Orion Shall Rise (20 page)

‘Ahoy!’ Terai shouted. ‘Drop the hook and let’s have a swim!’

The group exchanged glances. ‘Well, Dad,’ Ranu called back, a touch embarrassedly, ‘I think we’d better get on in. We, uh, were planning – Anyway, I think we’d better.’

Terai grinned.
What should I have expected? At their age, eight hours is a long time to be out sailing with a chap they can’t help thinking of as ancient. Fun while it lasted, but now they want privacy to make love.

‘As you like,’ he replied, waving to show he was not offended. ‘I’ll stay for a bit, but you go ahead.’

‘Are you sure that’s wise, Father?’ Mari asked.

Terai swam closer. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I can still wrestle either of your brothers to the ground, three falls out of three; and here’s Hiti to carry me along if I should get tired.’

I can also still show your mother a hell of a good time; but I want a swim first. I’ve been too much away
.

That was as the member of the Electoral College for his Uriwera tribe. The Queen was old and in failing health; the times were stormy; it was wise to debate in advance what person should next be honored by elevation to the throne, for the powers of the monarch were theoretically quite limited but in practice could be considerable if he or she fully used the moral force – the mana – of the office. Terai had repeatedly declined the request of the elders that he, as a magnate, represent Uriwera in Parliament. Not only would that have entailed his resignation from the Navy, but he had no taste for politicking, even the formalistic politics– by-consensus of a civilization as conservative as the Maurai. However, he felt he owed his tribe some service, over and above what he gave to the country as a whole.

Ranu laughed. ‘We might try that wrestling again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Very well, Dad, I’ll take the boat in. Uh, we may none of us be home for dinner.’

‘I’d be disappointed in you if you were,’ Terai said, and the craft left him amidst general merriment.

They’re good kids,
he thought.
I don’t suppose it’ll happen, unless maybe between Ranu and Alisabeta – youngsters want to explore before they settle down – but I’d be glad to see any of ours marry today’s sweetheart.
He wrinkled his nose.
Not like those I’ve watched too bloody often in the cities.

Why?
he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time.
Breakaway from old decencies, aping of foreign styles, belly-rumble about ‘moral corruption, when we keep the world locked up in a cage of outworn institutions,’ while recruitment for the Navy has dropped alarmingly low…
.
Oh, yes, the Power War was a shock; it showed me too that we aren’t
angels. But it had to be fought – didn’t it? – if we were to pass a clean and safe planet on to those same children who now complain about what we did – and Lesu Haristi, it ended twenty years ago!

Hiti’s beak nudged him out of his thoughts. He felt thankful for that. Brooding wasn’t his nature, wherefore it hurt whenever he fell into it.

He and the dolphin romped on into the bay. Numerous boats were out. Those crews that spied him swung close to give a cheery hail. Reaching a reef, he went below, aided by his companion, to admire the formations and brightly colored fish. He could only stay underwater about three minutes at a time, but then, he was merely revisiting scenes familiar to him from many scuba dives.

What a beautiful, mysterious, protean Earth this was – and how heartbreakingly vulnerable!

A little weary after he finished, Terai got on Hiti’s back and rode the last kilometer to the wharfs. There he climbed aboard his deserted yacht, found a treat of sliced ham for his steed, toweled himself dry, and donned shirt, trousers, sandals. The sun had gone behind the western clouds and he felt the need of more than bare skin or a sarong. Maybe, he thought, he was starting to show his years a mite, in other ways than gray hair and furrowed countenance.

The town was not large, primarily a marketplace plus a few minor industries. More like inhabitants of a remote island than the average modern N’Zealanner, Uriwera tribespeople generally preferred to live on separate family grounds scattered over a wide territory, holdings which gave them a substantial part of their support directly, as well as cash products. Those who had moved here from the hinterland left hard work and long hours to a handful of entrepreneurs.

Airy houses, their wood fancifully carved and painted, lined brick-paved streets that wound steeply uphill. Children played among pets, musical instruments and voices resounded from verandahs, laughter filled the tavern and dancing feet the plaza. Trees
arched above, palm, kauri, matai, elm, where birds flitted and sang; flowers and vines surrounded nearly every dwelling; the evening was warmed by their perfumes and by savory kitchen odors.

Everywhere, kanakas and wahines greeted Terai. Several wished him to stop and gossip, or come inside for a drink, but he declined in polite, circuitous fashion. He wanted home, a rum toddy, his wife in bed, little Parapara to welcome when she returned, dinner before a log fire. Nevertheless the invitations pleased him. Some old-established families had gradually become half strangers to common folk, and surely the Lohannasos were as prominent as any. He, though, had succeeded in managing his property, his partnership in the Red Ox freight line, and his missions as an officer of naval intelligence, without losing the friends of his boyhood.

His house scarcely differed from theirs, either. It did command a magnificent view from a showplace garden, but except for its size was typical; and the cottages where the staff – mostly kinfolk – lived had their exact counterparts on many a farm or ranch. While the buildings included stables and kennels, as well as the workshop where Terai enjoyed making things, none were ostentatious. Beneath his roof he kept a jackdaw collection of objects from around the world, but that was nothing unusual either, in the globe-navigating Maurai Federation.

He bounded through the open front door. Beyond, straw mats, ash paneling, and broad windows kept the entryroom full of light. ‘Hallo-o!’ he bellowed.

His wife appeared. He moved to embrace her. In her mid-forties, Elena continued thoroughly embraceable. Herself built on a generous scale, hair streaked with white like a sea phosphorescent in the dark, she was born a Bowenu of the Te Karaka tribe; they had met when the Navy sent him for advanced education to the engineering school where she was a student, had become lovers almost immediately, written back and forth while he was off to the Power War, and married as soon afterward as their parents could sign the customary agreement and arrange the customary festivities.

‘M-m-m,’ he purred into her ear. ‘You smell of woman, you do.’ Then he sensed how tensely she stood, stepped back, kept his hands on her hips but looked down into a faceful of trouble. ‘I say, what’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘A radio call today from Aruturu Haakonu in person. He said you were to come at once if convenient
– if inconvenient, come all the same.’

Terai scowled and gnawed his lip.

‘He told me he knows you’ve been away as an Elector, and
is
sorry to haul you off to duty in such haste,’ Elena went on. ‘Otherwise he explained nothing. But I don’t believe he ever jokes unless there’s a sticky situation.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ Terai agreed. ‘Hasn’t, since his son was killed … So be it. I’ll get the morning train from Napiri. Do you want to ride along to the station and take my horse back?’

‘Of course. Who else should?’ Achieving a smile, she stroked his cheek. ‘We needn’t leave before sunrise to catch the train, and you can sleep on it. How tired are you now?

‘Not half as tired as we both shall be,’ he laughed. They were a Navy couple of the old-fashioned sort.

2

Most buildings in Wellantoa were substantial, brick, stone, tile, often whitewashed or brightly plastered, a solar collector on every roof. Here too people disliked crowded housing. The hills above the bay gave more area to family gardens and public parks than to homes. This frequently meant going a distance of kilometers from place to place. Few in the city minded, despite their reputation as a hustling and bustling lot. After all, they could take bicycles, horses (properly diapered while in town), carriages, trams in the flatlands, their own feet anywhere; the mild climate usually made transit a pleasure; for the rare emergency, motor vehicle existed, taxicabs, ambulances, Fire engines, police cars. The waterfront was busy and noisy, as were the railway station and various factories, but on the whole, this was a gracious community.

Silhouetted on its height against the Tararua Mountains, the Admiralty overlooked much of it, from Parliament and the Palace at either end of the same ridge, down past the loveliness of the University campus and stateliness of the Royal Science Museum, and across the strait toward South Island. On this day, however, wind brawled out of the Tasman Sea, rain slashed, sight lost itself in silver-gray: weather to disquiet a believer in omens.

Terai was not, but he couldn’t help thinking how it fitted the lair wherein he sat and the purpose that had called him here.

Just under the ceiling, the emblem of the Intelligence Corps was
the most colorful thing in the big room; but its image, a falcon stooping upon a kea, reminded visitors of that evil which the sheep-killing parrot symbolized. The only personal items were photographs of Aruturu Haakonu’s dead son Ruori and his surviving household, on the desk; a tabletop model of the ship aboard which he had served as a young man in the Okkaidan War, placed next to an outsize terrestrial globe; and a crossed pair of spears, acquired in Africa during his years as a field agent, on the wall behind him. Everywhere else were bookshelves and filing cabinets, of well-chosen hardwood but strictly devoted to reference material. The customary Triad images were lacking. The chief of the Corps was not a devotee of Tanaroa, Lesu, and Nan – not of anything, he had remarked to Terai in a rare unguarded moment, except human steadfastness in a universe that was also mortal.

‘Thank you for such a prompt response, Captain Lohannaso,’ he said when the other entered. Thereupon he rang for his secretary to bring tea, inquired after Terai’s family, and spent a few minutes discussing the prospects of the local soccer team. He well understood the value of good manners toward a subordinate. Underneath them, he remained an aristocrat of the Aorangi tribe, into whom something of the starkness and splendor of their mountain had entered.

Presently he sat straight at the glassy sweep of the desk, and his single eye came to such intent focus that the artificiality of the left one was unmistakable. The eye was gray, his hair and a beard that fell to his breast were white, his features craggy and pallid. In him the Ingliss side of the ancestry was dominant – spirit as well as body, Terai imagined.

Nevertheless, he was not discourteous, he did not go too hastily at matters. His concession to the Maurai temperament took the form of didactic discursiveness.

‘I’ve recalled you partly because you’re among our ablest field operatives, Captain, in a period when we’re damnably short even of run-of-the-mill personnel,’ he said. ‘And you understand the present danger better than Her Majesty’s average subject does. We’ve had it too easy for centuries.
You
don’t take our hegemony for granted.’

‘The admiral is kind,’ Terai muttered, and reached for his pipe.

Aruturu made a harsh sound that might have been meant for a chuckle. ‘It’s not precisely kind of me to bring you here when
you’ve earned a long leave, and for the mission I have in mind. A mission which should never have been required in the first instance.’

‘Really, sir?’

The monocular gaze went afar. ‘Our colleagues before the Downfall would not have been caught by surprise as we’ve been. Compared to them, we – everyone like us on Earth – we’re naive, ignorant, understaffed, underequipped, undersupported. We’ve never had any enemies who required us to become efficient. But you’ve heard me on this topic before.’ Aruturu returned his look, sharpened, to Terai.

‘Now we seem at last to be up against somebody who has given the business a great deal of thought and done a great deal of ground-work. Somebody with whom you may be uniquely well qualified to cope.’

Terai raised his brows and waited.

‘In view of your trip to Laska five years ago,’ Aruturu explained.

Terai winced. ‘That was hardly a success of mine, sir. I suspect I was rather cleverly hoodwinked, and lucky to get out alive, but I found no proof of anything.’

‘
I
suspect you came closer to making a discovery than all the agents we’ve had in those parts before or since. The sheer size and wildness of that country – a society too loosely organized, in its damned Lodges, for us to infiltrate in any useful degree – Well.’ Aruturu’s tone grew metallic. ‘What brought your name to my mind was another name in a report lately received from Europai. Mikli Karst.’

Terai nearly dropped his smoking gear, recovered, and got busy with it. ‘I’m surprised the admiral remembers me in that connection.’

‘I’ve an excellent memory, Captain Lohannaso, and a better data retrieval system. Your own recollection may have gotten a trifle dim, after the range of later assignments you had.’ Aruturu formed the smile of a carnivore. ‘Yes, of course you made yourself too conspicuous among the Norrmen to be very useful there, again. But how would you like to meet your old opponent on ground that is new to you both?’

Wind shrieked, rain dashed against panes, the noise of a typewriter in the outer office suggested skeletons holding carnival on Ghost Night. Terai started his pipe. The smoke scratched his palate in friendly, reassuring wise. ‘Please say on, sir.’

‘This will take time,’ Aruturu warned. ‘I shall have to ramble through the background of it all.

‘Our operatives in the Domain of Skyholm are miserably few, in spite of the increasing Maurai presence in the country. The well-
developed domestic communication and air transportation systems do enhance their capabilities somewhat, and they send regular dispatches via GRC.’ Terai recognized the abbreviation for coded radio, relayed by the sea stations which the Federation maintained worldwide.