They gave him the lead. He pelted across the glade where he had settled, toward the trees that walled it. The bare sky bore death. Between the trunks, shrubs and withes grew thick, stiffly resistant. Old skill came back to him and he parted them with economical movements of arms and shins. Adzel must follow more cautiously, lest he leave a trampled trail; but each of his strides was longer than the man's. Chee traveled easily from branch to branch.
Falkayn guessed they had gone three kilometers when a whistling sounded overhead. Glancing up, he saw one of the vehicles as it moved toward Streak. The lean shape belonged to an Avelan, produced for human-occupied planets after the Shenna scare made them arm to some degree, as formidable a war machine as he had feared. The insigne painted upon it was the linked figure eights of united Babur. It and its like had surely been bought through dummies years ago, and put in care of human mercenaries.
Relief fountained in Falkayn when it passed out of sight. It had not spied them.
"Let me take a look," Chee called. Adzel tossed her a pair of binoculars adjustable to her eyes, and she swarmed aloft.
Falkayn felt glad of the halt. He wasn't yet tired. On a clear track he could still run his thirty klicks without breathing unduly hard. But this was a chance to let his senses range around, to become part of the world instead of its being a set of obstacles.
Late afternoon light speared among boles and boughs from a blue in which small clouds wandered. The trees hereabouts were mainly stonebark, now leafless, and rainroof, whose canopies were gone yellow but would provide cover if he picked his way with forethought. The forest floor was less overgrown in this area of summer shade than it had been around his landing spot. Its new-fallen cover scrunched beneath his feet, sending up a rich, damp odor. Ornithoids flitted among bare twigs and buzzbugs danced in the sunbeams like dustmotes. A sudden powerful sense of—not homecoming—longing gripped Falkayn. Was this his country yet, or had he roamed away from it for overly many years?
No time to mope about that. Chee scampered back down. "I saw our bandit descend, and the other's hovering above, evidently at the boat," she reported. "They'll soon find nobody's minding that store."
"We had best move fast," Adzel proposed.
"No," Falkayn decided. "Not till we know how thorough they're going to be. Let's get tucked away while we can, especially you, old bulligator."
Chee returned to her post while Adzel squeezed into a thicket. Falkayn used his blaster to slash bushes and boughs, which he laid across the Wodenite's protruding tail. He himself could more readily hide—
The Cynthian zipped to the ground and across it. "School's out," she snapped. "They're coming on impellers, four men flying a search spiral. What d'you bet they've got a sniffer?"
Falkayn stiffened. Short of a cave, there would be no concealment from an instrument sensitive to the gases of breath and perspiration. Wild animals might cause delays with false alarms, but hardly enough to do the hunted any real good.
This could be the end, after all our years of luck. The thought was strange. Aloud, idiotically, he asked, "How would they happen to have a sniffer?"
"Precaution against guerrillas, or maybe guerrillas already are active," Chee said. "Only one of the flyers seems to've carried any, though. Else they'd have two parties in motion."
"Could we take to the air ourselves?"
"Chu, no! Where've your wits gone? We'd be seen for sure, this close to them."
Adzel spoke from the coppice: "I'll register much the most strongly when they come in range. You two proceed. Let me stay and decoy them."
"Have your brains turned to oatmeal too?" Chee snorted.
"Listen, friends, it is impossible in any event for me to escape—"
Intelligence slammed back into Falkayn like sword into sheath. "Sunblaze!" he cried. "Turn that notion inside out. Adzel, you stay put. Chee, come along with me. Guide me on a course that'll make them scent us first."
Her ears lifted. "What have you in mind?"
"Hurry, move, you jittertongue!" Falkayn said. "I'll explain as we run."
He stood beneath a rainroof at the edge of a stand of stonebark, whose limbs and twigs traced a skeletal pattern across what he could see of the sky. It hummed above him, and his hunters glided into view, well clear of the treetops. They were human but didn't seem so, the impellers on their backs like thick, paired fins, the helmets on their heads like naked bone, metal agleam in the level light. Otherwise they wore unfamiliar gray uniforms, and three of them carried energy guns whose long barrels bespoke heavy destructive capacity. The leader, who flew lower than the rest, bore a box with scanners and intake valves on its front, meters on its rear: yes, a sniffer.
That man pointed. A bolt raved from the weapon of another, scything dazzlingly across limbs that fell off and crashed downward in bitter-smelling smoke. An amplified voice boomed in accented Anglic: "Come out in sight or we'll burn the ground you're on!"
Falkayn stepped forth, empty hands raised. He was beyond fear. But every sense was at its keenest pitch, he saw each separate fallen leaf under his boots, heard it rustle, felt it give beneath his tread, he knew how a breeze whispered the sweat away from his cheeks, he drank fragrances of growth and healthy decay, it felt impossible to him that Chee's presence did not shout a warning.
The soldiers paused. "That's right, hold where you are," the voice ordered. The four of them conferred. They would naturally be wary of any ambush. However, their instrument had told of just this single man . . . .
An arboreal animal clinging to a high branch didn't count. It was inconspicuous, its fur gray with black spots, its posture that of a creature frozen into terrified immobility. Chee had rolled in the humus below the dead leaves. And the men were not Hermetians, they knew nothing of the planet's wildlife. Perhaps none of them had even noticed her.
One remained high. His companions came down to take the prisoner. As they passed near the Cynthian, she whipped her blaster from under her belly and opened fire.
The first bolt struck the sniffer, slashed through the cover and in among the circuits. He who bore it screamed and let go. The shot trailed across him, searing shut the mortal wound it made. His body continued down on its impeller, brokenly dangling.
Her second ray missed. It only got her target on the leg. But that put him out of action. He fled straight up, his own shrieks horrible to hear.
The third blazed at Chee. She had already slipped behind the trunk and was on her way groundward, springing from bough to bough across meters of air. He slewed his gun about in search of Falkayn, but Falkayn was back under foliage. Hermetian and Cynthian snapped shots from what shelter they had. The soldier retreated. In blind fury, he and his unhurt companion sent flame after flame. Where those struck, wood burst and soil steamed. Hundreds of wings lifted in panic, till cries well-nigh drowned out the flat thunder.
It was useless. Slipping from cover to cover, Falkayn was out of that area within seconds. Chee had less trouble moving invisibly. When they rejoined Adzel, she went on high and glimpsed no hostiles, apart from the one aircraft at hover. The mercenaries must have helped their wounded mate back.
"And they'll be without a sniffer till somebody brings a replacement," Falkayn said. As he had not been afraid earlier, he was not exultant now; he merely knew what he must do, and momentum carried him headlong. "We've got to be far gone before then. We'll start off now, slowly and ultracautiously. Come nightfall, which thank God is soon, we'll move fast. I mean fast." To the Wodenite: "Never mind any more noble self-sacrifices, huh? You carry me, and Chee on my back, and we will have a good speed without needing rest stops." Yes, he thought, the old team is still working rather well, and pointed to a landmark glimpsed between trees, an unmistakable snowpeak. "Steer yonderward. That way are my people."
XVI
Hornbeck occupied a plateau jutting from a lower flank of Mount Nivis. North beyond a forest climbed the heights, up to where whiteness forever gleamed. In the west also the horizon was ridged, but to eas
t and south vision met just sky at the end of plowlands. The gray stone manor house stood a little apart from a thorp of lesser dwellings and other buildings. Here was the origin of the Falkayn domain, in timber and iron; though its enterprises had since spread planetwide, here was still its heart.
Walking along a road that wound among the fields, he saw them empty at this season, stubble and bare brown soil except when cattle in pastures cropped the last Earthside grass which autumn had left. The day was clear, windless, and cool; so great a silence filled it that the scrunch of his boots on gravel seemed mysteriously meaningful. Far overhead a steelwing hovered, alert for prey. No cars flew by to trouble it, nor did any move across the ground. The whole settlement had withdrawn: sending few messages to the outside world and those curt; sending few of its members there and those, closemouthed, on the briefest of errands; inviting no visitors—as if in preparation for onslaught.
Which it would soon undergo, in a form more dangerous to it than physical attack, Falkayn thought.
He and his mother had come forth, this morning after his arrival, to talk together away from last night's loving turmoil. But for half an hour they walked speechless. After the years that had passed, he could not be sure what she was thinking. He himself found he could not dwell on plans. His body was too busy remembering.
Athena Falkayn finally took the word. She was a tall woman, still handsome and vigorous, white hair falling thick past her shoulders. Like her son, she wore a coverall ornamented by the family patch; but she had added a necklace of fallaron amber.
"David, dear, I was too happy to see you again, too horrified at the risks you've run and then realizing you did come through them safe—I couldn't say this erenow. Why are you really here?"
"I told you," he answered.
"Yes. To take over from Michael, as is your right."
"And my duty."
"No, David. You know better. John and Vicky"—her remaining two children, living elsewhere—"and their spouses are perfectly competent. For that matter, I was essentially in charge after your father died, Michael being away so much with his naval work. Or have you grown so foreign to us that you don't believe we can cope?"
Falkayn winced and rubbed his face. It was gaunt from days of hard traveling, living off the country; his party had not dared fly. "Never," he replied. "But with my, well, my experience—"
"Could you not have applied that more usefully in space, helping organize the war effort?" The glance she sent on high, where ships patrolled, was like a shaken fist.
"I doubt it," he said roughly. "Do you suppose the Commonwealth government would have any part of me? As for van Rijn—well, maybe I've made a bad mistake. Or maybe not. But . . . look, Hermes has always been at peace. The rough and tumble of history is unreal to you—to everybody living on this planet—no more than a set of names and dates we learn as children, and forget afterward because they mean nothing to us. I, though, I've seen war, tyranny, conquest, upheaval, among scores of races. It made me visit sites on Earth, from Jericho and Thermopylae to Hiroshima and Vladivostok, only there were more of them in between than anybody could have time for . . . . I know something about how these horrors work. Not much—the League's got plenty of people as well informed as I am or better—but I can claim more understanding than most Hermetians."
He gripped her arm. "Before I go on, please let some air into this vacuum I've been talking in," he craved. "Tell me what the situation is. I heard mention of a social revolution sponsored by the occupation authorities, but no details. Everybody yesterday was excited and—Lord, it did get to be one hooraw of a sentimental occasion, didn't it? Plus the cursing of traitors who've stirred up the Travers. It can't be as simple as that."
"No, 'tis not," Athena agreed. "Maybe you can see a pattern, different from what I fear I see."
"Tell me."
"Well, I'm a light-year from having all the facts, and I may be shading those I do have, according to my own biases. You should talk to others, consult news records—"
"Yes, of course." Falkayn laughed sadly. "Mother, I'm fifty years old. Uh, that's forty-five Hermetian."
Her smile responded in the same mood. "And I can't feel, I suppose I can believe but I can't feel it's been that long since the doctor laid you down on my stomach and I heard what a fine pair of lungs you had."
They walked on. The road was interrupted by a plank bridge crossing the Hornbeck itself. They halted at the middle and leaned on the rail, looking down through the water to the stones on the bottom which it made ripply. The current clucked.
"Well," she said in a low monotone, "you know the Baburites came into this system and announced we were their protectorate. They meant to take our few warships, but Michael led those out.
"Michael," she said again after a second, in pride and mourning.
Wyvernflies danced above the brook, golden on gauzy wings.
"I imagine Lady Sandra needed a moonful of nerve then," she continued. "The fleet gone, her oldest son with it—what an excuse to depose her. She must have stood up to those creatures and made them see that she alone could maintain a government, that otherwise they'd inherit anarchy on a planet about which they were nigh totally ignorant. Which was true. Her purpose is to save our lives, our way of living, as many and as much as she can. If she has to compromise, well, I at least will thank her for whatever she can keep."
Falkayn nodded. "You're wise, Mother. Listening to some of those hotheads last night . . . Help me tell them there's nothing romantic about war and politics."
Athena sent her gaze toward a glacier which gleamed under the snows of Mount Nivis. "Soon afterward, the Baburites brought in oxygen-breathing mercenaries, mostly human," she said. "Happens I've a little information about those, because the Duchess asked me to get folk I could trust to make inquiries, since businesses of our domain would inevitably be dealing with the occupiers and Lady Sandra knew I've always been close to our chief Followers.
"The humans and nonhumans are both a motley lot, recruited over a period of years—from the broken, the embittered, the greedy, the outlawed, the amoral, the heedless adventurous."
Falkayn nodded. Expanding through space with the speed and blindness of a natural force, Technic civilization had bred many such. "Recruitment alone must have required quite an organization, backed by plenty of resources," he said.
"'Tis plain," Athena answered. "I suppose their upper-echelon officers knew part of the truth; but the ranks weren't told. The story they were handed was this: A consortium of investors, who wanted to stay anonymous, was quietly preparing a free-lance army, crack troops who'd hire out at high prices wherever they might. That might be on behalf of societies which found themselves meeting a threat like the Shenna; or it might be to assist would-be imperialists venturing outside of known space. There was a strong hint that the Ymirites in particular were interested in that and would find oxygen-breathing auxiliaries useful on smaller worlds—for instance, to exact tribute in the form of articles manufactured to order."
Falkayn let a corner of his mouth bend upward. "I almost have to, no, I do have to admire their audacity," he said. "Ymir was a natural choice, however; it's a favorite object of superstition."
Because we know hardly a byte about it, he recalled. Our name for a giant planet, dwarfing Babur, whose inhabitants are traveling and colonizing through space but apparently uninterested in any close contact with us—or else have decided we're too hopelessly alien.
"I wonder why you, the League, got no inkling of all that recruitment," Athena said. "The best estimate I can make, from what reports of conversations I've gathered—and, yes, between us, interrogations of a few kidnapped soldiers—some small guerrilla activity has begun, we disown it publicly but word does filter back to us—" She drew breath. "Never mind. Mainly, my folk have counted the occupying troops as well as possible. They number about a million. Other information suggests that about as many more are being held in reserve."
Falkayn whistled.
&
nbsp; And yet—"It's quite understandable why no intelligence of it reached us," he told her. "A couple of million individuals, collected piecemeal in tens of thousands of places on dozens of planets, they don't amount to a particularly noticeable statistic. Intrigues are forever going on anyway.
"Maybe agents of one or two companies did get some intimations. But if so, they or their bosses didn't see fit to pass the information on to the rest of us and push for a full investigation. Communication between members of the League is not what it used to be."
Space is too big, and we too divided.
Athena sighed. "I've gathered that.
"Well. The soldiers were warned they'd be in isolation for years. But the accumulating pay was excellent, and apparently some fairly lavish recreational facilities were provided, everything from beer halls and brothels to multi-sense library service. And of course the planet where they were sent had its natural wonders to explore, grim though 'twas, marginally terrestroid, hot, wet, perpetually clouded."
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