Orion Shall Rise

by Poul Anderson

  ‘And turn ourselves into another satellite of yours, same as our Southwestern kinfolk? All right, tell me this. How many people every year, around the world, live in ignorance and squalor, and die of starvation or sickness, because you damned smugmugs won’t allow the world a productive technology?’

  ‘Tanaroa, woman! We’re doing what we can, and we’d do better if we didn’t have to mount guard on the likes of you, but the fact is that Earth, the biosphere, can’t afford –’

  Wairoa raised a palm. ‘I suggest we spare the rhetoric,’ he said coolly. ‘Everybody here has heard it before.’ Through the silence that fell, his question thrust: ‘How have you maintained secrecy for two whole decades?’

  ‘Organization,’ Ronica said. Plainly, she was glad to be relieved of the fight that had been building. ‘Mikli tells me we could never have gotten away with it in ancient days, but no intelligence corps now has the equipment or the expertise they did back then. And the actual Orion site is under the Leutian Mountains of Laska. They’re not just isolated; enough of them are volcanic to mask stuff like heat emission.’

  Terai winced. ‘I came so close, once –’

  ‘You must have conducted numerous tests,’ Wairoa persisted.

  ‘Well, yes, of course. Nearly all of them underground – developing the bombs, for instance.’ Ronica grinned. ‘The locals expect to hear an occasional loud noise and maybe feel a tremor.’

  Wairoa nodded. The sunlight sickled across his tiger-striped hair. ‘Indeed. Vented radioactivity would be too slight to notice, when no one knew any reason to monitor a background count that varies naturally. But your test launch, that is another story, no?’ It was chilling how still he sat. ‘The Wolf chieftains are aware that the Maurai have learned that somebody is collecting fissionables. They must realize that a global alert for fallout is a logical consequence of this knowledge. How could they hope to escape detection of their shot?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ Ronica said. ‘Well, the planners prepared for the worst case. Given the spotty detection network, how can you pinpoint the source? You can suspect Norrmen are responsible, and you can get kind of nasty about it, but how are you going to identify and catch a person who really has information?

  ‘Go ahead and search,’ she defied his corps. ‘It’ll be a long hunt, because you’ve not got what it takes to comb our country from end to end in a hurry. Meanwhile, seeing as how this test was successful, I doubt we’ll have many more. We should, but you don’t leave us the option and maybe on that account we’ll lose a few ships, a few lives.’ It rang forth: ‘So all right, even if my life is among them. Before you can find us, Orion shall rise.’

  A wintry tingle went through Iern. Bon Deu, I didn’t imagine what I was committing myself to!

  Where Terai stared like a sick man, Wairoa pursued: ‘What is the military purpose of this? It must be military.’

  Ronica nodded. She had gone as stern as he. ‘Because of you, yes, that’s the first objective. To win for us Norries the freedom to be ourselves again.

  ‘Iern, Skyholm inspired the idea. All by itself, it controls Franceterr, because nothing can strike at it and it can strike at anything. What of higher ground yet?

  ‘We’re building ten Orion spacecraft, twice what we estimate we’ll need. Allow for misfortune. What we do put into Earth orbit – their crews can follow the movements of single vessels down below. Their carrying capacity will be enormous; with the system we’ve developed, a kilo of uranium or plutonium will boost something like seventy-five tonnes. How’d you like a weight – shaped, pinpoint-guided – dropped on you at meteorite speed? We figure one such object, a few tonnes’ mass, hitting the ocean, would sink every ship for ten kilometers around. And lasers – we’ll deploy solar-collector mirrors, to power Skyholm-type lasers, but bigger. Precision lightning bolts, my friend!

  ‘And there will not be a single God damned thing you can do about it.’

  Silence. Ronica sat back. After a time she raised her glass to her lips and, having drunk, said very softly: ‘Not that we want revenge or any such nonsense. We assume the Maurai have the wit to know when they’re beaten. After Orion is aloft and we’ve performed a demonstration or two on uninhabited targets, we take it for granted you’ll agree to live and let live. Then we can get on with the work we really want to do.’

  Silence. Terai and Wairoa looked at each other. Iern felt dizzy. Plik startled the company by speaking for the first time.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said around pipe and wineglass. His tone was almost calm. ‘Your proper business. To raise the Old Serpent and bring about the end of the world.’

  Ronica gave him a hard glance. ‘No,’ she said. ‘If anything, to save the world.’

  ‘Not as men have known it,’ Plik replied. ‘Including you, my dear; “man” embraces “woman.” No, the gods are doomed – everybody’s gods – and what new ones will come striding through their ashes, we shall not live to understand.’

  Throughout the furious talk that followed, he would say no more. He simply drank himself to sleep.

  2

  Ships to the northwest radioed warnings of a storm. The captain of the Graym Trader decided to steer around, following the coastline though with ample sea room, rather than make a direct run from the mouth of Wandy Fuca to Cook Inlet.

  On the fourth morning of the voyage, Iern came out on deck from the stateroom he and Ronica shared. She was napping after a post-breakfast romp; he lacked her feline ability to sleep almost at will, and went up for some fresh air.

  It had turned bitterly cold, that air, blowing from a murkiness in the west. It stung his face, flung salt on his lips, whined and hooted in the framework of the tower, where the vanes spun as if lashed frantic. Wrack blew like smoke under a leaden sky. The sea was leaden-hued also, save for foam on the thick waves and spume off their crests. The ship rolled and shuddered to their anger. Mountains thrust above the eastern horizon, their brutal outlines gone dim.

  Crewmen on watch stayed inside. Iern was astonished to see Terai at the starboard rail. The prisoners were no longer subjected to the indignity of restraints – what could they do, where could they flee? – except for being locked into their stateroom at night and having their guards occupy the adjacent cabin. However, they held aloof, appearing only at mealtimes and for exercise topside, seldom speaking to anybody. Iern couldn’t blame them.

  Moved by the loneliness of that big form, the Clansmen went to join Terai. ‘Good day,’ he ventured in Unglish.

  The Maurai grunted and continued staring landward.

  ‘Isn’t this weather hard on you?’ Iern asked. They both wore watch caps, pea jackets, and canvas trousers issued them, but Terai’s body strained his garments, and his feet, which could fit into no shoes aboard, perforce had a pair of thin shoreside slippers.

  He appeared to thaw a trifle. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Yesterday a sailor found me a set of long woolen underwear. It’s too tight and it itches, but it keeps me warm.’

  ‘They’re not such bad fellows, the Norrmen they?’

  ‘N-no, not as individuals.’ Terai hesitated. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve just begged half a kilo of butter from the cook.’ He took a hand briefly out of a coat pocket to show the cube in its waxed-paper wrapping. ‘The extra calories will help me survive those unheated quarters.’

  ‘Oh? I never heard –’ Iern broke off. Maybe the idea was true, maybe it was superstition, or maybe the Oceanian race had a metabolism unlike his. Whatever he said might give offense, as edgy as the captive must be.

  ‘Most people mean well,’ Terai added. ‘I haven’t met many I’d call evil. The causes they can serve, though, that’s where the evil is.’

  ‘Well, obviously you, in your position, you can’t approve of Orion. And yet, well, you’ve learned it isn’t diabolical, like a nuclear weapon, or a direct threat to your country.’ Iern essayed a smile. ‘The Northwesterners will never be imperialists. They’re too – ornery, is that their word? Trying to make a conquer
ing army out of them would be like herding cats.’

  Terai gave him a glare. ‘Don’t you know what poison those bloody ships of theirs will spew across the world?’

  ‘You heard Ronica’s data. The contamination will be negligible compared to –’

  Terai’s words trampled Iern’s down: ‘Do you imagine they’ll stop with a single set of launchings? And supposing they get their way, they’ll loot the planet and rape the biosphere same as their ancestors did. And they’ll build nuclear powerplants – breeder reactors, fusion generators – and others will have to do likewise, but of fear if nothing else, and soon there’ll be bombs again –’ The Maurai swallowed an uneven breath. ‘Son,’ he declared, ‘I’m not a historian or a philosopher, but I’ve seen considerable of this globe and the people on it, and I can tell you one absolute certainty. Whenever a capability exists, it will be used.’

  ‘No,’ Iern argued, ‘you’re the ignorant one. Ronica’s told me about the safeguards they mean to establish after the, the liberation.’

  ‘Whereupon they’ll overthrow your enemies for you at home and you’ll live happily forevermore,’ Terai leered. ‘That’s what’s bought you, isn’t it? That, and your lady love’s delectable carcass. Well, she’s not the first who whored for a gang of conspirators. Listen, and I’ll give you a few surprises about what your precious Norrmen have been at in your Domain –’

  Fury exploded through Iern. ‘Shut your filthy mouth!’ he shouted. ‘Before I kill you!’

  Terai took his great hands forth and waited grimly. A ghost of reason whispered to Iern beneath the thunderclaps, Don’t try, you can’t, and besides, his words don’t mean anything, they’re merely a cry of pain. He turned his back and stalked away, around and around the deck until calm should return. Terai stood in place for a while, regarding him, then went below.

  Faylis screamed and fled down the sky, but she was the moon and the wolf that will devour the moon was at her heels. Blood of battle reddened the snow that had lain on the ground through years of unending winter. Ravens tore at corpses. The tree in which Iern crouched helpless had frozen to death; it branches reached stark across a heaven where the sun was guttering out. Now the dolmens gave up their dead, now from the North a black ship fared, while out of the sea rose a snake, writhing till the waters boiled, spewing venom in a fog. Skyholm was falling, each moment more near, more enormous, the noise of its coming shook all Earth so that the slain men trembled on the snow, and behind Skyholm the stars fell, trailing fire, and each of them wailed –

  ‘What the hell?’ Ronica exclaimed. ‘Darling, wake, something’s happening.’

  She shook him. He had the upper bunk. He groped his way to awareness of her, a shadow in the murk of the tiny room but a real, solid, sane hand and a breath of woman-smell. A fresh cry, a tattoo of hasty feet, yanked him alert. He swung from under his blankets and dropped to the deck. It was chill beneath his soles.

  ‘Let’s see.’ Ronica opened the door a crack and peered out. Light from the corridor spilled yellow across her mane and bare skin. ‘Nobody. The trouble’s topside.’ She glided forth. He followed.

  Another door sagged half-splintered. Wairoa stood in the cabin behind. The adjoining door swung to and fro as the ship rolled, but neither of the guards was there. Mikli emerged from his quarters, bristle-haired, attired in a nightgown. Wairoa saw him and stepped back inside. Plik was in too boozy a sleep to be aroused.

  A howl rolled down the companionway, together with a frigid blast. A voice followed: ‘Ma-an overboard!’

  Ronica bounded up the ladder. When Iern emerged too, he found added lights being turned on. Their glimmer picked out drops of a rain that was half sleet, flying on the wind. The cold struck fangs in him. Amidships, the guards stood in their pajamas at the port rail, gripping pistols, squinting down. The night lookout slumped nearby on his knees, face a mask of blood that dripped onto the planks. A fourth sailor and the captain approached; they had flung on jackets and trousers. A fifth was evidently at a searchlight which probed from the deckhouse roof, while the steersman in the bridge had reversed the screws. The ship lurched toward a stop.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Ronica demanded through the keening of the air.

  ‘The big Maurai,’ said a guard. ‘He’s overboard.’

  ‘You, you, you.’ The captain pointed. ‘Take the lifeboat. Orik, you stand by to throw a lifering if we see him in the water.’

  ‘What went on?’ Iern asked through a sudden sickness.

  Mikli plucked at his arm. ‘That’s what we’ll have to find out,’ the intelligence officer said. ‘Meanwhile, none of us is much use. Go below again. We don’t need a case or two of pneumonia added to our problems.’

  Chon Till, captain of the Graym Trader, could almost have been a native of southeastern Merica. In him, the African strain that had for the most part diffused throughout the general Northwestern population manifested itself anew: brown skin, kinky hair, broad nose and lips. He was no impoverished barbarian, though, but very much a man of the Wolf Lodge. He had actually donned a uniform tunic, blue with ivory buttons, for his inquiry.

  He glowered around the saloon. Outside its stuffy warmth, wind yowled, sea whooshed and rumbled, hail tapped on glass. Inside, an electric lamp shone dull from the overhead. Seated around the table with him were Mikli, Iern, Ronica, and, opposite him for a direct confrontation, Wairoa.

  ‘I’ve interviewed the witnesses among the crew,’ he snapped, and ticked points off on his fingers. ‘The men on guard duty heard a loud noise that roused them. They were prompt to respond, but apparently Lohannaso had broken his door open in a single rush and started running. The guards glimpsed him headed up the companionway. One pursued, the other quite properly stayed to keep Haakonu under control – until he heard the “Man overboard,” at which point he also went on deck. The lookout saw Lohannaso burst into the open, dashed to intercept him, and has a broken nose for his trouble. He’s too dazed to be sure what came next. Maybe the Maurai slipped and fell over the side, maybe he jumped. I want to know which.’

  ‘How do you propose to interrogate a dead man?’ Mikli scoffed.

  Till raised his brows. ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’

  ‘We’re been searching for more than an hour. He’s a strong swimmer, but – how long would you guess a man can survive in this water before the cold kills him, Ronica?’

  The woman shrugged, though sorrow dwelt on her face. ‘Half an hour, maybe, give or take some,’ she replied. ‘In his case, I’d take; he’s not a white man, nor used to subarctic temperatures.’

  ‘He could have stayed afloat long enough,’ Till said. ‘We’d soon have gotten to him, especially if he hollered. The question in my mind is whether he struck his head on a strake or something like that and immediately went under, or whether it was deliberate suicide, or – or whatever else.’ He fixed his gaze on Wairoa. ‘What have you to tell, Haakonu?’

  The response might have come from a machine: ‘The noise of the lock breaking woke me. I saw him go through. He was enormously strong; it would have been easy for him. By the time I was out of my bunk, men were dashing around so busily that I deemed it best to stay where I was.’

  ‘But you were his friend!’ ripped from Iern. ‘You must know what he wanted, what made him do it.’ Poor Terai. His stories about his home, that he told by our campfires in the woods, made me hope to visit him there someday. I should write to his widow –when they let me, after Orion has risen….

  ‘I do not read minds,’ Wairoa said. ‘Like everybody else, I saw him brooding. He may have decided he would rather die.’

  ‘No,’ Ronica declared. ‘Never. He had too much life in him.’

  ‘Besides,’ the captain said, ‘the witnesses told me he was fully clad. If he intended suicide, why should he take that trouble beforehand?’

  Mikli scratched in his beard. ‘You never know about suicides.’ he observed. ‘They do the most peculiar things. I knew a physician who contracted an inoperabl
e cancer. Perhaps he could have been saved if we were allowed to manufacture radioisotopes. As was, he gave himself a lethal injection. First he sterilized the needle.’

  ‘And Terai did belong to an alien culture,’ Iern said, however it hurt. ‘A situation like this might drive a Maurai over the brink. Is that possible, Wairoa?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the man with the mask.

  Ronica slammed a fist on the table. ‘No, God damn it,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve been exposed to plenty of Maurai in my time, and I know a real he-man when I meet one, too, and in Terai’s case it is not possible. What are you holding back, Wairoa?’

  The reply was whispery: ‘He did not confide in me. If you are thinking of drugs or torture as means to find out whether I lie, please be advised that my peculiar constitution will make it a waste of your effort.’

  Ronica grimaced. ‘Krist, what sort of swine do you suppose we are?’

  An idea came to excite Iern. ‘I have a suggestion,’ he said. ‘You remember I made an unlikely sort of escape myself. Terai may have hoped to do similarly. If he could – well, disable the lookout, throw heavy things to put anybody else out of action for a few minutes, lower the lifeboat –’

  ‘And row from us?’ Till derided. ‘Let’s imagine he raised the mast and sail before we got organized. A mighty big imagining, if you ask me. He’d still have only a fraction of our hull speed.’

  ‘But it’s a dark and wild night,’ Iern argued. ‘He was a physical prodigy. He just might have carried it off, and eluded you for the hour or two he’d need. How far are we from land?’

  ‘About five nautical miles. That’s to a chain of islands. Beyond is the Inside Passage, and the mainland beyond it. Everything wilderness, scarcely an inhabitant anywhere, for at least a thousand kilometers in any direction.’

  ‘The boat carries stores and equipment. Sir, I realize it’d be a gamble against astronomical odds, but I can picture Terai deciding that cast of the dice against his life was worth it, if conceivably he could get to his people and tell them what they need to know to stop Orion. He wouldn’t have told you, Wairoa. Why involve you, when you could scarcely help him? Better to leave you in reserve against his likely failure.’