The High Crusade Read online

  Catherine appeared in the door. Her gun flamed. The book of her journey vanished in smoke and ash. Owain screamed in anguish. Coldly, she fired again, and he fell.

  She flung herself into Roger’s arms and wept. He comforted her. Yet I wonder which of them gave the most strength to the other.

  Afterward he said ruefully: “I fear we’ve managed ill. Now the way home is indeed lost.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Where you are, there is England.”

  Epilogue

  A noise of trumpets and cloven air broke loose. The captain laid the typescript down and pressed an intercom button. “What’s going on?” he snapped.

  “That eight-legged seneschal up at the castle finally got hold of his boss, sir,” answered the voice of the sociotech. “As near as I can make out, the planetary duke was out on safari, and it took all this while to locate him. He uses a whole continent for his hunting preserve. Anyhow, he’s just now arriving. Come see the show. A hundred antigrav aircraft — good Lord! — the ones that’ve landed are disgorging horsemen!”

  “Ceremonial, no doubt. Just a minute and I’ll be there.” The captain glared at the typescript. He had read about halfway through it. How could he talk intelligently to this fantastic overlord without some inkling of what had really developed out here?

  He skimmed hastily, page after page. The chronicle of the Wersgor Crusade was long and thunderous. Suffice it to read the conclusion, how King Roger I was crowned by the Archbishop of New Canterbury, and reigned for many fruitful years.

  But what had happened? Oh, sure, one way or another the English won their battles. Eventually they acquired enough actual strength to be independent of their leader’s luck and cunning. But their society! How could even their language, let alone their institutions, have survived contact with old and sophisticated civilizations? Hang it, why had the sociotech translated this long-winded Brother Parvus at all, unless some significant data were included? . … Wait. Yes. A passage near the end caught the captain’s eye. He read:

  “… I have remarked that Sir Roger de Tourneville established the feudal system on newly conquered worlds given into his care by the allies. Some latterday mockers of my noble master have implied he did this only because he knew nothing better to do. I refute this. As I said before, the collapse of Wersgorixan was not unlike the collapse of Rome, and similar problems found a similar answer. His advantage lay in having that answer ready to hand, the experience of many Terrestrial centuries.

  “To be sure, each planet was a separate case requiring separate treatment. However, most of them had certain important things in common. The native populations were eager to follow the behest of us, their liberators. Quite apart from gratitude, they were poor ignorant folk, their own civilizations long ago obliterated; they needed guidance in all things. By embracing the Faith, they proved they had souls. This forced our English clergy to ordain converts in great haste. Father Simon found texts of Scripture and the Church Fathers to support this practical necessity — indeed, while he himself never claimed so, it would seem that the veritable God consecrated him a bishop by sending him so far out in partibus infidelium. Once this is granted, it follows that he did not exceed his authority in planting the seed of our own Catholic church. Of course, in his day we were always careful to speak of the Archbishop of New Canterbury as ‘qur’ Pope, or the ‘popelet,’ to remind us that this was a mere agent of the true Holy Father, whom we could not find. I deplore the carelessness of the younger generations in this matter of titles.

  “Oddly enough, no few Wersgorix soon came to accept the new order. Their central government had always been a distant thing to them, a mere collector of taxes and enforcer of arbitrary laws. Many a blueskin found his imagination captured by our rich ceremonial and by a government of individual nobles whom he could meet face to face. Moreover, by loyally serving these overlords, he might hope to regain an estate, or even a title. Of the Wersgorix who have repented their sins and become valuable Christian Englishmen, I need only mention our one-time foe Huruga, whom all this world of Yorkshire honors as Archbishop William.

  “But there was nothing disingenuous in Sir Roger’s proceedings. He never betrayed his allies, as some have charged. He dealt with them shrewdly, but except for the necessary concealment of our true origin (which mask he dropped as soon as we had waxed strong enough not to fear exposure) he was aboveboard. It was not his fault that God always favors the English.

  ’Jairs, Ashenkoghli, and Pr?°tans fell in with his proposals readily enough. They had no real concept of empire. If they could have whatever planets without natives we seized, they were quite happy to leave us humans the immensely troublesome task of governing that larger number where a slave population existed. They turned hypocritical eyes away from the often bloody necessities of such government. I am sure that many of their politicians secretly rejoiced that each new responsibility of this sort thinned out the force of their enigmatic associate; for he must create a duke and lesser gentility for it, then leave that small garrison to train the aborigines. Uprisings, internecine war, Wersgor counter-attacks, reduced these tiny cadres still further. Having little military tradition of their own, the Jairs, Ashenkoghli and Pr?°tans did not realize how those cruel years welded bonds of loyalty between native peasants and English aristocrats. Also, being somewhat effete, they did not foresee how lustily humans would breed.

  “So in the end, when all these facts were pikestaff plain, it was too late. Our allies were still only three nations, each with its own language and way of life. Springing up around them were a hundred races, united in Christendom, the English tongue, and the English crown. Even if we humans had wished, we could not have changed this. Indeed, we were about as surprised as anyone.

  “As proof that Sir Roger never plotted against his allies, consider how easily he could have overrun them in his old age, when he ruled the mightiest nation ever seen among these stars. But he leaned backward to be generous. It was not his doing that their own younger generation, awestruck by our successes, began more and more to imitate our ways…”

  The captain put the pages aside and hurried out to the main airlock entrance. The ramp had been let down, and a red-haired human giant was striding up to greet him. Fantastically clad, bearing a florid ornamental sword, he also carried a businesslike blast gun. Behind him an honor guard of riflemen in Lincoln green stood at attention. Over their heads fluttered a banner with the arms of a cadet branch of the great Hameward family.

  The captain’s hand was engulfed in a hairy ducal paw. The sociotech translated a distorted English: “At last! God be praised, they’ve finally learned to build spaceships on Old Earth! Welcome, good sir!”

  “But why did you never find us … er … your grace?” stammered the captain. When it had been translated, the duke shrugged and answered:

  “Oh, we searched. For generations every young knight went looking for Earth, unless he chose to look for the Holy Grail. But you know how bloody many suns there are. And even more toward the center of the galaxy — where we encountered still other starfaring peoples. Commerce, exploration, war, everything drew us inward, away from this thinly starred spiral arm. You realize this is only a poor outlying province you’ve come upon. The King and the Pope dwell away off in the Seventh Heaven… Finally the quest petered out. In past centuries, Old Earth has become little more than a tradition.” His big face beamed. “But now it’s all turned topsy-turvy. You found us! Most wonderful! Tell me at once, has the Holy Land been liberated from the paynim?”

  “Well,” said Captain Yeshu haLey, who was a loyal citizen of the Israeli Empire, “yes.”

  “Too bad. I’d have loved a fresh crusade. Life’s been dull since we conquered the Dragons ten years ago. They say, however, that the royal expeditions to the Sagittarian star clouds have turned up some very promising planets — But see here! You must come over to the castle. I’ll entertain you as best as I can, and outfit you for the trip to the King. That’s tric
ky navigation, but I’ll furnish you with an astrologer who knows the way.”

  “Now what did he say?” asked Captain Halley, when the bass burble had stopped.

  The sociotech explained.

  Captain Halley turned fire color. “No astrologer is going to touch my ship!”

  The sociotech sighed. He’d have a lot of work to do in the coming years.

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  Document creation date: 05.06.2010

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