The Day of Their Return

XIII

South of the Green Bowl, hills climbed ever faster. Yet for a while the stream continued to flow peaceful. Ivar wished his blood could do likewise.

Seeking tranquillity, he climbed to the foredeck for a clear view across night. He stopped short when he spied others on hand than the lookout who added eyes to the radar.

Through a crowd of stars and a torrent of galaxy, Creusa sped past Lavinia. Light lay argent ashore, touching crests and crags, swallowed by shadows farther down. It shivered and sparked on the water, made ghostly the sails which had been set to use a fair wind. That air murmured cold through quietness and a rustle at the bows.

Fore and aft, separated by a few kilometers for safety, glowed the lights of three companion vessels. No few were bound this way, to celebrate the Season of Returnings.

Ivar saw the lookout on his knees under the figurehead, and a sheen off Erannath’s plumage, and Riho Mea and Iang Weii in their robes. Captain and chaplain were completing a ritual, it seemed. Mute, now and then lifting hands or bowing heads, they had watched the moons draw near and again apart.

“Ah,” Mea gusted. The crewman rose.

“I beg pardon,” Erannath said. “Had I known a religious practice was going on, I would not have descended here. I stayed because that was perhaps less distracting than my takeoff would have been.”

“No harm done,” Mea assured him. “In fact, the sight of you coming down gave one extra glory.”

“Besides,” Iang said in his mild voice, “though this is something we always do at certain times, it is not strictly religious.” He stroked his thin white beard. “Have we Kuang Shih religion, in the same sense as the Christians or Jews of the Ti Shih or the pagans of the tineran society? This is one matter of definition, not so? We preach nothing about gods. To most of us that whole subject is not important. Whether or not gods, or God, exist, is it not merely one scientific question—cosmological?”

“Then what do you hunt after?” the Ythrian asked.

“Allness,” the chaplain replied. “Unity, harmony. Through rites and symbols. We know they are only rites and symbols. But they say to the opened mind what words cannot. The River is ongoingness, fate; the Sun is life; Moons and Stars are the transhuman.”

“We contemplate these things,” Riho Mea added. “We try to merge with them, with everything that is.” Her glance fell on Ivar. “Ahoa, Sir Mariner,” she called. “Come, join our party.”

Iang, who could stay solemn longer than her, continued: “Our race, or yours, has less gift for the whole ch’an—understanding—than the many-minded people of the Morning Star. However, when the Old Shen return, mankind will gain the same immortal singleness, and have moreover the strengths we were forced to make in ourselves, in order to endure being alone in our skulls.”

“You too?” Erannath snapped. “Is everybody on Aeneas waiting for these mentors and saviors?”

“More and more, we are,” Mea said. “Up the Yun Kow drifts word—”

Ivar, who had approached, felt as if touched by lightnings. Her gaze had locked on him. He knew: These are not just easy-goin’, practical sailors. I should’ve seen it earlier. That coffin—and fact they’re bound on dangerous trip to honor both their ancestors and their descendants—and now this—no, they’re as profoundly eschatological as any Bible-and-blaster yeoman.

“Word about liberation?” he exclaimed.

“Aye, though that’s the bare beginning,” she answered, Iang nodded, while the lookout laid hand on sheath knife.

Abruptly she said, “Would you like to talk about this … Rolf Mariner? I’m ready for one drink and cigar in my cabin anyway.”

His pulses roared. “You also, good friend and wise man,” he heard her propose to Iang.

“I bid you goodnight, then,” Erannath said.

The chaplain bowed to him. “Forgive us our confidentiality.”

“Maybe we should invite you along,” Mea said. “Look here, you are not one plain scientist like you claim. You are one Ythrian secret agent, collecting information on the key human planet Aeneas, no?” When he stayed silent, she laughed. “Never mind. Point is, we and you have the same enemy, the Terran Empire. At least, Ythri shouldn’t mind if the Empire loses territory.”

“Afterward, though,” Iang murmured, “I cannot help but wonder how well the carnivore soul may adapt to the enlightenment the Old Shen will bring.”

Moonlight turned Erannath’s feather to silver, his eyes to mercury. “Do you look on your species as a chosen people?” he said, equally low. At once he must have regretted his impulse, for he went on: “Your intrigues are no concern of mine. Nor do I care if you decide I am something more than an observer. If you are opposed to the occupation authorities, presumably you won’t betray me to them. I wish to go on a night hunt. May fortune blow your way.”

His wings spread, from rail to rail. The wind of his rising gusted and boomed. For a while he gleamed high aloft, before vision lost him among the stars.

Mea led Iang and Ivar to her quarters. Her husband greeted them, and this time he stayed: a bright and resolute young man, the dream of freedom kindled within him.

When the door had been shut, the captain said: “Ahoa, Ivar Frederiksen, Firstling of Ilion.”

“How did you know?” he whispered.

She grinned, and went for the cigar she had bespoken. “How obvious need it be? Surely that Ythrian has suspected. Why else should he care about one human waif? But to him, humans are so foreign—so alike-seeming—and besides, being a spy, he couldn’t dare use data services—he must have been holding back, trying to confirm his guess. Me, I remembered some choked-off news accounts. I called up Nova Roma public files, asked for pictures and—O-ah, no fears. I am one merchant myself, I know how to disguise my real intents.”

“You, you will … help me?” he faltered.

They drew close around him, the young man, the old man, the captain. “You will help us,” Iang said. “You are the Firstling—our rightful leader that every Aenean can follow—to throw out those mind-stifling Terrans and make ready for the Advent that is promised—What can we do for you, lord?”

Chunderban Desai broke the connection and sat for a while staring before him. His wife, who had been out of the room, came back in and asked what was wrong.

“Peter Jowett is dead,” he told her.

“Oh, no.” The two families had become friendly in the isolation they shared.

“Murdered.”

“What?” The gentleness in her face gave way to horror.

“The separatists,” he sighed. “It has to be. No melodramatic message left. He was killed by a rifle bullet as he left his office. But who else hated him?”

She groped for the comfort of his hand. He returned the pressure. “A real underground?” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Nor I, until now. Oh, I got reports from planted agents, from surveillance devices, all the usual means. Something was brewing, something being organized. Still, I didn’t expect outright terrorism this soon, if ever.”

“The futility is nearly the worst part. What chance have they?”

He rose from his chair. Side by side, they went to a window. It gave on the garden of the little house they rented in the suburbs: alien plants spiky beneath alien stars and moons, whose light fell on the frosted helmet of a marine guard.

“I don’t know,” he said. Despite the low gravity, his back slumped. “They must have some. It isn’t the hopeless who rebel, it’s those who think they see the end of their particular tunnels, and grow impatient.”

“You have given them hope, dear.”

“Well … I came here thinking they’d accept their military defeat and work with me like sensible people, to get their planet reintegrated with the Empire. After all, except for the Snelund episode, Aeneas has benefited from the Imperium, on balance; and we’re trying to set up precautions against another Snelund. Peter agreed. Therefore they killed him. Who’s next?”

Her fingers tightened on his. “Poor Olga. The poor children. Should I call her tonight or, or what?”

He stayed in the orbit of his own thoughts. “Rumors of a deliverer—not merely a political liberator, but a savior—no, a whole race of saviors—that’s what’s driving the Aeneans,” he said. “And not the dominant culture alone. The others too. In their different ways, they all wait for an apocalypse.”

“Who is preaching it?”

He chuckled sadly. “If I knew that, I could order the party arrested. Or, better yet, try to suborn him. Or them. But my agents hear nothing except these vague rumors. Never forget how terribly few we are, and how marked, on an entire world … We did notice what appeared to be a centering of the rumors on the Orcan area. We investigated. We drew blank, at least as far as finding any proof of illegal activities. The society there, and its beliefs, always have been founded on colossal prehuman ruins, and evidently has often brought forth millennialist prophets. Our people had more urgent things to do than struggle with the language and ethos of some poverty-stricken dwellers on a dead sea floor.” His tone strengthened. “Though if I had the personnel for it, I would probe further indeed. This wouldn’t be the first time that a voice from the desert drove nations mad.”

The phone chimed again. He muttered a swear word before he returned to accept the call. It was on scramble code, which automatically heterodyned the audio output so that Desai’s wife could not hear what came to him a couple of meters away. The screen was vacant, too.

She could see the blaze on his face; and she heard him shout after the conversation ended, as he surged from his chair: “Brahma’s mercy, yes! We’ll catch him and end this thing!”