"Anderson, Poul - Fire Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Our looks followed his. He touched a control on the chaise, interior lighting dimmed, the quickly fallen upland night grew clear to seeStars crowded blackness, nearly space-bright and space-many. The galactic belt glimmered from horizon to horizon; I remembered that in Haelen they call it the Winterway. Low to the south, Sagittarius stood across it. There I sought, and believed I found, the patch of glow that drowns out from sight of Earth the triple sun called Anubelea. Close by, the trail of light was cloven by dark dust. Elsewhere, invisible to us, fared worlds being born, worlds alive with other flesh and spirit than ours, burnt-out neutron 'clinkers, those pits of alienness men called black holes, galaxy after galaxy around the curve of reality; and the question is unanswerable, unaskable, what this all came from and what it will return to and why.

Espina's desiccated utterance brought me back. "I've studied the files on you at some length, as well as hearing testimony. My learned colleagues deplore the time I've spent. They remind me of problems they consider more urgent, especially now during a war. The mutiny was a very small affair, they say, and had no obvious important effects. The defendants have not denied the charges against them. Let us punish and be done-

"Regardless, I've persisted." He nodded at his infotrieve. "No doubt I can conjure up every fact about you which the law could possibly called germane, and a good many additional."

He paused before finishing, "Yes, quite a few facts. But how much truth?"

I dared take the word: "Sir, if you mean the moral issues, justification, we requested a chance to explain and were denied."

Exasperation crackled. "Certainly. Did you imagine a court handling Intel-cultural, often interspecies problems, could get anything done if it permitted emotional scenes at preliminary hearings?"

"I understand, sir- But we've not been allowed to make public statements either. We've been held incommunicado, and those hearings were barred to spectators. I doubt the legality of that."

"My ruling, under wartime powers. You may come to see that I've had my reasons."

The crippled body leaned forward, too old for repair, too alive for its captivity. The eyes assailed us. "Here you may orate as you please," Espina said. "I counsel you against it, though. What I hope to get from you is rather more subtle, more difficult than your personal objections to certain Federation policies. I mean to inquire about matters juridically irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial. I want hearsay and conjecture. You are prepared to sacrifice your futures for those beings yonder. Why?"

His hand chopped air. "Set yourselves aside if you're able. Tell me about them as you know them or, likelier; imagine them. Oh, yes, I've gone over several xenological treatises. I've actually returned to childhood and reread that saccharine Tales from Far Ishtar. Words and pictures, nothing else!

"Give me some blood and bone. Make me feel how it feels to know doomsday is coming again in one's own lifespan."

The servant entered with a tray. "You may have alcohol, or whatever drug you need to relax, later if you desire," Espina said. "But best not at once. We've a formidable task ahead."

He sipped from his teacup. I caught the tarry odor of Lapsang Soochong. Presently he began to search us out.



ONE



IN FIRE TIME the north country got no peace from the Demon Sun. Day and night, summer and winter, it blazed aloft until there was no longer any day or any winter. But those were the Starklands, where few mortals had' ever gone and none could ever dwell, whether the year be good or evil. Dauri from that realm, bound south on their unknown errands, saw the Red One sink as they fared, until at last it sometimes wheeled under the horizon behind them.

Having crossed the Desolation Hills, such travelers were in among the Tassui, the Frontier Folk, who held the south end of Valennen and hence were the northernmost of mortals. Here land, life, and sky alike were strange to theirs.

When the Stormkindler was far from the world, hardly more than the brightest stars, these parts knew small difference between seasons. In winter some rain might be hoped for, and the days were a little shorter than the nights, but that was nearly all. (Traders and soldiers from the Gathering said that meanwhile in the far north the True Sun never rose, and the cold grew so strong that ice lay in the very valleys.) But Fire Time changed this, as it did everything else. Then at mid-summer the Tassui got the Invader by day, two suns at once, while at midwinter they got it by itself, not one moment of blessed darkness.

The same held true if a person traveled South-OverSea: except for seasons changing, winter in Beronnen when summer was in Valennen-and the Burner always lower to northward. Finally he reached a place which never saw it during Fire Time, merely afterward when it had retreated too great a distance to wreak harm. Most Tassui thought this must be a country favored by the gods, and disbelieved foreigners who told them that it was, instead, chill and niggardly.

Amanak knew the story was right. He had visited Haelen himself a hundred years ago as a legionary of the Gathering. But he seldom gainsaid his fellows and followers about matters of that kind. Let them keep wrong ideas if they wanted, especially ideas which fed envy, suspicion, and hatred of the outsiders. For he was at last ready to open his full attack.

A horn blew in the hills above Tarhanna. Echoes toned off crags and scarps. Louder brawled the Esali River, hastening through a canyon toward the plain. Not yet had drought, already setting in elsewhere, shrunken it to the trickle, among stones that scorched the feet of the thirsty, which Amanak's grandfather had remembered from cubhood. But the air hung still and hot, with a smoky smell out of lia and bushes where they withered.

Alone, the True Sun drew near to the western ridges. Haze turned its shield a dull yellow, ash-dust offa woodland or a range that flame had grazed upon. Otherwise the sky was clear, a blue so hard that it might ring if struck. Deeper blue ran the shadows of wrinkles on slopes; down in clefts and dales they were purple.

Again Amanak winded his hom. The warriors left their shady spots and loped toward him. They would not don war-harness, those who had any, until just before the battle. Baldric, scabbard, pouch, quiver were the sole clothing of most. Their green pelts, green-andgold-glinting red-brown manes, black faces and arms, i stood vivid against the dun growth and strewn rocks around them. Spearheads gleamed high. Tails switched hindquarters in eagerness. When they crowded together beneath the low bluff on which he stood, their male odor was like a breath off damp iron.

The pride in Amanak did not keep him from making a rough count, now when he had them in a group. They numbered about two thousand. That was much fewer than he expected soon to need. However, it was a good response for the start of an undertaking as venturesome as this. And they had come from everywhere, too. His own contingent had had the longest journey to rendezvous, he supposed, from Ulu under the Wortdwall. But by looks, bearing, gear, ornament, scraps of talk, he recognized others out of all South Valennen, mountaineers, woods runners, plains rangers, sea reapers of coasts and islands. If they proved able to seize the trade town, their kindred would flock after them.