"So what is the man, an immortal genius with the talents of a dozen Corpus Corps types and the soul of the devil?"
"That might overstate the case, Your Majesty. Then again, it might not."
His Imperial Majesty continued to frown.
"Might I have your leave to depart, Your Majesty? You can always request my termination."
"Go . . . go, Morren. Let him rot on Old Earth, and preserve what you can for Your Emperor."
"As Your Majesty wishes."
LIV
THE WIND COMING Off the Inland Sea streamed the once-black cloak from his shoulders like wings, and the red sun perched on the western horizon outlined him like a black marble statue above the angled stones and marble columns that remained.
The oldest of the old cities, that was all the cat-eyed people had called it, but ruins were ruins, whether they were buried beneath the purpled clay of the high plains, or but half-buried and standing on a hillside above the Inland Sea.
The lower edge of the crimson sun touched the water, and the gray and wispy high clouds melted pink. The dark water took on a maroon tinge. Once it had been called a wine-dark sea, and now it was again, though it was neither sailed nor crossed by the scattered peoples along its shore. That, too, was as it had been in the first beginning.
He had stayed too long, too long after he had helped them found and defend their settlement, too long indeed, for even the children, incredibly quick, bright, bowed as he passed.
He turned until the sun was at his back, not that the fading light carried much warmth, and began to walk upward toward the row of fallen columns for another look at the statue.
His boots clicked on the stone underfoot, the steps fractured and cracked, but still in place.
He nodded a greeting to her, her face already in shadow.
Without further gestures, he sat on the column to her right, squinting as the last rays of the sun cast a glow at the base of the fallen goddess. Her face was beautiful, in the old style, the style of a Caroljoy, but remained expressionless. Her arms were long since gone, but neither she nor he looked to hold or to be held.
He studied the white lines, the unblinking eyes, while the light dimmed.
Soon, the fog would creep in, climbing the hill toward the fallen pillars and tilted white stone blocks.
Glancing down at his cloak, no longer crisp black, but worn, faded almost into olive, with the use of the past years, worn and patched, the last patches those provided by Charletta, who had patched it while complaining that Berin would let her do nothing strenuous until their child was born, until her time had come.
He snorted as he looked at the stone goddess.
"Your time has long gone, and mine also."
If you say so.
"Already, this continent is reawakening. Was the worst of all. I belonged to the dead times."
You cannot die.
"Nor can you."
I lived only while people remembered.
"Remember? Soon I will remember little."
You do not want to remember.
"Don't want to forget either. Where does that leave me?"
She did not answer, and he looked away from the perfect white face of the recumbent woman and watched the upper tip, the last crimson slivers, of the sun drop below the watery horizon, watched the long shadows lengthen, dancing from slow wave to slow wave.
"Well, my lady, we had our times."
It is early for self-pity.
"I forget. You have watched more centuries than I have."
I have seen nothing.
"Have I? Tell me I have seen. Watched while others lived, loved, and died. Watched and killed, killed and watched. Pulled strings, played god, and for what? For what?"
You have lived, if not how you wanted. You have lived.
He could not refute her last statement, and did not try, as he sat on a ruined column, keeping company with a statue, as the twilight became night. Knowing that the next day—the next day, for he had waited too long—he must begin the trip to the place of his beginning.
LV
ABOVE THE FADED olive singlesuit, patched and dusty, hawk-yellow eves glittered beneath tight-curled blond hair. The jaw remained elfin, and the skin smooth, but there was a tiredness behind the youthful features reflected only in the lagging steps, where each stride stopped short of briskness, each step mirrored more than mere fatigue.
The afternoon sun glared down at the solitary figure on the empty road as he trudged westward, staff in hand, pack on back.
The gently rolling hills to his right sported an uneven growth of assorted bushes and trees, none more than twice the traveler's height, and all less than a pair of decades old.
Nodding without pausing, he contemplated what would one day be a forest, recalling when the area had boasted little beyond purpled clay, landpoisons, and a few clumps of the purple grass that had been all that could grow.
Glancing to his left, he observed the recently tilled soil, and the dark green tips of the sponge grains beginning to peer through the soil that retained a tinge of purple.
A faint rumble whispered from the west.
With a sigh, the traveler turned from the packed clay road less than five meters wide and marched northward into the underbrush, finally halting underneath a small oak and seating himself to wait for the road roller to pass on eastward to the newly developed coastal settlements.
Not that anyone expected him, nor wanted him, but meeting even a roller crew in the middle of the piedmont would raise questions, and there would be enough of those when he reached the high plains. Time enough for the questions then.
He stretched out his legs and waited, listening for the faint sounds he hoped were there—the twitter of the insects, the chirp and rustle of remaining or returning birds, as well as the reintroduced species, those few that had been preserved on New Augusta, New Colora, or in reserves throughout the Empire.
The insects resumed their twitters immediately, even before he stopped moving, but the heavy and moist air brought no sounds of birds or other larger species.
As the rumbling of the roller grew from a whisper into a grumbling, the cargo vehicle topped a hill and gathered momentum to plunge down its slope on its eastward route.
Within minutes, the grumbling roar had dwindled back into a whisper.
The traveler stood, flexing his shoulders as if to remove the tightness, reshouldered his backpack, and picked up his heavy, but well-worked staff.
Soon, he would need to refill his water bottle, and to see what he could find to supplement the food he carried. Soon—but not for another five or ten kays, at least.
His steps were even as he returned to the road, where the heavy red dust had already settled back to blur the wide traces of the cargo rollers where they had flattened the right of way even more smoothly than before.
The respite had refreshed him, and his steps were brisker. He began to whistle one of the newer tunes he had composed in the last few years. Although he recalled the older ones, and whistled their now and again in his blacker moments, he usually avoided them and the memories they brought back.
At the top of the next hill, he paused to survey the gentle: hills that rose into the eastern Noram mountains. He could see the darker green of their forested slopes, where the ecological recovery had been quicker than on the slower draining and clay-based hilly plain, where he stood.
How long had it been since he had overflows this area?
He pushed the thought away and started down the western slope of the hill, his booted feet leaving barely a trace on the shoulder of the packed clay road.
Three kays westward, he paused again upon a hilltop, when he saw a single man standing beside a machine—a locally built tractor type pulling a tilling rig.
He shrugged and continued downward, until at last he stood beside the machine, observing the man who struggled with an assembly that controlled the tilling bars dragged by the tractor. The tractor, obvivously of local design and manufac
ture, bore more patches than the traveler's singlesuit, but appeared clean and in good repair.
"Hades . . . ," muttered the operator, refusing to pay any attention to the traveler.
In turn, the traveler seated himself in the midafternoon shade of the large wheels and waited, taking a sip from his nearly empty water bottle.
"Hades . . . double Hades . . . grubbin' Impie design . . ."
The blond man finished the water and replaced the bottle in the harness attached to his pack, stretching his legs out to wait for the other to complete the repair or surrender to the need for assistance.
Clank!
Plop!
A large hammer dropped beside the traveler, who looked up without curiosity.
"Perfectly good machine . . . useless because some idiot tech decided it was easier to copy from a stupid Imperial design . . ."
"That bad?" asked the blond-haired man as he watched the operator clamber down from the tractor.
"Wouldn't be hard at all if I had Imperial tools, three hands, and a graving dock to immobilize the whole stupid assembly!"
The operator had the long-armed and narrow-faced look of shambletown ancestry, but wore a relatively new jumpsuit, which carried only recent dirt and grease. His black hair was short, and he wiped his forehead with a brown cloth, which he replaced in a thigh pocket of the jumpsuit.
"Mind if I take a look?" asked the traveler.
"Be my guest. Not scheduled for a pickup for hours yet. Don't seem to have the tools to fix it."
After nodding sympathetically, the traveler climbed up to the assembly with an ease that spoke of familiarity with both equipment in general and repairs in awkward locales.
The man in the olive jumpsuit frowned as he surveyed the jammed assembly. In one respect, the operator was correct. The Imperial design, obviously adapted from a flitter-door system, was far too complicated.
Still—Imperial designs usually had more than one solution.
He bent over the assembly, looking at the far side upside down. A wry smile creased his face as he straightened and checked the small tool kit which the operator had left.
Not ideal, but he thought what he had in mind would work. Even permanent connections could be removed, if you knew their structure.
Click. Click.
With the right angle, the hidden releases, and an extreme amount of pressure, he managed to get the "permanent" coupling released.
The loss of pressure on the line allowed the assembly to drop into place. With the pressure off the line, he was able to release the other end of the connector.
As the operator had probably known, the check valve was jammed with debris and hardened fluid. Within a few minutes he had it clean again, and ready to reconnect. Doing the best he could, he cleaned out the tubing and the fittings before he reassembled them.
Finally, he closed the tool kit and climbed back down to the puzzled operator.
"Think it should work now. Want to try it?"
The operator shook his head, wiping his forehead once more with the brown cloth.
"How did you do that?"
"Had some familiarity, once, with that sort of design. A few tricks I happened to remember."
"That Hades-fired assembly gives us more problems than the rest of the equipment put together. I've never seen anyone fix one that quickly."
"Luck, I suppose."
"Where are you headed?"
"West."
The operator surveyed the traveler, looked from the patched and faded singlesuit to the western mountains, taking in the backpack and staff resting against the tractor wheels.
"On foot?"
"Simpler that way. No hurry. Feet don't break down if you rest them now and again."
The operator shook his head. "Still a few wild Mazers loose. I wouldn't recommend going much beyond the next check station. Better to catch a ride with one of the road rollers. They'd be happy to take you. They like the company."
The traveler nodded. "Appreciate the suggestion."
"You sure look familiar. Swear I saw you someplace."
"Not likely. Been a long time since I passed this way."
"Well . . . whatever. I appreciate the help. Appreciate it a lot. Anything I can do for you? Like to give you a lift, but . . ." The Recorps operator surveyed the half-tilled field.
"Understand. You've got a job."
The operator nodded. "Stet. Beats running the hills. Even if I don't see the lady more than once a week. Kids always have enough to eat. Not like the old days, bless the captain."
"Pardon?"
"Not like the old days, I said."
The traveler smiled faintly, nodded, and bent to pick up the pack and staff. Straightening, he twirled the staff one-handed and inclined his head momentarily toward the Recorps tech.
"Good luck," he called to the operator as he set out toward the road and the mountains toward which it led.
"Sure not like the old days . . . captain and all . . ." He could hear the operator murmuring as the tech began to check out the equipment before returning to his tilling.
The traveler waited until he had crossed the next hilltop before resuming his whistling.
LVI
THE COMMANDER RAN his eyes over the screen, trying to focus on the words, finally letting them settle midway down the text.
". . . mysterious traveler on the Enron continent has been blamed for the overthrow of two local rulers, at least, for the death of a score of bandits, and for the establishment of a 'devilspawn' settlement on the Inland Sea . . ."
". . . settlement verified, location on grid three, named Stander, allegedly founded in memory of the traveler who departed in a wagon of fire . . ."
". . . not all events reported can be verified, but all verified references fall within a three-century period . . . some evidence to indicate traveler was real Imperial, perhaps a wandering scholar of some sort . . . but . . . would not explain ability with weapons . . . particularly with native arms . . ."
The commander bit his lip. No sooner had he managed to purge the superstitious gobbledygook from the main base records than it was turning up elsewhere on Old Earth.
Reclamation was a serious business, dependent far too much on worn-out equipment—equipment modified so much the original specs were useless—too few supplies, and too few trained personnel. As the Empire continued to shrink, with each subsequent cutback, there were fewer replacement parts, fewer visiting ships of any sort with which to trade for the needed technical equipment the Empire failed to supply.
With all the drawbacks, there was less and less incentive to push back the landpoisons.
His hand touched the screen and sent the report to the system files.
Bad enough that the early captain, whoever he had been, had been turned into a godlike legend. Now he had to contend with other magical forces and legends.
How could he explain the improved environmental monitoring reports from places where Recorps had never been? It had been hard enough to justify the limited Imperial support with the bad reports from the out-continents.
Despite his efforts, and the efforts of the commandants before him, Recorps was shrinking, and the rate of progress slowly but surely declining.
The records showed that four centuries earlier, Recorps had been operating the now-closed Scotia station, and that two centuries before that the Noram effort had crossed the Momiss River. Yet they still had not completed the eastern sections of Noram, despite the efforts in the Brits and on the fringes of Euron.
There never were enough techs, let alone enough officer-grade types, to fill the positions necessary. The Admin complex was filled with empty offices, empty quarters, empty labs.
Still, the spouts were less severe, and far less frequent, and there hadn't been a stone rain in Noram in over a century, and summer ice rains were a rarity, rather than the norm they had once been.
"Hard work . . . ," he muttered. Hard work, that was what had caused the improvement, not the magic of some tr
aveler in mysterious Enron, or some long-dead captain.
Even that captain, he rationalized, had worked hard. He hadn't used magic, no matter what the old locals insisted, no matter what the Corwin tapes had said, no matter what the old songs said.
It would be so easy to give up, to assume things would still get better without Recorps. But until the Imperial and Recorps effort had begun, what had there been? Savages and shambletowns, a declining local population, and despair. Who wanted to go back to that?
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