The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  “It is fair, ai, it is as fair as the Sunset Kingdom of legend,” Ilyandi breathed at last.

  She stood slim in the man’s kirtle and buskins that she, as a Vilku, could with propriety wear on trek. The wind fluttered her short locks. The coppery skin was as wet and almost as odorous as Kalava’s midnight black, but she was no more wearied than any of her companions.

  The sailor Urko scowled at the trees and underbrush crowding close on either side. Only the strip up which the travelers had come was partly clear, perhaps because of a landslide in the past. “Too much woods,” he grumbled. It had, in fact, been a struggle to move about wherever they landed. They could not attempt the hunting that had been easy on the coast. Luckily, the water teemed with fish.

  “Logging will cure that.” Kalava’s words throbbed. “And then what farms!” He stared raptly into the future.

  Turning down-to-earth: “But we’ve gone far enough, now that we’ve gained an idea of the whole country. Three days, and I’d guess two more going back downstream. Any longer, and the crew at the ship could grow fearful. We’ll turn around here.”

  “Other ships will bring others, explorers,” Ilyandi said.

  “Indeed they will. And I’ll skipper the first of them.”

  A rustling and crackling broke from the tangle to the right, through the boom of the wind. “What’s that?” barked Taltara.

  “Some big animal,” Kalava replied. “Stand alert.”

  The mariners formed a line. Three grounded the spears they carried; the fourth unslung a crossbow from his shoulders and armed it. Kalava waved Ilyandi to go behind them and drew his sword.

  The thing parted a brake and trod forth into the open.

  “Aah!” wailed Yarvonin. He dropped his spear and whirled about to flee.

  “Stand fast!” Kalava shouted. “Urko, shoot whoever runs, if I don’t cut him down myself. Hold, you whoresons, hold!”

  The thing stopped. For a span of many hammering heartbeats, none moved.

  It was a sight to terrify. Taller by a head than the tallest man it sheered, but that head was faceless save for a horrible blank mask. Two thick arms sprouted from either side, the lower pair of hands wholly misshapen. A humped back did not belie the sense of their strength. As the travelers watched, the thing sprouted a skeletal third leg, to stand better on the uneven ground. Whether it was naked or armored in plate, in this full daylight it bore the hue of dusk.

  “Steady, boys, steady,” Kalava urged between clenched teeth. Ilyandi stepped from shelter to join him. An eldritch calm was upon her. “My lady, what is it?” he appealed.

  “A god, or a messenger from the gods, I think.” He could barely make her out beneath the wind.

  “A demon,” Eivala groaned, though he kept his post.

  “No, belike not. We Vilkui have some knowledge of these matters. But, true, it is not fiery—and I never thought I would meet one—in this life—”

  Ilyandi drew a long breath, briefly knotted her fists, then moved to take stance in front of the men. Having touched the withered sprig of tekin pinned at her breast, she covered her eyes and genuflected before straightening again to confront the mask.

  The thing did not move, but, mouthless, it spoke, in a deep and resonant voice. The sounds were incomprehensible. After a moment it ceased, then spoke anew in an equally alien tongue. On its third try, Kalava exclaimed, “Hoy, that’s from the Shining Fields!”

  The thing fell silent, as if considering what it had heard. Thereupon words rolled out in the Ulonaian of Sirsu. “Be not afraid. I mean you no harm.”

  “What a man knows is little, what he understands is less, therefore let him bow down to wisdom,” Ilyandi recited. She turned her head long enough to tell her companions: “Lay aside your weapons. Do reverence.”

  Clumsily, they obeyed.

  In the blank panel of the blank skull appeared a man’s visage. Though it was black, the features were not quite like anything anyone had seen before, nose broad, lips heavy, eyes round, hair tightly curled. Nevertheless, to spirits half stunned the magic was vaguely reassuring.

  Her tone muted but level, Ilyandi asked, “What would you of us, lord?”

  “It is hard to say,” the strange one answered. After a pause: “Bewilderment goes through the world. I too … You may call me Brannock.”

  The captain rallied his courage. “And I am Kalava, Kurvo’s son, of Clan Samayoki.” Aside to Ilyandi, low: “No disrespect that I don’t name you, my lady. Let him work any spells on me.” Despite the absence of visible genitals, already the humans thought of Brannock as male.

  “My lord needs no names to work his will,” she said. “I hight Ilyandi, Lytin’s daughter, born into Clan Arvala, now a Vilku of the fifth rank.”

  Kalava cleared his throat and added, “By your leave, lord, we’ll not name the others just yet. They’re scared aplenty as is.” He heard a growl at his back and inwardly grinned. Shame would help hold them steady. As for him, dread was giving way to a thrumming keenness.

  “You do not live here, do you?” Brannock asked.

  “No,” Kalava said, “we’re scouts from overseas.”

  Ilyandi frowned at his presumption and addressed Brannock: “Lord, do we trespass? We knew not this ground was forbidden.”

  “It isn’t,” the other said. “Not exactly. But—” The face in the panel smiled. “Come, ease off, let us talk. We’ve much to talk about.”

  “He sounds not unlike a man,” Kalava murmured to Ilyandi.

  She regarded him. “If you be the man.”

  Brannock pointed to a big old gnarlwood with an overarching canopy of leaves. “Yonder is shade.” He retracted his third leg and strode off. A fallen log took up most of the space. He leaned over and dragged it aside. Kalava’s whole gang could not have done so. The action was not really necessary, but the display of power, benignly used, encouraged them further. Still, it was with hushed awe that the crewmen sat down in the paintwort. The captain, the Vilku, and the strange one remained standing.

  “Tell me of yourselves,” Brannock said mildly.

  “Surely you know, lord,” Ilyandi replied.

  “That is as may be.”

  “He wants us to,” Kalava said.

  In the course of the next short while, prompted by questions, the pair gave a bare-bones account. Brannock’s head within his head nodded. “I see. You are the first humans ever in this country. But your people have lived a long time in their homeland, have they not?”

  “From time out of mind, lord,” Ilyandi said, “though legend holds that our forebears came from the south.”

  Brannock smiled again. “You have been very brave to meet me like this, m-m, my lady. But you did tell your friend that your order has encountered beings akin to me.”

  “You heard her whisper, across half a spearcast?” Kalava blurted.

  “Or you hear us think, lord,” Ilyandi said.

  Brannock turned grave. “No. Not that. Else why would I have needed your story?”

  “Dare I ask whence you come?”

  “I shall not be angry. But it is nothing I can quite explain. You can help by telling me about those beings you know of.”

  Ilyandi could not hide a sudden tension. Kalava stiffened beside her. Even the dumbstruck sailors must have wondered whether a god would have spoken thus.

  Ilyandi chose her words with care. “Beings from on high have appeared in the past to certain Vilkui or, sometimes, chieftains. They gave commands as to what the folk should or should not do. Ofttimes those commands were hard to fathom. Why must the Kivalui build watermills in the Swift River, when they had ample slaves to grind their grain?—But knowledge was imparted, too, counsel about where and how to search out the ways of nature. Always, the high one forbade open talk about his coming. The accounts lie in the secret annals of the Vilkui. But to you, lord—”

  “What did those beings look like?” Brannock demanded sharply.

  “Fiery shapes, winged or manlike, voices like gr
eat trumpets—”

  “Ruvio’s ax!” burst from Kalava. “The thing that passed overhead at sea!”

  The men on the ground shuddered.

  “Yes,” Brannock said, most softly, “I may have had a part there. But as for the rest—”

  His face flickered and vanished. After an appalling moment it reappeared.

  “I am sorry, I meant not to frighten you, I forgot,” he said. The expression went stony, the voice tolled. “Hear me. There is war in heaven. I am cast away from a battle, and enemy hunters may find me at any time. I carry a word that must, it is vital that it reach a certain place, a … a holy mountain in the north. Will you give aid?”

  Kalava gripped his sword hilt so that it was as if the skin would split across his knuckles. The blood had left Ilyandi’s countenance. She stood ready to be blasted with fire while she asked, “Lord Brannock, how do we know you are of the gods?”

  Nothing struck her down. “I am not,” he told her. “I too can die. But they whom I serve, they dwell in the stars.”

  The multitude of mystery, seen only when night clouds parted, but skythinkers taught that they circled always around the Axle of the North … Ilyandi kept her back straight. “Then can you tell me of the stars?”

  “You are intelligent as well as brave,” Brannock said. “Listen.”

  Kalava could not follow what passed between those two. The sailors cowered.

  At the end, with tears upon her cheekbones, Ilyandi stammered, “Yes, he knows the constellations, he knows of the ecliptic and the precession and the returns of the Great Comet, he is from the stars. Trust him. We, we dare not to otherwise.”

  Kalava let go his weapon, brought hand to breast in salute, and asked, “How can we poor creatures help you, lord?”

  “You are the news I bear,” said Brannock.

  “What?”

  “I have no time to explain—if I could. The hunters may find me at any instant. But maybe, maybe you could go on for me after they do.”

  “Escaping what overpowered you?” Kalava’s laugh rattled. “Well, a man might try.”

  “The gamble is desperate. Yet if we win, choose your reward, whatever it may be, and I think you shall have it.”

  Ilyandi lowered her head above folded hands. “Enough to have served those who dwell beyond the moon.”

  “Humph,” Kalava could not keep from muttering, “if they want to pay for it, why not?” Aloud, almost eagerly, his own head raised into the wind that tossed his whitened mane: “What’d you have us do?”

  Brannock’s regard matched his. “I have thought about this. Can one of you come with me? I will carry him, faster than he can go. As for what happens later, we will speak of that along the way.”

  The humans stood silent.

  “If I but had the woodcraft,” Ilyandi then said. “Ai, but I would! To the stars!”

  Kalava shook his head. “No, my lady. You go back with these fellows. Give heart to them at the ship. Make them finish the repairs.” He glanced at Brannock. “How long will this foray take, lord?”

  “I can reach the mountaintop in two days and a night,” the other said. “If I am caught and you must go on alone, I think a good man could make the whole distance from here in ten or fifteen days.”

  Kalava laughed, more gladly than before. “Courser won’t be sea-worthy for quite a bit longer than that. Let’s away.” To Ilyandi: “If I’m not back by the time she’s ready, sail home without me.”

  “No—” she faltered.

  “Yes. Mourn me not. What a faring!” He paused. “May all be ever well with you, my lady.”

  “And with you, forever with you, Kalava,” she answered, not quite steadily, “in this world and afterward, out to the stars.”

  9

  From withes and vines torn loose and from strips taken off clothing or sliced from leather belts, Brannock fashioned a sort of carrier for his ally. The man assisted. However excited, he had taken on a matter-of-fact practicality. Brannock, who had also been a sailor, found it weirdly moving to see bowlines and sheet bends grow between deft fingers, amidst all this alienness.

  Harnessed to his back, the webwork gave Kalava a seat and something to cling to. Radiation from the nuclear power plant within Brannock was negligible; it employed quantum-tunneling fusion. He set forth, down the hills and across the valley.

  His speed was not very much more than a human could have maintained for a while. If nothing else, the forest impeded him. He did not want to force his way through, leaving an obvious trail. Rather, he parted the brush before him or detoured around the thickest stands. His advantage lay in tirelessness. He could keep going without pause, without need for food, water, or sleep, as long as need be. The heights beyond might prove somewhat trickier. However, Mount Mindhome did not reach above timberline on this oven of an Earth, although growth became more sparse and dry with altitude. Roots should keep most slopes firm, and he would not encounter snow or ice.

  Alien, yes. Brannock remembered cedar, spruce, a lake where caribou grazed turf strewn with salmonberries and the wind streamed fresh, driving white clouds over a sky utterly blue. Here every tree, bush, blossom, flitting insect was foreign; grass itself no longer grew, unless it was ancestral to the thick-lobed carpeting of glades; the winged creatures aloft were not birds, and what beast cries he heard were in no tongue known to him.

  Wayfarer’s avatar walked on. Darkness fell. After a while, rain roared on the roof of leaves overhead. Such drops as got through to strike him were big and warm. Attuned to both the magnetic field and the rotation of the planet, his directional sense held him on course while an inertial integrator clocked off the kilometers he left behind.

  The more the better. Gaia’s mobile sensors were bound to spy on the expedition from Ulonai, as new and potentially troublesome a factor as it represented. Covertly watching, listening with amplification, Brannock had learned of the party lately gone upstream and hurried to intercept it—less likely to be spotted soon. He supposed she would have kept continuous watch on the camp and that a tiny robot or two would have followed Kalava, had not Wayfarer been in rapport with her. Alpha’s emissary might too readily become aware that her attention was on something near and urgent, and wonder what.

  She could, though, let unseen agents go by from time to time and flash their observations to a peripheral part of her. It would be incredible luck if one of them did not, at some point, hear the crew talking about the apparition that had borne away their captain.

  Then what? Somehow she must divert Wayfarer for a while, so that a sufficient fraction of her mind could direct machines of sufficient capability to find Brannock and deal with him. He doubted he could again fight free. Because she dared not send out her most formidable entities or give them direct orders, those that came would have their weaknesses and fallibilities. But they would be determined, ruthless, and on guard against the powers he had revealed in the aircraft. It was clear that she was resolved to keep hidden the fact that humans lived once more on Earth.

  Why, Brannock did not know, nor did he waste mental energy trying to guess. This must be a business of high importance; and the implications went immensely further, a secession from the galactic brain. His job was to get the information to Wayfarer.

  He might come near enough to call it in by radio. The emissary was not tuned in at great sensitivity, and no relay was set up for the short-range transmitter. Neither requirement had been foreseen. If Brannock failed to reach the summit, Kalava was his forlorn hope.

  In which case—“Are you tired?” he asked. They had exchanged few words thus far.

  “Bone-weary and plank-stiff,” the man admitted. And croak-thirsty too, Brannock heard.

  “That won’t do. You have to be in condition to move fast. Hold on a little more, and we’ll rest.” Maybe the plural would give Kalava some comfort. Seldom could a human have been as alone as he was.

  Springs were abundant in this wet country. Brannock’s chemosensors led him to the closest. By t
hen the rain had stopped. Kalava unharnessed, groped his way in the dark, lay down to drink and drink. Meanwhile Brannock, who saw quite clearly, tore off fronded boughs to make a bed for him. He flopped onto it and almost immediately began to snore.

  Brannock left him. A strong man could go several days without eating before he weakened, but it wasn’t necessary. Brannock collected fruits that ought to nourish. He tracked down and killed an animal the size of a pig, brought it back to camp, and used his tool-hands to butcher it.

  An idea had come to him while he walked. After a search he found a tree with suitable bark. It reminded him all too keenly of birch, although it was red-brown and odorous. He took a sheet of it, returned, and spent a time inscribing it with a finger-blade.

  Dawn seeped gray through gloom. Kalava woke, jumped up, saluted his companion, stretched like a panther and capered like a goat, limbering himself. “That did good,” he said. “I thank my lord.” His glance fell on the rations. “And did you provide food? You are a kindly god.”

  “Not either of those, I fear,” Brannock told him. “Take what you want, and we will talk.”

  Kalava first got busy with camp chores. He seemed to have shed whatever religious dread he felt and now to look upon the other as a part of the world—certainly to be respected, but the respect was of the kind he would accord a powerful, enigmatic, high-ranking man. A hardy spirit, Brannock thought. Or perhaps his culture drew no line between the natural and the supernatural. To a primitive, everything was in some way magical, and so when magic manifested itself it could be accepted as simply another occurrence.