A Wizard and a Warlord
Christopher Stasheff
ISBN: 0-812-54167-7
1
The transparent wall curved up to form a ceiling filled with the glory of a million stars; below glowed the bank of screens that showed the views around the ship. A smaller screen, set into the surface of the console in the center of the room, lit the craggy features of the giant who sat poring over a database. He was Magnus d’Armand, itinerant revolutionary, and the starlit room was the bridge of his spaceship Herkimer.
“So there you are!”
Magnus braced himself even as he looked up; Alea was out for blood again. “Of course.”
She stood in the hatchway, fairly glowing with anger—tall, almost as tall as he, with a face that some would have called angular but that he thought lovely. Even in the loose light blue shipboard fatigues, her slender figure made his breath catch.
She strode into the room, fairly sizzling with outrage. “What are you doing in here? You’re always in the lounge!”
“The press of work, I’m afraid.” Magnus gestured at the screenful of data before him. “It’s time to start thinking about the planet we’ve picked for a landing.”
“The one you picked! All I did was nod and agree—not that you would have paid attention if I hadn’t!” Magnus stared, hurt. “I would have chosen another destination!”
Alea plowed right past the remark. “We’re almost there. A little late to be thinking about whether or not they need us, isn’t it?”
Magnus bridled at her tone but fought to hide it. The adrenaline of battle sang through his veins, and he hoped it didn’t show in his eyes. “Yes, I’ve been remiss. I’m afraid I’ve been enjoying your company too much to bother doing my homework.”
“Enjoying my company!” Alea’s lip curled in scorn. “You know I’m a shrew and a termagant—and I know it, too!”
“We do have some spirited discussions,” Magnus admitted, “but they’re enjoyable in their way.” He frowned. “Have you changed your mind, then? Is the visit not worth our time?”
“Are there enough people to warrant it?” Alea countered. “Three huge continents, but only the fourth one, the one that’s almost small enough to call an island, has been colonized.”
“I don’t think the worth of a people depends upon their number,” Magnus said gravely.
“But they’re not exactly oppressed, are they?” Alea demanded. “Not from those pictures you showed me! No one looks to be starving, no one’s wearing rags—and if there are oppressors, where do they live? We didn’t see any castles, any palaces—just village after village of thatch-roofed cottages!”
“The pictures we saw when we started this trip were hundreds of years old,” Magnus reminded her. “A great deal may have changed. Those castles could be there now, and the people groaning in toil.”
“The orbital survey doesn’t show any castles on hilltops,” Alea snapped, “and you did it yesterday. It shows only temples—and there aren’t even any cities around them.”
“Well, some of the towns are rather large,” Magnus. said, “and there’s one of them for every province, with villages around it.”
“You’re seeing provinces where they don’t exist! It takes more than a river or a mountain chain to make a political division.”
“Still, I’d prefer to think of them as Neolithic city-states.”
“When your ‘cities’ are scarcely more than large towns?” Alea said scornfully.
“Athens wasn’t much more, by modern standards,” Magnus said judiciously, “and it governed the farms and villages all around it.”
“Just because most of the land is cultivated doesn’t mean the towns govern the countryside. You might as well say the temples on top of those round hills rule the farmers! After all, they build their houses round as the hills, don’t they?”
Magnus stared at her. “What a remarkable insight! Here I’d put it down to standard Neolithic architecture, but you’re right! They’re building the houses in imitation of the holy hills!”
Alea made an impatient, dismissive gesture; she wasn’t fishing for compliments at the moment. “That’s beside the point. What matters is that whatever form of government those people have, it works for them! They’re well fed and well housed. Why wouldn’t they be happy?”
“Because they might not be free,” Magnus said: “If a girl has to marry whomever the priests tell her and a boy can never leave the county in which he was born, can they ever be content?”
“Yes, if the girl happens to love that man and the boy is happy where he is!” Alea shot back. “Sometimes the priests do have insight, you know.”
“Sometimes,” Magnus agreed. “I can see you might think they’re too well-off to be worth a visit, but something bothers me about the setup. It’s probably right, but possibly wrong, very wrong. There have been civilizations before this that nourished their people’s bodies well but left their souls starving. These people may be prosperous but miserable.”
“Probably! May be! We’re traveling a hundred light-years for something that’s possibly wrong! What if we get there and learn that everything’s fine?”
“I’ll rejoice,” Magnus said. “But we might land and find the people in rags with aristocrats lording it over them. Either way, someone should care enough to find out what has happened to these people over the centuries.”
“Why? What could we do about it? Even if we bring back word, who would care?”
“True, all the descendants of their relatives will have died long ago.” Magnus sighed. “And only historians would be interested. But I can’t help worrying that we may find them exploited unmercifully; as in so many other lost colonies. I’ll always regret not going there if I don’t find out.”
“If! If!” Alea threw up her hands in exasperation. “Are we to spend the rest of our lives jaunting about the galaxy chasing an ‘if?”
“I know it seems a waste of our time and effort,” Magnus said ruefully, “but anything could have happened to them.” He forced a smile. “They might even have developed a shining Utopia with the answers to the questions that torture all souls.”
“It’s the hunger that tortures the bellies and the brutality of the masters we should be worrying about—and we’ve no reason to think these people have either!”
“That’s true,” Magnus agreed, “but we might find them living just as their ancestors did. What if oppression has kept them from advancing?”
“What if advances are really steps backward?” Alea snapped. “From all those books Herkimer has showed me, it seems every time your race made another leap in progress, it cost them dearly by raising two problems for every one it solved.”
It had become his race now, Magnus noted, though as far as he knew, she was human, too. “Yes—what good does it do to save a mother and child at birth if they die from starvation two years later? Still, if they’ve multiplied to the point of overpopulation, we can at least show them some modern farming techniques and boost their food production.”
“If!” Alea stormed. “I can’t waste my life waiting to find out if any of your ‘ifs’ are worth it!” She spun on her toe and stalked out.
Magnus slumped in his seat with a sigh. He had known she was spirited—that was one of the qualities that had prompted him to invite her to leave her medieval planet and join him in traveling from star to star trying to free the oppressed peoples of the colony planets—but he hadn’t expected her to be so turbulent. “You don’t suppose she really wants to turn back, do you, Herkimer?”
“No, Magnus,” said the tranquil voice of the ship’s computer. “I think she has been confined too long in a limited space with only you for company.”