teachings. He couldn’t yet believe that there was nothing to the Triad but fire. And whether or not that was the case, he’d carry out the rites and commandments of his religion. It was a good faith for a soldier, popular in the legions, excellent for morale and discipline.
From the outside, Larreka didn’t look like a person who would study philosophy. He might have been a veteran sergeant, slightly undersized but heavily muscled, less graceful than most though exceedingly fast when needful. Wounds deep enough to leave permanent scars had seamed his body in places; a gouge crossed the bone of his brow, and his left ear was missing. Haeleners being of South Beronnen origin, he had skin formerly pale brown, turned dark and leathery by many weathers, wherein his eyes stood ice-blue. His speech kept traces of a rough homeland accent, and his most conspicuous weapon—practically his trademark—was the heavy knuckleduster-handled curve-bladed shortsword favored in that antarctic country. Otherwise he wore only a purse- belt for small articles, and the arms and travel kit strapped in a bundle on his back or loaded in two wicker panniers. This included a hunting spear and a hatchet which could double as a weapon. Nothing was ornamented; it was well-worn cloth, hide, wood, steel. His sole jewelry was a gold chain around the thick left wrist.
The soldiers behind him were gaudier, sporting plumes, beadwork, jingling links. They were also very respectful of their shabby leader. Larreka, Zabat’s son of Clan Kerazzi, was perhaps the most demanding of the thirty-three legionary commandants. After two centuries in the Zera, he was far into middle age, three hundred and ninety on his last birthday. But he could expect another hundred years of health, and might well hope for more—if a barbarian didn’t get him first, or any of the natural catastrophes the Rover was brewing for the world.
It slipped under the horizon. For a brief while, clouds to the north were sullen from its rays. Then the sane light of the Sun shone free. Cumulus loomed tall and white above a blue shadowiness hinting at storm.
“Think it’ll rain, sir?” asked the male from Foss Island. “I sure wouldn’t mind.” Though near the equator, his home was refreshed by winds off the sea. Here he felt hot and dusty.
“Save your thirst for Primavera,” Larreka advised. “The beer there is good.” He squinted. “N-n-no, I wouldn’t look for rain today. Tomorrow, maybe. Don’t be in a fume about it, son. You’ll soon get more water hereabouts than you can handle, enough to drown a galleyfish. Maybe then you’ll appreciate Valennen better.”
“I doubt that,” a companion said. “Valennen’s supposed to go even drier than it futtering well already is.”
“Futtering ain’t the word, Saleh,” a third put in with a crow of laughter. “Female pelts’ll get baked so stiff you could sand a hole in your belly.”
His exaggeration was moderate. Loss of moisture did coarsen the mat of fine green plant growth covering most of a body. “Why, as for that,” Larreka said, “heed the voice of experience,” and described alternate techniques in blunt language.
“But, sir,” Saleh persisted, “I don’t get it. Sure, Valennen sees a lot more of the Wicked Star, a lot higher in the sky, than Beronnen does. I understand how it gets hotter than here. Only why’ll the country dry out that bad? I thought, ng-ng, I thought heat draws water out of the sea and dumps it as rain. Isn’t that how come the tropical islands are mostly wet?”
“True,” Larreka answered. “That’s what’s going to spill rain all over Beronnen for the next sixty-four years or more, till we’re in mud up to our tail-roots when we aren’t flooded out—not to speak of snowpack melting in the highlands and whooping down, to add to the fun and games. But Valennen’s saddled with those enormous mountains along the whole west coast, where the main winds come from. What little water the interior’s got will blow away eastward over the Sea of Ehur, while clouds off the Argent Ocean crash on the Worldwall. Now shut your meat hatch and let’s tramp.”
They sensed that he meant it and obeyed. For some reason he recalled a remark which Goddard Hanshaw had once made to him:
’’You Ishtarians seem to have such a natural-born discipline that you don’t need any spit-and-polish—hell, your organized units like in the army hardly seem to need any drill. Only, is ‘discipline’ the right word? I think it’s more a, well, a sensitivity to nuances, an ability to grasp what a whole group is doing and be an intelligent part of it… Okay, I reckon we humans catch on faster to certain ideas than you do, concepts involving three-dimensional space, for instance. But you’ve got more, uh, a higher social IQ.” He had grinned. “A theory unpopular on Earth. Intellectuals hate to admit that beings who have wars and taboos and the rest can be further evolved than their own noble selves, who obviously have none.”
Larreka remembered the words in the English which had been used. Fascinated by humans since their first arrival, he had seen as much of them as he could manage and learned everything about them and from them that he was able. This was rather more than he let on to his followers or his brother officers; it wouldn’t have fitted his character as a rough, tough old mudfoot. Language had been no problem to a fellow who’d knocked around half the globe and always quickly found how to ask local people for directions, help, food, beer, housing, sex, whatever he wanted. Besides, English was very narrow in range and choice of sounds. Humans could never match the voice or hearing of even a male Ishtarian. He admired them for plowing their way through Sehalan anyhow.
When they were so pitifully short-lived, too. A single sixty-four or less, and they needed special medicines to keep their strength. Before the end of the second sixty-four, that was no help either… Larreka unconsciously quickened his pace a bit. He wanted to enjoy his friends while he had them.
More urgent was his errand among them. He carried evil news.
Primavera was houses and other buildings along asphalt streets shaded by the red and yellow foliage of big old native trees which had been left in place when the area was originally cleared, their soil tended to keep them alive amidst alien growth. It rose in gentle slopes from a landing on the Jayin where boats docked and vessels of Ishtarian river traffic paid calls; the inhabitants manufactured a few articles like rot-proof fabrics to trade for many of their needs. They built largely in native materials, wood, stone, brick—though the glass they made was superior to anything of Beronnen—and added light bright paint. A road ran east, vanishing over a ridge, eventually to reach the spacefield, A kilometer outside of town it passed by the airport, where flyers were kept for long-range transportation. Around home people used groundcars, cycles and feet.
Ishtarians were too common in Primavera to draw special attention unless they were individually well-known. Larreka only was to long-term residents. And not many persons were outdoors at this hour, when adults were at work and children in school. He had reached Stubbs Park, was about to short-cut through it and grab a drink of water at the fountain in the middle, before he was hailed.
First, he heard the purr of a large flywheeler at high speed, followed by a squeal of braking. To drive like that in town would have been unforgivably reckless in most, but not quite all. He wasn’t surprised to recognize Jill Conway’s throaty shout.
“Larreka! Old Sugar Uncle himself! Hi there!” She unsnapped her safety harness, sprang from the saddle and out between the roll bars, left the vehicle balanced while she hurled herself into his arms.
At length, “M-m-m,” she murmured, stood back, cocked her head, and surveyed him centimeter by centimeter. “You’re looking good. Worked some fat off, have you? But why the deuce didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d’ve baked a cake.”
“Maybe that was why,” he teased in her English.
“Aw, switch it off, will you? The trouble with a lifespan like yours is you develop no sense of time. My culinary disasters didn’t happen yesterday, they were twenty years ago. I’m a grown lady now, people keep wistfully telling me, and you’ll be surprised how well I cook. I must admit, you never did anything more heroic than eat those things a little girl made for her Sugar Uncle.”
They smiled at each other, a gesture common to both species though human lips curved rather than quirked upward. Larreka returned her searching gaze. They’d swapped radiograms and sometimes talked directly by phone, but hadn’t met in the flesh for seven years, since the Zera Victrix went to Valennen. He’d been kept busy by worsening natural conditions and the rise of banditry to take leave, while she’d first been studying hard, then embarking on her own career. When little was yet known about the ecology of Beronnen and the Iren Archipelago to the south, he couldn’t blame her for choosing to do research in their congenial environments. In fact, he would have been distressed had she decided to investigate the greater mysteries of Valennen. That continent wasn’t safe any longer, and Jill was among his loves.
She’d changed. In a hundred years of close acquaintance with humans, close friendships with several, Larreka had learned to tell them apart as well as they could themselves, person by person or year by year. He had left her a lanky, late-maturing adolescent who had scarcely outgrown a tomboyishness which, no doubt, he had helped foster. Today she was indeed adult.
