Fire Time

by Poul Anderson

That’s where the missing townspeople are, Sparling realized. In the audience. Assemblies came years apart; and then the group seldom collected. The usual practice was to try for a consensus before casting a formal vote. This was best done by leisured meetings of individuals in private. Christ! Do I have to go there cold, right now? I’d counted on time to lay groundwork, break my news gently–

  He heard himself say: ‘Doubtless you told them this strengthens the case you came here to make, for sending reinforcements to Valennen. I take it many are opposed?’

  ‘Right,’ Larreka answered. ‘A lot of them want outright evacuation. Give up the whole damn continent, just like that. Well, Ian, what are your ill tidings?’

  Sparling told him. He stood silent for a space, save that the wind rustled his mane. The scar on his brow was livid.

  Finally: ‘Let’s hit them with that. Hard. Right away. We may shock a little sense into them.’

  ‘Or out of them,’ Sparling muttered. He saw no escape, though, and stalked along beside his comrade.

  The assembly met in an auditorium whose marble colonnades always reminded him of the Parthenon. That was in spite of differences being endless, from circular plan to abstract mosaic frieze. Glazed windows above tiers packed with spectators let light down onto a floor where the members stood. At its middle was a dais for the Lawspeaker and whoever happened to be addressing the body.

  It was as colorfully mixed a band as any he had seen on the highway. Every society which remained in the Gathering was represented; and Ishtarians were more wildly inventive than men where it came to social institutions. Tribes, clans, monarchies, aristocracies, theocracies, republics, communisms, anarchisms found approximate analogues in this chamber. But what was one to make of a people who alternated the franchise annually between males and females, or who controlled the population of an oasis by staging periodic combats to the death between adolescents of both sexes who might well be close friends, or who changed spouses on a fixed schedule intended to get all possible couples together, or who settled contested public issues by a method of tossing bones which they knew gave random results, or– For that matter, had Earth ever seen the like of the Gathering itself?

  The assembly was dwindled from its last meeting, a decade ago. Already then, discussion had turned on how much territory civilization might reasonably hope to hang onto, given human help whose exact form had yet to be determined. Since, the legions had pulled back from numerous important islands. Growing storminess, declining economy, pressure from barbarians on the move, had forced them – were forcing them. But to surrender Valennen entirely, at this stage, would be in a new order of magnitude.

  As he entered with Larreka, Sparling saw the speaker was Jerassa. He knew him well: a local male, chosen by the masters of Sehala city because he was intelligent, articulate, and in his fashion sophisticated. He had spent a great deal of time in Primavera, made many human friends, and learned much of what they had to teach. In daily life he was among the scholars and chroniclers at the Tower of the Books whom the Afella Indomitable legion subsidized for its own honor. But there was nothing dusty about him; he was rather a dandy. Besides the selek entomoids which lived in his mane as part of the symbiosis, he cultivated rainbow-winged orekas. They made a flittering glory about his head as he talked.

  ‘–in former cycles, I agree we would have been wise to keep a foothold in Valennen, perhaps actually increase our troops there if Commandant Larreka is right about a leader who has been uniting the wild folk for purposes that go beyond pillage. Yes, as long as we possibly could, we should have held the gates against a migration such as we believe helped bring down earlier high cultures.

  ‘But our lifetimes are blessed. To our aid have come powerful allies. Formerly we hoped that, thanks to the legions and to provisions like well-guarded stocks of food, civilization might survive, might keep its continuity, in some countries. But then the humans arrived. We how have hope, yes, expectation that the Gathering will survive substantially unharmed and over a broad range.

  ‘Granted, what the humans can do for us is limited. They have explained that they cannot get large support from their home world. Perhaps more important, they are few; and only they can operate certain devices, or plan the best use of these. Still, a single armed aircraft of theirs is mightier than a legion, let alone a barbarian horde.

  ‘Therefore I submit that Valennen is not worth keeping. We can return at our convenience. Meanwhile, what have we lost? Luxury items like skipfoot leather; fisheries, which the Rover will make unprofitable anyway; and, to be sure, minerals and materials like phoenix, for which we have use. But we can get along without those if need be. Besides, after the Valenneners have broken themselves on the defense line which, with human help, we can hold – I predict they will become desperately anxious to trade with us.

  ‘I submit that we have better work for our people to do, closer to home. The role of the legions in this latest chaos time is likely to be more civil than military, more engineering than fighting. Let us not merely refrain from asking any second legion to join the Zera Victrix in Port Rua; let us request the Zera itself to come back. We need it here, not there.’

  Jerassa had seen Sparling and Larreka, who did not go into the tiers but stayed at the entrance. He must have adapted his speech immediately, for he ended: ‘You have heard an abundance from me. Here is a spokesman for the humans. Is it your will that he address you next?’

  ‘Aye,’ sang from the hundred on the floor, while a murmur went through the watchers above. Jerassa bounded off the dias. Owazzi the Lawspeaker said formally, ‘Welcome, Ian Sparling. Is it your wish to address us?’

  Like hell, the man thought. And a big reason is you, old girl. You’re among the half dozen in this universe I’d least want to hurt. ‘Yes,’ he said, advanced, and mounted.

  Owazzi and he clasped shoulders. Hers felt saddeningly fragile. Ancient even on Ishtar, she must have been aging doubly fast under the news of the last few years. That meant she had not long to be, and knew it. For as if a hypothetical deity wanted to make amends for Anu, her face was spared the slow decay which can take half a human’s lifetime, and the final horror of senility. She regarded him through clear eyes in a face gaunted but unwrinkled. Her pelt remained bright greenish-tawny, her mane golden-tinged red – young.

  ‘Do you know what has gone on here?’ she asked.

  ‘A little,’ Sparling said; then, to buy time: ‘Best would be if you told me.’

  She launched into a crisp summation of proceedings since the assembly convened. This was part of her duty. Though the original function of the Lawspeaker – to know all the codes in the Gathering – had diminished after literacy became widespread, an excellent memory and a gift for seeing the total picture remained essential in the person who presided over these meetings. She had for three hundred years, and nobody had yet suggested retiring her.

  Sparling half listened, half struggled to arrange the words he must soon voice. His problem was not really to put a hard truth into soft language; it was to move his hearers toward decisions and actions that might ease the span ahead. But what decisions? He couldn’t be sure. What actions? This was not a parliament. Almost its sole power was moral.

  I’ve been twenty years on Ishtar, and made myself into a xenologist in order to know better what I could best do as an engineer. But a lot of my studies were done in countries far from here. And in any case, I’ve never had to play local politics. My politicking has been back on Earth, to get okays and funds for my work. Therefore I have got to bear in mind that the Gathering is not an empire, not a federation, not a set of alliances. Or – no – it is certain of those things, in a certain wise, to certain of its members. But the rest see it quite differently. What common terms do these delegates have? Why, many of they aren’t even delegates! And he rehearsed the accounts of the past and present as if he were newly arrived and hearing them for the first time.

  Civilization in South Beronnen did not perish utterly when last Anu
came near. Folk had built storehouses, fortresses, yes, vaults where books and instruments could be preserved; and they had a few legions. Longevity helped too. A bright young Ishtarian might study under a master, be in the prime of life when the catastrophes began, and survive to teach in the next cycle. (Also there seemed to be the factor of creativity. If most men are at their most original between the ages of, say, twenty and thirty-five, the corresponding Ishtarian ages would be about fifty to one hundred fifty, with all the advantages of accumulating experience and insight.)

  Civilizations thus could rebuild and then expand vigorously, exploring, trading, colonizing. This meant guardians were needed. Ishtarians might have less innate violence, power hunger, and general irrationality than men; but they were equally able to see that robbery often yields more fun and profit than honest labor, or to fear becoming victims themselves. Humans have tended to handle resultant troubles by subjugating the troublemakers. But Beronnen had no government to establish a hegemony. The legions were the closest thing to governed organizations, and they were autonomous. They hired out to whoever would pay, on whatever terms could be mutually agreed on – though never to anvone who attacked Beronneners.

  Less developed areas found it worthwhile to engage these crack troops, or detachments thereof. They got protection, plus valuable civilian services; a legion was by no means exclusively military. They also got trade with Beronnen and each other, and access to the learning and technology that centered around Sehala.

  It was a good idea to meet at intervals, exchange information, negotiate accumulated disputes, plan joint undertakings. Sehala was the natural if not the invariable site for this. A society might send its leader(s) or might send diplomatic representatives … or something else. It might dispatch a single person or several. Formulas evolved for apportioning votes reasonably fairly, irrespective of numbers. But the assembly was not a legislature. It recommended.

  True, the recommendations were normally followed, by legions and nations alike. A dissenting minority would find it more expedient to obey majority will than to risk being left isolated. The soldiers regarded themselves as custodians of civilization, but – in contrast to counterparts throughout human history – not as being on that account its policy makers. (Longevity helped. An officer of Larreka’s age had seen countless issues burning for a while, ashes not long afterward.)

  Thus the Gathering was different things to its different members, not to mention outsiders. Their languages included names for it which were not mutually translatable. To some folk it was a kind of police; to others it was the bearer and preserver of everything important; to some, this gave it mystical significance; to others it was a foreign culture, not inherently superior, whose captaincy it was good, or at least prudent, to acknowledge; and on and on.

  To the Valenneners – scattered, anarchic, backward – it was an alien, which sent traders and, reasonably enough, guarded these … but which replied to attacks with punitive expeditions whose targets were shrewdly if not always correctly picked … and which forbade with its garrisons and patrol ships the good old custom of raiding … and which, while it kept its strength, would never let them take new lands, distant from the Cruel Star.…

  Owazzi finished. The consensus appeared to favor Jerassa. Of course, nobody could compel the Zera Victrix to come home, and perhaps those who had much to lose in Valennen would support it, did it choose to stay. In any case, it had independent income, from services which personnel of it performed in many separate places. But the bulk of this assembly felt that it should urge the legions to pull in closer to the heartland; and probably Larreka’s colleagues would rather do this than join him in a doomed cause; so was it not best that Larreka reconsider? That was the general feeling, Owazzi said. A minority had been pointing out that the kind of military aid the humans would give had not been specified, and should be before any further thinking was done. Would the speaker for Primavera, if such he was, care to comment?

  ‘I must,’ Sparling said harshly.

  He wished he were on a Terrestrial-type stage, safe behind a lectern, not surrounded by these eyes and eyes and eyes. As was conventional, he faced the Lawspeaker. He filled his lungs and said to her old face:

  ‘I think most of you here will understand how grieved we are at the tidings I bear. Prepare yourselves.’Useless human phrase. Ishtarians speak straight out on public matters. They save oratory for art, where it belongs. ‘Very lately we have gotten word that our hands may be tied for years to come, in helping you in any way.

  ‘Any way. I do not know when work can continue on my dams, nor does Jane Fadavi know when she can get the air seeders to abort tornados, nor have we prospect of synthetic food and prefabricated shelters being sent for refugees in the near future, nor aircraft to evacuate them from stricken parts, nor – anything. Including weapons.

  ‘At best, we can do minor jobs, we can advise, we can try to keep Primavera going. I do say this: We will not abandon you. For hundreds of us, this is our home too, and you are our people.

  ‘You have doubtless guessed the reason. You know that war goes among the stars, between our world Earth and another. Thus far, action has not been intense. Both sides were busy marshaling their forces. Now it is in earnest, and will consume resources we had counted on.

  ‘But I have worse news yet. Part of Earth’s effort involves establishing a base on this world. Be not afraid. You are remote from the fighting. The base is not necessary. We of Primavera will strive to persuade the overlords of Earth that it is not necessary.’

  Shall I tell them the war isn’t? No, not here. They’ll soon observe our bitterness.

  ‘If we succeed in that, we will at least release our home production. For instance, the dams can then be finished in time. But unless the war proves brief, we cannot expect shipments from Earth as early as we had planned. And we may not be able to stop construction of that base. We will almost surely be in no position to help you fight. Oh, I suppose we can keep our private guns and vehicles, and you can keep those you already own. But a few small arms, a few cars and flyers, will not check the barbarians.

  ‘I do not know what will happen. Conceivably this will all end in short order and we can go on as we’d hoped. But I think we had better batten down against the worst.’

  Sparling stopped. Lousy rhetoric for a human audience, he thought. How good for a mixed bag of Ishtarians? Not awfully, I’m afraid.

  Into a terrible hush, Owazzi took the word. ‘We must think a multitude of stiff thoughts over again. No doubt this assembly will stand for longer than expected, to consider ways, means, and contingencies with our human friends.’ The language allowed her to separate those, by a suffix, from human unfriends. To him: ‘wonder, though, since Larreka accompanies you, I wonder what your ideas are about holding on in Valennen.’

  Taken by surprise, Sparling stammered, ‘I, I don’t know, I’m not a soldier, not competent to say–’

  Jerassa spoke from the floor: The Lawspeaker is right; we must more than ever move carefully toward judgment. But does it not seem, colleagues, that this triples the reason for recalling our forces to Beronnen?’

  Protests arose in a storm-wave. Nobody wanted the legions to withdraw from his or her country. Yet – voices were sufficiently soft for Sparling to make out what individuals said – few opposed the principle that civilization should pull its outposts closer in and, specifically, abandon all holdings north of the equator.

  Owazzi ended the low hubbub by signaling Larreka to the dais.

  When he had silence, the commandant said, flat-toned for an Ishtarian:

  ‘No. I tried to explain earlier, and you still don’t see. This is not a question of protecting a few commercial interests. It’s a question of heading off a conqueror. I know that, I tell you, know it from military intelligence and from what’s lately been happening and from a cold shiver that a lifetime on the frontier has taught me how to feel.

  ‘If we can’t get human war-aid, we’ll not just be wise to
stick in Valennen, we’ll have to. Else the enemy can strike however he feels like, throughout the Ehur and Fiery Seas. He can throw more against an island than we can put on it; and when that garrison’s been reduced, he can go on to the next. A battle or two won by us won’t mean a frittering thing, long-range, when he’s got a whole mainland to withdraw to and we no troops there to welcome him.

  ‘Soon we’ll lose those waters. Soon after, he’ll be harrying North Beronnen while his ships range west into the Argent and east into the Cyclonic Ocean, picking off whatever he pleases, raising allies, breeding fighters– And maybe afterward we can keep him from taking over this half of this continent, but we’ll’ve had to haul in everything we’ve got left to defend it.

  ‘Which’d be the end of the Gathering. Civilization might limp on, but only in South Beronnen. And only for South Beronnen. Doom and blast, can’t you see the Gathering is what this cycle’s all about, the best thing we’ve got to pass on to the next?

  ‘Yes, you can stay safer for a while by letting Valennen go. My judgment as a soldier is, it’d be better to let several of your homes go, and send the strength to me there that I need to clean the place out. But vote as you please. The Zera stays.’

  X

  “Gwine to run all night!

  Gwine to run all day!

  I’ll bet my money on de bobtail nag–

  Somebody bet on de bay.”

  As she ended the old song, Jill Conway kept fingers flying on her guitar and began to whistle. Trills, glides, notes, chords, now shivery shrill, now bell-deep, flew out beneath the stars, entered ears and danced along nerves till the whole body seemed to tone with them. Those were rollicking ghosts they raised, nevertheless ghosts.

  Meanwhile her gaze wandered aloft. On this warm night she had rolled back the porch roof of her cottage. She and Yuri Dejerine sat under the sky only. Primavera had no need for street illumination; a tall hedge around the yard screened off windows of neighbors, who weren’t close anyway; here was nothing except a glowglobe on a table where stood the cognac he had brought to follow the dinner she cooked. Above shadowy sweet-smelling masses of trees, the stars marched in brilliant armies on either bank of the galactic river. Caelestia hastened tumbling and glittering between them. But her eyes sought past Ea, toward the Wings. In that constellation lay Earth, which had begotten the words and music she offered her guest – had begotten her entire race, though scarcely an atom from it could be in her.…