He drew hard on his cigarette. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let’s discuss contingencies. Nobody knows what will happen. For instance, a candidate less controversial than Ferlay might be impossible to push aside. But just in case –
‘You want weapons. Espayn can’t supply them directly. If nothing else, Skyholm intelligence would learn we were producing more than we were using, and set out to trace where they were being sent. However, we have connections to Yuan, in Merique … and can be the intermediary and arrange the conduit, do you see? And these mountains are a good place to train men discreetly. … Yes, let us by all means talk, sir.’
In Jovain’s breast, glory mounted.
‘Vineleaf, O my Vineleaf, now pour the hoarded sunshine out
From bottles where it lay in a dream of summers lost
To the sunsets wrought by frost
All throughout the vineyards where grapes had swollen purple
And well-nigh sweet as kisses that from boy to girl were tossed
When their lightfoot pathways crossed –
Nor count the cost!
Aldebaran is not so red within the Hyades
As is the hearthside claret heartward flowing;
No gold or whiteness quivers across the winter seas
Like that which gleams where chardonnay is glowing.
Drink, before our time shall come for going.
‘Once again the vintners have wrought their humble miracle –’
Plik broke off. ‘Bah!’ he snorted, swept a crashing discord out of his lute, and banged the instrument down. ‘Plenty. Indeed, too bloody much. Fill my glass, will you, dear?’
Seated opposite, Sesi gave him a surprised look through the candlelit dimness. Likewise did the four – a sailor, a couple of laborers, a pysan come to market – benched at the adjoining table. They and the singer were the only customers in the Pey-d’Or. Not expecting heavy trade until later, when most men would have finished their evening meals at home, the landlord was upstairs enjoying his.
‘Why’d you stop?’ the barmaid asked. That’s a nice song.’
‘Puerile,’ the Angleyman sneered. ‘So conventional it creaks. Nothing of the Goddess there. Suddenly I couldn’t go on quacking banalities about drink and love, when I might instead be drinking’ – his mood shifted to impudence – and maybe, later, get in a spot of lovemaking?’
Sesi tossed her head. ‘Wasn’t that song for me? And you stopped right in the middle.’
Plik sighed. ‘Yes, I intended a tribute, but this wasn’t worthy of my Vineleaf.’ He shook his head, clicked his tongue, twisted his mouth upward on the left side. ‘Or perhaps it was, which would be rather worse. I’ll compose you something better, I promise.’ He paused. ‘Ah … you could provide a bit more inspiration, you know, sweet-pants. Starting with a recharge of burgundy.’
‘I’ll buy, Plik,’ a workman offered. He spoke Brezhoneg.
‘Why, thank you, Roparzh,’ the poet replied in the same language. ‘Do that twice and I’ll probably feel like committing a different song – a real one, with blood in its veins.’
‘And in our lingo, hey? I wasn’t following the Angley too well. How about that “Bandit Ballad” of yours?’ Roparzh turned to his companions. ‘You like it too, don’t you, Koneg? And you out-of-town fellows will, I know. It’s a rouser.’
Plik considered. ‘It’s subversive, is what it is.’ In many stanzas, it celebrated the exploits, combative as well as gustatory and amorous, of the half-legendary outlaw Jakez, who five centuries ago spearheaded pysan resistance to an oppressive Mestromor. ‘It wouldn’t be popular among your sort – I’ve heard it bellowed from end to end of Kemper, and in the countryside as well – it wouldn’t be, if it didn’t vent a real grudge or two.’
Roparzh scratched in his mane and thought about that. Koneg grunted, ‘Yah-uh. You know what the cost of food’s gone up to? And rent and everything else. Except wages. Can our Ligue get the Trademaster to allow us a raise? No!’
‘The city Ligues have given in –’ began the farmer.
Koneg nodded vehemently. ‘They won’t so much as go over the Mestromor’s head and appeal to the saints on our account.’
‘Don’t your precious saints know about your plight, or care?’ scoffed the sailor.
His was not the first voice between these walls to speak thus of the Aerogens, but Sesi stuck out her tongue at him, which made Plik say: ‘It’s not their fault. By their own law, the annexation treaty, they can’t interfere in the domestic affairs of this state. If ever they did, you Breizhads would howl as furiously as any people in the Domain.’
‘Don’t blame us food-growers either,’ said the pysan. ‘We’d be as squeezed as you are, except that our association still has, oh, one ball left to it. And even so, it can’t keep cheap grain from the South out of Ar-Mor. We’ll be ruined if we don’t get some modern ten-horse combines, and do you know the price on those things?’
‘Argh, forget your Ligue,’ the seaman growled. ‘Scrap it. Scrap ’em all. They may’ve been useful once, in old times when people needed to band together for everything, but now they’re a meddlesome yoke on you.’
‘The thought of a yoke running about meddling in business has a certain elfin charm,’ Plik remarked. Sesi flounced off after his wine.
‘What would you put in place of them?’ Roparzh asked.
‘Nothing,’ the sailor said. ‘Abolish them. Abolish the Trademaster’s office too – every damned official we’ve inherited from the past. Let people earn their keep however they personally please, and sink or swim by themselves. If they want to cooperate, fine, but let them do it by free choice, and have a right to opt out anytime.’
The pysan regarded him in astonishment. The townsmen, who had had more exposure to strange notions, grew thoughtful. Sesi brought Plik his filled glass. He took a long draft.
‘You wouldn’t know what or who you could depend on,’ said Koneg at length.
‘That’s how they do it in Merique – the Northwest Union, anyhow,’ replied the sailor. ‘And it works, it works. Not that I’ve been there myself or ever expect to, but I’ve talked with crewmen of theirs who’ve come this far –’
The door at the head of the stairs opened. A cold breath of air pierced the tavern smokiness. Snow was falling through an early dusk. Colored lanterns shone across the street, as they did everywhere in the city, for Solstice was only three days in the future.
Two persons closed the door behind them and descended into the taproom. Snow dusted their cloaks and caps. Their shadows followed them, huge and restless as the glooms around the hearthfire. Plik peered, and suddenly exclaimed:
‘Why, talk of an ace and draw a royal flush! Here comes authority’s own self, if you wish to continue debating about the Northwest Union.’ He raised his lanky frame and sketched a bow. ‘Welcome, sir and lady,’ he said in Angley. ‘Come drink with us. That’s obviously your intent, but let us invite you nevertheless.’
The pair approached. ‘Many thanks,’ the man responded in accented but fluent Francey. ‘Ah, isn’t this language preferable for the rest of the group? It behooves foreigners to be polite.’
He reached the table and stopped, a small and rather ugly individual with a blade of a nose, glacial eyes, beard short and gray around bad teeth. His garments were nondescript, like his companion’s. It was on her that the men’s attention dwelt, and not simply because a woman in trousers was a rare sight here. She was big, blond, young, handsome, and there was a feral quality about her though she stood quietly.
Himself still on his feet, gesturing with his goblet, Plik performed grandiose introductions. ‘– And this is adorable Sesi, whose true name I have decreed to be Vineleaf, prepared to serve you. What shall it be? My treat, unless these gentlemen care to contribute. We don’t get ranking officers of the Northwest Union in our down-at-heels favorite inn very often. In fact, have we ever? No. Therefore, on behalf of the management, welcome.’
The man formed a curiously cha
rming smile and waved at the company. ‘My name is Mikli Karst,’ he said.
‘Ronica Birken,’ the woman informed them. Sir, are you the poet we have heard about?’ Her Francey was barely serviceable.
‘From time to time I perpetrate various doggerel,’ Plik answered. They settled themselves at his table and Sesi took orders – ‘including whatever you desire, my loveliness, within the limits of this lean purse.’
Mikli Karst brought forth a cigarette case, proffered it around, was refused – instead, Plik asked Sesi to bring him his clay pipe – and lit up with a fuel device that drew much comment. Presently, though, the foreigner could take a sip and ask: ‘How did you instantly know where we’re from? Norries aren’t exactly common in Uropa, yet.’
‘Ah, but a ship from your country arrived two days past,’ explained Plik. ‘A most impressive ship,’ he added for the benefit of Sesi and the pysan. ‘You ought to see her while you have the chance. A giant catamaran, four-masted, actually carrying an aircraft.’ He flicked his glance back at the newcomers, especially Ronica. ‘Several of her crewmen wandered in yesterday. I was singing and they seemed to enjoy it. I daresay you heard from them, and came when your duties permitted.’
Ronica nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I like a good song. And maybe you’d like to hear a sample of ours.’
‘Absolutely, whether or not I can decipher the words.’ Plik drew out a tobacco pouch and began stuffing his pipe. ‘Your men – two of them could mangle their way through a little Angley – they said you’d come directly to northern Espayn, and laid to in Bylba harbor for three weeks before proceeding here. They didn’t know exactly why. Can you tell us?’
Mikli spread his palms. ‘We’re on what amounts to a diplomatic mission,’ he said. ‘My associates and I had business in the Espaynian interior. Sightseers in Kemper needn’t hurry, because our ship will probably be docked for months, while our team conducts further business with your people. Some of it relates to trade – tariffs, for example – and some to other matters of mutual concern. I regret not being free to say more.’
Nobody minded much. Aristocrats of the Domain, both Aerogens and groundlings, did not make their own proceedings public. ‘Well, then,’ Plik replied, ‘I hope that whenever your tasks bring you back to Kemper, you’ll visit the Pey-d’Or. Meanwhile let’s buckle down to the really serious thing in life, namely getting drunk.’
It became a memorable evening, though not one that anybody remembered clearly. A few did recall afterward that toward the end, Ronica Birken leaped onto a table, beaker aloft, and shouted something about Orion rising. Mikli Karst was quick to hush her. Nobody knew what it signified. Foreigners had peculiar ways.
CHAPTER NINE
As his yacht entered the bay, Terai Lohannaso swarmed up the rigging. For a minute he crouched on the spreader beneath the masthead and let the world flood him.
Wind whooped fresh and salt from the port quarter, through a brilliance that laved his flesh and skipped across whitecaps. The waves were like diamond-dusted sapphire, swirled with emerald where sunlight met crests, but moving, molten, alive. This far aloft, he still heard how they rushed and chuckled. Their vigor throbbed upward, into him. Gulls wheeled and piped overhead. Forward, mountains encircled the shore where his town nestled. They were mostly forested, summer-green in a thousand hues, save where a river cataracted down toward the sea or where an occasional hayfield ripened toward harvest. Above them in the west, cloud banks loomed, their whiteness deeply blue-shadowed and faintly gold-tinged by a declining sun.
Terai bawled in delight, sprang to his feet, and dived. The sloop was heeled far over. He struck the water cleanly and knifed down through cool depths that darkened from amber to amethyst as they caressed his whole body. Rising, he saw a long shape approach. Hiti, the family dolphin, had accompanied the party all day, playing tag with the hull but also, more and more, begging in every leap and fluke-flicker for somebody to come join him.
They broke surface together. The helmsman, Terai’s older son Ranu, brought the boat around in a rattle of jib, main, and boom. The girl he had invited along kept an arm around his waist. Likewise engaged were Terai’s second son, Ara, and, by her boyfriend, his older daughter, Mari. Slender, lithe, tawny skins aglow, dark hair tossing, scantily dressed or nude, they all made a pleasing sight along the rail. (Parapara had elected to spend this first of the school holidays at a party for children. Unspokenly, she seemed clear about the fact that at ten she was old enough to be perturbed by an erotic atmosphere which she was not yet old enough to share.)
‘Ahoy!’ Terai shouted. ‘Drop the hook and let’s have a swim!’
The group exchanged glances. ‘Well, Dad,’ Ranu called back, a touch embarrassedly, ‘I think we’d better get on in. We, uh, were planning – Anyway, I think we’d better.’
Terai grinned. What should I have expected? At their age, eight hours is a long time to be out sailing with a chap they can’t help thinking of as ancient. Fun while it lasted, but now they want privacy to make love.
‘As you like,’ he replied, waving to show he was not offended. ‘I’ll stay for a bit, but you go ahead.’
‘Are you sure that’s wise, Father?’ Mari asked.
Terai swam closer. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I can still wrestle either of your brothers to the ground, three falls out of three; and here’s Hiti to carry me along if I should get tired.’
I can also still show your mother a hell of a good time; but I want a swim first. I’ve been too much away.
That was as the member of the Electoral College for his Uriwera tribe. The Queen was old and in failing health; the times were stormy; it was wise to debate in advance what person should next be honored by elevation to the throne, for the powers of the monarch were theoretically quite limited but in practice could be considerable if he or she fully used the moral force – the mana – of the office. Terai had repeatedly declined the request of the elders that he, as a magnate, represent Uriwera in Parliament. Not only would that have entailed his resignation from the Navy, but he had no taste for politicking, even the formalistic politics– by-consensus of a civilization as conservative as the Maurai. However, he felt he owed his tribe some service, over and above what he gave to the country as a whole.
Ranu laughed. ‘We might try that wrestling again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Very well, Dad, I’ll take the boat in. Uh, we may none of us be home for dinner.’
‘I’d be disappointed in you if you were,’ Terai said, and the craft left him amidst general merriment.
They’re good kids, he thought. I don’t suppose it’ll happen, unless maybe between Ranu and Alisabeta – youngsters want to explore before they settle down – but I’d be glad to see any of ours marry today’s sweetheart. He wrinkled his nose. Not like those I’ve watched too bloody often in the cities.
Why? he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time. Breakaway from old decencies, aping of foreign styles, belly-rumble about ‘moral corruption, when we keep the world locked up in a cage of outworn institutions,’ while recruitment for the Navy has dropped alarmingly low…. Oh, yes, the Power War was a shock; it showed me too that we aren’t angels. But it had to be fought – didn’t it? – if we were to pass a clean and safe planet on to those same children who now complain about what we did – and Lesu Haristi, it ended twenty years ago!
Hiti’s beak nudged him out of his thoughts. He felt thankful for that. Brooding wasn’t his nature, wherefore it hurt whenever he fell into it.
He and the dolphin romped on into the bay. Numerous boats were out. Those crews that spied him swung close to give a cheery hail. Reaching a reef, he went below, aided by his companion, to admire the formations and brightly colored fish. He could only stay underwater about three minutes at a time, but then, he was merely revisiting scenes familiar to him from many scuba dives.
What a beautiful, mysterious, protean Earth this was – and how heartbreakingly vulnerable!
A little weary after he finished, Terai got on
Hiti’s back and rode the last kilometer to the wharfs. There he climbed aboard his deserted yacht, found a treat of sliced ham for his steed, toweled himself dry, and donned shirt, trousers, sandals. The sun had gone behind the western clouds and he felt the need of more than bare skin or a sarong. Maybe, he thought, he was starting to show his years a mite, in other ways than gray hair and furrowed countenance.
The town was not large, primarily a marketplace plus a few minor industries. More like inhabitants of a remote island than the average modern N’Zealanner, Uriwera tribespeople generally preferred to live on separate family grounds scattered over a wide territory, holdings which gave them a substantial part of their support directly, as well as cash products. Those who had moved here from the hinterland left hard work and long hours to a handful of entrepreneurs.
Airy houses, their wood fancifully carved and painted, lined brick-paved streets that wound steeply uphill. Children played among pets, musical instruments and voices resounded from verandahs, laughter filled the tavern and dancing feet the plaza. Trees arched above, palm, kauri, matai, elm, where birds flitted and sang; flowers and vines surrounded nearly every dwelling; the evening was warmed by their perfumes and by savory kitchen odors.
Everywhere, kanakas and wahines greeted Terai. Several wished him to stop and gossip, or come inside for a drink, but he declined in polite, circuitous fashion. He wanted home, a rum toddy, his wife in bed, little Parapara to welcome when she returned, dinner before a log fire. Nevertheless the invitations pleased him. Some old-established families had gradually become half strangers to common folk, and surely the Lohannasos were as prominent as any. He, though, had succeeded in managing his property, his partnership in the Red Ox freight line, and his missions as an officer of naval intelligence, without losing the friends of his boyhood.
His house scarcely differed from theirs, either. It did command a magnificent view from a showplace garden, but except for its size was typical; and the cottages where the staff – mostly kinfolk – lived had their exact counterparts on many a farm or ranch. While the buildings included stables and kennels, as well as the workshop where Terai enjoyed making things, none were ostentatious. Beneath his roof he kept a jackdaw collection of objects from around the world, but that was nothing unusual either, in the globe-navigating Maurai Federation.
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