shovel-tusked brute pursued by several Ruadrath. The hunters’ yells
split the air. Rrinn uttered a joyous howl and sped to help. Flandry was
left floundering behind in spite of wanting to demonstrate his prowess.
He saw Rrinn head off the great beast and engage it, knife and spear
against its rushes, till the others caught up.
That evening there was feasting and merriment. The grace of dancers, the
lilt of song and small drums, spoke to Flandry with an eloquence that
went beyond language and species. He had admired Ruadrath art: the
delicate carving on every implement, the elegant shapes of objects like
sledges, bowls, and blubber lamps. Now tonight, sitting–bundled up–in
one of the igloos that had been raised when the old females predicted a
blizzard, he heard a story. Rrinn gave him a low-voiced running
translation into Eriau. Awkward though that was, Flandry could identify
the elements of style, dignity, and philosophy which informed a tale of
heroic adventure. Afterward, meditating on it in his sleeping bag, he
felt optimistic about his chances of manipulating Wirrda’s.
Whether or not he could thereby wrest anything out of the Merseians was
a question to be deferred if he wanted to get to sleep.
Ydwyr said quietly, “No, I do not believe you would be a traitress to
your race. Is not the highest service you can render to help strike the
Imperial chain off them?”
“What chain?” Djana retorted. “Where were the Emperor and his law when I
tried to escape from the Black Hole, fifteen years old, and my
contractor caught me and turned me over to the Giggling Man for a
lesson?”
Ydwyr reached out. His fingers passed through her locks, stroked her
cheek, and rested on her shoulder for a minute. To save her
garments–indoors being warm and she simply an alien there, her body
neither desirable nor repulsive–she had taken to wearing just a
pocketed kilt. The touch on her skin was at once firm and tender; its
slight roughness emphasized the strength held in check behind. Love
flowed through it, into her, and radiated back out from her until the
bare small office was aglow, as golden sunsets can saturate the air of
worlds like Terra. Love? No, maybe not really. That’s a typical sticky
Anglic word. I remember, somebody told me, I think I remember … isn’t
it caritas that God has for us mortals?
Above the gray robe, above her, Ydwyr’s countenance waited powerful and
benign. I mustn’t call you God. But I can call you Father–to
myself–can’t I? In Eriau they say rohadwann: affection, loyalty,
founded on respect and on my own honor.
“Yes, I could better have spoken of burning out a cancer,” he agreed.
“The breakdown of legitimate authority into weakness or
oppression–which are two aspects of the same thing, the change of Hands
into Heads–is a late stage of the fatal disease.” A human male would
have tried to cuddle her and murmur consolations for memories that to
this day could knot her guts and blur her eyesight. Then he would have
gotten indignant if she didn’t crawl into bed with him. Ydwyr continued
challengingly: “You had the toughness to outlive your torment, at last
to outwit the tormentors. Is not your duty to help those of your race to
freedom who were denied your heritage?”
She dropped her gaze. Her fingers twisted together. “How? I mean, oh,
you would overrun humanity … wouldn’t you?”
“I thought you had learned the worth of propaganda,” he reproached her.
“Whatever the final result, you will see no enormous change; centuries
of effort lie ahead. And the goal is liberation–of Merseians, yes, we
make no bleat about our primary objective being anything else–but we
welcome partners–and our endeavor is, ultimately, to impose Will on
blind Nature and Chance.”
Junior partners, she added to herself. Wett, is that necessarily bad?
She closed her eyes and saw a man who bore Nicky Flandry’s face
(descendant, maybe) striding in the van of an army which followed the
Merseian Christ. He carried no exterior burden of venal superiors and
bloodless colleagues, no interior load of nasty little guilts and doubts
and mockeries; in his hand was the gigantic simplicity of a war knife,