Fire Time

TWENTY-FOUR

Jill wept. Sparling held her close, on the bench they had in the rear of the command cabin. His face was a helmet’s visor, save that an edge of his mouth twitched downward, over and over, and his eyes smoldered coal-dry.

Slow tears coursed along Dejerine’s cheeks, bitter across his -tips. From time to time a shudder possessed him. Somehow his hands walked steadily over the console and his brain measured what the scanner screens revealed.

The blast crater gleamed black, soil turned to glass. It was not unduly wide. The missile had been a precision instrument, shaped to cast its force in a cone and give off minimal hard radiation. This couldn’t be perfect. A ring of unvaporized casualties lay around. For penance he magnified the view at random spots. Part of that meat moved, which was worst of all.

Abruptly he could take no more. He brought the energy gun into play. Bolts raved, forms charred, for a minute or two until the ground lay in a smoking peace. Maybe a few could have been saved, given proper medical care. But where was that?

Father, forgive me, he would have begged if he had been able, for I knew not what I did. He had never before seen combat. But it was as if he dared not pray. Instead, there belled through him:

For now thou numberest my steps; dost thou not watch over my sin?

My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity.

And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place.

The waters wear the stones; thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man.

Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth; thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.

His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.

But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.

Jill ceased crying. Small and shaky, her voice nonetheless marched: “I, I’m okay. Thanks, darling. The sight was horrible, I’d no idea how horrible. But I’m only shocked, not killed, not crippled.”

“Take it easy,” Sparling said.

“No. Can’t do that yet, laren.” The soldier’s girl rose. Dejerine heard her boots on the deck. Her arm crossed his shoulder. “Here,” she said. In her hand were the knives she and Sparling had held, flanking him in the copilots’ seats while he did their bidding. “Take them.”

“I don’t want them,” Dejerine protested.

“For appearances’ sake when we get back.” Jill tossed them at his feet. The blades rang together.

He looked up out of his helplessness into her blue gaze. “What should I do?”

She came around her chair and sat down, no longer bothering with safety harness, “First, let’s take a scout around,” she said. More life resounded in every newspoken word.

Dejerine felt Ishtar’s gravity in his fingertips. The aircraft obeyed just the same. Lazily spiraling, it searched across kilometers. The screens showed barbarians in blind, panic flight, on land and water alike. Meanwhile Sparling took the third seat, drew pipe and tobacco pouch from his tunic, loaded and lit and puffed. The odor was like a dream of Earth. Calm had descended on him.

At last, impersonal of accent, he inquired, “How many do you suppose we accounted for?”

Dejerine swallowed twice before he wrenched forth:

“Two or three thousand.”

“Out of, hm-m, didn’t we estimate fifty thousand minimum?”

Laughter cackled from Dejerine. “Six per cent. They got off easily. We took a mere thousand lives apiece.”

“They’re rather more extravagant on Mundomar. And the garrison here numbers well above three thousand—each of whom would’ve been killed, or suffered out a few years as a slave before the most brutal kind of overwork did him in.”

Sparling leaned closer. His tone gentled: “Do believe, I’m not happy about what we’ve done. I don’t feel righteous. But neither do I feel guilty. And we’re in your eternal debt. Yours, Yuri. You suggested a single big shot. I thought we’d have to hunt them with machine guns.”

“What’s the difference, in Christ’s name?”

“None morally, I reckon. However, this took fewer of them, and most died too fast to know it. Besides”— Sparling paused—“they’re a warrior breed. Bullets or clumsy chemical bombs might’ve checked them, but I don’t think would have stopped them for long. They’d have found tactics, made inventions, stolen weapons from us, copied them… come back to battle endlessly, till our final choices would have been to kill off their whole race or give in—throw civilization on Ishtar, if not ourselves, to them and their mercies. This today—I don’t think they’ll ever return against this.”

“And,” Jill said low, “a trivial point, no doubt, but now our people needn’t make that raid out of Primavera. They can restore the stuff they, hm, borrowed. You’ll close the case then, won’t you, Yuri?”

Dejerine jerked a nod. “What shall we do next?” he asked them.

“Why, you’re the boss,” Jill replied, as if astonished at the emptiness in him. Her voice quickened, even brightened. “Well, let’s radio the legion, reassure them, consult—In fact, could we possibly land? Spend the night? Check out the barbarian camp? Who knows, we might find that object from Tammuz. Or a few dauri. They’d sure need help and comforting, poor dears.”

Things in the largest tent indicated that strange little starfish figures had indeed huddled there. But they were gone, fled in a terror and bewilderment beyond the horde’s own. From what Jill told him, Dejerine imagined them scuttling through this country that for them held only hunger, and was surprised at how deeply he wished they would make it alive across the Desolations.

The star-cube they had left behind. In awe he bore it to his flyer.

When he entered a gate of Port Rua, the soldiers saluted him who had delivered them. They did not cheer. Sparling explained they were too weary, they had lost too many, for rejoicing. That must wait. In what remained of the day they simply sent out burial details to cover the grisliness beyond their walls.

A wind sprang up, hoarse-throated, forge-hot, skinwithering. Dust drove before it till the air was a gray that stung and gritted; Bel glared as red as Anu.

“We will abide,” Acting Commandant Irazen said, “if we get help.”

He addressed the humans in the office that had been Larreka’s. It was a white-plastered, rough-raftered room, mostly bare aside from a few mattresses, patterned in rainbows, on the clay floor, and a few books and battered souvenirs along the walls. The shortsword banner hung from a crosspiece on a footed staff opposite Irazen’s. Windows were shuttered against the storm. Dull yellow lantern flames breathed pungency into a warmth less furious than outside.

Dejerine looked from the leonine being who also served a civilization, to Jill and Sparling hand in hand, and back. The girl interpreted. How slim and fair she stood. The light glowed on hair and gleamed in eyes. “What can I tell him?” she asked when silence had grown.

“Tell him—Dieu m’assiste—what can I?” Dejerine spread his palms in appeal. “He doubtless imagines Earth has had a change of heart. Have you the heart to tell him the truth?”

“No, oh, no,” she whispered. “I’m not that brave.” She turned to Irazen and spoke a few halting sentences. The Ishtarian rumbled a reply which eased her distress an atom.

“I explained this was a special case, that you stretched your authority and Earth can’t give any further military aid,” she said. “He’s not too disappointed. After all, he doesn’t expect the Valennener confederation can outlive this blow. He’ll just have individual warbands to cope with, sometimes to play off against each other. He… he says that as long as there is a Zera Victrix, our names will be on its rolls,”

“Probably the blockade will dissolve when the news has crossed the sea,” Dejerine responded. Impulse snatched him. “But if not, I’ll break it!”

Jill drew breath. Sparling let go an amazed, delighted oath. The girl told the soldier, who advanced to grip Dejerine by the shoulders till they hurt.

What a foolish promise to make, the human officer thought. Why do I know I’ll fulfill it? Why am I not dismayed at myself? He saw Jill’s vividness and knew why.

Or did he? She wasn’t his. She and Sparling were bound across space to a judgment that might well bind them together for what was left of their years after the punishment. He, Yuri Pierre Dejerine, had nothing to gain but trouble. Then why this rising gladness?

Well. I doubt if I’ll be called on to stir. The buccaneers will go straight home to their—what do they call it?—their Fire Time. Or if they don’t, I can make a pretext to flit off alone, and carry out my mission in secret.

Blood guiltiness crowded back. Yes, I can sink ships full of sentient creatures who are helpless before me.

Jill winked. “We won’t tell on you,” she vowed. “Will we, Ian?”

“Absolutely never,” the man agreed. The guilt grew incandescent in Dejerine’s guts.

Irazen spoke again. Jill and Sparling lost a degree of their joy. “What now?” Dejerine demanded through a spasm in his pulse.

“He says—” The girl tightened her hold on the man. “He says he isn’t Larreka. He’ll stay while he’s able, but the legion can no longer feed itself here, and if the Gathering doesn’t supply them, he’ll pull out.”

She tried to smile. “Don’t look glum, Yuri,” she added. “Valennen won’t be the menace it was, and the Zera will be alive down south.”

“But it would be better if you… if they could stay, would it not?” Dejerine asked.

“Oh, yes,” Sparling said. “You’re Navy; you ought to see that in a glance at the map. This is the anchor point for protection of the Fiery Sea, for keeping civilization going in those islands and North Beronnen, and keeping their resources available elsewhere—resources which’d be much wanted under the best conditions, and damn near vital if we of Primavera can’t help as we’d hoped to.”

Jill nodded. The tresses rippled along her throat. Within Dejerine, a nova burst.

—“What’s wrong? Yuri, are you all right?” He realized that a minute or more had gone. She was holding him by the waist. On her face and Sparling’s was honest, anxious concern. Irazen, sensing it, held forth hands as if to offer what help an alien could.

“Oui… Ça va bien, merci. Une idee—” Dejerine shook himself. “Pardon. I must think.”

He sat down, knees lifted, gripped his temples, stared at the rainbow beneath him, and—did not think—let understanding come, in great soft waves of peace.

Finally he rose. He knew why those two fared blithely toward prison. The same power rang through his words.

Not that he waxed eloquent. Rather, he stammered and groped for ways to tell his vision. He wished he had, or could at least comprehend, the dream art of the Ishtarians.

“My friends, I, I don’t know what you can say to him here. Perhaps best you be, eh, noncommittal. Say that a limited amount of supplies will positively come. Say we trust the Gathering will decide to hold what it has and that… that civilization will retreat no further.

“Entre nous—Between us, I can let you know—for the present, work on the base is halted. Everything you had in Primavera goes back to you. And the Navy will serve you as best we can,”

“Oh, Yuri,” Jill sang. The blue eyes seemed, for a moment, blinded.

“Judas priest,” Sparling said in voice that should have pardoned the Betrayer.

Dejerine hurried on. I must make this irrevocable. “Why? Well, I live in my head the same as you. I was less and less sure I was doing right. Therefore I came north to fetch you with a vague idea that Ian might seize my aircraft and force me to, to do what we did. If he could succeed in that. ah, not my fault, was it? On him be the consequences. And you—everyone should feel kinder toward me, even though I was forced.”

“But I did not expect you would bear those consequences too, Jill.”

“I did not foresee how it would feel to bum people who could not fight back. Never mind how good or bad the causes, they could not fight back. You who will go to Earth are free of that.”

“Yet it is never enough to kill. We must help and build. I am commander. My men will cheerfully obey the changed orders I give them until I am replaced. Primavera will stay in the Federation—also after they send for us three, because we will be those who go speak for Ishtar—”

“Do you see?”

“I do,” said Sparling. Jill sped to Dejerine and kissed him.