Red Country (12 page)

I gaped at him. He did not notice. His dream had carried him away.

“No one knows the extent of Hethria, but we could probably expand indefinitely.” The glow had become a perfect beacon. “So, my dear, I laid my plans. Then I conducted surveys, made costings, ordered designs. This spring I submitted them to the Land Commission. They were delighted. We're going to level the Gebros, Sellithar, and colonize Hethria. And we can begin right now!”

My mouth must have hung open like an empty bag. I heard myself say, faint, far and distant, “You're going to do
what?
”

“Colonize Hethria. Make Everran the jewel of Estar, and ourselves. . . . Well, my dear. What do you think of my surprise?”

I goggled up at him as he stood there, the light and hope slowly dying from his face, and part of me was sorry to hurt him, when he had clearly meant to give me pleasure, part of me was reeling in bottomless consternation, and part was rigid with inexplicable fright.

He said uncertainly, “Sellithar?”

I pulled myself together. “Kastir, I don't wish to sound ungrateful. But . . . irrigation. In Hethria. You do know that irrigation brings salt? That you have to be very careful, act with the greatest moderation, or you'll upset the balance and sterilize the desert completely? And the balance is so delicate out there. . . .”

“Of course, I forgot you'd been there.” He sounded relieved. “It's quite simple. Our new dam will harness the whole Kemreswash, producing so much water that even with new farms we can just wash the salt away. Chop down all those helliens, they thieve water. There'll be plenty then. You see, my dear?”

My head reeled. I said desperately, “That isn't right, the trees suck up the salt the water brings,” and he gave me a kind, just short of patronizing smile.

“No, no, I had my researchers study it. I can show you the figures. They prove conclusively that more water, more cultivation, will solve the entire problem, and give a return as well. Which the trees do not.”

I could not assemble an argument. The whole world had suddenly gone insane, turned upside down. I stammered, “But the Gebros—raze the Gebros. . . .”

“My dear, what earthly use is it? A monument, no more. As useless as those wretched dragon bones they've finally managed to bury in Gebria, and which our new Saphar scholars have already proved to be a dinosaur's. The Gebros stone will be ideal for a score of things, the dam, the canals, the new farmsteads—”

“But the Hethox. . . .”

“They will be no problem. They never did threaten Everran. We can establish reserves for them on some of the really useless land. My dear, this is progress. Surely you can see they've roamed about out there, wasting natural resources, occupying valuable country, for far too long? They're a relic, like the Gebros. It's time Hethria came out of the past.”

He looked sure of approval, having quoted my own battlecry. Frantically I snatched the first pertinent argument to hand.

“The roads, the Sathellin . . . what will happen to our trade with Assharral?”

His face hardened. “The Sathellin. Yes. Frankly, Sellithar, I think it's time we did do away with them. They
have
exploited something. They import trash at exorbitant prices, they maintain this ridiculous pretence that no one else can cross the desert; they have a monopoly on a lucrative trade that drains off wine. Wine for which we get no return.” I remembered, with a start, that Estar had recently complained of a decrease in our export of wine. “Once we settle Hethria, we can trade with Assharral for ourselves.”

“But they're nomads, it's their way of life! They're free, they could never cope with settling—”

“I'm sure some arrangement can be made. After all, they are a minority group. We can hardly expect, Sellithar, to halt the march of progress, to deny so many others an improvement in the quality of life, just for a minority's sake.”

I think I gasped. He looked enquiring. Scrabbling to avoid the thought that just so he must have described the people of Everran, I fell back on the fatuous.

“Hethria. You saw it. It's a wild place, it shouldn't be tampered with.” An echo in my mind threw back at me:
Math is respect for That-which-is. It should not be tampered with unless you must.
“Surely, Kastir, we don't
need
all this expansion? We have a favorable trade balance, a stable population, no food problems, our finances are solid as a rock. . . .”

“My dear Sellithar.” He looked quite shocked. “I never thought to hear you produce such a feeble argument. Have you actually let emotion fog your wits?”

There was nowhere to go but the last ditch, so I went. “Yes, I have! You saw Hethria. Surely you realized how beautiful it is?”

He was stunned. “A howling wilderness full of rocks and sand, nomad peddlers and naked savages? It will be beautiful, I assure you. But now?”

He had seen the potential. He had not so much as glimpsed the reality. Memory burst its dam and I saw Zam accepting the cost of mending the Hethox' delinquency, the cruelty of a langu, the wait for a flood once in five generations, the harshness of a lonely, unrewarded life spent maintaining a desert's equilibrium. “Because that's how Hethria is.”

And I saw what it was to me.

However I denied the memory it had been there in my mind all along, the red country, untouched, untamed, safe from the gray flood that had drowned Everran, a land of color and delight whose strength was in the very harshness from which they sprang, a citadel whose existence made my own gray world bearable. The spell I had lived under broke on a surge of protective panic so sharp it pained, the most intense emotion I had felt in three long years.

“Yes, it is beautiful!” I cried. “And I like it how it is—I don't
want
it changed!”

We gaped at each other. Then he made one last attempt to bridge the rift.

“Sellithar, the plans have been approved. The funds are allotted. How can I tell Estar that it won't be done?”

“You'll just have to, that's how!”

His face chilled. He said sternly, “Sellithar, I have always done my best to further your wishes, but this whim is too ridiculous. You've ignored the facts. You're letting emotion run away with you.”

“No, I am not! The facts are that Hethria's a desert with a limited population and a fragile natural balance and you can't alter either without causing a disaster—and as for chopping down the helliens and expecting your new dam to wash the salt away, you must be out of your head!” I had never spoken so hotly in the length of our marriage, he could not believe his ears. “If you had any idea of the facts you'd never have drawn up your plans at all!”

It was done. He looked not cold but ruthless, the Estarian power-lord I suppose he had always been. You may change the livery, but not the skin.

He said without expression, “I am sorry to say this. But I am the governor of Everran. My plans for the development of Hethria have been approved. And I shall see that they go ahead.”

* * * * * *

For a good while after he left my mind simply ran about like a beheaded chicken, incapable of thought. I could only feel. Fear, a frenzy of protective panic, desperate urgency to stop him at any cost, no matter how. At last I calmed enough to grow constructive, but the picture the materials presented was grim.

My first thought was Estar itself. Get the approval rescinded. I knew the methods. Feed the news-talkers, raise a pressure group, by threat or enticement enlist enough power-lords to ensure public opinion became law. But could I do it? In that trade Kastir was as adroit as I.

Moreover, he was Estarian, a palpable vantage. Further, I had never before opposed him in earnest. And he would be in earnest, I had offended him too deeply to leave a doubt. Three years had taught me that when Kastir made what he felt was a correct decision he could be formidably stubborn. And I had steeled his resolution. In addition, if I tried and failed, it would damage my standing, and possibly his. Then I should be politically impotent, not even a power behind the throne.

Divert Estar, then? Quarred would not like the idea of a new wool-producer, capable, if on paper, of doubling their clip; it would do painful things to the price. Quarred might apply sufficient pressure to make Estar think again.

And Kastir was more than capable of wrecking that strategy in the egg. He was an expert at that sort of fighting also. Far more expert than I.

Sabotage the plans themselves? Explode the salt-washing theory, refute Hethria's potential, destroy the feasibility of the dam, prove the cost in money and manpower to be monstrous, irretrievable, pick so many holes that Estar would scrap the plan? But in logistics Kastir was more brilliant than in theory. He had taken a year to construct those plans. At every practical point they would be impregnable, and when it came to theories it would be one group of experts against another. Estar would hear what the richest promise said.

I could climb on a speaker's stand like any other fanatic and harangue the people myself, but Kastir would defuse that too; we both knew how “the voices of the people” could be manipulated to speak their leaders' will.

Once more panic threatened me. Alone, there was nothing I could do.

Allies, then? None in Estar strong enough to outweigh Kastir's. In the Confederacy, Holym would not care, Hazghend would be unmanageable, Quarred, when it came to open confrontation, might back down before Estar's overwhelming financial and numerical weight. Everran was a broken reed. The Lyngthirans? A double-edged sword. The Sathellin were a minority, the Hethox naked savages. That left. . . .

The aedryx. With the barriers down, the images flooded out: Beryx's refusal to tamper with reality, Zam determined Hethria should not become a desolation, Moriana's black eyes flashing at the thought of a fight. And behind them was Assharral. Surely an empire with ten provinces, all but one bigger than Everran, could outweigh Estar's hordes?

But why consider Assharral? Use the aedryx themselves. They could force Kastir to change his mind as simply as Zam once compelled me to stand still. He himself would cancel the project, it would all be over with one quick stroke to the heart of things. . . .

Then calamity broke on me. How did I send them word?

Zam would certainly have taken my last message at face value. I was sure, with a certainty beyond reason, that he would not only shun me forever, he would never have looked for me in thought, or for Everran either. Probably he was quite ignorant of Kastir's plans.

And would Beryx be different? At the beginning they might have made sure I did not capsize the watercart and precipitate the whole Confederacy upon them, they might—yearningly, wishfully, a small unreasonable voice persisted—have cared enough to see I came home safe. Once I married Kastir and Everran grew stable, there would be no point in surveillance. Three years had passed. They would not be looking now.

I could not sit idle, could not find an occupation to divert me, I could not think of a resourceful counselor. The only real candidate was now on the opposite side.

When that thought surfaced I got up, donned my shoes, told the cook not to keep dinner, and walked down to my mother's house.

* * * * * *

Sazan and Haskar were out, at one of the “youth rallies” I found the most obnoxious of Estarian customs, but my mother greeted me with her usual kiss and smile. After their return from Quarred our affection had first healed and then strengthened, and she could divine my feelings like no one else. We went up on the roof, where it was now cool enough to sit in the shade of the garden mulberry, and she said, “Take your shoes off, I shall. Now what's the trouble, love?”

She had adapted so completely to her changed fortunes that it was hard to disinter any trace of the queen mother, let alone the queen. In her plain blue house dress and apron she looked no more than a brisk widowed housewife. Competent, comely, at home in her low sphere. Like Beryx she had the knack of adjusting to unpleasant reality. I did not expect her to produce a solution, even advice. All I wanted was to talk, to share the burden on my mind.

“Kastir,” I said. “He's taken the most awful notion imaginable. He wants to colonize Hethria.”

Once started, there was no stopping it. Kastir's plans, his misconceptions, the flaws in my counters, the threat's imminent urgency, the cause of my opposition, the significance of Hethria, then back into the past, Zam and Beryx and Moriana and my journey for help from Assharral, it all tumbled out, right back to that idiotic dream which had led me so fatally astray.

Maddeningly, my mother was quite uninterested in the present menace or the strategic problems, not much more concerned with Assharral, and only marginally with Hethria. What she wanted to hear about was Zam. How old he was, what he looked like, how he spoke, what sort of manners he had, a score of such asinine questions, then a detailed analysis of his hypothetical character, until I said in exasperation, “Mama, Zam doesn't matter. What matters is to stop Kastir, this time, now!”

“Salvation from the east.” She reverted to the dream, disregarding me. “I always thought it a pity they did away with the Phathos, he talked a deal of sense. And so this Zam . . . dear me,
That,
such a peculiar name, however did he come by such a thing, I shall never get used to it—but no matter.” There was a gleam in her eye that I knew all too well.

“Mama! You're not to go making cock-and-bull plans, I absolutely forbid you! The Phathos was talking about Everran, and it's all irrelevant now. And I'm married, and I mean to stay that way!”

“Marriages can be annulled,” she said with that blithe, hair-raisingly immoral commonsense she sometimes showed. “I was never very fond of Kastir, to tell the truth—”

“Mama, will you
stop it!
You talk as if—I am married and I'm perfectly happy. Anyway, he's an aedr and a monster and I wouldn't look at him if he were the last man on earth and—and—I told him I never wanted to see his face again.” Infuriatingly, idiotically, my voice wobbled. “That's not the point. The point is that I have to find a way to save Hethria, and I have to do it now!”