Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga

by Poul Anderson

  “Never chose to,” he corrected her.

  He recalled a remark of Raven’s, one day in Instar. “It isn’t natural for humans to be consistently gentle and rational. They’ve done tremendous things here for so small a population. They don’t lack energy. But where does their excess energy go?” At the time, Tolteca had bristled. Only a professional killer would be frightened by total sanity, he thought. Now he began, unwilling, to see that Raven had asked a legitimate scientific question.

  “There is much that we never chose to do,” said Elfavy with a hint of wistfulness.

  “I admit wondering why you don’t at least colonize the uninhabited parts of Gwydion.”

  “We stabilized the population by general agreement, several centuries ago. More people would only destroy nature.”

  They emerged from the woods again. Another meadow sloped upward to a cliff edge. The grass was strewn with white flowers; the common bush of star-shaped leaves grew everywhere about, its buds swelling, the air heady from their odor. Beyond this spine of the hills lay a deep valley and then the mountains rose, clear and powerful against the sky.

  Elfavy swept an arm in an arc. “Should we crowd out this?” she asked.

  Tolteca thought of his own brawling unrestful folk, the forests they had already raped, and made no answer.

  The girl stood a moment, frowning, on the clifftop. A west wind blew strongly, straining the tunic against her and tossing sunlit locks of hair. Tolteca caught himself staring so rudely that he forced his eyes away, across kilometers toward that gray volcanic cone named Mount Granis.

  “No,” said Elfavy with some reluctance, “I must not be smug. People did live here once. Just a few farmers and woodcutters, but they did maintain isolated homes. However, that is long past. Nowadays everyone lives in a town. And I don’t believe we would reoccupy regions like this even if it were safe. It would be wrong. All life has a right to existence, does it not? Men shouldn’t wear more of a Night Face than they must.”

  Tolteca found some difficulty in concentrating on her meaning, the sound was so pleasant. Night Face—oh, yes, part of the Gwydiona religion. (If “religion” was the right word. “Philosophy” might be better. “Way of life” might be still more accurate.) Since they believed everything to be a facet of that eternal and infinite Oneness which they called God, it followed that God was also death, ruin, sorrow. But they didn’t say much, or seem to think much, about that side of reality. He remembered that their arts and literature, like their daily lives, were mostly sunny, cheerful, completely logical once you had mastered the complex symbolisms. Pain was gallantly endured. The suffering or death of someone beloved was mourned in a controlled manner which Raven admired, but Tolteca had trouble understanding .

  “I don’t believe your people could harm nature,” he said. “You work with it, make yourselves part of it.”

  “That’s the ideal.” Elfavy snickered. “But I’m afraid practice has no more statistical correlation with preaching on Gwydion than anywhere else in the universe.” She knelt and began to pluck the small white flowers. “I shall make a garland of jule for you,” she said. “A sign of friendship, since the jule blooms when the growth season is being reborn. Now that’s a nice harmonious thing for me to do, isn’t it? And yet if you asked the plant, it might not agree!”

  “Thank you,” he said, overwhelmed.

  “The Bird Maiden had a chaplet of jule,” she said. By now he realized that the retelling of symbolic myths was a standard conversational gambit here, like a Lochlanna’s inquiry after the health of your father. “That is why I wore a bird costume this time. It is her time of year, and today is the Day of the River Child. When the Bird Maiden met the River Child, he was lost and crying. She carried him home and gave him her crown.” She glanced up. “It is a seasonal myth,” she explained, “the end of the rains, lowland floods, then sunlight and the blossoming jule. Plus those moral lessons the elders are always quacking about, plus a hundred other possible interpretations. The entire tale is too complicated to tell on a warm day, even if the episode of the Riddling Tree is one of our best poems. But I always like to dance the story.”

  She fell silent, her hands busy in the grass. For lack of anything else, he pointed to one of the large budding bushes. “What’s this called?” he asked.

  “With the five-pointed leaves? Oh, baleflower. It grows everywhere. You must have noticed the one in front of my father’s house.”

  “Yes. It must have quite a lot of mythology.”

  Elfavy stopped. She glanced at him and away. For an instant the evening-blue eyes seemed almost blind. “No,” she said.

  “What? But I thought . . . I thought everything means something on Gwydion, as well as being something. Usually it has many different meanings—”

  “This is only baleflower.” Her voice grew thin. “Nothing else.”

  Tolteca pulled himself up short. Some taboo—no, surely not that, the Gwydiona were even freer from arbitrary prohibitions than his own people. But if she was sensitive about it, best not to pursue the subject.

  The girl finished her work, jumped to her feet, and flung a wreath about his neck. “There!” she laughed. “Wait, hold still, it’s caught on one ear. Ah, good.”

  He gestured at the second one she had made. “Aren’t you going to put that on yourself?”

  “Oh, no. A jule garland is always for someone else. This is for Raven.”

  “What?” Tolteca stiffened.

  Again she flushed and looked past him toward the mountains. “I got to know him a little in Instar. I drove him around, showing him the sights. Or we walked.”

  Tolteca thought of the many times in those long moonlit nights when she had not been at home. He said, “I don’t believe Raven is your sort,” and heard his voice go ragged.

  “I don’t understand him,” she whispered. “And yet in a way I do. Maybe. As I might understand a storm.”

  She started back toward camp. Tolteca must needs follow. He said bitterly, “I should think you, of everyone alive, would be immune to such cheap glamour. Soldier! Hereditary aristocrat!”

  “Those things I don’t comprehend,” she said, her eyes still averted. “To kill people, or make them do your bidding, as if they were machines—But it isn’t that way with him. Not really.”

  They went down the trail in stillness, boots thudding next to sandals. At last she murmured, “He lives with the Night Faces. All the time. I can’t even bear to think of that, but he endures it.”

  Enjoys it, Tolteca wanted to growl. But he saw he had been backbiting, and held his peace.

  V

  They returned to find most of the party asleep, eyelids padded against the daylight. The sentry saluted them with a raised arrow. Elfavy continued to the edge of camp, where the three Lochlanna had spread their bedrolls. Kors snored, a gun in his hand; Wildenvey looked too young and helpless for his gory shipboard brags. Raven was still awake. He squatted on his heels and scowled at a sheaf of photographs.

  As Elfavy approached, his grin sprang forth; even to Tolteca, he seemed quite honestly pleased. “Well, this is a happy chance,” he called. “Will you join me? I have a pot of tea on the grill over the coals.”

  “No, thank you. I like that tea stuff of yours, but it would keep me from sleeping.” Elfavy stood before him, looking down at the ground. The wreath dangled in her hand. “I only—”

  “Never come between an Oakenshaw and his tea,” said Raven. “Ah, there, Sir Engineer.”

  Elfavy’s face burned. “I only wanted to see you for a moment,” she faltered.

  “And I you. Someone mentioned former habitation in this area, and I noticed traces on a ridge near here. Sol went there with a camera.” Raven flowed erect and fanned out his self-developing films. “It was a thorp once, several houses and outbuildings. Not much left now.”

  “No. Long abandoned.” The girl lifted her wreath and lowered it again.

  Raven gave her a steady look. “Destroyed,” he said.
>
  “Oh? Oh, yes. I have heard this region was dangerous. The volcano—”

  “No natural disaster,” said Raven. “I know the signs. My men and I cleared away the brush with a flash pistol and dug in the ground. Those buildings had wooden roofs and rafters, which burned. We found two human skeletons, more or less complete. One had a skull split open, the other a corroded iron object between the ribs.” He raised the pictures toward her eyes. “Do you see?”

  “Oh.” She stepped back. One hand crept to her mouth. “What—”

  “Everyone tells me there is no record of men killing men on Gwydion,” said Raven in a metallic voice. “It’s not merely rare, it’s unknown. And yet that thorp was attacked and burned once.”

  Elfavy gulped. Anger rushed into Tolteca, thick and hot. “Look here, Raven,” he snapped, “you may be free to bully some poor Lochlanna peasant, but—”

  “No,” said Elfavy. “Please.”

  “Did every home up here suffer a like fate?” Raven flung the questions at her, not loudly but nonetheless like bullets. “Were the hills deserted because it was too hazardous to live in isolation?”

  “I don’t know.” Elfavy’s tone lifted with an unevenness it had not borne until now. “I . . . have seen ruins once in a while . . . nobody knows what happened.” A sudden yell: “Everything isn’t written in the histories, you know! Do you know every answer to every question about your own planet?”

  “Of course not,” said Raven. “But if this were my world, I’d at least know why all the buildings are constructed like fortresses.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Why, you asked me that once before. . . . I told you,” she stammered. “The strength of the house, the family—a symbol—”

  “I heard the myth,” said Raven. “I was also assured that no one has ever believed those myths to be literal truths, only poetic expressions. Your charming tale about Anren who made the stars has not prevented you from having an excellent grasp of astrophysics. So what are you guarding against? What are you afraid of?”

  Elfavy crouched back. “Nothing.” The words rattled from her. “If, if, if there were anything . . . wouldn’t we have better weapons against it . . . than bows and spears? People get hurt—by accidents, by sickness and old age. They die, the Night has themnothing else! There can’t be!”

  She whirled about and fled.

  Tolteca stepped toward Raven, who stood squinting after the girl. “Turn around,” he said. “I’m going to beat the guts out of you.”

  Raven laughed, a vulpine bark. “How much combat karate do you know, trader’s clerk?”

  Tolteca dropped a hand to his gun. “We’re in another culture,” he said between his teeth. “A generation of scientific study won’t be enough to map its thought processes. If you think you can go trampling freely on these people’s feelings, no more aware of what you’re doing than a bulldozer with a broken autopilot—”

  They both felt the ground shiver. An instant afterward the sound reached them, booming down the sky.

  The three Lochlanna were on their feet in a ring, weapons aimed outward, without seeming to have moved. Elsewhere the camp stumbled awake, men calling to each other through thunders.

  Tolteca ran after Elfavy. The sun seemed remote and heatless, the explosions rattled his teeth together, he felt the earth’s vibrations in his boots.

  The noise died away, but echoes flew about for seconds longer. Dawyd joined Elfavy and threw his arms around her. A flock of birds soared up, screaming.

  The physician’s gaze turned westward. Black smoke boiled above the treetops. As Tolteca reached the Simnons, he saw Dawyd trace the sign against misfortune.

  “What is it?” shouted the Namerican. “What happened?”

  Dawyd looked his way. For a moment the old eyes were without recognition. Then he answered curtly, “Mount Granis.”

  “Oh.” Tolteca slapped his forehead. The relief was such that he wanted to howl his laughter. Of course! A volcano cleared its throat, after a century or two of quiet. Why in the galaxy were the Gwydiona breaking camp?

  “I never expected this,” said Dawyd. “Though probably our seismology is less well developed than yours.”

  “Our man made some checks, and didn’t think we would have any serious trouble if we built a spaceport here,” said Tolteca. “That wasn’t a real eruption, you know. Just a bit of lava and a good deal of smoke.”

  “And a west wind,” said Dawyd. “Straight from Granis to us.”

  He paused before adding, almost absentmindedly, “The site I had in mind for your base is protected from this sort of thing. I checked the airflow patterns with the central meteorological computer at Bettwis, and the fumes never will get there. It is a mere unlucky happenstance that we should be at this exact spot, this very moment. Now we must run, and may fear give speed to us.”

  “From a little smoke?” asked Tolteca incredulously.

  Dawyd held his daughter close. “This is a young planetary system,” he said. “Rich in heavy metals. That smoke and dust, when it arrives, will include enough such material to kill us.”

  By the time they got in motion, jogging south along a sparsely wooded ridge, the cloud had overshadowed them. Kors looked past a dim red ball of sun, estimating with an artilleryman’s eye. His lantern jaw worked a moment, as if chewing sour cud, before he spoke.

  “We can’t go back the way we came, Commandant. That muck’ll fall out all over these parts. We’ve got to keep headed this way and hope we can get out from under. Ask one of those yokels if he knows a decent trail.”

  “Must we have a trail?” puffed Wildenvey. “Let’s cut right through the woods.”

  “Listen to the for-Harry’s-sake heathdweller talk!” jeered Kors. “Porkface, I grew up in the Ernshaw. Have you ever tried to run through brush?”

  “Save your breath, you two,” advised Raven. He loped a little faster until he joined Dawyd and Elfavy at the head of the line. Grass whispered under his boots, now and then a hobnail rang on a stone and sparks showered. The sky was dull brown, streaked with black, the light from it like tarnished brass and casting no shadows. The only bright things in the world were an occasional fire-spit from Mount Granis, and Elfavy’s flying hair.

  Raven put the question to her. He spaced his words with his breathing, which he kept in rhythm with his feet. The girl replied in the same experienced manner. “In this direction, all paths converge on the Holy City. We ought to be safe there, if we can reach it soon enough.”

  “Before Bale time?” exclaimed Dawyd.

  “Is it forbidden?” asked Raven, and wondered if he would use his guns to enter a refuge tabooed.

  “No . . . no rule of conduct. . . . But nobody goes there outside Bale time!” Dawyd shook his head, bewildered. “It would be a meaningless act.”

  “Meaningless—to save our lives?” protested Raven.

  “Unsymbolic,” said Elfavy. “It would fit into no pattern.” She lifted her face to the spreading darkness and cried, “But what sense would it make to breathe that dust? I want to see Byord again!”

  “Yes. So. So be it.” Dawyd shut his mouth and concentrated on making speed.

  Raven’s eyes, watching the uneven ground, touched the girl’s quick feet and stayed there. Not until he tripped on a vine did he remember exactly where he was. Then he swore and forced himself to think of the situation. Without analytical apparatus, he had no way to confirm that volcanic ash was as dangerous as Dawyd claimed; but it seemed reasonable, on a planet like this. The first expedition had been warned about many vegetable species that were poisonous to man simply because they grew in soil loaded with heavy elements. It wouldn’t take a lot of inhaled metallic material to destroy you: radioactives, arsenates, perhaps mercury liberated from its oxide by heat. A few gulps and you were done. Dying might take a while, prolonged by the medics’ attempts to get a hopelessly big dose out of your body. Not that Raven intended to watch his own lungs and
brain go rotten. His pistol could do him a final service. But Elfavy—

  They stopped to rest at the head of a downward trail. One of the Gwydiona objected through a dried-out throat: “Not the Holy City! We’d destroy the entire meaning of Bale!”

  “No, we wouldn’t.” Dawyd, who had been thinking as he trotted, answered with an authority that pulled their reddened eyes to him. “The eruption at the moment when we happened to be downwind was an accident so improbable it was senseless. Right? The Night Face called Chaos.” Several men crossed themselves, but they nodded agreement. “If we redress the matter—restore the balance of events, of logical sequence—by entering the Focus of God (in our purely human persona at that, which makes our act a parable of man’s conscious reasoning powers, his science)—what could be more significant?”

  They mulled it over while the gloom thickened and Mount Granis boomed at their backs. One by one, they murmured assent. Tolteca whispered to Raven, in Ispanyo, “Oa, I do believe I see a new myth being born.”

  “Yes. They’ll doubtless bring one of their quasi-gods into it, a few generations hence, while preserving an accurate historical account of what really happened!”

  “But by all creation! Here they are, running from an unnecessarily horrible death, and they argue whether it would be artistic to shelter in this temple spot!”

  “It makes more sense than you think,” said Raven somberly. “I remember once when I was a boy, my very first campaign in fact. A civil war, the Bitter Water clan against my own Ethnos. We boxed a regiment of them in the Stawr Hills, expecting them to dig in. They wouldn’t, because there were brave men’s graves everywhere around, the Danoora who fell three hundred years ago. They came out prepared to be mowed down. When we grasped the situation, we let them go, gave them a day’s head start. They reached their main body, which perhaps turned the course of the war. But that victory would have cost us too much.”

  Tolteca shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Any more than you would understand why men died to pull down the foreign castles on our planet.”