Vittohrya was very nearly the opposite of Seattle. A cultural and, to a lesser degree, political rather than a commercial center, it preserved (or had in the course of centuries regained) the legendary graciousness it had possessed before the Doom War. What ancient buildings survived had been lovingly restored; most new architecture was in harmony with them; parks and gardens were everywhere. Ronica showed Iern about, historic sites, viewpoints, museums, the university she had attended. Each evening they enjoyed a presentation – concert, ballet, Injun dance – before going back to their hotel and enjoying each other.
And yet, he came to see, ‘very nearly opposite’ was superficial, misleading. Folk might tend to be more cultivated and less bustling here, but the same demon of energy and will dwelt in them. He saw it in breakneck boat races, swimming, ball games; in the tense curve of a bridge or a statue; in Venturers’ Hall, where reports arrived daily of prospects for profit around the globe; in crowded, noisy, smoky taverns, as beer went down by the liter and distilled spirits followed close behind; in walls that bore scars of street fighting during the Power War and later riots; in the free-swinging gait of man and woman alike.
In the glowers and curt responses given what few uniformed Maurai he noticed.
‘I feel sorry for them,’ he admitted once when he and Ronica were by themselves. That must be some of the loneliest duty on Earth.’
‘I s’pose,’ she answered. ‘Inspectorate personnel are spread almighty thin. Of course, I’ll bet you silver to skunk cabbage that a lot of so-called Maurai sailors, business people, scholars, and tourists are undercover agents.’
‘What sort of treatment do they usually get?’
‘Depends. Some among us still won’t speak to one, unless you count spitting on the street as he walks by. Some are cold and correct. Most, nowadays, are willing to meet an individual halfway and give him whatever he deserves. And some fawn on them.’
‘Surely genuine friendships happen, even affairs and marriages.’
‘Oh, sure. Bound to. Speaking of which –’ She reached for him.
– They moved to a housekeeping cabin the Wolf Lodge owned and spent the rest of the month there. It stood by itself in a lovely place on the west coast. Land dropped steeply to the sea, forest dreamed, mountains reared behind. They had ample supplied, books, radio, phonograph and music library, boat, fishing tackle. When they wished to explore elsewhere, they took bicycles over several kilometers of trail to a dirt road where a bus stopped. Ordinarily their quest was into natural splendors, for the great island was lightly populated, but sometimes they found themselves in a fisher village and its cheerful pub.
By then Iern could talk, less and less haltingly each time. Ronica made him learn Unglish by insisting they use nothing else for at least half of every day. Among others he stayed mute, until toward the end she decided they could safely call him sufficiently recovered to speak a few cordial words in a voice which had not yet gotten back a natural intonation. She continued to carry on the actual conversations for both of them, shifting easily from truthful reminiscence to shameless prevarication.
These were a hardy, hearty folk. From low little houses, built strong against gales, they set forth in low little boats to reap the ocean. Among the headstones in the graveyards stood memorials to those who never came back; centuries had eroded away many names but no courage. The lucky men returned to their wives, who had been working at least as hard, and their children, who also had tasks but always attended school. They returned to a church, for most of them believed in Yasu; perhaps a general store, and certainly a tavern, though it be but a single room in the landlord’s home; bus, bicycle, or pony cart bringing them to larger communities where they found shops and a chapter house of whatever Lodge was theirs, though it be but a weathered cabin.
‘I like your people,’ Iern told Ronica, in their cottage. ‘The more I see of them, the better I like them –’
She smiled. Lamplight glowed amber across her hair and skin; shadows shifted, bringing out by turns the strong molding of her body, the deep cleft of her bosom. She was making dinner, and the air in the room was warm, aromatic, faintly resin-smoky. Windows were full of night, but the world came through them as a sound of surf, soughing in trees, call of an owl. ‘You like just about anybody,’ she said. ‘You’re that kind of guy.’
‘– but the less I understand them,’ he went on, from the chair where he sat admiring the view. She being infinitely the better cook, he washed dishes after meals. It was as reasonable a division of labor as her skillful splitting of firewood with a flint-headed ax on which she chipped a fresh edge as required, his carrying the sticks inside.
‘How so?’ She continued busy. The stone slab topping the brick stove was hot, water boiled in a vessel of heat-resistant glass set over an opening above the fire, a synthetic-lined aluminum wok had received its oil and was ready for stir-frying.
He fumbled after words. ‘I don’t have the right terms, I can’t ask the right questions. But, oh, what seems completely contradictory – on the one hand, this outspoken individualism, the freehold farmer or the small businessman or the skipper who owns his own boat, those the ideal –’
‘My mother and stepfather have told me that people didn’t make such a fuss about it before the war. They took it for granted. Since, we’ve gotten the Maurai to react against.’
‘Well, but on the other hand, the Lodges, and members centering their lives on them – Or am I wrong about that?’
‘It’ll take a slew of explaining,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how well I can explain, seeing as how I grew up with it. You, looking in from the outside, might actually make a few things clearer to me. Let’s talk it over as soon as dinner’s on the table.’
He felt a sheerly intellectual thrill. By now he knew full well that she was not in any degree a barbarian. He did not know what she really was.
The Northwest Union was never founded as such; it grew. The name dated from the Assembly of Vittohrya, which formalized relationships already in existence, but another hundred years would pass before the last Territory joined.
In the dark and poorly chronicled era following the Doom War, their cities destroyed or dying on the vine, climate turned cold and stormy, nature itself fallen sick, their only outside contacts the Mong invaders, somehow those Northwesterners who survived rallied themselves to prevail. Out of the need to stand together, shoulder to shoulder and back to back, the Lodges evolved.
These people had always been both self-reliant and gregarious. They had had their churches, clubs, civic organizations, volunteer service groups, and the like. The oldest of the Lodges – Elk, Moose, Lion, Mason – traced their origins to the time before the catastrophe. They were nuclei and examples; but likewise were the remaining nonwhite aborigines, some of whom had kept a vestige of tribalism and now revived it in new forms. (This was almost the sole analogy to early Maurai history.)
The typical Lodge began as a male outfit for mutual help. Much of that was of a military or constabulary character. In region after region, a Lodge became a militia, recruiting, training, procuring and storing matériel, building and garrisoning strong points, and fighting when called upon. Add to this its civilian functions. It organized medical and fire-protection teams, provided for the aged and disabled and bereaved, salvaged what it could of books and other relics, set up schools for the children, exerted social pressure toward civilized behavior. Rituals, costumes, initiations, ranks, mystique gave its members strength to endure; such things were both recreation and re-creation. Membership was always voluntary, because for a long time the ghosts of the old United States and Canada haunted the minds of men; but once a Lodge had arisen, few individuals wished to stay outside its shelter.
Gradually, fitfully, Lodges spread beyond their original homes. Members who moved elsewhere founded chapters, which stayed in touch and worked out a hierarchy for decision-making. The fraternities had always kept certain secrets, and their warlike functions had reinforced this tra
it. Eventually their top officers came to wield considerable power. It was not unlimited, for a disgruntled member could try to stir up a vote against it, or appeal to civil authority, or just resign. However, when it called upon the resources, economic and human, of a society whose chapters reached from the Bering Sea to Cape Mendocino, and which had investments in everything from farms to intercontinental trading companies, that power became intense.
Apart from some aboriginal tribes which had taken the name, a Lodge was not identified with a Territory. Geographically, Lodges interpenetrated. In early centuries, members of the same one might occasionally find themselves on opposite sides of a firing line. (The period rarely saw a clean-cut situation of Mericans versus Mong. Rather, there were intermittent clashes between different quarrelsome and usually short-lived little polities. When Norrman fought Norrman or Mong fought Mong, he was apt to seek allies among the aliens. Complexities and treacheries were numberless. Then during spells of peace, powerful families made advantageous marriages across borders, trade in goods and ideas grew brisk, a brilliant center of art and learning might develop and attract as many foreign as domestic admirers.)
Fraternity did, though, tend to mitigate strife and draw kindred together. The upshot was that the Norrmen stood off the Mong, drove them back from the eastern mountains, and in the course of doing so forged a new, eventually unified civilization.
In that civilization, most things a man did were of his personal choice. He shared in the bulk of public business through his Lodge. Not much was left for the state to do, and he preferred matters be that way.
He; or she. Since before the Doom, Northwesterners had borne a tradition of equal political rights for the sexes. Few communities of theirs ever lost it, and those regained it afterward. A ballot might be meaningless in the age of the folk-wanderings, but the labor and marksmanship of a wife meant everything, and she was entitled to her voice in township council. From the beginning, Lodges recognized their ‘ladies’ auxiliaries’ as essential to survival. As times grew less desperate, childbearing grew less urgent, while simultaneously activities in which women could fully participate became more important. Piecemeal, Lodges admitted them to first-class membership. (‘They were already telling their husbands how to vote, anyway,’ Ronica laughed.)
Nowadays, when members of two different Lodges married –which happened more often than not – or a member married an outsider – which was becoming fairly common – it was usual for one to adopt the affiliation of the other. Usual, but not compulsory. A person might not wish to sever old ties, or go through a second postulancy.
The ordinary member paid dues, performed service-type duties, took part in rituals and celebrations. He or she might stand for office, or might become a salaried employee. The rewards of membership were, first and foremost, solidarity, a sense of heritage, an ideal of mutual helpfulness; schooling, insurance, medical care, housing when away from home; recreational and research facilities; the inner glow that came from free-will service; color, pageantry, fun.
And sometimes more.
The Wolf Lodge originated around Mount Hood, an area which the Mong never reached and where defense against native troublemakers was comparatively easy. Thus it was less concerned with war than with restoring order and productivity, while preserving as much material of the lost civilization as possible. It took its fair share in the general defense, but: supplied a disproportionate number of officers, especially technical and staff officers. Later it provided many teachers, engineers, physicians, and similarly well-trained people, demand for whose work caused chapters to spread like dandelion seeds. Prestige allowed it to be more selective than most about whom it admitted, and more demanding of them after they were initiated. To this day, its dues were the highest at every grade of membership, its interior pomp and public display almost the least, of any Lodge; yet none had members more influential, in technology, science, commerce, art, scholarship, the military, civic and national affairs.
It had its rites, of course, beginning with those customary at the start and end of a regular meeting. The most solemn was Return, when on Midwinter Eve a chapter met to remember its dead. Midsummer Day saw the pleasant ceremony of Honors. Revelry was in order following an initiation or an elevation in rank, as well as a wedding, christening, or golden anniversary. Funerals were stately, courts of dispute stern. The Wolves took part in communal festivities, though not very conspicuously, and maintained their philanthropies, schools, cultural and scientific activities, militia – in short, the usual –– plus their equally usual collective enterprises, their shares in private businesses, and their representation in the Grand Council.
On the whole, though, the Wolf Lodge, even more than most, expected its members to create their own livelihoods and lives. It gave help rather than support. It required effort as well as dues, and not too many questions asked. Democratic enough at the day-today chapter-house level, it was oligarchic and close-mouthed higher up. Members who did not like this continuation of what had been an obvious wartime necessity, twenty years ago, were free to complain, call for investigation or impeachment, or resign. Few had done so, and fewer yet had paid any attention to them. Among the Wolves, the ancient bonds of the pack remained as strong as the bonds between Captain and Aerogens had once been under Skyholm.
Hence this was the Lodge that had conceived of Orion, and still dominated the endeavor to make Orion rise.
4
Beneath a westering sun, waves flamed green, gunmetal, mercury. They rolled mightily landward, reared, and crashed in foam-fountains on cliffs. The wind that whistled over them deepened its noise to a roar when it entered the forest above. It thrust and flowed and swirled, it flung coldness, salt sting of spindrift, smells of kelp and distance. Gulls wheeled and mewed; black brant took wing as a sea otter swam close; farther out, from time to time one of a pod of migratory whales broached and then dived; a ship slipped under the horizon but her sails remained in sight like a memory.
Evergreen boughs tossed dark against a sky where clouds flew in streaks. The wind tore scraps of yellow, red, bronze off broadleaf trees and sent them whirling away to their fates. A strip of turf along the cliff edge where Iern and Ronica sat was thick, harshly fragrant, tawny with autumn.
They had been for a tramp through the woods and had stopped on their way back to rest and watch the whales go by. After several minutes he glanced sideways at her. She had drawn up her knees and clasped hands across them. Her gaze had wandered from the waters and gone northwestward – toward home or toward heaven? It was a somehow blind stare. Her lips drooped.
He touched her sleeve. The wool of the mackinaw was rough beneath his fingers. ‘You look sad,’ he offered.
She turned her face to his. Her hair was coiled in braids, but a lock had escaped from her watch cap and fluttered on her brow. He had never seen a more endearing sight. ‘Oh, do I?’ she asked as if coming slowly awake.
‘You’ve been like that all day. You’ve tried hard to conceal it and be jolly, but I’ve come to know you a little, Ronica.’
She sighed. Her smile was pensive. ‘Well, okay, why not be frank? I’m sorry this will soon end.’
Dismay smote him. ‘No, it can’t! Mustn’t!’
‘Been a wonderful month, right? None better in my life. But I can’t go on parasitizing forever. I’ve work to do, kinfolk – the Lodgemaster and I agreed beforehand I’d get a month’s vacation with you. That was fine by me.’ The green eyes were focused unwaveringly upon him. ‘I didn’t know, then, how hard it would be to say goodbye.’
For an instant he was dizzy, and blood in his ears shouted the wind out of them. ‘For how long?’ he croaked.
Pain crossed the strong-boned countenance. ‘No telling. I’ll try to get leave and rejoin you before … Orion rises … but – depends on how things go, how badly I’m needed. Don’t be afraid, Iern. You saved Wolf’s bacon in the air above Krasriaya, and the Lodge won’t forget. We dare not risk the Maurai finding out about you, beca
use you know too much, like the location I’ll be heading for, and there is no way in the world you could keep it from their drugs and doctors. But you’ll have a decent place to wait in, and afterward I dare hope we’ll help you return to your own.’
‘How long?’
‘A year, two years – I can’t tell. I’m only a junior engineer, and I’ve been absent for such a stretch –’
‘Am I supposed to wait –’ Abrupt rage exploded in Iern. He cracked fist into palm. ‘No, God damn it!’ he yelled in Unglish. ‘I’ll not stand for that! I love you too much!’
She gasped. ‘Oh, Iern, oh, Iern.’ And they were in each other’s arms.
– Laughing, while tears glistened on her cheekbones, she raised herself to an elbow and said unsteadily, ‘Okay, flyboy, you win. I kept telling myself it was just an infatuation. You were foreign to me, exciting on that account, but also a great lay, a human being I could like and respect, and I’d been alone ever since – Well, anyhow, I was wrong. This turned into more than a party. I want to go on with you for always.’
‘And I you.’ He rolled over to nuzzle her in the hollow where throat met collarbones. She was smooth and warm and smelled of summers gone and summers to come. ‘It won’t be easy, Ronica. Besides the different nationalities – entire cultures – I am –’ He must force it out, even though it was to her and his face was hidden against her. ‘I’ve begun to see how childish I’ve been, my whole life. I won’t improve overnight.’
‘Aw, now.’ She rumpled his hair. ‘How about we get our pants back on before we freeze our buns off?’
They did, sat up, held hands, exchanged smiles and kissing motions. Wind, whales, chill, declining sun went unnoticed. ‘You’ll come along to Laska,’ she said happily. ‘I can wangle that. As a matter of fact, there’s no safer place to hide you.’
Orion Shall Rise Page 35
