First, however… m-m-m-m?”
Warmth rose in him. “M-m-m-m,” he returned.
V
T HREE HUNDRED KILOMETERS east of the Hephaestian Sea, two thousand north of Eopolis, the Uplands rose. There a number of immigrants from northern Europe had settled during the past century’s inflow. Like most colonists, once it became possible to survive beyond the original town and its technological support, they tended to clump together with their own kind. Farmers, herders, lumberjacks, hunters, they lived in primitive fashion for lack of machinery; freight costs from Earth were enormous. Later, when Demetrian industry began to grow, they acquired some modern equipment—but not much, because in the meantime they had developed ways well suited to coping with their particular country. Moreover, most of them didn’t care to become dependent on outsiders. They or their ancestors had moved here to be free of governments, corporations, unions, and other monopolies. That spirit endured.
The folk who bore it had evolved a whole ethos. In their homes, many of them continued to speak the original languages; but given that variety, English was the common tongue, in a new dialect. Traditions blended together, mutated, or sprang spontaneously into being. For instance, at winter solstice—cold, murk, snow, in this part of the continent which humans called Ionia—they celebrated Yule (not Christmas, which still went by the Terrestrial calendar) with feasting, mirth, decorations, gifts, and reunions. Halfway around the Demetrian year they found a different occasion for gatherings, more frankly bacchanalian. Then bonfire signalled to bonfire across rugged distances, while around them went dancing drinking, eating, singing, japing, gaming, sporting, lovemaking from sundown to sunrise.
For the past three years, Margaret Mulryan had given music at that season to those who met on Trollberg, when she wasn’t busy with associated pleasures. She was again on herway, afoot along a dirt road, since the journey was part of the fun. As she went, she practiced the latest song she had made for the festival, skipping to its waltz time while her clear soprano lifted.
In silver-blue, the dew lies bright
.
The midsummer night
Is abrim with light
.
Come take each other by the hand,
For music has wakened
All over the land
.
Fingers bounced across the control board of the sonador she held in the crook of her left arm. Programmed to imitate a flute, though louder, the mahogany-colored box piped beneath her chorus.
Go gladly up and gladly down
.
The dancing flies outward like laughter
From blossomfield to mountain crown
.
Rejoice in the joy that comes after!
Dust puffed from under her shoes. Around her, the heights dreamed beneath the amber glow of a Phoebus declining westward, close to its northernmost point in a sky where a few clouds drifted white. The road followed the Astrid River, which rippled and gurgled, green with glacial flour, on her right, downward bound to Aguabranca where it would enter the mighty Europa. Beyond the stream lay untouched native ground, steeply falling into a dale already full of dusk, clothed in bluish-green growth wherever boulders did not thrust forth—lodix like a kind of trilobate grass or clover, gemmed with petals of arrowhead and sunbloom, between coppices of tall redlance and supple daphne. Insectoids swarmed, gorgeously hued flamewings, leaping hopshrubs, multitudinous humbugs. A bright-plumed frailie cruised among them, a minstrel warbled from a bough, a couple of bucearos swooped overhead, and a draque hovered lean, far above—not birds, these, but hypersauroids, like every well-developed vertebrate which Demeter had brought forth. Pungencies that roused memories of resin and cinnamon drifted on a south breeze which was rapidly cooling off the afternoon.
On Caitlín’s left ran a rail fence. Somewhat level, till it met a scarp three or four kilometers off, the soil thus demarked had been converted to pasture for
Warmth rose in him. “M-m-m-m,” he returned.
V
T HREE HUNDRED KILOMETERS east of the Hephaestian Sea, two thousand north of Eopolis, the Uplands rose. There a number of immigrants from northern Europe had settled during the past century’s inflow. Like most colonists, once it became possible to survive beyond the original town and its technological support, they tended to clump together with their own kind. Farmers, herders, lumberjacks, hunters, they lived in primitive fashion for lack of machinery; freight costs from Earth were enormous. Later, when Demetrian industry began to grow, they acquired some modern equipment—but not much, because in the meantime they had developed ways well suited to coping with their particular country. Moreover, most of them didn’t care to become dependent on outsiders. They or their ancestors had moved here to be free of governments, corporations, unions, and other monopolies. That spirit endured.
The folk who bore it had evolved a whole ethos. In their homes, many of them continued to speak the original languages; but given that variety, English was the common tongue, in a new dialect. Traditions blended together, mutated, or sprang spontaneously into being. For instance, at winter solstice—cold, murk, snow, in this part of the continent which humans called Ionia—they celebrated Yule (not Christmas, which still went by the Terrestrial calendar) with feasting, mirth, decorations, gifts, and reunions. Halfway around the Demetrian year they found a different occasion for gatherings, more frankly bacchanalian. Then bonfire signalled to bonfire across rugged distances, while around them went dancing drinking, eating, singing, japing, gaming, sporting, lovemaking from sundown to sunrise.
For the past three years, Margaret Mulryan had given music at that season to those who met on Trollberg, when she wasn’t busy with associated pleasures. She was again on herway, afoot along a dirt road, since the journey was part of the fun. As she went, she practiced the latest song she had made for the festival, skipping to its waltz time while her clear soprano lifted.
In silver-blue, the dew lies bright
.
The midsummer night
Is abrim with light
.
Come take each other by the hand,
For music has wakened
All over the land
.
Fingers bounced across the control board of the sonador she held in the crook of her left arm. Programmed to imitate a flute, though louder, the mahogany-colored box piped beneath her chorus.
Go gladly up and gladly down
.
The dancing flies outward like laughter
From blossomfield to mountain crown
.
Rejoice in the joy that comes after!
Dust puffed from under her shoes. Around her, the heights dreamed beneath the amber glow of a Phoebus declining westward, close to its northernmost point in a sky where a few clouds drifted white. The road followed the Astrid River, which rippled and gurgled, green with glacial flour, on her right, downward bound to Aguabranca where it would enter the mighty Europa. Beyond the stream lay untouched native ground, steeply falling into a dale already full of dusk, clothed in bluish-green growth wherever boulders did not thrust forth—lodix like a kind of trilobate grass or clover, gemmed with petals of arrowhead and sunbloom, between coppices of tall redlance and supple daphne. Insectoids swarmed, gorgeously hued flamewings, leaping hopshrubs, multitudinous humbugs. A bright-plumed frailie cruised among them, a minstrel warbled from a bough, a couple of bucearos swooped overhead, and a draque hovered lean, far above—not birds, these, but hypersauroids, like every well-developed vertebrate which Demeter had brought forth. Pungencies that roused memories of resin and cinnamon drifted on a south breeze which was rapidly cooling off the afternoon.
On Caitlín’s left ran a rail fence. Somewhat level, till it met a scarp three or four kilometers off, the soil thus demarked had been converted to pasture for
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