Poul Anderson - A Stone in Heaven

—“It may be for the best.” Trouble was heavy in Banner’s voice. “A fuller understanding of what’s afoot may make them calmer, more cooperative. You must judge, dear.”

Yevvwl decided. She had thin choice, anyhow. “It begins to seem these star-folk are secretly readying for an outright attack on ours,” she said. “I know not why; my oath-sister has tried to make the reason clear to me, and failed. If we see that they forge the stuff of battle here, the likelihood of it heightens.”

“Attack—!” Kuzhinn gasped. “All of them together, like a pack of lopers?”

Ayon halted. His hand dropped to the blaster, his vanes and ears drew back, his pupils narrowed beyond what the glare brought about. “What are you saying among each other?” he demanded. “You do not bear yourselves like peaceful people.”

Yewwl had taken a lead in moots at home and assemblies on the Volcano for well-nigh twenty years. She relaxed her whole frame, signalled graciousness with her vanes, and purred, “I was translating, of course, but I fear I alarmed them. Remember, we are completely new to this kind of place. The high walls, the narrownesses between, light, noise, smells, vehicles rushing by, everything sets us on edge. Mention of armor has raised a fear that you—the local Ramnuans—may plan to oust us from our lands, against the coming of the Ice. Or if you plot no direct attack on us, you may mount one on neighboring barbarians. That could start a wave of invasions off westward, which would finally crash over our country.” She spread open palms. “Ai-ah, I know well it’s ridiculous. Why should you, when you already have from the humans more than what we came seeking? But it would soothe them to see what you really do make.”

—“Oh, good, good!” Banner cheered.

Ayon dropped his wariness, in a slightly contemptuous manner. “Come,” he invited.

Clangor, lividness, a vast sooty hall where natives controlled engines that cut, hammered, annealed, transported … a warehouse where rack after rack held what appeared to be helmets, corselets, arm-and legpieces, and shapes more eldritch which Banner had names for … It was as if Yewwl could feel the woman’s horror.

“You see that none of this could fit any of us,” Ayon fleered. “It is for humans. They take it elsewhere.”

—“Combat space armor; auxiliary gear; small arms components.” The Anglic words in Yewwl’s head were a terrible litany. “I suppose he’s established a score of factories on out-of-the-way worlds, none too big to be hidden or disguised—” Urgently, in the tongue of the clans: “Find out about those garments.”

“Yes, we receive cloth and tailor it to pattern,” was Ayon’s reply to Yewwl’s leading questions. “The finished clothes are alike, except in size and ornament; yes, also for humans to wear.”

—“Uniforms,” Banner nearly groaned. “Instead of making a substantial, traceable investment in automated plants, he uses native hand labor where he can, for this and the fighting equipment and—and how much else?”

Fear walked the length of Yewwl’s spine. “Oath-sister,” she asked, “have I seen enough for you?”

—“No. It’s not conclusive. Learn all you can, brave dear.” Anguish freighted the tone.

“Does this prove what you have fretted over?” Skogda breathed.

“Thus it seems,” his mother answered low. “But we need our fangs deeper in the facts, for if the thing is true, it is frightful.”

“We will take that bite,” he vowed.

Ayon led them out. “We’ve walked far,” he said. “I grow hungry, whether or not you do. We’ll return home.”

“Can we go forth again later?” Yewwl requested. “This is such a wonder.”

He rippled his vanes. “If the humans haven’t dismissed you. I’ve no hope for your errand. What under the sky can you offer them?”

“Well, could we go back by a different route?”

Ayon conceded that, and padded rapidly from the factory. Its metal clamor dwindled behind Yewwl. She looked around her with eyes that a sense of time blowing past had widened.

The tour had gone beyond the compact part of town. New structures stood well apart, surrounded by link fences and guarded by armed Ramnuans. The street was now a road, running along a high ridge from north to south, over stony, thinly snow-covered ground. Eastward, the hill was likewise bare of anything except brush, to its foot. There a frozen river gleamed. Across a bridge, Dukeston reared and roared and glared. Westward lay only night, wild valleys, tors, canyons, cliffs, tarns. A cold wind crept out of the wastes and ruffled her pelt. The few stars she could see were as chill, and very small. Banner said they were suns, but how remote, then, how ghastly remote …

Ahead, the road looped past another featureless building which air towers showed to be the cover of caverns beneath. “What is in that?” Yewwl queried, pointing.

“There they work the new ore I spoke of earlier,” Ayon said.

—“Find out what it is!” Banner hissed.

Yewwl tried. The clumsiness of conversation helped mask her directness, and the rest of her party, in their unmistakable hostility, trailed her and the guide. “ Ruad’a’a,” Ayon responded finally. “I have no other word for it. The humans use ours.”

—“Oh, shit!” Banner exploded; and: “But why would they go to that trouble? Ordinarily they use Anglic names for such things. Get him to describe it.”

Yewwl made the attempt. Ayon wanted to know why she cared. She thought fast and explained that, if the Dukeston humans valued the stuff, and her homeland chanced to be supplied with it, that would be a bargaining point for her.

“Well, it’s black and often powdery,” Ayon said. “They get a kind of metal from it.”

—“Could be pitchblende,” Banner muttered in Anglic. To Yewwl: “Find out more.”

Ayon could relate little else. Native labor had done only the basic construction; after that, secrecy had clamped down. He did know that large, complex apparatus had been installed, and the interior was conditioned for humans, and machines regularly collected the residue that came out and hauled it off to dump at sea, and the end product left here in sealed boxes which must be thick, perhaps lead-lined, since they were heavy for their size.

—“Fissionable? Nobody uses fission for anything important … except in warheads—” The incomprehensible words from afar were a chant of desperation. In Yewwl’s speech, Banner said out of lips that must be stretched tight across her teeth: “It would be the final proof. But I can’t think how you could learn, my sister—”

“What is this?” Skogda growled.

“Nothing,” Yewwl said hastily. “He’s just been describing what they make there.” If her son knew that Banner thought it might be the very house of destruction—if that was what Banner thought—he could go wild.

“No,” he denied. “You may fool everybody else, Mother, but I can read you.” His fangs glistened forth, hackles lifted, ears lay back, vanes extended and shivered. “You agreed we, your companions, have the right to know what’s happening.”

“Well, yes, it does seem that something weird goes on, but I don’t understand what,” she replied with mustered calm. “I would guess we’ve discovered as much as we’re able to. Let’s stay quiet, give no alarm, till we’re safe—”

Ayon stepped backward. “The young fellow stands as if he’s about to attack me,” he said. His own voice and posture were charged with mistrust. “The rest of your following are fight-ready too.”

“No, no, they are simply excited by this experience.” Yewwl insisted. A sick feeling swept through her. Ayon didn’t believe. And surely it must seem peculiar to him that a group of touring foreigners were so taut.