Dismay smote him. ‘No, it can’t! Mustn’t!’
‘Been a wonderful month, right? None better in my life. But I can’t go on parasitizing forever. I’ve work to do, kinfolk – the Lodgemaster and I agreed beforehand I’d get a month’s vacation with you. That was fine by me.’ The green eyes were focused unwaveringly upon him. ‘I didn’t know, then, how hard it would be to say goodbye.’
For an instant he was dizzy, and blood in his ears shouted the wind out of them. ‘For how long?’ he croaked.
Pain crossed the strong-boned countenance. ‘No telling. I’ll try to get leave and rejoin you before … Orion rises … but – depends on how things go, how badly I’m needed. Don’t be afraid, Iern. You saved Wolf’s bacon in the air above Krasriaya, and the Lodge won’t forget. We dare not risk the Maurai finding out about you, because you know too much, like the location I’ll be heading for, and there is no way in the world you could keep it from their drugs and doctors. But you’ll have a decent place to wait in, and afterward I dare hope we’ll help you return to your own.’
‘How long?’
‘A year, two years – I can’t tell. I’m only a junior engineer, and I’ve been absent for such a stretch –’
‘Am I supposed to wait –’ Abrupt rage exploded in Iern. He cracked fist into palm. ‘No, God damn it!’ he yelled in Unglish. ‘I’ll not stand for that! I love you too much!’
She gasped. ‘Oh, Iern, oh, Iern.’ And they were in each other’s arms.
– Laughing, while tears glistened on her cheekbones, she raised herself to an elbow and said unsteadily, ‘Okay, flyboy, you win. I kept telling myself it was just an infatuation. You were foreign to me, exciting on that account, but also a great lay, a human being I could like and respect, and I’d been alone ever since – Well, anyhow, I was wrong. This turned into more than a party. I want to go on with you for always.’
‘And I you.’ He rolled over to nuzzle her in the hollow where throat met collarbones. She was smooth and warm and smelled of summers gone and summers to come. ‘It won’t be easy, Ronica. Besides the different nationalities – entire cultures – I am –’ He must force it out, even though it was to her and his face was hidden
against her. ‘I’ve begun to see how childish I’ve been, my whole life. I won’t improve overnight.’
‘Aw, now.’ She rumpled his hair. ‘How about we get our pants back on before we freeze our buns off?’
They did, sat up, held hands, exchanged smiles and kissing motions. Wind, whales, chill, declining sun went unnoticed. ‘You’ll come along to Laska,’ she said happily. ‘I can wangle that. As a matter of fact, there’s no safer place to hide you.’
‘I, uh, I don’t want to scandalize your family. Marriage. … I don’t know what the legalities are. Under Aerogens law, Faylis can’t have her divorce till a year and a day after she’s filed suit, assuming it’s uncontested. But what does Union law have to say about a marriage performed in a different country, that no longer
is
a marriage?’
‘Union law doesn’t have a mucking thing to say. Did you think we’d let the government meddle in something so important? Don’t you worry your pretty little head. My folks will understand, and we’ll straighten out any formalities at leisure.’
They embraced. When she drew back, she had turned serious.
‘Let’s give this some further thought, darling,’ she advised. ‘Where we’re bound for – if we both are – is no nice retreat where you can have plenty of amusements while you rusticate. It’s in the outback. You will not be permitted to leave or have any outside communication until the work
is
done, and I’ve told you that could be a couple of years yet. I’ll be busier than a one-armed octopus, and often bone-tired when I get home; they’re really pushing hard. I may get sent off again looking for fissionables, which takes skills you haven’t got. Laska does have grand scenery, hunting, fishing, and so forth, but it has a lot of rotten weather too, and winter
is
moving in. Expect to be housebound most of the time.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I believe I could –’
‘Iern,’ she interrupted bluntly, ‘you’ve called yourself childish, and maybe you are in a few ways, but for the most part you’re a man, and an energetic, restless man at that. Can you stand being a … a sort of he-concubine?’
Can I?
he wondered in sudden shock. ‘Must I?’ he heard himself ask through a tightening throat.
Her expression grew stark. ‘Yes. And – oh, God –’ She hammered at the grass. ‘The more I look at it, the more it seems that the situation could poison what we’ve got between us. Maybe we, we
would do better to separate … for however long it takes.’
‘No!’ Wrath flared in him. ‘Why should they keep me a prisoner? Haven’t I earned their trust?’
‘Orion means too much, darling. Too much to me myself.’ She wrenched the statement forth. ‘And you did, when you were a Clan Senior, you did show a particular friendship for the Maurai.’
I can yell at her and wreck this joy we’ve just won,
said a new voice in Iern’s head.
Or I can answer carefully, while thinking harder than ever before in my life
.
The effort to choose each word and keep his tone level made him shiver. ‘Ronica, listen. I favored closer relationships with the Maurai, true. That was because they seemed to have the future in them, science, high technology. But here I’ve learned that the Union does also, perhaps more. And are the two incompatible, anyway? Does the liberation of the Union mean the destruction of the Maurai?’
‘Oh, no,’ she whispered. ‘I told you Orion is not a weapon. At least, not a thing to kill people by the millions. If the mission goes as it should, nobody will die.’
‘So you can work on it in good conscience?’
‘Yes.’
An uneasy recollection of Plik crossed Iern’s mind. He threw it out. Purpose thrilled upward within him. It was like riding the hurricane or leaping from Skyholm again. He sensed that his decision had been secretly coalescing in him for weeks. Now all at once it had set him free.
‘Why can’t I join you?’ he challenged.
‘What?’ she cried.
His voice resonated in his skull. ‘Enlist me in your cause. From clues you’ve let drop, I have a vague guess as to what Orion may be. If I’m right, magnificent! I’ll want to help. If I’m wrong, I’ll still do my best for you. I’m offering you my commitment, you see. And I have a technical education, and I am a first-class pilot. I might actually make a useful suggestion or two. Ronica, take me.’
‘Iern, Iern, Iern!’ She toppled into his arms. ‘Iern, together we’ll see Orion rise.’
Wind shrilled, waves marched, the North Pole circled toward winter.
Another wind whooped off the Sound, whirled through city streets, dashed rain against houses. The water streamed back down, gurgled along gutters, shimmered on pavement wherever a lamp broke the early darkness. Traffic still thronged and boomed: pedestrians in hooded coats, bicyclists and motorcyclists in ponchos, bubble shapes of private cars, lumbering bulk of buses, now and then a horseman or an animal-drawn cart. Hoot, clang, rattle resounded from railway station and yards, docksides, factories working overtime. Lights beckoned from taverns, restaurants, gambling halls, theaters, bawdyhouses. Derelicts huddled in doorways or slunk from alley to alley, clutching to them whatever warmth might lie in a jug of cheap booze or a marijuana cigarette if they had any.
An Inspectorate patrol passed through downtown Seattle. Silence spread around it like ice freezing outward, until the men’s boots racketed unnaturally loud. They were armed, not simply with the knives and truncheons that had been standard, but with pistols and rifles. They moved in close formation and their
visages
were dour. You got the impression that they would almost have welcomed a reason to open fire, these easygoing Maurai who since the war had tried so hard to make friends.
The house of Elwin Halmer saw nothing of this. It was among the old mansions which remained as enclaves in the industrial sections that had grown up around them and devoured their neighbors. The living room was warm and softly lit, pastel-papered, full of heirlooms. Flames crackled in a fireplace designed for efficiency but built of rough stones. Above the bone candlesticks on its mantel hung the emblem of the Wolf, burned into a piece of walrus hide.
‘Check … and, I do believe, mate,’ said Plik.
His host and warden studied the board. ‘Damn! You’re right. Well, it was a good game.’ His tone begrudged the words.
Plik unfolded himself and left the table, glass in hand, to get a refill of whiskey at a sideboard. The Norrman shook his head. ‘How do you do it?’ he wondered. ‘You’ve been drinking at a rate that threatens to bankrupt the Lodge, and still you beat me three games out of four.’
‘Perhaps you should drink too,’ Plik suggested. By now his Unglish was adequate. ‘If the Lodge
is
kind enough to provide for my material wants, presumably you can take a share. Don’t feel you would be embezzling. I’m supposed to be kept as happy as detention allows, but I do miss drinking companions.’
Elwin scowled. ‘You know I can’t do that. I’ve got to lose weight.’ His fat would not have been unusual among Maurai his age, but here, as in Uropa, it was abnormal.
Plik grinned. Liquor clucked from a bottle. ‘I do know. I’ve been devising a song for you, my friend.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, I’ve told you that at home I’m a balladeer of sorts. If you will let me sing a capella –
‘“The doctor said, ‘Diet.’ I nodded my head
And wondered just what it was I would be fed.
I looked at my ration. The ration was small.
I reached for my glass. There was no alcohol.”
‘No alcohol! No alcohol! A very small ration and no alcohol!
No alcohol! No alcohol! A very small ration and no alcohol!’
‘Easy for you,’ Elwin grumbled. Plik returned to his chair. ‘But listen.
‘“Oh, sweetheart, dear sweetheart, I’m full of despair.
I feel I am living on water and air.
The ration allowed
is
exceedingly small,
And the worst thing of all, there is no alcohol.”
‘No alcohol! No alcohol! A very small ration and no alcohol!
No alcohol! No alcohol! A very small ration and no alcohol!’
‘(The next really needs a female voice.)
‘“Oh, lover, dear lover, pray do not feel blue.
I’ve got the most marvelous treatment for you.
Let’s hop into bed and you’ll have such a ball
You’ll forget your small ration and no alcohol.”
‘No alco –’
‘Hold on!’ Elwin exclaimed. He doubled a fist. ‘Are you making fun of me, you miserable sot?’
Plik reached for a pipe and tobacco jar given him. ‘Why, no, not really. At least, no more than I’m wont to make fun of myself.’
‘A whole mucking month I’ve put up with you and your guards –’
The Angleyman’s thin, drink-flushed cheeks grew redder. ‘As a service to your bloody Lodge, which may promote you for it, to the next higher order – Fleascratcher First Class or whatever the title
is
. Do you think
I’ve
enjoyed being cooped up and only allowed out on what amounts to a leash?’
‘Yah, to the nearest cathouse, mainly. They picked my place to hold you not just because of its location but because – you know it, you bastard – my wife’s less than a year in her grave, and I don’t get around –’
‘If you think I’d purposely – That’s an insult, sir.’
They glared across the table in tension that had been gathering for weeks as if beneath a thunderhead. A lightning rod appeared and discharged it: one of the two knifemen who made sure Plik stayed in the house or, accompanying him on occasional excursions, made sure he stayed discreet. ‘Somebody to see you,’ he reported.
Iern followed. He had shed his rain gear, but the wet sheened on his face and he seemed to exude cold dampness. Behind him, impassive, trod his own attendant. ‘Good evening,’ he said in Unglish.
‘Welcome, welcome, welcome!’ Plik sprang from his chair and half ran, half staggered to hug his friend. ‘None but Vineleaf could be a happier sight,’ he burbled after he had stepped back. ‘How have you been, old chap?’
‘Occupied,’ Iern said reminiscently. ‘You?’
‘Hm, they’ve given me comfortable quarters and made every reasonable effort to provide distraction – local tours, theater, books, you can imagine – but time has inevitably become a stream of glue.… Well, never mind the self-pity, especially if you bring release. Do you?’
Iern hesitated. ‘In a way.’
They had been talking Angley. Elwin Halmer made an uneasy noise. ‘It’s all right,’ Iern told him in Unglish. ‘Ask my guard. Ah, I’m sorry.’ He performed introductions. ‘I’ve come to discuss my plans with your guest.’
‘Why this late?’ Plik inquired.
‘The obvious reason, not to draw attention. Maurai are starting to
beswarm Seattle – every town in the Union they can reach, I imagine – and more are expected.’
Plik scrutinized Iern. ‘You have joined the Northwest cause, I see.’
‘Um-m, well, in a way. I’m not free to explain till, till you’ve made a decision for yourself.’
They sat down. Elwin mustered the hospitality to offer drink. Thereafter the Uropans ignored everybody else.
‘I’m going with Ronica, north. You can doubtless guess the destination a little closer than that, but I promised to say nothing, and in fact I’ll be told nothing further before we’re safely on our way. Would you like to come along? Be warned, it’s a commitment you make for the next year or two. If you refuse, they’ll keep you confined for the duration anyway. But you’ll have those distractions you mentioned, which will be in short supply where we’re bound.’
‘Do you know, you’re sounding like her?’
‘I am? Well. … I asked, and she got her superiors in the Lodge to agree, so you’re invited. I felt you deserve the choice. You might feel less lonely. On the whole, though, it’s probably not an invitation you’d be wise to accept.’
Plik blazed back: ‘Wise? What’s weak little whimpering wisdom, when there’s a chance to witness the wreck of the gods? Of course I accept!’
Iern stared. Shadows chased across the gaunt face before him. Eyeballs caught firelight and flickered. ‘I don’t understand.’