“All over the place.”
“If I’m boring you…”
“Academic maundering, which I suppose you can’t help, being an academician. Go on. I have to get this one way or another and it might as well be now.”
“So kind. Remind me to poison your next drink. Hmm. Yes. The Huvved came roaring in over Tairanna and took her fast and bloody. Poor old Pradites and Eftakites hadn’t a chance against a Warmaster, stories from that time have her melting down whole cities in a single hour.” She sat up, wiped at her face. “Like I’m going to melt in a minute.” She poured more fruitade into her glass, tasted it, grimaced. It was warmish, all the ice long gone. She dumped the pitcher out, filled it at the fountain and emptied it over her head, filled it again, emptied it again and dripped back to the lounge chair. “From all I can find out, the Hordar were a peaceful lot then; they did more fighting with words than with fists, they’d rather go somewhere else when things got tense. Didn’t mean they wouldn’t fight, but they weren’t much good at hopeless battles. Even then, though, you didn’t want to push them too hard. Back them into a corner and you had trouble, serious trouble, capital T trouble. You get the Hordar Surge coming at you.”
Parnalee broke open the fastenings on his tunic, wiped at his face and his neck with a damp handkerchief. “I presume this will eventually reach some endpoint.”
Aslan ignored him. “What it is, it’s a sort of mob action that turns a collection of individuals into a single being with a single mind and a single purpose which is basically to stomp a threat into mush.” She lifted the damp ends of her shirt and flapped them idly, trying to stir a bit of breeze along her sweaty body. “To trigger a Surge…” she broke off, yawned, “… you put a minimum of twelve Hordar in some sort of enclosed space and apply extreme stress involving the survival of a genetic group.” She closed her eyes, after a minute cracked the eye on Parnalee’s side. He was flushed with heat and visibly uncomfortable; she couldn’t tell if he was listening. Oh well, what the hell, might as well finish her recitation. “A Surge grows in lumps of twelve, don’t know why, but there it is.” She yawned again. “Bridges from group to group until most of the population is involved. It doesn’t quit until the danger is gone or every unit in the Surge is dead.” She pushed sweat-soggy hair out of her eyes and thought about going inside for a bath, but it was hotter in there than it was here. Too bad the fountain was in full sunlight, be nice to sit in it a while and cool off, but she didn’t want a case of sunstroke, she didn’t much trust the doctors on this primitive world. Wonder if there are any umbrellas inside, I could tie an umbrella to one of those upper tiers and make my own shade. Hmm. Haven’t got the energy to move. “After I came on the term in the early histories, I tried talking about it in my interviews. Every Hordar had a powerful nonverbal response to the word and put up barriers whenever I tried to move beyond abstractions to the actual mechanics of the thing and the emotional and physical responses.” She sighed. “You getting any of this, Par?”
“I’m listening.”
“Hmm. You think there’s any chance, if it’s this hot tomorrow, for us to go out on the lake, do some swimming?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Freshwater eel-analogs. Very hungry this time of year.”
“Shit.”
“Yeh.”
“Wondered why I didn’t see any boats out there.”
“That’s why.”
“Swimming pools?”
“Huvved. No slaves or Hordar allowed.”
“As my mother would say, sweet sweet.”
“Go on with your lecture. What’s the rest of it?”
“I forget.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“All right. You noticed that Hordar and Huvved are related closely enough to permit interbreeding?”
“I noticed.”
“Probably no pureblood Huvved left; they didn’t bring that many women with them when they skipped out. Let’s see. Surge. Huvved/Hordar mixes don’t seem to have the capacity for that melding, but they exhibit much the same reactions to the word. A lot of fear there. Pride. Rage. A whole witch’s brew boiling away down deep. I suppose anything that intense is useful in your business.”
He grunted, a noncommittal sound she took for assent.
“I came across the phenomenon when I was reading about the early years. Seems that the Imperator then was a bit gaga about Hordar, it was a band of Hordar rebels who came within a hair of removing his head. He and his happy band of sycophants had a fine old time running down and disposing of the locals. Got so bad the Hordar believed he was going to slaughter them all. There you have it, extreme stress involving the survival of a genetic group. The thing that tipped them over the edge was a sort of auto-da-fe he put together outside a Littoral city called Ayla gul Inci. The Incers were driven into a fenced enclosure and forced to watch their relatives burn. About ten minutes into the barbeque they began melding into a Surge. About half of them were killed, but the Imperator barely got away with his skin intact. Not long after that his Security Chief took a look around at what was happening to his men and materiel and convinced the Imperator to abdicate in favor of his most competent nephew. That’s what the histories say, you can draw your own conclusions. The Grand Sech worked out a schema that gave enough to everyone to keep them relatively contented and things settled down. Like I said, the Hordar those days weren’t into mass suicide once the Surge was defused; they adapted and there was a fairly easy peace for the next two centuries. Then a free trader arrived; they don’t have his name, but it seems he had connections with Bolodo Neyuregg. The Imperator before this one, he needed techs because his Warmaster was deteriorating and that threatened his power. He didn’t want to hire anyone who’d give away Tairanna’s location; he was charmed by the thought of, shall we say, hire-purchase of those techs. He didn’t stop with them, slave holding seems to be addictive; hmm, either that or Bolodo reps are very persuasive, anyway, two transports a year for over fifty years, that adds up to a lot of slaves.” She yawned. “That’s about it, except the reason there’s trouble now is simple enough when you consider the impact of cramming maybe a thousand years worth of technological development into fifty years and dumping this onto what was a stable, nearly unchanging society. Basic stupidity always makes trouble.”
Parnalee passed his handkerchief over his face again, wiping away the file of sweat and the trickles that were dripping into his eyes. “Surge,” he said, “you can’t make a noble icon out of a mob. I need stories of individuals. Looks like you’re telling me I’m not going to get them.”
“Not from the Conquest,” she said drowsily; she kept flapping her shirt ends, not putting much energy into this. “But you don’t want those, do you? I mean I doubt that Tra Yarta would let you make Huvveds out as what? villains of the piece? no matter how much the Hordar might enjoy such a treat.”
“There are ways…” He brooded a moment. “I’m getting a feel for the Huvved, but I’ll be depending on you and Churri to bring me something I can use for the Hordar. I don’t see anything yet… after I think about it, maybe…”
She dropped her arms over the edge of the narrow lounge chair, began playing with the short stiff grass. “Well, while you’re thinking, what have you picked up about what happens when a transport’s due?” She paused, but he lay like a sunstruck log, saying nothing. “I hope it’s more than I’ve got. Any time I go near anything about the ship, I’m warned off, sometimes hard, sometimes subtle, but the end is, I know the twice-a-year thing and that’s about it.”
“Lock down.”
“What?”
He sucked in a long breath, trickled it slowly out. Finally, he said, “All techs, anyone they suspect might be able to fool around with the ship, they’re locked into the Pens.” He lifted heavy, reddened eyelids. “Means me and Churri. Probably not you.” He spoke slowly, wearily, as if he were too fatigued to push the words out. “Tra Yarta aside, these clotheaded Huvveds have only one use for women.” He pushed himself up, got heavily to his feet, stretched, slumped. “I’m going to get some sleep, Churri wants to talk to you, tomorrow he said… He yawned. “Didn’t say why.”