Poul Anderson - The Boat of a Million Years

You wouldn’t have thought of these beings as artists. Barrel torsos, some one hundred fifty centimeters tall on four stumpy limbs, covered with big scales or flaps, brown and leathery, that could individually lift to show a soft pink un-dersurface for fluid intake, excretion, sensing; no head to speak of, a bulge on top where a mouth underlay one scale and four retractable eyestalks protruded; four tentacles below, each terminating in four digits, that could be stiffened at will by turgor. But how repulsive did a body look that was scaleless as a flayed corpse? The humans took care always to be fully clothed among Xenogaians.

Rapidly driven, the boat passed several galleys bound the same way, then numbers of lesser craft “fishing” or freighting. None were going downstream; the tide had begun to flow, and although the moon was fairly distant today, the bore up the river would be considerable. At ebb the argosies would set forth. This was a seafaring nation (?) whose folk hunted great aquatic beasts and harvested great weed fields, traded around the coasts and among the islands, occasionally fought pirates or barbarians or whatever their enemies were. As tactfully as possible, the six at Hestia refused to give any military aid. They didn’t know the rights or wrongs, they only knew that this appeared to be the most advanced civilization on the planet but someday they’d want to start getting acquainted with more. Of course, doubtless .their local friends had found uses both warlike and peaceful for what they acquired from them.

A pair of hours slipped by. On the south side, forest gave way to orchards and croplands. Foliage drooped sere. On die north, while hills heightened in the background, bluffs declined to gentle slopes. Towers came into hazy view, grew clearer, loomed sheer above masts crowded along the wharfs; and Aliyat went ashore into Xenoknossos.

Warded by stream and fleet, the city had no need of outer walls. Along wide, clean streets, colonnades and facades rose intricately sculptured. Glass flashed in color patterns of contrasting simplicity. The effect was not busy but harmonious, airy, like trees and vines in wind or kelp in currents, undersea, strange to behold on a world that dragged so heavily. The raucous turbulence of human crowds was absent. Dwellers moved deliberately; even the looks and remarks that followed Aliyat were decorous. It was their voices that danced, twittered, strove, joined together—their voices and the sounds of instruments from places where they took their pleasure.

Not all was thus. Climbing a hill, she saw down to a camp outside the city, a wretched huddle of makeshift shelters. The beings within stood ominously bunched. Armed guards were posted about. Chill touched her. This must, somehow, be the reason she was called.

On the hilltop fountained the building she knew as the Halidom. Its stone had weathered pale amber. Nothing like its interwoven, many-branched vaults and arches, spiral wm-dows and calyx eaves, was ever on Earth. Imagination yonder had never ranged in those directions. When the images arrived, architecture, together with musk and poesy and much else, might well have a rebirth, if anybody still cared about such things.

S’saa accompanied her inside. A chamber vast and dim opened before them. The mighty of Xenoknossos had gathered, expectant, in a half circle before a dais. Thereon were those three, one of each sex, who reigned or presided or led. Hearing tell of them, Hanno had from space proposed dubbing them the Triad, but later those at Hestia thought a better word might be the Triune.

She approached.

That night she radioed back from the apartment lent her. She camped in it, really, as ill suited as the furnishings were; but it served. A window was unshuttered to warm darkness, the booming of a breeze. The small horned moon tinted clouds and cast ghostly shimmers on the river. Fires burned sullen among the squatters in the field.

Exhaustion flattened her voice, though her mind had seldom felt more awake. “We’ve been at it all day,” she said. “Not that the trouble is complicated in itself, but it involves beliefs, traditions, prejudices, everything that’s so knitted into a person— Think of a pagan Celt and a pious Muslim trying to explain, to justify, the status and rights of women to each other.”

“The Ithagene did have the wisdom to ask for an outside opinion,” Patulcius remarked. “How many human societies ever did?”

“Well, this is unprecedented,” Wanderer answered from the outback. “We never had any real aliens among us on Earth. Maybe in future we’ll benefit— Go on, Aliyat.”

“It’s how they breed,” copulating in fresh water, which must be still if conception was to result; a certain concentration of certain dissolved organic materials was essential. That set no more of a handicap, on a world where most regions were normally wet, than loss of the ability to synthesize vitamin C in the body had done for her species. “You remember, the city people use that lake in the hills behind town.” Holy Lake became the human name, for it seemed lovemaking was a religious rite in this society. “Well, throughout the hinterlands, most others have dried up to the point where they’re useless. The habitants have gotten together and demand access to Holy Lake till the drought’s over. It’s badly shrunken too, but enough is left for everybody if triples ration their turns.” Aliyat’s laugh clanked. “How that would go over with our race! But of course the Ithagene don’t think of it the way we do. What has the Xenoknossians up in arms is the thought of ... outsiders profaning their particular mystery, the presence of their, their tutelary spirit or god or whatever it is. The Triune told the countryfolk to go home and wait out the bad times. They shouldn’t breed anyway till the rains come again. But you know about the sacred Year-Births—”

“Yes,” Tu Shan said. “Besides, they live primitively, infant mortality is always high, they feel they must be fecund whatever happens.”

“The realm, this whole section of Minoa, is close to civil war,” Aliyat told them. “There’ve been killings. Now the, uh, tribes have jointly sent two or three thousand here, who insist that soon, come what may, they’ll go to the lake. Nothing can stop them, short of a massacre. Nobody wants that, but to give in could tear things apart almost as terribly.”

Macandal whistled low. “And we had no idea. If only they’d come to us sooner.”

“I don’t suppose it occurred to them before they got desperate,” Patulcius guessed. “If we don’t find a solution fast, I suspect it will be too late.”

“That’s why you went, Aliyat.” Macandal’s tone wavered. “I gathered, from S’saa’s hints, that it concerned this kind of thing, and you, with your experience— Don’t misunderstand!”

“No offense,” Aliyat said. “I did, I hope, slowly get a feel for what’s going on, and a notion. It may be worthless.”

“Tell us,” Svoboda begged.

If you could use human words for Ithagenean emotions and make sense, Aliyat thought, then the assembly next morning was appalled. “No!” exclaimed the le of the Triune. “This is impossible!”

“Not so, Foreseers,” she maintained. “It can be quickly and easily done. Behold.” She unfolded a sheet of paper. Copied thereon, a transmission from Hestia to a machine she had earned along, was an enlarged aerial photograph of Holy Lake and its vicinity. The Ithagene didn’t object to overflights, though none had ever accepted an invitation to ride. (Did some instinct forbid, was it a prohibition, or what?) She pointed. “The lake lies as hi a bowl, fed by rain and runoff. Here, a short way below, is a hollow. Let us clear it of trees and brush, then dig a channel through the hill above. Some of the life-giving water will drain out to fill it, while enough will remain for yon after the channel is closed again. There, out of sight of your people, the countryfolk can engender according to their own customs. For you this would be a huge undertaking, but you know of our machines and explosives. We will do it for you.” Hissings and rustlings filled the, gloom. S’saa must explain to Aliyat, patching out the native language with what human speech lo commanded: “Although they are reluctant, they would agree, lest worse befall. However, they fear the habitants will refuse, will take the proposal as a deadly threat. Knowing Kth and Hru’ngg, the leaders, I think this is true. For a life-site is not any pond; it is hallowed by ancient use, by the life it has given in the past. To triple elsewhere would be to set the work) awry. The rains might never return, or the violators might never have another birth.” Dismay struck whetted. “You don’t believe that!”