The Man-Kzin Wars 05

CHAPTER SIX

“No, Ib,” Tyra Nordbo said, lowering her rifle.

“Fire!” the young man said.

“No!”

One of the prisoners looked up from his slump; tears rolled slowly down through the dirt on his cheeks and the thin wispy adolescent beard. His lips moved soundlessly.

“Squad-fire!”

The magrifles gave their whispering grunt, and the five prisoners toppled into the graves they had spent the last half-hour digging. Behind, the villagers gave a murmur, halfway between shock and approval; they were Amish, men in dark suits and women in long black skirts. The half-ruined houses of the farmtown beyond were slipping into shadow as Alpha Centauri set; the moon was up, and Beta, leaving it just too dark to tell a black thread from a white. The air smelled of death and of moist turned earth from the graves, and from the plowed fields beyond, purple-black rolling hills amid the yellow of reaped grain and the dusty green of pasture. Orchards and vineyards spotted the land, and small lakes behind dams. Woodlots were the deep green of Terran oak and the orange-green of Kzin, tall frondlike growths in Wunderland’s reddish ocher. Westward the last sunlight touched the glaciers and crags of the Jotuns, floating like a mirage seen through glass. The mountains were close, the dense forest of the foothills less than a day’s walk away.

It was hard to imagine war had passed this way, until you saw the graves. Many fresh ones in the churchyard, and these five outside it, along the graveled main street. The other soldiers in the squad lowered their weapons and turned to watch the exchange between brother and sister.

Tyra Nordbo was 180 centimeters, as tall as her brother, but she lacked the ordinary low-gravity lankiness of Wunderlanders; she was robust and fullbosomed, and strikingly athletic for a girl of eighteen. Her brother was only four years older and much alike in his high-cheeked, snub-nosed looks. There was a hardness to his face that she lacked, although she matched the anger when he swung to confront her.

“Karl, Yungblut,” he snapped over his shoulder, “bury them. Kekkonen, get the dogs back to the van.” He raised his voice to the villagers. “You people, return to your homes. Justice has been done.”

The black-clad farmers stirred and settled their hats and turned back to their houses.

“Justice, Ib?” Tyra said, her voice full of quiet fury She slung her rifle and reached to tear off the Provisional Gendarmerie badge sewn to the arm of her bush jacket. It landed at Ib’s feet with a quiet plop of dust. Her holoprinted ID card followed it.

“Those were bandits!” lb said, jerking his head at the graves where earth fell shovelful by shovelful.

“Thieves, murderers, and rapists,” Tyra said, nodding jerkily. The sight was not too bad; the prefrag penetrators were highly lethal but did not mangle flesh much. She had seen much worse, working in an aid station for the underground army, during the Street fighting in Muchen at Liberation. “They deserved to die-after a fair trial.”

The Amish here were strict in their pacifist faith, and had made little resistance when the gang moved in; the investigation had been ugly hearing. This part of the Jotun foothills had been guerrilla country during the last days of the occupation, full of folk on the run from the collaborationist police, from the forced-labor gangs, or simply from spreading poverty and chaos. Not all of them had gone back to the lowlands when peace came, to the sort of badly-paid hard work that was available. Many had turned to raiding, and were difficult to catch. The Wunderlander armed forces were stretched thin, and most of their efforts had to go to the fighting farther into the kzinti sphere, as the human fleets pressed the aliens back.

“They were guilty,” she went on. “They still deserved a trial, and it wouldn’t have taken any effort at all to carry them back to Arhus,” she went on bitterly. Her eyes stung, and she blinked back anger and grief. I will not cy.

“General Markham.-”

“You and your precious Ulf Reichstein-Markham. He’s as bad as a kzin!” she snapped. Some of the other troopers scowled at that. Ulf Markham had been among the fiercest of the space-based Resistance fighters in the Serpent Swarm, and he had a considerable following in the military. “Compared to a real hero, like Jonah Matthieson, or-Enough. I quit. My pay’s in arrears”-everyone’s was-“so I’ll take the horse and rifle in lieu. Goodbye.”

“Stop -“ lb called to her back. “You’re running away, running away like Father did!”

“Don’t you ever mention Father like that again,” she said coldly, forcing her hand away from the weapon slung at her back. Her hands were mechanical as she unhitched the horse and vaulted into the saddle, an easy feat on Wunderland.

His voice followed her as she cantered out into the falling night.

And so the Commission leaves us only the home farm, the Teufelberg forest, and the Kraki, of the properties, Tyra Nordbo read, tilting the paper towards the firelight. The letter took on the tones of her mother’s voice, deliberately cheerful and utterly sad, as it had been ever since Dada left. Was taken away on that crazy astrophysical expedition by the kzin, Yiao-Captain. But this is more than enough to keep all of us here busy. It is a relief not to have the management of so much else, and we must remember how many others are wanting even for bread.

She started to crumple the printout in one hand, then carefully smoothed it out and folded it, tucking it back into the saddlebags and leaning back against the saddle. In the clearing on the other side of the fire her horse reached down and took another mouthful of grass, the rich kerush sound followed by wet munching and the slight jingle of the hobble chain. Her new dog Garm looked up and thumped his tail on the grass, the firelight ruddy on the Irish Setter-mostly Setter-hairs of his coat. Elsewhere the flicker caught at grass, trees, bushes, the overhanging rock of the cliff behind her and the gnarled trunk and branches of an oak that grew out of the sandstone ten meters above her head. Overhead the stars were many and very bright; in the far distance a tigripard squalled, and the horse threw up its head for a moment in alarm. Nowhere in the wilderness about her was there a hint of Man-save that the tree and the grass, woman and horse and dog were all of the soil and blood and bone of Sol.

“So,” she whispered to herself “It is not enough that we are stripped of our honor, they must make us paupers as well.”

Not quite paupers, she admitted.

That had been among the first things her father taught her; not to lie, first and foremost not to lie to herself. They would be quite comfortably off; the home farm was several thousand hectares, the timber concession would be profitable enough now that the economy was recovering, and the pelagic-harvester Hrolf Kraki was a sturdy old craft. The household staff were all old retainers, loyal to Mutti, and very competent. It’s not the money, she knew; it was a matter of pride. The Nordbos had been the first humans to settle Skognara District, back when the Nineteen Families arrived. They had been pioneers, ecological engineers adapting Terran life to a biosphere not meant for it and a planet not much like Earth; then guides, helpers, kindly landfathers to the ones who came after and settled in as tenants-in-chief, subtenants, workers.

It was not the loss of the lands and factories and mines; in practice the family bad merely levied a small percentage in return for governing, a thankless privilege these past two generations. But Gerning and Skognara belonged to the Nordbos, they had made them with blood and sweat and the bones of their dead. For the Commission to take the rights away was to spit on the memories. Of Friedreich Nordbo, who had sponsored a tenth-share of the First Fleet, of Uirike Nordbo, who discovered how to put Terran nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria in fruitful symbiosis with the native equivalents, of Sigurd Nordbo, who lost his life fighting to save a stranded schoolbus during the Great Flood, Of her aunt Siglide Nordbo, who had piloted her singleship right up to the moment it rammed a kzinti assault transport during the invasion.

And of Peter Nordbo, who had stood like a rock between the folk of Skognara and the conquerors’ demands, every day that he was able. Who was ten years gone, shanghaied into space because he told a kzin who was half a friend of an astronomical curiosity, leaving a wife who had no choice but to yield more than he had, as conditions grew worse. Condemned for a traitor in absentia, by a court that thought it was merciful… and Mutti was all alone now in the big silent house on the headland at Korness, looking out over the waves. Few friends had been willing to visit, much less speak in her defense.

“Dada-mann,” Tyra whispered, laying her head on her knees and weeping aloud, because there was nobody to heat That was what she had cried out when he left. There had been no words he could say to a child of eight… Presently Garm came, creeping on his stomach and whining at her distress, sticking his anxious cold nose against her face; she clutched him and sobbed until there was no more.

When she was functional again she took the coffee pot off the heater coil-the fire was for comfort, and predators-and poured herself a cup. The other letter was still sealed; she had nearly discarded it, until the return address caught her eye. Claude Montferrat Palme, a Herrenmann of ambiguous reputation. Frowning, she pressed her thumb to the seal to deactivate the privacy lock and then opened it.

“Dear Fra Nordbo,” she read. “A possible juncture of interests-”

“Yes, there are workings in the mountains,” the old villager said.

At least, that was what Tyra thought he had said. These backwoodsmen had been up in the high country for the better part of two centuries, pioneers before the kzinti came and isolated by choice and necessity since. Their dialect was so archaic it was almost Pletterdeutz, without the simplified grammar and many of the loan-words from the Baltic and Scandinavian languages that characterized modern Wunderlander. Back further in the Jotuns were tiny enclaves even more cut off, remnants of the ethnic separatists who had come with the third through seventh slowship fleets from Sol System.

“What sort of workings?” she said, slowly. Her own accent was Skognaran, more influenced by Swedish and Norse than the central dialect of Munchen; modified by a Herrenmann-class education, of course.

The Nordbos were formerly of the Freunchen clan, one of the Nineteen Families. Formerly. Lucidly, these primitives were out of touch with the news; they barely comprehended that the alien conquerors were gone.

“Ja, many sorts, Fra Nordbo,” the old man said deferentially.

The von Gelitz family had owned these lands-still did, pending the Reform Commission’s findings-but that ownership had always been purely theoretical, except for a hunting lodge or two. Nobody but the Ecological Service ever paid much official attention to this area, and they had gotten careless during the occupation. There was an old manor house outside Neu Friborg’s common fields, but it had been ruins for the better part of a century. He had called them the “old herr’s place.”

Old, she thought with a shiver, looking at the man. They were getting by on home remedies here, and what knowledge their healer could drag out of an ancient first-aid program. The wrinkles, wispy white hair, liver spots… this man might be no more than seventy or eighty, barely middle-aged with decent medicine. Markham should spend less on his precious fleet-the UN Navy is fighting the war now-and more on people and places like this!

Apart from premature aging and the odd cripple, it was not too bad as backcountry towns in the Jotuns went. Built of white-plastered fieldstone and homemade tile, around a central square with the mayor’s office, the national polezi station-long disused-and the Reformed Catholic church. There was a central fountain, and plenty of shade from eucalyptus and pepper and featherfrond trees. They were sitting under an awning outside the little gasthaus, watching the sleepy traffic of midafternoon: bullock-carts and burros bringing in firewood or vegetables, a girl switching along a milch cow, tow-haired children in shorts tumbling through the dust in some running, shouting game. A rattletrap hovertruck went by in a cloud of grit, and a waitress went about watering the flowers that hung from the arches behind them in earthenware pots.

That was all there was to see: the town and its four-hundred-odd inhabitants, the cluster of orchards and fields around it in the little pocket of arable land, and wilderness beyond-mostly scrubby, in the immediate vicinity, but you could find anything from native jungle to forest to desert in a few days’ journey. All about the peaks of the Jotuns reared in scree and talus and glacier; half a continent of mountains, taller than Earth’s Himalayas and much wider. Wunderland had intermittent plate tectonics, but when they were active they were active, and the light gravity reduced the power of erosive forces. These were the oldest mountains on the planet, and not the highest by any means.

The old man finished fanning himself with his straw hat and continued:

“Jade, of course. No mines, but from the high mountain rivers; that is how we paid our tribute to the kzin. We are not ignorant knuzen here, Fra Nordbo!”

There was a pathetic pride to that; a hovertruck had come once a month from the lowlands, until the final disruption at liberation. Tyra felt a slight stinging in her eyes. Once even the most isolated settlement had been linked to Munchen, with virtual-schools and instant emergency services…

“Then, sometimes hunters come through; hunting for tigripard bides, quetzbird feathers. Or prospectors. There is gold, hafnium… when I was a small boy, scholars also from the Scholarium in Munchen.”

“Scholars?” she said, pricking up her ears.

“Yes; they said little-this was just after the War you understand, people were suspicious then-but there were rumors of formations that could not be accounted for. But they found nothing, and had to return to Munchen when so much of the Scholarium was closed by the government.” The collaborationist authorities had other priorities than education; their own profits, primarily. “And -but your supplies, they have arrived!” He rose and left, bowing and murmuring good wishes.

Another hovertruck pulled into the square; big and gleaming by contrast with the single ancient relic the village of Neu Friborg owned, although shabby enough by Munchen standards, much less Earth’s. The man who stepped down from it was tall, 190 centimeters at least; his black hair was worn in a shag cut, although she knew he had kept it in a military-style crop while he was Police Chief of Munchen. Chief for the collaborationists, and notoriously corrupt even by the gang’s standards. Claude Montferrat-Palme, of the Sydow clan. He wore expensive outbacker clothes, leather boots and grey usthcloth jacket and breeches, with a holstered strakkaker, and a beret. A small, neatly clipped black mustache lay on his upper lip, and his mouth quirked in a slight smile,

“Fra Nordbo,” he said, bowing formally over her hand with a click of heels.

“Fro Palme,” she replied, inclining her head with equal formality. A server bustled up with stems of the local beer.

“Prosit,” he said.

“Skaal,” she replied. “Now that the amenities are over, could you tell me exactly what you had in mind?”

Her voice held a chilly correctness; he seemed to recognize the tone, and smiled wryly.

“Fra Nordbo, I’m very strongly reminded of your father.”

“You knew him?” she said, with a raised eyebrow. “Perhaps you will claim to have been his friend, next?”

He surprised her by letting the smile grow into a deep laugh. “Quite the contrary” he said, shaking his head. “He treated me with the most frigid politesse, as befitted an honorable Landholder forced to deal with noxious collaborationist scum.”

She relaxed slightly. “He couldn’t have known you were involved with the Resistance,” she said.

“Ach, at the time I wasn’t,” he replied frankly. “I was a collaborationist at that point. My conversion came later; people do change. As some claim your father did, later.”

“That is a lie!” she said. More calmly: “My father was an astrophysicist, it was his… hobby, since he had to govern Skognara from a sense of duty. How was he to know the enemy would think a mere energy-anomaly a thing of potential military importance? The kzin-Yiao-Captain-forced him to accompany them on the expedition.”

“From which he has never returned, and hence cannot defend himself. And the Commission has been in no charitable mood.”

Tyra’s blond head drooped slightly. “I know,” she said quietly. “Tb,.. my brother and I, we have discussed resigning the Nordbos from the Freunchen clan.”

“Advisable, but it may make little difference. Unless I’ve lost my political feelers-and I haven’t-the Reformers are going to strip the Nineteen Families of everything but ceremonial power. And from all but their strictly private property, as well.”

Tyra nodded jerkily, feeling the hair stir on her neck as her ears laid back. That mutation was a mark of her heritage, of the old breed that had won this planet for humankind.

“it is unjust! Men like my father did everything they could to shield -“ She shrugged and fell silent again, taking a mouthful of the beer.

“Granted, but most of the kzin are gone, and a great deal of repressed hatred has to have a target.” He turned one hand up in a spare gesture. “Even our dear Grand Admiral Ulf Reichstein-Markham has been able to do little to halt the growth of anti-Families feeling. Which means we of the Families-as individuals-had better look to our own interests.”

Tyra looked down into her mug. Montferrat laughed again.

“How tactful you are for one so young, Fra Nordbo. I have a reputation for looking after my own interests, do I not? Old Sock is the nickname now; because I fit on either foot, having changed sides at just the right moment. Unfortunately, most of my accumulated wealth went on securing my vindication.”

He nodded dryly at her startled glance. “Yes, our great and good government of liberation is very nearly as corrupt as the collaborationists they hunt down so vigorously. Not Markham; his vice is power, not wealth. A little too nakedly apparent, however, and I doubt he will retain much of it past the elections, when the junta steps down. Which it will, given that the UN Space Navy is overseeing the process… but I digress.”

“Ja, Herr,” Tyra said. “You spoke of a matter of mutual interest?”

“Indeed.” He took out a slim gold cigarette case, opening it at her nod and selecting a brown cigarillo. His gaze sought the mountains as he took a meditative puff. “After you mentioned rumors of something… strange in these mountains.”

“I was a student at the Scholarium before the liberation, and afterwards a little. Before my brother… Well, he greatly admires Admiral Markham.”

“Of whom you no longer think highly, and who is notoriously unfond of myself, thus showing his bad taste,” Montferrat said suavely. “Yes. Thank you for the information on that little atrocity, by the way; it may come in useful as a stick for the Admiral’s spokes.” He frowned slightly, looking at the glowing tip of the cigarillo.

“I don’t believe in fate, but there’s a… synchronicity to events, sometimes. Your father vanished, seeking an artifact of inexplicable characteristics, near this system. You come across evidence of another here in these mountains. And I -“

Tyra made an inquiring sound.

“Well, let us say that this is the third instance,” Montferrat went on. “More would be unsafe for you to know; it has to do with General Markham, and his Sol-System patrons the ARM. It would certainly be unsafe for me to be openly involved in any such search.”

“You implied that you would be commissioning a search?” Tyra said.

“No. Searchers. Who will be looking, but not specifically for that. It is necessary that someone guard these unaware guardians; and since this presents me with an opportunity to do a lovely lady a service-”

He smiled gallantly; Tyra retained her look of stony politeness. Montferrat sighed.

“As you will.” A puff made the cigarillo a crimson ember for a moment. “First I must tell you a story, about a man named Jonah, and some friends he has made recently. Unusual friends-”