The Day of Their Return df-4

by Poul Anderson

  “None,” the tall young woman answered. After a moment she added, reluctantly and out of habit: “Thank you.”

  “Is it that you do not wish to eat the salt of an enemy?” His smile was wistful. “I shouldn’t imagine tradition requires you refuse his tea.”

  “If you like, Commissioner.” Tatiana seated herself, stiff-limbed in her plain coverall. Desai spoke to his wife, who fetched a tray with a steaming pot, two cups, and a plate of cookies. She set it down and excused herself. The door closed behind her.

  To Desai, that felt like the room closing in on him. It was so comfortless, so … impoverished, in spite of being physically adequate. His desk and communications board filled one corner, a reference shelf stood nearby, and otherwise the place was walls, faded carpet, furniture not designed for a man of his race or culture: apart from a picture or two, everything rented, none of the dear clutter which makes a home.

  Our family moves too much, too often, too far, like a bobbin shuttling to reweave a fabric which tears because it is rotted. I was always taught on Ramanujan that we do best to travel light through life. But what does it do to the children, this flitting from place to place, though always into the same kind of Imperial-civil-servant enclave? He sighed. The thought was old in him.

  “I appreciate your coming as I requested,” he began. “I hope you, ah, took precautions.”

  “Yes, I did. I slipped into alley, reversed my cloak, and put on my nightmask.”

  “That’s the reason I didn’t visit you. It would be virtually impossible to conceal the fact. And surely the terrorists have you under a degree of surveillance.”

  Tatiana withheld expression. Desai plodded on: “I hate for you to take even this slight risk. The assassins of a dozen prominent citizens might well not stop at you, did they suspect you of, um, collaboration.”

  “Unless I’m on their side, and came here to learn whatever I can for them,” Tatiana said in a metallic tone.

  Desai ventured a smile. “That’s the risk I take. Not very large, I assume.” He lifted the teapot and raised his brows. She gave a faint nod. He poured for her and himself, lifted his cup and sipped. The heat comforted.

  “How about gettin’ to business?” she demanded.

  “Indeed. I thought you would like to hear the latest news of Ivar Frederiksen.”

  That caught her! She said nothing, but she sat bolt upright and the brown gaze widened.

  “This is confidential, of course. From a source I shan’t describe, I have learned that he joined a nomad band, later got into trouble with it, and took passage on a southbound ship of Riverfolk together with an Ythrian who may or may not have met him by chance but is almost certainly an Intelligence agent of the Domain. They were nearly at the outfall when I got word and sent a marine squad to bring him in. Thanks to confusion—obviously abetted by the sailors, though I don’t plan to press charges—he and his companion escaped.”

  Red and white ran across her visage. She breathed quickly and shallowly, caught up her cup and gulped deep.

  “You know I don’t want him punished if it can be avoided,” Desai said. “I want a chance to reason with him.”

  “I know that’s what you claim,” Tatiana snapped.

  “If only people would understand,” Desai pleaded. “Yes, the Imperium wronged you. But we are trying to make it good. And others would make tools of you, for prying apart what unity, and safety in unity, this civilization has left.”

  “What d’you mean? Ythrians? Merseians?” Her voice gibed.

  Desai reached a decision. “Merseians. Oh, they are far off. But if they can again preoccupy us on this frontier—They failed last time, because McCormac’s revolt caught them, too, by surprise. A more carefully engineered sequel would be different. Terra might even lose this entire sector, while simultaneously Merseia grabbed away at the opposite frontier. The result would be a truncated, shaken, weakened Empire, a strengthened Roidhunate flushed with success … and the Long Night brought that much closer.”

  He said into her unvoiced but unmistakable scorn: “You disbelieve? You consider Merseia a mere bogeyman? Please listen. A special agent of theirs is loose on Aeneas. No common spy or troublemaker. A creature of unique abilities; so important that, for the sake of his mission, a whole nonexistent planet was smuggled into the data files at Catawrayannis; so able—including fantastic telepathic feats—that all by himself he easily, almost teasingly escaped our precautions and disappeared into the wilds. Prosser Thane, Merseia is risking more than this one individual. It’s giving away to us the fact that the Roidhunate includes such a species, putting us on our guard against more like him. No competent Intelligence service would allow that for anything less than the highest stakes.

  “Do you see what a net your betrothed could get tangled in?”

  Have I registered? Her face has gone utterly blank.

  After a minute, she said: “I’ll have to think on that, Commissioner. Your fears may be exaggerated. Let’s stay with practicalities tonight. You were wonderin’ about Ivar and this companion of his … who suggests Ythri may also be stickin’ claws into our pot, right? Before I can suggest anything, you’d better tell me what else you know.”

  Desai armored himself in dryness. “Presumably they took refuge in the Orcan country,” he said. “I’ve just had a report from a troop dispatched there to search for them. After several days of intensive effort, including depth quizzing of numerous people who might be suspected of knowledge, they have drawn blank. I can’t leave them tied down, futile except for fueling hatred of us by their presence: not when sedition, sabotage, and violence are growing so fast across the whole planet. We need them to patrol the streets of, say, Nova Roma.”

  “Maybe Ivar didn’t make for Orcus,” Tatiana suggested.

  “Maybe. But it would be logical, no?”

  She uttered a third “Maybe,” and then surprised him: “Did your men quiz that new prophet of theirs?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. No result. He gave off weird quasi-religious ideas that we already know a little about; they’re anti-Imperial, but it seems better to let him vent pressure on behalf of his followers than to make a martyr of him. No, he revealed no knowledge of our Firstling. Nor did such as we could find among those persons who’ve constituted themselves an inner band of apostles.”

  It was clear that Tatiana stayed impersonal only by an effort. Her whole self must be churning about her sweetheart. “I’m astonished you got away with layin’ hands on him or them. You could’ve touched off full-dress revolt, from all I’ve heard.”

  “I did issue instructions to handle cult leaders with micromanipulators. But after the search had gone on for a while, this … Jaan … voluntarily offered to undergo narco with his men, to end suspicion and, as he put it, leave the Terrans no further reason to remain. A shrewd move, if what he wanted was to get rid of them. After that big a concession from his side, they could scarcely do less than withdraw.”

  “Well,” she challenged, “has it occurred to you that Ivar may not be in yon area?”

  “Certainly. Although … the lead technician of the quiz team reported Jaan showed an encephalogram not quite like any ever recorded before. As if his claim were true, that—what is it?—he is possessed by some kind of spirit. Oh, his body is normal-human. There’s no reason to suppose the drug didn’t suppress his capacity to lie, as it would for anyone else. But—”

  “Mutation, I’d guess, would account for brain waves. They’re odd and inbred folk, in environment our species never was evolved for.”

  “Probably. I’d have liked to borrow a Ryellian telepath from the governor’s staff—considered it seriously, but decided that the Merseian agent, with the powers and knowledge he must have, would know how to guard against that, if he were involved. If I had a million skilled investigators, to study every aspect of this planet and its different peoples for a hundred intensive years—”

  Desai abandoned his daydream. “We don’t escape the possibility
that Ivar and the Ythrian are in that region, unbeknownst to the prophet,” he said. “A separate group could have smuggled them in. I understand Mount Cronos is riddled with tunnels and vaults, dug by the Elder race and never fully explored by men.”

  “But ’twould be hopeless quest goin’ through them, right?” Tatiana replied.

  “Yes. Especially when the hiding place could as well be far out in the desert.” Desai paused. “This is why I asked you to come here, Prosser Thane. You know your fiancé. And surely you have more knowledge of the Orcans than our researchers can dig out of books, data banks, and superficial observation. Tell me, if you will, how likely would Ivar and they be to, m-m, get together?”

  Tatiana fell silent. Desai loaded his cigarette holder and puffed and puffed. Finally she said, slowly:

  “I don’t think close cooperation’s possible. Differences go too deep. And Ivar, at least, would have sense enough to realize it, and not try.”

  Desai refrained from comment, merely saying, “I wish you would describe that society for me.”

  “You must’ve read reports.”

  “Many. All from an outside, Terran viewpoint, including summaries my staff made of nord writings. They lack feel. You, however—your people and the Orcans have shared a world for centuries. If nothing else, I’m trying to grope toward an intuition of the relationship: not a bald socio-economic redaction, but a sense of the spirit, the tensions, the subtle and basic influences between cultures.”

  Tatiana sat for another time, gathering her thoughts. At last she said: “I really can’t tell you much, Commissioner. Would you like capsule of history? You must know it already.”

  “I do not know what you consider important. Please.”

  “Well … those’re by far our largest, best-preserved Builder relics, on Mount Cronos. But they were little studied, since Dido commanded most attention. Then Troubles came, raids, invasions, breakdown toward feudalism. Certain non-nords took refuge in Arena for lack of better shelter.”

  “Arena?” Desai wondered.

  “Giant amphitheater on top of mountain, if amphitheater is what it was.”

  “Ah, that’s not what ‘arena’ means … No matter. I realize words change in local dialects. Do go on.”

  “They lived in that fortresslike structure, under strict discipline. When they went out to farm, fish, herd, armed men guarded them. Gradually these developed into military order, Companions of Arena, who were also magistrates, technical decision-makers—land bein’ held in common—and finally became leaders in religious rites, religion naturally comin’ to center on those mysterious remains.

  “When order was restored, at first Companions resisted planetary government, and had to be beaten down. That made them more of priesthood, though they keep soldierly traditions. Since, they’ve given Nova Roma no particular trouble; but they hold aloof, and see their highest purpose as findin’ out what Builders were, and are, and will be.”

  “Hm.” Desai stroked his chin. “Are their people—these half million or so who inhabit the region—would you call them equally isolated from the rest of Aeneas?”

  “Not quite. They trade, especially caravans across Antonine Seabed to its more fertile parts, bringin’ minerals and bioproducts in exchange for food, manufactures, and whatnot. Number of their young men take service with nords for several years, to earn stake; they’ve high talent for water dowsin’, which bears out what I said earlier about mutations among them. On whole, though, average continent dweller never sees an Orcan. And they do keep apart, forbid outside marriages on pain of exile, hold themselves to be special breed who will at last play special role related to Builders. Their history’s full of prophets who had dreams about that. This Jaan’s merely latest one.”

  Desai frowned. “Still, isn’t his claim unique—that he is, at last, the incarnation, and the elder race will return in his lifetime—or whatever it is that he preaches?”

  “I don’t know.” Tatiana drew breath. “One thing, however; and this’s what you called me here for, right? In spite of callin’ itself objective rather than supernatural, what Orcans have got behaves like religion. Well, Ivar’s skeptic; in fact, he’s committed unbeliever. I can’t imagine him throwin’ in with gang of visionaries. They’d soon conflict too much.”

  Now Desai went quiet to ponder. The point is well taken. That doesn’t mean it’s true.

  And yet what can I do but accept it … unless and until I hear from my spy, whatever has happened to him? (And that is something I may well never know.)

  He shook himself. “So whether or not Ivar received help from an individual Orcan or two, you doubt he’s contacted anyone significant, or will have any reason to linger in so forbidding an area. Am I correct, Prosser Thane?”

  She nodded.

  “Could you give me an idea as to where he might turn, how we might reach him?” Desai pursued.

  She did not deign to answer.

  “As you will,” he said tiredly. “Bear in mind, he’s in deadly danger as long as he is on the run: danger of getting shot by a patrol, for instance, or of committing a treasonable act which it would be impossible to pardon him for.”

  Tatiana bit her lip.

  “I will not harass you about this,” he promised. “But I beg you—you’re a scientist, you should be used to entertaining radical new hypotheses and exploring their consequences—I beg you to consider the proposition that his real interests, and those of Aeneas, may lie with the Empire.”

  “I’d better go pretty soon,” she said.

  Later, to Gabriel Stewart, she exulted:

  “He’s got to be among Orcans. Nothin’ else makes sense. He our rightful temporal leader, Jaan our mental one. Word’ll go like fire in dry trava under a zoosny wind.”

  “But if prophet didn’t know where he was—” fretted the scout.

  Tatiana rapped forth a laugh. “Prophet did know! Do you imagine Builder mind couldn’t control human body reactions to miserable dose of narcotic? Why, simple schizophrenia can cause that.”

  He considered her. “You believe those rumors, girl? Rumors they are, you understand, nothin’ more. Our outfit has no liaison with Arena.”

  “We’d better develop one … Well, I admit we’ve no proof Builders are almost ready to return. But it makes sense.” She gestured as if at the stars which her blinded window concealed. “Cosmenosis—What’d be truly fantastic is no purpose, no evolution, in all of that yonder.” Raptly: “Desai spoke about Merseian agent operatin’ on Aeneas. Not Merseian by race, though. Somebody strange enough to maybe, just maybe, be forerunner for Builders.”

  “Huh?” he exclaimed.

  “I’d rather not say more at this point, Gabe. However, Desai also spoke about adoptin’ workin’ hypothesis. Until further notice, I think this ought to be ours, that there is at least somethin’ to those stories. We’ve got to dig deeper, collect hard information. At worst, we’ll find we’re on our own. At best, who knows?”

  “If nothin’ else, it’d make good propaganda,” he remarked cynically. He had not been back on Aeneas sufficiently long to absorb its atmosphere of expectation. “Uh, how do we keep enemy from reasonin’ and investigatin’ along same lines?”

  “We’ve no guaranteed way,” Tatiana said. “I’ve been thinkin’, though, and—Look, suppose I call Desai tomorrow or next day, claim I’ve had change of heart, try wheedlin’ more out of him concernin’ yon agent. But mainly what I’ll do is suggest he check on highlanders of Chalce. They’re tough, independent-minded clansmen, you probably recall. It’s quite plausible they’d rally ’round Ivar if he went to them, and that he’d do so on his own initiative. Well, it’s big and rugged country, take many men and lots of time to search over. Meanwhile—”

  XVI

  The room within the mountain was spacious, and its lining of Ancient material added an illusion of dreamlike depths beyond. Men had installed heated carpeting, fluoropanels, furniture, and other basic necessities, including books and an eidophone to w
hile away the time. Nevertheless, as hours stretched into days he did not see, Ivar grew half wild. Erannath surely suffered worse; from a human viewpoint, all Ythrians are born with a degree of claustrophobia. But he kept self-control grimly in his talons.

  Conversation helped them both. Erannath even reminisced:

  “—wing-free. As a youth I wandered the whole of Avalon … hai-ha, storm-dawns over seas and snowpeaks! Hunting a spathodont with spears! Wind across the plains, that smelled of sun and eternity! … Later I trained to become a tramp spacehand. You do not know what that is? An Ythrian institution. Such a crewman may leave his ship whenever he wishes to stay for a while on some planet, provided a replacement is available; and one usually is.” His gaze yearned beyond the shimmering walls. “Khrrr, this is a universe of wonders. Treasure it, Ivar. What is outside our heads is so much more than what can nest inside them.”

  “Are you still spaceman?” the human asked.

  “No. I returned at length to Avalon with Hlirr, whom I had met and wedded on a world where rings flashed rainbow over oceans the color of old silver. That also is good, to ward a home and raise a brood. But they are grown BOW, and I, in search of a last long-faring before God stoops on me, am here"—he gave a harsh equivalent of a chuckle—"in this cave.”

  “You’re spyin’ for Domain, aren’t you?”

  “I have explained, I am a xenologist, specializing in anthropology. That was the subject I taught throughout the settled years on Avalon, and in which I am presently doing field work.”

  “Your bein’ scientist doesn’t forbid your bein’ spy. Look, I don’t hold it against you. Terran Empire is my enemy same as yours, if not more. We’re natural allies. Won’t you carry that word back to Ythri for me?”

  Ripplings went over Erannath’s plumage. “Is every opponent of the Empire your automatic friend? What of Merseia?”

  “I’ve heard propaganda against Merseians till next claim about their bein’ racist and territorially aggressive will throw me into anaphylactic shock. Has Terra never provoked, yes, menaced them? Besides, they’re far off: Terra’s problem, not ours. Why should Aeneas supply young men to pull Emperor’s fat out of fire? What’s he ever done for us? And, God, what hasn’t he done to us?”