Damon Knight - Orbit 16

If so, then maybe it is best that Etaa has gone, and taken my son. I only pray, to whatever true Gods may be, that they are safe, and that some day her son will return to claim his throne, and be the greatest of our kings. If she chose to leave me, I cannot blame her, for I never had the right to take her as I did. But I loved her, and I pray she will remember that too, and forgive me a little.

I often wonder if she ever loved me. If so, it was more than I deserved. But sometimes there was a look, or a sign— The hands of the summer wind are as warm and light as your touch, Etaa; it may be that your Mother has stolen you home after all. Watch over my son, and forgive his father. Give him your blessings, as you gave them to me. Etaa ... I think I will not see you again.

But come, my lords; the Godseye keeps watch on us, and the sun is already high. They say a smith may look at a king: Then let it be the last thing he ever sees!

I understand that I’m speaking today because you wondered how a “naive kid” in the Colonial Service was inspired to solve the Human Problem. The answer is simple—I loved Etaa, and Etaa was the mother of Alfilere.

You probably all remember the situation at the time. The Colonial Service had come upon the Humans not long before: an intelligent life form based on carbon rather than silicon, but oxygen breathers and compatible with roughly the same temperature range that we are. That made them another com­petitor, but only marginally; and if they were anything else but Humans, we could have expected to coexist with them. But our studies of their ongoing culture, and the scanty records of their past, indicated they were the most unrelent­ingly and irrationally aggressive species we’d ever encoun­tered. Combined with a high technology, it would have made them the most dangerous, too. We’d live in peace with them willingly enough, under the circumstances, but the question I’d always heard was whether they would live in peace with us. The majority Conservative opinion was that it wasn’t likely, and so our sector council ordered us to intervene, and stall their cultural progress. The Liberal faction in the Service objected, doing their best to prod the Human status quo, and that was how the trouble started.

I’m a xenobiologist, and at the time I was just beginning my career; I was also too inexperienced to question policy then, and so I blindly supported the majority’s stand on Humans. Especially since I’d had to live among Humans, to study (and watch) them, as the “coachman” for the God-hating king of Tramaine. When the Libs gave restricted rec­ords to the king, and then openly incited the neighboring Kotaane to war, we Conservatives retaliated by kidnapping Etaa, the king’s Kotaane mistress, and her son, his heir. I was chosen to do the actual deed, because of my strategic position— and, frankly, my naiveté. All I had to do was keep the pair safely out of the way, they told me, and at the same time I could experience my first change-study of an unknown world. ... All I had to do was spend an eternity alone, I discovered, on a desolate abandoned world with no one for company but a superstitious alien woman and a squalling alien brat. I didn’t know whether to feel honored by the responsibility, or ashamed of being used. But I did my duty, and stole her away to the outer moon.

I sent Etaa drugged wine, and shuttered all the ports; she never knew what had happened, even when I brought the shuttle down near the ruins of the dead colony and opened the lock. I watched her on the screens as she stepped outside, waiting while the first rush of stunned dismay took her. She stumbled back, clutching her child protectively against her as the cold wind gusted, swirling the drab rust-brown grit into stinging clouds. Beyond us the naked, stony slope swept upward toward the ruins of the Human town, fangs of bitter­ness snapping at the clouds. I’d seen it once before, but never like this, knowing I couldn’t leave it. My own eyes burned with the bleakness and the memory of the stinging wind. It would be hard to learn the unity of this world ... it was easy to see why the Humans had failed to.

I don’t know what thoughts were in Etaa’s mind then; only that they probably weren’t the ones I expected. But confusion and despair were on her face as she started down the ramp, the wind tugging at her long cape and stiff, ungainly skirts. Her baby had begun to cry, wailing with the wind. For the first time she was real for me, touching my emotions and stirring—pity. This was the stolen woman, used by a ruthless king, whose misery I seemed to be tied to from the start, when I’d piloted the king’s carriage in her capture. She was only another victim of the cruel and senseless schisms that divided these wretched Humans, and she’d suffer more now and never understand why, because of them, and because of us…I felt unease pull down pity: Did I have the right—? But she’d been a pawn, she would be a pawn; maybe that was her destiny, and this was mine.

I left the controls at last, bracing myself to deliver the final horror to her. I’d gotten rid of my Human makeup, and knew my form would be starting to slip after the stress of the flight. And no Human had ever seen a “God” unmasked, even a God who passed for a coachman. Avoiding the velvet cush­ions on the floor, I went to stand at the lock.

—Meron—? She turned with a gasp to stare up at me, her hands asking the question. I remembered she was a Kotaane priestess, and could hear; the speculation was that the king had taken her precisely because she could, out of his hatred for tradition. Her eyes had brightened with hope and some­thing more as she turned. It froze into terror as she saw me, and she backed away, her fingers stiffening out in a sign to ward off evil. It was too much like an obscenity popular with the king’s retainers; I almost laughed. That would have been the final cruelty. I caught it in time and only spread my hands in a peace gesture. I signed, —I will not harm you, Lady Etaa. Have no fear. She shook her head, keeping her dis­tance. I wondered what I must look like to her—a mockery of a Human made of bread dough, or clay. I ducked back into the king’s “carriage” to get my hooded jacket, thinking the more I covered the better. But as I disappeared I heard her startled cry and footsteps behind me on the ramp. She ap­peared at the lock in a swirl of dust, and dropped to her knees at my feet. —Oh, please, don’t leave me here! The baby whimpered as her signing jostled him, inside her cape. I stared down at her, stunned; but seeing my face again she faltered, as if she saw her own doom instead. Looking away, she placed her wriggling child tenderly on a red velvet cush­ion, then forced her eyes back to mine, signing, —Then have mercy on my child. Take him with you, he’s no harm to anyone! He is a prince, return him to—to his father, King Meron. You’ll be rewarded! Give him to anyone . . . but let him live—

I bent down and picked up the child; he gazed at me in fascination, and suddenly he began to laugh. Inexplicably delighted, I held him close; then, slowly, I passed him back to his mother’s arms. Hope shattered on her face, and she flinched when I touched her.

I stepped back. —Etaa, you aren’t being abandoned in this godforsaken place. I am your guardian; I’ll stay with you here, to look after you and your child. You’ve been . . . exiled, and it will be a hard life for us both. But it won’t last forever, only until—certain matters are settled in Tramaine. But it has to be this way until then; you have no choice. This is your new home.

She watched rigidly, the need to ask a hundred questions struggling against the certainty that she didn’t need to ask, but only accept, and endure, this new trial. She looked down at last, and I saw the trembling lines of her face grow quiet with resolve; she would adapt. I felt relieved, and somehow surprised.