Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

The engines hummed, warming up. Fists and feet battered on the valve. The sickness made him retch.

O Joana, if this kills you⁠—

He threw the main-drive switch. Acceleration jammed him back as the gig leaped free.

Staring out the ports, he saw fire blossom in space as the great guns of Vwyrdda opened up.

My glass was empty. I signalled for a refill and sat wondering just how much of the yarn one could believe.

“I’ve read the histories,” I said slowly. “I do know that some mysterious catastrophe annihilated the massed fleet of Janya and turned the balance of the war. Sol speared in and won inside of a year. And you mean that you did it?”

“In a way. Or Daryesh did. We were acting as one personality, you know. He was a thoroughgoing realist, and the moment he saw his defeat he switched wholeheartedly to the other side.”

“But⁠—Lord, man! Why’ve we never heard anything about this? You mean you never told anyone, never rebuilt any of those machines, never did anything?”

Laird’s dark, worn face twisted in a bleak smile. “Certainly. This civilization isn’t ready for such things. Even Vwyrdda wasn’t, and it’ll take us millions of years to reach their stage. Besides, it was part of the bargain.”

“Bargain?”

“Just as certainly. Daryesh and I still had to live together, you know. Life under suspicion of mutual trickery, never trusting your own brain, would have been intolerable. We reached an agreement during that long voyage back to Sol, and used Vwyrddan methods of autohypnosis to assure that it could not be broken.”

He looked somberly out at the lunar night. “That’s why I said the genie in the bottle killed me. Inevitably, the two personalities merged, became one. And that one was, of course, mostly Daryesh, with overtones of Laird.

“Oh, it isn’t so horrible. We retain the memories of our separate existences, and the continuity which is the most basic attribute of the ego. In fact, Laird’s life was so limited, so blind to all the possibilities and wonder of the universe, that I don’t regret him very often. Once in a while I still get nostalgic moments and have to talk to a human. But I always pick one who won’t know whether or not to believe me, and won’t be able to do much of anything about it if he should.”

“And why did you go into Survey?” I asked, very softly.

“I want to get a good look at the universe before the change. Daryesh wants to orient himself, gather enough data for a sound basis of decision. When we⁠—I⁠—switch over to the new immortal body, there’ll be work to do, a galaxy to remake in a newer and better pattern by Vwyrddan standards! It’ll take millennia, but we’ve got all time before us. Or I do⁠—what do I mean, anyway?” He ran a hand through his gray-streaked hair.

“But Laird’s part of the bargain was that there should be as nearly normal a human life as possible until this body gets inconveniently old. So⁠—” He shrugged. “So that’s how it worked out.”

We sat for a while longer, saying little, and then he got up. “Excuse me,” he said. “There’s my wife. Thanks for the talk.”

I saw him walk over to greet a tall, handsome red-haired woman. His voice drifted back: “Hello, Joana⁠—”

They walked out of the room together in perfectly ordinary and human fashion.

I wonder what history has in store for us.

The third book of the Story of the Men of Killorn. How Red Bram fought the Ganasthi from the lands of darkness, and Kery son of Rhiach was angered, and the pipe of the gods spoke once more.

Now it must be told of those who fared forth south under Bram the Red. This was the smallest of the parties that left Killorn, being from three clans only⁠—Broina, Dagh, and Heorran. That made some thousand warriors, mostly men with some women archers and slingers. But the pipe of the gods had always been with Clan Broina, and so it followed the Broina on this trek. He was Rhiach son of Glyndwyrr, and his son was Kery.

Bram was a Heorran, a man huge of height and thew, with eyes like blue ice and hair and beard like a torch. He was curt of speech and had no close friends, but men agreed that his brain and his spirit made him the best leader for a journey like this, though some thought that he paid too little respect to the gods and their priests.

For some five years these men of Killorn marched south. They went over strange hills and windy moors, through ice-blinking clefts in gaunt-cragged mountains and over brawling rivers chill with the cold of the Dark Lands.

They hunted and robbed to live, or reaped the grain of foreigners, and cheerfully cut down any who sought to gainsay them. Now and again Bram dickered with the chiefs of some or other city and hired himself and his wild men out to fight against another town. Then there would be hard battle and rich booty and flames red against the twilight sky.

Men died and some grew weary of roving and fighting. There was a sick hunger within them for rest and a hearthfire and the eternal sunset over the Lake of Killorn. These took a house and a woman and stayed by the road. In such ways did Bram’s army shrink. On the other hand most of his warriors finally took some or other woman along on the march and she would demand more for herself and the babies than a roof of clouds and wind. So there came to be tents and wagons, with children playing between the turning wheels. Bram grumbled about this, it made his army slower and clumsier, but there was little he could do to prevent it.

Those who were boys when the trek began became men with the years and the battles