by John Dalmas
Apparently the underground groups were all very small and not generally in contact with one another.
A substantial part of their small total membership seems to have consisted of telepaths. In the underground, telepaths would seem to have a better chance of surviving than non-telepaths. And perhaps telepaths tend to have more empathy for other humans, although Kazi, a remarkably able telepath, was nothing less than satanic.
Interestingly, one of the principal members of the underground was one of Kazi’s daughters, Nephthys. Nephthys was also the prized and privileged jewel in the harem of Draco, one of the two ruling consuls after Kazi’s death.
From A HISTORY OF THE ORCS, by Reinholdt Malaluan. A.C. 876, Deep Harbor, New Home
VIII
Orc officers were skilled in subterfuge and concealment of purpose. They practiced them unceasingly in the vicious politics of command. But in those politics, character concealment was neither troubled with nor possible; they were too much alike, and too many were telepaths.
Now, when it might have been possible to conceal their character from their visitors, they didn’t know how. Both assigned hosts wore togas instead of uniforms, but their arrogance, hardness, and utter lack of compassion were increasingly apparent with continued contact.
In contrast, Chandra and Anne Marie were conspicuously innocent, earnest, and benign.
The driver, standing against the dashboard of the polished and topless bronze chariot, was like none of his passengers. He was a non-personality whom his masters would notice only in failure or error, unless one of them was looking for someone to abuse. To Chandra and Anne Marie, he was silently informative, a source of inner discomfort.
Their first afternoon had been spent with their two hosts beneath an awning on one of the roof gardens of the varied-level palace. What had been anticipated as a session of questions and answers had proved to be a round of frustration. It became clear that their hosts would not be frank, and they in turn dared not be. But the orc telepaths had learned abundantly from their unspoken thoughts and reactions.
At Chandra’s request, much of the subsequent two days had been spent seeing the city, and their cameras had been busy. Yesterday they had visited the squat cylindrical granaries and seen how barges would be unloaded in harvest time. Blindfolded oxen trod in circles, turning a heavy capstan that powered a conveyor screw. The cats that policed the granaries seemed as arrogant and efficient as the orcs.
Today’s visit had been to a slaughterhouse where women cut up carcasses of beef, their strong bare arms smeared with blood. The floors were mortared stone, sloping to drains and scrubbed daily with lye. From the slaughterhouse the ambassadors had been taken upstream to the water intake plant, where the long vanes of windmills pumped canal water into tanks resembling the granaries. The stout bald man in charge had bowed and smiled and rubbed his hands. A man of responsibility, he nonetheless wore numerals tattooed on his forehead, like their driver and the women in the slaughterhouse and every other unarmed inhabitant they’d noticed.
Afterward Anne Marie had ridden in preoccupied silence. Now she looked around again. From the air I thought this place was handsome, she told herself, but it’s not. It’s ugly. Nothing green, nothing growing except on and around the palace. Just stone buildings and hectares on hectares of pavement. At least they’d had the foresight to install lots of storm drains. But why no soil, no grass, no trees? Two-storied row buildings of precisely fitted stone blocks crowded the wide streets. Their windows were small in the thick walls, giving built-in tunnel vision.
From the air they had seen substantial grounds separating the buildings from those behind them. She thought she knew now what they were: drill grounds. She couldn’t remember whether they had looked paved or not, and tried to glimpse them through the alleyways between buildings. But the alleyways were long and narrow; from the moving chariot her eyes were rewarded by nothing more than momentary slots of light.
The hard-faced officers sat facing them; she and Chandra thought of them as “the Centurions.” What were they thinking, sitting so expressionlessly?
Chandra broke the silence. “Why have most of the workers we’ve seen been women?”
“The men have been taken into the army,” one of the officers recited. “Barbarians threaten the country, and we must defend it.”
“From the sky we saw a fight between barbarians and some of your cavalry. Then we flew over their encampment. There aren’t enough of them to endanger the Empire of Kazi or this city.”
Neither “centurion” spoke for perhaps a minute. Finally the second one replied. “Many thousands more are scattered through the country northwest of the sea. They have laid waste the country there, butchering the inhabitants and burning the towns.”
“Where do you keep the children?” Anne Marie asked. “All I’ve seen are girls at least ten years old. I haven’t seen any boys at all. Where do you keep them?”
The two faces turned to her, and somehow made that simple act a communication of contempt. “Children are kept separate so that the women may work without hindrance. They live in separate quarters.”
“But who brings them up? Who takes care of them?”
“Those who are assigned.”
She persisted. “When can we visit them?”
“I do not know.”
They were grateful to reach the palace grounds, to be led by a steward to their luxurious quarters.
The upper levels of the palace consisted of numerous segments of terraces, some of them entirely gardens, others with one or more apartments opening onto gardens. Chandra and Anne Marie had a terrace, with its apartment, to themselves. After supper they found their reclining chairs had been moved into the shade of three neatly sheared cedars where they could sit out of the evening sun. A small olive-colored bird sang energetically in a low waxy-leaved tree.
Anne Marie gestured at the chairs. “Moved again. I’m afraid our privacy is fictitious.”
“The price of service, I suppose. At least they’re quiet and inconspicuous.”
“And efficient.”
“The whole outfit is efficient.” With a grunt Chandra lowered himself into one of the chairs. “I don’t know why I ate so much, unless it was to make up for a lousy day.”
“I suppose frustration is part of being an ambassador,” she replied. “And it hasn’t been a total loss. We’re getting a pretty good idea of their technology and the kind of people they are. And a lot of good video footage.”
She walked to the balustrade and looked northward across the city’s roofs. “What kind of games do you suppose they play in that big stadium?”
“The word is arena. A stadium implies athletic contests. I’d be surprised if they didn’t set tigers loose on the slaves over there. I’ve got the feeling they’d feed them babies without blinking.”
“Do you suppose they’re going to let us see the children?” she asked.
“I doubt it. The boy children are probably in barracks somewhere, getting military training. I think the women are slaves and most of the men are soldiers. Mike was right: This city has no walls because it has a big tough professional army. And who but slaves would wear numbers tattooed on their foreheads?”
They both remained silent for awhile.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be so critical of the orcs,” Anne Marie said thoughtfully. “They have to cope with a pretty hard and warlike world. Like those barbarians.”
“Don’t blame the barbarians for the orcs; not that pack of barbarians anyway. The orcs said they’re just arriving, but this city and its culture have been around for awhile.”
He got to his feet. “I think it’s time to call Matt again, and this time I won’t mince words.”
On the Phaeacia, Matthew looked unseeingly at the instrument panel for a long moment after Chandra broke transmission.
“Huh! Whatever those people are, they’ve made a rotten impression on Chan and Anne. What do you make of it?”
“Well,” Nikko answered
, “when he said that about ‘feeding them babies,’ I remembered what orcs were. Orcs in ancient literature, that is.”
“Oh? What?”
“An army of subhuman monsters.”
Matthew looked at her, perplexed.
“It was in a fantasy I read when I was about fourteen or fifteen-a trilogy, The Lord Of The Rings. In the story there was an evil sorcerer, a super sorcerer, who’d lived for centuries. Millennia, in fact. And he’d bred an army of sadistic subhuman monsters called orcs, and tried to conquer the world with them. He even had a black tower, like the city down there.”
“Isn’t that a little-improbable? Ancient literature-fantasy literature, anyway-is unlikely to have survived down there. They must have gotten the word from something else. Don’t you think?”
Nikko shrugged. “All the computer had to say about ‘orc’ was, a fish-like marine mammal of Earth. And there are an awful lot of parallels between what’s down there and what’s in the book. What I’m concerned about is the kind of society it would be that tried to emulate the land of Mordor.”
Matthew leaned back and pulled briefly on his chin. “I think I’ll call a team meeting for oh-eight hundred tomorrow,” he said reflectively. “Maybe we need a different contact, for a little perspective.”
“A different contact? With whom?”
“How about some simple straightforward savages this time? The barbarians. It ought to be interesting and even informative. And there shouldn’t be any danger in it. We can just sit in the pinnace with the force shield on and talk to them from there.”
IX
Sags d’ forste a en pojke da d’ svavte uppi himlen jussom orn or lunna vannen nar d’ stirra ned p a jedden simne upp t’ jamna ytan.
Ropte hod a pekte uppe.
«Da jussom kjampnar talte om, som dojtsa haxen sejte barar gamlarna fra sjaanor.»
[It was first a child that saw it, saw it hovering in the morning like an eagle over water watching ready for the salmon rising to the quiet surface.
Called aloud and pointed upward.
“ ’tis the thing the warriors spoke of, that the German seeress told us carries ancients from the stars.”]
From THE JARNHANN SAGA, Kumalo translation
It settled slowly like a polished silver bowl, oblong, inverted, and with stubby legs, while children of all sizes ran toward it through the meadow, looking upward. The audio pickup brought calling voices and the barking of a few dogs. Three meters from the ground, Matthew had to stop descent; there wasn’t enough room to set down and activate the shield without trapping children inside.
“How about that!” Mikhail said. “They’re not a bit afraid. You’d think space craft landed here every week and passed out candy.”
Matthew picked up the microphone and, with the volume turned high, ordered them to clear room for landing. The only effect was to increase the volume of shrill voices.
A number of men and women were approaching now on foot and horseback, most of them moving casually, neither hurrying nor hanging back. As they reached the vicinity they formed small groups behind the children, watching with apparent interest and talking easily among themselves.
“Should I transvise?” Mikhail asked.
“Sure, go ahead,” said Matthew, and the hubbub swelled as the mob of children could suddenly see through the hull.
More adults and children were arriving. A very large man on horseback picked his way through the children, who opened a path for him. When he reached the center he raised both arms overhead and the tumult subsided a bit.
“T’baka Du!” he called. “Go klar for skybaten!”
“I understood that!” Nikko said excitedly. “He told them to move back and give us room. It’s something like Swedish; I’ll bet I can talk to them!”
The children were backing away, with some of the older boys taking charge, giving orders and gesturing. When the loose throng had become a circle, Matthew put the Alpha down and instantly activated the shield. Then they sat without speaking, watching the children discover the shield and test it with curious hands.
“All right,” Matthew said at last. “Try your Swedish on them and see how it goes. Say we wish them no harm and do not like to use our great weapons which can kill large numbers from a distance.”
Nikko pressed the microphone switch and an “Ah-h-h” ran through the crowd as she began speaking slowly in a tonal cadence. When she had finished, the man who’d moved the children signalled the crowd to quiet once more. He hadn’t taken time to saddle his mount, but sat it bareback, sideways now. His left foot dangled; his right leg was cocked up on the animal’s back. It would have been hard to look more nonchalant.
“We are pleased you speak our language,” he said, speaking it himself for the crowd. “It is very rare to find a foreigner who does. But it will be better if I talk in Anglic; then we need not wait while the woman translates for you. I will tell my people afterward what was said. They are glad you have come. We want to be friends with the star people.”
There was a murmur of assent from the crowd while Nikko translated.
“Ask him how he knows we are star people,” Matthew instructed. Nikko spoke, still in Swedish, and many of the children looked back toward the nearby huts, pointing and calling out.
“I’m not getting all that,” Nikko told the others.
“Something about a witch, apparently, a dojtsa witch, whatever that is.”
Again the big man spoke, in Anglic this time. “Who but the star people would come out of the sky? Besides, my wife foretold your coming; it is she the children called a witch. And also, your force shield does not stop thoughts.”
“Let me have the microphone,” Matthew said. Nikko handed it to him and he thumbed the switch. “What do you know about force shields?” he demanded.
“Only the little your thoughts have told me, and what I observe in the children.”
“Damn it, Matt!” Mikhail said. “Don’t you see what he’s saying? The man’s a telepath! He even knew that Nikko is the only one of us that speaks Swedish!”
Matthew digested that for a few seconds, then set it aside for the time. “Who is your ruler?” he asked. “We want to talk to him.”
“The Council of Chiefs has been sent for and should be here after a while. But I am the only one of them who speaks Anglic. My name is Nils Jarnhann.”
The man sat his horse no more than six meters away, just outside the shield, and Matthew looked him over carefully. He’d stand at least 195 centimeters and mass 110 kilos. Even relaxed he gave an impression of great strength and virility, like a jungle cat. He wore soft leather breeches wrapped around his calves with strips. Short blond braids reached his burly shoulders. The thinness of his mustache and beard suggested youth, despite his physique and presence and apparent rank.
“How did you come to learn Anglic when your people don’t speak it?” Matthew asked.
“When we still lived in the north I was cast out for a killing, and wandered in countries where Anglic was spoken between those of different tongues.”
“How did you live in exile?”
“As a soldier and assassin.”
“And why did your people take you back again?”
“When they left our homeland they had need of an Yngling.”
Matthew turned to Nikko. “What’s an Ingling?”
She shrugged. “It used to mean a youth, a youngling, but that doesn’t fit the context here. It must have picked up a different meaning along the line, or a special connotation.”
Matthew switched on the microphone again. “What brings your people to this land which is claimed by the orcs?”
“Our homeland grows colder and wetter year by year. It was harder and harder to make a crop. The turnips rotted in the field and the rye molded in the shocks. People of middle age remember when cattle could graze for five or six months of the year. In recent years it was necessary to feed hay for eight months, while the hay crops grew poorer. In the north among the reinde
er and glutton clans, things were even worse. Finally, a year ago, the ground was still snow-covered in June. The tribes made peace, united, and left-left a land that had been their mother but could no longer feed them.”
A land they knew and loved, thought Matthew. No doubt the only land most of them had been able to imagine. That must have been a hard decision.
“The People crossed the sea in boats,” the man continued. “We allied ourselves with the Poles and others and defeated the armies of Kazi that had come to conquer Europe. After a winter of hunger, the People came to this place. We like it here. It is rich in grass and cattle. There is timber for fuel and building. We will stay and drive the orcs away.”
“Are these your entire people, camped along this valley?”
“Yes.”
“There are many more orcs than there are of you. What makes you think you can drive them out?”
“The orcs are strong and dangerous, but not as strong as you think. They are like a great spruce tree, mighty, darkening much ground and shading out what takes root beneath them, but rotten and hollow inside. For outlanders they are skilled fighters, but now that Kazi is dead, there is nothing they live for and nothing they are willing to die for. They have pride, but even that is shallow. They obey because they hardly know how to disobey and they are afraid to disobey, but they find no savor in risking life, only in taking it.”
“How do you know so much about the orcs?”
“I have been in their city, been their prisoner, talked with Kazi himself and fought in their arena. Their language is strange to me, but I could see their pictures and look through their eyes and know their feelings. And of course, we have met them in war.”
Matthew changed direction. “And you were an assassin? How many men did you kill?”
“As an assassin, none. I was sent by the Inner Circle of the Kinfolk, the Psi Alliance, to assassinate Kazi, but I failed. It was in war I killed him.”