The People of the Wind Page 5

  “The sexual cycle is not totally rigid. In particular, grief often brings on estrus. Doubtless this was originally a provision of nature for rapid replacement of losses. It seems to have brought about a partial fusion of Eros and Thanatos in the Ythrian psyche which makes much of the race’s art, and doubtless thought, incomprehensible to man. An occasional female can ovulate at will, though this is considered, an abnormality; in olden days she would be killed, now she is generally shunned, out of dread of her power. A favorite villain in Ythrian story is the male who, by hypnosis or otherwise, can induce the state. Of course, the most important manifestation of a degree of flexibility is the fact that Ythrians have successfully adapted their reproductive pattern, like everything else, to a variety of colonized planets.”

  “Me, I think it’s more fun being human,” Rochefort said.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Wa Chaou replied. “Superficially the relationship between the sexes looks simpler than in your race or mine; you’re either in the mood or you’re not, and that’s that. I wonder, though, if it may not really be more subtle and complicated: than ours, even more basic to the whole psychology.”

  “But to return to evolution,” the lecturer was saying. “It seems that a major part of Ythri underwent something like the great Pliocene drought in’ Terra’s Africa. The ornithoids were forced out of dwindling forests onto growing savannahs. There they evolved from carrion eaters to big-game hunters in a manner analogous to pre-man. The original feet became hands, which eventually started making tools. To support the body and provide locomotion on the ground, the original elbow claws turned into feet, the wings that bore them became convertible to legs of a sort.

  “Still, the intelligent Ythrian remained a pure carnivore, and one which was awkward on land. Typically, primitive hunters struck from above, with spears, arrows, axes. Thus only a few were needed to bring down the largest beasts. There was no necessity to cooperate in digging pits for elephants or standing shoulder to shoulder against a charging lion. Society remained divided into families or clans, which seldom fought wars but which, on the other hand, did not have much contact of any sort.

  “The revolution which ended the Stone Age did not involve agriculture from the beginning, as in the case of man. It came from the systematic herding, at last the domestication, of big ground animals like the maukti, smaller ones like the long-haired mayaw. This stimulated the invention of skids, wheels, and the like, enabling the Ythrian to get about more readily on the surface. Agriculture was invented as an ancillary to ranching, an efficient means of providing fodder. The food surplus allowed leisure for travel, trade, and widespread cultural intercourse. Hence larger, complex social units arose.

  “They cannot be called civilizations in a strict sense, because Ythri has never known true cities. The, mobility of being winged left no necessity for crowding together in order to maintain close relationships. Granted, sedentary centers did appear — for mining, metallurgy, and other industry; for trade and religion; for defense in case the group was defeated by another in aerial battle. But these have always been small and their populations mostly floating. Apart from their barons and garrisons, their permanent inhabitants were formerly, for the main part, wing-clipped slaves — today, automated machines. Clipping was an easy method of making a person controllable; yet since the feathers could grow back, the common practice of promising manumission after a certain period of diligent service tended to make prisoners docile. Hence slavery became so basic to pre-industrial Ythrian society that to this day it has not entirely disappeared.”

  Well, we’re reviving it in the Empire, Rochefort thought For terms and under conditions limited by law; as a punishment, in order to get some social utility out of the criminal; nevertheless, we’re bringing back a thing the Ythrians are letting die. How more moral are we than they? How much more right do we have?

  He straightened in his chair. Man is my race.

  A willowy blonde with the old-fashioned Esperancian taste for simplicity in clothes, Eve Davisson made a pleasing contrast to Philippe Rochefort, as both were well aware. He was a tall, rather slender young man, his bearing athletic, his features broad-nosed, full-lipped, and regular, his hair, kinking itself into a lustrous black coif over the deep-brown skin. And he stretched to the limit the tolerance granted officers as regards their dress uniforms — rakishly tilted bonnet bearing the sunburst of Empire, gold-trimmed blue tunic, scarlet sash and cloak, snowy trousers tucked into low boots of authentic Terran beef-leather.

  They sat in an intimate restaurant of Fleurville, by a window opening on gardens and stars. A live sonorist played something old and sentimental; perfumed, slightly intoxicant vapors drifted about; they toyed with hors d’oeuvres and paid more serious attention to their champagne. Nonetheless she was not smiling.

  “This world was settled by people who believed in peace,” she said. Her tone mourned rather than accused. “For generations they kept no armed forces, they relied on the good will of others whom they helped.”

  “That good will didn’t outlive the Troubles,” Rochefort said.

  “I know, I know. I shan’t join the demonstrators, whatever some of my friends may say when they learn I’ve been out with an Imperial officer. But Phil — the star named Pax, the planet named Esperance are being geared for war. It hurts.”

  “It’d hurt worse if you were attacked. Avalon isn’t far, and they’ve built a lot of power there.”

  Her fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. “Attack from Avalon? But I’ve met those people, both races. They’ve come here on trade or tour or — I made a tour there myself, not long ago. I went because it’s picturesque, but was so graciously treated I didn’t want to leave.”

  “I daresay Ythrian manners have rubbed off on their human fellows.” Rochefort let a draft go over his palate, hoping it would tingle away his irritation. This wasn’t supposed to be a political evening. “Likewise less pleasant features of the Ythrian personality.”

  She studied him through the soft light before she said low, “I get an impression you disapprove of a mixed colony.”

  “Well… in a way, yes.” He could have dissembled, facilely agreed to everything she maintained, and thus improved his chances of bedding her later on. But he’d never operated thus; and he never would, especially when he liked this girl just as a person. “I believe in being what you are and standing by your own.”

  “You talk almost like a human supremacist,” she said, though mildly.

  “To the extent that man is the leading race furnishes most of the leaders — in Technic civilization, yes, I suppose you’d have to call me a human supremacist,” he admitted. “It doesn’t mean we aren’t chronically sinful and stupid, nor does it mean we have any right to oppress others. Why, my sort of people are the xenosophont’s best friend. We simply don’t want to imitate him.”

  “Do you believe the Terran Empire is a force for good?”

  “On balance, yes. It commits evil. But nothing mortal can avoid that. Our duty is to correct the wrongs… and also to recognize the values that the Empire does, in fact, preserve.”

  “You may have encountered too little of the evil.”

  “Because I’m from Terra itself?” Rochefort chuckled. “My dear, you’re too bright to imagine the mother system is inhabited exclusively by aristocrats. My father is a minor functionary of the Sociodynamic Service. His job caused us to move around a lot. I was born in Selenopolis, which is a spaceport and manufacturing center. I spent several impressionable years on Venus, in the crime and poverty of a planet whose terraforming never had been quite satisfactory. I joined the navy as an enlisted rating — not out of chauvinism, merely a boyish wish to see the universe — and wasn’t tapped for pilot school for two-three years; meanwhile, I saw the grim side of more than one world. Sure, there’s a cosmos of room for improvement. Well, let’s improve, not tear down. And let’s defend!”

  He stopped. “Damn,” he said frankly. “I’d hoped to lure you out of you
r seriousness, and fell into it myself.”

  Now the girl laughed, and raised heir glass. “Let’s help each other climb out, then,” she suggested.

  They did. Rochefort’s liberty became highly enjoyable. And that was fortunate, because two weeks after he reported back from it, Ansa was ordered into deep space. Light-years from Pax, she joined the fleet that had been using immensity as a mask for its marshaling; and ships by the hundreds hurled toward the Domain of Ythri.

  V

  The conference was by phone. Most were, these days. It went against old Avalonian courtliness but saved time — and time was getting in mighty short supply, Daniel Holm thought.

  Anger crackled through clearly enough. Two of the three holographs on the com board before him seemed about to climb out of their screens and into his office. No doubt he gave their originals the same impression.

  Matthew Vickery, President of the Parliament of Man, wagged his forefinger and both plump jowls and said, “We are not under a military regime, may I remind you in case you have forgotten. We, the proper civil government, approved your defense measures of the past several years, though you are aware that I myself have always considered them excessive. When I think of the prosperity that tax money, those resources, could have brought, left in private hands — or the social good it could have done in the public sector — Give you military your heads, and you’d build bases in the fourth dimension to protect us against an invasion from the future.”

  “We are always being invaded by the future,” Ferune said. “The next part of it to arrive will not be pleasant.”

  Holm crossed his legs, leaned back, blew cigar smoke at Vickery’s image, and drawled, “Spare us the oratory. You’re not campaigning for re-election: here. What’s made you demand this four-way?”

  “Your entire high-handedness,” Vickery declared. “The overflow quantum was that last order, barring non-Ythrian ships from the Lauran System. Do you realize what a trade we do… not merely with the Empire, though that supports many livelihoods, but with unaffiliated civilizations like the Kraokan?”

  “Do you realize how easy it’d be for the Terrans to get a robotic job, disguised, into low orbit around Avalon?” Holm retorted. “Several thousand megatons, touched off at that height when skies are clear, would set about half of Corona afire. Or it might be so sophisticated it could land like a peaceful merchantman. Consciousness-level computers aren’t used much any more, when little new exploration’s going on, but they could be built, including a suicide imperative. That explosion would be: inside a city’s force shields; it’d take out the generators, leaving what was left of the city defenseless; fallout from a dirty warhead would poison the whole hinterland. And you, Vickery, helped block half the appropriation we wanted for adequate shelters.”

  “Hysteria,” the president said. “What could Terra gain from a one-shot atrocity? Not that I expect war, if only we can curb our own hotheads. But — well, take this ludicrous home-guard program you’ve instigated.” His glance went toward Ferune and Liaw. “Oh, it gives a lot of young folk a fine excuse to swagger around, getting in people’s way, ordering them arrogantly about, feeling important, and never mind the social as well as the fiscal cost of it But if this navy we’ve been building and manning at your loud urging, by straining our production facilities and gutting our resources, if this navy is as advertised, the Terrans can never come near us. If not, who has been derelict in his duty?”

  “We are near their sector capital,” Ferane reminded him. “They may strike us first, overwhelmingly.”

  “I’ve heard that till I’m taped for it. I prefer to program myself, thank you.” Vickery paused. “See here,” he continued in a leveled tone, “I agree the situation is critical. We’re all Avaloniads together. If I feel certain of your proposals are unwise, I tell this to the public and the Parliament. But in the end we compromise like reasonable beings.”

  Ferune’s face rippled. It was as well that Vickery didn’t notice or wasn’t able to read the meaning. Liaw of The Tarns remained expressionless. Holm grunted, “Go on.”

  “I must protest both your proceedings and the manner of them,” Vickery said. “We are not under martial law, and indeed the Compact makes no provision for declaring it.”

  “Wasn’t needed in the old days,” Holm said. “The danger was clear and present. I didn’t think it’d be needed now. The Admiralty is responsible for local defense and liaison with armed forces elsewhere in the Domain—”

  “Which does not authorize you to stop trade, or raise a tin militia, or anything cutting that deeply into normal Avalonian life. My colleagues and I have endured it thus far, recognizing the necessity of at least some things. But today the necessity is to remind you that you are the servants of the people, not the masters. If the people want your policies executed, they will so instruct their legislative representatives.”

  “The Khruaths did call for a home guard and for giving the Admiralty broad discretion,” Liaw of The Tarns said in his rustling voice. He was old, had frost in his feathers; but he sat huge in his castle, and the screen gave a background image of crags and a glacier.

  “Parliament—”

  “Is still debating,” Holm interrupted to finish. “The Terran Imperium has no such handicap. If you want a legal formula, well, consider us to be acting under choth law.”

  “The choths have no government,” Vickery said, reddening.

  “What is a government?” asked Liaw, Wyvan of the High Khruath — how softly.

  “Why… well, legitimate authority—”

  “Yes. The legitimacy derives, ultimately, no matter by what formula, from tradition. The authority derives, no matter by what formula, from armed force! Government is that institution which is legitimized in its use of physical coercion on the people. Have I read your human philosophers and history aright, President Vickery?”

  “Well… yes… but—”

  “You seem to have forgotten for the moment that the choths have been no more unanimous than your human factions,” Liaw said. “Believe me, they have been divided and they are. Though a majority voted for the latest defense measures, a vocal minority has opposed: feeling, as you do, President Vickery, that the danger has been exaggerated and does not justify lifting that great a load.”

  Liaw sat silent for a space, during which the rest of them heard wind whistle behind him and saw a pair of his grandsons fly past. One bore the naked sword which went from house to house as a summons to war, the other a blast rifle.

  The High Wyvan said: “Three choths refused to make their gift. My fellows and I threatened to call Qherran on them. Had they not yielded, we would have done so. We consider the situation to be that grave.”

  Holm choked. He never told me before! — Of course he wouldn’t have. Ferune grew nearly as still on his bench as Liaw. Vickery drew breath; sweat broke, out on his smoothness; he dabbed at it.

  I can almost sympathize, Holm thought. Suddenly getting bashed with reality like that.

  Matthew Vickery should have stayed a credit analyst instead of going into politics (Holm’s mind rambled on, at the back of its own shocked alertness). Then he’d have been harmless, in fact useful; interspecies economics is often a wonderland in need of all the study anyone can give it. The trouble was, on a thinly settled globe like Avalon, government never had been too important aside from basic issues of ecology and defense. In recent decades its functions had dwindled still further, as human society changed under Ythrian influence. (A twinge of pain.) Voting was light for offices that looked merely managerial. Hence the more reactionary humans were able to elect Vickery, who Viewed With Alarm the trend toward Ythrianization. (Was no alarm justified?) He had nothing else to offer, in these darkening times.

  “You understand this is confidential,” Liaw said. “If word got about, the choths in question would have to consider it a deathpride matter.”

  “Yes,” Vickery whispered.

  Another silence. Holm’s cigar had burned short, wa
s scorching his fingers. He stubbed it out. It stank. He started a new one. I smoke too much, he thought. Drink too much also, maybe, of late. But the work’s getting done, as far as circumstance allows.

  Vickery wet his lips. “This puts… another complexion on affairs, doesn’t it?” he said. “May I speak plainly? I must know if this is a hint that… you may come to feel yourselves compelled to a coup d’etat.”

  “We have better uses for our energies,” Liaw told him. “Your efforts in Parliament could be helpful.”

  “Well — you realize I can’t surrender my principles. I must be free to speak.”

  “It is written in the Compact,” Ferune said, and his quotation did not seem superfluous even by Ythrian standards, “’Humans inhabiting Avalon have the deathpride right of free speech, publication, and broadcast, limited only by the deathpride rights of privacy and honor and by the requirements of protection against foreign enemies.”

  “I meant—” Vickery swallowed. But he had not been years in politics for nothing. “I meant simply that friendly criticism and suggestions will always be in order,” he said with most of his accustomed ease. “However, we certainly cannot risk a civil war. Shall we discuss details of a policy of nonpartisan cooperation?”

  Behind the ready words, fear could still be sensed. Holm imagined he could almost read Vickery’s mind, reviewing the full significance of what Liaw had said.