The Bloodwing Voyages

by Diane Duane

  When the shimmer died he looked around him a bit warily—he hadn’t been to these coordinates in years, and there was no telling how much the place might have changed. But he was pleasantly surprised to see that it was no different at all. Jim was surrounded by high hills, soft rounded shapes covered with scrub oak and manzanita, wild olive and piñon pine, and here and there a palm. The cooling air was sweet with sage and with the wet green smell of the creek in the gully to his right. It ran where it had run, where it should run, whispering around what seemed the same old stones. Jim smiled. Sometimes, just sometimes, things stayed the way they were supposed to.

  He began to walk along the top of the gully, upstream, toward the creek’s source. A long time it was since he had last been here at Sespe. Once it had been a condor preserve, hundreds of years ago when the great birds were in danger of becoming extinct. Now that they flourished, Sespe was just another part of the North American Departmental Wilderness that surrounded it—a trackless, houseless place, accessible only on foot, or by transporter. Indeed Jim could have beamed directly to the place where he was headed but he wouldn’t have had time to get in the mood for what he had in mind. He started off into the great silence, moving as softly as he could; for there was no sound anywhere but the bare breathing of the wind, and his footsteps seemed too loud for the twilit sanctity of this place.

  He passed other streambeds in the gathering dusk. They were dry, as well they might have been this time of year. But the watercourse Jim followed as he trudged up the hill was not affected by the weather. Breathing a bit harder than usual with the steady exertion, Jim kept climbing, making his way around the shoulder of one hill, crossing the stream with a splash and a shock of cold when he found this side blocked with an old rockfall. Another twist in the watercourse, and then one more—

  Jim stopped. It was exactly the same, exactly. From the side of a high, dark hill, water sprang, slowing down as if from a smitten rock; and above the spring-source, growing straight out of the sheer hillside and then curving upward, there was the tree. It had apparently known some hard times since Jim had seen it last. It was lightning-blasted, this old twisted olive, so that branches were missing at the top; and the claw-marks of black bears, their calling cards for one another, were scored deep and ragged down its trunk. But the tree survived. Its roots were still sunk deep in the heart of the hill, and the sharp aromatic scent of its ripening fruit hung on the still air. Jim looked up at the tree with silent approval and began to climb toward it.

  Reaching it took some doing—the stones of the hillside were loose—but Jim persevered. Finally he reached the great horizontal trunk, swung himself up onto it and stepped out to where the tree’s branches began to curve outward. One strong branch thick with olives reached out over the spring; the smell of splashing water and of new fruit mingled, a cool spicy scent of life. Here, Jim thought, right here. He took out the small bundle he had brought with him from the ship, untied the cord around it, and shook out the little pennon—a strip of supple woven polymer that would hang here and last through years of wind and rain, unchanged. Fasteners—Jim felt in his pocket for them, threaded the polymer strips through the eyelets in the pennon, then reached out to hold them shut around the tree branch one at a time, melting them shut with bursts from his phaser on its lowest notch.

  Then down the tree again, and back to his vantage point by the streambed. The pennon hung down, swinging very slightly in a breath of breeze that came down over the hillside—the pennon’s scarlet muted in this darkness to an ember-gray, the black characters on it hardly visible except as blurs of shadow. Jim looked up at the sky. Not much of it was visible, hemmed about as he was by hills; but the brightest stars were out already, and others followed. The summer Triangle, Deneb and Vega and Altair, lay westering low. Jim smiled slightly at Deneb, then let his eyes drift on northward through the base of the Triangle, following the faint band of the Milky Way and the Galactic Equator through Cygnus into Lacerta, Cassiopeia, Andromeda. There was beta Andromedae; then a bit southward…Jim stood and waited for his eyes to get used to the gathering darkness. He knew he wouldn’t be able to see the star he was looking toward, anyway. But right now, sight, or eyesight anyway, wasn’t an issue. He waited.

  And when he felt the moment was right, he drew himself straight and spoke her name the necessary five times—the fourth name by which only one closer than kin might know her, the name by which one was known to the Elements and Their rulers. One time each he spoke that name for the Earth, the Air, the Fire, the Water; and once for the Archelement which encompassed them all, that It might hear and grant the weary soul a home in this place when at last that soul flew. The fifth time he said that name, the wind died. A listening stillness fell over everything. Jim didn’t move.

  That was when the great dark shape came sailing over the hilltop, low; planing down over the stream on twelve-foot pinions, black-feathered, showing the wide white coverts under the wings; a dark visitation of silence, grace, freedom, flight, indifference. Riding its thermal, the condor swept over Jim’s head, a shadow between him and the stars. It tilted its head as it passed—a glance, no more, a silhouette motion and a look from invisible eyes. Then it leaned to its port side, banked away on the thermal, was over the next hill, was gone.

  The sigil-beast of my House, she had said.

  A big, ugly scavenger…but nothing can match it when it flies….

  Jim stared after it, and let out a small breath of bemusement, uncertainty, wonder. How about that, he thought. The night breeze began to blow again; bound to the olive branch, the name-flag stirred.

  Jim pulled out his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

  “Spock here.”

  “Mr. Spock, have someone get down to the transporter room and beam me up.”

  “Yes, Captain.” There was a pause. Jim got the feeling that Spock was glancing around the bridge to make sure no one was listening, for when he spoke again, his voice was private and low. “Jim—are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Jim looked down at the watercourse, the way the dark apparition had gone, and for the first time in days, actually felt relieved. The feeling was very belated. He didn’t care; he embraced it. “Mr. Spock…you don’t suppose there might be some spot in the galaxy where we’re needed right now, do you?”

  “Captain,” the calm voice came back, “our new patrol-information dispatches just received from Starfleet this past hour include news of two armed rebellions, a plague, and a mail strike; various natural disasters attributed to acts of deity, and unnatural ones attributed to inflation, accident and the breakdown of diplomacy; seventeen mysterious disappearances of persons, places or things, both with and without associated distress calls; eight newly discovered species of humanity, three of which have declared their intention to annex Starfleet and the Federation, and one of which has announced that it will let us alone if we pay it tribute. And probably most serious of all, a tribble predator has gotten loose from the zoo in a major city on Arcturus VI, and for lack of its natural prey has started eating peoples’ cats.”

  Jim paused. “Well, Mr. Spock,” he said, very seriously, “it’s going to take us at least a week to get all that cleared up. I think we’d better get out there and get started, don’t you?”

  “Undoubtedly, Captain. Energizing.”

  The world faded into the golden shimmering of the transporter effect.

  The pennon stirred again, saying one dark word, a name, to the wind, in the strong Rihannsu calligraphy.

  Starlight glinted on the swift water. And one small star slowly subtracted itself from that light, soaring more and more swiftly outward, past the setting sickle moon and into the ancient night.

  PART TWO

  The Romulan Way

  For the collaborator…

  …isn’t it great?

  NOTE

  The document following is a print-medium transcription of the “subjective-conceptual history” work The Romulan Way, copyright © Terise
Haleakala-LoBrutto. The material originally appeared in substantially different form in The Journal of the Federation Institute for the Study of Xenosociology, Vol. LXII, Numbers 88–109.

  FOREWORD

  Among many issues we are still unsure of, one fact makes itself super-evident: they were never “Romulans.”

  But one hundred years after our first tragic encounters with them, that is what we still call them. The Rihannsu find this a choice irony. Among the people of the Two Worlds, words, and particularly names, have an importance we have trouble taking seriously. A Rihanha asked about this would say that we have been interacting, not with them and their own name as it really is, but with a twisted word/name, an aehallh or monster-ghost, far from any true image. And how can one hope to prosper in one’s relationships if they are spent talking to false images in the belief that they are real?

  Over eight years of life among the Rihannsu has dispelled some of the ghosts for me, but not all. Even thinking in their language is not enough to completely subsume the observer into that fierce, swift, incredibly alien mindset, born of a species bred to war, seemingly destined to peace, and then self-exiled to develop a bizarre synthesis of the two. It may be that only our children, exchanged with theirs in their old custom of rrh-thanai, hostage-fostering, will come home to us knowing not only their foster families’ minds, but their hearts. And we will of course be shocked, after the fashion of parents everywhere, to find that our children are not wholly our own anymore. But if we can overcome that terror and truly listen to what those children say and do in our councils afterward, the wars between our peoples may be over at last.

  Meanwhile, they continue, and this work is one of their by-products. It was begun as a mere piece of intelligence—newsgathering for a Federation frightened of a strange enemy and wanting weapons to turn against it from the inside. What became of the work, and the one who did it, makes a curious tale that will smack of expediency, opportunism, and treason to some that read it…mostly those unfamiliar with the exigencies of deep-cover work in hostile territory. Others may think they see that greatest and most irrationally feared of occupational hazards for sociologists—the scientist “going native.” By way of dismissal, let me say that the presumption that one mindset is superior to another—an old one to a new one, a familiar one to a strange—is a value judgment of the rankest sort, one in which any sociologist would normally be ashamed to be caught…if his wits were about him. But for some reason this single loophole has been exempted from the rule, and the sociologist-observer’s mindset is somehow supposed to remain unaltered by what goes on around him. Of this dangerous logical fallacy, let the reasoner beware.

  The raw data that the observer was sent to gather is detailed in separate sections from those which tell how she gathered it. This way, those minded to skip the incidental history of the gathering may do so. But for those interested not only in the why of research among the Rihannsu but in the how as well, there is as much information about the culmination of those eight years as the Federation will allow to be released at this time. I hope that this writing may do something to hasten the day when our children will come home from summer on ch’Rihan and ch’Havran and tell us much more, including the important things, the heartmatters that cause Federations and Empires to blush and turn away, muttering that it’s not their business.

  About that, they will be right. It is not their business, but ours; for there are no governments, only people. May the day when they will fully be true come swiftly.

  Terise Haleakala-LoBrutto

  Chapter One

  Arrhae ir-Mnaeha t’Khellian yawned, losing her sleep’s last dream in the tawny light that lay warm across her face, bright on her eyelids. She was reluctant to open her eyes, both because of the golden-orange brightness outside them, and because Eisn’s rising past her windowsill meant she had overslept and was late starting her duties. But there was no avoiding the light, and no avoiding the work. She rubbed her eyes to the point where she could open them, and sat up on her couch.

  It was courtesy and euphemism to call anything so hard and plain a couch: but then, it could hardly be expected to be better. Being set in authority over the other servants and slaves did not entitle her to such luxuries as stuffed cushions and woven couch fittings. It was the stone pillow for Arrhae, and a couch of triple-thickness leather and whitewood, and a balding fur or two in far-sun weather: nothing more. And to be truthful, anything more would have sorted ill with the austerity of her room. It was no more than a place to wash and to sleep, preferably without dreams.

  Arrhae sighed. She was much better off than most other servants in the household: but even for the sake of the chief servant, the House could not in honor afford to make toward the hfehan any gesture that might be construed as indulgence. Or comfort, Arrhae thought, rubbing at the kinks in her spine and looking with loathing toward the ’fresher—which as often as not ran only with cold water. Still, she did at least have one. And there was even a mirror, though that had been purchased with her own meager store of money. It wasn’t so much a luxury as a necessity, for House Khellian had rigid standards of dress for its servants. Those who supervised them were expected to set a good example.

  And the one who supervised everything was not supposed to be last to appear in the morning. Arrhae went looking hurriedly for the scraping-stone. Granted that this morning’s lateness was her first significant fall from grace; but having achieved a position of trust, Arrhae was reluctant to lose it by provoking the always-uncertain temper of her employer.

  H’daen tr’Khellian was one of those middle-aged, embittered Praetors whose inherited rank and wealth had placed him where he was, but whose inability to make powerful friends—or more correctly, from what she had seen, to make friends at all—had prevented him from rising any further. In the Empire there were various means by which elevation could be attained through merit, or through…well, “pressure” was the polite term for it. But H’daen had no military honors in his past that he could use as influence, and no political or personal secrets to employ as leverage when influence failed. Even his wealth, though sufficient to keep this fine house in an appropriate style, fell far short of that necessary to buy Senatorial support and patronage. His home was a popular place to visit, much frequented by “acquaintances” who were always on the brink of tendering support for one Khellian project or another. But somehow the promised support never materialized, and Arrhae had too often overheard chance comments that told her it never would.

  She stood there outside the ’fresher door with the scraping-stone and the oil bottle clutched in one hand, while she waved the other hopelessly around in the spray zone, waiting for a change in temperature. There was no use waiting: the ’fresher was running cold again, and Arrhae clambered in and made some of the fastest ablutions of her life. When she got out, her teeth were clattering together, and her skin had been blanched by the cold to several shades paler than its usual dusky olive. She scrubbed at herself with the rough bathfelt, and finally managed to stop her teeth chattering, then was almost sorry she had. The sounds of a frightful argument, violent already and escalating, were floating in from the kitchen, two halls and an anteroom away. She started struggling hurriedly into her clothes: she was still damp, and they clung to her and fought her and wrinkled. The uproar increased. She thought of how horrible it would be if the Head of House should stumble into the fhaihuhhru going on out there, and not find her there stopping it, or, more properly, keeping it from happening. O Elements, avert it!

  “Stupid hlai-brained drunken wastrel!” someone shrieked from two halls and an anteroom away, and the sound made the paper panes in the window buzz. Arrhae winced, then gave up and clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut and swore.

  This naturally made no difference to the shouting voices, but the momentary blasphemy left Arrhae with a sort of crooked satisfaction. As servants’ manager, hru’hfe, she monitored not only performance but propriety, the small and large matters of honor that
for slave or master were the lifeblood of a House. It was a small, wicked pleasure to commit the occasional impropriety herself: it always discharged more tension than it had a right to. Arrhae was calmer as she peeled herself out of her kilt and singlet and then, much more neatly, slipped back into them. Pleats fell as they should, her chiton’s draping draped properly. She checked her braid, found it intact—at least something was behaving from the very start this morning. Then she stepped outside to face whatever briefly interesting enterprise the world held in store.

  The argument escalated as she got closer to it. Bemused, then tickled by the noise, Arrhae discarded fear. If tr’Khellian himself were there, she would sweep into the scene and command it. If not—she considered choice wordings, possible shadings of voice and manner calculated to raise blisters. She smiled. She killed the smile, lest she meet someone in the hall while in such unseemly mirth. Then, “Eneh hwai’kllhwnia na imirrhlhhse!” shouted a voice, Thue’s voice, and the obscenity stung the blood into Arrhae’s cheeks and all the humor out of her. The door was in front of her. She seized the latch and pulled it sideways, hard.

  The force of the pull overrode the door’s friction-slides dramatically: it shot back in its runners as if about to fly out of them, and fetched up against its stops with a very satisfying crash. Heads snapped around to stare, and a dropped utensil rang loudly in the sudden silence. Arrhae stood in the doorway, returning the stares with interest.