The wind coming down from the glacier seemed to cut right through Lord Mehrang’s Devajjo-fur coat. Ice crystals stung his cheek. He moved heavily across the tundra and gestured for Lieutenant-Captain Lord Naaz Vijana to follow. The young officer climbed out of the VTOL craft, and surprise showed on his face as he encountered the full force of the freezing wind. He pulled up the collar of his viridian-green Fleet greatcoat, then jammed his cap far down his forehead, partly for warmth, partly to keep the cap from flying away.
Mehrang adjusted his hood to keep the ice crystals away from his face. A hot exhaust port on the aircraft gave a metallic ping as it cooled.
When Vijana joined him, Lord Mehrang raised his mittened hand and gestured to the camp huddled next to the long lake below the glacier. “There they are,” he said. “The true lords of this world.”
Hide tents seemed to crouch before the wind. Hundreds of shaggy brown cattle drank from the lake or grazed on the mosses and grasses. Humanoids, equally shaggy, walked among the tents and the cattle.
“Extraordinary color,” said Vijana. The lake was teal green and laced with silver as the wind tore at its surface.
“It’s rock flour from the glacier,” he said. “Changes the way the water refracts. You can look up the science later, if you’re interested.” Lord Mehrang had not brought Vijana here to discuss the color of lakes.
“I will, my lord, thank you.”
Vijana had a cunning, pointed face, caramel skin, bright, alert black eyes, and a pencil mustache that Mehrang considered unfortunate. Lord Mehrang knew that Vijana also had a gambling habit, little or no patronage in the Fleet, and no hope of promotion. Vijana had only managed a promotion to lieutenant-captain because of a need for officers during the war, but now the war was long over, and Vijana’s career had stalled. Not only was he in debt and with no chance of advancement, but his little frigate had been stationed here at Esley, a world as sad and pathetic as his own hopes.
Lord Mehrang shifted his large, heavy body and began his trudge toward the camp. “Glaciers cover almost a quarter of the planet’s surface,” he said. “And nearly half of what’s left is reserved for the Yormaks.” He gestured toward the camp in disgust. “There are only a couple hundred thousand of them, and they get half a world!”
And between the frigid, dry climate and the Yormak reserves, there wasn’t a lot of room left for settlers, or—more importantly—developing a proper economy. Only forty-six million people had settled the planet under Clan Mehrang’s patronage, and it was hard for the current lord to scrape his proper share from the scant profits. Of all those Peers who served as patrons to settled worlds, he was by far the poorest. His family could barely afford a third-rate palace in Zanshaa High City, and no Mehrang had ever been co-opted into the Convocation. It was a situation that filled him with fury.
“And it doesn’t have to be like this! My family drew up plans generations ago,” he said. “Seed lampblack over the glaciers to reduce the planet’s albedo, as well as absorb heat to melt the ice. Giant mirrors put in space to reflect even more light and heat onto the planet to speed the process. The consultants say we’d have a green, warm world in under thirty years. Even if that’s too optimistic, we can still manage it in under fifty. But generation after generation, century after century, the government on Zanshaa has turned down our every application.”
“That’s a shame, my lord,” said Vijana. He shivered as the wind blasted down his neck, and with a gloved hand he drew his collar closer around his throat. “This place could certainly be warmer.”
“And it’s all because of them,” Mehrang said, pointing again at the camp. “It’s all because of the Yormaks.”
Esley had been discovered eighteen hundred years before, along with the humanoid Yormaks, tool-using natives who followed their herds of cattle from one pastureland to the next. When the then Lady Mehrang was first appointed patron of the new world, she must have been skipping with joy. She would settle this world, adjust its climate, take a piece of every profitable enterprise, and raise the Yormaks to become full citizens of the empire, subject only to the will of the conquering Shaa. After all, races such as the Naxids and the Torminel had been advanced from a primitive state and were now obedient, productive citizens.
Except it had all gone wrong. The Yormaks ignored Lady Mehrang and her settlers and would only pay attention if they were somehow compelled. They were disinclined to learn the language of the Shaa, and again used it only under compulsion. Further, they never tried to teach the newcomers their own language, and it was only learned by dedicated researchers who followed them over the frigid world, recorded their speech, and made educated guesses as to what the words meant. When provided with useful technology—wagons or sleds, modern stoves, simple tools—the Yormaks simply abandoned them on the tundra and continued using the crude implements they crafted themselves.
Lady Mehrang tried to find the dominant personalities in each band, appointed them chieftains over each group, and tried to use these to control the native population, but the chieftains were uninterested in being in charge of anything, and they refused to participate in any of Lady Mehrang’s schemes for advancing them. When Lady Mehrang separated Yormaks from their families and herds in order to subject them to a concentrated education in modern civilization, they had simply lain down, stopped eating, wasted away, and died.
Delegations of chieftains had been sent to the capital at Zanshaa so that the Shaa could explain to them their responsibilities under the Praxis, but the first group wasted away before the Great Masters could even see them. Subsequent delegations were better supervised and had a lower mortality rate, but all they did was stand listlessly and ask to go home.
Eventually even the Shaa were forced to concede defeat. They announced that they had granted the Yormaks’ petition to live on their home world, and they subsequently made arrangements for them to continue their traditional life. Enormous tracts of land were reserved for them along their established migration routes, and a branch of the Ministry of Forestry and Fisheries was dedicated to studying the Yormaks, protecting their way of life, and mitigating any conflict with Esley’s new settlers.
“All because the Shaa could never admit they’d made a mistake,” said Lord Mehrang. “They misclassified the Yormaks as people, when in fact they’re just clever animals.”
Vijana didn’t reply, as by this point they were walking through the herd of cattle, and he was eying them nervously. An adult bull or cow stood as high as Vijana at the shoulder, and its massive, shaggy head alone probably outweighed him. Vijana was treading cautiously past one of the animals, a vast gray-backed creature, and when the animal turned its head to view him with all its four eyes, Vijana nearly jumped out of his skin.
“They’re harmless,” Lord Mehrang said. “They might step on you by accident, but they won’t deliberately do you harm.” One cow loomed up in front of him, walking on enormous spade-shaped feet that were used to dig through winter snow to find grasses. “Just prod them out of the way,” Mehrang said, and did exactly that. The cow moved without any sense of resentment.
The animals’ smell was overpowering, and the scent seemed somehow to clot at the back of Lord Mehrang’s throat: he hawked and spat.
They walked around the cow and came face-to-face with a Yormak. It was built like a short, stocky human, but with a leathery muzzle full of yellow teeth and four eyes distributed evenly around the circumference of its head. The Yormak was covered in long brown fur, and it wore a shaggy coat made from the pelt of one of the cattle. Over one shoulder was a leather strap from which dangled a furry leather bag. A handmade wooden tool was carried in one three-fingered hand.
The Yormak and the two Terrans gazed at one another for a few seconds, and then the Yormak, without changing expression, altered course to walk around Lord Mehrang. Mehrang took a step to block the Yormak’s path. The Yormak altered course again, and again Lord Mehrang blocked it. The Yormak gave a kind of sneeze from slitted nostrils, then stood completely still. This time it waited for Mehrang and Vijana to move out of its way and then walked past them, again without acknowledging their existence. It paused, then used the tool to scoop up a patty of cattle dung and dump it in its furry sack.
“They burn dung for fuel,” Mehrang said in disgust. “We give them stoves, but . . .” He waved a hand helplessly.
“Burning dung?” said Vijana. “That would account for the smell.”
Mehrang walked on in the direction of a drumlin, a glacial-formed ridge running parallel to the lake. “And that scoop it carried?” he said. “The design hasn’t changed in millennia. All their tools, the clothes, the tents . . . it’s all identical as far back as we can go through the archaeological record. Eighty thousand years, they’ve been making the exact same spear point, the same cattle goads, the same snowshoes, the same cradleboards for their young.”
The smell had caught in his throat again, and again he spat. “They don’t evolve. They’re a dead end.” He made a broad gesture that encompassed the entire world of Esley. “The Praxis is all about evolution. When we encounter a new world, we import new plants, new crops, new animals, and let them all compete with the native life-forms. The best life-form wins. Except we can’t do it here.” Disgust welled in him. “Even if we started absolutely level, with the same primitive technology, in a hundred years any of the other species under the Praxis would outcompete the Yormaks. They’d be extinct.”
Vijana shivered in his greatcoat. “I might be extinct if I stay out here much longer.”
Mehrang ignored the complaint and strode on through the camp, into the smoke of the dung fires and the stink of hides and unwashed bodies, past the Yormaks, who barely glanced at him. He came to a kind of cove carved into the flank of the drumlin and paused to watch a group of Yormaks sitting or kneeling there. Before them was a natural shelf on which sat some objects—stones, a bundle of twigs wrapped with grassy twine, the shoulder bone of some creature with glyphs carved into it. One of the Yormaks was holding another object—some sticks lashed together with rawhide into a kind of asterisk shape, with stones and bits of bone tied to it all with strands of sinew. The Yormak was speaking rapidly, apparently to the thing itself, with other Yormaks chiming in, as if in agreement, or offering further clarification.
It was the most animated, Mehrang thought, that he’d ever seen these creatures.
Vijana seemed bewildered. “What are they doing?” he asked.
“It’s classified as ‘undefined ritual behavior,’” Mehrang said. “But it sure looks like religion to me.”
“Religion?” Vijana was appalled.
“They’re calling on these things—these fetishes—for some kind of supernatural aid.” Mehrang spat again. “This is a shrine, except you can’t get the government to admit that. Officially, these aren’t gods or fetishes, they’re ‘traditional ritual objects of uncertain utility.’” He laughed. “What kind of lawyer gibberish is that? They’re bending over backwards not to see what’s happening right in front of us.”
Vijana was confused. “But if it’s actually religion—” He shook his head. “Well, that can’t be, right? Because if it were—”
“If you or I practiced religion openly,” Lord Mehrang said, “we’d be arrested and very possibly executed.” He flapped a hand at the Yormaks. “But these—creatures—are allowed to flout the Praxis in the most egregious way. Explain to me how that’s even possible!”
Vijana spread his hands. “I’m in the Fleet,” he said. “All manner of orders are given that I’m obliged to carry out, whether they make sense or not.”
“You understand, then.” Lord Mehrang nodded. “Someone decided ages ago that the Yormaks were going to be protected, and now they’re protected no matter what madness they do.” He stepped closer to Vijana, looming over the younger, smaller man. “The only way that would change,” he said, “is if the Yormaks rebelled.”
“Rebelled?” Vijana was dubious. “Why would they rebel? They seem to have everything exactly the way they want it.”
Lord Mehrang took Vijana by the arm. “Let’s not go into that right now,” he said. “Let’s just assume that the Yormaks rebel for whatever reason gets into their thick heads. What would you do if the lord governor asked for your assistance to end a revolt? How would you do it?”
Vijana considered this and spoke through lips blue with the cold. “Firing antimatter missiles from orbit would be far too destructive. Still, Yormaks would best be attacked from the air, I imagine. Arm aircraft with automatic weapons.” His brows knit. “How many aircraft do you have on Esley?”
“The administration has been generous with licenses. There’s such a lack of infrastructure on my poor planet that aircraft are necessary to knit the settlements together.”
“And weapons?”
“We’d have to make most of them, but we have enough industrial capacity to turn out what we’d need in short order.”
“Bombs? Incendiaries?”
Lord Mehrang smiled. “Entirely within our capacity.”
Calculations flickered across Vijana’s face. He seemed wholly absorbed in the problem. “How dependent are the Yormaks on their cattle?”
“Completely. For food, clothing, shelter, bone for tools, and dung for their fires.”
“Yormaks might be able to hide, I suppose, but they can’t hide whole cattle herds.” He looked up in query. “Kill the cattle, and the Yormaks will starve?”
“They fish and hunt, but they won’t survive on that alone, not in this climate.”
“Well then. Just mow the cattle down, along with any Yormaks we find. Either way the rebels die.”
Lord Mehrang gave a satisfied smile. “Let’s say you take command of suppressing the rebellion. How far away is your nearest superior?”
“I’m an independent command, so I report directly to the Commandery on Zanshaa. If they detailed someone from the Home Fleet to supervise me, it would be at least three months before he arrived. But more likely they’d order a squadron out from the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid, and that’s six to eight weeks out, depending on how soon they could leave and how many gravities their commander piles on to get here. Since it’s a chance to command in the suppression of a revolt, they’d almost certainly be here sooner rather than later.”
“It sounds as if someone would want to steal your credit for suppressing the rebels.”
Vijana shrugged. “It’s the Fleet, my lord. You’d be surprised how often the credit goes where it doesn’t belong.”
“Your possible supersession concerns me.” Mehrang patted Vijana on the arm. “If anything as regrettable as a rebellion were to occur, I would have to make certain that you received proper credit for a successful action. A promotion, decorations . . .”
“Beg pardon, my lord. But these are not within your purview.”
Mehrang straightened. “I am not without influence. I am patron to an entire world, and my own patron is Lord Convocate Mondi, on the Fleet Control Board. Which is in charge of decorations and promotions.”
“Mondi is most influential,” Vijana agreed.
“And of course Esley itself would express its appreciation. There would be cash rewards, and grants of land. Choice grants, too, taken from the Yormak reserves, and full of resources, or perhaps in strategic locations certain to be developed within your lifetime. You would be patron to a city, perhaps more than one.”
Vijana smiled. “A gratifying picture, my lord. But of course there is no rebellion, and the lord governor has not summoned me to his aid.”
“The lord governor is my cousin. We agree on many matters.”
Vijana’s thin little mustache twitched. “And the rebellion? The Yormaks have no reputation for violence.”
Mehrang smiled. “Watch,” he said. He turned and walked into the midst of the dialogue between the Yormaks and their totem, and then he snatched the talisman from the hand of the speaker and brandished it high above his head. The Yormaks yelped in surprise, or gave deep coughs of apparent disgust, then sprang to their feet and clustered around Mehrang, all of them shouting, or howling in warning. Some snatched stone knives from their belts or brandished other implements. Alarmed by the threats and the noise, Vijana patted his greatcoat for a weapon he knew was not there.
Just as the howling peaked, just as it seemed the Yormaks were about to tear Lord Mehrang limb from limb, he returned the totem to the Yormak who had been holding it. The shouts and shrieks died away almost to nothing. After patting the creature and speaking soothing words, Lord Mehrang left the group and returned to Vijana. The Yormaks resumed their dialogue with the talisman as if nothing had happened.
“See?” Mehrang said. “Those fetishes are the only things they really seem to care about. It’s not hard to get them stirred up.”
Vijana nodded. “I’m impressed, my lord. Impressed by all the . . .” He hesitated. “The planning you’ve put into this.”
Mehrang took Vijana’s arm again and steered him out of the camp. “Shall we go to some warm place and have a drink?” he said. “We should give further thought to your future.”
“I should like nothing better, my lord,” said Vijana. They walked through the herd again, then up the slope toward Mehrang’s aircraft. Vijana flapped his arms for warmth. He gave Mehrang a thoughtful look.
“It would be better if the rebellion happened in winter. You could track the Yormaks through the snow.”
Mehrang nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Have you ever considered fuel-air explosives? If we could get them built, they’d wipe out a whole herd of cattle at a single go, along with any Yormaks in company.”
Lord Mehrang smiled even as the cutting wind blew sharp ice crystals into his face. “You’ll have to tell me all about them, Lieutenant-Captain,” he said. “They sound most useful.”
The first videos of the rebellion were jittery and incomplete and were supposed to have been shot by the employees of Forestry and Fisheries assigned to supervise and protect the Yormaks. They showed a howling mob of Yormaks brandishing weapons, and over the soundtrack you could hear the custodians shouting in alarm before the video abruptly cut off. Some of the videos ended with the thud of blows, or the screams of wounded.
Rescue parties found only the bodies of the custodians, beaten and stabbed with primitive weapons, and lying adjacent to the camps of the Yormaks, who by now were showing no interest whatever.
The scenes hadn’t been difficult to arrange. There were plenty of people on Esley who hated the Yormaks and their guardians both, and Lord Mehrang had been careful to encourage and reward that hatred.
The videos provided enough evidence for the lord governor to declare the Yormaks in a state of rebellion, and to call for assistance from the Fleet. Police forces descended on the remaining guardians, rounded them up, and escorted them to the towns, where they would be safe.
Along the way, the police killed any Yormaks they encountered.
The governor also called for volunteers to form a militia, and within days well-armed hunters were speeding out onto the winter tundra in their tracked snow machines, following the trails of the herds.
A few weeks later, the fuel-air explosives began to prove their worth.
Lord Mehrang amused himself with the thought of the last few Yormaks being rounded up to live in zoos. Though he very much doubted that, once confined, they would long survive.