PLANET OF THE GOLDEN HORDE
The
squad's eyes registered the girl's blaster even as their chief spoke. Someone
yelled. Bourtai fired into the thick of them. Ionic Ughtning crashed. Captain
Sir Dominic Flandry dropped.
A
bolt sizzled where he had been. He fired, wide-beamed, the energy too diluted
to kill even at short range but scorching four men at once. As their screams
lifted, he bounced back to his feet, overlapped the fallen frontline, stiff-armed
a warrior beyond, and hit the landing. . . .
This
was the beginning of Flandry's hair-raising mission to Altai, one of the
neutral planets between the two warring galactic cultures. But it also looked
like the end of the adventure, for beyond his escape lay the man-killing frozen
wastes of an ultra-polar zone.
Turn
this book over for second complete novel
POUL ANDERSON was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and was
graduated as a physics major from the University of
Minnesota. Writing was a hobby of his, and he sold a few stories while in
college. With jobs hard to find after graduation, he continued to write and
found to his surprise that he was not a scientist at all, but-a born writer.
Best known for his science-fiction, he has also written mysteries, non-fiction,
and historical novels.
Poul Anderson lives in Orinda, California,
with his wife and young daughter. Novels of his published in Ace Books editions
include PLANET OF NO RETURN (D-199), STAR WAYS (D-255), WAR OF THE WING-MEN
(D-303), SNOWS OF GANYMEDE (D-303), WAR OF TWO WORLDS (D-335), WE CLAIM THESE
STARS (D-407), and EARTHMAN GO HOME1 (D-179).
MAYDAY ORBIT
by
POUL ANDERSON
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
mayday orbit
Copyright ©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved
no
man's world Copyright
©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
I
Seen
on approach,
against crystal darkness and stars crowded into foreign constellations, Altai
was beautiful. A good half of either hemisphere was polar cap. There. the snowfields were tinged rosy by sunlight, while ice
shimmered blue and green. The tropical belt of steppe and tundra shaded from
bronze to tarnished gold, strewn with quicksilver lakes. Three planetary radii
out in space there spun a double ring, meteoric dust, subtle rainbow
iridescence girdling the equator. Beyond hung two moons like
copper coins among the stars.
Captain
Sir Dominic Flandry, field agent, Naval Intelligence Coips of the Terrestrial
Empire, pulled his gaze reluctantly back to the spaceship's bridge. "I
see where the name comes from," he remarked. In the language of this
planet's human colonists, which he had learned electronically from a
Betelgeusean trader, Altai meant Golden. "But Krasna is a misnomer for the
sun. It isn't really red, to the human eye, anyhow. Not
nearly as red as your home star. More of an orange-yellow, I'd
say."
The blue
visage of Zalat, who commanded the battered merchant vessel, twisted into the
grimace which was his
race's equivalent of a shrug. He was moderately
humanoid, though only half as tall as a man, stout, hairless, clad in a metal,
mesh tunic. "I zuppose it was de, you zay, contrazt." He spoke
Terrestrial Anglic with an unnecessarily thick accent, as if to show that the
independence of the Betelgeu-sean System—buffer state between the hostile
realms of Terra and Merseia—did not mean it had nothing to contribute to the
mainstream of interstellar culture.
Flandry
would rather have practiced his Altaian, especially since Zalat's Anglic
vocabulary was so small as to limit conversation to platitudes. But he
deferred. As the sole passenger of alien species, with special dietary
requirements, he depended on the captain's good will. Also, he wanted the
Betelgeuseans to take him at face value. Officially, his job was only to
re-establish contact between Altai and the rest of humankind. The mission was
so unimportant that Terra didn't even give him a ship of his own, but let him
negotiate passage as best he might. So, he let Zalat chatter.
"After
all," the skipper continued, "Altai was first colonized more dan
zeven hoondert Terra-years a-pazt: in de verrry dawn, you zay, of interztellar
travel. Littie was known about w'at to eggzpect. Krazna muzt have zeemed
deprez-zingly cold and red, after Zol. Now-to-days, we have more aztronautical
zophizticazhion."
Flandry
looked back at the stars: more than he could count, more than he could imagine.
An estimated four million of them, included in that vague sphere called the
Terrestrial Empire, was an insignificant portion of this one spiral arm of
this one commonplace galaxy. Even if you added the nonhuman empires, the
sovereign suns like Betelgeuse, and the reports of a few explorers who had gone
extremely far in the old days, that part of the universe known to man was
terrifyingly small. And it would always remain so.
"Just
how often do you come here?" he asked, largely to drown out the silence.
"About
onze a Terra-year," answered Zalat. "However, dere is oder merchantz on diz route bezides me. I have de fur trade,
but Altai alzo produzes gemz, mineralz, hidez, vari-ouz organic productz, even
dried meatz, w'ich are in zome demand at home. Zo dere is usually a Betelgeuzean
zhip or two at Ulan Baligh."
"Will you be here
long?
"I
hope not. It is a tediouz plaze for a nonhuman.
One pleazure houze for uz has been eztablizhed, but—" Zalat made another
face "—wid de dizturbanzez going on, dough, fur trapping and caravans have
been much hampered. Lazt time I had to wait a mont'
for a full cargo. Diz time may be worze."
Oh-ho,
thought Flandry. But aloud
he merely said, "If the metals and machinery you bring in exchange are as
valuable as you claim, I wonder why some Altaians don't acquire spaceships
and start trading on their own."
"Dey
have not a mercantile kind of zivihzazhion,"
Zalat replied. "Remember, we Betelgeuzeanz have been coming here for lezz
dan a zentury. Before den, Altai was izolated. De original zhips dat brought de
coloniztz were long ago worn out. Dey demzelves had never been interezted
enough in re-eztablizhing galactic contact to build new craft. Remember, deir
planet is zo poor in heavy metalz dat zuch construction would be verry eggzpenzive
for dem.
"Now-to-days, might be, zom of de
younger Altaian malez have zome wizh to try zuch an enterprize. But lately de
Kha Khan has forbidden any of his zubjectz from leaving de planet, eggzept a
few truzted and verry cloze-mouf per-zonal reprezentativez in de Betelgeuzean
Zyztem. Diz pro-hibizhion is one reazon for de inzurreczhionz againzt him.''
"Yeh." Flandry gave the ice fields a hard look. "Anybody who wants to get
off that ball of permafrost, and can't, has my
sympathy. If it were my planet, I think I'd look around for an enemy to sell it
to."
But
stiU I'm going there, he
reflected. Talk
about your unsung heroes! The more the Empire cracks and crumbles, the more
frantically a few of us have to
scurry around patching it. Otherwise the Long Night might come in our own
sacrosanct lifetimes.
And
in this particular instance, his mind ran on, J have reason to believe that an enemy is trying to buy the planet.
II
From
the polar snows of Altai,
broad, shallow rivers wound southward over the steppes. Where two of them Zeya
and Talyma, met at Ozero Rurik, the city named Ulan Baligh was founded by the
first colonists. It had never been large; today, the only permanent, human
setdement on the planet, it had some twenty thousand residents. But the number
of people in its environs was usually greater than this. For tribesmen were
always arriving here to trade or confer or attend the rites in the Prophet's
Tower. They walled the southern edge of town with tents and trucks; their
encampments spilled around the primitive spaceport and raised smoke for
kilometers along the lakeshore.
As
his ship descended, Captain Flandry was more interested in something less
picturesque. He had bribed an engineer to let him use a magnifying viewport in
the after turret. Through this he saw that monorail tracks wove a spider strand
around Ulan Baligh, that flatcars upon them held cradled missiles, that some
very modern military aircraft lazed on their gravebeams in the sky, that tanks
and beede-cars prowled about in quantity, that the barracks and emplacements
for an armored brigade were under construction west of the city, that a squat
building near the central market place must house a negagrav generator powerful
enough to shield the entire urban area; all of this was new. None of it had
been built in any factories controlled by the Terrestrial Empire.
"However, the stuff could well have been
supplied by my little green chums," he murmured to himself. "If the
Merseians got a base here in the buffer region, outflanking us at Catawrayannis
. . . well, it wouldn't be decisive by itself. But it would strengthen their
hand quite a bit. And eventually, when their hand looks strong enough, they're
going to start the big war."
Not
for the first time, .he suppressed a bitterness over
his own people, too rich to spend treasure in an open attack on the menace—most
of them even denying that any menace existed, for what power would dare break
the Pax Terres-tria? After all, he thought wryly, he enjoyed his furloughs home
precisely because Terra was decadent.
But
at this moment Terra was also some 300 light-years distant; and he had work on
hand.
Through
his mind flickered a review of those hints Intelligence
had gathered in the Betelgeuse region. Traders had casually mentioned curious
goings-on at some place named Altai. They had litde specific information to
relate, for they took no interest in the affairs of the place except insofar as
their commerce with it was affected. The information they did reveal, when
Terra's men stood them drinks, led to the Imperial archives, where the planet
was identified as an ancient human colony far off the regular space lanes, not
so much lost as overlooked.
A
proper investigation would have required several months and several hundred
agents. Being spread horribly thin over far too many stars, Intelligence sent
just one man. At the Terran Embassy on Betelgeuse VI, Flandry was given a slim
dossier on Altai, a stingy advance on an expense account, and an order to
learn just what the devil was going on out there. After which, overworked men
and machines forgot about him. They would remember when he reported back, or if
they got news he had died in some unusual fashion. But if neither of these
things happened, Altai might well lie obscure for another decade.
Which could be a trifle too long, Flandry thought.
Elaborately casual, he strolled from the
turret back to his cabin. The Altaians must not suspect he had seen their new
military installations. Or, if they did come to suspect his knowledge, they
must not realize that he realized the equipment was there for any
other purpose than suppressing a local
rebellion. The Khan had been careless in not hiding this evidence of out-world connection, doubtless because he had not expected a Terran
investigator would show up. He would certainly not be so careless as to
knowingly let the investigator take significant information home again.
At
the cabin, Flandry dressed with his normal care. According to report, the
Altaians were people after his own heart: they liked color on their clothes, in
great gobs. He chose a shimmerite blouse, green, embroidered vest, purple
trousers with a gold stripe tucked into tooled-leather half boots, crimson sash
and cloak, black beret slanted rakishly over his sleek seal-brown hair. He
himself was a tall well-muscled man; his long face bore high cheekbones and a straight
nose, gray eyes and a neat mustache. But then, he patronized Terra's best
biosculptor.
The
spaceship landed at one end of the concrete field. Another Betelgeusean ship
was cradled opposite, confirming Zalat's remark about the interstellar trade.
Not precisely brisk—maybe two dozen ships per standard year—but continuous;
and, by now, doubdess important to the local economy.
As
he stepped from the debarkation lock, Flandry felt the exhilaration of a
gravity only three-fourths Terrestrial. But it was quickly lost when the air
stung him. Ulan Ba-ligh lay at eleven degrees north latitude. With an axial
tilt about like Terra's, a wan, dwarf sun, and no oceans to moderate the
climate, Altai knew seasons almost to the equator. The northern hemisphere was
past autumnal equinox, approaching winter. A wind streaking off the pole
sheathed Flandry in chill, hooted around his ears and snatched the beret from
his head.
He
grabbed it back, swore, and confronted the portmas-ter with less dignity than
he had planned. "Greeting," he said" with the formal idiom he
had learned. "May peace dwell in your yurt. This
person is named Dominic Flandry and ranges the Empire of Terra."
The
Altaian blinked narrow, black eyes. Otherwise, his face remained a mask. It was
a wide, rather flat countenance, but not purely mongoloid. Hook nose, thick,
short beard, and light skin bespoke a caucasoid
admixture as much as did the hybrid language. His frame was short and
heavy-set. He was dressed in a wide-brimmed fur hat with a chinstrap, a leather
jacket lacquered in some complicated pattern, pants of thick felt and
fleece-lined boots. An old-style machine pistol was holstered at his left hip,
a broad knife on his right.
"We
have not had any such visitors. . . ." He paused, collected himself, and
bowed. "Be welcome, all guests who come with honest words," he said
ritually. "This person is named Pyotr Gutchluk, of the Kha Khan's sworn
men." He turned to Zalat. "Captain, you and your crew may proceed
directly to the yamen. I shall see you there later about the legal formalities.
First, I must personally conduct so distinguished a guest as this to the
palace."
He clapped his hands. Two servants appeared,
similar in dress and looks to himself. Their eyes
glittered, seldom leaving the Terran. However wooden they kept their faces here, this was a thunderbolt in their lives. Flandry's luggage
was loaded onto a small electrotruck of antique design. "Of course,"
Pyotr Gutchluk said, half inquiringly, "so great an orluk as yourself would prefer a varyak to a tul-yak."
"Of
course," said Flan dry, wishing his language education had included those
words.
A
varyak turned out to be a local breed of motorcycle. A massive-two-wheeler,
smoothly powered from a bank of energy capacitors, it had a jumpseat and luggage
rack aft, a machine-gun mount forward. (But no actual weapon in this case, he
noted.) The steering was by a crossbar which the knees guided. Other apparatus,
including a two-way radio, were controlled from a manual panel behind the
windscreen. When the vehicle was slow or stationary, an outrigger wheel could
be lowered on the left for support. Pyotr Gutchluk offered Flandry a goggled
crash helmet from a saddlebag, hopped aboard his own machine, and took off at 200 kilometers an hour.
The
Terran accelerated to keep up. The wind slashed over the screen, into his face,
and nearly tore him loose. He started to slow down. But for Imperial prestige,
kept a stiff upper lip and somehow managed to stay on Gutchluk's tail.
As
they roared into the city, he acquired the knack. Finally he could even look
around. Quite a view they had here.
Ulan
Baligh formed a crescent along the flat shores of a bay in the lake. Beyond,
the waters lapped indigo. Overhead were deep-blue sky and the rings. Pale by
day, they were a frosty halo above the orange sun. Gutchluk was taking an
overhead road suspended from pylons that were cast like dragons holding the
cables in their teeth. It seemed for official use only; no one else was upon it
save an occasional varyak patrol. Below him, Flandry saw steeply-curved red
tile roofs above ancient stone walls, tinged ruddy by the sun. All buildings
were large; residential ones held several families each, commercial ones were
jammed with tiny shops. The streets were wide, clean-swept, full
of nomads and wind. Most traffic was pedestrian.
Ahead loomed the palace walls. Flandry glimpsed gardens within,
and the royal house at the center. It was a giant version of the city
tenements, but gaudily painted, with wooden dragons forming colonnades and
bronze dragons on the roof. However, / it was overshadowed by the Prophet's
Tower, a kilometer or so away. Everything else was, too.
From
the vague Betelgeusean descriptions, Flandry had deduced that most Altaians
professed a sort of Moslem-Buddhist synthesis, codified centuries ago by the
Prophet Subotai. The religion had only this one temple, but that was enough. A sheer two kilometers it reared up into the thin hurried air as if
it would spear a moon. Basically a pagoda shape, blinding-red in color,
it had one flat side facing north. That wall was a single tablet on which, in a
contorted Sino-Cyrillic alphabet, the words of the Prophet were inlaid, holy
forever. Even Flandry, who had scant reverence in his heart, felt a moment's
awe. A stupendous will had raised that spire above these plains.
The
elevated road swooped downward again. Gutchluk's varyak slammed to a halt
outside the palace gates. Flandry, taller than any local man, had some trouble
with his steering bar. He almost crashed into the wrought, bronze bars. He
untangled his legs and veered barely in time. The swerve nearly threw him. High
on the wall, a guard leaned on his portable rocket launcher and laughed.
Flandry heard him. Damn! That couldn't be permitted. He continued riding in a
curve. The ring he steered around Gutchluk was so tight that both could easily
have been killed. At the last moment he slapped down the third wheel and let
the cycle slow to a halt. While it was still moving, he jumped up onto the
saddle and took a bow.
"By
the Ice People!" exclaimed the portmaster. Sweat shone on his face. He
wiped it off with a shaky hand. "They breed reckless men on Terra."
"Oh,
no," said Flandry. He wished he dared mop his own wet skin. "A bit demonstrative, perhaps, but never reckless. We
always know exactly what we're doing."
Once
again he had occasion to thank loathed hours of calisthenics and judo practice
for a responsive body. As the gates opened, Flandry
putt-putted through under the awed gaze of the Khan's soldiers.
The
gardens surrounding the driveway were of rocks, arched bridges, dwarf trees and
mutant lichen. Nothing that needed much warmth or water would grow on Altai.
Flandry noticed the dryness of his own nose and throat. This air snatched
moisture from him as greedily as it did heat. Once inside the palace, he was
more grateful for its Terralike atmosphere than he wished to admit.
A
white-bearded man in a fur-trimmed robe made a deep bow. "The Kha Khan
himself bids you welcome, Orluk Flandry," he said. "He will see you
at once."
"But the gifts I brought for him—"
"No matter now, my lord." The chamberlain bowed again, turned and led
the way. They passed through vaulted corridors hung with gaily colored
tapestries. But the palace was very silent. Servants scurried about whispering;
guards in dragon-faced, leather tunics and goggled helmets bore modern
blasters at attention; tripods fumed incense. The entire sprawling house
seemed to crouch, watchful.
I
imagine I have upset them somewhat, Flandry thought. Here,
I suspect, they've got a cozy little conspiracy going, with beings sworn to lay
all Terra waste, and suddenly a Terrah officer drops in, for the first time in
five or six hundred years. So what do they do next? It's their move.
Oleg Yesukai, Kha Khan of all the Tribes, was
bigger than most Altaians. His long, sharp face bore a
reddish, fork beard. Cold rings, thickly embroidered robe, silver trim
on his fur cap, were worn with an air of impatient concession to tedious
custom. The hand which Flandry, kneeling, touched to his brow,
was hard and muscular; the gun at the royal waist had seen use.
This private audience chamber was draped in
red, its furniture inlaid and grotesquely carved, but it also held an
up-to-date Betelgeusean graphone and a desk buried under official papers.
"Be
seated," said the Khan. He himself took a low-legged chair and opened a
cigar box of carved bone. A hard smile bent his mouth. "Now that we've
gotten rid of my damn fool courtiers, we need no longer act as if you were a
subject." He took a crooked purple stogie from the box. "I would
offer you one of these, but it might make you ill. In thirty-odd generations,
eating food grown from Altaian soil, we have probably changed our metabolism a
bit."
"Your
majesty is most gracious." Flandry inhaled a cigarette of his own and
relaxed as much as the straight-backed chair permitted.
Oleg Khan spoke a stockbreeder's pungent
obscenity. "Gracious? Hal See here, Terran.
Fifteen years old, my father became an outlaw on the tundra." (He meant
local years, a third again as long as those of home. Altai was about one A. U.
distant from Krasna, but the sun was less massive than Sol.) "By the time
he was thirty, he had seized Ulan Baligh with 50,000 warriors and deposited old
Tuli Khan naked on the arctic snows. So as not to shed royal blood, you
understand. But he never would live in the city. And his sons were raised in
the ordu—the encampment—as he had been. We practiced war against the Tebtengri
as he had known war, but we had to master reading, writing, and science as
well. Let us not bother with graciousness, Orluk Flandry. I never had time to
leam any."
The
out-worlder waited passively. That seemed to disconcert Oleg, who smoked for a minute in short ferocious drags, then leaned forward
and said, "Well, why does your government finally deign to notice
us?"
"I
had the impression, your majesty," answered Flandry in a mild voice,
"that the original colonists of Altai came this far from Sol in order to
escape notice."
"True. True. Don't believe that rat crud
in the hero songs. Our ancestors came here because they were weak, not strong.
Planets where men could settle at all were rare enough to make each one a
prize. By going far afield and picking a wretched icy desert, a few shiploads of Central Asians avoided having to fight for their new home. They didn't
plan to become herdsmen, either. They tried to farm. But that proved impossible.
Too cold and dry, among other things. Nor could they
build an industrial, food-synthesizing society; not enough heavy metals,
fossil fuels, fission-ables. This is a low-density planet, you know. Step by
step, over generations, with only dim traditions to guide them, they were
forced to evolve a nomadic life. That was suitable to Altai, and their numbers
increased. Of course, legends have grown up. Most of my people still believe
Terra is some kind of lost Utopia and
our ancestors werte hardy warriors." Oleg's
rust-colored eyes narrowed upon Flandry. He stroked his beard. "I've read
enough, thought enough, to have a fan-idea of what your Empire really is—and
what it can and cannot do. So, why this visit, at this exact
moment?"
"We
have remained absent for two main reasons, your majesty," said Flandry.
"First, we are no longer interested in conquest for the mere sake of
conquest. Second, our merchants have avoided this entire sector. You see, it
lies far from our heardand stars; the Betelgeuseans, close to their own base,
could compete on unequal terms; the risk of meeting some prowling warship of
our Merseian ,enemies is unattractive. In short, there
has been no occasion, military or civilian, to search out Altai." He
slipped smoothly into prevarication gear. "However, the Emperor does not
wish any members of the human family cut off. At the very least, I bring you
his brotherly greetings." (That was subversive. The word should have been
"fatherly." But Oleg
Khan
would not take kindly to being patronized.) "At most, if Altai wishes to
rejoin us, for mutual protection and other benefits, there are many
possibilities we might discuss. Joining the Empire does not necessarily mean
becoming a mere province. You might, for example, prefer simply having an Imperial
resident, to offer help and advice . . ."
He
let the proposal trail off, since in point of fact a resident's advice tended
to be, "I suggest you do thus and so, lest I call in the Marines."
The
Altaian king surprised him by not getting huffy about sovereign status.
Instead, amiable as a tiger, Oleg Yesukai answered:
"H you are distressed about our internal
difficulties of the moment, pray do not be. Nomadism necessarily means
tribalism, which easily brings feud and war. I have mentioned that my father
seized power from the Nuru Bator clan. We in turn have gur-khans who rebel
against us. As anyone can tell you, that alliance
called the Tebtengri Sha-manate is giving us considerable trouble. But such is
nothing new in Altaian history. Indeed, I have a firmer hold on more of the
planet than any Kha Khan since the Prophet's time. In a little while I shall
bring every last tribe to heel."
"With the help of imported armament?" Flandry elevated his brows a millimeter.
Risky though it was to admit having seen the evidence, it might be still more
suspicious not to. Of course, he needn't reveal how much he had observed. Since
the other man remained unruffled, Flandry continued, "The Imperium would
gladly send a technical mission."
"I do not doubt it." Oleg's response was dry.
"May
I respectfully ask what planet supplies the assistance your majesty is now
receiving?"
"Your
question is impertinent, as well you know. I do not take offense, but I decline
to answer. Confidentially: the old mercantile treaties between Altai and
Betelgeuse guarantee that the blueface traders shall have monopolies in certain
of our export items. This other race, the one which sells us
weapons, is taking payment in the same articles. I am not violating an
oath, for I do not consider myself bound by obligations which the Nuru Bator
dynasty assumed. However, it would at the present time be inexpedient that
Betelgeuse discover the facts."
It
was a good spur-of-the-moment lie: so good that Flan-dry hoped Oleg would
believe he had fallen for it. He assumed a fatuous smirk. "I quite
understand, great Khan. You may rely on Terrestrial discretion."
"I
hope so," said Oleg humorously. "Our traditional punishment for
spies involves a method to keep them alive for days after they have been
flayed."
Flandry's
gulp was calculated, but not altogether faked. "May I respectfully remind
your majesty," he said, "just in case some of your less educated
subjects should act impulsively, that the Imperial Navy is under orders to redress
any wrong suffered by any Terran national anywhere in the universe."
"Very
righüy," said Oleg. His tone was so sardonic that he must have realized
that that famous rule had become a dead letter, except as an occasional excuse
for bombarding some world that got obstreperous without being able to fight
back. Between the traders, his own agents in the Betelgeusean System, and
whoever was selling him arms, the Kha Khan had become as unmercifully
well-informed about galactic politics as any Terran aristocrat. Or Merseian.
The
realization was chilling. Flandry had perforce gone blind into his assignment.
Only now, piece by piece, did he see how big and dangerous it was.
"A
sound policy," continued Oleg. "But let us be frank, Orluk. If you
should suffer, let us say, accidental harm in my dominions— and if your superiors should misinterpret the circumstances, though I am sure
they would not—I should be forced to invoke assistance which is quite readily
available."
Merseia
isn't far, thought
Flandry; and
Intelligence knows that at this time they have massed a lot of naval units at their nearest base. If I want to hoist Terran vintages again,
I'd better start acting the fool as never before in a gloriously misspent life.
Aloud,
a hint of bluster: "Betelgeuse has treaties with the Imperium, Your
Majesty. They would not interfere in a purely interhuman dispute!" And
then, as if appalled at his own boldness: "But there won't be any.
Certainly there won't. The, uh, conversation has, uh, taken an undesirable
turn. Most unfortunate, Your Majesty! No offense
intended! I was, ah, I am interested in unusual human
colonies. An archivist mentioned your, ah, your beautiful planet to me. As long
as I was coming here, it was suggested I might as well cany official greetings to . .
And so on and so on.
Oleg Yesukai grinned.
in
Altai
rotated once in 35 hours. The settlers had adapted, and Flandry was used to postponing
sleep. He spent the afternoon touring Ulan Baligh, asking silly questions of
his guides, which he felt sure they would relay to the Khan. Four or five meals
were normally eaten during the long day, and he was invited to dine at the town
houses of chieftains belonging to Clan Yesukai. This gave him a further chance
to build up his role: a Terran fop who had wangled this assignment from an
uninterested Imperium, simply for a lark. A visit to one of the joyhouses that
was operated for transient nomads helped reinforce the impression. Also, it was
fun.
Emerging after sunset, he saw the Prophet's
Tower had become luminous. It lifted like a bloody lance over brawling,
flicker-lit streets, up toward the wintry, steppe stars. The tablet wall was
white, the words thereon in jet: two kilometers of precepts for a stern and
bitter way of life. "I say," he exclaimed,
"we haven't done that yet. Let's go."
The
chief guide, a burly, gray warrior leathered by decades of wind and frost,
looked uneasy. "We must hasten back to the palace, Orluk," he said.
"The Kha Khan has ordered a banquet in your honor."
"Oh, fine. Fine! Though I don't know how
much of an
orgy I'm in shape for . . . after this bout we
just had. Eh, what?" Flandry nudged the man's
ribs with an indecent thumb. "Still, a peek inside, really I must. It's
unbelievable, that skyscraper, don't you know? You could make it one of the
galaxy's great tourist attractions."
"We
would have to cleanse ourselves before we could enter, Orluk."
A
young man added blundy: "In no case could it be allowed. You are not an
initiate. And there is no holier spot amidst all the suns."
"Oh,
well, in that case—Sorry, no offense, I hope. Mind if
I photograph it tomorrow?"
"Yes,"
said the young man. "There is no law against it, perhaps, but we could not
be responsible for what some tribesman who saw you with your camera might do.
None but the Tebtengri would look on the Tower with anything but reverent eyes."
"Teb-"
"Rebels and heathen, far in the north." The older man touched brow and hps, a sign
to ward off evil. "Brewers of bad luck at Trengri Nor
and traffickers with the Ice People. Far worse, even, than the wild Voiskoye;
for the Tebtengri know right from wrong, yet freely choose wrong. It is not
well to speak of them, only to exterminate them. Now we must hasten, Orluk.
"Oh,
yes. To be sure." Flandry scrambled into the
tul-yak lent him, an open motor carriage with a dragon figurehead.
While he was being driven to the palace, he
weighed what he knew in an uncomfortable balance. Something was going on, much
bigger than a civil war. Oleg Khan had no intention that Terra should hear
about it. A Terran agent who actually learned a bit of truth must not go home
alive; only a well-bom idiot could safely be allowed return passage. Whether or
not Flandry could convince the Altaians he was that idiot, remained to be seen.
It wouldn't be easy, for certainly he must probe deeper than he had yet done.
If
somehow I do manage to swirl my
cloak, twiddle my mustache, and
gallop off to call an Imperial task force, Oleg may summon his own friends, who
are obviously not a private gun-selling concern, as he wants me to believe.
All Altai couldn't produce enough trade goods to pay for the stuff I saw from
the spaceship. So ... if the friends get here ahead of my
task force, and decide to protect this military investment of theirs, there's going to be a fight. And
with them dug in on the surface, as well as cruising local space, they'll have
the advantage. The Navy won't thank me if
I drag them into a losing campaign.
He kindled a fresh cigarette and wondered
miserably why he hadn't told HQ, when this job was first laid before him, that
he was down with Twonk's Disease.
At
his guest suite in the palace he found a valet waiting. But the little man was
rather puzzled by Terran garments. Flandry spent a half-hour choosing his own
ensemble. At last, much soothed, he went back into the hallway. An honor guard
awaited him with bared daggers in their hands. He was escorted to an immense
feasting chamber, where he was placed at the Khan's right.
There
was no table. A hundred men sat crosslegged on either side of a great stone
trough stretching the length of the room. Broth, reminiscent of won-ton soup
but with a sharper taste, was poured into this from
wheeled kettles. When next the Khan signalled, the soup was drained through
traps, spigots flushed the trough clean, and solid dishes were shoveled in.
They weren't bad, although rather greasy by Terrestrial
standards. Meanwhile each man's cup of hot, powerfully alcoholic herb tea was
kept full. A small orchestra caterwauled on pipes and drums,.and
some fairly spectacular performances were given by varyak riders, knife
dancers, acrobats, and marksmen. At the meal's end, an old tribal bard stood up
and chanted lays; a plump and merry man from the downtown bazaars related his
original stories; gifts from the Khan were distributed to all present; and the
affair broke up. Not a word of conversation had been spoken.
Not
quite sober, Flandry followed his guards back to his apartment. The valet bade
him goodnight and closed the thick fur drapes which served for internal doors.
A
radiant globe illuminated the room, but seemed feeble compared with the light
filling the balcony window. Flandry opened this and looked out in wonder.
Beneath
him lay the darkened city; roofs curved and thinly hoar-frosted; streets like
black rivers. Beyond twinkling, red campfires, Ozero Rurik stretched out to an
unseen horizon, a polished ebony sheet crossed by double moon-shivers. On his
left the Prophet's Tower stood as a perpetual flame, crowned with
constellations. Both satellites were near the full, ruddy discs, broader to the
eye than Luna, haloed with ice crystals. Their light drenched the plain, turned
the Zeya and Talyma into ribbons of molten glass. But the rings dominated them,
bridging the southern sky with rainbows. Second by second, thin firestreaks
crossed heaven, as meteorites from that huge twin band hurtled into the
atmosphere.
Flandry
was not much for gaping at landscapes. But this time he let minutes pass before
he realized how frigid the air was.
He
turned back to the comparative warmth of the suite. As he closed the window, a
woman entered from the bedroom.
He
had expected some such hospitality. She was taller than most Altaian females.
Long, blue-black hair fell down her back; lustrous, tilted eyes with a greenish
hue, rare on this planet, regarded him unwinkinkly. Otherwise, she was hidden
by veil and gold-stiffened cloak. She advanced till she was very near him, and
he waited for some conventional token of submission.
Instead,
she continued to watch him for close to a minute. It grew so still in the room
that he heard the wind blowing waves ashore. Shadows lay thick in the comers.
Dragons and warriors on the tapestries appeared to stir.
Finally,
in a low uneven voice, she said: "Orluk, are you indeed a spy from the
Mother of Men?"
"Spy?" Flandry thought horrifyingly about agents provocateurs. "Good cosmos, nol I mean, that is to say, nothing of the
sort!"
She laid a hand on his wrist. The fingers
were cold, and clasped him with frantic strength. Her other hand slipped the
veil aside. He looked upon a broad, fair-skinned face, delicately arched nose,
full mouth and firm chin: handsome rather than pretty. She whispered so fast
and fiercely he had trouble following her:
"Whatever
you are, you must listen! If you are no warrior yourself, then give the word
when you go home to those who are. I am Bourtai Ivanskaya of the Tumurji folk,
who belonged to the Tebtengri Shamanate. Surely you have heard speak of them,
enemies to Oleg, driven into the north but still at war with them. My father
was a noyon—a division commander—well known to Juchi Ilyak. He fell at the
battle of Rivers Meet, last year, where the Yesukai men took our whole ordu. I
was brought here alive, partly as a hostage—" A flare of haughtiness:
"As if that could influence my peoplel— and partly for the Kha Khan's
harem. Since then I have gained a little more confidence. More important, I
have gotten connections of my own. The harem is always a center of intrigue.
Nothing is secret for very long from the harem, but much which is secret begins
there . . ."
"I
know," said Flandry. "I've encountered polygynous cultures
before." Stunned, almost overwhelmed, he could nonetheless not resist
adding: "Bedfellows make strange politics."
She blinked incomprehension and plunged on:
"I heard today that a Terran envoy was landed. I thought, perhaps, he came
on a hint of what Oleg Yesukai readies against the Mother of Men. Or if he does
not know, he must be told! I found out what woman would be lent to him, and
arranged that I myself should be substituted. Ask me not how I did that! In the
past year I have wormed secrets out of more than one harem guard and thus
gotten power over him. Oleg is a fool to believe it suffices to load them with
antisex hormone on such a tour
of duty. I have the right. No method is dishonorable for me. Oleg Khan is my
enemy and the enemy of my dead father. All means of revenge on him are lawful.
But worse, Holy Terra lies in danger. Listen, Terra man . . ."
Flandry
awoke. For those few seconds, the situation had been so fantastic that he was
paralyzed. Like a character in a bad stereodrarna, employing a girl (it would
be a girl, too, and not simply a disgruntled maní) who babbled her autobiography as prologue to
some improbable revelation. Now suddenly he understood that this was real: that
melodrama does happen once in a while. And if he got caught playing the hero,
any role except comic relief, he was dead.
He
drew himself erect, fended Bourtai off, and said in haste: "My dear young
lady, I have not the slightest competence in these matters. Furthermore, I've
heard far more plausible stories from far too many colonial girls hoping for a
free ride to Terra. Which, I assure you, is actually not a
nice place at all for a little colonial girl without funds. I don't wish
to offend local pride, but the idea that a single backward planet could offer
any threat to the Imperium would be funny if it weren't so yawn worthy. I
beg.you, spare me."
Bourtai
stepped back. The cloak fell open. She wore a translucent gown which revealed a
figure somewhat stocky for Terran taste, but nonetheless full and supple. He
would have enjoyed watching that, except for the bewildered pain on her face.
"But
my lord Orluk," she stammered, "I swear to you by the Mother of us
both—"
You poor romantic, it cried in him, what do you think 1 am—a visiting god? If you're
such a yokel that you never heard of
planting microphones in a guest room, Oleg Khan is not. Shut up before you kill
us!
Aloud,
he got out a delighted gaffaw. "Well, by Sinus, I do call this thoughtful.
Furnishing me with a beautiful lady spy atop everything else.
But honesdy, darling, you can drop the pretense' now. Let's play some more
adult games, eh, what?"
He
reached for her. She writhed free, ran across the chamber, dodged his pursuit
and shouted through swift tears:
"No,
you fool, you blind, brainless cackler, you will listenl You will listen if I
must knock you to the floor and sit on your head—and tell them, tell them when
you come home, ask them only to send a real spy and learn for themselves!"
Flandry
cornered her. He grabbed both flailing wrists and tried to stop her mouth with
a kiss. She brought her forehead hard against his nose. He staggered back,
shocked with the pain, and heard her yell:
"They
are Merseians: great, green-skinned, long-tailed monsters, the Merseians, I
tell you. They come here in secret from a secret landing field. But I have seen
them myself, walking these halls after dark. I have heard from other girls to
whom this or that drunken orkhon babbled. I have crept like a rat in the walls
and listened myself. They are called Merseians—the most terrible enemy your
race and mine have yet known, and—"
Flandry
sat down on a couch, wiped blood off his mustache, and said weakly:
"Never mind that for now. How do we get out of here? Before the guards
come to shoot us, I mean."
Bourtai fell silent,
and he realized he had spoken in Anglic. He realized further that they wouldn't
be shot unless their capture looked impossible. They would be questioned
gruesomely.
He didn't know if there were lenses as well
as microphones in the walls. Nor did he know if the bugs passed information on
to some watchful human, or merely made a record that would be studied in the
morning.
He
sprang to his feet and reached Bourtai in a single bound. She reacted with
feline speed. A hand cracked toward his larynx. He had already dropped his
head, and took the blow on the hard top of his skull. His own hands gripped the
borders of her cloak and crossed forearms at her throat. Before she could jab
him in the solar plexus, he yanked her too close. She reached up thumbs to
scoop out his eyeballs. He rolled his head and was merely scratched on the
nose. After the Danish kiss he had just got, that "hurt. He yipped, but
didn't let go. A second later, her breath clamped off, she went limp.
He
whirled her around, got an arm lock, and let her sag against him. She stirred. So brief an oxygen starvation had brought no more than a moment's
unconsciousness. He ^buried his face in her dark, flowing hair, like a
lover. It had a warm, somehow summery smell. He found an ear and breathed
softly:
"You
little gristlehead, did it ever occur to you that the Khan is suspicious of me?
That there must be listeners? Now our forlorn chance
is to crash out of here. Steal a
Betelgeusean spaceship, maybe. First, though, I must pretend I. am arresting you. That may put them off guard. They may not
arrive here too swifdy and alerdy for us. Understand? Can you play the
part?"
She
grew rigid. He felt her almost invisible nod. The supple young body leaning on
him eased into a smoothness of controlled nerve and muscle. He had seldom known
a woman this competent in a physical emergency. Unquestionably, Bourtai
Ivanskaya had had military training.
She was going to need it.
Aloud,
Flandry huffed: "Well, I've certainly never heard anything more
ridiculous! There aren't any Merseians in this stellar neighborhood. I checked
very carefully before setting out. Wouldn't want to come across them, don't you
know, and spend perhaps a year in some dreary Merseian jail while the pater
negotiated my release. Eh, what? Really now, you've been talking perfect rot,
every word." He hemmed and hawed a bit. *T think
I'd better turn you in, madame. Come along, now, no tricks."
He
marched her out the door, into the pillared corridor. One end opened on a
window, but there was a sheer twenty-meter drop to a night-frozen fishpond. The
other end stretched into dusk, lit by infrequent bracketed lamps. Flandry husded Bourtai in that direction. Presendy they came
to a staircase, sweeping wide and grandly downward. A pair of sentries stood
posted there in helmets, leather jackets, guns and knives. One of them took aim
and barked, "Haiti What are you doing?"
"This
girl, don't you know," panted Flandry. He nudged Bourtai. She gave some
realistic squirmings. "Started to babble all sorts of
wild nonsense. Who's in charge here? She thought I'd help her overthrow
the Kha Khan. Imagine!"
"What?" The other
soldier trod close.
"The
Tebtengri will avenge me," snarled Bourtai. "The Ice People will
house in the ruins of this palace and kick your bones from underfoot, you
scum!"
Flandry
thought she was overacting, but the guards both looked shocked. The nearer one
sheathed his blaster. "I shall hold her, Orluk," he said.
"Boris, run and fetch the commander."
As
he stepped close, Flandry released the girl. With steel on his pate and stiff
leather on his torso, the sentry wasn't very vulnerable. Except—Flandry's right
hand rocketed upward. The heel of it struck the guard under the nose. He
lurched backward, caromed off the balustrade, and flopped dead on the stairs.
The other, who had half turned to go, spun about. He snatched for his weapon.
Bourtai put a leg behind his ankles and pushed. Down he went. Flandry pounced.
They rolled over, clawing for a grip. The guard yelped. Flandry glimpsed
Bourtai over his opponents shoulder. She had taken the knife off the first
warrior and circled about, looking for a chance. Flandry relaxed and let his
enemy get on top. Bourtai grabbed the man under the chin, yanked his head back,
and slashed.
Flandry
scrambled from beneath. "Get their blasters," he gasped. "Here,
give me one. Quick! We've made more racket than I had expected. Do you know the
best escape route? Lead on, then!"
Bourtai raced barefooted down the steps. Her
gold cloth
cloak and frail gown streamed behind her. Insanely, Flandry followed her down
one flight, two flights.
Boots clatted on marble. Rounding yet another spiral curve, Flandry saw a squad of soldiers
quick-stepping upward. The leader hailed him: "Do you have the prisoner
secure, Orluk?"
So
there had been a human operator at the bug. Of course, even if he surrendered
Bourtai, Flandry could not save his own skin. Harmless fop or no, he had heard
too much. But they didn't realize he realized that.
The
squad's eyes registered the girl's blaster even as their chief spoke. Someone
yelled. Bourtai fired into the thick of them. Ionic lightning crashed. Flandry
dropped. A bolt sizzled where he had been. He fired, wide-beam, the energy too
diluted to kill even at short range but scorching four men at once. As their
screams lifted, he bounced back to his feet, overlapped the fallen frontline,
stiff-armed a warrior beyond, and hit the landing.
From
here, a wide bannister curled to the ground floor. Flandry whooped, seated
himself, and slid. At the bottom was a sort of lobby. Glass doors opened on the
garden. The moons and rings were so bright out there that no headlights were
used on the half-dozen varyaks roaring toward this entrance. Mounted guardsmen
were attracted by the noise of the fight.
Flandry
stared around. Two meters up, the doorway was flanked by arched windows. He
signaled Bourtai, crouched beneath one and made a stirrup with his hands. She
climbed to the sill, broke the window glass with her gun butt, and fired into
the troop. Flandry took shelter behind a column.
The
remnant of the infantry squad came stumbling down the stairs in pursuit of him.
He blasted. In a hopelessly exposed position, they retreated back upward, out
of sight.
A
varyak leaped through the doors. The soldier aboard shielded his face against
flying glass with his arms. Flandry shot him before he had uncovered himself.
The varyak veered, crashed into the jamb, and toppled across the entrance. The
next one hurtled over it. The rider balanced himself with a trained body while
he blazed at the Terran. Bourtai got him from above.
She
sprang down unassisted. "I got two more when I first fired," she
said. "A third pair escaped. They're out there somewhere, calling for
help."
"We'll have to chance
it. Where are the nearest gates?"
"They
will be closed. We cannot burn through the lock before-"
"I'll
find a means. Quick, help me right these two varyaks here. . . . Up in the saddle with you. Can you guide the other one also?
Follow me, then, slowly. Ill draw their fire and" we'll see what
happens." Flandry hastened out into the garden. He didn't feel the cold.
He dragged the corpses from the varyaks near the palace, put both machines back
on their wheels, and mounted one himself. Bourtai put-putted
near. He gestured her to take along the fourth vehicle. By leaning low,
she could reach the steering bars with her hands. They accelerated down the
path.
So
far, energy weapons had fulfilled their traditional military function, giving
more value to speed and purposeful-ness in action than to mere numbers. But
there was a limit.
Two
people couldn't stave off hundreds for very long. He must get
clear.
Flame
sought him. He lacked skill to evade
such fire by tricky riding. Instead, he crouched low in the saddle and plunged straight forward, hoping he wouldn't be pierced.
A bolt singed one leg, slightly but savagely painful. He glanced behind. From
two side paths, the surviving pair of patrolmen steered in pursuit.
Ahead loomed a high-arched little bridge. His cycle snorted up and over. Just beyond
the hump, he left the saddle. He hit the planks, judoka style, with relaxed
muscles and face cushioned by one arm. Even so, he bumped his nose. For a
moment tears blinded him and he used bad words. Then he crouched in the gloom
along the railing.
His
varyak careened on without him. Unsuspecting in this dim light, the two guardsmen
roared by. Flandry shot them both as they went past.
The
uproar was rising throughout the garden, up on the walls. One by one the palace
windows lit, until scores of dragon eyes glared into the night. Flandry ran
from the bridge and disentangled the three crashed varyaks from a hedge.
"Bring the rest!" he shouted to Bourtai. She came, not with the two machines
beside her, but trailing behind. Tethers ran to their guide bars. He realized,
of course, that would be standard equipment. If these things were commonly used
by nomads, there'd be times when a string
of riderless pack vehicles was required.
"One
for you and one for me," he muttered. Here, beneath an overleaning rock,
they were a pair of shadows. Moonlight beyond made the garden a fog of coppery
light. The outer wall reared against that view and cut it off, brutally black,
merlons raised across Altai's rings like bared teeth. "The rest we use to
ram down the gates. Can do?"
"Must
do," she said. With quick skillful fingers she set the varyak control
panels and hauled stuff from the saddlebags. "Here extra clothing and
helmets are always kept. If a man got wet and tried to drive far across the
steppe without changing clothes, he'd freeze. Just put on the helmet now. We
can dress properly later."
"We
won't need clothes anyway, for a short dash to the spaceport."
"Do
you think that field is not now crawling with Yesukai men?"
"Oh, hell," said
Flandry.
He
buckled on the headgear, snapped down the goggles, and mounted anew. Bourtai
ran along the varyak line, flipping switches. The riderless machines took off.
Gravel spurted from their wheels, into Flandry's abused face. He followed the
girl this time.
Three
warriors raced down a crosspath. Briefly they were stark under the moons. Then
the murk ate them again. They had not seen their quarry. The household troops
must be in one gorgeous confusion, Flandry thought. He
must escape before that hysteria faded and a systematic hunt was organized.
The
gateway loomed before his vision. Heavy bars screened off a plaza that was
death-white in the night radiance. He saw his runaway varyaks only as meteoric
gleams. Sentries atop the wall had a better view. Blasters thundered and machine
guns raved. But there were no riders to drop from those saddles.
The
first varyak hit with a doomsday clangor. It rebounded in four pieces. Flandry
sensed a chunk of red-hot metal buzz past his ear. The next one crashed, and
the bars buckled. The third smote and collapsed across a narrow opening. The
fourth flung the gates wide. "Nowl"
At 200 KPH, Bourtai and Flandry made for the gateway. They had a few seconds
before the men above recovered enough from their astonishment to start shooting
again. Bourtai hit the toppled wrecks. Her machine climbed the pile, took off,
and soared halfway across the plaza. Flandry saw her balance herself as
precisely as a bird, land on two wheels, and vanish in an alley beyond the
square. Then it was his turn. He wondered fleetingly what the chances were of
surviving a broken neck, and hoped he would not. Not with the Khan's
interrogation chambers waiting. He knew he couldn't match Bourtai's
performance. He slammed down the third wheel in mid-air. The impact when he hit
the ground was less violent than expected. For an instant he teetered, almost
rolling over. Then he came down on his outrigger. Fire spattered off stone
behind him. He retracted the extra wheel and gunned his motor.
A glance north, past the Tower toward the
spaceport, showed him airboats aloft in a hornet swarm. He had no prayer of
hijacking a Betelgeusean ship. Nor was there any use in fleeing to Zalat in the
yamen. Where, then, beneath these unmerciful autumnal stars?
Bourtai
was a glimpse in moonlight, half a kilometer ahead of him down a narrow,
lighted street. He let her keep the lead and concentrated grimly on avoiding
accidents. It seemed like an eye-blink, and it seemed like forever, before they
had left the city and were out on the open steppe.
IV
Wind lulled in long grasses, the whispering ran
for kilometers, on and on beyond the world's edge, pale yellow-green in a
thousand subüe hues rippled by the wind's footsteps. Here and there some
frost-nipped bush thrust up red spikes; the grasses swirled around them like a
sea. High overhead reached the sky: an infinite vault full of wind and
deep-blue chill. Krasna burned low in the west, dull orange, painting the steppe
with ruddy light and fugitive shadows. The rings were an ice bridge to the
south. Northward the sky had a bleak, greenish shimmer which Bourtai said was
reflection off an early snowfall.
Flandry
crouched in grass as tall as himself. When he ventured a peek, he saw the
airboat that hunted him. It moved in lazy spirals, but the mathematics that
guided it and its cohorts wove a net around this planet. To his eyes, even
through binoculars taken from a saddlebag, the boat was so far as to be,a mere metallic flash. But he knew it probed for him with
telescopes, ferrous detectors, infrared amplifiers—every means known to Altaian
technology.
He would not have believed he could escape
the Khan's searching craft for this long. Two planetary days, was it? Memory
had faded. He knew only a fever dream: bounding north on furious wheels,
bleeding skin from the air; sleeping a few seconds at a time in the saddle;
wolfing jerked meat from the varyak's emergency supplies as he rode; stopping
to refill canteens at waterholes Bourtai found by signs invisible to him. He
knew only how he ached, to the nucleus of his inmost cell, and how his brain
was gritty with weariness.
But
the plain was unbelievably huge. Between the north-em and southern ice caps, it
covered almost twice the land area of Terra; for Altai had no oceans. The grass
was not everywhere as tall as in this immediate vicinity, but it was always
high enough to veil prey from sky-bome eyes. The fugitives had driven through
several herds of grazing animals to break their trail. They had dodged and
woven under Bourtai's guidance, and she had a hunter's knowledge of how to
confuse pursuit.
Now, though, the chase
seemed near an end.
Flandry
glanced at the girl. She sat- crosslegged, impassive. Her own exhaustion was
shown by little except the darkening under her eyes.-
In stolen clothes, hair braided under the helmet, she might have been a boy.
But the grease smeared on her face for weather protection had not much affected
her haughty, good looks.
He
hefted his gun. "Think that chap upstairs will spot us?" he asked. He
didn't speak lowly, but the blowing immensities around reduced his voice to
nothing.
"Not yet," she answered. "He
is at extreme detector range.
He
cannot swoop down at every dubious flicker on his gauges, or he would never
cover the territory he must."
"So . . . ignore him
and hell go away?"
"I
fear not," she said, troubled. "The Khan's troopers are no fools. I'm
familiar with that search pattern. That man and his fellows will circle about,
patrolling where they are until nightfall. The net they have established by now
is certain to enmesh us, as they know. If we ride further after dark, we must
turn on the heaters of our varyaks or freeze to death. But those heaters will
make us a torch to the infrared spotters."
Flandry
rubbed his chin. Altaian garments were ridiculously short on him, which was
bad for morale. He thanked his elegant gods for antibeard enzyme . . . and
wished he dared smoke. "What do you advise?"
he asked.
She
shrugged. "We must stay here. There are sleeping bags in the equipment,
you know. They are well enough insulated to keep us alive if we fasten them
together to make a double unit. Our body radiation won't be so strong as to
betray us . . . unless the temperature drops very far."
"How close are we to
your friends?"
Bourtai
rubbed tired, hazel eyes. "I cannot say. They move about, under the
Khrebet and along the Kara Gobi fringe. At this time of year, they will be
drifting southward, so we are probably not terribly far from some Tebtengrian
ordu. Still, distances are never small on the steppe." After a moment:
"The Khan's folk know, as well as we do, that our varyaks' energy cells
are nigh exhausted. If we live the night, tomorrow we shall have to walk. At
that rate, we will probably be caught in a storm and frozen before we can find
help."
Flandry glanced at the battered, dusty
vehicles. Wonderfully durable gadgets, he thought in a vague way. Largely
handmade, of course, using small power tools; but made with the care and
craftsmanship feasible in a nonmercan-tile economy. The radios could
doubtlessly call several hundred kilometers. The first such signal would bring
that aircraft overhead down like a stooping falcon.
He
eased himself onto his back and lay, letting his muscles throb. The ground was
cold beneath. After a moment Bour-tai followed suit, snuggling close with a
trustfulness that touched him.
"If
we do not escape, well, such is the space-time pattern," she said, more
calmly than he could have managed. "But if we do, what then is your plan,
OrlukP"
"Get word to Terra, I
suppose. Don't ask me how."
"Will
not your friends come to avenge you when you do not return?"
"No. The Khan need only tell the
Betelgeuseans that I, regretably,
died in some accident or riot or whatever, and will be cremated with full
honors. The evidence is easy enough for him to fake. Any mutilated corpse about
my size would do; one human looks so much like another to the untrained
nonhuman. The Betelgeuseans will pass the word on to my organization.
Naturally, some of my colleagues will suspect foul play, but they have so much
else to do that the suspicion probably won't be strong enough to act on. The
most they will do is send another agent like myself. And this time, expecting
him, the Khan can make preparations. He can camouflage his new military stuff,
make sure our man talks only to the right people and sees only the right
things. What can one man do against a planet?"
"You have done
somewhat already."
"But I told you, I
caught Oleg by surprise."
"You
will do more," she continued serenely. "For instance, why can't you
smuggle a letter out with the help of some Betelgeusean? We Tebtengri can get
agents into Ulan Ba-ligh to contact the spacemen."
"I
imagine that has occurred to the Khan. He will make damn sure that no person he
is not absolutely certain of has any contact with any out-worlder. And he'll
have all export material searched with care before it leaves Altai."
"Write
a letter in the Terran language. He won't recognize what it says." .
"Hell get it translated."
"Oh, no." Bourtai raised herself on one elbow. "There is not a human on
Altai except yourself who reads the Anglic. Some Betelgeuseans do, of course,
but no tribesmen. The language evolved after we lost contact with the
mainstream of humanity, and there has been no pressing reason for anyone to
learn it. Oleg himself reads only Altaian and the principal
Betelgeusean language, Alfzarian. I know that for a fact. He mentioned
it to me one night recentiy."
She
spoke of the past year in a cool tone. Flandry gathered that in this culture it
was no disgrace to have been a harem slave.
"Even
worse," he said. "I can just see Oleg's agents permitting a letter
they couldn't read to go out. Nor would they trust a Betelgeusean to translate
it for them; the letter might offer a substantial bribe to fake that job. No,
from now on until they know I'm dead, I don't expect they'll let anything they
are not absolutely sure about come near a spaceship, or near a
spacefarer."
Bourtai
sat straight. Sudden, startling tears blurred her gaze. "But you cannot be
helpless!" she cried. "You are from Terra!"
He
didn't want to disillusion her. "Well see. First, let's get out of the
immediate mess." Hastily, he plucked a stalk of grass and chewed.
"This tastes almost like home. Remarkable
similarity."
"Oh,
but it is of Terrestrial origin." Bourtai's dismay changed mercurially to
simple astonishment, that he should not know what was
so everyday to her. "The first colonists here found the steppe a virtual
desert. Only sparse plant forms grew, poisonous to man. All other native life
had retreated into the Arctic and Antarctic. Our ancestors used genetic
engineering on 'the seeds and small animals they had with them. They created
strains adapted to local conditions, and released them. Terrestroid ecology
soon took over the whole tropic belt."
Flandry
noticed once again that Bourtai was no simple barbarian. She came from a
genuine and fairly sophisticated civilization, even if it was on wheels. It
would be an interesting culture to visit ...
if he survived, which was dubious.
Krasna
was obviously an old sun, middle Population Two, which had drifted from the
galactic nucleus into this spiral arm. Since the heavy elements are formed
within the stars, scattered through space by nova-type processes, and accumulated
in the next stellar generation, the most ancient stars have no planets. Krasna
must be among the oldest ones which did; and it and its worlds were very poor
in substances of middle and high atomic number. Which
included many industrial metals.
Being
smaller than Sol, Krasna had matured very slowly. In the first billion years or
so, internal heat had given Altai a more or less Terrestroid surface
temperature. Protoplasmic life had evolved in shallow seas. Probably the first
crude land forms had emerged. But then radioactivity was used up. Residual heat
bled into space. At last only the dull sun furnished warmth, Altai froze. The
process was slow enough that life did not become extinct, but adapted.
Eventually
equilibrium was reached. Altai lay ice-bound from pole to pole. An old, old
world: so old that one moon had finally come within the Roche limit, shattered
and formed rings; so old that its sun had completed the first stage of hydrogen
burning and moved into another set of nuclear reactions. And these were more
intense. Krasna grew hotter and brighter. For the next several million years,
it would continue to increase its output. In the end, Altai's seas, liquid once
more, would boil; beyond that, the planet itself would boil, as Krasna became
nova; and beyond that lay the the white dwarf condition, where the star sank
back down into ultimate darkness.
But as yet the process was scarcely begun.
Only the tropics had reached a temperature that men—children of a more massive
and brilliant sun—could endure. Most of the planet's water fled the equatorial
belt and snowed down on the still frigid poles,
leaving dry plains where a few plants struggled to re-adapt, but were destroyed
by this invading green grass.
Flandry's
mind touched, the remote future of Terra, and recoiled. A gelid breeze slid
around him. He grew aware of how stiff and chilly he was. And night had not
even fallen!
He
groaned back to a sitting position. Bourtai sat calm. He envied her fatalism.
But it was not in him to accept the chance of freezing while he cowered in a
sack—or to walk, if he survived the dark hours, across hundreds of parched
kilometers, through a cold that strengthened day by autumnal day.
His
mind scuttered about, a trapped weasel seeking any bolthole. Fire, fire, my
chance of immortality for a fire-Hoy, there!
He
sprang to his feet, remembered the aircraft, and hit dirt again so fast that he
bumped his bruised nose. The girl listened wide-eyed to his streaming,
sputtering Anglic. When he had finished, she sketched a reverent sign. "I
also pray the Spirit of the Mother that She guide
us," said Bourtai.
Flandry
showed his teeth in what was possibly a grin. "I, uh, wasn't exactly
praying, my dear. No, I think I've a plan. Wild, but—Now, listen."
"No!" she exclaimed when he had
finished. The violence of her rejection startled him. "Not even to save
our fives?" he asked.
"Would it? I don't see how."
"Well,
I can't guarantee anything, of course," Flandry said. His Hps moved
upward, one-sidedly. "Or, rather, I can. I can promise you this scheme
will give us the whole world and a new pair of skates. Because
if it fails, I won't be available for scolding purposes anyway." He
sat up, hugged his knees and squinted across pale, rippling kilometers. The
sun seemed to topple nightward. "How it works will be simple enough. As soon as darkness comes, 111 about on my varyak setting fires.
The capacitors have a few kilometers left in them. This grass is so dry the
whole prairie will flare up like a tinderbox. So well have smoke to screen us
from view and warmth to blanket the radiation from our heaters."
"But
do you not understand, Orluk? Just because the grass burns so easily, a steppe
fire is the most dreaded thing on Altai. All other work, all fighting, even, stops
when one is seen. Every person is law-bound to do nothing but quench it."
The girl shivered. "And you would set one deliberately!"
"Uh-huh.
Because I figured your custom must be just as you've described. Don't you see?
The Khan's hunters will drop the search for us while they tackle the blaze. I
suppose your usual method is to drop foam bombs from the air?" She nodded.
"Well, then, if any of your people are in the neighborhood—which means
within several hundred kilometers, since they're bound to have sky patrols
watching for a possible Khanist raid—and if they're close enough to spot the
fire, they'll send aircraft to help, won't they? Sure. When they arrive, we'll
break radio silence and holler for them to pick us up. I think, given your
name, they will. They can probably snatch us and escape, don't you agree? If they act fast. Until they show, well duck and dodge
about, using the fire for cover. Once rescued, we'll be streaked northward to
temporary safety, anyhow. Right? Yes, yes, the idea
depends on several assumptions which may be dead wrong. But they don't look too
improbable, do they?" "No-no. But the law of
Altai-"
"Law
be damned. We won't burn off more than a few hundred
hectares. Couple thousand at worst. In exchange for which,
Altai gets a chance to call on Holy Mother Terra for her liberation."
As she still hesitated, he leaned closer and murmured: "Rather more
important to me, personally, you get a chance to live and be free."
"What?"
She looked at him blankly. He smiled. A slow blush stained her cheeks; the
tilted, green eyes dropped.
He
caught her hands between his. "I never spurned any good luck that came my
way," he said. "And who ever had such good luck as to meet Bourtai
Ivanskaya?"
"What?
But no, you are an orluk of Terra; I am only . . ." Her stammering died
out. She wasn't used to courtliness; didn't know what it meant. She trembled
harder. He drew her close to him and kissed her.
Little
more than that happened. For one thing, he was too tired and hungry. But before
long she sighed and whispered, "As you think best, Dominic . . ."
Krasna
touched the horizon, hung red and bloated for minutes, and was gone. Night fell
with pyrotechnic swiftness. Stars sprang forth, the rings became a cold blaze,
the wind grew fangs.
Flandry
mounted his varyak. There was a tiny scrit, and
a faggot of twisted straw in Bourtai's hand blossomed flame. She gave it to
him. He kicked the motor into life whirled off. The grasses
rusded, invisible, as he parted them.
Several
meters away, he leaned over and put the torch to the ground. A sheaf of red and
yellow tongues licked up.
He
roared in a spiral, sowing his fires. By the time he rejoined the girl, they
were coalescing into one. She bestrode her own machine, mute and unhappy. He
must turn on her heater for her. The warmth from his needed a while to penetrate
the numbness in his feet.
The
fire arose and bellowed. A curtain of fight spread across the world, wavering,
climbing, showering sparks like refugee stars. Smoke
blotted out the rings and half of heaven. Flandry felt heat gusts and smelled
bitterness. He guided himself and the girl in slow pursuit, over hot, charred
ground where their shadows wobbled grotesquely on stubble.
The
airboat swooped low. Momentarily, its teardrop form was oudined against orange
and raw gold. Flandry's muscles braced themselves for a bullet storm. The craft
buzzed up again, out of sight. He hadn't been noticed. He wasn't important . .
. now.
Bourtai fumbled with her radio receiver. The
uneven light made her face leap from the murk. Then, as the nearest flames
guttered, she vanished. Only the metal highlights on her varyak remained.
Voices
trickled through the crackle and cough: "—come in, Ulan Baligh . . . Our
position is . . . Units from Jagatai Station . . .Stand by ... Prepare for . . . Windage . . . Danger
. . ." She tuned them out, searching. The time seemed long before a new
tone on a different band reached Flandry's ears.
"Aye,
Noyon, it's wildfire indeed. I see one Khanist vessel hovering. . . . Hold, a
flock of them just registered on my radar screen, hither bound. Too small a squadron to stop the thing by itself. But
they're calling for reinforcements. I think
they can handle the bum well enough."
The
answer was faint with remoteness, mangled by static, but prideful. "None
shall say the Mangu Tuman withheld aid against the common enemy. Call them and
say a flight of ours will shortly be on its way under command of myself, Arghun Tiliksky."
"Must
I tell that, Noyon? They might decide that shooting you down was worth
violating the Yassa."
"They
would not dare. Every man on Altai would call for their deaths." With a
dryness Flandry liked, the distant voice added, "Besides, I doubt if one officer of one ordu in the Tebtengri Shamanate is quite
such a prize. Expect us within half an hour. Signing
off."
Half an
hour, Flandry's mind repeated. He didn't listen to the interchange between rebel scout
and Khanist pilot. Their arrangement of truce Was brief, formal, and cold. He concentrated on staying near enough to the
fire for its infrared radiation to screen his own, without getting so close
that he would be seen.
That
took a litde precision. The blaze grew with horrible
speed. Now it lit the whole plain, and small animals fled squealing between his
varyak wheels. The first firefighting squadron arrived and swooped beneath the
smoke for a closer look. The thunder of their passage reverberated in his head.
They rushed back beyond sight, and the bombs started falling. Where one struck,
whiteness fountained, spread, and congealed in a sticky layer. A drop of this
hit
Flandry's right hand. He spent several profane minutes un-gluing his fingers.
Driven
by a strong wind, the conflagration was immune to backfires. The aircraft laid
a foam barrier across its path. It halted, sputtered, shook loose defiant
banners, and outflanked the obstacle. Flandry could have sworn it whooped in
derision.
Bourtai's
hand sought his and squeezed tight, as they drove across ashen wasteland and
glowing coals. "Said I not?" she asked thinly. "Said I
not?" He muttered what comfort he could. Cinders blew up to streak their
faces and stop their nostrils.
Another team from a more distant station
appeared. Pre-sendy, the fire was contained to the south as well as to the
north. But eastward it overleaped a foam line too thin, curved about and
established its private sunrise. The first squadron, having discharged all
bombs, went back after more. Their dwindling noise was scarcely audible above
the roar on the steppe.
Bdurtai
rose in her saddle. Her eyes turned skyward. "Lis-tenl" After a
moment, Flandry heard the sound too. It was the whisde of aircraft in a hurry,
-coming down from the north. His heart fluttered. The girl,
cooler than he when action was imminent, tuned her receiver.
"Do
you know these Mangu Tuman people?" he asked stupidly.
"A litde. They and mine, like all the Tebtengrian
tribes, have met at Kievka Fair. And sometimes other
occasions." Curt orders rattled from the loud-speaker. "That
is the frequency to call them on."
Flandry saw midget shapes sweep across the
wall of flame, several kilometers away. The Tebtengri didn't work in the sedate
style of Oleg's men, who hovered far above. They dive-bombed. His gaze shifted
from them to the opposite horizon. The pattern grew slowly in his brain, pieced
together from glimpses caught through roiling smoke and gushing lambencies.
"They're
taking the eastern front, leaving the Khan's units to work inward from north
and south," he said. "Hm. That means, to get
close enough for a speedy rescue operation, we must go clear
around and re-approach the fire from the east. We'd better get started. I don't
think, with the force they now have, the men will need much longer to put it
out."
The
girl's brief smile flashed white in her sooty, shadowed countenance. Her
machine streaked off. He took a backward spurt of dust in his mouth, spat it
out with an obscene remark, and tried to pull alongside. But she was too fast.
He could barely see her, in snatches, now a silhouette against the blaze, now a flying gleam in darkness. The varyak motors droned,
louder even than the burning they neared. Wheels hit stones and holes, bounced,
swayed, and pounded on.
Across
the south edgel Bending north again, they steered
close for concealment. The full furnace heat billowed over them; smoke stank
and stung, grass crackled, flames whirled with a great hollow bawling. The
earth under the fire glowed white, overlaid with a tinge of hellish blue; and then red and tawny sheets flowered up to the
smoke roof. Boom went a bomb; foam jetted and clung, pale amidst flying sparks.
Flandry's front wheel crossed a tentacle
of the spreading suppressor. His machine slewed around. He put down the
outrigger wheel before he was thrown, gunned his engine, and pulled clear.
Bourtai was lost to sight. He proceeded half blind.
Wasn't it time for her to signal the
newcomers? He squinted with bloodshot eyes at his instrument panel, dialed the
radio, heard a babble of commands and reports.
"Come on, lass" he shouted uselessly into the racket. "Don't be
shy. Come on!"
Suddenly her voice was
crisp from the speaker.
"Attention,
men of the Mangu Tuman. Attention. I give the Tebtengri call for help, ya-u-la, freemen aid a freeman. I, Bourtai, daughter of the
noyon Ivan Ogotai, who fell with the Tumurji at Rivers Meet. Ya-u-ldl I,
escaped from captivity in Ulan Baligh, am now driving along the east face of
the wildfire. Behind me is a man from Holy Mother Terra. This I declare true:
he is from Terra Herself; hunted by the Khan as I am hunted. He aided my escape
and he will aid Altai to liberty. Send a boat and pick us up before Oleg's men
do." I shall maintain a signal on this band for your guidance. Ya-u-la! Hear Bourtai Ivanskaya of the Tumurji."
Flandry
threw a glance over his shoulder. If the enemy had someone listening on this
frequency that the Tebtengri employed, fun and games must be expected.
A
craft rushed from the hidden sky. A moment it poised, listening with
directional antennae. The red light picked out Oleg's emblem on the flanks.
Down near ground level, it streaked after the girl.
Flandry whipped his varyak around and darted
toward darkness. The airboat boomed unheedingly past h"n. A momentary flare-up in the background lined Bourtai. The Khanist pilot
saw her too. A blaster beam stabbed. She made her wheels sprint. The
incandescent lance turned in chase. Flandry converged on her. She saw him and
tried to wave him away. He waved back: This way, follow mel
Another
vessel, smaller and with a strange insigne, appeared. Its gun drew a line
across the line of the first beam. A voice rapped from Flandry's radio:
"Lackey of the usurper, is this how you observe the holy truce?"
Both
ceased fire. The vessels circled each other like hostile dogs, a few meters
above the earth. "I made no move against you or yours," said Cleg's
pilot. "I am after certain outlaws. Stand aside,
or you yourself will have broken the peace."
Flandry
and Bourtai edged close together and rolled not too slowly from the scene. A
smoky veil descended. The boats were hidden. "If those two keep
arguing," Flandry called to her, "and meanwhile another Tebtengrian
homes on your signal—"
"Yaaah!" she screamed.
He twisted about. His eyes strained and
watered in a universe of turbulent smoke. Enough light came through, painting
it blood color, for a few meters' vision. He saw Bourtai's varyak roll over,
hit the ground and bounce in a cinder cloud. The girl had thrown herself clear.
She struck, curled into a ball, and tumbled through the grass.
That
which had pounced on her and had upset the vehicle sprang in pursuit. Flandry
had an instant's glimpse of a shaggy head and monstrous body, legs too long
even for that height. He yanked his gun from the holster and whipped his
machine around.
The
demon shape bounded over grass already scorching. Bourtai lay motionless. Dead, or just the wind knocked from her? The creature
stooped above. Flandry lowered his third wheel, halted, and took aim.
A
hand as big as his head plucked the blaster from him.
He
didn't stop to look behind. His foot kicked the accelerator. The motor
snorted. The varyak stayed where it was.
Flandry
leaped off. Two giants held the vehicle fast. A third, looming out of acrid
black clouds, snatched at him. He glimpsed eyes and teeth, ducked and started
running. The one who held Bourtai straightened, tucking her casually beneath an
arm. Flandry couldn't rescue her. Wouldn't another Tebtengrian boat ever show?
Yes, by heaven! At sight's edge he spied the
shape. It dipped low and hung quiet. The pilot must be staring into unrestful
gloom with eyes not adapted. Flandry dashed in that direction. Breath was
anguish in his dried lungs.
The
ground thudded behind him. The strider caught up, took him by the waist, and
flung him over one hairy shoulder.
Upside
down, he saw the other savages. There were four in all. Two squatted by the
varyaks, deftly lashing them to long, thick poles. Grunting, they lifted one
machine between them, the carrying rod supported on their collarbones. The two
who bore the prisoners picked up the remaining varyak with their free hands.
Bourtai's transmitter must have gone dead when she was knocked over, for the
Tebtengrian vessel did not follow. As the giants trotted northeastward,
Flandry's bobbing eyes saw the flyer hover a minute more, then lift again and
vanish. A moment afterward, a Khanist boat arrived. It didn't stay either.
Smoke
blotted out vision. When he could see again, Flan-dry found himself being
carried across the steppe at some ten kilometers per hour. The fire was already
remote from him, dwindling and dying in the night.
The
varyak heaters were still in operation, blowing enough warm air across him to
maintain life. He wondered if it made any important difference.
V
Several
times in that long night
the savages halted for a rest. On the first
occasion, they tied the humans' ankles together and their hands behind their backs, crowded around one varyak and baked themselves.
Dumped in the grass, Flandry tried at once to worm free. But the thongs were
too skillfully knotted. He struggled to his feet. "Bourtail" he
called, low and hoarse. "Can you hear me?"
"Aye." He saw her rise like him, half visible beneath one gibbous moon. The
steppe was a lake, hoarfrost tinged copper, shadows running mysteriously before
the wind. It whispered and rustled. "Aye, Dominic. Are you hurt?"
"Mostly in my pride ...
so far. I
was afraid you . . . when you went off your saddle at such a speed
. .
She achieved a chuckle. "Any nomad child leams that art."
They
inched toward each other. "Who are those gargan-tuas?" he asked.
"Voiskoye." She had come close enough that he could
read grimness in her expression.
"That doesn't tell me much, you
know."
"Wild ones. Long ago, in the early days on Altai, when chaos often prevailed as
folk sought a means of living-suitable to this planet, a small band of
criminals fled onto the steppes, which were then sparsely populated. Somehow
they survived. The first generation or two lived largely by raiding lonely
farmsteads; and they stole women. Then Altaians ceased to farm, while the
Voiskoye learned to five as hunters. They still do so. Because their numbers
are not great and the plains are very large, no one has troubled much about
them. Sometimes they steal or kidnap, sometimes they barter, but most times
they are never seen. I did not know there was a band hereabouts. They must have
come toward the fire hoping to kill any game animals stampeded in their
direction. Then they saw us and—" She drooped against him. The dark head
bowed with weariness.
Flandry
made himself ignore his own aches and consider the giants. There was sufficient
light. They seemed more caucasoid than the average
Altaian, probably because their ancestors had happened to be. Within a mane of
black hair and a waist-length tangle of beard, their features were big-nosed,
heavy-browed, almost acromegalic. He noticed again
that a disproportionate percentage of their incredible height —two and a quarter meters—was thigh and shank. But the torsos were stocky rather
than lean. They wore shaggy tunics, nothing else save necklaces of teeth or
bone. Their accoutrements included flint-headed axes, boomerangs, and knives
obviously forged from steel scraps. While they appreciated the varyak heater,
they didn't actually seem to mind the chill that gnawed at him.
He
wondered what they lived on. No, wait, that was easy. (If only this headache
would go away and let him think!) Just as Terrestrial vegetation had overrun
the planetary tropics, so would those Terrestrial animals that the nomads
herded. Some, drifting free, would revert to a wild state. . . . Yes, he could
remember dully how Bourtai had passed through a flock of big queer-looking
creatures to break their trail, ages ago. . . . Giant forms would soon develop.
a fresh biological type in an environment with
lots of unfilled ecological niches can evolve explosively.
Even man.
Take a few dozen hunters. Keep their descendants
inbred, to intensify any traits they may possess; but breed them fast, seven
generations per century, and subject them to merciless natural selection. Besides
metabolic adjustment to diet, temperature, and the rest, you will soon get a
changed body. Size is advantageous for conserving heat as well as for running
down prey. Under such conditions, nature will not need much more time to
create a new breed of man than man does to create a new breed of dog.
The question must be asked: "What do they
Want us for?"
"The varyaks for
metal, of course," Bourtai mumbled.
"That's an evasion, sweetheart, as well
you know. What do they want us for?"
She hunched into herself.
"They are said to be cannibals."
"But
too seldom encountered for anyone to be sure, eh? Well, we aren't in their
kitchen yet. Brrrrl I could almost welcome a nice hot casserole. Come on, let's
go defrost."
He
must cheer her up before she troubled to stump with him to the other varyak.
That passive resignation, which is the other face of a stoic culture, was upon
her. At length they huddled above its heater and felt iciness depart.
"Hm,"
Flandry said, "the radio on this one still looks workable." He
wriggled into position for some knob twiddling. If he could raise the Mangu
Tumanl
A
hand pulled him aside. A broad coarse visage grinned down. "Hey!"
Flandry wailed. "You aren't supposed to understand about radios."
The
giant squatted beside the girl. Flandry crawled back. When he attempted the
dials again, he was casually pushed off.
"They
may not understand machines," Bourtai said bleakly, "but they know
that machines are dangerous to them. Guns kill, boats fly off. You will be
given no chance."
"Reckon
not," Flandry sighed. He experimented with talking to his captor, but soon
learned that the Voiskoye language had drifted too far from basic Altaian.
Exhausted, he slumped and fell into an uneasy sleep.
When
the trek resumed, he did by signs persuade them to carry him and Bourtai
piggyback, rather than feed sack fashion. That was some help. So was the biltong given them to chew and the water from a
leather bag. Nonetheless, he had never spent a more miserable twenty hours.
They
reached camp a while after sunrise. Flandry was put on the ground and untied.
"Oofl" he groaned, and sat. His ankles wouldn't bear him. But he
scanned the scene alertly.
Crass
had been trampled over a large circle. Pup tents of hide surrounded one big
tepee on which various cabalistic designs were crudely drawn in clay pigment.
Fires burned in shallow trenches; skins and strips of flesh hung on poles to
dry. Utensils were earthen; tools were mainly wood, stone, and bone. In
general, the camp looked paleolithic. However, through the open flap of the
tepee Flandry glimpsed cloth and metal.
Two
hulking women stood guard over the prisoners. Otherwise the tribe, perhaps a
hundred adults and three times as many naked children, crowded about the varyaks.
Ah, that was a marvel! The four hunters who had brought this prize were
cheered, slapped on the back, danced around and presented with necklaces. At
the height of festivities, one came from the tepee and painted their faces.
Flandry
watched him narrowly. The chief or medicine man, or whatever he was, had
outlived most of his followers, judging by his grizzled locks. (Probably few
Voiskoye reached forty. Hunger, accident, disease, and blizzard devoured
them.) He was shorter and less powerfully built than the average, though still
overtopping a Terrestrial. His garment was fringed with tails and ornamented
with beads. He wore a headdress not unlike an ancient shako. Cicatrices
decorated his breast, and shrewdness marked his features. It was soon obvious that
he had waited in his tent and had begun by rewarding the heroes for purely ceremonial
reasons. His glance kept straying toward the captives. When at last he could
leave his people to jabber at the machines and prepare for a banquet, he
approached Flandry with evident eagerness.
Hunkering
down, he said in accented basso Altaian: "What kind Izgnannikh you?"
"What kind what?" Having recovered some strength, the Altaian leaned forward. Bourtai
looked on with hopeless eyes.
"You . . . two Izgnanniki. Not
so? Herders, ordu folk, what you call yourself. We say Izgnanniki. She there common sort. Never see one like you. How?"
"I,"
said Flandry with what he hoped was impressive-ness, "am from Holy Mother
Terra."
He
met neither disbelief nor acceptance. A mask appeared to drop over the heavy
face. For entire minutes the giant peered at him. Only one hand moved, stroking
the long beard.
Finally,
very slowly: "Izgnanniki
tell Tjout Terra. Say men
come from star name Terra. Not so? Ha. You look ata-moi—what say—strange." A thick finger
pointed at the foreign shape of hair, eyes, nose, smooth
chin. "You name?"
"Captain
Sir Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Corps, Imperial Terrestrial Navy," he
intoned with full magniloquence.
The
Voisko jumped to his feet, pulled a carved bone from the pouch at his waist and
shook it toward the sun and the man. "You no make zaporo!" he roared furiously. "I kill. Kill now. Zaporo for me. Me only. Nyennekh, nyen nekh, shviska upolyanskl"
"What does he mean?" Bourtai
whispered.
"He
thinks I tried to—" Flandry discovered that Altaian, like many languages
postdating the origin of space travel, had no word for "magic" or any
related concept—"he believes certain phrases and rituals have special
powers to help or harm. See, he's warding off the hypothetical effects of what
I said. It must have sounded like a strong formula to him. If they do eat us, I
daresay they'll believe they're gaining any special potencies
we may have."
She spat her contempt.
"No
zaporo," Flandry soothed the giant. "Only
my name. See, nothing happened. I only told you my name."
"Zaporo
mine," the other
growled, somewhat mollified. "I make zaporo, good for us, bad for enemies. I tribemaster. You understand?" The shrewdness
returned. "If you not make big zaporo, you
not from Terra. Not so?"
Since
the Voisko didn't squat again, Flandry rose too. He had recovered that much
from the trip here. Being used to nonhuman races taller than man, he was put at
no psychological disadvantage by having to look up at the witch doctor. He
twirled his mustache and murmured. "Well, I never said I couldn't, just that I didn't. On that occasion."
"You
caught like animal," the Voisko scoffed. "Terra man be caught like animal? Not so."
"I
was taken by surprise," Flandry said. "And naturally, your hunters
were full of the zaporo
you had given them. I own to not being all-powerful. But . . . we
do have certain tricks where I come from."
An
awkward delay ensued, since his interlocutor's rusty Altaian failed. The whole
idea must be rephrased and fhreashed out, which Flandry thought rather spoiled
the effect. However, such slowness did help drive the concept home, that anyone
who claimed to be a Terran should be handled with care.
"My
name Kazar," the chief told him. "Not real name. Real name secret so
enemies not make zaporo
on me. Name I use, Kazar. Name you use, Vlanary. Not so? We talk."
"Uh, how do you happen
to know Izgnannikh speech?"
Kazar
scowled. "Years ago, me young, just old 'nough be called
man. Hard winter. Many starve. Go with father
and other men, take Izgnanniki animals. Herdsmen see us. Shoot guns. Most
Voiskoye killed. Me captured. Live with herdsmen
three years. Do what herdsmen tell me do. Jahangir, they name."
"A
tribe now supporting Oleg Yesukai," Bourtai chimed in. "I have heard
of them. They are poorer than most, which has made them hard. They would not be
above enslaving a prisioner. Especially one who we hardly
regard as human."
Kazar" brooded darkly at her.
"Jahangir beat me. Me do dirty work. Escape. Come
home. Now me kill Izgnanniki where can."
"Whoa!" Flandry stepped between him
and the girl. "Not this one. Haven't you heard? There's a war among the nomads.
Her people are fighting the same ones who captured you."
"Yes, me know T>out shooting on
steppes, in sky. Me see Izgnanniki dead mark by
Izgnannikh weapons." "So we're friends together, eh?" Flandry
beamed.
The
lion head shook. "No. All Izgnanniki enemies to
Vois-koye."
He's
doubtlessly right, Flandry
realized. Not being worth cultivating as allies, the savages were considered
and treated as dangerous nuisances by both nomad factions. "You know about
radios?" he said. "Let me radio this woman's people to come get her
and me. They'll be pleased. It would be worth a lot of metal to them."
For
a moment Kazar hesitated. Then, decisively, with a chopping motion of one huge hand: "No. Izgnanniki hear we have you,
they come. We give you. They give metal? Not so. They shoot!"
Bourtai's
anger flashed. She jumped to her feet. "What's that? Do you mean the
Tebtengri would break an oath? Why, you louse-bitten rat, if you even knew what
'oath' means—"
Kazar
reached past Flandry and cuffed. Bourtai rolled over. Flandry glared, decided
resistance was useless, and knelt by the girl. She sat up, holding her head.
The bruise on her temple began to turn blue. "You all right?" he
breathed. It was astonishing how anxious he felt.
She
nodded numbly. A female or two snarled and edged toward her. Kazar waved them
back. "You keep still," the chief ordered her.
The
Terran climbed erect. His full weariness struck home. He could only croak:
"You get no use from me if you harm the woman. Understand?"
Kazar
shrugged. "You earn you keep and her keep, we feed both. Or you feed
us," he added with a bark of laughter.
"We'll need our
sleeping bags back, and a tent."
Kazar nodded impatiendy. "So,
so. Your bags good for only babies. You try run
away, we track. Good trackers, us."
"I
don't doubt that," Flandry said. The thought of being hunted across the
steppe by leaping, baying trolls brought the sweat to his skin. Yes, he was
effectively jailed.
"So what you do for
Voiskoye?"
"Good
Lord, let me think! I've got sand in my synapses," Flandry muttered in
Anglic.
His
dulled gaze went around and around the camp. Could he only get at a radio—the
Mangu Tuman were half an hour from here by airboat. If he called them, they'd
surely send a scout, at least, to investigate. And one scout craft with a blaster cannon would have this whole gang at its
mercy....
Half a bloody hour!
"I
can make you some Terran zaporo," he
said thickly. "Good zaporo. Full bellies, warm weather, many children, beer and skitdes. But I need Terran type equipment to do
it."
Kazar's
grin was doubly wolfish; the Voiskoye were starting to evolve carnivore teeth.
"I know what gun look like," he said. "Also
radio. You not come near stuff."
"I didn't mean that.
But I must have—"
"You
get stuff you need," the chief said. "But only for what I understand.
You not make something I not understand first. You tell me what you need and
why. If I understand, I give."
Flandry
stared into the deep-set eyes. Not for the first time, he realized that
technological backwardness did not imply stupidity. Kazar had picked up more
sophistication among the nomads than one might have expected.
"I'm
too tired to think," Flandry protested. "Let me sleep a while."
"Like
litde baby. Izgnannild worms." Kazar spoke a command.
"You have food, then sleep, so? After sleep, tell me what you do for
us."
The
prospect of becoming food himself if he didn't propose something acceptable
was no immediate worry to Flandry. He was too exhausted. He was hardly in the
bag with Bourtai, under a pup tent assigned them, than unconsciousness hit
him. The noisy revels outside never touched his dreams.
But
he had a well-trained subconscious. When he awoke, hours later, it was with a
shout. Bourtai blinked her bewilderment. He leaned over and planted a kiss on
her mouth.
"Kid, I do believe I've got an ideal"
"W-will it serve
us?"
"Diabolically."
VI
Krasna
stood at late afternoon, a
fire coal in the pale sky. The camp looked nearly deserted. Gnawed bones and
pits filled with white ashes told of the feast, which most tribespeople were
now sleeping off in their tents. A few children and older females moved
sullenly about, cleaning up the mess, or carrying on the endless chores of the
primitive. Several males were also awake, crosslegged on the ground, chipping
flints or shaping wood. They followed Flandry and Bourtai with incurious gaze.
The average I. Q. here couldn't amount to much; Kazar was exceptional.
His
tepee stood open on stacks of woven fabrics, glassware, plunder and salvage of
civilization. Metal predominated—broken tools and firearms, utensils,
ornaments, scraps of this and that piled in a junk heap for reclaiming by
Vois-koye smiths. Flandry saw the two varyaks on top. One was already half
dismanded.
The
chief squatted before it, plying wrench and chisel with skill as well as
strength. His shaggy head jerked as Flandry blocked the doorway. Mates and
children slunk outside. "You come," he invited. "You tell what
you got for us."
Flandry
accepted. Bourtai crouched near the flap, increasingly ill at ease. Well, the man thought, being
a potential fricasee isn't any too relaxing for her. The notion didn't bother him. After he was
through with his body, it might as well make payment in kind for all the filets
and chops it had enjoyed. Not that he didn't want to remain
alive. There were so many recipes he had never even tasted. . . .
"Well?" growled Kazar.
Flandry
reached for the varyak. With the control panel off, its innards looked
forlornly out at him. Kazar knocked his hand aside. "Not touch!"
"Look," said Flandry, as aggrieved
as possible, "if you don't want my Terran zaporo, tell me. I must have some apparatus. Like
your carved bones, or those pictures on your tent, or the signs scarred onto
your breast. You will simply have to trust me with a few wires and such."
"First you tell me how work."
"Very well." Flandry rubbed his chin and stared solemnly upward. "We have a
number of things on Terra that could be valuable to you. You probably have
trouble finding water, don't you? What do you do on a dry plain like
this?"
"Waterhole one day off. Send women with bags." "Why not
camp closer?"
"Animals
come drink. We camp near, animals go drink someplace
else. Better we stay far, send men to hunt, women to carry Water. Not so?"
"Yes. But handiest yet would be to dig a
well. You know, a hole in the ground."
Kazar
nodded. "We do that sometimes. Cannot dig deep.
Not have tools. Loose dirt cave in if we dig deep.
When we think water not deep below, we dig. If not sure water not deep, we not
dig."
"Ah-hal
I figured as much. Well, friend, your troubles are over. I can build you a
thing that shows where water lies no deeper than two man-heights. Good pure
water too, not the bitter stuff you must often come upon."
Something
like enthusiasm touched the hairy face. "You not tell true, you die for
sure," Kazar promised. "How you zaporo work? I try make zaporo for find water, long ago. Not work. You tell how."
"Well," Flandry drawled, "I
suspect you didn't have
quite the
right concept. We Terrans have made the dowsing rod obsolete. Let's just
consider the laws governing magic. That's what we call zaporo on Terra: magic. You know there are many different magics, for hunting,
for good luck and good health, to harm enemies, and so on. But there are really
only two kinds, aren't there? One; you use a thing which has once
touched, or been part of, another thing. For instance, you use a man's name,
part of himself, to make magic on him. Or better yet, some of his hair or
nails or blood—"
"Not speak!"
Kazar exclaimed. "Woman listen!"
"No matter. I assure you, Terran magic is too strong to be bothered by a woman's
presence. In fact, some of our feared magicians are women. Well, that's one
sort of magic: what at home we call the contagious kind. The other sort is
working on a thing by using a likeness of that thing. For instance, you help
your hunters catch game by sticking spears in a clay image of the kind of
animal they're after. Correct? That's what we Terrans call sympathetic
magic."
Much
impressed, Kazar nodded. "You know much zaporo. Me leam many ways, many . . . what word? . . . many secrets.
But me never think 'bout zaporo being two kinds."
"Not
your fault," said the other condescendingly. "You never had a
scientific education. Very well, how shall we find water? Since we have no part
of the spring we want to locate, we can't use contagious magic. So we must use
sympathetic magic. We must make a symbol—a sign, you understand?—of water, and
of a man finding it. The apparatus I shall have to construct is the symbol on
which we operate. Savvy?
"Here's
how it works." With his forefinger, he sketched in the dust. "First
we construct a picture of the territory in which we are. We can do that with
wires attached to a plank, forming more or less of a square. But where ground
water exists near the surface, there will be plant growth, so we must symbolize
that." He drew a series of loops with an arrow through it. "Thus,
brush and twigs." Pointing to a variable inductance from
the varyak's radio: "That will serve in the actual model. Do you
see how it is changed in shape by turning a dial? In using this model, one
adjusts the shape of the brush symbol until it is close to the actual shape of
any growth in the area."
"That belong
radio," Kazar said suspiciously.
"Yes, I know. But you know what a radio looks like. How could a single part of it serve the
same function? Can a bone be the whole animal? Use your common sense."
Flan-dry drew in two pairs of parallel lines, also pierced, at separate points.
"These are pictures of the water covered by the earth, as seen through two
eyes. In the model those will be used." He indicated a pair of variable
condensers. "You can see how they are adjustable to local contours."
He
had to stop often to explain his reasoning in Kazar's more limited vocabulary
and to prove this or that lemma to the chiefs
satisfaction. But in synopsis, he rolled on: "What, however, is land
without the sun? The omnipotent, life-giving sun, ah, yes, we must include
that in our hookup. You know that energy cells power a varyak, so I will take
one. It isn't quite exhausted yet. With the help of a coil it'll make a spark
across this gap when this key is closed. The creation of the spark stands for
the rising of the sun, life and hope and rebirth and so forth. As the sun draws water from the earth, so
will our model seek water lying within the earth.
"One more thing. We must symbolize the act of seeking view,
so must our machine. Therefore we will run a short wire into the earth, thus,
and a long one heavenward, thus. The long one, which imitates a man surveying
the whole world, can best be raised by a kite. D'you know
what a
kite is? No? Well, give
Bourtai some light sticks and cord, and some of that cloth, and I'm sure she can make one for us.
"As
for the operation of the machine, that's an easy matter. I shall let the woman there tap the key which controls the spark. You see
what that means, of course. A female operating the sunsymbols stands for the
union of the two elemental life forces. The woman has to control the spark,
rather than the other way around, because we wish to get a kindly result, water
flowing from the ground like milk from a mother's breast. I myself shall do the most difficult job, adjusting the various parts of
the machine to symbolic conformity. You may go fly the kite. Attached to the
kite string, besides the seeking-wire, there will be a flat slab. Yonder one
will do." He indicated a plastic
chunk broken off the varyak panel. "You must stroke the plate with your
free hand while thinking hard about ground water. When the plate feels sticky,
then everything is in adjustment and I can
read the location of the spring off my dials."
After
many more circumlocutions, Kazar got the idea and agreed that the hydrophilic
machine was no hoax but constructed according to sound principles of zaporo. Then he was eager to begin at once. But not so anxious that he did not watch
Flandry's every motion, and inspect each item requested before he handed it
over.
The
job did not take many hours. As they went outside with the clumsy breadboard
circuit, Bourtai murmured, "Do you really think we can—"
"I
assume you know whatever telegraphic code your people employ," he
answered as sofdy. "The nomads must have one; voice radio can't always be
practical."
She
nodded, took a long breath, and ran with the kite till it was aloft. Flandry
thought how graceful she was. But damn, he had to concentrate on another sort
of oscillations, getting this haywired rig to function. . . . "Give me
some room there!" he snapped at the giants crowding about. The spectacle
had drawn the whole camp to gape and gabble. Even Kazar couldn't make them
stand very far off, and they jammed together on every side. Flandry would
rather have been surrounded by bears.
Bourtai
gave the kite string to the chief and sat down at the improvised key. When the
spark leaped and crackled, blue among long evening shadows, the Voiskoye
rumbled their uneasiness. Hair stirred on male scalps; unfairly big muscles
grew tense. Kazar traced protective signs in the air.
The
key rattled. "Ya-u-la, freemen aid a freeman!" in dots and dashes in the hope that someone
not of the Khan's party was tuned in. There should be a receiver open to the
distress band in every ordu, at all times. But the energy cell was feeble,
nearly drained by the varyak's long flight. And there would be atmospherics.
Flandry swung his control dials through slow circles. He didn't know closely
enough the electronic properties of his neo-Hertzian set. He must try every
combination, trusting he would strike the frequency he wanted among them.
Stillness descended on the tribe. Only the
thin, frying noise of the spark, the clattering key, and the breeze in long
grass were heard. Kazar held the kite string in one hand,
crouched over the plastic plate on the ground and stroked it with the other. Suddenly,
a roar: "Tulyanskl Me stick!"
"Ah so," Flandry nodded. If you run
your fingers over any smooth surface for a while, you will get a sensation of
tackiness. He hoped the sweat that sprang out on him didn't show too much.
"Well, one is never certain the first time. We must continue trying. If
the dials read the same repeatedly at the sticky point, then we'll know the
machine is working."
After
our signal is picked up, they'll have to get a directional fix on it. And then
get here themselves. If they are coming.
He stretched the
process out for minutes longer.
But there came the time
when Kazar snorted, "Too long. Get feeling over
and over. You tell where dig." The tribe sensed their leader's mood and
rumbled.
"Very
well," Flandry yielded.
"I daresay we do have a reading.
Now I must interpret it.
Addissababa Constantinople walla
walla kalamazoo woomera saskatoon
Saskatchewan rhine and out goes he. Follow me—no, best
keep the kite in the ir. Bourtai
can take it along. You may carry the rest of the apparatus."
Kazar
spoke an order. A male went into the tepee and came back with a regular
steel-bladed shovel. Oh,
oh, Flan-dry thought.
That well would get dug sooner than he had figured on.
He led them out across the steppe. Most of
the tribe followed at his heels. Their silence was more ominous than their
previous grunts had been. He could virtually feel their stares drilling holes
in his back. As slowly and with many pauses to survey the land as he dared, he
proceeded northward.
After
a kilometer or two, Kazar gruffed, "You say zapor-ozka find water near. Not good if water far."
"I
can't find what isn't there," Flandry protested. "The nearest spring
is a litde distance off. In the future you can choose your campsites according
to what the machine tells." But no one seemed very convinced. After
several more minutes, he decided he had about exhausted their scanty patience.
He stopped and stamped his feet. "Here."
"Here?"
Kazar stooped, crumbled the soil between his fingers and held a pinch to his
nose. "Dry. Much dry. Look there, khru grass, grow on driest ground."
"You'd
never have thought of looking here," the Terran argued blandly. "Which proves how valuable my machine is."
Kazar
gave him a hard look, rose, and signaled his shovel-man. That giant got busy.
Clods stormed loose. The others edged close. Their bodies were huge and black
against the yellow sunset sky, their smell sharp in the nose. Bourtai seemed
fragile in their midst. She held her kite like a doomed banner.
After considerable pant and thud, the
shovelman spoke to Kazar. The chief said loweringly,
"Ground very hard. No wetter."
"He
hasn't gone deep enough," Flandry said. "I told you it might be as many as four man-heights, remember? That's Voiskoye men,
naturally."
"You
say two," Kazar corrected. The bristies rose on his head and shoulders.
Eyes under cavernous brow ridges caught the fading light and glittered. "Me think you not tell true."
"Well,
there's always the possibility that some rival magician has cast a spell on my
machine." Flandry wasted more seconds explaining his words. "I'd
better make a fresh magic to find out if that's the case."
"We not find water
quick, you dead," Kazar stated flady.
Flandry looked heavenward.
His
pious gesture was rewarded with a spark in the northern sky. Metal glared, far
and far above the steppe. Oh Lord, he
thought, let
them see the kite and understand!
Outrunning
its own noise, the airboat was almost on top of them before a Voisko yelled and pointed. Then the wake came over the
plain in a prolonged thunderclap. Bourtai released the kite, jumped wildly,
tore off her jacket and waved it.
The savages bawled and scattered. Kazar threw
the transmitter circuit to earth. It smashed. He whirled on Flandry. "You
lie!" he roared, loud as the boom from the north. One hand snatched after
the Terran.
Flandry
ducked. Kazar dashed at him. Flandry dodged past. The giant snarled, tried to
turn as switfly, but failed.
Bourtai
was still waving her coat at the sky. Kazar leaped and caught her. She yelled,
twisted in his gTasp,
and tried to gouge his
eyes. He gave her a shake, and she hung dazed. He lifted her with one hand and
reached for her neck with the other.
Flandry
snatched the shovel from the hole where it lay abandoned. He ran full tilt
against the Voisko. The blade struck that looming belly with his weight behind.
Kazar yammered ear-rippingly and let Bourtai fall. The gash in him was deep but
not serious. Faster than expected, his fist smote the shovel from Flandry's
grasp. It spun through the air for meters.
Flandry
turned and ran. Anything to draw Kazar from Bourtai.
She was sitting up, but semi-conscious. A dim part of his mind wondered what
the hell ailed him, getting chivalrous at his age. The footfalls that shook the
ground drew closer. He heard a bestial bellow.
There
came a crack. The thud that followed jolted through Flandry's shinbones.
Turning, he saw Kazar's bulk stretched monstrously in the grass. A hole was
burned from shoulder blade to breast. The airboat hovered a few meters above. A
nomad stood in the open door. One hand gripped a blaster.
"Did I get him?"
he called.
Flandry
bent over Kazar. "Yes," he answered. "He's dead. Poor bastard. I didn't mean that to happen." He stopped
and closed the staring eyes.
"Did you send that
call for help?" the nomad asked.
"Yes."
Flandry helped Bourtai rise. "Here we are. But who are you?"
"From the Mangu Tuman. Stand aside. Ill land and take you aboard.
Best we hurry. These parts are crawling with Khanist ordus. If we're
caught—" The man's grin was as harsh as the noise he made while drawing a
finger across his throat.
vii
Ahghun
Tiuksky thrust his head forward. A sunbeam, trickling through one small window
in the kibitka, touched his face and etched it strongly against shadow. The
other men who sat crosslegged in a ring
on the floor became a mere background for him.
"Your
deed was evil," he declared. "Nothing can justify setting -a grass
fire. No luck can come of it."
Flandry
studied him. This noyon of the Mangu Tuman was quite young, even for these
times when few Tebten-grian men reached any great age. And he was a dashing,
gallant warrior, as everyone said and as he proved the night of the fire. But
to some extent, Arghun was the local equivalent of a prude.
"The
fire did no great harm, did it?" asked the Terran mildly.
"And
the motive justified the act," said Toghrul Vavilov, Gur-Khan of the
tribe. He stroked his beard and exchanged knowing smiles with Flandry: a
kindred hypocrite. "I only regret we failed to rescue you at once."
A
visiting chieftain exclaimed: "Your noyon verges on blasphemy himself,
Toghrul. Sir Dominic is from Terra! If a lord of Mother Terra
wishes to set a blaze, for any reason or none, who may deny him?"
Flandry felt he ought to blush, but decided
not to. "Be that as it may," he said, "I couldn't improve any
better plan."
"So
today this council has been called," added Toghrul Vavilov, as pompously
as redundancy. "The chiefs of every tribe allied with our own must hear
what this distinguished guest has to relate."
"But the fire!"
mumbled Arghun.
Eyes
went through gloom to an old man seated under the window. Furs covered frail
Juchi Ilyak so thickly that his bald parchment-skinned head looked disembodied. The Grand Shaman stroked a wisp of white beard,
blinked eyes that were still sharp in their web of wrinkles, and murmured with
a dry little smile:
"This
is not the time to dispute whether the rights of a man from Holy Terra override
the Yassa by which Altai lives. The question seems rather, how shall we survive
in order to raise such legal quibbles at another date?"
Arghun
tossed his reddish-black hair and snorted. "Oleg's father, and the whole
Nuru Bator dynasty before them, tried to conquer the Tebtengri. But still we
hold the north-lands. I do not think this will change overnight."
"Oh,
but it will," said Flandry in his softest voice. "Unless something
is done soon, it will."
He treated himself to one
of his few remaining cigarettes and leaned forward so that the light would pick out his own features.
Straight gray eyes and long thin nose were exotic on this planet, hence
impressive. "Let me summarize your situation as I understand it," he
said. "Throughout their history, Altaians have used chemical power and
stored solar energy. The only nuclear generators demanded by their way of life
are a few small, stationary ones at Ulan Baligh and at the mines. Your
internecine wars on Altai have also been confined to chemical and electrical
energy weapons. Your economy would not have supported atomic war, even if the
feuds and boundary disputes which started your fights were worth such
destruction. Hence you Tebtengri always had sufficient military strength to
hold the northlands. Though the rest of the planet were
to ally against you, it would not be able to bring enough force to bear on
these sub-arctic pastures to drive you out of them. Am I right?"
They
nodded. He continued: "But that situation has now been changed. Oleg Khan
is getting help from outside this planet. Some of his new toys I have seen with
my own eyes. Craft that can fly flourishes around your best, or can go beyond
the atmosphere to swoop down elsewhere; batde-cars whose armor your strongest
chemical explosives cannot pierce; missiles that can devastate so wide an area
that no amount of dispersal can save you. As yet, Oleg hasn't got much modem
equipment like that. But more will arrive within the next several months. When
he has enough to crush you with ease, hell do so.
"What's
still worse, from my viewpoint, he will have allies that are not human."
They stirred uneasily. Only
Juchi the Shaman remained quiet, watching Flandry with impassive eyes. A clay
pipe in his hand sent bitter incense toward the roof. "We have nonhuman
friends of our own," he said calmly. "Who are these creatures that
Oleg has invoked?"
"Merseians,"
Flandry answered. "They're another starfar-ing, imperial race—and man
stands in the path of their ambitions. For a long time now, we've been
deadlocked with them, nominally at peace, actually skirmishing, subverting,
assassinating, probing for weaknesses. They have
decided Altai would make a useful naval base.
"Outright
invasion would be expensive, especially since Terra would be sure to notice so
massive an operation and would probably interfere. But there's a more subde approach,
by which Altai can be taken over under Terra's nose. The Merseians will supply
Oleg with enough help that he can conquer the whole planet. In exchange, once
he has done so, he will let in the Merseian engineers. Altaians will dig and
die to build fortresses; this entire world will become one impregnable nest of
strongholds; then, and only then, will the Merseian fleet move in, because then
it will be too late if Terra realizes what has been happeningl"
"Does
Oleg himself know about these plans?" asked Toghrul roughly.
Flandry
shrugged. "Insufficiendy well, I imagine. He thinks he can drive a good
bargain. Like many another puppet ruler, hell wake up
one morning and see the strings they've tied on him. But then hell be helpless too. I've watched this sort of thing occur
elsewhere."
In
fact, he added to himself, I've helped bring it about now and then—on
Terras behalf.
Toghrul
entwined nervous fingers. "I believe you," he said. "We have had
glimpses, heard rumors, gotten bits of information
from travelers and spies. What you have told us makes the puzzle fall together.
. . . But what can we do? Can we summon the Terrans?"
"Aye—aye,
call the Terrans, wam the Mother of Menl" Flandry felt how passion flared
in the scarred warriors beside him. He had gathered erenow that the Tebtengri
had no use for Subotai the Prophet (a major reason why the southern tribes were
hostile to them) but built their own religion around a hard-boiled sort of
humanistic pantheism. It grew on him how strong a symbol the ancestral planet
was to them.
He
didn't want to tell them what Terra was actually like these days. (Or, perhaps, had always been. He suspected men are only
saints and heroes in retrospect.) Indeed, he dared not speak of sottish
emperors, venal nobles, faithless wives, servile commons, to this armed and
burning reverence. But
luckily, there's a practical problem at hand.
"Terra
is farther from here than Merseia is," he pointed out. "Even the
nearest base we've got is more distant than their nearest one. I've no reason
to believe there are any Merseians on Altai at this moment; but surely Oleg has
at least one fast spaceship at his disposal to inform them if anything goes
wrong. Suppose we do get word of the facts to Terra, and Oleg knows we have
done so. What do you think he will do?" Flandry nodded, owlishly.
"Correct on the first guess! Oleg will send a message to that closest
Merseian base. I know that a heavy naval force is currently stationed there,
and I doubt very much if the Merseians will abandon their investment here tamely.
No, they will dispatch their ships at once to this planet, blast the Tebten-gri
lands with nuclear bombs, and dig in. That won't be as smooth and thorough a
job as present plans call for, but it will be effective. By the time a Terran
fleet of reasonable size can get here, the Merseians will be quite well entrenched.
The hardest task in space warfare is to get a strong enemy off a planet firmly
held. Under the present logistic circumstances, it may prove impossible. But
even if, thanks to our precipitating matters ahead of the Merseian timetable,
even if the Terrans do blast them loose, Altai will have been turned into a
radioactive desert in the process."
Silence
clapped down. Men stared at each other and back to Flandry with a horror he had
seen before and which still hurt him to behold. Wherefore he continued hastily:
"So
the one rational objective for us, right now, is to get a secret message out. If Oleg and the Merseians don't suspect that Terra knows
about their scheme, they won't hurry it up. Instead of Merseia, it can be Terra
which suddenly arrives here in strength, seizes Ulan Baligh, establishes underground emplacements and orbital forts.
Under such circumstances, Merseia will not fight at all. They'll write Altai
off. I know their basic strategy well enough to predict that much with absolute
certainty. You see, they'll no longer be able to make Altai an offensive base
against Terra—the cost would be out of proportion to any gain—on the other
hand, Terra, in full possession of Altai, cannot use it as a base for
aggression against them." He should Tiave said
will not; but he let these people make the
heartbreaking discovery for themselves, that Terra's only real interest was to
preserve a fat status quo.
Arghun
sprang to his feet. As he crouched under the low ceiling, primness dropped from
him. His leonine, young face became a sun; he cried, "And Terra will have
usl We will be restored to humankindl"
While
the Tebtengri whooped and laughed aloud at that realization, Flandry smoked his
cigarette with care. After all, he thought, provincial status needn't corrupt
them. Not too much. There would be a small naval base, an Imperial governor, an
enforced peace between the tribes, and a reasonable tax. Otherwise, they could
live pretty much as they chose. Proselytization wasn't worth Terra's while.
What freedom the Altaians lost here at home, their young men would regain
simply by having access to the stars. Wasn't that so?
Juchi,
the Shaman, whose office bound together all these chiefs, spoke in a whisper
that pierced: "Let us have silence. We must weigh how this may be
done."
Flandry
waited till the men had calmed somewhat before he gave them a rueful smile.
"That's a good question," he said. "Next question, please."
"The
Betelgeuseans—" rumbled Toghrul.
"I
doubt if we can get our message out through them," said another gur-khan.
"Were I Oleg the Damned, I would put a guard around every individual
Betelgeusean, as well as every spaceship, until the danger is past. I would
inspect every article of trade, every fur or hide or smoke gem, before it was
loaded."
"I myself would send to Merseia at
once," shivered someone else.
"No, we needn't fear that," said
Flandry. "I'm sure the Merseians won't commit themselves to so hazardous
an action as the immediate occupation of Altai, unless they're fairly sure that
Terra does have knowledge of their project. They have too many commitments
elsewhere to go off half-cocked at every hint of possible trouble."
"Besides,"
said Juchi, "Oleg has pride. He will not make himself a laughing stock to
his masters, screaming for help because one fugitive is loose in the
Khrebet."
"Anyhow,"
put in Toghrul, "he knows how impossible it is for Orluk Flandry to
smuggle the information out. Those tribes who do not belong to our Shamanate
may dislike the harsh Yesukai rule, but they are still more suspicious of us,
who traffic with the Ice Dwellers and scorn their stupid Prophet. We aren't
likely to get the help of any southerner. Even supposing someone would agree to
brand our message on an outgoing hide, or slip a letter into a bale of pelts,
or microscribe it on a gem, and even supposing such words did get past Oleg's
inspectors, the cargo would still, most likely, wait months in some
Betelgeusean warehouse before anyone looked at it."
"We
don't have many months before Oleg overruns your country, and the Merseians
arrive," finished Flandry.
He sat for a while listening to them chew
desperate and impractical schemes. The air in here was hot and stuffy. All at
once he could take no more. He rose. "I need a fresh breath and a chance
to think," he said.
Juchi
nodded grave dismissal. Arghun jumped up again. "I come too," he
said.
"If
the Terran desires your company," said Toghrul. "You might show him
our ordu, since he came direcdy from his sleep to this
conference."
"Thanks," said
Flandry absent-mindedly.
He
went out the door and down a short ladder. The kibitka in which the chiefs met
was actually a large truck. Its box was fitted out as austere living quarters.
On its top, as on top of all the larger and slower vehicles, the flat black
plates of a solar-energy collector were tilted to face Krasna. The accumulator
banks, thus charged, were auxiliary sources of power for the nomads. Such roofs
made this wandering town seem like a flock of futuristic turtles scattered
across the hills.
The Khrebet was not a high range. Gullied
slopes, gray-green with thornbush and yellow with sere ^rass, climbed in the
north. Somewhere beyond that horizon they were buried under the glacial cap. Downward swept a cold wind, whining about Flandry. He
shivered and drew tighter about him the coat hastily sewn to his measure. The
sky was very pale today, almost white; the rings stood low and wan in the
south, where the hills emptied into steppe.
As
far as Flandry could see, the heards of the Mangu Tuman were spread out in care
of boys mounted on var-yaks. They were not catde. Terra's higher mammals are
not easily raised on other planets; rodents are tougher and more adaptable. The
first colonists brought rabbits with them, which they mutated and crossbred by
the usual genetic engineering methods. That ancestor could hardly be recognized
in the cow-sized grazing beasts of today. They looked more like giant
dun-colored guineau pigs than anything else. Separate from them Flandry saw
occasional flocks of transformed ostriches. Arghun gestured with pride.
"Yonder
kibitka houses the ordu library," he said. "Those children seated on
the ground nearby are being taught the alphabet."
Flandry
nodded appreciation, though he was not surprised. Obviously illiterates could
not have operated the ground vehicles he saw or the negagrav aircraft
patrolling overhead. Nomadism was quite compatible with a high education. Given
microprint, you could carry thousands of volumes along on your travels. Arghun
indicated the trucks —sometimes organized in trains—that held the camp
arsenals, sickbay, machine ships, and small factories for textiles and
ceramics.
The poorer families had no kibitkas but were
crowded into yurts: dome-like tents of felt, mounted on motor carts. But no one
seemed hungry or ill-clad. It was not an impoverished nation which carried
such' gleaming missiles on flatbed cars, or operated such a fleet of light
tanks, or armed every adult with such efficient (if somewhat outmoded)
infantry weapons. In answer to Flandry's questions, Arghun explained that the
entire tribe, male and female, was a military as well as a social and economic
unit. Everybody worked and everybody fought. While unequal wealth did exist,
no one was allowed to go without the necessities.
"Where does your metal
come from?" the Terran inquired.
"The grazing lands of
each tribe include some mines,"
Arghun
said. "In our yearly round with the herds, we spend some time there,
digging and smelting. Elsewhere on the circuit we reap semi-wild grain planted
the year before; and we tap crude oil from wells we possess and pass it through
a robotic refiner plant. What we cannot produce ourselves, we trade with others
to get. One reason the Tebtengri Shamanate has survived despite opposition is
that between its various tribes, it has in its circumpolar lands all needful
natural resources. In fact, right yonder in the Khrebet lies
one of Altai's few really rich iron ore deposits."
"It sounds like a
virtuous life you lead," said Flandry.
His
slight shudder did not escape Arghun, who hastened to say: "Oh, we have
our pleasures too, Orluk; feasts, games and sports, the arts, the great fair at
Kievka Hill when the tribes meet and—" He broke off.
Bourtai
came walking past a campfire. Flandry could sense her loneliness. Women in this
culture were not much inferior to men. She was free to go whither she would,
and was a heroine for having brought the Terran here. But her clan was slain.
She had not even been given any work to do.
She
saw the men and ran toward them. "What has been decided?"
"Nothing yet." Flandry caught her hands. Now that he was rested, he could appreciate
her good looks. His face crinkled its best smile. "I couldn't see going in
circles with a lot of men when I might be going in circles with you. So I came
out here, hoping to find you. And my hopes were granted."
A flush crept up her high, flat cheeks. She
wasn't used to glibness. Her gaze fluttered downward. "I do not know what
to say," she whispered.
"You need say nothing.
Only be," he leered.
"No,
I am no one. The daughter of a dead man . . . my dowry long ago plundered . . .
and you are a Terran orlukl It is not rightl"
"Do you think your
dowry matters?" asked Arghun.
A
strained note in his voice drew Flandry's attention. "Have you two
met?" the Terran inquired.
"Yes.
We spoke for a while this morning," said Arghun stiffly.
He
clamped dignity back on himself like a mask. Flandry gave him a long glance,
shrugged, and sighed. "Come on," he said. "We'd better return to
the kurultai."
He
didn't release the girl, but tucked her arm under his. She came along mutely.
Through the heavy garments he could feel her tremble a litde. The wind ruffled
a stray lock of dark hair.
As
they neared the kibitka of the council, its door opened. Juchi Ilyak stood
there, thin and bent. Somehow, though, his low voice carried across meters of
blustering air:
"Orluk,
perhaps there is a way for us. We can at least seek wiser counsel. Dare you
come with me to the Ice Flock?"
VIII
Tengri
Nor, the Ghost Lake, lay far in the north. When
Flandry and Juchi stepped from their airboat, it was still day, and the rings
were invisible. At night, the Shaman said, they were a glimmer, half seen on
the southern horizon. Krasna looked like an ember in this air, at this time;
the snowfields were tinged red. But as the sun toppled toward darkness, purple
shadows glided from drift to drift.
Flandry
had not often met such quietness as this. Even in space, there was always the
low noise of the machinery that kept one alive. Here, the air seemed to freeze
all sound. The tiniest of winds blew up fine, ice crystals, whirling and
glistening above the snowbanks; but he could not hear it His fur-muffled body
and heavily greased face felt no immediate cold—not in so dry an
atmosphere—but breath was whetted in his nostrils. He thought he could smell
the lake, but he wasn't sure. None of his Terran senses were
quite to be trusted in this winter place.
With
unexpected loudness, shocking like a gunshot, he said, "Do they know we are here?"
"Oh,
yes. They have our ways. They will soon come meet us." Juchi looked
northward at the ruins that stood mountainous on the lakeshore. Snow had half buried those marble walls, white on white, with the
sundown light bleeding across shattered colonnades. Frost from the
Shaman's breath began to stiffen his beard.
"I
suppose they recognize the
markings on our boat,"
Flandry
said. "But what if the Kha Khan sent a disguised vessel?"
"That
was tried once or twice, by Oleg's father. His craft was destroyed by some
means, while he was still far south of here. The dwellers are quite
alert." Juchi raised his arms and began swaying on his feet. He threw back
his head and closed his eyes. A high-pitched chant rose from his lips.
Flandry
had no idea whether the old man was indulging superstition, practicing a ritual
of courtesy, or doing what was actually needful to summon the glacier folk. He
had been in too many strange places to dogmatize. He waited, his gaze ranging
the scene.
Beyond
the ruins, westward along the lakeshore, a forest grew. White slender trees
with intricate, oddly geometric branches flashed like icicles, like jewels.
Their thin, bluish leaves vibrated continuously. It seemed that they should
tinkle, that this whole forest was glass. Flandry had never known a wilderness
so quiet. The snow between those gleaming boles was carpeted by low, gray
plants. The rocks which thrust up here and there were almost buried under such
lichenous growth. Had the place been less cold and hushed, it would have
suggested a tropical richness.
The
lake reached out of sight, pale-blue between the snowbanks. As evening swept
across the waters, the mists that hovered above were drawn white against
shadow.
Juchi
had explained the biochemical basis of polar life on Altai. Originally
protoplasmic, terrestroid, the native forms had been forced to adapt in past
ages to falling temperature. They had done so by synthesizing methanol.
A
fifty-fifty mixture of methanol and water remained fluid to below minus forty
degrees. When it finally did freeze, it did not expand into cell-disrupting ice
crystals; it simply, and gradually, turned into slush. Vegetation and the more
primitive animals remained functional till about seventy below, Centigrade;
after that they did not die, but became dormant. The higher animals, being
homeothermic, would not suspend animation till the air reached minus a hundred
degrees.
The
polar lakes and rivers were likewise charged with alcohol accumulated from
aquatic species as they died. Thus they remained fluid till midwinter. The
chief problem of life in the glacial regions was to find minerals. Bacteria
brought up some from below the permanent ice. Wherever rock was exposed,
animals would travel far to lick and gnaw it; then, returning to their forests,
they contributed the heavy atoms when they died. But in general, the Altaian
ecology made do without. For example, no native animal possessed bones.
Instead, chitinous and cartilaginous materials "had been elaborated far
beyond anything seen on Terra.
Juchi's account had sounded plausible and
interesting in a warm kibitka on a grassy slope, with microtexts on hand to
supply quantitative details. But when he stood on million-year-old snow,
watching night creep like smoke between crystal trees and cyclopean ruins,
hearing the Shaman chant in an unknown language beneath a huge green sunset
sky, Flandry discovered that scientific explanations were but feeble attempts
at the truth.
One moon was aloft. He saw something drift
across its copper shield. The objects—a flock of white spheres, ranging in
diameter from a few centimeters to a giant bigger than the airboat—came nearer.
Tentacles streamed from beneath the globes. Juchi broke off his call.
"Ah," he said matter-of-factiy, "the aeromedusae. The dwellers
cannot be far."
"What?"
Flandry hugged himself. The cold was beginning to be felt now, as it gnawed
through fur and leather toward flesh.
"Our name for them. They look like primitive organisms, but actually they are well evolved,
with sense organs and brains. They electrolyze hydrogen from water to inflate
themselves. Propulsion is by air forced backwards. They feed on small game
which they shock insensible through those tentacles. The Ice Folk have
domesticated them."
Flandry
stole a glance at a jagged wall, rearing above the gloom to catch a last
sunbeam. "They did more than that, once," he said with pity.
The
Shaman frowned a little. "We humans really have no idea whether the
Dwellers have degenerated or not," he said. "I daresay intelligence
appeared on Altai in the first place as a response to worsening conditions—the
warming of Krasna in the past few million years, after the planet's biosphere
was adapted to lower temperatures. Superficially it would appear that the new
race built a superior civilization which has subsequendy
collapsed. The shortage of metals and the slow shrinkage of the ice caps might
have been the cause . . . And yet that is not what the Dwellers themselves
assert. They show no sense of having lost a glorious past." His slanted eyes squinted in concentration as lie sought words. "They—as nearly as
I can understand them, —had deliberately abandoned their material civilization
after they had found better methods." Two beings came from the forest.
At
first glance they were like dwarfish, white-furred men. Then you saw details of
squat build and rubbery limbs. The feet were long and webbed, expandable to
broad snowshoes or foldable to short skis. The hands had three fingers opposed
by a thumb set in the middle of the wrist. The ears were feathery tufts; fine
tendrils waved above each round, black eye; sad, gray monkey faces peered from
a ruff of hair. Their breath did not steam like human breath, for their body
temperature was well below the Centigrade zero. One of them bore a stone lamp
in which an alcohol flame wavered. The other had an intricately carved, white
staff. In some undefinable way, the circling medusae appeared to be guided by
it.
They
came near, halted, and waited. Nothing moved but the low wind, ruffling their
fur and streaming the flame. Juchi stood just as quiet. Flandry
made himself conform, though his teeth wanted to clap. He had seen many
kinds of life, on worlds more foreign than this. But there was a strangeness
here that got under his skin and crawled.
The
sun went down. Thin, dustless air gave no twilight. Stars burst forth in a
sudden blackness. The edge of the rings painted a remote arc. The moon threw
cuprous radiance over the snow and crowded the forest with shadows.
A
meteor split the sky with, noiseless lightning. Juchi seemed to take that as a
signal. He began talking. His voice was like ice that tones as it contracts in
midnight cold: not altogether a human voice. Flandry began to understand what a
Shaman was and why he presided over the allied northland tribes. Few men indeed
had the intelligence needed to master the Dwellers' language and deal with
them. Yet a large part of the Tebtengri strength lay in their relationship with
these beings. Metal was traded for organic fuel and curious, plastic substances
from Tengri Nor; mutual defense was maintained against
the Kha Khan's sky raiders.
A
Dweller made reply. Juchi turned to Flandry. "I have related who you are
and from whence you come, Orluk. They are not surprised. Before I spoke of your
requirements, he said their—I do not know precisely what the word means, but
it has something to do with communication—he said they could reach Terra
herself, as far as mere distance was concerned, though only through
dreams?"
Flandry
stiffened. It could be. How long had men been hunting for some
faster-than-light equivalent of radio? A handful of
centuries. What was that, compared to the age of the universe? Or even
the age of Altai? He realized suddenly, not with his mere brain but with his
whole organism, how old this planet was.
"Telepathy?"
he blurted. "I've never heard of telepathy with that great a range."
"No.
That is not what the Dwellers mean. Were it so, they would have learned of this
Merseian situation long ago, and warned us. His concept is not one that I can
quite understand." Juchi added with great care: "In fact, he admitted
to me that every power the Dwellers possess looks useless for our
purposes."
Flandry sighed. "I might have known. A
telepathic message to the Imperial Navy would have been too simple. No chance
for heroics."
"The
Dwellers say they freed themselves ages ago from those cumbersome buildings and
engines we humans still use," Juchi told him. "They have been free to
think—to follow pure thought toward some unknowable ultimate—for longer than we
can imagine. But by the same token, they have lost many purely material powers.
They can withstand aggression from Ulan Baligh; but against the spaceships and
atomic weapons of Merseia they would be helpless."
Half seen in red moonlight,
an autochthone spoke.
Juchi
continued. "He says they do not fear racial death. If Merseia should
exterminate them, they will accept it calmly for themselves. All things end,
yet nothing ever really ends. However, it would be preferable
that their lesser brethren, the beasts and plants of the ice forest, have a few
more million years to live, so that they also may approach truth."
Which is a fine, resounding ploy, thought Flandry, provided
it be not the simple fact.
"They,
like us Tebtengri, are not unwilling to become clients of the Terrestrial
Empire," said Juchi. "To them, political status means nothing. They
will never have enough in common with men to be troubled by any Imperial governor.
They know Terra will not gratuitously harm them— whereas Merseia would, if only
by provoking that planet-wide battle of space fleets you have described.
Therefore the Cold People will assist us in any way they can. But at present
they know of no solution."
"Do
these two speak for their whole race?" asked Flandry dubiously.
"And for the forests and the
waters," Juchi said.
Flandry
thought of a biosphere which was one great organism, and nodded. "If you
say so, I'll take your word. But if they can't help . . ."
Juchi
gave an old man's sigh, like wind over the acrid waters. "I had hoped they
could. But now, have you no fresh plan of your own?"
Flandry
stood a long time, feeling the chill creep inward. At
last he said: "If the only spaceships on Altai are at Ulan Baligh, then
evidendy we must get into the city somehow, to post our message. Have these
folk any means of secredy contacting a Betelgeusean?"
Juchi
inquired. "No," he translated the answer. "Not if the traders
are closely guarded; and their awareness tells them that that is so."
The
lamp bearer stooped forward so that the dull-blue fire brought his countenance
out of darkness. Could as human an emotion as sorrow really be
read into those eyes? Words droned. Juchi listened.
"They can get us into the city,
undetected, on any night which is cold enough," he said. "The medusae
can carry us through the air. They can actually see and avoid radar beams. A
medusa is too cold to show on an infrared scope, and of course would not activate
a metal detector. A single man bome in its tentacles would be too small to
register on any grounded instrument." The Shaman paused. "But what
use is that? If we want to get anyone into Ulan Baligh, he can simply walk in,
disguised."
torch
among the constellations. "Could we know there was such a ship in the
neighborhood?"
"I
daresay, since it could not approach undetected, it would radio Ulan Baligh
spaceport in the usual way. Anything else would be so suspicious that a patrol
would be sent immediately." Juchi conferred with the nonhumans.
"Yes," he said, "we could be apprised of the vessel's presence.
Our friends here suggest that we place men, carried by medusae, unnoticeably
far above Ulan Baligh. They can carry receivers. By thus intercepting the space
radio beam, they can listen to the conversation between the ship and the
portmaster. Would that serve?"
Flandry breathed out in a
great freezing gust. "It might."
Suddenly and joyously, he
laughed.
Perhaps no such sound had ever before rung
across Ten-gri Nor. The Dwellers started back, like frightened small animals.
Juchi stood in shadow. For that instant, only Captain Dominic Flandry of
Imperial Terra had light upon him. He stood with his head raised into the
copper moonglow, and laughed like a boy.
"By heaven," he
shouted, "we're going to try itl"
IX
An
autumn gale came down off
the pole. It gathered snow on its way across the steppe and struck Ulan Baligh
near midnight. In minutes
the high, red roofs were lost to sight. Close by a lighted window, a man could
see horizontal white streaks, whirling out of darkness toward darkness. But if
he removed himself a few meters, pushing through drifts already knee-deep, the
light was gone. He stood blind, buffeted by the storm, and heard it rave.
Flandry
descended from the upper atmosphere. That cold had smitten so deep he thought
he might never be warm again. In spite of an oxygen tank, his lungs were
starving. He saw the blizzard from above as a moon-dappled, black blot. The
early ice floes on Ozero Rurik were dashed to and fro along its southern
fringe. Tentacles enmeshed him; he sat under a giant balloon that rushed earthward
from the sky. Behind him trailed a flock of other medusae, twisting along air
currents he could not feel, to avoid radar beams he could not see. Ahead of him
flew a single globe, bearing a Dweller who huddled against a cake of ice; for
the tropical storm was hell's own sulfurous wind to the polar native.
Once the snowfall enclosed him, even Flandry
could sense how much warmer the air had become. Still chilly
enough to kill him, though. He squinted into a nothingness that yelled.
Once his numbed, dangling feet struck a roof-tree. The blow came as if from far
away. Pale at first, strengthening as he neared, the red luminescence of the
Prophet's Tower shafted upward beyond sight.
Flandry groped for the nozzle at his
shoulder. The radiant spire enabled him to just barely see through the driven
flakes. Another medusa crowded close, bearing a pressure tank of paint. Somehow, Flandry reached
across the gap and made his hose fast.
Now,
attic intelligence, do you understand what I want you to do? Can you guide this
horse of mine for me?
The
wind yammered reply. Deeper and steadier, he heard noises like blasting: the
powerful breaths by which his medusa propelled itself. A gust threw him toward
the tablet wall. His carrier wobbled in mid-air, fighting to maintain
position. An inlaid letter loomed before him, big as a house, black upon
shining white. He aimed his hose and squirted.
Damnl
The green jet was flung aside in a flaw of wind. He corrected his aim and saw
the paint strike. It remained liquid even at this temperature. No matter, it
was sticky enough, and would be dry before morning. The first tank-ful was
quickly expended. Flandry coupled to another one, carried by another medusa. Blue this time. All the Tebtengri had contributed all the
squirtable paint they had—every hue in God's rainbow. Flandry could but hope
there would be enough.
There
was. He nearly fainted from cold and weariness before the end of the job. Even
so, when the last huge stroke was done—each character was 150 meters tall—he
could not resist adding an exclamation point at the very bottom.
"Let's
go," he whispered. Somehow, the Dweller knew and pointed his staff. The
medusa flock sprang back through the clouds.
Flandry had a moment's glimpse of a military
airboat. It had detached itself from the squadron patrolling above the spaceport. Maybe the pilot was going off
duty. As the medusae topped the storm, entering clear moonlight and ringlight,
the craft veered. Its guns stabbed blue bolts into the living globes. Flandry
reached for the futile blaster at his hip. His fingers were like wood, he
couldn't close them!
The
medusae, all but his and the Dweller's, whipped about. They swarmed around the
vessel, laid tentacles fast and clung. The metal was nearly buried in their
cluster. Electric fires crawled forth; sparks dripped. These creatures could
build potential enough to break hydrogen from the water molecule. Flandry
recalled that a metallic fuselage was a Faraday cage, immune to lightning. But
when concentrated electric discharges burned holes, shattered glassite,
spot-welded control circuits—the boat staggered. The medusae detached
themselves. The boat plummeted.
Flandry relaxed and let his
animal bear him northward.
The town seethed. There had been rioting in
the Street of Gunsmiths, and blood still dappled the new-fallen snow. Armed men
tramped on guards around palace and spaceport. Outside their formations, the
mobs hooted. From the lakeshore encampments came war
music. Pipes squealed, gongs crashed; the
young warriors rode their varyaks in breakneck circles and cursed.
Oleg
Khan looked out the window of his tower room. "It shall be made good to
you," he muttered. "Oh, yes, my people, you shall have
satisfaction."
Turning
to the Betelgeusean who had just been fetched, he glared into the blue visage.
"You have seen?"
"Yes, your majesty." Zalat's
Altaian, usually fluent and little accented, grew thick. He was a badly shaken being. Only the
prompt arrival of -the royal household troops had saved his ship from
destruction by a thousand shrieking fanatics. "I swear we had nothing to
do with . . . we are innocent as—"
"Of course! Of course!" Oleg Yesukai brought one palm
down in an angry slicing motion. "I am not one of those ignorant rodent
herders out there. Every Betelgeusean has been under constant surveillance
since—" He checked himself.
"I
know that, your majesty," faltered Zalat. "But I am Still unsure as to your reason."
"Did
I not make it plain to' you? You know the Terran visitor was killed by
Tebtengri agents, the very day he arrived. It bears out what I have long suspected, the north-land tribes have become religiously
xenophobic. Since they doubtless have otiier operatives in the city, they may
well try to murder you Betelgeuseans as well. Thus it is best that you be
closely guarded and have contact only with men who we
know are loyal, until the situation is under full control."
Somewhat calmed by his own words, Oleg sat
down, stroked his beard and watched Zalat from narrowed eyes. "I regret
you were so nearly lynched this morning," he said smoothly. "Because
you are out-worlders, and the defiling symbols are not in the Altaian alphabet,
the mob jumped to the conclusion that it was some dirty word in your language.
I, of course, know better. From studying the wreckage of a patrol craft lost
last night, my technicians have deduced that the outrage involved the arctic
devilfolk, doubtlessly in concert with the Tebtengri. Such a vile deed would
not trouble those tribes in the least; they are not followers of the Prophet.
But what puzzles me is—I admit this frankly, though confidentially—why? A daring, grueling task... . . .
merely to give us a wanton insult?"
He
glanced back at the window. From this angle, the Tower looked normal. You had
to be on the north to see what had been done: the tablet wall disfigured by
more than a kilometer of paint. But from that side, the fantastic desecration
was visible across entire horizons.
The
Kha Khan doubled a fist. "It shall be repaid them," he said.
"This has rallied the orthodox tribes behind me as no other thing
imaginable. When their children are boiled before their eyes, the Tebtengri
will realize what they have done."
Zalat
hesitated. "Your majesty—" "Yes?"
Oleg snarled.
"Those symbols ... on the Tower ...
they are letters of the Terran alphabet." "What"
"I
know the Anglic language somewhat. Most Betel-geuseans do. But how could those
Tebtengri ever have learned—"
Oleg, who knew the answer to that, interrupted by seizing the captain's
tunic and shaking him. "What
does it say?" he
yelled.
"That's
the strangest part, your majesty," stammered Zalat. "It doesn't mean
anything. The word makes no sense."
"Well,
what sound does it spell, then? Speak before I have your teeth pulledl"
"May Day," choked
Zalat. "Just May Day, your majesty."
Oleg
let him go. For a while there was silence. At last the Khan said: "Is that
a nonsense phrase, or an actual Terran word?"
"Well
... I suppose it could be a word. I
don't claim to be intimate with, uh, with every slang phrase or idiom or
technicality in the language. Uh, well, May is the name of a month in the
Terran calendar, and Day means 'diumal period.'" Zalat rubbed his yellow
eyes, searching for logic. "Perhaps May Day means the first day of
May."
Oleg
nodded slowly. "That sounds reasonable. The Altaian calendar, which is
modified from the ancient Terran, has a similar name for a month of what is
locally springtime. Mayday . . . could it mean our Day of the Spring Festival? Perhaps."
He
got up, returned to the window and brooded across the city. "It's long
until May," he said. "If that was an incitement to anything it's
foredoomed. We are going to break the Tebtengri this very winter. By next
Spring Festival Day—" He cleared his throat and finished curdy: "By
then, certain other projects will be well under way."
"How
could it be an incitement anyhow, your majesty?" argued Zalat, emboldened.
"Who in Ulan Baligh could read it?"
"True.
I can only conjecture, some wild act of defiance or superstition, hoping to
change our luck for the worse." The Khan turned on his heel. "You are
leaving shortly, captain, are you not?"
"Yes,
your majesty. As soon as your inspectors have finished
checking our cargo."
"You shall convey a message. No other
traders are to come here for one year. We will have troubles enough, suppressing
the Tebtengri and their aboriginal allies, without keeping guard on
foreigners." Oleg shrugged. "Besides, there would be no reason for
merchants to visit us. The coming war will disrupt the caravans. Afterward, when things are set in order . . . perhaps."
Privately, he doubted that trade would ever
be resumed. By summer, the Merseian engineers would be here and work would have
started on the great naval base. A year from now, Altai would be firmly in the
Merseian Empire. And, as its viceroy, the Kha Khan would have no time for
commerce. Instead he would be leading his warriors to batdes in the stars, more
glorious and full of booty than any ancient hero had dreamed.
X
Winter came early to the northlands. Snow fell and
lay endlessly on the plains, under a sky like blue steel. The Mangu Tuman
proceeded on their migratory cycle. Wagons and herds and people were a hatful
of dust strewn across immensity. Here and there a fire sent a thin smoke-streak
vertically into the windless air. Krasna hung low in the southwest, a frosty
red-gold wheel.
Three persons glided from the main ordu. They
were on skis, rifles slung behind their parkas, hands gripping tethers which
led to a small negagrav tow unit. It flew swiftly, pulling them, so that the
skis sang on the thin crisp snow.
Arghun
Tiliksky said hard-voiced: "I can appreciate,
Orluk Flandry, that you and Juchi Ilyak keep secret the reason for that Tower
escapade, five weeks ago. What no man knows, no man can reveal if captured. Yet
you seem quite blithe about the consequences. Have you not heard what our spies
and scouts relate? Infuriated warriors flock to Oleg Yesukai, who has pledged
to annihilate us before next thaw. Never before was so great and firm an army gathered against us. In consequence, the whole
Tebtengrian alliance cannot spread around the arctic circle
as hitherto, but must remain close together. And there is not enough forage
under the snow for so many herds in so small an area. I say to you, the Khan
need not invade. He need only wait. By spring, famine will have done half his
work for himl"
"Let's hope he plans on that," said
Flandry. "Less strenuous than fighting, isn't it?"
Arghun's
angry young face swung toward him. The noyon clipped: "I do not share the
common awe of everything Terran. You are as human as I. In this environment,
where you are untrained, you are more fallible. I warn you plainly, unless you
here and now give me good reason to do otherwise, I shall request a kurultai.
And at it I will argue that we cease this waiting—that we strike now at Ulan
Baligh, while we still have full bellies."
Bourtai cried aloud, "Nol That would be asking for ruin.
They
outnumber us, the Khanists, three or four to one. And I have seen some of the
new engines the Merseians brought them. If we invaded the south, it would be
like animals invading a butcher's corral."
"It
would be quick, at least." Arghun glared at Flan dry. "Well?"
The
Terran sighed. He might have expected this. In the past weeks, Bourtai had
always been near him, and Arghun had always been near her. The noyon had given
him surly words before now. He might have known that this invitation to hunt
sataru—mutant ostriches escaped from the herds and gone wild—masked something
else. Well, Arghun was decent to warn him.
"If you don't trust me," he said,
"though cosmos knows I've fought and bled and had my nose frostbitten in
your cause, can't you trust Juchi Ilyak? He and the Dwellers know my scheme.
They will assure you that our success depends on hanging back and avoiding
battle as long as possible."
"Juchi grows old," said Arghun.
"His mind is feeble-Hoy, there!"
He yanked a guide line. The negagrav unit
purred to a stop and hung in mid-air, halfway along a slope. Politics dropped
from Arghun; he pointed at the snow with a hunting dog's eagerness.
"Spoor," he hissed. "We go by muscle power now, to sneak close.
The birds can outrun this motor if they hear it. You go straight up this hill,
Orluk Flandry. Bourtai and I will encircle it to right and left."
The
Altaians had slipped their reins and skied noiselessly from him before Flandry
quite understood what had happened. Looking down, he saw big splay tracks: a
pair of sataru. He started after them. How the deuce
did you manage these footsticks, anyway? Waddling across the snow, he tangled
them and tripped. His nose grazed a boulder. He sat up, swearing in eighteen
languages and Old Mardan phonoglyphs.
"This
they call fun?" He tottered erect. Snow had gotten under his parka hood.
It began to melt, and trickle over his ribs. "Great greasy comets,"
said Flandry, "I might have been sitting in the Everest House with a
bucket of champagne, lying to some beautiful wench about my exploits ... but no, I had to come out here and
experience theml"
Slowly,
he dragged himself up the hill. At the brow he crouched and peered through an
unnecessarily cold and thomy screen of brush. No two-legged birds, only a steep slant back down to the plain. . . . Waitl
He
saw blood and the dismembered sataru an instant before he himself was attacked.
The beasts seemed to rise from weeds and
snowdrifts, as if the earth had spewed them forth. A dozen
white, scutter-ing shapes, big as police dogs, rushed in upon them. Flandry glimpsed long, sharp noses, alert, black eyes that hated
him, high backs and hairless tails. He yanked his rifle loose and fired.
The slug bowled over the nearest animal. It rolled halfway downhill, gathered
its muscles, and crawled back with a shattered spine to fight some more.
Flandry
didn't notice. The next was at him. He shot it point blank. Flesh and bone
exploded. One of its fellows stopped to rip the meat. But the rest continued
their charge. Flandry took aim at a third. A heavy body landed between his
shoulders. He went down on his face. Jaws worried his leather coat.
Somehow
he rolled over. One arm shielded him. His rifle had fallen out of his grip. A
beast fumbled it in forepaws almost like hands. He groped for the dagger at his
belt. Two animals were upon him. Chisel teeth slashed. He managed to kick one
of them on the nose. It squealed and bounced away. But two more attacked in its
place.
Someone
yelled. The sound was nearly smothered by Flandry's heartbeat. He drove his
knife into a hard shoulder. The beast writhed free, leaving him weaponless. The
others piled on him. He fought with boots and knees, fists and elbows, in a
cloud of kicked-up snow. An animal jumped in the air, came down on his midriff.
The wind whoofed out of him. His face-defending arm
dropped. A creature went for his throat.
Arghun
arrived behind. The Altaian seized that animal by the neck. Steel flashed in
his free hand. In one expert movement he disemboweled the beast and flung it
aside. Several of the pack left Flandry, fell upon the still snarling body and
fed. Arghun booted another exactly behind the ear. It dropped as if poleaxed.
One jumped the rear to get on his back. He stooped, his left hand made a judo
heave, and as the animal soared over his head he ripped its stomach with his
knife.
"Up, man!" He hoisted the Terran. The pack chattered
around them. But then Bourtai began to shoot. She dropped them right and left.
The largest of the animals whistled. At that signal, the survivors bounded off
and were out of sight in seconds.
Arghun
sank down gasping. Bourtai flew to Flandry. "Are you hurt?" she
sobbed.
"Not
too much." He looked at the noyon. "Thanks," he said
inadequately.
"You
are a guest," grunted Arghun. After a moment: "They grow bolder each
year. I had never expected to be attacked this near an ordu. Something must be
done about them, if we live through the winter."
"What are they?"
Flandry shuddered toward relaxation.
"Gurchaku. They range the Khrebet and the northern steppes. They'll eat anything,
but prefer meat. Chiefly they kill feral animals, but they also steal from our
herds, and people have died under their jaws." Arghun looked grim.
"They were not as large in my grandfather's day, nor as cunning."
Flandry nodded.
"Rats."
"I
know what rats are," said Bourtai. "But the
gurchaku—" "A new genus. Similar things have happened on other
colonized planets." Flandry wished for a cigarette. He wished so hard that
Bourtai had to remind him to continue. "Oh, yes. Some of the stowaway rats
on your ancestors' ships remained small pests, but others moved into the wilds
as the country became Terrestrialized. They changed,
as the Voiskoye changed, but even faster because of having shorter generations.
Yes, an early job for a Terran commissioner here will be to wipe out the
gurchaku. Pity, in a way.
They look like a species with interesting possibilities."
He
managed a tired grin at Bourtai. "After all," he said, "if a
frontier planet has beautiful girls, tradition requires that it have monsters
as well."
Her blush was like fire.
They
returned to camp in silence. Flandry entered the yurt given him, dressed his
wounds, washed and changed clothes. Then he flopped down on his bunk and stared
at the ceiling. He reflected bitterly on the assorted romancing he had heard
about the High Frontier in general and the dashing adventurers of the
Intelligence Corps in particular. So what did it amount to in practice? A few
nasty moments with men or giant rats that wanted to kill you, stinking leather
clothes, wet feet, chilblains and frostbite, unseasoned food, creaking wheels
replaced by squeaking runners, temperance, chastity, early rising, weighty
speech with tribal elders, not a book he could enjoy or a joke he could understand
for light-years. He yawned, rolled on his stomach, and tried to sleep. After a
while he gave that up and began to wish that Arghun's reckless advice would be
followed. Anything to break this dreariness!
A tap on the door. He started to his feet, bumped his head on a curved ridgepole, swore,
and said, "Come in." The caution of years laid a hand on his blaster.
As
the door opened he saw the short winter day was near an end. A red streak
lingered above one edge of the world. His overhead lamp picked out Bourtai. She
entered,, closed the door, and stood silendy.
"Why . . . hullo." Flandry paused. "What brings you
here?"
"I
came to see if you were well." Her eyes did not meet his.
"Oh?
Oh, yes. Yes, of course," he said stupidly. "Kind
of you. I mean, uh, shall I make
some tea?"
"Are you certain your bites were not
serious? Did you put on an antiseptic?"
"Sure, sure. I do know a few things about taking care of myself."
Automatically, Flandry added with a smile: "I could wish I didn't, though. So lovely a
nurse—"
Again
he saw the blood rise in her face. Suddenly he understood. He would have
realized earlier, had Altaians not been basically a more shy and reticent
people than his own. A heavy pulse beat in his throat. "Sit down," he
invited.
She
lowered herself to the floor. He joined her, sliding a practiced arm over her
shoulder. She did not flinch. He let his hand glide on downward till the arm
was about her waist. She leaned against him.
"Do
you think we will see another springtime?" she
asked. Her tone was level, devoid of self-pity, phrasing a strictly practical
question.
"I
have one right here with me," he said. His lips brushed her hair.
"No
one speaks thus in the ordu," she breathed. "We are both cut off from
our kindred, you by distance and I by death. Let us not remain lonely any
longer."
He
forced himself to give fair warning: "I'll return to Terra the first
chance I get, and wouldn't recommend that you come along."
"I know," she
murmured. "But until thenl"
His mouth found hers.
There was a thump on the
door.
"Go
awayl" said Flandry and Bourtai together. They looked surprised into each
other's eyes and laughed.
"My lord," called
a man's voice, "Toghrul Gur-Khan sends me. A messages has
been detected. From a Terran spaceship!"
Flandry
knocked Bourtai over in his haste to get outside. But even as he ran, he
thought with frustration that this job of his had been hoodooed from the
outset.
XI
Invisibly
high among the thin winds
over Ulan Baligh, a warrior sat in the patient
arms of a medusa. He breathed oxygen from a tank and rested numbed fingers on a
radio transceiver. However thickly he was swaddled, his watch could only last
four hours before he was relieved. Maybe Altaians were the sole breed of man who
could endure it that long.
This
night he was rewarded. His earphones crackled with a faint,
distorted voice, in a language he had never heard. A return beam gabbled from
the spaceport. The speaker above gave place to another, who addressed the
portmaster in halting Altaian, doubdessly learned from the Betel-geuseans.
The
Tebtengrian listener dared not try any communication of his own. If detected
(and the chances were that it would be) such a call would bring a nuclear
missile streaking from Ulan Baligh. However, his transceiver amplified and
relayed what he heard. Kilometers away, another hovering medusa carried
another set which passed the message on to still another. The long chain ended
at the ordu of the Mangu Tuman. If, by some accident, the Khanists detected
that re-transmission, they would not be alarmed. Radio beams often leaked, and
the ionosphere might well bounce such leakage halfway round the planet.
Through
his binoculars, the Tebtengrian watcher actually saw the Terran ship descend.
Moonlight gleamed off sleek, armed swiftness. He whisded in
awe. Still, he thought, this was only one vessel, and officially, at
least, it was only paying a visit. Oleg, the Damned, had
camouflaged or disguised his modern installations, weeks ago. He would
receive the Terrans like butter, wine them and dine them, but they would see
what he wished them to see and hear what he wished them to hear. Presendy they
would go home again, to report that nothing worth worrying about was happening
on Altai.
The
scout sighed, beat his gloved hands together, and wished his relief would soon
arrive.
And
near the glacial cap, Dominic Flandry turned from Toghrul's receiver.
"That's that," he said. "HMS Callisto has landed at Ulan Baligh. We'll maintain our
radio monitors, but I don't expect they'll pick up anything . . . until the
moment the ship takes off again, of course."
"When will that
be?" asked the Gur-Khan.
"In
three or four days, I imagine," said Flandry. "We've got to be readyl
Every ordu must be alerted tonight. By dawn I want
them moving across the plains according to the scheme Juchi and I drew up for
you."
Toghrul nodded. Arghun Tiliksky, who had also
crowded into the kibitka, demanded: "What's the meaning of this? Why
haven't I been told?"
"You
didn't need to know before the time came," Flandry answered. "The
Tebtengri warriors can get into motion, ready for battle, on five minutes'
notice, under any conditions ^whatsoever. Or so you were assuring me, in a
ten-minute speech, one evening last week. Very well,
Noyon, move theml"
Arghun bristled. "Where?
Why?"
"You'll
be in command of the Mangu Tuman varyak division," Toghrul said.
"Lead it due south for 500 kilometers, then stand by for further radio
orders. The other tribal forces will be stationed elsewhere. Probably you will
see a few, but maintain strict radio silence. Yurts and kibit-kas, being less
mobile, will proceed to positions - closer by. The women and children can drive
them."
"Also the herds," reminded Flandry.
"Don't forget, the massed Tebtengri herds can cover quite a large
area."
Arghun
looked at the formation sketched on a piece of paper, which the alliance was to
adopt. "But this is lunacyl" he yelped. "If Oleg knows we've
spread ourselves out, straggling over half the map in this ridiculous manner,
he can drive a wedge between—"
"He won't know," said Flandry.
"Or if he does find out, he won't know why we're doing it—which is what
counts. Now, git!"
For
a moment Arghun's eyes clashed with his. Then the noyon slapped gauntlets
against one thigh, whirled, and departed. It was indeed very few moments before the night grew loud with
varyak motors and lowing battle horns.
When
that racket had faded, Toghrul tugged his beard and said to Flandry,
"Well, now that we two are quite alone, can't you at least tell me how
that Terran ship was fetched here?"
"Why, it came to inquire more closely
into the reported death of me, a Terran citizen, on Altai," Flandry
chuckled. "Or so the captain will tell Oleg, I'm sure. Oleg will believe
him; it's entirely plausible. The Terrans will look around Ulan Baligh a few
days and let Oleg convince them my death was merely an accident. After which
they'll take off for their base again."
Toghrul
stared at him, back at the map, and then suddenly broke into buffalo laughter.
For a while the Gur-Khan of the Mangu Tuman and the field agent of the Imperial
Terrestrial Naval Intelligence Corps joined hands and danced around the kibitka
singing of the flowers that bloom in the spring.
Presendy
Flandry left. There wasn't going to be much sleep for anyone in the next few
days. But nonetheless, he didn't plan on sleeping tonight. He rapped eagerly on
his own yurt. Silence answered him. He scowled and opened the door.
A note lay on his bunk. My beloved, the alarm signals have blown. You
know Toghrul gave me weapons and a new varyak. My father taught me to ride and shoot as well as any man. It is
fitting that the last of Clan Tumurji
depart with the warriors.
Flandry stared at the scrawl for a long
while. Finally, he undressed and went- to bed.
When he awoke in the morning, his cart was
under way. A boy had taken the wheel for him. He emerged to find the whole
encampment grinding across the steppe. Toghrul stood taking a navigational
sight on the rings. He greeted Flandry with a gruff: "We should reach our
own assigned position tomorrow." A messenger dashed up, something needed
the chief's attention— one of the endless emergencies when so big a group was
on the move. Flandry found himself alone.
By
now he had learned not to offer the nomads his unskilled assistance. He spent
the day composing scurrilous limericks about the superiors who had assigned him
to this mission. The trek continued noisily through the dark. Next morning
there was drifted snow to clear before camp could be made. Flandry discovered
that he was at least able to wield a snow shovel. Soon he wished he wasn't.
By
noon the ordu was settled—not in the compact laagers which offered maximum
safety, but wavering across kilometers in a line which brought mutinous
grumbling. Toghrul roared down protest and went back to his kibitka to crouch
over the radio. But two incredibly tedious days passed before he sent for
Flandry.
Then things happened in a
hurry.
"Ship
departing," the Gur-Khan said. "We've just detected the usual
broadcast warning aircraft from the spaceport area." He frowned.
"Will there be time before nightfall to carry out every planned
maneuver?"
"That doesn't matter," Flandry
assured him. "Our initial pattern is already set up. The Callisto skipper can't help spotting that from space,
even if it weren't routine to keep a very beady eye on any suspicious planet as
you leave. When he notices, the captain will linger. If he floats in orbit with
radiation screens at max and generators throttled down to minimum, I doubt that
they'll know in Ulan Baligh that he's still around."
His
eyes went to the map on the desk. The various Tebtengrian units had confirmed
their positions. The ordus lay in a heavy east-west line, 500 kilometers long
across the winter-white steppe. The more mobile varyak divisions sprawled in
bunches to form lines which slanted past either end of the first one, meeting
in the north but far apart in the south. He stroked his mustache and waited.
"Spaceship
cleared for takeoff. Stand by. Rise, spaceship Callisto!"
As
the relayed voice trickled weakly from the receiver, Flandry snatched.a pencil
and drew another figure on the map. "This is the next formation," he
said. "Might as well start on it at once. The
ship will have seen the present one inside of five minutes."
Toghrul
bent over the microphone and rapped, "Varyak divisions of Clans Munlik,
Fyodor, Kubilai, Tuli, attention. Drive due west for 100 kilometers from your
present positions and stop. Belgutai, Bagdarin, Chagatai,
Kassar, due east for 100 kilometers. Gleb, Temujin . . ."
Flandry
rolled the pencil between his fingers. As the reports came in, over an endless
hour, he marked where each unit had halted. The whole device began to look
pathetically crude.
"I
have been thinking," said Toghrul after a prolonged silence.
"Nasty
habit," said Flandry. "Hard to break. Try
cold baths and long walks."
"What if Oleg finds
out about this?"
"He's
pretty sure to discover something is going on. His scouts will pick up bits of
our messages. But only bits, since these are short-range transmissions. I'm
depending on our own air cover to keep the enemy from getting too good a look
at what we're up to. AH Oleg will know is that we're shifting around on a large
scale." Flandry shrugged. "If I were him, I'd decide that the
Tebtengri were practicing formations against the day he attacks."
"Which
is not far off." Toghrul drummed the desk top.
Flandry
drew a figure on the paper. "This will be the third arrangement. I believe
we can get that done too before sunset. During the night we can proceed to the
fourth one, and start the fifth at dawn. I expect we'll finish in two
days."
"It's going to consume
an unholy amount of stored energy."
"Don't
worry about that. Before the shortage gets acute, your people will be safe with
the Imperium sending enough necessities to tide them over—or they'll be dead,
which is still more economical."
The
night that followed wore very slowly away. Now and then Flandry dozed. He paid
scant heed to the sunrise; too much else must be done. Sometime later a warrior
was shown in. "From Juchi Sharman," he reported, with a clumsy
salute. "Air scouts watching the Ozero Rurik area report troops are being
massed and that outrider columns are starting northward."
Toghrul
smote the desk with one big fist. "Are they invading us already?"
"That
big a push won't get this far north for a week," Flandry said, though his
guts felt cold at the news. "Or more, if we harry them
from the air."
"A week. . . . When
can we expect help?" said Toghrul.
"Not
for three or four weeks at the earliest. The Callisto has to return to Catawrayannis base, where
the commandant will have to patch together a task force which will have to get
here. Allow four weeks, plus or minus. Can we fight a delaying action that
long, without suffering too much damage?"
"We had better,"
said Toghrul, "or we are done."
XII
Captain
Flandby laid the rifle butt to his shoulder. The
stock felt smooth and not cold, insofar as his numbed cheek could feel
anything. The metal parts, so chill that they would skin any bare fingers that
touched them, stung him through his gloves.
It
was hard to guage distance in this red half-light, across this whining scud of
snow. Hard to guess windage; even trajectories were baffling on this miserable
three-quarter-gee planet. He decided the enemy wasn't close enough yet, and
lowered his gun.
Crouched
beside him in the lee of the snowbank, the Dweller turned dark eyes upon the
man. "I go now?" he asked. His Altaian was worse than Flandry's,
though Juchi himself had been surprised to learn that any of the Ice Folk knew
the human tongue.
"I
told you already, no." The Terran's own. accent
was thickened by the frostbitten puffiness of his lips. "You've to cross a
hundred meters of open ground to reach those trees. You'd be seen and shot
before you got half way. We have to arrange a distraction first."
He
peered again through the murk. Krasna had almost vanished from these polar
lands for the winter, but at this moment was not yet very far below the
horizon. A surly gleam in the south gave men enough light to see a litde
distance.
The attacking platoon had come so close that
Flandry could make out individuals: blurred forms against the great, vague
lake. He could see that they rode upon modified varyaks, with runners and
negagrav thrust to drive them across the permasnow. It was sheer ill luck that
he and his squad had blundered into them. The Tebtengri had retreated onto the
polar cap and eventually into the depths of the Ice Lands. They lived off a few
slaughtered and frozen animals, while their herds wandered the steppe under
slight guard, while men and Dwellers skirmished, avoiding pitched batde as much
as they could, fighting a guerrilla war to slow Oleg Khan's advance. Skulk,
shoot, run, hide, bolt your food, snatch a nap in a sleeping
bag and tent as dank as yourself, and go forth to skulk again.
Now
the rest of Flandry's party lay dead by Tengri Nor. He had escaped, but not
far. With this one companion he was trapped, for the pursuers could move faster
on their machines than he could afoot.
He guaged his range afresh. He got a man in his sights and
jerked his head at the Dweller, who slipped away. Then he fired.
The
southerner jerked in the saddle, caught at his belly, and slid to the ground.
Even in this glum light, his blood was screaming red on the snow. Through the
wind, Flan-dry heard the others yell. They scattered over a wide front He took
aim and fired once more. A miss. He wasn't accomplishing
enough. He had to furnish a few seconds' diversion, so they wouldn't notice the
Dweller running toward those crystalline trees at his back.
Flandry
thumbed his rifle control to automatic fire. He popped up from behind the
snowbank, shooting, and called, "My grandmother can lick your
grandmother!"
Diving,
he sensed more than heard the lead storm that went where he had been. Energy
bolts crashed overhead, scythed downward and sizzled in the snow. He breathed
hot steam. Surely that damned Dweller had reached the woods by now. He fired,
blind in the vapors as his onward-rushing enemy. Come on, someone,
pull me out of this mess! What's the
use, anyhow? The little guy babbled something about sending a message through
the roots—ridiculous! Through
gun-thunder Flandry heard the first high-ringing noise. He raised his eyes in
time to see the medusae attack.
They
swarmed from above, hundreds upon hundreds, their tentacles full of lightning.
Some were hit, burst into hydrogen flames, and sought men to bum even as they
died. Others snatched warriors from the saddle, lifted them, and dropped them
into the mortally cold waters of Tengri Nor. Most went efficiently about a task
of electrocution. Flandry had not quite grasped what was happening before the
platoon retreated. By the time he had climbed erect, the retreat was a rout.
"Holy
hopping hexaflexagons," he mumbled in awe. "Now why can't I do that
stunt?"
The
Dweller returned, small, furry, rubbery, an unimpressive goblin who said with
diffidence, "Not enough medusa to do this often. Your friends come. We
wait here."
"Huh?
Oh, you mean a rescue party. Yeh, I suppose one of our units would be close
enough to hear the fight and join in." Flandry stamped his feet, trying to
force the circulation back. "Nice haul," he said, looking over
strewn weapons and vehicles. "I think we got revenge for our squad."
"Dead
men just as dead on any side of fight," reproached the Dweller.
Flandry winced. "Don't
remind me."
He
heard the whirr of tow motors. The ski patrol that came around the woods was
bigger than he had expected. He recognized Arghun and Bourtai in the lead. It
came to him, with a shock, that he hadn't spoken to
either one, except to say hello and goodbye, since the campaign began. Too busy. That was the trouble with war. Leave out the toil,
discipline, discomfort, scant sleep, lousy food, monotony and combat, and war would
be a fine institution.
He strolled to meet the newcomers as
debonairly as possible for a man without cigarettes. "Hi," he said.
"You missed the show."
"Dominic."
Bourtai seized his hands. "You might have been killed!" she gasped.
"Occupational
hazard," said Flandry. "I thought you were in charge of our western
division, Arghun?"
"No
more fighting there," said the noyon. "I am going about rounding up our
troops."
"How's
that?"
"Have
you not heard?" The frank eyes widened. For a moment Arghun stood on the snow and gaped. Then a grin cracked his
frozen mustache, he slapped Flandry's back and shouted: "The Terrans have
arrived!"
"Huh?"
Flandry felt stunned. The blow he had taken— Arghun owned a hefty set of muscles—wait, what had he
said?
"Yesterday,"
chattered the Altaian. "I suppose your receivers didn't bring in the
announcement, nor anyone's in that outfit you were
fighting. There've been some bad atmospherics in this area. Or maybe your
opponents were die-hard fanatics. There are some whom we'll have to dispose
of. But that should not be difficult. You and I won't be needed."
He
brought himself under control and went on more calmly: "An Imperial task
force appeared out of space and demanded the surrender of the Yesukai troops as
being Merseian clients'. The commander at Ulan Baligh yielded without a fight;
what could he have done against such power? Oleg Khan flew to the front and
tried to rally his forces. You should have been listening, the ether was lively
last nightl But a couple of Terran spaceships arrived
and dropped a demonstration bomb squarely on his field headquarters. That was
the end of that, The Khanist tribesmen are already disengaging and streaming
homeward. Juchi Shaman has been asked by the Terran admiral at Ulan Baligh to
come and advise him what to do next—and to bring you along!"
Flandry
closed his eyes and swayed on his feet. Bourtai caught him in her arms.
"What is the matter, Dominic?" she cried. \
"Brandy,"
he whispered. "Tobacco. India
tea. Shrimp mayonnaise, with a genuine
Riesling on the side. Air conditioning. . . ." He shook himself.
"Sorry. My mind wandered."
He
scarcely saw how her lip trembled. Arghun did, gave
the Terran a defiant look and caught the girl's hand. She clung to his like a
child.
This time Flandry did notice. His mouth
twitched upward. "Bless you, my children," he murmured.
"What?" Arghun
snapped, half-angry and half-bewildered.
"When
you get as old and battered as I," Flandry told them, "you will
realize that no one dies of a broken heart. In fact, that organ heals with
disgusting speed. If you want to name your first-born Dominic, I will be happy
to mail a silver
spoon suitably engraved."
"But—" stammered Bourtai. "But—" she gave up and held
Arghun's hand more tighdy.
The noyon's face burned. He
said hastily, seeking impersonal things, "Now
will you explain your
actions, Terra man?"
"Hm?" Flandry blinked. "Oh, yes. To be sure."
He
started walking. The other two kept pace along the thin, blue Lake of Ghosts,
under a lacework of icy leaves. The red half-day smoldered toward night.
Flandry spoke with laughter reborn in his voice:
"Our problem was to send a secret
message to the Terran base. The most secret one possible would, naturally, be
one which nobody recognized as a message. For instance, May Day painted on the
Prophet's Tower. It looked like gibberish, pure, spiteful mischief . . . but
the whole city could see it. They'd talk. How they'd talk! Even if no
Betelgeu-seans happened to be at Ulan Baligh just then, there would soon be
some who would certainly hear news so sensational no matter how closely they
were guarded. And the Betel-geuseans in turn would carry the yam home with
them, where the Terrans connected with our embassy would hear it. And the
Terrans would understand!
"You
see, May Day is a very ancient code call of ours. It means, simply, Help me."
"Oh-ho,"
said Arghun. He slapped his thigh. His own laughter barked forth. "Yes, I
see it now. Thanks, friend, for a joke to tell my grandchildren!"
"A
classic," agreed Flandry with his normal modesty. "My corps was bound
to send a ship to investigate. Knowing little or nothing, its men would be on
the qui vive. In view of the message on the Tower, Oleg's
tale of my accidental death would be obviously disregarded. But I figured I
could trust my chums to keep their mouths shut and pretend to be taken in by him. My problem was, how to inform them of the real situation, without Oleg
knowing they had been informed.
"You
can easily guess how that was done. We maneuvered the Tebtengri Shamanate over
the plains, forming Terran letters big enough to be seen with the naked eye
from a ship just getting into clear space. The subsequent letters could be
smaller, since the Callisto
people would use telescopes
as soon as they realized what was going on. I wrote a note, short but to the point, across thé whole
damn steppe."
He
filled his lungs with the keen air. Through all his weariness the magnificence
of being alive flowed into him. He grinned and finished, "I daresay those
were the biggest letters ever written. So big that you had to
get off the planet to read them."
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350
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