Fire Time

THREE

Southbound, Larreka and his attendants neared Primavera about noon of the day after he had left his wife at Yakulen Ranch. The human settlement lay three marches upriver from the city of Sehala. No longer was that site a precaution against possible trouble. Surely everyone in Beronnen, and most dwellers elsewhere throughout the Gathering, had come to understand that the Earthfolk were their friends, the last best hope of saving their entire civilization. But the aliens still needed space to raise crops and cattle which could nourish them in ways that raingrain or breadroot, the flesh of els or owas, could not. And those who studied nature, like Jill Conway, preferred readier access to wildlife than the plowlands around Sehala afforded. And those who studied people declared that their own constant presence in the city would be too upsetting.

Not that any such effect could amount to a dust-puff—Larreka had often thought—alongside the upsettingness built into this world.

He swung briskly down a road which paralleled the wide, sheening flow of the Jayin. An important highway, it was brick-paved; he felt heat as well as gritty hardness. But that was enough for a tough-padded old soldier to show himself by putting on buskins. Bad though the time was becoming. South Beronnen always escaped the worst of what the Rover passed out… except indirectly, of course, when starveling hordes invaded this favored land. Furthermore, right now was mid-autumn in the southern hemisphere, the airs easing off toward rainy winter, no matter how hard the Rover tried to screw things up.

Its red glower, low above northern hills which it turned amethyst, was near setting. The Sun stood high and brilliant. Double shadows and blended hues made the landscape strange. It rolled gently away from either bank of the river. This shore was given over to human cultivation. Wheat, corn, and the rest had been harvested, leaving stubblefields; but apples flushed in an orchard, homed fourlegged animals chewed grass behind fences—how green everything was! The opposite side remained native: turf of golden-hued lia studded with scarlet firebloom, trees in coppices tawny (swordleaf) or ocherous (swirlwood and leatherbark) Wingseed birches were propagating yonder, and many pods flapped across the stream before they ran out of stored energy and fell to the ground. Nature’s carelessness: they could no longer take root over here; the soil had been changed too much.

The breeze into which they beat was pleasant after the morning’s sultriness. Larreka heard his mane rustle. He drank the sweet weird odors of Earthside growth with an appreciation learned through a hundred years. The grimness of his present mission didn’t lessen that. A soldier shouldn’t let worry spoil whatever bonuses life tossed his way.

“How much further, sir?” asked one of the half-dozen males at his back. They weren’t needed in these closely settled, food-rich parts. But it had expedited the trek across North Beronnen and over the Thunderhead Mountains, to have some who could be detached to hunt and forage while the rest kept going, and extra hands for camp chores. Larreka figured he might as well let them come the whole way to Sehala and its fleshpots. Poor bastards, they wouldn’t get a lot of fun during their youth. He who had spoken was a native of Foss Island in the Fiery Sea, recruited there and posted directly to Valennen because that was where the Zera was stationed these years. He had never before visited the mother continent.

“Chu, maybe an hour.” Larreka used a unit denoting the sixteenth part of a noon-to-noon, coincidentally quite near to the Earth measurement. “Keep moving. I told you we’ll overnight there.”

“Well, at least Skeela’ll soon be down.”

“Huh?—Oh. Oh, yes.” With as many names as he had heard for the red orb, Larreka could generally spot another.

He himself thought of it as the Rover, since he belonged to the Triadic cult. There it was central, together with the Sun and that Darkness on whose brow smolders the Ember Star. As a youth in Haelen, he had called it Abbada, and had been told it was an outlaw god who returned every thousand years; later he became skeptical, and considered the pagan rites of propitiation a waste of good meat. The barbarians of Valennen were in such awe of the thing that they gave it no name whatsoever, Just a lot of epithets, none of which should be used twice in a row lest its attention be drawn to the speaker. And so the business went, different everywhere, including among the humans. They called the red one Anu, and denied a soul of any kind was in it; and likewise for the Sun, which they called Bel, and the Ember Star, which they called Ea.

In many ways, their concept was the creepiest of the lot. Larreka had had to nerve himself to master their teachings. He couldn’t yet believe that there was nothing to the Triad but fire. And whether or not that was the case, he’d carry out the rites and commandments of his religion. It was a good faith for a soldier, popular in the legions, excellent for morale and discipline.

From the outside, Larreka didn’t look like a person who would study philosophy. He might have been a veteran sergeant, slightly undersized but heavily muscled, less graceful than most though exceedingly fast when needful. Wounds deep enough to leave permanent scars had seamed his body in places; a gouge crossed the bone of his brow, and his left ear was missing. Haeleners being of South Beronnen origin, he had skin formerly pale brown, turned dark and leathery by many weathers, wherein his eyes stood ice-blue. His speech kept traces of a rough homeland accent, and his most conspicuous weapon—practically his trademark—was the heavy knuckleduster-handled curve-bladed shortsword favored in that antarctic country. Otherwise he wore only a purse-belt for small articles, and the arms and travel kit strapped in a bundle on his back or loaded in two wicker panniers. This included a hunting spear and a hatchet which could double as a weapon. Nothing was ornamented; it was well-worn cloth, hide, wood, steel. His sole jewelry was a gold chain around the thick left wrist.

The soldiers behind him were gaudier, sporting plumes, beadwork, jingling links. They were also very respectful of their shabby leader. Larreka, Zabat’s son of Clan Kerazzi, was perhaps the most demanding of the thirty-three legionary commandants. After two centuries in the Zera, he was far into middle age, three hundred and ninety on his last birthday. But he could expect another hundred years of health, and might well hope for more—if a barbarian didn’t get him first, or any of the natural catastrophes the Rover was brewing for the world.

It slipped under the horizon. For a brief while, clouds to the north were sullen from its rays. Then the sane light of the Sun shone free. Cumulus loomed tall and white above a blue shadowiness hinting at storm.

“Think it’ll rain, sir?” asked the male from Foss Island. “I sure wouldn’t mind.” Though near the equator, his home was refreshed by winds off the sea. Here he felt hot and dusty.

“Save your thirst for Primavera,” Larreka advised. “The beer there is good.” He squinted. “N-n-no, I wouldn’t look for rain today. Tomorrow, maybe. Don’t be in a fume about it, son. You’ll soon get more water hereabouts than you can handle, enough to drown a galleyfish. Maybe then you’ll appreciate Valennen better.”

“I doubt that,” a companion said. “Valennen’s supposed to go even drier than it futtering well already is.”

“Futtering ain’t the word, Saleh,” a third put in with a crow of laughter. “Female pelts’ll get baked so stiff you could sand a hole in your belly.”

His exaggeration was moderate. Loss of moisture did coarsen the mat of fine green plant growth covering most of a body. “Why, as for that,” Larreka said, “heed the voice of experience,” and described alternate techniques in blunt language.

“But, sir,” Saleh persisted, “I don’t get it. Sure, Valennen sees a lot more of the Wicked Star, a lot higher in the sky, than Beronnen does. I understand how it gets hotter than here. Only why’ll the country dry out that bad? I thought, ng-ng, I thought heat draws water out of the sea and dumps it as rain. Isn’t that how come the tropical islands are mostly wet?”

“True,” Larreka answered. “That’s what’s going to spill rain all over Beronnen for the next sixty-four years or more, till we’re in mud up to our tail-roots when we aren’t flooded out—not to speak of snowpack melting in the highlands and whooping down, to add to the fun and games. But Valennen’s saddled with those enormous mountains along the whole west coast, where the main winds come from. What little water the interior’s got will blow away eastward over the Sea of Ehur, while clouds off the Argent Ocean crash on the Worldwall. Now shut your meat hatch and let’s tramp.”

They sensed that he meant it and obeyed. For some reason he recalled a remark which Goddard Hanshaw had once made to him:

’’You Ishtarians seem to have such a natural-born discipline that you don’t need any spit-and-polish—hell, your organized units like in the army hardly seem to need any drill. Only, is ‘discipline’ the right word? I think it’s more a, well, a sensitivity to nuances, an ability to grasp what a whole group is doing and be an intelligent part of it… Okay, I reckon we humans catch on faster to certain ideas than you do, concepts involving three-dimensional space, for instance. But you’ve got more, uh, a higher social IQ.” He had grinned. “A theory unpopular on Earth. Intellectuals hate to admit that beings who have wars and taboos and the rest can be further evolved than their own noble selves, who obviously have none.”

Larreka remembered the words in the English which had been used. Fascinated by humans since their first arrival, he had seen as much of them as he could manage and learned everything about them and from them that he was able. This was rather more than he let on to his followers or his brother officers; it wouldn’t have fitted his character as a rough, tough old mudfoot. Language had been no problem to a fellow who’d knocked around half the globe and always quickly found how to ask local people for directions, help, food, beer, housing, sex, whatever he wanted. Besides, English was very narrow in range and choice of sounds. Humans could never match the voice or hearing of even a male Ishtarian. He admired them for plowing their way through Sehalan anyhow.

When they were so pitifully short-lived, too. A single sixty-four or less, and they needed special medicines to keep their strength. Before the end of the second sixty-four, that was no help either… Larreka unconsciously quickened his pace a bit. He wanted to enjoy his friends while he had them.

More urgent was his errand among them. He carried evil news.

Primavera was houses and other buildings along asphalt streets shaded by the red and yellow foliage of big old native trees which had been left in place when the area was originally cleared, their soil tended to keep them alive amidst alien growth. It rose in gentle slopes from a landing on the Jayin where boats docked and vessels of Ishtarian river traffic paid calls; the inhabitants manufactured a few articles like rot-proof fabrics to trade for many of their needs. They built largely in native materials, wood, stone, brick—though the glass they made was superior to anything of Beronnen—and added light bright paint. A road ran east, vanishing over a ridge, eventually to reach the spacefield, A kilometer outside of town it passed by the airport, where flyers were kept for long-range transportation. Around home people used groundcars, cycles and feet.

Ishtarians were too common in Primavera to draw special attention unless they were individually well-known. Larreka only was to long-term residents. And not many persons were outdoors at this hour, when adults were at work and children in school. He had reached Stubbs Park, was about to short-cut through it and grab a drink of water at the fountain in the middle, before he was hailed.

First, he heard the purr of a large flywheeler at high speed, followed by a squeal of braking. To drive like that in town would have been unforgivably reckless in most, but not quite all. He wasn’t surprised to recognize Jill Conway’s throaty shout.

“Larreka! Old Sugar Uncle himself! Hi there!” She unsnapped her safety harness, sprang from the saddle and out between the roll bars, left the vehicle balanced while she hurled herself into his arms.

At length, “M-m-m,” she murmured, stood back, cocked her head, and surveyed him centimeter by centimeter. “You’re looking good. Worked some fat off, have you? But why the deuce didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d’ve baked a cake.”

“Maybe that was why,” he teased in her English.

“Aw, switch it off, will you? The trouble with a lifespan like yours is you develop no sense of time. My culinary disasters didn’t happen yesterday, they were twenty years ago. I’m a grown lady now, people keep wistfully telling me, and you’ll be surprised how well I cook. I must admit, you never did anything more heroic than eat those things a little girl made for her Sugar Uncle.”

They smiled at each other, a gesture common to both species though human lips curved rather than quirked upward. Larreka returned her searching gaze. They’d swapped radiograms and sometimes talked directly by phone, but hadn’t met in the flesh for seven years, since the Zera Victrix went to Valennen. He’d been kept busy by worsening natural conditions and the rise of banditry to take leave, while she’d first been studying hard, then embarking on her own career. When little was yet known about the ecology of Beronnen and the Iren Archipelago to the south, he couldn’t blame her for choosing to do research in their congenial environments. In fact, he would have been distressed had she decided to investigate the greater mysteries of Valennen. That continent wasn’t safe any longer, and Jill was among his loves.

She’d changed. In a hundred years of close acquaintance with humans, close friendships with several, Larreka had learned to tell them apart as well as they could themselves, person by person or year by year. He had left her a lanky, late-maturing adolescent who had scarcely outgrown a tomboyishness which, no doubt, he had helped foster. Today she was indeed adult.

Clad in the usual blouse and slacks of townsfolk, she stood tall, long-legged, barely on the feminine side of leanness. Her head was long too, the face rather narrow though bearing a wide full mouth, nose classically straight, eyes cobalt blue and heavy-lashed under level brows. Sunlight had browned and slightly freckled a fair skin. Dark-blond and straight, her hair fell to her shoulders, controlled by a silver-and-leather filigree band he had given her. She had stuck a bronzy saru feather in the back of it.

“You’re ready to be bred, all right,” Larreka agreed. “When and who to?”

He hadn’t expected she would flush and mumble, “Not yet,” then immediately ask: “How’s the family? Did Meroa come along?”

“Yes. I left her at the ranch.”

“Shucks, why?” she challenged. “You’ve got a far nicer wife than you deserve, for your information.”

“Don’t tell her.” His pleasure faded. “This is no furlough for me. I’m bound on to Sehala for an assembly, afterward back to Valennen as soon as may be; and Meroa will stay behind.”

Jill stood quite still for a space before she responded low: “Are things getting that bad there?”

“Worse.”

“Oh.” Another pause. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“The trouble blew up damn near overnight. I wasn’t sure at first. We could just have been having a run of foul luck. When I knew better, I called to demand an assembly, then took ship.”

“Why didn’t you call us for air transport?”

“What use? You can’t bring in everybody. Even if you had enough aircraft, which I doubt, a lot of speakers wouldn’t ride in them. So we couldn’t get a quorum together sooner than I could arrive by sea and land.” Larreka gusted a sigh. “Meroa and I needed a vacation anyway—it’s been spiky, this past year—and the trip gave us that.”

Jill nodded. He had no cause to explain the reasons for his route to her. Under better conditions, the fastest way would have been entirely waterborne, from Port Rua in the South of Valennen to Liwas at the mouth of the Jayin and upriver to Sehala. But at present there were too many equinoctial gales, swelled by the red sun. Besides risk of shipwreck, sailors faced the likelihood of a voyage that contrary storms lengthened by weeks. Safest was to island-hop through the Fiery Sea, make harbor on the North Beronnen coast, then hike across the Dalag, the Badlands, the Red Hills, the Middle Forest, and the Thunderhead Range to the Jayin Valley: mostly wilderness and a lot of it pretty barren, but nothing that an old campaigner couldn’t get through at a goodly clip.

“Well, I’ve been out in the field awhile,” she said. “Fossilling around in the Stony Mountains till day before yesterday. Probably I’ve not gotten what news God or Ian Sparling now have.” Her reference wasn’t theological; Goddard Hanshaw was the mayor.

“They don’t, aside from doubtless having heard the speakers will assemble soon. How could I’ve called them on the march? That’s why I’ve stopped off here, to see your leaders and try for a word from them that I can bring along to Sehala.”

Again Jill nodded. “I forgot. Silly of me. I’m too used to instant communications, simply add hot air and stir.”

She was in a different boat from him, Larreka reflected indulgently. A standard-size portable transceiver would reach to one of the relays the humans had planted throughout the southern half of this continent, and it would buck the voice on. But greater distances required a big transmitter and those relays the newcomers had put on the moons. Thus far they hadn’t built more than four such stations—being, after all, at the end of a mighty long and thin supply line from Earth—Primavera, in Sehala, in Light Place on the Haelen coast, and, barely ten years ago, in Port Rua. It was ironic that, posted away off to Darkness-and-gone in the northern hemisphere, he’d been able to talk from end to end of the Gathering, a meridian arc ten thousand kilometers in length; and then, as he approached the center of civilization, his walkie-talkie had gone deaf and dumb.

Jill took his arm. “They don’t expect you, hey?” she said. “C’mon, let me make the arrangements. I want to listen in.”

“Why not?” he answered. “Though you won’t like what you hear.”

An hour passed. Jill whirled off to collect the men she had mentioned, who were carrying out jobs in the neighborhood. Meanwhile Larreka led his troopers to the single inn Primavera boasted. Mainly it dealt in beer, wine, pool games, darts, the occasional dinner out; but it had accommodations for humans, whether these be transients or new chums who’d soon get permanent digs, and for visiting Ishtarians. Larreka saw his squad settled in and told the proprietor to bill the city for them as per long-standing agreement. He didn’t warn them not to run it riotously high. They were good lads who’d keep the honor of the legion in mind.

Nor did he make arrangements for himself. Jill had written two years ago that she’d moved from her parents’ home to a rented cottage which had an Ishtarian-outfitted chamber—it dated back several of her generations, to when scholars of both races were working constantly and intimately in an effort at mutual understanding— and if he didn’t stay with her anytime he was in town, she’d be cut to the squick. (“That’s ‘squick.’ It bleeds more.”)

He proceeded to the mayor’s home-cum-office. A community like Primavera needed little steering. Most of Hanshaw’s duties involved Earth; shipping companies, individual scientists and technics considering a job here, bureaucrats of the World Federation when they got the urge to meddle, national politicians who could be a bigger nuisance.

The house was typical, built for a climate the humans called “Mediterranean.” Thick walls, pastel-painted, gave insulation as well as strength; to the rear, a patio opened on a flower garden. Sturdy construction, steel shutters for the windows, an aerodynamically designed heraklite roof, were needful against tornados. Larreka had been told that Ishtar’s rotation made storms more frequent and violent than on Earth.

Hanshaw’s wife admitted him but didn’t join the conference in their living room. Besides the mayor and Jill, Ian Sparling was present. Those were ample. Get more than a few Terrestrials together, and it was incredible what time they’d dribble away in laborious jabber. Sparling was chief engineer of the rescue project, therefore a key man. Moreover, he too was a good friend of Larreka’s.

“Howdy, stranger,” boomed Hanshaw. He’d changed almost shockingly, the commandant saw, turned gray and portly. He still seemed vigorous, however, and still insisted on shaking hands rather than clasping shoulders.

“Flop yourself.” He gestured at a mattress spread on the floor to face three armchairs. Nearby, a wheeled table held an executive-desk console. “What’ll you have? Beer, if I know you.”

“Beer indeed,” Larreka replied. “In many large mugs,” He meant brew of breadroot flavored with domebud; to him, the stuff gotten from Earth grains tasted vile. That wasn’t true of all such plants. After a hearty shoulderclasp with Sparling, he drew a pipe from his pouch and drawled, “Furthermore, I haven’t blown tobacco for seven years.”

The engineer grinned, ordered his supply, and on getting it back stuffed a briar of his own. He was a tall man—two full meters, which put him brow to brow with Larreka—in his mid-forties, wide-shouldered but otherwise gaunt and rawboned, hands and feet large and knobbly, movements looking awkward though they did everything he wanted them to. High cheekbones, curved nose, deep creases around thin lips, weatherbeaten skin, unruly black hair tinged with gray, tuneless voice, eyes big and brilliantly gray-green, had little changed since last time. Unlike Hanshaw, Sparling was as careless a dresser as Jill, but lacked her flair.

“How’re the wife and youngster?” Larreka asked him.

“Oh, Rhoda’s about as usual,” he replied. “Becky’s a student on Earth—you didn’t know? Sorry. I always was a rotten correspondent. Yes, she’s back there. I saw her last year on a trip. She’s doing fine.” Larreka recalled that humans were entitled to home leaves every four of their native years. Some, like Jill, had never taken any; this was home to them, and they were in no hurry to make an expensive tour. But Sparling returned oftener than that. to present his latest plans and argue for support of them.

“I’ve kept better track of your work than of your family.” Larreka meant no offense. Whatever would ease the disasters ahead was top-rank in every civilized mind. “Your flood control dams—” Seeing the engineer scowl, he stopped.

“That’s become part of our whole problem,” Sparling said stiffly. “Let’s settle down and get at it.”

Olga Hanshaw brought the refreshments her husband had ordered by intercom, and announced lunch in an hour. “I’m afraid it’ll be nothing fancy,” she apologized to Larreka. “The storms this past summer hurt the crops, your people’s as well as ours.”

“Well, we realize in your position, you’ve got to set an example of austerity,” Jill said to her. “I know a hog from a Hanshaw.”

Sparling alone chuckled. Maybe, Larreka thought, her English-language remark referred to something on Earth, where the engineer had been born and spent his earlier youth. Did she notice how his gaze, having gone to her, kept drifting back?

“Let’s save the jokes for later.” the mayor urged. “Maybe this evening we can have a poker game.” Larreka hoped so. Over the octads he’d become ferociously good at it, and kept in practice by introducing it to his officers. Then he saw Jill gleefully rub her hands and remembered how she’d played slapdash chess but precocious poker. How tough had she become since?

They sobered when Hanshaw continued, “Commandant, you’re here on unpleasant business. And I’m afraid we’ve got worse news for you.”

Larreka tensed on the mattress where he couched, took a long gulp of beer, and said: “Unleash.”

“Port Rua sent word the other day. Tarhanna has fallen.”

Larreka had kept too much Haelener in him to yelp or swear. He sought what—comfort he could find in the smoke-bite of tobacco before saying flatly, “Details?”

“Not a hell of a tot. Apparently the natives—the barbarians, I mean, not the few civilized Valenneners you’ve got—apparently they made a surprise attack, took the town, threw everybody out, and told the legionary chief as he was leaving that they weren’t there for loot, they intended to garrison it.”

“Bad,” Larreka said after a while. “Bad, bad, and bad.”

Jill leaned forward to touch his mane. Disturbed, a few of the seleks therein leaped out from among the leaves, then scurried back down to the proper business of such small entomoids, keeping it free of vermin and dead matter. “A shock, huh?” she asked softly.

“Yes.”

“Why? I mean, as I understand the case, Tarhanna is… was the Gathering’s main outpost in the interior of Valennen, “way upriver from Port Rua. Right? But what purpose had it except trade? And you always knew trade’ll go to pot as conditions deteriorate.”

“It was a military base, too,” Larreka reminded her. “Thence we could strike at robbers, uppity households, whatever. Now—” He smoked for a second before he proceeded. “Maybe this hits me hardest as a sign. You see, the Zera’s still in good shape. Tarhanna should’ve been able to throw back every landlouper the whole inhabited end of the continent could raise against it. Or, anyhow, hang on till Port Rua sent a relief expedition. Only it didn’t. Also, the enemy feels he can keep it. Therefore, he’s got himself an outfit. Not a bunch of raiders: an organized outfit. Maybe even a confederation.”

He appealed: “Do you see what that means? Final proof of what I’d decided had to be the case. The bandits and pirates were growing too bloody bold, too successful, to be the kind we’d routinely coped with. And of course we were getting a little military intelligence from the outback—and now this—”

“Somebody’s been uniting the barbarians at last. Probably he’s finished, and ready to put the crunch on us. To cast the Gathering out of Valennen altogether.”

“Except that’s a bare start for him. It has to be. In the past, the Rover drove desperate people south. They fell on civilization and helped tear it apart. This time around, it looked like civilization had a chance to pull through. Only somebody has organized the Valenneners to match us. He can’t have but one long-range purpose—to invade the south, kill, enslave, kick us out of our lands, and take over the ruins.

“That’s what I’ve traveled for. To tell the assembly we can’t withdraw ‘temporarily’ from Valennen, we’ve got to hold fast at every cost; to get reinforcements, a second legion at a minimum, up there. But first I want to ask what help you in Primavera can give. It may not be exactly your war. But you’re here to learn about Ishtar. If civilization falls, you’ll have a thin time carrying on,”

That was as long a speech as he had ever made, even addressing the Zera on a high occasion. He turned half wildly to his pipe and beer.

Sparling’s voice yanked him back: “Larreka, this hurts like a third-degree bum to say, but I’m not sure what help we can give you. You see, we’ve been stuck with a war of our own.”