The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  She summoned her uncle the land warden, who was waiting in the next room, and asked him, “How can we make the other peerdoms help? Should we send an emissary to them?”

  “That would be the way to begin,” the land warden said.

  They discussed the different peers and how they were likely to react.

  “Could Arne be the emissary?” the prince asked finally.

  “Of course he could,” the land warden said. “But with the peer dying and your sister deposed, he is needed here.”

  “Then we must find someone else.” She looked to Arne for suggestions.

  Things were happening with an ease Arne found difficult to believe. “Perhaps we should wait until the scout from Easlon arrives,” he said. “If each peerdom sent us a hundred lashers tomorrow—which wouldn’t make much of an army—I would have no idea what to do with them. I could arrange to feed and house them, but their training must be left to someone who knows how.”

  They agreed to wait until the Easlon scout arrived before they asked the other peerdoms for help.

  The prince’s final question concerned the new one-namer, Deline.

  “I won’t know about her for at least a tenite,” Arne said with a smile. “By then, she will have made a beginning—if she is going to make one.”

  He was curious himself as to how Deline was doing. When he returned to Midd Village, his first stop was Farlon’s pottery. He found the potter highly pleased with his new prentice. Deline learned quickly, she had deft fingers, and she produced common crockery with ease. Now he was letting her experiment with different kinds of clay. She had modeled an oddly shaped object of curved surfaces and fragile loops, and she sat looking at it intently. Arne was pleased she had found something to interest her even though she seemed thoughtful rather than enthusiastic.

  She remained so in the days that followed. She did everything expected of her and did it well. She was cooperative, she was polite to her fellow workers and the villagers she came in contact with, but she shared nothing of herself. It was as though her real self were imprisoned beyond their reach.

  She worked with the prentices and quickly learned the rudiments of the more important crafts. She traveled about with Arne, learning to walk long distances; learning to look for damage or wear in anything from roads to machines; learning the procedure for arranging repairs when she found the need for them. Arne showed her how to check inventories and order new supplies when stocks on hand dropped below an acceptable level.

  Together they helped one-name foresters survey stands of timber and mark trees for cutting, fell them, saw them into logs. Then they watched no-namers haul the logs to a stream so they could be floated down to the river, which carried them to the mill. The mill cut them according to need, and Arne determined the need himself—whether for rough planks, finished lumber for building, or carefully finished boards of selected rare woods for use at the court. The wood was placed in a drying kiln if it was needed quickly or air dried if it was not.

  Deline continued to share his bed each night. She waited until darkness fell, and then, a lithe shadow, she flitted to the top of the town and slipped into the First Server’s dwelling.

  The daez became tenites; the tenites a mont. Arne gave as much time as he could spare to his two new responsibilities—his tiny army and his assistant. The army responded with eager enthusiasm. Deline worried him because she continued to hold herself apart from this new life that was happening around her.

  But she did her work well, and she soon learned the customs of the village. She managed her love affair with Arne so deftly that no rumor of it circulated. Probably some villagers suspected it—love affairs were always suspected—but the villagers practiced discretion in their own lives and respected it in the lives of others. The only things gossiped about were those that were done openly.

  When Deline had finished the most important prentice assignments, she was able to spend more time with Arne during the day. They became co-workers and colleagues, and Arne marveled at how quickly she learned and how well she worked with him.

  Late one afternoon they went out together in response to a report of road damage. Walking back in the gathering dusk, Arne discussed the repairs and how they should be made. He would go at once, he said, and requisition a crew of no-namers so work could begin early the next morning.

  Deline said suddenly, “The land warden told me you ran the peerdom. I thought he was joking. Now I understand what he meant. I was a fool to think anyone who works as hard as you do—as hard as all the one-namers do—could be plotting treason. When would any of you have the time?”

  “Plotters find the time,” Arne said. “I suppose no one bothered to tell you treason is an important concern of mine.”

  She turned and stared at him.

  “I am responsible for one-namers’ loyalty throughout the peerdom,” Arne said. “I also am expected to keep an eye on no-namers and lashers. As you know, it can be extremely easy to corrupt a naive prentice.”

  “You mean—you found out—”

  “Of course. I found out at once. He was a clumsy spy, but he illustrates why we must be constantly on the lookout for traitors. From time to time one of the other peerdoms sends an agent to Midlow—ostensibly on a legitimate errand but actually to recruit spies when no one is looking. His peer suspects Midlow is conspiring against her, or perhaps his peerdom has some plot of its own to advance. We also suspect the Peer of Lant of recruiting spies in all of the Ten Peerdoms, and that is much more serious. We must watch for treason constantly.”

  “We are a long way from Lant. Why would its peer want spies here?”

  “The Peer of Lant wants to conquer the world—which includes Midlow.”

  She was silent for a time. Then she said, “With all of that going on, I accused you, the person responsible for preventing treason—”

  “Even when I find someone behaving suspiciously, I find it dangerous to take action in such matters without first investigating carefully. It is so easy to accuse an innocent person—and so difficult to make amends.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “It is dangerous.”

  The realization that she would remain an outsider for sikes pained him. One-namers accepted her, but they wouldn’t trust her until she had been tested by time. Arne, too, though his love for her gradually became a certainty, was unable to trust her completely. He couldn’t tell her about the secret rooms in the houses at the top of the village, for example, or about the cache of food in his garden. In that respect, she remained a renegade peerager.

  He would never be able to share the Great Secret with her, the work in the ruins. Not even his most trusted one-name friends were aware of that.

  The Easlon scout finally arrived. It was Bernal, whom Arne already knew. Inskor sent his apologies for the delay. Bernal was the scout best qualified to train an army, but he had been far to the south when Arne’s request came.

  The two of them talked through the night. Arne had been trying to learn how the Peer of Lant organized her armies. Egarn knew something about military theory and could tell him how armies had been organized in the past—he’d had officer training himself as a young man—but he had paid no attention at all to Lant’s military establishment.

  Bernal knew all about the Lantiff. Together they compared the system Egarn had described with the one Lant was using and considered what should be done to build an army quickly and efficiently.

  “The Peer of Lant’s conquests have come more slowly since Egarn tricked her,” Bernal said, “but they are none the less certain, and her army keeps growing. She simply overwhelms her opponents. She never hurries. Each victory makes her stronger, and she has long hoped that her len grinders would eventually devise a weapon to take the place of the one she lost.”

  He turned and met Arne’s inquiring gaze firmly. “Now they have done so. She has a weapon of her own.”

  The fragile hope of Arne’s little army vanished in the sudden chill that he felt. “That alters all of
our strategy,” he said slowly.

  “Ah—but Lant doesn’t have Egarn’s weapon. It has something like it but different. Lant’s weapon produces a force but not a fire—it strikes without burning. It stuns, but it doesn’t destroy. Also, it doesn’t strike from as great a distance. The tube looks the same, but the kinds of lens and their arrangement are very different.”

  “Then we still have an advantage.”

  “For the present. No doubt her servers will try to improve this new weapon, and they may succeed. They may even produce one more devastating than Egarn’s, but the one they have is more valuable for the battles they are fighting now. It doesn’t kill. When the defeated lashers recover, they find themselves in the army of Lant. The peer’s army is growing faster than ever. I brought two of her new weapons for Egarn to see.”

  He passed two small tubes to Arne.

  “How did you get them?” Arne asked.

  Bernal smiled. “Lant made the mistake of attacking the Peerdom of Ramor. Ramor has an unusual peer—she is willing to learn and able to take advice. We set a trap and annihilated most of an army. The Peer of Lant hadn’t encountered Egarn’s weapon since we closed the passes. She had got careless. Now she will proceed with extreme caution for a time. In the past, time gained from her caution hasn’t meant very much, but if the Ten Peerdoms can actually make use of it to build their own army, the future suddenly begins to look brighter.”

  “What do we need to do?” Arne asked.

  “You are doing it. You are doing everything that needs to be done—everything except one, persuade the other peerdoms to help, and Inskor thinks you will do that, too. Inskor is especially pleased that you are adding no-namers to your army. Lines of defense require huge amounts of work, and we need several of them so we can inflict a series of losses on the Lantiff before they reach our border.”

  “Is the attack certain?”

  “The Peer of Lant is elderly. She may not be menacing the world for many more sikes, but while she lives, her wars will continue. We have been trying to assassinate her. We killed two of Lant’s top generals, but thus far the peer has managed to protect herself. I am looking forward to seeing Egarn again.”

  “I will take you to him now,” Arne said. “Then I will introduce you to your army.”

  Suddenly everything was on a dizzying upswing. Arne had a brief interview with the dying peer and a longer one with the prince and the land warden. Things had returned to normal in Midlow, and he could be spared for a mission to the other peerdoms. Deline had done so well that he could temporarily leave his routine duties to her. As a buffer against one-namers who might still be resentful of her, he gave her an assistant, Hutter, his young prentice surveyor.

  He knew he would miss her desperately. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised him that they were still lovers; unlike the village girls, she had no reason to resent the long, uncertain hours he worked and his frequent absences. She shared his work with him and traveled about the peerdom with him, and they were able to steal delicious moments from the cares and humdrum routine of running a peerdom.

  But he had always expected to lose her eventually. He had long been resigned to the fact that he was a poor lover, and he knew he couldn’t hold a passionate woman like her.

  Unless—was it possible that she loved him?

  On their last night together, he asked her to wive him.

  She drew back in astonishment, her moon-lit blond hair in alluring disarray, her body an enticing, bright contrast to the dark bed. She said slowly, “You mean—live here with you, bear children, be a village wife—”

  The first server’s wife would be the foremost one-name woman in the peerdom, but the distinction between that and any village wife hardly mattered to the former prince. “Share my life,” Arne said, “and let me share yours.”

  “A one-name life in a one-name village,” she mused.

  “But you are a one-namer,” he said.

  She winced as though he had struck her. “Yes. Yes, I am. Sometimes I forget.” She put her arms around him. “You love me, and I love you, but that becomes so complicated when one is a one-namer. Do you really want to share the rest of your life with me?”

  “I do.”

  “I see. I must think. I must think about being a one-namer. By the time you return, I will have decided.”

  The prince provided a horse for Arne, and he went first to a hero’s welcome in the Peerdom of Weslon. The wild lashers had burned and plundered Weslon Court before Arne defeated them. The court was being rebuilt, but the charred ruins that remained were a sobering reminder of what had happened. The peer, a tall, slender young woman, had inherited her title shortly before the lashers arrived, and she had thought it lost forever until Arne led his one-namers to her rescue. She greeted him warmly, proudly displayed her baby daughter, Weslon’s new prince, and ordered a feast for him. She gave him an immediate interview with her advisors in attendance.

  Arne had several requests for her in the name of the Peer of Midlow. The first was that she permit Weslon’s scouts to train one-namers from all of the Ten Peerdoms. They had been secretly training a limited number for sikes, but an enormous force of scouts was needed to keep watch on the Ten Peerdoms’ frontiers. The scouts of Easlon could not train so many.

  “We must send our scouts far into the wilds so they can give an early warning when trouble approaches,” Arne said. “The wild lashers were almost within your borders before they were noticed.”

  The peer agreed immediately.

  Arne’s second request was that Weslon contribute lashers and no-namers to a common army that would defend all of the Ten Peerdoms—one that could move instantly wherever it was needed. “We already have started such a force in Midlow, and an Easlon scout is training it,” Arne said. “I invite you to send us a hundred lashers and a hundred no-namers now and as many as you can spare later. When the army has been trained, parts of it will be stationed along all the frontiers, including Weslon’s, and if danger threatens anywhere, the entire army will respond.”

  This request was received with hesitation and doubtful muttering. The memory of the rebel army was as green in Weslon as elsewhere. Finally Arne appealed directly to the peer. “Majesty, the Ten Peerdoms cannot survive without an army. If there had been additional scouts when the wild lashers came, and a common army you could call upon, there would be no charred wreckage in Weslon Court.”

  She promised to send a hundred lashers and a hundred no-namers to Bernal immediately. He next took his story to West Southly, which was already apprehensive that Lant’s army might suddenly burst upon its unprotected southern frontier. The peerdom had long neglected its defenses simply because nothing ever seemed to happen beyond its borders, and it agreed at once to send the requested hundred lashers and hundred no-namers to Bernal and fifty one-namers to Weslon to train as scouts.

  By the time Arne reached the Peerdom of Chang, he had made a discovery. Success engenders success. The fact that Weslon, Midlow, and West Southly were already contributing to a common army overrode all of the arguments the Chang peeragers could muster. He continued his circuit of the Ten Peerdoms, leaving Easlon for last—but the Peer of Easlon learned of his mission before he arrived, and Easlon’s quota of a hundred lashers and a hundred no-namers had already started for Midlow. When all of the promised lashers and no-namers arrived, there would be a thousand of each, and five-hundred one-namers were gathering in Weslon and Easlon for scout training. Inskor had sent six more scouts to Midlow to help Bernal. It all happened so easily Arne was left wondering why they had waited so long.

  He spent several daez with Inskor before he turned homeward, discussing the uses that might be made of the new army. His success elated him, but it had been a grueling trip, and he was exhausted when he reached Midd Village. He found riding more tiring than walking.

  Deline came shortly after he arrived and threw herself into his arms. It was the homecoming he had thought about through all of the long daez of travel; but when
he gathered her to him, she drew back.

  “Have you decided?” he asked.

  “Yes. But we need time to ourselves to talk about that. Your duty comes first.”

  “All right,” he said with a weary smile. “Tell me.”

  He expected her to recite the list of petty problems accumulated during his absence, but she said, “There are none.”

  “None at all?”

  “Everything has been taken care of.” She was actually functioning as the first server’s assistant, and doing it well, and she couldn’t conceal the pride she felt. “There are no problems, but the land warden has sent a message for you. He wants to see you as soon as possible.”

  “Tonight?” Arne asked in dismay.

  “The message said the moment you arrived.”

  “Did the message say what he wants?”

  She looked away. “No. But the peer’s death is expected at any time.”

  “Very well. I’ll go at once.”

  He kissed her again and left. At least he still had the horse to ride. He rode it into the court and all the way up the spiraling road to the land warden’s level, a privilege normally reserved for peeragers. No one challenged him, and all of the guards saluted. The land warden was at the palace and had to be sent for. Arne settled himself to wait and fell asleep in his chair.

  The land warden awakened him—happy to see him but humbly apologetic for the abrupt summons. “It could have waited for morning,” he said, “But as long as you are here—”

  He tersely summarized what had happened since Arne left. It finally had dawned on the other peers that Lant was more than a remote threat, and the wild lasher attack on Weslon was something that could happen to any of them. All had sent messages pledging cooperation. Lashers and no-namers had begun to arrive from the other peerdoms, and Bernal was elated.

  As for the peer—she was dying, of course. She had been dying for a long time, but she still possessed determination. She wanted to live until she was assured Midlow was prepared for the future. The prince?