Cairncross hunched forward in his pilot seat. The speedster had no need of his guidance, but he felt he drew strength from the power at work below his fingers. A touch, and he could release missiles capable of wiping out a city, or the sunlike flame of a blaster cannon. He sat alone here, but within this same hull were men who adored him. Niku stood before him in heaven, become the brightest of the stars, and yonder poised nearly half the force he would presently unleash, to make himself lord of a hundred thousand worlds.
Maybe that’s why I’m going in person, when I decided I’d waited too long at home on Flandry. I could have dispatched a trusty officer, but it feels good to be in action again, myself. Cairncross scowled. Besides, he might outwit anybody else. I know better than to underestimate him.
A waft of chill seemed to pass through the air that rustled from the ventilator. If he went directly, he’s been there for days.
Cairncross squared his shoulders and summoned confidence. How could a solitary human creature evade his precautions in that scant a time? Nigel Broderick allowed no laxity. No stranger would get access to any place where he might see what was building. After all, my original idea was to neutralize Flandry by bringing him to Hermes.
Just the same—
We’ll take no chances, we’ll strike immediately and hard. In a few more hours, Cairncross would be on the moon Elaveli, issuing orders. Let Broderick lead a detachment to Port Lulang and occupy it, on the grounds that he was searching for a spy—true, as far as it went. But probably Flandry was on Ramnu. I’ll command the planetside operation. The stakes are too high for a lesser player. They are the destiny of civilization.
Brief wistfulness tugged at Cairncross. He’d cherished a secondary hope of winning Flandry over to his cause. The man would be valuable. And why shouldn’t he join me? What does he owe Gerhart? He’s been slighted, ignored, shunted aside. I’d have the brains to reward such a follower as he deserved, and listen to him. My aim is to give the Empire the strong, wise government it so desperately needs, to found a dynasty armored in legitimacy against usurpers … yes, then I’ll clone myself … Why, there’ll no longer be any reason not to reverse the glaciation on Ramnu. In fact, it will be a suitably glorious achievement for my reign. An entire race of beings will revere my name for as long as their sun endures.
Though that will be the littlest part of what I shall do. I could be remembered through the lifetime of the universe.
Beneath the triumphant vision went a sigh. It is very lonely to be an embodiment of fate. He had daydreamed of gaining a friend in Flandry; their spirits were much alike, and the officer’s derisive humor would relieve the Emperor’s austere seriousness. But as matters had developed, the odds were that Cairncross would seize the other, wring him dry of everything he knew with a deep hypnoprobing, and mercifully obliterate what was left.
Civilization was deathly ill; the rot had reached the heart. Nothing could save it but radical surgery.
Yewwl’s first encounter was with a couple of native workers. Her party was riding toward Dukeston, which was as yet hidden from sight by a ridge in between. Its lights made a glow that night-adapted eyes saw as brilliant. Thence rolled a low rumbling, the sound of machines at their toil. Here the land seemed untouched. Hills lifted stark, white-mantled save where crags reared forth, above gorges full of blackness. Frosty soil rang beneath hoofs; stones rattled; brush cracked. The air hung still and bitterly cold, making the travelers keep their vanes wrapped around them; breath formed frost crystals that lingered in glittery streamers. Overhead twinkled more stars than a human would have seen unaided, though fewer than Yewwl had observed on pictures from Terra. Mothermoon was a crescent, scarcely moved from its earlier place among them, while Fathermoon was well down the sky. Childmoon rose tiny in the east.
The strangers appeared suddenly, around the corner of a bluff. They halted, like Yewwl’s group. Stares went back and forth. She saw them quite clearly, except that she couldn’t be sure of the precise color of their fur. It was paler than hers, and the two were tall and slender. In their hands and strapped to their thighs they carried objects that must be made by star-folk.
After a moment, one of them spoke something that could be a question. Yewwl opened and drooped her vanes, trying to show she didn’t understand. She emphasized it by saying aloud, “We share not the same language.”
To her surprise, the male of the pair addressed her in Anglic. He had less vocabulary and grammar than she had acquired from Banner, and neither of them had a vocalizer to turn the sounds into those that a human would have formed. Nevertheless, a degree of comprehensibility got through: “Do you know this talk?”
“Yes,” she replied.
—“Don’t admit to knowing much,” Banner warned in her head. “They mustn’t identify you.”
“A little,” Yewwl added, nervously fingering the scarf that hid her collar. “How did you guess?”
“You are from afar,” the male answered shrewdly.
“I have never seen your kind before, though my mate and I range widely in our work. But they say that off westward is another human settlement, and I thought you might well have come from there. None of the barbarians known to us do any business here.”
Communication was not truly that easy. It was full of obscurities, false starts, requests for repetition, annoyed rephrasings. But persistence kept it limping along.
Like many local natives, in these hills and the marshes below, the couple were employed by the star-folk. Live timber cruisers, harvesters, and so forth—including operators of various machines—came cheaper than robots. They were paid in trade goods, by which this region had become prosperous but upon which it was now, after centuries, totally dependent. (—“Don’t you think we have been kinder to your people at Wainwright?” Banner murmured.) These two were prospectors, searching out the ores for which Dukeston’s appetite had become insatiable of late. The colony itself had grown at the same pace. Why? Who knew? The humans must have their reasons, but those were beyond the grasp of simple Ramnuans.
Yewwl bristled to hear that.
She gave a brief explanation of her ostensible errand, and the pair guided her band onward. This was an exciting development for them! En route, she cautioned her followers anew, “Forget not: say nothing about our having been flown here, should we meet somebody who knows our tongue. We are supposed to have spent days going overland. Nor ever let fall that I am in tie with a star-person. We are to spy out what may be a hostile territory, under guise of being envoys. Let me talk for everyone.”
“I seize no sense,” Ngaru of Raava complained.
In truth, the idea of organized enmity was vague and tricky as wind, and felt as icy. “Suppose a feud is between Banner and the clan-head at this place,” Yewwl said. “Their retainers are naturally loyal to them, and thus likewise at odds.”
“But we’re asking for her/his help,” Kuzhinn protested. “Why should we abide with the House of the Banner, which gives us naught?”
The time for explanation had been far too short—not that Yewwl had a great deal more to go on, herself, than faith in her oath-sister. “Banner would help us if she could, and in a mightier way,” Yewwl said. “First she must overcome those who are holding her back from it. She believes the leaders here are among them. I don’t expect they would ever really grant aid. Why should they? It is with the House of the Banner that the clans have ancient friendship.”
“What is it, again, that we are to do?” Iyaal inquired.