The Bloodwing Voyages

by Diane Duane

  The later Rihannsu historians have almost unanimously joined in condemning Lai i-Ramnau tr’Ehhelih for suggesting that the Rihannsu brought this devastating result on themselves by leaving Vulcan in the first place, and thus “running away from the problem” that should have been solved as a whole planet before they left. “They brought their wars with them in the ships,” he said in Vehe’rrIhlan, the “Non-Apology.” “Their aggression, which they fought so hard to keep, was their silent passenger, their smuggled-on stowaway, the one voice not raised at meeting. But for all its silence, they knew it was there. They brought their problem with them when they fled it, as all do who part company with a trouble before it is completely resolved. Change of place is not solution of problem, change of persons is not solution of problem, but they threw even this shred of logic away when they left Vulcan. They attempted to become a new culture, but they went about this mostly by turning their backs on the old one. One who follows such a course is still following nothing but the old programming in reverse, or twisted—as if a computer programmer turned over a punch card and ran it backward. The results may look new, but the card is the same, and the program is the same, and sooner or later terribly familiar results will follow. The travelers fought for the freedom to fight. They won the freedom, but they also won the fighting….”

  They killed Lai tr’Ehhelih some years after he wrote those words, and his works were expunged in many kingdoms and councillories. In others, mostly eastern strongholds on ch’Havran, they were carefully hidden and preserved, which is fortunate. Otherwise we should know nothing of this hated, feared, angry little man, who told the truth as he saw it, and was so universally condemned. In retrospect, there may have been something to the truth he told. The Two Worlds have never been at peace with each other or themselves, and the first thousand years of their settlement were a broil of violence. The warfare led finally to unity and a sort of power, but the union was uneasy, and the power passed frequently from one hand to another, and never rested easy in any.

  The government of ch’Rihan and ch’Havran, as mentioned before, began as extensions both of the civil structure of the ships and the governmental structure on Vulcan. Unfortunately, the first of these proved more divisive than inclusive, and the settlement scheme for the Two Worlds began to interfere almost immediately with the second.

  Originally there was supposed to be in the Two Worlds: one Councillory—consisting of the Grand Council of the planet (to which each local clan, tribe, or city sent one or more representatives) and the High Council (consisting of the thirty most senior councillors from the Grand Council, and ten of the most junior). By choice, people had been widely scattered in settlement, so as not to overtax natural resources. But not every family had its flitter anymore. The Rihannsu had brought maybe a thousand small vehicles with them among the surviving ships, and every trip in every one of them was grudged. Most of them were solar-powered, true, but there was the matter of spare parts, wear and tear, and so forth. For those first years, status was often reckoned not in land (of which many people had a great deal) but transportation.

  With mobility so decreased, it was no longer a matter of simply calling a Grand Council meeting and having people flit in casually from all over the planet, every week or so. There had to be fewer meetings. It was a logistical problem getting everyone together, especially in the years before the communications networks were completely settled in place. With fewer meetings, more problems piled up to be handled, and the meetings had to be long—a problem, since pre-Reformation Vulcans were no fonder than the post-Reformation ones of spending endless hours in pursuit of bureaucracy. Less got done in council meetings, both the Grand Council and the High one. The High Council in particular suffered from quick turnover in the early years, as many of the oldest councillors were in extreme old age, and there was less continuity of experience than was usual. More misunderstandings and mismanagements cropped up than had done at home on Vulcan, and people at home were often dissatisfied with the results.

  In addition, there were more things to fight about than there had been in the old days…both more concrete problems and more abstract ones. Not only were there the familiar divisions, but blocs that voted with what ship they had been in. These “ship-blocs” often disastrously divided votes on important matters. Land—its boundaries and use of its resources—often became an issue, and there could be as many as fifteen or twenty factions—subdivisions of clans, tribes, or ship-blocs—fighting over who would get what. Here again, tr’Ehhelih may have told the right truth: even in the midst of plenty the Rihannsu could not get the context of the ancient scarcity of good land out of their minds, or their hearts. The squabbles, raids, and annexations were endless.

  Government was slowed down by both these sets of problems at times when it could hardly afford to be, during the first half-century of the Settlement. Its ill function caused its collapse, an abrupt one, and the Ruling Queen’s rise.

  The most obvious trigger of the bloody events was the terrible famine in the south continent on ch’Havran, during which almost half of the fifteen hundred people scattered across it died of starvation in the seventy-eighth year after the settlement. But it could be said that the system had already been staggering under a burden of distances increased beyond management, and reduced logistical and technological support. It was bound to fall soon, and perhaps the sooner the better. However, the Councils fell badly, and the toll in lives and resources—and honor—was high.

  The Ruling Queen’s rise is paradoxical to this day, even among Rihannsu. She was one of those people with that inexplicable quality that Terrans call “charisma” and Rihannsu “nuhirrien,” “look-toward.” People would listen to her, gladly give her things they could hardly spare, forgive her terrible deeds. Her power was astonishing, and unaccountable. She was not a great physical beauty, or a very mighty warrior, or marvelously persuasive, or any of the other things people normally find attractive. She simply had that quality, like Earth’s Hitler, like (at the other end of the spectrum) Surak, of being followed. Some have used the word “sociopath” to describe her, but the term loses some of its meaning in Rihannsu culture, where one is expected to reach out one’s hand and take what one wants…as the travelers did.

  T’Rehu was a north continent Grand Councillor’s daughter who succeeded her father in office after his death. (Rihannsu political offices to this day change hands by birth succession rather than election, except when relatives are lacking or there is dishonor involved. A Senator whom his district considers substandard cannot be voted out of office, but his senatoriate can send him their swords by way of suggestion that he use them on himself. Very rarely is the suggestion ignored.)

  At first there seemed nothing special about her. She was capable enough, and her councillory (Elheu district, in the ship-bloc nation called Nn’Verih) prospered, and its clans with it. As time went on, however, others looked at their prosperity and became suspicious of it, noticing that the neighbors of Elheu were dying off, or being killed in inexplicable feuds, and ceding their lands—choice ones—to Elheu. No one quite had the nerve to suggest treachery, but all the same, puppets of T’Rehu’s house or members of her family were soon sitting in the council chairs of more and more Nn’Verih districts. And there were disturbing reports of armed raids, House-burnings, forced marriages, and mind-betrothals, forced conceptions and births so that children related to T’Rehu’s House would inherit councillories and (after suitable training in her house) dance to her lyre.

  Not all of these reports were true, of course. But it seems true enough that T’Rehu was vastly dissatisfied with the way the council system worked. Numerous families of her district had, in her youth, suffered from terrible lack of the basic needs: food in that part of the continent was scarce, there were famines and plagues, good medical help was hard to come by. No one knows whether the story is true that T’Rehu lost a lover to lunglock fever because the council “could not afford” to send a healer out with the vaccine,
newly developed and very expensive. It may be propaganda generated by one of T’Rehu’s people. But even if it is, the story was probably truth somewhere else, painfully indicative of the kind of suffering that went on in the Two Worlds during their early days.

  Time passed and the problem grew too slowly, perhaps, for either the Grand Council or High Council to perceive it clearly in their busy and infrequent meetings. The population increased in Nn’Verih, and most especially in Elheu, increased almost fifty percent over twenty years. Scientists were welcome in Nn’Verih, especially if they specialized in fertility or cloning. The place got a great name for research, though where the money for it was coming from, and the facilities, was often in question. The usual explanation was that Elheu had political connections with the Ship-Clans. People who looked too closely into the question tended to stop abruptly, either out of seeming choice or because they were suddenly nowhere to be found.

  And rather suddenly, about sixty years after the settlement, Elheu had an army. Oddly enough, this came as a surprise. For all its warfare, Vulcan was never very good at organizing it: there had been no standing armies. A leader with a cause would raise what force he could by spreading the news around as to why one should fight: if you convinced people well enough, you would have a larger army than your enemy, and you would have a chance to beat them. Then after your victory (Elements granting you won), everyone would do what looting and spoiling they felt was necessary, and take the booty home to their own clans and tribes. For these reasons, alliances were never considered to have any more permanence than a pattern of dust on a windy day: you could not keep the force that had made you worth allying with. A standing army would have been considered an outrageous expense. Where would you keep them? And more important, where would they get food and water?

  This situation was probably fortunate: if Vulcan had supported the standing-army concept, there would probably be nothing there now but sand, burying the tallest spires of the last-standing cities. What was unfortunate was that ch’Rihan did have enough resources of local food and water to support large organized groups of people. T’Rehu had made the conceptual jump, and invented the standing army. She did not sit around thinking of things to do with it for more time than was absolutely necessary.

  She did wait a while, however. She waited until it was perfectly obvious to both the Grand Council and High Council what she was likely to do if anyone crossed her. Between the years 60 and 72 A.S. she made pointed examples of a few small territories not far from Elheu. She massed troops on their border (only a matter of a couple of thousand, but in those days, those were numbers to be reckoned with) and then had them sent false intelligence that, for political purposes, she was bluffing them. Predictably, to look bold before the other Houses, they defied her. T’Rehu then came down on them—little pieces of the world, county-sized by Earth standards, full of gentleman farmers busy scratching their livings out of a still-protesting planet—and she burned their crops and houses and killed those who resisted, and captured those who did not. If they entered her service willingly, well. If they did not, she turned her adepts loose on the captives and had them mind-changed, so that they went into her service anyway. If the mindchange didn’t work, the captives in question were never seen again.

  The Grand Council immediately convened and went into uproar. T’Rehu went among them, utterly cool—as well she might have been, with her bodyguard about her. Very nearly she swept the Sword off the Empty Chair and took it for herself, but at the last moment prudence or fear prevented her. She had her guards overturn the Master Councillor’s chair, with him in it, and sat down there herself with her S’harien across her lap, unsheathed—one of the few of the great swords that Surak did not put aboard the ships himself. There she stayed for a noisy half hour, and let them rave about honor and outrage. “Say what you like, and do what you like,” she said at last, “I am your mistress now. Idiots and old men shall not run my land anymore, nor any other I can get my hands on.”

  This panicked the council, as well it might have. Perhaps a hundred of the three hundred twelve of them had lands that bordered on T’Rehu’s…or might later, at the rate she was going. Councillors from the other continents were scornful. Granted that the woman had out-stepped her bounds on the north continent, and should be punished, but how could she hope to transport an army across the seas, or to ch’Havran?

  She merely smiled and reminded them of her friendship with the Ship-Clans. Many hearts went cold in their owners’ sides as they remembered the mass transports lying in hangar-bays in the four ships, each transport capable of handling five hundred people at a time. There were more than enough transports to manage a smallish army…or a largish one.

  They did the only thing they could think of, they offered her the Master Councillory, the lordship of the Grand Council, if she would hold her hand. S’task stood up at that and walked out of council, which he had been attending by courtesy (High Councillors might, though they had to ask permission of the Grandees). “I did not give you leave to go,” the imperious voice rang out behind him.

  “I have no need to ask it, of you especially,” said S’task. His voice was not so firm as it had been once: he was very old, even by Vulcan standards, and troubled with circulatory and bone-marrow problems that may have been caused by cumulative radiation exposure on the journey. But he was as fierce as he had ever been, and few dared to cross his mild voice when it was raised in either Council.

  “I shall kill you if you do not ask leave,” said T’Rehu, standing up with the S’harien in her hand.

  He turned to her, and the carefully preserved council tape records, for all that they have been copied hundreds of times, still clearly show the cool scorn in his eyes. It might have been Surak dealing with some childish flaw in logic. “You may do so,” he said. “That is the prerogative of force. But I give no honor to force. Power, yes. But you have no power, none that I recognize. I ask no leave of you.” And he walked out of chambers, while T’Rehu stood behind him with the sword shaking in her hand.

  “You will not do that twice!” she cried, and then found her composure again, and was seated, while the chamber stirred and murmured in fear at the terrible audacity of the woman who would challenge the authority of the father of the Two Worlds, the leader of the journey. Their fear became too much for them. Possibly had they united against her then, they might have stopped her. There might have been a war, but it would have been a small one.

  They did not unite against her. They gave T’Rehu the Grand Councillorship, and for a while it held her quiet as she played with the politics of the “lower house” and amused herself. But it did not hold her long, and the thought of her rebuff in front of the Grandees still rankled. She waited for an excuse, and one presented itself.

  There are several theories for the cause of the famine in the south continent in 78 A.S. The accusation that T’Rehu started it herself is probably baseless: Rihannsu biotechnology was not far enough along to make germ warfare at all likely. As far as anyone can tell from the records remaining, the weather was quite enough to do it—one of those paradoxical years that happens in many a temperate climate, when winter simply refuses to let go, and temperatures remain subnormal all year long. Freak weather killed most of the imported cultivated graminiformes, and the south continent people were short of other staples. They would not plant “the wretched root,” and so had none when it might have saved their lives. Help was marshaled and sent from other continents and nations, but not quickly enough to save a thousand lives. Part of this (though T’Rehu did all she could to conceal the fact) was the sheer stubbornness of the southerners: they had a tradition of bearing suffering without complaint as they had in Gorget and Vengeance. And without complaint they died, by hundreds. The help arrived too late.

  To T’Rehu, it was a gift from the Elements. She swept into the Grand Council and delivered them a long diatribe, berating them for not doing better for the people in their care. (Carefully she avoided any line of r
easoning that might have indicated she, as Master Councillor, was at all responsible for “her” governing body’s failures.) “It will not be allowed to happen again,” she said, and the next day she informed the High Council that the Master Councillor required them to meet.

  They sent back to say that the “request” was incorrectly made, but nonetheless they would accommodate her. What the forty had not been expecting was to find her waiting in chambers for them the next morning, with five cohorts of a hundred warriors each standing outside (and many of them inside that crowded little room as well). T’Rehu told them that their rule was ineffective. Others better suited to handling the affairs of two great worlds would now assume it.

  The forty, to their credit, did not freeze as completely as the Grand Council had. They had suspected something of T’Rehu’s intent, and had come armed; they defied her. But her eye was not on them. She was watching S’task. He rose up, and slowly and carefully turned his back on her, and headed toward the chamber doors.

  “I have not given you leave,” she said, and this time her voice was heard to be shaking in the hush that had fallen on the room.

  S’task said never a word.

  She signed to her guard, and one of them threw a dart-spear at S’task, and it pierced his side and his heart, and that was the end of him. Only he lifted up his head as he lay there bleeding out his life in the uproar and the massacre that followed, and he said to T’Rehu, “The beginning is contaminated, and force will not avail you, or it.”

  So he died there, two hundred forty-eight years old, in the building whose cornerstone he had laid, as he had laid the cornerstone of the journey itself. Not many missed the irony that it was the old “Vulcan,” the way of kings and queens and unbridled passions and wars, for which he had fought, that had killed S’task at last.