none (25 page)

more do I want?

They heard the music beginning before they reached the new Community Hall at the New Skye

farm, and Camilla looked at MacAran in startled dismay. "Good Lord, what's that unholy racked"

"I forgot you weren't a Scot, darling, don't you like the bagpipes? Moray and Domenick and a

couple of others play them, but yon don't have to go in until they're finished unless you like," he laughed.

"It sounds worse than a banshee on the loose," Camilla said firmly. `The music isn't all like that, I

hope?"

"No, there are harps, guitars, lutes, you name it, they've got it. And building new ones." He squeezed her fingers as the pipes died, and they walked toward the hall. "It's a tradition, that's all. The pipes. And the Highland regalia--the kilts and swords."

Camilla felt, surprisingly, a brief pang almost of envy as they came into the hall, brightly lit with

candles and torches; the girls in their brilliant tartan skirts and plaids,

147

the men resplendent in kilts, swords, buckled plaids swaggering over their shoulders. So many of them were bright-haired redheads.
A colorful tradition. They pass it on, and our traditions--die Oh, come, damn it, what traditions? The annual parade of the Space Academy? Theirs fit, at least, into this strange world.

Two men, Moray and the tall, red-headed Alastair, were doing a sword dance, leaping nimblyacross the gleaming blades to the sound of the piper. For an instant Camilla had a strange vision ofgleaming swords, not used in games, but deadly serious, then it flickered out again and she joined in theapplause for the dancers.

There were other dances and songs, mostly unfamiliar to Camilla, with a strange, melancholy lilt anda rhythm that made her think of the sea. And the sea, too, ran through many of the words. It was dark inthe hall, even by the torchlight, and she did not anywhere see the coppery-haired girl she sought, and

Page 118

after a time she forgot the urgency that had brought her there, listening to the mournful songs of a

vanished world of islands and seas;

O Mhari Oh, Mhari my girl

Thy sea-blue eyes with witchery

Draw me to thee, off Mull's wild shore

My heart is sore, for love of thee... .

MacAran's arm tightened around her and she let herself lean against him.

She whispered, "How strange, that on a world without seas, so many sea-songs should be kept

alive... ."

He murmured, "Give us time. Well find some seas to sing about--" and broke off, for the song haddied, and someone called, "Fiona! Fiona, you sing for us!" Others took up the cry, and after a time theslight red-haired girl, wearing a full green-and-blue skirt which accentuated, almost flaunting, herpregnancy, came through the crowd. She said, in her light sweet voice, "I can't do much singing, I'm shortof breath these days. What would you like to hear?"

Someone called out in Gaelic; she smiled and shook her head, then took from another girl a small

harp and sat on a wooden bench. Her fingers moved in soft arpeggios for a moment, and then she sang:

148

The wind from the island brings songs of our sorrow

The cry of the gulls and the sighing of streams;

In all of my dreaming, I'm hearing the waters

That flow from the hills in the land of our dreams.

Her voice was low and soft, and as she sang Camilla caught the picture of green, low hills, familiaroutlines of childhood, memories of an Earth few of them could remember, kept alive only in songs suchas this; memories of a time when the hills of Earth were green beneath a golden-yellow sun, and sea-blueskies... .

Page 119

Blow westward, O sea-wind, and bring us some murmur

Adrift from our homeland of honour and truth;

In waking and sleeping, I'm hearing the waters

That flow from the hills in the land of our youth.

Camilla's throat tightened with half a sob. The lost land, the forgotten... for the first time, she made aclear effort to open the eyes of her mind to the special awareness she had known since the first wind. Shefixed her eyes and her mind, almost fiercely, with a surge almost of passionate love, on the singing girl;and then she saw, and relaxed.

She won't die. Her child will live.

I couldn't have borne it, for him to be wiped out as it he'd never been.. .

What's wrong with me? He's only a few years older than Moray, there's no reason he shouldn't

outlive most of us...but the anguish was there, and the intense relief, as Fiona's song swelled into a close;

We sing in this far land the songs of our exile,

The pipes and the harps are as fair as before;

But never shall music run sweet as the waters

That flow in that land we shall never see more.

Camilla discovered that she was weeping; but she was not alone. All around her, in the darkenedroom, the exiles were mourning their lost world; unable to bear it, Camilla rose and blindly made her waytoward the door, groping through the crowds. When they saw that she was pregnant they courteouslycleared a way for her. MacAran followed, but she took no notice of him; only when they were outside,she turned to him and stood,

149

clinging to him, weeping wildly. But when at last she began to hear his concerned questions, she turned

them aside. She did not know how to answer.

Rafe tried to comfort her, but somehow he picked up her disquiet, and for some time he did not

Page 120

know why, until abruptly it came to him.

Overheard the night was clear, with no cloud or sign of rain. Two great moons, lime-green, peacock

blue, hung low in the darkening violet sky. And the winds were rising.

Inside the Hall of the New Hebrides Commune, music passed imperceptibly into an almost ecstaticgroup dance, the growing sense of togetherness, of love and communion binding them together intobonds of closeness which were never to be forgotten or broken. Once, late in the night when the torcheswere flaring and guttering low, two of the men sprang up, facing one another in a flare-up of violentwrath, swords flickering from their flamboyant Highland regalia, crossing in a clash of steel. Moray, Alastair and Lewis MacLeod, acting like the fingers of a single hand, dived at the two angry men andbrought them sprawling down, knocking the swords out of their hands, and sat on them--literally--untilthe gleam of wolfish anger died in the two. Then, gently freeing them they poured whisky down theirthroats (
 
Scots will somehow manage to make whisky at the far ends of the Universe, Moraythought, no matter what else they go without
) until the two fighting men embraced one anotherdrunkenly and pledged eternal friendship and the love-feast went on, until the red sun rose, clear andcloudless in the sky.

Judy woke, feeling the stir of the wind like a breath of cold through her very bones, the wakingstrangeness in her brain and bones. She felt quickly, as if seeking to reassure herself, where her childstirred with a strange strong life.
 
Yes. It is well with her, but she too feels the winds of madness
 
.

It was dark in the room where she lay, and she listened to the sounds of distant song.
 
It isbeginning, but this time... this time do they know what it is, can they meet it without fear orstrangeness?
 
She herself felt perfect calm, a silence at her center of being. She knew, without surprise,exactly what had brought the madness at first;

150

and knew that for her, at least, madness would not return. There would always, in the season of the winds, be strangeness, and a greater openness and awareness; the latent powers, so long dormant, would always be stronger under the influence of the powerful psychedelic borne on the wind. But she knew, now, how to cope with them, and there would be only the small madness which eases the mind and rests the unquiet brain from stress, leaving it free to cope with further stress another time. She let herself drift on it now, reaching out with her thoughts for a half-felt touch that was like a memory. She felt as if she were spinning, floating on the winds that tossed her thoughts, and briefly her thoughts clasped and linked with the alien (even now she had no name for him, she needed none, they knew each other as a mother knows the face of her child or as twin recognizes twin, they would be together always even if her living eyes never again beheld his face) in a brief, half-ecstatic joining. Brief as the touch was, she needed, desired no more.

She drew out the jewel, his love-gift. It seemed to her to glow in the darkness with its own inner fire,as it had glowed in his hand when he laid it in hers in the forest, echoing the strange silver blue glow of hiseyes.
 
Try to master the jewel
 
. She focused her eyes and thoughts on it, struggling to know, with thatcurious inner sight, what was meant.

Page 121

It was dark in her room, for as the night moved on the moons sank behind the shuttered window andthe starlight was dim. The jewel still clasped in her hand, Judy reached for a resin-candle; sleep was farfrom her. She felt about in the darkness for a light, missed it and heard the small chemical-tipped splinterfall to the floor. She whispered a small irritable imprecation, now she would have to get out of bed andfind it. She stared fiercely at the resin-candle, somehow looking
 
through
 
the jewel in her hand.

Light, damn you
.

The resin-candle on its carven stick suddenly flared into brilliant flame, untouched. Judy, gasping andfeeling her heart pound, quickly snuffed the flame, took her hand away; again centered all her thoughts onthe jewel and the flame and saw the light flare out again between her fingers.

151

So this is what they were...

This could be dangerous. I will hide it until the proper time comes
. In that moment she knewshe had made a discovery which might, one day, step into the gap between the transplanted knowledgeof Earth and the old knowledge of this strange world, but she also knew that she would not speak of itfor a long time, if ever.
 
When the time comes and their minds are strong and ready, then--thenperhaps they can be trusted with it. If I show them now, half of them will not believe--and the restwill begin to scheme how to use it
 
. Not now.

Since the destruction of the starship and his acceptance that they were marooned on this world (
Alifetime? Forever? Forever for me, at least
) Captain Leicester had had only one hope, a lifework,something to give reason to his existence and some glimmer of optimism to his despair.

Moray could structure a society which would tie them to the soil of this world, rooting like hogs fortheir daily food. That was Moray's business; maybe it was necessary for the time being, to evolve astable society which could insure survival. But survival didn't matter if it was
 
only
 
survival, and he nowrealized it could be more. It would some day take their children back to the stars. He had the computer;and he had a technically trained crew, and he had a lifetime of knowledge. For the last three months hehad systematically, piece by piece, stripped the ship of every bit of equipment, every bit of his owntraining for a lifetime, and programmed, with the help of Camilla and three other technicians, everythinghe knew into it. He had read every surviving textbook from the library into it, from astronomy to zoology,from medicine to electronic engineering; he had brought in every surviving crew member, one by one, andhelped them to transfer all their knowledge to the computer. Nothing was too small to program into thecomputer, from how to build and repair a food synthesizer, to the making and repair of zippers onuniforms.

He thought, in triumph; there's a whole technology here, a whole heritage, preserved entire for our

descendants. It won't be in my lifetime, or Moray's, or perhaps in my children's lifetime. But when we

Page 122

grow past the small struggles of day-to-day survival, the knowledge will be there, the heritage.

152

It will be here for now, whether the knowledge for the hospital of how to cure a brain tumor or glaze acooking-pot for the kitchen; and when Moray runs up against problems in his structured society, as heinevitably will, the answers will be here. The whole history of the world we came from; we can pass byall the blind alleys of society, and go straight to a technology which will take us back to the stars oneday--to rejoin the greater community of civilized man, not crawling around on one planet, but spreadinglike a great branching tree from star to star, universe upon universe.

We can all die, but the thing which made us human will survive--entire--and some day we will go

back. Some day we will reclaim it.

He lay and listened to the distant sound of singing from the New Skye hall, in the dome which hadbecome his whole life. Vaguely it occurred to him that he should get up; dress; go over to them, jointhem.
 
They had something to preserve too
 
. He thought of the lovely copper-haired girl he had knownso briefly; who, amazingly, bore his child.