But life could not be strictly nomadic. Some gear was not portable, or needed protection. Thus, in each territory, at least one true house and several outbuildings had been erected, where the people lived from time to time.
Humans needed protection too. Ridenour fOund that out when he and Evagail were caught in a storm.
She had led him off the line of march to show him such a center. They had been enroute for an hour or two when she began casting uneasy glances at the sky. Clouds rose in the north, unbelievably high thunderheads with lightning in their blue-black depths. A breeze chilled and stiffened; the forest moaned. “We’d better speed up,” she said at length. “Rainstorm headed this way.”
“Well?” He no longer minded getting wet.
“I don’t mean those showers we’ve had. I mean the real thing.”
Ridenour gulped and matched her trot. He knew what kind of violence a deep, intensely irradiated atmosphere can breed. Karlsarm’s folk must be hard at work, racing to chop branches and make rough roofs and walls for themselves. Two alone couldn’t do it in time. They’d normally have sought refuge under a windfall or in a hollow trunk or anything else they found. But a house was obviously preferable.
The wind worsened. Being denser than Terra’s, air never got to hurricane velocity; but it thrust remorselessly, a quasi-solid, well-nigh unbreathable mass. Torn-off leaves and boughs started to fly overhead, under a galloping black cloud wrack. Darkness thickened, save when lightning split the sky. Thunder, keenings, breakings and crashings, resounded through Ridenour’s skull.
He had believed himself in good shape, but presently he was staggering. Any man must soon be exhausted, pushing against that horrible wind. Evagail, though, continued, easy of breath. How? he wondered numbly, before he lost all wonder in the cruel combat to keep running.
The first raindrops fell, enormous, driven by the tempest, stinging like gravel when they struck. You could be drowned in a flash flood, if you were not literally fhiyed by the hail that would soon come. Ridenour reeled toward unconsciousness—no, he was helped, Evagail upbore him, he leaned on her and—
And they reached the hilltop homestead.
It consisted of low, massive log-and-stone buildings, whose overgrown sod roofs would hardly be visible from above. Everything stood unlighted, empty. But the door to the main house opened at Evagail’s touch; no place in the woodlands had a lock. She dragged Ridenour across the threshold and closed the door again. He lay in gloom and gasped his way back to consciousness. As if across light-years, he heard her say, “We didn’t arrive any too soon, did we?” There followed the cannonade of the hail.
After a while he was on his feet. She had stimulated the lamps, which were microcultures in glass globes, to their bright phosphorescence and had started a fire on the hearth. The principal heat source, however, was fuel oil, a system antique but adequate. “We might as well figure on spending the night,” she said from the kitchen. “This weather will last for hours, and the roads will be rivers for hours after that. Why don’t you find yourself a hot bath and some dry clothes? I’ll have dinner ready soon.”
Ridenour swallowed a sense of inadequacy. He wasn’t an outbacker and couldn’t be expected to cope with their country. How well would they do on Terra? Exploring, he saw the house to be spacious, many-roomed, beautifully paneled, draped and furnished, Evagail’s advice was sound. He returned to her as if reborn.
She had prepared an excellent meal out of what was in the larder, including a heady red wine. White tablecloth, crystal goblets, candlelight were almost a renaissance of a Terra which had been more grãcious than today’s. (Almost. The utensils were horn, the knifeblades obsidian. The paintings on the walls were of a stylized, unearthly school; looking closely, you could identify Arulian influence. No music lilted from a taper; instead came the muffled brawling of the storm. And the woman who sat across from him wore a natural-fiber kilt, a fringed leather bolero, a dagger and tomahawk.)
They talked in animated and friendly wise, though since they belonged to alien cultures they had little more than question-and-answer conversation. The bottle passed freely back and forth. Being tired and having long abstained, Ridenour was quickly affected by the alcohol. When he noticed that, he thought, what the hell, why not? It glowed within him. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I classed your people as barbarians. I see now you have a true civilization.”
“You needed this much time to see that?” she laughed. “Well, I’ll forgive you. The Cities haven’t realized it yet.”
“That’s natural. You’re altogether strange to them. And, isolated as they are from the galactic mainstream, they… haven’t the habit of thinking something different… can be equal or superior to what they take for granted is the civilized way.”
“My, that was a sentence! Do you acknowledge, then, we are superior?”
He shook his head with care.
“No. I can’t say that. I’m a city boy myself. A lot of what you do shocks me. Your ruthlessness. Your unwillingness to compromise.”
She grew grave. “The Cities never tried to compromise with us, John. I don’t know if they can. Our wise men, those who’ve studied history, say an industrial society must keep expanding or go under. We’ve got to stop them before they grow too strong. The war’s given us a chance.”
“You can’t rebel against the Empire!” he protested.
“Can’t we? We’re a goodly ways from Terra. And we are rebelling. No one consulted us about incorporation.” Evagail shrugged. “Not that we care about that in itself. What difference to us who claims the over-lordship of Freehold, if he lets us alone? But the Cities have not let us alone. They cut down our woods, dam our rivers, dig holes in our soil, and get involved in a war that may wreck the whole planet.”
“M-m, you could help end the war if you mobilized against the Arulians.”
“To whose benefit? The Cities’!”
“But when you attack the Cities, aren’t you aiding the Arulians?”
“No. Not in the long run. They belong to the Cities also. We don’t want to fight them—our relationship with them was mostly pleasant, and they taught us a great deal—but eventually we want them off this world.”
“You can’t expect me to agree that’s right.”
“Certainly not.” Her tone softened. “What we want from you is nothing but an honest report to your leaders. You don’t know how happy I am that you admit we are civilized. Or post-civilized. At any rate, we aren’t degenerate, we are progressing on our own trail. I can hope you’ll go between us and the Empire, as a friend of both, and help work out a settlement. If you do that, you’ll live in centuries of ballads: the Peacebringer.”
“I’d like that better than anything,” he said gladly.
She raised her brows. “Anything?”
“Oh, some things equally, no doubt. I am getting homesick.”
“You needn’t stay lonely while you’re with us,” she murmured.
Somehow, their hands joined across the table. The wine sang in Ridenour’s veins. “I’ve wondered why you stood apart from me,” she said. “Surely you could see I want to make love with you.”