The People of the Wind

by Poul Anderson

  “I remind you about eggs and grandmothers, Ensign. Of course they have. Powerful, complicated set-ups, plus rings of exterior surface-to-space launchers. We’ll be firing our biggest and best, programmed for detonation at high sub-stratospheric altitude. The pattern I’m about to diagram should allow one, at least, to reach that level before it’s intercepted. If not, we start over.”

  “Sir! You don’t mean a continent buster!”

  “No, no. Calm down. Remember this ship couldn’t accommodate any. We have no orders to damage His Majesty’s real estate beyond repair. Ours will be heavy brutes, true, but clean, and shaped to discharge their output straight ahead, mainly in the form of radiation. Blast wouldn’t help much against the negafields. We’ll whiff the central part of town, and Intelligence tells me the fringes are quite flammable.”

  “Sir, I don’t want to annoy you, but why do we do it?”

  “Not wantonly, Ozumi. A landing is to be made. Planetside warfare may go on for a while. This particular town, Centauri they call it, is their chief seaport and industrial capital. We are not going to leave it to send stuff against our friends.”

  Sweat stood on Ozumi’s brow. “Women and children—”

  “If the enemy has any sense, he evacuated nonessential persons long ago,” Munteanu snapped. “Frankly, I don’t give a curse. I lost a brother here, last time around. If you’re through sniveling, let’s get to work.”

  Quenna flapped slowly above the Livewell Street canal. Night had fallen, a clear night unlike most in the Delta’s muggy winters because of that and the blackout, she could see stars? They frightened her. Too many of the cold, nasty little things. And they weren’t only that, she was told. They were suns. War came from them, war that screwed up the world.

  Fine at first, lots of Ythrians passing through, jingle in their purses, moments when she forgot all except the beauty of the male and her love for him; in between, she could afford booze and dope to keep her happy, especially at parties. Parties were a human idea, she’d heard. (Who was it had told her? She tried to remember the face, the body. She would be able to, if they didn’t blur off into the voices and music and happy-making smoke.) A good idea. Like war had seemed. Love, love, love, laugh, laugh, laugh, sleep, sleep, sleep, and if you wake with your tongue tasting bad and needles in your head, a few pills will soon put you right.

  Except it went sour. No more navy folk. The Nest empty, a cave, night after night after night, till a lass was ready to scream except that the taped music did that for her. Most humans moving out, too, and those who stayed — she’d even have welcomed human company — keeping underground. The black, quiet nights, the buzzing aloneness by day, the money bleeding off till she could barely buy food, let alone a bottle or a pill to hold off the bad dreams.

  Flap, flap. Somebody must be in town and lonesome, now the fighting had started again. “I’m lonesome too,” she called. “Whoever you are, I love you.” Her voice sounded too loud in this unmoving warm air, above these oily waters and dead pavements, between those shadowy walls and beneath those terrible little stars.

  “Vodan?” she called more softly. She remembered him best of the navy folk, almost as well as the first few who had used her, more years back than she cared to count. He’d been gentle and bothered about his lass at home, as if that dragglewing deserved him. But she was being silly, Quenna was. No doubt the stars had eaten Vodan.

  She raised her crest. She had her deathpride. She would not be frightened in the midnight streets. Soon dawn would break and she could dare sleep.

  The sun came very fast.

  She had an instant when it filled the sky. Night caught her then, as her eyeballs melted. She did not know this, because her plumage was on fire. Her scream drowned out the following boom, when superfast molecules of air slipped by the negafields, and she did not notice how it ruptured eardrums and smashed capillaries. In her delirium of pain, there was nothing except the canal. She threw herself toward it, missed, and fell into a house which stood in one blaze. That made no difference, since the canal waters were boiling.

  Apart from factors of morale and war potential, the strike at Centauri must commit a large amount of Avalonian resources to rescue and relief. It had been well timed. A mere three hours later, the slot which had been prepared in the defenses completed itself and the first wave of invasion passed through.

  Rochefort was in the van. He and his hastily assembled crew had had small chance to practice, but they were capable men and the Meteor carried out her assignment with an élan wished he could feel. They ran interference for the lumbering gunships till these were below the dangerous altitude. En route, they stopped a pair of enemy missiles. Though no spacecraft was really good in atmosphere, a torpedo boat combined acceptable maneuverability, ample firepower, and more than ample wits aboard. Machines guided by simple robots were no match.

  Having seen his charges close to ground, Rochefort took his vessel, as per assignment, against the source of the missiles. It lay beyond the mountains, in the intensely green gorge of a river. The Terran boats roared one after the next, launched beams and torpedoes against negafields and bunkers, stood on their tails and sprang to the stratosphere, swept about and returned for the second pass. No third was needed. A set of craters gaped between cuffs which sonic booms had brought down in rubble. Rochefort wished he could forget how fair that canyon had been.

  Returning to Scorpeluna, he found the whole convoy landed. Marines and engineers were swarming from personnel transports, machines from the freighters. Overhead, patrol craft darkened heaven. They were a frantic few days that followed. Hysteria was never far below the skin of purposeful activity. Who knew for certain what the enemy had?

  Nothing came. The screen generators were assembled and started. Defensive projectors and missiles were positioned. Sheds were put together for equipment, afterward for men. And no counterattack was made.

  Airborne scouts and spaceborne instruments reported considerable enemy activity on the other continents and across the islands. Doubtless something was being readied. But it didn’t appear to pose any immediate threat.

  The second slot opened. The second wave flowed down, entirely unopposed. Scorpeluna Base spread like an ink-blot.

  His intention now being obvious, Cajal had various other orbital fortresses destroyed, in order that slots come more frequently. Thereafter he pulled his main fleet back a ways. From it he poured men and equipment groundward.

  The last Avalonian ships edged nearer, fled from sorties, returned to slink about, wolves too starveling to be a menace. No serious effort was wasted on them. The essential was to exploit this tacit cease-fire while it lasted. On that account, the Imperials everywhere refrained from offensive action. They worked at digging in where they were and at building up their conquest until it could not merely defend itself, it could lift an irresistible fist above all Avalon.

  Because he was known to have the favor of the grand admiral, Lieutenant Philippe Rochefort (newly senior grade) got his application for continued planetside duty approved. Since there was no further call for a space torpedo craft, he found himself flying aerial patrol in a two-man skimmer, a glorified gravsled.

  His assigned partner was a marine corporal, Ahmed Nasution, nineteen standard years old, fresh off New Djawa and into the corps. “You, know, sir, everybody told me this planet was a delight,” he said, exaggerating his ruefulness to make sure his superior got the point. “Join the navy and see the universe, eh?”

  “This area isn’t typical,” Rochefort answered shortly.

  “What is,” he added, “on an entire world?”

  The skimmer flew low above the Scorpelunan plateau. The canopy was shut against broiling air. A Hilsch tube arrangement and self-darkening vitryl did their inadequate best to combat that heat, brazen sky, bloated and glaring sun. The only noises were hum of engine, whirr of passage. Around the horizon stood mountain peaks, dim blue and unreal. Between reached emptiness. Bushes, the same low, reddish-leaved, medici
nal-smelling species wherever you looked, grew widely apart on hard red earth. The land was not really flat. It raised itself in gnarly mesas and buttes, it opened in great dry gashes. At a distance could be seen a few six-legged beasts, grazing in the shade of their parasol membranes. Otherwise nothing stirred save heat shimmers and dust devils.

  “Any idea when we’ll push out of here?” Nasution asked, reaching for a water bottle.

  “When we’re ready,” Rochefort told him. “Easy on the drink. We’ve several hours to go, you and I.”

  “Why doesn’t the enemy give in, sir? A bunch of us in my tent caught a ’cast of theirs — no orders not to, are there? — a ’cast in Anglic. I couldn’t understand it too well, their funny accent and, uh, phrases like ‘the Imperials have no more than a footgrip,’ you have to stop and figure them out and meanwhile the talking goes on. But Gehenna, sir, We don’t want to hurt them. Can’t they be reasonable and—”

  “Sh!” Rochefort lifted an arm. His monitoring radio identified a call. He switched to that band.

  “Help! O God, help! — Engineer Group Three… wild animals… estimate thirty-four kilometers north-northwest of camp — Help!”

  Rochefort slewed the skimmer about.

  He arrived in minutes. The detail, ten men in a ground-car, had been running geological survey to determine the feasibility of blasting and fuse-lining a large missile silo. They were armed, but had looked for no troubles except discomfort. The pack of dog-sized hexapodal lopers found them several hundred meters from their vehicle.

  Two men were down and being devoured. Three had scattered in terror, seeking to reach the car, and been individually surrounded. Rochefort and Nasution saw one overwhelmed. The rest stood firm, back to back, and maintained steady fire, Yet those scaly-bristly shapes seemed almost impossible to kill. Mutilated, they dragged their jaws onward.

  Rochefort yelled into his transmitter for assistance, swooped, and cut loose. Nasution wept but did good work at his gun. Nevertheless, two more humans were lost before the lycosauroids had been slain.

  After that, every group leaving camp got an aerial escort, which slowed operations elsewhere.

  “No, Doctor, I’ve stopped believing it’s psychogenic.” The major glanced put of the dispensary shack window, to an unnaturally swift sunset which a dust storm made the color of clotted blood. Night would bring relief from the horrible heat… in the form of inward-gnawing chill. “I was ready to believe that at first. Your psychodrugs aren’t helping any longer, though. And more and more men are developing the symptoms, as you must know better than I. Bellyache, diarrhea, muscle pains, more thirst than this damned dryness will account for. Above all, tremors and fuzzy-headedness. I hate to tell you how necessary a job I botched today.”

  “I’m having my own troubles thinking.” The medical officer passed a hand across his temple. It left a streak of grime, despite the furnace air sucking away sweat before that could form drops. “Frequent blurred vision too? Yes.”

  “Have you considered a poison in the environment?”

  “Certainly. You weren’t in the first wave, Major. I was. Intelligence, as well as history, assured us Avalon is acceptably safe. Still, take my word, we’d scarcely established camp when the scientific team was checking.”

  “How about quizzing Avalonian prisoners?”

  “I’m assured this was done. In fact, there’ve been subsequent commando operations just to collect more for that purpose. But how likely are any except a few specialists to know details about the most forbidding part of a whole continent that nobody inhabits?”

  “And of course the Avalonians would have all those experts safely tucked out of reach.” The major gusted a weary breath. “So what did your team find?”

  The medical officer groped for a stimpill out of the open box on his desk. “There is a, ah, high concentration of heavy metals in local soil. But nothing to worry about. You could breathe the dust for years before you’d require treatment. The shrubs around use those elements in their metabolism, as you’d expect, and we’ve-warned against chewing or burning any part of them. No organic compounds test out as allergens. Look, human and Ythrian biochemistries are so similar the races can eat most of each other’s food. If this area held something spectacularly deadly, don’t you imagine the average colonist would have heard of it, at least? I’m from Terra — middle west coast of North America — oh, Lord—” For a while his gaze was gone from Scorpeluna. He shook himself. “We lived among oleanders. We cultivated them for their flowers. Oleanders are poisonous. You just need to be sensible about them.”

  “This has got to have some cause,” the major insisted.

  “We’re investigating,” the medic said. “If anyone had foreseen this planet would amount to anything militarily — it’d have been studied before ever we let a war happen, so thoroughly — Too late.”

  Occasional small boats from the Avalonian remnants slipped among the Terran blockaders at high velocity and maximum variable acceleration. About half were destroyed; the rest got through and returned spaceward. It was known that they exchanged messages with the ground. Given suitable encoding and laser beams, a huge amount of information can be passed in a second or two.

  “Obviously they’re discussing a move,” Cajal snarled at his staff. “Equally obviously, if we try to hunt them, they’ll scatter and vanish in sheer distance, sheer numbers of asteroids and moons, same’s they did before. And they’ll have contingency plans. I do not propose to be diverted, gentlemen. We shall keep our full strength here.”

  For a growing body of observations indicated that, on land and sea, under sea and in their skies, the colonists were at last making ready to strike back.

  Rochefort heard the shrieking for the better part of a minute before it registered on him. Dear Jesus, dragged through his dullness, what ails me? His muscles protested bringing the skimmer around. His fingers were sausages on the control board. Beside him, Nasution slumped mute, as the boy had been these past days (weeks? years?). The soft cheeks had collapsed and were untidily covered by black down.

  Still, Rochefort’s craft arrived to help those which had been floating above a ground patrol. The trouble was, it could then do no more than they. Energy weapons incinerated at a flash hundreds of the cockroach-like things, twenty centimeters long, whose throngs blackened the ground between shrubs. They could not save the men whom these bugs had already reached, and were feasting on. Rochefort carefully refrained from noting which skimmer pilots gave, from above, a coup de grace. He himself hovered low and hauled survivors aboard. After what he had seen, in his present physical shape, Nasution was too sick to be of use.

  Having evidently gotten wind of meat in this hungry land, the kakkelaks swarmed toward the main base. They couldn’t fly, but they clattered along astonishingly fast. Every effort must go to flaming a cordon against them.

  Meanwhile the Avalonians landed throughout Equatoria. They deployed so quickly and widely — being very lightly equipped — that bombardment would have been futile. All who entered Scorpeluna were Ythrian.

  The chief officers of medicine and planetology confronted their commandant. Outside, an equinoctial gale bellowed and rang through starless night; dust scoured over shuddering metal walls. The heat seemed to come in enormous dry blasts.

  “Yes, sir,” the medical chief said. Being regular navy rather than marine, he held rear admiral’s rank. “We’ve proven it beyond reasonable doubt” He sighed, a sound lost in the noise. “If we’d had better equipment, more staff — Well, I’ll save that for the board of inquiry, or the court-martial. The fact is, poor information got us sucked into a death trap.”

  “Too many worlds.” The civilian planetologist shook his gaunt head! “Each too big. Who can know?”

  “While you gabble,” the commandant said, “men lie in delirium and convulsions. More every day. Talk.” His voice was rough with anger and incomplete weeping.

  “We suspected heavy-metal poisoning, of course,” the medical off
icer said. “We made repeated tests. The concentration always seemed within allowable limits. Then overnight—”

  “Never mind that,” the planetologist interrupted. “Here are the results. These bushes growing everywhere around… we knew they take up elements like arsenic and mercury. And the literature has described the hell shrub, with pictures, as giving off dangerous vapors. What we did not know is that here is a species of hell shrub. It looks entirely unlike its relatives. Think of roses and apples. Besides, we’d no idea how the toxin of the reported kind works, let alone these. That must have been determined after the original descriptions were published, when a purely organic compound was assumed. The volume of information in every science, swamping—” His words limped to a halt.

  The commandant waited.

  The medical officer took the tale: “The vapors carry the metals in loose combination with a… a set of molecules, unheard of by any authority I’ve read. Their action is, well, they block certain enzymes. In effect, the body’s protections are canceled. No metal atoms whatsoever are excreted. Every microgram goes to the vital organs. Meanwhile the patient is additionally weakened by the fact that parts of his protein chemistry aren’t working right. The effects are synergistic and exponential. Suddenly one crosses a threshold.”

  “I… see…” the commandant said.

  “We top officers aren’t in too bad a condition yet,” the planetologist told him. “Nor are our staffs. We spend most of our time indoors. The men, though—” He rubbed his eyes. “Not that I’d call myself a well man,” he mumbled.

  “What do you recommend?” the commandant asked.

  “Evacuation,” the medical chief said. “And I don’t recommend it, I tell you we have no alternative. Our people must get immediate proper care.”

  The commandant nodded. Himself sick, monstrously tired, he had expected some such answer days ago and started his quiet preparations.