JMJ
Here's a rather long first chapter of a novel I am reworking. Comments welcome --
Gelen!
Part 1: The Star Brother
Chapter 1
Anselmo Ruiz came out of cold sleep staring into a stranger’s dark face, reflected in the low ceiling above him. The eyes, black as the obsidian knives of the peyote growers, were the only thing he recognized – and by this, he knew himself. The knowledge woke him further until he felt the webbing that held him in the bunk.
“Can you hear me?”
He managed a slight movement of his head. Above him, eclipsing his own image, a blurred vision hung, made up of auburn hair, pale skin and overred lips.
“Destination Fen. Citizenship?” A pause came here. “Earth?”
He tried to nod but couldn’t quite.
“Oh. I see.” The voice changed. “You are a Star Brother, travelling with that colonial savage.”
She leaned further over him, a hard-faced woman with startling yellow eyes, reading something he could not see. “ID – check. Name – Jose Maria Juan Pa – Can’t pronounce that one. Anselmo de – de Vaca. Ah, here’s the end. Ruiz. Alright. Sixty Terran years.” Then with satisfaction, “Origin, Ixtlan Colony. Didn’t think you were born on Earth.” She punched keys somewhere out of sight.
“Visa granted. But your shaggy friend’s been denied.” She reached over and pressed a switch on the wall. “You can’t get up yet,” she said, her voice fading as another wave of drowsiness passed over him.
He had not been home in decades and it seemed now as though Earth was just as much his home as Ixtlan – both of them lost in the void. But suddenly, on the edge of sleep, there came over him the memory of his last, poignant view of Ixtlan. The inhabited poles were hidden in cloud, but the fat, steaming middle seethed with lurid gases, gleaming in the light of a double star.
His people had once been refugees – flotsam of some forgotten war, relocated en masse at Ixtlan’s north pole. And some other group had settled New Eire, the south pole. And then they had all been forgotten until the Star Brothers came and after them the politicians -- and then suddenly Ixtlan was civilized.
Civilization. The word seemed to glow for a moment against a backdrop of stars until, nova-like, it flared brightly and was gone. Anselmo Ruiz was fifteen years old again and it was summer. He stood in the stony place where the jungle began and helped his uncle, Liam Esteban de Vaca break camp.
They were loading an air car, metalplast shimmering in the heat. Here in this place, south of the colony, the days were a succession of unrelieved sun followed by the briefest twilight before the onrush of the new dawn.
Liam de Vaca put in the projectile gun they hadn’t needed, and the cooker and the mostly empty crate of provisions. He wore a stunner at his belt but they had been lucky and the patrollers had not caught them.
Anselmo closed a locker and crawled out into the sunshine. There was nothing left to do. He took up the spear he had made and fingered the knife at his belt, waiting. He was a sturdy boy, not tall, but well-muscled. His hands and feet were rather small and his head was set well down on his shoulders with dense, black hair cut straight across his forehead.
In the jungle to the south, a monkeylike daybat howled and the shriekers answered, Wayva! Wayva! The sound rose up the scale until the humans could no longer hear it.
De Vaca fumbled at a silver chain he wore about his neck. “Here,” he said and slipped a medal over the boy’s head. “I loan it to you – the image of Our Lady brought long ago from Earth. Now you must surely come back from the hunt.”
“I will,” the boy said because he was young and to him it seemed impossible that he would die.
“Then I await your signal.” De Vaca turned away, stopped and came back to trace a cross on Anselmo’s forehead. “Oh yes,” he murmured. “You will return.”
When De Vaca had gone, Anselmo walked back through the campsite to make sure there was no sign left that they had been here. He checked over the little satchel at his belt. There was nothing save his ID recorder and the transmitter keyed to De Vaca’s receiver. And then, with a last look at the wasteland behind him, he plunged in among the trees.
He followed the south trail for most of that day, pausing only at the clearing called Bitter Field. Long ago, a shuttle had crashed there and the jungle had never grown back.
In this place, he could look up and see the sky where already the azure of the polar region was giving way to the greenish shade of the upper temperate zone. Devlin, the little russet moon, hung like a petulant frown, scarcely visible above the trees. Leonora, the other moon, was larger but he would not see her for many hours yet.
When he had rested, Anselmo took up his journey on the far side of the clearing. The trees here were stunted, the vines and flowers even more bizarre than they had been before the crash. Something had come between God’s creating and the growing of these things so that the boy hurried past, shamed as though he had looked at what he should not see.
Further on, where the trees were larger, moss billowed to his knees and great swatches of the stuff hung down to slap at his face. His shirt was plastered to the skin with sweat, but he dared not remove it because of the daybats. It was not yet time for them.
There was water in the cup of a dark, slug-colored fungus and in the twilight he would gather the fat, wormlike things that burrowed beneath the moss. He would eat what he must, taking within himself the gifts of this world. This, too, was part of the hunt.
Days passed and Anselmo grew thinner. The coarse planes of his face showed every angle and his eyes became as the dark pools of autumn, reflecting the stars that did not shine in summer.
Sometimes as he slept in the forks of huge, splayed trees, cushioned by the everpresent moss, he dreamed of his home in the north. Again he found himself in the log house, filled and overflowing with children and dogs, aunts and brothers, books and rugs and firelight. He would go back to his parents after the hunt. He would return as his father had returned before him, no longer a boy but a man.
He dreamed also of winter and drifting snow – the half year night with its grim reality of school. He would enter the Star Brothers’ academy this year. But winter seemed as far and fabulous as dreams of travelling among the stars.
Eight days out, he came into the region of the South March and forded the slimy Santiago River. In all this time, he had seen no animal larger than a daybat. There were no snakes, no insects that would take his blood – not even a fly. But the moss kingdom was ending.
After the river, the trail began to climb. The ground grew stony once more and the vines were thicker.
Anselmo was always hungry now. He gathered fungi that tasted like dried meat without salt, and he chewed and chewed and finally spat out the useless fiber. He ate the clustering sky tubers that hung about his face, and he slept now in little clearings where he built fires to keep away the bats.
Everything was changing. Things began to sting him, raising welts on his face and hands. Lizard-like creatures, some small and some not so small, spat poison against his boots.
Presently he came to the ruins. None could say for certain who had built here – probably it was a lost colony, cousins of the peyote growers. The houses were of crumbling brick, the deserted streets overgrown. Broken windows spilled forth a vicious looking red vine.
He fed himself one last time. After the miles he had covered, everything was changed. What had been edible was barely palatable now. He drank from the village well and rested in the shade of a broken wall.
The flat hours stretched out, sweltering hot as the strangeness of the jungle seeped into him. Again and again he went to the well to draw water, the spear clutched in one hand, his boots crunching on the broken pavement.
The sun swung around the horizon and the daybats began to gather along the housefronts. They were small and dappled, chittering among themselves as they watched him. It was almost as though they wondered why he had built no fire.
Anselmo lay the spear across his lap and leaned forward to pull off his shirt. It was a malodorous garment by now, stained beneath the arms. For some reason he found himself promising the Virgin – for, like his own mother, she would expect cleanliness in her children – promising that he would wash it before he put it on again.
Yes, he would, he swore. And he would bathe himself too, though the water smelled like rotten eggs. If only he might succeed in the hunt!
The first of the daybats flew down to perch beside him, pausing before it scampered up his thigh. Its little feet tickled as it four-footed awkwardly across his stomach, dragging its wings. Then another glided down – and another, until they were all over him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, stiffening against the wall at his back. Success, he pleaded. A successful hunt! A drop of sweat ran down one side of his face.
Needle teeth sank into the flesh over his ribs. It would have tickled unbearably if it hadn’t hurt. The creature clung there, drinking his blood while the others began to bite, three on his chest, two at his side, more on his arms. One of them perched beside his throat.
He continued to pray. A successful hunt – yes, he would bathe and wash his clothes – but it hurt now as the little creatures drank his blood! They were poisoning him with their saliva.
And yet how clear his mind became as the daybats fed – clear as crystal, clear as ice sharding in the winter starlight. He tried to think of the log house and the dogs and brothers and baby sister until suddenly – far away he heard the cough of the daybats’ host! There came a booming of giant wings clapped together, a drumming.
Anselmo emptied his mind of all save pain and purpose while his eyes gleamed in the shadows of the wall. Sunlight lay all about him, pouring from the jade-colored sky, bathing the empty houses of the dead. But now that light had no strength. He shivered with cold.
The drumming grew louder.
Now the boy entered a place of stillness. As the sweat gathered and rolled down his face, he saw things he had not noticed before: the dark beneath the trees, the leaves’ bright edges against the sky, the iridescent colors of the flies. He would be as the daybats’ prey, the fat brown mosscats one almost never saw. He would hold himself still – still! And in the stillness he would be eyes – his life in his eyes!
The bat-host came at last around a jagged wall, treading lightly on the broken bricks, its lizard-bird head erect, one amber eye regarding him curiously. A forked tongue flicked in and out while clawed forearms stretched wide to show greeny-gold plumage. Feathers – or what passed for feathers glowed in the sunlight like jewels.
The glory of the sun dwelt in those golden eyes, in the sheening coif of feathers that surrounded the head like a halo. Had he not known better, Anselmo would have worshipped the thing he had come to kill.
A wave of dizziness passed over him as the daybats continued to take their fill of his blood. Each wound was burning now, but it did not matter.
Nothing mattered except that the bat-host came to him, its wings spread that he might adore it before he died. A pagan from across the river would have felt a grim exaltation at this moment, giving himself up to the stillness that came with the daybats’ bite. But Anselmo was no pagan.
He drew back, peeling away layers of quiet, reaching inward to the core of him. The daybats stirred nervously and one or two of them withdrew as Anselmo clutched his spear with trembling hands.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet, scattering the bats, the spear drawn back, poised for the cast. The bat-host opened its beak to scream, showing rows of needle teeth – and the spear thunked home.
Even before the second scream – before he knew whether he had killed it or not – his knife was in his hand and he leaped upon his prey, buffeted by wings that were not true wings, clawed as he fell. The bats shrieked and fled, and – after a moment’s thrashing, the bat-host was still. In the silence Anselmo heard the wind whispering in the treetops.
He pulled out his spear and held it aloft as sticky blood ran down the shaft and onto his hand. “I am a man!” he shouted, but no one heard. “I am a man!”
Suddenly he swayed, dropping the spear. He forgot he was to bathe, forgot he was bloody and filthy as he crawled, exhausted, into one of the tomblike houses and fell asleep.
Father Ruiz woke suddenly. The auburn-haired woman was back. Had she seen on him the stillness of the hunt? But no, she was only looking at a gauge and then down at her wrist reader.
“A few more minutes,” she said. “You’ve been in since Gate 6 – that’s a long jump.”
He watched her as he had watched the bat-host, in his hunter’s way, and saw in her eyes and in the lines about her mouth that she was ill at ease. But then he grew drowsy again and closed his own eyes.
It was an autumn night two years after the hunt. It was the night he told his father he wanted to be a priest.
Juan Patricius Ruiz was not young. He had outlived two wives; Anselmo’s mother was his third. His estate was surrounded by the lands of his grown sons, and he was one of Coll Quadrant’s leading men. He looked at his son with what might have been mild surprise.
“You expected this,” Anselmo said from the stillness. “You are pleased.”
“Perhaps,” his father admitted. “Shall I send you to the seminary here? Or would you like to go to the South Pole?”
“I want to join the Star Brothers,” Anselmo said.
Juan Patricius watched him silently, his eyes like bits of onyx, his lips scarcely moving. “No one,” he said, “from Coll Quadrant has ever gone to the Star Brothers.”
“But Papa – they do so much for us! They travel all through the net! Father Saer has even been to Earth!”
“Is it travel you want or to do the will of God?”
Anselmo had no answer to this.
“No one will stop you, of course,” his father added.
The words hung heavy with meanings Anselmo could not grasp. He struggled against that weight. “Why should I not go?” he whispered.
His father walked over to a chair and sat down. Behind him, a muted holo of Our Lady of Guadalupe hung on the wall. Her face was as still as any hunter’s.
“I did not say you should not go.”
Anselmo waited, clutching the stillness around him.
“You were born here,” Juan Patricius said slowly. “The Franciscans at least would understand. They know. But offworlders are another matter.”
“What,” his son asked through dry lips, “would the Franciscans understand?”
“That,” his father said, waving one hand in Anselmo’s direction. “They know of the stillness.”
“You taught me that!” Anselmo said in surprise. “It is the way of a hunter.”
“I taught you,” Juan Patricius agreed. “But also, you learned.”
“I learned?”
The old man leaned his head on the woven leather chairback. “The stillness,” he murmured. “Have you ever seen this among the Star Brothers?”
Anselmo felt as though he were balancing above a precipice. He was afraid to speak.
“Anselmo,” his father went on remorselessly. “I hunted the bat-host in my youth. So did Liam De Vaca. So did we all. You already know that.”
His son grew cold. Perhaps if he did not ask the final question, there would be no answer – but he knew this was foolish. To flee knowledge was not the way of a hunter.
“My son,” Juan Patricius said now, “the Star Brothers are recruited from many worlds. They travel much, as you say.”
The chair creaked while Our Lady looked down silently.
“The daybats,” Juan Patricius went on, “do not live on other worlds.”
Anselmo’s hard young face grew taut and he felt again in memory, the bite of the daybats. They had drunk his blood. And they had poisoned him.
Poison.
“Papa,” he said at last. “What is the stillness?”
And his father told him – that in the beginning it had seemed no more than a technique taught from father to son, but that later, they had learned that the toxin of the daybats was no toxin at all. It was an infection.
“We are constrained to hunt. It is the one compulsion.”
“And to send your children?”
His father sighed. “It is a gift as well,” Juan Patricius said. “Not what you think. Not an invasion of your mind – only an added faculty.”
“Who all knows of this?” Anselmo asked.
“Who can say? Those who have the gift can discuss it with one another, but I don’t know if anyone has tried to tell an outsider.”
“Not even the Star Brothers?” Anselmo asked him.
“They probably suspect.”
“But have I your permission to – to ask them?”
Juan Patricius sighed. “You have,” he said.
But later, when Anselmo’s stillness had left him, he felt nothing but horror. Possessed, he told himself. Infected. Which of his thoughts were his own? What of his faith? His vocation?
He fled the house, striding through the frosty night to the home of his brother Fernand. There, without speaking, Fernand joined him. For hours they roamed the dying woods beneath two full moons.
“He is growing old. He forgets what a shock this is at first.”
Anselmo said nothing.
“It is no more than – than a new lens for the eye, or an ear implant. It is a bonus – a symbiote. Not a parasite.”
“How can I know that I am still human?” Anselmo cried. “How can I know?”
Fernand thought this over. “Well,” he said, “do you love God above all things?”
His brother nodded solemnly. He did, he thought, at least most of the time.
“And do you still believe everything in the Credo?”
This was easier. “Of course I do,” Anselmo said.
“If that is so,” Fernand said, “there can’t have been any damage.”
Anselmo looked sidewise at his brother. Fernand was close to fifty years old, a son of his father’s first wife. Yet of all his brothers, this was the one to whom he felt closest. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he admitted.
Fernand laughted. “Anselmo, who was it let out the bull last summer when he forgot to close the gate?”
Anselmo looked sheepish. “I did.”
“And when Papa asked who left the gate open?”
“I started to lie. You were there and you know. But then I told the truth.”
“Why?”
“Because a lie is cowardly.”
Fernand paused. “Were those the acts of a man possessed?” he asked. “To behave stupidly, to lie and then to change your mind?” He laid one hand on Anselmo’s shoulder. “You are free to do evil. To be stupid. You are also free to do good. All the keys are there on the instrument. The only difference is that a few more have been added.”
“Fernand – how can you know? You too have hunted the bat-host. You are not free.”
“I may not be the best of men – but can you think I am possessed by an alien intelligence?”
Anselmo had heard a few tales of Fernand’s youth and the answer to this was obvious. “No,” he admitted, grinning a little. “I don’t think so.”
But for a long while after that, he did not use the stillness. He wanted to play upon only those keys he was sure of – at least until the time came to speak again to his father.
It was winter and there was no sunrise. The moons were but slivers in the sky as he stood with Juan Patricius in the snowy corral. He told his father he would go to the Star Brothers and then he went.
There was no more to that story. His father and Fernand were both dead and Ixtlan was a memory forty years gone.
She was watching him when he opened his eyes. He began to pull himself upright by the webbing with the ease of one used to star travel. His dreams evaporated in the antiseptic greyness of the cubicle.
“Here,” she said and handed him a cloying drink. He grimaced and swallowed it down.
“Shuttle goes out in three hours.”
“Thank you, Miss –”
Her lips thinned at the deliberate archaism. “I suppose you know the rest,” she said. “You’ve been through the net before.” She turned to go.
“Excuse me,” he said, still halfway out of his bunk. “You mentioned one of my companions earlier – a Lost Rythan. Heth Stephen Tyger.”
“That’s right. Cubicle –” She looked at her sheet. “Seventeen.”
“And perhaps another Star Brother? Kurt bor Dareth?”
She bit her lip. “Next to this one. Number twelve. You’re in thirteen.”
He smiled a little. He had an unexpected smile that gave life to his normally stolid features, but it was not always a reassuring smile. The attendant glanced at him and hurried away.
“She’s from Sachsen,” he muttered as he stood up carefully in the partial gravity. “And likely Conpol is breathing down her neck. Now I wonder –”
He was wearing a regulation jumpsuit, but he fished his luggage from a locker and changed into an old-fashioned cassock. It was the uniform of the Star Brothers. Only then did he step out into the corridor.
Starship Peace Through Victory was a Net Central ships: an INS ship to be precise. Most of his fsellow passengers were military – or else they were civilian government employees. His destination was Fen Colony. Because this particular colony was legally considered occupied territory, travel was severely restricted.
He wondered how Kurt bor Dareth was faring. For a man raised in an asteroid colony, his colleague was unusually prone to motion sickness. The revolting chemical cocktail might have helped – but it didn’t always. Likely Kurt would be ill.
Outside his own cubicle, he nearly ran into a giant in a dark jumpsuit. The other man stepped nimbly aside, tossing silver hair from his eyes.
“Ah, Stephen. There you are,” Father Ruiz said when both had recovered their balance.
“I was just coming to check on you,” the giant said. “Father bor Dareth is waiting for you in the deck lounge.”
They squeezed one behind the other through a claustrophobic hallway and into a larger chamber furnished with plastifoam and bearing a close resemblance to a padded cell. Kurt lay slumped in a chair, but he sat up when the others came in.
“Headache?” Father Ruiz asked.
“Yes. It’s getting better.”
“Good.” He took another chair and, ignoring a No Pollution sign, began filling his pipe, another archaism he has picked up early in his travels. “I hear you’re not going down,” he said to Heth Stephen.
“No.” The Lost Rythan folded his long legs into another seat and crossed his arms. “We knew that was possibility,” he said. “A probability, in fact.”
“Any reason given?”
“No. Of course you aren’t wanted either, but it was easier to keep me out.”
The ventilator came on with a vengeance and the Lost Rythan gave it a sour look. “And Conpol is probably listening to everything we say,” he added unnecessarily.
Father Ruiz grunted his opinion of Conpol. If they heard, they could add it to his dossier.
“They’re not in charge of the occupation -- or of the colony,” Kurt said quietly. “We are going to people who need us and will probably welcome us.”
“You are going to the Drayaks, a benighted group of pagans who make blood sacrifices to the moon.” Heth Stephen did not take his eyes from the ventilator. “And I might add that the bishop of Havekgerem is less than happy about your coming. He has been told to leave the Drayaks alone.”
Father Ruiz smoked in silence.
“We know the bishop is in a difficult position, Stephen,” Kurt said. “But we are Star Brothers. He might forbid our remaining in his diocese, but he has no jurisdiction among the other tribes.”
“He could be deported,” Heth Stephen said. shortly. “Charges of espionage or conspiracy are easy to trump up these days with the Freewarders pushing Net Central for a fight.” He shifted impatiently, trying to get comfortable.
“Bishop Rainsilver took his chances when he came here,” Father Ruiz snapped, goaded at last into speech. “He knew about the situation.”
Heth Stephen brushed down his moustaches with one long-fingered hand. “You take your chances too,” he remarked.
“We’ll be alright, Stephen,” Kurt put in. “And if we are not – well, that is in God’s hands.”
Father Ruiz removed the pipe from his mouth and knitted his brows, an expression that made him look quite fierce. “Fen is restricted,” he said. “And I know it has something to do with whatever is down there –”
“Who, Father. It has to do with who is down there,” Heth Stephen said. “Otherwise the restrictions would have been removed years ago.”
“I had heard a few things,” Father Ruiz murmured. “Only rumors. Gelens –” The name had ugly connotations. There had been dark hints, scraps of unsettling lore tucked away in semi-restricted government reports. But Father Ruiz had been inclined to dismiss much of this as either propaganda or native folklore translated into psychological jargon. The Star Brothers had given him all the information they had, which was plainly not enough – and he had chosen to take the assignment.
“Whatever they are, they have souls,” Kurt said now. “Just as the Drayaks have souls.”
“Gelens are Drayaks,” Heth Stephen told him. “At least Drayaks produce them. But souls? That remains for you to determine, I suppose. I believe they look human enough.”
“That’s comforting,” Father Ruiz said dryly.
“Father, the planet is practically cordoned off because of the gelens. Why else do you think it is still under occupation?”
Heth Stephen laid out his hands on his knees, frowning as he followed his thoughts further. “God help you if there is a war,” he said. “God help any civilians on Fen.”
“Stephen, we needn’t borrow trouble,” Kurt said. As a miner’s son, he was used to the slow, deliberate speech of people confined together for long periods of time. Arguments made him uneasy.
But Father Ruiz only stuck his pipe back into his mouth and talked around it. “You know we’ll be careful, Stephen. But we could hardly pass up an opportunity like this.”
The Lost Rythan shrugged. “So what all do you know about Fen?”
“Networld fifty-seven. Opened up twenty standard years ago with lost colony status. Same as Lost Rythar.”
Heth Stephen nodded slowly. “Yes, this is a lost colony, alright. In fact, it was almost certainly settled before the advent of star travel -- at least star travel as we know it.” He looked over at Father Ruiz. “The people you are going to are descendants of ancient European tribesmen, most likely Visigoths. But they are changed, just as most colonists have changed. Only in this case the changes have been more extreme.”
“They have been isolated,” Kurt murmured. “Stagnated, perhaps, or inbred -- at least in the beginning.”
“Yes, I’ve already heard all that,” Father Ruiz said. “It’s been thousands of years since -- since whatever happened to their ancestors. Of course they would change.”
“They still have a pretechnical civilisation,” Heth Stephen went on. “Or at least they did until Net Central came.”
“And now?”
“Initial contact followed by war – also the same as Lost Rythar. They stole weapons and other things, just as my ancestors did. They still do. And I’ve heard they are very good at it.”
“But they were defeated, weren’t they?” Father Ruiz said. “They didn’t fight to a draw as Lost Rythar did.”
Heth Stephen smiled a little. “You know as well as I do that we were lucky. My people would have fought to the last man if it had been necessary, but it wasn’t.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it was different here. They are occupied. You are going to what is called the great island, Havekgerem. That is also the name of the main settlement. The dominant tribe are the Haveks.”
“Havekgerem,” Father Ruiz repeated. “Yes. And you have an enclave there?”
“We do. Attached to the bishop’s residence. You will be the first Star Brothers on the planet, you know.”
“Only the first, I’m sure,” Father Ruiz said. “But now, what can you tell us about the Drayaks? I take it they are one of the lesser tribes?”
“The lesser tribe around here. They live in villages along the coast of the island. They go in for fishing and woodcarving mostly. The Haveks trade with them, but they don’t like them.”
Father Ruiz looked a question and at this, Heth Stephen smiled slightly. “Religion, Father. Their differences are centered in religion.”
The priest got up and emptied his pipe. “Details?”
Heth Stephen shook his head. “That’s all I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t count on anything familiar – any leftover Christianity, for instance. I told you they worship the moon.”
“Yes, you did,” Father Ruiz said. “You mentioned blood sacrifices.”
“But that’s all I know. You’ll have to find out the rest when you go down.”
“Well, let’s get on with it then,” the priest growled. “Head alright, Kurt? Good. We’ll bring out our luggage.”
Kurt rose gingerly. He was taller than Father Ruiz and younger. His straight hair was the color of dust, his grey eyes almost transparently clear.
“I’ll help you,” Heth Stephen said. He moved swiftly in the low gravity with a grace his great frame should not have warranted. But he slowed before he reached the priests’ cubicles. Father Ruiz halted a step or so behind him.
“I don’t think they can hear us in the corridor,” the Lost Rythan murmured. “So wait a moment. I didn’t really think they’d let me go down, as I told you. But there are reasons, of course.” He leaned closer to Father Ruiz. “We Lost Rythans – well you know our reputation. Naturally we are politically neutral, but –”
“Stephen, I already guessed that you are with the Faring Guard.”
The other man gave him a sober look. “I didn’t want you to find out, Father. I don’t mean because the Faring Guard are penitents – I have, as a matter of fact, been a felon – but there are other reasons why you should remain ignorant.”
“The Faring Guard is often accused of espionage.”
Heth Stephen did not reply to this directly. “We interest ourselves very much in public affairs,” he conceded after a moment’s consideration. “And in some affairs that are not public. Did you know, for example, that you would not have been allowed to come had it not been for the Old Constitution Party and the direct intervention of Senator Ming?”
“You don’t say.”
“Senator Ming is a liberal and probably an atheist, but he stands up to the IN’s party at every turn. He believes in human rights.”
“Rights in general? Hmp. That’s not very prudent, is it?”
“Senator Ming is not prudent. He will fall eventually, Father, and when he does, many others will fall with him.” He lowered his voice even further. “Ming has interfered in the occupation of Fen. If it had not been for his intervention, the gelens, of which we know so little, would have been rounded up long ago and used for some sort of experiments. They are considered dangerous, yes, more than you can imagine, but also potentially useful. Don’t forget that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Father. I think our people down on the planet may know by now, but they haven’t been able to get that information to the rest of us.”
“So the Faring Guard is well represented on Fen?”
“I can’t say about that,” Heth Stephen hedged. “One does not.”
“I know that, Stephen,” Father Ruiz told him. “But you have a Lost Rythan enclave and that is where we’ll be going first.” He pressed the lock on his cubicle and handed out his things. “I am beginning to understand the bishop’s uneasiness,” he added.
Burdened, they made their way to the lift. “Thank you, Stephen,” he told the Lost Rythan. “And now –”
They had come to the debarkation port and already troopers and a few civilians were entering the shuttle.
“Good luck to you, Fathers,” Heth Stephen said with a small smile. “And more than luck.” He knelt for Father Ruiz’ blessing, impervious to the stares of those about him. Whatever their reactions may have been, they wisely kept them to themselves. One generally did when dealing with Lost Rythans.
Within fifteen minutes, the shuttle was gliding away from Peace Through Victory and into the sapphire tinted atmosphere of Fen.
It was a blue bead of a planet, striated with cloud, white at the poles and white also a long way into what should have been the temperate zones. After arid Wechsler, their last posting, this world seemed marvelously opulent.
“But if those ice caps ever melted, there wouldn’t be much land, would there?” Kurt observed presently.
Father Ruiz keyed in a map on the seat screen. “There isn’t much land now,” he said. He pointed to a long, jagged island with another, smaller one above it. “Havekgerem, I presume.”
“There!” Kurt exclaimed, looking up at the main screen.
They were coming in above a narrow strip of coastline, mostly jumbled rock and small islets where dark masses of what were probably evergreens clung precariously above the sea. But these gave way almost at once to a plain of frothy green. Soon there was nothing but forest below as far as they could see.
“Temperate deciduous,” Father Ruiz remarked. “No jungles here. Probably marine climate and certainly on the cool side.”
Kurt reached over and clicked on their speaker. The voice that came out was sexless, computer generated, and too loud. He turned it down.
“-- diameter, rotation at roughly the same speed as –”
“Is that the only track, I wonder?” Father Ruiz asked.
“I think so.” His companion fiddled with the control and the voice deepened and softened, though its spiel did not change. “-- like all networlds, contains many variations of Terran species. Fen is unique, however, in that its human population is the oldest exile group known.”
He flicked it off. “I guess we know most of that.”
“If this is like the usual, they’ll start in on net theories,” Father Ruiz agreed.
Kurt smiled a little. “And then politics? What is the official theory, anyway?”
“Natural phenomenon. Accident. I am inclined to agree about the first part, but I don’t believe in accidents.”
“Creation of God, then,” Kurt murmured. “That fits better than the artifact theory. After all, we’ve yet to meet an intelligent race that does not originate on earth.”
“Or a stupid one, either,” Father Ruiz added under his breath. Then, “Look, Kurt! Cabin roofs!”
“Are you sure?”
“That looked like a village to me.”
Kurt bor Dareth closed his eyes. “I’ll be glad when we’re down,” he admitted. He leaned his head on one hand. “What a coincidence all of the networlds are habitable,” he said after a moment.
“I don’t believe in coincidence, either,” his companion snapped.
“Well the IN’s would hardly accept the theory of divine providence,” Kurt said and was answered by a snort.
Their attention turned to the main screen. The forest roof was opening out and the square shapes of buildings were unmistakable now. Presently they flew above a sprawling settlement on the banks of a wide river. Houses set along crooked streets met in open squares, and each square was centered with an obelisk. Father Ruiz was pondering the significance of these when the screen went dark. They were about to land.
Havekgerem terminal was as chilly as their reception. They amused themselves for a while trying to guess which of the officials were from occupation intelligence – Conpol. Perhaps the tall, bony fellow who couldn’t “find” their luggage? Or the woman who addressed them loudly as Citizen Ruiz and Citizen bor Dareth? Not the one at the desk, surely. He looked too timid.
It was evening before they were allowed to meet the Lost Rythan who had come for them. Their host was far younger than Heth Stephen, with dusky brown hair, a short beard and colorful, rather barbaric clothing.
He looked down his straight nose at the port officials and retrieved the luggage. His name, he said, was Kril Anthony Third-Blade, and in height he overtopped the two Star Brothers by well over a head.
“I am one of Bishop Rainsilver’s aides,” he added as he led them out into the chilly dusk. “You will stay at the enclave until you leave for your station.”
Father Ruiz grunted. His time at the terminal had outlasted his good humor. Probably, he thought morosely, the cold of this place was in his bones to stay.
Meanwhile, Kril Anthony led them to an aircar and pressed one palm on the lock. “Tomorrow you may buy supplies here in the city,” he said. “Rac Marcus Wolfbane will take you in. We have a voucher from the Star Brothers.”
“Glad it got through,” Father Ruiz said. “Things are pretty tight, aren’t they?”
Kril Anthony did not say anything as he took them aloft. Then, “Heth Stephen Tyger was to have joined us,” he said.
“They wouldn’t let him down.”
“Has it always been this difficult to visit Fen?” Father bor Dareth asked.
“Not quite.” They flew arrow straight above the city, landing on the roof of a large structure not much different in appearance from the rest. “The IN’s,” Kril Anthony said, “do not like religion, of course. And the IN’s have become the most powerful party in Net Central. Naturally,” he added with innocent complacency, “they don’t like Lost Rythans either.”
Father Ruiz kept a straight face. “Of course,” he agreed, knowing that Lost Rythar considered itself the official protector of the Star Brothers – and had done so ever since that colony’s conversion some century or so before. Lost Rythan protection could be embarrassing at times, due to the excessive enthusiasm of the protectors. Lost Rythans were so boisterously pious and direct, much too prone to rip their enemies apart in the service of God.
But Kril Anthony was speaking. “As you must know already, Fen is an occupied planet. And here, at least, the IN’s dominate both the military and Conpol. It is very hard to get a visa and even harder to leave. And,” he added with a little shrug, “everything we send out is censored of course.”
Father Ruiz nodded slowly as they left the flier and passed into the upper passages of what began, from the inside, to look like a fortress. “I’d guess a Lost Rythan designed this place,” was his only comment.
And Kril Anthony, as a Lost Rythan himself, took this at face value. “We did,” he said. “Bis Patrick Bloodbear was the architect.”
“But do you think you’ll need all this?” Father Ruiz indicated what looked like gun emplacements under the roof.
Kril Anthony shrugged. “Who can say? Things change quickly sometimes.”
“Oh?”
Their guide hesitated. “The IN’s are still answerable to congress,” he said slowly, “and through congress to the Constitution Party. That fact is recognised here, though just barely. But if there is a war with the Freewarders –” He didn’t need to finish. If war came, all semblance of freedom would be abrogated. The Star Brothers knew that as well as the Lost Rythans did.
They had to wait, however, to learn more about the situation. Their evening was spent in formalities of a sort Father Ruiz particularly detested, and it wasn’t until the next day that they were turned over to Kril Anthony’s colleague, Rac Marcus Wolfbane. Rac Marcus took them through the malls of Havekgerem, where a variety of offworlders and natives thronged the shops.
“Haveks,” the Lost Rythan murmured, indicating the natives. “There are Drayaks here too, but they have their own part of the city and keep to themselves.”
The Haveks were short, stocky, green-eyed people, uniformly blonde in the more buttery shades. They dressed in a mixture of offworld clothing and native wool.
“Drayaks look like that too?” Father Ruiz asked.
“More or less. But they are finer boned and their eyes are – well, the color’s not the same. And they bug out a bit, or they’re too large, or something.” He glanced at the priest. “You would not consider them handsome.”
Father Ruiz lit his pipe. “You have a Christian community here,” he observed. “Large enough for a bishop. Does it include both tribes?”
Rac Marcus shook his head. “Absolutely not. Tribal prejudice goes much too deep for that.” He hoisted a crate into the flier with an ease that left Father Ruiz staring. Rac Marcus Wolfbane had the face of an ascetic scholar, which contrasted oddly with his Lost Rythan stature and clothing. He had, Father Ruiz recalled, been assigned to read from an edifying book at dinner the night before and had done a creditable job.
“The Haveks,” Rack Marcus added as they climbed back into the vehicle, “have always worshipped the sun. Drayaks have the moongod – or the nightsun as it is called. The gulf between them is that stark. Night and day. Making a few converts among the Haveks has not changed things too much.”
Back in the enclave that evening, Father Ruiz and his companion accepted an invitation to visit Kril Anthony Third-Blade in his own spartan quarters. This, Father Ruiz suspected, would be their real briefing insofar as they were to be briefed at all – and he was right.
They began by telling Kril Anthony of their day’s excursion.
“Rac Marcus,” the younger man said when they were finished, “is very interested in the Drayaks himself. He has already asked permission to go to the Arengerem mission.”
“That is a Drayak city?” Father Ruiz asked.
“No. But the Drayak quarter there is much larger.” Kril Anthony broke off to serve them all beer. “The troopers brew it themselves,” he said. “And we buy it from them. Unofficially, of course.”
Father Ruiz accepted politely. This was a part of Lost Rythan etiquette that had nothing to do with the bishop. Though the room in which they sat was so bare that he and their host were obliged to sit on the bunk while Kurt had the only chair, Kril Anthony might have been a Lost Rythan mountain chieftain entertaining visitors to his keep.
They drank in silence until Kurt set his bottle down on the desktop and looked over at their host. “We’ll need to know anything else you can tell us,” he prompted gently. “Even things you may take for granted. Remember we are new here.”
“Of course,” Kril Anthony told him. “I hesitate because the things I know are sadly mixed with rumors.”
“Native tales?” Father Ruiz asked.
“Rumors in general. The Occupation is very secretive – and so are the Drayaks. Like the troopers, they too live mostly among enemies.”
Father Ruiz found himself looking at the brindled pelt of a large animal stretched on the far wall. Undoubtedly Kril Anthony had been hunting in the nearby forest. That pelt and a crucifix were the only ornaments in the room. “Gelens,” he murmured. “It all comes back to that, doesn’t it? Heth Stephen Tyger told me they are the reason for the Occupation.”
Kril Anthony too stared at the pelt. “A tribal coalition attacked the offworlders less than a year after initial contact,” he said slowly. “It took another year to pacify them. Haveks and Drayaks had banded together for the first time in their history under a charismatic leader named Dilavek. But all that fell apart later when Dilavek committed suicide.”
“But the gelens?” Kurt asked. “What about the gelens?”
Kril Anthony finished his beer at a gulp. “It was the gelens who made the difference, you see. They stole weapons and learned to use them. And they – did other things.”
“Like what?” Father Ruiz asked, turning his gaze on Kril Anthony’s face. “And is this the rumor part?”
“Not at all. They specialised in sabotage, you see. But it was of a very unusual nature. They started fires, found out things no one could have told them, caused landslides, flier accidents. Some of them, you understand. Some of the gelens. And there is more.”
“More?”
“A few were taken to earth after the war for study. They were prisoners used for experiments.” Kril Anthony sat forward. “I’m afraid this part is mostly rumor,” he admitted. “But we have reason to believe they were – that their abilities were amplified mechanically. That they were capable of telekinesis among other things and that this was somehow integrated into a weapons system. Or at least there was an attempt to do so.”
Father Ruiz scowled, shifting his dark gaze to the crucifix. It was Lost Rythan work, harsh planed and rugged.
Kril Anthony looked at it too. “But you are going to one of the villages,” he added. “Not the cities. I believe the place is called –”
“Chigerem,” Father Ruiz told him. “And there is supposed to be a garrison nearby in case we need protection.” He showed his teeth a little.
“Chigerem, yes. A hamlet of Drayak fishermen; gelens would be few in such a place. And,” he added after a moment, “these rumors should be far away.”
“Just how far is Chigerem from here?”
“By flier not far. But you’ll have to go up to Arengerem and take a boat south along the coast. The Occupation won’t authorise civilian flights beyond the two cities -- and you hardly qualify for a military flier.”
Father Ruiz relit his pipe, thinking. “Did our vouchers cover – I mean, is there anything waiting for us when we get there?”
“We contracted for a cabin and a chapel. You will pay the headwoman for the buildings when you arrive.”
“The headwoman.” Father Ruiz shrugged. “And when do we leave?”
“I am to fly you to Arengerem on Friday. That is a permitted flight.”
Father Ruiz suppressed a sigh of relief. He found the enclave stifling. Trust Lost Rythans to strictly obey the bishop’s orders, he thought ruefully. Even now Kril Anthony was probably suffering pangs of conscience over allowing the priest to smoke indoors.
Two days later, they departed.
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
