Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga

by Poul Anderson

  He swung aside a door which gave on a huge and sunny room, gaily painted walls lined with cribs and playpens. A mobile robot stood by each, and a bright large machine murmured to itself in the center of the floor. Dawyd walked around, observing. “This is a routine and rather nominal inspection,” he said. “The engineers have already overhauled everything. As a physician, I have to certify that the environment is sanitary and pleasant, but that has never been a problem.”

  “What is it for?” Tolteca queried.

  “Do you not know? Why, to care for infants, those too young to accompany us to the Holy City. Byord is about as young as we ever dare take them. The hospital wing of this building has robots to nurse the sick and the very old during Bale time, but that’s not under my supervision.” Dawyd snapped his fingers. “What in the name of chaos was I going to tell you? Oh, yes. In case you have not already been warned. This entire building is locked up during Bale. Automatic shock beams are fired at anything—or anyone—that approaches within ten meters. Any moving object that gets through to the outside wall is destroyed by flame blasts. Stay away from here!”

  Tolteca stood quiet, for the last words had been alarmingly rough.

  Finally, he ventured, “Isn’t that rather extreme?”

  “Bale lasts about three Gwydiona days and nights,” said Dawyd. He had fixed his stare on a pen and tossed the sentences over his shoulder. “That’s more than ten standard days. Plus the time needed to walk to the Holy City and back. We don’t take chances.”

  “But what is it you fear? What can happen?” Dawyd said, not entirely steadily, but so far upborne by his own euphoria that he could at last speak plainly, “It is not uncommon that some of those who go to the Holy City do not come back. On returning, the others sometimes find that in spite of locks and shutters, there has been destruction wrought in town. So we put our important machines and our helpless members here, with mechanical attendants, in a place which nothing can enter till the time locks open automatically.”

  “I’ve gathered something like that,” Tolteca breathed. “But have you any idea what causes the trouble?”

  “We are not certain. The mountain apes are often blamed, but the experience you related to me does seem to absolve them. Conceivably, I don’t know; conceivably we are not the only intelligent race on Gwydion. There could be true aborigines, so alien that we failed to recognize any trace of their culture. Various legends about creatures that live underground or skulk in the deep forests may have some basis in fact. I don’t know. And it is never a good idea to theorize in advance of the data.”

  “Didn’t you, or your ancestors, ever attempt to get data?”

  “Yes, many times. Cameras and other recording devices were planted again and again. But they were always evaded, or discovered and smashed.” Dawyd broke off short and continued his inspection in silence. He moved a little jerkily.

  They were leaving the fortress before Tolteca suggested diffidently, “Perhaps we, from the ship, can observe what happens while you are gone.”

  Dawyd had calmed down again. “You are welcome to try,” he said, “but I doubt you will have any success. You see, I don’t expect the town will be entered. No such thing has happened for many years. Even in my own boyhood, a raid on a deserted community was a rare event. You must not believe this is a major problem for us. It was worse in the distant past, but nowadays it has so dwindled that there isn’t even much incentive to study the problem.”

  Tolteca didn’t think he would be unmotivated to look into the possibility of a native race on Gwydion. But he didn’t wish to disturb his host further. He struck a cigarette as they walked on. The streets were now entirely bare save for Dawyd and himself. And yet the sun drenched them in light. It sharpened his feeling of eeriness.

  “Actually, I’m afraid you will have a dull wait,” said the older man. He was becoming more and more himself as the Namerican’s questions receded in time. “Everybody gone, everything locked up, over the whole inhabited planet. Maybe you would like to fly down to the southern hemisphere and explore a little.”

  “I think we’ll just stay put and correlate our findings,” said Tolteca. “We have a lot. When you return—”

  “We won’t be worth much for a few days afterward,” Dawyd warned him. “It isn’t easy for mortal flesh, being God.”

  They reached his house. He stopped at the door, looking embarrassed. “I should invite you in, but—”

  “I understand. Family rites.” Tolteca smiled. “I’ll stroll down to the park at town’s end. You’ll pass by there on your way, and I’ll wave farewell.”

  “Thank you, far-friend.”

  The door closed. Tolteca stood a moment, inhaling deeply, before he ground the cigarette butt under his heel and walked off between shuttered walls.

  X

  The park was gay with flowers. A few of the expedition lounged under shade trees, also waiting to observe the departure. Tolteca saw Raven, and clamped lips together. I will not lose my temper. He approached and gave greeting.

  Raven answered with Lochlanna formality. The mercenary had put on full dress for the occasion, blouse, trousers, tooled leather boots, embroidered surcoat. He stood square, next to a baleflower bush as tall as himself. Its buds were opening in a riot of scarlet flowers. They smelled almost but not quite like the cousin species in the mountains, herbs, summer meadows, a phosphorus overtone, and something else that flitted half sensed below the surface of memory. The Siamese cat Zio nestled in Raven’s arms; he stroked the beast with one hand and got a purr for answer.

  Tolteca repeated Dawyd’s warning about the fortress. Raven’s dark head nodded. “I knew that. I’d do the same in their place.”

  “Yes, you would,” said Tolteca. He remembered his resolution and added impersonally, “Such over-destructiveness doesn’t seem characteristic of the Gwydiona, though.”

  “This isn’t a characteristic season. Every five standard years, for about ten standard days, something happens to them. I’d feel easier if I knew what.”

  “My guess—” Tolteca paused. He hated to say it aloud. But finally: “A dionysiac religion.”

  “I can’t swallow that,” said Raven. “These people know about photosynthesis. They don’t believe magical demonstrations make the earth fertile.”

  “They might employ such ceremonies anyhow, for some historical or psychological reason.” Tolteca winced, thinking of Elfavy gasping drunken in the arms of man after man. But if he didn’t say it himself, someone else would; and he was mature enough, he insisted, to accept a person on her own cultural terms. “Orgiastic.”

  “No,” said Raven. “This is no more a dionysiac culture than yours or mine. Not at any time of year. Just put yourself in their place, and you’ll see. That cool, reasonable, humorous mentality couldn’t take a free-for-all seriously enough. Someone would be bound to start laughing and spoil the whole effect.”

  Tolteca looked at Raven with a sudden warmth for the man. “I believe you’re right. I certainly want to believe it. But what do they do, then?” After a moment: “We have been more or less invited to join them, you realize. We could simply go watch.”

  “No. Best not. If you’ll recall the terms in which that semi-invitation was couched, it was implicitly conditional on our feeling the same way as them—joining into the spirit of the festival, whatever that may mean. I don’t think we could fake it. And by distracting them at such a time—more and more, I’m coming to think it’s the focus of their whole culture—by doing that, we might lose their good will.”

  “M-m, yes, perhaps. . . . Wait! Perhaps we can join in. I mean, if it involves taking some drug. Probably a hallucinogen like mescaline, though something on the order of lysergic acid is possible too. Anyhow, couldn’t Bale be founded on that? A lot of societies, you know, some of them fairly scientific, believe that their sacred drug reveals otherwise inaccessible truths.”

  Raven shook his head. “If that were so in this case,” he answered, “they’d use t
he stuff oftener than once in five years. Nor would they be so vague about their religion. They’d either tell us plainly about the drug, or explain politely that we aren’t initiates and it’s none of our business what happens at the Holy City. Another argument against your idea is that they shun drugs so completely in their everyday life. They don’t like the thought of anything antagonistic to the normal functioning of body and mind. Do you know, this past day is the first instance I’ve seen or heard or read of any Gwydiona even getting high on alcohol?”

  “Well,” barked Tolteca in exasperation, “suppose you tell me what they do!”

  “I wish I could.” Raven’s disquieted gaze went to the baleflower. “Has the chemical analysis of this been finished?”

  “Yes, just a few hours ago. Nothing special was found.”

  “Nothing whatsoever?”

  “Oa, well, its perfume does contain an indole, among other compounds, probably to attract pollinating insects. But it’s a quite harmless indole. If you breathed it at an extremely high concentration—several thousand times what you could possibly encounter in the open air—I suppose you might get a little dizzy. But you couldn’t get a real jag on.”

  Raven scowled. “And yet this bush is named for the festival. And alone on the whole inhabited planet, has no mythology.”

  “Xinguez and I threshed that out, after he’d checked his linguistic references. Bear in mind that Gwydiona stems from a rather archaic dialect of Anglic, closely related to the ancestral English. That word bale can mean several things, depending on ultimate derivation. It can signify a bundle; a fire, especially a funeral pyre; an evil or sorrow; and, more remotely and with a different spelling, Baal is an ancient word for a god.”

  Tolteca tapped a fresh cigarette on his thumbnail and struck it with an uneven motion across the heel of his shoe. “You can imagine how the Gwydiona could intertwine such multiple meanings,” he continued. “What elaborate symbolisms are potentially here. Those flowers have long petals, aimed upward; a bush in full bloom looks rather like a fire, I imagine. The Burning Bush of primitive religion. Hence, maybe, the name bale. But that could also mean ‘God’ and ‘evil.’ And it blooms just at Bale time. So because of all these coincidences, the bale-flower symbolizes the Night Faces, the destructive aspect of reality . . . probably the most cruel and violent phase thereof. Hence nobody talks about it. They shy away from creating the myths that are so obviously suggested. The Gwydiona don’t deny that evil and sorrow exist, but neither do they go out of their way to contemplate the fact.”

  “I know,” said Raven. “In that respect they’re like Namericans.” He failed to hide entirely the shade of contempt in the last word.

  Tolteca heard, and flared. “In every other respect, too!” he snapped. “Including the fact that your bloody warlords are not going to carve up this planet!”

  Raven looked directly at the engineer. So did Zio. It was disconcerting, for the cat’s eyes were as cold and steady as the man’s. “Are you quite certain,” said Raven, “that these people are the same species as us?”

  “Oa! If you think—your damned racism—just because they’re too civilized to brew war like you.” Tolteca advanced with fists cocked. If Elfavy could only see! it begged through the boiling within him. If she could hear what this animal really thinks of her!

  “Oh, quite possibly interbreeding is still feasible,” said Raven. “We’ll find that out soon enough.”

  Tolteca’s control broke. His fist leaped forward of itself.

  Raven threw up an arm—Zio scampered to his shoulder—and blocked the blow. His hand slid down to seize Tolteca’s own forearm, his other hand got the Namerican’s biceps, his foot scythed behind the ankles. Tolteca went on his back, pinned. The cat squalled and clawed at him.

  “That isn’t necessary, Zio.” Raven let go. Several of his men hurried up. He waved them away. “It was nothing,” he called.” I was only demonstrating a hold.”

  Kors looked dubious, but at that moment someone exclaimed, “Here they come!” and attention went to the road. Tolteca climbed back erect, too caught in a tide of anger, shame, and confusion to notice the parade much.

  Not that there was a great deal to notice. The Instar folk walked with an easy, distance-devouring stride, in no particular order. They were lightly clad. Each carried the one lunch he would need on the way, some spare garments, and nothing else. But their chatter and laughter and singing were like a bird-flock, like sunlight on a wind-ruffled lake, and now and then one of the adults danced among the hurtling children. So they went past, a flurry of bright tunics, sunbrowned limbs, garlanded fair hair, into the hills and the Holy City.

  But Elfavy broke from them. She ran to Raven, caught both the soldier’s hands in her own, and cried, “Come with us! Can’t you feel it, liatha?”

  He watched her a long while, his features wooden, before he shook his head. “No. I’m sorry.”

  Tears blurred her eyes, and that wasn’t the way of Gwydion either. “You can never be God, then?” Her head drooped, the yellow mane hid her face. Tolteca stood staring. What else could he do?

  “If I might give you the power,” said Elfavy. “I would give up my own.” She sprang free, raised hands to the sun and shouted, “But it’s impossible that you can’t feel it! God is here already, everywhere. I see Vwi shining from you, Raven! You must come!”

  He folded his hands together within the surcoat sleeves. “Will you stay here with me?” he asked.

  “Always, always.”

  “Now, I mean. During Bale time.”

  “What? Oh—no, yes—you are joking?”

  He said slowly, “I’m told the Night Faces are also revealed, sometimes, under the Steeps of Kolumkill. That not everyone comes home every year.”

  Elfavy took a backward step from him. “God is more than good,” she pleaded. “God is real.”

  “Yes. As real as death.”

  “Great ylem!” exploded Tolteca. “What do you expect, man? Everybody who can walk goes there. Some must have incipient disease, or weak hearts, or old arteries. The strain—”

  Raven ignored him. “Is it a secret what happens, Elfavy?” he asked.

  Her muscles untensed. Her merriment trilled forth. “No. It’s only that words are such poor lame things. As I told you that night in the sanctuary.”

  In him, the grimness waxed. “Well, words can describe a few items, at least. Tell me what you can. What do you do there, with your physical body? What would a camera record?”

  The blood drained from her face. She stood unmoving. Eventually, out of silence that grew and grew around her: “No. I can’t.”

  “Or you mustn’t?” Raven grabbed her bare shoulders so hard that his fingers sank in. She didn’t seem to feel it. “You mustn’t talk about Bale, or you won’t, or you can’t?” he roared. “Which is it? Quick, now!”

  Tolteca tried to stir, but his bones seemed locked together. The Instar people danced by, too lost in their joy to pay attention. The other Namericans looked indignant, but Wildenvey had casually drawn his gun and grinned in their eyes. Elfavy shuddered. “I can’t tell!” she gasped.

  Raven’s expression congealed. “You don’t know,” he said. “Is that why?”

  “Let me go!”

  He released her. She stumbled against the bush. A moment she crouched, the breath sobbing in and out of her. Then instantly, like a curtain descending, she fell back into her happiness. Tears still caught sunlight on her cheeks, but she looked at the bruises on her skin, laughed at them, sprang forward and kissed Raven on his unmoving lips. “Then wait for me, liatha!” She whirled, skipped off, and was lost in the throng.

  Raven stood without stirring, gazing after them as they dwindled up the road. Tolteca would not have believed human flesh could stay immobile so long.

  At last the Namerican said, through an acrid taste in his mouth, “Well, are you satisfied?”

  “In a way.” Raven remained motionless. His words fell flat.

  “D
on’t make too many assumptions,” said Tolteca. “She’s in an abnormal state. Wait till she comes back and is herself again, before you get your hopes up.”

  “What?” Raven turned his head, blinking wearily . He seemed to recognize Tolteca only after a few seconds. “Oh. But you’re wrong. That’s not an abnormal state.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your planet has seasons too. Do you consider spring fever a disease? Is it unnatural to feel brisk on a clear fall day?”

  “What are you hinting at?”

  “Never mind.” Raven lifted his shoulders and let them fall, an old man’s gesture. “Come, Sir Engineer, we may as well go back to the ship.”

  “But—Oa!” Tolteca’s finger stabbed at the Lochlanna. “Do you mean you’ve guessed—”

  “Yes. I may be wrong, of course. Come.” Raven picked up Zio and became very busy making the cat comfortable in his sleeve.

  “What?”

  Raven started to go.

  Tolteca caught him by the arm. Raven spun about. Briefly, the Lochlanna’s face was drawn into such a fury that the Namerican fell back. Raven clapped a hand to his dagger and whispered, “Don’t ever do that again.”

  Tolteca braced his sinews. “What’s your idea?” he demanded. “If Bale really is dangerous—”

  Raven leashed himself. “I see your thought,” he said in a calmer tone. “You want to go up there and stand by to protect her, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Suppose they do lie around in a comatose state. Some animal might sneak past the guard robots and—”

  “No. You will stay down here. Everybody will. That’s a direct order under my authority as military commander.” Raven’s severity ebbed. He wet his lips, as if trying to summon courage. “Don’t you see,” he added, “this has been going on for more than a thousand years. By now they have evolved—not developed, but blindly evolved—a system which minimizes the hazard. Most of them survive. The ancestors alone know what delicate balance you may upset by blundering in there.”