Under Strange Suns (29 page)

Yuschenkov had been in conversation with the two joon non-stop from the moment they had departed the Esaul’s Hall. Echeckok appeared talkative, eager. Frejhig less so, though forthcoming when questioned by Yuschenkov, his responses elaborated on by Echeckok.

Aidan had paid little attention. He couldn’t understand the conversation and he was preoccupied with the Lhakovi invasion. He struggled with the notion of turning back, wondering if radio contact with the ship was worth his absence from the battle preparation. As he walked, the urge ebbed. He was committed. Second guessing himself was counterproductive.

Instead, he let himself observe the countryside they passed through. It did not comport with his notions of farmland. The crops were the wrong color and grew in shapes and formations he was unfamiliar with. Red barns, silos, combine harvesters like mechanical dinosaurs, irrigation equipment–all absent. Even the sky was the wrong color. He expected a brilliant yellow sun bleaching the sky a powdery blue. But the land about him was nonetheless unmistakably cultivated. The soil was tilled in even rows, vegetation obeying the orders to form ranks and files. The buildings squatted low, no common color pointing to a consensus as to what shade a proper farm building should be. Stands of ramrod straight trees broke the general horizontal orientation of the view. Occasionally they passed close enough that Aidan could see three-lobed fruit dangling from nubs along the tree boles. And above the entire scene, the commanding presence of the blue planet rolling lazily overhead.

There was, Aidan decided, an odd beauty to it.

“So, tell me about Frejhig,” Aidan said to Yuschenkov, startled at being addressed after so many miles. “What makes him so intriguing?”

“Seems he is a refugee from across the Wall. He tells me his village was one of the last conquered by the Lhakovi south of the Wall, a holdout, unwilling to voluntarily give up the old ways. At least in this section of the continent. He spent most of his youth there, becoming assimilated into what he calls the Northern Protectorate. A couple of years ago he had enough, risked crossing the Wall.”

Aidan whistled. He knew firsthand the risks involved. And this joon had done it without the assistance of a firearm or a climate-adaptive camouflage jacket.

“Can you ask him if he remembers the attack on his village?” If Aidan could pick up some practical intelligence on Lhakovi tactics he would be a fool to pass up the opportunity.

Yuschenkov relayed the question.

“He says he was very young. He remembers that the villagers were very brave, but the Lhakovi were invincible. They burned the village with fire arrows and came in from every direction at once. He says he is sorry he cannot remember more.”

“I don’t know anything about joon psychology, but it sounds traumatic,” Aidan said. “I’m not surprised that’s all he remembers.”

Aidan considered the story. Earthwork defenses might have been the right call to defend against incendiaries. Attacking from all sides indicated at least rudimentary command and control. It also indicated a calculated brutality, a society that ruled through fear, making bloody examples of those who failed to kowtow.

“It doesn’t seem like there is any escaping it,” Aidan said.

“Escaping what?”

“The bloodshed. The rotten bastards who try to frighten everyone into following their path. All that shit.”

“It’s the way of the universe.”

“Come on, Doc. The universe is a big place. There’s gotta be some hope of peace, somewhere out there.”

“Why? The Lhakovi are just another expression of entropy. Or, more precisely, they capitalize on it. ‘Things fall apart, the center will not hold’ unless you do as we say, because we hold the path to true harmony. ‘And if you don’t do as we say, then things will most definitely fall apart.’ Commonplace. Because it works.”

“I’d like to say you’re a cynic, Doc.”

“You’d like to, but it’s hard to ignore your own senses, right, Aidan? Where there is life, there is conflict.”

“Got any other options?”

“Death.”

“No thanks. Inevitable conflict or no, I’ll stick with life.”

Echeckok spoke and began a dialog with Yuschenkov.

“He wants to know what we were discussing,” Yuschenkov said. “I told him we were debating the meaning of life. He wanted to know if we realized that it was simple: joon girls.”

“Good answer,” Aidan said.

* * *

They camped for the night a dozen miles beyond the low rise west of Girdled-by-Fields. Aidan erected the shelter. The joon expressed their surprise: Echeckok a sense of wonder, Frejhig a certain timorousness. In fact, it required a deal of cajoling to convince the Lhakovi refugee to enter.

Aidan pressed his backup pistol upon Yuschenkov that night, telling him that with battle looming he’d best get used to toting a piece.

The next day they steered their course a couple points to the north. As Yuschenkov informed Aidan, the expanse of land between the Wall and sea narrowed to a cape where a swelling ridge met the water another two days’ walk from this point, the ridge rising gradually until it terminated in a wave-pounded cliff. His ship had plowed into the surface of Ghark about halfway from here to the headland, north and west of this point. Yuschenkov built his storage depot east of the crash, building into a hollow or depression in the side of the ridge.

“About a year’s worth of labor, constructing what isn’t much more than a shed. But the building and the elevation do provide the salvage some protection from the elements.”

Aidan was repacking the shelter with the ‘assistance’ of Echeckok, doubling the time the procedure normally required. He didn’t mind. The kid’s curiosity was infectious. Echeckok was all of twelve Ghark years, the equivalent–or so Yuschenkov opined–of a sixteen-year-old human. But without the bored, know-it-all attitude.

Frejhig stood a few yards away, scanning the horizon. Aidan wasn’t sure if that was the thousand-yard stare of a survivor, boredom, or simply social discomfort.

“Hey, Frejhig, you okay?” Aidan asked.

The joon turned at the sound of his name.

Yuschenkov translated. “He says he is fine. He wants to get moving.”

“Okay, troops, move out,” Aidan said, stowing away the compact sleeve containing the shelter.

They headed northwest, making for the ridge. A morning breeze strengthened. Aidan thought he could scent salt on the wind. The plain behind them almost imperceptibly diminished as the ground inched higher. They trudged uphill, the footing becoming more rugged and rocky. At last they crested the ridgeline and Yuschenkov led them downslope, nearer the western plain, until the going grew easier, and they angled to the right, following the ridge northward.

They passed a stand of trees, twisted things, all bent in the same direction by the prevailing north wind.

Aidan patted one of the slender trunks. “Tree,” he said to Echeckok. “Tree.”

The joon responded with a series of words, too rapid for Aidan to catch.

Yuschenkov laughed. “He’s unsure what you are attempting to get a translation for. He offered the word for ‘wood’–‘eglen’–the word for ‘bent’–‘spetunkil’–the word for this particular species ‘grekeneg’–and the word for ‘tree’–‘eg.’”

“I can see it taking twenty years to get a handle on the lingo,” Aidan said. He slapped the trunk of the last grekeneg in the copse and said, “Eg.”

Echeckok emitted the gurgle that Aidan had come to interpret as laughter and then corrected Aidan’s pronunciation.

They flushed a covey of birds, the lower bellies and underside of the wings the same red Aidan had seen across the wall. But the dorsum and breast were mottled shades of teal and slate.

“Bird,” he said.

This preliminary language lesson helped occupy Aidan’s attention as they hiked north. He tried, with limited success, to involve Frejhig in the conversation.

Aidan pointed at the secondary star. “What do you call that?” he asked.

Both Frejhig and Echeckok answered, the one with apparent reluctance, the other with the enthusiasm of a front-row pupil. “Tarik,” they said.

“And that?” Aidan pointed toward the rising primary.

“Freg,” they said.

The answers didn’t mean anything to Aidan, just syllables. He looked at Yuschenkov, eyebrows raised in question.

“Ascended heroes, best I can determine,” Yuschenkov said. “The joon north of the wall don’t seem to engage in any sort of formal religious practice. Rather, they celebrate tellings of endless cycles of hero tales. There is something ceremonial about it, something akin to worship in telling the stories. But I’ve been unable to quantify it.”

“So, Tarik and Freg?”

“Days’ worth of narrative. My throat would give out. Short version: Tarik stole something–I think fire, though I hear contradictory versions. Freg pursues him perpetually, sometimes gaining, sometimes falling farther behind. The joon wax quite poetic about it. Basically extended metaphors for stellar phenomena, of course. But with the mingling of the colors in the sky every day, and their color-based writing system, the sky tells them stories every day. It is really quite beautiful.”

They paused for lunch. With Yuschenkov translating, Aidan pressed Frejhig for more information about the Lhakovi.

“What was the hardest thing for you to adjust to when you reached Girded-by-Fields?” he asked.

“Seeing women on the streets. Whenever I see one, I expect the Keepers of the Dictates to haul her away to the stoning circle. And there is a general sense of disorder that I still find troubling.” The words were halting.

“Some things you miss, then?”

“Oh, no. I’m growing accustomed to house colors not conforming to the Dictates, women mingling with the men, and all that. Well, I do miss my family. Those who survived, that is.”

“It is hard to leave family behind. Things must have become truly intolerable. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

When Frejhig responded, it was rapid fire, louder than his previous answers. “The arms’ masters were animals. I trained as hard as the other boys. I was never late. I did not shirk. It is no fault of my own that I cannot hurl a javelin as far as the others, nor that I did not advance to the next rank of swordsmanship with the others of my age. But the arms’ masters made sport of me and encouraged the other boys to do so as well.”

So, bullying. Aidan absorbed that. He could see a bullied boy being driven to extreme actions. At the same time, he was considering the implications of what seemed to be compulsory military training. The defense of Girdled-by-Fields grew even more problematic.

They took full advantage of the long Ghark day. Nothing that Aidan would recognize as night was going to occur this 26-hour cycle and they pushed on, pausing for rest breaks when Yuschenkov or the two young joon expressed any hint of tiredness.

“Take a look,” Yuschenkov said, pointing off to the west.

Tarik was mid-way up, casting long, red-tinged shadows in the direction Yuschenkov indicated. About a half-mile out into the plain Aidan saw what he took to be a gully, perhaps a stream bed or the commencement of a ravine. He followed it as it dug a straight line out into the plain. Farther out he saw upthrust structures, like the girders and crossbeams of a toppled building. Then he realized what he was seeing: the beginning of the furrow cut into the plain by the crash landing of the
Eureka II
, leading to the remains at the end of the furrow perhaps a mile or two farther on–the crumpled superstructure of a spaceship.

“You walked away from that? Wow,” Aidan said.

“I did, yes.” Yuschenkov’s response was both curt and subdued.

“Right,” Aidan said, realizing he had brought up unpleasant memories. “So the storage shed should be close?”

Yuschenkov led on for perhaps another mile. A spur of rock jutted out from the ridge, blocking their way. Skirting around the tip, Aidan saw that on the far side, where the spur rejoined the ridge, a ledge of stone overhung a depression in the slope. Yuschenkov had capitalized on the natural shelter, building out walls and a roof of timber and sod. The light was poor here, Tarik’s anemic crepuscular rays occluded by the ridge and the roof. But Aidan could still make out neatly stacked piles of mechanical and electrical equipment.

“Welcome to Ghark’s one-stop spaceship emporium,” Yuschenkov said.

“You’ve been busy,” Aidan said. “As much as I’d like to dive right in, try to contact the ship tonight, I imagine the work will be easier with more light.”

“And I’m too goddamned tired to tinker with electronics,” Yuschenkov said.

“Right, there’s that. Okay. Bed-time, boys.”

They dispensed with the shelter that night, laying out bed-rolls between towering stacks of salvage, beneath the thick roof of the depot. A sea breeze circulated through, keeping the air fresh. Aidan slept and dreamed of kites, lighthouses, and seagulls.

A
IDAN WOKE IN THE MORNING TO
discover Frejhig missing.

He found Echeckok curled up near a pile of conduits and plastic piping. Aidan shook the joon gently.

“Frejhig?” he asked when the joon’s luminescent, copper-hued eyes popped open. He gestured about, trying to get across the gist of his query.