But after they got to the port of Reggio, he called again, sounding kind of bummed out. It seemed as if he was wondering what he was down there for. I could see his problem; it was ours too-Tarel's and mine.
"Larn," I said, "you're worrying about no workable plan again." He didn't say anything back right away.
"Can I make a suggestion?" I asked.
"Okay. Sure."
"We've got an intention. Right?"
"I guess so. Yes."
"So what is it, then? The intention."
It took him a minute-well, ten or fifteen seconds- before he answered, I suppose because what he was looking at didn't seem do-able to him. "Make this a rebel world," he said at last.
I was playing it by ear myself now, and what I said next surprised me. "Take it back another step," I told him, "Our real intention is to rid the Empire of tyrannical rule. Right?"
There was another lag, and when he answered, his voice was thoughtful. "Right. That's right."
"So how about this, then: You're down there doing things, making decisions step by step to suit the situation-the best you can and with no need to hurry. And if you keep that intention in mind, to rid the Empire of tyrannical rule, your decisions will move us in that direction.
"Does that make any sense to you?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Yeah."
"Good. And we're not in a hurry! We can't make a rebel world out of Fanglith overnight. As far as that's concerned, maybe it's not even possible. Take things a step at a time, learn, and wait for the bright idea that you can build a plan on. And if things don't look good in a year or two, maybe we'll decide to go somewhere else, to some other planet. We don't have to make it on Fanglith."
I shut up then, to give him a chance. After a minute though, when he hadn't said anything more, I spoke again. "Brother mine, are you there?"
I heard him chuckle then, the welcomest sound I'd heard in a long time. "Yeah, I'm here. Thanks, sis. You're the greatest. This is Larn, over and out."
"This is the Jav, over and out."
I switched off the mike. Maybe not the greatest, I thought, but l am pretty good, if I do say so myself.
Tarel and Moise were already sleeping. Only Bubba was awake with me, looking at me and grinning, his tongue hanging out. I winked at him, then put on the learning program skullcap and began my first lesson in Arabic.
Moise:
These people who rescued me were clearly not children of Abraham. Nor were they Christian, nor of Islam. Yet if they were heathen, they seemed nonetheless people of honor and nobility. And surely they had shown me kindness and many wonders. Even their huge wolf-like dog spoke with them in his own language, which they understood, and they answered him in-theirs. Deneen says they will start to teach me their language tomorrow.
Although they have knowledge and power incredibly beyond my own, they treat me almost like one of them. True, at first they locked me in my room at night, but that was a reasonable precaution. And they showed me no other distrust, though they knew nothing about me except what I told them. They have told me their dog reads the thoughts of men, and has told them I am honorable, worthy of their trust. Perhaps he does read thoughts. I will test him when I learn to understand his speech.
Being with them, I feel an excitement like none I have imagined before. And even though they are goyim, if they ask me to help them in their endeavors, as I expect they will, I will surely agree. For I have no family, nor anyone else in all this world.
PART THREE
Larn:
A few hours later I woke up, just barely, and feeling kind of chilly, went below and fell right asleep again. The next thing I knew, someone had grabbed me and jerked my right arm up behind my back. A second person was taking the blast pistol, stunner, and communicator off my belt. Someone else, on deck, was holding a flickering torch down through the hatch; now he backed away.
"Not to struggle." The guy talking was the one who'd taken my weapons. "I wish not to harm you."
The words were Evdashian! Broken Evdashian! Then whoever was holding me jerked me to my feet, harder than he needed to. He was strong, with hands like very large clamps.
I was absolutely wide awake now, but confused. How could the Imperials have found me? And wouldn't the political police have spoken in Standard? Besides, someone whose language was Standard wouldn't speak Evdashian with that accent. It occurred to me then that maybe they'd been here ahead of us this time. Maybe they had native monitors on Fanglith now, who'd picked up my communicator traffic.
But I couldn't really believe that; it seemed impossible that this was happening.
The guy who had me in the hammerlock pushed me toward the ladder. There was just enough light that I could see the one with my weapons start up the ladder.
The man following me had to release his hammer lock to climb the steep steps after me, but at the top, the guy with my weapons was waiting in the dark with my stunner pointed at me.
The sailor on watch was standing well back from the gangplank, obviously afraid of the guys who'd captured me. His relief man was sitting awake on a woo! bale, staring, unmoving. The moon, about three-quarters full, was lighting the scene from about thirty or forty degrees above the western horizon. Considering the geometry of the planet, moon, and sun here, that made it about midnight.
Then the man behind me reached the deck and clamped the hammerlock on me again.
The one with my weapons definitely seemed to be the boss. I could see now that he wore a conical Norman helmet, and I was willing to bet he had a hauberk on beneath his cloak. A knight's outfit. But he was familiar with civilized weapons, because he turned and put both the sailors to sleep with my stunner. I hoped it was to sleep; if he'd reset it upward from the medium setting I usually kept it on, at this range they were probably dead. He hadn't needed to shoot them at all; they hadn't been about to do anything.
Meanwhile the guy behind me never paused, just kept walking across the deck and down the gangplank, pushing me ahead of him. The guy with the torch had started off ahead; the one with my weapons came along behind now. A little way along the wharf we came to several horses, watched by a fourth man. The guy in charge stepped in front of me and turned, stunner steady. Now, in the moonlight and torchlight, I could see his face.
"Brislieu, let go his arm." This time he spoke in Norman French. My arm was released.
"Arno!" I said. This was harder for me to believe than my first idea about Imperials. How had he learned to talk Evdashian? No wonder I hadn't recognized his voice! Then I recalled: The last day we'd been with him, he'd spent a couple of hours plugged into the learning program, absorbing Evdashian-just before the Federation corvette had blown up; a little before we'd left Fanglith. It was surprising he could speak it at all; that had been two and a half years earlier, and he'd never had a chance to use it, even once.
"I'd come here looking for you!" I told him. "But how did you find me? How did you even know I was back on Fanglith?"
He laughed softly. "Your French has gotten worse," he said, again in Norman French. "You've been speaking too much Provencal. We'll talk of how I found you, and of other things, when we're out of town." He gestured toward one of the horses. "That one is yours; get on. We have some twenty miles to ride. And do not try to escape. You'll be more comfortable sitting in the saddle than tied over it on your belly, and the scenery will be better that way."
I put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the horse-one of the heavy war horses that the Normans call destriers. Arno had swung into the saddle without letting the stunner move away from me. Then we rode off down the dirt street, the horses' iron-shod hooves thudding softly in the quiet night. I hadn't ridden since Normandy; the horse's smell and the roll of its gait felt good to me. At one point we encountered a street patrol, but they didn't pay any attention to us. I suppose they recognized Arno and Brislieu as Norman knights, and Normans were the masters here.