“The island. What else? I have considered how the transaction may be done. Pay me a sum equal to the agreed-on price for the land, with an option to buy it. Leave the sum in escrow until I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. I will know whether your chieftans intend to abide by this and, afterward, whether I have truly met the terms as they understand them. My researches lead me to expect they will be honest.”
“You’re asking… a great deal.”
“I offer much more.”
“What?”
Orichalc hooked his tail around a stanchion. The long body swayed. “I cannot precisely tell you, for I myself do not know. But it is of the utmost.”
“Get to reality, will you?” Lissa snapped, impatient.
The undulations went hypnotic, the words sank to a breath. “Hearken. I am a cosmonaut of the Great Confederacy. It embraces four of the seven Susaian-inhabited planets, about seventeen hundred light-years from here. You have heard? Yes-s-s.
“During the last several of your calendrical years, its Dominance has repeatedly dispatched expeditions elsewhere. They are totally secret. Nothing whatsoever is said about them. Key personnel return to live sequestered in a special compound. I have gathered that they enjoy every attention and luxury there, and are well satisfied. Ordinary crewfolk of the several ships go more freely about on their leaves, but may not speak to anyone, no, not nestmates or clones or even each other, of what they have done and seen.
“That is easy to obey, for we know well-nigh nothing. Our vessels leap through hyperspace to someplace else. We lie there for varying times while the scientists use their instruments and send out their probes, operations in which we do not partake. All we perceive is that we float in empty, unfamiliar interstellar space until we go back. Ah, but the feelings of those officers and scientists! They flame, they freeze, they strike, recoil, exult, shudder; the glory and the dread of Almightiness are upon them.
“And at home, I have once in a while come near enough to certain of the Dominators that I sense the same in them. Not the awe, no, for they do not venture thither themselves, to yonder remote part of the galaxy; but their inward dreams grasp a pride and a hope that are demonic.” (What did that last word really mean in the Susaian tongue?)
In free fall, there is no true over or under. Nonetheless Orichalc loomed. “Is this not a sufficient sign that something vast writhes toward birth?” he demanded.
“I, I can’t say,” Lissa stammered. “You, how and why did you—”
“They knew I was unhappy, until presently, slowly, I went aquiver,” Orichalc said. “Well, my race has learned dissimulations. I led them to believe that I suffered private difficulties, hostilities, until I began seeing ways whereby I might cope. They expected little of a humble crew member, therefore suspected little. Meanwhile I took my surreptitious stellar sightings and made my calculations.
“And at home, I plotted with others. Jointly, they raised the means to obtain this spacecraft and send me off in it, all under false pretenses. Our need is that great.
“Here I am. I know, quite closely, where and when the monster thing is to happen. It will be soon. What is this worth to you and your kindred, Earthblood?”
XII
Lissa spent the day before departure with her parents.
They were at the original family home, on Windholm itself. A stronghold as much as a dwelling, Ernhurst offered few of the comforts, none of the sensualities in mansions and apartments everywhere else. Yet Davy and Maren had refrained from enlarging it, and often returned there. It held so many memories.
From the top of a lookout tower Lissa saw immensely far. Southward the downs rolled summer-golden to the sea, which was a line of gleaming argent on that horizon. Wind sent long ripples through the herbage; cloud shadows swept mightily over heights and hollows. It boomed and bit, did the wind, but odors of growth, soil, water, sunlight brought life to its sharpness. Northward the land climbed toward hills darkling with forest. Other than the estate, its gardens and beast park, the sole traces of man lay to the west, toylike at their remove, a power station, a synthesis plant, and the village clustered around them.
“Oh, it’s good to be here again,” she sighed.
“Then why are you so seldom?” her father asked quietly.
She looked away from him. “You know why. Too much to do, too little time.”
His laugh sounded wistful. “Too little patience, you mean. You’re trying to experience the whole universe. Relax. It won’t go away.”
“I’ve heard that aplenty from you, when Mother hasn’t been after me to settle down, get married, present you with another batch of grandchildren. You relax, you two.
“If you live till then.” She sensed how he must force the words out. “We were content to let you enjoy your first time around in freedom, like most people. But your enthusiasms are never just intellectual or artistic or athletic, and your idea of a truly grand time is still to hare off and hazard your life on some weird planet.… I’m sorry, my dear. I don’t want to nag you again, on this day of all days.” Her right hand rested on the parapet. He laid his left over it. “We’re afraid, though, Maren and I. How I rue the hour I asked you to go meet that Susaian. Ever since, you’ve charged breakneck forward.”
She bit her lip. “You could have taken me off the project. You can still.”
Aquiline against the sky, his head shook. “And have you hate me? No, I’m too weak.”
“What? You?” She stared.
He turned to smile at her. “Where you are concerned, I am. Always have been, for whatever reason.”
“Dad—” She clung to his hand.
He grew grave. “I do need to talk with you, seriously and privately. This seems to be my chance.”
She released herself, stepped back a meter, and confronted him. He had now put the well-worn importunities aside, she knew. Doubtless he had only used them as a way into what he really had to utter. Her heart knocked. “Clearance granted,” she said, and realized that today this was no longer one of their shared jokes.
“You’re bound into an unforeseeable but certainly dangerous situation—”
“No, no, no!” she protested automatically. “Must I explain for the, it feels like the fiftieth time? The environment’s safe. Orichalc saw no extraordinary precautions being taken.”
“But Orichalc did learn that an extraordinary event will occur there in the near future. Who knows what it will involve? If nothing else, the Susaians won’t be overjoyed when outsiders break in on their ultra-secret undertaking. Their resentment might… express itself forcibly.”
“Oh, Dad, that’s ridiculous. They’re
“There are Susaians and Susaians,” he declared, “just as there are humans and humans. The rulers of the Great Confederacy are not the amiable, helpful sorts who lead most of their nations. It isn’t general knowledge, because we don’t want to compromise our sources, but some of our intelligence about them makes me wonder what we may have to face, a century or two from now.”
She didn’t care to pursue that. The immediate argument was what mattered. “Anyhow, we’ll be in clear space. If anything looks threatening, we’ll hyperjump off in a second. No, a millisecond.
“Understood. Otherwise I’d never have authorized the venture. But you in turn understand—don’t you?—you can’t depend on the ship to handle everything, especially make the basic decisions. If she could do that to our satisfaction, she wouldn’t need a master, nor even a scientific team aboard. Lissa, the more I’ve considered your choice of personnel, the more I’ve discovered about them, the less happy I’ve become.”
She clenched her fists. “Orichalc? He’s got to come along. Guide, advisor, and, well, hostage for his own truthfulness. Yes, we know very little about him, but that’s hardly his fault.”
“Orichalc worries me the least,” Davy replied. “Why did you co-opt Esker Harolsson?”
