Orion Shall Rise (43 page)

‘Yes, she has the ultimate Gaean personality, doesn’t she?’ Plik mused. ‘Or an aspect of it… as St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross have two aspects of the ultimate Christian personality.… Why do I use that mincing word “personality”? I mean “soul.” “Emotional”
is
another cowardly word. I will say “spiritual.” The real meaning of a faith is spiritual, beyond comprehension except by the spirit. She explained hers to you, in part, by being what she is.’

‘Could she possibly be right?’

‘Is a poem right or wrong? Hers
is
a powerful myth, yes.’

Silence fell between them. Mist thinned off the ground, revealing lands on the left harvested or under preparation for winter wheat, silvery-green prairie on the right. Blue-clad slugai were emerging from their row houses of rammed earth. Birds passed overhead. The air had warmed further and carried odors of soil and vegetation as well as horse and man. The manifold noises of the cavalry troop had settled into a steadiness of syncopated beats.

‘And these Yuanese,’ broke from Iern. ‘Can they be fundamentally different from the Krasnayans? Oh, I admit how little I’ve seen of either. But less and less can I believe they’d conspire with Jovain, away off in Uropa, and arm him for his coup, as we’ve heard they probably did.’

‘Why have you changed your mind?’ Plik asked.

‘Well, naturally, a Gaean regime in the Domain would please them, and some of their officials may have given him a little secret encouragement and help. Otherwise … they act far more interested in the Northwest Union. And well they might. Same continent. They don’t give me any impression of being imperialists, directly or indirectly. Gaeanity at its heart is not militant. I’ve learned that much. Its nature
is
to persuade, not compel.’

‘You
have
learned,’ Plik said. ‘Not that you have logical proof. Our species is gifted where it comes to interpreting doctrine so as to justify whatever one wants to do. You’re here because some Gaeans are adventurous and warlike, aren’t you? And what’s happening in the world goes beyond logic, beyond all rational explanation.’

Iern gave him a sharp look. ‘Are you getting weird again?’

‘The universe is weird. I’m not sure whether “reality” is a word that can have a meaningful definition.’

Plik leaned close. ‘Hear me,’ he said, and never had Iern seen him more grave. ‘I am an alcoholic wastrel, but I’m also a minor poet, and therefore from time to time I deal in things that cannot be spoken straight out.

‘What I feel upon us is a gigantic conflict of … mystiques – a conflict so deep-going that human beings and whole civilizations are turning themselves willy-nilly into archetypes and reenacting
immemorially ancient myths – for only myth and music can even hint at such truths.… The Apollonian Domain and Arthurian Maurai are up against Orphic Gaeanity and the Faustian Northwest. Or if you’d rather, the Norrmen are demons readying to overthrow the gods of sky, sea, and earth – though chthonic gods have always had their own dark side – and the war that is coming will bring an end to the world.’

Ronica –
‘No!’ Iern shouted. ‘You’re crazy!’

He wanted to gallop his horse till wind, speed, exertion drove the horror out of him.
Why horror? Those were only words, that Plik likes to play with. He’s only eccentric, not a madman, not a prophet
. Orluk would scarcely allow him to leave the troop. He trotted ahead, drew next to Ronica, and poured talk at her, any talk that came to his tongue.

She answered merrily. His nightmare faded. It left him altogether when she brought her mouth close to his ear and proposed, in a straightforward sentence, what they should do while the company took its midday rest.

They reached the military base toward evening. The outlines of a blockhouse, hulking athwart heaven, recalled centuries of history that Uropa had not shared; but lesser buildings were reassuringly prosaic, functional. Familiar as well were a little airfield, a few planes parked on it, and a whiff of synfuel scent.

One craft was Northwestern, a large version of the one that lay on the lake bottom with its deadly cargo. Iern made out an insigne painted on the tail, a running wolf from whose neck hung a broken chain. As the column approached, half a dozen men stepped forth to meet its leader. Among them were two unmistakable countrymen of Ronica’s; others waited by the plane.

A Yuanese officer saluted, said some words, and handed a sheet of paper to Orluk. The noyon read it, frowned, and sat pondering. Mikli spoke to him, got a curt response, and rode over to where Iern, Ronica, and Plik were waiting.

‘Orders flown in from Chai Ka-Go today,’ he informed them. To judge by his manner, this was not unexpected. ‘He’s to let us go home immediately, taking Terai and Wairoa along.’

The Clansman’s pulse bounced. On a night flight, he wouldn’t see as much as he had hoped.
But she’ll be beside me, and when we arrive –

‘Our esteemed commander doesn’t approve of such haste,’ Plik observed shrewdly. ‘He suspects a hustle, and wonders if his superiors were wise in endorsing it.’

Mikli leered. ‘They weren’t,’ he said in Francey. ‘The imperative for our side has been that at all costs, we must not let anybody else interrogate the Maurai. No doubt our spokesmen’s argument was plausible – that, being those who got on the trail of the conspirators, we know most and are best able to interrogate in depth, and no time should be wasted. But doubtless it was certain additional considerations that made certain key Yuanese individuals agree the argument was indisputable. Come, let’s pay our devoirs and be gone.’

Courtesies went to and fro. Armed Norrmen took charge of the prisoners. Hand in hand, Iern and Ronica were the last to embark. They paused at the cabin door and looked back. Sunset light scattered unreal gold across a land that again, itself, seemed unreal. Still on his horse, Orluk loomed out of a long shadow, peering after the departing foreigners.

His first month in the Northwest Union became for Iern more than an idyll. It turned into a voyage of discovery.

The inaugural surprise was his reception, or rather the lack of any. There were no passport requirements, no customs, no money changers, no officials. The plane landed on an airstrip near a village simply because agents of the Maurai Inspectorate might be present at a city port. Terai, Wairoa, and a couple of their guards stayed aboard simply because the sight of men under detention would have caused gossip. Everybody else made straight for a nearby hostel.

When Iern expressed amazement, Ronica snorted. ‘What’d any country in its right mind want with that kind of garbage?’ she said. ‘We hold that busybody types should also earn an honest living.’

After a few hours’ sleep, the party met for a gargantuan breakfast, served by a staff that presented no reckoning. This place belongs to the Wolf Lodge, and we’re on Lodge business,’ Ronica explained. ‘Otherwise we’d pay. If we were nonmembers, we’d pay double.’

‘You and I shall have to call on the local Lodgemaster before we go on,’ Mikli told the Clansman. ‘Be discreet.’

That was in a home down the street. Iern had seen occasional photographs and read occasional travelers’ descriptions from the Union; not many were available in Uropa. He was somewhat prepared for architectural styles which were, moreover, less exotic than the Mong’s. The office within the house was plainly furnished except for pictures, relics of local history, and a carven plaque above the desk – the wolf with the broken chain and the motto
Run Free
. The Lodgemaster, who in the present case was a robust middle-aged woman, heard out Mikli’s brief account, asked some eager questions through him, but soon, at his urging, shook the newcomer’s hand, wished him a pleasant stay, and bade him goodbye.

Iern had expected that here he would receive formal asylum, or else be referred to someone who had the power to grant it. ‘But this was just a courtesy call!’ he exclaimed when back outside.

‘Why, of course,’ Mikli said. ‘It pays to observe the proprieties when they don’t cost too much effort. At that, Dorda was rather miffed when I told her this was a concern of the Mother Lodge, acting for the whole, and we could only
give
her a short time and some noncommittal chitchat. Provincial chapters complain chronically about how snotty the leadership
is
.’

‘Whom shall we report to?’

‘Nobody, unless you count a small number of people whose help we’ll need. You aren’t going to be held incommunicado, exactly, but it wouldn’t do to attract attention to you.’

‘Isn’t this illegal?’

Mikli yipped mirth. ‘You have considerable to learn, duckie. As a matter of fact, the appropriate officers of the Wolf Lodge will have to okay such things as the internment of Terai and Wairoa. Otherwise, if they found us out, they might hold us guilty of unjustifiable invasion of personal liberty. We’d have to let our prisoners go, and face a hefty damage suit for sullying the honor of the Lodge, as well as whatever claims the two Maurai wanted to bring against us.’

‘But the government –’ Iern gave up.

Two automobiles waited at the airstrip. They were large, their aluminum and woodwork brightly painted. Iern could see that they used steam engines, automatically fired by powdered coal; he smelled it, too, in the reek of exhaust. He could not tell whether the tires were of synthetic elastomer, as in the Domain, or natural rubber obtained through trade.

Their warders joined the captives in one. Mikli, Plik, Iern, and Ronica took its mate. ‘Let me drive,’ the woman said ardently. ‘Yasu Krist, I don’t think I’ve held a steering wheel for an ever-loving year!’

She spoke Unglish, but Iern understood. At odd moments along the way, she had led him in practicing it, and Vanna had shown him books in it. The written language was sufficiently near Angley that he knew he could quickly learn to read, if not to write very reliably. Speech would take a while longer. As yet, he could only follow Ronica, because he was used to her voice, and only in fragments. However, it had become clear to him – as Mikli had remarked on an
evening at the campfire – that the two speeches transformed into each other according to fairly regular rules. Once he had mastered those, fluency would become just a matter of exercise and of acquiring vocabulary.

The dialects of Ingliss prevalent in various parts of Oceania were something else again. As for Maurai, while its grammatical structure was basically Hinja-Uropan, scarcely half its words were related to Angley or Francey, and their line of descent had seen countless mutations.

Ronica engaged the motor. The car took off like a rocket. Though the road was smoothly graveled, Iern thought a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour a trifle excessive if you weren’t airborne, especially when she roared in an arc around indignant drivers of horse carriages and oxcarts. The second chauffeur probably agreed, for his vehicle was soon lost to sight behind a cloud of dust.

Otherwise the scene was peaceful. Sunlight and cloud shadows flowed across alternations of evergreen forest and cleared farmland. Afar in heaven he saw a mighty snowpeak, Mount Rainier. Cloven air hooted. A partly opened window let in a breath of coolness, hay, smoke, damp, autumnal odors advancing as summer retreated.

Eeriness tingled through him. ‘Those farms,’ he said at last. ‘Utterly strange to me – almost every detail about them – but even so, they … they remind me of my grandfather Mael’s, where I was born. And I can’t think how.’

‘Freeholds,’ Ronica answered, referring to earlier reminiscences of his. ‘Most of these, the same families have had for generations, beholden to nobody. Hirelings and tenants, too, have generally been around for lifetime after lifetime. They belong here the same as their landmasters.’

‘It’s neither that ideal nor that solid an existence. It never was,’ Mikli scoffed from the back seat. ‘Like most of our institutions, Iern, this kind of husbandry originated out of need for defense during the Mong Wars. It’s obsolete now. More and more farmers are selling out to agribusinesses … because their sons and daughters have moved to town. Three or four years ago, the Grand Council passed a resolution deploring this decay of the yeomanry, the backbone of the Union, and calling for remedies. Heh-eh! One virtue the Northwestern government does have. By its rudimentary character, it makes obvious the fatuity of all government: something which the heavy-handedness of most tends to disguise.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Ronica said. ‘I think we’ve got a damn fine system, or did till the Maurai horned in. We will again, by God.’ She lifted her head, and Iern remembered that secret battle cry,
Orion shall rise
.

Between them, as much in argument as in exposition, she and Mikli sketched the unwritten constitution of the Northwest Union.

Membership in a Lodge was voluntary and revocable for cause. These days, a substantial part of the population belonged to none, and even members carried on most everyday activities independently of them. Regardless, they remained fundamental to the society – or societies, in this huge and diverse realm.

What actual government the Union had was principally local, elected, and highly participatory through public meetings which often got highly vocal. It provided little more than police and courts. Other services – roads, schools, libraries, hospitals, fire protection, waste disposal, and on and on, frequently including police – were furnished by private enterprise or by a Lodge on a fee basis. (Twice, en route to Seattle, the car stopped at a turnpike and Mikli paid toll.) Competition kept the price low, since law provided for no exclusive franchises.

Above municipalities were the Territories, fifty-two regions widely different in size and character, all of them organic outgrowths of land, ethnos, and history. Their own governments ranged from parliamentary to aristocratic, and met periodically to deal with matters of regional concern. (To this extent, Territories resembled states of the Domain or tribes of the Federation.) However, they usually had such meager executive authority that they were dependent on the goodwill of a community to carry out, in its area, any measures they enacted.