World without Stars (12 page)

Rorn smiled, without noticeable malice, and reminded: “You’ll never build your escape vessel if you lose their skills, Hugh.
And there’s no other way off this planet. The Yonderfolk left nothing behind except a few items the Ai Chun took apart centuries
ago. What I’ve learned while we were here convinces me the Yonderfolk really don’t use radio for communication, nor are they
likely to notice a laser flash, nor— Never mind. You’ve got to have these men.”

“For their own sakes, if nothin’ else,” Valland agreed. He leaned his ax against the table and folded his arms. “I can’t believe
you’d murder your fellow human bein’s, Yo.”

“Not willingly. Only if I absolutely must, and then in love and service. But they are hostages. They’ll leave with us.”

“Now you know I can’t allow that. We’d never get ’em
back.” Valland sought the gaze of the prisoners. “Hate to sound theatrical, but stayin’ laconic is hard work. Which’d you
rather be, dead or slaves?”

Sweat glistened on their skins. Galmer jerked out, “You needn’t ask,” and Bren nodded.

“You see,” Valland told Rorn, “you can buy your own escape with their lives and freedom, but that’s all.”

Rorn looked uncertain. A splashing resounded from the tank, and the two great sleek heads broke surface. Through the scant
illumination, chalcedony eyes probed at Valland. He gave them stare for stare.

The Ai Chun spoke via their dwarf. In the Earth-days since he renounced his species, Rorn had improved his command of Yonder
until he could readily use it; so much does the removal of inward conflict do for the mind, and you may decide for yourself
whether it’s worth the price. “Do you follow them, Hugh?” he asked. “Not so well, eh? They say—” He stopped. “Do you know
just what they are?”

“The skipper told me about them,” Valland said shortly.

“He’s prejudiced. They are … good, wise— No, those words are too nearly meaningless. … They are as far beyond us as we are
beyond the apes.”

“I’m not sure how far that is.” Valland shrugged. “Go on, what do they want?”

“You’ve … we’ve caused them a heavy loss. This latest episode goes further to prove that they can’t tolerate us running loose,
any more than we could tolerate pathogenic bacteria. But they don’t strike out, blindly destructive, as men would. They’ll
take us in. They offer us more than we could ever hope to gain, or know, or feel, by ourselves.”

“Like your case?” Valland said. “Sorry, but I am bein’ sarcastic. The answer is no. You and they can go in return for our
friends. Then, if you all leave us be, we’ll do the same for you.”

Rorn translated. The Ai Chun were slow to reply, as they were slow to most things. In the end:

“Negative,” Rorn said. “They don’t fear death. They’re reborn, immortal in a way we’ll never achieve.”

“Have you swallowed that crock yourself?”

“Makes no difference. I’m not afraid either, not of anything any longer. But think. It doesn’t matter whether their belief
is correct or not. What does matter is that they hold it. By taking these men away from you, whether by death or captivity,
they’ll ruin you. For the sake of that, they don’t much mind cutting short a pair of incarnations.”

“They’d better not mind,” Valland grinned bleakly, “with their chums listenin’ in.”

“Don’t you understand what that means?” Rorn breathed. “You aren’t just confronting two individuals. An entire world! You
can’t win on your own terms. But let go your pride. It’s no more than a monkey screaming from the treetops how important he
is. Let go, use your reason, take their guidance, and you’ll have our true victory.”

“Spare me the sermon, Yo. I got a girl waitin’ on Earth. The rest of us have our loves too, whatever they may be, as strong
as yours. We’d sooner die than give them up. I’ve lived a fair spell, and it’s been my observation that hate doesn’t make
for conflicts which can never be settled. People who hate each other can still strike bargains. But conflictin’ loves are
somethin’ else.”

Valland stood a while, stroking his beard and sunk in thought. Outside, the battle had ended. In the silence that now filled
the hut, one grew aware of breathing, the faint lap of waves in the tank as the Ai Chun stirred, the thump of a spear butt
on the floor, the heat and stenches and inward-crowding shadows.

Finally Valland gusted a sigh. He raised his head and spoke, low but resonant. “How about me?”

“What?” Rorn gaped at him.

“I organized this attack, you know. Modest as I am, I doubt if my gang is any military threat without me. If you must keep
a hostage, suppose you take me instead of those fellows.”

“No, Hugh!” Galmer cried.

“We can’t afford heroics,” Valland said to him. “You can spare my technical knowledge, at least. And maybe I can talk these
people into makin’ peace. Think you could?”

Bren thrust his face up, so that light could touch the lines and hollows lately carved therein. “
You
don’t know what they’re like,” he said.

Valland ignored him. “Well?” he asked Rorn.

“I … I don’t know.” A conference followed. “They must consider this.”

“All right,” Valland said. “I’ll leave you alone to talk the proposition over.”

He started for the door. “Halt!” Rorn yelled. A soldier sprang in pursuit.

Valland obeyed, turned about and said evenly, “I’ve got to tell them outside in any event, and prove this is my personal idea.
Otherwise you could get attacked soon’s you cross the threshold. I’ll come back in two, three hours and see what you’ve decided.
Agreed?”

They stood dumb and let him depart.

V
ICTORY
was dead meat in ya-Kela’s mouth. Word had run through the Packs: There are actual downdevils here, now when God is withdrawn
from heaven. Ya-Valland himself could not prevail against them, he left the house they have taken without those he went in
to save, and however strange his kind may be to us, we can see, we can even smell the horror that clutches him and his mates.
Day glares upon us. Best we slink off under the forest roof.

Many had already done so. And more and more of them followed, picking up their gear and vanishing into the mists. They spoke
little, but that little made a mumbling across the land like the first wind-sough before a storm.

He himself was fain to leave. But because ya-Valland asked it, he used his last shreds of authority to hold some in place.
A hundred or less, they squatted well away from the compound in a ring about such prisoners as had been taken. They dared
not tend the dead of either side. Corpses littered the tussocky ground, rocked among the reeds, sprawled beneath the walls;
and the carrion wings wheeled impatiently overhead.

Ya-Valland, ya-Argens, and ya-Urduga stood disputing in their own tongue, which no longer seemed likely to be God’s. Ya-Kela
waited, slumped down on heels and tail, feeling his age and his weariness. He had been given to understand that ya-Valland
would go away with the downdevils as the price of liberty for his other two mates. But without him, what were the rest? They
seemed to feel likewise, for the talk
waxed fierce until ya-Valland cut it off and would listen to no more.

Then he addressed the One. He had fetched his musicmaker. The Azkashi sounds limped forth: “Be not disheartened, my friend.
We did not succeed as well as we hoped, but the hunt is far from ended.”

“We have run ourselves breathless,” ya-Kela said, “and the quarry swings about to gore us. Who may prevail against the downdevils
save God, Who has forsaken the world?”

“I do not plan to stay with the enemy for long,” ya-Valland said.

“They have taken captives often and often. None ever returned. Old stories tell of a few whom the Packs recaptured in skirmishes.
They were so changed that naught could be done but kill them as gently as might be.”

“I shall not suffer such a fate if you will stand by me.”

“I owed you a blood debt,” ya-Kela said, “but it has been paid with folk who were dear to me.”

“You have not yet paid your debt to your people,” ya-Valland said sharply.

Ya-Kela started, glanced up at him, and rose to bring their eyes more nearly level. “What do you mean by this newest riddle?”

“Something that you—all the Azkashi—must come to understand. Without it, you are doomed. With it, you have hope; more than
hope, for when free folk know what freedom costs and how to meet that cost, they are hard indeed to overcome.”

A faint tingle ran along ya-Kela’s skin. “Have you a new magic for us?”

“Better than a magic. An idea.” Ya-Valland sought words. “Listen to a story.

“In the sky-place whence I come were two countries. One was called Europe, where dwelt a people like myself. The other was
called America, and a different folk possessed it
whom we named Indians. The people of Europe crossed the waters between and started to take land in America. Most of the Indians
were hunters. At best, they could not match the powers of the Europeans, who were not only farmkeepers like the Niao but also
had new weapons. Thus, in time, the Europeans took all America away from the Indians.”

Ya-Kela stepped back. His ax lifted. “Are you telling me that you are akin to the Herd?” he shouted.

Ya-Velland’s mates clapped hands to those fiery weapons they had repossessed. He waved them back, spread his own empty hands,
and said:

“In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. For example, the Indians held a faith in beings not unlike the downdevils, whereas
the Europeans worshiped one God. I am trying to teach you a lesson. Are you brave enough to hear me out?”

Ya-Kela could say nothing but, “Yes.” Lowering his ax was harder work than his charge into arrows and flame.

“For, you see,” ya-Valland said, “the Indians need not have lost. In the early days, at least, they outnumbered the European
settlers. They were masters of the wilderness. They were not slow to get for themselves weapons like those of the invaders.
In truth, at times they had better ones, and inflicted numerous bloody defeats on their foe.

“Why, then, did they lose?”

“The reasons were several. But a great one was this. They were satisfied to win a battle. To them, any piece of land was as
good as any other, provided both had game. They fought for honor and glory alone. If once a territory had been occupied, and
farms had covered it, they did no more than raid its outskirts. And seldom did they stand and die like Europeans, to hold
a place that was holy because their fathers were buried there.

“Furthermore, ya-Kela, they did not fight as one. If a Pack of them was overwhelmed, that was of small concern to other Packs
elsewhere. Some even helped the Europeans against
their own kinfolk. None thought of bringing the whole American land together, under a single council. None planned generations
ahead, sacrificing lives and goods that their greatgrandchildren might be free. All these things the Europeans did. And thus
the Europeans conquered.

“Can you see what may be learned from this?”

Ya-Kela bowed his head. “The lesson is hard.”

“I do not expect the Azkashi to learn it soon,” ya-Valland said.“If you yourself do so in your lifetime, and teach a few others,
that may suffice.” He was still for a moment. “And perhaps then I will have paid a part of the blood debt my ancestors left
me.”

Ya-Kela cried in anguish, “What has this to do with your going away?”

“Only that, whatever becomes of me, you must think ahead and hold fast to common purpose. You must not be content with a single
victory like ours today, nor lose your will because of a later defeat such as we have also met. I am the one who hazards the
gelding of his souls, and I have not yet despaired. Be you likewise. God has not left you.”

“Look in the sky and tell me so again,” ya-Kela said.

“Why, I shall. Come here.”

Ya-Valland led him into the compound, though he cringed from the silent, locked house. A lean-to behind held the enigmatic
tools he had observed on his earlier visit. “We are lucky that we did not wish to be crowded by those in our living quarters,”
ya-Valland said. He took one, a box and tube mounted on three legs, and carried it back to free ground

“This,” he said, “we call a
photoscreen ’scop
. Suppose you have a very hot fire. Cast a small ember into the coals, and you will not be able to see it, for the coals flood
it with their brilliance. Yet if the place were otherwise dark, the ember would seem bright enough. True?”

“True,” ya-Kela said. Wonder began to take hold of him. The mere sight of magics like this gave spirit.

“The ’scope has the power to pluck faint lights out of greater,” ya-Valland said. He consulted with his mates and a set of
leaves covered with curious markings, and pointed the tube heavenward. “I will show you the sky—yonder part—as if night had
fallen. See.”

He touched a projection. A smooth flat plate on the box grew dark. One point of light burned near the middle.

“Is that not where the planet Oroksh should be?” ya-Valland asked. Ya-Kela assented mutely. As the One, he had long been intimate
with the heavens. “Well, find me another.” Ya-Kela gestured at unseen Ilyakan—if it really was there, his thought shuddered.
Ya-Valland aimed in the same direction. “Hm, not quite right. Here.” As he moved the tube, another steady spark drifted across
the plate. “Do you see?”

“I see,” ya-Kela said humbly.

“Now let us try low in the east.”

Ya-Kela gasped, sprang back, fell to all fours and howled the first lines of the Welcome. God shone upon him. Ya-Valland twisted
a knob, and God blazed brighter than mortal eyes had ever before seen Him.

“He is still aloft,” ya-Valland said. “This you could well have known for yourselves, save that you would not agree that the
sun could hide Him. Think, though. It does not mean He is less than the sun. A bonfire a great distance off may be veiled
by a torch close to hand. Fear not the downdevils; God is with you yet.”

Ya-Kela crouched on the wet earth and sobbed.

Ya-Valland raised him up and said, “I ask only courage of you, which you have already shown. We have little time before I
must go back into the house. Let us make plans. Later you shall bring those hes whom you think will take this sight as you
did. Then we shall be ready for whatever may befall.”