Children of Infinity Page 4

  The next day I hear that Lothar has been prepared for Exile, and the day after that I hear nothing more about him, and the days after that there is no mention and I try to forget. But one morning, under my cubicle, I find the scrapbooks, in the envelope a note from him. I will try to get these to you somehow, the note says. I am not crazy. They are real.

  I mean to throw them out, but until I can find a proper time, I hide them. Several weeks later they are still there and I open them to look, find that I cannot discard them. Sometime after that, in the corridors on a Free Day, I find myself talking very quietly to a strange Youther about the past.

  poul anderson

  Wingless on Avalon

  As far as we know—but how much do we really know, in this one corner of this one galaxy that we have somewhat explored?—Avalon was the first planet whereon two different intelligent species founded a joint colony. Thus, much was unforeseeable, not only about the globe itself, whose mysteries had barely been skimmed by the original explorers, but about the future of so mixed a people. The settlers began by establishing themselves in the Hesperian Islands, less likely to hold fatal surprises than a continent. And the two races chose different territories.

  Relations between them were cordial, of course. Both looked forward to the day when men and Ythrians would take over the mainlands and dwell there together. But at first it seemed wise to avoid possible friction. After all, they had scarcely anything in common except more or less similar biochemistries—warm blood, live birth, and the hope of making a fresh start on an uncorrupted

  world. Let them get acquainted gradually; let mutuality develop in an unforced way.

  Hence, Nat Falkayn rarely saw winged folk in the early part of his life. When an Ythrian did, now and then, have business in Chartertown, it was apt to be with his grandfather David or, presently, his father Nicholas; certainly not with a little boy. Even when an eagle-like being came as a dinner guest, conversation was seldom in Anglic. Annoyed by this, Nat grew downright grindstone about learning the Planha language as his school required. But the effort didn’t pay off until he was seventeen Avalonian years old—twelve years of that Mother Earth he had never seen, of which his body bore not a single atom.

  At that time, the archipelago settlements had grown to a point where leaders felt ready to plant a seed of habitation on the Coronan continent. But much study and planning must go before. Nicholas Falkayn, an engineer, was among those humans who joined Ythrian colleagues in a research and development team. His headquarters happened to be at the chief abode of the allied folk, known to its dwellers as Trauvay and to humans as Wingland. He would be working out of there for many cycles of the moon Morgana, each of which equaled not quite half a Lunar month. So he brought his wife and children along.

  Nat found himself the only boy around in his own age bracket. However, there was no lack of young Ythrian companions.

  “Hyaa-aah!” In a whirl and thunder, Keshchyi left the balcony floor and swung aloft. Sunlight blazed off his feathers. The whistling, trumpeting challenge blew down: “What are you waiting for, you mudfeet?”

  Less impetuous than his cousin, Thuriak gave Nat a sharp yellow glance. “Well, are you coming?” he asked.

  “I . . . guess so,” the human mumbled.

  You are troubled, Thuriak said, although not with his voice. Infinitely variable, Ythrian plumage could send ripples of expression across the entire body, signs and symbols often more meaningful than words could ever be. Nat had learned some of the conventional attitudes as part of his Planha lessons. But now, during these days of real acquaintance with living creatures, he had come to feel more and more like a deaf-mute.

  He could merely say, in clumsy direct speech: “No, I’m fine. Honest I am. Just, uh, well, wondering if I shouldn’t at least call my mother and ask—

  His tone trailed off. Thuriak seemed to be registering scorn. And yet this was a gentle, considerate youth, not at all like that overbearing Keshchyi. . . .

  If you must, like a nestling. Did that really stand written on the bronze-hued feathers, the black-edged white of crest and tail?

  Nat felt very alone. He had been delighted when these contemporaries, with whom he had talked a bit and played a few games, invited him to spend the Freedom Week vacation at their home. And certainly that whole extended household known as the Weather maker Choth had shown him politeness, if not intimacy—aside from a few jeering remarks of Keshchyi’s, which the fellow probably didn’t realize were painful. And his parents had been glad to let him accept.

  “It’s a step toward the future,” his father had exclaimed. “Our two kinds are going to have to come to know each other inside out. That’s a job for your generation, Nat . . . and here you’re beginning on it.”

  But the Ythrians were alien, and not just in their society. In their bones, their flesh, the innermost molecules of their genes, they were not human. It was no use pretending otherwise.

  “Different” did not necessarily mean “inferior.” Could it, heartbreakingly, mean “better” ? Or “happier” ? Had God been in a more joyful mood when He made the Ythrians than when He made man?

  Perhaps not. They were pure carnivores, born hunters. Maybe that was the reason why they allowed, yes, encouraged their young to go off and do reckless things, accepting stoically the fact that the unfit and the unlucky would not return alive—

  Keshchyi swooped near. Nat felt a gust of air from beneath his wings. “Are you glued in your place?” Keshchyi shouted. “The tide isn’t, I can tell you. If you want to come, then for thunder’s sake, move!”

  “He’s right, you know,” said calmer Thuriak. Eagerness quivered across him.

  Nat gulped. As if searching for something familiar, anything, his gaze swept around.

  He stood on a balcony of that tall stone tower that housed the core families. Below were a paved courtyard and rambling wooden buildings. Meadows where meat animals grazed sloped downhill in Terrestrial grass and clover, Ythrian starbell and wry, Terrestrial oak and pine, Ythrian braidbark and copperwood, until cultivation gave way to the reddish mat of native susin, the scattered intense green of native chasuble bush and delicate blue of janie. The sun Laura stood big and golden-colored at morning, above a distantly glimpsed mercury line of ocean. Elsewhere wandered a few cottony clouds and the pale, sinking ghost of Morgana. A flock of Avalonian draculas passed across the view, their leathery wings awkward beside the plumed splendor of Keshchyi’s. No adult Ythrians were to be seen; they ranged afar on their business.

  Nat, who was short and slender with rumpled brown hair above thin features, felt dwarfed in immensity.

  The wind murmured, caressed his face with coolness, blew him an odor of leaves and distances, a smoky whiff of Thuriak’s body.

  Although young, that being stood nearly as tall as one full-grown, which meant that he was about Nat’s height. What he stood on was his enormous wings, folded downward, claws at their main joints to serve as a kind of feet. What had been the legs and talons of his birdlike ancestors were, on him, arms and hands. His frame had an avian rigidity and jutting keelbone, but his head, borne proudly on a rather long neck, was almost mammalian beneath its crest—streamlined muzzle, tawny eyes, mouth whose lips looked oddly delicate against the fangs, little brow, yet the skull bulging backward to hold an excellent brain.

  “Are you off, then?” Thuriak demanded while Keshchyi whistled in heaven. “Or would you rather stay here? It might be best for you, at that.”

  Blood beat in Nat’s temples. I’m not going to let these creatures sneer at humans! ran through him. At the same time he knew he was being foolish, that he ought to check with his mother—and knew he wasn’t going to, that he couldn’t help himself. “I’m coming,” he snapped.

  Good, said Thuriak’s plumage. He brought his hands to the floor and stood on them an instant while he spread those wings. Light shining through made his pinions look molten. Beneath them, the gill-like antlibranch slits, the “biological superchargers”
which made it possible for an animal this size to fly under earthlike conditions, gaped briefly, a row of purple mouths. In a rush and roar of his own, Thuriak mounted.

  He swung in dizzying circles, up and up toward his hovering cousin. Shouts went between them. An Ythrian in flight burned more food and air than a human.

  But I am no Ythrian, Nat thought. Tears stung him. He wiped them away, angrily, with the back of a wrist, and sought the controls of his gravbelt.

  It encircled his coveralls at the waist. On his back were the two cylinders of its power pack. He could rise; he could fly for hours. But how wretched a crutch this was!

  Leaving the tower, he felt a slight steady vibration from the drive unit pulsing through his belly. His fingers reached to adjust the controls, level him off, and line him out northward. Wind blew, shrill and harsh, lashing his eyes till he must pull down the goggles on his leather helmet. The Ythrians had transparent third lids.

  In the last several days, he had had borne in on him—until at night, on the cot set up for him in the young males’ nest, he must stifle his sobs lest somebody hear—borne in on him how much these beings owned their unbounded skies, and how his kind did not.

  The machine that carried him went drone, drone. He trudged on a straight course through the air, while his companions dipped and soared and reveled in the freedom of heaven that was their birthright.

  The north shore curved to form a small bay. Beyond susin and bush and an arc of dunes, its waters glistened clear blue-green; surf roared furious on the reefs across its mouth. A few youngsters kept sailboats here. Keshchyi and Thuriak were among them.

  But . . . they had quietly been modifying theirs for use on open sea. Today they proposed to take it out.

  Nat felt less miserable when he had landed. On foot, he was the agile one, the Ythrians slow and limited. That was a poor trade-off, he thought grayly. Still, he could be of help to them. Was that the real reason they had invited him to join this maiden venture?

  For Keshchyi, yes, no doubt, the boy decided. Thuriak seems to like me as a person. . . . Seems to. His look went across that haughty unhuman countenance, and although it was full of expression, he could read nothing more subtle than a natural excitement.

  “Come on!” Keshchyi fairly danced in his impatience. “Launch!” To Nat: “You. Haul on the prow. We’ll push on the stern. Jump!”

  For a moment of anger, Nat considered telling him where to go and returning alone. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be here anyway, on a dangerous faring, without having so much as told his parents. The whole idea had been presented to him with such beast-of-prey suddenness. . . . No, he thought. I can’t let them believe I, a human, must be a coward. I’ll show ’em better. He seized the stempost, which curved over the bow in a graceful sculpture of vines and leaves. He bent his back and threw his muscles into work.

  The boat moved readily from its shelter and across the beach. It was a slim, deckless, nearly flat-bottomed hull, carvel-built, about four meters long. A single mast rested in brackets. Sand, gritty beneath Nat’s thin shoe soles, gave way to a swirl of water around his trouser legs. The boat gave a chuckling sound as it came afloat.

  Keshchyi and Thuriak boarded in a single flap. Nat had to make an undignified scramble across the gunwale and stand there dripping. Meanwhile the others raised the mast, secured its stays, began unlashing jib and mainsail. It was a curious rig, bearing a flexible gaff almost as long as the boom. The synthetic cloth rose crackling into the breeze.

  “Hoy, wait a minute,” Nat said. The Ythrians gave him a blank glance and he realized he had spoken in Anglic. Had they never imagined it worth the trouble to learn his language properly, as he had theirs? He shifted to Planha. “I’ve been sailing myself, around First Island, and know—uh, what is the word?” Flushing in embarrassment, he fumbled for ways to express his idea.

  Thuriak helped him. After an effort, they reached understanding. “I see, we have neither keel nor centerboard, and you wonder how we’ll tack,” the Ythrian interpreted. “I’m surprised the sportsmen of your race haven’t adopted our design.” He swiveled a complexly curved board, self-adjusting on its pivot by means of vanes, upward from either rail. “This interacts with the wind to provide lateral resistance. No water drag. Much faster than your craft. We’ll actually sail as a hydrofoil.”

  “Oh, grand!” Nat marveled.

  His pleasure soured when Keshchyi said in a patronizing tone, “Well, of course, knowledge of the ways of air comes natural to us.”

  “So, we re off!” Thuriak laughed. He took the tiller in his right hand and jib sheet in his left; wing-claws gripped a perch bar. The flapping sails drew taut. The boat bounded forward.

  Hunkered in the bottom—there were no thwarts—Nat saw the waters swirl, heard them hiss, felt a shiver of speed and tasted salt on his lips. The boat reached planing speed and skimmed the surface in a smooth gallop. The shore fell aft, the surf grew huge and loud ahead, dismayingly fast.

  Nat gulped. No, I will not show them any uneasiness. After all, he still wore his gravbelt. In case of capsizing or—or whatever—he could flit to shore. The Ythrians could, too. Was that why they didn’t bother to carry life jackets along?

  The reefs were of some dark coraloid. They made a nearly unbroken low wall across the lagoon entrance. Breakers struck green-bright, smashed across those jagged backs, exploded in foam and bone-rattling thunder. Whirlpools seethed. In them, thick brown nets of atlantis weed, torn loose from a greater mass far out to sea, snaked around and around. Squinting through spindrift, Nat barely made out a narrow opening toward which Thuriak steered.

  I don’t like this, I don’t like it one bit, went through him, chilled amidst primal bellows and grunts and hungry suckings.

  Thuriak put down the helm. The boat came about in a slash of boom and gaff, a snap of sailcloth; sounds that were buried in the tornado racket. On its new tack, it leaped for the passage. Thuriak fluted his joy. Keshchyi spread plumes which shone glorious in sun and scud-blizzard.

  The boat dived in among the reefs. An unseen net of weed caught the rudder. A riptide and a flaw of wind grabbed hold. The hull smashed against a ridge. Sharpnesses went like saws through the planks. The surf took the boat and started battering it to death.

  Nat was aloft before he knew what had really happened. He hovered on his thrust-fields, above white and green violence, and stared wildly around. There was Thuriak, riding the air currents, dismay on every feather, but alive, safe. . . . Where was Keshchyi?

  Nat yelled the question. Faint through the noise there drifted back to him the shriek: “I don’t know, I don’t see him, did the gaff whip over him—?” and Thuriak swooped about and about, frantic.

  A cry tore from him. “Yonder!” And naked grief: “No, no, oh, Keshchyi, my blood kin, my friend—”

  Nat darted to join the Ythrian. Winds clawed at him; the breakers filled his head with their rage. Through a bitter upflung mist he peered. And he saw—

  Keshchyi, one wing tangled in the twining weed, athresh in waves that surged across him, bore him under, cast him back for an instant, and swept him bloodily along a reefside.

  “We can grab him!” Nat called. But he saw what Thuriak had already seen: that this was useless. The mat that gripped Keshchyi was a dozen meters long and wide. It must weigh a ton or worse. He could not be raised, unless someone got in the water first to free him.

  And Ythrians, winged sky-folk, plainly could not swim. It was flat-out impossible for them. At most, help from above would keep the victim alive an extra minute or two.

  Nat plunged.

  Chaos closed on him. He had taken a full breath, and held it as he was hauled down into ice-pale depths. Keep calm, keep calm, panic is what kills. The currents were stronger than he was. But he had a purpose, which they did not. He had the brains to use them. Let them whirl him under—he felt his cheek scrape across a stone—for they would cast him back again and—

  Somehow he was near Keshchyi. He was treadi
ng water, gulping a lungful when he could, up and down, up and down, away and back, always snatching to untangle those cables around the wing, until after a time beyond time, Keshchyi was loose.

  Thuriak extended a hand. Keshchyi took it. Dazed, wounded, plumage soaked, he could not raise himself, nor could Thuriak drag him up alone.

  A billow hurled Nat forward. His skull flew at that reef where the boat tossed in shards. Barely soon enough, he touched the controls of his gravbelt and rose.

  He grabbed Keshchyi’s other arm and switched the power output of his unit to overload. Between them, he and Thuriak brought their comrade to land.

  “My life is yours, Nathaniel Falkayn,” said Keshchyi. “I beg your leave to honor you.”

  “Aye, aye,” whispered through the rustling dimness where the Weathermaker Choth had gathered in the house.

  “Awww . . .” Nat mumbled. His cheeks felt hot. He wanted to say, “Please, all I ask is, don’t tell my parents what kind of trouble I got my silly self into.” But that wouldn’t be courteous, in this grave ceremony that his friends were holding for him.

  It ended at last, however, and he and Thuriak got a chance to slip off by themselves, to the same balcony from which they had started. The short Avalonian day was drawing to a close. Sunbeams lay level across the fields. They shimmered off the sea, beyond which were homes of men. The air was still and cool, and full of the scent of growing things.

  “I have learned much today,” Thuriak said seriously.

  “Well, I hope you’ve learned to be more careful in your next boat.” Nat tried to laugh. I wish they’d stop making such a fuss about me, he thought. They will in time, and we can relax and enjoy each other. Meanwhile, though—

  “I have learned how good it is that strengths be different, so that they may be shared.”