Emerging from a birch grove they came in sight of a large encampment of tiny huts with low log walls, in loosely ordered rows instead of the customary neoviking ring. The clan totem stood near the center, a crude representation of an otter.
“We have not built real villages yet,” Alvar explained. “It was decided we probably will have to move: we must be light on our feet. And the orcs will burn whatever we have built.”
That night the Council of Chiefs and the War Council, from all the neoviking clans, met around a tall fire beneath the stars. A chieftain, referring to him as the Yngling, suggested that Nils Järnhann replace Kniv Listi as War Leader.
Nils stood in the circle of firelight, greasy braids resting on his wide heavy shoulders, and looked around him. “I thank Ulf Vargson for his faith in me. But I know of Kniv Listi, of his cunning and resourcefulness. His raids have been told of in the longhouse of my village. I prefer to leave the leadership in his experienced hands and act as counsel to him, as I did to Bjorn Arrbuk when he led us in humiliating the orcs and horse barbarians time and again.
“Having said this, I will ask something of you. I would like to search the tribes for those who have prophetic dreams, or who sometimes seem to know what another will say before he says it. Some few of them will prove to have psi-power, as I have, but undeveloped. Trained, their minds can be as valuable to us as swords or bows.”
VI
Tolkien conceived of Mordor, stinking Mordor, wasteland, blasted, land of vile depravities unnamed; washed with reeking acid rain, too corrupt for any greenness, splintered mountains round a fissured plain.
For how could Mordor, foul, perverted, smile beneath a sun?
How lie green with fragrant grass?
How lie spotted white and gold with gently nodding flowers, atrill with birdsong, sweet with loveliness?
From EARTH, by Chandra Queiros
The Phaeacia resembled a giant guitar pick—a reflective ellipsoid seventy-one meters long, thirty-three wide, and somewhat thicker aft than foreward. Functional outriggings broke but did not spoil the symmetry of her lines. Much of her volume was occupied by the drive units, life support system, and a hangar for the two pinnaces. Living and working space for her crew of thirty-one and the sixteen members of the exploration team was adequate but tight.
A gong signalled three bells in the “afternoon” watch. The full exploration team and the ship’s two ranking officers crowded into the narrow conference room to sit shoulder to shoulder around the polished hardwood table. When everyone was seated, Matthew Kumalo stood up. Conversation died and seventeen pairs of eyes settled on him.
“I’ve called us together to review the situation down below and how we’ll approach it. If any of you think I’m wrong about it, I know I can trust you to tell me.”
There were smiles around the table.
“Now I don’t see us in any real danger down there if we’re careful and use our heads. There is no possibility whatever that anyone on this planet has anything that can break our force shields. Any comments?”
“Yes.” The speaker was Alex Malaluan, historian, who had studied everything available on research methods in archaeological anthropology. On New Home, of course, there was no such field, but the university library had material on it dating from old Earth. “Contact Prime stands on a part of the site of the old Romanian city of Constanta. So let’s call it Constanta instead of Contact Prime. It sounds more like a place where people live—more human.”
“Okay,” said Matthew, “Constanta it is.”
“What happened to the old city?” someone asked. “It hasn’t been much more than seven hundred Earth years since it was a going concern.”
“I expect the rounded hillocks we’ve seen, grown over with grass, are all that’s left of it,” Alex replied.
“How come? On some sites there are still some old buildings standing and a lot of recognizable rubble piles. Why are others like Constanta so smoothed over?”
Matthew interrupted. “Can you answer that in one hundred words or less, Alex? We need to get on with other things.”