Orion Shall Rise (21 page)

‘They report that a large Union ship, complete with an aircraft, has reached a port on the western peninsula and settled down for an indefinite stay,’ the chief continued. ‘Earlier she was in Espayn. They’ve sent us as many names and ratings as they could learn, and Mikli Karst’s is at the head of the list, seemingly the leader of the expedition. Its purpose is undisclosed, aside from vague talk of “commercial and diplomatic negotiations.” It arrived about two months ago, following similarly secretive scurryings about in Espayn. Karst
is
seldom at the harbor, but has been seen in places such as Tournev, the principal city. Several members of his party have not been seen at all since shortly after the landing. Certain rumors recently heard, and passed on to me, are what have perturbed me enough to decide we had better get properly cracking on this. They tell of strangers in the eastern marches of the Domain, who crossed the Rhin River and vanished among the Allemans. They sound as if that party may well be from the ship.’

‘How so, and how did they reach our men?’ Terai inquired.

‘They scarcely would have, and in any event they would not have included any worthwhile description – save that the leader of the band
is
a rather spectacular woman.
That
raised gossip along many a trade route.’ Aruturu repeated his grin. ‘The Norrmen make mistakes too. Though perhaps they had no choice; perhaps she was the best they could get for the task, whatever it is.’

‘What do you think they’re up to, sir?’

‘It
is
a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Yet consider.’ Aruturu ticked points off on his bony fingers.

‘First,’ he said, ‘none of this would be possible without the connivance of aristocrats high in the Domain. Its states have extensive autonomy, but Skyholm keeps basic control. Of recent years, that control has been faltering. Regardless, no gang of foreigners could establish a base, travel about as they please, and never offer a real explanation – unless they had some intrigue afoot with powerful men.

‘Second, the Domain is riddled with intrigue. Its Captain
is
nearing the end, like Her Majesty here; but the Captaincy of
Skyholm carries authority several orders of magnitude above what our monarchy does. Contending for it are traditionalists, Gaeans, a dozen different cabals of malcontents. If the Northwest Union can help engineer the succession of a government favorable to it vis-à-vis us, we’ll not only be eased out of a growing market, our European operations – our intelligence – will be slowly strangled.

‘And the Norrmen will fare as they choose. … What are that woman and her followers doing beyond the Rhin? Could they be after fissionables? Could that be the basic reason why Norrmen are plotting with members of the Aerogens?’

Terai, who was no coward, shivered. The gale outside was less terrible than that which Aruturu bespoke. ‘Sir, I’ve, well, I’ve heard what you might call whispers about this, but it’s hard to, to accept. Didn’t the Federation scour the world for that stuff, long ago, and throw it into a subduction zone?’

‘Yes, but the search was cursory in wilderness or in devastated areas, and afterward the supposition was that the remainder could be confiscated as it was discovered. That didn’t work so well, did it? The Norrmen before the war found fuel for several reactors, without undue difficulty. There must be rather more lying about in forgotten nooks and crannies. And lately – We’re keeping it secret for the time being, if only to avoid public panic, but we have gotten definite evidence that somebody is foraging again. You’ll be briefed.’

The calm statement came to Terai like a kick in the belly. He felt sick, half stunned. ‘But it doesn’t make sense!’ he protested.

‘Why not?’ his superior replied.

‘Because – teeth of Nan, because it doesn’t!’

Aruturu leaned back in his chair. ‘Give me your reasons, Captain. I’ve obviously been through the argument before, but you need to clarify your own thinking.’

‘Well –’ Terai puffed hard, raising a small guardian cloud for himself. Dismay drained from him and horror receded to the bottom of his mind. Monstrosities could be slain; but first they must be understood. His thoughts grew methodical.

‘Well, the logic of it,’ he said. ‘Suppose somebody – call him X – suppose somebody did get together a few hundred kilos of uranium-235, plutonium, or whatever else. Let X make bombs of it, too. What then? I presume the bombs would be for use on us,’
since we dominate Earth.
‘How shall they be delivered? A fleet of
bombers or rockets is ridiculous. Quite aside from the metal, where’s the fuel to come from? Oil wells are treasures in the firm grip of the chemical industry. Synfuels depend in the last analysis on solar energy, and that’s too diffuse. X couldn’t build an adequate plant, or divert the amount he’d need from the civilian economy, without us noticing.

‘Therefore X can only mount a sneak operation, bombs in the holds of merchant ships and so on. Supposing he could coordinate the thing, against our bases and outposts around the world – and I don’t see how he could – it wouldn’t destroy us. We’re too widespread; too much of our strength comes from village and family enterprises; what was left of our Navy would still be stronger than anything he could muster. Besides, surely most of the human race would join us, to stamp on anybody who’d risk a second Downfall.

‘No, sir, if X
is
crazy enough to try that, then X
is
too crazy to be any real menace.’

He stopped, short of breath after such an unwontedly long speech. For a while, the storm keened.

To tell the truth,’ Aruturu said, ‘I agree with your reasoning. A nuclear attack on us would be a grisly absurdity. However, we cannot reason the data away.’

‘What
could
the motive be?’ Terai implored.

Aruturu sighed. ‘I’ve spent more sleepless nights than I care to number, trying to answer that. Your X might build a powerplant, as the Norrmen wanted to do before the war. But given our policy of prohibition, that doesn’t make sense either. It would have to be tucked off at the back of beyond, where it could play no worthwhile industrial role.

‘What else? An attempt at extortion? Or, controverting both sanitary and morality, an actual attempt at bringing the Federation down? Whatever the aim, it’s necessarily hostile to us, because the ban is ours.’

Terai made no comment. None was needed. You could argue against the right of the Maurai to be the custodians of Earth, but you could not dispute the fact that nuclear energy, in whatever form and for whatever purpose, meant the possibility of nuclear weapons.

‘Who is X?’ Aruturu pursued. ‘Probably the Northwest Union. Oh, not officially. An entire nation can’t hide so hellish a secret, especially when it’s so weakly governed. But a close-knit consortium of their Lodges might.’

‘We shouldn’t dismiss others,’ Terai counseled. The admiral remembers how Beneghal made an undercover effort of that sort.’

‘Indeed. And you know what a close watch we’ve kept on Beneghal ever since. Who else? X has to have the technological capability, which excludes the vast majority of mankind today. Besides, most societies are sympathetic or, at worst, resigned to us. In the case of the Northwest Union, we stand foursquare between them and their dearest dreams.’

‘The Gaeans don’t like us either,’ Terai reminded.

Aruturu nodded. True. However, can you imagine them splitting the atom? They’d hang any of their own people who tried. Aye, aye, the Corps
is
investigating them. It’s investigating every candidate, the whole way from Okkaido to the Domain itself. But let us not play games, you and I. We have just a single prime suspect. Or, rather, and much more difficult for us, a number of prime suspects; but the guilty group, with ninety percent certainty, is Northwestern. Our task is to find them, prove their guilt, and break them, before it
is
too late.’

He fell silent for a space. The gale ramped. When he spoke further, it was most quietly:

‘Terai Lohannaso, I do not order you on this mission. Think first. Refusal won’t be held against you. It’s lonely and weird and may lead you nowhere but into death. You have earned better.’

The big man braced muscles and will. ‘If nothing else, Admiral,’ he said, ‘I’ve my kids to think about, and whatever kids they’ll be having. I accept.’

Aruturu’s smile this time held a touch of warmth. ‘Well, then, I promise you’ll find it fascinating, as great a challenge as you can ever meet. Our men presently in the Domain are routine information collectors, not spies; their identities and duties are known to Skyholm. I ask you to go there on a roving commission.

‘The Norries may not be after fissionables at all … in Europai. In any event, that can scarcely be their primary goal. Ferret out what
is
happening, Captain, and take whatever measures may be indicated. In effect, you’ll have plenipotentiary authority.’

‘Just what does that mean, sir?’ Terai asked cautiously.

‘Well, you should send your findings here, for the Cabinet and the Navy. But if you can’t, then, whatever you decide to do. Her Majesty’s government will back you down the line. It has that much faith in me; I have that much faith in you.’

Aruturu waited a little before finishing, with a visible measure of pain: ‘Besides the regular sort of staff, you’ll have an associate who, I believe,
is
quite extraordinary. And I ought to know. He’s my grandson – in part; in a way, a strange way.’

3

Had the ancient canal through either Panama or Suez been restored – projects thus far rejected as demanding too many machines and too much fuel – or had
Hivao
traveled, spendthrift, under power, she could have reached the antipodes in less than the two months it actually took. Heavy weather and foul winds did not impede her particularly; but around Cape Horn they combined with icebergs drifting up from Antarctica to make her creep along. Later, as she headed north, most currents were unfavourable until, near the end of her journey, she entered the Gulf Stream.

The planners had foreseen the slowness. Indeed, the ship was a monohull chosen for sturdiness and capacity, not speed. The Corpsmen aboard required the time for study, and at that, they must be intense about it.

They were bound for a country, an entire and alien civilization, which none but the two who instructed them knew at first hand. Language was only the most obvious hurdle to overleap. Angley was not like the dialects of Ingliss flourishing in such places as Stralia and Awaii, nor was Francey like the Faranasai heard in the Taiiti region. It was also essential to grasp the elementary facts of geography, ethnology, history, laws, customs, traditions, faiths, contentions … the list continued.

Modern psychopedagogics made the learning possible, but just barely. The voyage was no pleasure cruise for either the intelligence team or the sailors. Women were absent from both groups, their abilities as well as their company sorely missed; be he right or wrong, the admiral had decided that frustration at sea would distract his agents less than would possible emotional involvements.

Terai noticed early on that Wairoa Haakonu attended few lectures and joined nobody in memorization exercises or speech practice. Instead, he shut himself up in his cabin with books, or spent hours on deck saying never a word to anybody. Terai determined to find out why. The fellow was supposed to be his partner, the other ten mainly support personnel for those two, but they had only met
twice, brief and formal encounters, before they embarked.

Terai’s opportunity came on the evening when
Hivao,
bearing south of east, crossed the sixtieth parallel. He emerged from his classroom below in search of cold air to blow the haze of concentration out of him before dinner. In that bleakness the deck appeared abandoned by all but the two crewmen on lookout. Twilight made their heavily clad, hooded forms goblinlike. Aft, a last streak of crimson smoldered on the horizon. Thence an overcast darkened toward the night rolling in from ahead. The sea glimmered dull gray as its waves marched to meet yonder gloom. A pair of albatross soared on high, only visible trace of life beyond the hull. Running before the wind,
Hivao
bore little sense of its sound or force, but its chill struck deep and spindrift laid salt on Terai’s mouth.

He strode off on what he planned as several laps around. It would be a respectable distance.
Hivao
was a five-masted squarerigger, a hundred and fifty meters in length, twenty meters in beam. A low deckhouse, whose glassed-in front was the bridge, and a shelter for the aircraft she carried were the principal interruptions in the sweep of her topside; nearly everything else, even the lifeboat bays, was below for the sake of streamlining. On a vessel this size, that did not limit cargo space too severely.

Those sails that were set made a spectral firmament but doubled the murkiness beneath. On his way to the rail, Terai almost stumbled over a rigging engine crouched at the foot of the mast it served. Lanterns burned far apart. He walked on across a ventilator grille, hearing the faint whirr of the fan, catching the odorous warmth of expelled air. When he got to the side, he thought he could hear an intake under the gunwale.

He went forward. Although no sculpture adorned the prow, reflections off the radar as it turned at the foremast head suggested Lesu’s watchfulness against shark-toothed Nan, and Terai offered a soft salute. Religion was no large part of his life, but the Triad seemed to him as sensible a way as any of symbolizing an ultimate mystery; on the whole, its church served the nation fairly well, and the rites ranged from pleasant to awesome.

He started aft along the port rail. Beyond the deckhouse, he made out the aircraft pod near the stern. A frown crossed his brow. He wished they didn’t have to bring that beast. Its presence was not quite easy to reconcile with their cover story: that they represented a private company sending assorted wares to the Domain on a ven
ture, in hopes of creating a steady trade; that finding the right markets for the different items would require time and travel.