She sat briefly in an equal blindness. Dear, awkward Ian. Did he suspect how she admired him, he who had roved over half the planet readying to do battle with the red giant? Or how fond of him she had grown, his patience and decency, the good company he was when a dark mood had not taken him? Sometimes she daydreamed about how things could have been, were she born twenty years earlier on Earth.
She blinked hard, wiped her eyes with the back of a hand, blinked again. Damn! Why am I woolgathering on a sheepless planet? I’ve got a job to do. Except I don’t know how.
Surging to her feet, she went back outside. Light from the doorway caught Dejerine sharp athwart a night where she could not at once see stars. He rose, concern upon his features. “Bad news, Jill?”
She nodded. Her fists were clenched at her sides. He came to take them in his hands and raise them. His gaze captured hers. “Can I help in any way?” he asked.
Hope sprang. “You bet you can!” Abruptly controlled, she related the situation in a few unemotional words.
The mobile face before her congealed. He let her go and stared past her. “A pity, I suppose,” he said, toneless. “That is, naturally I regret your distress. As to the wisdom of the military decision, I am not qualified to judge. You realize my orders are clear. Apart from self-defense, my command is forbidden to intervene in native affairs.”
“You can appeal. Explain—”
He had never before interrupted her. “It would be futile. Therefore it would be undutiful, wasting the time of my superiors.”
“Well… okay. Let’s talk about that later. Right now, Larreka needs quick transportation. I hear you’ve classed flyers big enough to hold an Ishtarian as, uh, Federation resources.”
“Yes,” he said, half defiantly. “You have few. We couldn’t bring many more. To construct the ground installations in a short time will take every available freight carrier.”
“You can let me borrow one for a couple of days, can’t you?” she inquired around a tightening in her throat. “Full-scale work hasn’t started.”
“I was afraid you would request that.” He shook his head. “No. Believe me, I wish I could. But if nothing else, the risk from storms—how bad do equinoctial gales get during a periastron? Nobody was here last time to study the meteorology. It must be unpredictable.”
Jill stamped her foot. “Damn you, I don’t need protection against myself!” She gulped. “Sorry. My turn to be sorry. Somebody else can pilot if you insist.”
His eyes shifted back to hers, and the least sardonicism touched his lips. Huh? Does he think I think he’s worried about losing delightful me?
He turned grave, even gentle. “I cannot authorize it for anyone,” he said. “The aircraft would be put at hazard for a purpose irrelevant to my mission. Worse, this would be a kind of intervention, however minor. Given such a precedent, where can I draw the line against further demands? No, there is no way I could justify myself to my superiors.”
Rage and grief whirled upward. “So you’re afraid of a reprimand!” Jill yelled. “A check mark in your file! A delay in your next promotion! Get out!”
Astounded, he stuttered, “Mais… please, I don’t… I didn’t mean—”
“Get out, you gonococcus! Or do I have to throw you out—like this?” She snatched the bottle and hurled it to the porch. It didn’t break, but the contents ran forth as if from a wound.
His mouth compressed, his nostrils dilated. He gave her a bow. “My apologies. Miss Conway. Thank you for your hospitality. Good evening.”
He walked off with metronomic strides and was lost in the dark.
Was I foolish? Jill hopped to and fro. Should I have—? But I couldn’t! I couldn’t! She sat down by the spilled cognac and wept.
ELEVEN
As Larreka and his escort neared the headquarters of Yakulen Ranch, a storm drove ponderously out of the west. Wind sighed cold through the heat which had brooded earlier, like a sword through flesh, and sunscorched lia rippled and rustled across yellow-brown kilometers of range. Far off, a herder and his wo were bringing in a flock of owas; they seemed lost in that hugeness. Single trees tossed, brawled, threw splashes of russet at flying murky clouds. Between land and low heaven swept a hundred fleetwings; their rices creaked faintly in the whine and boom around. Where light-spears, fire or brass color, struck, they changed the took of the world. Westward stood a purple-black cliff down which lightnings torrented. The noise of those streams rolled steadily louder.
The trooper from Foss Island said, “If I was home and saw that weather coming at me, I’d haul my boat as high ashore as she’d go and cable her fast.” Larreka could barely hear him.
“Well, it’s not a twister, but I’d sure appreciate a roof over me when it gets here,” the commandant agreed. “On the double!” He flogged his tired body into a smart trot.
The familiar buildings made a clustered darkness to the north. He saw that the sails were off the windmill and the flag was descending a pole whose horned bronze finial swayed in arcs above the hall. Letters from here, to him and Meroa in Valennen, had told how nobody took a chance any longer on a gale not turning into a hurricane.
The first raindrops lashed nearly level when he entered the courtyard. Long, low, half-timbered, peak-roofed in tile, the lesser structures of the ranch walled in its paved rectangle—barns, stables, kennels, mews, storehouses, granaries, workshops, bakery, brewery, cookhouse, laundry, surgery, school, ateliers, observatory, library—not everything a civilized community needed, but ample when it could trade with other ranches and the towns. Yakulen’s publishing linked to Nelek’s ropewalk and Sorku’s iron smelter and thus outward over South Beronnen and the whole Gathering. Folk scurried about, battening down. Just before a hireling closed the door, Larreka glimpsed a small flyer parked in a shed. Ng-ng, we’ve got a human visitor, he thought. I wonder who.
Hail whitened the wind, danced across flagstones, rattled on walls, bit at skin. He shielded his eyes with an arm and slogged to the hall.
It rose enormous at the middle of the court, stone, brick, and phoenix, many-windowed, many-balconied, gargoyles time-worn but mosaics still bright after ten sixty-four-years. That was at the east end, the oldest. As the Yakuten family grew in wealth, numbers, retainers, and guests, they added new units, each enclosing its own patio. Changing styles (the latest incorporated heraklite and armor glass from Primavera) flowed together as do bluff, crag, and canyon.
Somebody must have been watching out of the warm windowglow, for Larreka and his males had scarcely loped onto the verandah when the Founders’ Door swung wide for them. Beyond its copper-sheathed massiveness waited an entryful of servants who took their baggage and toweled them dry. Larreka hung onto his Haelen blade. It was a trademark; the soldiers said One-Ear slept with it. The rest, such as fire-crackle profanity in a score of languages, he needn’t keep up here among his kindred. The heroic capacity for drink—welt, he’d take as much tonight as he felt like, and no more; he was getting along in years, after all.
At the head of his six legionaires, he walked down a corridor to the main room. It was brick, carpeted in deep-blue Primavera neolon, wainscoted in woods of several hues and grains. Flames leaped and sang in four hearths, bracketed lanterns shone along the walls. Between them hung pictures, trophies, ancestral shields; high overhead, the rafters bore banners which had flown over battles or rescues. At the far end of the chamber, half hidden among unrestful shadows, was a shrine of She and He. (Few of the household attended it; most of the family were Triadists, while their help were drawn from a wide reach holding many different cults. But if nothing else, respect for tradition demanded it be kept.) The room was chiefly floor space, a long table, mattresses strewn about, some chairs for occasional humans. The warm air smelled of woodsmoke and bodies. Windows on two sides, closed against the storm which dashed itself on them, muffled its noise.