around here likesleepy pigs!" he grumbled. "Have the Pedaga nothing to do but wait onthe Geoark to make up its mind?"
"What do you think they'll do?"
"The Geoark? Invite the strangers to land. What else could they do?"
"Tell them to go away."
"And suppose they chose not to go?"
The girl looked bewildered. "I can't imagine anyone refusing theGeoark."
"Maybe they've got their own Geoark. Why should they cooperate withours?"
"_Two_ Geoarks? What a strange idea."
"Is it strange that you and I should have two brains? Or were you awarethat I have one too?"
"Evon! What a _strange_ idea."
He seized her by the ankles and dragged her squealing to the spring,then set her down in the icy trickle. Marrita moved away, grumblingcomplaints, and Letha snatched up a switch and chased him around theglade, shrieking threats of mayhem, while Evon's laughter broke thegloomy air of the small gathering, and caused a few other Pedaga towander into the clearing from the pathways.
"I think we should prepare a petition for the Geoark," someonesuggested.
"About the sky-fleet? And who knows what to say?"
"I'm afraid," said a girl. "Somehow I'm suddenly afraid of them."
"Our brothers from the Exodus? But they're _people_--such as you and I."
So went the voices. After an hour, a crier came running through theglade to read another message received from the sky-fleet.
PROPAUTH EARTH FROM COMMSTRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACE, KLAEDEN COMM, PRESENTS GREETINGS!
HAVING RECEIVED NO ANSWER TO OUR PREVIOUS COMMUNICATION, WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LAND AT ONCE. I AM IMPOSING AN INFORMATIONAL QUARANTINE TO AVOID RESTIMULATING POSSIBLE RECESSIVE KULTURVERLAENGERUNG, BUT SUGGEST YOU GUARD YOURSELVES. OUR CULTURES HAD A COMMON ORIGIN. WE COME IN ARMS, WITHOUT ENMITY.
ERNSTLI BARON VEN KLAEDEN, COMMANDING STRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACESTRIKE COMMAND IMPERIAL FORCES OF THE SECESSION
This was even more mystifying than the previous one, even lessmeaningful in translation. One thing was clear, however: the fleet wasgoing to land, without invitation.
Embarrassed, the elders of the Geoark immediately called the tech clans."Can you revive the devices that speak across space?" they asked.
"They are revived," answered the tech clans.
"Then let us speak to our brothers from space."
And so it was that the people of the gardens of Earth sang out:
BRETHREN TO BRETHREN, PRESENT LOVE LOVE LOVE.
WE WELCOME YOU TO OUR GLADES AND TO OUR PLACES OF FEEDING AND OUR PLACES OF SLEEPING. WE WELCOME YOU TO THE BOSOM OF THE WORLD OF BEGINNING. AFTER TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS, EARTH HAS NOT FORGOTTEN. COME AMID REJOICING.
THE ELDERS OF THE GEOARK
"I'm afraid Earth will remember more than it wants to," growled ErnstliBaron ven Klaeden, as he issued the command to blast into anatmospheric-braking orbit.
And there was thunder in a cloudless sky.
"_O your steed was auld and ye hae mair, Edward, Edward. O your steed was auld and ye hae mair, And some other dule ye dree, O." "O I hae kill'd my ain father dear, Mither, mither; O I hae kill'd my ain father dear, Alas and woe is me, O._"
--ANONYMOUS
* * * * *
In accordance with the rules of invasion strategy for semi-civilizedplanets, the fleet separated itself into three groups. The first groupfell into atmospheric braking; the second group split apart andestablished an "orbital shell" of criscrossing orbits, timed andinterlocking, at eight hundred miles, to guard the descent of the firstwave of ships, while the third wave remained in battle formation atthree thousand miles as a rear guard against possible space attack. Whenthe first wave had finished braking, it fell into formation again andflew as aircraft in the high stratosphere, while the second wave brakeditself, and the third wave dropped into the orbital shell.
From the first wave, a single ship went down to land, and itstelecameras broadcast a view of a forest garden, slightly charred for ahundred yards around the ship, with fires blazing along its edges.
"No signs of the natives yet," came the report. "No signs of technology.No evidence of hostility."
A second ship descended to land a mile from the first. Its telecameracaught a fleeting glimpse of a man waving from a hilltop, but nothingmore.
One at a time the ships came, with weapon locks open and bristling withsteel snouts. The ships came down at one-mile intervals, the first waveforming a circle that enclosed an area of forty-six hundred squaremiles. The second wave came down to land in a central circle of fifteenmiles diameter. The third wave remained in its orbital shell, where itwould stand guard as long as the fleet was on the ground.
In accordance with the rules of officer's conduct, Baron ven Klaeden,who had ordered the landing, was the first to expose himself to theenveloping conditions outside the flagship. He stood in an open lock,sniffing the autumn air of Earth in late afternoon. It was full ofjet-fire smoke, and smelled of burning brush. The automaticextinguishers had quenched the flames, but the blackened trees and brushstill roasted and sparked and leaked smoke across the land. Somewhere abird was singing through the sunlit haze. Baron ven Klaeden recognizedthe sound as made by a living thing, and wondered if the recognition wasborn into his bones.
Three hundred and fifty yards to the north, a wingship towered in thesun, its guns trained outward from the inner circle, and to the south,another wingship. The baron glanced down at the earth beneath theflagship. The jets had reduced to ashes something that might have been alow wooden structure. He shrugged, and glanced across the blackened areatoward the orderly forest. Trees and shrubs, and a carpet of green turfbelow, broken here and there by rain-worn rocks and clusters of smallerfragile leafy stuff that might be food-plants. Vivid splashes of colorblossomed in the shady forest, scarlets and blues and flashes ofbrilliant lemon that lived in profusion in the foliage of the shrubbery.Some of the trees were living masses of tiny flowers, and when the windstirred them, petals showered to the ground in fragrant gusts. The windchanged, and the air that breathed about the commander's face was fullof perfume.
I feel nothing, he thought. Here is beauty and warmth, here is the homeof Man, and almost an Eden, but I feel nothing. It is just another motethat circles a minor sun, and to me it is only an exploitable supplydump of Nature, a place to accomplish Procedure 76-A, "Refueling Methodfor Terrestroid Planets Without Facilities, Native Labor Exploitable."
It was only a way-station on the long long road from Scorpius to Ursa,and it meant nothing, nothing at all. It had changed too much. Milleniaago, when the Star Exodus had burst forth to carry Man halfway acrossthe galaxy, things had been different. A few colonies had kept accuratehistories of Earth intact, and when the Transpace Empire had gathereditself into social integration, nearly five thousand years ago, thehistories had been made universally available. The baron had studiedthem, but from the viewpoint of the spacer, the history of Humanity hadceased in any way to be associated with Earth after the Star Exodus. Manwas a space creature, a denizen of the interstellum--or had been, beforethe War of Secession--and when history moved into space, Earth was ahalf-remembered hamlet. Ven Klaeden had seen the Earth-vistas that thehistorians had reconstructed for the museums--vistas of roaringindustrial cities, flaming battlegrounds, teeming harbors andspaceports. The cities were gone, and Earth had become a carefullytended Japanese garden.
* * * * *
As he stared around, he felt a lessening of the anxiety that had gnawedat him since the analyst Meikl had predicted dire consequences after thelanding. The cultural blood of Man had diverged into two streams sovastly different that no intermingling seemed possible to him. It wouldbe easy, he decided, to keep the informational quarantine. The order hadalready been issued. "All personnel are forbidden to attempt thelearning of the current Earth-tongue, or to teach any Empi
re-culturelanguage to the natives, or to attempt any written communication withthem. Staff-officers may communicate only under the provisions ofMemorandum J-43-C. The possession of any written or recorded material inthe native tongue, and the giving of written material to the natives,shall be taken as violations of this order. No sign language or otherform of symbolic communication shall be used. This order shall be inforce until Semantics section constructs a visual code for limitedpurposes in dealing with the natives. Staff officers are herebyauthorized to impose any penalty ranging to death upon offenders, and totry any such cases by summary courts martial. Junior officers authorizedto summarily arrest offenders. Effective immediately. Ven Klaeden,Comm."
It would keep any interchange to an absolute minimum, he thought. AndSemantics had been ordered to attempt construction of a visual languagein