World without Stars (8 page)

I told him.

He whistled. “Looks like the Herd’s found you out.”

“The what?”

“The Shkil. You remember. I’ve about decided it translates best as ‘Herd.’ What’d you say they call themselves?”

“The Niao. With somebody else in charge that they name as Ai Chun.”

“Um. The downdevils, I suppose. My own translation again, of an Azkashi word that means somethin’ like ‘the evil ones in the
depths.’ Only I thought the downdevils were a set of pagan gods, as contrasted with the local religion where the galaxy’s
the one solitary original God, beware of imitations.”

Valland’s lightness was not matched by his tone. I realized with a jolt that this was putting him in a bad fiix. What with
the strain of the past hours, trying to unravel Gianyi’s intent, we’d forgotten that our shipmate was among people who hated
and feared those I was to depart with.

And … surely the Pack had watchers by the edge of wilderness.

“We can hardly avoid going,” I said, “but we’ll stall till you can return here.”

“Well, I’ll try. Hang on a bit.”

There followed some ugly noises.

“Hugh!” I cried. “Hugh, are you there?”

The rain had stopped, and silence grew thick in the hut. Gianyi muttered through the dwarf to his unknown masters. I sat and
cursed.

Finally, breathlessly, Valland said:

“Matters peaked in an awful hurry. Ya-Kela figured treachery. He called in his goons and wanted to put me to the question,
as I believe the polite term is. I pointed out that I could shoot my way clear. He said I’d have to sleep eventually and then
he’d get me. I said no, I’d start right back to camp if need be, might not make it but I’d sure give him a run for his money.
Only look, old pal, I said, let’s be reasonable. My people don’t know anything about the downdevils. Maybe they’ve been tricked.
If so, I’ll want your help to rescue them, and between us we can strike a hefty blow. Or suppose the worst, suppose my people
decide to collaborate with the enemy because they offer a better deal. Then I’ll be worth more to you as a hostage than a
corpse. I got him calmed down. Now he wants to lecture me at length about how bad the downdevils are.”

“Try to explain the idea of neutrality,” I said. “Uh, Hugh, are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“No,” he said. “Are you sure for yourself?”

I tried to answer, but my throat tightened up on me.

“We’re both in a bad spot,” Valland said, “and I wouldn’t be surprised but what yours is worse. Ya-Kela swore by his God he
won’t hurt me as long as I keep my nose clean. I won’t be a prisoner, exactly; more like a guest who isn’t permitted to leave.
I think he’ll stand by that. I’ve already handed him my gun, and still he’s lettin’ me finish before he sequestrates the radio.
So I ought to be safe for the time bein’. You go ahead and sound out the whosits—Ai Chun. You’ve got to. Once you’re back,
we’ll parley.”

I tried to imagine what it had been like, standing in a cave full of wolves and surrendering one’s only weapon on the strength
of a promise. I couldn’t.

T
HE GALLEY
walked fast over the water. Except for creak and splash of oars, soft thutter of a coxswain’s drum, an occasional low-voiced
command, it was too silent for my liking. Torches lit the deck built across the twin hulls. But when Rorn and I stood at the
rail, we looked into murk. Even with goggles, we saw only the galaxy and its wave-splintered glade; the accompanying canoes
were too far out.

Rorn’s gaunt features were shadow and flicker beside me. “We’re facing something more powerful than you maybe realize,” he
said.

I rested my hand on my gun butt. Its knurls comforted me. “How so?” I asked.

“Those boats which first came, and ran away. They must have been from the place we’re headed for now. What’s its name again?”

“Prasiyo, I think.”

“Well, obviously they simply chanced on us, in the course of fishing or whatever. The crews were ordinary unspecialized Niao,
we saw that. But they didn’t take the responsibility of meeting us. No, they reported straight back to Prasiyo. Now normally,
you know, given a generally human-type instinct pattern, a technological-geographical situation like this one makes for individualism.”

I nodded. Tyranny gets unstable when a cheap boat can pace a warship and there’s a wilderness for dissatisfied people to vanish
into. The Niao had not fled us because of timidity. Their harrying of the Azkashi proved otherwise. So the Niao must
like
being subservient.

“Nevertheless,” Rorn continued, “it took some while before this delegation arrived. That means it had to be organized. Authorized.
Which means word had to get back to a distant front office.”

“Now that needn’t take long, given telepathy.”

“My exact point. The masters therefore debated the matter at length and took their time preparing to contact us. There’s also
the business of the Yonder language having been preserved so long and carried so far. What these clues point to is: we’re
on the marches of a very big and very old empire.”

I was surprised. Rorn hadn’t seemed capable of reasoning so clearly. “Makes a good working hypothesis, anyhow,” I said. “Well,
if we can get them to help us, fine. They’ll have more resources, more skills of the kind we need, than the Pack does. Of
course, first we have to get Hugh back into camp with us.”

Rorn spat.

“You don’t like him, do you?” I asked.

“No. A loudmouthed oaf.”

“He’s your crewfellow,” I reminded him.

“Yes, yes. I know. But if matters should come to a pass—if we can only save ourselves, the whole remaining lot of us, by abandoning
him—it won’t weigh on my conscience.”

“How would you like to be on the receiving end of that philosophy?” I snapped. “We orbit or crash together!”

Rorn was taken aback. “I didn’t mean—Captain, please don’t think I—”

Ghostlike in his robes and hat, Gianyi glided to me. “I have thought you might be shown the ship,” he offered.

We were both relieved at the interruption, as well as interested in a tour, and followed him around the deck. The cabin assigned
us was pretty bare. The others, for Gianyi and three more Niao of similar rank, were a curious blend of austere furnishing
with ornate painted and carved decoration. I noticed that two symbols recurred. One was a complicated
knot, the other a sort of double swastika with a circle superimposed. I asked about them.

Gianyi bowed deep. “The knot is the emblem of the Ai Chun,” he said.

“And this?”

He traced a sign on his breast. “The
miaicho
bound fast by the power of the solar disc.”

A few minutes later, I observed that helmsmen and lookouts wore broad hats with that second insigne on them. I asked why.
Gianyi said it was protection against the miaicho.

Rorn was quick to understand. He pointed at the immense spiral in heaven. “That?”

“Yes,” Gianyi said. “Its banefulness is great when there is no sun at the same time. We would not have crossed the water tonight
had the Ai Chun not commanded.”

So, I thought, the God of the Azkashi was some kind of demon to the Niao. Just as the Niao’s venerated Ai Chun were the downdevils
of the Pack …

Gianyi made haste to take us below. The hull, like everything else, was well built. No metal anywhere, of course; ribs and
planks were glued, then clinched with wooden pegs. Construction must have been a major job. Gianyi admitted there was just
this one ship on the lake; otherwise only canoes were needed, to fish and to keep the savages in their place. But whole fleets
plied the oceans, he said. I was prepared to believe him after he showed me some very fine objects, ceramic and plastic as
well as polished stone.

The crew intrigued me most. The rowers worked in several shifts on a well ventilated, lantern-lit deck. They were all of a
kind, with short legs, grotesquely big arms and shoulders, mere stumps of tail. Some fighters were on board too, like the
colossus I had already seen. To our questions, Gianyi replied that other types of Niao existed, such as divers and paddy workers.
He himself belonged to the intellectual stock.

“You may only breed within your own sort?” I asked.

“There is no law needed,” Gianyi said. “Who would wish to mate with one so different, or keep alive a young which was not
a good specimen? Unless, of course, the Ai Chun command it. They sometimes desire hybrids. But that is for the good of all
the Niao.”

When I had unraveled that this was what he had actually said, and explained to Rorn, my companion reflected in our own tongue:
“‘The system appears to operate smoothly. But that has to be because hundreds, thousands of generations of selective breeding
lie behind it. Who enforced that, in the early days?” I saw him shudder. “And how?”

I had no reply. There are races with so much instinct of communality that eugenics is ancient in their cultures. But it’s
never worked long enough at a time for others, like the human race, to be significant. You get too much individual rebellion;
eventually some of the rebels get power to modify the setup, or wreck it.

So perhaps the autochthones of this planet did not have human-type minds after all?

No—because then how did you account for the Azkashi?

In spite of the temperature, we felt cold. And belowdecks was a cavern, full of glooms, lit by no more than a rare flickering
lamp. We excused ourselves and returned to our little room. It had only one sconce, but we stuck spare candles in their wax
around us.

Rorn sat down on his bedroll, knees hugged to chin, and stared at me where I stood. “I don’t like this,” he said.

“The situation’s peculiar,” I agreed, “but not necessarily sinister. Remember, the Yonderfolk suggested we might base ourselves
here.”

“They supposed we’d arrive with full equipment. Instead, we’re helpless.”

I regarded him closely. He was shivering. And he had been so competent hitherto. “Don’t panic,” I warned him. “Remember,
the worst thing that can happen to us is no more than death.”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking and—well, consider. The Ai Chun, whoever they are, haven’t much physical technology, for
lack of metal. But they’ve gone far in biology and mentalistics. Consider their routine use of telepathy, which to this day
is too unreliable for humans. Consider how they could regulate the Niao, generation after generation, until submissiveness
was built into the chromosomes. Could they do the same to us?”

“A foul notion.” I wet my lips. “But we have to take our chances.”

“Harder for me than you.”

“How so?”

He looked up. His features were drawn tight. “I’ll tell you. I don’t want to, but you’ve got to understand I’m not a coward.
It’s only that I know how terrible interference with the mind can be, and you don’t.”

I sat down beside him and waited. He drew a breath and said, fast and flat, eyes directly to the front:

“Faulty memory editing. That’s not supposed to be possible, but it was in my case. I was out in the Frontier Beta region.
A new planet, with a new med center. They didn’t yet know that the pollen there has certain psychodrug properties. I went
under the machine, started concentrating as usual, and … and I lost control. The technicians didn’t see at once that something
was wrong. By the time they did, and stopped the process— Well, I hadn’t lost everything. But what I had left was unrelated
fragments insufficient for a real personality. Worse, in a way, than total amnesia. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to wipe the
slate clean. That would be like suicide.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked when he stopped to gulp for air.

“Forty-odd years. I’ve managed to … to restructure myself. But the universe has never felt quite right. A great many
very ordinary things still have a nightmare quality to them, and—” He beat the deck with his fist. “Can you imagine going
through something like that again?”

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said.

He straightened. His aloofness came back to him. “I doubt that, captain. People have to be far closer than we are to feel
anything but a mild regret at each other’s troubles. Or so I’ve observed. I spend a lot of time observing. Now I don’t want
to talk further about this, and if you tell anyone else I’ll kill you. But take my advice and watch your mind!”

W
E CAME
to Prasiyo in darkness, and left in darkness, so to me it was only torches, shadows, sad strange noise of a horn blown somewhere
out in the night. Afterward I saw it by day, and others like it; and as I became able to ask more intelligent questions, the
Niao I met could give me better answers. Thus I learned a great deal, and never in my traveling have I met a society more
outlandish.

But that’s for the xenological files. Here I’ll just say that Prasiyo wasn’t a town, in the sense of a community where beings
lived in some kind of mutual-interest relationship, with some feeling of common tradition. Prasiyo was only a name for that
lakefront area where the docks happened to be. This made it convenient to locate certain workshops nearby. So the igloo-shaped
huts of the Niao clustered a bit thereabouts—unlike in the wide, wet agricultural region that stretched behind Lake Silence,
on and on to the ocean. Yes, and still further, because there were Niao who had been bred for pelagiculture too.

The Pack maintained a true community, in those lairs where Valland was now a prisoner. Later we found that there were other
savages, in other wild parts of the world, who did likewise. Some of them had progressed to building little villages. But
the Niao, who appeared to be civilized, had nothing of the kind anywhere. For they were the Herd, and herds don’t create nations.

Neither do gods.

Our galley didn’t go to the wharf. Instead, we moored
alongside a structure built some distance offshore: a square, massive stone pile that loomed over us in the night like a thundercloud.
Lanterns picked out soldier Niao guarding the ramparts. Helmeted and corseleted, armed with knives, pikes, bows, catapults,
they stood as if they were also stone. Gianyi and three fellow scribes conducted us off ship, in a stillness so deep that
the gangplank seemed to drum beneath our feet. The blind dwarf scuttled after us. They all bent low in reverence to the gate.