‘Right. You like quaint customs and ethnic music,’ Launy lashed out. ‘But never something really different. Never something that might upset the Maurai predominance.’
‘That might wreck every civilization again, or life itself,’ Terai said back. His lips tightened off his teeth. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the Downfall didn’t come barely in time, to save the whole biosphere from what the old industry was doing to it.’
‘You talk like a Gaean.’
‘Lesu forbid!’ Terai attempted a laugh. ‘The Mong dislike us worse than you do, and I doubt a single Maurai ever gave Gaeanity a second thought.’
‘Then why do you make “ecology” and “diversity” your catchwords for a holy war?’
Long-smoldering anger spat forth a small blue flame. ‘We share this planet,’ Terai growled. ‘Your reckless coal-burning and chemical effluents were bad enough. When you collected fissionables and set out to build a nuclear powerplant, that was too buggering much. When you turned down our ultimatum, what could we do but declare war! Now we’re going to curb you, for everybody’s sake!’
His temper abated as fast as it had flared. He was not a choleric man. ‘Don’t fear, Launy,’ he said, and fumbled in his pockets. ‘We’re not after your kind, just after the exploiters and crazies who’ve grabbed the rudder from you. The few who don’t know, or don’t care, that Earth’s cupboard is flinking close to empty.’ He drew out briar pipe and tobacco pouch.
‘Oh, I know it is,’ the Norrie answered. ‘Remember, my father was an Iron Man – a scavenger – and I’ve read the books and heard the lectures.’
His mind repeated them in synopsis:
The Doom War and its aftermath didn’t wipe out knowledge. Too many records of every sort were left, and in certain lucky areas, certain lucky people sooner or later got a chance to study them. They could have rebuilt – except that the earlier technological civilizations had consumed the abundant, easily accessible materials which had made it possible to build in the first place. No Mesabis were left, no Prudhoe Bays, no vast virgin timberlands, no tonnes of fertile topsoil on each arable square meter. More and more, the ancestors had been making do with substitutes and rearrangements. The successor societies, cursed with low energy and lean resources, could not afford to restore the industrial plant necessary for that.
So, mostly, those who survived kept going by creating new versions of savagery or barbarism. Few of them have yet climbed any further back. Few, if any, ever will, unless –
The Maurai hold a key, and beyond the door they guard is a stairway to the future. Their own ancestors were lucky. N’Zealann wasn’t hit. Yes, it got its dose of ultraviolet when the bomb explosions thinned the ozone layer – diebacks and mutations in the microbial foundations of life, famines and pestilences and chaos. But it wasn’t hit. The structures remained, usually. Factories, laboratories, hydroelectric facilities, not to speak of unexhausted iron and coal mines. City people died, but country dwellers tended to live, and on their reservations the aborigines had a tribal fellowship with institutions that were adaptable to the new conditions. As nature began to recover, the N’Zealanners wanted to reconstruct, and found themselves facing a terrible labor shortage. They invested coal and iron in ships that went out recruiting immigrants, who were mainly from the Polynesian islands. It was natural for them to evolve a scientific but parsimonious technology.…
We’re different, we in the Northwest. We started with a richer base. And we didn’t change from what we had been. Throughout the hard centuries, we never stopped looking forward, we never stopped hoping and dreaming.
His pipe charged and between his jaws, Terai produced a lighter. It was a small hardwood cylinder with a close-fitting piston. He removed the latter and shook some tinder from a compartment of his tobacco pouch down the bore. After he had tucked the pouch away, he rammed the piston home, withdrew it again, and emptied the tinder onto his tobacco. Air compression had heated it to the combustion point. With careful inward puffs, a hand screening off the wind, he nursed the fire into complete life.
‘You know,’ Launy murmured, ‘that clumsy thing comes near to being a world-symbol for your civilization.’
Terai smiled; crow’s-feet meshed around his eyes. ‘Oh, it isn’t clumsy when you’ve gotten the knack. Don’t tell me you’d prefer sulfur matches! Why, a smoke would cost you a day’s wages.’
‘What people carry at home is a torch about the size of your thumb. Plastic case, flint-and-steel igniter. The fuel, generally butane, we derive from coal or by destructive distillation of sawdust.’
‘I know. I’ve seen. A drunken sailor is less extravagant.’
‘Now wait a minute, Terai. Your people make use of forests as well as farms. Why, you farm and mine the seas themselves.’
‘We replant. We maintain a balance.’
‘We do too, as far as we’re able. We’d be better able if we had more energy to spend. That’s the solution to everything, energy.’
Terai pointed around the ocean, into the wind, and upward.
‘Oh, sure, your chosen sources,’ Launy said. ‘Sun, wind, water, biomass – but it all goes back in the end to the sun, and the sun’s good for hardly more than a kilowatt per square meter, at high noon on a clear day; a hell of a lot less in practice.’
‘We do use some coal, you know,’ Terai answered, ‘but we treat it for clean burning. You could do likewise.’
‘Not if we’re to live the way we think human beings are entitled to. That calls for high-production industries. Petroleum’s too precious a feedstock to burn, of course, and wood’s too valuable as lumber or just as forest. What’s left but coal? I admit it’s dirty, and it won’t last forever.’
Excitement mounted in Launy. ‘Why won’t you Maurai allow nuclear development?’ he challenged. The plants we designed would’ve been harmless and safe. We’d’ve disposed of the wastes perfectly safely, too, glassified and stored in geologically stable desert areas – innocent compared to coal mines, acids, ash, gases. We were willing to cooperate in precautions against any weapon-making. We’d also have cooperated in research on thermonuclear power, unlimited energy for as long as Earth lasts. Energy to start us back toward the stars.’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘But no. You’d have none of it, nor let us. Why?’
‘That was explained a million times over,’ Terai said, a little wearily. ‘The dangers, in case present systems break down, outweigh any possible gain. Even if the systems worked perfectly, forever, the planet itself would suffer too much from industry on the scale you want.’
‘So you say,’ Launy retorted. ‘But what about power politics, greed, maintaining your, uh, your hegemony? Those have been a mighty big part of your motivation, Maurai. I don’t mean you personally. You’ve always struck me as an honorable man. It puzzles me how you could serve as a spy between the wars. You could have refused the assignment.’
‘I wasn’t a spy,’ Terai said mildly. ‘Yes, my role as a merchant skipper was a disguise, I was a naval intelligence officer the whole time, but I didn’t steal any secrets. I only got to know your country better.’
‘Against the day when you’d fight us!’ Launy struggled to keep hold of his feelings. ‘No doubt you think of yourself as a simple patriot, a loyal subject of your Queen and member of your tribe. And no doubt that’s true, as far as it goes. Underneath, though – in your quiet, relaxed-looking way, you Maurai are fanatics.’
He paused before he added: ‘My history professor in college had a saying, “Nothing fails like success.” He was right, and your civilization is the prime example. Your achievements were great in their time, but you’ve gotten fixated on them. You worship them more devoutly than you do your Triad. If anything might change the status quo in any real way, you’ll stamp it down … and congratulate yourselves on your stewardship of Earth.’
He snapped after air, gripped the rail, and turned his gaze back over the sea, away from his beleaguered land.
Terai stood mu
te, exhaling the fragrance. Finally he laid a hand on the Norrman’s shoulder and rumbled, ‘I’m not offended. Say what you like. You need to. I’m still your friend. I’ll take every chance that comes by to prove it.’
3
The armadas clashed off the mouth of the mighty Columma River, on a day when half a gale drove icy rain mingled with sleet out of the west. Currents lent trickiness to the enormous waves; eastward, reefs and shoals lurked beneath. It was as if nature herself fought in defense of this her country.
If so, she fought in vain.
There were skilled sailors among the Union crews, but virtually every Maurai was a child of the great waters, with a dolphinlike sense for them and for the winds that caressed or stirred or lashed them. The Union ships were well built, but most of them on lines that were antique before the old civilization destroyed itself, and they were driven by clumsy rigs or clumsier coal-fired engines, with a very few synfuel diesels. The Maurai ships were aerodynamic as much as they were hydrodynamic, as maneuverable as shark or albatross; those with auxiliary power ran electric motors smoothly off fuel cells. Neither side had many aircraft, but the primitive Union machines were weatherbound, while the Maurai pilots could fly. Rain did not blind radar, sonar, heat detectors, and other such instruments; those of the Maurai were incomparably superior.
As for weapons, the Union guns used explosive powder of mineral origin. Scarcity restricted the supply. The Maurai had been accumulating ammunition from sources more diffuse but unlimited. Their violent combustibles were of largely biological origin, from pelagic farms or bacterial cultures. What metals they used had principally come, by patient electrochemistry, from the sea. Oxygen and hydrogen were similarly borrowed; solar cells had maintained their cryogenic state on the long voyage hither.
Rockets blazed, torpedoes churned, bombs whistled downward, and each of them pursued a precise target. Manmade lightning racked the storm. Union ironclads wallowed amidst their dying companions and shot wildly back. Then the biggest invader missiles arrived, bearing cargoes of liquid gases that reacted upon impact. Volcanoes awoke. The armored ships broke apart. Water fountained upward, fell back, rushed about in its torment to fling hulls, wreckage, survivors crashingly together.
The battle was done in less than two hours. Afterward the wind died away, as if awed into silence, and the rain fell softly, as if weeping for men dead and treasure lost, hope lost. The Maurai did not exult, they went about searching for whom they might rescue, and horror dwelt behind no few of their faces.
They had taken some damage themselves, of course. For example, a shellburst put Barracuda out of action until she could be repaired and killed a number of persons aboard her. They included Launy Birken.
The war writhed on for two more years, because it had become a land war. And the land was gigantic. From the Klamath Mountains of Calforni it reached up the seaboard to embrace all of Laska. In its northern parts, its eastward parapets were the Rockies; farther south they were the Cascades, the country narrowing thus because Norrmen cared little for treeless dry plains. Theirs was a realm of uplands, deep valleys, rushing streams, intricate straits and fjords – of woods and swamps, never distant from the richest farm or the lustiest coastal city – of rain, fog, snow, shy sunshine, but sometimes unutterably clear winter nights where stars glittered and auroras flared – of strongholds, hiding places, secret trails, ambushes.
And its folk, men, women, children, were warriors. Terai came to believe that natural selection had worked upon them. Their ancestors had suffered immensely more in the Downfall than his, and meanwhile the Mong poured across from Sberya, over a channel that for years lay frozen for months on end because nuclear detonations had filled the upper air with dust. Through the Yukon plateau the newcomers punched, over the heights beyond and down the tundras and prairies, irresistible – save by the forebears of the Norrmen. Those rolled the tide back in blood from their mountains; they regained Laska, cutting off the influx out of Asia; during centuries of warfare they held off the aliens, wore them down, built their own strength, wrested back what eastern tracts they desired, until at last quietness fell and peace rather than strife became the norm along their borders.
Their descendants were not surrenderers either. They were not insane; when beaten beyond doubt, they yielded, sullenly. The Maurai captured their cities and production centers without inordinate killing. However, that did not end the contest. It did no good to take Seattle, Portanjels, Vittohrya, and send a detachment of marines to occupy the fisher hamlet on Sanwan Island where the Grand Council of the Union met (‘off by themselves to keep ’em from doing too much mischief,’ Launy had once explained). The powers of the central government were so limited that it scarcely qualified as one. More authority resided in the Territorial capitals, but was nonetheless scant. The bone and brain of this society were its Lodges, and they were everywhere. A local Lodgemaster could field a regiment overnight, and disperse it to anonymity when its mission was completed.
With hellish slowness, the Maurai found how to make their enemies lay down arms. They had neither the manpower nor the will to overrun the country, and the thought of devastating it – Earth – never occurred to them, except perhaps in nightmares. But they could choke off supplies of war matériel at the source. Meanwhile they could offer relief, medicine, unstinted help in reconstruction, technological improvements, trade, scholarships at their universities for the gifted young.
In this endeavor, High Commissioner Ruori Haakonu became a hero more useful than any combatant. His intelligence, charm, unfeigned warmth, and kindliness gave a glow to his quite real achievements. His masculine beauty did no harm. At the same time, he tolerated no nonsense and was uncannily well informed. (His father, Aruturu, was chief of the intelligence division, Terai Lohannaso’s ultimate commander.)
Thus, piecemeal, the Lodges were persuaded to give up and make the best of things. The situation remained acridly bad for them. By treaty, the Northwest Union forswore future attempts to get energy from the nucleus. Its navy was limited to a coast guard and its industry to whatever the Maurai Ecological Service should decide was not too dangerous. For enforcement, the Federation would keep bases at strategic spots and exercise unlimited rights of inspection. Such inducements as favorable terms of commerce scarcely healed the bleeding pride or lessened the weight of the shackles.
But at least there was peace. Terai could soon go home.
4
Walking down the village street, he had seldom felt so alone.
The place was lovely. Frame houses with flowering sod roofs stood well back from the pavement, surrounded by lawns and gardens, jauntily painted, many displaying carved designs on doors, gables, or beam ends. Behind them reared a fir forest; its odor brought the springtime coolness alive. To south, the snowpeak of Mount Rainier filled heaven with purity.
Yet isolation radiated from Terai, the outlander. Fair-skinned Norries and occasional squat brown Injuns stiffened when they saw him; children ceased their games; dogs snuffed wrongness, bristled, and snarled. None ignored him but a cat sunning itself on a porch and a raven that flapped hoarse overhead.
Well, he thought tiredly, what else did I expect? Maybe I shouldn’t have come. But I told you, Launy, I’d show you my friendship whenever I could.
He found the house he wanted, mounted the steps, swung the wooden knocker. Anneth Birken opened the door. She was a tall woman, well formed, brown braids hanging down over the midcalf dress that was customary in this part of the Union. ‘Good day,’ she said, and recognized him and stepped back. Her eyes widened till white ringed blue. ‘Oh –!’
Terai honored local custom by tipping his cap. He had been careful to don dress uniform, white tunic and trousers, but to leave off his decorations. ‘Good day, Mizza Birken,’ he said. When previously they met, almost four years ago, it had been on first-name terms. ‘I hope I’m not intruding. If you want, I’ll leave immediately.’
She made no response.
‘I wrote ahea
d, but I suppose you didn’t get my letter,’ he plowed on. The mails are still in poor shape. I learned your community radiophone is out of order too. This was my last chance to visit you, though. Next week I return to N’Zealann.’
Resolution congealed in her. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.
He stood humbly, as if the upper hand were hers, and answered, ‘Only to call on you, for old times’ sake and to see whether I can help with anything. And, uh, and … if you wish … I can tell you about Launy’s last days, and his death. I was there, you see.’
She stood for a number of raven-croaks before she said, ‘Come in,’ and led the way.
The house was pleasant, in its somewhat dark and cluttered Northwestern fashion: it was full of mementos. She took him to the living room and gestured him to a chair as heavily built as the rest of her furniture. Above the fireplace he saw an oak panel carved with the emblem of the Lodge that had been Launy’s, and was hers too, as it happened: a wolf at full speed, a broken chain around its neck, and underneath it the motto Run Free.
‘Please be seated, Commander Lohannaso,’ Anneth said. ‘I read your insignia correctly, don’t I? You have commander’s rank now? Can I offer you refreshment? I’m afraid we’ve no coffee or proper tea at the moment, but there’s herb tea, or milk or beer or cider if you prefer.’
‘Not unless you want it, thank you,’ he replied, thinking what an effort hospitality would be for her and what explaining to her neighbors she might have to do afterward. He longed for a smoke but remembered that she didn’t indulge, common though the vice had become in the Union as trade with the Southeast revived, and decided against hauling out his pipe.
She poised above him. Her mouth was drawn tense, her nostrils were flared and white. ‘You can tell me how Launy met his end,’ she said, flat-voiced. ‘I’m sure it was gallantly. But I’ve received nothing except the bare news, a year late.’
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