Fire Time (16 page)

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.’

“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.…

Wings,
passed over her mind.
Is it part of a different idea for Yuri? We’ve naturally come to use the star-pictures of Beronnen; but across a thousand light-years, he can recognize a few of man’s, however strangely changed, he told me. Which are they?

Light-years. Light
… It glimmered on grass, glinted where it caught insignia on the man’s dress uniform or, she knew, the silver in her headband; maybe her unbound hair shone a little for him. She finished the music.

‘Nom d’un nom!’
Dejerine exclaimed. He struck hands together. ‘I have never heard anything like! Where is it from?’

‘America, I believe.’ Jill lowered the guitar to the floor, leaned back in her chair with one long leg crossed over the other, and lifted her glass for a sip. This Earthside brandy was heady stuff. She warned herself to go slow.
Well not too slow. Moderation in all things, including moderation.

She had made that remark to Ian Sparling, and he had said, ‘My dear, your idea of moderation would’ve strained Alexander the Great,’ then at once retreated into impersonalities.
Is Ian really in love with me? I wish I could be sure, to help me know what to do, whatever that would be.
She continued, smiling a bit:

‘Odd, that you should have to come this far to hear a song off your native planet. But maybe it’s forgotten there. I daresay we preserve many quaint archaisms. Shall we charge admission?’

Dejerine shook his sleek head. ‘No, no, Jill,’ he said. They had gotten on first-name terms in the course of the meal, which he praised with a knowledgeability that proved he was sincere. She had been pleased, being rather proud of her skill. ‘I meant your incredible … coda? It fitted so well, yet it cannot be of human origin. Can it?’

‘Yes and no,’ she replied. ‘I spent a couple of seasons doing field work in the Thunderhead Mountains. The locals there communicate across distances by whistling, and they’ve developed a music based on it. I learned and adapted what I could. That wasn’t much. Ishtarians are better than us at producing and hearing sounds. Their music, like their dance, is nearly always incredibly sophisticated by our lights.’

‘What you can do is remarkable.’

‘Yeah, I’ve made it a minor art of my own. You should hear some numbers.’ Jill grinned. ‘Downright obscene.’

Dejerine chuckled and bent toward her. She hoped he hadn’t misunderstood her jape as a suggestion. To change the subject, and because the sudden fancy amused her, she said, ‘Apropos peculiar cultural creations, that expression you used.
“Nom d’un nom,”
wasn’t it? If you’ll forgive my pronunciation. Am I right that it means “name of a name”?’

He nodded, relaxed, picked his cigar out of the ashtray on the table, and puffed.

I reckon he got the hint,
she thought.
Maybe not consciously. He’s sensitive.

‘A French phrase,’ he said. ‘I have never grasped the logic of it.’

‘Oh, but I do. What is the name of a name? For instance, my name is Jill. But the name of my name–’ She cocked her head and laid fingertip to chin. ‘Yes, I believe my name is named Susan. And yours … m-m … Fred? Why, we may have founded a whole new science!’

They laughed together. Then a silence fell, wherein they heard a nightringer sing.

‘What a lovely evening,’ she murmured at last. ‘Enjoy it. We won’t get a hell of a lot more like this in our lifetimes.’

‘Lovely in every way,’ he said, ‘though chiefly because of you.’ She gave him a quick glance, but he stayed where he was and his tone came earnest rather than glib. Therefore her look stayed with him. ‘I am truly grateful for your invitation, your all-around kindness. It has been, it is hard
work getting settled here. And then nearly everyone is chilly toward us, if not outright hostile.’

‘That seems wrong to me. You’re wearing the same uniform as my brother. This war wasn’t of your making, and you’re doing your duty the most humane way you can.’

‘You know I support the war. Not for conquest or glory –
ad i chawrti,
no! – but as the lesser of two evils. If we keep the balance of power today, we should not have to fight on a far larger scale in ten or twenty years.’

‘You’ve told me before. I – Yuri, I like you as a person, but you’re too bright not to realize I’m also trying to influence you, get your help for the help of Ishtar. You talk about sacrifices for the greater good. Well, what value have millions of thinking lives? A whole set of societies, arts, philosophies, all we could learn and make of ourselves, from a race which quite possibly balances out as ahead of us in evolution.’

His free hand made a fist on the arm of his chair. ‘I sympathize with the fact that you have friends here who will suffer if your programs are curtailed,’ he said. ‘But as for the more abstract issues – Jill, excuse me, but I ask you to ask yourself: How much scientific advance is your brother’s life worth?’