“Things are different on Ishtar. The Ishtarian afoot can travel faster than a man, including a man on a horse, and for much longer at a stretch without tiring. He can see quite well by night, so the shorter day is no inconvenience. He rarely needs shelter, and if need be he can live indefinitely off whatever herbage grows along his path. It’s no particular bother to camp out on the job. In short, he’s a better traveler than we are, with more speed and scope.
“Therefore, ranchers could carry out many different kinds of operation over very wide areas. When they got to the point of wanting fixed marts, at spots where it was desirable to locate other sedentary industries, why, they went ahead and started ’em. The town, the city can send its farmers out far enough to keep itself fed and produce a surplus. Certain kinds of specialists live there. But mainly the population is floating, because for most Beronnen families the ranches are a better, actually a more interesting environment.
“It’s a misnomer to speak of ‘civilization’ on this planet. Shucks, the word doesn’t have fewer syllables than ‘literate culture.’ But I guess we’re stuck with the habit.”
Sparling continued. Presently he was in among buildings. There was no city wall, such as defended the communities like Port Rua (or lost Tarhanna) that doubled as military strongpoints. War had been absent from this territory for a very long while. Today it was still not considered worthwhile providing more defense than a legion. Should that be defeated, Sehalans would have a better chance in scattering to live off the countryside, than letting themselves be boxed in by an enemy who could do likewise and whose camp would not suffer providential epidemics. Most of the wealth was out on the ranches anyway.
In fact, there was no city plan. Builders chose their sites at will. Regularly used routes between became trampled, rutted lanes, except where it had been convenient to pave a few sections. Mostly, structures stood well apart, amidst lia, bushes, trees. No type of dwellers or industries occupied any particular area. Many quarters were simple booths or tents, brought in by visitors who didn’t care to pay for lodgings. Permanent buildings were large by ancient human standards—to accommodate a larger species—and, while a majority more or less resembled the inn, some were startlingly artistic, whether monumental or exquisite.
Sehala sprawled.
It did not stink, nor was it littered. Sanitation was less of a problem for Ishtarians. whose water-hoarding systems discharged no urine and comparatively little of a dry fecal matter, than had been the case for man. Nevertheless, whoever was in charge of an establishment disposed of wastes and rubbish, if only because otherwise his neighbors would have sued him for making their environs offensive. Odors were of smoke, vegetation, sharp male and sweet female scents.
Folk who saw Sparling saluted him courteously. whether they had met him before or not, but didn’t stop to talk. Thrusting chitchat upon a person who might be in a hurry was considered bad manners. Fewer were in sight than usual.
He found out why as he was passing the Tower of the Books. “Ian!” bawled a voice. Larreka, commandant of Zera Victrix, overtook him. They clasped shoulders, and each read signs of trouble upon the other.
“What’s wrong?” Sparling opened.
Larreka’s tail lashed his ankles. Whiskers bristled above fangs. “Plenty,” he growled, “both here and in Valennen, and I don’t know which is worse. Word last night, a call from Port Rua. A regiment sent to regain Tarhanna, bushwhacked and wiped out. Wolua himself—you remember Wolua, my first officer?—he got killed. The barbarians’ ransom demand for their prisoners isn’t gold, it’s weapons; and whoever drew up that list knows exactly what he needs to damage us the most.”
Sparling whistled.
“So Owazzi called the assembly together again this morning,” Larreka continued. “Soon I couldn’t take any more speeches and walked out.”
That’s where the missing townspeople are, Sparling realized. In the audience. Assemblies came years apart; and then the group seldom collected. The usual practice was to try for a consensus before casting a formal vote. This was best done by leisured meetings of individuals in private. Christ! Do I have to go there cold. right now? I’d counted on time to lay groundwork, break my news gently—
He heard himself say: “Doubtless you told them this strengthens the case you came here to make, for sending reinforcements to Valennen. I take it many are opposed?”
“Right,” Larreka answered. “A lot of them want outright evacuation. Give up the whole damn continent, just like that. Well, Ian, what are your ill tidings?”
Sparling told him. He stood silent for a space, save that the wind rustled his mane. The scar on his brow was livid.
Finally: “Let’s hit them with that. Hard. Right away. We may shock a little sense into them.”
“Or out of them,” Sparling muttered. He saw no escape, though, and stalked along beside his comrade.
The assembly met in an auditorium whose marble colonnades always reminded him of the Parthenon. That was in spite of differences being endless, from circular plan to abstract mosaic frieze. Glazed windows above tiers packed with spectators let light down onto a floor where the members stood. At its middle was a dais for the Lawspeaker and whoever happened to be addressing the body.
It was as colorfully mixed a band as any he had seen on the highway. Every society which remained in the Gathering was represented; and Ishtarians were more wildly inventive than men where it came to social institutions. Tribes, clans, monarchies, aristocracies, theocracies, republics, communisms, anarchisms found approximate analogues in this chamber. But what was one to make of a people who alternated the franchise annually between males and females, or who controlled the population of an oasis by staging periodic combats to the death between adolescents of both sexes who might well be close friends, or who changed spouses on a fixed schedule intended to get all possible couples together, or who settled contested public issues by a method of tossing bones which they knew gave random results, or—For that matter, had Earth ever seen the like of the Gathering itself?
The assembly was dwindled from its last meeting, a decade ago. Already then, discussion had turned on how much territory civilization might reasonably hope to hang onto, given human help whose exact form had yet to be determined. Since, the legions had pulled back from numerous important islands. Growing storminess, declining economy, pressure from barbarians on the move, had forced them—were forcing them. But to surrender Valennen entirely, at this stage, would be in a new order of magnitude.
As he entered with Larreka, Sparling saw the speaker was Jerassa. He knew him welclass="underline" a local male, chosen by the masters of Sehala city because he was intelligent, articulate, and in his fashion sophisticated. He had spent a great deal of time in Primavera, made many human friends, and learned much of what they had to teach. In daily life he was among the scholars and chroniclers at the Tower of the Books whom the Afella Indomitable legion subsidized for its own honor. But there was nothing dusty about him; he was rather a dandy. Besides the seek entomoids which lived in his mane as part of the symbiosis, he cultivated rainbow-winged orekas. They made a flittering glory about his head as he talked.