by John Dalmas
Homecoming
( Yngling - 2 )
John Dalmas
John Dalmas
Homecoming
I
Nikko Kumalo seldom saw the bridge on night watch, and its beauty affected her. It was “night” now by the ship’s chronometer and their own circadian rhythms, and all passageway lights were muted accordingly. The bridge itself was lit mainly by the cool luminescent characters on the black computer screen and dim blue night lights in the bulkheads, with an overall effect of soft velvet. Ram had cut off the unobtrusive wake tone that kept the bridge watch alert in the dimness, and it seemed to Nikko that to speak would break a spell.
On the viewscreen were two other lights, gibbous demi-discs bright and prominent against a backdrop of black space. Her eyes fixed on them and she knew what they were.
Ram spoke quietly. “You said to call you.”
“They’re beautiful, Ram, just beautiful.” Her husband Matthew, standing beside her, said nothing, just looked at Earth and its satellite. After more than seven centuries, men from New Home were looking at the planet from which their ancestors had come. Back in normal space after weeks in jump phase, they could measure her distance in millions of kilometers instead of parsecs.
He shivered. What would they find there? Something drastic had happened-must have happened-long ago to have ended without warning all traffic between the mother planet and her then still infant primary colony. Blue and white showed on the screen-there were still seas and clouds. Perhaps a virulent disease or transstellar conquerors were waiting for them, as the geophobes back home had feared. Right now, he thought, we know no more than when we raised ship, except that Earth is still here, still blue and white in space. Later today we’ll begin to find out other things.
So many generations had lived and died since his many-times removed great grandparents had left Earth that he hadn’t expected to feel this much emotion. Briefly in the muted darkness, all four stared at the viewscreen, Nikko and Matthew hand in hand, Ram and the computerman in their duty seats, seeing what men from New Home had seen only in their imaginations since the last ship from Earth had left it 780 New Home years before.
The culture of New Home was basically agrarian, and its people in general were calm and methodical. So planetary analyses waited until general duty hours to begin. The analyses were much the same as those made by the ancient charting ships-the Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. But this time they were not being made routinely, impersonally, of new and unknown planets. The subject was the mother planet, Earth. Spectral readings indicated a planetary temperature approximately two and a half Celsius degrees below twenty-first century levels. The absorption spectrum indicated no significant change in atmospheric C02, and a reduction in water vapor compatible with the temperature change. Albedo seemed high, suggesting greater than old-normal cloud cover, but the existing level was not outside the limits of twenty-first century variability.
What everyone was really waiting for were exploration flights within the atmosphere. It was the northern hemisphere spring-the computer said May 24 by the Gregorian calendar-and as the shadow of night moved out over the eastern Atlantic, the Phaeacia began a close survey pattern 900 kilometers above sea level. Carefully she scanned for the radiation signatures of cities. And found none.
Pinnace Alpha launched at ship’s midday and began scouting the sunlit Americas from within the troposphere. She sighted villages reminiscent of early American Indian villages, in openings seemingly cleared by fire. Baby ice sheets glistened whitely in Keewatin, the Ungava Peninsula, and the Canadian Rockies, and forests covered the eastern half of North America from the Gulf of Mexico to north of Lake Superior.
In 2100 A.D. there had been more than 1.47 billion people in the western hemisphere. Matthew Kumalo radioed that there would hardly be more than five or ten million now.
“Duty days” yielded in part to the dictates of the solar day on Earth. Low-level flights followed the sunrise into eastern Asia and across the Eurasian land mass; its ancient cities were rubble or less, many grown over with forests. There were no new cities;there were only pretechnology towns.
After several days the exploration team decided on Contact Prime-the town where first contact would be made with the people of Earth. It stood beside the old Danube ship canal, a short distance from the Black Sea. Single-masted ships lay in its harbor. Though not the largest of the new towns-it was four kilometers across-it seemed clearly the most advanced. Most towns looked like something from the Middle Ages: haphazard, ugly, and surrounded by hostile stone bastions. This town, by contrast, was rigorously geometrical, with a harmonious kind of severe beauty, an angular regularity that demonstrated the existence there of mathematicians and planners. And unfortified. Its stadium would accommodate tens of thousands, Matthew thought. A tall black tower rose from a palace with terraced roof gardens, the most impressive structure they had seen either here or at home.
Whatever had happened to mankind on Earth, Matthew thought to himself, it was rising with a new civilization. He felt cautiously eager to visit Contact Prime, to begin learning what had happened, and what was happening now.
II
Something was making the cattle restless. Their normal foraging movements had stopped, their heads raised to stare southward. It had started a moment earlier with some old cows at the south edge of the herd, and spread. He stood in his stirrups, old calves sinewy, strong bare toes supporting his wiry weight, to scan the irregular sea of grass in that direction. Perhaps wolves were moving down the draw from the forested ridge a kilometer away, hoping to take a new calf from the fringe of the herd.
Casually he took his short bow from its boot and strung it. There was no cause for concern. Last year’s grass had been broken and flattened by winter snows, and the new grass was still young spears not long enough to conceal a hare. They could not move out of the draw without becoming targets for himself and the others.
It did not occur to him to think beyond wolves. But it was men who rode out of the pines, and he sat back, watching them. Horse barbarians, he thought, predatory and wild, but constrained by their fealty to the Master from attacking his herds or his herdsmen. Horse barbarians. They were of different tribes and tongues, from as near as the Southern Desert and as far as the Great Eastern Mountains, wherever those might be. But he hadn’t seen any like these before. His keen eyes took in details. These were large men, some with yellow hair, and they carried no lances.
They separated, moving casually as if to encircle or half encircle the herd, and he started toward them to warn them away. They began to shout, to drive the cattle, and he called angrily at them, shaking his bow. One of the nearest raised his own bow and the herdsman stared for a shocked moment before slumping to the ground, his callused toes losing their grip on the stirrups.
The other herdsmen fled, and the intruders made no effort to stop them. They simply drove the herd across the arm of prairie toward the mountains rising to the northwest.
III
Space is deep and beautiful, ruthless but predictable,
Inhuman.
The men of Earth are only some of these.
From EARTH, by Chandra Queiros
Han var Ahmed, son t’ Ahmed, han var sad a Kassis spihunn i Kyng Janos hov pa Pestad.
Svarthud var han liksa faren, langsynt asa som d’ alren, slug a kail i pann som faren.
Laste ikke tankar tvaatom, sag han aj i sjal som faren, fasen tavelte om makten i d’ sajkarl hovdingringen.
Ikke fegling som d’ alren, dolte aj i prysi jomme, kjampe han, jaav liks a vasam, hovding han blann orkahodern.
Hatte rival, luden Dreka, han som glade sej i tortyr, sjalson t’ d’ aset Kassi.
[Ahmed was he, son of Ahmed, was the seed
of Kazi’s spy-dog in the Magyar court of Janos.
Black-skinned was he like his father, patient also like the elder, ruthless, cunning, as his sire was.
Was no telepath however, read not minds as had his father, though he strove to rule the psi men.
Was no coward like his father skulking in a velvet covert, was a warrior hard and wary, was a chieftain in the orc horde.
Had a rival, hairy Draco, he whose pleasures lie in tortures,
Draco, soul-child of dead Kazi.]
From THE JARNHANN SAGA,
Kumalo translation.
The buckled lattice of leather straps reached high on the ankles, as on Roman sandals. The leather soles were needlessly thick and hard, however, and noisy with metal bosses and heel plates. They clattered harshly in the stone corridor, driven by five pairs of strong purposeful bare legs, and turned a blind corner without caution. Two slaves, warned by the unsynchronized tattoo, already stood clear with their backs to the wall. It was basic to remain unnoticed, and their minds were carefully blank as the officers passed, erect, hard, and arrogant.
The man who strode at the front of the group was clearly in command. One of the others, despite the pace and hard decisiveness of their march, tried to speak confidentially into the leader’s ear but was cut off with a brusque gesture. The chamber they entered had no door to be opened. The corridor simply ended in it, with glass doors opposite standing open on a sun-lit balcony. Unlike the corridor, the chamber was not walled with dark polished basalt, but veneered with marble, hung with rich indigo fabric, and carpeted with furs.
Five men awaited the five, and they too had an obvious leader. All ten dressed much the same: boots, short-sleeved tunic, and light harness with an ornamental breast plate, silver for the leaders, polished bronze for the others. Their visible weapons were short swords, ceremonial but also lethal.
The waiting leader, Draco, was Mediterranean in appearance, ugly-handsome, with olive skin, thick close-cropped curly hair, and a mat resembling black fur curling on his forearms and bare legs. He looked like a compact gladiator, mean and muscular, brutal and deadly.
The leader of the second five, Ahmed, was taller and more slender-fine-boned, actually-giving somehow the simultaneous impressions of smoothness and lean muscularity. His coloring was coffee brown, his hair a skullcap of fine kinks. He was cool, contained, and calculating, and the impression of deadliness he gave was different than Draco’s-if there was gloating to be done it would follow, not anticipate the act.
“Your men are the garrison force,” Ahmed opened coldly. “You clean them out. If you can.”
Draco smirked. “The region north and west of the Danube is your responsibility. The Master himself assigned the sectors.” He stared amusedly at Ahmed, the tilt of his head suggesting that he, the telepath, was listening to more than the Sudanese wanted to tell him.
Ahmed knew better. To him, screening was no effort; it was just there. Words came to his dark lips and action to the slender-strong fingers with seeming spontaneity. Only that effortless screening enabled him to compete successfully with ruthless telepaths for leadership.
“Have you forgotten his final instructions to you?” Ahmed replied. “Let me quote them. ‘Draco, I know you have the taste and wits for the job, and I am leaving you plenty of men. I also know you’re lazy, careless, and inclined to overkill when left alone. Do not forget, while I am gone, that I will return. When I do, everything must be in order. I hold you responsible for any revolts, or incursions by wandering tribes. Also keep in mind that dead slaves are of no further use except to the commissary department, and beef is much cheaper.’ ”
It was a remarkably close quote, delivered with the same contemptuous condescension as the original. Only the emphases were Ahmed’s. And the quotation carried a background, a context not apparent in the words themselves. Both of Kazi’s lieutenants, bitter antagonists, had wanted field command in the Russian campaign, and Ahmed had been chosen.
Draco’s face darkened with anger. “But he did not come back. His field commander led the army to defeat and allowed the Master to be killed. Now the situation is different. I am my own master and make my own decisions. I have no more responsibility north of the Danube.”
Ahmed smiled slightly. “This city is north of the Danube. Do I command it alone then?”
Draco’s eyes bulged with sudden anger, his left hand clutching reflexively at his hilt. “We are south of it!” he snarled. “Are you completely ignorant? The City is north of the canal but south of the Danube!”
“A quibble. The Master treated the canal as the eastward extension of the river.” Ahmed’s tone became more reasonable now, almost conciliatory. “Besides, my defeat you remind me of left only a ragged few hundred of their warriors alive. Not every Northman is a warrior; not even most of them. The great majority are peasants. Consider then that my army did its part when we butchered so many of them in the Ukraine. We have paid our share of the cost. And you do not want it said that Draco preferred to leave the fighting to others.”
Draco did consider, screening from the psis on Ahmed’s staff. Perhaps this was an opportunity. Ahmed had failed in the Ukraine, but he had not been an experienced field commander; his position had come from his father’s influence with Kazi. While he, Draco, had risen through the ranks.
His patrols had several times encountered Northman patrols and raiding parties with results ranging from exasperating to shocking. But those had been chance engagements, not part of a systematic campaign. And the Northmen were no longer a free-roving war party, vulnerable only in their persons. Their whole nation was with them now, peasants, women and children, making them a much easier nut to crack. If he destroyed them he would be recognized as the new Master.
“I’ll think about it,” he answered stiffly. Ahmed would not have set this before him without having trouble or treachery in mind, but that he could handle when the time came.
Ahmed relaxed alone in his windowless chamber, its thick stone walls effectively shielding his thoughts. Draco had taken the bait. Like tough meat, the Northmen would take forever to chew up. And Draco was unstable: the frustration would destroy his judgment. He would undoubtedly eliminate the Northmen as a problem, but by then his army would be reduced and demoralized and his prestige broken.
IV
Pinnace Alpha was by no means the most sophisticated craft ever built. New Home had inherited the technical and scientific knowledge of late twenty-first century Earth, much of it, stored in books and tapes. But her culture was agrarian and her high tech industry non-existent, whether cybernetics, intramolecular, biosynthetics, or electronics. Sophisticated components couldn’t be ordered from a contractor; there were no contractors. They were handcrafted in the shop or the lab, or done without. It hadn’t even been possible to go out and buy much of the requisite shop and lab equipment; they’d had to be handcrafted too.
But she was easy to fly.
Now Alpha coasted downward through the ionosphere along a gravitic vector extending through Contact Prime, the AG coils generating only enough to hold acceleration within safe limits. As they approached the F1 layer, Matthew eased in the accumulator, slowing for entry and continuing to decelerate. Soon they were no longer approaching a planet; they seemed instead to be above the ground and dropping downward.
At four kilometers above the city Matthew slowed and began spiraling toward it in broad loops.
“I almost said that’s a handsome city,” said Nikko Kumalo, “but I think impressive’s the better word.”
“I’d go for both,” said Mikhail Ciano. “Whoever built it was a damned good engineer.”
At two hundred meters they leveled off and circled, and Matthew switched the hull to one-way transparent. Below they could see growing clusters of people staring upward toward them. He fingered a dial beneath the viewscreen and a group on a rooftop snapped into large magnification.
He whistled silently. “What do you think of that?”
“Soldiers!
” said Chandra Queiros.
Matthew shifted the view from place to place; soldiers were present or even prominent almost everywhere, straight-backed and hard-faced. Mikhail Ciano watched thoughtfully. “They look like Roman legionaries. I’ll bet I know now why this city isn’t walled. They’re not only the best engineers and organizers around; they’ve probably got the best army.”
Matthew pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, then slid the pinnace into a climbing northwesterly course, leveling off at a thousand meters.
“What is it, Matt?” asked Anne Marie Queiros. “Why are we leaving?”
“I’m not ready to make real contact yet. We’ve given them a look at us-given them something to think and talk about. That’ll be enough for now.”
He looked back at the others. “We’re not prepared yet, psychologically, to deal with what looks like a military society. At least I’m not. I need to digest what we saw back there. Back home we’ve had seven centuries of peace and relative sanity; we haven’t had dealings with foreign cultures of any kind. Our responses aren’t conditioned to people like those back there.”
He looked ahead again at the broad grassland across which they flew. “Besides, there’s no hurry. I want more data, and some time to think about it.”
“There’s one thing I’ll bet I already know about them,” Chandra said.
“What’s that?”
“They didn’t built that city with heavy equipment. They built it with slaves.”
For a while they flew without further talk. “How far have we come?” Nikko asked after a bit.
“From the city? A hundred and forty-one kilometers.”
“We haven’t seen so much as a village in the whole distance. Nothing more than a few tent camps near the cattle herds.”