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  Seeing Conway’s bemusement, he stopped. ‘Uh, sperm, sir?’ the younger man asked.

  ‘What, you haven’t heard? You are an innocent. Standard Procedure, Entropy Reaching Maximum. The point is, you are my single chance to learn about my objective. Ignorant as I am, I could do every kind of harm, perhaps actually compromise my mission.’

  ‘But – you’re educated, you’ve been around in space–’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes,’ Dejerine said impatiently. ‘I understand the celestial mechanics of the Anubelean System. I know a little something about the natives of Ishtar, including their unique biological situation.’ He drew breath. ‘Planets where men can walk around in shirt sleeves are few enough that everybody alive between the ears can at least name you those we know. By the same token, however, they’re thinly scattered. Our main involvements are with races and bases closer to home. Also, never forget, any planet is a whole world, too big and complicated to comprehend. Bon Dieu, man, I live on Earth and I can’t describe its littoral ecology or the dynastic history of China or what the current squabble in the Kenyan Empire is about!’

  He dropped cigar in ashtaker, slammed his drink down next to it, and from the table snatched the book on Ishtar. ‘I have been studying this, for instance.’ His words came quick and harsh. ‘The latest published, ten years old. Neatly assembled information.’ He flopped it open, more or less at random, and thrust it under Conway’s nose. ‘Observe.’

  The left page:

  ANUBELEA B (Bel)

  Type: G2, main sequence

  Mass: 0.95 Sol

  Mean diameter: 1.06 Sol

  Mean rotation period: 0.91 Sol

  Luminosity: 0.98 Sol

  Effective temperature: 5800° K.

  Note: Asteroids are distributed semi-randomly, due to the companion stars. For complete orbital data, see Appendix D. For fuller description of planets of B other than Ishtar, see Chapter XI.

  The right page:

  ANUBELEA B III (Bel III)

  ISHTAR

  Elementary parameters Earth (E) = 1.0

  Mass: 1.53 E

  Mean equatorial diameter: 1.14 E = 14,502 km.

  Mean density: 1.03 E = 5.73 H2O.

  Mean surface gravity: 1.18 E = 1155 cm/sec2.

  Sidereal year: 1.072 E = 392 Terrestrial days = 510 Ishtarian days.

  Rotation period: 0.775 E = 18 h 36 m 10.3 s.

  Axial inclination: 1.14 E = 28° 3′.2.

  Mean irradiation (from Bel only): 0.89 Sol/Earth.

  Mean angular diameter of Bel: 1.03 Sol/Earth = 33°.

  Mean sea-level atmospheric pressure: 1.12 E = 850 mm Hg.

  Normal % atmospheric composition by volume: N2 76.90, O2 21.02, H2O 0.35, A 1.01, CO2 0.03, + misc.

  Water/land surface ratio: 1.20 E = 2.94:1.

  Satellites

  Mean orbital radius, km.Sidereal period, hoursMean equivalent diameter, km.Mean angular diameter

  I (Caelestia) 2.40 × 104 8.34 188 38′

  II (Urania) 7.35 × 104 44.61 265 13′.5

  Note: Both moons being of irregular shape, especially I, diameters and angular diameters as seen from Ishtar are calculated for equivalent spheres. For fuller information and discussion, see Chapter III.

  ‘What’s there that I couldn’t get better and quicker from the navigator’s bible?’ Dejerine said. ‘Oh, yes, sì, oui, da, ja, also text, pictures, anecdotes. Not bad material for a tourist to study in advance, if anybody could afford to play tourist over such a distance. And I’ ve gone through the other stuff too, projected hours of 3V records, I know the shape of an Ishtarian–’ He had been riffling pages as he talked, and for no logical reason halted at such an illustration.

  A male and female were shown, plus a human who gave scale. The male was the larger of the pair, about the size of a small horse. ‘Centauroid’ was a very loose description. The burly two-armed torso merged smoothly with the four-legged barrel, taurine hump above the forequarters leading from the horizontal to the almost vertical sections of the back. The body looked leonine rather than equine, with its robust build, long tail, padded feet whose three toes (more prehensile in front than behind) bore purplish nails. The arms resembled, somewhat, those of a Terrestrial weight lifter; but the hands each had four digits, the first three not unlike man’s thumb and two of his fingers though spreading more widely, the last like a less-developed extra thumb with one more joint, all possessing nails too. The head was big and round, ears large and pointed (slightly movable), jaw showing a chin and near-anthropomorphous delicacy, teeth white and small except for a pair of upper fangs which barely protruded from the mouth. Instead of a nose, a short muzzle opened in a single broad nostril which curved downward and flared at the ends. Beneath, feline whiskers surrounded the upper lip. The eyes also suggested a cat’s, whiteless, his blue, hers golden.

  Face and arms were glabrous, the skin (in the race depicted, native to Beronnen) light brown. Most of the body bore a tawny-green mosslike pelt. The lion impression was heightened by a rufous mane which covered head, throat, and spine down to the hump: composed not of hair but of thickly leaved vines. A similar growth formed a shelf of eyebrow.

  Sexual dimorphism was considerable. The female stood fifteen centimeters shorter. She had a mere stub of tail. Her hump was large and softly rounded, unlike his blocky cluster of muscles; her rump was broad and her belly deep; two nipples on an udder which wasn’t large, and the external genitalia, were brilliant red. Accompanying text noted that her odor was sweet and his acrid, and that she commanded a wider range of frequencies in both speech and hearing.

  They were unclad aside from ornaments and a belt to support pouch and knife. He carried a spear and a stringed instrument slung across his shoulders; she, a longbow, quiver, and what might be a wooden flute.

  ‘–I know the biochemistry is basically like ours, we can eat a good deal of each other’s food though some essentials are lacking in either case – why, they get drunk on ethanol too.’ Dejerine snapped the volume shut. ‘Homelike, no? Except that men have spent a century on Ishtar, working hard to understand, and you can better tell than I how far off they are from their goal!’ He sent the book spinning over to his bed.

  ‘A long ways,’ his visitor admitted.

  ‘And those humans. True, true, more than half the population of Primavera is floating: researchers who come for a while to carry out specific projects, technies on time contract, archeologists basing themselves there till they can go on to … Tammuz, is that the dead planet’s name? Nevertheless, they must all have a special devotion to Ishtar. And the core of them are the long-term residents, the careerists, a fair percentage second- or third-generation Ishtarians who have scarcely an atom from Earth in their cells.’ Dejerine spread his palms. ‘Do you see how badly I need a, a briefing? I need more than that, of course, but can’t possibly get it. So … my friend, will you kindly finish your drink and take another? Loosen your tongue. Free-associate. Tell me about your past life, your family, your comrades. In return, I can at least bring them your greetings, and whatever presents you wish to send.

  ‘But help me.’ Dejerine knocked back his second glass. ‘Give me ideas. What shall I say to them, how reconcile them and get them to co-operate, I who come in as the agent of a policy that dashes their fondest hopes to the deck?’

  Conway sat for a space, his vision lost in the overlook across Luna, before he said carefully: ‘You know, you might start by showing them that documentary of Olaya’s which made the big splash last month.’

  ‘On the background of the war?’ Dejerine was startled. ‘But it was generally critical.’

  ‘No, not quite. It tried hard to be objective. Oh, everybody knows Olaya is no enthusiast for this thing. Too aristocratic by temperament, I suppose. But he’s a damn fine journalist, and he did a remarkable job of getting a variety of viewpoints.’

  Dejerine frowned. ‘He skimped the fundamental issue: the Eleutherians.’

  Emboldened, Conway answered, ‘Frankl
y, I, and I’m not alone, I don’t agree they are the fundamental issue. I admire them, of course, and sympathize, but mainly I think we, humankind, we have to stay on top of events for our survival as a species. On Ishtar I’ve seen such chaos rising–’ Earnestly: ‘But that’s what I’m getting at. Somebody like, oh, my sister Jill, her whole life spent there … she, her kind of people, they only see the horrors Anu is bringing to their planet. If they could realize that sacrifices have to be made for a higher good– But they’re intelligent, you know, trained in scientific skepticism; they’ve spent their lives coping with the wildest jumble of cultures and conflicts. No slick propaganda pitch is going to win them over.

  ‘That Olaya show, it was honest. It touched reality. I felt that, and … I can tell you my people on Ishtar would. If nothing else, they’d understand we still have free speech here, Earth isn’t a monolithic monster. It ought to help.’

  Now Dejerine was quiet for a time which grew.

  At the end, he jumped to his feet. ‘All right!’ he exclaimed. ‘I asked for your advice, and – Donald, Don, may I call you? I’m Yuri – immediately you begin. Come, do have some more. Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.’

  III

  Southbound, Larreka and his attendants neared Primavera about noon of the day after he had left his wife at Yakulen Ranch. The human settlement lay three marches upriver from the city of Sehala. No longer was that site a precaution against possible trouble. Surely everyone in Beronnen, and most dwellers elsewhere throughout the Gathering, had come to understand that the Earthfolk were their friends, the last best hope of saving their entire civilization. But the aliens still needed space to raise crops and cattle which could nourish them in ways that raingrain or breadroot, the flesh of els or owas, could not. And those who studied nature, like Jill Conway, preferred readier access to wildlife than the plowlands around Sehala afforded. And those who studied people declared that their own constant presence in the city would be too upsetting.

  Not that any such effect could amount to a dustpuff – Larreka had often thought – alongside the upsettingness built into this world.

  He swung briskly down a road which paralleled the wide, sheening flow of the Jayin. An important highway, it was brick-paved; he felt heat as well as gritty hardness. But that wasn’t enough for a tough-padded old soldier to slow himself by putting on buskins. Bad though the time was becoming, South Beronnen always escaped the worst of what the Rover passed out … except indirectly, of course, when starveling hordes invaded this favored land. Furthermore, right now was mid-autumn in the southern hemisphere, the airs easing off toward rainy winter, no matter how hard the Rover tried to screw things up.

  Its red glower, low above northern hills which it turned amethyst, was near setting. The Sun stood high and brilliant. Double shadows and blended hues made the landscape strange. It rolled gently away from either bank of the river. This shore was given over to human cultivation. Wheat, corn, and the rest had been harvested, leaving stubblefields; but apples flushed in an orchard, horned four-legged animals chewed grass behind fences – how green everything was! The opposite side remained native: turf of golden-hued lia studded with scarlet firebloom, trees in coppices tawny (swordleaf) or ocherous (swirlwood and leatherbark). Wing-seed bushes were propagating yonder, and many pods flapped across the stream before they ran out of stored energy and fell to the ground. Nature’s carelessness: they could no longer take root over here; the soil had been changed too much.

  The breeze into which they beat was pleasant after the morning’s sultriness. Larreka heard his mane rustle. He drank the sweet weird odors of Earthside growth with an appreciation learned through a hundred years. The grimness of his present mission didn’t lessen that. A soldier shouldn’t let worry spoil whatever bonuses life tossed his way.

  ‘How much further, sir?’ asked one of the half-dozen males at his back. They weren’t needed in these closely settled, food-rich parts. But it had expedited the trek across North Beronnen and over the Thunderhead Mountains, to have some who could be detached to hunt and forage while the rest kept going, and extra hands for camp chores. Larreka figured he might as well let them come the whole way to Sehala and its fleshpots. Poor bastards, they wouldn’t get a lot of fun during their youth. He who had spoken was a native of Foss Island in the Fiery Sea, recruited there and posted directly to Valennen because that was where the Zera was stationed these years. He had never before visited the mother continent.

  ‘Chu, maybe an hour.’ Larreka used a unit denoting the sixteenth part of a noon-to-noon, coincidentally quite near to the Earth measurement. ‘Keep moving. I told you we’ll overnight there.’

  ‘Well, at least Skeela’ll soon be down.’

  ‘Huh? – Oh. Oh, yes.’ With as many names as he had heard for the red orb, Larreka could generally spot another.

  He himself thought of it as the Rover, since he belonged to the Triadic cult. There it was central, together with the Sun and that Darkness on whose brow smolders the Ember Star. As a youth in Haelen, he had called it Abbada, and had been told it was an outlaw god who returned every thousand years; later he became skeptical, and considered the pagan rites of propitiation a waste of good meat. The barbarians of Valennen were in such awe of the thing that they gave it no name whatsoever, just a lot of epithets, none of which should be used twice in a row lest its attention be drawn to the speaker. And so the business went, different everywhere, including among the humans. They called the red one Anu, and denied a soul of any kind was in it; and likewise for the Sun, which they called Bel, and the Ember Star, which they called Ea.

  In many ways, their concept was the creepiest of the lot. Larreka had had to nerve himself to master their teachings. He couldn’t yet believe that there was nothing to the Triad but fire. And whether or not that was the case, he’d carry out the rites and commandments of his religion. It was a good faith for a soldier, popular in the legions, excellent for morale and discipline.

  From the outside, Larreka didn’t look like a person who would study philosophy. He might have been a veteran sergeant, slightly undersized but heavily muscled, less graceful than most though exceedingly fast when needful. Wounds deep enough to leave permanent scars had seamed his body in places; a gouge crossed the bone of his brow, and his left ear was missing. Haeleners being of South Beronnen origin, he had skin formerly pale brown, turned dark and leathery by many weathers, wherein his eyes stood ice-blue. His speech kept traces of a rough homeland accent, and his most conspicuous weapon – practically his trademark – was the heavy knuckleduster-handled curve-bladed shortsword favored in that antarctic country. Otherwise he wore only a purse-belt for small articles, and the arms and travel kit strapped in a bundle on his back or loaded in two wicker panniers. This included a hunting spear and a hatchet which could double as a weapon. Nothing was ornamented; it was well-worn cloth, hide, wood, steel. His sole jewelry was a gold chain around the thick left wrist.

  The soldiers behind him were gaudier, sporting plumes, bead-work, jingling links. They were also very respectful of their shabby leader. Larreka Zabat’s son of Clan Kerazzi was perhaps the most demanding of the thirty-three legionary commandants. After two centuries in the Zera, he was far into middle age, three hundred and ninety on his last birthday. But he could expect another hundred years of health, and might well hope for more – if a barbarian didn’t get him first, or any of the natural catastrophes the Rover was brewing for the world.

  It slipped under the horizon. For a brief while, clouds to the north were sullen from its rays. Then the sane light of the Sun shone free. Cumulus loomed tall and white above a blue shadowiness hinting at storm.

  ‘Think it’ll rain, sir?’ asked the male from Foss Island. ‘I sure wouldn’t mind.’ Though near the equator, his home was refreshed by winds off the sea. Here he felt hot and dusty.

  ‘Save your thirst for Primavera,’ Larreka advised. ‘The beer there is good.’ He squinted. ‘N-n-no, I wouldn’t look for rai
n today. Tomorrow, maybe. Don’t be in a fume about it, son. You’ll soon get more water hereabouts than you can handle, enough to drown a galleyfish. Maybe then you’ll appreciate Valennen better.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ a companion said. ‘Valennen’s supposed to go even drier than it futtering well already is.’

  ‘Futtering ain’t the word, Saleh,’ a third put in with a crow of laughter. ‘Female pelts’ll get baked so stiff you could sand a hole in your belly.’

  His exaggeration was moderate. Loss of moisture did coarsen the mat of fine green plant growth covering most of a body. ‘Why, as for that,’ Larreka said, ‘heed the voice of experience,’ and described alternate techniques in blunt language.

  ‘But, sir,’ Saleh persisted, ‘I don’t get it. Sure. Valennen sees a lot more of the Wicked Star, a lot higher in the sky, than Beronnen does. I understand how it gets hotter than here. Only why’ll the country dry out that bad? I thought, ng-ng, I thought heat draws water out of the sea and dumps it as rain. Isn’t that how come the tropical islands are mostly wet?’

  ‘True,’ Larreka answered. ‘That’s what’s going to spill rain all over Beronnen for the next sixty-four years or more, till we’re in mud up to our tail-roots when we aren’t flooded out – not to speak of snowpack melting in the highlands and whooping down, to add to the fun and games. But Valennen’s saddled with those enormous mountains along the whole west coast, where the main winds come from. What little water the interior’s got will blow away eastward over the Sea of Ehur, while clouds off the Argent Ocean crash on the Worldwall. Now shut your meat hatch and let’s tramp.’

  They sensed that he meant it and obeyed. For some reason he recalled a remark which Goddard Hanshaw had once made to him: