Homecoming

VI

Tolkien conceived of Mordor, stinking Mordor, wasteland, blasted, land of vile depravities unnamed; washed with reeking acid rain, too corrupt for any greenness, splintered mountains round a fissured plain.

For how could Mordor, foul, perverted, smile beneath a sun?

How lie green with fragrant grass?

How lie spotted white and gold with gently nodding flowers, atrill with birdsong, sweet with loveliness?

From EARTH, by Chandra Queiros

The Phaeacia resembled a giant guitar pick-a reflective ellipsoid seventy-one meters long, thirty-three wide, and somewhat thicker aft than foreward. Functional outriggings broke but did not spoil the symmetry of her lines. Much of her volume was occupied by the drive units, life support system, and a hangar for the two pinnaces. Living and working space for her crew of thirty-one and the sixteen members of the exploration team was adequate but tight.

A gong signalled three bells in the “afternoon” watch. The full exploration team and the ship’s two ranking officers crowded into the narrow conference room to sit shoulder to shoulder around the polished hardwood table. When everyone was seated, Matthew Kumalo stood up. Conversation died and seventeen pairs of eyes settled on him.

“I’ve called us together to review the situation down below and how we’ll approach it. If any of you think I’m wrong about it, I know I can trust you to tell me.”

There were smiles around the table.

“Now I don’t see us in any real danger down there if we’re careful and use our heads. There is no possibility whatever that anyone on this planet has anything that can break our force shields. Any comments?”

“Yes.” The speaker was Alex Malaluan, historian, who had studied everything available on research methods in archaeological anthropology. On New Home, of course, there was no such field, but the university library had material on it dating from old Earth. “Contact Prime stands on a part of the site of the old Romanian city of Constanta. So let’s call it Constanta instead of Contact Prime. It sounds more like a place where people live-more human.”

“Okay,” said Matthew, “Constanta it is.”

“What happened to the old city?” someone asked. “It hasn’t been much more than seven hundred Earth years since it was a going concern.”

“I expect the rounded hillocks we’ve seen, grown over with grass, are all that’s left of it,” Alex replied.

“How come? On some sites there are still some old buildings standing and a lot of recognizable rubble piles. Why are others like Constanta so smoothed over?”

Matthew interrupted. “Can you answer that in one hundred words or less, Alex? We need to get on with other things.”

“Sure. Most towns and cities were built largely of materials not intended to last. They built buildings to knock down in twenty years or so, and replaced them with new ones that had newer engineering. They rejuvenated the material chemically and physically and remolded it for reuse. In some cities they made a point of maintaining selected old buildings or neighborhoods of stone or concrete construction, out of a sense of tradition; in fact a few old historical cities were quite largely maintained that way, although they were ringed with tracts of later, disposable-type construction. Those of us who flew over old Budapest were very impressed with the ruins there. But Constanta must have been virtually all late construction.”

“And that’s a subhumid climate they have there,” Chandra put in. “Maybe even semiarid. Over the course of seven centuries they must have had some severe drought periods, some maybe lasting for decades. There would have been a lot of soil drifting over and around the rubble heaps in open country like that.”

“Okay,” Matthew cut in. “That was our hundred words. Now, the weapons chests aren’t the place for the weapons any longer. Before we land we’ll mount them where they’ll be easy to get at if we need them.”

“If we’re going to have weapons handy,” Chandra said, “we’d better start with the clear understanding that they’re a last resort. We came here to learn, not to intimidate anyone or make war.”

“I think we’re clear on that,” Matthew replied mildly. “But if for some unforeseen reason we need weapons to keep from getting killed, then we’d better have them ready. Obviously though, our real security lies in being careful, using our heads, and keeping the force shields on except for leaving and entering the boats.

“Now a few last reminders. Don’t land so close to any Earth person that he’ll be inside your shield when you activate it. Unless of course you want him inside. And raise your commast before you activate. Otherwise you won’t be able to hear or communicate with anyone outside without deactivating. And without the commast up it can get mighty stuffy inside the shield, fast.

“Also, at least to begin with I don’t want both pinnaces to have people away from them at the same time without clearance. At least one has to be able to leave the ground at once, in case of emergency. The pinnaces, after all, are the only atmospheric flight capacity we have.

“And finally, everyone will wear a loaded pistol at all times when outside a shield, and carry two frag grenades with him, except in circumstances where it’s clearly undesirable.

“Any questions or comments?”

“Yes.”

The tone was heavy, dark, and all eyes went to Skipper Ram Uithoudt as he got to his feet. “Before we were treated to the discourse on archaeology, you said there was nothing whatever down there that could open our force shields. Well there is, and I’ll bet there’s a lot of it in everyday use.”

The room was quiet for a moment before Matthew said, “What’s that?”

“Trickery,” Ram answered. “Trickery.”

It was decided that Alpha would make first contact, with the same crew that had reconnoitered the city two days earlier. When she launched, she had a newly installed rack with automatic rifles ready for quick use. Two large open-topped bags hung beneath it, half full of fragmentation and blast grenades.

Draco rode with practiced ease. He’d spent thousands of hours in the saddle in his forty-four years, the first few hundred under the merciless eyes of hard-nosed drill instructors. Forty-four was rather old. Most died younger in battle or brawl, stabbings or beatings. To be not only forty-four but a consul was proof of outstanding ability and utter ruthlessness.

Right now he couldn’t see the sky chariot; it was behind a hillock. When it had shown itself the other day, he’d been confident it would come to earth here sooner or later. He wondered if there were others.

He knew little about the ancients, but the old stories told of great power. They could smash a city flat with no more effort than a man squashing a bug beneath his foot. The only reasons they could have for returning were to rule or collect tribute. They might want a regent to administer for them here, or a go-between, someone who knew situations and possibilities.

He turned to scowl at Ahmed’s small group paralleling his own a dozen meters away. It was a nuisance to have to screen out here on the steppe. To preserve his privacy and vanity, Draco had no psi on his immediate staff, relying entirely on his own powerful talent. But the non-psi Sudanese dog kept two of them with him everywhere but in harem, including that insolent eunuch, Yusuf the Turk.

Topping the low rise, he could see the sky chariot atop the next gentle hillock, shining brightly in the sun. Did they use slaves to polish it, he wondered, or did their arts keep it so? The last few score meters they rode warily, observing with care. A few meters from the sky chariot was a curved line of crushed grass and broken flowers, as if, for some reason, people within it had come out and trampled an exactly circular path around their craft.

The two groups of horsemen had almost come together now, converging on the pinnace. Ahmed was a length ahead when Draco, about to spur even, saw Ahmed’s stallion recoil, its powerful haunches bunched, and try to back away as if it had bumped into something. Draco reined to an abrupt stop and watched while Ahmed brought his now-rearing mount under control, using the spade-bit brutally.

Tentatively Draco moved his horse toward the pinnace with short steps. At the line in the grass it jerked its head and nearly squatted as it took a reflexive step backward. Then both men turned their nervous animals and sidled toward the craft, each with one hand outstretched. Something hard was there that they could not see, something unyielding that rose from the ring of flattened grass.

At that moment the sky chariot turned to glass before them, and Draco could see the people inside-five of them. Strange clothing covered them from foot to neck, fitting their limbs loosely. Surrounded by an invisible wall, they wore no body armor. And no swords; perhaps the small objects belted to their waists were weapons of some kind.

They were looking at him and his people.

Probably the invisible wall would allow weapons to be wielded outwardly by those inside, even though it apparently would let nothing penetrate from without.

But it did not block thoughts effectively. And they thought in Anglic; that was a stroke of luck! The Master had made his officers learn the language because it was widely used in Europe between people of different native tongues.

Abruptly a voice spoke, loud and clear, seeming somehow to come from a spar extending above the chariot. The tone was slightly metallic but clearly a woman’s. Her aura was not one you would find about a slave; among the ancients, as among some peoples on Earth, women must rank as men.

The audio pickup in the commast seemed to be working well, Matthew noted. It was directional, and right now was focused on two who appeared to be the leaders and who sat their horses side by side. Their breast plates were burnished silver instead of bronze, and their helmets more luxuriantly plumed. The shorter of the two replied to Nikko’s question.

“Yes, we speak Anglic, but it is not our native speech.”

“What is your native speech?” Nikko asked.

His answer meant nothing to her, but Anne Marie said softly, “Let me have the mike.” She spoke into it in an unfamiliar language, listened, then turned to the others. “Arabic,” she said, “or rather, a twenty-ninth century derivative. It’s not much like the computer extrapolations of what Arabic might have become. More like a pidgin Arabic, as if… ”

“What did he say?” Matthew interrupted with some irritation.

“It amounted to flattery and a formal welcome. They are honored to talk to the ancients, and something about helping us in any way they can. That’s the gist of it.”

Their scabbards were conspicuously empty. They’re bound to be impressed with the pinnace, Matthew told himself, and they probably have legends of laser weapons, nuclear bombs, the whole ancient armory, though God knows what transformations they may have undergone over centuries of oral tradition. It’s just as well they don’t know we don’t have such things today.

Mikhail voiced similar thoughts. “Eating out of our hands, sounds like. I wouldn’t let them know how little we have in the way of ordnance and men; they might turn less respectful.”

Matthew nodded. “Anne, tell them we’ve come from a world of the ancients, in a great starship that’s hovering five hundred kilometers directly above their city. They may not know what a kilometer is, so explain to them that the ship is above the sky, where there is no air to breathe and it’s always night. That should impress them.”

“I’m not up to that on short notice, Chief. I’ll need some review before I get very ambitious.”

“Use Anglic then. It should help strengthen our psychological dominance if they have to use our language. Tell them we don’t want to harm them. Say we want to know more about them and… no, wait. We’d better sound more business-like. Ask who their ruler is.”

As Anne Marie spoke, Matthew watched the two leaders. They consulted briefly in whispers too soft for the pickup to adjust to, but he got the impression that they were not friendly to one another.

The one who answered was not the one who had spoken before. “I am Ahmed and he is Draco. We rule together since the death of our great Master, Kazi, who was already great among the ancients, your forefathers. He fathered our people and ruled them from their beginning.”

“Wow!” Anne Marie exclaimed when he was done. “Sounds like they have some fantastic traditions. I can hardly wait to find out about them.”

“And they rule together,” Matthew mused. “Somehow I don’t believe that’s a happy and stable arrangement. Ask them the name of their nation.”

The shorter man answered again, back straight, head high. “Our nation is the Empire of Kazi. That is the City of Kazi and we are the Orcs.”

“Orcs,” Nikko said to herself, and frowned thoughtfully. Somewhere, she was sure, she had read or heard of orcs. Her mind sought back through courses in history, Earth geography, anthropology, but nothing came to her. Whatever orcs had been though, the word stirred aversion and distrust within her.

“Tell them we want to know more about them,” Matthew was saying. “Tell them we’re going to send two ambassadors among them. Tell them… tell them they are to treat our ambassadors as royalty and to answer all questions honestly and completely, or we will be angry with them. Got that?”

Anne Marie repeated it before switching the microphone on. Matthew searched the unreadable expressions of the listening orcs while she broadcast.

“I never knew you were so tough,” Mikhail murmured with a grin.

“Power is something these people obviously understand and appreciate,” Matthew answered. “If they think we have a lot of it, we’ll hold their respect. And as far as that’s concerned, can you imagine what we could do to them with our grenades and automatic weapons from an aircraft?”

Mikhail grunted. “The threat’s the thing though. Tough-looking characters like that would never imagine we wouldn’t follow through.”

The orc leaders consulted in whispers for minutes before answering; finally the one called Ahmed faced the Alpha again. “It will be necessary to prepare a proper apartment for our royal guests. We will be ready to receive ambassadors tomorrow.”

“Tell them we’ll be here at midday,” Matthew instructed, “with two ambassadors, a man and a woman. We’ll expect them to be furnished everything they wish in the way of comforts and servants. Tell them we are used to the best, and will expect the best when we are among them.”

Abruptly when Anne Marie finished, Matthew deactivated the shield and lifted Alpha vertically with sudden speed, out of sight without farewell.

Nikko raised her eyebrows at her husband. “You’re not exactly a paragon of courtesy today.”

He didn’t smile. “We’ll let the ambassadors be the diplomats. I want them to think of me as hard and mean.”

“Who are your ambassadors going to be?” Chandra asked expectantly. “They ought to include someone who speaks the language, don’t you think? And her husband?”

Matthew glanced over his shoulder at Chandra’s grin, and his unaccustomed grimness passed. “I tried to fix it so you wouldn’t even have to pack. Assuming Anne is willing.”

Anne’s voice and face were sober. “Of course. This is the kind of thing we came all this way for.”

“Like royalty,” Chandra said, rubbing his hands together. “I think we’re about to learn what the term ‘Roman splendor’ means.”

Draco glanced sourly toward Ahmed nearby, into whose ears Yusuf was pouring all they’d gleaned from the thoughts of the star men. Amazing that the ancients exposed their thoughts so freely. It was obvious they had no awareness at all of telepathy.

They rode on toward the City, both Draco and Ahmed digesting what they had learned, their earlier awe of the ancients replaced by a compound of greed and caution. Now they would have to agree on where, in the palace, the ambassadors would be quartered. It might take an adjustment of sectors to find a suitable apartment in a neutral location; neither would willingly let the other have control of them.

Nikko Kumalo’s searching had reached a dead end. She could not place the word orc.

In their small cabin aboard the Phaeacia she listened to Matthew’s slow even breathing. Usually she fell asleep quickly, but tonight her riddle had kept her awake. She had asked the computer what the word meant. It had printed out-Orc: Any of several large fish-like mammals of earth, especially Grampus Griseus.

But her subconscious insisted that was not the source of the word’s familiarity.

It would come to her eventually, she was sure.