The Final Planet

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The Cardinal raised her staff higher, the Brigid cross on the end of it glowing momentarily with the brightness of the sun. Lightning, still make-believe and still effective, jumped in all directions—along the City walls, across the River, into the ranks of Narth’s army, up the side of the Island, down the newly harvested plain, and to the tops of the snow-capped mountains in the distance.

  Ah, it was quite a show.

  Panic-stricken, the rebel army broke and ran in wild chaos, the insanely clicking hordi, poor things, leading the way. Hovercrafts nosed over, rafts capsized, canoes loaded with weapons floundered, horses galloped off in terror. The River filled with bobbing hordi heads. Fortunately the poor things seemed able to swim.

  For good measure, herself raised the cross higher still. It glowed with space darkness for a fraction of a second. The sky turned black and the whole world shook with thunder. And more thunder. And yet more thunder in an ear-splitting cadenza of primal sound.

  Imaginary thunder of course, but it worked just as well as the real thing. The clouds dissipated quickly and it was once again a lovely harvest morning.

  The late Narth’s army was finished. It would be at least a generation before anyone would attack the City again.

  Conscious that his woman and his friends had gathered around him, awed by what was really, to tell the truth, only a minor trick show, Seamus stood stock-still in the fullness of his relief and pride. Ah, the bitch is loving every minute of this, he thought as she lowered her crozier and seemed actually to wink at him.

  Just to the right of the awestruck rank of Young Ones, two squads of Wild Geese poured out of the Michael Collins and the Thomas Patrick Doherty. They carried their blue plow-and-stars flag and were dressed in white electronic-protective armor, their black cloaks flowing behind them, phasers ready to fire. Further down the River, there was another blast as the Napper Tandy glided to a soft landing.

  “It took you long enough to get here,” said Seamus O’Neill.

  “O’Neill, will you never learn that you are not the hinge of history?” She was grinning broadly. “When the City was obviously collapsing, we decided more positive action was required before Narth gained control of the food and energy resources and eliminated the only remnants of sanity and order on this heathenish planet. I admit that it’s a little strange to think of you representing sanity and order, but the Holy Rule says work with what you have. We trusted you could hang on in the City long enough for us to get to you.”

  “You might have given us a hint you were coming,” he argued.

  “Och, Seamus, you didn’t think we’d leave you here among all these heathens, did you?” The Lady Deirdre was not only grinning broadly, which was unusual enough, she was laughing. “Sure weren’t you after inviting us to come, and aren’t you—” the woman actually guffawed, something Seamus had never witnessed before “—Lord O’Neill himself?”

  More Wild Geese were pouring out of the Tandy, and the Brian Borou was settling down in the distance. His own platoon—with a grinning Fergus in command—was marching on the double toward them. The young Zylongi skirmish line remained in astonished silence, not comprehending what had happened or what was being said.

  Deirdre continued in Spacegael: “Now, O’Neill, I have something for you to do that just may suit your talents, something you can perform adequately for a change.” Then in perfect Zylongian, “Far be it from me, Colonel O’Neill, to give you military advice, but if you wish to supplement your own excellent troops with a few platoons of Wild Geese, you may want to restore some order in the City. You may also wish to leave your talented and charming … uh … ‘proper woman’ with us so that we can treat her injury. She can help us with communications.” And the Captain put her arm gently around the astonished Marjetta. “Can’t you, my dear?”

  “Yes, Deirdre,” the little imp replied, inordinately pleased with herself.

  The Young Ones, fascinated by their new allies, fanned out with Fergus’s platoon of Wild Geese and began to march back into their City. The silence of the morning air of Zylong was rent again, now by the mournful but implacable wail of Celtic warpipes. They had almost reached the gate when the sound of massive retrorockets roared behind them again.

  Out on the Island the smoke cleared; there on the highest hill a great, gray spaceship settled slowly to the ground. The Peregrinatio of the Iona was over.

  The chapel bell rang softly across the waters. It was time for Morning Song.

  27

  The Captain Abbess did not normally entertain in her own quarters, considering that such entertainments were not in keeping with her understanding of holy poverty.

  Besides, it was such a nuisance.

  However, exceptions were made on special occasions. It was her custom to entertain a very select group after the midnight Mass of Christmas. This Christmas, the first on the planet recently renamed “Tyrone,” she shared fruitcake and brandy in her austere study with Diarmuid MacDiarmuid, the ancient and venerable Prior, Sean Murphy, the young and very shrewd Subprior, Brigadier Liam Carmody of the Wild Geese regiment and his wife, Maeve, and General Seamus Finnbar O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and his pregnant wife, Lady Margaret—called Pegeen by almost everyone—O’Neill.

  The Countess, now charmingly plump, announced to the small company that of all the things she liked on the island of Iona, the best was the Lady Deirdre’s fruitcake.

  Her husband was glum. He was always glum at Christmastime, but to make matters worse, he had had a shouting fight with the Abbess before the Mass. Now, he was angry at himself for having lost his temper. She had not returned his anger, which meant that she had won. He wished Pegeen would stop babbling, damn the woman. Was that all she was good for anymore? Prattling about fruitcake? She had become a Taran biddy in short order.

  Pegeen. Glory be to God, what can you do about a name like that? Of course she loved it; she loved everything about the Iona—the stained glass in the chapel, the library, which she was devouring book by book, the plainsong, the services, the monks, the nuns, and the Wild Geese. It was as though the whole damn pilgrimage had been put together for her entertainment. The “wee leprechaun lass” was an instant hit with the whole monastery. Having to share his wife with monks, nuns, and a regiment of Wild Geese was poor reward for all the risks he’d taken on this planet.

  It isn’t fair.

  His ruminations came full circle—back to his argument with Deirdre. It had begun with his complaining about the close—too close, he thought—relationship between Marjetta and Deirdre. He was tired of having an Abbess for a mother-in-law, he had said—half in fun and half in earnest. “Ah, sure, Seamus, what’s a poor old woman to do when she sees a queen coming into her territory? She had better be after making her peace with the new woman.”

  He answered irritably, “You’re daft, woman. What do you mean a ‘queen’? She’s just a Captain in an army that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “’Tis not so, Seamus O’Neill,” she replied calmly, fingering her pectoral cross. “You may not be much of an Earl—that will take time to tell; sure it was nothing on your part that deserved it—but you have found for yourself a real queen in that wee lass.”

  That’s when all hell broke loose. After the big blowup and after she had floored him with the whole story of his mission, Deirdre must have felt sorry for his obvious deflation because she had asked with more concern than she usually displayed, “You are not really dissatisfied with Pegeen, are you?”

  “Ah, musha, I’ve not taken leave of all my senses. I suppose I’ve got nothing to complain about along those lines. She’ll do until someone better comes along.”

  Even now, blathering away and munching on the fruitcake, Marjetta was enough to make O’Neill’s throat tighten and his eyes fill with tears. A touch from her hand and he melted into slush. There was hardly a minute of the day when she wasn’t in the back of his mind. There she was, accepting another “wee sip” of the abbatial brandy. He sighed. The creature had a very
bad effect on the woman’s sexual appetites; it increased them enormously, pregnant or not. It looked like another long night for Seamus O’Neill—and on the Holy Feast of Christmas. He sighed again. He thought of Ernie and Sammy. It had been a long time.

  The thought of Sammy took him back to that first day after Iona had landed. His orders were to restore some discipline in the City. He sent the main body of his force of pacifiers into the Central Quarter to secure what was left of the Energy Center. O’Neill took a squad in the direction of the jail to rescue Sammy. Along with them was Cathy Houlihan as medical “adviser,” a superb doctor who never lost her nerve in a fight or a crisis. The wind was dying; it was time to begin bringing in the wounded and injured to the hospital.

  He led his team rapidly through the now quiet streets of the City, past the dead bodies and over the rubble to the ruins of the jail.

  “Seamus, you idjit, what are we after doing here?” Cathy exclaimed.

  “Somewhere in this mess we may be able to find the Director of their hospital. Sure she’ll be useful before the day is out.”

  It took only a few minutes to find the staircase that led down to the tiny dungeon where Sammy was. “Glory be to God!” burst out of Cathy when the heavy metal door was opened and she saw what was inside.

  Sammy was still alive, bleeding badly from wounds opened by her furious struggle with her chains. She was still in the full fury of the frenzy, howling, snarling, screaming. He crammed a tranquillity pill into her foaming mouth. It had its usual effect. Sammy went limp against the chains, collapsing in a heap when Seamus freed her. She would not look up. Seamus gently put the back of his hand against her face.

  “Dr. Houlihan, I would like to present Dr. Samaritha, who has just become the Director of the Body Institute here—hospital, to you. You will excuse her unprepossessing appearance. Through no fault of her own she has had a rather rough time of it.” O’Neill spoke in a formal and dignified tone. Sammy began to pull herself together. She would not look at him, however.

  “I am sure that the Doctor will want to go to the hospital immediately to begin the arduous task of ministering to the wounded and dying. Houlihan, you and the rest of the squad go along with her; offer every assistance possible. I will ask the Captain Abbess to instruct the Pat Moynihan to land in front of the hospital to provide you with auxiliary power. We will send the rest of our medical team in as soon as Dr. Samaritha has determined what needs to be done. Carry on, gentlepersons.” He left quickly to rejoin the main force of the Wild Geese.

  Cathleen told O’Neill later what had happened after he left. A tiny immunized skeleton staff had survived the night of horror hidden behind the walls of the hospital compound, fearing attack by the Hooded Ones. When the popular Samaritha arrived, they sorted themselves out and began to work. Within an hour the Tarans and Sammy’s staff were laboring efficiently together to aid those Zylongi who had dragged themselves to the hospital for treatment. The Moynihan landed a medical team from the Iona shortly thereafter. By the end of the day, the cross-cultural medical team had saved hundreds of lives.

  As Cathy had put it later, with the characteristic ethnocentrism of the Tarans, “She’s a quare heathen person, she is, but a daycent woman just the same; and I’ll speak up for her to anyone, I will. Seamus, she’s a hell of a fine doctor.”

  When O’Neill left the jail, he hastened to the command post that the Wild Geese had established just off the ruins of the Central Plaza. The noise of the shuttlecraft landings, then the troop carriers, and finally the huge monastery, the terrifying appearance of the Geese and the fierce banshee wail of their pipes sent most of the celebrating Zylongi scurrying back to their living spaces in terror. The wind died down in the morning, easing the force of the frenzy. Those Zylongi who still seemed of a mind to continue the killing and raping were quickly dissuaded by the “stun” charge of the phasers carried by the Geese. By noon, what was left of the City was quiet.

  O’Neill was beginning to get things under control when he remembered the tranquillity pills. He got on the communication link to Deirdre. “What have you in the way of defrenzy pills, woman? My people are going to need them by nightfall—not to mention the entire population of Zylong.”

  “Someone as wise as myself could be trusted to have thought of that, O’Neill. Your, er, lass was good enough to help us with a sample of her blood for us to analyze so that we could produce some kind of medication. A secondary investigation into the nature of the wind has produced the theory that the frenzy is in part an allergic reaction to what the wind picks up blowing across the harvested jarndt fields. Just as your man down in Hyperion thought. If you stop the wind, you stop the frenzy.”

  “Sure, ’tis analyses like that that got you those pretty red robes. Now all you have to do is stop the wind.”

  “If we can divert a meteor with our psychic powers, we can stop a wind.”

  Sure enough, the wind stopped just as abruptly as it had begun. A great peace descended on Zylong, a peace so profound and reassuring that Seamus could see Retha and Yens relax as though a vast burden had lifted from their shoulders. They looked at each other with tears in their eyes.

  “In years to come, we must celebrate this day in a new way. This Day of Peace shall be a new Festival by which all our descendants will remember the final ceasing of the wind,” said Yens, holding his wife’s hand.

  “Geemie O’Neill Day,” the delightful little tyke giggled.

  “There will be none of that,” Seamus insisted, without—to tell the truth—too much conviction.

  So the work of reconstruction began. Horor and engineers from the monastery busied themselves repairing the energy station; the computer technicians arranged lines into Podraig—whose language had been considerably cleaned up in deference to Zylongi sensibilities. Yens, as the Chairman of Public Order, in consultation with Fergus Hennessey, posted the daily assignments of Wild Geese patrols. Order slowly emerged.

  * * *

  He worried about Sammy. One day as he was crossing the hospital plaza, Cathy stopped him to sing the praises of Dr. Samaritha again. She had done a brilliant job of restoring the hospital to its former efficiency. “Ah, sure she’s worked hard, she has,” said the golden-haired Cathleen, and pounded the side of the Moynihan, which was still parked there. “The poor thing.”

  “She is that.” He tried to break away from the conversation. He didn’t want to have to think about re-establishing that relationship.

  “It was strange what happened the second day after the hospital reopened—it almost broke my heart, ‘twas so sad,” persisted Cathy. “A new group of badly injured Zylongi had been brought in by a squad of Geese from a quarter of the City that was just being pacified. One of them was a man with a badly shattered skull. Dr. Samaritha hesitated for just a moment, then plunged ahead with dramatic and skillful surgery. Sure she saved that man’s life on the spot. Then,” Cathy paused dramatically for effect and went on, “she turned to me and said, ‘Honored Adviser, perhaps you would not mind if I rest for just a few moments?’

  “‘Heaven help us, woman,’ I said, ‘you’ve earned more than a bit of rest. That was as brilliant a piece of work as I have ever seen. You saved that fellow when I would have given him up for sure. He’s a very distinguished-looking fellow. Must be someone important around here.’

  “‘He directs an orchestra, Honored Adviser,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you find him pleasant. He … he is my mate.’

  “Praise be to Brigid, Patrick, Columcile, and the Holy Mother of God, Seamus, what was there for the two of us to do but break down and weep in each other’s arms. I tell you, man, she’s a fine lady—heathen or not!”

  He told himself that he had to see Sammy and Ernie, had to exchange forgiveness and understanding, had to renew their friendship. Could he do it? He’d asked the Cardinal what she thought, the old witch.

  “Why have you been after waiting so long? And herself expecting a child, like almost every other female on this heathenish p
lanet. The poor things still love you, you idjit. More than ever. Which you don’t deserve at all, at all.”

  * * *

  The reconstruction of the City passed from physical rebuilding to the reformation of the political structure. The first political act of the Council, as the Young Ones had constituted themselves, was to unanimously elect Seamus King. He stormed out of the meeting, saying he would be damned if he would be king of anything, whereupon they revised their agenda, tabled the “King” vote, and respectfully requested that he rejoin them to advise them in their deliberations. They voted themselves into office for a year (providing for their replacement by citizen vote after that time—a detail that was strongly urged on them by O’Neill and of which they had somehow not thought).

  The meeting was adjourned until the next day, when a public ceremony was planned to present the Tarans formally to the citizenry of the City and to exchange pledges of mutual help and support for the future peace and prosperity of the planet.

  It had been a grand sight. In one of the smaller and still intact plazas near the wall, the Council, with their Taran “Advisers,” gathered for its first meeting under the deep purple Zylongian sky. The Young Ones were still clad in their torn and dirty robes (“Turrible pagan clothes,” muttered old Diarmuid); the Wild Geese stood tall and proud in their black and white armor; the monks and nuns waiting for the ceremony to begin made a solid block of Celtic blue in their long dress habits. The Zylongi crowd that had gathered to watch the show were awed at the spectacle. Then the pipers struck up “Deirdre’s March,” and the Abbess approached slowly, clad in her full crimson robes of office with golden Brigid crozier aloft, ascending to her throne in a most regal fashion. The ceremony began officially with speeches, exchanging of scrolls of peace and friendship, and other appropriate gestures of protocol.

  Subprior Murphy had risen to say that he strongly agreed with General O’Neill’s decision to reject the kingship. Sure no good had ever come to any planet from having a King. All they did was want to fight. So, as an alternative, he recommended that the City be governed by someone who should be entitled “Earl,” someone who would preside over the Council and its Taran Advisers and administer the government on a daily basis for no longer than a year’s term—subject, of course, to reelection. He felt that General O’Neill could hardly refuse to accept office under those conditions.