Don Miwel Carabán, calde of S’ Antón d’ Inio, arranged a lavish feast for his Maurai guests. It was not only that this was a historic occasion, which might even mark a turning point in the long decline. (Don Miwel, being that rare combination, a practical man who could read, knew that the withdrawal of Perio troops to Brasil twenty years ago was not a “temporary adjustment.” They would never come back. The outer provinces were on their own.) But the strangers must be convinced that they had found a nation rich, strong, and basically civilized, that it was worthwhile visiting the Meycan coasts to trade, ultimately to make alliance against the northern savages.
The banquet lasted till nearly midnight. Though some of the old irrigation canals had choked up and never been repaired, so that cactus and rattlesnake housed in abandoned pueblos, Meyco Province was still fertile. The slant-eyed Mong horsemen from Tekkas had killed off innumerable peons when they raided five years back; wooden pitchforks and obsidian hoes were small use against saber and arrow. It would be another decade before population had returned to normal and the periodic famines resumed. Thus Don Miwel offered many courses, beef, spiced ham, olives, fruits, wines, nuts, coffee, which last the Sea People were unfamiliar with and didn’t much care for, et cetera. Entertainment followed—music, jugglers, a fencing exhibition by some of the young nobles.
At this point the surgeon of the Dolphin, who was rather drunk, offered to show an Island dance. Muscular beneath tattoos, his brown form went through a series of contortions which pursed the lips of the dignified Dons. Miwel himself remarked, “It reminds me somewhat of our peons’ fertility rites,” with a strained courtesy that suggested to Captain Ruori Rangi Lohannaso that peons had an altogether different and not very nice culture.
The surgeon threw back his queue and grinned. “Now let’s bring the ship’s wahines ashore to give them a real hula,” he said in Maurai-Ingliss.
“No,” answered Ruori. “I fear we may have shocked them already. The proverb goes, ‘When in the Solmon Islands, darken your skin.’”
“I don’t think they know how to have any fun,” complained the doctor.
“We don’t yet know what the taboos are,” warned Ruori. “Let us be as grave, then, as these spike-bearded men, and not laugh or make love until we are back on shipboard among our wahines.”
“But it’s stupid! Shark-toothed Nan eat me if I’m going to—”
“Your ancestors are ashamed,” said Ruori. It was about as sharp a rebuke as you could give a man whom you didn’t intend, to fight. He softened his tone to take out the worst sting, but the doctor had to shut up. Which he did, mumbling an apology and retiring with his blushes to a dark corner beneath faded murals.
Ruori turned back to his host. “I beg your pardon, S’ñor,” he said, using the local tongue. “My men’s command of Spañol is even less than my own.”
“Of course.” Don Miwel’s lean black-clad form made a stiff little bow. It brought his sword up, ludicrously, like a tail. Ruori heard a smothered snort of laughter from among his officers. And yet, thought the captain, were long trousers and ruffled shirt any worse than sarong, sandals, and clan tattoos? Different customs, no more. You had to sail the Maurai Federation, from Awaii to his own N’Zealann and west to Mlaya, before you appreciated how big this planet was and how much of it a mystery.
“You speak our language most excellently, S’ñor,” said Doñita Tresa Carabán. She smiled. “Perhaps better than we, since you studied texts centuries old before embarking, and the Spañol has changed greatly since.”
Ruori smiled back. Don Miwel’s daughter was worth it. The rich black dress caressed a figure as good as any in the world; and, while the Sea People paid less attention to a woman’s face, he saw that hers was proud and well formed, her father’s eagle beak softened to a curve, luminous eyes and hair the color of midnight oceans. It was too bad these Meycans—the nobles, at least—thought a girl should be reserved solely for the husband they eventually picked for her. He would have liked her to swap her pearls and silver for a lei and go out in a ship’s canoe, just the two of them, to watch the sunrise and make love.
However—
“In such company,” he murmured, “I am stimulated to learn the modern language as fast as possible.”
She refrained from coquetting with her fan, a local habit the Sea People found alternately hilarious and irritating. But her lashes fluttered. They were very long, and her eyes, he saw, were gold-flecked green.
“You are learning cab’llero manners just as fast, S’ñor,” she said.
“Do not call our language ‘modern,’ I pray you,” interrupted a scholarly-looking man in a long robe. Ruori recognized Bispo Don Carlos Ermosillo, a high priest of that Esu Carito who seemed cognate with the Maurai Lesu Haristi. “Not modern, but corrupt. I too have studied ancient books, printed before the War of Judgment. Our ancestors spoke the true Spañol. Our version of it is as distorted as our present-day society.” He sighed. “But what can one expect, when even among the well born, not one in ten can write his own name?”
“There was more literacy in the high days of the Perio,” said Don Miwel. “You should have visited us a hundred years ago, S’ñor Captain, and seen what our race was capable of.”
“Yet what was the Perio itself but a successor state?” asked the Bispo bitterly. “It unified a large area, gave law and order for a while, but what did it create that was new? Its course was the same sorry tale as a thousand kingdoms before, and therefore the same judgment has fallen on it.”
Doñita Tresa crossed herself. Even Ruori, who held a degree in engineering as well as navigation, was shocked. “Not atomics?” he exclaimed.
“What? Oh. The old weapons, which destroyed the old world. No, of course not.” Don Carlos shook his head. “But in our more limited way, we have been as stupid and sinful as the legendary forefathers, and the results have been parallel. You may call it human greed or el Dío’s punishment as you will; I think the two mean much the same thing.”
Ruori looked closely at the priest. “I should like to speak with you further, S’ñor,” he said, hoping it was the right title. “Men who know history, rather than myth, are rare these days.”
“By all means,” said Don Carlos. “I should be honored.”
Doñita Tresa shifted on light, impatient feet. “It is customary to dance,” she said.
Her father laughed. “Ah, yes. The young ladies have been getting quite impatient, I am sure. Time enough to resume formal discussions tomorrow, S’ñor Captain. Now let the music begin.”
He signalled. The orchestra struck up. Some instruments were quite like those of the Maurai, others wholly unfamiliar. The scale itself was different … They had something like it in Stralia, but—a hand fell on Ruori’s arm. He looked down at Tresa. “Since you do not ask me to dance,” she said, “may I be so immodest as to ask you?”
“What does ‘immodest’ mean?” he inquired.
She blushed and tried to explain, without success. Ruori decided it was another local concept which the Sea People lacked. By that time the Meycan girls and their cavaliers were out on the ballroom floor. He studied them for a moment. “The motions are unknown to me,” he said, “but I think I could soon learn.”
She slipped into his arms. It was a pleasant contact, even though nothing would come of it. “You do very well,” she said after a minute. “Are all your folk so graceful?”
Only later did he realize that was a compliment for which he should have thanked her; being an Islander, he took it at face value as a question and replied, “Most of us spend a great deal of time on the water. A sense of balance and rhythm must be developed or one is likely to fall into the sea.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, stop,” she laughed. “You’re as solemn as S’ Osé in the cathedral.”
Ruori grinned back. He was a tall young man, brown as all his race but with the gray eyes which many bore in memory of Ingliss ancestors. Being a N’Zealanner, he was not tattooed as lavishly as
some Federation men. On the other hand, he had woven a whalebone filigree into his queue, his sarong was the finest batik, and he had added thereto a fringed shirt. His knife, without which a Maurai felt obscenely helpless, was in contrast: old, shabby until you saw the blade, a tool.
“I must see this god, S’ Osé,” he said. “Will you show me? Or no, I would not have eyes for a mere statue.”
“How long will you stay?” she asked.
“As long as we can. We are supposed to explore the whole Meycan coast. Hitherto the only Maurai contact with the Merikan continent has been one voyage from Awaii to Calforni. They found desert and a few savages. We have heard from Okkaidan traders that there are forests still farther north, where yellow and white men strive against each other. But what lies south of Calforni was unknown to us until this expedition was sent out. Perhaps you can tell us what to expect in Su-Merika.”
“Little enough by now,” she sighed, “even in Brasil.”
“Ah, but lovely roses bloom in Meyco.”
Her humor returned. “And flattering words in N’Zealann,” she chuckled.
“Far from it. We are notoriously straightforward. Except, of course, when yarning about voyages we have made.”
“What yarns will you tell about this one?”
“Not many, lest all the young men of the Federation come crowding here. But I will take you aboard my ship, Doñita, and show you to the compass. Thereafter it will always point toward S’ Antón d’ Inio. You will be, so to speak, my compass rose.”
Somewhat to his surprise, she understood, and laughed. She led him across the floor, supple between his hands.
Thereafter, as the night wore on, they danced together as much as decency allowed, or a bit more, and various foolishness which concerned no one else passed between them. Toward sunrise the orchestra was dismissed and the guests, hiding yawns behind well-bred hands, began to take their departure.
“How dreary to stand and receive farewells,” whispered Tresa. “Let them think I went to bed already.” She took Ruori’s hand and slipped behind a column and thence out onto a balcony. An aged serving woman, stationed to act as duenna for couples that wandered thither, had wrapped up in her mantle against the cold and fallen asleep. Otherwise the two were alone among jasmines. Mists floated around the palace and blurred the city; far off rang the “Todos buen” of pikemen tramping the outer walls. Westward the balcony faced darkness, where the last stars glittered. The seven tall topmasts of the Maurai Dolphin caught the earliest sun and glowed.
Tresa shivered and stood close to Ruori. They did not speak for a while.
“Remember us,” she said at last, very low. “When you are back with your own happier people, do not forget us here.”
“How could I?” he answered, no longer in jest.
“You have so much more than we,” she said wistfully. “You have told me how your ships can sail unbelievably fast, almost into the wind. How your fishers always fill their nets, how your whale ranchers keep herds that darken the water, how you even farm the ocean for food and fiber and…” She fingered the shimmering material of his shirt. “You told me this was made by craft out of fishbones. You told me that every family has its own spacious house and every member of it, almost, his own boat … that even small children on the loneliest island can read, and have printed books … that you have none of the sicknesses which destroy us … that no one hungers and all are free—oh, do not forget us, you on whom el Dío has smiled!”
She stopped, then, embarrassed. He could see how her head lifted and nostrils dilated, as if resenting him. After all, he thought, she came from a breed which for centuries had given, not received, charity.
Therefore he chose his words with care. “It has been less our virtue than our good fortune, Doñita. We suffered less than most in the War of Judgment, and our being chiefly Islanders prevented our population from outrunning the sea’s rich ability to feed us. So we—no, we did not retain any lost ancestral arts. There are none. But we did re-create an ancient attitude, a way of thinking, which has made the difference—science.”
She crossed herself. “The atom!” she breathed, drawing from him.
“No, no, Doñita,” he protested. “So many nations we have discovered lately believe science was the cause of the old world’s ruin. Or else they think it was a collection of cut-and-dried formulas for making tall buildings or talking at a distance. But neither is true. The scientific method is only a means of learning. It is a … a perpetual starting afresh. And that is why you people here in Meyco can help us as much as we can help you, why we have sought you out and will come knocking hopefully at your doors again in the future.”
She frowned, though something began to glow within her. “I do not understand,” she said.
He cast about for an example. At last he pointed to a series of small holes in the balcony rail. “What used to be here?” he asked.
“Why … I do not know. It has always been like that.”
“I think I can tell you. I have seen similar things elsewhere. It was a wrought-iron grille. But it was pulled out a long time ago and made into weapons or tools. No?”
“Quite likely,” she admitted. “Iron and copper have grown very scarce. We have to send caravans across the whole land, to Támico ruins, in great peril from bandits and barbarians, to fetch our metal. Time was when there were iron rails within a kilometer of this place. Don Carlos has told me.”
He nodded. “Just so. The ancients exhausted the world. They mined the ores, burned the oil and coal, eroded the land, until nothing was left. I exaggerate, of course. There are still deposits. But not enough. The old civilization used up the capital, so to speak. Now sufficient forest and soil have come back that the world would try to reconstruct machine culture—except that there aren’t enough minerals and fuels. For centuries men have been forced to tear up the antique artifacts, if they were to have any metal at all. By and large, the knowledge of the ancients hasn’t been lost; it has simply become unusable, because we are so much poorer than they.”
He leaned forward, earnestly. “But knowledge and discovery do not depend on wealth,” he said. “Perhaps because we did not have much metal to cannibalize in the Islands, we turned elsewhere. The scientific method is just as applicable to wind and sun and living matter as it was to oil, iron, or uranium. By studying genetics we learned how to create seaweeds, plankton, fish that would serve our purposes. Scientific forest management gives us adequate timber, organic-synthesis bases, some fuel. The sun pours down energy which we know how to concentrate and use. Wood, ceramics, even stone can replace metal for most purposes. The wind, through such principles as the airfoil or the Venturi law or the Hilsch tube, supplies force, heat, refrigeration; the tides can be harnessed. Even in its present early stage, paramathematical psychology helps control population, as well as—no, I am talking like an engineer now, falling into my own language. I apologize.
“What I wanted to say was that if we can only have the help of other people, such as yourselves, on a worldwide scale, we can match our ancestors, or surpass them … not in their ways, which were often shortsighted and wasteful, but in achievements uniquely ours….”
His voice trailed off. She wasn’t listening. She stared over his head, into the air, and horror stood on her face.
Then trumpets howled on battlements, and the cathedral bells crashed to life.
“What the nine devils!” Ruori turned on his heel and looked up. The zenith had become quite blue. Lazily over S’ Antón floated five orca shapes. The new sun glared off a jagged heraldry painted along their flanks. He estimated dizzily that each of them must be three hundred feet long.
Blood-colored things petaled out below them and drifted down upon the city.
“The Sky People!” said a small broken croak behind him. “Sant’sima Marí, pray for us now!”
Loklann hit flagstones, rolled over, and bounced to his feet. Beside him a carved horseman presided over fountain waters. For an instant he
admired the stone, almost alive; they had nothing like that in Canyon, Zona, Corado, any of the mountain kingdoms. And the temple facing this plaza was white skywardness.
The square had been busy, farmers and handicrafters setting up their booths for a market day. Most of them scattered in noisy panic. But one big man roared, snatched a stone hammer, and dashed in his rags to meet Loklann. He was covering the flight of a young woman, probably his wife, who held a baby in her arms. Through the shapeless sack dress Loklann saw that her figure wasn’t bad. She would fetch a price when the Mong slave dealer next visited Canyon. So could her husband, but there wasn’t time now, still encumbered with a chute. Loklann whipped out his pistol and fired. The man fell to his knees, gaped at the blood seeping between fingers clutched to his belly, and collapsed. Loklann flung off his harness. His boots thudded after the woman. She shrieked when fingers closed on her arm and tried to wriggle free, but the brat hampered her. Loklann shoved her toward the temple. Robra was already on its steps.
“Post a guard!” yelled the skipper. “We may as well keep prisoners in here, till we’re ready to plunder it.”
An old man in priest’s robes tottered to the door. He held up one of the cross-shaped Meycan josses, as if to bar the way. Robra brained him with an ax blow, kicked the body off the stairs, and urged the woman inside.
It sleeted armed men. Locklann winded his oxhorn bugle, rallying them. A counterattack could be expected any minute. … Yes, now.
A troop of Meycan cavalry clanged into view. They were young, proud-looking men in baggy pants, leather breastplate and plumed helmet, blowing cloak, fire-hardened wooden lances but steel sabres—very much like the yellow nomads of Tekkas, whom they had fought for centuries. But so had the Sky People. Loklann pounded to the head of his line, where his standard bearer had raised the Lightning Flag. Half the Buffalo’s crew fitted together sections of pike tipped with edged ceramic, grounded the butts, and waited. The charge crested upon them. Their pikes slanted down. Some horses spitted themselves, others reared back screaming. The pikemen jabbed at their riders. The second paratroop line stepped in, ax and sword and hamstringing knife. For a few minutes murder boiled. The Meycans broke. They did not flee, but they retreated in confusion. And then the Canyon bows began to snap.
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