Orion Shall Rise

by Poul Anderson

  Orluk heard the latest bulletin, replaced his miniradio in its bag, and nodded, stonily satisfied. ‘We’ll see action before this day is done,’ he said. ‘They’re deploying field artillery, including a pair of fair-sized rocket launchers, while their foot are digging in.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Vanna whispered.

  An officer laughed. ‘Did you expect them to strew roses?’ he gibed.

  ‘Major, one does not address the reverend lady in that style,’ Orluk rapped.

  The man stiffened in his saddle. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘You will apologize to her, not me. She’s done more to hold this outfit together than any of you.’

  ‘Reverend lady, I was thoughtless. I abase myself.’

  ‘No, please,’ Vanna said. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least. I… I should not have spoken as I do. We must go on.’

  Orluk said, unwontedly awkward: ‘As a matter of fact, reverend lady, it should not be much of a fight. They seem to be the usual unprofessional Norrie militia, scarcely at more than battalion strength. I expect they’ll tease us with shells and sniping as we come in range. But two can play at that game, and we can call in a few fighter-bombers as well, if they get too troublesome. We may or may not find it worthwhile to root out their sharpshooters or reduce the fort.’

  ‘Sir,’ another officer said, ‘may I suggest we don’t delay for that? We’ve been lucky so far. A snowstorm could do us more harm, cause more delay, than some holdouts at our backs.’

  They had indeed been fortunate, Vanna reflected. Clear, stingingly crisp weather the whole way. No need for shovels or snowplows, because the Norrmen themselves had reopened the road after the last blizzard. On the other hand, though they were plainsmen, she didn’t think her dear, hardy boys would suffer unduly from anything the highlands could throw at them, or be unable to carry on. And the vernal equinox was only a few days off, the beginning of spring.…

  ‘Yes, probably,’ Orluk said. He laughed aloud. ‘How long since I was campaigning in mountains! How good to be back!’

  And how I understand him – now flowed upward in Vanna on a wave of affection.

  Almost, she could ignore the column that trotted, trudged, and rode on groaning wheels, through this defile and heavenward. Or else she could take them as another flowering of the Life Force, comely in their fashion. Leather creaked beneath her, muscles surged between her knees, a sweet smell of horse sweat softened the chill of the air, reins in a hand and mane rough under a palm when she stroked the beast confirmed her own aliveness. Filling the road, helmets nodded above uniforms, as rifles did across the shoulders of infantrymen; the lances of riders swayed like wheat before the wind, while pennons and banners made bright splashes. (O flags inscribed with honors! Her name was on one of them.) Wagons and field guns rumbled behind mules. The occasional armored car was almost jewel-like in its polished workmanship, at its distance among these distances. A sound rolled through the division, the reverberation of its advance, that she imagined would recall the sound of an incoming surf to those who had seen the ocean.

  On the right, a river brawled merrily in reply. Gray-green, it dashed brilliant sprays off rocks, swirled, eddied, surged. Beyond it, and to the left, the mountains reared, incredible in their steepness, their grandeur. Precipices, talus slopes, outthrusts stood blue-gray above snow that remained utterly white, save where sunlight sprang off it in diamonds or shadows lay blue as the sky overhead. She could not see either summit from here, but crowns gleamed before and behind, too splendid for arrogance.

  The sun had advanced far enough toward noon that it shone down into the gorge, on into her bloodstream. An eagle hovered up yonder.

  Iern told me of the Alps in Yevropea.

  How can it be wrong to rise high? Karakan Afremovek himself cited ancient records, how the spacefarers of those days saw the planet suddenly as our home in the cosmos, alive, infinitely precious.

  Flat, booming sounds echoed down between the rock walls from afar. ‘They’re enfilading our advance company,’ Orluk said. He might have been discussing a deal in cattle. ‘It’s supposed to retreat and draw them on, while we advance in close order. Hoot the bugles.’

  Word went back. Trumpets awoke to wildness. Echoes cried answer. A kind of muted roar went along the ranks, in which the shouts of sergeants were nearly drowned.

  ‘Now whatever happens, reverend lady,’ Orluk told Vanna, ‘you stay by Lieutenant Bayan here.’ To the young man: ‘Lieutenant, don’t forget, you are responsible for the proróchina’s safety. Don’t forget, either, she’s worth as much to us as any single corps we’ve got.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Vanna protested. ‘Please –’ Pain jagged through her. Us? Our aim? Destruction of those spaceships. Yes, true, we cannot let the heedless Norrmen lay hand on all Earth. But could we ourselves not, later – we, and you of Skyholm, Iern –?

  ‘Look there!’

  The cry brought Vanna’s gaze aloft. Something flew. It gleamed silver against azure, a maned head and a long tail, heart-stoppingly lovely.

  Orluk shaded his eyes and peered. ‘A rocket of theirs,’ he said. ‘Well, we know they don’t have but a few, and that bugger’s poorly aimed. We may not take any casualties at all from it.’

  Rocket, Vanna thought. What would Orion have been like, rising?

  The sky exploded.

  She crept back to herself and to her feet. Naked, she rose. The blast had stripped the garments from her, as it dashed her against the road. Asphalt clung to the smashed bones of her left arm, from which its moltenness had eaten off the flesh.

  First she must set the agony aside. It seemed that nothing existed but agony, that the fire would burn her forever. From somewhere infinitely deep she raised a mandala. It had the form of Earth, small, cool, blue, amidst the stars of space. The mantra that sounded around it was Living, dancing, forever love. Living, dancing, forever love. …

  As she returned to herself, she saw smoke blow off sprawled black unshapes. Vapors roiled above the river, though it had ceased boiling.

  Other things were crimson, swollen, cooked but not yet dead. They staggered or crawled about, making noises.

  Vanna heard them only dimly. She thought her eardrums must be broken. Her right eye was missing, too; she fumbled a finger into the socket, then withdrew her touch from the jelly beneath and the char and protruding bone beneath that. Her left eye saw through a blur, but clearly enough, what the rest of her was like.

  No matter. She shambled off, searching through the dust and ash that drifted under a cloud like a mountain-high fungus. A dark spatter on the ground, as if of wings – the eagle, hurled from heaven? – no, likelier a man’s head split open, and his burned brains. Forms mewled at her feet. She went on downward. Farther from ground zero might be some who could understand her.

  She found them after a while. One had no face. He sat cradling in his arms a comrade who had little skin, but who could see and croak, ‘It’s her, I think, the Good Lady, I think.’

  Vanna sat down with them. Because of her left hip joint, she could not assume lotus position, and because of having just a single hand, she could not properly bless them. However –

  ‘Peace, and we return ourselves to Gaea. Peace, and we return ourselves to Gaea, to That Which we are, to Her Who is us. It is done in beauty, it is done in beauty –’ She strangled on her words and died.

  3

  The auditorium was packed, seats and aisles, stares and stares and stares. Ventilation could not carry away body heat or body smells; air grew stifling and loud with breath. Afoot near the entrance, Iern and Ronica looked down across what seemed almost a single shadowed mass, to the stage. There light glared.

  Eygar Dreng stood at a microphone. His wide shoulders were hunched, and the words dragged out of him. At his back, two banners were spread across the wall: the green (for forests alive) and white (for purity of mountains) of the Northwest Union; the wolf and his broken chain of this Lodge.

  ‘– no more information has rea
ched me as of now. I repeat, yesterday the Mong invasion was halted by the annihilation of every force they had in our eastern Rockies. Tactical nuclear weapons accomplished this. The troops were the pick of the regiments, and it seems unlikely that more can be fielded for a long time. Reports are coming in of consternation throughout their homelands.’

  No triumph was in his tone: ‘Our news monitors are also receiving accounts of horror and fury around the … civilized world. In Vittohrya, the Chief denied any foreknowledge or complicity by our government, pledged full cooperation with the Maurai, and called on every Norrman to help find and kill the guilty parties. It seems, though, that no mobs are storming Wolf halls or attacking members. Instead, I’ve heard an account or two of celebration in the streets. In Wellantoa, the Queen and Prime Minister issued a joint statement – Oh, shit, you know what they said as well as I do, and the same for everybody else.’

  He straightened. ‘Yes, those were Wolf units posted in the East, at exactly those points where the Mong could be expected to enter. I didn’t know that myself until today, but it would not have been hard to arrange. Nor did I know that any of the nuclear fuel for Orion had been diverted to weapons. And supposing this was a necessary backup for us, I don’t know why a party under flag of truce did not arrange a demonstration for the Mong, instead of slaughtering them by the tens of thousands. Well, true, they did pose a first-order threat, and I am not a military man.

  ‘I’m going to turn this platform over to Captain Mikli Karst of Naval Intelligence, chief of our security operations. He has said he’ll tell us more.’

  Eygar stumped off the stage. Mikli sprang onto it.

  He was in dress uniform, medals aglisten, himself vibrant with victory. He seized the microphone as if it were a weapon and brought his wolf-gray head close to it. His free hand gestured –waved, pointed, chopped, cut – while his voice rang:

  ‘Okay, ladies and gentlemen, comrades in Orion, I’ll explain why. Afterward you can tear me to pieces if you choose, because I, I have been the prime mover behind it all. Not alone, of course, but the instigator, the arranger, the encourager when the going got tough, the man finally responsible … and damned proud to be!’

  The audience moaned. It sounded orgasmic.

  ‘Almost from the start,’ Mikli hammered at them, ‘I saw we might well find ourselves in a desperate situation. In fact, that was a great deal likelier than not. Orion always was a gamble, by brave men and women willing to risk everything for freedom. Did you, my comrades, and did our country and our cause not deserve what insurance we could devise against catastrophe?

  ‘What is so awful about atomic energy? It’s cleaner and safer than coal or synfuel; it’s equal to the long-range requirements of a high industrial civilization, which solar energy is not; it’s our key to the stars. Your parents knew this, and tried to bring it back for peaceful use. The Maurai crushed them, because it would have upset their own cushy dominance. You know the truth yourselves. That’s why you’ve been building Orion, to free your countrymen and the human race.

  ‘Then I ask you, what is so bad about a limited use of nuclear weapons? Is a man less dead with a spear or a bullet through him? Does it hurt less to get hit by shrapnel or a flamethrower? What have we got, what have we had through the centuries but a taboo? It was the ancestors of the Maurai who gave us that word, you know: taboo, a senseless prohibition.’

  Mikli let his statement sink in before he proceeded in quieter wise.

  ‘No, we are not about to throw multimegatonne weapons around the globe and bring on a new Doom. We would not do that, and besides, we haven’t the means. What we have done, what we propose to do, is simply defend ourselves.

  ‘The Mong, like the Maurai, were unprovoked aggressors. In the Power War, free men and women fought to defend their homes and liberties. They failed, not for want of courage, but because their hands were tied – by taboo. And at least that was a one-front war. This time, as always, we had not the manpower to hold our eastern frontiers against the Mong while the Maurai were at our throats in the West – not unless we gave our few defenders what they needed to make their devotion tell.

  ‘Director Dreng asked, reasonably enough, why our action was not to fire a single such weapon where the enemy would see and be warned. He is understandably shocked. Events and his many responsibilities have given him no chance to think about this question. I hope you will do so now, Eygar Dreng. Put that fine mind of yours back to work. And you likewise, my companions in Orion.

  ‘I give away no secret in reminding you that our supply of such weapons is limited. Most of what fissionables we could scrounge over the years is tied up here, waiting to raise Orion. Given a warning, the Mong would doubtless have withdrawn… and been free to try a different strategy. Meanwhile the Maurai and, yes, our own government would have had warning too. They would have reacted. Instead of an overwhelming feat of arms, which does indeed seem to have united all our peoples behind the Wolf Lodge, we would have had indecisiveness – counterattack – quite possibly, Norrman against Norrman, while the tyrants gloated in Wellantoa.

  ‘As is, we have terminated the eastern threat for as long as we shall need. Like our forebears of old, we have rolled back the Mong midnight from our homeland. Now we are free to deal, once and forever, with the Maurai.’

  Cheers began to sound.

  Mikli signaled. ‘Let me bring before you a man who can say more about war in a dozen words than I can in a thousand – Colonel Arren Rogg, cadre commandant of the heroes who held the Laska Peninsula for us, and still hold it!’

  A big person lumbered onstage. He pointed to his empty right sleeve. ‘I left this flipper in a valley south of here, where we bushwhacked the enemy,’ he said without dramatics. ‘Not much for me to lose, when so many fine young men left their lives in the same place. Those Maurai marines fought well, I’ve got to admit. They did not die cheap. A lot of graves are out there this morning, along with the fellows still alive, still on guard. I wish we’d had nukes then. I think the dead and the living and their kinfolk wish it too. If we need to meet another attack like the last, and us without reinforcement, we’d better have nukes.

  ‘Thank you.’ He limped back down.

  A roar followed him.

  Mikli shouted into it: ‘Are we really sorry, friends? Sure, it was regrettable, but which would you rather be, a killer or a slave? And I have battlefront reports, news to share with you. Identifications are in for most of the Mong regiments that were wiped out. If you’ve read your history, or listened to your parents and grandparents when you were a kid, you’ll remember them. They killed plenty of Norrfolk in their day, they, the pride of the Mong. And now their core is gone. Hear the list: Whirlwind, Faithful Shepherd, Dragon, Sons of Oktai, Bison –’

  Ronica snatched after Iern’s hand. He stood absolutely motionless.

  ‘– St. Ivan’s – those the main ones, but lesser allies as well – gone, gone, gone!’

  The crowd was on its feet, stamping till the concrete reverberated, waving fists on high, screaming.

  Mikli’s amplified voice interwove: ‘– power – let the niggers learn from what happened to the gooks – yes, I say to you, we shall overcome – we have the might; the warning has been given – the future is ours – Orion shall rise!’

  Iern wrenched free of Ronica and made his way out the door. She gasped, looked after him, started to follow, then pulled her lips together, folded her arms, listened and watched.

  4

  The builders of the site had provided a common room for religious and meditational services, with three nichelike chapels, Yasuan, Jewish, Buddhist. Nothing was large, because congregations never would be; pagans held their ceremonies outdoors or at home. Then somehow a tiny chamber elsewhere, little more than a volcanic bubble smoothed out, came into the hands of a few Old Christians, who made it theirs. It could hold perhaps twenty worshipers, though it seldom did.

  Plik found himself quite alone when he entered. The vault was silent,
cold, full of shadows; it had only a single fluorescent plate in the ceiling, thirty centimeters square, while light from the corridor outside must seep in past a grille of withes. Wooden too were the chairs. Cushions for kneeling lay upon them, together with prayer books, for the damp stone floor would have rotted leather and paper. The walls, plastered, bore frescoes of lily patterns, dim and hard to make out. Opposite the entrance, a communion rail ran before an altar that was a block of native basalt. On either side stood empty candleholders. The vessels upon a homespun altar cloth were bone. The crucifix above was carved from driftwood, crudely, yet with a sense of how the contours strained in the sea-bleached material.

  A holy water font at the entrance was equally rough, a soapstone dish on an oaken pedestal. Plik signed himself. He went in, genuflected, found a candle, dropped an offering in a box, planted the taper and lit it with a piston lighter – a Maurai import. In the murk around, the flame burned star-small.

  Plik knelt on the bare floor before the rail, put his hands together and bowed his head above them. Thinly clad and thinly fleshed, he shivered.

  After a time he rose. He unslung the guitar that had been across his back, strummed a few notes, and sang to its accompaniment, very low, while he confronted the crucifix:

  ‘Lord beyond eternity,

  Fountainhead of mystery,

  Why have You now set us free?

  ‘You, Who unto death were given,

  By Yourself, that we be shriven,

  See, Your world will soon lie riven.

  ‘After Easter, need we dread

  Fire and ice when we are dead?

  Hell indwells in us instead.

  ‘From our hearts we raise a tower

  Wherein sullen monsters glower.

  Save us from our hard-won power!

  ‘You Who raged within the sun

  When no life had yet begun,

  Will You let it be undone?