Orion Shall Rise

by Poul Anderson

  She dismissed that as unworthy. ‘Your belief means everything to you, doesn’t it?’ she murmured.

  ‘“Belief” is a misleading word,’ he responded. ‘Gaea is not Deu. Gaea is the life on Earth. There must be other living worlds, and there may well be an ultimate cosmic Oneness, but the universe is too big and strange for us. We’ll never know anything beyond what we can see from this planet, and never understand most of that. Perhaps the next organelles that Gaea develops, in thousands or millions of years, perhaps they will.’

  She stopped his monotone by reaching forward and stroking his arm. ‘I know. But you haven’t answered me. I asked if your… philosophy … isn’t what you live for, you, Talence Jovain Aurillac.’

  He nodded, while peering outward, downward. ‘It has come to be.’

  ‘You’ve never told me why.’

  ‘Why does anybody do, or accept, anything? We can’t be sure. Our conscious minds are mere prototypes. The chief part of us, in the brain, too, is the old mammal, the ancient reptile.’ He turned to her and formed a lopsided smile. ‘I preach too much, don’t I?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not for me. But I do suspect something happened to you.’

  He grimaced. ‘Yes. The Italyan campaign. No large affair, as wars go. Nothing but our “assistance” to a “friendly nation” against “Espaynian aggression and its local cat’s-paws.” It succeeded. We kept the Zheneral’s client warlord from subjugating our client warlord.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I was a military flyer. I didn’t see the worst of it by any means. But what I did see – death, maiming, agony, grief, destruction, waste – and for what? How were we threatened, when Skyholm hangs ready to blast any invaders of the Domain into smoke? But, yes, our commerce might be inconvenienced, and another land might turn Gaean and therefore stop heeding us.

  ‘I went home and accepted – requested – the castlekeeper’s post for my Clan in the Prynys. It would give me the freedom from distraction I needed, to think, to try making sense out of what I had witnessed.

  ‘And presently Ucheny Mattas came up from Espayn, traveling afoot, explaining and converting as he went. I’ve mentioned him to you, haven’t I? He isn’t Mong, he’s Douroais, though he did study under Tsiang Sartov. I was interested, and invited him to stay for a time.’ Once more Jovain smiled. ‘He’s there yet. Dismiss any image of a gaunt, monomaniac ascetic. Mattas revels in life. I wish I could, the way he does. But the upshot was, he proved to me that life is neither empty happenstance nor at the whim of some inhuman supernatural Thing. No, it creates and it is its own meaning, its own purpose and destiny.’

  His tone softened: ‘From this I got peace within myself. Do you wonder that I want to share it with my countrymen?’

  ‘Oh, Jovain!’ She moved to hug him.

  She was half angered, half relieved when, at that instant, another couple appeared in the entrance. The man had the ruddy blondness of Flandre upon Aerogens features, and wore the coarse garments of that state: unmistakably a Maartens of Clan Dykenskyt. The woman, small and dark, was just as clearly a Silber, though her family wasn’t self-evident.

  ‘Greeting, sir and lady,’ the man said. He had the accent, too. Probably he seldom left his ancestral holding. ‘We would not intrude.’

  ‘This is everybody’s place. ‘Jovain made amends for brusqueness by rising and bowing. ‘Let us bid you welcome. You will find that the view today is extraordinary. We were about to depart, and we do in goodwill.’

  Faylis followed his lead. After appropriate courtesies, she found herself on the path beside Jovain.

  They walked off. When out of earshot, he said, ‘Well, we were lucky to have privacy as long as we did.’

  ‘But we’ve so much more to talk about,’ she protested. ‘Your time ends in a week. When afterward can we meet?’ On an impulse, she seized his hand. ‘Let’s go to my apartment.’ Having come alone, he must share his with a man who had also arrived solitary.

  He hesitated. ‘Iern doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Iern won’t be back for hours. He’s taking his advanced squadron to look at a storm out in the Gulf.’ Quickly: ‘I’m not being forward. We’ll have a little wine, and talk.’

  And–? she wondered. Her pulse accelerated.

  ‘I accept with joy,’ he replied.

  They wheeled and went back fast, along the lane, up the ramp, through the amaryllis and fungus tunnel. ‘You always give me joy,’ he said. ‘I’m glum by nature. You’re lovely, and Gaea laughs with your mouth.’

  I shouldn’t let him say such things. But it warms me. I tingle. Faylis tried to make the conversation light. ‘Thank you, kind sir. I agree you are of sparing habits. I’ve heard you called a man who has no redeeming vices. But that must be unjust, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, I have my recreations. I enjoy keeping fit – mountaineering, skiing, playing a hard game of pelota. I play the flute fairly well too, did you know? And appreciate the arts in general. And am an amateur astronomer. On a clear highland night, the stars call my spirit skyward, and when it returns to Gaea –’

  Avidly discoursing, they went by the Winter Lord and the fountain, fared among the hexagons, saw the minikin cataract, penetrated the bamboo cluster, climbed the staircase, entered the tunnel of leaves, crossed the whimsical bridge, and proceeded along the mossy catwalk. Thence an ordinary companionway brought them back to ordinary Skyholm, but that didn’t matter. They passed people correctly but automatically, bound for their special destination.

  Faylis opened the apartment door. Her left hand remained in Jovain’s right.

  ‘Oh!’

  Iern surged from his chair. ‘What the blaze?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘But you, you said, you told me –’ Faylis stammered.

  ‘The storm was disappointing, not worth the fuel as an example.’ Iern’s eyes narrowed, his tone sharpened, he stood fists on hips. ‘You didn’t expect me this early, eh?’

  ‘Sir,’ Jovain said, and it was as if metal clashed against metal, ‘your wife invited me here for an hour or two of polite conversation.’

  ‘About what?’ Iern jerked his head in the direction of the book. ‘You’d’ve had it squirreled away when I got home, wouldn’t you, darling? And any other evidence.’

  She stiffened. She felt her cheeks kindle. ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ she cried.

  Jovain had released his grasp but not left her side. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Iern,’ he said, ‘I shall not forget my manners and make untoward remarks, but honor seems to demand that I remind you your wife is born a Mayn of Clan Ashcroft.’

  Faylis stamped her foot. Letting fury loose was incredibly exhilarating. ‘Not a harem slave in Khorasan! A Clanswoman, free and civilized!’

  Iern whitened. His nostrils flared. Sudden fear struck her. He had never badly hurt anybody she knew of, but he was as touchy as a Gascon. (Through her flashed memory of his stepmother confiding a belief that that was because of his divided heritage. Enrolled in the Academy a year late, a stranger to city ways, the accent of Brezh thick on his tongue, he had had to fight, over and over, before he won respect from his compeers.) Once Faylis had seen him explode. They were traveling through Normaney, where neither the Ferlays nor the Mayns had any property, any prerogatives; they came on a pysan flogging a tied-up dog bloody for some offense; Iern sprang off his horse and gave the man a drubbing, and afterward in Clan court was callously cheerful about paying for the teeth he had knocked out.

  He mastered himself and said through taut lips: ‘Major Jovain, I imply no breach of propriety. No technical breach. I do declare that my wife is young and innocent – naive, if you wish – and you have been exposing her to vicious nonsense against which she has no defense. I have no legal means of stopping that, but I shall know what your honor is worth when I see whether or not you stop meddling in our family life. Meanwhile you are unwelcome in my home. You will depart.’

  Rage flared from the older man. ‘It’s her home too!’

  Appalled – This is worse than
a fight – Faylis stared from one to the next. Dismay went over her like an Arctic tide. She sank to the floor and wept.

  Contrite as fast as he had been infuriated, Iern fell to his knees and took her in his arms. Jovain hovered in a corner, trapped. Etiquette demanded he go, but if he did, it would be a surrender from which he might never win back.

  Resolution congealed his countenance. He stayed.

  After a while Faylis was merely, quietly sobbing. ‘Please,’ she brought forth, ‘I’m so fond of you both.…’ Iern raised her, assisted her to the couch, got her to stretch out on it and laid a cushion beneath her head. He stroked her hair. ‘Be calm, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  He sought the cabinet and set forth cognac and three glasses. At Jovain he threw a sour grin. ‘A big emotional scene would be uncivilized,’ he admitted. ‘We should talk this out in a reasonable way. I offer you drink, Clansman.’

  ‘I thank you,’ said Jovain as properly.

  Iern poured. He handed the potions out, but touched rims only with Faylis. She ventured a shaky smile.

  Palms cupped around vessels evoked a comforting aroma. Jovain cleared his throat. ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘may I make a suggestion?’

  Iern inclined his neck. ‘If you wish, sir.’

  ‘We have too much accumulated tension between us,’ Jovain stated. ‘We’ve each resented what we saw as the other’s interference in what should be your lady wife’s personal development, but we have scarcely met, and then under public circumstances. We do need to discuss matters honestly and privately, but first, I believe, we need to discharge that tension.’

  Iern grew wary. ‘What do you propose?’

  Jovain shaped a chuckle. ‘Oh, nothing barbaric. No Italyan duello, no Angley fistfight, no Erian drinkdown – but a good, rousing sunwing contest.’

  Surprised, Iern gave him a close look.

  ‘It won’t be important which of us wins,’ Jovain said. ‘The point is that we will have fought our symbolic fight and be free to go on from there.’

  ‘Um-m-m … fairness –’

  ‘I know. You are a Stormrider. Well, a sport of mine is gliding. You must be aware of how tricky the Pryny airs are.’

  ‘I am. And you’ve flown against Espaynian fighters –’ Excitement gathered. ‘By Charles! It would be interesting, wouldn’t it?’

  They worked out details while they finished their brandies and Faylis regained her equilibrium. Thereafter, tactfully, Jovain left.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Normally a sunwing contest was an event watched by thousands, and several took place in succession. That would happen as part of a festival, at which the games, competitions, and performances were many, everything from handball, footraces, and acrobatics to live chess, dressage, and ballet. Flags of Clans and states would fly above a stadium that holiday clothes made gaudy, music and cheers resound, the Chosen Lady strain forward in her youthful eagerness to know who the winners were to be whom she would garland, while up amidst blue the craft swooped and glittered wherein the lords of the air matched skills.

  Maybe that was why Faylis had, from the first, a sense of dreadful wrongness about the encounter between Iern and Jovain, a feeling – which she kept futilely telling herself was absurd – that naught but evil could come of it. Here was no crowd, no noise, no ceremony and celebration, no revelry ahead that would roil the streets until dawn. She stood in a pasture, beyond sight of any habitation. Ankle-high grass reached as far in every direction as she could see, from this flat part on toward a wooded ridge in the north. Before a changeable breeze, ripples went silvery over its greenness. Cattle grazed in the distance, and to the south lay a weed-grown rubbleheap that might have been a building before the Judgment. (Passing by, she had noticed pieces of crumbled concrete scattered in a line – an ancient highway, less durable than the stones at Carnac. Nobody since had had reason to clear the stuff away and make a new dirt or gravel road.) In spite of moving, the air was hot; pungencies of soil, dung, bruised plants rolled upward through it. The sky was cloudless, paled by a sun which slowly climbed toward the great wan crescent of Skyholm. Against that brightness, she could not make out the shadowed part of the aerostat. It was as if shade had vanished from Earth.

  Tethered nearby were the horses that had borne people from Tournev, and those that had drawn the flatbed wagons on which the sunwings rested. By either vehicle waited a few retainers. While all were groundlings, with shoulder patches of Clan Talence on their various liveries or workaday garb, they seemed to share Faylis’ forebodings, or at least to understand that this was no play of friends; their two groups did not mingle, and their words were scant.

  Beyond, on spidery wheels and struts, the aircraft poised. No matter the twenty-five-meter wingspans or the bright brave emblems on control surfaces, to Faylis they looked hideously fragile. The bodies were films of clear plastic, stretched over exiguous frames between propeller at the nose and empennage at the end of a boom thin enough to tremble in this light wind. After they had been offloaded, each had been borne away by a single man, the axle on his shoulders; companions had nothing to do but keep wings from hitting the ground and crumpling. These were toys – Iern’s owned by himself, Jovain’s borrowed from the local Academy on his authority as a flight officer – but toys such as had sometimes killed men.

  Her husband came to her. He had exchanged his riding outfit for loincloth, sandals, and parachute; every gram he could save would work for him. Sweat sheened on muscular torso and broad visage, his eyes sparkled sapphire, the draft ruffled brown locks, teeth flashed arrogantly white. When he kissed her, the odors of male flesh were nearly overwhelming. ‘Wish me luck, macushla,’ he said. (That was a word he had brought back from Eria. On how many lasses there had he used it? But of course he wasn’t married then.)

  ‘Be careful,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I promise. Not so careful that it would be stupid, but within reason, I promise.’ He grabbed her close and growled into her ear: ‘After all, I’ve got plans for this evening, oh, yes. Tomorrow it’s going to be you that’s careful, about walking and sitting down.’ He whooped forth laughter and bounded off.

  Farther away, Jovain stood alone … how very alone. He had chosen to wear white shirt and trousers under his parachute harness. That kept for him a dignity which Iern had shed. Likewise did the soft salute he gave her, before he turned and strode to his machine.

  You be careful, Jovain! her heart cried. She clutched to her the fact that he had insisted on taking the craft lent him to a vacant workshop, that he might spend some hours by himself inspecting and servicing it.

  The pilots scrambled into their cockpits, strapped their bodies into skeletal chairs, sent fingers across rudimentary controls. On the upper wing surfaces, solar cells drank energy from heaven. Electric motors awakened. Propellers whirred. Slowly, on parallel tracks into the breeze, the sunwings rolled off. They gathered speed.

  If only one of them would hit a rock, Faylis prayed. That wouldn’t harm anything except the plane. It would stop this affair. But obviously it could not happen. The men had checked every centimeter of their takeoff routes.

  The sunwings lifted.

  Why am I afraid? she asked the chill within her. It’s just a sport, with strict sporting rules. The winner forces the loser back to earth. Iern claims it’s less dangerous than polo.

  His in bravura spirals, Jovain’s in a steady climb, the damselflies sought altitude. Light shimmered on propeller circles and off the lower wing surfaces. Already she could not see through the skin to the reed-slender ribs, but she knew, she knew.

  Jovain got well above his opponent. Abruptly his craft slanted about and dived. His aim was to shade his opponent’s solar cells, but it appeared almost that he meant to ram. Faylis crammed a knuckle between her teeth.

  Jovain executed a bank, a turn – she didn’t know the language, she could scarcely follow the action, but all at once Iern’s wings were in shadow. Jovain had the sun gauge
of him. If he could hold it for a minute, denying his rival sufficient power, Iern must either glide down or crash.

  Or break free! The lower airboat went into a wild roll. Its wingtips came near brushing the other. If they did, both machines would be wrecked. Jovain fell away from that risk, and from stirred-up currents which tossed his gossamer vehicle about. Iern leveled off and swooped around. He must be taking help from an updraft – a thermal, was that the word? He must have planned this.

  Now it was he overhead and eastward. He kept well back, so that he blocked light from only about half Jovain’s cells – Faylis guessed. But the Southerner, thus underpowered, disadvantaged by geometry, could not yaw clear of him.

  Yet Jovain could ride the wind too, and maybe with greater skill. Between that and his remaining engine capability, he could keep aloft. For how long? Faylis had heard of engagements that went on for hours, until sheer exhaustion brought a contestant to such slowness and clumsiness that it became easy to hold him under complete eclipse and make him descend.

  It isn’t fair! Iern’s thirteen years younger!

  As if in a mating dance, the sunwings swung around the sky. She could not hear them, she could hear nothing but the hiss of air through grass, the drumbeat of blood in her ears.

  And, yes, a retainer who addressed the man beside him. ‘Plumb loony, them, heh?’

  ‘It’s their way, Hannas,’ replied the second. They spoke what must be their mother tongue, Alleman in the Elsass version, believing that nobody else understood it. Faylis had studied the entire linguistic family, as a case history of divergence after the Judgment.