The Warlock Wandering

by Christopher Stasheff

  "Nay, certes," Gwen breathed, swaying close to him. "But we tarry."

  "How the hell does she know where to go?" Rod muttered to Yorick. "Okay, so the planet has a moon or two, so we've had light almost all the way, and when the big moon set, she just had us wait twenty minutes till the other one rose. But even with it, I can scarcely see twenty feet in front of me!"

  "Well, I can see fine." Yorick grinned. "You Sapiens have just gone soft, that's all. Too many millennia of lighted streets."

  "What's she?" Rod grumbled. "A Neanderthalette?"

  Yorick shook his head. "Not a good enough build. Kinda scrawny, y' know? And the face is kinda flat and angular. But I think she's a nice kid underneath it all."

  Actually, Rod had been thinking that Chornoi was a classical beauty—or would have been, if her face hadn't been constantly pinched with hostility. And her body was anything but "scrawny." However, he could understand why she wouldn't measure up to the Neanderthal ideal of femininity. The comment on her interior self, though, he doubted. "You must be seeing deeper than I am."

  Yorick shrugged. "You Saps must be damn near blind."

  Rod wondered if he meant that to be interpreted both ways.

  "Come on." Yorick stepped up the pace. "We've got some serious catching up to do."

  Chornoi strode ahead of them, as briskly as though she hadn't realized she was climbing a thirty-degree slope. Finally she came to a stop, and the men huffed and puffed up beside her, with Gwen silent at Rod's shoulder.

  "Here it is." Chornoi waved a hand.

  They stood on top of a ridge, oriented roughly east-west. The moonlight showed a plain stretching out for miles about them, unending grassland broken only by the occasional copse and a line of stunted trees that straggled across the prairie, marking a watercourse.

  Rod took a deep breath. "Quite a view."

  Chornoi nodded. "It's spectacular by sunlight, but I don't think we can wait for that." She pointed. "There's the actual Sun-Greeting Place."

  A stone step rose from the ground a few feet in front of them. Thirty feet away, an upright slab bulked large against the night. Chornoi slipped a slender flashlight out of her jacket and aimed it at the boulder. Its beam showed that the top of the standing stone had been flattened from front to back and leveled, then notched, eight deep gouges cut out of the rock. The first, fourth, and eighth were very deep.

  "The shamen come up here every morning to greet the sun," Chornoi explained. "They take it in rotation. It's a religious ritual, of course, but it has a very practical purpose, too—every morning, the Shaman of the Day sees how close the sun is coming to one of the big notches. The middle one is the equinox—there're sixteen months here; the two moons revolve eight times a year, and they rule the months in alternation. Figure that the first groove is the winter solstice. The sun starts there, moves down to the middle groove for the vernal equinox, goes on to the eighth groove for the summer solstice, then moves back to the middle groove for the autumnal equinox, and on back to the first one."

  "New Year's," Yorick said.

  Chornoi nodded. "And it's up to the shaman of the Purple tribe to keep an eye on the sun. When it rises behind the fourth notch, he goes home and tells everybody to start planting. When he sees sunrise through the eighth notch, he tells everybody to celebrate."

  "A midsummer night's dream?"

  "You could call it that," Chornoi said sourly. "Then the sun starts to swing back, and when it rises behind the fourth notch again, the shaman tells the tribe to get ready for harvest."

  "Then back to Midwinter, and the whole thing starts all over again." Yorick knelt by the stone step. "Want to shine that thing down here, Ms.?"

  "Why not? But call me 'Chornoi,' all right? We're working together now."

  The light gleamed on the rough stone at the base of the slab. Yorick ran a finger across the surface, and stopped at a dark blot.

  They all stared, silent for a moment.

  Then Yorick's finger went on to trace another drop, and another.

  "Blood," Rod said softly.

  "I'm not quite equipped to run a chemical analysis," Yorick mused, "but I'd say that was a pretty good bet. Want to scan the area, Ms. Chornoi?"

  "Well, that's an improvement, I guess," Chornoi grunted. She moved the circle of light slowly over the area around the stone step. The grass stood about three inches high.

  "Nice to find out they keep it mowed," Yorick said, "but that's about all I see."

  Rod nodded. "Not the slightest sign of a struggle. Whoever our hatchet man was, he was remarkably neat."

  "Damn near inhuman," Yorick agreed.

  "Not quite." Chornoi's lips were thin. "Some of my colleagues were extremely efficient. I wasn't too bad, myself."

  Yorick looked up. "But the blood on the stone does kind of indicate that the Wolman met the cleaver when he stepped up here to greet the sun."

  Rod frowned. "Yeah. So what… Oh!"

  "Right." Yorick nodded. "Who steps up to the Sun-Greeting Place to greet the sun?"

  "A shaman," Chornoi breathed.

  "But none of the shamen are missing," Rod pointed out.

  "So what?" Yorick shrugged. "None of the Wolmen are missing. So why shouldn't it be a shaman who's not missing, instead of just an ordinary warrior?"

  "More to the point," Chornoi said softly, "why shouldn't it be Hwun? After all, he's the shaman of the Purple tribe, and they're the ones closest to this place."

  "No reason at all, except that Hwun is very much alive. Far too much so, for my liking." Rod frowned. "What is this business about Hwun being the chief chief, when he's also the Purple shaman? I've heard of overlapping directorates, but isn't this a little too obvious?"

  "No problem there." Chornoi shook her head. "Wolman government is basic democracy, Major—very basic. They just sit around in a circle and discuss who's going to be leader. And when most of them agree—well, that's who the leader is. Every clan does it that way—and, once they've decided on a leader, they tend to stay with him. So when the clans gather for a tribal meeting, it's the clan headmen who sit down to elect the tribal leader."

  Yorick nodded. "Which means that one of the tribal chiefs is going to be the national chief."

  Chornoi frowned at him. "You had experience with this kind of thing?"

  "We were Number One. So they held a tribal meeting like that to fight the soldiers better?"

  "You have been around. But it was a national meeting— all the tribes banded together for an all-out war."

  "Makes sense." Yorick agreed. "After all, it was probably the first time in their history that they'd had somebody to fight besides each other."

  Gwen shivered. "Must men forever be fighting, then?"

  "Sure. How else would we get you ladies to notice us, instead of the other guys?" Yorick turned back to Chornoi. "This wouldn't happen to have been the first time they'd ever banded together for anything, would it?"

  Chornoi stared at him, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. Up until the convicts came, they'd always been fighting each other, just the way you said."

  Yorick nodded. "Nice of you to help out that way."

  "Yes, bringing civilization to the poor savages." Rod's eyes glittered. "I always find unification fascinating."

  Something in his voice made Chornoi look up with a scowl. "Don't make any mistake, Major. It was the Wolmen's idea to get together to fight us, not the colonists'. Just a marriage of convenience, that's all."

  "And as fragile as such unions usually are, I'm sure— but one which Shacklar and Cholly have steadily been trying to strengthen."

  "Oh, that's deliberate enough, sure—and Shacklar definitely likes having a national leader he can deal with. But they chose Hwun, not him."

  "At a national council?"

  Chornoi nodded. "The tribal leaders got together, so of course they chose one of their own number. That's how come Hwun, the Purple chief, wound up being acclaimed chief Wolman chief."

  "Makes sense." Rod nodded. "Bu
t why'd they elect a shaman instead of a general—excuse me, 'war-chief?' I mean, how good a tactician is a pholk-physician going to be?"

  Chornoi shook her head. "Medicine's only part of it, Major, only a spin-off, really. His main function is spiritual. He's a holy man."

  Rod shuddered. "I don't like the sound of that. Religion and politics make a lousy combination."

  "But it's very useful when you're trying to keep all the factions of your people together," Chornoi pointed out. "That's Hwun's main job. As to fighting when they went to war, he had four generals, one for each tribe. They took care of the tactics; he just had the final say on strategy."

  "Neat." Rod scowled. "In fact, a little too efficient for my liking."

  "But his constituents can recall him at any minute," Yorick pointed out.

  Chornoi gave him an irritated glare. "That's right, in fact. How'd you know?"

  "Y* seen one oral culture, y' seen 'em all," Yorick said. "Not really true, but they do all have certain characteristics in common. Government by consensus is one of 'em, and instant recall is part of that."

  "Instant, yes—by the most effective means available. At least, sometimes. In fact, it has occurred to me that we may be looking at an impeachment here."

  Yorick shook his head. "You'd know better than I would, but I find it hard to believe. This kind of a society wouldn't understand that kind of sneaky killing. If somebody wanted to challenge the head honcho, he'd just do it. In fact, the more witnesses he had for the fight, the stronger his support would be."

  Rod nodded. "That sounds right. Besides, you said it yourself, Chornoi—some of your colleagues are inhumanly efficient. This is such a neat job that it fairly screams 'professional.'"

  Slowly, she nodded. "Yeah. Probably well armed, too."

  Rod frowned. "But he didn't use a blaster. If he had, there wouldn't have been blood."

  Chornoi shook her head. "A pro wouldn't have, Major. This was right at dawn, remember? A blaster bolt would've been seen. It also might have set a fire, and people would have really started wondering." She shrugged. "Sometimes the oldest weapons work best."

  "Well, one thing's sure, then." Yorick stood up, dusting off his hands. "It wasn't any Wolman who did this killing. I mean, they may be pretty enthusiastic, and I'm sure they're skillful, but when you get right down to it, when it comes to killing people, they're really amateurs." He nodded to Chornoi. "One of the soldiers did this—and one trained for commando work."

  "Probably." Chornoi gazed at the dark spatters on the stone. "Don't sell those Wolmen short, though. They've become very competent warriors since they started fighting these convict-soldiers. Very competent—and they've been developing a lot of skill with blasters, ever since Shacklar took over and the truce began."

  "I do not understand," Gwen murmured. "Why doth he give Wolmen his weapons, when to keep them to his own men would yield him great advantage?"

  Chornoi shrugged. "He seems to think that if it comes to war, the colonists are going to be wiped out, sooner or later. We're so heavily outnumbered that our only real hope for survival is peace with the Wolmen."

  "And the only way to be sure of that," Rod said stiffly, "is to meld the two cultures into a single, unified society."

  Chornoi nodded. "And having all the blasters on the soldiers' side, doesn't exactly help build Wolman confidence."

  "Maybe not." Yorick looked around. "I get the feeling we're missing something. There may be evidence of a struggle in the area around here—or some other kind of evidence that we won't find at night."

  "True," Rod said judiciously. "With only a flashlight, we're limited to looking at what we already suspect. We'll have to wait for daylight to get the Big Picture, and any clues we haven't thought of."

  "There's a problem with that," Yorick pointed out.

  "Aye, my lord," Gwen added. "We must needs be at the Governor's great hall in the morn—e'en by dawn."

  Rod shrugged. "So what? We already skipped town, didn't we?"

  "Aye, yet they did enlarge us upon our parole."

  Chornoi stared. "What is she talking about?"

  "She means Shacklar only let us go, because we promised to come back in the morning." Rod's mouth tightened at the corners.

  "'Twould be dishonorable, an we did not return."

  "Well, true, but this isn't Gramarye. Honor isn't quite so important here."

  Gwen stared at him, scandalized. More importantly, Rod realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he didn't believe it himself anymore. "All right, all right! We'll have to go back to town! Besides—skipping town is one thing, but skipping the planet is entirely another!"

  Gwen frowned. "What is a 'planet,' my lord?"

  Chornoi just stared at her; but Rod took a deep breath and said, "Well. A planet is a world, darling. It's not flat, you see—it's round, like a ball."

  "Assuredly not!" she cried.

  Rod shrugged. "Okay, so don't believe me—just take my word for it. I came to Gramarye on a 'shooting star,' remember—and I got to see the planet from way up. Way up—and it's round. Oh, believe me, it is round!"

  "He's telling you the truth." Chornoi frowned, puzzled. "I've seen planets from space, too, and they're round, all right. Like that." She pointed at the single moon that was still up in the sky. "It's just a very little planet. The word means 'wanderer,' see, and you know how the moon wanders; it moves all over the sky."

  "Aye." Gwen frowned, trying to absorb the alien concept. "There be others, be there not? Stars that do wander."

  "Right." Rod nodded. "They're worlds, too. But most of the stars, the ones that stay put—well, they're suns, just like the one that gives us light and heat during the daytime."

  "Can they truly be?" Gwen breathed, eyes round. "Nay, surely not! For they be but points of light!"

  "That's because they're so far away," Chornoi explained.

  "Nay, it could not be." Gwen turned to her, frowning. "For they would have to be so far distant that…" She broke off, her mind reeling as she realized just how far away that would have to be.

  Chornoi watched her, nodding slowly. "Yes, ma'am. That's how far away. So far that it takes their light quite a few years to get here."

  "Yet how can that be?" Gwen asked, looking from Rod to Chornoi and back. "How can light take time to come to a place?"

  "Well—it travels," Rod said. "Believe us, honey—there's no easy way to prove it. I mean, it has been proven, but it was very hard to do, very complicated. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. That's about six trillion miles in a year." Gwen's eyes lost focus, and Rod confided, "Don't try, dear. We can't really grasp the idea of a distance that huge—not really, not emotionally. But we can be intimidated by trying." He turned to Chornoi. "The nearest star here—it wouldn't happen to be visible, would it?"

  "Oh, yeah. It's the third star in the barrel of 'The Blaster'— one of our homemade constellations." Chornoi stepped up beside Gwen and pointed. "You see those six stars, forming a rough parallelogram—you know, a rectangle leaning sideways?"

  Gwen sighted along her arm. "Aye, I see them."

  "Well, that's the handgrip. And that line of four stars at a right angle to them? That's the barrel. The third star in from its end is our nearest neighbor." Chornoi shrugged. "It doesn't really have a name—just a number on the star-charts. The soldiers call it 'The Girl Next Door.'"

  "How far away is it?" Rod asked.

  "Just under seven light-years."

  "Dost mean…" Gwen swallowed. "… that the star I see now is not truly the star? That 'tis but light that hath left it seven years agone?"

  "Right." Rod nodded with vigor. "We're not seeing it as it is, but as it was seven years ago. Very right, dear. For all we know, it could be blowing up right now—but we wouldn't find out about it for seven years." Secretly, he was impressed with the quickness of Gwen's understanding.

  His wife just stared up into the night sky, lost in the immensity of the concept.

  "And planet
s," Rod murmured, "swing around and around their sun in circles that are just a little bit egg-shaped."

  Gwen whirled to stare at him in astonishment. "Nay— for surely the Sun doth go about the Earth! I do see it rise and go across the sky daily!"

  Rod shook his head. "It just looks that way. It's the earth that's turning, really." He cranked with a finger. "Around and around, like a spinning top. Stop and think about it— if you're turning around and around, it looks as though Yorick, there, is turning around yow, when he's really standing still, doesn't it?"

  Gwen gazed at Yorick, then slowly began to turn around in place. After two revolutions, she said, "'Tis so." She stopped and looked up at Rod. "Yet merely from looking, how can I tell whether 'tis he that's moving, or I?"

  Rod's breath hissed in. He'd known Gwen was intelligent, but he was amazed by the quickness with which her mind darted on to the next question. He stared at her, astounded by her mental leap. Then he smiled weakly. "Well, you have to have other kinds of evidence, too, dear. For example, when we look through telesc… uh, closely at other planets, we can see their moons going around and around them. That explains why our own moon wanders the way it does—it's really revolving around us. Which makes it a pretty good bet that we're revolving around our sun, especially after we've found out that it's a heck of a lot bigger than any of its planets." He shrugged. "And the bigger it is, the harder it pulls."

  She stared at him for a long moment, then said slowly, "And is it for that reason that we will have such great difficulty in leaving this 'planet?'"

  Rod caught his breath, staring at her. Then he opened his mouth, breathing in, and finally said, "Yes. The planet pulls things to it, just as the sun pulls the planet toward itself."

  "Then why doth the planet not fall into the sun?"

  "Because it's going too fast. Like…" Inspiration hit. "Like you, when you're trying to catch Geoffrey. He goes flying past, and you grab him, but because he's going so fast, you can't pull him in against you. On the other hand, you're holding on tightly enough so that he can't get away, either, so he just swings around at the end of your arm. Now, imagine that he refuses to stop, and he just goes on swinging around and around you, forever. And it's that same kind of pull, like your pull on him, that attracts things to the planet. Of course, from where we're standing, that 'attracting' looks like 'falling.' We call the force 'gravity.' The planet pulls on the object—like this." He pulled her up against him, and wrapped his arms around her. "And it doesn't want to let the object go."