Poul Anderson: The People of the Wind

“Let’s get to real work,” he said. “I’d like to ask specific questions about the overall state of Domain preparedness. And you’d better listen to me about what’s been going on here while you were away — through the whole bloody-be-flensed Lauran System, in fact. That’s none too good either.”

The car identified its destination and moved down. Its initial altitude was such that the rider inside glimpsed a dozen specks of ground strewn over shining waters. But when he approached they had all fallen beneath the horizon. Only the rugged cone of St Li was now visible to him.

With an equatorial diameter of a mere. 11,308 kilometers, Avalon has a molten core smaller in proportion than Terra’s; a mass of 0.63 cannot store as much heat. Thus the forces are weak that thrust land upward. At the same time, erosion proceeds fast. The atmospheric pressure at sea level is similar to the Terrestrial — and drops off more slowly with height, because of the gravity gradient — and rapid rotation makes for violent weather. In consequence, the surface is generally low, the highest peak in the Andromedas rising no more than 4500 meters. Nor does the land occur in great masses. Corona, capping the north pole and extending down past the Tropic of Swords, covers barely eight million, square kilometers, about the size of Australia. In the opposite hemisphere, Equatoria, New Africa, and New Gaiila could better be called large islands than minor continents. All else consists of far smaller islands.

Yet one feature is gigantic. Some, 2000 kilometers due west of Gray begins that drowned range whose peaks, thrusting into air, are known as Orbnesia. Southward it runs, crosses the Tropic of Spears, trails off at last not far from the Antarctic Circle. Thus it forms a true, hydrological boundary; its western side marks off the Middle Ocean, its eastern the Hesperian Sea in the northern hemisphere and the South Ocean beyond the equator. It supports a distinct ecology, incredibly rich. And thereby, after the colonization, it became a sociological phenomenon. Any eccentrics, human or Ythrian, could go off, readily transform one or a few isles, and make their own undisturbed existence.

The mainland choths were diverse in size as well as in organization and tradition. But whether they be roughly analogous to clans, tribes, baronies, religious communes, republics, or whatever, they counted their members in the thousands at least. In Oronesia there were single households which bore the name; grown and married, the younger children were expected to found new, independent societies.

Naturally, this extremism was exceptional. The Highsky folk in particular were numerous, controlling the fisheries around latitude 30° N. and occupying quite a stretch of the archipelago. And they were fairly conventional, insofar as that word has any meaning when applied to Ythrians.

The aircar landed on the beach below a compound. He who stepped out was tall, with dark-red hair, clad in sandals, kilt, and weapons.

Tabitha Falkayn had seen the vehicle descending and walked forth to meet it. “Hello, Christopher Holm,” she said in Anglic.

“I come as Arinnian,” he answered in Planha. “Luck fare beside you, Hrill.”

She smiled. “Excuse me if I don’t elaborate the occasion.” Shrewdly: “You called ahead that you wanted to see me on a public matter. That must have to do with the border crisis. I daresay your Khruath. decided that western Corona and northern Oronesia must work out a means of defending the Hesperian Sea.”

He nodded awkwardly, and his eyes sought refuge from her amusement.

Enormous overhead, sunshine brilliant off cumulus banks, arched heaven. A sailor winged yonder, scouting for schools of piscoid; a flock of Ythrian shuas flapped by under the control of a herder and his uhoths; native pteropleuron lumbered around a reef rookery. The sea rolled indigo, curled in translucent green breakers, and exploded in foam on sands nearly as white. Trawlers plied it, kilometers out. Inland the ground rose steep. The upper slopes still bore a pale emerald mat of susin; only a few kinds of shrub were able to grow past those interlocking roots. But further down the hills had been plowed. There Ythrian clustergrain rustled red, for ground cover and to feed the shuas, while groves of coconut palm, mango, orange, and pumpernickel plant lifted above to nourish the human members of Highsky. A wind blew, warm but fresh, full of salt and iodine and fragrances.

“I suppose it was felt bird-to-bird conferences would be a good idea,” Tabitha went on. “You mountaineers will have ample trouble understanding us pelagics, and vice versa, without the handicap of differing species. Ornithoids will meet likewise, hm?” Her manner turned thoughtful: “You had to be a delegate, of course. Your area has so few of your kind. But why come in person? Not that you aren’t welcome. Still, a phone call—”

“We… we may have to talk at length,” he said. “For days, off and on.” He took for granted he would receive hospitality; all choths held that a guest was sacred.

“Why me, though? I’m only a local.”

“You’re a descendant of David Falkayn.”

“That doesn’t mean much.”

“It does where I live. Besides — well, we’ve met before, now and then, at the larger Khruaths and on visits to each other’s home areas and — We’re acquainted a little. I’d not know where to begin among total strangers. If nothing else, you… you can advise me whom to consult, and introduce me. Can’t you?”

“Certainly.” Tabitha took both his hands. “Besides, I’m glad to see you, Chris.”

His heart knocked. He struggled not to squirm. What makes me this shy before her? God knew she was attractive. A few years older than he, big, strongly built, full-breasted and long of leg, she showed to advantage in a short sleeveless tunic. Her face was snubnosed, wide of mouth, its green eyes set far apart under heavy brows; she had never bothered to remove the white scar on her right cheekbone. Her hair, cropped beneath the ears, was bleached flaxen. It blew like banners over the brown, slightly freckled skin.

He wondered if she went as casually to bed as the Coronan bird girls — never with a male counterpart; always a hearty, husky, not overintelligent worker type — or if she was a virgin. That seemed unlikely. What human, perpetually in a low-grade lovetime, could match the purity of an Eyath? Yet Highsky wasn’t Stormgate or The Tarns — he didn’t know — Tabitha had no companions of her own species here where she dwelt — however, she traveled often and widely… He cast the speculation from him.

“Hoy, you’re blushing,” she laughed. “Did I violate one of your precious mores?” She released him. “If so, I apologize. But you always take these things too seriously. Relax. A social rite or a social gaffe isn’t a deathpride matter.”

Easy for her, I suppose, he thought Her grandparents were received into this choth. Her parents and their children grew up in it. A fourth of the membership must be human by now. And they’ve influenced it — like this commercial fishery she and Dtaun have started, a strictly private enterprise —

“I’m afraid we’ve no time for gaiety,” he got out. “We’ve walking weather ahead.”

“Indeed?”

“The Empire’s about to expand our way.”

“C’mon to the, house.” Tabitha took his arm and urged him toward the compound. Its thatch-roofed timber dwellings were built lower than most Ythrian homes and were sturdier than they seemed; for here was scant protection from Avalon’s hurricanes. “Oh, yes,” she said, “the empire’s been growing, vigorously since Manuel the First. But I’ve read its history. How has the territory been brought under control? Some by simple partnership — civilized non-humans like the Cynthians found it advantageous. Some by purchase or exchange. Some by conquest, yes — but always of primitives, or at most of people whose strength in space was ridiculously less than Greater Terra’s. We’re a harder gale to buck.”