Authors: Avram Davidson
Levvis swore in a faint voice. Duston dropped his farseer. Mars went sick. The ship drew in its ramp as a dog draws in its tongue.
Whether Blaise himself was at the control, or some member of Praetorian Guard, or (as it looked, as it seemed it might) if two or perhaps more than two were struggling for the controls, no one on the ground could say. But
Persephone
yawed, girated, held to an erratic course, came out of incline, went into it again.
All the while the pettyboat climbed. For a moment, it seemed to rest, to hover, to brood upon the wind. Then it flashed as it turned in the sun.
“Here I come,” said Lockharn, softly. So close was his voice, so wrapped in the awesome drama of the scene were his mates below, that it seemed for a second that he was there, there, in the midst of them, and not a distant voice brought near by the magic of the communicator.
The pettyboat came swooping down the air like a falcon upon its prey. The great ship broke loose from its veering and careening, started — and the boom, the blast, broke harsh and loud upon their ears — at increased speed and at a sharp oblique —
And the pettyboat rammed her between amidship and the engines. One fraction of a second, the black hole yawned, gaped. Then hole, boat, ship, all — all was lost in the flash of the explosion, the fiery convulsion, billowing, burning, burning —
— falling — falling —
Sound upon sound, noise echoing noise; and then the great column of smoke and fire blotting out the horizon and filling the sky — and the noise and the sound of that filled the world.
I
T WAS LONG, LONG BEFORE ANY OF THEM MOVED
from the spot where they had been standing. Mars was the first to speak. “Poor old Lockharn,” he said.
“Well,” said Storm, echoing a phrase as old as the Age of Space, the Technic Period itself, but now almost incredibly appropriate — “Well … he bought the farm….”
Rond stared at the pillar of cloud and fire. His face was white as snow, his mouth opened and closed like a fish’s mouth. There was a stone bench a few feet away. He moved like a man about to faint, almost fell, sat down heavily. He looked up, looked around, spread his hands in a gesture of absolute helplessness.
“All over,” he said. “All gone. No hope. No hope.”
Rahan-Joe put his hands on the man’s bowed shoulders. “The world is still here,” he said. “It will still need you, Rond-Father, you and your wisdom. Now you are a part of us.”
Rond’s head nodded, nodded — but whether in assent, or whether in confusion and bewilderment, they could not tell. “Poor old Locky,” Duston said. “He did it for us. I don’t know if any of us would have done it for him.”
The courtyard had been filling up with silent people. Now there was a movement in the crowd, which gave way to allow someone through. It was an old, old woman, all in black — the priestess of the People of the Forest, Nelsa’s outlaw band. The crone tottered up to them and bowed, her hands cupped together. “The prophecy,” she said, her voice full of awe and joy. “The prophecy …”
Heads nodded, faces mirrored her emotions. “How is that?” Jory asked.
It was O-Narra who answered him. “
‘The great bird slays its dam, Heaven and Earth burn, the Great Men dwell in the Land and rule in equity.’
You see, Jory, the rest of it has been fulfilled. And now you will stay here, all of you.”
There seemed no doubt of that. They had no means of departure, and no means of making of any. They were back in pre-Technic times. Their own scientific and technological knowledge and ability rested on the top of a pyramid, of which the base had been utterly destroyed. There was no point in looking for fissable materials now, or even petroleum. Borax was once again nothing more than the bitter salt of the desert, to be used for religious rituals and to soften water. The power-packs would last a while, and their knives would outlast them. All they had, in the long run, which could set them apart from the people of the Land, was their outlook upon the world, and their memories of what men might do … might, having once done, do again — if not now, then at a future date. That was all. But it was by no means inconsiderable.
Persephone
would be marked down in the Guild registries as “Overdue.” After a while the Directorate would have her charted route checked for wreckage; then, finding none, finding no traces or reports of her or her crew anywhere within the extent of the Guild’s knowledge, she would be listed as “Believed Missing.” The Directorate was short on both sentiment and imagination. No expeditions would be sent out to places which were merely astronomical sightings. It was not a period of expansion, and there were no signs of a change in this. Chances that they would ever see another starship in the skies of planet Valentine were infinitely remote.
Here they were. And it was up to them to make the best of it.
• • •
For a while the land lay numb. The crash of the
Persephone
had killed not only her own crew but almost the entire army of the septs, including the obdurate Dame herself. Here and there the survivors of the invaded districts crept out of hiding and looked around them in wonder. Elsewhere, out of habit and out of awareness of necessity, the people tended their crops and herds. Occasionally some miraculously surviving member of the warrior class would be seen, no more certain of what to do than anyone else. The sept cities lay quiet; in the unharried fiefs the widowered Lords sat in their empty halls; husbands and pretty boys waited for the women who would never return. There was energy and initiative enough for the rites of mourning, after it was realized there would be no return, but not for much more. The land, for a while, lay numb.
At length King Mukanahan sent out the message that he would summon a great council, the first such in a thousand years, and he set as the time for it the approaching Solstice, always a festive season and a time of pilgrimage to the Holy Court. Once or twice a courier in scarlet and black, white band fastened to her helmet, and a sprig of leaves in her empty scabbard, came to the Court; and it was known that overtures toward attaining to the now-vacant High Keepership had been made by some surviving Great Lady.
It was known, too, that the Holy Presence had not been pleased to make any reply.
And many people, of both sexes and of all classes, not knowing where else to turn, clinging automatically to the sole remaining symbol of authority, flocked to the vast precincts of the Court even in advance of the time for the council. There were supplies enough to feed them if they had stayed for years.
“The people still pray and the sun still rises,” O-Narra said to Jory. “But other things will never be the same again.”
“I suppose not,” Jory said. “Levvis tells me that his wife is expecting a child. He picked up some ideas about boat-building on Humboldt’s Two Worlds, one of which is mostly water, and he says that he intends to settle on the River Lin when the council is over, and try to teach the boatsmen there what he knows.”
O-Narra nodded. Slowly a smile crept over her face, and she said, “It is not only Levvis’s wife who is expecting a child.” He looked up at her quickly. She nodded, and said, “I feel life stirring within me. And I am sure that it will be a man-child, and of his father’s size when he is fully grown.”
Too full of emotion for words, he kissed her, and they were silent for a long time. Then she said again, “Other things will never be the same … many men who were the plural mates of a Great Lady have taken each of them a new wife. There have not been enough men to go around for generations, and each generation there have been fewer. Some of the men have been doing something we had never even heard of, except in old daddy’s tales. Some of the men have taken more than one wife each.”
They sat on the mossy verge of a stone pool, watching tiny blue water-creatures dart around, in and out of the shadows of the leaning
lo
trees, watched the sun catching the ripples of the surface. Jory nodded, slowly. “Polygamy … It makes sense, under the circumstances,” he said.
Her next words were even more surprising. She told him that it made sense not only for the men of the land. Levvis, too, must take many wives. And Mars, and Storm, Duston, Crammer — and even Rond. “If he is not too old,” she added. “But I do not think he is too old, Jory — do you?”
He smiled slightly. “I shouldn’t think so … But why do you say they must, O-Narra?”
Her manner was matter-of fact, but quite sincere, as she told him why. Evidently she had thought it all out to her own satisfaction. The people of the land needed the vigor of the new Great Men. Their bloodlines were old and could only profit by the addition of fresh ones. It would be certain to mean more men-children, since — as she had been told — among Jory’s people there were more males born than females. And the children of these unions, the men-children in particular, would be a further source of fresh and vigorous blood. Their sons must also take many wives. They would thus spread not only the greater physical vigor of the new men but also their greater knowledge. And, finally, but not least, by substituting polygamy for polyandry an absolute end could be written to the old aristocratic system.
He mused on this. Something occurred to him. “You say that Levvis must do this, and Storm and Mars and Duston and Crammer and even Rond. Then — ”
“Yes! Then Jory must do it, too!”
Since the debacle he had been trying to accustom himself to the fact that his old world, his old muliplicity of worlds, was gone forever. That he was here, forever, on a world altogether new, altogether different. One thing above all others had helped him to make this adjustment: O-Narra — who represented a new world all her own. And now O-Narra was refusing to have him all to herself, she was proposing to share him, to restore to him — or, rather, to provide him with — a new multiplicity of worlds. Would he himself, had conditions been reversed, been capable of such unselfishness? He knew that he would not.
“I think … I think …” He found himself stumbling over his tongue as well as his thoughts. “I think that … since you feel this way … that you should make the first choice….”
She said, “I have”
“You — oh. Who?”
“Nelsa. She is a strong woman who will give you strong children. And she is sensible enough to prefer a share of one good man to all of a poor one. Let her pick your third wife, and let the third one pick the fourth, and — ”
“Hold on!” he exclaimed. “Hold on! Don’t rush me! Uh … why don’t you talk to Captain Rond?”
• • •
They found him walking in the garden of his quarters, walking back and forth with a stately air. He had recovered from his period of great shock, was looking perhaps better than Jory recalled having seen him look since they had arrived on Valentine’s World. He greeted them affably.
“I’m particularly glad to see you, Cane, just at this moment. I have many things to tell you. Now that we are likely to be here for the foreseeable future, it behooves us all to take stock of our situation and our resources. We aren’t the only ones who’ve been shaken up, you know, and forced to re-evaluate our lives. Everyone on this continent has had to. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to King Mukanahan, you know. Despite the narrowness of his life and upbringing he’s by no means unintelligent. And I think I may say that he found in me a fellow philosopher. I’ve done my best to give him some understanding of the universe we know and of its other inhabitants and how they developed. For example, my information dealt with the history of our own people on the old Homeworld, their rude beginnings, the strife and struggles of empire, the fumbling and the bungling of democracy, and then the commencement of the Technic Period and the development of the Academic Guilds, the best system of government known to man.”
Jory had decided against trying to follow or accompany Rond as he walked up and down the garden. He and O-Narra sat on the low wall and watched and listened. Now and then, as the older man stopped, and looked at him, inquiringly, Jory said, “Yes, sir.” And then Rond was off again.
It was by now quite obvious, according to Rond, that the old system of government here was gone forever. Not enough of the old ruling caste of warrior-aristocrats remained to reinstitute the former ways of life. This was, of course, a good thing. Still and all, there was much to be said for the old way, barbaric though its expression was. It gave stability, discipline, cohesion. Enough respect for it still remained to provide a foundation for a new structure which would combine the best of the old with the best of the new….
“Are you following me in all this, Cane?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rond nodded, continued his conversational walkings. First of all, the King would have to abdicate. There was no need for a monarchy, nor even a figurehead. The obvious form the new government should take was that of an oligarchy, like the Directorates of the Academic Guilds. Eventually, in fact, an Academy would be set up to inculcate the proper principles. Now — who should comprise the oligarchy, the directorate? The answer was obvious. Rond and his men, for one. The surviving members of the warrior-aristocracy, for another.
They would unite in more than rule. They would unite in marriage. Breed a new race. Their children would marry among themselves, and only among themselves. Doubtless the male genes would prove prepotent and the male children be of normal size. Any exceptions would be rigidly excluded.
“Now is the time to start, Cane,” Rond said, a glow of conviction animating his face. “Now — while the people are still quiescent and willing to do as they are told. Before anarchic notions get spread abroad. And think of the future! This is, after all, only a single continent. There are other continents, other countries. We can extend our rule over the whole planet, eventually.”
Jory asked, “Have you told all this to the King?”
“I have.”
“He knows he must abdicate?”
“Yes. I think he’s glad of the opportunity. I could see that he was deeply impressed by what I had to tell him. The so-called council will be held shortly, but it will have no duty other than to accept the decision and to see that it’s carried out. I have sent communications to the surviving Great Ladies, and I don’t doubt that a perfect accord can be reached with them.