Harvest of Stars (78 page)
Again Lilisaire laughed. “At last a thousandfold worn-out dispute shows a fresh face!” Lightly: “Shall we leave it to twitch?
Be welcome, Captain, as a new presence in an old house. Will you take refreshment?”
He had gotten used to Lunarian shifts of mood. “Thank you, my lady.”
She poured, a clear sound against the Pan pipes, gave him his goblet of cut crystal, and raised hers. The wine glowed golden.
“
Uwach yei
,” she toasted. It meant, more or less, “Aloft.”
“
Serefe
,” he responded. Rims chimed together.
“What tongue is that?” she asked.
“Turkish. To your honor.’” He sipped. It was glorious.
“You have ranged widely, then—and, I deem, as much in your person as in vivifer or quivira.”
“It is my duty,” he said dismissingly.
“What breed are you?”
Momentarily he was taken aback, then recognized the idiom she had in mind. “I was born in the southern end of Africa, my lady.”
“A stark and beautiful land, from what I have seen.”
“I was small when I left it.” If you had the synnoiotic potential, you must develop it from early childhood, or it was gone.
His mind flew back to the sacrifices his parents had made—his mother giving up
her career, his father, pastor in the Cosmological Christian Church, seeing him bit by bit losing God—to be with him in the
Brain Garden on St Helena, give him some family life while he grew into strangeness. But parents had always surrendered themselves
and their children to something larger. History knew of apprentices to shamans, the prophet Samuel, Dalai Lamas, lesser monks
of many faiths, yes, boys made eunuchs because only so could they advance in the service of the Emperor. … “I do go back now
and then.” It was indeed beautiful, that preserve where lions walked and grass swayed golden beneath the wind.
He must not let her pursue this subject. Lilisaire stood pensive. How much did she know or guess at? It was actually a relief
when she said: “Maychance we should consider your business, that late we can take our ease. I think I would enjoy showing
you about my abode.”
“I’d be fascinated,” he replied, which was no lie, although he realized he would see nothing she didn’t want him to see.
“You and your … lesser comrades?” (What intimation had she of his real status, not a simple captain among detectives but a
pragmatic of determinor rank?) “have investigated Caraine and , Aiant, as well as others of the old blood.” (How quickly she
had learned that!) “Now it is my turn, nay?” Her glance might have seemed candid. “Well, short and plain, I know naught of
any plot to wreck the Habitat. True, you would not await that I admit it. Thus let me lay thereto that any such would be futile,
stupid. Niolente herself could not in the end stay the all-devouring Federation.”
Despite her resistances, intrigues, fomented rebellion, terminal armed defiance, no. Venator wanted to say that the collapse
of the sovereign Selenarchy, the establishment of the Republic, its accesssion to the World Federation and the rules of the
Covenant were
not merely the result of political and economic pressures. Ultimately, it was moral force. When Rinndalir left with Guthrie
and Fireball began disbanding, the heart went out of too many Lunarians. Niolente’s had beaten rather lonely.
But: “We were not going to pick over dry bones, were we, my lady?” he advanced.
Lilisaire’s smile could turn unfairly seductive. “You
are
an intelligent man, Captain. I could come to a liking for you.”
“I certainly don’t accuse or suspect you of wrongdoing,” he said in haste. “I’m only, m-m, puzzled, and hope you can give
me some illumination.”
“Ask on.” She gestured. “Shall we be seated?”
That meant more on low-
g
Luna than on Earth. He settled onto the divan before the table. She joined him. He was far too conscious of her nearness.
A pheromonal perfume? No, surely nothing so crude, and so limited in its force.
“Taste,” she urged. He nibbled a canapé of quail’s egg and caviar. Her daintiness put him to shame.
He cleared his throat. “My service has found clues to some activity in deep space,” he said. “Probably it’s based in the asteroids,
but we aren’t certain.”
He lied. He knew of no such thing, unless you counted that bitter resistance to Federation governance which died with Lilisaire’s
ancestress Niolente. The service had monitored this woman as closely as it was able because it knew she was equally opposed
to most of what the Federation stood for, and she was dangerous. It learned that she had been ransacking every record and
database available to her, and some of her queries had come near the matter of Proserpina. If she reached it, that could prove
deadly. And now she had recalled Ian Kenmuir from yonder.
“It’s not necessarily illicit,” Venator continued, “but it is undeclared, apparently secret. If it’s going to be consequential,
the government naturally wants information about it.”
“Yes,” she said low, “to feed your computer models, to coordinate this also into your blandly running socioeconomic structure.”
He heard but ignored the venom. “Since you have enterprises out there, my lady,” and all the asteroid colonists were Lunarians,
who could tolerate weak gravity, “I wonder if you might have some knowledge.”
Her voice became teasing. “If the undertaking be secret, how should I?”
“I don’t mean directly. Someone may have noticed something and mentioned it to you, incidentally.”
“Nay. I am too distant from those realms. I have been too long away.” Intensity: “Eyach, too long away.”
Because she must stay here to wage her hidden war?
“A forlorn hope of mine, no doubt,” he said. “And the whole thing may be a mistake, a wrong interpretation of ours.” What
it was was a farce. He had no expectation of really sounding her out. He was after intangibles, personality, traits, loves,
hatreds, strengths, weaknesses, her as a living person. Given that, he might better cope with her. “I’ll be very grateful
if you’d look into your memory, put a search through your personal files, whatever may possibly call up something relevant.”
“Indeed I have memories. Yet you must tell me more. Thus far this is vacuum-vague.”
“I agree.” He did have specifics to offer her, concocted details that might be convincing.
“Best we range it at leisure.” Her fingers touched his wrist. She smiled afresh. “Come, you’ve barely tasted your wine, and
it a pride of my house. Let us get acquainted. You spoke of your African childhood—”
He must be careful, careful. But with a mind like hers, it should not be too difficult to steer conversation away from the
trivia that would betray him.
The daycycle passed. They drank, talked, wandered, dined, and went on from there.
To him, sexual activity had been an exercise desirable occasionally for health’s sake. He discovered otherwise.
She bade him farewell next mornwatch, cool as a mountain spring. He was only dimly aware of his flight back to Tychopolis.
Not until he had been in oneness and cleared his head did he see how she had told him nothing meaningful, and how he might
well have let slip a few inklings to her.
For a while he had even thought there was some justice on her side. But no. In the long term, hers was the fire that must
be quenched. In the near future—well, Terrans had brought the Moon to life, beginning before there were any Lunarians. They
had their own claim, their own rights, on this world, won for them hundreds of years ago by the likes of Dagny Beynac.
Buy
The Stars Are Also Fire
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For information, advice, and other helpfulness I thank Karen Anderson, John G. Cramer, Victor Fernández-Dávila, Robert Gleason, A. T. Lawton, Bing F. Quock, and P. Wright. They are not responsible for whatever mistakes, misinterpretations, and inelegances remain here, but they saved me from quite a few.
Thanks are also due Frank J. Tipler for good-naturedly letting me show some ideas of his misused in the future as, alas, many an idea has been misused in the past or is being in the present.
Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Trigonier Trust
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
978-1-5040-2445-7
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