Poul Anderson - Queen of Air and Darkness

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POUL ANDERSON

The Queen of Air

and Darkness

Poul ANDERSON was born November 25, 1926, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, of

Scandinavian parents. Part of his youth was spent in Denmark. He returned

to the United States before World War II, and he sold his first story while

student at the University of Minnesota. When he graduated.with distinction,

1948, he decided to try to support himself for a time with his writing

before

seeking employment in his area of specialization, physics. That for a time

approaching twenty-five years with the end happily not in sight. In 1953

Anderson married Karen Kruse, herself an author of fiction and poetry. They

have one daughter, Astrid. They make their home in Orinda, California.

Anderson's dazzling versatility as a writer is reflected in James Blish's

description of him as ". . . the scientist, the technician, the stylist,

the bard, the

humanist and the humorist-a non-exhaustive list." He ranks as one of the

most prolific science fiction writers of all times (a recently compiled

bibliography, published in the April 1971 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy

and Science fiction, fills seven pages!). From poetry to novels to short

stories

to nonfiction books and articles on a variety of subjects, he brilliantly

combines the saga and song of his Scandinavian heritage with the searching

mind and speculative science of the scholar. He also finds time for such

varied activities as houseboat building, sailing, mountain climbing,

gardening,

chess, poker, Science Fiction Writers of America, Mystery Writers of

America, and the Society for

Creative Anachronism (where he is known as Bela of Eastmarch in its

medieval tourneys)-another non-exhaustive list.

Under his own name and his two pseudonyms, Winston P. Sanders and

Michael Karageorge, he is the author of some fifty books and perhaps

two hundred shorter items. His stories "No Truce with Kings," "The

Longest Voyage" and "The Sharing of Flesh" won Hugo Awards. His

mystery novel Perish by the Sword won the Cock Robin Award. Well-

known science fiction novels are Brain Wave, The High Crusade, Three

Hearts and Three Lions, Earthman's Burden (with Gordon R. Dickson), The

Broken Sword, Alter Doomsday and Tau Zero. Recently anthologized stories are

"Call Me Joe" (selected for inclusion in the SFWA Hall of Fame, Volume

2), "The Man Who Came Early," "Sam Hall," "Kings Who Die" and

"Journeys End." His Time Patrol series was collected in Guardians of

Time. Other series concern Nicholas van Rijn, the interstellar trader,

Dominic Flandry and Trygve Yamamura.

Anderson's novel The Byworlder was a finalist in the balloting for the 1971

Nebula Awards; and his novelette "The Queen of Air and Darkness" won

a Nebula Award.

The last glow of the last sunset would linger almost until midwinter. But

there would be no more day, and the northlands rejoiced. Blossoms

opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steelflowers rising blue from

the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-

never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them in iridescent

wings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled. Between horizons the

sky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full,

shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. The shadows they made

were blurred by an aurora, a great blowing curtain of light across half

heaven. Behind it the earliest stars had come out.

A boy and a girl sat on Wolund's Barrow just under the dolmen it

upbore. Their hair, which streamed halfway down their backs, showed

startlingly forth, bleached as it was by summer. Their bodies, still dark

from that season, merged with earth and bush and rock, for they wore

only garlands. He played on a bone flute

and she sang. They had lately become lovers. Their age was about \.

sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Out..lings

and thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how they

had once dwelt in the lands of men.

His notes piped cold around her voice:

"Cast a spell, weave it well of dust and dew and night and you."

A brook by the grave mound, carrying moonlight down to a hillhidden

river, answered with its rapids. A flock of hellbats passed black beneath

the aurora.

A shape came bounding over Cloudmoor. It had two arms and' two legs,

but the legs were long and claw-footed and feather covered it to the end

of a tail and broad wings. The face was half, human, dominated by its

eyes. Had Ayoch been able to standwholly erect, he would have reached

to the boy's shoulder.

The girl rose. "He carries a burden," she said. Her vision was not.. meant

for twilight like that of a northland creature born, but she had learned

how to use every sign her senses gave her. Besides the,fact that ordinarily

a pook would fly, there was a heaviness to his haste.

"And he comes from the south." Excitement jumped in the boy, sudden

as a green flame that went across the constellation Lyrth. He sped down

the mound. "Ohoi, Ayoch!" he called. "Me here,: Mistherd!"

"And Shadow-of-a-Dream," the girl laughed, following.

The pook halted. He breathed louder than the soughing in the growth

around him. A smell of bruised yerba lifted where he

stood.

"Well met in winterbirth," he whistled. "You can help me bring this to

Carheddin."

He held out what he bore. His eyes were yellow lanterns above. It moved

arid whimpered.

"Why, a child," Mistherd said.

"Even as you were, my son, even as you were. Ho, ho, what a snatchl"

Ayoch boasted. "They were a score in yon camp by Fallowwood, armed, and

besides watcher engines they had big ugly dogs aprowl while they slept. I

came from above, however, having spied on them till I knew that a handful

of dazedust "

"The poor thing." Shadow-of-a-Dream took the boy and held him to her

small breasts. "So full of sleep yet, aren't you?" Blindly, he sought a

nipple.

She smiled through the veil of her-hair. "No, I am still too young, and you

already too old. But come, when you wake in Carheddin under the mountain,

you shall feast."

"Yo-ah; " said Ayoch very softly. "She is abroad and has heard

and seen. She comes." He crouched down, wings folded. After a

moment Mistherd knelt, and then Shadow-of-a-Dream, though

she did not let go the child.

The Queen's tall form blocked off the moons. For a while she regarded the

three and their booty. Hill and moor sounds withdrew from their awareness

until it seemed they could hear the northlights hiss.

At last Ayoch whispered, "Have I done well, Starmother?"

"If you stole a babe from a camp full of engines," said the beautiful voice,

"then they were folk out of the far south who may not endure it as meekly

as yeomen."

"But what can they do, Snowmaker?" the pook asked. "How can they track

us?"

Mistherd lifted his head and spoke in pride. "Also, now they too have felt

the awe of us."

"And he is a cuddly dear," Shadow-of-a-Dream said. "And we need more like

him, do we not, Lady Sky?"

"It had to happen in some twilight," agreed she who stood above. "Take

him onward and care for him. By this sign," which she made, "is he claimed

for the Dwellers."

Their joy was freed. Ayoch cartwheeled over the ground till he reached a

shiverleaf. There he swarmed up the trunk and out on a limb, perched half

hidden by unrestful pale foliage, and crowed.

Boy and girl bore the child toward Carheddin at an easy distancedevouring

lope which let him pipe and hey sing:

"Wahaii, wahaii!

Wayala, laii! -

Wing on the wind

high over heaven,

shrilly shrieking,

rush with the rainspears,

tumble through tumult,

drift to the moonhoar trees and the dream-heavy

shadows beneath them,

and rock in, be one with the clinking wavelets of

lakes where the starbeams drown."

As she entered, Barbro Cullen felt, through all grief and fury, stabbed by

dismay. The room was unkempt. Journals, tapes, reels, codices, file boxes,

bescribbled papers were piled on every table. Dust filmed most shelves and

corners. Against one wall stood a laboratory setup, microscope and

analytical equipment. She recognized it as compact and efficient, but it was

not what you would expect in an office, and it gave the air a faint chemical

reek. The rug was threadbare, the furniture shabby.

This was her final chance?

Then Eric Sherrinford approached. "Good day, Mrs. Cullen," he said. His

tone was crisp, his handclasp firm. His faded gripsuit didn't bother her.

She

wasn't inclined to fuss about her own appearance except on special

occasions. (And would she ever again have one, unless she got back Jimmy?)

What she observed was a cat's personal neatness.

A smile radiated in crow's feet from his eyes. "Forgive my bachelor

housekeeping. On Beowulf we have-we had, at any ratemachines for that, so

I never acquired the habit myself, and I don't want a hireling disarranging

my tools. More convenient to work out of my apartment than keep a

separate office. Won't you be seated?"

"No, thanks. I couldn't," she mumbled.

"I understand. But if you'll excuse me, I function best in a relaxed

position."

He jackknifed into a lounger. One long shank crossed the other knee.

He drew forth a pipe and stuffed it from a pouch. Barbro wondered why

he took tobacco in so ancient a way. Wasn't Beowulf supposed to have

the up-to-date equipment that they still couldn't afford to build on

Roland? Well, of course old customs might survive anyhow. They

generally did in colonies, she remembered reading. People had moved

starward in the hope of preserving such outmoded things as their

mother tongues or constitutional government or rational-technological

civilization ....

Sherrinford pulled her up from the confusion of her weariness. "You

must give me the details of your case, Mrs. Cullen. You've simply told

me your son was kidnapped and your local constabulary did nothing.

Otherwise, I know just a few obvious facts, such as your being widowed

rather than divorced; and you're the daughter of outwayers in Olga

lvanoff Land who, nevertheless, kept in close telecommunication with

Christmas Landing; and you're trained in one of the biological

professions; and you had several years' hiatus in field work until

recently you started again."

She gaped at the high-cheeked, beak-nosed, black-haired and gray-eyed

countenance. His lighter made a scrit and a flare which seemed to fill the

room. Quietness dwelt on this height above the city, and winter dusk

was seeping through the windows. "How in cosmos do you know that?"

she heard herself exclaim.

He shrugged and fell into the lecturer's manner for which he was

notorious. "My work depends on noticing details and fitting them

together. In more than a hundred years on Roland, tending to cluster

according to their origins and thought habits, people have developed

regional accents. You have a trace of the Olgan burr, but you nasalize

your vowels in the style of this area, though you live in Portolondon-

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Poul Anderson - Queen of Air and Darkness

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