Orion Shall Rise (39 page)

‘Listen,’ said Mikli’s disembodied voice. ‘Listen well. This day you were idiotic to the point of betrayal –’

‘Shall we take that matter before a Lodge court?’ she retorted.

He chuckled. ‘I don’t belong to any Lodge, remember? I only serve, in my fashion. Well, you wanted us to forgive and forget. I can’t forget – my arm still hurts abominably – but I do see what motivated you, and I’ve grown resigned to the fact that the human species has a capacity for idealism which costs it megadeaths per century. So let us two dismiss the past and simply resolve that Orion shall rise.’

Those words never failed to make her spine tingle.
And this bastard knows it,
she thought.
Just the same –
An ancient saying crossed her mind.
He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s
our
son of a bitch … I suppose
. … ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t allow coldblooded murder. But I agree we have a problem. How do we keep the Maurai from spilling their news? It could bring their outfit onto the real scent, couldn’t it? Before Orion is ready.’

‘I admit I was too impulsive,’ he replied. ‘A fault of mine. I should not have invited you along to Yurrup, either. What you could do was irrelevant to my mission, and ended up compromising it.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘Done is done, and we may yet reap some benefit from the situation. In fact, we already have a better idea than before of how closely the Maurai are on our track. We need to inform our associates and get started on countermeasures.’

‘What do you think we should do?’

‘This. To the degree that chance permits. And I always have been rather good at rolling with the dice.

‘During the trip I established, in conversation, that neither Terai nor Wairoa knows any Mong language. A considerable advantage
for us, hm? The difficulty I mentioned to you, earlier, was that the Krasnayans would innocently help everybody in our group go home.’ Sardonicism: ‘Except for Iern, of course. We know whom he’ll accompany.… Now we’ve deduced that the Krasnayan authorities have gotten reason to be twice leery of foreigners who come from the woods. Such an attitude can be used.’

Ronica poised herself.

‘Here’s the plan I’ve worked out,’ Mikli thrust at her. ‘I’ll see to it that we all get detained – not mobbed or shot or anything like that, but detained on suspicion. Except you. I’ll have to improvise the scenario as we go along. Basically, you get away from the rest of us at some appropriate point. You make your way to Yuan. You’re expert at sneaking, and the border isn’t far south. There you contact a certain person. You’ll have to go through the usual bureaucratic quadrille first, but I’ll give you key names to cite, and the phrase “Code Nineteen.” Do you follow that? “Code Nineteen.” When finally you’re brought to an official who knows what it means, you’ll explain that the entire project is in danger –’

‘What project?’

‘You have no need to know, my dear. An elementary principle of secret-keeping. “Code Nineteen” will serve. And the word that Yuan had better dispatch an armed force in a hurry, to take charge of the prisoners. After that, leave matters to me. I’ll get the lot of us, including your precious Maurai and your priceless Clansman, bundled off to our country.’

‘I… don’t have more than a few words … of Mong.’

‘No problem. Plenty of Soldati know Unglish. They wouldn’t like their serfs having a language they can’t eavesdrop on. The dialects aren’t too different from those in the Union. You’ll manage.

‘Is this operation permissible under your principles?’

She ignored the sarcasm. Her pulse accelerated. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The way you’ve put it. Tell me more.’

2

Vanna Uangovna was at meditation in her bower when the strangers appeared. Wind blew sharp, whipped a gray heaven, brawled in trees and tossed their limbs about, rippled the grass of the meadow. It was turning sere, that grass; her flowers were gone; the vineleaves
decking the arbor were red and crackly, while a pair of birches showed gold against somber evergreens. In girlhood, Vanna would have shivered in the cold, as thin as her robe was. Today, a Gaean adept, she had chosen to make this weather the mandala she would contemplate, the Aspect that would take her into itself and so open the way to Oneness.

Again Earth spun toward Northern winter. Heat radiated out and out, until it belonged to that energy which pervaded the cosmos and whispered of the mystery at the beginning of all things. No mathematical physicist had yet developed a wave function for the primordial event, and there were those who maintained that none ever would, that paradox was the very core of reality.… But she was not separate from the farthest star or the earliest instant. The dear, familiar water she drank and that coursed in her bloodstream, most of the molecules in her quite ordinary body, these held hydrogen atoms which had formed during the first second or two of convulsion. They would endure while the universe did, save for those that escaped to space and became the stuff of new stars forging new iron. … If she was so intimate a part of the galaxies, how ultimately integral she must be with Gaea, the living Earth!

Let this austere day strip self from her – an expression of the Life Force that had had its role in evolution but could now best die out, like the seasonal rut of ancestral animals becoming transfigured into the love between man and woman. Let her, for the short while she was able, perceive, however dimly, the Organism, and seek an Insight into how she, this portion of Her, should function in the service of the Purpose. The wind blew, the wind blew.…

Meditation was not trance. As she merged her being with the world, she opened her senses more and more widely to it. Thus she heard the strangers afar, though they did not walk clumsily. She might have let them go by unhailed – no one from the vicinity would disturb her without urgent cause – but a while later they were close enough that her heightened perceptions captured their talk, and she realized from the cadence that they must be out-landers.

Prospectors for bomb stuff. Detonations in the West, such as ushered in Death Time
. Memory stabbed through her inner peace, which drained from the wound. Suddenly alone in her head, she stepped out and stood where the wind could stream unhindered across her.

That raw vigor brought calm, determination.
They may be harmless. In any case, what reason would they have to attack me?
Early in her discipleship she had learned how not to be afraid of death or pain; fearlessness about her own person became as natural to her as breathing. However, she rejoiced in her usefulness – proróchina, ucheny, Librarian, human being – and did not wish it to end before Gaea was through with her.

Following a deer trail, the newcomers emerged in the meadow. They saw her and stopped. For a minute, looks went back and forth.

They were incredibly diverse, and weatherbeaten, unbarbered, ragged. The biggest of them could only be Maurai. To judge by what was left of their clothes, the tall blond woman and the short gray man were Northwesterners. The young fellow and the scarecrow figure were puzzling, and as for the sixth member of the party – no, he was not deformed, but he was alien.

The gray man smiled, advanced, and bowed. ‘Greeting, my lady,’ he said. His Yazik was fluent but the accent did, indeed, identify the Union. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. We’re travelers in distress, searching for aid. Are we near Dulua?’

‘Yes,’ Vanna answered, less calmly than she had expected to. ‘I’ll take you there if you like.’

‘Many thanks. You are most kind, my lady. Permit me to introduce us. We are a mixed bag.’ He pointed about. ‘My name
is
Mikli Karst. Ronica Birken and I hail from the Territories, as I imagine you’ve guessed. Terai Lohannaso and Wairoa Haakonu are from the Federation. Talence Iern Ferlay and, ah, Plik are more exotic, from the Domain of Skyholm in Yevropea. We regret that I alone among us speak your language.’

The Domain!

Vanna realized she was gaping like a child. She mustered graciousness. ‘Thank you, sir. I hight Vanna Uangovna Kim.’ In Unglish: ‘I bid you welcome.’ She said the same in Maurai and Angley.

The young man was the most startled. ‘I didn’t expect I could talk to anybody here!’ he exclaimed.

Vanna must proceed slowly: ‘I am the Librarian. As such, I have to be able to read the principal languages of the world, and I have seen much fascinating material from your country, sir.’

‘But you speak it, too. Without even a strong accent.’

Vanna smiled. She liked him. ‘I have recordings, and practice
reading aloud. How else could I appreciate your poetry?’

Talence,
she recalled.
A sort of royalty in the Domain. What events have brought him to Merica, in the company of these?
‘I am eager to hear your story,’ she said.

‘Well, that may pose a few problems, honored Vanna,’ Mikli warned. ‘What we are free to tell is limited.’ He addressed the blond woman in Unglish: ‘I think this is the strategic moment for you to take off, my dear.’

Starkness laid hold of Ronica. She nodded, once, and said, ‘Aye.’ She flung herself against Iern and they exchanged a fierce kiss. She vanished into the woods.

Dismay shocked through the Librarian. ‘What is this?’

‘Be at ease,’ Mikli replied patronizingly. ‘We aren’t under arrest, are we? It isn’t compulsory to proceed to Dulua,
is
it? But the rest of us plan to, and will be glad if you come along. By all means, take us straight to the appropriate security officers.’

Fissionables gatherers, then? But it doesn’t make sense, not really
. Vanna called upon the wind for coolness. She observed the remaining strangers, each by each, and used her gift for reading people.

Mikli stood smug. Terai was curbing belligerence, Wairoa freezing his features into immobility, but it seemed they were both surprised by Ronica’s disappearance – as was Plik, who looked around in a vague fashion. Iern appeared to have been forewarned (predictable, when he and the woman were obviously close) but not to be nursing any particular scheme, only to be trying for stoicism. No, these were no united conspirators.

Well, what are they?

‘You will have explanations to make,’ Vanna cautioned.

‘I realize that,’ Mikli said. ‘Shall we go make them?’

Almost automatically, she started for the homeward path. They trailed her, save for Mikli, who walked alongside. She didn’t want that; she distrusted his glibness.

Therefore she said in Angley: ‘Do we have this language in common? Then let us use it.’

‘Tanaroa, yes!’ exploded from Terai. ‘What I could tell you about that treacherous little skulk –’

‘Easy, easy,’ Mikli interrupted. ‘Your word against mine, an exercise in futility until our Krasnayan hosts have carried out a proper investigation.’ Menace: ‘If you accuse me, I’ll accuse you
right back, and we may find ourselves mutually dead.’

Vanna moistened her lips, which had gone dry. ‘Can you tell me anything?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps I can advise you, if you are innocent of wrongdoing. I am an influential person in Dulua.’

Clearly, Mikli had not anticipated her, but assumed he would be the sole spokesman. She must needs admire how he improvised. ‘The story
is
less than pleasant, my lady. It involves official secrets, too. I imagine you will be interpreter at the hearing, and so find out the different things we shall have to say. Meanwhile, I thank you for your generous offer, but believe we had all better give careful thought to our testimony before we make any admissions.

‘For example, Terai and Wairoa,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘you Maurai have intelligence agents throughout the Five Nations. I know who a number of them are. If I named them, the Soldati would have to take steps, and your service would be vastly inconvenienced. I won’t, I will observe professional courtesy – as long as you do. Shouldn’t we let the governments concerned settle the matter quietly between them?’ To Vanna: ‘I hope I haven’t shocked you, my lady.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said in a dull voice.
Of course the Maurai have
planted spies among us. They want to be sure we don’t get adventurous, or Gaeanity get out of hand.

‘And you, Iern, Plik, it would not be in your interest to reveal everything you
think
you know,’ Mikli continued. ‘If you hope for support from the Lodges, and eventual repatriation – But, honored Vanna, Iern has a great deal to tell which
is
no secret, about his life in the Domain and the coup there that you have probably heard about. And Plik will entertain us with a song or two, I’m sure, if you promise him a drink. Come, let’s be friends.’

In their different ways, they yielded. The Maurai whispered together and went mute. Iern shied off from describing how he had gotten here, but was candid – in a swimmingly romantic fashion – about his experiences before. Vanna bore with his anti-Gaeanism; he knew no better, he was capable of learning, and in truth he did appear to have suffered injustice. Gaeanity did not by itself make anybody wise or moral. Like a religion (in the strict sense of that word), to most of its followers it was just a set of myths, phrases, and rites. Generations, perhaps centuries must pass before it had become more than this to all mankind.
The Life Forte is millennial
.

That odd man, Plik, presently offered a song, which he entitled ‘Statecraft,’ but it was wild and weird and Vanna didn’t like it.