Poul Anderson - The Long Night

Manuel reached over and took her hand. “It’s done, Kathryn,” he said quietly. “We can go home now.”

He added after a moment, as if to himself: “Hate is a useful means to an end but damned dangerous. We’ll have to get the racist complex out of mankind. We can’t conquer anyone, even the Gorzuni, and keep them as inferiors and hope to have a stable empire. All races must be equal.” He rubbed his strong square chin. “I think I’ll borrow a leaf from the old Romans. All worthy individuals, of any race, can become terrestrial citizens. It’ll be a stabilizing factor.”

“You,” I said, with a harshness in my throat, “are a megalomaniac.” But I wasn’t sure any longer.

It was winter in Earth’s northern hemisphere when the Revenge came home. I walked out into snow that crunched under my feet and watched my breath smoking white against the clear pale blue of the sky. A few others had come out with me. They fell on their knees in the snow and kissed it. They were a wild-looking gang, clad in whatever tatters of garment they could find, the men bearded and long-haired, but they were the finest, deadliest fighting crew in the Galaxy now. They stood there looking at the gentle sweep of hills, at blue sky and ice-flashing trees and a single crow hovering far overhead, and tears froze in their beards.

Home.

We had signalled other units of the Navy. Some would come along to pick us up soon and guide us to the secret base on. Mercury, and there the fight would go on. But now, just now in this eternal instant we were home.

I felt weariness like an ache in my bones. I wanted to crawl bear-like into some cave by a murmuring river, under the dear tall trees of Earth, and sleep till spring woke up the world again. But as I stood there with the thin winter wind like a cleansing bath around me, the tiredness dropped off. My body responded to the world which two billion years of evolution had shaped it for and I laughed aloud with the joy of it.

We couldn’t fail. We were the freemen of Terra fighting for our own hearthfires and the deep ancient strength of the planet was in us. Victory and the stars lay in our hands, even now, even now.

I turned and saw Kathryn coming down the airlock gangway. My heart stumbled and then began to race. It had been so long, so terribly long. We’d had so little time but now we were home, and she was singing.

Her face was grave as she approached me. There was something remote about her and a strange blending of pain with the joy that must be in her too. The frost crackled in her dark unbound hair, and when she took my hands her own were cold.

“Kathryn, we’re home,” I whispered. “We’re home, and free, and alive. O Kathryn, I love you!”

She said nothing, but stood looking at me forever and forever until Manuel Argos came to join us. The little stocky man seemed embarrassed—the first and only time I ever saw him quail, even faintly.

“John,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you something.”

“It’ll keep,” I answered. “You’re the captain of the ship. You have authority to perform marriages. I want you to marry Kathryn and me, here, now, on Earth.”

She looked at me unwaveringly, but her eyes were blind with tears. “That’s it, John,” she said, so low I could barely hear her. “It won’t be. I’m going to marry Manuel.”

I stood there, not saying anything, not even feeling it yet.

“It happened on the voyage,” she said, tonelessly. “I tried to fight myself, I couldn’t. I love him, John. I love him even more than I love you, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

“She will be the mother of kings,” said Manuel, but his arrogant words were almost defensive. “I couldn’t have made a better choice.”

“Do you love her too,” I asked slowly, “or do you consider her good breeding stock?” Then: “Never mind. Your answer would only be the most expedient. We’ll never know the truth.”

It was instinct, I thought with a great resurgence of weariness. A strong and vital woman would pick the most suitable mate. She couldn’t help herself. It was the race within her and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Bless you, my children,” I said.

They walked away after awhile, hand in hand under the high trees that glittered with ice and sun. I stood watching them until they were out of sight. Even then, with a long and desperate struggle yet to come, I think I knew that those were the parents of the Empire and the glorious Argolid dynasty, that they carried the future within them.

And I didn’t give a damn.

Thus Manuel Argos, a hero as unconventional as van Rijn, traded the iron cellar of slavery for the vitryl ring of mastery. He found the imperial signet a perfect fit for his heavy hand.

The. Terran Empire he proclaimed was eagerly welcomed as a force for interstellar peace. Both ravaged worlds and those that had escaped harm chose to join the new imperium. Terra’s protection brought security without loss of local autonomy. At its zenith, the Empire ruled 100,000 inhabited systems within a sphere four hundred light-years in diameter.

But size and complexity could not avert the doom that ultimately faces any human enterprise. The original worthy goal of security became a crippling obsession, especially after Terra collided with, furiously ambitious Merseia. Worries about foes without masked decadence within. Knaves and fools sought to preserve their threatened authority by unjust means. To many thirty-first century citizens, the vaunted Pax Terrena had become a Pax Tyrannica.

Yet despite the impossible odds against them, the stub bornly independent settlers of Freehold vowed that Terra would not make of their world a desert, and call it peace.

“No dragons are flying—”

Karlsarm looked up. The fog around him was as yet thin enough that he could glimpse the messenger. Its wings sickled across nightblue and those few stars—like diamond Spica and amber Betelgeuse—which were too bright and near to be veiled. So deep was the. stillness that he heard the messenger’s feathers rustle.

“Good,” he murmured. “As I hoped.” Louder: “Inform Mistress Jenith that she can get safely across open ground now. She is to advance her company to Gallows Wood on the double. There let someone keep watch from a treetop, but do not release the fire bees without my signal. Whatever happens.”

The sweet, unhuman voice of the messenger trilled back his order.

“Correct,” Karlsarm said. The messenger wheeled and flew northward.

“What was that?” Wolf asked.

“Enemy hasn’t got anyone aloft, far as Rowlan’s scouts can tell,” Karlsarm replied. “I instructed—”

“Yes, yes,” growled his lieutenant. “I do know Anglic, if not bird language. But are you sure you want to keep Jenith’s little friends in reserve? We might have no casualties at all if they went in our van.”

“But we’d have given away another secret. And we may very badly want a surprise to spring, one of these times. You go tell Mistress Randa the main body needs maximum cover. I’m after a last personal look. When I get back, we’ll charge.”

Wolf nodded. He was a rangy man, harsh-faced, his yellow hair braided. His fringed leather suit did not mark him off for what he was, nor did his weapons; dirk and tomahawk were an ordinary choice. But the two great hellhounds that padded black at his heels could only have followed the Grand Packmaster of the Wind-hook.

He vanished into fog and shadow. Karlsarm loped forward. He saw none of his hundreds, but he sensed them in more primitive ways. The mist patch that hid them grew tenuous with distance, until it lay behind the captain. He stopped, shadow-roofed by a lone sail tree, and peered before and around him.