Orion Shall Rise (44 page)

A vague analogue of a federal parliament, the Grand Council of the Union met annually for a short time around summer solstice, unless emergency required an extraordinary gathering. The location was on an island in the straits, from which the major cities thereabouts were accessible but not so readily that their fleshpots would tempt legislators to hold long sessions.

This legislature was bicameral. The House of Delegates was the larger, comprising representatives of the Territories. Each Territory could have from one to three, according to how much it contributed to the national treasury, a matter which it decided for itself, as it did
the manner of choosing its representatives. The House of the Lodges had one member from each, including Injun, Eskimo, and Aleut tribes that had opted for an equal status. (Some, with entire control over their home Territories, saw no reason to.) Presiding over both was the Chief, elected by the Delegates with the advice and consent of the Lodges.

The Delegates passed legislation; the Lodges could veto. Nothing that was passed applied to any Territory whose own laws contravened it. However, unreasonable or unduly selfish denial was apt to bring reprisals, such as a general boycott. The Grand Council concerned itself mainly with the common interest in broad matters –public health, protection of environment, inter-Territorial cooperation in general – and this to a very limited degree. It did not even directly issue money. The Territories did; the Union dollar simply registered what they, at current rates of exchange, saw fit to pay into the common fund. (Currencies were variously based, but always on something tangible, usually silver, copper, or real estate. They had better be; paper money was in use, but nowhere was it legal tender.)

The Council maintained modest clerical and research facilities at the otherwise sleepy fishing village where it customarily assembled. More extensive resources were available via radiophone, printout, or a boat to one of the cities.

The offices of the Chief were permanently in Vittohrya. They handled defense and foreign relations. As for defense, it relied on the Territorial volunteer militias, though a cadre of professionals existed. The Chief appointed and removed diplomats, while the treasury supported a small organization of career experts and underlings. Any international agreement, no matter how trivial, required the approval of both Houses. This had not originally been cumbersome, for in its glory days, between the decline of the Mong and the coming of the Maurai, the Northwest Union had had scant reason to care what foreigners wanted.

These years were more humble. If they would continue speaking for their peoples at all, Chief, Grand Council, and Territorial authorities must cooperate with the occupying Inspectorate in its searches and seizures. ‘I see the bear trap they’re in, and sympathize, sort of,’ Ronica said. ‘Our native toadies and opportunists don’t exactly help their prestige, either. The more power they
think
they need to claim over us, the less compliance they get, so they call
for more laws, more snoops, and folk get their backs up higher and find new ways to evade.’

‘It isn’t that simple,’ Mikli maintained. ‘Quite a few among us
want
a stronger government. They say if we’d had one, we wouldn’t have lost the war; and now we need one to … ah … “bring us into the modern world” is a popular phrase among intellectuals.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Ronica sneered. ‘There’ve always been a lot of infantiles who want somebody else to make their mistakes for them, and the intellectuals have always been glad to oblige.’ She glanced at Iern. ‘In the past ten or a dozen years, Lodge membership has been increasing from a postwar low. Ordinary people are deciding, the way they did when the Mong were on the rampage, they’ve nowhere else to turn.’

‘When fever has burned off fat,’ Plik murmured at her back, ‘we begin to see the real flesh again, and the skeleton beneath.’

2

As he neared Seattle, Iern saw how villages grew closer together, roads were paved, and automotive traffic waxed. A military convoy in the Domain would have had fewer motor vehicles per kilometer than civilians were driving here. While trucks predominated, buses, motorcycles, and even private passenger cars were common; the metropolitan area must contain thousands. And this was in spite of numerous railroads, where steam locomotives pulled interminable trains. Lines appeared, strung on wooden poles, which he learned transmitted electric power, or telegraphic and, in some cases, telephone communications. Daylight or no, colored fluorescent
signs
blinked outside many shops. After dark, nearly all illumination would be by carbon-filament electric incandescents, and no few families would tune in radios they owned for an evening’s entertainment.

‘How can you do it?’ Iern marveled.

‘By good luck,’ Mikli replied. ‘After the Doom War there was abundant metal lying around. A single sky-piercer, as a tall building was called, yielded I know not what tonnage of steel and copper; abandoned automobiles became a major resource; et cetera. Besides, nature has blessed the Northwest with abundant hydroelectric potential, and we import coal from enormous fields farther east. So we’ve no lack of energy or chemical feedstocks. We get
aluminum from clay, magnesium from seawater, synthetics from coal and wood products – Well, you can find the details in an engineering library.’

‘It’s more than luck,’ Plik declared. ‘You had to be the kind of people who do such things.’

‘Aye,’ said Ronica proudly. ‘Free people, everybody minding his own business, including the business he makes his living by.’

She maneuvered through a crowded intersection. ‘Shoulda been a traffic-control signal there,’ she said when she had gotten past, after an exchange of curses in which a muleteer came off second best. ‘We have them downtown. But they do require materials, mainly electrical, which’re in heavy demand for other things. We hear talk about replacing power lines with underground ceramic tubes of salt solution, then we could reclaim that much metal, but the labor required would be unbelievable.’

Bitterness ripped from her: ‘What we could do if the Maurai’d let us! Energy, resources, boundless, a universe full! But no, that would upset their precious little hegemony, wouldn’t it?’

Mikli reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. ‘Easy,’ he warned.

– Seattle was big. Though a census had never been held in the Union, population was estimated as high as fifty thousand. The city was also, to Iern’s mind, ugly. Its streets were admittedly clean; horses, oxen, and the like wore plastic diapers in town, as they did in the Domain. Otherwise, here was none of the venerability of an industrial section in his country, nor any piously preserved ruins such as towered over Chai Ka-Go. Most construction was brick and concrete, boxlike, smoke-begrimed. Traffic brawled, factories belched soot and stench, marts were garish: a chaos wherein houses left over from an earlier era seemed pathetically lost.

Ronica gave a defensive answer to a remark of Iern’s: ‘This is a working town. We don’t need parks, when it’s just a short ferry ride to an island or bus ride to the nearest woods. The air isn’t usually this bad; rain washes it for us. And you’ll see a nice district or two.’

All the same, he was disturbed, at a deeper level than the esthetic.
Why?
he wondered.
Could Plik be right about this being Demon Land? No, that’s absurd. But why, then, am I uneasy?
He wasn’t accustomed to looking into himself.

Ronica kept her promise. Crowded with ships, the waterfront was a rousing sight. When she turned north, its docks and warehouses
soon gave way to homes surrounded by lawns and gardens. Fresh breezes blew off the Sound, which sparkled around winging sailboats and islands intensely green save where fall colors had begun to blaze. Mountains limned the sky.

The car went up a driveway and stopped under a carriage porch. The building was impressive, long, high, massively and darkly timbered. Above the main doorway stood the sign of the Wolf. ‘The Seattle chapter house,’ Mikli said. The Mother Lodge
is
south on Mount Hood, where it was founded, but this
is
the largest chapter and here we’ll spend the night.’

– Dinner was ceremonious, presided over by a white-bearded Lodgemaster in a blue robe, who kept a hat on his head and, when they rose to go, took a staff which a postulant waiter handed him. Two other Lodgemasters were present, one female, and several more persons whose counsel was obviously wanted. The seafood offered was delicious, the regional wine surprisingly good. Despite the formal atmosphere, in a dining room where portraits on the wainscot looked from across centuries, and despite the need for translation, talk went vigorously. Iern found himself telling at length about his nation, background, experiences, hopes.

Afterward the party repaired to a chamber whose somber sumptuousness was both relieved and deepened by the relics on display. Ronica showed them to the Uropans: banners and weapons from battlefields where Norrmen rolled back Mong; a sliderule belonging to the chief of the first engineering team that restored a hydroelectric dam, while sickness ravaged them and resentful savages raided them; the log of a ship that had dared Arctic fogs and storms and ice for three years, to rechart those waters – remembrances of Wolves who had served their people well and brought honor to their Lodge. Iern was especially moved by a set of logarithmic and trigonometric tables. They had been hand-copied in an isolated community, not long after the War of Judgment, from a printed book that was rotting away.

Meanwhile servitors laid out drinking and smoking materials, and disappeared. Curtains shut away a night that had turned rainy. The group found armchairs and settled down for serious discussion.

Ronica tried to keep the foreigners abreast of it, but was handicapped by the fact that she kept putting in her own oar. A couple of times she got into stiff arguments. It was Mikli who, after hours had passed, summed the decision up:

‘We cannot risk our secret getting out. Not that you’d willingly betray us, I know. However, your presence could give the enemy clues, as active as they’re likely to become after Terai’s report from Uropa.

‘So, Iern, you shall have the asylum you asked for, in safe place. I’m afraid we can’t let you establish contact with your homeland, even clandestine, for some while to come. But what could you expect to accomplish immediately? Wait a year or two and see how the cat jumps over there. Meanwhile, I think you’ll enjoy learning more about us.’ He snickered. ‘Considering who your teacher will be, eh?’

Ronica didn’t blush. ‘I sure am ready for a furlough,’ she said.

‘What about me?’ asked Plik. ‘When can I return?’

‘Sorry. You’ll have to wait too,’ Mikli said. ‘We’ll make your stay as pleasant as we can.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I imagine your friends will prefer to be by themselves at first. We’ll provide you comfort and amusement, Plik, and Iern will revisit you in due course.’

‘I see,’ the Angleyman answered slowly. ‘Well, this is better brandy than I can afford at home, and as for Vineleaf –’ Breath hissed in between his teeth. Tossing off his glassful, he refilled, his hand not quite steady. ‘You won’t mind if I keep helping myself, will you?’

‘And what of Terai and Wairoa?’ Iern demanded. ‘Where are they?’

The Northwesterners heard the names. Their faces hardened, like molten metal setting. ‘We consider them prisoners of war,’ Mikli said. ‘We won’t maltreat them.’

War
. Iern and Plik exchanged a look. Rain hammered on windowpanes.

‘I expect they can go back after Orion has risen,’ Ronica made haste to add.

‘Hold!’ Mikli exclaimed.

She gave him a whetted glance. ‘I’ll not spill anything,’ she told him in the same Angley she had been using, ‘but neither will I lie to Iern, by words or by silence.’

The Clansman braced himself where he sat. ‘I would have liked to bid Terai and Wairoa goodbye,’ he said.

‘They’ll be okay, I swear, if they don’t get reckless,’ Ronica promised. ‘And you might very well see them again before you’re free to go home, all of you – when the world is free.’

3

Vangcouve Island, across the Strait of Wandy Fuca, hardly seemed a place of exile.

Under assumed names, Iern and Ronica spent their first three days in Vittohrya. Given clothes in local style, Iern attracted no attention from the city’s cosmopolitan dwellers, in spite of cleanshavenness and comparatively short hair, while Ronica drew no more than she did everywhere there were men. When in public he kept a bandage on his throat and she explained that her husband was recovering from laryngeal surgery and could not speak. His condition did not prevent him from dining well; the Wolf Lodge had provided ample money.

Vittohrya was very nearly the opposite of Seattle. A cultural and, to a lesser degree, political rather than a commercial center, it preserved (or had in the course of centuries regained) the legendary graciousness it had possessed before the Doom War. What ancient buildings survived had been lovingly restored; most new architecture was in harmony with them; parks and gardens were everywhere. Ronica showed Iern about, historic sites, viewpoints, museums, the university she had attended. Each evening they enjoyed a presentation – concert, ballet, Injun dance – before going back to their hotel and enjoying each other.

And yet, he came to see, ‘very nearly opposite’ was superficial, misleading. Folk might tend to be more cultivated and less bustling here, but the same demon of energy and will dwelt in them. He saw it in breakneck boat races, swimming, ball games; in the tense curve of a bridge or a statue; in Venturers’ Hall, where reports arrived daily of prospects for profit around the globe; in crowded, noisy, smoky taverns, as beer went down by the liter and distilled spirits followed close behind; in walls that bore scars of street fighting during the Power War and later riots; in the free-swinging gait of man and woman alike.

In the glowers and curt responses given what few uniformed Maurai he noticed.

‘I feel sorry for them,’ he admitted once when he and Ronica were by themselves. That must be some of the loneliest duty on Earth.’