Orion Shall Rise Page 10

  Anjelan tittered and stroked Faylis’ cheek. Thank you,’ she said. ‘Never fear, I’ll return him in mint condition. Goodbye, now.’

  The door closed behind her. Faylis kept staring at it, until she recalled that the hour was near for her to meet Jovain.

  2

  Fitted in between the ribs of Skyholm, corridors were short, companionways were steep, both were narrow and heavily trafficked. Faylis must continually squeeze by people: stern-faced officer, brisk technician, pondering scientist, solemn chaplain, sophisticated city woman, rural squire full of marvel, young couple on their first visit but intent only on each other, aged couple on their last visit and also hand in hand, Clansfolk who affected the costumes of whatever states they lived in, one a dark alien – Maurai, surely – who had some professional reason to come aloft. … Usage had stylized such encounters, made them into a dance of movements and expressions whereby you avoided jostling and, simultaneously, the appearance of indifference. In the beginning Faylis had been enchanted. Later she found it monotonous, meaningless, maddening.

  She wondered how anybody could endure repeated assignments here. Well, they had their work to keep them interested. Doubtless they grew accustomed to the crowdedness, and accepted the – the decorum, the reverence for Skyholm as the heart of civilization, that was expected. She could try to empathize. After all, though raised in the spaciousness of a Bourgoynais estate, she had accepted dormitory quarters when she entered the Consvatoire, that she might dwell in the brilliance of books and intellects.

  She had imagined Skyholm as an intensified version of that, until she arrived and found that Iern had taken more than one virginity from her. Never again could she look heavenward and see a kind of divinity in this hollow globe. It was merely a thing humans had made, which kept some of them in power over others. The mystery and grandeur of life inhered in life itself.

  Fragrance welled up a companionway. She hastened into the Garden.

  The bottom tier of the inhabited belt did more than help freshen the air. Mostly aeroponic, to save the weight of soil, it nevertheless seemed totally natural. It restored the spirit with leaves, blossoms, playful waters, singing and winging birds, intricacy, intimacy. Children could rollick along the walks and steps without troubling lovers in an arbor, oldsters in talk or reverie on a bench, a meditator before a shrine, a wanderer in search of peace and beauty. The art of centuries had learned how to create lushness out of very little, where it was desired, and elsewhere make sparseness delightful.

  Where Faylis entered from above, a catwalk began. Its rails were elaborately trained grapevines, its carpeting was moss, it went on into moist green dusk through a tunnel of foliage wherein orchids glowed. Following this, she came to a bridge over a tiny stream that ran through a channel of indurated wood whose irregularities made it swirl, jump, and chuckle. Presently she took a stairway, whose own wood had been selected for its grain, that curved downward and around, into a stand of bamboo rustling and clicking in warm ventilator breezes. Leaving that, she saw the brooklet ring as a waterfall across a sculptured panel, into a basin where goldfish flickered.

  Her way then grew austere for a while. The walk was bare metal, a structural member undisguised though inlaid with geometrical patterns. Fluorescents shone upon struts and cables. They were positioned so that light and shadow brought the endless interplay of hexagons forth into chiaroscuro. Ivy, morning glory, occasional shrubs softened chosen lines. Woven among them, a huge cage of monofilaments gave room for songbirds to fly; their notes reechoed through these spaces. Hummingbirds and butterflies – tiger swallow tails – darted free, living jewels.

  A filigree arch marked the boundary of a court where grass and flowerbeds were. Having taken a hidden course from the fish basin, here the stream leaped as a fountain and chimed sparkling back over bowls of aluminum anodized in rich hues. Several tracks radiated hence. Faylis picked one that went between rows of bonsai and by a statue of the Winter Lord – a Juran legend – whose lucite was icily illuminated from within. Beyond was a passageway also made of low-weight synthetic, dim and damp but clustered with showy fungi. It gave on beds of amaryllis, whose colors the ribs of Skyholm pierced; harmless but brightly patterned small snakes basked under heat lamps.

  A ramp, whose surface changed from rough wood to parquet, slanted farther downward between two actual trees. Fruit hung lanternlike amidst the leaves of the orange, while a house in the branches of the dwarf oak tempted children to enter. At the bottom, a path where bubbles of pseudo-gravel scrunched underfoot went between formal hedges, past a bower over whose lattice roses rioted, red, white, yellow, purple, night-blue.

  There Talence Jovain Aurillac waited.

  He stepped forth and took Faylis’ hands in his, without ritual greeting. For a space they regarded one another.

  Approaching forty, he was not exceptionally tall in the Clans but slender, lithe, graceful in his movements. On him, the typical long skull and narrow face bore a curved nose, golden-brown eyes, olive complexion, black and slightly gray-shot hair. Strong in his veins, blood of the Midi let him do what few of his kinsmen could with success: cultivate a mustache and pointed beard in the style of the Pryny groundlings whom his estate dominated. His clothes were somber but tasteful, fur-trimmed velvet tunic, tight hose, opal pendant, amber-studded belt and half-boots. When he spoke, his voice was musical, the Angley bearing a marked accent from Eskual-Herria:

  ‘I began to fear you were detained, my dear.’

  ‘Why, I am just on time.’ She pointed to the wristwatch that was among her most expensive pieces of jewelry: not much iron in it, nor even much precious alloying metal such as manganese, but many hours of highly skilled handicraft.

  ‘Really?’ He bent to look, holding her arm, and lingered unnecessarily. His military service, if nothing else, must have made him familiar with miniature clocks. Her enjoyment of his touch made her feel a little guilty, until she recalled how Iern flirted with every attractive woman in sight. And frequently did more than flirt.

  ‘Right you are.’ Jovain straightened. The time simply appeared long.’ He smiled. It was a rather nervous smile, and the words jerked out of him as if rehearsed but badly rehearsed. Very likely they were. He lacked Iern’s glibness. In his; gaze was only honesty.

  She wondered if he stayed true to his wife. They had been wedded fifteen years, with three children who survived – something of an accomplishment for a Clanswoman, though of course the father’s descent included hardy mountaineers. Yet, while he had never complained directly, Faylis gathered that a chill had fallen on the marriage since Irmali refused to join her husband in his conversion to Gaeanity.

  Despite that, she thought, the ancient honor of his family abides in him. His ancestors stood guard for generations against Iberyan raiders. He still does, no matter that most of Iberya has become a single nation with which the Domain trades. He himself is a pilot who saw combat over the Italyan peninsula, won decorations and the devotion of his men, and later, as castlekeeper, earned the affection of his pysans.

  She knew little more than that, and most of her information was from others. He and she had not met except when he had occasion to be in some region where she was, and then their conversation had not dwelt on themselves. Nor did the letters which they exchanged at an ever-increasing rate. It’s his mind, his wonderful mind that draws me to him; and, yes, his soul, coming aflame when he speaks to me of Gaea.

  His tone, gone matter-of-fact, made her realize with a start that she had been trying to think of him in the stately phrases of an Alainian Era chronicler. ‘Ah, well. I hope you had no trouble finding this place?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘The Garden is certainly complicated, but even if the way-markers are inconspicuous, they’re easy to follow.’ She drew a perfumed breath. ‘Why did you want me to come?’

  His voice dropped. ‘This high above Earth,’ he answered slowly, ‘you can experience an incomparable aspect of Gaea.’

  Taking her arm again
, he led her into the bower. Roses filled it with dusk and sweetness. Through ventilation murmur she caught a hypnotic buzzing of Skyholm’s stingless bees. The flowers made a frame, a crown of thorns and petals like that upon the brow of Zhesu, around a prismatic window which revealed the world below.

  Her moodiness departed from Faylis. This would always remain a miracle, the ever-changing sight of clouds, waters agleam, rich plains and manifold uplands dappled with field, heath, forest, meadow, rock, snow, shadow, sunlight or moonlight or starlight, save when the planet roofed itself with weather. Today was clear, scraps of bluetinged whiteness adrift above a summerscape that the afternoon turned golden. Gaea dreamed.

  After a long while, standing behind her, Jovain asked low (she left his words in her hair): ‘Isn’t this an especially fine setting?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied as softly.

  He clasped her shoulders. ‘I wanted you to see, Faylis, and for more than the view alone. I hoped to share this experience of the All … with you.’

  On the instant, overwhelmingly, memory rose and filled her.

  They were at the Aurillac house in Tournev. She had left the Consvatoire after her betrothal but stayed in the city, rather than go back to Bourgoyn until the wedding, so that she could be near Iern. His duties often took him away, though. Meanwhile Jovain prolonged his business and exerted himself to break a coolness that had come between him and her. He succeeded; she was allured by the worldview he sought eloquently to explain.

  A late hour, one stormy night, found them in the common room, seated across from each other before its great stone fireplace. Only embers were left there, piecemeal dying, and only a candelabrum on the mantel raised flames. Everybody else had gone to bed. In spite of the air being warm, slightly smoke-pungent, a noise of rain against windowpanes made the darkness throughout most of the chamber feel somehow thickened.

  ‘How cold we’d be if these walls weren’t heated,’ she ventured.

  ‘Why, no,’ he said. ‘We could dress for it. And at that, people usually overdress. They make an ample thermostatic system atrophy, that they had at birth from Gaea.’

  ‘Would you rip the wiring out of here if the family let you?’

  He shrugged. ‘That would depend on whether I knew of a better use for the metal. After all, it isn’t for lack of power that electricity is scarce. Skyholm could pour energy down to us, if metal for conductors were less costly.’

  ‘But I thought –’ she said. ‘I’ve heard about plans to import aluminum and things from the Northwest Union, where they have the coal to produce it –’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Earnestness took him over. He leaned forward. ‘Faylis, my young friend, do you share the vulgar misconception? That Gaeanity is hostile to any technology, that it would bring down Skyholm if it could? Not true!’

  ‘But,’ she said weakly, ‘I’ve heard, Iern’s told me, and, and I’ve read for myself –’

  He sighed. ‘I grant you, there are fools and fanatics among us. But they aren’t many, and on the whole we’ve been misrepresented, by fools and fanatics among our enemies. They take sentences out of context and try to prove we’d abolish every advance that’s been made since the Stone Age. That we’d return civilized countries to the same ignorance and wretchedness that rule everywhere outside them –’ his utterance harshened – ‘famines for lack of pest controls, plagues for lack of medicine and sanitation – as if we believed defense against natural rivals is not a driving force of evolution!’ His eyes caught candlelight and glimmered through the gloom like drawn steel. ‘Do you think I would destroy the work of my forefathers?’

  ‘No, not you, not you,’ she said in haste. ‘But I’m confused sometimes. Everything will seem clear, and then – oh, for instance, you told me the book I’m reading is important, but I’ve just finished a chapter called “The Myth of Progress” –’

  ‘Surely you agree with the author that we can’t let the Northwest Union and its kind bring back an industry that flays and sears and poisons the planet. The Maurai are absolutely right in forbidding it.’ He frowned, pursed his lips, shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, they’re letting the Norrmen keep, or actually rebuild, far too much. And now the Domain is admitting traders from the Union, to enrich those filthy technocrats. It must be stopped.’

  ‘Yes, that part’s easy,’ she said, ‘but he writes as if he believes the Maurai are still more dangerous.’

  Jovain nodded. ‘They fancy themselves the wardens of living Earth. And they have done some good. But their entire spirit is wrong. Cold, rationalistic, no matter how warm-hearted they claim to be. They want to conserve the biosphere in order to use it, not be in and of it but use it. Their genetic engineering is an obvious example – imposing their will on Gaea, as if men had the wisdom to steer evolution. Yes, in certain matters they may have been our allies, but I suspect they are the ultimate enemy and the final war will be against them.’

  ‘And afterward?’ she prompted.

  He shook his head anew, though calm was descending upon him, a hint of that peace and joy beyond measure which (Karakan foretold) would come when all humanity was fully One with Gaea. ‘I can’t say. Nobody can. Except that we won’t forget what we’ve learned. Including our mistakes; mistakes are a way of learning, for life as well as our little part of life. We’ll preserve what is good. We may build several more Skyholms, for instance. If we do, we’ll keep them for benign purposes. The price of civilization will no longer be the pain of not knowing Gaea. No more loneliness, no more ugliness, no more poverty, oppression, war – Instead, our race will be Her eyes, hands, mind, turned outward on the universe.’

  She had heard that before, or read it in the writings he urged on her. Tonight she inquired about future aerostats. She knew, from Iern and printed sources, that the Maurai were negotiating to get plans and information that would help them float their own. They could do it by themselves, and would if they must, but technical data from the Domain would expedite matters. She also knew that they wanted them for tasks similar to those of the original. What would a Gaean world do with such devices?

  ‘A few of the same things,’ Jovain told her. ‘Pure science. Gentle helpfulness; storm warnings, for instance.’ He disapproved of breaking up hurricanes, which might have a biological role that was not yet understood. Likewise, he would only agree to a very limited amount of message relay, lest people get enthralled by words at the expense of direct perception. ‘And that we may adore Gaea from above, too.’

  And at this hour she and Jovain were above, together. No, not above, she thought, if that meant detachment. They were still within the Whole, and of it; they had simply reached a level where they could more fully look upon its majesty.

  The floor of the arbor was a sponge-soft material on which you could recline or kneel. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let us seek Oneness.’

  For an instant she was alarmed and hung back. He sensed it. His smile was sympathetic. ‘Have no fears,’ he assured her. ‘I have nothing planned besides the perfectly chaste practices you know, contemplation, meditation, yoga, exercises you’ve already tried. I hoped that here, in this special place, they might give you special help.’

  Suddenly happy, she laid palms together over her bosom and lowered herself beside him.

  3

  Later, somehow – she was never sure what had happened – they kissed, shyly at first, then ardently.

  She drew back at last and sat huddled, dizzy and shuddering. ‘No,’ she gasped, ‘no, please, I mustn’t.’

  He kept his hands quiescent but stayed close. ‘Why not?’ His speech was likewise unsteady, and a vein throbbed in his left temple.

  She stared through tears at her feet. ‘It would, would be, it’s wrong.’

  ‘Iern doesn’t agree. Or do you cling to the double standard? You’re too free-souled for that, Faylis.’

  With an effort, she lifted her face. On his she thought she saw less passion than pleading. In the Gaean future there is to be marriage, but as a deepeni
ng of mystic unity with the All, purified of suspicion, possessiveness, jealousy. Nevertheless – ‘I’m sorry, Jovain.’ She swallowed, and tasted the salt on her lips. ‘You’re my dearest friend, but I can’t. My father – it would break him if he knew.’

  The man slumped for a moment before he straightened and said, ‘I must respect your wishes, madame. If I have given offense, in humility I crave pardon.’

  The conventional formula was soothing. ‘You have not, sir,’ she replied, equally by rote. ‘Let it continue between us as it has to my pleasure been.’

  Their glances met afresh and lingered, until they both laughed just a little. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You ease the loneliness for me, more than you know.’

  ‘And you ease mine –’ She veered away from that. ‘I felt you must be lonely, but too proud to admit it. Why do you stay in that drafty old castle, off among half-barbarian shepherds who don’t even speak Francey?’

  He settled into a more relaxed position, as did she. His gaze went to the land and sea beneath them. The territory of his overlordship lay wrinkled at the edge of vision.

  ‘I mean,’ she persisted with growing boldness, ‘they don’t need you for more than a few weeks total out of the year. The rest of the time, your first officer can handle matters, and send for you in emergency. You could have a place in Tournev, as we do, and occupy yourself with something you enjoy, like Iern and his flying.’

  And be nearby when Iern is gone.…

  He scowled. ‘My sons are uncertain about their Gaeanity, in the teeth of their mother’s opposition. I’m not afraid that exposure to Clan ways would make them lose faith. But modern skeptics – or, worse, the foreigners who’re swarming in, Maurai, Northwestern ers, Mericans, Beneghalis – No, let them grow up in the clean mountains.’

  Almost, she heard Iern gibe: ‘I notice that among those subversive foreigners you don’t list Mong.’ To her and in public he had said: ‘One of the scariest things about the Gaeans is that if they got in charge, they’d censor everything they don’t agree with. Read their books, or consider Espayn and the Zhenerals “information commissioners.” It’d be like the Isolation Era, but worse. At least then the government was trying to protect: the Domains native traditions.’ And by the way, Jovain, Faylis added, what you said isn’t entirely convincing. It seems an excuse rather than a reason. What are you really doing in your borderland?