(He had decided in these latter years that the work would be more use to him than the Triad.)
“I’d better let Jill tell the rest herself,” Meroa added. Her glance flickered around the group. “No insult. What you don’t know, you can’t be guilty of concealing from that Primavera boss; and Yakulen may have sore need of his good will.”
They signified assent.
“What we can discuss openly,” Meroa said to Larreka, “is Rafik. He wants to enlist—in the Yissek, because of your ideas about the Fiery Sea coming under attack soon, where they are.” Dryly: “Also, I suspect, because of what he’s heard about balmy tropical paradises and eager dusky maidens.”
“No,” Larreka replied. “Not if I can talk him out of it, Can’t he see, his best service is right here? If we can hold Valennen, a few raids on the Fieries won’t matter. If we can’t, then we’ve lost the Fieries too, and Beronnen is next in line.”
“Chu, do talk to him. Bear in mind, he probably doesn’t care for the idea of his mother being his military chief.”
“He’d care for those islands less. Already the Rover’s made them the opposite of paradise. The Yissek’s fighting typhoons and flood tides and famines oftener than it’s fighting barbarians. The dusky maidens are too busy staying alive to be particularly eager any more.”
“I tried to tell him that, but it only fanned his idealism. Service where service is needed, no matter the risk!”
“Then I’ll tell him that a soldier who willingly takes risks is a soldier the legion is better off without—Speak of a rammer and he’ll stave in your boat.”
The noise from the entry was immensely relieving, foot-stamp, servants busy, Rafik’s deep young tones and Jill’s bugle clarity. He heard the girl say,” —we thought of taking shelter, but no tree would be safe with all that lightning blatting around, so he took me on his back and galumphed his hardest—”
His son staggered in, soaked despite a rubdown, hailed them, and collapsed onto a mattress. That must have been a real fiend’s race he ran. Well, Meroa had birthed him on a vessel beating through Ripship Straits in the teeth of an easterly, and a tinge of that had remained with the lad. I’m proud of you, of you and all the rest. I’m no Yakulen—only by marriage—I’m not in the way of seeing my family as octads of cousins sharing the same land. I’m an old Haelener, whose world has his wife and kids at its core.
Jill followed. She had shed her clothes. Her skin glowed from toweling. The hair stayed as wet as Rafik’s foliage, trailing firelight shimmers. Having been carried, she was not exhausted, and sped to hug Larreka. “Sugar Uncle! Hello!”
Watching her come, he thought how oddly lovely she was. Once in her adolescence, when they’d been for a swim, she had commented on that. “Tell me for honest, won’t you? How horrible do I seem to you? Sure, you like me, but how do I look? Four-limbed, a torso tottering along, no whiskers, no hump, no tail, no plants, bald except for ridiculous little patches, breasts dangling on top and… and genitalia right out in front too, in sight of the world and everybody—”
“How do you think I look?” he had replied.
“You’re beautiful. The way a cat is beautiful.”
“Okay, you remind me of a saru in flight, or a swordleaf in a high wind, or whatever. Now shut up and break out our lunch.”
For a blink of time, while she dashed across the floor, he wished he could spend an hour being her human lover. To gaze into those curious half-white eyes, rub beak against beak and taste thick pink lips, send fingers down the long slim blue-veined throat, across the softnesses beneath to their sunrise-colored tips and on over a many-curved slope till they rested between her thighs… Did humans ever have such wonderings about Ishtarians? Unlikely; humans were too frail. His was the merest flicker of sadness that he could never be closer than now to her. Damn! When would she grab herself a mate and start whelping?
She cast herself onto her knees and into his arms. Her nails dug through the leaves of his mane.
Larreka bellowed for more cider. Jill liked it, too. “I brought you a kilo of tobacco,” she said.
“You brought more than that, I hear,” he answered. “Freeze-dried rations—You’re grand.”
She switched to English. He saw and felt the bleakness upon her. “You know about the ban on transport, don’t you? Instead of battering my skull against that wall, I kept quiet and… went around collecting firearms and ammunition. You’ve got mighty little in Valennen. I couldn’t be very bold, in case that Dejerine bastard got wind of it. But I bought, begged, borrowed, a couple of times I stole—about twenty rifles and pistols, plus a few thousand rounds for them.”
“Jill, you’re a laren!”
“The least I could do, Uncle. Let’s be practical, though. First, you’ll have to arrange for porters while you’re here, to help lug that stuff to the north coast.”
“Couldn’t you just flit it to Port Rua in a small vehicle?”
“Uh-uh. Too obvious. Dejerine could wonder why Miss Conway took a junket. He could check back and confiscate what he found. Whereas if I go off overland on a field trip, and the weapons aren’t really missed for weeks—You see?
“Another thing. Several thousand rounds aren’t that flinkin’ many. You know how ninety-nine percent are bound to miss in action, no matter how skilled the marksmen; and you have maybe ten skilled marksmen in Valennen, right? You’ll want an instructor who can spend a minimum of ammo on training more. And it’ll help if, come combat, that instructor is there in the line, firing shots that go where they’re supposed to.”
He understood before she had finished. “You don’t mean you aim to come along with me?” he exclaimed.
She nodded. She had drawn knees close to chin and folded arms around them; the ends of her wet hair stroked her breasts and left gleaming streaks. “I mean exactly that, Uncle.”
TWELVE
Dejerine had found it astonishingly hard to acquire a site for his ground installations. He wanted a place not too far from Primavera, and discovered an area two hundred kilometers eastward which his planetological team reported was suitable. It was otherwise useless land, stony, dusty when rain didn’t make it muddy, barren aside from scattered leathery shrubs, deserted by the natives. Repeated periastrons were doubtless responsible for that, droughts which killed off vegetation followed by cloudburst after cloudburst to wash away exposed topsoil. The planet had many such regions. Yet a substantial water table remained, the bedrock was solid, the surrounding hills could be quarried for building material.
He expected that the Tayessa family, to whose ranch this desert belonged, would be glad to sell it. No doubt they’d jack the price as high as they were able, but he had plenty of gold along, plus authority to draw pesos if Federation currency was demanded. He was dumfounded when, after conferring, the owners refused.
On the basis of what xenological knowledge he had, he replied to their representative: “I am aware that no individual owns the land, but rather the Tayessas do, and you must consider the rights of generations unborn.
However, surely titles change hands, for one reason or another. Have you the right to deny the unborn what my gold can buy?”
“What can it?” she answered through the interpreter Hanshaw had supplied. “The Red Sun is here. Who can eat gold, or shelter in it?”