Northern Stars Read online

  Oh yes. Like the Walker and the Sleeper, I suppose? I grit my teeth. She looks me in the eye, impatient: “Well, what’s the matter?” Doesn’t even let me try to speak. “There may have been biosculptors who were stupid or crazy, but that’s another matter. Of course some artifacts were very limited. The Institute made sure of it by suppressing the necessary data, all Permahlion’s research. They made him practically an outlaw, fifty years ago, and after that they did everything to discourage artorganics. But it didn’t keep us from carrying on.”

  I can’t understand what she is saying. She must see it, and it gives her fresh cause for annoyance. “Well, what do you think, that you’re the only one in the world? There are hundreds of you, silly! Just because the original human race is doomed to disappear sooner or later doesn’t mean that all life must end. It was all right for the Eschatoï to think that way, not for you!”

  And suddenly, quietly, sadly, “You really thought I was a monster, didn’t you?”

  What can I say? I subside onto the sofa and she sits down as well, not too near, slowly, sparing her knees. Yes, she’s old, really old. When she becomes animated, the expression in her eyes, her way of talking, her leap-frog sentences are there; but when she’s quiet it all flickers out. I look away. After the silence, all I can find to say is, “You made others? Like me?”

  The answer is straightforward, almost absentminded: “No. I could have made others, probably, but for me, one baby was already a lot.”

  “You made me … a baby?”

  “I wanted you to be as normal as possible. There’s nothing to prevent artorganic matter growing as slowly as organic matter. Actually, it’s the best way. The personality develops along with it. I wasn’t in a hurry.”

  “But you never made others … in the usual way?”

  A sad-amused smile: “Come on, Manou. I was sterile, of course. Or rather, my karyotype was so damaged that it was unthinkable to try to have children in the usual way, as you put it. But you’re a lot more resistant than we are. The beauty of artorganics is that one can improve on nature. That’s the danger as well. But in the long run, it means I was able to give you a chance to adapt better than we could to the world you’d be dealing with. Do you remember? You were never sick when you were little.”

  And I still heal very quickly. Oh yes, the medic in the Kerens Center pointed that out. That was a constant factor in artifacts. Not a proof, however; there had been a fairly widespread mutation of this kind about a hundred years earlier. “It is from studying this phenomenon, among others, that artorganic matter ended up being created. There are still instances of it among normal humans.” It was a parallelism, he emphasized, not a proof. But an indication that, combined with others, added to the certainty of my being an artifact.

  “I’m telling you”—she’s still adamant—“you should try to have children.”

  She’s really determined to know whether or not her experiment has worked, is that it?

  “Thirty-two is a bit late, don’t you think?”

  “A bit late? You’re in your prime!”

  “For how long?”

  I’m standing up, fists clenched. I wasn’t aware of getting up, wasn’t aware of shaking. If she notices it, she gives no sign. She shrugs: “I don’t know.” And before I can react she smiles the old sarcastic smile: “At least as long as I, in any case. Longer, if I’ve been successful. But for exactly how long I don’t know.”

  She looks straight at me, screwing up her eyes a little. Suddenly no longer old and tired, she’s ageless; so very gently sad, so very wise. “You thought I could tell you. That’s why you came.”

  “You made me, you should know!”

  “Someone made me, too. Not in the same way, but someone made me. And I don’t know when I’m going to die either.” The small, ironic smile comes back. “I’m beginning to get some idea, mind you.” The smile disappears. “But I’m not certain, I don’t know the date. That’s what being human is like, too. Haven’t you learned anything in fifteen years? The only way to be sure is to kill yourself, which you didn’t. So keep on. You’ll still live long enough to forget lots of things and learn them all over again.”

  And she looks at the old watch that slides around her birdlike wrist. “Two hours before your train. Would you like something to eat?”

  “Are you in a hurry for me to leave?”

  “For our first time it would be better not to try our luck too far.”

  “You really think I’ll come back?”

  Gently, she says, “I hope you’ll come back.” Again the sarcastic smile. “With a belly this big.”

  I shake my head; I can’t take any more. She’s right. I rise to get my bag near the door. “I think I’ll walk back to the station.”

  Still, she goes with me onto the terrace and we walk down to the beach together. As we pass one of the statues, she puts a hand on the grey, shapeless stone. “It was his house, Permahlion’s. He brought the statues here himself. He liked to scuba-dive when he was young. I was his very last pupil, you know. He made the first artorganic humans, but he didn’t call them artifacts. It killed him, what was done to them after him.”

  As always when the sun finally breaks through the clouds, it gets hot quickly. As I shrug off my jacket, I see her looking at me; she barely reaches my shoulder. It must be a long time since she was in the sun; she’s so pale.

  I scan the distance for something else to look at. A few hundred yards from the beach there seem to be shapes jumping in the waves. Dolphins? Swimmers? An arm above the water, like a sign …

  She shades her eyes. “No, they’re Permahlion’s mermaids. I call them mermaids, anyway. I don’t know why, but they’ve been coming here for several seasons. They don’t talk and they’re very shy.” At my stupefied silence, she remarks acidly: “Don’t tell me you have something against humanoïds?”

  No, of course not, but …

  She brushes off my questions, her hands spread in front of her: “I’ll look for everything there is about them in the lab. You’ll be able to see it. If you ever come back.” A cloud seems to pass over her rapidly, and she fades again. “I’m tired, my daughter. The sun isn’t good for me these days. I’m going to lie down for a bit.”

  And she goes, just like that, without another word or gesture, a tiny figure stumbling a little in the sand. I want to watch her go, and I can’t watch her go, as though it were the last time, perhaps because it is the last time, and “my daughter” has lodged itself in my chest somewhere; it grows, pushing my ribs, and the pressure becomes so strong that I shed my clothes and dive into the green, warm water to swim toward the sea creatures. My first burst of energy exhausted, I turn on my back and look toward the house. The tiny silhouette has stopped on the terrace. I wave an arm, I shout, “I’ll come back, Mother!” I laugh, and my tears mingle with the sea.

  UNDER ANOTHER MOON

  Dave Duncan

  Dave Duncan was born and educated in Scotland, but has lived in Canada since 1955. Duncan writes that “after a long career as a petroleum geologist, he discovered it was easier to invent his own worlds and switched to writing.” He has published seventeen novels in the past eight years, about evenly divided between fantasy and science fiction, two short stories, and one poem. His SF novels, beginning with A Rose-Red City and Shadow (both 1987), have all appeared from Del Rey Books in the U.S. with notable commercial success. His best-known fantasy is the Seventh Sword sequence; he is currently completing the four-volume “Man of His Word” fantasy series. His SF novel West of January, perhaps his best work to date, won the 1990 Aurora Award for best long-form work in English.

  The Science Fiction Encyclopedia comments: “Dave Duncan’s work has all the flamboyance of tales written strictly for escape, but (as has been noted by critics) never for long allows his readers to forget what kind of problems he is inviting them to dodge. His most virtuoso passages seem almost brazenly to dance with despair.” “Under Another Moon” is a tale of love and death that blur
s distinctions between fantasy and SF. It seems, hauntingly, to echo Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and to cast a penumbral glow over its world. It is a dance of death and a dance of triumph.

  * * *

  Was this what being a man was? Was this what being an earl was? Jauro stood in his own hall, before his own assembled household, and listened in furious silence as his honour was trampled in the dirt, his courage mocked, his ancestry insulted.

  Did they think he was a milksop woman who would endure such abuse?

  Blood roared in his ears and his fists trembled with a yearning to draw and smite the upstart envoy who came in the name of the king, this bearer of the royal scorn. Lackey! Coward! Were he not wrapped in the king’s office, he would not dare speak such words before the earl of Rathmuir; not in his own hall, not anywhere. Or, if he tried it, he would die.

  Yet in truth he was more like to slay Jauro instead, for he was larger and older, a man in his prime. No grey showed in his beard, and his eyes were quick. The sword arm left uncovered by his furs was a conspicuously thicker and hairier arm than Jauro’s was, and his powerful fingers were already crooked for the draw. His stance was that of a man poised to provoke violence and then meet it, a man enjoying his mission, reveling in the rage he was rousing, a rage that would not be hidden by the earl’s fair beard. Behind him stood six stalwarts of the royal fyrd—greyer, capable veterans, smirking in silence as the young victim squirmed under their burly leader’s scorn.

  And all around the walls, the earl’s own people listened also, in shock and dismay: the white-haired elders on their stools, the children standing behind them, the women in turn at their backs, holding their babies, or clasping their daughters’ shoulders. Back of them all stood the men, teeth glinting within their beards, and their hands clenched on their sword hilts. It was the custom that the men stood at the rear for such a reception, and the reason was obvious, although Jauro had never realized it before—if he were to draw against the visitors, he would be dead before his own fyrd could struggle through the others to aid him. Blood would muddy the rushes on the clay floor, and the earl’s blood would flow first.

  Acrid smoke roiled from the fireplaces. Beyond the open door at the far end of the hall, misty tendrils of rain swept over the royal horses and the two men left out there to hold them. The early dusk of winter was closing in, and the hall was growing dim—and cold also, unless it was only rage that darkened Jauro’s sight and moved on his arms like an icy breath, raising the hairs on them and chilling the sweat below his fur cloak and cloth leggings. Nothing was clear to him but the face of the envoy, the hateful close-bearded young man whose eyes were laughing even as he spouted this hateful royal insolence. This vomit of lies, this pig piss!

  And the envoy looked far smaller than he had done only minutes earlier; he was shrinking as Jauro’s fury choked off discretion. Was this what being a man was? Young the earl might be, but he was no virgin in mortal combat; he had seen the colour of men’s lifeblood and he could feel a rising lust to see it again. Soon, very soon, he would decide that dying was better than hearing more of this horsefarting.

  Just before he lost control, it ended: “Thus spake His Majesty, King Reggalo, the Merciful, the Just.” Silence, and the envoy’s eyes shone with cruel pleasure as he waited for the response.

  The fires crackled, and even the hiss of the rain seemed audible in the hush. How could so many be so quiet? Water dripping through the thatch played a faint staccato rhythm in corners. A child whimpered and its mother put a hand over its mouth.

  Jauro took a deep breath, then another, as he fought for calm, as he planned his words lest they tremor and betray him.

  Be a man!

  “We thank you for His Majesty’s message.” His voice came out deep and strange to him, but it was gratifyingly steady. He heard a small sigh at his back. He had been meant to hear it—Fromto was relieved that the words were no more warlike than that. But they were defiance nonetheless.

  “His Majesty’s command!” Mockery twisting the tight-coiled blackness of the envoy’s beard.

  “I shall send my reply before the end of the least-month.”

  The envoy put his head on one side, while his companions shifted and glanced around. “Reply? You misheard, Earl Jauro.”

  “I heard. But we have barely buried our dead. We must tend our wounded, our widows and our orphans. Bands of rebels still roam the moors. His Majesty will comprehend that my duty to the safety of my people is also my duty to His Majesty.”

  “His command was specific—you will accompany us, and your daughter also.”

  To argue would seem like weakness, but his people were listening, and it was their blood Jauro’s defiance was risking—his own blood was already as good as spent. They deserved a reason.

  “Evildoers have spoken untruths to His Majesty. My loyalty is unswerving.”

  “You will be given a hearing,” the envoy promised, and his smile made the promise a threat.

  “Also, my child is not yet old enough to consider marriage.”

  The envoy’s eyes seemed to dance with merriment. “His Majesty understood that your family matured young—or was Your Lordship deprived of comfort?”

  Insult! Fromto growled softly in the background, and Jauro’s hand twitched towards his sword hilt. At once the envoy’s hand was on his own, in a move too fast to see. Deadly fast! So Reggalo had sent his best brawler, who would either slay Jauro out of hand or parry his thrusts to impotence—and to draw against the king’s envoy would be treason. It was a trap within a trap.

  With a mighty effort, Jauro spread his fingers and moved them away from danger. “His Majesty has been misinformed on many matters.”

  The envoy sneered and released his sword in a flamboyant gesture. “The child will benefit by completing its childhood in the civilized surroundings of His Majesty’s palace.”

  Some of the men by the walls muttered angrily—Jauro silenced them with a glare. “But this is my heir we are discussing. I must consider the child’s welfare. His Majesty’s daughter, this Princess Uncoata … I understand her first marriage proved sterile. She has a crooked back and her wits are the laughingstock of the markets?”

  “Your Lordship is the one misinformed,” said the envoy, his companions’ open amusement belying his words. “We speak of Prince Uncoato, a man of undoubted strength and virility who yearns to know his bride. A larger, heavier man than Your Lordship.”

  Little Thorti given to an idiot cripple? Tiny, delicate Thorti with her trilling song and her smoke-gray eyes? Jauro’s throat knotted at the images that came to his mind—he had seen that shambling Uncoato once, and shuddered to think what such a monster might have become since. Sweat was trickling down his face; he could stand no more of this. “I repeat that His Majesty has been misinformed on many matters. I shall gather my witnesses and send my reply within three days.”

  “His Majesty’s command—”

  Jauro roared. “You have far to ride before dark, Your Grace!”

  Satisfaction twisted the envoy’s lips. He had sought to provoke violence, but this response would do: royal edict rejected, hospitality refused, treason, defiance, open revolt. The king’s command had been crafted to produce nothing less.

  “Then in sorrow I bid Your Lordship farewell.” The man bowed, but the move barely reached his shoulders. In contempt he turned his back, and his supporters moved aside to let him through. They clutched their sword hilts and glanced warily around as they followed him to the door. Wet leather squeaked in their boots.

  Jauro stood and watched the departure, his whole body trembling with suppressed fury.

  Fromto was speaking at his back. “Loothio! Follow and see which way they ride. Ambloto—gather your band and saddle up, lest they do mischief on their way.”

  Sensible, practical Fromto! Jauro was still too tense to have thought of those things. He started to turn, and was suddenly encircled by rope-thin arms. It was Thorti, the smoke-gray eyes filled with tears,
peering up at him in horror.

  “Mother! You must not flaunt the king!”

  Jauro tried to break free, and the child clung fiercely—tiny and yet made strong by desperation; far smaller than he had been at that age, and he was not a large man, as the envoy had so greatly enjoyed mentioning.

  “Be still!” he barked. He glanced over Thorti’s head to the elders, who were on their feet now, gathering into a group and starting to jabber shrilly. Their bald heads and wispy white beards shone in the gloom. “Venerable ones—prepare your counsel, and we shall hear you shortly.”

  “Mother!” Thorti cried, louder now. “You must not defy the king just for my sake. I shall marry the prince, if that is his royal will.”

  “Never!” Jauro untwined himself and, laughing, swung his child up at arms’ length so their eyes were level. It was no strain—he could have held the stance for hours—but then he saw the hurt and humiliation flower in those smoky eyes. Idiot! Children of this age scorned such baby games. He changed his hold to a hug, clasping Thorti tight to his furs.

  “You also have grown, my beloved,” he said. “You are so heavy now!”

  Thorti’s voice came softly, privately into his ear. “It is almost time! The prince or another!”

  “What!” Thorta?

  He lowered her gently to the floor, as though she were suddenly fragile. He sank down on one knee and stared at the eager blush now spreading over the tiny bird-like face.

  “Already? Oh, my sweet! When?”

  Her words quavered with the conflict of joy and fear: “Yesterday! It came yesterday.”

  His child a woman! His heart overflowed with sudden memory of his own youth, and of the fearsome transition to adulthood—long wanted, yet unexpectedly sudden, welcome and yet terrifying. He struggled for words, and could not find them, as he so often could not find words for his child now. Thorti … Thorta … was tense under his gaze, not responding to his smile, frightened of the muscular, hairy warrior he had become. For almost two years now, he had felt a growing sense of loss and guilt whenever he spoke with his child; in the three days since his return it had been worse than before, an unbearable pain in his throat. Clumsy and tongue-tied, he could do nothing but hug the tiny form, and pat the thin shoulders. Thorta, Thorta, my beloved! When had they lost each other? Why could he not put his feelings into words?