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CHAPTER TWO

Justina Magna stepped out of her tent and shivered in the cold night air. She was fully clothed, but the clothes she was wearing were those which she had worn through the day, with only a light jacket added as the night-dark approached. She stood quite still for a moment, steeling herself against the chill, and then walked on. Overhead, the stars shone brightly. Here in the fringes of the Syrene the air was crystal-clear.

The camp was very still. There were two sets of guards posted, one set by the escort that had been hired to protect the trade caravan in Pir, the other posted by her own party from the platoon of soldiers which accompanied it. The wagons of the caravan were set apart from the wagons which the humans had brought from Omer. Neither the veir clansman who was in charge of the caravan nor his hired mercenaries trusted the humans, and the humans trusted them even less. Nevertheless, both parties had agreed to travel together for mutual protection against the er’kresha while they moved slowly toward Ziarat. Lieutenant Verdi, the officer in charge of the platoon, had protested this decision on the grounds that riding with armed veich might prove more dangerous than any visitation from reckless bandits, but his protest had been set aside. Cesar Scapaccio, whose expedition it was, was well enough aware that the veich held the real power in Azreon, and that here the war had to be conducted in a more diplomatic manner.

Justina Magna passed the sentry who was watching the scrub land to the east. His eyes tracked her as she walked away from him, but she ignored him. Farther down the line she found Sergeant Garstone, apparently engaged in watching the sentry. She offered him a cigarette, and he declined. His pale eyes looked down at her, illuminated by the gleam of a lantern that hung from a hook on one of the struts of the wagon’s cupola.

“No sign of restless natives?” she asked, the mockery in her tone only just perceptible.

“No,” he replied shortly.

“Surely no gang of desert savages is going to attack us?” she said. “With the kind of firepower we have we could stand off a small army.”

“Maybe they don’t know that,” he pointed out.

“The worst of these long nights,” she commented, “is the cold. Even out here in the desert, by the time the night-dark comes it’s positively bitter...and then by day we fry in the sun. If Haidra rotated on its axis a little more quickly the people here wouldn’t be so damned miserable.”

Because there was no question in the speech, Garstone felt no obligation to reply.

“You’re not very talkative,” observed the woman.

“No,” agreed the sergeant.

“I couldn’t sleep. I suppose you never really acclimatize to new temporal rhythms. I’ve been here ten years, in Earthly terms. A third of my life. And still I can’t adjust to a forty-hour day and a culture which operates on the basis of taking seven hours sleep in the middle of the night and another seven in the middle of the day. I guess that once the world of your birth has imprinted its own rhythm on your chemistry nothing can change it. It seems that even people who are born on alien worlds never really fit in...maybe it’s something in our genes. What do you think?”

“I think you’re missing your soft bed,” said Garstone tersely. “Anyone can adjust to anything.”

“But you’re not asleep, are you?” she countered. “And it’s not as if it were your turn to stand watch. Or does the army always set sentries to watch its sentries?”

“I don’t need much sleep,” said the sergeant.

The woman licked her lips, tasting the metallic dust which had settled there since she removed the veil that had guarded her mouth and nose during the long trek. Garstone watched her, sharing her sensation. The taste of the silvery dust was something they all knew by now, and would know much more intimately in the long months to come.

“Why are you here, Sergeant Garstone?” she asked.

“I was ordered to come.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

She looked at him speculatively. “Don’t you think you’re being unnecessarily rude?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Are you a misogynist?” she inquired ironically.

“I’m a noncommissioned officer,” he replied, with a certain amount of sour wit. “If you want to ask questions that touch on matters of military security, you’d better ask Lieutenant Verdi.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Ask him when he wakes up.”

“He’d only say that he’s doing his duty and following orders. He’d imply, as you do, that this whole affair is a stupid waste of time and that he wishes he were back in barracks waiting for the war to recall him to its bosom. But if Command Haidra really felt like that they’d have turned down Scapaccio’s request for military escort. In fact, initially they did turn it down. What do you think made them change their minds?”

“They didn’t bother to tell me. Probably a simple matter of protocol. Scapaccio is a colonel of sorts, even if he’s an off-worlder not on active service. He probably bullied a few captains and majors at Command Base into juggling the paperwork so that he got his platoon without anyone at the top of the tree knowing or caring.”

“Maybe,” said Justina Magna, staring out into the night and taking a last draw from her cigarette. “And maybe not.”

“Why bother?” asked the sergeant. “You’re getting what you want out of the trip. You’re getting a nice long holiday in the wilderness to appreciate the desert flowers and the moonbeams. You’ve got away from the Base and its routines. You might be in on Scapaccio’s exciting archaeological discoveries—buried treasure from a million years ago. You might even get to see your loyal protectors shoot up a few of the locals. Then again, there’s the fabulous exotic city of Ziarat, straight out of some ancient mythology. Enjoy yourself.”

“You can be quite articulate when you try,” she said. “All you need is warming up a bit. And that’s a good philosophy you’re peddling. If only you could take it into your own heart. But you don’t like any of this, do you? You hate the desert, you hate Scapaccio, you despise Delizia and you don’t like having to associate with so many unpacified veich. Sometimes I suspect that you don’t even like having to associate with me.”

“Should I?”

“That depends,” she said. “I’d say you should...but I’m prejudiced.”

She turned, with the air of one who has emerged victorious from a battle of wits. She swung her hips deliberately as she walked away.

“Whore,” muttered Garston. He ran his hand up and down the barrel of his rifle, and almost began to hope that there would be an attack before it was time to move on. He was a patient man—as a soldier, he had been trained for patience—but even the most phlegmatic temperament builds up frustrations that need action to be released.

* * * *

Remy teased the focusing wheel of the binoculars with his forefinger, trying to work a sharp image out of the blur where the horizon should have been. He failed. The combination of the haze and the dust defeated him, and the only thing which testified to the continued presence of the er’kresha within his field of vision was a ruddy tower of cloud which sparkled like frosted mist: the extra dust stirred up into the hot air by the plodding hooves of the er’kreshan mounts.

“Shit!” murmured Remy.

“Well?” asked Doon, who was laid out prone alongside him.

Remy passed over the binoculars. “They’re headed straight out into the Syrene,” he said. “East-nor’east. That’s where Belle Yella is, all right. The worst possible place for him to be, from our point of view.”

Doon tried to focus the binoculars, but with no greater success than Remy.

“Why the hell are they heading into the desert?” asked Madoc, who was standing a few meters away, screened by the rock on which Remy and Doon were perched.

“According to Yerema,” said Remy dully, “there are two reasons. First, because the range of mountains in the heart of the Syrene is in some way sacred to them—nobody lives there, but the er’kresha have always regarded it as being in some way the centerpiece of their mythical empire. Secondly because it’s wild and desolate and completely private—an excellent place for working miracles.”

“I don’t see that it’s any better for miracles than anywhere else,” muttered Doon.

“According to the Calvar scholars, as told to Yerema,” said Remy, “the er’kresha have various stereotyped ideas about what constitutes a miracle. One of them is bringing rain to make the desert bloom.”

Doon lowered the binoculars and squinted out over the flat plain of gray sand and bronzed rock, patched here and there with black thorn bushes and spined grasses. “Now that would be a miracle,” he said.

“It rains there sometimes,” said Remy. “But in the mountains the dice are loaded in Belle Yella’s favor. Nobody lives there on a permanent basis, as I said, so nobody can testify to the regularity of its circumstances, but Yerema figures that it rains there every year just as it rains in the north and the south and the east. When the cloud blows in from the east at the end of summer the mountains drive it up and precipitate a downpour. That’s why the rivers flowing through the Syrene fill up with water again after the summer drought. The mountains are surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert in every direction, but they themselves have a somewhat more benevolent climate. What’s happening out there is that Belle Yella’s cultists are slowly gathering acolytes and witnesses, who are going to spend a lot of time praying bareheaded in the noonday until they’re hallucinating visions and revelations on a regular basis. Then Belle Yella will make rain and force the desert to bloom, and his followers will proclaim him the next best thing to God. Then the support will rally in no uncertain terms, and the war will be on. When people need miracles, they can find them easily enough. The Calvars reckon they know enough about er’kreshan history and oral tradition to write a script for this whole stupid crusade.”

“So what do we do?” asked Madoc.

Remy and Doon turned to look back at him, but made no move to scramble down from their coign of vantage.

“The sioconi say that the end of summer is already here. I don’t know how long it will be before Belle Yella’s miracle arrives on schedule, but we may have between twelve and twenty days. I don’t think we have any alternative but to go into the Syrene heartland after him. It isn’t going to be easy getting to him in that sort of territory, while he’s surrounded by several hundred crazy followers, but I reckon it’s a better bet than one of his assassins getting to the king in Ziarat. With luck, the er’kresha in the mountains will be preoccupied with spiritual affairs—and they certainly won’t be expecting visitors. But it’s not a job we can look forward to.”

“What about Yamba’s so-called army?” asked Doon. “They haven’t done a damn thing except police the streets of Ziarat since the king and the Calvars started using us for all important operations. Couldn’t we give this one back to him?”

“They couldn’t do it,” said Remy. “And it would show us in one hell of a had light. Yamba and his friends hate us enough as it is for what we’ve done. If we turn our back on the first major crisis—a crisis which our coming here has helped to precipitate—we lose virtually all of our influence in Ziarat. That would be fatal. This is our problem even more than Ziarat’s, and we have to solve it.”

“So what kind of force do you propose taking into the desert?” inquired Madoc. “Half a dozen commandos—or a small army?”

Remy adjusted the veil that masked the lower part of his face. Then he moistened his lips with his tongue.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “We’ll have to make plans back in Ziarat. I think Yerema will want to lead this one himself.”

Doon, meanwhile, had put the field glasses back to his eyes and was staring into the distance—not to the east, where the er’kresha had disappeared, but to the south.

“Riders,” he said, passing the binoculars back to Remy. “They’re ours.”

Remy had no difficulty in picking out the approaching men, riding Calvar beasts at a gallop. That didn’t augur well for their reasons. The animals brought by the Calvars from Omer, which Remy thought of for the sake of convenience as “horses” though they were not of Earthly stock, were bred for endurance and for the ability to work well in desert conditions, not for fast speed over short distances. They were longer in the leg and faster than the indigenous species that filled the same ecological and cultural niche, but they were usually ridden hard only in a fight or a pursuit.

One of the riders was a veir, the other a siocon—both were trusted men within Yerema’s private army.

Remy waved a signal to the approaching men, and the veir, Subala, waved back. The two slowed their mounts appreciably, and Remy jumped from the top of the rock into the saddle of his own horse, which shied uneasily at the shock of his abrupt arrival. Doon got down and mounted in a more conventional manner, and the three rode back the way they had come toward the rough desert trail. They met the riders at the bottom of the shallow slope, where the road—such as it was—led away across the coarse sandy soil toward Ziarat.

Iasus Fiemme, the siocon, handed Remy a folded piece of paper. Remy got down before opening it, and the alien also dismounted. “The news was transmitted from Pir by radio,” said Fiemme. “It’s several days old now. We picked it up in a small village three hours to the south.”

Remy read it through, and then looked pensively at the siocon. The other was a fraction taller than he, but seemed very spare and gaunt by comparison with Remy’s stocky figure. Though Remy’s skin had been burned dark brown by the sun there was still a contrast in coloring, for the siocon’s brown skin had an odd bluish tint. His bald head carried a series of lateral ridges, and his eyes were very dark, protected from the morning sun by a natural shield which had evolved in the sioconi from a nictitating membrane owned by one of their distant ancestor species. He was, of course, veiled against the fine corrosive dust, but his veil was dyed to match the color of his skin. The sioconi and the er’kresha were members of the same species, but the er’kresha were, on average, considerably shorter and more bony in the features.

“We’ve got enough trouble as it is,” said Remy, “without this. What does Yerema suggest we do about it?”

“He wants you to ride north and meet them,” answered Fiemme. “Help escort them to Ziarat. Find out what they’re here for. I’m to come with you. Subala will take your report back to Yerema now, so that he can consider the matter of what to do about Belle Yella.”

“Those instructions came verbally, along with this?” said Remy, holding up the paper.

“That’s right,” replied Fiemme.

“I suppose he realizes that I might not exactly be welcome with these people? I am a deserter from the human army, when all is said and done.”

To that Fiemme made no reply.

“What is it?” asked Doon, leaning forward from the saddle as he tried to catch a glimpse of the paper. It would have done him no good—the message was written in the language of the clans.

“A ship from Omer docked at Pir some days ago,” said Remy dourly. “It was carrying Calvar trade goods, and also half a dozen wagons, an assortment of horses and something like twenty humans, mostly soldiers. They’re heading for Ziarat with a Calvar caravan.”

“Doesn’t exactly sound like an invasion force,” said Doon. “Wagons and horses instead of lorries and tanks. Must be figuring on a long stay with no support from home. Why didn’t Command fly them over?”

“I don’t know,” said Remy.

“Maybe more recruits for the cause?” suggested Madoc.

“On the other hand,” said Remy, “they may have come to arrest us all and take us back for trial.”

“They’ve never made a habit of chasing deserters,” Madoc pointed out, though with some unease in his voice. “It’s never been policy—not worth the trouble. They’ve always worked on the theory that if people want to go native they can.”

“Well,” said Remy, “we could find out. The caravan can’t be more than a day’s ride north of here. Yerema wants me to find out what they’ve come here for. You want to come? Or would you rather ride south with Subala?”

“Do they have any women?” asked Doon.

“It doesn’t say.”

“I’ll ride with you anyhow.”

“Me too,” said Madoc. “Why not? They’re hardly likely to shoot us down on sight.”

Remy folded the piece of paper and put it carefully away into his pocket. Then he swung himself back up into the saddle. Remy remembered the last time that he had seen army uniforms, during the last months of what Command Haidra referred to in its communications as “the pacification.” The real purpose of the operation had been to bring the civilian veich who had settled in Omer under the direct control of a human governing council whose job was to make sure that their surplus wealth went to a good cause—the human war effort. Remy had done his own bit toward the pacification through a long year of police work interrupted by occasional skirmishes. In ten years since his desertion he had frequently recalled all the key incidents of that year—his first real encounter with the war. The fighting which he had done after the first landing on Haidra had been brief, and he had seen no direct action except for having to defend the troop ships against aerial attack with the aid of a laser cannon. That had seemed to him to be a very impersonal mode of combat. The pacification had been different.

“All right,” he said, when Iasus Fiemme had mounted. “We’d better move on. Subala—you ride with us for a couple of miles and I’ll tell you what to report to Yerema. There isn’t much to add to what he already knew we’d find.”

He turned his mount to face north, and urged it into a slow walk.

On the ships, he remembered, Command Interstellar made a point of spreading slogans through the troops to help their thinking run along the right grooves. You can’t escape the war, said one of those slogans. There isn’t any world big enough to be a bolt-hole.

So much for military philosophy.