by Jo Clayton
He lifted his head, looked at her with dislike that melted into a smile more professional than warm, though that might be her own attitudes getting in the way. “I’ve arranged several such entertainments.”
She slid the sweating glass back and forth across her bare midriff. “Ah.” She was silent for a breath or two, then she said, “Be careful, Par.”
“Don’t angle for a promotion up to dog?”
“You got it.”
She heard the tinkle of ice cubes, then he grunted. When he spoke, he changed the subject (the change landed on her ear with a loud clunk that said he didn’t want to talk about this any more). “How’d the Huvved get here? Is there anything in that for me?”
“Hmm. Depends on what you want. You might be able to touch in undertones of Hordar pride and anger and take the curse off them. As long as you don’t get so explicit you rub up against Huvved paranoia.” She glanced at Parnalee, saw his annoyance, trying to teach him elementary tricks of his own trade, hah! she swallowed a grin, but… enough was enough, she’d gotten a small jab in for that look he gave her, time to be serious. “Let’s see. About three hundred years ago, again that’s standard not local years, when the good folk in the Huvved Empire got tired of their bloody rulers, or maybe desperate enough not to care all that much what happened to them, they rose up on their hind legs and kicked out the current Imperator. Came within a hair of putting their hands on him too, close enough they scared the shit out of the creep. He ran for his life in his last Warmaster, wrapped in her cloud of stingers, made the insplit just ahead of a swarm of Harriers. When they didn’t give up and dived after him, he ordered a random course punched in, ran along it full out until he lost them, then popped back to realspace so he could find out where he was. Poor old Pradites. Either Pradix’s holiness had worn off or Luck was out to lunch because where do you think he was when he stuck his nose up? A spit and a half from Horgul. They come all this distance to get away from home fights and bloody Huvved, spend seven centuries getting comfortable with their new world, and here comes the Huvved Imperator and his hopeful court to sit on their necks again. Hmm. One of those coincidences nobody believes, but they happen. Um. Shall I go on?”
“This is printed out?”
“Minus a few editorial comments that might annoy the spy who reads my hard copy.”
He squinted up at brilliant white sunlight glittering through interstices between the undulant leaves of the low broad tree spreading out above them, leaves like overlapping slices of translucent green jade. “I’ve got nothing better to do until it cools down. Go on.”
“Thanks a lot.” She sipped at the fruitade; it was still cool enough to be drinkable, though the ice had melted. She wiped away the sticky trickle spilling from the corner of her mouth and wished futilely for a little wind to stir the hot still air; with the outer curtain wall and the inner walls that shut in this much smaller space, any breeze around would give up and go home. “Right. Picture our Imperator and his bunch sitting up there in that monstrous Warmaster, drooling over what looks like a sweet setup for plunder. Picture their surprise when they tune in on the local comsets and hear a version of Hordar speech. It apparently hadn’t changed all that much in the centuries since the Pradites left Hordaradda, the Hordar are a pretty conservative bunch. Far as I can gather, there was an odd mix of technology. A lot like they’ve got now, in fact. Minus some flourishes laid on by the slave techs the present Imperator has been importing. Functioning comsets, the landers from the colony transport, some stray robotics, some sophisticated filters, touches here and there of tech they’d brought with them and managed to hang onto. They did some mining in the asteroid belt, dumped their worst criminals on the next world out, that kind of thing. Otherwise, they were pretty well early industrial with large feudal patches out on the grasslands, what they call the Duzzulkas. No ground traffic, but a busy sky. Airships. Hydrogen lift. All sizes, all over the place. Cheap and reliable. Don’t have to build roads. By the by, I’ve convinced Tra Yarta that I should visit a Sea Farm soon, tell you about that later. Anyway, where was I?”
“All over the place.”
“If I’m boring you…”
“Academic maundering, which I suppose you can’t help, being an academician. Go on. I have to get this one way or another and it might as well be now.”
“So kind. Remind me to poison your next drink. Hmm. Yes. The Huvved came roaring in over Tairanna and took her fast and bloody. Poor old Pradites and Eftakites hadn’t a chance against a Warmaster, stories from that time have her melting down whole cities in a single hour.” She sat up, wiped at her face. “Like I’m going to melt in a minute.” She poured more fruitade into her glass, tasted it, grimaced. It was warmish, all the ice long gone. She dumped the pitcher out, filled it at the fountain and emptied it over her head, filled it again, emptied it again and dripped back to the lounge chair. “From all I can find out, the Hordar were a peaceful lot then; they did more fighting with words than with fists, they’d rather go somewhere else when things got tense. Didn’t mean they wouldn’t fight, but they weren’t much good at hopeless battles. Even then, though, you didn’t want to push them too hard. Back them into a corner and you had trouble, serious trouble, capital T trouble. You get the Hordar Surge coming at you.”
Parnalee broke open the fastenings on his tunic, wiped at his face and his neck with a damp handkerchief. “I presume this will eventually reach some endpoint.”
Aslan ignored him. “What it is, it’s a sort of mob action that turns a collection of individuals into a single being with a single mind and a single purpose which is basically to stomp a threat into mush.” She lifted the damp ends of her shirt and flapped them idly, trying to stir a bit of breeze along her sweaty body. “To trigger a Surge…” she broke off, yawned, “… you put a minimum of twelve Hordar in some sort of enclosed space and apply extreme stress involving the survival of a genetic group.” She closed her eyes, after a minute cracked the eye on Parnalee’s side. He was flushed with heat and visibly uncomfortable; she couldn’t tell if he was listening. Oh well, what the hell, might as well finish her recitation. “A Surge grows in lumps of twelve, don’t know why, but there it is.” She yawned again. “Bridges from group to group until most of the population is involved. It doesn’t quit until the danger is gone or every unit in the Surge is dead.” She pushed sweat-soggy hair out of her eyes and thought about going inside for a bath, but it was hotter in there than it was here. Too bad the fountain was in full sunlight, be nice to sit in it a while and cool off, but she didn’t want a case of sunstroke, she didn’t much trust the doctors on this primitive world. Wonder if there are any umbrellas inside, I could tie an umbrella to one of those upper tiers and make my own shade. Hmm. Haven’t got the energy to move. “After I came on the term in the early histories, I tried talking about it in my interviews. Every Hordar had a powerful nonverbal response to the word and put up barriers whenever I tried to move beyond abstractions to the actual mechanics of the thing and the emotional and physical responses.” She sighed. “You getting any of this, Par?”
“I’m listening.”
“Hmm. You think there’s any chance, if it’s this hot tomorrow, for us to go out on the lake, do some swimming?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Freshwater eel-analogs. Very hungry this time of year.”
“Shit.”
“Yeh.”
“Wondered why I didn’t see any boats out there.”
“That’s why.”
“Swimming pools?”
“Huvved. No slaves or Hordar allowed.”
“As my mother would say, sweet sweet.”
“Go on with your lecture. What’s the rest of it?”
“I forget.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“All right. You noticed that Hordar and Huvved are related closely enough to permit interbreeding?”
“I noticed.”
“Probably no pureblood Huvved left; t
hey didn’t bring that many women with them when they skipped out. Let’s see. Surge. Huvved/Hordar mixes don’t seem to have the capacity for that melding, but they exhibit much the same reactions to the word. A lot of fear there. Pride. Rage. A whole witch’s brew boiling away down deep. I suppose anything that intense is useful in your business.”
He grunted, a noncommittal sound she took for assent.
“I came across the phenomenon when I was reading about the early years. Seems that the Imperator then was a bit gaga about Hordar, it was a band of Hordar rebels who came within a hair of removing his head. He and his happy band of sycophants had a fine old time running down and disposing of the locals. Got so bad the Hordar believed he was going to slaughter them all. There you have it, extreme stress involving the survival of a genetic group. The thing that tipped them over the edge was a sort of auto-da-fe he put together outside a Littoral city called Ayla gul Inci. The Incers were driven into a fenced enclosure and forced to watch their relatives burn. About ten minutes into the barbeque they began melding into a Surge. About half of them were killed, but the Imperator barely got away with his skin intact. Not long after that his Security Chief took a look around at what was happening to his men and materiel and convinced the Imperator to abdicate in favor of his most competent nephew. That’s what the histories say, you can draw your own conclusions. The Grand Sech worked out a schema that gave enough to everyone to keep them relatively contented and things settled down. Like I said, the Hordar those days weren’t into mass suicide once the Surge was defused; they adapted and there was a fairly easy peace for the next two centuries. Then a free trader arrived; they don’t have his name, but it seems he had connections with Bolodo Neyuregg. The Imperator before this one, he needed techs because his Warmaster was deteriorating and that threatened his power. He didn’t want to hire anyone who’d give away Tairanna’s location; he was charmed by the thought of, shall we say, hire-purchase of those techs. He didn’t stop with them, slave holding seems to be addictive; hmm, either that or Bolodo reps are very persuasive, anyway, two transports a year for over fifty years, that adds up to a lot of slaves.” She yawned. “That’s about it, except the reason there’s trouble now is simple enough when you consider the impact of cramming maybe a thousand years worth of technological development into fifty years and dumping this onto what was a stable, nearly unchanging society. Basic stupidity always makes trouble.”
Parnalee passed his handkerchief over his face again, wiping away the file of sweat and the trickles that were dripping into his eyes. “Surge,” he said, “you can’t make a noble icon out of a mob. I need stories of individuals. Looks like you’re telling me I’m not going to get them.”
“Not from the Conquest,” she said drowsily; she kept flapping her shirt ends, not putting much energy into this. “But you don’t want those, do you? I mean I doubt that Tra Yarta would let you make Huvveds out as what? villains of the piece? no matter how much the Hordar might enjoy such a treat.”
“There are ways…” He brooded a moment. “I’m getting a feel for the Huvved, but I’ll be depending on you and Churri to bring me something I can use for the Hordar. I don’t see anything yet… after I think about it, maybe…”
She dropped her arms over the edge of the narrow lounge chair, began playing with the short stiff grass. “Well, while you’re thinking, what have you picked up about what happens when a transport’s due?” She paused, but he lay like a sunstruck log, saying nothing. “I hope it’s more than I’ve got. Any time I go near anything about the ship, I’m warned off, sometimes hard, sometimes subtle, but the end is, I know the twice-a-year thing and that’s about it.”
“Lock down.”
“What?”
He sucked in a long breath, trickled it slowly out. Finally, he said, “All techs, anyone they suspect might be able to fool around with the ship, they’re locked into the Pens.” He lifted heavy, reddened eyelids. “Means me and Churri. Probably not you.” He spoke slowly, wearily, as if he were too fatigued to push the words out. “Tra Yarta aside, these clotheaded Huvveds have only one use for women.” He pushed himself up, got heavily to his feet, stretched, slumped. “I’m going to get some sleep, Churri wants to talk to you, tomorrow he said… He yawned. “Didn’t say why.”
No spring in his step, with none of the massive force that usually hung like an aura about him, he stumped off, wiping at his face and neck with the sodden handkerchief.
She frowned after him, wondering if he was going to crack up before they got out of here; she couldn’t do much without his backing, might as well follow Xalloor’s advice, find a way to live as well as possible within the limits allowed her. And maybe keep alive a shriveled, forlorn little hope that Mama Adelaar would come and get her out of this mess.
He was a proud man, his size and strength and, well, shrewdness had insulated him from the kicks and pratfalls that life delivered regularly to ordinary folk. One of these days he was going to explode and tell some home truths to whatever Huvved creep it was giving him a bad time. He didn’t understand what it meant to be powerless; he didn’t feel in his bones he was a slave. She had a strong impression that he’d never been in a situation he hadn’t eventually dominated. He played with irrational emotions and used them to manipulate people, but he was essentially a rational man; despite his experience he kept expecting people, maybe she’d better say men, to act out of reasoned self-interest. That wasn’t happening here. It didn’t matter how strong, how skilled, how valuable he was; at any time, for any reason, no matter how absurd, he could be flogged or even killed. His lack of control over his life was beginning to eat into him. She frowned at the brilliant glitter of the water droplets leaping up to fall down and fall again from basin to basin, wondering if Churri was right. Maybe they should go over the wall and try hiding in the mountains.
Churri wanted to see her tomorrow, huh? Well, he was going to have to wait. She was getting out of here, Tra Yarta had set up a visit to a Sea Farm. She sighed, straightened her legs and lay with her eyes closed listening to the music of the falling water; after a while she dropped into a doze.
7
The sea was a hard blue glitter reaching into a white glitter near the horizon where water merged with sky, the blue interrupted with undulant ribbons of what appeared to be shiny black-green plastic, the largest several meters long and a meter wide, leaves of the primary crop of the Sea Farm, the free-standing alga trees called yoss. Acres and acres of leaves, fans of supple strips rising and falling with the lift and drop of the sea. Narrow blue lanes cut through the black, openways spread in a web about a large collection of broad-bottomed barges with low structures built on them, the living quarters of the Farm family and its affiliates, storage buildings, generator sheds, processing sheds and open areas filled with bales of yoss leaves and piles and piles of brownish egg-shaped pods with heavy nets tied down over them. Water areas and barge areas alike, the Farm seethed with activity, children busy at small tasks, adults moving continually in and out of the water, off the barges and out of small brightly-colored boats scattered through the leaf fans, others busy at exposed machinery, moving in and out of work structures, doing assorted housekeeping chores, hanging out wash, working around exterior ovens where heat rose in wavery lines, vertical mimicry of the leaf-lines on the water. A floating village, close to self-sufficient.
The small airship droned in a wide circle about the perimeter of the farm. The inert and disapproving young Huvved seated beside Aslan came reluctantly awake (Zarkzar Efi Musvedd, though he discouraged her using his name with a lofty glare when she tried to start up a conversation). “Yoss,” he drawled. “Average stem length, fifty fathoms, average diameter fifty feet. Leaf length, thirty to fifty feet. Valuable in bulk because they contain a fiber used in most areas of Hordar activity. Rope, the outer bags of airships…” He jerked a thumb upward toward the glistening ceiling of the gondola, a tightly woven, obviously very tough material. “One of the imported techs has developed a process
to condition those fibers, fining the threads to produce a soft silky sheen.” He pinched at the muted blue fabric draped over his arms. “The side stalks are harvested, mulched, macerated and the juices distilled into the fuel for the engines of this airship and those runabouts.” He pointed down at the small shells darting about like waterbugs. “The main stalks are home for edible parasites, animal and vegetable, you’ve eaten some of them, I’m sure. And tucktla. Tucktla shells are crushed to make red and purple dyes. Also a very powerful glue. Hordar use it a lot in building. The chair you’re sitting on is held together with tucktla. Near the surface, the subsidiary stalks produce large clusters of pods, egg-shaped, maybe three feet wide, five long, you can see piles of them down there, filled with hydrogen extracted from seawater. The fanners harvest those, slap glue over the stems to prevent leaks and sell them ashore to the airship companies. The lift in this ship is provided by yoss pods; having such a resource available when they arrived, the Hordar didn’t bother developing any other transport.” There was a casual contempt in the Huvved’s voice as he went through his guide’s spiel.
Aslan glanced at him, decided there was more of her mother in her than she’d thought; she wanted to put a knee where it’d hurt most and wipe the smug off that painted face. She suppressed a smile at the thought and went back to looking out the window as the airship spiraled in to a stubby pylon. She felt the small jolt as the noselock clicked home, a louder hum from the motors, then silence, then a few twitches; she could see small dark figures moving about below them, hauling on ropes, shoving home the levers of friction clamps. A moment later the pilot came from the cockpit door, walked past them and used a rodkey to open the exit door.