The People of the Wind

by Poul Anderson

  “The peace treaty remains to be formulated,” said the drained voice. “I can tell you in strict confidence, Governor Saracoglu has sent to the Imperium his strongest recommendation that Avalon not be annexed.”

  Vickery started babbling. Liaw held stiff. Holm gusted a breath and sat back.

  They’d done it; They really had.

  The talk would go on, of course. And on and on and on, along with infinite petty particulars and endless niggling. No matter. Avalon would stay Ythrian — stay free.

  I ought to whoop, he thought. Maybe later. Too tired now.

  His immediate happiness, quiet and deep, was at knowing that tonight he could go home to Rowena.

  XIX

  There were no instant insights, no dramatic revelations and reconciliations. But Arinnian was to remember a certain hour.

  His work for his father had stopped being very demanding. He realized he should use the free time he had regained to phase back into his studies. Then he decided that nothing was more impractical than misplaced practicality. Tabitha agreed. She got herself put on inactive duty. Eventually, however, she must return to her island and set her affairs in order, if only for the sake of her partner’s family. Meanwhile he was still confined to Gray.

  He phoned Eyath at her rented room: “Uh, would you, uh, care to go for a sail?”

  Yes, she said with every quill.

  Conditions were less than perfect. As the boat left the bay, rain came walking. The hull skipped over choppy olive-dark waves, tackle athrum water slanted from hidden heaven, long spears which broke on the skin and ran down in cool splinters, rushing where they entered the sea. “Shall we keep on?” he asked.

  “I would like to.” Her gaze sought land, a shadow aft. No other Vessels were abroad, nor any flyers. “It’s restful to be this alone.”

  He nodded. He had stripped, and the cleanness dwelt in his hair and sluiced over his flesh.

  She regarded him from her perch on the cabin top, across the cockpit which separated them. “You had something to tell me,” she said with two words and her body.

  “Yes.” The tiller thrilled between his fingers. “Last night, before she left—” In Planha he need speak no further.

  “Galemate, galemate,” she breathed. “I rejoice.” She half extended her wings toward him, winced, and withdrew them.

  “For always,” he said in awe.

  “I could have wished none better than Hrill, for you,” Eyath replied. Scanning him closer: “You remain in fret.”

  He bit his lip.

  Eyath waited.

  “Tell me,” he forced forth, staring at the deck. “You see us from outside. Am I able to be what she deserves?”

  She did not answer at once. Startled not to receive the immediate yea he had expected, Arinnian lifted his eyes to her silence. He dared not interrupt her thought. Waves boomed, rain laughed.

  Finally she said, “I believe she is able to make you able.”

  He nursed the wound. Eyath began to apologize, summoned resolution and did not. “I have long felt,” she told him, “that you needed someone like Hrill to show you that — show you how — what is wrong for my folk is right, is the end and meaning of life, for yours.”

  He mustered his own courage to say, “I knew the second part of that in theory. Now she comes as the glorious fact. Oh, I was jealous before. I still am, maybe I will be till I die, unable to help myself. She, though, she’s worth anything it costs. What I am learning, Eyath, my sister, is that she is not you and you are not her, and it is good that you both are what you are.”

  “She has given you wisdom.” The Ythrian hunched up against the rain.

  Arinnian saw her grief and exclaimed, “Let me pass the gift on. What befell you—”

  She raised her head to look wildly upon him.

  “Was that worse than what befell her?” he challenged. “I don’t ask for pity” — human word — “because of past foolishness, but I do think my lot was more hard than either of yours, the years I wasted imagining bodily love can ever be bad, imagining it has any real difference from the kind of love I bear to you, Eyath. Now we’ll have to right each other. I want you to share my hopes.”

  She sprang down from the cabin, stumbled to him and folded him in her wings. Her head she laid murmuring against his shoulder. Raindrops glistened within the crest like jewels of a crown.

  The treaty was signed at Fleurville on a day of late winter. Little ceremony was involved and the Ythrian delegates left almost at once. “Not in very deep anger,” Ekrem Saracoglu explained to Luisa Cajal, who had declined his invitation to attend. “By and large, they take their loss philosophically. But we couldn’t well ask them to sit through our rituals.” He drew on his cigaret. “Frankly, I too was glad to get off that particular hook.”

  He had, in fact, simply made a televised statement and avoided the solemnities afterward. A society like Esperance’s was bound to mark the formal end of hostilities by slow marches and slower thanksgiving services.

  That was yesterday. The weather continued mild on this following afternoon, and Luisa agreed to come to dinner. She said her father felt unwell, which, regardless of his liking and respect for the man, did not totally displease Saracoglu.

  They walked in the garden, she and he, as often before. Around paths which had been cleared, snow decked the beds, the bushes and boughs, the top of the wall, still white although it was melting, here and there making thin chimes and gurgles as the water ran. No flowers were left outdoors, the air held only dampness, and the sky was an even-dove-gray. Stillness lay beneath it, so that footfalls scrunched loud on gravel.

  “Besides,” he added, “it was a relief to see the spokesman for Avalon and his cohorts board their, ship. The secret-service men I’d assigned to guard them were downright ecstatic.”

  “Really?” She glanced up, which gave him a chance to dwell on luminous eyes, tip-tilted nose, lips always parted as if in a child’s eagerness. But she spoke earnestly — too earnestly, too much of the time, damn it “I knew there had been some idiot anonymous death threats against them. Were you that worried?”

  He nodded. “I’ve come to know my dear Esperandans. When Avalon dashed their original jubilation — well, you’ve seen and heard the stuff about ‘intransigent militarists.’ ” He wondered if his fur cap hid his baldness or reminded her of it. Maybe he should break down and get a scalp job.

  Troubled, she asked, “Will they ever forget… both sides?”

  “No,” he said. “I do expect grudges will fade. We’ve too many mutual interests, Terra and Ythri, to make a family fight into a blood feud. I hope.”

  “We were more generous than we had to be. Weren’t we? Like letting them keep Avalon. Won’t that count?”

  “It should.” Saracoglu grinned on the left side of his mouth, took a final acrid puff and tossed his cigaret away. “Though everybody sees the practical politics involved. Avalon proved itself indigestible. Annexation would have spelled endless trouble, whereas Avalon as a mere enclave poses no obvious difficulties such as the war was fought to terminate. Furthermore, by this concession, the Empire won some valuable points with respect to trade that might otherwise not have been feasible to insist on.”

  “I know,” she said, a bit impatiently.

  He chuckled. “You also know I like to hear myself talk.”

  She grew wistful. “I’d love to visit Avalon.”

  “Me too. Especially for the sociological interest. I wonder if that planet doesn’t foreshadow the distant future.”

  “How?”

  He kept his slow pace and did not forget her arm resting on his; but he squinted before him and said out of his most serious thought, “The biracial culture they’re creating. Or that’s creating itself; you can’t plan or direct a new-current in history. I wonder if that wasn’t the source of their resistance — like an alloy or a two-phase material, many times stronger than either part that went into it. We’ve a galaxy, a cosmos to fill—”

&nbs
p; My, what a mixed bag of metaphors, including this one, gibed his mind. He laughed inwardly, shrugged outwardly, and finished: “Well, I don’t expect to be around for that. I don’t even suppose I’ll have to meet the knottier consequences of leaving Avalon with Ythri.”

  “What could those be?” Luisa wondered. “You just said it was the only thing to do.”

  “Indeed. I may be expressing no more than the natural pessimism of a man whose lunch at Government House was less than satisfactory. Still, one can imagine. The Avalonians, both races, are going to feel themselves more Ythrian than the Ythrians. I anticipate future generations of theirs will supply the Domain with an abnormal share, possibly most of its admirals. Let us hope they do not in addition supply it with revanchism. And under pacific conditions, Avalon, a unique world uniquely situated, is sure to draw more than its share of trade — more important, brains, which follow opportunity. The effects of that are beyond foreseeing.”

  Her clasp tightened on his sleeve. “You make me glad I’m not a statesman.”

  “Not half as glad as I am that you’re not a statesman,” he said, emphasizing the last syllable. “Come, let’s drop these dismal important matters. Let’s discuss — for example, your tour of Avalon. I’m sure it can be arranged, a few months hence.”

  She turned her face from him. When the muteness had lasted a minute, he stopped, as did she. “What’s the matter?” he asked, frightened.

  “I’m leaving, Ekrem,” she said. “Soon. Permanently.”

  “What?” He restrained himself from seizing her.

  “Father. He sent in his resignation today.”

  “I know he… has been plagued by malicious accusations. You recall I wrote to Admiralty Center.”

  “Yes. That was nice of you.” She met his eyes again.

  “No more than my duty, Luisa.” The fear would not leave him, but he was pleased to note that he spoke firmly and maintained his second-best smile. “The Empire needs good men. No one could have predicted the Scorpeluna disaster, nor done more after the thing happened than Juan Cajal did. Blaming him, calling for court-martial, is wizened spite, and I assure you nothing will come of it”

  “But he blames himself,” she cried low.

  I have no answer to that, he thought.

  “We’re going back to Nuevo Mexico,” she said.

  “I realize,” he attempted, “these scenes may be unduly painful to him. Need you leave, however?”

  “Who else has he?”

  “Me. I, ah, will presumably get an eventual summons to Terra—”

  “I’m sorry, Ekrem.” Her lashes dropped over the delicate cheekbones. “Terra would be no good either. I won’t let him gnaw away his heart alone. At home, among his own kind, it will be better.” She smiled, not quite steadily, and tossed her head. “Our kind. I admit a little homesickness myself. Come visit us sometime.” She chose her words: “No doubt I’ll be getting married. I think, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to name a boy for you.”

  “Why, I would be honored beyond anything the Emperor could hang on this downward-slipping chest of mine,” he said automatically. “Shall we go inside? The hour’s a trifle early for drinks, perhaps; on the other hand, this is a special occasion.”

  Ah, well, he thought above the pain, the daydream was a pleasant guest, but now I am freed from the obligations of a host. 1 can relax and enjoy the games of governor, knight, elevated noble, Lord Advisor, retired statesman dictating interminable and mendacious memoirs.

  Tomorrow I must investigate the local possibilities with respect to bouncy and obliging ladies. After all, we are only middle-aged once.

  Summer dwelt in Gray when word reached Avalon. There had been some tension — who could really trust the Empire? — and thus joy amid the human population exploded in festival.

  Bird, Christopher Holm and Tabitha Falkayn soon left the merriment. Announcements, ceremonies, feasts’ could wait; they had decided that the night of final peace would be their wedding night.

  Nonetheless they felt no need of haste. That was not aloft. It flowed, it sang. The last stars, the sinking moon turned sea and land into mystery; ahead, sharp across whiteness, lifted the mountains of home.

  It was cold but that sent the blood storming within her.

  She thought: He who cared for me and he who got me share the same honor. Enough.

  Muscles danced, wings beat, alive to the outermost pinion. The planet spun toward morning. My brother, my sister have found their joy. Let me go seek my own.

  Snowpeaks flamed. The sun stood up in a shout of light.

  High is heaven and holy.

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