Harvest of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  Yes, beside it the standard adjustable model lent to her showed as ugly and clumsy. Even her own gear aboard her torchcraft would have. But they were more versatile and far more sturdy, she felt sure. Rinndalir was loco to caper around in that flimsy thing.

  Though the thought stripped away none of the glamour, it was steadying. “And you have ample experience with low-gravity environments,” she heard him observe. “I see. If you have rested enough, we should proceed home.”

  “I wasn’t tired,” she said. “I was waiting for you to catch up.”

  He smiled and waved an arm, spread-fingered. The muscle equivalents in sleeve and glove made the gesture virtually as graceful as within his stronghold. “Believing you would need a pause at the summit, I indulged in a little crag-leaping.”

  In the gloom of the gorge below them? The reflection flitted through her that if he’d come to grief, she, alone, mapless, unacquainted with landmarks, ill-equipped to send a long-range call, would have been in serious trouble. Had he cared? She found she couldn’t resent it. His nature was such—she supposed.

  “I hope you have enjoyed our excursion,” he went on.

  Whatever pique she felt vaporized in splendor. “Oh, yes! Mil gracias! You’ve been hyper kind.”

  These hours afoot had been a marvel. Often she quite forgot her troubles. Past sightseeing had brought her to things that were superb, amidst expanses of dreariness, but none compared with what he showed her. Freakish, eerily beautiful formations; mineral colors subtle or startling; tremendous vistas; the remnant of an old exploration camp; enigmatic stones that must have come from beyond the Solar System; the bas-reliefs decorating one scaur; at last the descent into this ravine and the cave near the bottom, where flashbeams awakened an Aladdin’s hoard of crystals—Some of it was recorded in early photographs, but most the Lunarians had discovered or made and kept known to none but themselves. Why had Rinndalir revealed it to her, who would surely tell others? Bueno, this was his demesne, he could refuse admission and grin at indignation.

  “When you’re so busy, too,” Kyra said.

  Foreboding stirred. Why, indeed, would he spare the time? Why wasn’t he at work organizing Guthrie’s rescue? He’d been out of her sight plenty at the castle, on his screened communication lines or perhaps more than once flying elsewhere to conspire in person. He sidestepped her questions with an evasion or a jest, assuring her nothing bad had happened thus far and that she ought to take her ease, relax, recuperate. No multi available to her would bring in a newscast; he said he spared his staff and himself those stupidities, and she decided against pursuing the matter.

  Hm, his lady Niolente had been equally occupied, and lately had remarked in her aloof fashion that she must make a trip. Maybe she was handling everything that at this moment could be handled. But the sense of confinement would have become unendurable to Kyra if … if they had allowed it to grow in her.

  “Best I get back into connection, then,” Rinndalir said lightly. “We will return by the shortest route, as quickly as you are able.”

  Despite all wonders, that was a relief. No normal spacer would have stayed out this long or gone this far without a vehicle. True, the danger wasn’t great, the sun wasn’t in a flare period, but as they two crossed a valley floor, dust had spurted three meters to their left and fallen back onto a new pockmark. The bullet-sized meteoroid would have killed either of them. His laughter rang. By the time her nerves had settled, it was too late to ask him if he had been delighted.

  He took the lead, soaring down the mountainside. More dust puffed from every footfall. It dropped off the repellent surfaces of his outfit, as it did off hers, and left him darkly shining. From time to time he must pause for her. It wasn’t due to a difference in physical strength. In that regard they were probably equal. The modifications that enabled his people to stay healthy and carry babies to term under one-sixth Earth weight were more in the cardiovascular system and the cellular chemistry than in bone or muscle. His spacesuit gave him his advantage. Hers was a responsive machine, his was garb. Panting, sweating, picking her way rock by rock, Kyra wondered whether she too wouldn’t opt for one such and to hell with hazards, were she a Lunarian.

  Which she never could be.

  On ground more nearly level she matched his pace and soon fell into the long, swinging rhythm of it. Neither spoke; breath was to spend on kilometers. Alone with herself, Kyra thought about Guthrie. Five daycycles, damn near, since she landed on the Moon; four since this seigneury took her unto itself, and since he drew nigh to L-5. If he had. How fared he now? And Bob Lee, the Packers, Esther Blum, yes, Nero Valencia, everybody? They could all have been captured, destroyed, anything. The Avantists wouldn’t announce it. Was that what the dearth of news meant which Rinndalir spoke of, if Rinndalir was telling the truth?

  What was truth, yonder inside his walls? How much of what she remembered was natural, how much artifice, how much illusion? Thinking back, she realized how little certainty was granted her, from the moment she passed the portal. Drowsiness and dream—

  No, be fair. Those first twenty-odd hours she had spent asleep or barely half awake, sedated, and it was Niolente’s suggestion but her own decision. Stress had drawn her more thin than she knew until suddenly it ended. (Wryly: This had also been her chance to take a pill from her pocket kit, cancelling the inhibitor and starting a rather overdue menstruation. It ended last nightwatch. She must remember to reinhibit. Her periods gave her no major discomfort, but should action commence again she’d rather not have that to fuss about.) Food and drink brought her were delicious, and with consciousness off guard she believed that she began to appreciate the music she heard.

  Afterward, though—Yes, utter hospitality and graciousness. Niolente’s courtesy to the guest was remote. Kyra suspected fire beneath that ice, but never felt it. Rinndalir charmed or fascinated as he chose. His discourse ranged over the whole of knowledge and culture, seen through eyes not wholly human. (“The mind deceives itself less often than it plays practical jokes on itself. … ‘All evil comes from not following Right Reason and the Law of Nature,’ said Uriel Acosta, a Portuguese-Dutch Jew in the seventeenth century. It is a fairly workable definition of evil, for beings that imagine they think. … The most terrible thing a mind can conceive of is that it knows everything important about reality. …”) When he was not on hand, there was no lack of handsome male and comely female attendants to show her about, answer her questions, respond to her wishes, and yet not press themselves upon her.

  The conservatory and the metamorphic pets rivaled the prides of Tychopolis. She swam in a great pool among fish never seen on Earth, then strapped wings to her arms and flew off above the gardens and glass sculptures of a cavern as spacious as L-5’s largest flight chamber. She learned how to play Mayan ball between the tiers of a replicated Mayan court, but the original could not become so wild. She mastered intricate low-g dances, Rinndalir’s arm around her waist, he suppleness itself. She struggled to comprehend books and recorded shows; the effort was richly rewarded, though she realized how superficial her understanding remained. Some wine or a mild psychedelic helped. Nobody offered her a quiviran session, and she would have declined, but the virtualities in a vivifer turned stranger than any dream, she whirling through an endless fractal curve, riding a billow on a sea of red smoke, turned into a harpstring plucked by the solar wind. …

  Oh, the Lunarians knew well how to keep her busy, distracted, away from her rightful concerns. The spires of Zamok Vysoki flashed at the horizon. It jolted through her that while she loped she had slipped entirely back into her memories of that fantasy life.

  Why had she been given it? Rinndalir could simply have detained her incommunicado. But she was his ally. Was she?

  The walls rose tall before their haste. An intricate frieze framed the entry valve at which they drew to a deep-breathing halt. “Welcome home, my lady,” he said.

  She made herself retort, “It’s not my home. When will you let me go?”r />
  He looked at her. The unfairly fair countenance flowed into seriousness. “I have hopes for that,” he said. Amazed, she could but follow him into the airlock and thence the castle.

  As they unsuited, he told her, “You will wish to refresh and rest before evenwatch. But pray stand prepared for a call.” His undergarment clung silkily, a second skin on a panther.

  Kyra went on to her room. A-buzz and a-shiver, she scarcely noticed the portraits, landscapes, and abstractions hung in the first corridor she took. Then, above a serpent-bannistered staircase, another hall was paneled for holo. The scenes changed every few hours. She had been told that a hypercomputer creatively modified recordings when it did not generate new ones, so that the inhabitants would never know what to expect. Today she passed as if on a bridge across a cosmically huge chasm. Far ahead burned fires, red and yellow and green; far behind rose a mysterious blue shimmer of ice cliffs. She felt suggestions of heat and cold, heard whispers of roaring and howling. In between were fog and smoke, wind-riven but thickly rolling. Left and right they seemed to curdle into solid forms, grotesque, one maybe human, one maybe beast.

  Her room was a haven. Ample, its gold and nacre held furnishings to whose style and proportions she had gotten used. Opposite a door that gave on a private bath, a large viewscreen was at present set to show the upper heavens, stars amplified into frosty visibility against the interior lighting. That was considerate; Earth would have reminded her of too much.

  A bedside table held a self-cooling carafe of the mango cider she had mentioned she enjoyed, a plate of small cakes delicately spiced with marijuana, and a vase shaped like a blue fountain of water, filled with purple roses. Their scent and a lilt of music flavored the air. She shucked her skinsuit, tossed it down the cleaner chute, and crossed a carpet patterned with constellations, silver on blue, which gave her bare feet slight electric tingles. After reveling in a shower, she came forth to study what was in her closet. A tailor machine had taken her measurements early on, and by next daywatch she was lavishly provided.

  The phone did not chime or call, it fluted. Hastily she threw on a bathrobe and went to answer. Rinndalir’s face looked out at her. Behind him Kyra saw Niolente. Her expression was composed, but on his Kyra read a savage exultation … or so she imagined.

  “I promised you a change of orbit, my lady,” he said. “Here you begin. We have fresh data to coordinate and plans to make.”

  It flared in Kyra. “Por favor, tell me,” she gasped.

  “Radar, ion trails, and analysis—but you know the procedures. Three more torchcraft have come to Lagrange-Five. Our information is that this is as many as the North American government commands. Belike they are crammed with Security Police. Another torch was cruising about the region in such a way that it must have been on search for your launcher, but it has returned Earthward. We think it found the rocket, and found it empty. Therefore the lord Guthrie most likely was brought into the colony, and the Security Police are in frantic quest of him there.”

  “Judas priest!” Kyra yelled. “Stop them before they find him!” A fragment of her noticed she had used an old oath of the jefe’s.

  He’d hoped that, if she failed to get help here, Tamura could retrieve him and reveal him. It hadn’t worked out. His other self must have been too quick on the uptake. Now she alone bore hope. Suppose the Lunarians decided their advantage lay in keeping neutral, or in striking a bargain with counter-Guthrie—No, she would not think that, not yet.

  And Rinndalir saved her from it: “Patience a while longer, a little, little while.” His smile reached out to capture her. “We know time is short. We marshal for action. But you, Pilot Davis, must understand that the lady Niolente and I cannot achieve by ourselves. We have been at work these past daycycles, persuading our fellow Selenarchs. It was not easy. Soon she departs again, to see to the final arrangements. Abide.”

  “Why don’t you just tell the Solar System the truth?” At once Kyra recognized her idiocy. Rinndalir could have done that the hour she arrived here, had he seen fit.

  His reply was much the same as he had given her earlier. “It would be irresponsible, and quite possibly useless. The situation is explosive. Your enemies have made their provisions. Where is our proof? Better the solid lord Guthrie in hand than the naked assertion he exists, nay?” But this time he added, smiling again—warmly, she believed in her dazzlement, warmly—“Pray forgive us if we have been less than forthcoming. The unknowns, the complexities were too many. We could have told you nothing meaningful. We are still half in enigma. But I say we are about to act. If you will bless me with your presence at dinner this evenwatch, my lady, I will seek to explain.”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. Her knees trembled beneath her.

  “At 1930, then? Good.” The screen blanked.

  She stood for a while wondering confusedly why she didn’t whoop and war-dance around the room. True, they hadn’t yet won, they could still lose, but—Her head felt all in a whirl. A private meeting with Rinndalir? She assumed it would be private, if Niolente was going away. Why in MacCannon’s name did he affect her like this? Alluring to look at, spellbinding to listen to, sure, but there should be more to a man than that. He wasn’t even a man, strictly speaking. Male, yes, but he couldn’t father a child on her if they both tried. She felt the blush as a wave of heat, glanced down and saw that it reached to her breasts.

  That called forth a laugh. Ease off, girl. The exotic always appealed, and no doubt she was on the rebound from Valencia. Let that lesson stay with her. Admittedly Rinndalir had depths beneath the glittering surface. Just what were they, though? Keep watchful, ready to jump.

  And don’t remain passive. Give him back some of his own. For openers, what to wear?

  She spent a considerable time on that. The wardrobe bestowed on her included things she hadn’t yet used. She chose the slinkiest, an ankle-length tigryl gown cut low, its skirt slit up the right side. Silvery slippers. No jewelry except her academy ring, taken from her pocket kit. Her hands were big for a woman’s, well fitted to the heavy gold circlet and inlaid star. Cosmetics were in the bathroom. Thus far she hadn’t availed herself of them, but now, a few careful touches, plus a dab of the right perfume.

  Then it was to wait, and wait. She screened a recording of an Earthside The Tempest which she liked, but found that it wasn’t registering on her. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, maybe? No, that would go too near the bone.

  A servant appeared at last, to escort her ceremonially. He bowed her through a door of the Pagoda and closed it behind her.

  Brilliance erupted in a million colors. This turret jutting into space was one synthetic diamond, faceted inside and out. She could not look at the blaze where the sun shone through, but everywhere else was flash and sparkle, changeable at every least motion she made. Rinndalir approached over the glassy-polished floor, in close-fitting black. Rainbows played across the whiteness of face and hands, shimmered on the pale hair, danced about his feet.

  “Welcome anew,” he murmured. Unthinkingly, she offered him her arm. He held his above. Fingertips barely touched her hand. She felt each one of them. She’d granted him superior status. What of it? He smiled and guided her to a table. Wine and hors d’oeuvres were on it. Light filled the crystal. He poured. “Your Terrestrial custom,” he said, as he gave her a goblet. “Would you fain propose a toast?”

  Impulse grabbed. “To our partnership!” Rims sang when they met. It was a noble wine, no, regal, imperial.

  They continued standing, Lunarian style, as they drank and talked. “I am happy about this,” he told her. “Before, we were not free to deal with you as we wished, Niolente and I. Henceforth, I trust, you shall in truth be a partner. May I say a friend?”

  “Yes, por favor, do.” She mustn’t let it overwhelm her. Hold steady. Speak out. “But if, if I am to be—I need to know more.”

  He nodded. “Undeniably. You could not earlier because we did not ourselves. Forgive my frankness. At the start we mus
t gather what evidence we were able that would confirm or disconfirm your story. It seemed plausible, but it could have been part of a scheme. Unless that began to look likely, we would not subject you to the horror and indignity of a deep quiz.”

  Which they could have done with impunity. How could she have taken revenge, or gotten any redress afterward unless that was their whim? “K-kind of you.”

  He grinned. “Precautionary. Why raise needless antagonism?”

  Emboldened, she replied, “Lunarian thinking, that. Wise, of course. But as for this having been an elaborate hoax—bueno, I suppose that was Lunarian thinking too.”

  “We have the reputation of being intriguers,” he agreed, unabashed. “Remember, Niolente and I must convince not only ourselves of your bona fides, but a sufficiency among the Selenarchs, and they would speculate about us. Then we must negotiate, while collecting more intelligence about your enemies. You would not have understood our ways. This is not your civilization. Had we let you follow along, simply explaining matters as they developed would have been a serious drain on time and energy, and probably an impossible task.”

  Kyra stiffened a bit. “I would not have gone hysterical on you.”

  “Nay,” he answered softly. “I am sure of that now. But remember, you came to us a stranger. How could we tell? You are as foreign to us as we are to you.”

  “I wonder about that.” She took a deeper draught than was right for a drink like this. It hallowed her palate and sent rainbows into her bloodstream, akin to those that glorified Rinndalir. Might there be something in it, a drug to which he was accustomed or immune? No matter. She’d recognize intoxication if it started, and curb herself. “What have you arranged to do? Soon. You know we can’t dawdle.”

  He sighed. “Pity to spoil this hour with business.”

  Was that also how a Lunarian thought? “Get it over with and then we can relax and enjoy.”