The Long Night df-10

by Poul Anderson

  “So, if we have enemies here in Hanno, we probably have automatic friends somewhere else. And not dreadfully far away. Ai any rate, we’re not likely to be pursued beyond the nearest border, nor extradited back here. In fact, the Engineer’s rivals are apt to be quite alarmed when they learn he’s clapped hands on a real space warship. They’re apt to join forces to get it away from him. Which’ll make you and me, my dear, much-sought-after advisors. We may or may not be able to get Tom back unhurt. I vow the gods a hundred Blue Giant seabeasts if we do! But we’ll be free, even powerful.

  “Or so I hope. We’ve nothing to go on but hope. And courage and wits and endurance. Have you those, Yasmin? Your life was too easy until now. But he asked me to care for you.

  “You’ll have to help. Our first and foremost job is to get out of Hanno. And I don’t speak their damned language for diddly squat. You’ll talk for both of us. Can you? We’ll plan a story. Then, if and when you see there must be a false note in it, you’ll have to cover—at once—with no ideas from me. Can you do that, Yasmin? You must!”

  —But conference was perforce by single words, signs, sketches in the red dirt. It went slowly. And it was repeated, over and over, in every possible way, to make certain—they understood each other.

  In the end, however, Yasmin nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I will try, as God gives me strength… and as you do.” The voice was almost inaudible, and the eyes she turned on the bigger, older woman were dark with awe.

  * * *

  In midafternoon they reached a farm. Its irregular fields were enclosed by forest, through which a cart track ran to join a dirt road that, in turn, twisted over several kilometers until it entered the fisher village.

  Dagny spent minutes peering from a thicket. Beside her, Yasmin tried to guess what evaluations the Krakener was making. I should begin to learn these ways of staying alive, the Sassanian thought. More is involved than my own welfare. I don’t want to remain a burden on my companions, an actual danger to them.

  And to think, not one year ago I took for granted the star rovers were ignorant, dirty, cruel, quarrelsome barbarians!

  Yasmin had been taught about philosophic objectivity, but she was too young to practice it consistently. Her universe having been wrecked, herself cast adrift, she naturally seized upon the first thing that felt like a solid rock and began to make it her emotional foundation. And that thing happened to be Roan Tom and Dagny Od’s-daughter.

  Not that she had intellectual illusions. She knew very well that the Krakeners had come to help the Shah of Sassania because the Pretender was allied with enemies of theirs. And she knew that, if successful, they would exact good pay. She had heard her father grumble about it.

  Nevertheless, the facts were: First, compatriots of hers, supposedly civilized, supposedly above the greed and short-sightedness that elsewhere had destroyed civilization… had proven themselves every bit as animalistic. Second, the star-rover garrison in Anushirvan turned out to be jolly, well-scrubbed, fairly well-behaved. Indeed, they were rather glamorous to a girl who had never been past her planet’s moon. Third, they had stood by their oaths, died in their ships and at their guns, for her alien people. Fourth, two of them had saved her life, and offered her the best and most honorable way they could think of to last out her days. Fifth (or foremost?), Tom was now her husband.

  She was not exactly infatuated with him. A middle-aged, battle-beaten, one-eyed buccaneer had never entered her adolescent dreams. But he was kind in his fashion, and a’skillful lover, and… and perhaps she did care for him in a way beyond friendship… if he was alive—oh, let him be alive!

  In any event, here was Dagny. She certainly felt grief like a sword in her. But she hid it, planned, guided, guarded. She had stood in the light of a hundred different suns, had warred, wandered, been wife and mother and living sidearm. She knew everything worth knowing (what did ancient texts count for?) except one language. And she was so brave that she trusted her life to what ability an awkward weakling of a refugee might possess.

  Please don’t let me fail her.

  Thus Yasmin looked forth too and tried to make inferences from what she saw.

  The house and outbuildings were frame, not large, well-built but well-weathered. Therefore they must have stood here for a good length of time. Therefore Imperial construction methods—alloy, prestressed concrete, synthetics, energy webs—had long been out of general use in these parts, probably everywhere on Nike. That primitiveness was emphasized by the agromech system.

  A couple of horses drew a haycutter. It also was wooden; even the revolving blades were simply edged with metal. From its creaking and bouncing, the machine had neither wheel bearings nor springs. A man drove it. Two half-grown boys, belike his sons, walked after. They used wooden-tined rakes to order the windrows. The people, like the animals, were of long slim deep-chested build, brown-haired and fair-complexioned. Their garments were coarsely woven smock and trousers.

  No weapons showed, which suggested that the bay region was free of bandits and vendattas. Nevertheless Dagny did not approach. Instead, she led a cautious way back into the woods and thence toward the house, so that the buildings screened off view of the hayfield.

  The Ki-akener woman scowled. “Why?” she muttered.

  “Why what… my lady?”

  “Why make—” Dagny’s hands imitated whirling blades. “Here. Planet… canted?… little. No cold?”

  “Oh. Do you mean, why do they bother making hay? Well, there must be times when their livestock can’t pasture.”

  Dagny understood. Her nod was brusque. “Why that ?”

  “Um-m-m… oh, dear, let me think. Lord Tom explained to me what he—what you two had learned about this planet. Yes. Not much axial tilt. I suppose not an unusually eccentric orbit. So the seasons oughtn’t to be very marked. And we are in a rather low latitude anyway, on a seacoast at that. It should never get too cold for grass. Too dry? No, this is midsummer time. And, well, they’d hardly export hay to other areas, would they?”

  Dagny shrugged.

  It is such a strange world, Yasmin thought. All wrong. Too dense. That is, if it had a great many heavy metals, humans would never have settled here permanently. So what makes it dense should be a core of iron, nickel and things, squeezed into compact quantum states. The kind that terrestroid planets normally have. Yes, and the formation of a true core causes tectonic processes, vulcanism, the outgassing of a primitive atmosphere and water. Later we get chemical evolution, life, photosynthesis, free oxygen.

  But Nike is too small for that! It’s Mars type. We have a Mars type planet in our own system—oh, lost and loved star that shines upon Sassania—and it’s got a bare wisp of unbreathable air. Professor Nasruddin explained to us. If a world is small, it has weak gravity. So the differential migration of elements down toward the center, that builds a distinct core, is too slow. So few gas molecules get unlocked from mineral combination by heat… Nike isn’t possible!

  (How suddenly, shockingly real came back to her the lecture hall, and the droning voice, young heads bent above notebooks, sunlight that streamed in through arched windows, and the buzz of bees, odor of roses, a glimpse of students strolling across a greensward that stretched between beautiful buildings.)

  Dagny’s fingers clamped about Yasmin’s arm. “Heed! Fool!”

  Yasmin started from her reverie. They were almost at the house. “Heavens! I’m sorry.”

  “Talk well.” Dagny’s voice was bleak with doubt of her.

  Yasmin swallowed and stepped forth into the yard. She felt dizzy. The knocking of her heart came remote as death. Penned cows, pigs, fowl were like things in a dream. There was something infinitely horrible about the windmill that groaned behind the barn.

  Neither shot nor shout met her. The door opened a crack, and the woman who peered out did so fearfully. Why, she’s nervous of us!

  Relief passed through Yasmin in a wave of darkness. But an odd, alert calm followed. She perceived with utter c
larity. Her thoughts went in three or four directions at once, all coherent. One chain directed her to smile, extend unclenched hands, and say: “Greeting to you, good lady.” Another observed that the boards of the house were not nailed but pegged together. A third paid special heed to the windmill. It too was almost entirely of wood, with fabric sails. She saw that it pumped water into an elevated cistern, whence wooden pipes ran to the house and a couple of sheds. Attachments outside one of the latter indicated that there the water, when turned on, drove various machines, like the stone quern she could see.

  No atomic or electric energy, then. Nor even solar or combustion power. And yet the knowledge of these things existed: if not complete, then sufficient to make aircraft possible, radio, occasional motorships, doubtless some groundcars. Why was it no longer applied by the common people? The appearance of this farm and of the fisher village as seen from a distance suggested moderate prosperity. The Engineer’s rule could not be unduly harsh.

  Well, the answer must be, Nike’s economy had collapsed so far that hardly anyone could afford real power equipment.

  But why not? Sunlight, wood, probably coal and petroleum were abundant. A simple generator, some batteries… Such things took metal. A broken-down society might not have the resources to extract much… Nonsense! Elements like iron, copper, lead, and uranium were surely simple to obtain, even after a thousand years of industrialization. Hadn’t Dagny, who knew, said this was a young planet? Weren’t young planets metal-rich?

  Meanwhile the woman mumbled, “Day. You’re from outcountry?”

  “Yes,” Yasmin said. No use trying to conceal that. Quite apart from accent and garments (the Hannoan woman wore a broad-sleeved embroidered blouse and a skirt halfway to her ankles), they—were not of the local racial type. But it was presumably not uniform over the whole planet. One could play on a peasantry’s likely ignorance of anything beyond its own neighborhood.

  “I am from Kraken,” Yasmin said. “My friend is from Sassania.” If no one on those comparatively cosmopolitan planets had heard of Nike, vice versa was certain. “We were flying on a mission when our aircraft crashed in the hills.”

  “That… was the flare… noises… this early-day?” the woman asked. Yasmin confirmed it. The woman drew breath and made a shaky sign in the air. “High ‘Uns I thank! We feared, we, ’twas them come back.”

  Obvious who “they” were, and therefore impossible to inquire about them. A little hysterical with relief, the wife flung wide her door. “Enter you! Enter you! I call the men.”

  “No need, we thank you,” Yasmin said quickly. The fewer who saw them and got a chance later to wonder and talk about them, the better. “Nor time. We must hurry. Do you know of our countries?”

  “Well, er, far off.” The woman was embarrassed. Yasmin noted that the room behind her was neat, had a look of primitive well-being—but how primitive! Two younger children stared half frightened from an inner doorway. “Yes, far, and I, poor farm-wife, well, hasn’t so much as been to the Silva border—”

  “That’s the next country?” Yasmin pounced.

  “Why… next cavedorn, yes, ‘tother side of the High Sawtooths east’ard… Well, we’re both under the Emp’ror, but they do say as the Prester of Silva’s not happy with our good Engineer… You! A-travel like men!”

  “They have different customs in our part of the world,” Yasmin said. “More like the Empire. Not your Empire. The real one, the Terran Empire, when women could do whatever a man might.” That was a safe claim. Throughout its remnants, no one questioned anything wonderful asserted about the lost Imperium—except, perhaps, a few unpleasant scholars, who asked why it had fallen if it had been so great. “Yes, we’re from far parts. My friend speaks little Anglic. They don’t, in her country.” That was why Dagny, clever Dagny, had said they should switch national origins. Krakener place names sounded more Anglic than Sassanian ones did, and Yasmin needed a ready-made supply.

  “We have to get on with our mission as fast as possible,” she said. “But we know nothing about these lands.”

  “Storm blow you off track?” the woman queried. As she relaxed, she became more intelligent. “Bad storm-time coming, we think. Lots rain already. Hope the hay’s not ruined before it dries.”

  “Yes, that’s what happened.” Thank you, madam, for inventing my explanation. Yasmin could not resist probing further the riddle of Nike. “Do you really expect many storms?”

  * * *

  One child hustled after his father while they went in and took leather-covered chairs. The woman made a large to-do about coffee and cakes. Her name was Elanor, she said, and her husband was Petar Landa, a freeholder. One must not think them backwoods people. They were just a few hours from the town of Sea Gate, which lay nigh the Great Cave itself and was visited by ships from this entire coast. Yes, the Landa family went there often; they hadn’t missed a Founders’ Festival in ten years, except for the year after the friends came, when there had been none.

  “You only needed a year to recover from something like that ?” Yasmin exclaimed.

  Dagny showed alarm, laying a hand on the Sassanian’s and squeezing hard. Elanor Landa was surprised. “Well, Sea Gate wasn’t hit. Not that important. Nearest place was… I forgot, all the old big cities went, they say, bombed after being looted, but seems to me I heard Terrania was nearest to Hanno. Far off, though, and no man I know was ever there, because ’twas under the Mayor of Bollen and he wasn’t any camarado to us western cavedoms, they say—”

  Yasmin saw her mistake. Unthinkingly, she had taken “year” to mean a standard, Terran year. It came the more natural to her because Sassania’s wasn’t very different. Well, thought the clarified brain within her, we came here to get information that might help us escape. And surely, if we’re to pretend to be Nikeans, we must know how the planet revolves.

  “I’ve forgotten,” she said. “Exactly when was the attack?”

  Elanor was not startled. Such imprecision was common in a largely illiterate people. Indeed, it was somewhat astonishing that she should say, “A little over five years back. Five and a quarter, abs’lut, come Petar’s father’s, birthday. I remember, for we planned a feast, and then we heard the news. We had radio news then. Everyone was so scared. Later I saw one black ship roar over us, and waited for my death, but it just went on,”

  “I think we must use a different calendar from you in Kraken,” Yasmin said. “And—being wealthier, you understand—not that Hanno isn’t—but we did suffer worse. We lost records and—Well, let’s see if Kraken and Sassania were attacked on the same day you heard about it. That was… let me think… dear me, now, how many days in a year?”

  “What? Why, why, five hundred and ninety-one.”

  Yasmin allayed Elanor’s surprise by laughing: “Of course. I was simply trying to recollect if an intercalary date came during the period since.”

  “A what?”

  “You know. The year isn’t an exact number of days long. So they have to put in an extra day or month or something, every once in a while.” That was a reasonable bet.

  It paid off, too. Elanor spoke of an extra day every eleventh Nikean year. Yasmin related how in Kraken they added a month—“What do you call the moons hereabouts?… I mean by a month, the time it takes for them both to get back to the same place in the sky… We add an extra one every twentieth year.” Her arithmetic was undoubtedly wrong, but who was going to check? The important point was that Nike circled its sun in 591 days of 25.5 hours each, as near as made no difference.

  And hadn’t much, in the way of seasons, but did suffer from irregular, scarcely predictable episodes when the sun grew noticeably hotter or cooler.

  And was poor in heavy metals. Given all the prior evidence, what Yasmin wormed from the chattersome Elanor was conclusive. Quite likely iron oxides accounted for the basic color. But they were too diffuse to be workable. Metals had never been mined on this globe; they were obtained electrochemically from the sea and from clays. (Alu
minum, beryllium, magnesium and the like; possibly a bit of heavy elements too, but only a bit. For the most part, iron, copper, silver, uranium, etc., had been imported from outsystem, in exchange for old-fashioned Terrestrial agroproducts that must have cornmanded good prices on less favored worlds. This would explain why, to the very present, Nike had such a pastoral character.)

  The Empire fell. The starships came less and less often. Demoralization ruined the colonies in their turn; planets broke up politically; in the aftermath, most industry was destroyed, and the social resources were no longer there to build it afresh. Today, on Nike, heavy metals were gotten entirely through reclaiming scrap. Consquently they were too expensive for anything but military and the most vital civilian uses. Even the lighter elements came dear; some extractor-plants remained, but not enough.

  Elanor did not relate this directly. But she didn’t need to. Trying to impress her distinguished guests, she made a parade of setting an aluminum coffeepot on the ceramic stove and mentioning the cost. (A foreigner could plausibly ask what that amounted to in real wages. It was considerable.) And, yes, Petar’s grandmother had had a lot of ironware in her kitchen. When he inherited, Petar was offered enormous sums for his share. But he had it made into cutting-edge implements. He cared less about money than about good tools, Petar did. Also for his wife. See, ladies, see right here, I use a real steel knife.

  “Gold,” Dagny said, low and harsh in Yasmin’s ear. “Animals, buy, ride.”

  The younger girl jerked to alertness. Tired, half lulled by Elanor’s millwheel voice, she had drifted off into contemplation. Dagny said this was a young world. Nevertheless it was metal-poor. The paradox had an answer. This system could have formed in the galactic halo, where stars were few and the interstellar dust and gas were thin, little enriched. Yes, that must be the case. It had drifted into this spiral arm… But wouldn’t it, then, have an abnormal proper motion? Tom hadn’t mentioned observing any such thing. Nor had he said there was anything peculiar about Nike’s own orbit. Yet he had remarked on less striking facts…