CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Rakki and White Head would go; and Gap Teeth would go because he refused to allow Rakki to venture into an unknown and alien domain without his personal protection. It took the Sky People some time to convince him that he wouldn’t need his spear.

They summoned one of their winged metal shells that flew like a giant bird—much larger than the one called down by the Sky Being called “Keene,” that Rakki had thought of as the head god when they first appeared in the egg with legs that rolled. It descended from the sky a short distance from the huts and opened. Naarmegen, the first of them to use words that were intelligible, came out, along with two others. Rakki and his two companions were taken inside.

Rakki could never have imagined such surroundings. They consisted entirely of strangely shaped creations from metal and other materials that were of the same essence as Oldworld objects he had seen… but patterned and organized together in a way that formed a totality of purpose that he was unable to comprehend. There were bundles of rods running along the walls and overhead, like vines but straighter and without leaves; patterns of shapes like straight-sided pebbles and slices of berries, some emitting light; constructions that looked the way he had heard ammunition boxes described; flat windows, glowing with designs in colors he had never seen before. Light came from brilliant shapes set into the sides of the interior and above. For the first time since his recollections began of having any coherent impressions at all, it brought home to him the full enormity of what must have been lost. The few relics he had come across of the past that was gone had been just that: oddments and tatters of what had once been a whole world.

They sat Rakki in one of the huge seats that extended past the top of his head, but when they tried to bind him to it with straps, Gap Teeth roared in protest and leaped to intervene. The Sky People seemed amused and were placating, and things quickly calmed down when the three passengers saw that they were securing similar restraints around themselves also. Maybe binding themselves to the Mother Bird was a way of symbolically consigning themselves into her safe keeping, Rakki thought.

One of the Sky People closed the door, sealing them from the outside, and then moved forward to sit at a place near the front, behind the bird’s eyes. Sounds like an animal whining and bellowing filled the space around them, and Rakki could feel the bird’s life energy pulsing in the floor beneath his feet. Gap Teeth’s hands were like claws, gripping the arm supports on the seats. Then he felt the bird move—for a moment his body felt sickened—and he knew they were lifting from the ground. Moments later, through the solid-water windows in the bird’s side, he could see the huts of Joburg, the creek that ran beside it, the surrounding rocks and growth, and then the side of the lake where the creek ended, all growing smaller as the bird rose, finally slipping behind and out of view. Soon even the hills were far below, shrunk to the appearance of folds in the mud along the sides of the creek.

Although he had been preparing himself ever since Keene and Sariena, the tall goddess with long hair, offered to bring him to their own settlement, he found himself numbed and awed by the experience. The sense of the power that was carrying them through the skies exhilarated him, as if part of it were flowing from the body of the bird and into his—unimaginable power, like that which could open the ground itself or throw fire into the sky when the mountains thundered; but the Sky People had tamed it to be used, like the beasts that were tamed to carry him. He began to believe that they might really have built another world beyond the sky.

The terrain below lost any similarity to places he could recognize. They seemed to be following the hills northward, beyond the limits that Rakki’s people had explored. The hills became more consolidated and grew higher, although not as high as the mountains to the east, which now appeared as black ridges and peaks receding away into the clouds. On the opposite side, to the west, the hills opened out onto jumbled plains of red, brown, and occasional green, again vanishing into haze. There was more water than Rakki had realized existed in the region: rivers hemmed in steep-sided valleys in some parts; chains of connected lakes in others. A wide, flat area that they passed over, where fingers of green and winding channels of water entangled among islands and pools, reminded him of the swamps. In just a few minutes, he had learned more about the lands surrounding his domain than a month of slow, arduous expeditions overland could have revealed.

Gap Teeth seemed just as overwhelmed, and even White Head was unusually silent. At intervals, voices spoke seemingly from the walls and from the flat windows that showed colors. In one of them a female face appeared, as sometimes happened with the things the Sky People carried on their arms. Gusts of wind seized the bird continually, causing it to rise and fall violently. Maybe the straps on the seats were there for more practical and mundane reasons than symbolizing unity with the Mother Bird, Rakki decided. The Sky People left them alone to take in all the strangeness and adjust to it in their own time.

Then Rakki noticed that details of the ground below were becoming larger again and took it to mean that they were going down. A sinking feeling in his stomach confirmed it as the bird’s descent steepened. And then he saw what must have been one of the cities that White Head had sometimes tried to describe.

At first it looked something like Joburg, with huts set out in a cluster, rocks and hills all around, and farther off, part of a wide river—running roughly westward, as far as Rakki could judge from the direction of the still-visible mountains. But as the bird came closer, the “huts” gradually revealed themselves as more immense than anything built of thatched boughs and grasses, formed from combinations of sharp lines and curves like the objects inside the bird. And moving around among them were more crawling eggs like the one that had come to Joburg. Rakki made out different kinds of them as the bird came to hover, then resumed sinking slowly. One had a long arm and was lifting something huge, while others nearby were being emptied of things that didn’t mean anything. They were for carrying loads, he realized. The Sky People didn’t need to tame animals to do their work. They made their own—but with capabilities no animal conceivable in his wildest imaginings could ever hope to match.

The sounds that had been present to a greater or lesser extent all through the journey ceased suddenly. A face was talking from one of the windows to the front again, below the bird’s eyes. Naarmegen unfastened his seat straps and stood up, and then did the same for Rakki, White Head, and Gap Teeth, while behind him another of the Sky People opened the bird’s side. “This is our base here,” Naarmegen said. The word was a new one. So perhaps it wasn’t a city, after all. “Name, Serengeti.” He then added something that sounded like “Welcome,” which Rakki didn’t quite get the meaning of either. He stood up, and in response to Naarmegen’s waved directions, followed him down the metal steps to the outside.

Out in the open and close-up, the constructions were even vaster than Rakki had guessed when looking down at them. What manner of craft was needed to fashion such things, he had no idea. Farther away in the opposite direction, a number of long columns of white and the silver color showed by freshly scratched metal lay along the ground, and one was standing on end, pointing toward the sky. Something told Rakki intuitively that these were yet larger and more powerful birds that traveled to the domain beyond the clouds. Strange noises came from all directions: droning and snorting like the calls of some animals; banging and clashing; bursts of what sounded like the rapid barking of dogs.

They began walking toward the nearer structures, over ground that was as flat as smoothed sand, yet hard like rock. In one place, a metal animal with an arm bearing a huge bowl, but with flat sides, was digging a trench, scooping as much earth with each bite as a man could move in a day of heavy work. Naarmegen waved a hand and said something that sounded carelessly cheerful. Rakki indicated that he didn’t understand. “All a mess. Still lots to do,” White Head translated from behind, where he was following with Gap Teeth. Many heads turned to follow them curiously. Some of the figures waved. Rakki was not sure what it meant, and so didn’t respond.

They arrived at one of the structures. It was like a cliff or the side of a crag that had been split by a fissure, but made of metal or some other Oldworlder stuff like the made-animals and the birds. Like them, it possessed windows that were solid yet clear. Several steps led up to a pair of doors that opened of their own accord as the arrivals approached.

Rakki’s first impression of the inside was that although it was made from Oldworlder materials and lit by their strange light, it felt like being back in one of the caves. More stairs, a greater number this time, took them higher to emerge into a space that was like the inside of the bird, but much larger and with many more people. A group assembled in the center seemed to be waiting for them. Keene was among them, and so was the goddess, Sariena. They greeted Rakki and his two companions, and then introduced another Sky Being called Gallian, whose hair was almost the color of White Head’s, but straighter and softer. Everyone was smiling. It seemed strange to Rakki that gods who commanded such ferocious powers should be so apparently anxious not to offend. There was nothing they could possibly fear from these three unarmed visitors who were mustering all of their self-control not to let their confusion and bewilderment show, and yet they were acting as if they conceded superiority of status. It made no sense.

Communicating mainly through Naarmegen, they gave assurances that there was nothing to be feared from the Sky People. They had not come here to make war. Rakki had already arrived at that conclusion. Warrior groups made war because they stood to gain things from those whom they vanquished—food, females, territory, possessions; or simply to eliminate them as potential threats to themselves. His one lingering thought had been that his people might be wanted for slave labor when he learned that the Sky People were building a settlement. But since arriving, he had already laid that fear to rest. They had no need of slaves. They made their own—stronger, uncomplaining, and untiring—slaves who would never drive spears into the masters’ backs or slit their throats while they slept.

So what did they want?

In the cramped work space that Sariena’s planetary scientists had been using aboard the Surya, Damien, her assistant, mulled over the results of simulations run from the latest observations of the motions of Athena and the perturbed planetary orbits that Athena’s onslaught had induced. The emerging patterns were so intriguing that the group were still up in the ship, even though lab space had been available in Serengeti for almost a week.

There was no doubt now that Athena was circularizing its orbit at a far faster rate than the old Terran theories would have deemed possible. That in itself was no huge revelation. Earlier data had pointed to it; and the old theories hadn’t allowed for electrical conditions or the effectiveness of gravitational tidal forces in damping the orbit of a hot plastic body toward lower-energy states. What was unexpected was the way in which the future extrapolations showed sets of resonances in which various Solar System bodies could cooperate in partitioning momentum and energy between themselves in such a way as to minimize further interactions—in other words, establish a new stable configuration—in a surprisingly short time.

“Imagine a bunch of maniac skaters making circuits around an ice rink, all gyrating and flailing their arms,” Damien had suggested when trying to explain it to one of the ship’s crew. “Every time two of them collide, they send each other off toward other parts of the rink, where there may or may not be someone else to collide with again. If there is, then it repeats until you get to somewhere where there’s more room. Eventually everyone ends up with enough space to be left alone, and until something disturbs it all again, you’ve got a stable system.”

Exactly what would happen depended on some very nonlinear equations that made prediction hazardous at best. But the significant thing was that the number of possible solutions being found for them was far greater than anyone had guessed. It meant that the probability of the Solar System rapidly recovering to find a stable configuration was also much higher than had been previously imagined.

What made this even more interesting to Damien was that it added credibility to the suggestion Emil Farzhin on Dione had first proposed, of Venus going into a resonant pattern with Mars and Earth after its expulsion from Jupiter, causing Mars to approach Earth and hang in the sky over northern India for something like twelve years at a time. Damien had found the thought captivating emotionally, but surely too improbable to take seriously without a lot more supporting evidence. Now it appeared the probability of not necessarily that particular instance happening, but of at least one from many like it, was not so remote after all.

To add to it, examination of many findings reported on Earth over the years before Athena was turning up more things that were consistent with Farzhin’s scenario. No satisfactory explanation had ever been put forward for the sudden rise in sea levels worldwide of around a hundred meters at the time in question, between 3000 and 5000 years previous. Data on ancient lakes and river systems, the depth and distribution of alluvial deposits, and staggering beds of animal and plant remains indicated repeated and massive flooding of the Tibetan-Himalayan region. Yet records from the adjacent areas of China and the eastern Mediterranean told of cyclic patterns in which suddenly receding waters left ships stranded on dry seabeds and ports landlocked far away from relocated coastlines. The number of meteorites found scattered on Earth or in Earth-intersecting near-asteroid orbits with compositions anomalously indicating Martian origins wildly violated all probability statistics based on Mars’s always having been where it was at present. And so it went on.

Farzhin’s team were continuing their investigations of the Indian Vedas and other Terran mythologies. Their latest, even more startling, claim was that under the strange conditions of microgravity that existed between Mars and Earth at the times of their mutual capture, tidal melting of the crustal rocks on Mars had caused immense lava fountains to erupt from the surface, which when cooled on the outside became conduits to convey further flows higher, until enormous, complex, glowing structures were formed, extending as high as a thousand kilometers and clearly visible from Earth. This, they contended, was the awe-inspiring deity that came to be worshiped as Brahma. Shiva, the destroyer, was the power that brought about its eventual collapse when the Earth-Mars bond was broken—in the process producing the layers of peculiarly formed rock shards and fragments covering the Tharsis Bulge region, which had always been something of a mystery. Thus arose accounts of “Jacob’s Ladder,” “Hamlet’s Mill,” Atlas supporting the sky, the columns of smoke and fire of Hebrew and Egyptian lore, and various other stairways, pillars, godly phalluses, and the like, that towered above some celestial realm or appeared to offer a bridge for mortals to cross. Damien’s first reaction had been to smile and shrug. But slowly, he was being won over.

Now, with evidence mounting to suggest that maybe it wouldn’t have needed to be the freak occurrence that had at first been supposed, the question that was coming to be asked was how likely it might be for something similar to happen again. Already, Athena had come close enough to Venus to transfer enough momentum to lift Venus outward several million miles, and future intercepts could creep even closer. One set of possible ways the orbital equations could evolve produced another three-body resonance, this time with Athena in the role previously taken by Venus, and Venus being hurled outward farther to enter into periodic encounters with Earth. Nobody was saying at this stage that it would happen; but at least one family of mathematical solutions said that it could. Damien wasn’t sure if Earth was ready to undergo another series of Mars-type encounters just yet. Maybe it was just as well, he reflected, that some of the first of the new AG-based technology, capable of cutting and building massive structures out of native rock, was on its way with the Aztec. They—or maybe their successors who would one day take over later spells on Earth—might well find they needed it.

A buzz from his wrist compad interrupted. It was Mya Feehn, another of the group, calling from elsewhere in the Surya. “What’s happening, Damien? Do you know?” she inquired.

“I’ve been working. What are you talking about?”

The image on the tiny screen looked away, as if wary of being overheard. “Something strange is going on. A pinnace from the Varuna docked with us a while ago. And now outgoing communications are blocked—I thought you’d have known.”

Damien could only shake his head. “As I said, I was working.” But as head of the group in Sariena’s absence, it would be up to him to find out—which was what Mya was really saying. “I’ll go to the condeck and see what it’s all about,” he said. “You’ll know more as soon as I do.”

He cleared the call and got up from the chair, pausing to let the touch of dizziness pass that came from changing attitude too quickly in a small ship. It would mean riding the booms to another module. He set off toward the elevator. But even before he had exited the section that the group’s work space was in, a general call over the address system preempted him. “Attention. This is the Captain. All ship’s officers and designated group and project heads, assemble immediately in the Command Module Control Deck. Officers and group heads, come to the condeck immediately. Thank you.”

There was some congestion at the boom capsule interchange point as persons from different places converged. Nobody knew what this was about. The capsule to the condeck was full, and Damien had to wait through one round-trip before he could board. During transit he saw the pinnace, docked with the Surya at a center port. The Varuna itself, he was told, was at present out of sight, somewhere on the far side of Earth.

He arrived to find the Command Deck crowded. But strangely, as he looked around for some clue as to what might be going on, he saw that the Captain and ship’s officers didn’t seem to be in charge of things at all, but were standing in a huddle to one side, looking agitated and subdued. Occupying the center of the floor was a blond, athletically built man in the uniform of an SA major…  wearing a sidearm!

That was when it hit Damien that other armed figures, brandishing close-quarters automatic infantry weapons openly and ready for use, were positioned around the entire floor. Some were wearing SA uniforms; others, not. Two, standing immediately behind the Captain and officers, were holding unholstered pistols. Damien looked bemusedly at another Kronian next to him. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure. It looks like they’re taking over the ship.”

“With guns?” Such a thing was unthinkable. Damien shook his head and indicated the SA colonel in the center of the floor. “Who’s he?”

“I don’t know.”

Another man in front of them turned his head. “His name’s Kelm. Executive Officer from the Varuna.”

An amplified voice spoke from a speaker to address the room. “Remain calm. It is not our wish to harm anyone, but if resistance is encountered we will not hesitate to do so. A proclamation will be read on the main screen that should answer most of your questions.”

At first, Damien thought it was Kelm who was speaking, but then he saw that the colonel was standing alert but motionless. Before he could ascertain where the announcement had come from, the large view screen facing the commander and chief officers’ stations activated. Gasps of amazement punctuated by exclamations of disbelief sounded on all sides. Looking out from the screen was the familiar figure of former General Claud Valcroix, and in the picture a few feet behind, his political partner, Ludwig Grasse. Also in the background were faces that Damien recognized from the political campaigning of recent times as those of prominent former American names from the Pragmatist camp.

“What?”

“But they were all on that transorbital that was lost on the way to Iapetus.”

“Where’s this coming from?”

”Wait,” Kelm called out sharply.

Valcroix began speaking. “I will make this brief, since our position has long been known to everyone. If you are watching this recording, you will already have been made aware of the situation of unilaterally declared sovereignty that it has been our decision to establish over the territory of Earth. The Pragmatist Party of the Kronian world system has endeavored, through the constitutionally approved Kronian political process, to obtain a distribution of representation that would be just and equitable for all its members, regardless of origins, or of beliefs of principle that might differ from those expressed by the present holders of policymaking privileges. We were rebuffed and denied in that endeavor. Therefore, we find ourselves left with no other option but to assert forcibly those rights which we sought to have acknowledged lawfully, but which were refused.

“If the Terran presence in Kronia is to be denied lawful expression, then by the same standard, the Kronians cannot claim to exercise lawful dominion over any territory of Earth. As the representative of, and speaker for, the sole surviving body qualified to exercise authority within those said territories, I hereby do proclaim the existence of the Terran Planetary Government, inaugurated under me as the uncontested President, to take effect as of now. And by that same authority invested in me, I declare all territories, installations, ground works, and other facilities introduced to Earth in the course of the current Kronian invasion of that territory, along with associated spacecraft, air and ground vehicles, and all forms of ancillary equipment and materials, to be rightfully the property of the Terran Planetary Government, seized according to prior international law applicable to those territories in the course of invasion and effective undeclared war. Former Terrans present in those territories are considered subject to such laws that the Terran Planetary Government shall see fit to declare. Kronians not wishing to become Terran citizens or failing to qualify will be regarded as temporary political detainees of status to be determined by negotiation with the Kronian administration.

“My colleagues and I will be arriving shortly to take direct charge of the recovery operation. In the meantime, I confer upon Kurt Zeigler the title of Acting Governor on behalf of the Terran Planetary Government, and with it delegate full authority to ensure and maintain order across all of the Terran possessions by whatever measures he judges appropriate.

“I ask all of you to help by giving your unqualified support through this difficult period when martial law must take precedence. But until our effective borders are secure, this is forced upon us. The sooner we can consolidate in a socially unified and coherent community, the sooner it will be possible to relax our vigilance and create once again the fabric of more civilized procedures that we all remember.” The Pragmatist emblem of a triangular motif pierced by a lightning flash appeared superposed on the picture. Valcroix concluded, “Together, we will build Earth again!” The image vanished.

A few seconds of stunned bewilderment passed while the message sank in. Then the protests started.

“They’re saying the ships are theirs now? They’re our ships!”

“How can they get here in that moon-jumper that vanished? It’s just the local bus company.”

“How can they get anywhere? They’re dead.”

In the center of the floor, Kelm raised a hand and flipped on the mike attached to a lapel of his tunic. “I think you’ll find that rumor was much exaggerated,” he said in answer to the last question. He turned his head toward one of the console stations, where a girl with a submachine gun had taken the operator’s place. “Transmit the code word down to Zeigler,” he instructed.

They had left the cave of metal boxes and talking pictures to move to another of the giant huts. It was less cluttered, with more places to sit, and had great tables, where Rakki and his companions were given food and drink. The food was more varied in composition and tastes than the kinds of things the Sky People had brought with them to Joburg, and consisted of variously colored preparations, some hot, some cold, some wet, some dry, served in dazzling bowls and platters and eaten with metal tools instead of sticks. Rakki still thought of all the beings as Sky People, although Naarmegen had tried to explain that there were two different kinds. Some of them had come back to the world, and others, called Kronian, were from a different world. The only difference Rakki could see was that the Kronians tended to be taller. He had learned other words too, such as “flyer,” “ground truck,” “building,” “screen,” “wheel,” “compad,” and “machine”—although so many things seemed to be described by the last that he still wasn’t sure what formed one and what didn’t.

It seemed that the intention was for the visitors to be impressed. Sariena, the goddess—a “Kronian” who had come to this world before—and Keene had talked of how all these things were achieved through people working for each other, not through killing and trying to subdue. The message seemed to be that Rakki’s people too could learn to command the powers that the gods did and live similarly one day if they changed their thinking and their ways. But if the gods already had the powers they had, and lived in ways that defied comprehension, why would they care what Rakki’s clan chose to do? They had nothing to gain that he could see; and if over some long span of time they succeeded in turning Rakki’s people into another race of gods, then it would only mean risking an eventual clash with them over sharing everything. And yet they seemed to want it. There was nothing in his experience that helped him to understand.

The thing that impressed itself on him the most was how utterly unknowing and uncomprehending these gods were, despite all their powers and machines, of even the rudiments of the reality he had lived every day for as long as he could remember. Their smooth hands and soft faces told him that they had never clawed for roots in the mud or under rocks, been swept down a mountainside in a torrent of hot ashes, or fought, crazed by hunger, over a worm-filled bird carcase. He ruled because in his world, his way was the only way. The ways of these gods were of no use to his clan. They would quickly be exterminated if they tried to live by them. Was there no other way to command the gods’ powers? . . .

Suddenly the gods were no longer paying attention to him and the other two, but talking rapidly among themselves, sounding alarmed. He had never seen that before. Voices were babbling from “compads” and other places on all sides. Keene shouted something at some people across the room. One called back something that sounded like, “Over in OpCom, right now!”

Rakki turned to Naarmegen. “What is this?” But Naarmegen was yelling at someone else and pointing at a screen on the wall.

”What?” Rakki demanded again, wheeling upon White Head.

“I’m not sure… . Some people have taken over their ship, up beyond the sky.”

“What is ship?”

And then a picture appeared on the screen that Naarmegen had been waving at. After a moment, Rakki recognized it as the inside of the building they had been taken to first, the one with many boxes and screens, and windows on all sides. But instead of sitting or standing casually as they had been when he last saw them, the people there were back against the walls, looking tensely at a smaller group occupying the center. One of them was saying something. Rakki couldn’t follow the words, but he recognized the figure as the Sky Being Zeigler, who had been at Joburg. Zeigler seemed to be in command, even though the silver-haired one was present who Rakki had been told had the greatest rank. He glanced aside and saw that Keene and Sariena were both staring at the screen in dismay. Something was happening that they hadn’t been expecting.

He looked back again. And suddenly a thrill raced through him.

Zeigler and his followers were carrying guns! They were asserting dominance and taking command. This was a language that Rakki understood. He didn’t need to hear the words.

Here, perhaps, was a true warrior that Rakki could follow and learn from.