The duke sat rigid, his eyes smoldering. At last he said, “You are as knowledgeable as I had feared.” He turned to Gar. “And you? What one of you knows, both must!”
“We have different areas of expertise,” Gar temporized. “For myself, I conjecture that, like those you call Milesians, you’re descended from the original colonists, but your ancestors chose to stay in the domes, rather than go out into the world and farm. Tell me, are all the Hollow Hills inhabited by tribes of Fair Folk?”
“All,” the duke confirmed. “Those whose people abandoned them were taken as homes by those who grew to be too many for one single hill. They scorned the ancestors of the Milesians for being so uncouth as to grub in the ground, and the Milesians scorned them for choosing prison over freedom.” He smiled vindictively. “The more fools they! As they found when the famines came and they had foolishly spawned as many brats as each of them wished! They came against our ancestors in their hordes, trying to batter a way into the hills—but our ancestors had never forgotten the magic of their textbooks and learning programs, and to add to the power of the nuclear generators, had learned how to tap enough geothermal energy, and to harness wind and water with turbines that charged storage batteries, so that they kept the machines working. Our ancestors took up the laser rifles they had learned to repair, and mowed down the Milesians by the hundreds. Oh, some of them died in those wars, but each took a hundred Milesians with him, and another of the Fair Folk rose up in his place!”
“Giving rise to the rumor that you couldn’t be killed.” Dirk suppressed a shudder.
“So your people all still learn how to repair the machines, and operate them?” Gar asked.
“All indeed! Some even become obsessed with such learning, and ferret out new knowledge, inventing new devices!”
“A rather solitary occupation,” Gar noted. “There are some solitary Fair Folk, yes,” the duke agreed, “but there were always leprechauns and their like among the Old People. Most, though, fulfill their assigned hours at the consoles and the repair benches, then pass the rest of their time in cultivating the arts, and in the delights of conversation.” Dirk suspected that “the arts” included martial arts, and that “conversation” covered a lot of flirtation, dalliance, social maneuvering, and jockeying for status, but he was wise enough not to say so. “Now we live in luxury,” the duke went on, “with leisure for learning and revelry, while the descendants of those who yearned for the freedom of the plains and forests must toil and sweat for scraps of bread, and strive against one another in ceaseless combat while we live in harmony.”
“Do you really?” Gar asked, interested. “How do you manage that?”
“We meet to discuss such issues as might cause friction—”
“All of you together?”
“Of course.” The duke frowned. “There are not so many of us that the town square cannot hold us all.”
“And if one of you is angry at another?”
“We hear their arguments at the assembly, and all decide together who is right to what degree, and wherein each should be blamed.”
“A time-consuming but effective way of governing,” Gar said. “However, you have plenty of spare time, don’t you?”
“That is our privilege,” the duke agreed, his voice guarded.
“Bought at the price of being able to roam freely, or to do as you damn well please even if it doesn’t suit the others—but the Milesians have little enough of such freedom, either.”
“Much less, for most of them,” the duke said darkly.
“But you also choose leaders,” Gar pressed. “How did you come to be duke? Simply by living long? Or by birth?”
“By long life and acclamation,” the duke replied. “There are many of my generation still living, but I was the one for whom the most applause rose when the old duke died. As to leading, I preside at the assemblies, and speak for us all in dealings with other hills. That is all.”
“And command if you need to fight the Milesians,” Gar inferred: “I assume, though, that you ride to one another’s hills now and again, probably at each equinox and solstice…”
“And woe to the peasants who cross our paths.” The duke smiled, eyes glowing. “I congratulate you on having discerned how we use the legend of the Wild Hunt, and the solstices and equinoxes as well, to add to our mystical aura.”
Dirk frowned; the duke was being entirely too open.
“I am sure it keeps you safe, and prevents your having to burn down more than a few Milesians,” Gar said diplomatically. “I would further conjecture that the festivals you hold on those occasions center on the exchanging of genes.”
“The festivals are also chances for athletic contests, which inspire our men to strive to perfect themselves in body and in skill at fighting,” the duke said sharply.
“And of course, the winner finds himself more attractive to the women of the neighboring Hill,” Gar interpreted.
The duke’s smile was brittle. “A tactful way of saying that we make no bar to the young, and not so young, who wish to taste and revel in one another’s joys.”
“An excellent safeguard against inbreeding,” Gar agreed. “Still, you must need the occasional influx of genes from completely outside the Fair Folk community; your gene pool can’t be very large.”
“You guess rightly, which is why we tolerate Desiree’s desire to amuse herself with your friend,” the duke said with a hard smile. “In fact, every now and again a Milesian proves so diverting that we allow him to remain among us all his days.”
“Or until you tire of him?” Gar smiled, and recited,
“He has taken a coat of the even cloth, And a pair of shoes of velvet green, And till seven years were past and gone, True Thomas on Earth was never seen.”
“Even so,” the duke said, “and those whom we find diverting, we keep until they start to age and lose their beauty. Those who cease to be diverting, we keep in other ways—those who cease amusing, or learn too much.”
“Learn what?” Gar asked. “That you’re only human, and can be slain like anyone else?” Anger sparked from the duke’s eyes. “Yes, that and more,” he hissed. “But we are not ‘merely human,’ like these Milesians, these clod-poll folk among whom you’ve been wandering!”
“They’re not all clods!” Dirk spoke in anger, the vision of Magda bright before him. “Some are beautiful, some highly skilled, many excellent soldiers! The rigors of their lives have made them hardy and strong, clever and skillful! Some are even as wonderful as any of your Fair Folk!”
“Ridiculous!” the duke snapped. “Are any Milesians as tall as we, as graceful or as handsome?” Dirk frowned. “So you think that your inbreeding has made you superior to the people of the outside world.”
“Not inbreeding—selective breeding! The Hill can support only so many! Each woman may bear only two children during her lifetime, and if one is born dark-haired, ugly, or maimed, we give him to the Milesians!”
Dirk remembered the tall “changeling” in Cort’s platoon. “But only if you can trade it for a good-looking Milesian. So that’s why you continually steal Milesian babies and leave Fair Folk infants in their places—as you say, you need the genes, but you take only the prettiest and the strongest!”
“And have been doing so for four hundred years,” the duke confirmed. “After all that time, surely we have all the best genes, and the Milesians all the worst!”
“Not at all,” Gar said, “for the babies you trade away have all your genes within them, even if they’re recessive. If you gain the strengths of the Milesians, so do they gain yours!”
“What strengths have they that we would wish?” the duke scoffed. His eyes glittered as he looked from Dirk to Gar and back. “Does it not worry you that I am so free to confirm your guesses, so open as to tell you facts you did not know?”