“Oh, my love,” he murmured huskily. “This may be the best thing I’ve ever done, helping send you out of harm’s way, or the worst, letting you go without me. Here I am, presuming. I don’t even know if you return my affection—no, don’t look at me like that. Say I didn’t know, not until just now.”
She begged, “Can’t you come with me? Oh, Aufors, I’m so … at a loss . . .”
He drew himself up and said firmly, “I believe the Duchess knows what she’s doing. I have known her for some time. I know that she plans from knowledge, whereas you and I have only intuition. When she says I might endanger you, she’s right. I’ve learned on the battlefield that once the decision is made, for good or ill, it must be done with firm conviction. Now go, and let me put on a surprised face for the Marshall”
Garth came then to take Genevieve’s hand and lead her away. She went reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder as Garth took her through the gate and to the alley’s end where two horses waited, their hooves muffled. While Aufors watched from the gate, they rode away, almost silently. By dawn, he knew, they would be well on their way to wherever it was they were going, certainly out of Havenor, across the border of High Haven, and well lost in the lands of somewhere else.
9: The Planet Ares
The planet Ares, which was not far from Haven in a spaciotemporal sense, had been resold several times before finally being settled, a millennium after its discovery, by a group of men who traced their ancestry to the frontiers of space exploration, a time when infinite space called resolute men into the wilderness to build an honorable society in which men were men, women were women, and everyone knew and accepted the difference. Aresians were more hearty than humorous, more intrepid than intuitive, more stalwart than studious. They eschewed the intellectual in favor of action, including sport of all kinds. They found a particular ecstasy in hunting or in doing things at high speed, preferably accompanied by loud noises and strong smells and with much drinking and jollity of a ribald sort to follow.
Their belief system was called Hestonism, a homocentric faith with a god who looked and acted like the best among them, fair minded and honorable and masculine in his approach to problems. If asked, any Aresian would have said that God was an honorable competitor, a good shot, and comfortable on the playing field. Sporting metaphors were customary in explaining the relationship between deity and laity, an intermediary clergy being considered both effete and ineffectual.
The ineffectual was eschewed as un-Aresian. People, no matter of what age or sex, should bedoing something. If they were notdoing something, the chances were, they were up to no good. Games had been provided by God to keep young people busy, and there was no juvenile predisposition so nefarious that it would not submit to daily sessions of competitive ball-carrying, rock-climbing, or game-shooting.
Aresians were well aware that others were less honorable than themselves. Had this not been the case, they would not have needed a world of their own in which their native superiority could manifest itself. Aresians felt there was no challenge that could not be met by well-toned muscle augmented by superior fire power under the approving eye of a deity who kept His omniscient eye upon the target and His omnipresent hand on the trigger.
Upon their arrival on Ares, therefore, the Aresians built sensible armories against whatever enemies might emerge in time, and they manufactured machines for the subduing of the natural world. Subjugation of nature was one of the things strong men did, and they gloried in it, digging deep for the ores they needed and cutting down whole forests to feed their furnaces. Whenever they had a few hours free of toil, they vied with one another in games and sports, in hunting or fishing, at tramping and striving against one another in exploits of physical endurance. They bred doggedly, and proud families with litters of robust and vehement children were the norm.