by John Dalmas
Then mom and Deneen fixed breakfast on an open fire. The high point was Deneen's fish. Mom contributed powdered milk, two kinds of algae bars, and whole-grain crackers. On the cutter they'd been living mostly on condensed rations.
Even with the not-so-great cuisine, it was a party.
After breakfast, mom had Deneen power up the Jav and checked its computer for the medical manual and inventory. Then she went into the dispensary and came out a while later with powder that presumably would kill fleas, and some greasy stuff for lice. At least they killed known equivalents on other worlds. The wolves had been scratching; they'd already gotten fleas from us. After a swim and a scrub, dad used clippers on Tarel, Moise, and me, down to the skin. Then we smeared each other. I can see how the grease might kill bugs: It not only stung and burned, it reeked. After half an hour we scrubbed again, and like the wolves, got powdered. Then we put on clean jump suits.
Meanwhile, Deneen had thrown our clothes, and the pallets we'd used the night before, into the Jav's sterilization chamber. When the sterilization cycle was finished, she checked crystallization and turned off the power again. An hour with the power on hadn't set things back too badly.
Then we all strolled over to the ancient hut we'd found on our first trip, and sat around on the tumbled stone walls, dad and mom on one side, the rest of us on another. The espwolves lay in the grass between us.
The first thing I wanted to hear was what had happened to Jenoor. When she'd finished telling us about her rescue, mom and dad wanted our story of the past few months. That took a while, and when we'd finished, dad grinned at us.
"I guess you're probably tired of sitting now. Your mother and I can tell our stories later,"
"Dad," Deneen said, "that's not funny. Give! Now!"
He laughed. "All right. When the Federation went Imperial, the underground on Evdash made some contingency plans: what to do when the Empire grabbed Evdash. Your mother and I, having a cutter, accepted the responsibility of getting Dr. Boshner off the planet. So when we left home, we headed for an estate in the mountains west of the capital, to pick him up."
Dr. G.K. Boshner was a tall, white-haired man who was Evdash's most famous refugee. He'd been head of the opposition party in the Federation senate when the Glondis Party threw out the constitution, and part of the Glondis justification for it involved making a lot of accusations against Dr. Boshner. He'd been lucky to get off Morn Gebleu alive, thirty years ago.
"In planning," dad went on, "we assumed that the Imperials would block off-planet escape attempts as soon as they arrived. It would be relatively easy for them. So our plan called for moving Dr. Boshner to a remote hiding place where he could be kept until off-planet patrols were relatively relaxed. By that time, hopefully, something might even be 'arranged' with naval personnel."
Dad glanced around at us, smiling wryly. "But there was one thing we hadn't been prepared for: how quickly the Imperials would take over the national police. I mean, the first day! Even when we heard it on the radio, we hadn't realized how widely Glondisan sympathizers had infiltrated the force. We assumed it would take a few days for the occupation administration to take extensive control.
"We were wrong. We were about sixty miles west of New Caltroff when a patrol floater spotted us, and hit us with a rocket."
He shook his head ruefully. "At that. We were lucky: The rocket was a solid round, not explosive. It holed us, which of course made us totally unspaceworthy, wrecked the life-support system, and caused other damage, some of it to me. I had about a dozen wounds, fairly superficial, from pieces of metal.
"But we could still fly. And a good deal faster than a police floater. Your mother lost them and hid in the anvil top of a thunderhead."
"A thunderhead?" I said. "The turbulence must have bounced you around something terrible, at the very least!"
"I suppose that's why they didn't look for us there. But in the anvil top, we were above major turbulence, and at the same time, effectively invisible to radar. We parked there and drifted southeast with it, to within twenty miles of a place we knew."
They'd been lucky, all right. Then mom had flown them by night to the place, a backwoods hill farm forty miles north of Jarfoss. Dad had lost quite a lot of blood. The people who hid them put the cutter in a hay barn, surrounded it with walls of hay bales, then roofed it over with bales on top of planks. It took months to get repair parts. Commercial sources had been shut down by the Empire, and when they finally got parts, it was from the naval supply depot at Jarfoss-parts never intended for a small civilian cutter. But they made do.
They never knew the pipeline the parts came through.
Dad had thought seriously then about staying on Evdash, and working with the underground, but the Glondis Party had old grudges against him, and there was a price on his head. He'd be a danger to anyone he might work with, a magnet to the political police.
A turncoat police unit, it turned out, had already arrested Dr. Boshner. He was hanged without trial during the first public executions. He'd been tried in absentia, back on Morn Gebleu, nearly thirty years ago.
The Glondis spy network really kept things hairy for a while. The resistance movement lost probably a third of its people the first week, and there was a continual trickle of losses after that. Mom and the people they were with doctored dad themselves, rather than risk getting a doctor. Mom sutured his wounds; his only anaesthetic was homemade whiskey.
Meanwhile a new underground was forming, and bit by bit, contacts were occurring with the old. It was hard to evaluate its size or much about it, because for safety, no one knew the names of more than a few others. But as far as he and mom could see, the nucleus seemed to be the military. And apparently the loyal police, when they'd adjusted to the new situation, started closing their eyes to underground activities as much as they dared.
By that time in dad's story, our behinds were tired of sitting on rocks, but we ignored the discomfort. We wanted to hear the rest. "How did you get together with Jenoor?" I asked.
"Jenoor," dad said, "why don't you tell him?"
"Well," she began, "it was quite a chain of coincidence. The sergeant transferred me to a delivery service van, where the driver gave me a shot to kill the pain. Then he delivered me…" She paused and looked around. "…at Jom and Dansee Jomber's! Dansee was home when I arrived, and it hit her pretty hard to learn what had happened. Piet had been a close friend of theirs. And I'm sure she assumed that the rest of you had been destroyed by patrol ships, though of course she didn't say that to me.
"They kept me in their basement for three days. The first thing Densee did was clean and bandage my foot. I was sort of on a cloud from the painkiller then, and watched her. It was pretty gross."
Looking at me, she smiled. I was cringing. "The first night, a man came there who was apparently a doctor. He gave me another shot-the first one was wearing off-and repaired my foot. That I didn't watch."
She turned to dad then. "Klentis," she said-not Uncle Klent anymore-"why don't you and Aven tell them the rest? It's more your story than mine."
Dad stood up before he spoke, and rubbed his backside. "You'll just have to wait a minute. My bones aren't as young as yours."
I became aware then of just how sore my own backside was from silting on rocks. "Let's go sit in the Rebel Javelin," I suggested. Everyone seemed to think that was a good idea, so we went in and sat on soft, contoured seats. And at mom's suggestion, Moise went into one of the cabins and napped. So much of what he'd been hearing meant nothing at all to him that he'd gotten groggy, and was having a terrible time staying awake
Dad. it turned out, had gotten a pipeline to a warrant officer in naval operations at Jarfoss. The cutter had be paired by then, and the idea was for the WO to get information to dad, to help him decide when to try to get off Evdash. At the same time, Jom Jomber was looking for somewhere to send Jenoor. And the warrant officer, one of the few people who knew Jenoor was there, made a deal with dad. He'd provide him with informa
tion, if dad would take this young girl away.
So mom, in a borrowed utility floater, had gone the next night to pick up this young girl in a parking lot in Jarfoss. Each had almost come apart when they saw who the other was.
On the farm, dad asked Jenoor where we'd been headed. Naturally she told him Grinder. He knew it wouldn't be in the astrogation cube by that name, and when he questioned her about it, she didn't know the planet's official name. When he told her-Tagrith Four- she said she'd never heard it before.
And if she hadn't, it seemed probable that the rest of us hadn't either.
They'd talked it over then, trying to figure what we might have done, in the unlikely event that we had gotten out-system alive. And decided the likeliest place to look for us was on Fanglith. If they didn't find us here, they'd head for Tagrith Four and hope we were alive somewhere.
Dad told us frankly that he hadn't had much hope. But any at all was enough to follow up on.
Their own escape, a couple of weeks later, was a lot less hairy than ours. It involved a major solar flare and undoubtedly some deliberate "failures to notice" by patrol scouts. Failures that could be blamed on instrument and radio problems caused by the flare. The Imperial cruiser had left the system by then.
And Bubba told us then why he'd been so quiet and moody after we left Evdash. It was more than the food, and being separated from Lady and the pups. Most espwolves, by their emotional disposition, can handle that land of thing pretty well. His bigger problem was that he had a secret from us-a very heavy secret, from me especially.
"I knew Jenoor alive out there on ground," he said, "Alive, wounded. I also knew it suicide to try get her. So I said nothing." He looked at me, holding my eyes with his. "After that, I not tell. I know you. You go mad if you know we left her there like that. You tear your hair out. After you shoot me."
"No, Bubba," I said. "No way would I ever shoot you. No way! Tear my hair out, yes. And I might have said some terrible things to you, until I got my senses back."
His eyes never faltered. "Anyway," he went on, "I not tell. But it hard to have such a secret. I never felt like that before. Like guilt. Worse than grief."
Jenoor went to him and, kneeling, hugged him. "Bubba," she said, "you seem wiser and wiser to me all the time. You did the right thing, the only right thing." Her eyes were brimming when she stood up. "And look how it turned out."
Bubba grinned at her. "Espwolf live around people, get more and more like them. Even sentimental."
Which made me wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to be an espwolf.
After Bubba's confession, we talked about what we'd do next. Mom and dad both considered that Fanglith was no place to try developing an anti-Imperial base. We'd keep it in mind as a last refuge, but that was all.
They got no argument from anyone, me least of all.
Now we would go to Grinder, just the way Piet had intended. It had at least one smuggler base, dad said, dug into a mountain. We could get the Jav's power transfer module rebuilt there.
Grinder had a false but carefully nurtured reputation as an abandoned world, in a system where the sun was supposed to be heating up. A planet with a worsening climate, where hardly anyone, if anyone at all, still lived. It was at the blurry edge of explored space, without commercial resources and far from any trade route. And with far too few people left to maintain technology, any human remnants would have degenerated to primitive survivalism.
So the story went. But Piet had been there, and knew what the real situation was. There actually weren't a lot of people on Grinder, but enough. They'd retained the technology that counted, and they taught it. They all belonged to a single culture that placed a high value on independence, they were resourceful, and they regarded themselves as one people.
And what they knew of the Glondisans, they didn't like at all.
What they were short on was organizational and military expertise. Dad was experienced at organization, and had made a study of military history. "You," he told me, "are the one with some experience."
I didn't consider my military experience to amount to much, and it didn't seem like the kind a rebel movement would find useful, but dad disagreed.
"Larn," he said, "I'm not trying to tell you that what you've gotten here on Fanglith amounts to a military education. It doesn't. But you've learned to adapt, innovate, and survive. And you've also proven yourself resourceful, able to face death, and a survivor.
"A formal military education probably only touches on the tactics we'll need, anyway-tactics well develop on our own. Mostly, any actual insurgency will have to be guerrilla warfare for years-probably lots of years- both on colony worlds and the urbanized central worlds. Chances are we'll never wage formal warfare against the Empire."
He grinned then. "You realize what you've done, don't you? You've recruited a couple of specialists in military thinking: Arno and Gunnlag must have an ingrained, almost instinctive feel for tactics. What they need is to be educated in technological weapons and equipment. And about the enemy.
"Meanwhile, with your education and having grown up in a technological culture, plus your experience now with warlike primitive cultures, you're the obvious person to work with them. To help translate Norman and Varangian wisdom into tactics and military organization that can work for us.
"So we'll call your a training operation and recruiting mission," he added, then stood. "And frankly, I can't think of a better place you could have gone for that than Fanglith." He turned to mom. "Aven, let's you and I take a hike on the beach. We've been penned up all too long."
That afternoon, Jenoor and I took a long hike into the hills and didn't return till nearly dark, getting to know one another again. We stayed six days on the island, giving Arno time to get the Varangians to Palermo and hired out as mercenaries-those who were interested. It also gave the Jaw's fuel cell time to fully decrystallize.
Then, power on, Deneen checked to make sure the scout's astrogation program included Tagrith Four. The plan now was that when we left Fanglith, Jenoor, Deneen, and I would fly the Rebel Javelin, taking Gunnlag, Moise, and the two pups. The Jav had quite a bit more room than our family cutter.
Arno would go with dad and mom and Tarel. Bubba and Lady would keep them company. I was willing to take Arno, but I'd to!d them about his romantic interest in Deneen, and we agreed it might be awkward if she was cooped up with him for sixty-eight days flying to Grinder. And while neither Deneen nor I brought it up, of course, it seemed to me it might be easier on Tarel if Deneen was with us on the scout, instead of with him on the cutter.
We would transfer Arno's fealty to dad; Arno would agree to that if he really wanted to leave with us. The way Amo's mind worked, you swore fealty to someone and then you were pretty much loyal unless you came up with some incentive to double-cross them and some technicality to make it all right. Which I didn't expect from him under the circumstances. And the espwolves would know if he got treacherous ideas.
Meanwhile I'd have Gunnlag to educate. I looked forward to it. Compile a data base of Norse and Standard, run it through the linguistics program, and have him learn Standard; we'd use it now instead of Evdashian. Evdashian was an offshoot dialect of Standard used only on Evdash, and chances were we'd never see Evdash again.
On the evening of the sixth day, the scout and the cutter lifted for Palermo. With the wolves scanning, we located Arno and Gunnlag, and put Moise down with a communicator to arrange the pickup. By communicator, I told Arno to arrange for a couple mule-loads of food and take it to the pickup point, outside Palermo. I'd have preferred three or more loads, but we didn't have storage.
Larger spacecraft would have been nice, for the biovats if nothing else. As it was, we'd have to ration pretty strictly on the long trip to Grinder.
It took Moise and Arno two days to get the food we needed and get it to the edge of an orange grove a couple of miles outside the city. Actually, Arno was nearly broke, way too poor now to buy that much food. But G
unnlag had received a bounty from Guiscard for bringing his Varangians to the recruiter, and that had been enough. (Guiscard and Roger never had enough Norman foot soldiers, and were always looking for high-quality mercenaries.) Arno had borrowed the two mules, and one of the Varangians had gone along to take them back to town.
Bubba okayed the pickup scene, so dad landed the cutter to get the food and the two warriors. Then we all got together on a hill a few miles southeast, got everything distributed, and said goodbye to one another.
The goodbyes were hard, believe me. We wouldn't see each other again for sixty-eight days. But there was no way around it, and at least Jenoor and I were together.
Sixty-eight days in FTL gave us a lot of time to talk-about what might be, how we'd like to have things turn out (and why), what problems we might run into, and even occasionally about what might have been. To give Gunnlag practice in Standard, we had him tell us about his people and others, the places he'd been, things he'd seen and done…
Moise too. Although he was a lot younger, and had less to tell, there was more than you might think, and it was more interesting than he realized. Fanglith and its people in general were marvelously interesting-I'd only seen a small sample myself.
Their stories strengthened our conclusion that it wasn't the place for us. To coin a phrase: It's an interesting place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
We worked on Gunnlag's and Moise's education. If you want to develop a better understanding, more insights, into your own culture, try educating someone in it who's from a totally different culture. That can be worth a whole series of university courses to you. Gunnlag, like Moise, was marvelously adaptable and had a quick mind. And of course, they each had some unusual and surprising ways of looking at the things we told them about.
But the most meaningful talks, for me, were some between Jenoor and me in the privacy of her tiny cubbyhold cabin or mine. (There were no cabins for two on the scout.) Talks about the future. And once again, I-we-knew too little, had too little information to plan with, beyond the next step or two, or in broad, vague terms. That kind of planning we could do.