The Day of Their Return df-4

by Poul Anderson

  “Idea seems … chancy, over-subtle … Can any nonhuman fathom our character that well?” he fretted.

  “Remember, in me he is half human,” Jaan replied; “and he has a multimillion-year history to draw on. Men are no more unique than any other sophonts. Caruith espies likenesses among races to which we are blind.”

  “I too grow impatient,” Yakow sighed. “I yearn to see us free, but can hardly live long enough. Yet Caruith is right. We must prepare all Aeneans, so when the day comes, all will rise together.”

  “The trade expansion is a means to that end,” Jaan assured. “It should cause Orcans to travel across the planet, meeting each sort of other Aenean, leavening with faith and fire. Oh, our agents will not be told to preach; they will not know anything except that they have practical bargains to drive and arrangements to make. But they will inevitably fall into conversations, and this will arouse interest, and nords or Riverfolk or tinerans or whoever will invite friends to come hear what the outlander has to say.”

  “I’ve heard that several times,” Ivar replied, “and I still have trouble understandin’. Look, sirs. You don’t expect mass conversion to Orcan beliefs, do you? I tell you, that’s impossible. Our different cultures are too strong in their particular reverences—traditional religions, paganism, Cosmenosis, ancestor service, whatever it may be.”

  “Of course,” Jaan said softly. “But can you not appreciate, Firstling, their very conviction is what counts? Orcans will by precept and example make every Aenean redouble his special fervor. And nothing in my message contradicts any basic tenet of yonder faiths. Rather, the return of the Ancients fulfills all hopes, no matter what form they have taken.”

  “I know, I know. Sorry, I keep on bein’ skeptical. But never mind. I don’t suppose it can do any harm; and as you say, it might well keep spirit of resistance alive. What about me, though? What am I supposed to be doin’ meanwhile?”

  “At a time not far in the future,” Yakow said, “you will raise the banner of independence. We need to make preparations first; mustn’t risk you being seized at once by the enemy. Most likely, you’ll have to spend years offplanet, waging guerrilla warfare on Dido, for example, or visiting foreign courts to negotiate for their support.”

  Ivar collected his nerve and interrupted: “Like Ythri?”

  “Well … yes.” Yakow dismissed his own infinitesimal hesitation. “Yes, we might get help from the Domain, not while yours is a small group of outlaws, but later, when our cause comes to look more promising,” He leaned forward. “To begin with, frankly, your role will be a gadfly’s. You will distract the Empire from noticing too much the effects of Orcans traveling across Aeneas. You cannot hope to accomplish more, not for the first several years.”

  “I don’t know,” Ivar said with what stubbornness he could rally. “We might get clandestine help from Ythri sooner, maybe quite soon. Some hints Erannath let drop—” He straightened in his seat. “Why not go talk to him right away?”

  Jaan looked aside. Yakow said, “I fear that isn’t practical at the moment, Firstling.”

  “How come? Where is he?”

  Yakow clamped down sternness. “You yourself worry about what the enemy may eavesdrop on. What you don’t know, you cannot let slip. I must request your patience in this matter.”

  It shuddered in Ivar as if the wind outside blew between his ribs. He wondered how well he faked surrender and relaxation. “Okay.”

  “We had better start back,” Yakow said. “Night draws nigh.”

  He turned himself around and then the aircraft. A dusk was already in the cabin, for the storm had thickened. Ivar welcomed the concealment of his face. And did outside noise drown the thud-thud-thud of his pulse? He said most slowly, “You know, Jaan, one thing I’ve never heard bespoken. What does Caruith’s race look like?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” was the reply. “They are more mind than body. Indeed, their oneness includes numerous different species. Think of Dido. In the end, all races will belong.”

  “Uh-huh. However, I can’t help bein’ curious. Let’s put it this way. What did the body look like that actually lay down under scanner?”

  “Why … well—”

  “Come on. Maybe your Orcans are so little used to pictures that they don’t insist on description. I assure you, companyo, other Aeneans are different. They’ll ask. Why not tell me?”

  “Kah, hm, kah—” Jaan yielded. He seemed a touch confused, as if the consciousness superimposed on his didn’t work well at a large distance from the reinforcing radiations of the underground vessel. “Yes. He … male, aye, in a bisexual warm-blooded species … not mammalian; descended from ornithoids … human-seeming in many ways, but beautiful, far more refined and sculptured than us. Thin features set at sharp angles; a speaking voice like music—No.” Jaan broke off. “I will not say further. It has no significance.”

  You’ve said plenty, tolled in Ivar.

  Talk was sparse for the rest of the journey. As the car moved downward toward an Arena that had become a bulk of blackness studded with a few lights, the Firstling spoke. “Please, I want to go off by myself and think. I’m used to space and solitude when I make important decisions. How about lendin’ me this flitter? I’ll fly to calm area, settle down, watch moons and stars—return before mornin’ and let you know how things appear to me. May I?”

  He had well composed and mentally rehearsed his speech. Yakow raised no objection; Jaan gave his shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “Surely,” said the prophet. “Courage and wisdom abide with you, dear friend.”

  When he had let the others out, Ivar lifted fast, and cut a thunderclap through the air in his haste to be gone. The dread of pursuit bayed at his heels.

  Harsh through him went: They aren’t infallible. I took them by surprise. Jaan should’ve been prepared with any description but true one—one that matches what Tanya relayed to me from Commissioner Desai, about Merseian agent loose on Aeneas.

  Stiffening wind after sunset filled the air around the lower mountainside with fine sand. Lavinia showed a dim half-disc overhead, but cast no real light; and there were no stars. Nor did villages and farmsteads scattered across the hills reveal themselves. Vision ended within meters.

  Landing on instruments, Ivar wondered if this was lucky for him. He could descend unseen, where otherwise he would have had to park behind some ridge or grove kilometers away and slink forward afoot. Indeed, he had scant choice. Walking any distance through a desert storm, without special guidance equipment he didn’t have along, posed too much danger of losing his way. But coming so near town and Arena, he risked registering on the detectors of a guard post, and somebody dispatching a squad to investigate.

  Well, the worst hazard lay in a meek return to his quarters. He found with a certain joy that fear had left him, as had the hunger and thirst of supperlessness, washed away by the excitement now coursing through him. He donned the overgarment everyone took with him on every trip, slid back the door, and jumped to the ground.

  The gale hooted and droned. It sheathed him in chill and a scent of iron. Grit stung. He secured his nightmask and groped forward.

  For a minute he worried about going astray in spite of planning. Then he stubbed his toe on a rock which had fallen off a heap, spoil from the new excavation. The entrance was dead ahead uphill, to that tunnel down which Jaan had taken him.

  He didn’t turn on the flashbeam he had borrowed from the car’s equipment, till he stood at the mouth. Thereafter he gripped it hard, as his free hand sought for a latch.

  Protection from weather, the manmade door needed no lock against a folk whose piety was founded on relics. When he had closed it behind him, Ivar stood in abrupt silence, motionless cold, a dark whose thickness was broken only by the wan ray from the flash. His breath sounded too loud in his ears. Fingers sought comfort from the heavy sheath knife he had borne from Windhome; but it was his solitary weapon. To carry anything more, earlier, would have provoked instant suspicion.


  What will I find?

  Probably nothin’. I can take closer look at Caruith machine, but I haven’t tools to open it and analyze. As for what might be elsewhere … these corridors twist on and on, in dozen different sets.

  Noneless, newest discovery, plausibly barred to public while exploration proceeds, is most logical place to hide—whatever is to be hidden. And—his gaze went to the dust of megayears, tumbled and tracked like the dust of Luna when man first fared into space—I could find traces which’ll lead me further, if any have gone before me.

  He began to walk. His footfalls clopped hollowly back off the ageless vaulting.

  Why am I doin’ this? Because Merseians may have part in events? Is it bad if they do? Tanya feels happy about what she’s heard. She thinks Roidhunate might really come to our aid, and hopes I can somehow contact that agent.

  But Ythri might help too. In which case, why won’t Orcan chiefs let me see Erannath? Their excuse rings thin.

  And if Ancients are workin’ through Merseians, as is imaginable, why have they deceived Jaan? Shouldn’t he know?

  (Does he? It wouldn’t be information to broadcast. Terran Imperium may well dismiss Jaan’s claims as simply another piece of cultism, which it’d cause more trouble to suppress than it’s worth … but never if Imperium suspected Merseia was behind it! So maybe he is withholdin’ full story. Except that doesn’t feel right. He’s too sincere, too rapt, and, yes, too bewildered, to play double game. Isn’t he?)

  I’ve got to discover truth, or lose what right I ever had to lead my people.

  Ivar marched on into blindness.

  XX

  A kilometer deep within the mountain, he paused outside the chamber of Jaan’s apotheosis. His flashbeam barely skimmed the metal enigma before seeking back to the tunnel floor.

  Here enough visits had gone on of late years that the dust was scuffed confusion. Ivar proceeded down the passage. The thing in the room cast him a last reflection and was lost to sight. He had but the one bobbing blob of luminance to hollow out a place for himself in the dark. Now that he advanced slowly, carefully, the silence was wellnigh total. Bad-a-bad, went his heart, bad-a-bad, bad-a-bad.

  After several meters, the blurriness ended. He would not have wondered to see individual footprints. Besides Jaan, officers of the Companions whom the prophet brought hither had surely ventured somewhat further. What halted him was sudden orderliness. The floor had been swept smooth.

  He stood for minutes while his thoughts grew fangs. When he continued, the knife was in his right fist.

  Presently the tunnel branched three ways. That was a logical point for people to stop. Penetrating the maze beyond was a task for properly equipped scientists; and no scientists would be allowed here for a long while to come. Ivar saw that the broom, or whatever it was, had gone down all the mouths. Quite reasonable, trickled through him. Visitors wouldn’t likely notice sweepin’ had been done, unless they came to place where change in dust layers was obvious. Or unless they half expected it, like me … expected strange traces would have to be wiped out …

  He went into each of the forks, and found that the handiwork ended after a short distance in two of them. What reached onward was simply the downdrift of geological ages. The third had been swept for some ways farther, though not since the next-to-last set of prints had been made. Two sets of those were human, one Ythrian; only the humans had returned. Superimposed were other marks, which were therefore more recent.

  They were the tracks of a being who walked on birdlike claws.

  Again Ivar stood. Cold gnawed him.

  Should I turn right around and run?

  Where could I run to?

  And Erannath—That decided him. What other friend remained to the free Aeneans? If the Ythrian was alive.

  He stalked on. A pair of doorways gaped along his path. He flashed light into them, but saw just empty chambers of curious shape.

  Then the floor slanted sharply downward, and he rounded a curve, and from an arch ahead of him in the right wall there came a wan yellow glow.

  He gave himself no chance to grow daunted, snapped off his beam and glided to the spot. Poised for a leap, he peered around the edge.

  Another cell, this one hexagonal and high-domed, reached seven meters into the rock. Shadows hung in it as heavy, chill, and stagnant as the air. They were cast by a ponderous steel table to which were welded a lightglobe, a portable sanitary facility, and a meter-length chain. Free on its top stood a plastic tumbler and water pitcher, free on the floor lay a mattress, the single relief from iridescent hardness.

  “Erannath!” Ivar cried.

  The Ythrian hunched on the pad. His feathers were dull and draggled, his head gone skull-gaunt. The chain ended in a manacle that circled his left wrist.

  Ivar entered. The Ythrian struggled out of dreams and knew him. The crest erected, the yellow eyes came ablaze. “Hyaa-aa,” he breathed.

  Ivar knelt to embrace him. “What’ve they done?” the man cried. “Why? My God, those bastards—”

  Erannath shook himself. His voice came hoarse, but strength rang into it “No time for sentiment. What brought you here? Were you followed?”

  “I g-g-got suspicious.” Ivar hunkered back on his heels, hugged his knees, mastered his shock. The prisoner was all too aware of urgency; that stood forth from every quivering plume. And who could better know what dangers dwelt in this tomb? Never before had Ivar’s mind run swifter.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think they suspect me in turn. I made excuse to flit off alone, came back and landed under cover of dust storm, found nobody around when I entered. What got me wonderin’ was letter today from my girl. She’d learned of Merseian secret agent at large on Aeneas, telepath of some powerful kind. His description answers to Jaan’s of Caruith. Right away, I thought maybe cruel trick was bein’ played. Jaan should’ve had less respect for my feelin’s and examined—I didn’t show anybody letter, and kept well away from Arena as much as possible, before returnin’ to look for myself.”

  “You did well.” Erannath stroked talons across Ivar’s head; and the man knew it for an accolade. “Beware. Aycharaych is near. We must hope he sleeps, and will sleep till you have gone.”

  “Till we have.”

  Erannath chuckled. His chain clinked. He did not bother to ask, How do you propose to cut this?

  “I’ll go fetch tools,” Ivar said.

  “No. Too chancy. You must escape with the word. At that, if you do get clear, I probably will be released unharmed. Aycharaych is not vindictive. I believe him when he says he sorrows at having to torture me.”

  Torture? No marks … Of course. Keep sky king chained, buried alive, day after night away from sun, stars, wind. It’d be less cruel to stretch him over slow fire. Ivar gagged on rage.

  Erannath saw, and warned: “You cannot afford indignation either. Listen. Aycharaych has talked freely to me. I think he must be lonely, shut away down here with nothing but his machinations and the occasional string he pulls on his puppet prophet. Or is his reason that, in talking, he brings associations into my consciousness, and thus reads more of what I know? This is why I have been kept alive. He wants to drain me of data.”

  “What is he?” Ivar whispered.

  “A native of a planet he calls Chereion, somewhere in the Merseian Roidhunate. Its civilization is old, old—formerly wide-faring and mighty—yes, he says the Chereionites were the Builders, the Ancients. He will not tell me what made them withdraw. He confesses that now they are few, and what power they wield comes wholly from their brains.”

  “They’re not, uh, uh, super-Didonans, though … galaxy-unifyin’ intellects … as Jaan believes?”

  “No. Nor do they wage a philosophical conflict among themselves over the ultimate destiny of creation. Those stories merely fit Aycharaych’s purpose.” Erannath hunched on the claws of his wings. His head thrust forward against nacre and shadow. “Listen,” he said. “We have no more than a sliver of time at best. Don�
�t interrupt, unless I grow unclear. Listen. Remember.”

  The words blew harshly forth, like an autumn gale: “They preserve remnants of technology on Chereion which they have not shared with their masters the Merseians—if the Merseians are really their masters and not their tools. I wonder about that. Well, we must not stop to speculate. As one would await, the technology relates to the mind. For they are extraordinary telepaths, more gifted than the science we know has imagined is possible.

  “There is some ultimate quality of the mind which goes deeper than language. At close range, Aycharaych can read the thoughts of any being—any speech, any species, he claims—without needing to know that being’s symbolism. I suspect what he does is almost instantly to analyze the pattern, identify universals of logic and conation, go on from there to reconstruct the whole mental configuration—as if his nervous system included not only sensitivity to the radiation of others, but an organic semantic computer fantastically beyond anything that Technic civilization has built.

  “No matter! Their abilities naturally led Chereionite scientists to concentrate on psychology and neurology. It’s been ossified for millions of years, that science, like their whole civilization: ossified, receding, dying … Perhaps Aycharaych alone is trying to act on reality, trying to stop the extinction of his people. I don’t know. I do know that he serves the Roidhunate as an Intelligence officer with a roving commission. This involves brewing trouble for the Terran Empire wherever he can.

  “During the Snelund regime, he looked through Sector Alpha Crucis. It wasn’t hard, when misgovernment had already produced widespread laxity and confusion. The conflict over Jihannath was building toward a crisis, and Merseia needed difficulties on this frontier of Terra’s.