The immensity swelled before Iern. It grew until it was like the whole Earth he had been orbiting. No, the moon, for it did not live. Nor did it have heights, plains, rilles, craters, mysteries. Behind its spiderweb ribs, it was only a horrible facelessness. Yet that was Skyholm, Skyholm.
He did not truly ken it, save in a remote sanctuary for those who mourn. The all of him was too engaged. Orion did not merely, blindly follow a trajectory. Too much had been unknown for such aiming. The aerodynamic controls were under his hands and he must use them, by guess, instinct, will; he himself must be the hurricane.
Push the stick, twist the wheel, flip the toggle, punch the button. Needles jittered across dials, computer displays snaked and trembled. Did he need another bomb to correct his path? No. The stratosphere shrieked. The hull shook and groaned. Heat went over him, a tidal wave. And still his target widened in sight.
It filled his vision and his being. There was naught else. Now.
Strange how slight the shock was, when Orion speared through the heart of Skyholm.
Nonetheless it threw the ship out of control. Iern’s blood surged to the spin. He saw Earth below him, awhirl. It sprang toward hugeness, as his prey had done before it died. Snowpeaks reached upward; or he might find his peace beneath yonder sea. The thickening air smashed at him. Its incandescence began to lay a hood across his eyes. His fingers flew, sending their word to motors, wings, and Ronica, where she crouched at the power board. But he could not regain command and he did not care, he, slayer of his heritage.
Thunder crashed.
It rolled from horizon to horizon, zenith to nadir and back again. Mountains took it up, cliff to crag. Birds staggered in flight. A fireball crossed the sky and vanished behind the Arctic Pole.
In its wake, Skyholm fell. Rags of fabric peeled off, tore loose, fluttered away on the thin winds high above. Sunlight rippled along them. The skeleton tumbled, over and over. When it reached the lower distances, it broke apart. Pieces flew in a hundred different shapes, a grotesque hail. Where they struck water, geysers fountained; where they struck soil, impact quivered through its mass; where they struck rock, it rang.
Stillness descended, until the rain arrived.
Ronica’s voice on the intercom fought its way across tumult: ‘We did it, huh, Iern? Goodbye. I love you. Thank you for loving me.’
If we – our children – I wish – No, I will not surrender her!
Within the Stormrider lifted a resolve to do what he had believed was impossible. He never knew how it happened. He did not really come back to himself until he had made Orion rebound off dense layers, in leaps that took her halfway around the world, had climbed on a fresh nuclear blast, regained orbit, and circled at rest.
In the hush that followed, he could weep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Where we are, it’s like seeing Earth reborn,’ said the man from space. ‘Utterly beautiful, peaceful, as if it would bear fruit that was never sown.…’
‘We’re at sunrise again,’ said the woman. ‘Wings of light over tall clouds; they make me remember an eagle that flew by a waterfall once in an upland wilderness.…’
Radio relays afloat and ashore bore their words across the globe.
‘Hear us,’ Iern pleaded. ‘We’ve had time to think, these past days while we soared around and around our planet, everybody’s planet. I suppose you have likewise. What reports we’ve caught tell of battle at a halt, and now of a truce called, while Maurai and Norrmen together brought help to Kenai and the homebound soldiers. That much compassion and common sense give hope for more. But you’ve not watched from beyond, as my lady and I have. You’ve not been out where Earth is one, alone among the stars. Listen to us who are there.’
‘Oh, we don’t expect we’ll convert anybody,’ Ronica joined in. ‘What we want to do is call for thought, and for the courage to make a new beginning.
‘You’ve got to, you know. It’s either that or go under. The old order of things is no more, it lies dead where brother slew brother.
‘Maurai Federation, Northwest Union: after those losses you’ve taken, do you want to fight on? Can you, even? Aren’t your societies already too hurt? If you let the war bleed you till the end, one or the other may prevail, but scarred, crippled, and nothing akin to what it was.
‘Soldati of the Mong: your reign is finished. Will you die in your tracks, or lead the way toward freedom?
‘Franceterr: you may build another Skyholm, but the Domain is forever in shards. Meanwhile you’re open to your enemies – and, Espayn, the barbarians threaten you as much. What will you do about that? World: will you stand by while Uropan civilization perishes, or will you join to save and share in that legacy?
‘Men, women, of every nation, every race and condition: how much longer are you going to let yourselves be used? When are you going to tell your leaders, “Enough!” and claim the right to live your own lives?’
The ship flew on, above an ocean that had come abrim with day.
‘We have no power, we two,’ Iern said, ‘nor do we want any. It’s power of humans over fellow humans that’s brought us all to this evil pass. Nor do we imagine we can talk you into some grandiose reconstruction. Things don’t work that way, and it’s probably well that they don’t. What we think we can do, from our perspective, is make some proposals. We’re sure they have occurred to many of you before. But we’ve heard no mention of them, and suspect nobody in authority has ventured to broach any such ideas, for fear they’ll be cast back and damage that same authority.
‘Ronica and I have nothing to lose, and millions who are listening.
‘The Maurai Federation denies wanting to impose its will on humankind. However, that is precisely what it has done, for lifetime after lifetime. Be honest, you in Oceania. Why would you stamp down the Northwesterners, if it were not that their scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs would inevitably undermine your scheme, your sway?
The Lodges of the Union also deny having imperial ambitions. They also should be more honest with themselves. They’ve never once admitted that others may have a right to self-preservation, to raise barriers against them, to resist their doing anything whatsoever that they damn well please. What have you been grasping after on behalf of your realm, Wolf, except the power to kick the rest of mankind out of your way?
‘Will the two of you fight to the death – the immediate death of the loser, the slow death of the winner? Or will you come to terms and for better or worse both change, in unforeseeable directions, into something else?
‘We say from outside your world: end the strife and get back to work. Let Orion rise, but not as a weapon – no, as a tool, which you build and use in partnership.
‘Yes, it will release radiation, but the time is overpast to become reasonable about that. The contamination will be slight, bearable, and temporary, until we have a permanent human foothold in space. Soon afterward, Earth should stop being an impoverished planet. How far we’ll then go, how much we’ll achieve, is for our descendants to reckon up, a billion years hence.
‘Meanwhile, let the industries grow, fusion generators included, but under proper safeguards. Let Maurai and Northwesterners join together to help their sister civilizations, the Mong, Uropa, and their old allies. Help the barbarians and savages as well, and offer them a hand, be patient – but, I would say, not let them suppose they’re your equals until they are civilized. There is no more virtue in backwardness than there is in domination.’
Ronica took the word: ‘Well, this goes pretty far. We can’t lay out a program for attaining paradise. Nobody can. Prophets who became kings have always brought disaster. We do ask you to think, think hard, and make peace and wage it.
‘You’ll need precautions, of course, so the Maurai won’t be tempted to seize the space fleet for purposes of demolition, or the Norrmen for purposes of supremacy. But I believe the strongest shield the peace and the undertaking can have is that they are what the people want. Make it known, folk
. Be ready to overthrow whoever would give you any less.
‘Orion shall rise, for all of us.’
Iern forgot to switch off the transmitter before he whispered, ‘How else may I win my own forgiveness?’
2
The Terra Australis departed Laska for N’Zealann early in the summer. She was a monohulled neobarque, white as her sails, upper works ashine with brass and glass. The Triad stood at her prow, the Cross and Stars flew from her staff, and a pennon on the foremast head proclaimed her the royal yacht. Ordinarily it was at her main-truck, but for this voyage that place of honor belonged to the flag of the Northwest Union.
The second day was bright and not unduly cold. Clouds stood in the north like snow mountains; otherwise the sun trekked alone through blue clarity. The ship heeled to a wind that strummed in her rigging and skirled across white-maned waves. They were green on their backs, amethystine under their crests; the sound of them was an ongoing low torrent. Foam blew off and carried salt to lips.
Three left the deckhouse and sought lee at the starboard rail. Nobody else was about, unless you counted the wahine in the wheel-house. This vessel required fewer sailors than servants.
Plik drained his goblet and refilled it from the wine bottle he had carried out of the guest saloon. ‘Stand with me here upon the deck,’ he said, mildly drunk, ‘for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have.’
‘Our first, anyhow, in the hooraw since Iern and I landed,’ Ronica replied. She had not drawn her parka hood forward, and brushed at a stray lock of hair which the wind tried to make into a banner.
‘It costs, being charismatic figures, and when you do it on a global scale –’ Plik shrugged. ‘Thus far the officers aboard have been courteous. They know how badly you two need a rest, and haven’t pressed their company on you. The feeling cannot persist. I’m glad I’m an obscure ne’er-do-well, tolerated on your account.’ He held his cup high, admired the ruby glow within, and drank.
‘Why did you ask to travel along?’ wondered Iern.
‘I couldn’t resist the opportunity. However, I only plan on a brief stay before catching passage back to my tavern and my Vineleaf. You two are in a different case. Gods are less free than mortals.’
‘Aw, c’mon!’ laughed Ronica. ‘Okay, we did grab the popular imagination, we do have some symbolic importance, and this tour of ours may help nail down the peace. But the sensation won’t last. While it does, we figure we’ll make damn sure of a place for ourselves in the space exploration program.’
Iern drank of his own wine and looked out beyond the horizon, as he often did. He had lost the haggardness that had been upon him, but certain lines in his face would never go away. He could once more be blithe, but his ghosts would never leave him. ‘You see,’ he tried to explain, ‘we have no countries, either of us.’
‘You can have any you want,’ Plik said.
‘Not really.’
‘I think I know what you mean. Whatever glories they heap on you, they will not be your motherlands. The gods of those went down in fire, and strangers inherit the temples.’
‘Yes. Besides – well –’
‘Besides, nowhere can you be merely yourselves. You are those from whose loins the new race, the new world, will spring.’
‘Whoa, now,’ Ronica protested.
‘Oh, not in hour-to-hour existence,’ Plik said. ‘That’s as full as always of grubbiness, conflict, connivance, short-sightedness, greed, stupidity, laziness, cruelty, waste, every charming usual human quality at play. But …you have mana, you two, and it will not let you go, no, not even after you are dead. I hope for your sakes you can resist the appeal, and the urge, to set the time a little more nearly right. My hopefulness, though, is very small.’
He pondered before he finished: ‘Unless – by blazing the trails beyond Earth, you can beget and nourish an entire myth unfelt in the past, that will live on in the lives of your children’s children’s children.… Come back in a thousand years, part the weeds on my grave, give my bones a shake, and tell me.’
‘Hm.’ Pain dwelt in Iern’s grin. ‘How? We’ll scarcely be in shape ourselves to do that.’
‘Wrong,’ Plik answered. ‘For better or worse, your two spirits will walk crowned through the whole cycle to come – and, it may well be, the ages that follow.’
‘We’re only us!’ the woman cried as if struck.
‘Is anyone ever only human?’
‘I don’t know,’ Iern said awkwardly. ‘I just know that at journey’s end Ronica and I will someday slip off to Terai’s house, and tell them there about him, our trail-friend. Not to forget, not to forget.’ He held out his glass. ‘Pour, will you, Plik?’ Raising it filled: ‘Here, while we can, here’s to Terai… Wairoa … Vanna Uangovna … yes, Mikli, Jovain, everybody – We remember. Do you hear? We remember.’
His free hand sought Ronica’s. Rims clinked threefold. Wind quickened. A whale surfaced. The ship bore onward, in quest of the Southern Cross.
THE SKY PEOPLE
The rover fleet got there just before sunrise. From its height, five thousand feet, the land was bluish gray, smoked with mists. Irrigation canals caught the first light as if they were full of mercury. Westward the ocean gleamed, its far edge dissolved into purple and a few stars.
Loklann sunna Holber leaned over the gallery rail of his flagship and pointed a telescope at the city. It sprang to view as a huddle of walls, flat roofs, and square watchtowers. The cathedral spires were tinted rose by a hidden sun. No barrage balloons were aloft. It must be true what rumor said, that the Perio had abandoned its outlying provinces to their fate. So the portable wealth of Meyco would have flowed into S’ Antón, for safekeeping—which meant that the place was well worth a raid. Loklann grinned.
Robra sunna Stam, the Buffalo’s mate, spoke. “Best we come down to about two thousand,” he suggested. “To make sure the men aren’t blown sideways, to the wrong side of the town walls.”
“Aye.” The skipper nodded his helmeted head. “Two thousand, so be it.”
Their voices seemed oddly loud up here, where only the wind and a creak of rigging had broken silence. The sky around the rovers was dusky immensity, tinged red gold in the east. Dew lay on the gallery deck. But when the long wooden horns blew signals, it was somehow not an interruption, nor was the distant shouting of orders from other vessels, thud of crew feet, clatter of windlasses and hand-operated compressor pumps. To a Sky Man, those sounds belonged in the upper air.
Five great craft spiraled smoothly downward. The first sunrays flashed off gilt figureheads, bold on sharp gondola prows, and rioted along the extravagant designs painted on gas bags. Sails and rudders were unbelievably white across the last western darkness.
“Hullo, there,” said Loklann. He had been studying the harbor through his telescope. “Something new. What could it be?”
He offered the tube to Robra, who held it to his remaining eye. Within the glass circle lay a stone dock and warehouses, centuries old, from the days of the Perio’s greatness. Less than a fourth of their capacity was used now. The normal clutter of wretched little fishing craft, a single coasting schooner … and yes, by Oktai the Stormbringer, a monster thing, bigger than a whale, seven masts that were impossibly tall!
“I don’t know.” The mate lowered the telescope. “A foreigner? But where from? Nowhere in this continent—”
“I never saw any arrangement like that,” said Loklann. “Square sails on the topmasts, fore-and-aft below.” He stroked his short beard. It burned like spun copper in the morning light; he was one of the fair-haired blue-eyed men, rare even among the Sky People and unheard of elsewhere. “Of course,” he said, “we’re no experts on water craft. We only see them in passing.” A not unamiable contempt rode his words: sailors made good slaves, at least, but naturally the only fit vehicle for a fighting man was a rover abroad and a horse at home.
“Probably a trader,” he decided. “We’ll capture it if possible.”
H
e turned his attention to more urgent problems. He had no map of S’ Antón, had never even seen it before. This was the farthest south any Sky People had yet gone plundering, and almost as far as any had ever visited; in bygone days aircraft were still too primitive and the Perio too strong. Thus Loklann must scan the city from far above, through drifting white vapors, and make his plan on the spot. Nor could it be very complicated, for he had only signal flags and a barrel-chested hollerer with a megaphone to pass orders to the other vessels.
“That big plaza in front of the temple,” he murmured. “Our contingent will land there. Let the Stormcloud men tackle that big building east of it … see … it looks like a chief’s dwelling. Over there, along the north wall, typical barracks and parade ground—Coyote can deal with the soldiers. Let the Witch of Heaven men land on the docks, seize the seaward gun emplacements and that strange vessel, then join the attack on the garrison. Fire Elk’s crew should land inside the east city gate and send a detachment to the south gate, to bottle in the civilian population. Having occupied the plaza, I’ll send reinforcements wherever they’re needed. All clear?”
He snapped down his goggles. Some of the big men crowding about him wore chain armor, but he preferred a cuirass of hardened leather, Mong style; it was nearly as strong and a lot lighter. He was armed with a pistol, but had more faith in his battle ax. An archer could shoot almost as fast as a gun, as accurately—and firearms were getting fabulously expensive to operate as sulfur sources dwindled.
He felt a tightness which was like being a little boy again, opening presents on Midwinter Morning. Oktai knew what treasures he would find, of gold, cloth, tools, slaves, of battle and high deeds and eternal fame. Possibly death. Someday he was sure to die in combat; he had sacrificed so much to his josses, they wouldn’t grudge him war-death and a chance to be reborn as a Sky Man.
“Let’s go!” he said.
He sprang up on a gallery rail and over. For a moment the world pinwheeled; now the city was on top and now again his Buffalo streaked past. Then he pulled the ripcord and his harness slammed him to steadiness. Around him, air bloomed with scarlet parachutes. He gauged the wind and tugged a line, guiding himself down.
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