The People of the Wind Read online

  Inwardly, he grinned at his own performance. He, fifty-three standard years of age, squat, running to fat, totally bald, little eyes set close to a giant nose, and two expensive mistresses in his palace — acting the role of a boy who acted the role of an homme du monde! Well, he enjoyed that once in a while, as he enjoyed gaudy clothes and jewels. They were a relaxation from the wry realism which had never allowed him to improve his appearance through biosculp.

  But at this point she asked, “Are we really going to attack the Ythrians?”

  “Heh?” The distress in her tone brought his head swinging sharply around to stare at her. “Why, negotiations are stalled, but—”

  “Who stalled them?” She kept her own gaze straight ahead. Her voice had risen a note and the slight Espanyol accent had intensified.

  “Who started most of the violent incidents?” he countered. “Ythrians. Not that they’re monsters, understand. But they are predators by nature. And they’ve no strong authority — no proper government at all — to control the impulses of groups. That’s been a major stumbling block in the effort to reach an accommodation.”

  “How genuine was the effort — on our side?” she demanded, still refusing to look at him. “How long have you planned to fall on them? My father won’t tell me anything, but it’s obvious, it’s been obvious ever since he moved here — how often are naval and civilian headquarters on the same planet? — it’s obvious something is b-b-being readied.”

  “Donna,” Saracoglu said gravely, “when a fleet of spacecraft can turn whole worlds into tombs, one prepares against the worst and one clamps down security regulations.” He paused. “One also discovers it is unwise to let spheres interpenetrate, as Empire and Domain have. I daresay you, young, away off in a relatively isolated system… I daresay you got; an idea the Imperium is provoking war in order to swallow the whole Ythrian Domain. That is not true.”

  “What is true?” she replied bitterly.

  “That there have been bloody clashes over disputed territories and conflicting interests.”

  “Yes. Our traders are losing potential profits.”

  “Would that were the only friction. Commercial disputes are always negotiable. Political and military rivalries are harder, For example, which of us shall absorb the Antoranite-Kraokan complex around Beta Centauri? One of us is bound to, and those resources would greatly strengthen Terra. The Ythrians have already gained more power, by bringing Dathyna under them, than we like a potentially hostile race to have.

  “Furthermore, by rectifying this messy frontier, we can armor ourselves against a Merseian flank attack.” Saracoglu lifted a hand to forestall her protest. “Indeed, Donna, the Roidhunate is far off and not very big. But it’s growing at an alarming rate, and aggressive acquisitiveness is built into its ideology. The duty of an empire is to provide for the great-grandchildren.”

  “Why can’t we simply write a treaty, give a quid pro quo, divide things in a fair and reasonable manner?” Luisa asked.

  Saracoglu sighed. “The populations of the planets would object to being treated like inanimate property. No government which took that attitude would long survive.” He gestured aloft. “Furthermore, the universe holds too many unknowns. We have traveled hundreds — in earlier days, thousands — of light-years to especially interesting stars. But what myriads have we bypassed? What may turn up when we do seek them out? No responsible authority, human or Ythrian, will blindly hand over such possibilities to an alien.

  “No, Donna, this is no problem capable of neat, final solutions. We just have to do our fumbling best. Which does not include subjugating Ythri. I’m the first to grant Ythri’s right to exist, go its own way, even keep off planet possessions. But this frontier must be stabilized.”

  “We — interpenetrate — with others — and have no trouble.”

  “Of course. Why should we fight hydrogen breathers, for example? They’re so exotic w can barely communicate with them. The trouble is, the Ythrians are too like us. As an old, old saying goes, two tough, smart races want the same real estate.”

  “We can live with them! Humans are doing it. They have for generations.”

  “Do you mean Avalon?”

  She nodded.

  Saracoglu saw a chance to divert the conversation back into easier channels. “Well, there’s an interesting case, certainly,” he smiled. “How much do you know about it?”

  “Very little,” she admitted, subdued. “A few mentions here and there, since I came to Esperance. The galaxy’s so huge, this tiny fleck of it we’ve explored…”

  “You might get to see Avalon,” he said; “Not far off, ten or twelve light-years. I’d like that myself. The society does appear to be unusual, if not absolutely unique.”

  “Don’t you understand? If humans and Ythnans can share a single planet—”

  “That’s different. Allow me to give you some background. I’ve never been there either, but I’ve studied material on it since getting this appointment.”

  Saracoglu drew breath. “Avalon was discovered five hundred years ago, by the same Grand Survey ship that came on Ythri,” he said. “It was noted as a potential colony, but was so remote from Terra that nobody was interested then; the very name wasn’t bestowed till long afterward. Ythri was forty light-years further, true, but much, more attractive, a rich planet full of people vigorously entering the modern era who had a considerable deal to trade.”

  “About three and a half centuries back, a human company made the Ythrians a proposal. The Polesotechnic League wasn’t going to collapse for another fifty years, but already anybody who had a functional brain could read what a cutthroat period lay ahead. These humans, a mixed lot under the leadership of an old trade pioneer, wanted to safeguard the future of their families by settling on out-of-the-way Avalon — under the suzerainty, the protection, of an Ythri, that was not corrupted as Technic civilization was. The Ythrians agreed, and naturally some of them joined the settlement.

  “Well, the Troubles, came, and Ythri was not spared. The eventual results were similar — Terra enforced peace by the Empire, Ythri by the Domain. In the meantime, standing together, bearing the brunt of chaos, the Avalonians had been welded into one. Nothing like that applies today.” They had stopped by a vine-covered trellis. He plucked a grape and offered it to her. She shook her head. He ate it himself. The taste held a slight, sweet strangeness; Esperancian soil was not, after all, identical with that of Home. The sun was now gone from sight, shadows welled in the garden, an evening star blossomed.

  “I suppose… your plans for ‘rectification’… include bringing Avalon into the Empire,” Luisa said.

  “Yes. Consider its position.” Saracoglu shrugged. “Besides, the humans there form a large majority. I rather imagine they’ll be glad to join us, and Ythri won’t mind getting rid of them.”

  “Must we fight?”

  Saracoglu-smiled. “It’s never too late for peace.” He took her arm. “Shall we go indoors? I expect your father will be here soon. We ought to have the sherry set out for him.”

  He’d not spoil the occasion, which was still salvageable, by telling her that weeks had passed since a courier ship brought what he requested: an Imperial rescript declaring war on Ythri, to be made public whenever governor and admiral felt ready to act.

  IV

  A campaign against Ythri would demand an enormous fleet, gathered from everywhere in the Empire. No such thing had been publicly seen or heard of, though rumors flew. But of course units guarding the border systems had been openly reinforced as the crisis sharpened, and drills and practice maneuvers went on apace.

  Orbiting Pax at ten astronomical units, the Planet-class cruisers Thor and Ansa flung blank shells and torpedoes at each other’s force screens, pierced these latter with laser beams that tried to hold on a single spot of hull for as long as an energy blast would have taken to gnaw through armor, exploded magnesium flares whose brilliance represented lethal radiation, dodged about on gray thrust, wove
in and out of hyperdrive phase, used every trick in the book and a few which the high command hoped had not yet gotten into Ythrian books. Meanwhile the Comet- and Meteor-class boats they mothered were similarly busy.

  To stimulate effort, a prize had been announced. That vessel the computers judged victorious would proceed with her auxiliaries to Esperance, where the crew would get a week’s liberty.

  Ansa won. She broadcast a jubilant recall. Half a million kilometers away, an engine awoke in the Meteor which her captain had dubbed Hooting Star.

  “Resurrected at last!” Lieutenant (j.g.) Philippe Rochefort exulted. “And in glory at that.”

  “And unearned.” The fire control officer, CPO Wa Chaou of Cynthia, grinned. His small white-furred body crouched on the table he had been cleaning after a meal; his bushy tail quivered like the whiskers around his blue-masked muzzle.

  “What the muck you mean, ‘unearned’?” the engineer-computerman, CPO Abdullah Helu, grumbled: a lean, middle-aged careerist from Huy Braseal. “Playing dead for three mortal days is beyond the call of duty.” The boat had theoretically been destroyed in a dogfight and drifting free, as a real wreck would, to complicate life for detector technicians.

  “Especially when the poker game cleaned and reamed you, eh?” Wa Chaou gibed.

  “I won’t play with you again, sir,” Helu said to the captain-pilot. “No offense. You’re just too mucking talented.”

  “Only luck,” Rochefort answered. “Same as it was only luck that threw such odds against us. The boat acquitted herself well. As you did afterward, over the chips. Better luck to both next time.”

  She was his first, new and shiny command — he having recently been promoted from ensign for audacity in a rescue operation — and he was anxious for her to make a good showing. No matter how inevitable under the circumstances, defeat had hurt.

  But they were on the top team; and they’d accounted for two opposition craft, plus tying up three more for a while that must have been used to advantage elsewhere; and now they were bound back to Ansa and thence to Esperance, where he knew enough girls that dates were a statistical certainty.

  The little cabin trembled and hummed with driving energies. Air gusted from ventilators, smelling of oil and of recycling chemicals. A Meteor was designed for high acceleration’ under both relativistic and hyperdrive conditions; for accurate placement of nuclear-headed torpedoes; and for no more comfort than minimally essential to the continued efficiency of personnel.

  Yet space lay around the viewports in a glory of stars, diamond-keen, unwinking, many-colored, crowding an infinitely clear blackness rill they merged in the argent torrent of the Milky Way or the dim mysterious cloudlets which were sister galaxies. Rochefort wanted to sit, look, let soul follow gaze outward into God’s temple the universe. He could have done so, too; the boat was running on full automatic. But better demonstrate to the others that he was a conscientious as well as an easy-going officer. He turned the viewer back on which he had been using when the message came.

  A canned lecture was barely under way. A human xenologist stood in the screen and intoned:

  “Warm-blooded, feathered, and flying, the Ythrians are not birds; they bring their young forth viviparously after a gestation of four and a half months; they do not have beaks, but lips and teeth. Nor are they mammals; they grow no hair and secrete no milk; those lips have developed for parents to feed infants by regurgitation. And while the antlibranchs might suggest fish gills, they are not meant for water but for—”

  “Oh, no!” Helu exclaimed. “Sir, won’t you have time to study later? Devil knows how many more weeks we’ll lie in orbit doing nothing.”

  “War may erupt at any minute,” Wa Chaou said.

  “And if and when, who cares how the enemy looks or what his love life is? His ships are about like ours, and that’s all we’re ever likely to see.”

  “Oh, you have a direct line to the future?” the Cynthian murmured.

  Rochefort stopped the tape and snapped, “I’ll put the sound on tight beam if you want. But a knowledge of the enemy’s nature might make the quantum of difference that saves us when the real thing happens. I suggest you watch too.”

  “Er, I think I should check out Number Three oscillator, long’s we’re not traveling faster-than-light,” Helu said, and withdrew into the engine room. Wa Chaou settled down by Rochefort.

  The lieutenant smiled. He refrained from telling the Cynthian, You’re a good little chap. Did you enlist to get away from the domination of irascible females on your home planet?

  His thought went on: The reproductive pattern — sexual characteristics, requirements of the young — does seem to determine most of the basics in any intelligent species. As if the cynic’s remark were true, that an organism is simply a DNA molecule’s way of making more DNA molecules. Or whatever the chemicals of heredity may be on a given world… But no, a Jerusalem Catholic can’t believe that. Biological evolution inclines, it does not compel.

  “Let’s see how the Ythrians work,” he said aloud, reaching for the switch.

  “Don’t you already know, sir?” Wa Chaou asked.

  “Not really. So many sophont races, in that bit of space we’ve sort of explored. And I’ve been busy familiarizing myself with my new duties.” Rochefort chuckled. “And, be it admitted, enjoying what leaves I could get.”

  He reactivated the screen. It showed an Ythrian walking on the feet that grew from his wings: a comparatively slow, jerky gait, no good for real distances. The being stopped, lowered hands to ground, and stood on them. He lifted his wings, and suddenly he was splendid.

  Beneath, on either side, were slits in column. As the wings rose, the feathery operculum-like flaps which protected them were drawn back. The slits widened until, at full extension, they gaped like purple mouths. The view became a closeup. Thin-skinned tissues, intricately wrinkled, lay behind a. curtain of cilia which must be for screening out dust.

  When the wings lowered, the slits were forced shut again, bellows fashion. The lecturer’s voice said: “This is what allows so heavy a body, under Terra-type weight and gas density, to fly. Ythrians attain more than twice the mass of the largest possible airborne creature on similar planets elsewhere. The antlibranchs, pumped by the wing-strokes, take in oxygen under pressure to feed it directly to the bloodstream. Thus they supplement lungs which themselves more or less resemble those of ordinary land animals. The Ythrian acquires the power needed to get aloft and, indeed, fly with rapidity and grace.”

  The view drew back. The creature in the holograph flapped strongly and rocketed upward.

  “Of course,” the dry voice said, “this energy must come from a correspondingly accelerated metabolism. Unless prevented from flying, the Ythrian is a voracious eater. Aside from certain sweet fruits, he is strictly carnivorous. His appetite has doubtless reinforced the usual carnivore tendency to live in small, well-separated groups, each occupying a wide territory which instinct makes it defend against all intruders.

  “In fact, the Ythrian can best be understood in terms of what we know or conjecture about the evolution of his race.”

  “Conjecture more than know, I suspect,” Rochefort remarked. But he found himself fascinated.

  “We believe that homeothermic — roughly speaking, warm-blooded — life on Ythri did not come from a reptilian or reptiloid form, but directly from an amphibian, conceivably even from something corresponding to a lung-fish. At any rate, it retained a kind of gill. Those species which were most successful on land eventually lost this feature. More primitive animals kept it. Among these was that small, probably swamp-dwelling thing which became the ancestor of the sophont. Taking to the treetops, it may have developed a membrane on which to glide from bough to bough. This finally turned into a wing. Meanwhile the gills were modified for aerial use, into superchargers.”

  “As usual,” Wa Chaou observed. “The failures at one stage beget the successes of the next,”

  “Of course, the Ythrian can
soar and even hover,” the speaker said, “but it is the tremendous wing area which makes this possible, and the antlibranchs are what make it possible to operate those wings.

  “Otherwise the pre-Ythrian must have appeared fairly similar to Terran birds.” Pictures of various hypothetical extinct creatures went by. “It developed an analogous water-hoarding system — no separate urination — which saved weight as well as compensating for evaporative losses from the antlibranchs. It likewise developed light bones, though these are more intricate than avian bones, built of a marvelously strong two-phase material whose organic component is not collagen but a substance carrying out the functions of Terra-mammalian marrow. The animal did not, however, further ease its burdens by trading teeth for a beak. Many Ythrian ornithoids have done so, for example the uhoth, hawklike in appearance, doglike in service. But the pre-sophont remained an unspecialized dweller in wet jungles.

  “The fact that the young were born tiny and helpless — since the female could not fly long distances while carrying a heavy fetus — is probably responsible for the retention and elaboration of the digits on the wings. The cub could cling to either parent in turn while these cruised after food; before it was able to fly, it could save itself from enemies by clambering up a tree. Meanwhile the feet acquired more and more ability to seize prey and manipulate objects.

  “Incidentally, the short gestation period does not mean that the Ythrian is born with a poorly developed nervous system. The rapid metabolism of flight affects the rate of fetal cell division. This process concentrates on laying down a body pattern rather than on increasing the size. Nevertheless, an infant Ythrian needs more care, and more food, than an infant human. The parents must cooperate in providing this as well as in carrying their young about. Here we may have the root cause of the sexual equality or near equality found in all Ythrian cultures.

  “Likewise, a rapid succession of infants would be impossible to keep alive under primitive conditions. This may be a reason why the female only ovulates at intervals of a year — Ythri’s is about half of Terra’s — and not for about two years after giving birth. Sexuality does not come overtly into play except at these times. Then it is almost uncontrollably strong in male and female alike. This may well have given the territorial instinct a cultural reinforcement after intelligence evolved. Parents wish to keep their nubile daughters isolated from chance-met males while in heat. Furthermore, husband and wife do not wish to waste a rich, rare experience on any outsider.