World without Stars (13 page)

He looked at his comrades. His teeth showed, in that gesture which seemed to betoken mirth among his breed, and he said in
their language: “
First time this gadget was used for
religious purposes, I’il bet. Wonder if the manufacturer will be interested in buyin’ an endorsement?
”

“
Hugh
,” said ya-Argens, “
I don’t know whether to call you a hero or a devil
”

Ya-Valland lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “
Neither
,” he said. “
Just a fanatic, for reasons you know
.”

T
HE BEST BARGAIN
we could make was harder than awaited. We must release every Niao prisoner. And I too must become a hostage.

In exchange we got Bren and Galmer back, and kept the guns we had recaptured. Rorn was obviously satisfied. (“He’s the real
negotiator,” Valland remarked. “The Ai Chun can’t know beans about war or politics. So they kid themselves that they made
him for the purpose.”) We were the leaders. Without us, the Azkashi alliance must soon fall apart, after which the last three
men could be picked off at leisure. Naturally, Rorn maintained the fiction that once in Prasiyo we would negotiate; and naturally
we pretended to be taken in by it, less from logic than from wishful thinking.

Disarmed, burdened with our survival gear and a fresh food supply, we walked from the hut in the middle of a soldier cordon
who held knives to our ribs. The weather had cleared for a while, though fresh thunderbeads were piling up in the north, blue-black
masses where lightning winked. The Ai Chun went before us. On land they were gross, clumsy, and still somehow terrible. A
forlorn party stood to watch us off: Urduga, Bren, Galmer, an Azkashi handful. They scarcely stirred. Our compound seemed
very small in that vast dark landscape.

Several canoes had been drawn ashore, along with the Pack dugouts. Rorn gave them a hard look. “Are these all you have?” he
demanded.

“Yes,” I said. “No doubt a number are drifting free, and probably others went home in panic.”

“We’ll be pretty crowded.” Rorn spoke with his masters. Voiceless messages flew across the water. “A detachmant from Prasiyo
will meet us, and we can transfer some of our party. But that can’t be for many hours.”

“Or we might come on one or two abandoned boats,” Valland suggested. “I hope so. Don’t fancy sittin’ cheek by jowl, myself,
when the jowls are so hairy.” He took a long breath. “Ah-h-h! Even this Turkish bath air is good, after all that time in the
cabin arguin’ with you.”

“You needn’t have dragged matters out as you did,” Rorn told him.

“Can’t blame a fellow for tryin’, can you?”

The canoes were long, with more than a meter of freeboard and great stability even after we filled them from stem to stern.
To be sure, overloading much reduced their speed. The Ai Chun, who took ample room for themselves, could easily have run away
from their escort. But we stayed together. Coxswains chanted low beneath the breeze, waves, distant muttering thunder; paddles
bit; we started forth across the lake. My last clear glimpse of land showed me the men we had liberated, wading out among
the reeds to stare and stare after us.

We three humans were in the same canoe. I hadn’t expected that. But Rorn wanted to talk. We squatted as best we oould near
the bow, so that the other passengers only squeezed us from one side. They were mute, hardly moving save to nurse a wound
or change a shift at the paddles. Their gods had come through for them, but they were still exhausted and shaken by what had
gone before. As we passed the wreck of the
Meteor
, many signed themselves.

“Why didn’t you bring your omnisonor, Hugh?” Rorn asked.

“I’m not exactly in a mood to sing,” Valland grunted.

“But it’d be useful for communication.”

“We got Yonder.”

“Nevertheless—”

“Damnation!” Valland exploded. “That instrument made my song to Mary O’Meara. You think I’ll use it for talkin’ with your
filthy owners?”

“Spare the emotion,” Rorn said. “The Ai Chun have as much right to preserve their culture as anyone else does. You’ve done
them harm enough.”

Well
, I thought,
I guess I am sorry that old Gianyi got killed. He was a decent sort, in his fashion
.

“We didn’t set out to hurt anybody,” Valland said. “If they’d left us alone, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Oh? What about your effect on the savages? You planned to organize them, give them new techniques, whole new concepts. And
they are the enemy. They’d have become a good deal more dangerous to the Niao. Furthermore, whatever your personal intentions,
could you guarantee to keep men off this world indefinitely?”

“No,” Valland said, “and I wouldn’t care to anyhow. Your right of cultural self-preservation is a lot of belly rumble. Anybody’s
got a right to defend himself against attack, sure—which is what we were doin’. But his right to wall off new ideas comes
from nothin’ but his ability to do so. If he can make the policy stick, fine. That proves he’s got something which works better
than the so-called progressive notions. But if he can’t, tough luck for him.”

“In other words,” Rorn jabbed, “might makes right.”

“I didn’t say that. Of course there are good or bad ways to compete. And if somebody doesn’t want to play the game, he should
be free to pot out. Only then he can’t expect to be subsidized by those who do want to keep on playin’.” Valland began to
remove his boots and tunic. “Judas, it’s hot! I could use some of that thundershower over there.”

“The Ai Chun were ancient when we hadn’t yet become
mammals,” Rorn said. “Do you dare call yourself wiser than them?”

“Garden of Eden theory of history,” Valland murmured.

“What?”

“Used to hear it often on Earth, a long time ago when filings were still fermentin’ there. People would look around at everything
that was goin’ wrong and blame it on the fact that men had left the good old tried-and-true ways of their grandfathers. I
always thought, though—if those ways had been so fine, why were they discarded in the first place?”

“You mean,” I ventured, “if the downdevils really are superior, they should have nothing to fear from us?”

“Right,” Valland said. “Besides, speakin’ of self-determination and so forth, how much has the Herd got?”

A trace of irritation crossed Rorn’s features. Remembering how he had once snapped at us all, I felt a hideous kind of pity.
This was like seeing a ghost.

“You may rationalize as much as you will,” he said. “The fact is, the Ai Chun are proving their superiority at this moment.”

“They’ve grabbed a temporary tactical advantage,” Valland said. “We’ll see how things work out in the long run. Just what
do you propose to do?”

“Prevent the establishment of a base on this planet,” Rorn said candidly. “Not by force, I think. There are better ways. We’ll
convince any future visitors that the planet is useless to them. I have some ideas along those lines.”

“They’ll need you, for certain, the downdevils,” I agreed. “But how do they intend to keep you alive? You took along a supply
of portable rations. But what about when those give out?”

“The food tanks are intact, back in camp,” Rorn said. “Your friends won’t refuse to feed you, even if it means feeding me
too.”

Until such time as you kill them and seize the units for yourself
, I thought sickly.

“Why don’t you peel down also, before you melt, skipper?” Valland asked.

The reminder was a shock. Heat weighed me down like thick wet wool. A strengthening breeze from the north gave small relief.
In fact, if it blew us off our straight-line course, or those rising clouds covered the sun by which we were presumably navigating—
I fumbled at my garments. My muscles felt stiff.
Won’t do to be cramped
, I thought amidst a beating in chest and temples.
No room here for a real stretch, but a few isometrics ought to help
.

“Makes me remember the High Sierra,” Valland mused.

“The what?” I asked. Anything was welcome that would make me forget for a while that I was here, and would quite likely soon
be dead. But I don’t know if he was really talking to me. He looked across the waters, into the murk of day and the livid
storm, and almost he sang.

“Mountain section on Earth. Parts were kept as wilderness. Mary and I backpacked in there once. That was just before the antithanatic
came along. But of course everybody knew it’d soon be in production. Nobody who was alive would have to grow old. Those were
strange weeks. Thinkin’ back, I have trouble makin’ them seem real. The world had grown so quiet. Wasn’t so much that people
got extra cautious, knowin’ what they stood to lose. It was an air. For a bit, while the human race waited, it felt land of
like wakin’ after a fever had broken. All mankind, since first it began to think, had gone around with that sickness, the
fear of old age. You’d look at a little girl, like yours, say, and you’d think of your grandmother, and know that in less’n
a century this packet of happiness would be blind and in pain and hungry for death. Then suddenly we didn’t have to take that
any more. People needed a while to get used to the idea.

“Mary and I, though, we were young. We couldn’t sit
still. We had to do somethin’ to … to show ourselves we were alive enough to rate immortality. What’d be the use of it, if
we only spent our centuries bein’ careful? Eventually most people felt likewise, of course, and went to the stars. But we
did from the first. Or, rather, Mary did—that kind of girl—and made me see it too.

“So we flitted to the Seirra, and loaded up, and started hikin’. Day after day; sun overhead, wind through the pines, till
we got above timberline and looked down those tremendous blue slopes, crossed a pass and stopped for a snowball fight; and
one night we camped by a lake where the moon and Jupiter rose together and threw two perfect glades, and Mary’s the only sight
I’ve seen that was more beautiful.

“Though, you know, we weren’t simply havin’ fun. To her, anyhow, and to me on’her account, it was a sort of pilgrimage. Others
had loved this place. But death got them and they’d never come back here. We wanted to do this for them. We swore to each
other we’d always remember our dead.” A small sad smile crossed Valland’s lips. “Oh, Lord, but we were young!”

Rorn half opened his mouth. I bristled. How much more preaching could a man be expected to take? Precisely in time, a voice
hailed from the leading canoe.

“
Ya-o-o-o-a aie! Aie!
”

The Niao shifted their packed bodies down the length of our boat and peered across the heads of their fellows. The soldiers
among them laid hands on weapons. The paddlers Stopped work. I heard the wind, still stiffening, pipe in my ears; little whitecaps
slapped our hull and rocked it. Sliding my goggles off my brow and activating them, I also stared.

The gloom was made lighter for me and I saw another Herd canoe a few kilometers to the west. It wallowed alone without visible
sign of life. But the dwarf shrilled on the vessel of the Ai Chun and his word was bayed thence by the giants.

“What’re they savin’?” Valland asked.

“People of ours in that craft,” Rorn said. “Frightened … in pain, I believe … I haven’t many words of Niao yet. The Ai Chun
sense their minds.”

And could not actually read the thoughts, leaped through my own brain. However, by now they must have studied humans enough
that they can identify our basic emotional patterns too. If they should tune in on me, what would they observe?

I struggled to suppress the fear-hope-fury that churned in me. I might as well have told the approaching storm to go home.

“Survivors of the battle, evidently,” Valland said. “Must’ve been wounded, escaped, haven’t the strength to maintain headway.”
At a shouted command, our group veered and started moving anew. “Well, an extra boat should relieve the jam somewhat for us.”

Could the Ai Chun tell Herd from Pack purely by mentalistics? I believed not. There was no real species difference. Ai Chun
telepathy must be short-range and imprecise; otherwise they wouldn’t have had to operate through the dwarfs. When you develop
a tool, you don’t evolve the tool’s capability in yourself. Nor does it have yours. The dwarfs were specialized; they didn’t
keep watch or give warning unless told to. For millions upon changing millions of years, no one on this world had needed any
equivalent of radar—nor, in the downdevils’ omnipotence, the cruel tricks of war.

Such reasoning had been the basis of Valland’s strategy, which had worked until he’d encountered Rorn. We must hope it remained
sound.

Certainly the Ai Chun would notice rage and terror aboard that canoe. They should dismiss it as a natural aftermath of battle.
Valland’s and my flare of emotion, though—why should
we
get excited?

“Shut your hatch, you dog!” I yelled at Rorn.

“What in the univese?” He blinked at me.

“Talking about ‘our people.’ They aren’t ours. Nor yours. You sold yours out!”

I made an awkward lunge at him. He fended me off. A soldier behind him prodded me back with his spear. Valland took my arm.
“Easy, skipper,” he said. To Rorn: “Not that I don’t agree!” He added some obscenities.

“Be quiet,” Rorn said. He smoothed his lank, wind-tossed hair. “I’ll talk to you after you’re fit to think.”

A question was flung at him from his masters. He replied in Yonder. I could follow the exchange, more or less. “Nothing serious.
The hostages got unreasonable.”

Valland and I swapped a glance. We must not let ourselves feel relief. That might also be noticed.

“How do you expect us to do anything but hate your guts?” he growled.

“I said be quiet,” Rorn answered. “I’ll have you punished if you aren’t.”

We nurtured revengefulness like a cherished flower. The canoes crawled forward. Presently a Niao stood up in the distant one—how
distant!—and waved. He was unmistakable, a soldier type, and hideously hurt. I didn’t like to think of the means by which
his cooperation had been gotten.
Not my idea or Hugh’s
, I told myself, wishing that could justify me.
A flourish of ya-Kela’s, I suppose. What do you expect, after the way his people have suffered?