‘How’d you do that? Plain to see, he wants them dead.’
‘I told him they’d become friends of mine; also, there is such a thing as the honor of the Lodge, and I’d complain to Wolf; also, in the near future I’d catch him alone and secure him and beat the living shit out of him. He saw my point.’
‘What’s next?’
‘I don’t know exactly, though I’m certain we’ll get home, to the Union. How I look forward to showing you around my country.’
And how I hope I will learn that you are not monsters there,
went through him.
When Orluk Zhanovich Boktan was based in Dulua, com
manding his bootless search for clues to the death-stuff runners, and during subsequent, shorter missions to this area, he and Vanna Uangovna had gotten on cordial terms. Their unlikeness made their encounters stimulating, while at the same time he respected her intellect and Power and she found him to be a kindly man at heart.
Thus she stood in the thin rain and listened while he told Bors Kharsov: ‘No, sir, I’m sorry, I can’t say more. Besides, I don’t know more. My orders were to get Karst’s release and bring the rest of them back to base, dead or alive, according to his directions and my judgment. The two men we have tied up seem to be first-chop suspects in the uranium smuggling, and that isn’t a business that can wait.’
‘Maurai – dealers in the horror – I can’t believe it,’ Vanna stammered.
‘Could be a ring of them, operating on their own,’ Orluk said. He had clearly been thinking hard as he rode hither. ‘The Federation’s as mixed a herd as the Five Nations, and spreads over all Oceania. Or could be an international criminal syndicate, members from everywhere. Or … could be the Maurai high command is sorry its forerunners junked what explosive they could find, these days when new factions are on the way up.’
‘Nevertheless –’ Vanna subsided, shivered, and stared at the armed strangers everywhere around.
‘The Norrmen seem to have a spoon in this kettle,’ Bors said, his tone mistrustful.
Orluk nodded. ‘I know. But are they necessarily our enemies any longer? If they got a clue to something, and warned our upper echelons because we’re in a position to act fast – well – Truth
is,
in the last several years, off and on, I’ve noticed Norrmen going in and out of important Yuanese offices –’ He snapped his lips shut. His was not to say more than he must.
‘What shall I tell the Maurai legate when she arrives?’ Bors wondered.
‘Don’t ruffle her feathers unduly,’ Orluk counseled. ‘Explain that her countrymen, if they really are her countrymen, were extradited on criminal charges, you have no choice but to obey, and she can apply to diplomatic channels for information.’ In his hand he held a gauntlet. He slapped it against his thigh, a whipcrack noise. ‘Let’s be away!’
Bors rustled the papers he had received, to show that he had in
fact had no choice. ‘You cannot stay for refreshment, honored sir?’ he asked as politeness required.
‘No, sir, my humble thanks, but I regret it is impossible.’ They exchanged bows, followed by salutes. Bors departed.
Orluk turned to go. Vanna plucked his sleeve. Fear knocked in her breast. ‘What do you really think?’ she asked him.
‘Wai?’ He blinked in surprise.
‘About this. What is behind it? I sense – utter wrongness –
evil –’
She must force the last word out. It was not one which a true Gaean would use save in the cruelest extremity.
Orluk’s leathery countenance registered unease. ‘How, reverend lady?’
‘I don’t know. This is so sudden. And yet it isn’t, either. Dreadful forces loose, unnatural alliances, everywhere lies and secrets,
lies
and secrets.… Orluk, a wind blows from tomorrow and it smells of war. Not a few battles and a treaty, but a war, violence and worse than violence, to bring down the world. What can you tell me? What can we do?’
Were they drops of mist on his brow and in his beard, or sweat? She saw him force himself into starkness. ‘Reverend lady,’ he said, ‘I know scarcely a thing beyond what I’ve already told. Something very bad is going on, but it’s still hidden in the dark.’ He squared shoulders which had slumped a little. ‘Come what may, come the demons out of hell, I hope I’ll do my duty, whatever it turns out to be.
‘I must go.’
‘A minute more,’ she craved, from a tide that – in this hour when serenity was torn to rags and scattered on the wind from the future – bore her toward Oneness. ‘I have a brother who’s a soldier. And are we not all reservists, all Soldati? If something happens to rouse those bone-deep fears we bear, ancestral memories of Death Time, and we must fight, you know how shaken the troops will be. A proróchina in their midst could make every difference to their morale. Call on me.’
‘Reverend lady!’ He was overwhelmed.
She smiled, for now that she had spoken, calm was rising in her, the calm of absolute resolution. ‘There will be many such volunteers,’ she said. ‘The fight will be for Gaea … and for humankind, lest Gaea be forced to cast us off. I approach you because we are acquainted. Krasnaya cannot field any large army, and it will
doubtless be under Yuanese joint command; you can expedite my recruitment; I would like to ride to battle with a friend.’
He gave her a bow of Third Humility; his Tien Dziang only rated Second. She gave him her blessing. He bustled off and barked orders.
Once more at peace, Vanna sought Iern. (Afterward she would withdraw to her home and let Oneness possess her and she possess It.) She wanted to bid him farewell. They would never meet again. He had gusted into her life like a breeze off the sea she had not seen except in pictures and poems; for a tiny bit, she had daydreamed; but of course that was impossible. The marvels he had described, the revelation of his spirit in their few days together, were as much as she could have hoped for, and enough.
He had his love. Maybe she would have the kindness to stand aside while Vanna and Iern said their decorous goodbyes.
5
Mist rolled white across the earth, but heaven was clear and the sun a dazzlement low in the east. Breath was still sharp as it went in the nostrils, visible as it went out, but sweet odors of horse had begun to rise. A hush lay yet over the company, but hoofbeats, creak of leather, jingle of metal, surrounded it with sound. Then from afar, dwindled but unutterably clear, came the ringing of a bell.
It clanged in no cadence of Franceterr, and a drum which must be huge boomed slowly beneath its tones. That call completed Iern’s sense of unreality – or was it he that was the phantom? Kilometers distant, he made out the temple, multiple-roofed, rising to an onion-domed tower, awakening the village beneath to devotions and labor, and every shape was grotesque. The landscape might likewise have been on another planet. Curiously laid-out fields reached from yonder horizon to this road; no fence, hedgerow, wall, or boundary stone identified any plot of ground as anybody’s own; trees stood only where they could serve as windbreaks or
give
shade to a worker while he rested. The feeling Iern got was that this countryside was tended in total care by the people who belonged to it.
On the right side of the road, a line of poplars went parallel, as they often did on both sides at home. Here they had untrimmed poles woven between them to make a cattle-proof barrier. Beyond
reached grass. Near the edge of vision, a herd and a pair of horsemen seemed to float on the mist.
Yesterday he had felt nothing strange, in the excitement of liberation and departure; and then when he and Ronica had slipped out of camp to a haystack they’d marked – (‘Who cares about the wet?’ she laughed. ‘It’ll steam right off, I promise you.’) This morning, his body weary and nerves aquiver from released tension, he knew how lost he was.
In search of assurance, he glanced behind him at the soldiers. They should be solid. But their forms, faces below the crested helmets, dress, banners were foreign; their very style of riding was, the rhythm in which lances swayed and flashed. Their outfitting sloppy and their formation well-nigh nonexistent by his standards, they nonetheless conveyed a sense of coiled-snake readiness. Yawns were giving place to talk, in ordinary human fashion, but when somebody cracked a joke in their high-pitched language, they did not laugh like Uropans.
He brought his attention back to the commander, on whose right he traveled. A compact man, Orluk Boktan bore himself so erect that he appeared taller than he was. A countenance craggy apart from the flat nose held slant gray eyes, gray mustaches and forked beard, a scar puckering the left cheek. He was bareheaded, his shaven pate stubbly, his collar open, and he puffed on an atrocious cigar. His voice was harsh but his manner affable – if Iern read it aright, which was not certain – as he responded to questions.
Ronica, on his left, conducted the conversation, translating between Unglish and Angley. Plik and Mikli rode close behind. Terai and Wairoa were at the tail of the column, not to be seen from here.
Poor fellows,
Iern thought. However, Ronica had explained the necessity of keeping them silent. Whatever cause she served, she herself must not be endangered!
How splendidly she rears in her saddle against this enormous sky. Am I falling in love?
‘Yes, Orluk was saying through the woman, ‘I am from Yo-Ming in the West, and know the mountains of the Border well. The Bison Polk has a range at their feet, and there my older wife dwells, and our children and grandchildren. I visit when I can.’
‘How do you come to live this far east?’
Orluk grinned. ‘Thanks to your folk! I had the luck to be in several of our last clashes with them. It got me quick promotion and the notice of my superiors. The Bison Polk has a good many mem
bers in the Chai Ka-Go area, who moved that way as the city grew. When their old noyon died, I was invited to take his post. Not easy, shifting from hills to plains, leading troops drawn from ranches and towns instead of hunters, trappers, timbermen – Well, I was needed on that same account, because these parts keep woodlands too, where the Bisons may someday have to fight. A proper Soldat doesn’t refuse duty. But I wanted my youngsters raised in the country of their fathers.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Fifteen years. It’s not bad. I’ve a fine home in Chai Ka-Go, which
is
a place where you can have fun; a nice little wife there, children by her, grandchildren in a few more years, I hope. I can brag that I’ve done well in my command. Who was dispatched to scour the Krasnayan woods for bombrunners? The Bisons!’
Reminded, Orluk lost his geniality, scowled, and puffed savagely on his cigar. ‘We found nothing, though,’ he said, ‘till your group – When I think about my women, children, grandchildren – Ha, if you want their story squeezed out of those two dogs, ask me. Start by putting pliers to their balls, I would.’
‘That isn’t so Gaean,
is
it?’ gibed Mikli.
‘I’m not a Gaean,’ Orluk said. ‘I
give
the Principles and adepts their due respect. They may be right. But meditation and theory aren’t for me, and what honor do they have from lip service? My homage is to the old gods – Oktai, Erlik, Lenin – and the ancestors.’ He brooded. ‘Not that I think a true Gaean would be tenderhearted in this matter. What
are
they scheduled for, those two?’
‘That’s out of my department,’ Mikli said.
‘Is it?’ Orluk threw him a backward look. ‘I wonder. You know a hellful more than you’ve told.’
‘Indeed I do,’ replied Mikli blandly. ‘For example, the ways by which my team identified what that pair were up to and how Ronica and I tracked them down. Details of that kind would point at too much else my service prefers not to make public. I do not question your trustworthiness, Noyon, but you have no need to know. As a military man, you understand.’
‘Yes, I do. But things weren’t this tangled and strange when I was young –’
Actually, Iern did not hear what the men talked about until later. Ronica had stopped translating when Orluk gave her an irritated glare. She continued to ride alongside the commander and listen to
the Unglish. The sense of isolation grew colder within Iern. He dropped behind to join Plik, while Mikli rode forward.
The Angleyman was sober, for lack of supplies, and subdued. He regarded his companion for a while before he said, ‘You’re troubled, my friend. Not worried or frightened, nothing so superficial, but troubled. Aren’t you?’
Iern stared ahead of him. The sight of Ronica against the Mong landscape stabbed with realization of how alien she, too, was. ‘I suppose you could call it that,’ he mumbled.
‘Do you know why? Presumably you’re bound for safety in the Union, and in charming company.’
That last phrase brought back recollection of Vanna yesterday. She hadn’t seemed to mind when he violated her society’s customs, took both her hands in his, and kissed them. How delicate they were, exquisitely formed. ‘Blessing be upon you, Talence Iern Ferlay,’ she had murmured. ‘May you win happiness, as you well deserve.’
She’s mistaken there,
had gone through him, in an arrow flight of his past misdeeds. She chanted a few lines in her language and explained: ‘Those were not a prayer for you. We do not pray to Gaea. They were a wish, with what force is mine behind it, that your share of Her life become whole.’ Her ritual solemnity broke. ‘I, I will remember you, often and often. Fare gladly.’
To Plik, Iern blurted, ‘I’m flying blind, that’s why, blind and the instruments gone dead.’
‘It is indeed disturbing to find oneself in a foreign myth.’
‘What? No, listen, I admit our stay in Dulua has made me doubt a great many things I took for granted. I wasn’t so narrow-minded I didn’t believe Gaeans can be good people individually. I knew some in Uropa who were – are. But they did seem to be on the side of the enemy –in a fundamental way, against everything the Domain lives by – and wrong, wrong! Now Vanna – those patient explanations of hers, and her own self –’ Iern looked near the sun through eyes almost shut. His lashes made rainbow colors. She had made him aware of countless small miracles like that, and gotten him to think about them and feel them.