Donya put the letter down and sat with eyes turned horizonward. At length she resumed.

  …are eager to know what’s happened, and what to expect.

  Your speech, like mine, has its limitations. I’ll borrow Arvannethan terms and hope they carry something across to you. Briefly, though, from your viewpoint the news is fine.

  The annihilation of an entire Imperial army was a shattering blow, as you can surely imagine. [Admiral] Ronnach, on my advice, pretended not to know just what had occurred. No doubt some rumor will reach Naís that ’observers’ were present; but this will be late, vague, and impossible to investigate further. The present implication is that you Northfolk may well be able to do the same, whatever it was, to any future aggressors.

  Certainly the Empire cannot spare strength for a second attempt, at least for years. My guess is that it never will. Among deterrents will be the presence of Seafolk in the Dolphin Gulf, with [vested interests] to protect.

  You see, by help of farspeakers, a Killimaraichan [diplomatic mission] in Rahíd was able to exert considerable pressure. The Throne had slim choice but to bite the sour apple and sign a [treaty] which, by and large, is pretty much what they desired in Eaching.

  Arvanneth is recognized as a [free state], its [independence] guaranteed by both major [powers]. Neither one will furnish it any [armed forces], and both will have trade access. Time will show whether the Empire, developing its [conquests] along the northwestern Gulf littoral, or the Seafolk, developing their commerce and [colonies] in the Hurricane Sea, become the eventual [dominators] of the city. Myself, I suspect neither. Arvanneth has a stable [government] again. In effect, the old order has been restored. It is an order which has outlived many others.

  Whatever happens, as far as you Northfolk are concerned, trade will revive immediately. And you will be left in [peace].

  Donya reread this passage twice, pondering in between, before she continued.

  Soon a ship will bear me home across the Glimmer-water. From there I’ll go to – what? In a way, you will come along. It will hurt that you do not in your darling self. Right now it hurts like a new-made wound. But it’s not as bad as it was, and should get better.

  Do you remember how, at the last, we stood hand in hand on the bank of the Jugular, and through a slow snowfall watched how the ice was healing around the Horn of Nezh? I feel thus tonight. Afterward, I dare hope, will come a thaw, and the waters flow free. A whole world of marvels and adventures is waiting, which I fear you cannot ever know, even in dreams.

  She frowned, shook her head, started to read the sentences over, then shrugged and went on forward.

  For I think I know what you are; and this whispers to me a little of what I am.

  Do you also remember the day you returned to Thunder Kettle from hunting, and we walked out on the prairie together? You said there had been and could never be a whole life shared by Rogaviki and outlander. Suddenly I saw how this might be – not superstition, not tradition, not manmade barriers – the very truth.

  Since, I’ve lived in the idea, explored it, tried to deny it is real, then opened my eyes and seen it everywhere around me, finally gathered my nerve and set out to chart it as far as it reaches. I’m not quite the first in the territory – could scarcely be, after untold centuries – and I’ve learned a deal from books and from talk with knowledgeable men. (I didn’t speak your name!) However, maybe I am by chance the first who came to it knowing something about evolution and used to looking at life that way.

  You were so interested when we talked about this – about how whales and dolphins, for instance, are cousins in one household of animals which returned to the sea, while seals and walruses belong to another, and [penguins] are birds which did likewise although the reptile ancestor of birds and mammals must have died eons ago – you were so interested that I’m sure it stayed in your head, whatever else you may have forgotten of what I’ve been writing about.

  Donya nodded to herself. She sent her glance around among the minnows, insects, a frog, a lizard, a robin, her horse; she ran a hand across her own body.

  Man is an animal too. We can see how he and the [monkeys] have a common forebear. And we can see how he has kept on evolving, in his separate homes around the world. Else why would he wear so many hues and faces?

  But these things do not go deep in our flesh, no deeper than for different breeds of the dog tribe. Like wolf, coyote, and hound, folk of the several races can beget fertile offspring. They can be brought up to any human way of life and thought.

  Human way. The races share certain absolutes, which therefore are probably as ancient as the brain or the thumb.

  Except for you Rogaviki.

  What happened on the plains of Andalin, after the Ice came, I cannot tell for certain. I suppose a fresh strain appeared by chance, and survived better than the rest, by luck or hardihood, till at last there was an entire new species of mankind.

  You haven’t recognized your uniqueness, because like us you took yourselves for granted. Yet I believe, now, your stories are right, that Rogaviki and outlander seldom have children together, and when they do, the children are sterile mules. I imagined this was an excuse for getting rid of unwanted babies – and it is that, of course; you cloak your motives the same as we do – but I think it’s true as well.

  For consider.

  Everywhere else, man is a creature of the pack, the herd, whatever you want to call it. Societies like mine, which give the individual a broad freedom, are rare; and both this freedom and the individual himself are defined by the society.

  Inevitably, I’m misusing language. To you, ‘society’ means simply ‘class of foreigners’. You know how they vary in, say, Rahíd, Arvanneth, the Wilderwoods, or west of the Mooncastle Mountains; but you make the unspoken assumption that individuals choose individually to live in those styles. ‘Freedom’ is what you might give excess fish caught in a weir, or something like that; if I told you it is a [right] which men have fought and died for, you would stare at me blankly. By ‘individual’ I do not mean ‘specific person’ – But I’m not conveying much, am I?

  Perhaps I can’t tell you either how absolutely extraordinary the fact is that you Rogaviki have developed a high-level, sophisticated culture as hunters, who have never been farmers and have never known [kings].

  Let me try anyhow to describe you from my outsider’s viewpoint. The Rogaviki, male or female, is by nature – by birth – emotionally self-sufficient. Apart from capturing an occasional invader (whom he usually kills out of hand far lack of knowing what else he might do) he feels no need to compel others to anything, whether by force or by subtler means such as he uses on his tame animals; nor has he the slightest wish, conscious or unconscious, to be led. Aside from his beasts, I doubt if he is capable of giving or obeying a direct command.

  The Rogaviki cannot be domesticated.

  Throughout the rest of the world, humans can be, and are. Likeliest man evolved already self-domesticated, a creature not only taught for survival’s sake to work within the group and heed its [chief], but bred to this. Those who failed were punished till they learned, while the untrainable perished, by the will of the group.

  You Rogaviki cooperate well, as long as you are in small, close-knit bands. But if someone grossly fails to do his share, or badly offends or endangers you, what is your response? You turn your back. You, an individual, will have nothing further to do with him, an individual. (Or, oftener, her. The aggressiveness of your women as compared to your men is another curious thing about you, bold though the men are.) When the wrongdoer has been cut off by enough people, we get an Outrunner, or more probably a miserable death.

  You have no [laws], just common sense and a limited amount of custom. The strongest bond on you, I’m sure, is the wish to please those persons you care about. You have no [trials] or [judgments], merely arbitrations by mutual consent. You have a high measure of [self-discipline], and I believe a high average of intelligence, but these come simply from natural selection. They who lack them do not live to bring forth young.

  And you have a need for open space which is more powerful than your wish for life itself. From this, maybe, everything else springs: your marriages, your arts, your feelings about the land, your whole social structure – your souls. (And yet again I use a Rogavikian word without being sure what it means.)

  I don’t know whence that need arises. ‘Instinct’ begs the question, doesn’t it? Many animals exhibit territoriality. My kind of human seems to have a weak form of it. In you it appears overwhelming. That mighty an inborn urge marks you off from me more sharply than could any difference in face or form.

  I think your drive to guard your borders originated as nature’s response to the necessity of keeping space around you. But where does it come from?

  [Pheromones] ? A Killimaraichan word this time. It refers to vapors given off by an animal, to influence the behavior of fellow creatures. Musk in breeding season is a rather crude example. I’ve read how naturalists in my homeland think nowadays that ants and bees work together because of [pheromones] – laying trails to food, for instance. Among humans, who knows?

  Maybe you Rogaviki breathe out a substance that, beyond a certain concentration, makes you uneasy. You can’t smell the stuff, understand; but maybe, beyond a point, you begin disliking the actual scent of man; and if crowdedness gets worse, your whole world seems wrong.

  Donya nodded thoughtfully.

  How and why this should be, remains guesswork till we know more. Here’s a notion of mine. When the Ice came down, at first there was terrible want, until nature adapted to the changed conditions and grew abundant. Meanwhile, a species of human that had no wish to exist in vast, close-huddled numbers could survive better on the plains than the old sort.

  I wonder if my hypothetical subtle fluid is the creation of a body chemistry which has effects more strange than this. I don’t suppose you ever thought about it, Donya, darling, but you – almost every woman of your people is the youthful sexual dream of every male outlander, made real. Who else could give joy to so many men, and enjoy each of them, and yet have no morbid [compulsion] about it, but rather keep active in all the fields of life? Very few outlander females, or none, I can tell you.

  But that alone cannot account for how you draw and hold our men. It’s nothing you want, I’m sure. In spite of everything, the [arrogance], the frequent [callousness], the [wantonness], in spite of everything, how [innocent] you Rogaviki women are! You actually warn us. Could it be that that substance which makes you what you are enters us likewise, but we are born without a balancing element? You are no danger to men of your own kind, are you?

  Could it even be that this is why you never come to [love] us as we do you – and you, maybe, do them, in your inmost households? There, I’ve used my mother’s tongue.

  Donya rested under the sun, beside the stream. The breeze had quickened till it stirred her hair. Out past the shallows, a pike glided by, river wolf.

  Well, dearest one, I’m at the finish. ‘At last,’ you’re likely thinking. But you see, beyond this insight and these questions of mine, which someday may somehow help you, I have no gift to leave. And first I must explain my reasoning, before I could tell you what it’s led me to, simple though that is. I may be right, I may be wrong, but here is what I believe.

  Everywhere else on earth, humans are domestic animals.

  Alone in the world and time, Rogaviki are wild animals.

  I don’t say good, I don’t say bad. The future could be yours, or you could be doomed, or both our species could go on for the next million years. We will not live to imagine the end.

  Morning is nearly on me, I’m bone tired, I want to put this in the hands of a man unseasonably bound north today, I have nothing else worth your heed. I only have the hard knowledge that you and I, Donya, can no more be mates in any real way than can hawk and sea lion. You told me so on the prairie, and afterward on the snows beside the river. Now I’ve tried to tell you why.

  Fare always well, my lovely hawk.

  Your

  Josserek

  The sun had reached noon when she smiled, more gently than ever he saw. Rising in a single flow, she stood above the stream, tore his letter in shreds, and watched them borne away.

  ‘I will bring my folk your thought,’ she said half aloud; ’but your words want their freedom.’

  She clad herself, mounted her horse, and rode back home to Owlhaunt.

  TWILIGHT WORLD

  Poul Anderson

  Contents

  Title Page

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAIN OF LOGIC

  THE CHILDREN OF FORTUNE

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  On the world’s loom

  Weave the Norns doom,

  Nor may they guide it nor change.

  – Wagner: Siegfried

  I

  TEN miles up, it hardly showed. Earth was a cloudy green and brown blur, the vault of the stratosphere reaching changelessly out to infinity, and beyond the pulsing engine there was silence and serenity no man could ever touch. Looking down, Hugh Drummond could see the Mississippi gleaming like a dream sword, and its slow curve matched the contours on his map. The hills, the sea, the sun and wind and rain, they didn’t change. Not in less than a million slow-striding years, and humankind was too brief a flicker for that.

  Farther down, though, and especially where cities had been—

  The man in the stratojet swore softly and bitterly, his knuckles whitening on the controls. He was a big man, his gaunt rangy form sprawling awkwardly in the tiny pressure cabin, and he wasn’t quite forty. But his dark hair was streaked with gray, his shoulders stooped in the shabby flying suit, and his long homely face was drawn into haggard lines. The eyes were black-rimmed and sunken with weariness, something dreadful about their intensity. He had seen too much, survived too much, until he began to look like most other people of the world. Heir of the ages, he thought dully.

  Mechanically, he went through the motions of following his course. Natural landmarks were still there, and he had powerful binoculars to help him. But he didn’t use them much. They showed too many broad shallow craters, whose vitreous smoothness threw back sunlight with the flat blank glitter of a snake’s eye, and the churned and blasted desolation of ground about them. And the region of total deadness was worse: twisted leafless trees, blowing sand, tumbled skeletons, perhaps at night a baleful blue glow of fluorescence. The bombs had been nightmare, riding in on wings of fire and horror to shake the planet with the death of cities. But the radioactive dust was more than nightmare.

  He passed over villages and small towns. Some of them were deserted, the dust or plague or economic breakdown making them untenable. Others still seemed to be feebly alive. Especially in the Middle West, there was a pathetic struggle to return to agriculture, but the insects and blights—

  Drummond shrugged. After nearly two years of this, over the scarred and maimed planet, he should be used to it. The United States had been lucky. Europe, now—

  Der Untergang des Abendlandes, he thought grayly. Spengler and the rest foresaw the collapse of a topheavy civilization. They didn’t foresee atomic bombs, radioactive-dust bombs, bacteria bombs, blight bombs – the bombs flying like senseless insects over a shivering world. So they didn’t guess what the collapse would really mean.

  Deliberately, he pushed the thought out of his conscious mind. He didn’t want to dwell on it. He’d lived with it two years, and that was two eternities too long. And anyway, he was nearly home now.

  The capital of the United States was below him, and he sent the stratojet slanting down in a long thunderous dive toward the mountains. Not much of a capital, the little town huddled on a slope of the Cascades, but the waters of the Potomac had filled the grave of Washington. Strictly speaking, there was no nucleus of government yet; surviving officialdom was scattered over the country, keeping in precarious touch by plane and radio. But Taylor, Oregon, came as close to being the nerve center as any other place.

  He gave the signal on the transmitter, knowing with a faint crawl along his spine of the rocket batteries trained on him from the green of those mountains. When one plane could carry the end of a city, all planes were under suspicion. Not that anyone outside was supposed to know that that innocuous little town was important. But you never could tell. The war wasn’t officially over. It might never be, with sheer personal survival overriding the urgency of treaties.

  A tight-beam transmitter gave him a cautious: ‘Okay. Can you land in the street?’

  It was a narrow, dusty track between two rows of wooden houses, but Drummond was a good pilot and this was a good jet. ‘Yeah,’ he said. His voice had grown unused to speech.

  He cut speed in a spiral descent until he was gliding with only the faintest whisper of wind across his ship. Touching wheels to the street, he slammed on the brake and bounced to a halt.

  Silence struck at him like a physical blow. The engine stilled, the sun beating down from a brassy sky on the drabness of rude ‘temporary’ dwellings, the total-seeming desertion beneath impassive mountains – Home! Hugh Drummond laughed, a short harsh bark with nothing of humor in it, and swung open the cockpit canopy.

  There were actually quite a few people peering from doorways and side streets. They looked fairly well-fed and well-dressed, many in uniform, they seemed to have purpose and hope. But this, of course, was the capital of the United States of America, the world’s most fortunate country.

  ‘Get out – quick!’

  The peremptory voice roused Drummond from the introspection which lonely months had made habitual. He looked down at a gang of men in mechanics’ outfits, led by a harassed-looking man in captain’s uniform. ‘Oh – of course,’ he said slowly. ‘You want to hide the jet. And, naturally, a regular landing field would give you away.’