Orion Shall Rise (5 page)

‘Orion shall rise.’

Terai Lohannaso first heard those words from a small girl, bereaved and embittered in the home she was about to leave, under a snowpeak in a land where he was an unwelcome alien. He was never sure afterward why they haunted him. It was not in his nature to brood, and while he always hated to bring sorrow upon others, he recognized that often there was a blunt necessity for action.

Maybe it was because he had known her father, seen him die, and been the one who came to tell her mother what had happened. Maybe it was because the sad little scene triggered within him an awareness of which he was not quite aware, memories of things done and seen and heard about, which at their times had seemed mere flashes, but taken together pointed toward something that might prove terrible. In any event, during the years that followed he often harked back to that moment, and beyond it to Launy Birken.

The two men had been acquainted before the Power War. This was not strange. Terai was skippering a tramp freighter based at Awaii; Launy was part owner of a factory, modest-sized but innovative, producing electronic gear that found a market also in the Maurai Federation.

Like many of her kind, Terai’s ship would sail through the narrows past Vittohrya, a town more cultural and political than mercantile, to Seattle. (Folk in the Northwest Union had had no qualms about rebuilding on former sites, even before the radioactivity had become unmeasurably slight. In such cases, the community was apt to preserve its name better than did those which had not been hit.) Upon docking, his supercargo sent messages to whatever people were appropriate. When Launy received an order, he would bring the consignment himself from his hinterland village, and stay to
make sure it got properly stowed. Then he and Terai went out for dinner and an evening’s drinking. He spoke no Maurai, but his companion was fluent in Unglish. Eventually Terai met Launy’s wife as well.

The fact that the men had served on opposite sides in the recent conflict put no constraint on their friendliness. The Whale War had been undeclared and short, the aims of either party strictly limited, and a chivalric code prevailed.

Terai, eighteen years of age and newly enlisted in the Federation Navy, won a medal when he took charge of his dismasted, burning frigate after all officers perished at the Battle of the Farallones, and kept her afloat under a jury rig the whole way back to Hilo Bay. He always remembered how the nearest of the victorious Union vessels hove to and sent men to help put out the fire, who expressed regrets that they could do no more than that because they must pursue fleeing Maurai units.

As for Launy, he, somewhat older, had captained one of the privateers that brought commerce to a standstill throughout the eastern Pacific Ocean. With her diesel auxiliary and lavish armament, his craft captured nine merchantmen, plundered them, and sent them to the bottom; but first he transferred their crews, not forgetting ship’s cats. Fascinated by Maurai culture, he treated his ‘guests’ with good cheer equal to any they would have offered in their homes.

Thus the two could respect and like each other.

Once or twice they did argue the rights and wrongs of their causes. The last such discussion before the next war occurred in quiet, wainscotted surroundings, a dining room in the Seattle chapter house of Launy’s Wolf Lodge.

He had invited Terai there for a gourmet meal and a look at something of what his civilization had accomplished, besides manufacture, trade, and exploration. The chamber was large, high-ceilinged, the tables spaced well apart and bearing snowy linen, fine china, ivory utensils. Flames danced in a stone fireplace but were only decorative; electric heating staved off the cold while wind hooted and rain dashed against glass. Likewise electric were the lights, though kept soft. Waterpower was abundant in these parts. In addition, the use of coal throughout the Union increased year by year at a rate that Maurai found horrifying.

‘I don’t understand you, Launy,’ Terai said. A bottle of wine and
a fair amount of local whiskey had lubricated his tongue. Sober, he was chary of words. ‘A decent fellow like you, fighting to keep a bunch of whalers in business. It’s not as if you had to. There’s no conscription here, and the war was not called a war anyway. Yes, you’ve told me you did well off your raiding, and it was a great adventure. But you’re doing better off your company, and if a man feels restless – Lesu Haristi, he’s got a whole planet to roam, and half of it still mostly unknown!’

‘And more than half of it full of nothing but backward starvelings,’ Launy retorted.

‘Oh, now, I’ve traveled rather widely, and it isn’t that bad. Not everywhere.’

‘Bad enough, and in enough places.’ Launy’s speech quickened. ‘I haven’t just read books, I’ve seen.’

‘M-m, how?’

‘My father was an Iron Man till he grew arthritic. He took me, a kid, along with him on his final trip. We went clear to the Lantic coast, prospecting. Plenty of stuff yet in the dead cities. We didn’t run into any danger. But I almost wish we had, because the main reason was that the natives were too miserable to be a menace. Instead, they begged. A lot of women tried to rent themselves out, with their families’ consent – for a needle, a plastic cup, anything useful we could spare. I was too young to pay much heed, but I don’t think those poor, scrawny, rickety-boned creatures got many takers.’

I like him more than ever,
Terai thought.
He’s straying from my question, maybe on purpose, but he’s not using the change of subject to glamorize himself.

That would have been easy, his mind went on. The Iron Men were picturesque, and their early exploits had been heroic in a raw fashion as they fought, sneaked, or bargained their way across the Mong-occupied plains in search of metal. Today, however, treaties regulated their passage; Lodge-owned plants near the sources processed materials before those were loaded onto trains that then chugged uneventfully over the prairies and up the mountains; sometimes the freight came from lodes that had been rediscovered, rather than from salvage: coal enormously exceeded it in tonnage. But, true, expeditions did still range through the wilds and barrens of the far East, hunting for the means to give Union industry more muscle.
If
it could only be given more brain and heart.
…

‘No, I’ll take a civilized country,’ Launy continued. ‘I’ve been south as far as Corado, and the countries there are all right: political puppets of yours, but living all right. The Mong, too. I’ve visited the Mong, and they’re as different from us as ever in spite of modernizing, but even their serfs eat well and are better educated than you might expect. I’d certainly love to travel through your Federation someday – I mean as a private person – oh, yes. And could be I’ll make it to Yurrup one of these years. Trade’s really begun growing in that direction, hasn’t it? Skyholm must be a wonderful sight. And you can name other lucky areas. But most of ’em –’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘No, thanks. I know about countries where the rich have it good, but I know about their poor, too, and I know about those where everybody is poor, and I tell you, I’ve seen enough.’

Terai returned to the attack. ‘If you’re so tender-hearted,’ he asked, ‘how can you support the slaughter of whales?’

‘You Maurai hunted them in the past. And you tried ranching them, like cattle.’

‘That was before out scientists learned – what scientists were finding out shortly before the Downfall – how intelligent the cetaceans are.’ Terai gripped his glass, snuffed the smoky odor, tossed ardency down his throat. ‘Oh, you’ve heard all this. Bit by bit, we decided the world isn’t so impoverished that men need to kill beings like that for meat and oil.’

He regarded the other across their table. What he saw was a big man, though not as big as himself, heavy-featured, ruddy, with yellow hair combed down to the shoulders and a close-trimmed red-yellow beard. The Norrman was rather typically clad for an evening out: scarf of imported silk tucked into the open collar of a plaid wool shirt, buckskin trousers, solid half-boots. An ivory ring on his left hand declared him married.

In this climate Terai dressed similarly, but his clothes were plain and their cut, as well as his appearance, foreign to the diners around. Those, mostly husband-and-wife couples, kept trying not to stare.

‘You could decide it on your own account,’ Launy said. ‘Not on behalf of the whole human race. When you started seizing Northwest whaling ships –’

‘As we’d long been seizing slave ships. You never objected to that.’

‘No. We don’t care for slavery here.’ Launy raised a palm. ‘Wait. We care for freedom. But that means the freedom of people, not horses or chickens. Sure, whales are smart animals, and I’d rather we left them alone. But you’ve never proved they’re more than animals. Be honest; all you have is a theory.’

He drank and spoke fast: ‘You took it on yourselves, in what you thought was your almightiness, to tell free captains what they could and could not do on the high seas. Maybe you realized whaling’s carried on almost exclusively by members of the Fish Hawk and Polaris Lodges, and you didn’t think the rest of this loose-jointed country would help them with its blood. But of course no Lodge forsakes another; the Mong wars taught us loyalty. Of course we told you busybodies to go Rusha. And when you got violent, why, the Lodges raised men and money, they armed and convoyed, they got violent right back at you.’

And in pitched battles, as well as raids, you persuaded us we had better not insist,
Terai admitted. He recalled vessels that were the core of the Union fleet at Farallones, steam-powered, steelplated, devoid of catapults but dragon-headed with cannon that fired explosive shells and tubes that launched rockets.
We didn’t understand you. We never guessed – in our, oh, yes, our ‘almightiness
’ –
that anyone would squander resources on that scale, for no larger reason than yours.

Launy’s voice dropped. He leaned forward. ‘Look, Terai,’ he proceeded earnestly, ‘let’s not squabble. Let me just add one thing, and afterward we can get drunk and sing songs and whatever else we feel like. But look. We need sperm oil for fine lubrication. Sure, I know jojoba oil will do. But we can’t import enough from areas where the jojoba plant grows, because there isn’t enough being raised, nor enough trade with them to stimulate it. As for whale meat and lamp fuel and baleen and such, mainly we sell them to the Mong, and buy stuff they have that we want, like coal or the tolls on our railroads through their nations. After we’ve got our industry really well developed, why, we won’t
need
to go whaling. It won’t
pay
anymore. Instead of bitching about our development and ob – uh – obstructing it every way you can short of provoking a full-dress war … why don’t you encourage us? We’d stop our whaling that much the sooner. Could it be that you – no, not you, Terai, but your politicians, your merchants – could it be that they don’t want anybody,
anywhere in the world, to get as important as the Maurai Federation?’

‘No!’ Terai denied, and wished for an instant that he were completely sincere.
Well, I am as far as I myself go, I suppose.
‘How often have we said it? We don’t want any single civilization lording it over the rest, nor any industry that damages the planet –’

Launy threw back his head and interrupted his guest with a shout of laughter. ‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘It suddenly struck me … how we’re parroting our newspapers and professors and orators … when you’re sailing on tomorrow’s tide. Talk about waste!’

Terai relaxed and boomed forth a chuckle. ‘You’re right about that, at least. Good drinking time is a nonrenewable resource. And didn’t you mention a girl show?’

‘I did that.’

Neither man felt need of the sleazy resorts in Docktown. Launy’s wife had accompanied him to Seattle, though agreeing not to interfere with his stag night; Terai’s crew included wahines as well as kanakas. However, Seattle strip dances were quite a contrast to the demure Awaiian hulas. It became a memorable evening.

They had few more. Five years after the Whale War ended, the Power War began; and it was declared – by the Federation upon the Union – and went on for three grisly years, because this time each agonist was determined to break the other.

That Launy and Terai had become friends was nothing extraordinary. The curious chance was that they met again, early in the second year of the second strife between their peoples.

A naval engagement took place of the Aurgon coast. The Maurai forces won, as the Maurai were winning everywhere at sea. They had learned their lesson earlier, had closely studied a society which they no longer underestimated, and had made ready for a conflict that the realists among them knew was ineluctable. The strength, skill, wealth, manpower had been theirs all along, needing only to be mobilized – though at that, the Norrmen gave them a hard fight.

The ship that bore Terai sank an enemy vessel and set about rescuing survivors. Those who were hauled from the water included a radionics officer named Launy Birken.

2

Waves ran blue, green white-laced, foam-swirled, from a shadowiness to starboard that was the continent, westward to the world’s edge. They brawled, they whooshed, they hissed and chuckled; the surge of them pulsed upward through timbers and into human bones. The sun stood past noon where a few clouds and many gulls flew like spatters of milk. Air blew spindrift and chill into men’s faces, tossed their hair, filled their ears with skirling.

Despite her size and the fact that she was beating upwind,
Barracuda
bounded on her way at twenty knots. She could have gone faster if her lift motors had raised more sail, but would have outpaced most of her flotilla. A science of hydrodynamics that, in the course of centuries, had become almost as precise as ballistics underlay her design. The trimaran structure was intended for speed and maneuverability rather than volume. Her
rigging
was more conventional – not that Maurai shipbuilders followed a uniform convention – but equally subtle and efficient. Five masts down the length of the main hull each bore five courses of squaresails (translucent synthetic fabric, strong and rot-proof) that were actually airfoils. Computer-controlled, their aileron edge panels created vectors that rotated the masts to whatever the optimum angle of the moment might be; no stays were needed, nor many running lines. Nor were more than four sailors –