The Rebel Worlds

“If he ever is.” It was as if someone else sat down at a control console in Flandry’s brain and made him say, “Why did he bring in barbarians?”

“He must’ve gone elsewhere himself and needed them to guard Virgil.” She looked aside. “I asked a couple of your men who’d watched on viewscreens, what that ship was like. ’Twas Darthan, from their descriptions. Not truly hostile folk.”

“As long as they aren’t given the chance to be! We’d offered Pax, and nevertheless they fired.”

“They … well, Darthans often act like that. Their culture makes it hard for them to believe a call for truce is honest. Hugh had to take what he could get in a hurry. After everything that’d happened, what reason had he to tell them someone might come for parley? He’s mortal! He can’t think of everything!”

Flandry slumped. “I suppose not, my lady.”

A fluting went through the forest. Kathryn waited a minute before she said gently, “You know, you haven’t yet spoken my right name.”

He replied in his emptiness: “How can I? Men are gone because of what I did.”

“Oh, Dominic!” The tears broke forth out of her. He fought to hold back his own.

They found themselves kneeling together, his face hidden against her breasts, his arms around her waist and her left around his neck, her right hand smoothing his hair while he shuddered.

“Dominic, Dominic,” she whispered to him. “I know. How well I know. My man’s a captain too. More ships, more lives than you could count. How often I’ve seen him readin’ casualty reports! I’ll tell you, he’s come to me and closed the door so he could weep. He’s made his errors that killed men. What commander hasn’t? But somebody’s got to command. It’s your duty. You weigh the facts best’s you’re able, and decide, and act, and long’s you did do your best, you never look back. You needn’t. You mustn’t.

“Dominic, we didn’t make this carnivore universe. We only live here, and have to try and cope.

“Who said you were in error? Your estimate was completely reasonable. I don’t believe any board of inquiry ’ud blame you. If Hugh couldn’t foresee you’d come with me, how could you foresee — ? Dominic, look up, be glad again.”

A moment’s hell-colored light struck through the eastern leaves. Seconds after, the air roared and a queasy vibration moved the ground.

Men stumbled to their feet. Flandry and Kathryn bounded apart. “What’s that?” cried Saavedra.

“That,” Flandry yelled into the wind that had arisen, “was the second barbarian ship making sure of our boat.”

A minute later they heard the ongoing thunderclap of a large body traveling at supersonic speed. It faded into a terrible whistle and was gone. The gust died out and startled flying creatures circled noisily back toward their trees.

“High-yield warhead,” Flandry judged. “They meant to kill within several kilometers’ radius.” He held a wet finger to the normal dawn breeze. “The fallout’s bound east; we needn’t worry. I’m stonkerish glad we hiked this far yesterday!”

Kathryn took both his hands. “Your doin’ alone, Dominic,” she said. “Will that stop your grief?”

It didn’t really. But she had given him the courage to think: Very well. Nothing’s accomplished by these idealistic broodings. Dead’s dead. My job is to salvage the living … and afterward, if there is an afterward, use whatever tricks I can to prevent my superiors from blaming me too severely.

No doubt my conscience will. But maybe I can learn how to jettison it. An officer of the Empire is much more efficient without one.

“At ease, men,” he said. “Well spend the next rotation period here, recuperating, before we push on.”

IX

The forest opened abruptly on cleared land. Stepping out, Flandry saw ordered rows of bushes. On three sides the farm was hemmed in by jungle, on the fourth it dropped into a valley full of vapors. The trend of his six Didonian days of travel had been upward.

He didn’t notice the agriculture at once. “Hold!” he barked. The blaster jumped into his grasp. A rhinoceros herd?

No … not really … of course not. Lord Advisor Mulele’s African preserve lay 200 light-years remote. The half-dozen animals before him had the size and general build of rhinos, though their nearly hairless slate-blue skins were smooth rather than wrinkled and tails were lacking. But the shoulders of each protruded sidewise to make a virtual platform. The ears were big and fanlike. The skull bulged high above a pair of beady eyes, supported a horn on the nose, then tapered to a muzzle whose mouth was oddly soft and flexible. The horn offset that effect by being a great ebony blade with a saw-toothed ridge behind it.

“Wait, Dominic!” Kathryn sped to join him. “Don’t shoot. Those’re nogas.”

“Hm?” He lowered the gun.

“Our word. Humans can’t pronounce any Didonian language.”

“You mean they are the—” Flandry had encountered curious forms of sophont, but none without some equivalent of hands. What value would an intelligence have that could not actively reshape its environment?

Peering closer, he saw that the beasts were not at graze. Two knelt in a corner of the field, grubbing stumps, while a third rolled a trimmed log toward a building whose roof was visible over a hillcrest. The fourth dragged a crude wooden plow across the newly acquired ground. The fifth came behind, its harness enabling it to steer. A pair of smaller animals rode on its shoulders. That area was some distance off, details hard to make out through the hazy air. The sixth, nearer to Flandry, was not feeding so much as removing weeds from among the bushes.

“C’mon!” Kathryn dashed ahead, lightfoot under her pack.

The trip had been day-and-night trudgery. In camp, he and she had been too occupied — the only ones with wilderness experience — for any meaningful talk before they must sleep. But they were rewarded; unable to mourn, they began to mend. Now eagerness made her suddenly so vivid that Flandry lost consciousness of his surroundings. She became everything he could know, like a nearby sun.

“Halloo!” She stopped and waved her arms.

The nogas halted too and squinted nearsightedly. Their ears and noses twitched, straining into the rank dank heat. Flandry was jolted back to the world. They could attack her. “Deploy,” he rapped at those of his men who carried weapons. “Half circle behind me. The rest of you stand at the trailhead.” He ran to Kathryn’s side.

Wings beat. A creature that had been hovering, barely visible amidst low clouds, dropped straight toward the sixth noga. “A krippo.” Kathryn seized Flandry’s hand. “I wish I could’ve told you in advance. But watch. ’Tis wonderful.”

The nogas were presumably more or less mammalian, also in their reproductive pattern: the sexes were obvious, the females had udders. The krippo resembled a bird … did it? The body was comparable to that of a large goose, with feathers gray-brown above, pale gray below, tipped with blue around the throat, on the pinions, at the end of a long triangular tail. The claws were strong, meant to grab and hang on. The neck was fairly long itself, supporting a head that swelled grotesquely backward. The face seemed to consist mainly of two great topaz eyes. And there was no beak, only a red cartilaginous tube.

The krippo landed on the noga’s right shoulder. It thrust a ropy tongue (?) from the tube. Flandry noticed a knot on either side of the noga, just below the platform. The right one uncoiled, revealing itself to be a member suggestive of a tentacle, more than two meters in length if fully outstretched. The krippo’s extended equivalent, the “tongue,” plunged into a sphincter at the end of this. Linked, the two organisms trotted toward the humans.

“We’re still lackin’ a ruka,” Kathryn said. “No, wait.” The noga behind the plow had bellowed. “That entity’s callin’ for one. Heesh’s own ruka has to unharness heesh ’fore heesh can come to us.”