THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND

Part one of three parts. The history of human civilization is the history of conflicts between nations, societies, races. Can human beings build a viable society with nonhuman partners? And what happens to the youngsters who want to adopt alien ways, and desire to be something that they physically cannot be?

POUL ANDERSON

1

"You can't leave now," Daniel Holm told his son. "Any day we may be at war. We may already be."

"That's just why I have to go," the young man answered. "They're calling Khruaths about it around the curve of the planet. Where else should I fare than to my choth?"

When he spoke thus, more than his wording became bird. The very accent changed. He was no longer using the Planha-influenced Anglic of Avalon—pure vowels, r's trilled, m's and n's and ng's almost hummed, speech deepened and slowed and strongly cadenced; rather, it was as if he were trying to translate for a human listener the thought of an Ythrian brain.

The man whose image occupied the phone screen did not retort, "You might consider staying with your own family," as once he would have. Instead Daniel Holm nodded, and said quietly, "I see. You're not Chris now, you're Arinnian," and all at once looked old.

That wrenched at the young man. He reached forth, but his fingers were stopped by the screen, "I'm always Chris, Dad," he blurted. "It's only that I'm Arinnian too. And, and, well, if war comes, the choths will need to be prepared for it, won't they? I'm going to help—shouldn't be gone long, really."

"Sure. Good voyage."

"Give Mother and everybody my love."

"Why not call her yourself?"

"Well, uh, I do have to hurry … and it's not as if this were anything unusual, my heading off to the mountains, and—oh—"

"Sure," said Daniel Holm. "I'll tell them. And you give my regards to your mates." The Second Marchwarden of the Lauran System blanked off.

Arinnian turned from the instrument. For a moment he winced and bit his lip. He hated hurting people who cared about him. But why couldn't they understand? Their kind called it "going, bird," being received into a choth, as if in some fashion those who did were renouncing the race that begot them. He couldn't count how many hours he had tried to make his parents—make any number of orthohumans—see that he was widening and purifying his humanity.

A bit of dialogue ran through memory: "Dad, look, two species can't inhabit the same globe for generations without pretty deep mutual consequences. Why do you go sky-hunting? Why does Ferune serve wine at his table? And those're the most superficial symptoms."

"I know that much: Credit me with some fair-mindedness, hm? Thing is, you're making a quantum jump."

"Because I'm to be a member of Stormgate? Listen, the choths have been accepting humans for the past hundred years."

"Not in such flocks as lately. And my son wasn't one of them. I'd 've … liked to see you carry on our traditions."

"Who says I won't?"

"To start with, you'll not be under human law any more, you'll be under choth law and custom … Hold on. That's fine, if you're an Ythrian. Chris, you haven't got the chromosomes. Those who've pretended they did, never fitted well into either race, ever again."

"Damnation, I'm not pretending—!"

Arinnian thrust the scene from him as if it were a physical thing. He was grateful for the prosaic necessities of preparation. To reach Lythran's aerie before dark, he must start soon. Of course, a car would cover the distance in less than an hour; but who wanted to fly caged in metal and plastic?

He was nude. More and more, those who lived like him were tending to discard clothes altogether and use skin paint for dress-up. But everybody sometimes needed garments. An Ythrian, too, was seldom without a belt and pouch. This trip would get chilly, and he lacked feathers. He crossed the tiny apartment to fetch coverall and boots.

Passing, he glanced at the desk whereon lay papers of his work and, in a heap, the texts and references he was currently employing, printouts from Library Central. Blast! he thought. I loathe quitting when I've nearly seen how to prove that theorem.

In mathematics he could soar. He often imagined that then his mind knew the same clean ecstasy an Ythrian, aloft alone, must know in the flesh. Thus he had been willing to accept the compromise which reconciled him and his father. He would continue his studies, maintain his goal of becoming a professional mathematician. To this end, he would accept some financial help, though he would no longer be expected to live at home. The rest of what little income he required he would earn himself, as herdsman and hunter when he went off to be among the Ythrians.

Daniel Holm had growled, through the hint of a grin, "You own a good mind, son. I didn't want to see it go to waste. At the same time, it's—too good. If 'tweren't for your birding, you'd be so netted in your books, when you aren't drawing a picture or writing a poem, you'd never get any exercise; at last your bottom would grow fast to your chair, and you'd hardly notice. I s'pose I should feel a little grateful to your friends for making their kind of athlete out of you."

"My chothmates," Arinnian corrected him. He had just been given his new name and was full of glory and earnestness. That was four years ago; today he could smile at himself. The guv'nor had not been altogether wrong.

Thus at thirty—Avalonian reckoning—Christopher Holm was tall, slender, but wide-shouldered. In features as well as build, he took after his mother: long head, narrow face, thin nose and lips, blue eyes, mahogany hair (worn short in the style of those who do much gravbelt flying), and as yet not enough beard to be worth anything except regular applications of antigrowth enzyme. His complexion, naturally fair, was darkened by exposure. Laura, a G5 star, has only 72 percent the luminosity of Sol and less ultraviolet light in proportion; but Avalon, orbiting at a mean distance of 0.81 astronomical unit in a period of 0.724 Terran, gets 10 percent more total irradiation than man evolved under. He made the customary part-by-part inspection of his unit before he put arms through straps and secured buckle at waist. The twin cone-pointed cylinders on his back had better have fully charged accumulators and fully operating circuits. If not, he was dead. One Ythrian couldn't hold back a human from toppling out of the sky. A couple of times, several together had effected a rescue; but those were herders, carrying lassos which they could cast around their comrade and pull on without getting in each other's way. You dared not count on such luck. O God, to have real wings!

He donned a leather helmet and lowered the goggles which were his poor substitute for a nictitating membrane. He sheathed knife and slugthrower at his hips. There would be nothing of danger—no chance of a duel being provoked, since a Khruath was peace-holy—not that deathpride quarrels ever happened often—but the Stormgate folk were mostly hunters and didn't leave their tools behind. He had no need to carry provisions. Those would be supplied from the family stores, to which he contributed his regular share, and ferried to the rendezvous on a gravsled.

Going out the door, he found himself on ground level. Humans had ample room on Avalon—about ten million of them; four million Ythrians—and even here in Gray, the planet's closest approximation to a real city, they built low-and widespread. A couple of highrises sufficed for resident or visiting ornithoids.

Arinnian flicked controls. Negaforce thrust him gently, swiftly upward. Leveling off, he spent a minute savoring the view.

The town sprawled across hills green with trees and susin, color-patched with gardens, that ringed Falkayn Bay. Upon the water skimmed boats; being for pleasure, they were principally sail-driven hydrofoils. A few cargo vessels, long shapes of functional grace, lay at the docks, loaded and unloaded by assorted robots. One was coming in, from Brendan's Islands to judge by the course, and one was standing out to the Hesperian Sea, which flared silver where the sun struck it and, elsewhere, ran sapphire till it purpled on northern and southern horizons.

Laura hung low in the empty west, deeper, aureate than at midday. The sky was a slowly darkening blue; streaks of high cirrus clouds, which Arinnian thought of as breastfeathers, promised fair weather would continue. A salt breeze whispered and cooled his cheeks.

Air traffic was scant. Severa Ythrians passed by, wings gleaming bronze and amber. A couple of humans made beltflights like Arinnian; distant, they were hardly to be told from a flock of slim leathery draculas which evening had drawn out of some cave. More humans rode in cars, horizontal raindrops that flung back the light with inanimate fierceness. Two or three vans lumbered along and an intercontinental liner was settling toward the airport. But Gray was never wildly busy.

High up, however, paced shapes that had not been seen here since the end of the Troubles: warcraft on patrol.

War against the Terran Empire— Shivering, Arinnian lined out eastward, inland.

Already he could see his destination, far off beyond the coastal range and the central valley, like a cloudbank on worldedge, those peaks which were the highest in Corona, on all Avalon if you didn't count Oronesia. Men called them the Andromedas, but in his Anglic Arinnian had also taken to using the Planha name, Weather-mother.

Ranchland rolled beneath him. Here around Gray, the mainly Ythrian settlements northward merged with the mainly human south; both ecologies blent with Avalon's own, and the country became a checkerboard. Man's grainfields, ripening as summer waned, lay tawny amidst huge green pastures where Ythrians grazed their maukh and mayaw. Stands of timberwood, oak or pine, windnest or hammerbranch, encroached on nearly treeless reaches of berylline native susin where you might still glimpse an occasional barysauroid. The rush of his passage blew away fretfulness. Let the Empire attack the Domain … if it dared! Meanwhile he, Arinnian, was bound for Eyath—for his whole choth, of course, and oneness with it, but chiefly he would see Eyath again.

Across the dignity of the dining hall, a look passed between them. Shall we wander outside and be ourselves?

She asked permission to leave of her father Lythran and her mother Blawsa; although she was their dependent, that was mere ritual, yet rituals mattered greatly. In like fashion Arinnian told the younger persons among whom he was benched that he had the wish of being unaccompanied. He and Eyath left side by side. It caused no break in the slow, silence-punctuated conversation wherein everyone else took part. Their closeness went back to their childhood and, was fully accepted.

The compound stood on a plateau of Mount Farview. At the middle lifted the old stone tower which housed the senior members of the family and their children. Lower wooden structures, on whose sod roofs bloomed amberdragon and starbells, were for the unwed and for retainers and their kin. Further down a slope lay sheds, barns, and mews. The whole could not be seen at once from the ground, because Ythrian trees grew among the buildings: braidbark, copperwood, gaunt lightningrod, jewelleaf which sheened beneath the moon and by day would shimmer iridescent. The flowerbeds held natives, more highly evolved than anything from offplanet—sweet small janie, pungent livewell, graceful trefoil and Buddha's cup, a harp vine which the breeze brought ever so faintly to singing. Otherwise the night was quiet and, at this altitude, cold. Breath smoked white.

Eyath spread her wings. They were more slender than average, though spanning close to six meters. This naturally forced her to rest on hands and tail. "Br-r-r!" she laughed. "Hoarfrost. Let's lift." In a crack and whirl of air, she rose.

"You forgot," he called. "I've taken off my belt"

She settled on a platform built near the top of a copperwood. Ythrians made few redundant noises; obviously he could climb. He thought she overrated his skill, merely because he was better at it than she. A misstep in that murky foliage could bring a nasty fall. But he couldn't refuse the implicit challenge and keep her respect. He gripped a branch, chinned himself up, and groped and rustled his way.

Ahead, he heard her murmur to the uhoth which had fluttered along behind her. It brought down game with admirable efficiency, but he felt she made too much fuss over it Well, no denying she was husband-high. He didn't quite like admitting that to himself. (Why?, he wondered fleetingly.)

When he reached the platform, he saw her at rest on feet and alatans, the uhoth on her right wrist while her left hand stroked it. Morgana, almost full, stood dazzling white over the eastward sierra and made the plumes of Eyath glow. Her crest was silhouetted against the Milky Way. Despite the moon, constellations glistered through upland air, Wheel, Swords, Zirraukh, vast sprawling Ship ...

He sat down beside her, hugging his knees. She made the small ululation which expressed her gladness at his presence. He responded as best he could. Above the clean curve of her muzzle, the great eyes glimmered.

Abruptly she broke off. He followed her gaze and saw a new star swing into heaven. "A guardian satellite?" she asked. Her tone wavered the least bit.

"What else?" he replied. "I think it must be the latest one they've orbited."

"How many by now?"

"They're not announcing that," he reminded her. Ythrians always had trouble grasping the idea of government secrets. Of government in any normal human sense, for that matter. Marchwardens Ferune and Holm had been spending more energy in getting the choths to cooperate than in actual defense preparations. "My father doesn't believe we can have too many."

"The wasted wealth—"

"Well, if the Terrans come—"

"Do you expect they will?"

The trouble he heard brought his hand to squeeze her, very gently, on the neck, and afterward run fingers along her crest. Her feathers were warm, smooth and yet infinitely textured. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe they can settle the border question peacefully. Let's hope." The last two words were perforce in Anglic rather than Planha. Ythrians had never beseeched the future. She too was bilingual, like every educated colonist.

His look went back skyward. Sol lay … yonder in the Maukh, about where four stars formed the horns … how far? Oh, yes, 205 light-years. He recalled reading that, from there, Quetlan and Laura were in a constellation called the Lupus. None of the three suns had naked-eye visibility across such an abyss. They were mere G-type dwarfs; they merely happened to be circled by some motes which had fermented till there were chemistries that named those motes Terra, Ythri, Avalon, and loved them.

"Lupus," he mused. "An irony."

Eyath whistled: "?"

He explained, adding: "The lupus is, or was, a beast of prey on Terra. And to us, Sol lies in the sign of a big, tame herd animal. But who's attacking whom?"

"I haven't followed the news much," she said, low and not quite steadily. "It seemed a fog only, to me or mine. What need we reck if others clashed? Then all of a sudden—Might we have caused some of the trouble, Arinnian? Could folk of ours have been too rash, too rigid?"

Her mood was so uncharacteristic, not just of Ythrian temperament in general but of her usually sunny self, that astonishment jerked his head around. "What's made you this anxious?" he asked.

Her lips nuzzled the uhoth, as if seeking consolation that he thought he could better give. Its beak preened her. He barely heard: "Vodan."

"What? Oh! Are you betrothed to Vodan?" His voice had cracked. Why am I shaken? he wondered. He's a fine fellow. And of this same choth, too; no problems of changed law and custom, culture shock, homesickness—- Arinnian's glance swept over the Storm-gate country. Above valleys steep-walled, dark and fragrant with woods, snowpeaks lifted. Closer was a mountainside down which a waterfall stood pillarlike under the moon. A night-flying bugler sounded its haunting note through stillness. On the Plains of Long Reach, in arctic marshes, halfway around the planet on a scorching New Gaiilan savannah, amidst the uncounted islands that made up most of what dry land Avalon had—how might she come to miss the realm of her choth?

No, wait, I'm thinking like a human. Ythrians get around more. Eyath's own mother is from the Sagittarius basin, often goes back to visit … Why shouldn't I think like a human? I am one. I've found wisdom, rightness, happiness of a sort in certain Ythrian ways; but no use pretending I'll ever be an Ythrian, ever wed a winged girl and dwell in our own aerie.

She was saying: "Well, no, not exactly. Galemate, do you believe I wouldn't tell you of my betrothal or invite you to my wedding feast? But he is a … a person I've grown very fond of. You know I planned on staying single till my studies were finished." She wanted the difficult, honored calling of musician. "Lately … well. I thought about it a lot during my last lovetime. I grew hotter then than ever before, and I kept imagining Vodan."

Arinnian felt himself flush. He stared at the remote gleam of a glacier. She shouldn't tell him such things. It wasn't decent. An unmarried female Ythrian, or one whose husband was absent, was supposed to stay isolated from males when the heat came upon her; but she was also supposed to spend the energy it raised in work, or study, or meditation, or—

Eyath sensed his embarrassment. Her laughter rippled and she laid a hand over his. The slim fingers, the sharp claws gripped him tenderly. "Why, I declare you're shocked! What for?"

"You wouldn't talk like that to—your father, a brother—" And you shouldn't feel that way, either. Never. Estrus or no. Lonely, maybe; dreamy, yes; but not like some sweating trull in the bed of some cheap hotel room. Not you, Eyath.

"True, it'd be improper talk in Stormgate. I used to wonder if I shouldn't marry into a less strict choth. Vodan, though—Anyhow, Arinnian, dear, I can tell you anything. Can't I?"

"Yes." After all, I'm not really an Ythrian.

"We discussed it later, he and I," she said. "Marriage, I mean. No use denying, children would be a terrible handicap at this stage. But we fly well together; and our parents have been nudging us for a long, time, it'd be so good an alliance between houses. We've wondered if, maybe, if we stayed hriccal the first few years—"

"That doesn't work too well, does it?" he said as her voice trailed off, through the bloodbeat in his ears. "That is, uh, continual sex relations may not be how Ythrians reinforce pair bonds, but that doesn't mean sex has no importance. If you separate every lovetime, you, you, well, you're rejecting each other, arent you? Why not, uh, contraception?"

"No."

He knew why her race, almost if not quite uniformly, spurned that. Children—the strong parental instinct of both mates—were what kept them together. If small wings closed around you and a small head snuggled down alongside your keelbone, you forgot the inevitable tensions and frustrations of marriage as much as if you were a human who had just happily coupled.

"We could postpone things till I've finished my studies and his business is on the wing," Eyath said. Arinnian remembered that Vodan, in partnership with various youths from Stormgate, Many Thermals, and The Tarns, had launched a silvicultural engineering firm. "But if war comes—kaah, he's in the naval reserve—"

Her free arm went around his shoulder, a blind gesture. He leaned his weight on an elbow so he could reach beneath the wings to embrace her stiff body. And he murmured to her, his sister since they both were children, what comfort he was able.

In the morning they felt more cheerful. It was not in Ythrian nature to brood—not even as a bad pun, they giving live birth—and bird-humans had tried to educate themselves out of the habit. Today, apart from a few retainers on maintenance duty, Lythran's household would fly to that mountain where the regional Khruath met. On the way they would be joined by other Stormgate families; arrived, they would find other choths entirely. However bleak the occasion of this gathering was, some of the color, excitement, private business, and private fun would be there that pervaded the regular assemblies.

And the dawn was clear and a tailwind streamed.

A trumpet called. Lythran swung from the top of his tower. Folk lifted their wings until the antlibranch slits beneath stood agape, purple from blood under the oxygen-drinking tissues. The wings clapped back down, and back on high; the Ythrians thundered off the ground, caught an updraft, and rode it into formation. Then they flew eastward over the crags.

Arinnian steered close to Eyath. She flashed him a smile and broke into song. She had a beautiful voice—it could nearly be named soprano—which turned the skirls and gutturals of Planha into a lilt. What she cataracted forth on the air was a traditional carol, but it was for Arinnian because he had rendered it into Anglic, though he always felt that his tricks of language had failed to convey either the rapture or the vision.

"Light that leaps from a sun still sunken
hails the hunter at hover,
washes his wings in molten morning,
startles the stars to cover.
Blue is the bell of hollow heaven,
rung by a risen blowing.
Wide lie woodlands and mountain meadows,
great and green with their growing.

But—look, oh, look!—
a red ray struck
through tattered mist.
A broadhorn buck
stands traitor-kissed.
The talons crook.

"Tilt through tumult of wakened wind-noise,
whining, whickering, whirly;
slip down a slantwise course of currents.
Ha, but the hunt comes early!
Poise on the pinions, take the target
there in the then of swooping—
Thrust on through by a wind-wild wingbeat,
stark the stabber comes stooping.

The buck may pose
for one short breath
before it runs
from whistling death.
The hammer stuns.
The talons close.

"Broad and bright is the nearing noontide.
Drawn to dreamily drowsing,
shut-eyed in shade he sits now, sated.
Suddenly sounds his rousing.
Cool as the kiss of a ghost, then gusty,
rinsed by the rainfall after,
breezes brawl, and-their forest fleetness
lives in leafage like, laughter.

Among the trees
the branches shout
and groan and throw
themselves about
It's time to go.
The talons ease.

"Beat from boughs up to row through rainstreams.
Thickly thutters the thunder.
Hailwinds harried by lash of lightning
roar as they rise from under.
Blind in the black of clawing cloudbanks,
wins he his way, though slowly,
breaks their barrier, soars in sunlight.
High is heaven and holy.

The glow slants gold
caressingly
across and through
immensity
of silent blue.
The talons fold."

II

Avalon rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds, on an axis tilted 21° from the normal to the orbital plane. Thus Gray, at about 43° N., knows short nights always; in summer the darkness seems scarcely a blink. Daniel Holm wondered if that was a root of his weariness.

Probably not. He was born here. His ancestors had lived here for centuries; they arrived with Falkayn. If individuals could change their circadian rhythms—as he'd had to do plenty often in his spacefaring days—surely a race could. The medics said that settling down in a gravity field only 80 percent of Terra's made more severe demands than that on the organism; its whole fluid balance and kinesthesia must readjust. Besides, what humans underwent was trivial compared to what their fellow colonists did. The Ythrians had had to shift a whole breeding cycle to a different day, year, weight, climate, diet, world. No wonder their first several generations had been of low fertility. Nevertheless, they survived; in the end, they flourished.

Therefore it was nonsense to suppose a man got tired from anything except overwork—and, yes, age, in spite of antisenescence. Or was it? Really? As you grew old, as you neared your dead and all who had gone before them, might your being not yearn back to its earliest beginnings, to a manhome you had never seen, but somehow remembered?

Crock! Come off that! Who said eighty-four is old? Holm yanked a cigar from his pocket and snapped off the end. The inhalation which lit it was unnecessarily hard. He was of medium height, and stocky in the olive tunic and baggy trousers worn by human members of the Ythrian armed services. The mongoloid side of his descent showed in round head, wide face, high cheekbones, a fullness about the lips and the blunt nose; the caucasoid was revealed in gray eyes, a skin that would have been pale did he not spend his free time outdoors hunting or gardening, and the hair that was grizzled on his scalp but remained crisp and black on his chest. Like most men on the planet, he suppressed his beard.

He was wading into the latest spate of communications his aides had passed on to him, when the intercom buzzed and said: "First Marchwarden Ferune wishes discussion."

"Sure!" Holm's superior was newly back from Ythri. The man reached for a two-way plate, withdrew his hand, and said, "Why not in the flesh? I'll be right there."

He stumped from his office. The corridor beyond hummed and bustled—naval personnel, civilian employees of the Lauran admiralty—and overloaded the building's air system till the odors of both species were noticeable, slightly acrid human and slightly smoky Ythrian. The latter beings were more numerous, in reversal of population figures for Avalon. But then, a number were here from elsewhere in the Domain, especially from the mother world, trying to help this frontier make ready in the crisis.

Holm forced himself to call greetings right and left as he went. His affability had become a trademark whose value he recognized. At first it was genuine, he thought.

The honor guard saluted and admitted him to Ferune's presence. (Holm did not tolerate time-wasting ceremoniousness in his department; but he admitted its importance to Ythrians.) The inner room was typical: spacious and sparsely furbished, a few austere decorations, bench and desk and office machinery adapted to ornithoid requirements. Rather than a transparency in the wall, there was a genuine huge window open on garden-scented breezes and a downhill view of Gray and the waters aglitter beyond.

Ferune had added various offplanet souvenirs and a bookshelf loaded with folio copies of the Terran classics that he read, in three original languages, for enjoyment. A smallish, tan-feathered male, he was a bit of an iconoclast. His choth, Mistwood, had always been one of the most progressive on Avalon, mechanized as much as a human community and, in consequence, large and prosperous. He had scant patience to spare for tradition, religion, any conservatism. He endured a minimum of formalities because he must, but never claimed to like them.

Bouncing from his perch, he scuttled across the floor and shook hands Terran style. "Khr-r-r, good to see you, old rascal!" He spoke Planha; Ythrian throats are less versatile than human (though of course no human can ever get the sounds quite right) and he wanted neither the nuisance of wearing a vocalizer nor the grotesquerie of an accent.

"How'dit go?" Holm asked.

Ferune grimaced. But that is the wrong word. His feathers were not simply more intricate than those of Terran birds, they were more closely connected to muscles and nerve endings, and their movements constituted a whole universe of expression forever denied to man. Irritation, fret, underlying anger and dismay, rippled across his body.

"Huh." Holm found a chair designed for him, sank down, and drew tobacco pungency over his tongue. "Tell."

Foot-claws clicked on lovely-grained wood. Back and forth Ferune paced. "I'll be dictating a full report," he said. "In brief, worse than I feared. Yes, they're scrambling to establish a unified command and shove the idea of action under doctrine into every captain. But they've no dustiest notion of how to go about it"

"God on a stick," Holm exclaimed, "we've been telling them for the past five years! I thought—oh, bugger, communication's so vague in this so-called navy, I'd nothing to go on but impressions, and I guess I got the wrong ones—but you know I thought, we thought a halfway sensible reorganization was in progress."

"It was, but it moulted. Overweening pride, bickering, haggling about details. We Ythrians—our dominant culture, at least—don't fit well into anything tightly centralized." Ferune paused. "In fact," he went on, "the most influential argument against trading our separate, loosely coordinated planetary commands for a Terran-model hierarchy has been that Terra may have vastly greater forces, but these need to control a vastly greater volume of space than the Domain; and if they fight us they'll be at the end of such a long line of communication that unified action is self-defeating."

"Huh! Hasn't it occurred to those mudbrains on Ythri, the Imperium isn't stupid? If Terra hits, it won't run the war from Terra, but from a sector close to our borders."

"We've found little sign of strength being marshaled in nearby systems."

"Certainly not!" Holm slammed a fist on the arm of his chair. "Would they give their preparations away like that? Would you? They'll assemble in space, parsecs from any star. Minimal traffic between the gathering fleet and whatever planets our scouts can sneak close to. In a few cubic light-years, they can hide power to blow us out of the plenum."

"You've told me this a few times," Ferune said dryly. "I've passed it on. To scant avail." He stopped pacing. For a while, silence dwelt in the room. The yellow light of Laura cast leaf shadows on the floor. They quivered.

"After all," Ferune said, "our methods did save us during the Troubles."

"You can't compare war lords, pirates, petty conquerors, barbarians who'd never have gotten past their stratospheres if they hadn't happened to 've acquired practically self-operating ships—you can't compare that bloody-clawed rabble to Imperial Terra."

"I know," Ferune replied; "The point is, Ythrian methods served us well because they accord with Ythrian nature. I've begun to wonder, during this last trip, if an attempt to become poor copies of our rivals may not be foredoomed. The attempt's being made, understand—you'll get details till they run back out of your gorge—but could be that all we'll gain is confusion. I've decided that while Avalon must make every effort to cooperate, Avalon must at the same time expect small help from outside."

Again fell stillness. Holm looked at his superior, associate, friend of years; and not for the first time, it came to him what strangers they two were.

He found himself regarding Ferune as if he had never met an Ythrian before.

Standing, the Marchwarden was about 120 centimeters high from feet to top of crest; a tall person would have gone to 140 or so, say up to the mid-breast of Holm. Since the body tilted forward, its actual length from muzzle through tail was somewhat more. It massed perhaps 20 kilos; the maximum for the species was under 30.

The head looked sculptured. It bulged back from a low brow to; hold the brain. A bony ridge arched down in front to a pair of nostrils, nearly hidden by feathers, which stood above a flexible mouth full of sharp white fangs and a purple tongue. The jaw, underslung and rather delicate, merged with a strong neck. That face was dominated by its eyes, big and amber, and by the dense, scalloped feather-crest that rose from the brow, lifted over the head, and ran half the length of the neck: partly for aerodynamic purposes, partly as a helmet on the thin skull.

The torso thrust outward in a great keelbone, which at its lower end was flanked by the arms. These were not unlike the arms of a skinny human, in size and appearance; they lacked plumage, and the hide was dark yellow on Ferune's, brown or black in other Ythrian subspecies. The hands were less manlike. Each bore three fingers between two thumbs; each digit possessed one more joint than its Terran equivalent and a nail that might better be called a talon. The wrist sprouted a dew claw on its inner surface. Those hands were large in proportion to the arms, and muscles played snakishly across them. They had evolved as ripping tools, to help the teeth. The body ended in a fan-shaped tail of feathers, rigid enough to help support it when desired.

At present, though, the tremendous wings were folded down to work as legs. In the middle of either leading edge, a "knee" joint bent in reverse; those bones would lock together in flight. From the "ankle," three forward toes and one rearward extended to make a foot; aloft, they curled around the wing to strengthen and add sensitivity. The remaining three digits of the ancestral ornithoid had fused to produce the alatan bone which swept backward for more than a meter. The skin over its front half was bare, calloused, another surface to rest on.

Ferune being male, his crest rose higher than a female's, and it and the tail were white with black trim; on her they would have been of uniform dark lustrousness. The remainder of him was lighter-colored than average for his species, which ranged from gray-brown through black.

"Khr-r-r-r." The throat-noise yanked Holm out of his reverie. "You stare."

"Oh. Sorry." To a true-born carnivore, that was more rude than it was among omnivorous humans. "My mind wandered."

"Whither?" Ferune asked, mild again.

"M-m-m … well—well, all right. I got to thinking how little my breed really counts for in the Domain. I figure maybe we'd better assume everything's bound to be done Ythrian-style, and make the best of that."

Ferune uttered a warbling "reminder" note and quirked certain feathers. This had no exact Anglic equivalent, but the intent could be translated as: "Your sort aren't the only non-Ythrians under our hegemony. You aren't the only ones technologically up to date." Planha was in fact not as laconic as its verbal conventions made it seem.

"N-no," Holm mumbled. "But we … in the Empire, we're the leaders. Sure, Greater Terra includes quite a few home worlds and colonies of nonhumans; and a lot of individuals from elsewhere have gotten Terran citizenship; sure. But more humans are in key positions of every kind than members of any other race—fireflare, probably of all the other races put together." He sighed and stared at the glowing end of his cigar. "Here in the Domain, what are men? A handful on this single ball. Oh, we get around, we do well for ourselves, but the fact won't go away that we're a not terribly significant minority in a whole clutch of minorities."

"Do you regret that?" Ferune asked quite softly.

"Huh? No. No. I only meant, well, probably the Domain has too few humans to explain and administer a human-type naval organization. So better we adjust to you than you to us. It's unavoidable anyhow. Even on Avalon, where there're more of us, it's unavoidable."

"I hear a barrenness in your tone and see it in your eyes," Ferune said, more gently than was his wont. "Again you think of your son who has gone bird, true? You fear his younger brothers and sisters will fare off as he did."

Holm gathered strength to answer. "You know I respect your ways. Always have, always will. Nor am I about to forget how Ythri took my people in when Terra had rotted away beneath them. It's just … just … we rate respect too. Don't we?"

Ferune moved forward until he could lay a hand on Holm's thigh. He understood the need of humans to speak their griefs.

"When he—Chris—when he first started running around, flying around, with Ythrians, why, I was glad," the man slogged on. He held his gaze out the window. From time to time he dragged at his cigar, but the gesture was mechanical, unnoticed. "He'd always been too bookish, too alone. So his Stormgate friends, his visits there—Later, when he and Eyath and their gang were knocking around in odd corners of the planet—well, that seemed like he was doing over what I did at his age, except he'd have somebody to guard his back if a situation got sharp. I thought maybe he also would end enlisting in the navy—" Holm shook his head. "I didn't see till too late, what'd gotten in him was not old-fashioned fiddlefootedness. Then when I did wake up, and we quarreled about it, and he ran off and hid in the Shielding Islands for a year, with Eyath's help— But no point in my going on, is there?"

Ferune gestured negative. After Daniel Holm went raging to Lythran's house, accusations exploding out of him, it had been all the First Marchwarden could do to intervene, calm both parties and prevent a duel.

"No, I shouldn't have said anything today," Holm continued. "It's only—last night Rowena was crying. That he went off and didn't say goodbye to her. Mainly, she worries about what's happening to him, inside, since he joined the choth. Can he ever make a normal marriage, for instance? Ordinary girls aren't his type any more; and bird girls—And, right, our younger kids. Tommy's completely in orbit around Ythrian subjects. The school monitor had to come in person and tell us how he'd been neglecting to screen the material or submit the work or see the consultants he was supposed to. And Jeanne's found a couple of Ythrian playmates—"

"As far as I know," Ferune said, "humans who entered choths have as a rule had satisfactory lives. Problems, of course. But what life can have none? Besides, the difficulties ought to become less as the number of such persons grows."

"Look," Holm floundered, "I'm not against your folk. Break my bones if ever I was! Never once did I say or think there was anything dishonorable about what Chris was doing, any more than I would've said or thought it if, oh, if he'd joined some celibate order of priests. But I'd not have liked that either. It's no more natural fox a man. And I've studied everything I could find about bird people. Sure, most of them have claimed they were happy. Probably most of them believed it. I can't help thinking they never realized what they'd missed."

"Walkers," Ferune said. In Planha, that sufficed. In Anglic he would have had to state something like: "We've lost our share, those who left the choths to become human-fashion atomic individuals within a global human community."

"Influence," he added, which conveyed: "Over the centuries on Avalon, no few of our kind have grown bitter at what your precept and example were doing to the choths themselves. Many still are. I suspect that's a major reason why several such groups have become more reactionary than any on the mother world."

Holm responded, "Wasn't the whole idea of this colony that both races should grant each other the right to be what they were?"

"That was written into the Compact and remains there," Ferune said in two syllables and three expressions. "Nobody has been compelled. But living together, how can we help changing?"

"Uh-huh. Because Ythri in general and Mistwood in particular have made a success of adopting and adapting Terran technology, you believe nothing's involved except a common-sense swap of ideas. It's not that simple, though."

"I didn't claim it is," Ferune said, "only that we don't catch time in any net."

"Yeh. I'm sorry if I— Well, I didn't mean to maunder on, especially, when you've heard me often enough before. These just happen to be thin days at home." The man left his chair, strode past the Ythrian, and halted by the. window, where he looked out through a veil of smoke.

"Let's get to real work," he said. "I'd like to ask specific questions about the overall state of Domain preparedness. And you'd better listen to me about what's been going on here while you were away—through the whole bloody-be-flensed Lauran System, in fact. That's none too good either."

III

The car identified its destination and moved down. Its initial altitude was such that the rider inside glimpsed a dozen specks of ground strewn over shining waters. But when he approached they had all fallen beneath the horizon. Only the rugged cone of St Li was now visible to him.

With an equatorial diameter of a mere. 11,308 kilometers, Avalon has a molten core smaller in proportion than Terra's; a mass of 0.63 cannot store as much heat. Thus the forces are weak that thrust land upward. At the same time, erosion proceeds fast. The atmospheric pressure at sea level is similar to the Terrestrial—and drops off more slowly with height, because of the gravity gradient—and rapid rotation makes for violent weather. In consequence, the surface is generally low, the highest peak in the Andromedas rising no more than 4500 meters. Nor does the land occur in great masses. Corona, capping the north pole and extending down past the Tropic of Swords, covers barely eight million, square kilometers, about the size of Australia. In the opposite hemisphere, Equatoria, New Africa, and New Gaiila could better be called large islands than minor continents. All else consists of far smaller islands.

Yet one feature is gigantic. Some, 2000 kilometers due west of Gray begins that drowned range whose peaks, thrusting into air, are known as Orbnesia. Southward it runs, crosses the Tropic of Spears, trails off at last not far from the Antarctic Circle. Thus it forms a true, hydrological boundary; its western side marks off the Middle Ocean, its eastern the Hesperian Sea in the northern hemisphere and the South Ocean beyond the equator. It supports a distinct ecology, incredibly rich. And thereby, after the colonization, it became a sociological phenomenon. Any eccentrics, human or Ythrian, could go off, readily transform one or a few isles, and make their own undisturbed existence.

The mainland choths were diverse in size as well as in organization and tradition. But whether they be roughly analogous to clans, tribes, baronies, religious communes, republics, or whatever, they counted their members in the thousands at least. In Oronesia there were single households which bore the name; grown and married, the younger children were expected to found new, independent societies.

Naturally, this extremism was exceptional. The Highsky folk in particular were numerous, controlling the fisheries around latitude 30° N. and occupying quite a stretch of the archipelago. And they were fairly conventional, insofar as that word has any meaning when applied to Ythrians.

The aircar landed on the beach below a compound. He who stepped out was tall, with dark-red hair, clad in sandals, kilt, and weapons.

Tabitha Falkayn had seen the vehicle descending and walked forth to meet it. "Hello, Christopher Holm," she said in Anglic.

"I come as Arinnian," he answered in Planha. "Luck fare beside you, Hrill."

She smiled. "Excuse me if I don't elaborate the occasion." Shrewdly: "You called ahead that you wanted to see me on a public matter. That must have to do with the border crisis. I daresay your Khruath. decided that western Corona and northern Oronesia must work out a means of defending the Hesperian Sea."

He nodded awkwardly, and his eyes sought refuge from her amusement.

Enormous overhead, sunshine brilliant off cumulus banks, arched heaven. A sailor winged yonder, scouting for schools of piscoid; a flock of Ythrian shuas flapped by under the control of a herder and his uhoths; native pteropleuron lumbered around a reef rookery. The sea rolled indigo, curled in translucent green breakers, and exploded in foam on sands nearly as white. Trawlers plied it, kilometers out. Inland the ground rose steep. The upper slopes still bore a pale emerald mat of susin; only a few kinds of shrub were able to grow past those interlocking roots. But further down the hills had been plowed. There Ythrian clustergrain rustled red, for ground cover and to feed the shuas, while groves of coconut palm, mango, orange, and pumpernickel plant lifted above to nourish the human members of Highsky. A wind blew, warm but fresh, full of salt and iodine and fragrances.

"I suppose it was felt bird-to-bird conferences would be a good idea," Tabitha went on. "You mountaineers will have ample trouble understanding us pelagics, and vice versa, without the handicap of differing species. Ornithoids will meet likewise, hm?" Her manner turned thoughtful: "You had to be a delegate, of course. Your area has so few of your kind. But why come in person? Not that you aren't welcome. Still, a phone call—"

"We … we may have to talk at length," he said. "For days, off and on." He took for granted he would receive hospitality; all choths held that a guest was sacred.

"Why me, though? I'm only a local."

"You're a descendant of David Falkayn."

"That doesn't mean much."

"It does where I live. Besides—well, we've met before, now and then, at the larger Khruaths and on visits to each other's home areas and—We're acquainted a little. I'd not know where to begin among total strangers. If nothing else, you … you can advise me whom to consult, and introduce me. Can't you?"

"Certainly." Tabitha took both his hands. "Besides, I'm glad to see you, Chris."

His heart knocked. He struggled not to squirm. What makes me this shy before her? God knew she was attractive. A few years older than he, big, strongly built, full-breasted and long of leg, she showed to advantage in a short sleeveless tunic. Her face was snubnosed, wide of mouth, its green eyes set far apart under heavy brows; she had never bothered to remove the white scar on her right cheekbone. Her hair, cropped beneath the ears, was bleached flaxen. It blew like banners over the brown, slightly freckled skin.

He wondered if she went as casually to bed as the Coronan bird girls—never with a male counterpart; always a hearty, husky, not overintelligent worker type—or if she was a virgin. That seemed unlikely. What human, perpetually in a low-grade lovetime, could match the purity of an Eyath? Yet Highsky wasn't Stormgate or The Tarns—he didn't know—Tabitha had no companions of her own species here where she dwelt—however, she traveled often and widely … He cast the speculation from him.

"Hoy, you're blushing," she laughed. "Did I violate one of your precious mores?" She released him. "If so, I apologize. But you always take these things too seriously. Relax. A social rite or a social gaffe isn't a deathpride matter."

Easy for her, I suppose, he thought Her grandparents were received into this choth. Her parents and their children grew up in it. A fourth of the membership must be human by now. And they've influenced it—like this commercial fishery she and Dtaun have started, a strictly private enterprise—

"I'm afraid we've no time for gaiety," he got out. "We've walking weather ahead."

"Indeed?"

"The Empire's about to expand our way."

"C'mon to the, house." Tabitha took his arm and urged him toward the compound. Its thatch-roofed timber dwellings were built lower than most Ythrian homes and were sturdier than they seemed; for here was scant protection from Avalon's hurricanes. "Oh, yes," she said, "the empire's been growing, vigorously since Manuel the First. But I've read its history. How has the territory been brought under control? Some by simple partnership—civilized non-humans like the Cynthians found it advantageous. Some by purchase or exchange. Some by conquest, yes—but always of primitives, or at most of people whose strength in space was ridiculously less than Greater Terra's. We're a harder gale to buck."

"Are we? My father says—"

"Uh-huh. The Empire's sphere approaches 400 light-years across, ours about 80. Out of all the systems in its volume, the Empire's got a degree of direct contact with several thousand, we with barely 250. But don't you see, Chris, we know our planets better? We're more compact. Our total resources are less but our technology's every bit as good. And then, we're distant from Terra. Why should they attack us? We don't threaten them, we merely claim our rights along the border. If they want more realm, they can find plenty closer to home, suns they've never visited, and easier to acquire than from a proud, well-armed Domain."

"My father says we're weak and unready."

"Do you think we would lose a war?"

He fell silent until they both noticed, through the soughing ahead, how sand scrunched beneath their feet. At last: "Well, I don't imagine anybody goes into a war expecting to lose."

"I don't believe they'll fight," Tabitha said. "I believe the Imperium has better sense."

"Regardless, we'd better take precautions. Home defense is among them."

"Yes. Wont be easy to organize, among a hundred or more sovereign choths."

"That's where we birds come in, maybe," he ventured. "Long established ones in particular, like your family."

"I'm honored to help," she told him. "Arid in fact I don't imagine the choths will cooperate too badly—" she tossed her head in haughtiness—"when it's a matter of showing the Empire who flies highest!"

Eyath and Vodan winged together. They made a handsome pair, both golden of eyes and arms, he ocher-brown and she deep bronze. Beneath them reached the Stormgate lands, forest-darkened valleys, crags and cliffs, peaks where snowfields lingered to dapple blue-gray rock, sword-blade of a waterfall and remote blink of a glacier. A wind sang whoo and drove clouds, which Laura tinged gold, through otherwise brilliant air; their, shadows raced and rippled across the world. The Ythrians drank of the wind's cold and swam in its swirling, thrusting, flowing strength. It stroked their feathers till they felt the barbs of the great outer pinions shiver.

He said: "If we were of Arinnian's kind, I would surely wed you, now, before I go to my ship. But you won't be in lovetime for months, and by then I might be dead. I would not bind you to that sorrow for nothing."

"Do you think I would grieve less if I had not the name of widow?" she answered. "I'd want the right to lead your memorial dance. For I know what parts of these skies you like best."

"Still, you would have to lift some awkward questions, obligation toward my blood and so on. No.. Shall our friendship be less because, for a while, you have not the name of wife?"

"Friendship—" she murmured. Impulsively: "I dreamt last night that we were indeed like humans."

"What, forever in rut?"

"Forever in love."

"Kh-h'ng, I've naught against Arinnian, but sometimes I wonder if you've not been too much with him, for too many years since you both were small. Had Lythran not taken you along when he had business in Gray—" Vodan saw her crest rise, broke off and added in haste: "Yes, he's your galemate. That makes him mine too. I only wanted to warn you … don't try, don't wish to be human."

"No-no." Eyath felt a downdraft slide by. She slanted herself to catch it, a throb of wings and then the long wild glide, peaks leaping nearer, glimpse through trees of a pool ashine where a feral stallion drank, song and rush and caress of doyen air, till she checked herself and flew back upward, breasting a torrent, every muscle at full aliveness—traced a thermal by the tiny trembling of a mountain seen through it, won there, spread her wings and let heaven carry her hovering while she laughed.

Vodan beat near. "Would I trade this?" she called joyously. "Or you?"

Ekrem Saracoglu, Imperial governor of Sector Pacis, had hinted for a while that he would like to meet the daughter of Fleet Admiral Juan de Jestis Cajal y Palomares. She had come from Nuevo Mexico to be official hostess and feminine majordomo for her widowed father, after he transferred his headquarters to Esperance and rented a house in Fleurville. The date kept being postponed. It was not that the admiral disliked the governor—they got along well—nor distrusted his intentions, no matter how notorious a womanizer he was. Luisa had been raised among folk who, if strict out of necessity on their dry world, were rich in honor and bore a hair-trigger pride. It was merely that both men were overwhelmed by work.

At last their undertakings seemed fairly well along, and Cajal invited Sarocoglu to dinner. A ridiculous last-minute contretemps occurred. The admiral phoned home that he would be detained at the office a couple of hours. The governor was already on his way.

"Thus you, Donna, have been told to keep me happy in the teeth of a postponed meal," Saracoglu purred over the hand he kissed. "I assure you, that will not be in the least difficult." Though small, she had a lively figure and a darkly pretty face. And he soon learned that, albeit solemn, she knew how to listen to a man and, rarer yet, ask him stimulating questions.

By then they were strolling in the garden. Rosebushes and cherry trees might almost have been growing on Terra; Esperance was a prize among colony planets. The sun Pax was still above the horizon, now at midsummer, but leveled mellow beams across an old brick wall. The air was warm, blithe with birdsong, sweet with green odors that drifted in from the countryside. A car or two caught the light, high above; but Fleurville was not big enough for its traffic noise to be heard this far from the centrum.

Saracoglu and Luisa paced along graveled paths and talked. They were guarded, which is to say discreetly chaperoned. However, no duenna followed several paces behind, but a huge four-armed Gorzunian mercenary on whom the nuances of a flirtation would be lost.

The trouble is, thought the governor, she's begun conversing in earnest.

It had been quite pleasant at first. She encouraged him to speak of himself. "—yes, the Earl of Anatolia, that's me. Frankly, even if it is on Terra, a minor peerage … Career bureaucrat. Might rather've been an artist—I dabble in oils and clays—maybe you'd care to see … Alas, you know how such things go. Imperial nobles are expected to serve the Imperium. Had I but been born in a decadent era! Eh? Unfortunately, the Empire's not run out of momentum—"

Inwardly, he grinned at his own performance. He, fifty-three standard years of age, squat, running to fat, totally bald, little eyes set close to a giant nose, and two expensive mistresses in his palace—acting the role of a boy who acted the role of an homme du monde! Well, he enjoyed that once in a while, as he enjoyed gaudy clothes and jewels. They were a relaxation from the wry realism which had never allowed him to improve his appearance through biosculp.

But at this point she asked, "Are we really going to attack the Ythrians?"

"Heh?" The distress in her tone brought his head swinging sharply around to stare at her. "Why, negotiations are stalled, but—"

"Who stalled them?" She kept her own gaze straight ahead. Her voice had risen a note and the slight Espanyol accent had intensified.

"Who started most of the violent incidents?" he countered. "Ythrians. Not that they're monsters, understand. But they are predators by nature. And they've no strong authority—no proper government at all—to control the impulses of groups. That's been a major stumbling block in the effort to reach an accommodation."

"How genuine was the effort—on our side?" she demanded, still refusing to look at him. "How long have you planned to fall on them? My father won't tell me anything, but it's obvious, it's been obvious ever since he moved here—how often are naval and civilian headquarters on the same planet?—it's obvious something is b-b-being readied."

"Donna," Saracoglu said gravely, "when a fleet of spacecraft can turn whole worlds into tombs, one prepares against the worst and one clamps down security regulations." He paused. "One also discovers it is unwise to let spheres interpenetrate, as Empire and Domain have. I daresay you, young, away off in a relatively isolated system … I daresay you got; an idea the Imperium is provoking war in order to swallow the whole Ythrian Domain. That is not true."

"What is true?" she replied bitterly.

"That there have been bloody clashes over disputed territories and conflicting interests."

"Yes. Our traders are losing potential profits."

"Would that were the only friction. Commercial disputes are always negotiable. Political and military rivalries are harder, For example, which of us shall absorb the Antoranite-Kraokan complex around Beta Centauri? One of us is bound to, and those resources would greatly strengthen Terra. The Ythrians have already gained more power, by bringing Dathyna under them, than we like a potentially hostile race to have.

"Furthermore, by rectifying this messy frontier, we can armor ourselves against a Merseian flank attack." Saracoglu lifted a hand to forestall her protest. "Indeed, Donna, the Roidhunate is far off and not very big. But it's growing at an alarming rate, and aggressive acquisitiveness is built into its ideology. The duty of an empire is to provide for the great-grandchildren."

"Why can't we simply write a treaty, give a quid pro quo, divide things in a fair and reasonable manner?" Luisa asked.

Saracoglu sighed. "The populations of the planets would object to being treated like inanimate property. No government which took that attitude would long survive." He gestured aloft. "Furthermore, the universe holds too many unknowns. We have traveled hundreds—in earlier days, thousands—of light-years to especially interesting stars. But what myriads have we bypassed? What may turn up when we do seek them out? No responsible authority, human or Ythrian, will blindly hand over such possibilities to an alien.

"No, Donna, this is no problem capable of neat, final solutions. We just have to do our fumbling best. Which does not include subjugating Ythri. I'm the first to grant Ythri's right to exist, go its own way, even keep off planet possessions. But this frontier must be stabilized."

"We—interpenetrate—with others—and have no trouble."

"Of course. Why should we fight hydrogen breathers, for example? They're so exotic w& can barely communicate with them. The trouble is, the Ythrians are too like us. As an old, old saying goes, two tough, smart races want the same real estate."

"We can live with them! Humans are doing it. They have for generations."

"Do you mean Avalon?"

She nodded.

Saracoglu saw a chance to divert the conversation back into easier channels. "Well, there's an interesting case, certainly," he smiled. "How much do you know about it?"

"Very little," she admitted, subdued. "A few mentions here and there, since I came to Esperance. The galaxy's so huge, this tiny fleck of it we've explored … "

"You might get to see Avalon," he said; "Not far off, ten or twelve light-years. I'd like that myself. The society does appear to be unusual, if not absolutely unique."

"Don't you understand? If humans and Ythnans can share a single planet—"

"That's different. Allow me to give you some background. I've never been there either, but I've studied material on it since getting this appointment."

Saracoglu drew breath. "Avalon was discovered five hundred years ago, by the same Grand Survey ship that came on Ythri," he said. "It was noted as a potential colony, but was so remote from Terra that nobody was interested then; the very name wasn't bestowed till long afterward. Ythri was forty light-years further, true, but much, more attractive, a rich planet full of people vigorously entering the modern era who had a considerable deal to trade."

"About three and a half centuries back, a human company made the Ythrians a proposal. The Polesotechnic League wasn't going to collapse for another fifty years, but already anybody who had a functional brain could read what a cutthroat period lay ahead. These humans, a mixed lot under the leadership of an old trade pioneer, wanted to safeguard the future of their families by settling on out-of-the-way Avalon—under the suzerainty, the protection, of an Ythri, that was not corrupted as Technic civilization was. The Ythrians agreed, and naturally some of them joined the settlement.

"Well, the Troubles, came, and Ythri was not spared. The eventual results were similar—Terra enforced peace by the Empire, Ythri by the Domain. In the meantime, standing together, bearing the brunt of chaos, the Avalonians had been welded into one. Nothing like that applies today." They had stopped by a vine-covered trellis. He plucked a grape and offered it to her. She shook her head. He ate it himself. The taste held a slight, sweet strangeness; Esperancian soil was not, after all, identical with that of Home. The sun was now gone from sight, shadows welled in the garden, an evening star blossomed.

"I suppose … your plans for 'rectification' … include bringing Avalon into the Empire," Luisa said.

"Yes. Consider its position." Saracoglu shrugged. "Besides, the humans there form a large majority. I rather imagine they'll be glad to join us, and Ythri won't mind getting rid of them."

"Must we fight?"

Saracoglu-smiled. "It's never too late for peace." He took her arm. "Shall we go indoors? I expect your father will be here soon. We ought to have the sherry set out for him."

He'd not spoil the occasion, which was still salvageable, by telling her that weeks had passed since a courier ship brought what he requested: an Imperial rescript declaring war on Ythri, to be made public whenever governor and admiral felt ready to act.

IV

A campaign against Ythri would demand an enormous fleet, gathered from everywhere in the Empire. No such thing had been publicly seen or heard of, though rumors flew. But of course units guarding the border systems had been openly reinforced as the crisis sharpened, and drills and practice maneuvers went on apace.

Orbiting Pax at ten astronomical units, the Planet-class cruisers Thor and Ansa flung blank shells and torpedoes at each other's force screens, pierced these latter with laser beams that tried to hold on a single spot of hull for as long as an energy blast would have taken to gnaw through armor, exploded magnesium flares whose brilliance represented lethal radiation, dodged about on gray thrust, wove in and out of hyperdrive phase, used every trick in the book and a few which the high command hoped had not yet gotten into Ythrian books. Meanwhile the Comet- and Meteor-class boats they mothered were similarly busy.

To stimulate effort, a prize had been announced. That vessel the computers judged victorious would proceed with her auxiliaries to Esperance, where the crew would get a week's liberty.

Ansa won. She broadcast a jubilant recall. Half a million kilometers away, an engine awoke in the Meteor which her captain had dubbed Hooting Star.

"Resurrected at last!" Lieutenant (j.g.) Philippe Rochefort exulted. "And in glory at that."

"And unearned." The fire control officer, CPO Wa Chaou of Cynthia, grinned. His small white-furred body crouched on the table he had been cleaning after a meal; his bushy tail quivered like the whiskers around his blue-masked muzzle.

"What the muck you mean, 'unearned'?" the engineer-computerman, CPO Abdullah Helu, grumbled: a lean, middle-aged careerist from Huy Braseal. "Playing dead for three mortal days is beyond the call of duty." The boat had theoretically been destroyed in a dogfight and drifting free, as a real wreck would, to complicate life for detector technicians.

"Especially when the poker game cleaned and reamed you, eh?" Wa Chaou gibed.

"I won't play with you again, sir," Helu said to the captain-pilot. "No offense. You're just too mucking talented."

"Only luck," Rochefort answered. "Same as it was only luck that threw such odds against us. The boat acquitted herself well. As you did afterward, over the chips. Better luck to both next time."

She was his first, new and shiny command—he having recently been promoted from ensign for audacity in a rescue operation—and he was anxious for her to make a good showing. No matter how inevitable under the circumstances, defeat had hurt.

But they were on the top team; and they'd accounted for two opposition craft, plus tying up three more for a while that must have been used to advantage elsewhere; and now they were bound back to Ansa and thence to Esperance, where he knew enough girls that dates were a statistical certainty.

The little cabin trembled and hummed with driving energies. Air gusted from ventilators, smelling of oil and of recycling chemicals. A Meteor was designed for high acceleration' under both relativistic and hyperdrive conditions; for accurate placement of nuclear-headed torpedoes; and for no more comfort than minimally essential to the continued efficiency of personnel.

Yet space lay around the viewports in a glory of stars, diamond-keen, unwinking, many-colored, crowding an infinitely clear blackness rill they merged in the argent torrent of the Milky Way or the dim mysterious cloudlets which were sister galaxies. Rochefort wanted to sit, look, let soul follow gaze outward into God's temple the universe. He could have done so, too; the boat was running on full automatic. But better demonstrate to the others that he was a conscientious as well as an easy-going officer. He turned the viewer back on which he had been using when the message came.

A canned lecture was barely under way. A human xenologist stood in the screen and intoned:

"Warm-blooded, feathered, and flying, the Ythrians are not birds; they bring their young forth viviparously after a gestation of four and a half months; they do not have beaks, but lips and teeth. Nor are they mammals; they grow no hair and secrete no milk; those lips have developed for parents to feed infants by regurgitation. And while the antlibranchs might suggest fish gills, they are not meant for water but for—"

"Oh, no!" Helu exclaimed. "Sir, won't you have time to study later? Devil knows how many more weeks we'll lie in orbit doing nothing."

"War may erupt at any minute," Wa Chaou said.

"And if and when, who cares how the enemy looks or what his love life is? His ships are about like ours, and that's all we're ever likely to see."

"Oh, you have a direct line to the future?" the Cynthian murmured.

Rochefort stopped the tape and snapped, "I'll put the sound on tight beam if you want. But a knowledge of the enemy's nature might make the quantum of difference that saves us when the real thing happens. I suggest you watch too."

"Er, I think I should check out Number Three oscillator, long's we're not traveling faster-than-light," Helu said, and withdrew into the engine room. Wa Chaou settled down by Rochefort.

The lieutenant smiled. He refrained from telling the Cynthian, You're a good little chap. Did you enlist to get away from the domination of irascible females on your home planet?

His thought went on: The reproductive pattern—sexual characteristics, requirements of the young—does seem to determine most of the basics in any intelligent species. As if the cynic's remark were true, that an organism is simply a DNA molecule's way of making more DNA molecules. Or whatever the chemicals of heredity may be on a given world … But no, a Jerusalem Catholic can't believe that. Biological evolution inclines, it does not compel.

"Let's see how the Ythrians work," he said aloud, reaching for the switch.

"Don't you already know, sir?" Wa Chaou asked.

"Not really. So many sophont races, in that bit of space we've sort of explored. And I've been busy familiarizing myself with my new duties." Rochefort chuckled. "And, be it admitted, enjoying what leaves I could get."

He reactivated the screen. It showed an Ythrian walking on the feet that grew from his wings: a comparatively slow, jerky gait, no good for real distances. The being stopped, lowered hands to ground, and stood on them. He lifted his wings, and suddenly he was splendid.

Beneath, on either side, were slits in column. As the wings rose, the feathery operculum-like flaps which protected them were drawn back. The slits widened until, at full extension, they gaped like purple mouths. The view became a closeup. Thin-skinned tissues, intricately wrinkled, lay behind a. curtain of cilia which must be for screening out dust.

When the wings lowered, the slits were forced shut again, bellows fashion. The lecturer's voice said: "This is what allows so heavy a body, under Terra-type weight and gas density, to fly. Ythrians attain more than twice the mass of the largest possible airborne creature on similar planets elsewhere. The antlibranchs, pumped by the wing-strokes, take in oxygen under pressure to feed it directly to the bloodstream. Thus they supplement lungs which themselves more or less resemble those of ordinary land animals. The Ythrian acquires the power needed to get aloft and, indeed, fly with rapidity and grace."

The view drew back. The creature in the holograph flapped strongly and rocketed upward.

"Of course," the dry voice said, "this energy must come from a correspondingly accelerated metabolism. Unless prevented from flying, the Ythrian is a voracious eater. Aside from certain sweet fruits, he is strictly carnivorous. His appetite has doubtless reinforced the usual carnivore tendency to live in small, well-separated groups, each occupying a wide territory which instinct makes it defend against all intruders.

"In fact, the Ythrian can best be understood in terms of what we know or conjecture about the evolution of his race."

"Conjecture more than know, I suspect," Rochefort remarked. But he found himself fascinated.

"We believe that homeothermic—roughly speaking, warm-blooded—life on Ythri did not come from a reptilian or reptiloid form, but directly from an amphibian, conceivably even from something corresponding to a lung-fish. At any rate, it retained a kind of gill. Those species which were most successful on land eventually lost this feature. More primitive animals kept it. Among these was that small, probably swamp-dwelling thing which became the ancestor of the sophont. Taking to the treetops, it may have developed a membrane on which to glide from bough to bough. This finally turned into a wing. Meanwhile the gills were modified for aerial use, into superchargers."

"As usual," Wa Chaou observed. "The failures at one stage beget the successes of the next,"

"Of course, the Ythrian can soar and even hover," the speaker said, "but it is the tremendous wing area which makes this possible, and the antlibranchs are what make it possible to operate those wings.

"Otherwise the pre-Ythrian must have appeared fairly similar to Terran birds." Pictures of various hypothetical extinct creatures went by. "It developed an analogous water-hoarding system—no separate urination—which saved weight as well as compensating for evaporative losses from the antlibranchs. It likewise developed light bones, though these are more intricate than avian bones, built of a marvelously strong two-phase material whose organic component is not collagen but a substance carrying out the functions of Terra-mammalian marrow. The animal did not, however, further ease its burdens by trading teeth for a beak. Many Ythrian ornithoids have done so, for example the uhoth, hawklike in appearance, doglike in service. But the pre-sophont remained an unspecialized dweller in wet jungles.

"The fact that the young were born tiny and helpless—since the female could not fly long distances while carrying a heavy fetus—is probably responsible for the retention and elaboration of the digits on the wings. The cub could cling to either parent in turn while these cruised after food; before it was able to fly, it could save itself from enemies by clambering up a tree. Meanwhile the feet acquired more and more ability to seize prey and manipulate objects.

"Incidentally, the short gestation period does not mean that the Ythrian is born with a poorly developed nervous system. The rapid metabolism of flight affects the rate of fetal cell division. This process concentrates on laying down a body pattern rather than on increasing the size. Nevertheless, an infant Ythrian needs more care, and more food, than an infant human. The parents must cooperate in providing this as well as in carrying their young about. Here we may have the root cause of the sexual equality or near equality found in all Ythrian cultures.

"Likewise, a rapid succession of infants would be impossible to keep alive under primitive conditions. This may be a reason why the female only ovulates at intervals of a year—Ythri's is about half of Terra's—and not for about two years after giving birth. Sexuality does not come overtly into play except at these times. Then it is almost uncontrollably strong in male and female alike. This may well have given the territorial instinct a cultural reinforcement after intelligence evolved. Parents wish to keep their nubile daughters isolated from chance-met males while in heat. Furthermore, husband and wife do not wish to waste a rich, rare experience on any outsider.

"The sexual cycle is not totally rigid. In particular, grief often brings on estrus. Doubtless this was originally a provision of nature for rapid replacement of losses. It seems to have brought about a partial fusion of Eros and Thanatos in the Ythrian psyche which makes much of the race's art, and doubtless thought, incomprehensible to man. An occasional female can ovulate at will, though this is considered, an abnormality; in olden days she would be killed, now she is generally shunned, out of dread of her power. A favorite villain in Ythrian story is the male who, by hypnosis or otherwise, can induce the state. Of course, the most important manifestation of a degree of flexibility is the fact that Ythrians have successfully adapted their reproductive pattern, like everything else, to a variety of colonized planets."

"Me, I think it's more fun being human," Rochefort said.

"I don't know, sir," Wa Chaou replied. "Superficially the relationship between the sexes looks simpler than in your race or mine; you're either in the mood or you're not, and that's that. I wonder, though, if it may not really be more subtle and complicated: than ours, even more basic to the whole psychology."

"But to return to evolution," the lecturer was saying. "It seems that a major part of Ythri underwent something like the great Pliocene drought in' Terra's Africa. The ornithoids were forced out of dwindling forests onto growing savannahs. There they evolved from carrion eaters to big-game hunters in a manner analogous to pre-man. The original feet became hands, which eventually started making tools. To support the body and provide locomotion on the ground, the original elbow claws turned into feet, the wings that bore them became convertible to legs of a sort.

"Still, the intelligent Ythrian remained a pure carnivore, and one which was awkward on land. Typically, primitive hunters struck from above, with spears, arrows, axes. Thus only a few were needed to bring down the largest beasts. There was no necessity to cooperate in digging pits for elephants or standing shoulder to shoulder against a charging lion. Society remained divided into families or clans, which seldom fought wars but which, on the other hand, did not have much contact of any sort.

"The revolution which ended the Stone Age did not involve agriculture from the beginning, as in the case of man. It came from the systematic herding, at last the domestication, of big ground animals like the maukti, smaller ones like the long-haired mayaw. This stimulated the invention of skids, wheels, and the like, enabling the Ythrian to get about more readily on the surface. Agriculture was invented as an ancillary to ranching, an efficient means of providing fodder. The food surplus allowed leisure for travel, trade, and widespread cultural intercourse. Hence larger, complex social units arose.

"They cannot be called civilizations in a strict sense, because Ythri has never known true cities. The, mobility of being winged left no necessity for crowding together in order to maintain close relationships. Granted, sedentary centers did appear—for mining, metallurgy, and other industry; for trade and religion; for defense in case the group was defeated by another in aerial battle. But these have always been small and their populations mostly floating. Apart from their barons and garrisons, their permanent inhabitants were formerly, for the main part, wing-clipped slaves—today, automated machines. Clipping was an easy method of making a person controllable; yet since the feathers could grow back, the common practice of promising manumission after a certain period of diligent service tended to make prisoners docile. Hence slavery became so basic to pre-industrial Ythrian society that to this day it has not entirely disappeared."

Well, we're reviving it in the Empire, Rochefort thought For terms and under conditions limited by law; as a punishment, in order to get some social utility out of the criminal; nevertheless, we're bringing back a thing the Ythrians are letting die. How more moral are we than they? How much more right do we have?

He straightened in his chair. Man is my race.

A willowy blonde with the old-fashioned Esperancian taste for simplicity in clothes, Eve Davisson made a pleasing contrast to Philippe Rochefort, as both were well aware. He was a tall, rather slender young man, his bearing athletic, his features broad-nosed, full-lipped, and regular, his hair, kinking itself into a lustrous black coif over the deep-brown skin. And he stretched to the limit the tolerance granted officers as regards their dress uniforms—rakishly tilted bonnet bearing the sunburst of Empire, gold-trimmed blue tunic, scarlet sash and cloak, snowy trousers tucked into low boots of authentic Terran beef-leather.

They sat in an intimate restaurant of Fleurville, by a window opening on gardens and stars. A live sonorist played something old and sentimental; perfumed, slightly intoxicant vapors drifted about; they toyed with hors d'oeuvres and paid more serious attention to their champagne. Nonetheless she was not smiling.

"This world was settled by people who believed in peace," she said. Her tone mourned rather than accused. "For generations they kept no armed forces, they relied on the good will of others whom they helped."

"That good will didn't outlive the Troubles," Rochefort said.

"I know, I know. I shan't join the demonstrators, whatever some of my friends may say when they learn I've been out with an Imperial officer. But Phil—the star named Pax, the planet named Esperance are being geared for war. It hurts."

"It'd hurt worse if you were attacked. Avalon isn't far, and they've built a lot of power there."

Her fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. "Attack from Avalon? But I've met those people, both races. They've come here on trade or tour or— I made a tour there myself, not long ago. I went because it's picturesque, but was so graciously treated I didn't want to leave."

"I daresay Ythrian manners have rubbed off on their human fellows." Rochefort let a draft go over his palate, hoping it would tingle away his irritation. This wasn't supposed to be a political evening. "Likewise less pleasant features of the Ythrian personality."

She studied him through the soft light before she said low, "I get an impression you disapprove of a mixed colony."

"Well … in a way, yes." He could have dissembled, facilely agreed to everything she maintained, and thus improved his chances of bedding her later on. But he'd never operated thus; and he never would, especially when he liked this girl just as a person. "I believe in being what you are and standing by your own."

"You talk almost like a human supremacist," she said, though mildly.

"To the extent that man is the leading race furnishes most of the leaders—in Technic civilization, yes, I suppose you'd have to call me a human supremacist," he admitted. "It doesn't mean we aren't chronically sinful and stupid, nor does it mean we have any right to oppress others. Why, my sort of people are the xenosophont's best friend. We simply don't want to imitate him."

"Do you believe the Terran Empire is a force for good?"

"On balance, yes. It commits evil. But nothing mortal can avoid that. Our duty is to correct the wrongs … and also to recognize the values that the Empire does, in fact, preserve."

"You may have encountered too little of the evil."

"Because I'm from Terra itself?" Rochefort chuckled. "My dear, you're too bright to imagine the mother system is inhabited exclusively by aristocrats. My father is a minor functionary of the Sociodynamic Service. His job caused us to move around a lot. I was born in Selenopolis, which is a spaceport and manufacturing center. I spent several impressionable years on Venus, in the crime and poverty of a planet whose terraforming never had been quite satisfactory. I joined the navy as an enlisted rating—not out of chauvinism, merely a boyish wish to see the universe—and wasn't tapped for pilot school for two-three years; meanwhile, I saw the grim side of more than one world. Sure, there's a cosmos of room for improvement. Well, let's improve, not tear down. And let's defend!"

He stopped. "Damn," he said frankly. "I'd hoped to lure you out of your seriousness, and fell into it myself."

Now the girl laughed, and raised heir glass. "Let's help each other climb out, then," she suggested.

They did. Rochefort's liberty became highly enjoyable. And that was fortunate, because two weeks after he reported back from it, Ansa was ordered into deep space. Light-years from Pax, she joined the fleet that had been using immensity as a mask for its marshaling; and ships by the hundreds hurled toward the Domain of Ythri.

V

The conference was by phone. Most were, these days. It went against old Avalonian courtliness but saved time—and time was getting in mighty short supply, Daniel Holm thought.

Anger crackled through clearly enough. Two of the three holographs on the com board before him seemed about to climb out of their screens and into his office. No doubt he gave their originals the same impression.

Matthew Vickery, President of the Parliament of Man, wagged his forefinger and both plump jowls and said,

"We are not under a military regime, may I remind you in case you have forgotten. We, the proper civil government, approved your defense measures of the past several years, though you are aware that I myself have always considered them excessive. When I think of the prosperity that tax money, those resources, could have brought, left in private hands—or the social good it could have done in the public sector—Give you military your heads, and you'd build bases in the fourth dimension to protect us against an invasion from the future."

"We are always being invaded by the future," Ferune said. "The next part of it to arrive will not be pleasant."

Holm crossed his legs, leaned back, blew cigar smoke at Vickery's image, and drawled, "Spare us the oratory. You're not campaigning for re-election: here. What's made you demand this four-way?"

"Your entire high-handedness," Vickery declared. "The overflow quantum was that last order, barring non-Ythrian ships from the Lauran System. Do you realize what a trade we do … not merely with the Empire, though that supports many livelihoods, but with unaffiliated civilizations like the Kraokan?"

"Do you realize how easy it'd be for the Terrans to get a robotic job, disguised, into low orbit around Avalon?" Holm retorted. "Several thousand megatons, touched off at that height when skies are clear, would set about half of Corona afire. Or it might be so sophisticated it could land like a peaceful merchantman. Consciousness-level computers aren't used much any more, when little new exploration's going on, but they could be built, including a suicide imperative. That explosion would be: inside a city's force shields; it'd take out the generators, leaving what was left of the city defenseless; fallout from a dirty warhead would poison the whole hinterland. And you, Vickery, helped block half the appropriation we wanted for adequate shelters."

"Hysteria," the president said. "What could Terra gain from a one-shot atrocity? Not that I expect war, if only we can curb our own hotheads. But—well, take this ludicrous home-guard program you've instigated." His glance went toward Ferune and Liaw. "Oh, it gives a lot of young folk a fine excuse to swagger around, getting in people's way, ordering them arrogantly about, feeling important, and never mind the social as well as the fiscal cost of it But if this navy we've been building and manning at your- loud urging, by straining our production facilities and gutting our resources, if this navy is as advertised, the Terrans can never come near us. If not, who has been derelict in his duty?"

"We are near their sector capital," Ferane reminded him. "They may strike us first, overwhelmingly."

"I've heard that till I'm taped for it. I prefer to program myself, thank you." Vickery paused. "See here," he continued in a leveled tone, "I agree the situation is critical. We're all Avaloniads together. If I feel certain of your proposals are unwise, I tell this to the public and the Parliament. But in the end we compromise like reasonable beings."

Ferune's face rippled. It was as well that Vickery didn't notice or wasn't able to read the meaning. Liaw of The Tarns remained expressionless. Holm grunted, "Go on."

"I must protest both your proceedings and the manner of them," Vickery said. "We are not under martial law, and indeed the Compact makes no provision for declaring it."

"Wasn't needed in the old days," Holm said. "The danger was clear and present. I didn't think it'd be needed now. The Admiralty is responsible for local defense and liaison with armed forces elsewhere in the Domain—"

"Which does not authorize you to stop trade, or raise a tin militia, or anything cutting that deeply into normal Avalonian life. My colleagues and I have endured it thus far, recognizing the necessity of at least some things. But today the necessity is to remind you that you are the servants of the people, not the masters. If the people want your policies executed, they will so instruct their legislative representatives."

"The Khruaths did call for a home guard and for giving the Admiralty broad discretion," Liaw of The Tarns said in his rustling voice. He was old, had frost in his feathers; but he sat huge in his castle, and the screen gave a background image of crags and a glacier.

"Parliament—"

"Is still debating," Holm interrupted to finish. "The Terran Imperium has no such handicap. If you want a legal formula, well, consider us to be acting under choth law."

"The choths have no government," Vickery said, reddening.

"What is a government?" asked Liaw, Wyvan of the High Khruath—how softly.

"Why … well, legitimate authority—"

"Yes. The legitimacy derives, ultimately, no matter by what formula, from tradition. The authority derives, no matter by what formula, from armed force! Government is that institution which is legitimized in its use of physical coercion on the people. Have I read your human philosophers and history aright, President Vickery?"

"Well … yes … but—"

"You seem to have forgotten for the moment that the choths have been no more unanimous than your human factions," Liaw said. "Believe me, they have been divided and they are. Though a majority voted for the latest defense measures, a vocal minority has opposed: feeling, as you do, President Vickery, that the danger has been exaggerated and does not justify lifting that great a load."

Liaw sat silent for a space, during which the rest of them heard wind whistle behind him and saw a pair of his grandsons fly past. One bore the naked sword which went from house to house as a summons to war, the other a blast rifle.

The High Wyvan said: "Three choths refused to make their gift. My fellows and I threatened to call Qherran on them. Had they not yielded, we would have done so. We consider the situation to be that grave."

Holm choked. He never told me before!—Of course he wouldn't have. Ferune grew nearly as still on his bench as Liaw. Vickery drew breath; sweat broke, out on his smoothness; he dabbed at it.

I can almost sympathize, Holm thought. Suddenly getting bashed with reality like that.

Matthew Vickery should have stayed a credit analyst instead of going into politics (Holm's mind rambled on, at the back of its own shocked alertness). Then he'd have been harmless, in fact useful; interspecies economics is often a wonderland in need of all the study anyone can give it. The trouble was, on a thinly settled globe like Avalon, government never had been too important aside from basic issues of ecology and defense. In recent decades its functions had dwindled still further, as human society changed under Ythrian influence. (A twinge of pain.) Voting was light for offices that looked merely managerial. Hence the more reactionary humans were able to elect Vickery, who Viewed With Alarm the trend toward Ythrianization. (Was no alarm justified?) He had nothing else to offer, in these darkening times.

"You understand this is confidential," Liaw said. "If word got about, the choths in question would have to consider it a deathpride matter."

"Yes," Vickery whispered.

Another silence. Holm's cigar had burned short, was scorching his fingers. He stubbed it out. It stank. He started a new one. I smoke too much, he thought. Drink too much also, maybe, of late. But the work's getting done, as far as circumstance allows.

Vickery wet his lips. "This puts … another complexion on affairs, doesn't it?" he said. "May I speak plainly? I must know if this is a hint that … you may come to feel yourselves compelled to a coup d'etat."

"We have better uses for our energies," Liaw told him. "Your efforts in Parliament could be helpful."

"Well—you realize I can't surrender my principles. I must be free to speak."

"It is written in the Compact," Ferune said, and his quotation did not seem superfluous even by Ythrian standards, "'Humans inhabiting Avalon have the deathpride right of free speech, publication, and broadcast, limited only by the deathpride rights of privacy and honor and by the requirements of protection against foreign enemies."

"I meant—" Vickery swallowed. But he had not been years in politics for nothing. "I meant simply that friendly criticism and suggestions will always be in order," he said with most of his accustomed ease. "However, we certainly cannot risk a civil war. Shall we discuss details of a policy of nonpartisan cooperation?"

Behind the ready words, fear could still be sensed. Holm imagined he could almost read Vickery's mind, reviewing the full significance of what Liaw had said.

How shall a fierce, haughty, intensely clannish and territorial race regulate its public business?

Just as on Terra, different cultures on Ythri at different periods in their histories have given a variety of answers, none wholly satisfactory or permanently enduring. The Planha speakers happened to be the most wealthy and progressive when the first explorers arrived; one is tempted to call them "Hellenistic." Eagerly adopting modern technology, they soon absorbed others into their system while modifying it to suit changed conditions.

This was the easier because the system did not require uniformity. Within its possessions—whether these were scattered or a single block of land or sea—a choth was independent. Tradition determined what constituted a choth, though this was a tradition which slowly changed itself, as every living usage must. Tribe, anarchism, despotism, loose federation, theocracy, clan, extended family, corporation, on and on through concepts for which there are no human words, a choth ran itself.

Mostly, internal ordering was by custom and public opinion rather than by prescription and force. After all, families rarely lived close together; hence friction was minimal. The commonest sanction was a kind of weregild, the most extreme was enslavement. In between was outlawry; for some specified period, which might run as high as life, the wrongdoer could be killed by anyone without penalty, and to aid him was to incur the same punishment. Another possible sentence was exile, with outlawry automatic in case of return before the term was up. This was harsh to an Ythrian. On the other hand, the really disaffected could easily leave home (how do you fence in the sky?) and apply for membership in a choth more to their taste.

Now of course some recognized body had to try cases and hand down judgments. It must likewise settle inter-choth disputes and establish policies and undertakings for the common weal. Thus in ancient times arose the Khruath, a periodic gathering of all free adults in a given territory who cared to come. It had judicial and limited legislative authority, but no administrative. The winners of lawsuits, the successful promoters of schemes and ordinances, must depend on willingness to comply or on what strength they could muster to enforce.

As Planha society expanded, regional meetings like this began to elect delegates to Year-Khruaths, which drew on larger territories. Finally these, in turn, sent their representatives to the High Khruath of the whole planet, which met every six years plus on extraordinary occasions. On each level, a set of presiding officers, the Wyvans, were chosen. These were entrusted with explication of the laws (i.e. customs, precedents, decisions) and with trial of as many suits as possible. It was not quite a soviet organization, because any free adult could attend a Khruath on any level he wished.

The arrangement would not have worked on Terra—where a version of it appeared once, long ago, and failed bloodily. But, Ythrians are less talkative, less busybody, less submissive to bullies, and less chronically crowded than man. Modern communications, computers, information retrieval, and educational techniques helped the system spread planetwlde, ultimately Domain-wide.

Before it reached that scale, it had had to face the problem of administration. Necessary public works must be funded; in theory the choths made free gifts to this end, in practice the cost required allocation. Behavior grossly harmful to the physical or social environment must be enjoined, however much certain choths might profit by it or regard it as being of their special heritage. Yet no machinery existed for compulsion, nor would Ythrians have imagined establishing any—as such.

Instead, it came slowly about that when a noncompliance looked important, the Wyvans of the appropriate Khruath cried Qherran on the offenders. This, carried out after much soul-searching and with the gravest ceremonies, was a summons to everyone in the territory: that for the sake of their own interests and especially their honor, they attack the defiers of the court.

In early times, an Qherran on a whole choth meant the end of it—enslavement of whoever had not been slaughtered, division of holdings among the victors. Later it might amount to as little as the arrest and exile of named leaders. But always it fell under the concept of deathpride. If the call to Qherran was rejected, as had happened when the offense was not deemed sufficient to justify the monstrosity of invasion, then the Wyvans who cried it had no acceptable alternative to suicide.

Given the Ythrian character, Qherran works about as well as police do among men. If your society has not lost morale, human, how often must you call the police?

None who knew Liaw of The Tarns imagined he would untruthfully say that he had threatened to rip Avalon asunder.

VI

Where the mighty Sagittarius flows into the Gulf of Centaurs, Avalon's second city—-the only one besides Gray which rated the name—had arisen as riverport, seaport, spaceport, industrial center, and mart. Thus Centauri was predominantly a human town, akin to many in the Empire, thronged, bustling, noisy, cheerfully, corrupt, occasionally dangerous. When he went there, Arinnian most of the time had to be Christopher Holm, in behavior as well as name.

Defense business now required it. He was not astonished at becoming a top officer of the West Coronan home guard, after that took its loose shape—not in a society where nepotism was the norm. It did surprise him that he seemed to be doing rather well, even enjoying himself in a grim fashion, he who had always scoffed at the "herd man." In a matter of weeks he got large-scale drills going throughout his district and was well along on the development of doctrine, communications, and supply. (Of course, it helped that most Avalonians were enthusiastic hunters, often in large groups on battues; and that the Troubles had left a military tradition, not difficult to revive; and that old Daniel was on hand to advise.) Similar organizations had sprung up everywhere else. They needed to coordinate their efforts with the measures being taken by the Seamen's Brotherhood. A conference was called. It worked hard and accomplished as many of its purposes as one could reasonably hope.

Afterward Arinnian said, "Hrill, would you like to go out and celebrate? W-we may not have a lot more chances." He did not speak on impulse. He had debated it for the past couple of days.

Tabitha Falkayn smiled. '"Sure, Chris. Everybody else will be."

They walked down Livewell Street. Her arm was in his; in the subtropical heat he was aware of how their skins traded sweat. "I … well, why do you generally call me by my human name?" he asked. "And talk Anglic to me?"

"We are humans, you and I. We haven't the feathers to use Planha as it ought to be used. Why do you mind?"

For a moment he floundered. That personal a question … an insult, except between the closest friends, when it becomes an endearment … I suppose she's just thinking human again. He halted and swept his free hand around. "Look at that and stop wondering," he said. Instantly he feared he had been too curt.

But the big blond girl obeyed. This part of the street ran along a canal, which was oily and littered with refuse, burdened with barges, walled in by buildings jammed together, whose dingy facades reared ten or twelve stories into night heaven. Stars, and the white half-disk of Morgana were lost behind, the glare, blink, leap and worm-crawl of raw-colored signs, (GROG HARBOR, DANCE, EAT, GENUINE TERRAN SENSIES, FUN HOUSE, SWITCH TO MARIA JUANAS, GAMBLING, NAKED GIRLS, LOANS, BUY … BUY … BUY … ) Groundbugs filled the roadway, pedestrians the sidewalks, a sailor, a pilot, a raftman, a fisher, a hunter, a farmer, a whore, a secretary, a drunk about to collapse, another drunk getting belligerent at a monitor, a man gaunt and hairy and ragged who stood on a corner and shouted of some obscure salvation, endless human seething, shrilling, chattering, through engine rumble, foot shuffle, raucousness blared out of loudspeakers. The air stank, dirt, smoke, oil, sewage, flesh, a breath from surrounding swamplands which would there have been a clean rotting but here was somehow made nasty.

Tabitha smiled at him anew. "Why, I call this fun, Chris," she said. "What else've we come for?"

"You wouldn't—" he stammered. "I mean, somebody like you?"

He realized he was gaping at her. Both wore thin short-sleeved blouses, kilts, and sandals; garments clung to wet bodies. But despite the sheen of moisture and the odor of female warmth that he couldn't help noticing, she stood as a creature of sea and open skies.

"Sure, what's wrong with once-in-a-while vulgarity?" she said, still amiable. "You're too puritan Chris."

"No, no," he protested, now afraid she would think him naive. "Fastidious, maybe. But I've often been here and, uh, enjoyed myself. What I was trying to explain was, uh, I, I'm proud to belong to a choth and not proud that members of my race elect to live in a sty. Don't you see, this is the old way, that the pioneers wanted to escape."

Tabitha said a word. He was staggered. Eyath would never have spoken thus. The girl grinned. "Or, if you prefer, 'nonsense,' " she continued. I've read Falkayn's writings. He and his followers wanted not one thing except unmolested elbow room," Her, touch nudged him along. "How about that dinner we were aimed at?" Numbly, he moved.

He recovered somewhat in the respectable dimness of the Phoenix House. Among other reasons, he admitted to himself, the room was cool and her clothes didn't emphasize her shape as they did outside.

The place had live service. She ordered a catflower cocktail. He didn't. "C'mon," she said: "Unbuckle your shell."

"No, thanks, really." He found words. "Why dull my perceptions at a happy moment?"

"Seems I've heard that line before. A Stormgate saying?"

"Yes. Though I didn't think they used drugs much in Highsky either."

"They don't. Barring the sacred revels. Most of us keep to the Old Faith, you know." Tabitha regarded him awhile. "Your trouble, Chris, is you try too hard. Relax. Be more among your own species. How many humans do you have any closeness to? Bloody-gut few, I'll bet."

He bridled. "I've seen plenty of late."

"Yeh. And emergency or no, doesn't it feel good? I wouldn't try to steer somebody else's life, of course, nor am I hinting it's true of you—but fact is, a man or woman who tries to be an Ythrian is a rattlewing."

"Well, after three generations you may be restless in your choth," he said, gauging his level of sarcasm as carefully as he was able. "You've knocked around quite a bit in human country, haven't you?"

She nodded. "Several years. Itinerant huntress, trapper, sailor, prospector, over most of Avalon. I got the main piece of my share in the stake that started Draun and me in business—I got that at assorted poker tables." She laughed. "Damn, sometimes it is easier to say things in Planha!" Serious: "But remember, I was young when my parents were lost at sea. An Ythrian family adopted me. They encouraged me to take a wandertime; that's Highsky custom. If anything, my loyalty and gratitude to the choth were strengthened. I simply, well, I recognize I'm a member who happens to be human. As such, I've things to offer which—" She broke off and turned her head. "Ah, here comes my drink. Let's talk trivia. I do get starved for that on St. Li."

"I believe I will have a drink too," Arinnian said.

He found it helpful. Soon they were cheerily exchanging reminiscences. While she had doubtless led a more adventurous life than he, his had not been dull. On occasion, such as when he hid from his parents in the surf-besieged Shielding Islands, or when he had to meet a spathodont on the ground with no more than a spear because his companion lay wing-broken, he may have been in worse danger than any she had met. But he found she was most taken by his quieter memories. She had never been offplanet, except for one vacation trip to Morgana. He, son of a naval officer, had had ample chances to see the whole Lauran System from sun-wracked Elysium, through the multiple moons of Camelot, out to dark, comet-haunted Utgard. Speaking of the frigid blue peace of Phaeacia, he chanced to quote some Homeric lines, and she was delighted and wanted more and asked what else this Homer fellow had written, and the conversation turned to books.

The meal was mixed, as cuisine of both races tended increasingly to be: piscoid-and-tomato chowder, beef-and-shua pie, salad of clustergrain leaf, pears, coffee spiced with witchroot. A bottle of vintage dago gave merriment. At the end, having seen her indulge the vice before, Arinnian was not shocked when Tabitha lit her pipe. "What say we look in on the Nest?" she proposed. "Might find Draun." Her partner was her superior in the guard; she was in Centauri as his aide. But the choth concept of rank was at once more complex and more flexible than the Technic.

"Well … all right," Arinnian answered.

She cocked her head. "Reluctant? Id've guessed you'd prefer the Ythrian hangout to anyplace else in town." It included the sole public house especially for ornithoids, they being infrequent here.

He frowned. "I can't help feeling that tavern is wrong. For them," he added in haste. "I'm no prude, understand."

"Yet you don't mind when humans imitate Ythrians. Uh-uh. Can't have it on both wings, son." She stood. "Let's take a glance into the Nest boozeria, a drink if we meet a friend or a good bard is reciting. Afterward a dance club, hm?"

He nodded, glad—amidst an accelerating pulse—that her mood remained light. While no machinery would let them take part in the Ythrian aerial dances, moving across a floor in the arms of another bird was nearly as fine, perhaps. And, while that was as far as such contact had ever gone for him, maybe Tabitha—for she was indeed Tabitha on this steamy night, not Hrill of the skies—

He had heard various muscular oafs talk of encounters with bird girls, less boastfully than in awe. To Arinnian and his kind, their female counterparts were comrades, sisters. But Tabitha kept emphasizing his and her humanness.

They took a taxibug to the Nest, which was the tallest building in the city, and a gravshaft to its rooftop since neither had brought flying gear. Unwalled, the tavern was protected from rain by a vitryl canopy through which, at this height, stars could be seen regardless of the electric lunacy below. Morgana was sinking toward the western bottomlands, though it still silvered river and Gulf. Thunderheads piled in the east, and a rank breeze carried the mutter of the lightning that shivered in them. Insectoids circled the dim fluoroglobe set on every table. Business was sparse, a few shadowy forms perched on stools before glasses or narcobraziers, a service robot trundling about, the recorded twangs of a steel harp.

"Scum-dull," Tabitha said, disappointed. "But we can make a circuit."

They threaded among the tables until Arinnian halted and exclaimed, "Hoy-ah! Vodan, ekh-hirr."

His chothmate looked, up, plainly taken aback. He was seated at drink beside a shabby-plumed female, who gave the newcomers a sullen stare.

"Good flight to you," Arinnian greeted in Planha; but what followed, however automatic, was too obvious for anything save Anglic. "I didn't expect to find you here."

"And to you, good landing," Vodan replied. "I report to my ship within hours. My transport leaves from Halcyon Island base. I came early so as not to risk being detained by a storm; we've had three whirldevils in a row near home."

"You are yare for battle, hunter," said Tabitha at her "most carefully courteous.

That's true, Arinnian thought. He's ablaze to fight. Only … if he couldn't stay with Eyath till the last minute, at least I'd've supposed he'd've been in flight-under-moon, meditating—or, anyhow, at carouse among friends—He made introductions.

Vodan jerked a claw at his attendant. "Quenna," he said. His informality was a casual insult. She hunched between her wings, feathers erected in forlorn self-assertion.

Arinnian could think of no excuse not to join the party. He and the girl seated themselves as best they could. When the robot rolled up, they ordered thick, strong New African beer.

"How blows your wind?" Tabitha asked, puffing hard on her pipe.

"Well; as I would like for you," Vodan answered correctly. He turned to Arinnian and, if his enthusiasm was a touch forced, it was nonetheless real. "You doubtless know I've been on training maneuvers these past weeks."

Yes. Eyath told me more than once.

"This was a short leave. My craft demands skill. Let me tell you about her. One of the new torpedo launchers, rather like a Terran Meteor, hai, a beauty, a spear! Proud I was to emblazon her hull with three golden stars."

"Eyath" means "Third Star."

Vodan went on. Arinnian glanced at Tabitha. She and Quenna had locked their gazes. Expressions billowed and jerked across the feathers; even he could read most of the unspoken half-language.

Yes, m'sweet, you long yellow Walker born, Quenna is what she is and who're you to talk down that jutting snout of yours? What else could I be, since I, growing from cub to maiden, found my lovetimes coming on whenever I thought about 'em and knew there'd never be any decent place for me in the whole- universe? Oh, yes, yes, I've heard it before, don't bother; "medical treatment; counseling."—Well, flabby flesh, for your information, the choths don't often keep a weakling; and I'll not whine for help. Quenna'll lay her own course, better'n you, who're really like me … aren't you, now, she-human?

Tabitha leaned forward, patted one of those arms with no heed for the talons, smiled into the reddened eyes and murmured, "Good weather for you, lass."

Astounded, Quenna reared back. For an instant she seemed about to fly at the girl, and Arinnian's hand dropped to his knife. Then she addressed Vodan: "Better we be going."

"Not yet." The Ythrian had fairly well overcome his embarrassment. "The clouds alone will decide when I see my brother again."

"We better go," she said lower. Arinnian caught the first slight musky odor. At the next table, another male raised his crest and swiveled his head in their direction. Arinnian could imagine the conflict in Vodan—dismiss her, defy her, strike her; no killing, she being unarmed—and yet that would be a surrender in itself, less to tradition than to mere conventionality—"We'll have to leave ourselves, soon's we finish these beers," the man said. "Glad to've come on you. Fair winds forever."

Vodan's relief was unmistakable. He mumbled through the courtesies and flapped off with Quenna. The city swallowed them.

Arinnian wondered what to say. He was grateful for the dull light; his face felt hotter than the air. He stared outward.

Tabitha said at length, softly, "That poor lost soul."

"Who, the nightflyer?" All at once he was furious. "I've met her sort befere. Degenerates, petty criminals. Pray Vodan doesn't get his throat cut in whatever filthy crib she's taking him to. I know what must've happened here. He was wandering around lonely, at loose ends, a mountaineer who'd probably never come on one like her. She zeroed in, hit him with enough pheromone to excite—ugh!"

"Why should you care? I mean, of course he's a friend of yours, but I hardly believe that pathetic creature will dare try more than wheedling a tip out of him." Tabitha drank smoke. "You know," she said thoughtfully, "here's a case of Ythrian cultural lag. They've been affected by human ideas to the point where they don't give their abnormals a quick death. But they're still not interested in sponsoring rehabilitation or research on cures, or in simple charity. Someday—"

He scarcely heard the last remark. "Vodan's to marry Eyath," he said through the interior grip on his gullet.

Tabitha raised her brows. "Oh? That one you mentioned to me? Well, don't you suppose, if she heard, she'd be glad he's gotten a bit of unimportant fun and forgetting?"

"It's not right! She's too clean. She—" Arinnian gulped. Abruptly he thought: So why not take the risk? Now I need forgetting myself. "Is the matter small to you?" he blurted. "In that case, let's us do the same."

"Hm?" She considered him for a while that grew. Lightning moved closer on heavy gusts. His rage ebbed and he must fight not to lower his eyes, not to cringe.

At last: "You are bitter for certain, aren't you, Chris?" A chuckle. "But likewise you're hopeful."

"I'm sorry," he got out. "I n-n-never meant disrespect. I wanted to give you a, an imaginary example—make you understand why I'm upset."

"I might resent your calling it imaginary," she smiled, though her tone had become more compassionate than teasing, "except I assume it wasn't really. The answer is no, thanks."

"I expected that. We birds—" He couldn't finish, but stared down into his mug until he lifted it for a quick, deep draft.

"What d'you mean, 'we'?" she challenged.

"Why, we … our generation, at least—"

When she nodded, her locks caught what illumination there was. "I know," she said gravely. "That behavior pattern, promiscuous as kakkelaks provided they don't much respect their partners, but hardly able to touch birds of the opposite sex. You're a bright lad, Chris; Avalonians aren't given to introspection, but you must have some idea of the cause. Don't you want, a wife and children, ever?"

"Of course. I—of course. I will."

"Most of them will, I'm sure. Most of the earlier ones did eventually, when they'd come to terms with themselves. Besides, the situation's not universal. We birds do have this in common, that we tolerate less prying than the average human. So comparative statistics aren't available. Also, the problem has gotten conspicuous these days for no deeper reason than that the movement into the choths has begun snowballing. And, finally, Chris, your experience is limited. How many out of thousands do you know well enough to describe their private lives? You'd naturally tend to be best acquainted with your own sort, especially since we birds have gotten pretty good at picking up face and body cues."

Tabitha's pipe had gone out. She emptied it and finished: "I tell you, your case isn't near as typical as you think, nor near as serious. But I do wish that going bird didn't make otherwise sensible people lose years in thwarting themselves."

Anger pricked him again. What call had she to act superior? "Now wait—" he began.

Tabitha knocked back her beer and rose. "I'm headed for my hotel," she said.

He stared up at her. "What?"

She ruffled his hair. "I'm sorry. But I'm afraid if we continue tonight, we'll brew one cyclone of a squabble. I think too well of you to want that. Well take another evening soon if you like. Now I aim to get into bed and have Library Central screen me some of that Homer stuff."

He couldn't dissuade her. Perhaps he took most umbrage at how calm his arguments left her. When he had bidden her a chill goodnight, he slouched to the nearest phoneboard.

The first woman he called was at work. Defense production was running at seven hours on, fifteen and the odd minutes off, plus overtime. The second female acquaintance said frantically that her husband was home if that was the party he wanted; he apologized for punching a wrong number. The third was available. She was overly plump, chattered without cease, and had the brains of a barysauroid. But what the chaos?

—He awoke about the following sunset. She was sweating in her sleep, breath stale from alcohol. He wondered why the air had gone hot and sticky. Breakdown in the conditioner? Or, hm, it'd been announced that if force screens must be raised, the power drain would require Environmental Control to shut off—

Force screens!

Arinnian jumped from bed.. Rain had given way to low overcast, but he glimpsed shimmers across that slatiness. He groped through the dusty clutter in the room and snapped on the'holovid.

A recording played, over and over, a man's voice high-pitched and his face stretched out of shape: "—war declared. A courier from Ythri has delivered the news in Gray, that Terra has served notice of war."