Poul Anderson: The Day of Their Return

“Why … well—”

“Come on. Maybe your Orcans are so little used to pictures that they don’t insist on description. I assure you, companyo, other Aeneans are different. They’ll ask. Why not tell me?”

“Kah, hm, kah—” Jaan yielded. He seemed a touch confused, as if the consciousness superimposed on his didn’t work well at a large distance from the reinforcing radiations of the underground vessel. “Yes. He … male, aye, in a bisexual warm-blooded species … not mammalian; descended from ornithoids … human-seeming in many ways, but beautiful, far more refined and sculptured than us. Thin features set at sharp angles; a speaking voice like music—No.” Jaan broke off. “I will not say further. It has no significance.”

You’ve said plenty , tolled in Ivar.

Talk was sparse for the rest of the journey. As the car moved downward toward an Arena that had become a bulk of blackness studded with a few lights, the Firstling spoke. “Please, I want to go off by myself and think. I’m used to space and solitude when I make important decisions. How about lendin’ me this flitter? I’ll fly to calm area, settle down, watch moons and stars—return before mornin’ and let you know how things appear to me. May I?”

He had well composed and mentally rehearsed his speech. Yakow raised no objection; Jaan gave his shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “Surely,” said the prophet. “Courage and wisdom abide with you, dear friend.”

When he had let the others out, Ivar lifted fast, and cut a thunderclap through the air in his haste to be gone. The dread of pursuit bayed at his heels.

Harsh through him went: They aren’t infallible. I took them by surprise. Jaan should’ve been prepared with any description but true one—one that matches what Tanya relayed to me from Commissioner Desai, about Merseian agent loose on Aeneas.

Stiffening wind after sunset filled the air around the lower mountainside with fine sand. Lavinia showed a dim half-disc overhead, but cast no real light; and there were no stars. Nor did villages and farmsteads scattered across the hills reveal themselves. Vision ended within meters.

Landing on instruments, Ivar wondered if this was lucky for him. He could descend unseen, where otherwise he would have had to park behind some ridge or grove kilometers away and slink forward afoot. Indeed, he had scant choice. Walking any distance through a desert storm, without special guidance equipment he didn’t have along, posed too much danger of losing his way. But coming so near town and Arena, he risked registering on the detectors of a guard post, and somebody dispatching a squad to investigate.

Well, the worst hazard lay in a meek return to his quarters. He found with a certain joy that fear had left him, as had the hunger and thirst of supperlessness, washed away by the excitement now coursing through him. He donned the overgarment everyone took with him on every trip, slid back the door, and jumped to the ground.

The gale hooted and droned. It sheathed him in chill and a scent of iron. Grit stung. He secured his nightmask and groped forward.

For a minute he worried about going astray in spite of planning. Then he stubbed his toe on a rock which had fallen off a heap, spoil from the new excavation. The entrance was dead ahead uphill, to that tunnel down which Jaan had taken him.

He didn’t turn on the flashbeam he had borrowed from the car’s equipment, till he stood at the mouth. Thereafter he gripped it hard, as his free hand sought for a latch.

Protection from weather, the manmade door needed no lock against a folk whose piety was founded on relics. When he had closed it behind him, Ivar stood in abrupt silence, motionless cold, a dark whose thickness was broken only by the wan ray from the flash. His breath sounded too loud in his ears. Fingers sought comfort from the heavy sheath knife he had borne from Windhome; but it was his solitary weapon. To carry anything more, earlier, would have provoked instant suspicion.

What will I find?

Probably nothin’. I can take closer look at Caruith machine, but I haven’t tools to open it and analyze. As for what might be elsewhere … these corridors twist on and on, in dozen different sets.

Noneless, newest discovery, plausibly barred to public while exploration proceeds, is most logical place to hide—whatever is to be hidden. And —his gaze went to the dust of megayears, tumbled and tracked like the dust of Luna when man first fared into space— I could find traces which’ll lead me further, if any have gone before me.

He began to walk. His footfalls clopped hollowly back off the ageless vaulting.

Why am I doin’ this? Because Merseians may have part in events? Is it bad if they do? Tanya feels happy about what she’s heard. She thinks Roidhunate might really come to our aid, and hopes I can somehow contact that agent.

But Ythri might help too. In which case, why won’t Orcan chiefs let me see Erannath? Their excuse rings thin.

And if Ancients are workin’ through Merseians, as is imaginable, why have they deceived Jaan? Shouldn’t he know?

(Does he? It wouldn’t be information to broadcast. Terran Imperium may well dismiss Jaan’s claims as simply another piece of cultism, which it’d cause more trouble to suppress than it’s worth … but never if Imperium suspected Merseia was behind it! So maybe he is withholdin’ full story. Except that doesn’t feel right. He’s too sincere, too rapt, and, yes, too bewildered, to play double game. Isn’t he?)

I’ve got to discover truth, or lose what right I ever had to lead my people.

Ivar marched on into blindness.

A kilometer deep within the mountain, he paused outside the chamber of Jaan’s apotheosis. His flashbeam barely skimmed the metal enigma before seeking back to the tunnel floor.

Here enough visits had gone on of late years that the dust was scuffed confusion. Ivar proceeded down the passage. The thing in the room cast him a last reflection and was lost to sight. He had but the one bobbing blob of luminance to hollow out a place for himself in the dark. Now that he advanced slowly, carefully, the silence was wellnigh total. Bad-a-bad, went his heart, bad-a-bad, bad-a-bad.

After several meters, the blurriness ended. He would not have wondered to see individual footprints. Besides Jaan, officers of the Companions whom the prophet brought hither had surely ventured somewhat further. What halted him was sudden orderliness. The floor had been swept smooth.

He stood for minutes while his thoughts grew fangs. When he continued, the knife was in his right fist.

Presently the tunnel branched three ways. That was a logical point for people to stop. Penetrating the maze beyond was a task for properly equipped scientists; and no scientists would be allowed here for a long while to come. Ivar saw that the broom, or whatever it was, had gone down all the mouths. Quite reasonable, trickled through him. Visitors wouldn’t likely notice sweepin’ had been done, unless they came to place where change in dust layers was obvious. Or unless they half expected it, like me … expected strange traces would have to be wiped out …

He went into each of the forks, and found that the handiwork ended after a short distance in two of them. What reached onward was simply the downdrift of geological ages. The third had been swept for some ways farther, though not since the next-to-last set of prints had been made. Two sets of those were human, one Ythrian; only the humans had returned. Superimposed were other marks, which were therefore more recent.

They were the tracks of a being who walked on birdlike claws.

Again Ivar stood. Cold gnawed him.