Owazzi finished. The consensus appeared to favor Jerassa. Of course, nobody could compel the Zera Victrix to come home, and perhaps those who had much to lose in Valennen would support it, did it choose to stay. In any case, it had independent income, from services which personnel of it performed in many separate places. But the bulk of this assembly felt that it should urge the legions to pull in closer to the heartland; and probably Larreka’s colleagues would rather do this than join him in a doomed cause; so was it not best that Larreka reconsider? That was the general feeling, Owazzi said. A minority had been pointing out that the kind of military aid the humans would give had not been specified, and should be before any further thinking was done. Would the speaker for Primavera, if such he was, care to comment?
“I must,” Sparling said harshly.
He wished he were on a Terrestrial-type stage, safe behind a lectern, not surrounded by these eyes and eyes and eyes. As was conventional, he faced the Lawspeaker, He filled his lungs and said to her old face:
“I think most of you here will understand how grieved we are at the tidings I bear. Prepare yourselves.” Useless human phrase. Ishtarians speak straight out in public matters. They save oratory for art, where it belongs. “Very lately we have gotten word that our hands may be tied for years to come, in helping you in any way.
“Any way. I do not know when work can continue on my dams, nor does Jane Fadavi know when she can get the air seeders to abort tornados, nor have we prospect of synthetic food and prefabricated shelters being sent for refugees in the near future, nor aircraft to evacuate them from stricken parts, nor—anything. Including weapons.
“At best, we can do minor jobs, we can advise, we can try to keep Primavera going. I do say this: We will not abandon you. For hundreds of us, this is our home too, and you are our people.
“You have doubtless guessed the reason. You know that war goes among the stars, between our world Earth and another. Thus far, action has not been intense. Both sides were busy marshaling their forces. Now it is in earnest, and will consume resources we had counted on.
“But I have worse news yet. Part of Earth’s effort involves establishing a base on this world. Be not afraid. You are remote from the fighting. The base is not necessary. We of Primavera will strive to persuade the overlords of Earth that it is not necessary.”
Shall I tell them the war isn’t? No, not here. They’ll soon observe our bitterness.
“If we succeed in that, we will at least release our home production. For instance, the dams can then be finished in time. But unless the war proves brief, we cannot expect shipments from Earth as early as we had planned. And we may not be able to stop construction of that base. We will almost surely be in no position to help you fight. Oh, I suppose we can keep our private guns and vehicles, and you can keep those you already own. But a few small arms, a few cars and flyers, will not check the barbarians.
“I do not know what will happen. Conceivably this will all end in short order and we can go on as we’d hoped. But I think we had better batten down against the worst.”
Sparling stopped. Lousy rhetoric for a human audience, he thought. How good for a mixed bag of Ishtarians? Not awfully, I’m afraid.
Into a terrible hush, Owazzi took the word. “We must think a multitude of stiff thoughts over again. No doubt this assembly will stand for longer than expected, to consider ways, means, and contingencies with our human friends.” The language allowed her to separate those, by a suffix, from human unfriends. To him; “I wonder, though, since Larreka accompanies you, I wonder what your ideas are about holding on in Valennen.”
Taken by surprise, Sparling stammered, “I, I don’t know, I’m not a soldier, not competent to say—”
Jerassa spoke from the floor: “The Lawspeaker is right; we must more than ever move carefully toward judgment. But does it not seem, colleagues, that this triples the reason for recalling our forces to Beronnen?”
Protests arose in a storm-wave. Nobody wanted the legions to withdraw from his or her country. Yet—voices were sufficiently soft for Sparling to make out what individuals said—few opposed the principle that civilization should pull its outposts closer in and, specifically, abandon all holdings north of the equator.
Owazzi ended the low hubbub by signaling Larreka to the dais.
When he had silence, the commandant said, flat-toned for an Ishtarian:
“No. I tried to explain earlier, and you still don’t see. This is not a question of protecting a few commercial interests. It’s a question of heading off a conqueror. I know that, I tell you. know it from military intelligence and from what’s lately been happening and from a cold shiver that a lifetime on the frontier has taught me how to feel.
“If we can’t get human war-aid, we’ll not just be wise to stick in Valennen, we’ll have to. Else the enemy can strike however he feels like, throughout the Ehur and Fiery Seas. He can throw more against an island than we can put on it; and when the garrison’s been reduced, he can go on to the next. A battle or two won by us won’t mean a futtering thing, long-range, when he’s got a whole mainland to withdraw to and we no troops there to welcome him.
“Soon we’ll lose those waters. Soon after, he’ll be harrying North Beronnen while his ships range west into the Argent and east into the Cyclonic Ocean, picking off whatever he pleases, raising allies, breeding fighters—And maybe afterward we can keep him from taking over this half of this continent, but we’ll’ve had to haul in everything we’ve got left to defend it.
“Which’d be the end of the Gathering. Civilization might limp on, but only in South Beronnen. And only for South Beronnen. Doom and blast, can’t you see the Gathering is what this cycle’s all about, the best thing we’ve got to pass on to the next?
“Yes, you can stay safer for a while by letting Valennen go. My judgment as a soldier is, it’d be better to let several of your homes go, and send the strength to me there that I need to clean the place out. But vote as you please. The Zera stays.”
TEN
As she ended the old song, Jill Conway kept fingers flying on her guitar and began to whistle. Trills, glides, notes, chords, now shivery shrill, now bell-deep, flew out beneath the stars, entered ears and danced along nerves till the whole body seemed to tone with them. Those were rollicking ghosts they raised, nevertheless ghosts.
Meanwhile her gaze wandered aloft. On this warm night she had rolled back the porch roof of her cottage. She and Yuri Dejerine sat under the sky only. Primavera had no need for street illumination; a tall hedge around the yard screened off windows of neighbors, who weren’t close anyway; there was nothing except a glowglobe on a table where stood the cognac he had brought to follow the dinner she cooked. Above shadowy sweet-smelling masses of trees, the stars marched in brilliant armies on either bank of the galactic river. Caelestia hastened tumbling and glittering between them. But her eyes sought past Ea, toward the Wings. In that constellation lay Earth, which had begotten the words and music she offered her guest—had begotten her entire race, though scarcely an atom from it could be in her…