“You’d spend your lives as outlaws? I should think you’d soon become bandits.”
“No, no. We’d carry on more raids, get more recruits and popular support, gather strength enemy must reckon with. Meanwhile we’d hope for sympathy elsewhere in Empire bringin’ pressure on our behalf, or maybe fear of Ythri movin’ in.”
“Maybe,” Hedin grunted. After a moment: “I’ve heard rumors. Great bein’ with gold-bronze wings, a-flit in these parts. Ythrian agent? They don’t necessarily want what we do, Firstlin’.”
Ivar’s shoulders slumped. “No matter. We failed anyhow. I did.”
Hedin reached across to clap him on the back. “Don’t take that attitude. First, military leaders are bound to lose men and suffer occasional disasters. Second, you never were one, really. You just happened to get thrown to top of cards that God was shufflin’.” Softly: “For game of solitaire? I won’t believe it.” His tone briskened. “Firstlin’, you’ve got no right to go off on conscience spin. You and your fellows together made bad mistake. Leave it at that, and carry on. Aeneas does need you.”
“Me?” Ivar exclaimed. His self-importance had crumbled while he talked, until he could not admit he had ever seen himself as a Maccabee. “What in cosmos can I—”
Hedin lifted a gauntleted hand to quiet him. “Hoy. Follow me.”
They brought their stathas off the trail, and did not rejoin it for ten kilometers. What they avoided was a herd belonging to Hedin: Terran-descended cattle, gene-modified and then adapted through centuries—like most introduced organisms—until they were a genus of their own. Watchfires glimmered around their mass. Hedin didn’t doubt his men were loyal to him; but what they hadn’t noticed, they couldn’t reveal.
On the way, the riders passed a fragment of wall. Glass-black, seamless, it sheened above moonlight brush and sand. Near the top of what remained, four meters up, holes made an intricate pattern, its original purpose hard to guess. Now stars gleamed through.
Hedin reined in, drew a cross, and muttered before he went on.
Ivar had seen the rum in the past, and rangehands paying it their respects. He had never thought he would see the yeoman—well-educated, well-traveled, hardheaded master and councilor—do likewise.
After a cold and silent while, Hedin said half defensively, “Kind of symbol back yonder.”
“Well… yes,” Ivar responded.
“Somebody was here before us, millions of years ago. And not extinct natives, either. Where did they come from? Why did they leave? Traces have been found on other planets too, remember. Unreasonable to suppose they died off, no? Lot of people wonder if they didn’t go onward instead—out there.”
Hedin waved at the stars. Of that knife-bright horde, some belonged to the Empire but most did not. For those the bare eye could see were mainly giants, shining across the light-years which engulfed vision of a Virgil or a Sol. Between Ivar and red Betelgeuse reached all the dominion of Terra, and more. Further on, Rigel flashed and the Pleiades veiled themselves in regions to which the Roidhunate of Merseia gave its name for a blink of time. Beyond these were Polaris, once man’s lodestar, and the Orion
Nebula, where new suns and worlds were being born even as he watched, and in billions of years life would look forth and wonder. . . .
Hedin’s mask swung toward Ivar again. His voice was low but eerily intense. “That’s why we need you, Firstlin’. You may be rash boy, yes, but four hundred years of man on Aeneas stand behind you. We’ll need every root we’ve got when Elders return.”
Startled, Ivar said, “You don’t believe that, do you? I’ve heard talk; but you?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Hedin’s words came dwindled through the darkness. “I don’t know. Before war, I never thought about it. I’d go to church, and that was that.
“But since— Can so many people be entirely wrong? They are many, I’ll tell you. Off in town, at school, you probably haven’t any idea how wide hope is spreadin’ that Elders will come back soon, bearin’ Word of God. It’s not crank, Ivar. Nigh everybody admits this is hope, no proof. But could Admiral McCormac have headed their way? And surely we hear rumors about new prophet in barrens—