But he did not have to!
When breeding cycles exist, they are controlled by some simple foolproof mechanism. Thus, for many birds on Earth it is the increasing length of the day in springtime which causes mating: the optical stimulus triggers hormonal processes which reactivate the dormant gonads. On Diomedes, this wouldn’t work; the light cycle varies too much with latitude. But once the proto-intelligent Diomedean had gotten into migratory habits — and therefore must breed only at a certain time of the year, if the young were to survive — evolution took the obvious course of making that migration itself the governor.
Ordinarily a hunter, with occasional meals of nuts or fruit or wild grain, the Diomedean exercised in spurts. Migration called for prolonged effort; it must have taken hundreds or thousands of generations to develop the flying muscles alone, time enough to develop other adaptations as well. So this effort stimulated certain glands, which operated through a complex hormonal system to waken the gonads. (An exception was the lactating female, whose mammaries secreted an inhibiting agent.) During the great flight, the sex hormone concentration built up — there was no time or energy to spare for its dissipation. Once in the tropics, rested and fed, the Diomedean made up for lost opportunities. He made up so thoroughly that the return trip had no significant effect on his exhausted glands.
Now and then in the homeland, fleetingly, after some unusual exertion, one might feel stirrings toward the opposite sex. One suppressed that, as rigorously as the human suppresses impulses to incest, and for an even more practical reason: a cub born out of season meant death on migration for itself as wfell as its mother. Not that the average Diomedean realized this overtly; he just accepted the taboo, founded religions and ethical systems and neuroses on it — However, doubtless the vague, lingering year-round attractiveness of the other sex had been an unconscious reason for the initial development of septs and flocks.
When the migratory Diomedean encountered a tribe which did not observe his most basic moral law, he knew physical horror.
Drak’ho Fleet was one of several which have now been discovered by traders. They may all have originated as groups living near the equator and thus not burdened by the need to travel; but this is still guesswork. The clear fact is that they began to live more off the sea than the land. Through many centuries they elaborated the physical apparatus of ships and tackle, until it had become their entire livelihood.
It gave more security than hunting. It gave a home which could be dwelt in continuously. It gave the possibility of constructing and using elaborate devices, accumulating large libraries, sitting and thinking or debating a problem — in short, the freedom to encumber oneself with a true civilization, which no migrator had except to the most limited degree. On the bad side, it meant grindingly hard labor and aristocratic domination.
This work kept the deckhand sexually stimulated; but warm shelters and stored sea food had made his birthtime independent of the season. Thus the sailor nations grew into a very humanlike pattern of marriage and child-raising: there was even a concept of romantic love.
The migrators, who thought him depraved, the sailor considered swinish. Indeed, neither culture could imagine how the other might even be of the same species.
And how shall one trust the absolute alien?
XXI
“It is these ideological pfuities that make the real nasty wars,” said Van Rijn. “But now I have taken off the ideology and we can sensible and friendly settle down to swindling each other, nie?”
He had not, of course, explained his hypothesis in such detail. Lannach’s philosophers had some vague idea of evolution, but were weak on astronomy; Drak’ho science was almost the reverse. Van Rijn had contented himself with very simple, repetitious words, sketching what must be the only reasonable explanation of the well-known reproductive differences.
He rubbed his hands and chortled into a tautening silence. “So! I have not made it all sweetness. Even I cannot do that overnights. For long times to come yet, you each think the others go about this in disgusting style. You make filthy jokes about each other… I know some good ones you can adapt. But you know, at least, that you are of the same race. Any of you could have been a solid member of the other nation, nie? Maybe, come changing times, you start switching around your ways to live. Why not experiment a little, ha? No, no, I see you can not like that idea yet, I say no more.”
He folded his arms and waited, bulky, shaggy, ragged, and caked with the grime of weeks. On creaking planks, under a red sun and a low sea wind, the scores of winged warriors and captains shuddered in the face of the unimagined.
Delp said at last, so slow and heavy it did not really break that drumhead silence: “Yes. This makes sense. I believe it.”
After another minute, bowing his head toward stone-rigid T’heonax: “My lord, this does change the situation. I think — it will not be as much as we hoped for, but better than I feared — We can make terms, they to have all the land and we to have the Sea of Achan. Now that I know they are not… devils… animals — Well, the normal guarantees, oaths and exchange of hostages and so on — should make the treaty firm enough.”
Tolk had been whispering in Trolwen’s ear. Lannach’s commander nodded. “That is much my own thought,” he said.
“Can we persuade the Council and the clans, Flockchief?” muttered Tolk.
“Herald, if we bring back an honorable peace, the Council will vote our ghosts godhood after we die.”
Tolk’s gaze shifted back to T’heonax, lying without movement among his courtiers. And the grizzled fur lifted along the Herald’s back.
“Let us first return to the Council alive, Flock-chief,” he said.
T’heonax rose. His wings beat the air, cracking noises like an ax going through bone. His muzzle wrinkled into a lion mask, long teeth gleamed wetly forth, and he roared:
“No! I’ve heard enough! This farce is at an end!”
Trolwen and the Lannacha escort did not need an interpreter. They clapped hands to weapons and fell into a defensive circle. Their jaws clashed shut automatically, biting the wind.
“My lord!” Delp sprang fully erect.
“Be still!” screeched T’heonax. “You’ve said far too much.” His head swung from side to side. “Captains of the Fleet, you have heard how Delp hyr Orikan advocates making peace with creatures lower than the beasts. Remember it!”
“But my lord—” An older officer stood up, hands aloft in protest. “My lord admiral, we’ve just had it shown to us, they aren’t beasts… it’s only a different—”
“Assuming the Eart’ho spoke truth, which is by no means sure, what of it?” T’heonax fleered at Van Rijn. “It only makes the matter worse. We know beasts can’t help themselves but these Lannach’honai are dirty by choice. And you would let them live? You would… would trade with them… enter their towns… let your young be seduced into their — No!”
The captains looked at each other. It was like an audible groan. Only Delp seemed to have the courage to speak again.
“I humbly beg the admiral to recall, we’ve no real choice. If we fight them to a finish, it may be our own finish too.”
“Ridiculous!” snorted T’heonax. “Either you are afraid or they’ve bribed you.”
Tolk had been translating sotto voce for Trolwen. Now, sickly, Wace heard the commander’s grim reply to his Herald: “If he takes that attitude, a treaty is out of the question. Even if he made it, he’d sacrifice his hostages to us — not to speak of ours to him — just to renew the war whenever he felt ready. Let’s get back before I myself violate the truce!”
And there, thought Wace, is the end of the world. I will die under flung stones, and Sandra will die in Glacier Land. Well… we tried.
He braced himself. The admiral might not let this embassy depart.
Delp was looking around from face to face. “Captains of the Fleet,” he cried, “I ask your opinion… 1 implore you, persuade my lord admiral that—”
“Th
e next treasonable word uttered by anyone will cost him his wings,” shouted T’heonax. “Or do you question my authority?”
It was a bold move, thought Wace in a distant part of his thuttering brain — to stake all he had on that one challenge. But of course, T’heonax was going to get away with it; no one in this caste-ridden society would deny his absolute power, not even Delp the bold. Reluctant they might be, but the captains would obey.
The silence grew shattering.
Nicholas van Rijn broke it with a long, juicy Bronx cheer.
The whole assembly started. T’heonax leaped backward and for a moment he was like a bat-winged tomcat.
“What was that?” he blazed.
“Are you deaf?” answered Van Rijn mildly. “I said—” He repeated with tremolo.
“What do you mean?”
“It is an Earth term,” said Van Rijn. “As near as I can render it, let me see… well, it means you are a—” The rest was the most imaginative obscenity Wace had heard in his life.
The captains gasped. Some drew their weapons. The Drak’ho guards on the upper decks gripped bows and spears. “Kill him!” screamed T’heonax.
“No!” Van Rijn’s bass exploded on their ears. The sheer volume of it paralyzed them. “I am an embassy, by damn! You hurt an embassy and the Lodestar will sink you in hell’s boiling seas!”
It checked them. T’heonax did not repeat his order; the guards jerked back toward stillness; the officers remained poised, outraged past words.
“I have somethings to say you,” Van Rijn continued, only twice as loud as a large foghorn. “I speak to all the Fleet, and ask you ask yourselves, why this little pip squeaker does so stupid. He makes you carry on a war where both sides lose — he makes you risk your lives, your wives and cubs, maybe the Fleet’s own surviving — why? Because he is afraid. He knows, a few years cheek by jowl next to the Lannach’honai, and even more so trading with my company at my fantastic low prices, things begin to change. You get more into thinking by your own selves. You taste freedom. Bit by bit, his power slides from him. And he is too much a coward to live on his own selfs. Nie, he has got to have guards and slaves and all of you to make bossing over, so he proves to himself he is not just a little jellypot but a real true Leader. Rather he will have the Fleet ruined, even die himself, than lose this prop up, him!”
T’heonax said, shaking: “Get off my raft before I forget there is an armistice.”
“Oh, I go, I go,” said Van Rijn. He advanced toward the admiral. His tread reverberated in the deck. “I go back and make war again if you insist. But only one small question I ask first.” He stopped before the royal presence and prodded the royal nose with a hairy forefinger. “Why you make so much fuss about Lannacha home lifes? Could be maybe down underneath you hanker to try it yourself?”
He turned his back, then, and bowed.
Wace did not see just what happened. There were guards and captains between. He heard a screech, a bellow from Van Rijn, and then there was a hurricane of wings before him.
Something — He threw himself into the press of bodies. A tail crashed against his ribs. He hardly felt it; his fist jolted, merely to get a warrior out of the way and see -
Nicholas van Rijn stood with both hands in the air as a score of spears menaced him. “The admiral bit me!” he wailed. “I am here like an embassy, and the pig bites me! What kind of relations between countries is that, when heads of state bite foreign ambassadors, ha? Does an Earth president bite diplomats? This is uncivilized!”
T’heonax backed off, spitting, scrubbing the blood from his jaws. “Get out,” he said in a strangled voice. “Go at once.”
Van Rijn nodded. “Come, friends,” he said. “We find us places with better manners.”
“Freeman… Freeman, where did he—” Wace crowded close.
“Never mind where,” said Van Rijn huffily.
Trolwen and Tolk joined them. The Lannacha escort fell into step behind. They walked at a measured pace across the deck, away from the confusion of Drak’honai under the castle wall.
“You might have known it,” said Wace. He felt exhausted, drained of everything except a weak anger at his chief’s unbelievable folly. “This race is carnivorous. Haven’t you seen them snap when they get angry? It’s… a reflex — You might have known!”
“Well,” said Van Rijn in a most virtuous tone, holding both hands to his injury, “he did not have to bite. I am not responsible for his lack of control or any consequences of it, me. All good lawyer saints witness I am not.”
“But the ruckus — we could all have been killed!”
Van Rijn didn’t bother to argue about that.
Delp met them at the rail. His crest drooped. “I am sorry it must end thus,” he said. “We could have been friends.”
“Perhaps it does not end just so soon,” said Van Rijn.
“What do you mean?” Tired eyes regarded him without hope.
“Maybe you see pretty quick. Delp” — Van Rijn laid a paternal hand on the Drak’ho’s shoulder — “you are a good young chap. I could use a one like you, as a part-time agent for some tradings in these parts. On fat commissions, natural. But for now, remember you are the one they all like and respect. If anything happens to the admiral, there will be panic and uncertainty… they will turn to you for advice. If you act fast at such a moment, you can be admiral yourself! Then maybe we do business, ha?”
He left Delp gaping and swung himself with apish speed down into the canoe. “Now, boys,” he said, “row like hell.”
They were almost back to their own fleet when Wace saw clotted wings whirl up from the royal raft. He gulped. “Has the attack… has it begun already?” He cursed himself that his voice should be an idiotic squeak.
“Well, I am glad we are not close to them.” Van Rijn, standing up as he had done the whole trip, nodded complacently. “But I think not this is the war. I think they are just disturbed. Soon Delp will take charge and calms them down.”
“But — Delp?”
Van Rijn shrugged. “If Diomedean proteins is deadly to us,” he said, “ours should not be so good for them, ha? And our late friend T’heonax took a big mouthful of me. It all goes to show, these foul tempers only lead to trouble. Best you follow my example. When I am attacked, I turn the other cheek.”
XXII
Thursday Landing had little in the way of hospital facilities: an autodiagnostician, a few surgical and therapeutical robots, the standard drugs, and the post xenobiologist to double as medical officer. But a six weeks’ fast did not have serious consequences, if you were strong to begin with and had been waited on hand, foot, wing, and tail by two anxious nations, on a planet none of whose diseases could affect you. Treatment progressed rapidly with the help of bioaccelerine, from intravenous glucose to thick rare steaks. By the sixth Diomedean day, Wace had put on a noticeable amount of flesh and was weakly but fumingly aprowl in his room.
“Smoke, sir?” asked young Senegal. He had been out on trading circuit when the rescue party arrived; only now was he getting the full account. He offered cigarettes with a most respectful air.
Wace halted, the bathrobe swirling about his knees. He reached, hesitated, then grinned and said: “In all that time without tobacco, I seem to’ve lost the addiction. Question is, should I go to the trouble and expense of building it up again?”
“Well, no, sir—”
“Hey! Gimme that!” Wace sat down on his bed and took a cautious puff. “I certainly am going to pick up all my vices where I left off, and doubtless add some new ones.”
“You, uh, you were going to tell me, sir… how the station here was informed—”
“Oh, yes. That. It was childishly simple. I figured it out in ten minutes, once we got a breathing spell. Send a fair-size Diomedean party with a written message, plus of course one of Tolk’s professional interpreters to help them inquire their way on this side of The Ocean. Devise a big life raft, just a framework of light poles which could be dovet
ailed together. Each Diomedean carried a single piece; they assembled it in the air and rested on it whenever necessary. Also fished from it: a number of Fleet experts went along to take charge of that angle. There was enough rain for them to catch in small buckets to drink — I knew there would be, since the Drak’honai stay at sea for indefinite periods, and also this is such a rainy planet anyhow.
“Incidentally, for reasons which are now obvious to you, the party had to include some Lannacha females. Which means that the messengers of both nationalities have had to give up some hoary prejudices. In the long run, that’s going to change their history more than whatever impression we Terrestrials might have made, by such stunts as flying them home across The Ocean in a single day. From now on, willy-nilly, the beings who went on that trip will be a subversive element in both cultures; they’ll be the seedbed of Diomedean internationalism. But that’s for the League to gloat about, not me.”
Wace shrugged. “Having seen them off,” he finished, “we could only crawl into bed and wait. After the first few days, it wasn’t so bad. Appetite disappears.”
He stubbed out the cigarette with a grimace. It was making him dizzy.
“When do I get to see the others?” he demanded. “I’m strong enough now to feel bored. I want company, dammit.”
“As a matter of fact, sir,” said Senegal, “I believe Freeman van Rijn said something about” — a thunderous “Skulls and smallpox!” bounced in the corridor outside — “visiting you today.”
“Run along then,” said Wace sardonically. “You’re too young to hear this. We blood brothers, who have defied death together, we sworn comrades, and so on and so forth, are about to have a reunion.”
He got to his feet as the boy slipped out the back door. Van Rijn rolled in the front entrance.
His Jovian girth was shrunken flat, he had only one chin, and he leaned on a gold-headed cane. But his hair was curled into oily black ringlets, his mustaches and goatee waxed to needle points, his lace-trimmed shirt and cloth-of-gold vest were already smeared with snuff, his legs were hairy tree trunks beneath a batik sarong, he wore a diamond mine on each hand and a silver chain about his neck which could have anchored a battleship. He waved a ripe Trichinopoly cigar above a four-decker sandwich and roared:
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