“Indeed. I don’t promise to retain the knowledge all my life. My head’s overly cluttered with cobwebby information as is. But for the present, yes, I do want to converse with them directly. It’d be insurance for us. And who knows, I might come up with a new scientific hypothesis about them, too skewball to have occurred to any Aenean.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. That was her way; she liked to touch people she cared about. “You’re no Imperial, Dominic,” she said. “You belong with us.”
“Be that as it may—” he said, confused.
“Why do you stand with Josip? You know what he is. You’ve seen his cronies, like Snelund, who could end by replacin’ him in all but name. Why don’t you join us, your kind?”
He knew why not, starting with the fact that he didn’t believe the revolution could succeed and going on to more fundamental issues. But he could not tell her that, on this suddenly magical day. “Maybe you’ll convert me,” he said. “Meanwhile, what about language lessons?”
“Why, ’course.”
Flandry could not forbid his men to sit in, and a number of them did. By straining his considerable talent, he soon disheartened them and they quit. After that, he had Kathryn’s whole notice for many hours per week. He ignored the jealous stares, and no longer felt jealous himself when she fell into cheerful conversation with one of the troop or joined a campfire circle for singing.
Nor did it perturb him when Chief Petty Officer Robbins returned from an excursion with her in search of man-edible plants, wearing a black eye and a sheepish look. Unruffled, she came in later and treated Robbins exactly as before. Word must have spread, for there were no further incidents.
Flandry’s progress in his lessons amazed her. Besides having suitable genes, he had been through the Intelligence Corps’ unmercifully rigorous courses in linguistics and metalinguistics, semantics and metasemantics, every known trick of concentration and memorization; he had learned how to learn. Few civilian scientists received that good a training; they didn’t need it as urgently as any field agent always did. Inside a week, he had apprehended the structures of Thunderstone’s language and man’s pidgin — no easy feat, when the Didonian mind was so absolutely alien.
Or was it? Given the basic grammar and vocabulary, Flandry supplemented Kathryn’s instruction by talking, mainly with Cave Discoverer. It went ridiculously at first, but after weeks he got to the point of holding real conversations. The Didonian was as interested in him and Kathryn as she was in heesh. She took to joining their colloquies, which didn’t bother him in the least.
Cave Discoverer was more adventurous than average. Heesh’s personality seemed more clearly defined than the rest, including any others in the party which incorporated heesh’s members. At home heesh hunted, logged, and went on rambling explorations when not too busy. Annually heesh traveled to the lake called Golden, where less advanced communions held a fair and Cave Discoverer traded metal implements for their furs and dried fruits. There heesh’s noga had the custom of joining with a particular ruka from one place and krippo from another to make the entity Raft Farer. In Thunderstone, besides Many Thoughts, Cave Discoverer’s noga and ruka belonged to Master Of Songs; heesh’s krippo (female) to Leader Of Dance; heesh’s ruka to Brewmaster; and all to various temporary groups.
Aside from educational duties, none of them linked indiscriminately. Why waste the time of a unit that could make part of an outstanding entity, in junction with units less gifted? The distinction was somewhat blurred but nonetheless real in Thunderstone, between “first families” and “proles.” No snobbery or envy appeared to be involved. The attitude was pragmatic. Altruism within the communion was so taken for granted that the concept did not exist.
Or thus went Flandry’s and Kathryn’s impressions. She admitted they might be wrong. How do you probe the psyche of a creature with three brains, each of which remembers its share in other creatures and, indirectly, remembers things that occurred generations before it was born?
Separately, the nogas were placid, though Kathryn said they became furious if aroused. The krippos were excitable and musical; they produced lovely clear notes in intricate patterns. The rukas were restless, curious, and playful. But these were generalizations. Individual variety was as great as for all animals with well-developed nervous systems.
Cave Discoverer was in love with heesh’s universe. Heesh looked forward with excitement to seeing Port Frederiksen and wondered about the chance of going somewhere in a spaceship. After heesh got straight the basic facts of astronomy, xenology, and galactic politics, heesh’s questions sharpened until Flandry wondered if Didonians might not be inherently more intelligent than men. Could their technological backwardness be due to accidental circumstances that would no longer count when they saw the possibility of making systematic progress?
The future could be theirs, not ours. Flandry thought. Kathryn would reply, “Why can’t it be everybody’s?”
Meanwhile the expedition continued — through rain, gale, fog, heat, strange though not hostile communions, finally highlands where the men rejoiced in coolness. There, however, the Didonians shivered, and went hungry in a land of sparse growth, and, despite their krippos making aerial surveys, often blundered upon impassable stretches that forced them to retrace their steps and try again. It was here, in High Maurusia, that battle smote them.
XII
The easiest way to reach one pass was through a canyon. During megayears, a river swollen by winter rains had carved it, then shrunken in summer. Its walls gave protection from winds and reflected some heat; this encouraged plant life to spring up every dry season along the streambed, where accumulated soil was kinder to feet than the naked rock elsewhere. Accordingly, however twisted and boulder-strewn, it appeared to offer the route of choice.
The scenery was impressive in a gaunt fashion. The river rolled on the parry’s left, broad, brown, noisy and dangerous despite being at its low point. A mat of annual plants made a border whose sober hues were relieved by white and scarlet blossoms. Here and there grew crooked trees, deep-rooted, adapted to inundation. Beyond, the canyon floor reached barren: tumbled dark rocks, fantastically eroded pinnacles and mesas, on to the talus slopes and palisades. Gray sky, diffuse and shadowless light, did not bring out color or detail very well; that was a bewildering view. But human lungs found the air mild, dry, exhilarating. Two krippos wheeled on watch overhead. Harvest Fetcher stayed complete, and every ruka rode a noga. The outworlders walked behind, except for Kathryn, Flandry, and Havelock. She was off to the right, wrapped in her private thoughts. This landscape must have made her homesick for Aeneas. The commander and the ensign kept out of their companions’ earshot.
“Damn it, sir, why do we take for granted we’ll turn ourselves in at Port Frederiksen without a fight?” Havelock was protesting. “This notion our case is hopeless, it’s encouraging treasonable thoughts.”
Flandry refrained from saying he was aware of that. Havelock had been less standoffish than the rest; but a subtle barrier persisted, and Flandry had cultivated him for weeks before getting this much confidence. He knew Havelock had a girl on Terra.
“Well, Ensign,” he said, “I can’t make promises, for the reason that I’m not about to lead us to certain death. As you imply, though, the death may not necessarily be certain. Why don’t you feel out the men? I don’t want anyone denounced to me,” having a pretty fair idea myself, “but you might quietly find who’s … let’s not say trustworthy, we’ll assume everybody is, let’s say enthusiastic. You might, still more quietly, alert them to stand by in case I do decide on making a break. We’ll talk like this, you and I, off and on. More off than on, so as not to provoke suspicion. We’ll get Kathryn to describe the port’s layout, piecemeal, and that’ll be an important element in what I elect to do.”
You, Kathryn, will be more important.
“Very good, sir,” Havelock said. “I hope—”
Assault burst forth.
The party had dr
awn even with a nearby rock mass whose bottom was screened by a row of crags. From behind these plunged a score of Didonians. Flandry had an instant to think, Ye devils, they must’ve hid in a cave! Then the air was full of arrows. “Deploy!” he yelled. “Fire! Kathryn, get down!”
A shaft went whoot by his ear. A noga bugled, a ruka screamed. Bellyflopping, Flandry glared over the sights of his blaster at the charging foe. They were barbarically decorated with pelts, feather blankets, necklaces of teeth, body paint. Their weapons were neolithic, flint axes, bone-tipped arrows and lances. But they were not less deadly for that, and the ambush had been arranged with skill.
He cast a look to right and left. Periodically while traveling, he had drilled his men in ground combat techniques. Today it paid off. They had formed an arc on either side of him. Each who carried a gun — there weren’t many small arms aboard a warship — was backed by two or three comrades with spears or daggers, ready at need to assist or to take over the trigger.
Energy beams flared and crashed. Slugthrowers hissed, stunners buzzed. A roar of voices and hoofs echoed above the river’s clangor. A krippo turned into flame and smoke, a ruka toppled to earth, a noga ran off bellowing its anguish. Peripherally, Flandry saw more savages hit.
But whether in contempt for death or sheer physical momentum, the charge continued. The distance to cover was short; and Flandry had not imagined a noga could gallop that fast. The survivors went by his line and fell on the Thunderstone trio before he comprehended it. One man barely rolled clear of a huge gray-blue body. The airborne flyers barely had time to reunite with their chief partners.
“Kathryn!” Flandry shouted into the din. He leaped erect and whirled around. The melee surged between him and her. For a second he saw how Didonians fought. Nogas, nearly invulnerable to edged weapons, pushed at each other and tried to gore. Rukas stabbed and hacked; krippos took what shelter they could, while grimly maintaining linkage, and buffeted with their wings. The objective was to put an opponent out of action by eliminating heesh’s rider units.
Some mountaineer nogas, thus crippled by gunfire, blundered around in the offing. A few two-member entities held themselves in reserve, for use when a ruka or krippo went down in combat. Eight or nine complete groups surrounded the triangular formation adopted by the three from Thunderstone.
No, two and a half. By now Flandry could tell them apart. Harvest Fletcher’s krippo must have been killed in the arrow barrage. The body lay transfixed, pathetically small, tailfeathers ruffled by a slight breeze, until a noga chanced to trample it into a smear. Its partners continued fighting, automatically and with lessened skill.
“Get those bastards!” somebody called. Men edged warily toward the milling, grunting, yelling, hammering interlocked mass. It was hard to understand why the savages were ignoring the humans, who had inflicted all the damage on them. Was the sight so strange as not to be readily comprehensible?
Flandry ran around the struggle to see what had become of Kathryn. I never gave her a gun! he knew in agony.
Her tall form broke upon his vision. She had retreated a distance, to stand beneath a tree she could climb if attacked. His Merseian blade gleamed in her grasp, expertly held. Her mouth was drawn taut but her eyes were watchful and steady.
He choked with relief. Turning, he made his way to the contest.
A stone ax spattered the brains of Smith’s ruka. Cave Discoverer’s ruka avenged the death in two swift blows — but, surrounded, could not defend his back. A lance entered him. He fell onto the horn of a savage noga, which tossed him high and smashed him underfoot when he landed.
The humans opened fire.
It was butchery.
The mountaineer remnants stampeded down the canyon. Not an entity among them remained whole. A young Terran stood over a noga, which was half cooked but still alive, and gave it the coup de grace; then tears and vomit erupted from him. The Thunderstoners could assemble one full person at a time. Of the possible combinations, they chose Guardian Of North Gate, who went about methodically releasing the wounded from life.
The entire battle, from start to finish, had lasted under ten minutes.
Kathryn came running. She too wept. “So much death, so much hurt — can’t we help them?” A ruka stirred. He didn’t seem wounded; yes, he’d probably taken a stun beam, and the supersonic jolt had affected him as it did a man. Guardian Of North Gate approached. Kathryn crouched over the ruka. “No! I forbid you.”
The Didonian did not understand her pidgin, for only heesh’s noga had been in Cave Discoverer. But her attitude was unmistakable. After a moment, with an almost physical shrug, heesh had heesh’s ruka tie up the animal.
Thereafter, with what assistance the humans could give, heesh proceeded to care for the surviving Thunderstone units. They submitted patiently. A krippo had a broken leg, others showed gashes and bruises, but apparently every member could travel after a rest.
No one spoke aloud a wish to move from the battleground. No one spoke at all. Silent, they fared another two or three kilometers before halting.
In the high latitudes of Dido, nights around midsummer were not only short, they were light. Flandry walked beneath a sky blue-black, faintly tinged with silver, faintly adance with aurora where some of Virgil’s ionizing radiation penetrated the upper clouds. There was just sufficient luminance for him not to stumble. Further off, crags and cliffs made blacknesses which faded unclearly into the dusk. Mounting a bluff that overlooked his camp, he saw its fire as a red wavering spark, like a dying dwarf star. The sound of the river belled subdued but clear through cool air. His boots scrunched on gravel; occasionally they kicked a larger rock. An unknown animal trilled somewhere close by.
Kathryn’s form grew out of the shadows. He had seen her depart in this direction after the meal she refused, and guessed she was bound here. When he drew close, her face was a pale blur.
“Oh … Dominic,” she said. The outdoor years had trained her to use more senses than vision.
“You shouldn’t have gone off alone.” He stopped in front of her.
“I had to.”
“At a minimum, carry a gun. You can handle one, I’m sure.”
“Yes. ’Course. But I won’t, after today.”
“You must have seen violent deaths before.”
“A few times. None that I helped cause.”
“The attack was unprovoked. To be frank, I don’t regret anything but our own losses, and we can’t afford to lament them long.”
“We were crossin’ the natives’ country,” she said. “Maybe they resented that. Didonians have territorial instincts, same as man. Or maybe our gear tempted them. No slaughter, no wounds, if ’tweren’t for our travelin’.”
“You’ve lived with the consequences of war,” his inner pain said harshly. “And this particular fracas was an incident in your precious revolution.”
He heard breath rush between her lips. Remorse stabbed him. “I, I’m sorry, Kathryn,” he said. “Spoke out of turn. I’ll leave you alone. But please come back to camp.”
“No.” At first her voice was almost too faint to hear. “I mean … let me stay out a while.” She seized his hand. “But of your courtesy, don’t you skite either. I’m glad you came, Dominic. You understand things.”
Do I? Rainbows exploded within him.
They stood a minute, holding hands, before she laughed uncertainly and said: “Again, Dominic. Be practical with me.”
You’re brave enough to live with your sorrows, he thought, but strong and wise enough to turn your back on them the first chance that comes, and cope with our enemy the universe.
He wanted, he needed one of his few remaining cigarets; but he couldn’t reach the case without disturbing her clasp, and she might let go. “Well,” he said in his awkwardness, “I imagine we can push on, day after tomorrow. They put Lightning Struck The House together for me after you left.” All heesh’s units had at various times combined with those that had been in Cave Discoverer; among o
ther reasons, for heesh to gain some command of pidgin.
“We discussed things. It’d take longer to return, now, than finish our journey, and the incomplètes can handle routine. The boys have gotten good at trailsmanship themselves. We’ll bear today’s lesson in mind and avoid places where bushwhackers can’t be spotted from above. So I feel we can make it all right.”
“I doubt if we’ll be bothered any more,” Kathryn said with a return of energy in her tone. “News’ll get ’round.”
“About that ruka we took prisoner.”
“Yes? Why not set the poor beast free?”
“Because … well, Lightning isn’t glad we have the potential for just one full entity. There’re jobs like getting heavy loads down steep mountainsides which’re a deal easier and safer with at least two, especially seeing that rukas are their hands. Furthermore, most of the time we can only have a single krippo aloft. The other will have to stay in a three-way, guiding the incomplètes and making decisions, while we’re in this tricky mountainland. One set of airborne eyes is damn little.”
“True,” He thought he heard the rustle of her hair, which she had let grow longer, as she nodded. “I didn’t think ’bout that ’fore, too shocked, but you’re right.” Her fingers tensed on his. “Dominic! You’re not plannin’ to use the prisoner?”
“Why not? Lightning seems to like the idea. Been done on occasion, heesh said.”
“In emergencies. But … the conflict, the — the cruelty—”
“Listen, I’ve given these matters thought,” he told her. “Check my facts and logic. We’ll force the ruka into linkage with the noga and krippo that were Cave Discoverer’s — the strongest, most sophisticated entity we had. He’ll obey at gun point. Besides, he has to drink blood or he’ll starve, right? A single armed man alongside will prevent possible contretemps. However, two units against one ought to prevail by themselves. We’ll make the union permanent, or nearly so, for the duration of our trip. That way, the Thunderstone patterns should go fast and deep into the ruka. I daresay the new personality will be confused and hostile at first; but heesh ought to cooperate with us, however grudgingly.”
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