The People of the Wind Read online

  “When he — Chris — when he first started running around, flying around, with Ythrians, why, I was glad,” the man slogged on. He held his gaze out the window. From time to time he dragged at his cigar, but the gesture was mechanical, unnoticed. “He’d always been too bookish, too alone. So his Stormgate friends, his visits there — Later, when he and Eyath and their gang were knocking around in odd corners of the planet — well, that seemed like he was doing over what I did at his age, except he’d have somebody to guard his back if a situation got sharp. I thought maybe he also would end enlisting in the navy—” Holm shook his head. “I didn’t see till too late, what’d gotten in him was not old-fashioned fiddlefootedness. Then when I did wake up, and we quarreled about it, and he ran off and hid in the Shielding Islands for a year, with Eyath’s help — But no point in my going on, is there?”

  Ferune gestured negative. After Daniel Holm went raging to Lythran’s house, accusations exploding out of him, it had been all the First Marchwarden could do to intervene, calm both parties and prevent a duel.

  “No, I shouldn’t have said anything today,” Holm continued. “It’s only — last night Rowena was crying. That he went off and didn’t say goodbye to her. Mainly, she worries about what’s happening to him, inside, since he joined the choth. Can he ever make a normal marriage, for instance? Ordinary girls aren’t his type any more; and bird girls — And, right, our younger kids. Tommy’s completely in orbit around Ythrian subjects. The school monitor had to come in person and tell us how he’d been neglecting to screen the material or submit the work or see the consultants he was supposed to. And Jeanne’s found a couple of Ythrian playmates—”

  “As far as I know,” Ferune said, “humans who entered choths have as a rule had satisfactory lives. Problems, of course. But what life can have none? Besides, the difficulties ought to become less as the number of such persons grows.”

  “Look,” Holm floundered, “I’m not against your folk. Break my bones if ever I was! Never once did I say or think there was anything dishonorable about what Chris was doing, any more than I would’ve said or thought it if, oh, if he’d joined some celibate order of priests. But I’d not have liked that either. It’s no more natural fox a man. And I’ve studied everything I could find about bird people. Sure, most of them have claimed they were happy. Probably most of them believed it. I can’t help thinking they never realized what they’d missed.”

  “Walkers,” Ferune said. In Planha, that sufficed. In Anglic he would have had to state something like: “We’ve lost our share, those who left the choths to become human-fashion atomic individuals within a global human community.”

  “Influence,” he added, which conveyed: “Over the centuries on Avalon, no few of our kind have grown bitter at what your precept and example were doing to the choths themselves. Many still are. I suspect that’s a major reason why several such groups have become more reactionary than any on the mother world.”

  Holm responded, “Wasn’t the whole idea of this colony that both races should grant each other the right to be what they were?”

  “That was written into the Compact and remains there,” Ferune said in two syllables and three expressions. “Nobody has been compelled. But living together, how can we help changing?”

  “Uh-huh. Because Ythri in general and Mistwood in particular have made a success of adopting and adapting Terran technology, you believe nothing’s involved except a common-sense swap of ideas. It’s not that simple, though.”

  “I didn’t claim it is,” Ferune said, “only that we don’t catch time in any net.”

  “Yeh. I’m sorry if I — Well, I didn’t mean to maunder on, especially, when you’ve heard me often enough before. These just happen to be thin days at home.” The man left his chair, strode past the Ythrian, and halted by the. window, where he looked out through a veil of smoke.

  “Let’s get to real work,” he said. “I’d like to ask specific questions about the overall state of Domain preparedness. And you’d better listen to me about what’s been going on here while you were away — through the whole bloody-be-flensed Lauran System, in fact. That’s none too good either.”

  III

  The car identified its destination and moved down. Its initial altitude was such that the rider inside glimpsed a dozen specks of ground strewn over shining waters. But when he approached they had all fallen beneath the horizon. Only the rugged cone of St Li was now visible to him.

  With an equatorial diameter of a mere. 11,308 kilometers, Avalon has a molten core smaller in proportion than Terra’s; a mass of 0.63 cannot store as much heat. Thus the forces are weak that thrust land upward. At the same time, erosion proceeds fast. The atmospheric pressure at sea level is similar to the Terrestrial — and drops off more slowly with height, because of the gravity gradient — and rapid rotation makes for violent weather. In consequence, the surface is generally low, the highest peak in the Andromedas rising no more than 4500 meters. Nor does the land occur in great masses. Corona, capping the north pole and extending down past the Tropic of Swords, covers barely eight million, square kilometers, about the size of Australia. In the opposite hemisphere, Equatoria, New Africa, and New Gaiila could better be called large islands than minor continents. All else consists of far smaller islands.

  Yet one feature is gigantic. Some, 2000 kilometers due west of Gray begins that drowned range whose peaks, thrusting into air, are known as Orbnesia. Southward it runs, crosses the Tropic of Spears, trails off at last not far from the Antarctic Circle. Thus it forms a true, hydrological boundary; its western side marks off the Middle Ocean, its eastern the Hesperian Sea in the northern hemisphere and the South Ocean beyond the equator. It supports a distinct ecology, incredibly rich. And thereby, after the colonization, it became a sociological phenomenon. Any eccentrics, human or Ythrian, could go off, readily transform one or a few isles, and make their own undisturbed existence.

  The mainland choths were diverse in size as well as in organization and tradition. But whether they be roughly analogous to clans, tribes, baronies, religious communes, republics, or whatever, they counted their members in the thousands at least. In Oronesia there were single households which bore the name; grown and married, the younger children were expected to found new, independent societies.

  Naturally, this extremism was exceptional. The Highsky folk in particular were numerous, controlling the fisheries around latitude 30° N. and occupying quite a stretch of the archipelago. And they were fairly conventional, insofar as that word has any meaning when applied to Ythrians.

  The aircar landed on the beach below a compound. He who stepped out was tall, with dark-red hair, clad in sandals, kilt, and weapons.

  Tabitha Falkayn had seen the vehicle descending and walked forth to meet it. “Hello, Christopher Holm,” she said in Anglic.

  “I come as Arinnian,” he answered in Planha. “Luck fare beside you, Hrill.”

  She smiled. “Excuse me if I don’t elaborate the occasion.” Shrewdly: “You called ahead that you wanted to see me on a public matter. That must have to do with the border crisis. I daresay your Khruath. decided that western Corona and northern Oronesia must work out a means of defending the Hesperian Sea.”

  He nodded awkwardly, and his eyes sought refuge from her amusement.

  Enormous overhead, sunshine brilliant off cumulus banks, arched heaven. A sailor winged yonder, scouting for schools of piscoid; a flock of Ythrian shuas flapped by under the control of a herder and his uhoths; native pteropleuron lumbered around a reef rookery. The sea rolled indigo, curled in translucent green breakers, and exploded in foam on sands nearly as white. Trawlers plied it, kilometers out. Inland the ground rose steep. The upper slopes still bore a pale emerald mat of susin; only a few kinds of shrub were able to grow past those interlocking roots. But further down the hills had been plowed. There Ythrian clustergrain rustled red, for ground cover and to feed the shuas, while groves of coconut palm, mango, orange, and pumpernickel plant lifted
above to nourish the human members of Highsky. A wind blew, warm but fresh, full of salt and iodine and fragrances.

  “I suppose it was felt bird-to-bird conferences would be a good idea,” Tabitha went on. “You mountaineers will have ample trouble understanding us pelagics, and vice versa, without the handicap of differing species. Ornithoids will meet likewise, hm?” Her manner turned thoughtful: “You had to be a delegate, of course. Your area has so few of your kind. But why come in person? Not that you aren’t welcome. Still, a phone call—”

  “We… we may have to talk at length,” he said. “For days, off and on.” He took for granted he would receive hospitality; all choths held that a guest was sacred.

  “Why me, though? I’m only a local.”

  “You’re a descendant of David Falkayn.”

  “That doesn’t mean much.”

  “It does where I live. Besides — well, we’ve met before, now and then, at the larger Khruaths and on visits to each other’s home areas and — We’re acquainted a little. I’d not know where to begin among total strangers. If nothing else, you… you can advise me whom to consult, and introduce me. Can’t you?”

  “Certainly.” Tabitha took both his hands. “Besides, I’m glad to see you, Chris.”

  His heart knocked. He struggled not to squirm. What makes me this shy before her? God knew she was attractive. A few years older than he, big, strongly built, full-breasted and long of leg, she showed to advantage in a short sleeveless tunic. Her face was snubnosed, wide of mouth, its green eyes set far apart under heavy brows; she had never bothered to remove the white scar on her right cheekbone. Her hair, cropped beneath the ears, was bleached flaxen. It blew like banners over the brown, slightly freckled skin.

  He wondered if she went as casually to bed as the Coronan bird girls — never with a male counterpart; always a hearty, husky, not overintelligent worker type — or if she was a virgin. That seemed unlikely. What human, perpetually in a low-grade lovetime, could match the purity of an Eyath? Yet Highsky wasn’t Stormgate or The Tarns — he didn’t know — Tabitha had no companions of her own species here where she dwelt — however, she traveled often and widely… He cast the speculation from him.

  “Hoy, you’re blushing,” she laughed. “Did I violate one of your precious mores?” She released him. “If so, I apologize. But you always take these things too seriously. Relax. A social rite or a social gaffe isn’t a deathpride matter.”

  Easy for her, I suppose, he thought Her grandparents were received into this choth. Her parents and their children grew up in it. A fourth of the membership must be human by now. And they’ve influenced it — like this commercial fishery she and Dtaun have started, a strictly private enterprise—

  “I’m afraid we’ve no time for gaiety,” he got out. “We’ve walking weather ahead.”

  “Indeed?”

  “The Empire’s about to expand our way.”

  “C’mon to the, house.” Tabitha took his arm and urged him toward the compound. Its thatch-roofed timber dwellings were built lower than most Ythrian homes and were sturdier than they seemed; for here was scant protection from Avalon’s hurricanes. “Oh, yes,” she said, “the empire’s been growing, vigorously since Manuel the First. But I’ve read its history. How has the territory been brought under control? Some by simple partnership — civilized non-humans like the Cynthians found it advantageous. Some by purchase or exchange. Some by conquest, yes — but always of primitives, or at most of people whose strength in space was ridiculously less than Greater Terra’s. We’re a harder gale to buck.”

  “Are we? My father says—”

  “Uh-huh. The Empire’s sphere approaches 400 light-years across, ours about 80. Out of all the systems in its volume, the Empire’s got a degree of direct contact with several thousand, we with barely 250. But don’t you see, Chris, we know our planets better? We’re more compact. Our total resources are less but our technology’s every bit as good. And then, we’re distant from Terra. Why should they attack us? We don’t threaten them, we merely claim our rights along the border. If they want more realm, they can find plenty closer to home, suns they’ve never visited, and easier to acquire than from a proud, well-armed Domain.”

  “My father says we’re weak and unready.”

  “Do you think we would lose a war?”

  He fell silent until they both noticed, through the soughing ahead, how sand scrunched beneath their feet. At last: “Well, I don’t imagine anybody goes into a war expecting to lose.”

  “I don’t believe they’ll fight,” Tabitha said. “I believe the Imperium has better sense.”

  “Regardless, we’d better take precautions. Home defense is among them.”

  “Yes. Wont be easy to organize, among a hundred or more sovereign choths.”

  “That’s where we birds come in, maybe,” he ventured. “Long established ones in particular, like your family.”

  “I’m honored to help,” she told him. “Arid in fact I don’t imagine the choths will cooperate too badly—” she tossed her head in haughtiness — “when it’s a matter of showing the Empire who flies highest!”

  Eyath and Vodan winged together. They made a handsome pair, both golden of eyes and arms, he ocher-brown and she deep bronze. Beneath them reached the Stormgate lands, forest-darkened valleys, crags and cliffs, peaks where snowfields lingered to dapple blue-gray rock, sword-blade of a waterfall and remote blink of a glacier. A wind sang whoo and drove clouds, which Laura tinged gold, through otherwise brilliant air; their, shadows raced and rippled across the world. The Ythrians drank of the wind’s cold and swam in its swirling, thrusting, flowing strength. It stroked their feathers till they felt the barbs of the great outer pinions shiver.

  He said: “If we were of Arinnian’s kind, I would surely wed you, now, before I go to my ship. But you won’t be in lovetime for months, and by then I might be dead. I would not bind you to that sorrow for nothing.”

  “Do you think I would grieve less if I had not the name of widow?” she answered. “I’d want the right to lead your memorial dance. For I know what parts of these skies you like best.”

  “Still, you would have to lift some awkward questions, obligation toward my blood and so on. No… Shall our friendship be less because, for a while, you have not the name of wife?”

  “Friendship—” she murmured. Impulsively: “I dreamt last night that we were indeed like humans.”

  “What, forever in rut?”

  “Forever in love.”

  “Kh-h’ng, I’ve naught against Arinnian, but sometimes I wonder if you’ve not been too much with him, for too many years since you both were small. Had Lythran not taken you along when he had business in Gray—” Vodan saw her crest rise, broke off and added in haste: “Yes, he’s your galemate. That makes him mine too. I only wanted to warn you… don’t try, don’t wish to be human.”

  “No-no.” Eyath felt a downdraft slide by. She slanted herself to catch it, a throb of wings and then the long wild glide, peaks leaping nearer, glimpse through trees of a pool ashine where a feral stallion drank, song and rush and caress of doyen air, till she checked herself and flew back upward, breasting a torrent, every muscle at full aliveness — traced a thermal by the tiny trembling of a mountain seen through it, won there, spread her wings and let heaven carry her hovering while she laughed.

  Vodan beat near. “Would I trade this?” she called joyously. “Or you?”

  Ekrem Saracoglu, Imperial governor of Sector Pacis, had hinted for a while that he would like to meet the daughter of Fleet Admiral Juan de Jestis Cajal y Palomares. She had come from Nuevo Mexico to be official hostess and feminine majordomo for her widowed father, after he transferred his headquarters to Esperance and rented a house in Fleurville. The date kept being postponed. It was not that the admiral disliked the governor — they got along well — nor distrusted his intentions, no matter how notorious a womanizer he was. Luisa had been raised among folk who, if strict out of necessity on their dry wo
rld, were rich in honor and bore a hair-trigger pride. It was merely that both men were overwhelmed by work.

  At last their undertakings seemed fairly well along, and Cajal invited Sarocoglu to dinner. A ridiculous last-minute contretemps occurred. The admiral phoned home that he would be detained at the office a couple of hours. The governor was already on his way.

  “Thus you, Donna, have been told to keep me happy in the teeth of a postponed meal,” Saracoglu purred over the hand he kissed. “I assure you, that will not be in the least difficult.” Though small, she had a lively figure and a darkly pretty face. And he soon learned that, albeit solemn, she knew how to listen to a man and, rarer yet, ask him stimulating questions.

  By then they were strolling in the garden. Rosebushes and cherry trees might almost have been growing on Terra; Esperance was a prize among colony planets. The sun Pax was still above the horizon, now at midsummer, but leveled mellow beams across an old brick wall. The air was warm, blithe with birdsong, sweet with green odors that drifted in from the countryside. A car or two caught the light, high above; but Fleurville was not big enough for its traffic noise to be heard this far from the centrum.

  Saracoglu and Luisa paced along graveled paths and talked. They were guarded, which is to say discreetly chaperoned. However, no duenna followed several paces behind, but a huge four-armed Gorzunian mercenary on whom the nuances of a flirtation would be lost.

  The trouble is, thought the governor, she’s begun conversing in earnest.

  It had been quite pleasant at first. She encouraged him to speak of himself. “—yes, the Earl of Anatolia, that’s me. Frankly, even if it is on Terra, a minor peerage… Career bureaucrat. Might rather’ve been an artist — I dabble in oils and clays — maybe you’d care to see… Alas, you know how such things go. Imperial nobles are expected to serve the Imperium. Had I but been born in a decadent era! Eh? Unfortunately, the Empire’s not run out of momentum—”