it you
fear? What can happen?"
Dawyd said, not entirely steadily, but so far upborne by his own euphoria that he could at last speak
plainly, "It is not uncommon that some of those who go to the Holy City do
not come back. On returning, the others sometimes find that in spite of locks
and shutters, there has been destruction wrought in town. So we put our
important machines and our helpless members here, with mechanical attendants,
in a place which nothing can enter till the time locks open automatically."
"I've
gathered something like that," Tolteca breathed.
"But have you any idea what causes the trouble?"
"We
are not certain. The mountain apes are often blamed, but the experience you
related to me does seem to absolve them. Conceivably, I don't know; conceivably
we are not the only intelligent race on Gwydion.
There could be true aborigines, so alien that we failed to recognize any trace
of their culture. Various legends about creatures that live underground or
skulk in the deep forests may have some basis in fact. I don't know. And it is
never a good
idea to theorize in advance of the data."
"Didn't you, or your
ancestors, ever attempt to get data?"
"Yes,
many times. Cameras and other recording devices were planted again and again.
But they were always evaded, or discovered and smashed." Dawyd broke off short and continued his inspection in
silence. He moved a little jerkily.
They
were leaving the fortress before Tolteca suggested
diffidently, "Perhaps we, from the ship, can observe what happens while
you are gone."
Dawyd had calmed down again. "You are welcome
to try," he said, "but I doubt you will have any success. You see, I
don't expect the town will be entered. No such thing has happened for many
years. Even in my own boyhood, a raid on a deserted community was a rare event.
You must not believe this is a major problem for us. It was worse in the
distant past, but nowadays it has so dwindled that there isn't even much
incentive to study the problem."
Tolteca didn't think he would be unmotivated to look
into the possibility of a native race on Gwydion. But
he didn't wish to disturb his host further. He struck a cigarette as they
walked on. The streets were now entirely bare save for Dawyd
and himself. And yet the sun drenched them in light. It sharpened his feeling
of eeriness.
"Actually, I'm afraid you will have a
dull wait," said the older man. He was becoming more and more himself as
the Namerican's questions receded in time.
"Everybody gone, everything locked up, over the whole inhabited planet.
Maybe you would like to fly down to the southern hemisphere and explore a
little."
"I think we'll just stay put and
correlate our findings," said Tolteca. "We
have a lot. When you return—"
"We won't be worth much for a few days
afterward," Dawyd warned him. "It isn't
easy for mortal flesh, being God."
They reached his house. He stopped at the
door, looking embarrassed. "I should invite you in, but—"
"I
understand. Family rites." Tolteca
smiled. "I'll stroll down to the park at town's end. You'll pass by there
on your way, and I'll wave farewell."
"Thank
you, far-friend."
The door closed. Tolteca
stood a moment, inhaling deeply, before he ground the cigarette butt under his
heel and walked off between shuttered walls.
X
The pake
was gay with flowers. A
few of the expedition lounged under shade trees, also waiting to observe the
departure. Tolteca saw Raven, and clamped hps together. I will not lose my temper. He approached and gave greeting.
Raven answered with Lochlanna
formality. The mercenary had put on full dress for the occasion, blouse,
trousers, tooled leather boots, embroidered surcoat.
He stood square, next to a baleflower bush as tall as
himself. Its buds were opening in a riot of scarlet flowers. They smelled
almost but not quite like the cousin species in the mountains, herbs, summer
meadows, a phosphorus overtone, and something else that flitted half sensed
below the surface of memory. The Siamese cat Zio
nestled in Raven's arms; he stroked the beast with one hand and got a purr for
answer.
Tolteca repeated Dawyd's
warning about the fortress. Raven's dark head nodded. "I knew that. I'd do
the same in their place."
"Yes, you would," said Tolteca. He remembered his
resolution and added impersonally, "Such over-destructiveness doesn't
seem characteristic of the Gwydiona, though."
"This
isn't a characteristic season. Every five standard years, for about ten
standard days, something happens to them. I'd feel easier if I knew what."
"My
guess—" Tolteca paused. He hated to say it aloud.
But finally: "A dionysiac religion."
"I
can't swallow that," said Raven. "These people know about
photosynthesis. They don't believe magical demonstrations make the earth
fertile."
"They
might employ such ceremonies anyhow, for some historical or psychological
reason." Tolteca winced, thinking of Elfavy gasping drunken in the arms of man after man. But if
he didn't say it himself, someone else would; and he was mature enough, he
insisted, to accept a person on her own cultural terms. "Orgiastic."
"No," said Raven. "This is no
more a dionysiac culture than yours or mine. Not at
any time of year. Just put yourself in their place, and you'll see. That cool,
reasonable, humorous mentality couldn't take a free-for-all seriously enough.
Someone would be bound to start laughing and spoil the whole effect."
Tolteca looked at Raven with a
sudden warmth for the man. "I believe you're right. I certainly
want to believe it. But what do they do, then?" After a moment: "We
have been more or less invited to join them, you realize. We could simply go
watch."
"No.
Best not. If you'll recall the terms in which that semi-invitation was couched,
it was implicitly conditional on our feeling the same way as them—joining into
the spirit of the festival, whatever that may mean. I don't think we could fake
it. And by distracting them at such a time—more and more, I'm coming to think
it's the focus of their whole culture—by doing that, we might lose their good
will."
"M-m,
yes, perhaps. . . . Wait! Perhaps we can join in. I mean, if it involves taking
some drug. Probably a hallucinogen like mescaline, though something on the
order of lysergic acid is possible too. Anyhow, couldn't Bale be founded on
that? A lot of societies, you know, some of them fairly scientific, believe that
their sacred drug reveals otherwise inaccessible truths."
Raven shook his head. "If that were so
in this case," he answered, "they'd use the stuff oftener than once
in five years. Nor would they be so vague about their religion. They'd either
tell us plainly about the drug, or explain politely that we aren't initiates
and it's none of our business what happens at the Holy City. Another argument
against your idea is that they shun drugs so completely in their everyday life.
They don't like the thought of anything antagonistic to the normal functioning
of body and mind. Do you know, this past day is the
first instance I've seen or heard or read of any Gwydiona
even getting high on alcohol?"
"Well,"
barked Tolteca in exasperation, "suppose you
tell me what they do!"
"I
wish I could." Raven's disquieted gaze went to the bale-flower. "Has
the chemical analysis of this been finished?"
"Yes, just a few hours
ago. Nothing special was found."
"Nothing
whatsoever?"
"Oa, well, its perfume does contain an indole,
among other compounds, probably to attract pollinating insects. But it's a
quite harmless indole. If you breathed it at an extremely
high concentration—several thousand times what you could possibly encounter in
the open air—I suppose you might get a little dizzy. But you couldn't get a
real jag on."
Raven
scowled. "And yet this bush is named for the festival. And alone on the
whole inhabited planet, has no mythology."
"Xinguez and I threshed that out, after he'd checked his
linguistic references. Bear in mind that Gwydiona
stems from a rather archaic dialect of Anglic,
closely related to the ancestral English. That word bale can mean several things, depending on ultimate derivation. It can
signify a bundle; a fire, especially a funeral pyre; an evil or sorrow; and,
more remotely and with a different spelling, Baal is an ancient word for a god."
Tolteca tapped a fresh cigarette on his thumbnail
and struck it with an uneven motion across the heel of his shoe. "You can
imagine how the Gwydiona could intertwine such
multiple meanings," he continued. "What elaborate symbolisms are
potentially here. s
Those flowers have long petals, aimed upward; a bush in full bloom looks rather
like a fire, I imagine. The Burning Bush
of primitive religion. Hence, maybe, the name bale. But
that could also mean 'God' and 'evil.' And it blooms just at Bale time. So
because of all these coincidences, the baleflower
symbolizes the Night Faces, the destructive aspect of reality . . . probably
the most cruel and violent phase thereof. Hence nobody talks about it. They shy
away from creating the myths that are so obviously suggested. The Gwydiona don't deny that evil and sorrow exist, but neither
do they go out of their way to contemplate the fact."
"I
know," said Raven. "In that respect they're like Nameri-cans."
He failed to hide entirely the shade of contempt in the last word.
Tolteca heard, and flared. "In every other
respect, too!" he snapped. "Including the fact that
your bloody warlords are not going to carve up this planet!"
Raven
looked directly at the engineer. So did Zio. It was
disconcerting, for the cat's eyes were as cold and steady as the man's.
"Are you quite certain," said Raven, "that these people are the same species as us?"
"Oa! If you think—your
damned racialism—just because they're too civilized to brew war like you."
Tolteca advanced with fists cocked. If Elfavy could only see! it begged through the boiling within him. If she could hear what this animal really
thinks of her!
"Oh,
quite possibly interbreeding is still feasible," said Raven. "We'll
find that out soon enough."
Tolteca's control broke. His fist leaped forward of
itself.
Raven
threw up an arm—Zio scampered to his shoulder— and
blocked the blow. His hand slid down to seize Tolteca's
own forearm, his other hand got the Namerican's
biceps, his foot scythed behind the ankles. Tolteca
went on his back, pinned. The cat squalled and clawed
at him.
"That
isn't necessary, Zio." Raven let go. Several of
his men hurried up. He waved them away. "It was nothing," he called.
"I was only demonstrating a hold."
Kors looked dubious, but at that moment someone
exclaimed, "Here they cornel" and attention went to the road. Tolteca climbed
back erect, too caught in a tide of anger, shame, and confusion to notice the
parade much.
Not that there was a great deal to notice.
The Instar folk walked with an easy,
distance-devouring stride, in no particular order. They were lightly clad.
Each carried the one lunch he would need on the way, some spare garments, and
nothing else. But their chatter and laughter and singing were like a
bird-flock, like sunlight on a wind-ruflled lake, and
now and then one of the adults danced among the hurtling children. So they went
past, a flurry of bright tunics, sunbrowned limbs,
garlanded fair hair, into the hills and the Holy City.
But Elfavy broke from them. She ran to Raven, caught both the
soldier's hands in her own, and cried, "Come with us! Can't you feel it, liaiha?"
He
watched her a long while, his features wooden, before he shook his head.
"No. I'm sorry."
Tears
blurred her eyes, and that wasn't the way of Gwydion
either. "You can never be God, then?" Her head drooped,
the yellow mane hid her face. Tolteca stood staring.
What else could he do?
"If
I might give you the power," said Elfavy.
"I would give up my own." She sprang free, raised hands to the sun
and shouted, "But it's impossible that you can't feel it! God is here
already, everywhere, I see Vwi shining from you,
Raven! You must come!"
He
folded his hands together within the surcoat sleeves.
"Will you stay here with me?" he asked.
"Always,
always."
"Now, I mean. During Bale time."
"What? Oh—no, yes—you are joking?"
"He
said slowly, "I'm told the Night Faces are also revealed, sometimes,
under the Steeps of Kolumkill. That not everyone
comes home every year."
Eifavy took a backward step from him. "God is more than good," she pleaded. "God is Teal."
"Yes. As real as death."
"Great
ylem!" exploded Tolteca. "What do you
expect, man? Everybody who can walk goes there. Some must have incipient
disease, or weak hearts, or old arteries. The strain—"
Raven
ignored him. "Is it a secret what happens, Eifavy?"
he asked.
Her
muscles untensed. Her merriment trilled forth.
"No. It's only that words are such poor lame things. As
I told you that night in the sanctuary."
In
him, the grimness waxed. "Well, words can describe a few items, at least.
Tell me what you can. What do you do there, with your physical body? What would
a camera record?"
The
blood drained from her face. She stood unmoving. Eventually,
out of silence that grew and grew around her: "No. I can't."
"Or
you mustn't?" Raven grabbed her bare shoulders so hard that his fingers
sank in. She didn't seem to feel it. "You mustn't talk about Bale, or you
won't, or you can't?" he roared. "Which is it? Quick,
now!"
Tolteca tried to stir, but his bones seemed locked
together. The Instar people danced by, too lost in their joy to pay attention. The other Namericans looked indignant, but Wildenvey
had casually drawn his gun and grinned in their eyes. Eifavy
shuddered. "I can't tell!" she gasped.
Raven's
expression congealed. "You don't know," he said. "Is that
why?"
"Let me gol"
He
released her. She stumbled against the bush. A moment she crouched, the breath
sobbing in and out of her. Then instantly, like a curtain descending, she fell
back into her
happiness. Tears still caught sunlight on her cheeks, but
she looked at the bruises on her skin, laughed at them,
sprang forward and kissed Raven on his unmoving lips.
"Then wait for me, liathal" She whirled, skipped off, and
was lost in the throng. '
Raven
stood without stirring, gazing after them as they dwindled up the road. Tolteca would not have believed human flesh could stay
immobile so long.
At
last the Namerican said, through an acrid taste in
his mouth, "Well, are you satisfied?"
"In
a way."
Raven remained motionless. His words fell flat.
"Don't
make too many assumptions," said Tolteca.
"She's in an abnormal state. Wait till she comes back and is herself
again, before you get your hopes up."
"What?"
Raven turned his head, blinking wearily. He seemed to recognize Tolteca only after a few seconds. "Oh. But you're
wrong. That's not an abnormal state."
"Huh?"
"Your
planet has seasons too. Do you consider spring fever a disease? Is it unnatural
to feel brisk on a clear fall day?"
"What are you hinting
at?"
"Never mind." Raven lifted his shoulders and let them fall, an old man's gesture.
"Come, Sir Engineer, we may as well go back to the ship."
"But—Oa!" Tolteca's finger
stabbed at the Lochlanna. "Do you mean you've
guessed—"
"Yes.
I may be wrong, of course. Come." Raven picked up Zio
and became very husy making the cat comfortable in
his sleeve.
"What?"
Raven started to go.
Tolteca
caught him by the arm. Raven spun about. Briefly, the Lochlanna's
face was drawn into such a fury that the Namerican
fell back. Raven clapped a hand to his dagger and whispered, "Don't ever
do that again."
Tolteca braced his sinews. "What's your
idea?" he demanded. "If Bale really is dangerous—"
Raven leashed himself. "I see your
thought," he said in a calmer tone. "You want to go up there and
stand by to protect her, don't you?"
"Yes.
Suppose they do he around in a comatose state. Some
animal might sneak past the guard robots and—"
"No.
You will stay down here. Everybody will. That's a direct order under my
authority as military commander." Raven's severity ebbed. He wet his lips,
as if trying to summon courage. "Don't you see," he added, "this
has been going on for more than a thousand years. By now they have evolved—not
developed, but blindly evolved—a system which minimizes the hazard. Most of them survive. The ancestors alone know what delicate balance you may
upset by blundering in there."
After another pause: "I've been through
this sort of thing before. Sent out men according to the best possible plan,
and then sat and waited, knowing that if I made any further attempt to help
them I'd only throw askew the statistics of their survival. It's even harder to
deal with God, Who can wear any face." He started trudging. "You'll
stay here and sweat it out, like the rest of us."
Tolteca stared after him. Thought trickled into his
consciousness. The
chaos 1 will.
XI
Raven
awoke more slowly than
usual. He glanced at the clock. Death and plunder, had he been eleven hours
asleep? Like a drugged man, too. He still felt tired.
Perhaps that was because there had been evil dreams; he couldn't remember
exactly what but they had left a scum of sadness in him. He swung his legs around and sat on
the edge of the bunk, rested head in hands and tried to think. All he seemed
able to do, though, was recall his father's castle, hawks nesting in the bell tower,
himself about to ride forth on one of the horses they still used at home but
pausing to look down the mountainside, fells and woods and the peasants'
niggard fields, then everything hazed into blue hugeness. The wind had tasted
of glaciers.
He
pushed the orderly buzzer. Kors' big ugly nose came
through the cabin door. "Tea," said Raven.
He
scalded his mouth on it, but enough sluggishness departed him that he could
will relaxation. His brain creaked into gear. It wasn't wise, after all, simply
to wait close-mouthed till the Instar people came
home. He'd been too abrupt with Tolteca; but the man
annoyed him, and besides, his revelation had been too shattering. Now he felt
able to discuss it. Not that he wanted to. What right had a storeful
of greasy Namerican merchants to such a truth? But it
was certain to be discovered sometime, by some later expedition. Maybe a decent
secrecy could be maintained, if an aristocrat made the first explanation.
Tolteca
isn't a bad sort, he
made himself admit. Half the
trouble between us was simply due to his being somewhat in love with Elfavy. That's not likely to last, once he's been
told. So he'll be able to look at things objectively and, I hope, find an
honorable course of action.
Elfavy. Her image blotted out the recollection of gaunt Lochlanna.
There hadn't much been said or done, overtly, between him and her. Both had
been too shy of the consequences. But now—I don't know. I just don't know.
He
got up and dressed in plain workaday clothes. Zio
pattered after him as he left his cabin and went down a short passageway to Tolteca's. He punched the doorchime,
but got no answer. Well, try the saloon. . . . Captain Uriel
sat there with a cigar and an old letter; he became aware of Raven by stages.
"No, Commandant," he replied to the question, "I haven't seen
Sir Engineer Tolteca for, oh, two or three hours. He
was going out to observe high tide from
the diketop, he said,
and wouldn't be back for some time. Is it urgent?"
The
news was like a hammerblow. Raven held himself
motionless before saying, "Possibly. Did he have anyone with him? Or any
instruments that you noticed?"
"No. Just a lunch and his sidearm."
Bitterness
uncoiled in Raven. "Did you seriously believe he was making a technical
survey?"
"Why-well, I didn't really think about
it. . . . Well, he may simply have gone to admire the view. High tide is impressiven you know."
|
the radio. If I don't rel |
i, or haven't sent instructions to |
Raven
glanced at his watch. "Won't be high tide for
hours." Utiel sat up straight.
"What's the matter?" Decision crystallized. "Listen
carefully," said Raven. "I am going out too. Stand by to lift ship.
Keep someone on
the contrary, within—oh—thirty hours, go into
orbit. In that event, and only in that event, one of my men will hand over to
you a tape I've left in his care, with an explanation. Do you understand?"
Utiel
rose. "I will not be treated in this fashion!" he protested.
"I
didn't ask you that, Captain," said Raven. "I asked if you understood
my orders."
Utiel grew rigid. "Yes, Commandant," he
got out.
Raven
went swiftly from the saloon. Once in the corridor, he ran. Kors,
on guard outside his cabin, gaped at him. "Fetch Wildenvey,"
said Raven, passed inside and shut the door. He clipped a tape to his personal
recorder, dictated, released it, and sealed the container with wax and his
family signet ring. Only then did he stop to snatch some bites from a food
concentrate bar.
Wildenvey entered as he was slipping a midget transceiver
into his pocket. Raven gave him the tape, with instructions, and added, "See
if you can find Miguel Tolteca anywhere about. Roust
the whole company to help. If you do, call me on the radio and I'll head
back."
"Where you going,
sir?" asked Kors.
"Into the hills. I am not to be followed."
Kors curled his lip and spat between two long
yellow teeth. The gob clanged on the disposer chute. "Very
good, sir. Let's go."
"You stay here and take care of my
effects."
"Any
obscene child of impropriety can do that, sir," said Kors,
looking hurt.
Raven felt his own mouth drawn faintly
upward. "As you will, then. But if ever you speak
a word about this, 111 yank out your tongue with my bare fingers."
"Aye, sir." Kors opened a drawer and took out a couple of
field belts, with supplies and extra ammunition in the pouches. Both men donned
them.
Raven set Zio
carefully on the bunk and stroked him under the chin. Zio
purred. He tried to
follow when they left. Raven pushed him back and closed the door in his face. Zio scolded him in absentia for several minutes.
Emerging from the spaceship, Raven saw that
dusk was upon the land. The sky was deeply blue-black, early stars in the east,
a last sunset cloud above the western mountains like a streak of clotting
blood. He thought he could
hear the sea bellow beyond the dike.
"We going far,
Commandant?" asked Kors.
"Maybe
as far as the Holy City."
"I'll break out a
flitter, then."
"No,
a vehicle would make matters worse than they already are. This'll be afoot. On the double."
"Holy muckballs!" Kors clipped a flashbeam to his belt and began jogging.
During
the first hour they went through open fields. Here and there
stood a barn or a shed, black under blackening heaven. They heard
livestock low, and the whir of machinery tending empty farms. If no one ever
came back, wondered Raven, how long would the robots continue their routines?
How long would the cattle stay tame, the infants alive?
The
road ended, the ground rose in waves, only a trail pierced the way among boles
and brush. The Lochlanna halted for a breather.
"You're chasing Tolteca, aren't you,
Commandant?" asked Kors.
"Shall I kill the son of a bitch when we catch him, or do you want
to?"
"If we catch him," corrected Raven. "He
has a long head start, even though we can travel a lot faster. No, don't shoot
unless he resists arrest." He stopped a second, to underline what
followed. "Don't shoot any Gwydiona. Under any circumstances whatsoever."
He
fell silent, slumping against a tree in total muscular repose, trying to blank
his mind. After ten minutes they resumed the march.
Trees
and bushes walled either side of the trail, leaves made a low roof overhead. It
was very dark; only the bobbing light of Kors' flash
picked stones and"dust into relief. Beyond the
soft thud of their feet, they could hear rustlings, creak-ings,
distant chirps and hoots and croaks, the cold tinkle of a brook. Once an animal screamed. The air cooled as they climbed, but
it always remained mild, and it overflowed with odors. Raven thought he could
distinguish the smells of earth and green growth, the damp smell of water when a
rivulet crossed the trail, certain individual flower scents; but the rest was
unfamiliar. Smell is the most evocative of the senses, and forgotten things
seemed to move below Raven's awareness, but he couldn't identify them.
Overriding all else was the clear brilliant odor of baleflower.
In the past few hours, every bush had come to full bloom.
Seen
by daylight, tomorrow, the land would look as if it burned.
Time
faded. That was a trick you learned early, from the regimental bonzes who
instructed noblemen's sons. You needed it, to survive the waiting and the
waiting of war without your sanity cracking open. You turned off your conscious
mind. Part of it might revive during pauses in the march. Surely it was hard to
stop at the halfway point for a drink of water, a bit of field ration, and a
rest, and not think about Elfavy. But the body had
its own demands. The thing could be done, since it must.
The
moon rose over Mount Granis. Passing an open patch of
ground and looking downslope, Raven saw the whole
world turned to silver treetops. Then the forest gulped him again.
Some
eight or nine hours after departure, Kors halted with
an oath. His flashbeam picked out a thing that
scuttled on spiderlike legs, a steel carapace and arms ending in sword blades.
'S guts!" Raven heard a gun clank from a holster. The
machine met the light with impersonal lens eyes, then
slipped into the brush.
"Guard
robot," said Raven. "Against carnivores. It
won't attack humans. We're close now, so douse that flash and shut up."
He led
the way, cat-cautious in darkness, thinking that Tolteca
must indeed have beaten him here. Though probably not by
very long. Maybe the situation could still be rescued. He topped the
final steep climb and poised on the upper edge of the great amphitheater.
For
a moment the moonlight blinded him. She hung gibbous over the Steeps, turning
them bone color and drowning the stars. Then piece by piece
Raven made out detail: mossy tiers curving downward to the floor, the ring of
towers enclosing the square of the labyrinth, even the central fountain and its
thin mercury-like jet. Even the gardens full of baleflower,
though they looked black against all that. slender
white. He heard a mumble down in the forum, but couldn't see what went on. With
great care he padded forward into the open.
"Hee-ee," said a man who sat on an upper terrace.
"That's hollow, Bale-friend."
Raven
stopped dead. Kors said something raw at his back.
Slowly, Raven turned to face the man. It was Llyrdin,
who had played chess in a diving bell and gone exploring for a spaceport in the
mountains. Now he sat hugging his knees and grinning. There was blood on his
mouth.
"It
is, you know," he said. "Hollow. Hollow is God. I hail hollow, hollow
hallow hullo."
Raven looked into the man's eyes, but the
moonlight was so reflected from them that they stared blank. "Where did
the blood come from?" he asked most quietly.
"She
was empty," said Llyrdin. "Empty
and so small. It wasn't good for her to grow up and be hollow. Was it? That much more nothing?" He rubbed his chin, regarded
the wet fingers, and said plaintively, "The machines took her away. That
wasn't fair. She was only a year and a half hollow."
Raven started down into the
chalice.
"She
came up about to my waist," said the voice behind him. "I think once,
very long ago, before the hollow, I taught her to laugh. I even gave her a name
once, and the name was Wormwood." Raven heard him begin to weep.
Kors
took out his pistol, unsnapped the holster from his belt and clamped it on as a
rifle stock. "Easy there," said Raven, not looking back but
recognizing the noise. "You won't need that."
"The muck I
won't," said Kors.
"We
aren't going to fire on any Gwydiona. And I doubt if Tolteca will give trouble . .. now."
XII
They
reached level
sward and passed beneath a tower. Raven remembered it was the one he had
climbed before. A child stood in the uppermost window, battering herself
against the grille and uttering no sound.
Raven
went through a colonnade. Just beyond, at the edge of the forum, some fifty Instar people were gathered, mostly men. Their clothes were torn, and even in
the moonlight, across meters of distance, Raven could see unshaven chins.
Miguel
Tolteca confronted them. "But Llyrdin killed that little girl!" the Namerican shouted. "He killed her with his hands and
ran away wiping his mouth. And the robots took the body away. And you do
nothing but stare!"
Beodag the forester trod forth. Awe blazed on his
face. "Under She," he called, his voice rising and falling, with something
of the remote quality of a voice heard through fever. "And She is the cold reflector of Ynis,
and Ynis Burning Bush, though we taste the river. If
the river gives light, O look how my shadow dances!"
"As Gonban
danced for his mother," said the one next to him. "Which
is joy, since man comes from darkness when he is born."
"Night Faces are Day
Faces are God!"
"Dance, God!"
"Howl for God, Vwi bums!"
An
old man turned to a young girl, knelt before her and said, "Give me your
blessing, Mother." She touched his head with an infinite tenderness.
"But have you gone
crazy?" wailed Tolteca.
It
snarled in the crowd of them. Those who had begun to dance stopped. A man with
tangled graying hair advanced on Tolteca, who made a
whimpering sound and retreated. Raven recognized Dawyd.
"What do you mean?" asked Dawyd. His tone was metal.
"I mean ... I want to say ... I don't understand—"
"No,"
said Dawyd. "What do you mean? What is your significance? Why are you here?"
'T-t-to help-"
They
began circling about, closing off Tolteca's retreat.
He fumbled after his sidearm, but blindly, as if knowing how few he could shoot
before they dragged him down.
"You
wear the worst of the Night Faces," Dawyd
groaned. "For it is no face at all. It is Chaos. Emptiness.
Mean-inglessness."
"Hollow," whispered the crowd. "Hollow, hollow, hollow."
Raven squared his shoulders. "Stick
close and keep your mouth shut," he ordered Kors.
He stepped from the colonnade shadows, into open moonlight, and approached the
mob.
Someone
on its fringe was first to see him: a big man, who turned with a bear's growl
and shambled to meet the newcomers. Raven halted and let the Gwydiona walk into him. A crook-fingered hand swiped at his
eyes. He evaded it, gave a judo twist, and sent the man spinning across the
forum.
"He
dances!" cried Raven from full lungs. "Dance with him!" He
snatched a woman and whirled her away. She spun top fashion, trying to keep her
balance. "Dance on the bridge from Yin to Yang!"
They didn't—quite. They stood quieter than it
seemed possible men could stand. Tolteca's mouth fell
open. His face was a moonlit lake of sweat. "Raven," he choked,
"oa, ylem, Raven—"
"Shut up," muttered the Lochlanna. He edged next to the Namerican.
"Stick by me. No sudden movements, and not a
word."
Dawyd
cringed. "I
know you," he said.
"You are my souL And
eaten with forever darkness and ever and no, no, no."
Raven
raked his memory. He had heard so many myths, there
must be one he could use . . . Yes, maybe. . . . His tones rolled out to fill
the space within the labyrinth.
"Hearken
to me. There was a time when the Sunsmith ran in the
shape of a harbuck with silver homs. A hunter saw him and pursued him. They fled up
a mountainside which was all begrown with crisflower, and wherever the harbuck's
hoofs touched earth the crisflower bloomed, but
wherever the hunter ran it withered. And at last they came to the top of the
mountain, whence a river of fire flowed down a sheer cliff. The chasm beyond
was cold, and so misty that the hunter could not see if it had another side.
But the harbuck sprang out over the abyss, and sparks
showered where his hoofs struck—"
He
held himself as still as they, but his eyes flickered back and forth, and he
saw in the moonlight how they began to ease. The tiniest thawing stirred within
him. He was not sure he had grasped the complex symbolism of the myth he retold
in any degree. Certainly he understood its meaning only vaguely. But it was the
right story. It could be interpreted to fit this situation, and thus turn his
escape into a dance, which would lead men back into those rites that had
evolved out of uncounted manslayings. •
Still
talking, he backed off, step by infinitesimal step, as if survival possessed
its own calculus. Kors drifted beside him, screening Tolteca's shivers from their eyes.
But
they followed. And others began to come from the buildings,
and from the towers after they had passed through the colonnade again. When
Raven put his feet on the first upward tier, a thousand faces must have been
turned to him. None said a word, but he could hear them breathing, a sound like
the sea beyond Instar's dike.
And
now the myth was ended. He climbed another step, and another, always meeting
their upturned eyes. It seemed to him that She had
grown more full since he descended into this vale. But it couldn't have taken
that long. Could it?
Tolteca
grasped his hand. The Namerican's fingers were like
ice. Kors' voice would have been inaudible a meter
away: "Can we keep on retreating, sir, or d'you think those geeks will rush us?"
"I
wish I knew," Raven answered. Even then, he was angered at the word Kors used.
Dawyd spread his arms. "Dance the Sunsmith home!" he shouted.
The
knowledge of victory went through Raven like a knife. Nothing but discipline
kept him erect in his relief. He saw the crowd swirl outward, forming a series
of interlocked rings, and he hissed to Kors,
"We've made it, if we're careful. But we mustn't do anything to break
their mood. We'have to continue backing up, slowly,
waiting a while between every step, as they dance. If we disappear into the
woods during the last measure, I think they'll be satisfied."
"What's happening?" The words
grated in Tolteca's throat.
"Quiet, I told you!" Raven felt the
man stagger against him. Well, he thought, it had been a vicious shock, especially
for someone with no real training in death. Talk might keep Tolteca
from collapse, and the dancers below-absorbed as
children in the stately figure they were treading—wouldn't be aware that the
symbols above them whispered together.
"All right." Raven felt the rhythm of the dance indicate a backward step for him. He
guided Tolteca with a hand to the elbow. "You
came here with some idiotic notion of protecting Elfavy.
What then?"
"I,
I, I went down to . . . the plaza. . . . They were—mumbling. It didn't make sense,
it was ghastly—"
"Not so loud!"
"I
saw Dawyd. Tried to talk to him.
They all, all got more and more excited. Llyrdin's
little daughter yelled and ran from me. He chased her and killed her. The
cleaning robots s-s-simply carried off the body. They began . . . closing in on
me—"
"I
see. Now, steady. Another backward step. Halt."
Raven froze in his tracks, for many heads turned his way. At this distance
under the moon, they lacked faces. When their attention had drifted back to
the dance, Raven breathed.
"It
must be a mutation," he said. "Mutation and genetic
drift, acting on a small initial population. Maybe, even if it sounds
like a myth, that story of theirs is true, that they're descended from one man
and two women. Anyhow, their metabolism changed. They're violently allergic to
tobacco, for instance. This other change probably isn't much greater than that,
in glandular terms. They may well still be inter-fertile with us, biologically
speaking. Though culturally . . . no, I don't believe they are the same
species. Not any more."
"Baleflower?" asked Tolteca.
His tone was thin and shaky, like a hurt child's.
"Yes.
You told me it emits an indole when it blooms. Not
one that particularly affects the normal human biochemistry; but theirs isn't normal, and the stuff is chemically related to the
substances associated with schizophrenia. They are susceptible. Every Gwydiona
springtime, they go insane."
The
soundless dance beloW jarred into a quicker, staccato
beat. Raven used the chance to climb several tiers in a hurry.
"It's
a wonder they survived the first few generations," he said when he must
stop again. "Somehow, they did, and began the slow painful adaptation.
Naturally, they don't remember the insane episodes. They don't dare. Would you?
That's the underlying reason why they've never made a scientific investigation
of Bale, or taken the preventive measures that look so obvious to us. Instead,
they built a religion and a way of life around it. But only in the first flush
of the season, when they still have rationality but feel the exuberance of
madness in their blood—only then are they even able to admit to themselves that
they don't consciously know what happens. The rest of the time, they cover the
truth with meaningless words about an ultimate reality.
"So
their culture wasn't planned. It was worked out blindly, by trial and error,
through centuries. And at last it reached a point where they do little damage
to themselves in their lunacy.
"Remember,
their psychology isn't truly human. You and I are mixtures, good, bad, and
indifferent qualities; our conflicts have we always with us. But the GwyóÜona seem to concentrate all their personal troubles
into these few days. That's why there'used to be so
much destruction, before they stumbled into a routine that can cope with this
phenomenon. That, I think, is why they're so utterly sane, so good, for most of the year. That's why they've never colonized the rest of the
planet. They don't know the reason—population control is a transparent
rationalization—but I know why: no baleflower.
They're so well adapted that they can't do without it. I wonder what would
happen to a Gwydiona deprived of his periodic
dementia. I suspect it would be rather horrible.
"Their
material organization protects them: strong buildings, no isolated homes, no
firearms, no atomic energy, everything that might be harmed or harmful locked
away for the duration of hell. This Holy City, and I suppose every one on the planet, is built like a warren, full of
places to run and dodge and hide and lock yourself
away when someone runs amok. The walls are padded, the ground is soft, it's hard to hurt yourself.
"But
of course, the main bulwark is psychological. Myths, symbols, rites, so much a part of their lives that even in their madness
they remember. Probably they remember more than in their sanity: things they
dare not recall when conscious, the wild and tragic symbols, the Night Faces
that aren't talked about. Slowly, over the generations and centuries, they've
groped their way to a system which keeps then-world somewhat orderly, somewhat
meaningful, while the baleflower blooms. Which
actually channels the mania, so that very few people get hurt any more; so they act out their hates and fears, dance them
out, living their own myths . . . instead of clawing each other in the physical
flesh."
The
dance was losing pattern. It wouldn't end after all, Raven thought, but merely
dissolve into aimlessness. Well, that would serve, if he could vanish and be
forgotten.
He
said to Tolteca, "You had to come bursting into
then-dream universe and unbalance it. You killed that little girl."
"Oa, name of mercy." The engineer covered his face.
Raven
sighed. "Forget it. Partly my fault. I should
have told you at once what I surmised."
They
were halfway up the terraces when someone broke through the dancers and came
bounding toward them. Two, Raven saw, his heart gone hollow. The moonlight cascaded
over their blonde hair, turning it to frost.
"Stop,"
called Elfavy, low and with laughter. "Stop,
Ragan."
He
wondered what sort of destiny the accidental likeness of his name to that of a
myth would prove to be.
She paused a few steps below him. Byord
clutched her hand, looking about from bright soulless eyes. Elfavy
brushed a lock off her forehead, a gesture Raven remembered. "Here is the
River Child, Ragan," she called. "And you are the rain. And I am the
Mother, and darkness is in me."
Beyond
her shoulder, he saw that others had heard. They were ceasing to dance, one by
one, and staring up.
"Welcome,
then," said Raven. "Go back to your home in the meadows, River Child.
Take him home, Bird Maiden."
Byord's small face opened. He screamed.
"Don't eat me, motherl"
Elfavy bent down and embraced him. "No,"
she crooned, "oh, no, no, no. You shall come to me. Don't you recall it? I
was in the ground, and rain fell on me and it was dark where I was. Come with
me, River Child." .
Byord
shrieked and tried to break free. She dragged him on toward Raven. From the
crowd below, a deep
voice lifted, "And the earth drank the rain, and the rain was the earth,
and the Mother was the Child and carried Ynis in her
arms."
"Jingleballs!" muttered Kors.
His scarecrow form slouched forward, to stand between his Commandant and those
below. "That tears it."
"I'm afraid so,"
said Raven.
Dawyd
sprang onto the lowest tier. His tone rang like a trumpet: "They came from the sky and
violated the Mother! Can you hear the leaves weep?"
"Now what?" Tolteca glared at them, where they surged
shadowed on the moon-gray turf. "What do they mean? It's a nightmare, it
doesn't make sense!"
"Every
nightmare makes sense," Raven answered. "The homicidal urge is awake
and looking for something to destroy. And it has just figured out what,
too."
"The ship, huh?" Kors hefted his
gun.
"Yes,"
said Raven. "Rainfall is a fertilization symbol. So what kind of symbol do
you think a spaceship landing on your home soil and discharging its crew is?
What would you do to a man who attacked your mother?"
"I
hate to shoot those poor unarmed bastards," said Kors,
"but-"
Raven
snarled like an animal: "If you do, 111 kill
you myself!"
He regained control and drew out his rniniradio. "I told
Utiel to lift ship thirty hours after I'd gone,
but that won't be soon enough. Ill warn him now. There
mustn't be any vessel there for them to assault. Then we'll see if we can save
our own hides."
Elfavy reached him. She flung Byord
at his feet, where the boy sobbed in his terror, not having sufficient mythic
training to give pattern to that which stirred within him. Elfavy
fixed her gaze wide upon Raven. "I know you," she gasped. "You
sat on my grave once, and I couldn't sleep."
He
thumbed the radio switch and put the box to his lips. Her fingernails gashed
his hand, which opened in sheer reflex. She snatched the box and flung it from
her, further than he would have believed a woman could throw. "No!"
she shrilled. "Don't leave the darkness in me, Ragan! You woke me
once!"
Kors
started forward. "Ill get it," he said. Elfavy pulled his knife from its sheath as he passed and
thrust it between his ribs. He sank on all fours, astonished in the moonlight.
Down
below, a berserker howl broke loose as they saw what had happened. Dawyd shuffled to the radio, picked it up, gaped at it,
tossed it back into the mob. They swallowed it as a whirlpool might.
Raven
stooped down by Kors, cradling the helmeted head in
his arms. The soldier bubbled blood. "Get started, Commandant. I'll hold
'em." He reached for his gun and took an
unsteady aim.
"No." Raven snatched it from him.
"We came to them." "Horse apples," said Kors,
and died.
Raven
straightened. He handed Tolteca the gun and the
dagger withdrawn from the body. A moment he hesitated, then added his own
weapons. "On your way," he said. "You have to reach the ship
before they do."
"You go!" Tolteca
screamed. "I'll stay—"
"I'm trained in unarmed combat,"
said Raven. "I can hold them a good deal longer than you, clerk."
He
stood thinking. Elfavy knelt beside him. She clasped
his hand. Byord trembled at her feet.
"You might bear in mind next tune,"
said Raven, "that a Lochlanna has obligations."
He
gave Tolteca a shove. The Namerican
drew a breath and ran.
"O
the harbuck at the cliff's edge!" called Dawyd joyously. "The arrows of the sun are in
him!" He went after Tolteca like a streak. Raven pulled loose
from Elfavy, intercepted her father, and stiff-armed
him. Dawyd rolled down the green steps, into the band
of men that yelped. They tore him apart.
Raven
went back to Elfavy. She still knelt, holding her
son. He had never seen anything so gentle as her smile. "We're next,"
he said. "But you've time to get away. Run. Lock yourself in a tower
room."
Her
hair swirled about her shoulders with the gesture of negation. "Sing me
the rest."
"You can save Byord too," he begged.
"It's such a beautiful song," said Elfavy.
Raven watched the people of Instar feasting. He hadn't much voice left, but he did his
lame best.
"—' Tis down
in yonder garden green, Love, where we used to walk, The fairest flower that e'er was seen Is withered to a stalk.
"
The
stalk is withered dry, my love; So will our hearts decay. So make yourself
content, my love, Till God calls you away.' "
"Thank you,
Ragan," said Elfavy.
"Will you go
now?" he asked.
"I?" she said.
"How could I? We are the Three."
He sat down beside her, and she leaned
against him. His free hand stroked the boy's damp hair.
Presently
the crowd uncoiled itself and lumbered up the steps. Raven arose. He moved away
from Elfavy, who remained where she was. If he could hold their
attention for half an hour or so—and with luck, he should be able to last that
long—they might well forget about her. Then she would survive the night. And
not remember.
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NO WORLD OF THEIR OWN by Poul Anderson D-553 THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND
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400
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and EYE OF THE MONSTER by Andre Norton
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F-167
CATSEYE by
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F-173 SECOND ENDING by James White
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F-174
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Edited
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THE DEFIANT AGENTS by Andre Norton F-185 THE FIVE GOLD BANDS by Jack Vance
and THE DRAGON MASTERS by Jack Vance F-187 ALPHA CENTAURI—OR DIEI by Leigh Brackett
and LEGEND OF LOST EARTH
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ARMAGEDDON, 2419 A.D. by Philip F. Nowlan
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