Beneath her continued hills and ravines, thickly wooded, and rushing streams. The volcano bulked in the north; smoke plumed from a frost-rimmed crater. Southward the land rolled down to the quicksilver sheet of the bay. Its shore was marshy—an effect of the very considerable tides that the nearer moon raised—but a village of neat wooden houses stood there on piles. Sailboats that doubtless belonged to fishermen were putting out. They must exist in such numbers because of a power shortage rather than extreme backwardness; for Dagny saw a good-sized motorship as well, crossing the bay from the gate to the lower, more populous south side. Its hull was of planks and its wake suggested the engine was minimal. At the same time, its lines and the nearly smokeless stack indicated competent design.
Here the wind had gentled, and the clouds were dissipating fast. (Odd to have such small cells of weather, she thought in a detached logical part of herself. Another indication of an atmosphere disturbed by violent solar conditions?) They shone ruddy-tinted in a deep purple vault of sky. The sun stood bright orange above mists that lay on the Nereid River delta.
“Down we go, lass,” Dagny said, “before we’re noticed.”
“What happened? Lord Tom, where is he?”
The sob scratched at Dagny’s nerves. She snapped, biting back tears: “Use your brain, you little beast, if it’s anything except blubber! He went first to the main fire-control turret. When he saw us attacked, he cut loose with the ship’s weapons. I don’t see how he could have gotten all those bastards, though. If they didn’t missile him, they’ve anyhow bottled him up. On our account!”
She realized she’d spoken entirely in Eylan. Suppressing a growl, she took over the controls of both suits. With no need for haste, she could ease them past the branches that tried to catch them, down to the forest floor.
“Now,” she said in Anglic. “Out.” Yasmin gaped. Dagny set the example by starting to remove her own armor.
“Wh-why?”
“Find us. In . . . in . . . in-stru-ments. Smell metal, no? Could be. Not take chance. We got—got to—” Dagny’s vocabulary failed her. She had wanted to explain that if they stayed with the suits, they ran the risk of detection from afar. And even if the Nikeans didn’t have that much technology left, whatever speed and protection the equipment lent wasn’t worth its conspicuousness.
She was almost grateful for every difficulty. It kept her mind—somewhat—off the overwhelming fact that Tom, her Roan Tom, was gone.
Or maybe not. Just maybe not. He might be a prisoner, and she might in time contrive to bargain for his release. No, she would not remember what she had seen done to prisoners, here and there in her wanderings, by vengeful captors!
Were that the case, though. . . . Her hand went first to the blaster at one coveralled hip, next to the broad-bladed knife; and there it lingered. If she devoted the rest of her days to the project, and if the gods were kind, she might eventually get his murderers into her clutch.
Yasmin shed the last armor. She hugged herself and shivered in a chill breeze. “But we haven’t any radios except in our helmets,” she said. “How can he contact us?”
Dagny framed a reply: “If he’d been able to follow us, he’d already be here, or at least have called. I left my squealer circuit on, for him to track us by. That was safe; its frequency varies continuously, according to synchronized governors in both our suits. But he hasn’t arrived, and we daren’t stay near this much metal and resonant electronic stuff.” Somehow, by words and gestures, she conveyed the gist. Meanwhile she filled their pockets with rations and medications, arranged the weapons beneath their garments, checked footgear. Last she hid the armor under leaf mould and canebrake, and took precise note of landmarks.
Yasmin’s head drooped until the snarled dark locks covered her face. “I am so tired,” she whispered.
Think I’m not? My lips are numb with it. “Go!” Dagny snapped.
She had to show the city-bred girl how to conceal their trail through the woods.
After a couple of hours, unhounded, the air warming and brightening around them, both felt a little better. It was up-and-down walking, but without much underbrush to combat, for the ground was densely carpeted with a soft mossy growth. Here and there stood clumps of fronded gymnosperm plants. This native vegetation was presumably chlorophyll-bearing, though its greenness was pale and had a curious bluish overcast. Otherwise the country had been taken over by the more efficient, highly developed species that man commonly brought with him. Oaks cast sun-speckled shadows; birches danced and glistened; primroses bloomed in meadows, where grass had overwhelmed a pseudo-moss that apparently had a competitive advantage only in shade. A sweet summery smell was about, and Yasmin spoke of her homeland. Even Dagny, bred in salt winds and unrestful watery leagues, felt a stirring of ancient instinct.
She was used to denser atmosphere. Sounds—sough in leaves, whistle of birds, rilling of brooks they crossed, thud of her own feet—came as if muffled to her ears; and on a steep upgrade, her heart was apt to flutter. But oxygen shortage was more or less compensated for by a marvelous, almost floating low-gravity lightness.
A good many animals were to be seen. Again, terrestroid forms had crowded out most of the primitive native species. With a whole ecology open to them, they were now in the process of explosive evolution. A few big insect-like flyers, an occasional awkward amphibian, gave glimpses of the original biosphere. But thrushes, bulbuls, long-winged hawks rode the wind. Closer down swarmed butterflies and bees. A wild boar, tusked and rangy, caused Dagny to draw her blaster; but he went by, having perhaps learned to fear man. Splendid was the more distant sight of mustangs, carabao, an entire herd of antlered six-legged tanithars.
A measure of peace came upon Dagny, until at last she could say, “All right, we stop, eat, rest.”
They sat under a broad-spreading hilltop cedar, that hid them from above while openness, halfway down the heights to the forest, afforded ample ground vision. They had made for the bay and were thus at a lower altitude. The waters sheened to south, ridges and mountains stood sharply outlined to north. In this clear air, the blueness of their distance was too slight to hide the basic ocherous tint of rocks and soil.
Dagny broke out a packet of dehydrate. She hesitated for a moment before adding water to the tray from a canteen she had filled en route. Yasmin, slumped exhausted against the tree trunk, asked, “What is the matter?” And, her eyes and mind wandering a little, she tried to smile. “See, yonder, apples. They are green but they can be dessert.”
“No,” Dagny said.
“What? Why not?”
“Heavy metal.” Dagny scowled. How to explain? “Young planet. Dense. Lots heavy metals. Not good.”
“Young? But—”
“Look around you,” Dagny wanted to say. “That sun, putting out radiation like an early Type F—in amount—but the color and spectral distribution are late G or early K. I’ve never seen anything like it. The way it flares, I don’t believe it’s quite stabilized at its proper position on the main sequence yet. Because of anomalous chemical composition, I suppose. You get that with very young suns, my dear. They’ve condensed out of an interstellar medium made rich in metals by the thermonuclear furnaces of earlier star generations. Or so I’ve been told.
“I know for fact that planets with super-abundant heavy elements can be lethal to men. So much . . . oh, arsenic, selenium, radioactives. Slow poison in some areas, fast and horrible death in others. This water, that fruit, may have stuff to kill us.”
But she lacked words or inclination. She said, “Iron. Makes red in rocks. No? Lots iron. Could be lots bad metal. Young planet. Lots air, no?”
She had, in truth, never heard of a dwarf world like this, getting such an amount of sunlight, that had hung onto a proper atmosphere. Evidently, she thought, there had not been time for the gas to leak into space. The primitive life forms were another proof of a low age.
* * *
Beyond this, she didn’t reason. She did not have the
knowledge on which to base logic, nor did she have the scientific way of thinking. What little cosmology and cosmogony she had learned, for instance, was in the form of vague, probably distorted tradition—latter-day myth. And she was intelligent enough to recognize this.
Once, she imagined, any Imperial space officer had been educated in the details of astrophysics and planetology. And he would have seen, or read about, a far greater variety of suns than today’s petty travels encompassed. So he would have known immediately what sort of system this was; or, if not, he would have known how to find out.
But that was centuries ago. The information might not actually be lost. It might even be moldering in the damp, uncatalogued library of her own Skerrygarth. Surely parts of it were taught in the universities of more civilized planets, though as a set of theoretical ideas, to be learned by rote without any need for genuine comprehension.
Practical spacefarers, like her and Tom, didn’t learn it. They didn’t get the chance. A rudiment of knowledge was handed down to them, largely by word of mouth, the minimum they needed for survival.
And speaking of survival—
She reached her decision. “Eat,” she said. “Drink.” She took the first sample. The water had a woodsy taste, nothing unfamiliar.
After all, humans did flourish here. Perhaps they were adapted to metal-rich soil. But the adaptation could scarcely be enormous. Had that been the case, terrestroid species would not be so abundant and dominant, after a mere thousand years or whatever on this planet.
Thus Nike was biochemically safe—at least, in this general region—at least, for a reasonable time. Perhaps, if outworlders stayed as long as one or two decades, they might suffer from cumulative poisoning. But she needn’t worry that far ahead, when a hunt was on immediately and when Tom—
Grimly, she fueled her body. Afterward she stood watch while Yasmin caught a nap. What she thought about was her own affair.
When the Sassanian awoke, they held a lengthy conference. The order Dagny had to issue was not complicated:
“We’re in enemy territory. But I don’t believe it covers the whole planet, or even the whole area between this sea and the next one east. ‘The Engineer of Hanno’ is a typical feudal title. I’ve not heard before that ‘engineer’ changed meaning to the equivalent of ‘duke’ or ‘king,’ but it’s easy to see how that could’ve happened, and I’ve met odder cases of wordshift. Well, our darling Engineer made it plain he regarded us as either the worst menace or the juiciest prey that’d come by in years. Maybe both. So he’d naturally call his full air power, or most of it, against us. Which amounted to half a dozen little craft, with gravmotors so weak they need wings! And look at those sailboats, and the absence of real cities, and the fact there’s scarcely any radio in use . . . yes, they’ve fallen far on Nike. I’m sure that raid from space was only the latest blow. They must have a small half-educated class left, and some technicians of a sort; but the bulk of the people must’ve been poor and ignorant for many generations.
“And divided. I swear they must be divided. I’ve seen so many societies like this, I can practically identify them by smell. A crazy-quilt pattern of feudalisms and sovereignties, any higher authority a ghost. If as rich a planet as this one potentially is were united, it’d have made a far greater recovery by now, after the space attack, than it has done. Or it would have beaten the raiders off at least.
“So, if we have enemies here in Hanno, we probably have automatic friends somewhere else. And not dreadfully far away. At any rate, we’re not likely to be pursued beyond the nearest border, nor extradited back here. In fact, the Engineer’s rivals are apt to be quite alarmed when they learn he’s clapped hands on a real space warship. They’re apt to join forces to get it away from him. Which’ll make you and me, my dear, much-sought-after advisors. We may or may not be able to get Tom back unhurt. I vow the gods a hundred Blue Giant seabeasts if we do! But we’ll be free, even powerful.
“Or so I hope. We’ve nothing to go on but hope. And courage and wits and endurance. Have you those, Yasmin? Your life was too easy until now. But he asked me to care for you.
“You’ll have to help. Our first and foremost job is to get out of Hanno. And I don’t speak their damned language for diddly squat. You’ll talk for both of us. Can you? We’ll plan a story. Then, if and when you see there must be a false note in it, you’ll have to cover—at once—with no ideas from me. Can you do that, Yasmin? You must!”
—But conference was perforce by single words, signs, sketches in the red dirt. It went slowly. And it was repeated, over and over, in every possible way, to make certain they understood each other.
In the end, however, Yasmin nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I will try, as God gives me strength . . . and as you do.” The voice was almost inaudible, and the eyes she turned on the bigger, older woman were dark with awe.
In midafternoon they reached a farm. Its irregular fields were enclosed by forest, through which a cart track ran to join a dirt road that, in turn, twisted over several kilometers until it entered the fisher village.
Dagny spent minutes peering from a thicket. Beside her, Yasmin tried to guess what evaluations the Krakener was making. I should begin to learn these ways of staying alive, the Sassanian thought. More is involved than my own welfare. I don’t want to remain a burden on my companions, an actual danger to them.
And to think, not one year ago I took for granted the star rovers were ignorant, dirty, cruel, quarrelsome barbarians!
Yasmin had been taught about philosophic objectivity, but she was too young to practice it consistently. Her universe having been wrecked, herself cast adrift, she naturally seized upon the first thing that felt like a solid rock and began to make it her emotional foundation. And that thing happened to be Roan Tom and Dagny Od’s-daughter.
Not that she had intellectual illusions. She knew very well that the Krakeners had come to help the Shah of Sassania because the Pretender was allied with enemies of theirs. And she knew that, if successful, they would exact good pay. She had heard her father grumble about it.
Nevertheless, the facts were: First, compatriots of hers, supposedly civilized, supposedly above the greed and short-sightedness that elsewhere had destroyed civilization . . . had proven themselves every bit as animalistic. Second, the star-rover garrison in Anushirvan turned out to be jolly, well-scrubbed, fairly well-behaved. Indeed, they were rather glamorous to a girl who had never been past her planet’s moon. Third, they had stood by their oaths, died in their ships and at their guns, for her alien people. Fourth, two of them had saved her life, and offered her the best and most honorable way they could think of to last out her days. Fifth (or foremost?), Tom was now her husband.
She was not exactly infatuated with him. A middle-aged, battle-beaten, one-eyed buccaneer had never entered her adolescent dreams. But he was kind in his fashion, and a skillful lover, and . . . and perhaps she did care for him in a way beyond friendship . . . if he was alive—oh, let him be alive!
In any event, here was Dagny. She certainly felt grief like a sword in her. But she hid it, planned, guided, guarded. She had stood in the light of a hundred different suns, had warred, wandered, been wife and mother and living sidearm. She knew everything worth knowing (what did ancient texts count for?) except one language. And she was so brave that she trusted her life to what ability an awkward weakling of a refugee might possess.
Please don’t let me fail her.
Thus Yasmin looked forth too and tried to make inferences from what she saw.
The house and outbuildings were frame, not large, well-built but well-weathered. Therefore they must have stood here for a good length of time. Therefore Imperial construction methods—alloy, prestressed concrete, synthetics, energy webs—had long been out of general use in these parts, probably everywhere on Nike. That primitiveness was emphasized by the agromech system. A couple of horses drew a haycutter. It also was wooden; even the revolving blades were simply edged with metal. From its creak
ing and bouncing, the machine had neither wheel bearings nor springs. A man drove it. Two half-grown boys, belike his sons, walked after. They used wooden-tined rakes to order the windrows. The people, like the animals, were of long slim deep-chested build, brown-haired and fair-complexioned. Their garments were coarsely woven smock and trousers.
No weapons showed, which suggested that the bay region was free of bandits and vendettas. Nevertheless Dagny did not approach. Instead, she led a cautious way back into the woods and thence toward the house, so that the buildings screened off view of the hayfield.
The Krakener woman scowled. “Why?” she muttered.
“Why what . . . my lady?”
“Why make—” Dagny’s hands imitated whirling blades. “Here. Planet . . . canted? . . . little. No cold?”
“Oh. Do you mean, why do they bother making hay? Well, there must be times when their livestock can’t pasture.”
Dagny understood. Her nod was brusque. “Why that?”
“Um-m-m . . . oh, dear, let me think. Lord Tom explained to me what he—what you two had learned about this planet. Yes. Not much axial tilt. I suppose not an unusually eccentric orbit. So the seasons oughtn’t to be very marked. And we are in a rather low latitude anyway, on a seacoast at that. It should never get too cold for grass. Too dry? No, this is midsummer time. And, well, they’d hardly export hay to other areas, would they?”
Dagny shrugged.
It is such a strange world, Yasmin thought. All wrong. Too dense. That is, if it had a great many heavy metals, humans would never have settled here permanently. So what makes it dense should be a core of iron, nickel and things, squeezed into compact quantum states. The kind that terrestroid planets normally have. Yes, and the formation of a true core causes tectonic processes, vulcanism, the outgassing of a primitive atmosphere and water. Later we get chemical evolution, life, photosynthesis, free oxygen—
Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga Page 40
