Harvest the Fire - [Harvest of Stars 03]

by By Poul Anderson

  A band of Keiki Moana swam by, pinniped incarnations of grace. Light from the west swirled in their wakes.

  Nicol ignored them. He had ended an hour of solitary pacing to stop where he was and curse his destiny.

  A soft footfall broke through to him. He turned about as Ianeke approached. For a moment they were still, he struggling to get rid of his thoughts, she uncertain.

  “You stand lonely, Jesse,” she said in Anglo. Her fluency had played its minor part in drawing them together.

  “It’s my choice,” he answered.

  She half reached for him, let her hand fall, and said, “I won’t trouble you if you don’t want me to.”

  He made a smile. “How could I not?” And in truth she was comely, brown and rounded, hair tumbling night-black past a face in which all the bloodlines of Earth seemed harmoniously mingled, her attire a wraparound skirt and a wreath of jasmine.

  Her own smile flashed back at him. “That’s better.” Seriousness returned. He heard the concern in her. “But you’re always lonely, aren’t you? I mean inside yourself, where it counts.”

  “What else can I be, when I’m always among strangers?” he retorted without thinking. Immediately he wanted to protest that he hadn’t expressed self-pity. But that could sound worse yet. He was too sparkbrained impulsive.

  “No, we’re your friends here!” she exclaimed, stricken. In some ways they were unreasonably vulnerable, these dwellers in mid-Pacific. Was it because they had scant contact with the rest of the world, or was it due to an obscure influence of the Keiki, those metamorphic seals, the other half of their society?

  Certainly they had made him welcome, first as a visitor, then as a person who began to imagine he might pass his life among them. Boundless was the patience with which they forgave his gaucheries and explosions of bad temper, while teaching him mainly by example. He often wondered how much was natural kindness and how much was for the sake of his interesting foreignness, or even his verses.

  “You and I—” Ianeke’s voice trailed off.

  “Yes,” he must agree. She had gone beyond kindness, she honestly cared for him.

  He could not break free of his mood. She regarded him with distress before she asked, “Were you making your new poem? I’m sorry if I interrupted. I’ll go away and let you work.” That too was genuine. Her culture made creativity an ideal, more powerful than he had found anywhere else.

  He shook his head. “No, no, it’s done.”

  Her eyes widened, then she bit her lip. “You sound displeased.”

  “I am. It’s garbage.”

  “I can’t believe that. You are too hard on yourself, ipo—dear one. How often have I told you? You are.” She touched his hand. He felt and heard and saw the sympathy.

  Sympathy! He nearly recoiled.

  “There’s nothing in it, nothing,” he rasped.

  “May I hear it?” She dared another smile. “Now is a good hour. You said the idea came at just this time, a few days ago.”

  “As you like.” He took his eyes from her, staring above the Keiki Moana in their waves, and mumbled,

  “The sunset throws a road across the sea,

  Ephemeral as fire, with barely breath

  Or ripple of a wrinkle on its bed,

  Nor signs to tell the day, ‘This way to death.’

  They who descend past infra-violet,

  Through that great night which underlies it, find

  No quietness for silt that sank from life

  To where the planetary millstones grind.

  How will those ocean folk remember us?

  How shall they and how can they? What we are

  Has bones too thick to walk the western road

  That smolders out beneath an eastern star.”

  “I do like,” she said low.

  He spat across the rail. “It’s empty, I tell you! No sense of what I wanted to say—”

  She moved to his side. “Of what is burning in you to say.”

  “Ha. The word for me is poetaster.”

  “No. You have the gift, you have the fire.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe, somewhere in my genome. What matter, when I don’t have anything to use it for?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His fists knotted. “What I’ve been wandering the world in search of, and thought for a while I might have found here. The—the symbols and the substance.” He drew a ragged breath. “Why has nothing new, nothing with real feeling in it, been done—in writing, music, every art, yes, every science—for centuries, I say, except by tiny enclaves like yours?”

  “Why, Earth, Luna, Mars, they have thousands of fine writers—”

  “Yes,” rushed from him. “Brilliant persons turning out excellent variations on old forms, old themes, trying to bring something back to life that was worn-out before their grandparents were born. What’s the sense in producing an imitation Odyssey, The Trojan Women, Hamlet, The Waste Land, Elegy at Jupiter?” His words gathered momentum. “Those spoke about love, strife, triumph, grief, terror, mystery, in the language of the people and their gods, or people who’d lost their gods but were gaining a universe. What life goes on today, except for what’s been the same for longer than anybody has lived, the same safe round, now and forever?”

  “I think we here—”

  “Yes, yes. You’re exploring, discovering, birthing new myths—” There flitted across him: In an offside corner of the planet, autonomous and undisturbed. But when someday those ways and dreams came forth into the outer world, how troubling would they be to its peace? As once the faith of Christ or Mahomet, the philosophy of Locke or Jefferson, the science of Newton or Darwin, or certain verses—

  “—and you sing of them,” he cried. “God, how I envy your bards! I hoped I could share—” He choked.

  She held him close. “You can. You shall.”

  He slumped. “No. It’s no use. I’m too outside.”

  She stepped back, taking both his hands in hers, and captured his gaze. “Kaohi mai ‘oe,” she said low. “Hold fast. You can learn to belong among us.”

  “How can I, when—when—-”

  As if to finish Nicol’s question for him and be the answer to it, Tawiri appeared from behind the deckhouse. To Nicol, the ship seemed to quiver beneath his tread. Yet he moved softly, the muscles that sheathed his mass under full control, cheerfulness on the round, smooth face. “Aloha, Ianeke,” he hailed in Awaiian. With the help of an inductor, and still more the help of her, Nicol had gained a fair command of the language. Tawiri gestured overside. The sun, become a red-gold shield, was on the horizon. Glade blazed from it across the waters. “I have been seeking you,” Tawiri said. “We were going to swim down the sunset road with the Keiki.”

  The young woman hesitated before she nodded. “Yes, we were. I forgot. Jesse—”

  Nicol knew he had the vigor to join them in the sea, but not the style. What they intended was a dance, an art, which they had started learning in childhood. Nor would he ever fully understand what marvel it was they celebrated.

  Bitterness rushed up in him, tasting of vomit. “Well, go!” he snapped. “Leave me alone.”

  Tears glimmered. “Jesse, I did not mean—”

  He felt the rage as a tide that bore him forward, helpless. “Go, I said! Eject! That’s an order!”

  She lifted a hand to her lips, as if slapped. Tawiri flushed, scowled, and rumbled, “Belay. You should not speak so to her. To anyone.” Incredulously: “And she your beloved.”

  “Mine?” Nicol yelled. “Everybody’s!”

  They stared at him. He sensed the horror in them. If Ianeke chose to share her bed with this friend also, what business was that of Nicol’s? None, here or throughout most of the world. The fact that he loved her was irrelevant to everyone but him.

  Tawiri hunched his shoulders. “That was pupuka,” he said almost mildly. The word, not quite translatable, implied an appalling breach of decency. “You must redeem yourself.” He meant performin
g an act of contrition before witnesses. Among the Lahui it was no humiliation. The usual aftermath was a feast, with much jollity.

  To Nicol, in his condition, it was impossible. A fraction of him knew how crazy he was being, but had no power to brake him. “I’ll redeem you, you smug slimeworm!” His fist slammed into Tawiri’s stomach.

  The big man lurched back, astounded, breath gusting from his mouth. He recovered and reached to grapple. Nicol had studied martial arts. Sometimes a contest worked some gall out of him. His response was equally reflexive, a sweep of legs and arms. Tawiri thudded down on the deck.

  He sat up but did not rise. His glance raked the foreigner, as did Ianeke’s. For a long while they were silent. The sun dropped from sight, the sea-road faded into darkness.

  “I did not know this of you,” Ianeke faltered at last.

  Nicol looked away from them. “I didn’t know it of myself,” he forced, aware that he lied. Yet he had not wanted it, he had not. “I’m . . . sorry.”

  “And we are.”

  Tawiri climbed to his feet. She moved to stand against his comforting bulk.

  “Yes,” she sighed, “best you go. A flight touches at Nauru, bound for Australia, tomorrow morning.”

  Where to, next? he wondered. Rage had drained away and left him numb. Later, he knew, would come the remorse and pain. Now he felt only a leaden practicality.

  A waxing half Moon shone pale above the deckhouse. Maybe he should try his luck there. Why not? He could do no worse than hitherto. Passage would consume most of his small savings, and the cost of living would be higher; if he didn’t want to exist in poverty, he’d need work, pay, to supplement citizen’s credit. Well, he’d heard about openings for Terrans in Lunarian outfits, and Terrans from Earth were preferred—more physical strength, ordinarily, plus the emotional factor of their being outsiders, hirelings, rather than residents. He ought quickly to acquire any necessary skills. Born and raised in the Habitat, he was at ease with changeable weight, Coriolis force, every trickiness of space. He’d gotten a technic education as well, to learn how the modern world operated. If, since then, he had become a drifter through the byways of Earth, why, his knowledge should soon revive. And if the Moondwellers were no more inspired or inspiring to him than Earthlings, maybe their environs would give him inhumanness to sing about, a latter-day Jeffers. . . .

  The thoughts blew past him cold and vague, like fog, above a slowly congealing realization of what he had lost.

  “But have it well, Jesse,” Ianeke sobbed in Tawiri’s arms, “always well.”

  “And you,” he said without tone. “All of you.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER

  5

  Falaire lived in the Dizoune apartments among other Lunarians who could afford it. Hers fronted a corridor that at present gave the illusion of space; you walked through blackness, surrounded by frosty stars, between doorways limned by constellations.

  At hers you entered a single great chamber, only the sanitor permanently hidden away. The floor, deep blue and yielding underfoot, extruded walls wherever she desired and reabsorbed them on command. From its half ellipse, sides curved nacreous to a ceiling vaulted and latticed, except where a section of native rock had been left unfinished. At the opposite end, a trumpet vine grew up a column to spread a canopy of leaves and fire-colored blossoms. Furniture, in the fine-drawn Lunarian style, was rather sparse; she liked room for pacing, dancing, or fencing practice. This evenwatch an outsize viewscreen had been set to generate a fantasy scene of towers reaching into a crimson sky where serpents flew on white wings. Music had dropped from savage passion to low and minor-key, sounds as of winds and strings, but with a subsonic beat for an erotic undertone.

  She had enclosed her bed and left those mirroring surfaces in place when she emerged with Nicol. They had donned robes. Hers wrapped her closely in a sable that set off white skin and loose golden hair. They walked hand in hand to a table that her housekeeper had decked with a lacy cloth, a light repast, and a carafe of wine. “We will serve ourselves,” she told it. The robot glided off to its station by the cuisinator and went motionless.

  Ordinarily the humans might have stood, Lunarian wise in Lunar gravity, but Nicol was glad to indulge his relaxed body and sit down. Falaire did the same. At her gesture, he poured into the crystal goblets.

  She lifted hers. “Uwach yei,” she murmured, traditional toast.

  “Salud, amor, dinero, y tiempo para gozarlos.”Still more ancient, Nicol’s response suited the moment; but also, already, he felt a wish to declare his Terranness—his independence. Besides, she would jeer at a sycophant, perhaps most cruelly if he was a lover.

  They drank, looking into each other’s eyes. He thought, as often before, how he really knew nothing of what dwelt behind hers. In the past hour she had again revealed no more than an inventive enjoyment. The wine was red and thick, pungently flavored. He didn’t quite like it, but best not say that. When he took a second draught, it seemed less harsh, and warmth tingled through his veins.

  Falaire smiled. “Brood you again, so soon?”

  Nicol shook himself. “I’m sorry. My mind wandered.”

  “Since you cannot in person? To wander is your nature.”

  Yes, she had come to know him in the times they were together. In her embrace he had bared his wishes and miseries; once he had wept. He tried for lightness. “I have no wish to travel just now.”

  “Nor do I wish you begone.” She took a salmon roe wonton in her chopsticks and nibbled it. He thought of a cat playing with a mouse. When she smiled, though, it was reminiscently. “Those were some wondrous docking maneuvers of yours.”

  “At a—a wondrous dock.” He knew he was nothing extraordinary in that regard. Well, she did lure forth capabilities he had not suspected.

  “I was reminded of your exploits in space,” she said. “Eyach, deft indeed.”

  “Not exploits. I never claimed—A couple of emergencies, extravehicular operations, repairs,” such as a sophotect could have done more readily; but the main reason for the Rayenn’s existence was to keep some slight human presence between the planets.

  Why did his tongue flounder like this? Though he wasn’t glib, he could usually hold up his end of a conversation and handle a compliment without fuss.

  “Now I believe those tales you told,” she said.

  “You didn’t before?” He felt an irrational hurt. “You could have verified them, the reports are in the courai database—”

  “Wai-ha, I teased. Be not so reactive.”

  “You are!” he flung back, and was immediately dismayed.

  He had come to know the Lunarian look she gave him, and the inward withdrawal it warned of.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, the words stumbling in their haste. “No offense, querida. I only meant you—your people, they are fierce and—and mercurial, and proud.” Proud as Lucifer, he thought out of books that few today knew.

  Why was the afterglow of love draining from him this fast?

  “We are not meek Terrans, nay,” she said.

  They ate and drank a while in silence. He wanted desperately to ease the strain he felt. Did she?

  “I, I understand,” he said at last. “I’m honored that you—”

  She smiled anew and reached across the table to close fingers briefly over his hand. “You are not of the common ruck in your race. You too rage at your unfreedom.”

  “No, not really, not exactly.” Try to keep things sane, he thought. Somehow he had come to the verge of an emotional eruption, his wits a-tumble.

  Falaire raised her brows. “Nay? You have spoken of being born into a desert of the spirit.”

  “That’s nothing I can blame anybody for.” He must curb the quick, hot anger she evoked. It was absolutely not reasonable.

  Her lips tightened, her tone went wintry. “I can and do. I curse this black hole of a world that sucks us in and crushes us formless. I would explode it if I could.”

  Yes, hi
s mind continued for her, destroy it and then range adventuring, unhindered by economics. And reign a Selenarch, unencumbered with politics. Life a wild poem, ruthless as theIliad, reckless as Otterburn. Beside that longing, his merely creative frustration was ludicrous. Yet his wrath seethed higher.

  Falaire’s laugh rang metallic. “Arai, who can burst asunder a black hole?”

  Nicol groped for a way to diminish her bitterness and his, bring them back to their pleasure. “On Proserpina they’re free.” What she would call free.

  “Who can escape a black hole?” she replied starkly.

  “True—No more emigrant ships—” Few ships of any kind, anywhere in the inner Solar System, and nearly all of them altogether machine.