For Love and Glory

Hebo struggled to his knees. “Holy Mother of God,” he stammered, “I, I thank you for your mercy. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you—”

Lissa watched, astonished. She dimly recalled the prayer from one or two historical documentaries. Who would have expected anything like this from anybody like him?

VII

Rain drummed on the dome and made the outside view a shadowiness in sluicing silver.

Recovered from shock and, in part, exhaustion, the four sat trying to assess that which had come over them. “I should have guessed,” said Lissa contritely. “The canyon, the scoured soil along it.”

Hebo shook his head. “No,” he growled. “The blame’s mine. You and Karl weren’t prepared, you were doing entirely different studies, you wouldn’t have come here if you hadn’t been diverted to us, and then we kept your minds too full of other things.” He grimaced. “Including my gross behavior. Can you believe I haven’t been in the habit of acting that way?”

“It’s all right, Torben,” she murmured.

“Nor was Dzesi at fault,” he plodded on. “She’s a drylander. Her people had no experience. But me, I’m from Earth. That was long ago, but still, I’ve stood on Severn side, I knew about the Bay of Fundy —and I forgot.”

He sighed. “It should’ve been plain to see from space. An estuary opening on a channel that leads to the ocean. A funnel; the exact conditions for a tidal bore. And the tide on Jonna is huge. And now it also had a storm at sea to push it higher.

“I could at least have stayed longer in orbit, observing. But no, I was in too much of a hurry to get us down and started, before your outfit noticed us and our nice little monopoly on the information evaporated.

“I was stupid.”

She found she hated seeing such a big, adventurous man humbled. Seemingly Dzesi did too, for the Rikhan said low, “I could have held us back. I have fared enough in space to realize that every new world is a snarefield of surprises. But I was likewise impatient.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Karl added. “You would soon have perished if you were incompetent. Instead, you have coped for century after century.”

“I will see to it that you get proper payment for the work you’ve done,” Lissa told the man and his partner. “Without you, the artifact might never have been found.”

Hebo smiled lopsidedly. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you both, for everything.

“But this has driven the truth home to me. I’ve grown too old.”

“No!” Lissa exclaimed. “You aren’t due for a rejuvenation. Are you?”

“It isn’t that.” She saw and heard how determination gathered itself. “Maybe you’ve never met a case before. You must have read or heard something about it, but it’s not the sort of thing anybody likes to dwell on. My foolishness was to keep shoving it aside. Later, I always told myself, later, someday, there’s no need yet. As the condition crept up on me, ignoring it got easier and easier.

“The problem is memories.”

“Oh, yes.” A chill passed within her. “Yes, I see.”

“I do not,” said Dzesi in quick irritation.

You probably wouldn’t know, thought Lissa. I daresay every member of your species expects to die a violent death. Or hopes to.

Hebo looked grim. To spare him, Lissa explained: “Rejuvenation makes the brain youthful again, of course, like every other part of the body. But it doesn’t erase memories. It refreshes them. Well, the brain’s data-storage capacity is finite. Worse, the correlations increase geometrically. In the end, it’s overwhelmed.”

“Surely, in humans, as in my kind, selective erasure is feasible,” Karl said, as if offering comfort.

“Oh, yes.” Lissa turned back toward Hebo. “I’m not familiar with the details, Torben, but I do know we have excellent clinics of every sort on Asborg. At least one of them must be equipped for the service.”

He eased a bit, smiled wryly. “Editing. Thanks, but I think I’d rather get the job done on Earth, if I can.”

Surprise jarred her. “Earth?”

“I’ll have to choose and decide, you understand. Earth is where my oldest memories come from. And some of my dearest.”

He looked away from her, outward into the rain and the distance.

VIII

Her team did not come to a real understanding of Jonna and the life thereon. That would be the work of centuries, if it could ever be completed. But they had learned about as much as anyone hoped for—a scattering of facts, some fragments of patterns—when shortly afterward they must leave.

First they returned their nonhuman members. As Dagmar ran from Gargantua toward a point high enough in the gravitational well to allow a hyperjump across light-years, Lissa stood in the saloon, watching the planet recede. She could have done so in her cabin, but it was cramped and the viewscreen here was bigger.

Never mind how familiar, she never wearied of such a sight. On its daylit half, the globe shone white, swirled with a hundred shades of blue, drowning out vision of the multitudinous stars. Nightside glimmered in the light of three moons, small golden crescents. More atmosphere than lay around Asborg or Earth, more clouds. But they opened enough for Karl’s people to have seen those stars and at last sought a way to them; and he himself was a mountaineer, used to her thin air.

She smiled as she remembered him. Might they meet again, often. Now the course was for Xanadu. The three little beings from there, with their extraordinary senses adapted to cold and darkness, had been as valuable in studying Jonna’s long night as his strength, woodcraft, and biological knowledge had been under its sun.

The leap after that would indeed be to home.

Dagmar murmured around her, like the great organism that in a sense the ship was. Air passed by in a cool breeze, currently bearing a slight piney fragrance. One standard gravity of acceleration gave a lightness welcome after Jonna. No matter how far they fared, the children of Earth brought along their remembrances.

A step on the deck made her turn her head. Romon Kaspersson Seafell had. come in. She suppressed a grimace, suddenly realizing that she wanted to be alone.

Not that the man was horrible. Medium-tall, slender, with sharp features, sharp dark eyes, and curly black hair, he wore a plain coverall like hers; but his bore the badge of his House on the shoulder, as if defiantly. Well, he was the only Seafell aboard, and only here because the Seafells had, surprisingly, contributed to the cost of this expedition and, reasonably enough, wanted at least one of their own along. He’d given no particular offense, and been a competent interpreter of geographical data.

“Good daywatch,” he greeted, adding after a moment’s hesitation, “milady.”

Why suddenly so formal? she wondered. Not that they’d been what you’d call close friends. In fact, she had confessed to herself, she didn’t quite like him—or, at any rate, she disliked what he stood for. However, relationships all around had been amicable enough, as they’d better be on a foreign planet.

“Likewise, Romon Kaspersson,” she answered carefully.

He drew alongside her and stopped, glanced at the screen, then regarded her. “Are we the only two idle ones aboard just now?” It sounded as though he wanted to make conversation.

“I daresay everybody else has their own activities,” she said— science, games, sports, sleep, whatever, while the ship conned herself through space.

He did not let the curtness put him off, but smiled a bit. “And I daresay you’ve been musing about your trailmate back yonder?”

It was easiest to reply, “Yes. Karl’s good people.” Actually, Hebo had been adrift in her mind. How was he