Perhaps it was time she reconsidered some of her long-held opinions.
Besides, there was an orgy going on, and she did not want to be left out. Rawl was never much fun, and could be so very irritating at times. O was hogging both Khalid and Brenner. That left Bredon.
She crossed the room slowly, wisps of doubt still lingering, and almost shyly put an arm around his waist.
Startled, he opened his eyes. He started to draw away, embarrassed, then stopped. This was something he had dreamed of, to have Lady Sunlight's arm around him, and he was not enough of a fool to throw it away.
“What's the matter?” she asked.
Bredon blushed and shrugged.
She remembered that, clean and intelligent as he was, he was still a native of Denner's Wreck, and guessed what was bothering him. The natives were fairly conservative, sexually-natural enough in a society with poor medical care and contraception. She looked at her companions and smiled. “Ah, yes,” she said. “Not quite befitting the dignity of demi-gods, is it?"
“No,” Bredon replied, still struggling with the realization that at long last Lady Sunlight was speaking to him, and that she even had her arm around him. He tried to get up the courage to put his arm around her, as well, but could not quite bring himself to do it.
“Well, we're human, really, as I suppose Geste and the others have told you, and we don't get this many of us together in one place very often, and we don't usually have such a good cause to celebrate. I suppose they just got carried away.” She smiled again, this time directly at Bredon.
“I suppose so,” Bredon agreed.
“You saved our lives, probably,” Lady Sunlight said, suddenly serious. “Thaddeus was crazy. You must have done a lot of damage, to drive him down there undefended while Geste was still loose."
Bredon shrugged again. “Aulden made it easy,” he said.
“Still, you did very well,” Lady Sunlight insisted.
Bredon did not reply.
“How did you get involved with us, anyway?” she continued. “Just what were you and Geste doing together? Imp told me a little, while we were locked up, but she never said how you came to be with Geste in the first place."
Bredon blushed again and looked away, then looked back. “He played a joke on me,” he said.
“Oh, he did? That's no surprise.” Her voice was tinged with her habitual anger and disgust at Geste's pranks.
“Yes,” Bredon said, “I… I got upset about it, and he promised me that he would do me a service as an apology."
Lady Sunlight nodded. “That was nice of him, I suppose. Was it a particularly nasty trick he played?"
“Well, no, not really… he made a horse talk, and wouldn't let me catch it.” Bredon felt desperately stupid, trying to explain himself to her.
“You catch horses?” she asked, puzzled, her head cocked slightly to one side so that her hair tumbled in a golden stream over one shoulder. She had never given much thought to what the natives did with themselves.
“I'm a hunter,” Bredon explained.
“Oh,” Sunlight said, clearly neither understanding nor very interested. “So he played this trick on you, then promised you something to make up for it. What did you ask for?"
Bredon knew, in a flash of intuition, that this was his chance, the best opportunity he would ever have, perhaps the only opportunity. He turned and looked her in the eye.
“You,” he said.
Taken aback, Lady Sunlight said, “Me?"
Bredon nodded.
Her anger at Geste grew. He had obviously thought that the whole thing was funny, this poor native lusting hopelessly after her. Bredon deserved better than that. Geste had even made a joke of his apology to the poor boy!
Sunlight looked at Bredon, eye to eye, and he realized that they were the same height. She glanced over at the bodies tangled on the floor, then back at Bredon. She spread her arms wide.
“Well,” she said, “here I am."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“…She appears rarely, but when she does, the people all fall to their knees and then prostate themselves, all calling out, ‘Glory to Starflower! Glory, glory!’ For some this is sincere devotion to the Power that protects them, but for others the only motivation is fear, for they know that her anger can be terrible and her retribution swift if her followers dare to disobey…"
– from the tales of Atheron the Storyteller
****
Sixteen wakes had passed since Geste put Thaddeus into the stasis field, and at long last all twenty-eight of the immortals resident on Denner's Wreck were gathered aboard the Skyland. Both of Thaddeus’ unconscious bodies were safely tucked away in storage, the original still in stasis and the clone's needs being supplied by symbiotes and life-support machines. The other twenty-seven Powers were gathered in the Skyler's main lounge. Cheerful music played in the background.
Bredon, there at the insistence of Geste, Imp, and several of the former captives, made himself as inconspicuous as possible in a back corner.
“All right, Geste,” Lady Haze demanded, “what are we doing here? What's so important we had to come in person?"
“I wanted you all here in person so that there won't be anyone refusing to abide by the majority decision,” Geste replied.
“What majority decision?” Gold the Delver asked.
“One that we haven't made yet, but that I hope we will."
“All right,” Lord Carlov said, “get on with it; what decision do you want?"
“I have a bit of a speech I want to make first. Bear with me."
Several people shifted uncomfortably.
“Get on with it,” Hsin of the River called.
“I will.” Geste stepped up onto a floating table and began, “We came to Denner's Wreck on a holiday, came to get away from the problems of life in the mainstream of civilization. We came, and we settled down, and we've had a good time here, all in all-but we've been irresponsible as hell about it, and we've made a mess of the planet."
Several people stirred, but no one protested aloud.
“Not only that, we've done an incredible amount of harm to the people who were here before us. Thaddeus killed hundreds of them; I know Rawl has killed several, as well, in his self-appointed role as judge, jury, and executioner…"
“Only four, Geste,” Rawl interrupted. “Four in four hundred years, and all four were murderers several times over."
“All right, four. And I'm sure some of the rest of you have killed people here, accidentally or otherwise-haven't you?"
Again, several people shifted uncomfortably, but no one spoke.
“You've killed people,” Geste repeated. “Not animals, or plants, or machines, but people, as conscious and genetically human as any of us. We don't have any right to do that."
Several people did start to speak this time, Rawl among them, but Geste held up a hand and silenced them.
“I know all the arguments-they're just short-lifers, they're only losing a few years, they're so primitive that their lives aren't worth living, they deserve it. That's crap. They're people, and we have no business interfering with them."
“It's hard to avoid them, if we're going to live here at all,” Brenner remarked.
“Not that hard,” Geste replied. “The Skyler's avoided them all, and Shadowdark, and Arn and Hollingsworth don't see them very often, I'm sure."
“I don't, either,” commented Lady Haze.
Lord Hollingsworth mumbled, “Never hurt any when I did see them, either."
“Furthermore,” Geste went on, “even when we haven't killed them or messed up their lives directly, we've done it indirectly, just by being here and allowing ourselves to be seen."
“If you're talking about messing up lives, Geste…” Starflower began.
He held up a hand. “I know, I know, I've been guilty of plenty of interference myself-not up to your level, Starflower, but enough. No, too much. But let me finish. To these people, we're practically gods. They
call us the Powers-you all know that. They credit Lady Sheila with controlling the weather and bringing the seasons; did you know that? Did you know that the Nymph is considered the goddess of erotic love? That Gold is lord of the underworld? That Sunlight is responsible for every flower that ever blooms? And Starflower here, who correctly admonishes me for my pranks, has been actively accepting their worship. We have completely screwed up the culture these people had when we arrived by allowing them to misinterpret us like this!"
“We didn't ask for this,” Starflower retorted.
“It's none of our business,” Lady Haze added.
“But it is our business, and at least one of us, Starflower, did ask for it-or do you claim that you never encouraged those ceremonies honoring you? We are responsible,” Geste insisted. “When we came here, we took a vote on whether or not to introduce modern technology to these people, whether to make any of them immortal or establish interstellar commerce, and we voted not to do any of that. Why? Because we had no right to interfere in their culture-that was what we said. Do you remember that?"
He glared around at them all, then continued, “That was what we said, but what we meant was that it wasn't our problem, that it was more fun to play demi-god and not worry about the poor savages. We interfered in their culture anyway. Hell, we didn't just interfere, we practically ruined it. We played God all over the place-and I was as bad as almost any of you, I admit it. We played at being gods while we preached noninterference. It's time to stop, now. It's gotten serious. One of us went berserk and killed hundreds of innocent people, and of all the rest of us, only three did anything-and even those three only got involved when Thaddeus threatened other immortals. He could have gone on killing people forever if he hadn't started interfering with us, couldn't he?"
He paused, and several people shifted uncomfortably. The Skyler's expression shifted from self-satisfaction, as she heard herself included in those who had helped, to uncertainty as she remembered how she had backed out toward the end.
“Well, it's time to stop the fun and games, people. Imp and Aulden and Sheila and I intend to take Mother and go back home, to get Thaddeus some psychological repair work-repairs that should have been done centuries ago, but which nobody wanted to get involved in. And when we get there, we're going to tell whatever authorities are concerned with this sort of thing that there's a planet here full of short-lifers who deserve better, and we're going to see that a proper development company is sent out here to Denner's Wreck to clean up our mess. Now, the rules of this little organization say that we need a majority vote to leave. We intend to get that majority vote right here and now, one way or the other."
The Skyler asked, “Do you expect all of us to go back?"
Geste looked at her, surprised not by the question, but by the source.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “You can stay if you like, but the terms will be a bit different. Mother won't be up there in orbit any more, to help out with long-range communications. And you had better not screw around with the locals any more, because starting right now, you'll be held accountable when we get some proper authority out here. These people have rights, and we'll see that they're protected. Which brings up another thing-I think it's high time that we started providing these people with some of the benefits of our presence, as well as the inconveniences. It's time we started giving them a little basic technology, improving their agriculture, their medicine, and so forth. Anyone who stays should plan on doing what he or she can to assist the short-lifers in the area."
“That's fine with me,” the Skyler said. “As long as I don't have to deal with them personally."
“I've been doing some of that already,” Leila said.
“I'd also like to say,” Geste went on, “if you don't care about altruism, that we haven't been doing ourselves any good staying here this long. It's too isolated, we have too much time to ourselves. Look at us! We've all gotten into ruts, become stereotypes. Listen to the music the Skyland is playing for us-popcult songs a thousand years old! Isn't it time we got ourselves out of this backwater and back into the mainstream?"
No one answered, and after a pause the Trickster concluded, “All right, then, that's my speech. Now the vote; who says we take Mother and load Thaddeus aboard and go home, immediately?” He raised his hand.
Imp's hand shot up, and Aulden's followed.
The Skyler raised her hand.
Lady Sunlight hesitated, then raised hers.
Sheila raised hers calmly and gracefully.
Madame O's hand rose, then Khalid's, then Arn's, Isabelle's, Lady Haze's, Leila's, and Nymph's.
“Oh, what the hell,” Starflower said, “I was getting tired of it anyway.” She thrust her hand up.
Rawl raised his hand, followed by Tagomi of the Seas, but by then it no longer mattered; the majority had spoken.
“Good!” Geste said, speaking loudly to cover the unhappy muttering of a few of the dissenters. “We leave twenty-eight hours from now-two planetary rotations. If you aren't aboard Mother by then, you're staying, whether you want to or not-and if you stay, remember that you'll be held accountable for your actions from now on.” He stepped down from the table and turned away.
Bredon slipped out of his corner and made his way toward the Trickster. Lady Sunlight noticed him and followed.
He caught Geste at the door.
“Hello, Bredon,” Geste said politely upon noticing him.
“Hello, Lord Geste,” he answered.
“'Geste’ is fine,” the Trickster said. “You don't need to give me any titles. And I was never a lord."
“All right, Geste, then."
“That's better. Now, you look like you're after something. What can I do for you?"
“When will you be taking me home?"
Geste looked at him, startled. “Home?"
“Back to my village."
“Oh! You know, Bredon, I hadn't realized that you wanted to go home; I had thought, somehow, that you'd be coming to Terra with us."
Bredon was speechless; his mouth opened, then closed, but nothing came out.
Behind him, Lady Sunlight said, “Oh, do come, Bredon; I think you'll be amazed. And back there we can get you a proper symbiote, adjust your body a little, extend your lifespan-we don't have the right equipment here yet."
“I can come?” Bredon managed at last. “Really?"
“Of course-if you're sure you want to."
“Want to?” The question seemed absurd. To travel above the sky, faster than light, to the homeworld of humanity-to live in the light of another sun-of course he wanted to go!
Then other images welled up, images of his parents, his siblings, Kittisha and Mardon and his other friends.
That all seemed unreal. He had learned so much since he had left his village. Could he ever really go back? Could he live the life of a hunter, using a grass rope and a spear, after what he had seen and done?
No, he knew he could not. He brushed the images of family and friends aside.
“Of course I want to come!” he said. “I'd like to go back to my village for a light or so, to tell them all what happened, though.” That, he thought, would be quite a tale; he wondered what it would sound like by the time old Atheron had interpreted it into something the village could accept.
“But even if you can't spare the time, that's all right,” he said. “Of course I want to come!"
“Good!” Lady Sunlight said, as she spun him around and kissed him.
Name of applicant: the-Hunter, Bredon
Honorific, patronymic, epithet, or other additional nomenclature: “son of Aredon the Hunter"
Citizenship number: None
Planet of origin: Denner's Wreck, catalog 2356-CS-6, 246-Aurigae III.
Place of origin: village, no recorded name, 28E16'30” N. 15E24'00” W.
Unaltered height: 1.71 meters
Education: None
State of health: Fair. No significant risk of contagion. No symbiotes.
Neural pattern recorded: Yes, by sponsor
Sponsor: Sunlight, C.H., Lady, CN 0456-4530-5072
Clearance granted, 3-8-7154.
– from the records of Terran Immigration
– END-
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