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“The Master Key”

 

 

 

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,

Fraught with a later prize;

Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies.

A new Ulysses leaves once more

Calypso for his native shore.

 

—Shelley

 

 

“The Master Key”

^ »

 

Once upon a time there was a king who set himself above the foreign merchants. What he did is of no account now; it was long ago and on another planet, and besides, the wench is dead. Harry Stenvik and I hung him by the seat of his trousers from his tallest minaret, in sight of all the people, and the name of the Polesotechnic League was great in the land. Then we made inroads on the stock-in-trade of the Solar Spice & Liquors Company factor and swore undying brotherhood.

Now there are those who maintain that Nicholas van Rijn has a cryogenic computer in that space used by the ordinary Terran for storing his heart. This may be so.

But he does not forget a good workman. And I know no reason why he should have invited me to dinner except that Harry would be there, and—this being the briefest of business trips to Earth for me—we would probably have no other chance of meeting.

The flitter set me off atop the Winged Cross, where Van Rijn keeps what he honestly believes is a modest little penthouse apartment. A summer’s dusk softened the mass of lesser buildings that stretched to the horizon and beyond; Venus had wakened in the west and Chicago Integrate was opening multitudinous lights. This high up, only a low machine throb reached my ears. I walked along roses and jasmine to the door. When it scanned me and dilated, Harry was waiting. We fell into each other’s arms and praised God with many loud violations of His third commandment.

Afterward we stood apart and looked. “You haven’t changed much,” he lied. “Mean and ugly as ever. Methane in the air must agree with you.”

“Ammonia, where I’ve been of late,” I corrected him.

s.o.p.: occassional bullets and endless dickering. You’re disgustingly sleek and contented. How’s Sigrid?” As it must to all men, domesticity had come to him. In his case it lasted, and he had built a house on the cliffs above Hardanger Fjord and raised mastiffs and sons. Myself—but that also is irrelevant.

“Fine. She sends her love and a box of her own cookies. Next time you must wangle a longer stay and come see us.”

“The boys?”

“Same.” The soft Norse accent roughened the least bit. “Per’s had his troubles, but they are mending. He’s here tonight.”

“Well, great.” The last I’d heard of Harry’s oldest son, he was an apprentice aboard one of Van Rijn’s ships, somewhere in the Hercules region. But that was several years ago, and you can rise fast in the League if you survive. “I imagine he has master’s rank by now.”

“Yes, quite newly. Plus an artificial femur and a story to tell. Come, let’s join them.”

Hm, I thought, so Old Nick was economizing on his bird-killing stones again. He had enough anecdotes of his own that he didn’t need to collect them, unless they had some special use to him. A gesture of kindness might as well be thrown into the interview.

We passed through the foyer and crossed a few light-years of trollcat rug to the far end of the living room.

Three men sat by the viewer wall, at the moment transparent to sky and city. Only one of them rose. He had been seated a little to one side, in a tigery kind of relaxed alertness—a stranger to me, dark and lean, with a blaster that had seen considerable service at his hip.

Nicholas van Rijn wallowed his bulk deeper into his lounger, hoisted a beer stein and roared, “Ha! Welcome to you, Captain, and you will maybe have a small drink like me before dinner?” After which he tugged his goatee and muttered, “Gabriel will tootle before I get you bepestered Anglic through this poor old noggin. I think I have just called myself a small drink.”

I bowed to him as is fitting to a merchant prince, turned, and gave Per Stenvik my hand. “Excuse my staying put,” he said. His face was still pale and gaunt; health was coming back, but youth never would. “I got a trifle clobbered.”

“So I heard,” I answered. “Don’t worry, it’ll heal up. I hate to think how much of me is replacement by now, but as long as the important parts are left. . . .”

“Oh, yes, I’ll be okay. Thanks to Manuel. Uh, Manuel Felipe Gómez y Palomares of Nuevo Mexico. My ensign.”

I introduced myself with great formality, according to what I knew of customs of those poor and haughty colonists from the far side of Arcturus. His courtesy was equal, before he turned to make sure the blanket was secure around Per’s legs. Nor did he go back to his seat and his glass of claret before Harry and I lowered ourselves. A human servant—male, in this one Van Rijn establishment—brought us our orders, akvavit for Harry and a martini for me. Per fiddled with a glass of Ansan vermouth.

“How long will you be home?” I asked him after the small talk had gone by.

“As long as needful,” Harry said quickly.

“No more, though,” Van Rijn said with equal speed. “Not one millimoment more can he loaf than nature must have; and he is young and strong.”

“Pardon, señor,” Manuel said—how softly and deferentially, and with what a clang of colliding stares. “I would not gainsay my superiors. But my duty is to know how it is with my captain, and the doctors are fools. He shall rest not less than till the Day of the Dead; and then surely, with the Nativity so near, the señor will not deny him the holidays at home?”

Van Rijn threw up his hands. “Everyone, they call me apocalyptic beast,” he wailed, “and I am only a poor lonely old man in a sea of grievances, trying so hard to keep awash. One good boy with promises I find, I watch him from before his pants dry out for I know his breed. I give him costly schooling in hopes he does not turn out another curdlebrain, and no sooner does he not but he is in the locker and my fine new planet gets thrown to the wolves!“

“Lord help the wolves,” Per grinned. “Don’t worry, sir, I’m as anxious to get back as you are.”

“Hoy, hoy, I am not going. I am too old and fat. Ah, you think you have troubles now, but wait till time has gnawed you down to a poor old wheezer like me who has not even any pleasures left. Abdul! Abdul, you jellylegs, bring drink, you want we should dry up and puff away? . . . What, only me ready for a refill?”

“Do you really want to see that Helheim—again?” Harry asked, with a stiff glance at Van Rijn.

“Judas, yes,” Per said. “It’s just waiting for the right man. A whole world, Dad! Don’t you remember?”

Harry looked through the wall and nodded. I made haste to intrude on his silence. “What were you there after, Per?”

“Everything,” the young man said. “I told you it’s an entire planet. Not one percent of the land surface has been mapped.”

“Huh? Not even from orbit?”

Manuel’s expression showed me what they thought of orbital maps.

“But for a starter, what attracted us in the first place, furs and herbs,” Per said. Wordlessly, Manuel took a little box from his pocket, opened it, and handed it to me. A bluish-green powder of leaves lay within. I tasted. There was a sweet-sour flavor with wild overtones, and the odor went to the oldest, deepest part of my brain and roused memories I had not known were lost.

“The chemicals we have not yet understood and synthesized,” Van Rijn rumbled around the cigar he was lighting. “Bah! What do my chemists do all day but play happy fun games in the lab alcohol? And the furs, ja, I have Lupescu of the Peltery volcano-making that he must buy them from me. He is even stooping to spies, him, he has the ethics of a paranoid weasel. Fifteen thousand he spent last month alone, trying to find where that planet is.”

“How do you know how much he spent?” Harry asked blandly.

Van Rijn managed to look smug and hurt at the same time.

Per said with care, “I’d better not mention the coordinates myself. It’s out Pegasus way. A g-nine dwarf star, about half as luminous as Sol. Eight planets, one of them terrestroid. Brander came upon it in the course of a survey, thought it looked interesting, and settled down to learn more. He’d really only time to tape the language of the locality where he was camped, and do the basic—basic planetography and bionics. But he did find out about the furs and herbs. So I was sent to establish a trading post.”

“His first command,” Harry said, unnecessarily on anyone’s account but his own.

“Trouble with the natives, eh?” I asked.

“Trouble is not the word,” Van Rijn said. “The word is not for polite ears.” He dove into his beer stein and came up snorting. “After all I have done for them, the saints keep on booting me in the soul like this.”

“But we seem to have it licked,” Per said.

“Ah. You think so?” Van Rijn waggled a hairy forefinger at him. “That is what we should like to be more sure of, boy, before we send out and maybe lose some expensive ships.”

Y algunos hombres buenos,” Manuel muttered, so low he could scarcely be heard. One hand dropped to the butt of his gun.

“I have been reading the reports from Brander’s people,” Van Rijn said. “Also your own. I think maybe I see a pattern. When you have been swindling on so many planets like me, new captain, you will have analogues at your digits for much that is new. . . . Ah, pox and pity it is to get jaded!” He puffed a smoke ring that settled around Per’s bright locks. “Still, you are never sure. I think sometimes God likes a little practical joke on us poor mortals, when we get too cockish. So I jump on no conclusions before I have heard from your own teeth how it was. Reports, even on visitape, they have no more flavor than what my competition sells. In you I live again the fighting and merrylarks, everything that is now so far behind me in my doting.”

This from the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes, and t’Kela!

“Well—” Per blushed and fumbled with his glass.

“There really isn’t a lot to tell, you know. I mean, each of you freemen has been through so much more than—uh—one silly episode. . . .”

Harry gestured at the blanketed legs. “Nothing silly—there,” he said.

Per’s lips tightened. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Men died.”

Chiefly because it is not good to dwell overly long on those lost from a command of one’s own, I said, “What’s the planet like? ‘Terrestroid’ is a joke. They sit in an Earthside office and call it that if you can breathe the air.”

“And not fall flat in an oof from the gravity for at least half an hour, and not hope the whole year round you have no brass-monkey ancestors.” Van Rijn’s nod sent the black ringlets swirling around his shoulder.

“I generally got assigned to places where the brass monkeys melted,” Harry complained.

“Well, Cain isn’t too bad in the low latitudes,” Per said.

His face relaxed, and his hands came alive in quick gestures that reminded me of his mother. “It’s about Earth-size, ayerage orbital radius a little over one a. u. Denser atmosphere, though, by around fifteen percent, which makes for more greenhouse effect. Twenty-hour rotation period; no moons. Thirty-two degrees of axial tilt, which does rather complicate the seasons. But we were at fifteen-forty north, in fairly low hills, and it was summer. A nearby pool was frozen every morning, and snowbanks remained on the slopes—but really, not bad for the planet of a g-nine star.”

“Did Brander name it Cain?” I asked.

“Yes. I don’t know why. But it turned out appropriate. Too damned appropriate.” Again the bleakness. Manuel took his captain’s empty glass and glided off, to return in a moment with it filled. Per drank hurriedly.

“Always there is trouble,” Van Rijn said. “You will learn.”

“But the mission was going so well!” Per protested. “Even the language and the data seemed to . . . to flow into my head on the voyage out. In fact, the whole crew learned easily.” He turned to me. “There were twenty of us on the Miriam Knight. She’s a real beauty, Cheland-class transport, built for speed rather than capacity, you know. More wasn’t needed, when we were only supposed to erect the first post and get the idea of regular trade across to the autochthons. We had the usual line of goods; fabrics, tools, weapons, household stuff like scissors and meat grinders. Not much ornament, because Brander’s xenologists hadn’t been able to work out any consistent pattern for it. Individual Cainites seemed to dress and decorate themselves any way they pleased. In the Ulash area, at least, which of course was the only one we had any details on.”

“And damn few there,” Harry murmured. “Also as usual.”

“Agriculture?” I inquired.

“Some primitive cultivation,” Per said. “Small plots scratched out of the forest, tended by the Lugals. In Ulash a little metallurgy has begun, copper, gold, silver, but even they are essentially neolithic. And essentially hunters—the Yildivans, that is—along with such Lugals as they employ to help. The food supply is mainly game. In fact, the better part of what farming is done is to supply fabric.”

“What do they look like, these people?”

“I’ve a picture here.” Per reached in his tunic and handed me a photograph. “That’s old Shivaru. Early in our acquaintance. He was probably scared of the camera but damned if he’d admit it. You’ll notice the Lugal he has with him is frankly in a blue funk.”

I studied the image with an interest that grew. The background was harsh plutonic hillside, where grass of a pale yellowish turquoise grew between dark boulders. But on the right I glimpsed a densely wooded valley. The sky overhead was wan, and the orange sunlight distorted colors.

Shivaru stood very straight and stiff, glaring into the lens. He was about two meters tall, Per said, his body build much like that of a long-legged, deep-chested man. Tawny, spotted fur covered him to the end of an elegant tail. The head was less anthropoid: a black ruff on top, slit-pupiled green eyes, round mobile ears, flat nose that looked feline even to the cilia around it, full-lipped mouth with protruding tushes at the comers, and jaw that tapered down to a v. He wore a sort of loincloth, gaudily dyed, and a necklace of raw semi-precious stones. His left hand clutched an obsidian-bladed battle-ax and there was a steel trade-knife in his belt.

“They’re mammals, more or less,” Per said, “though with any number of differences in anatomy and chemistry, as you’d expect. They don’t sweat, however. There’s a complicated system of exo- and endothermic reactions in the blood to regulate temperature.”

“Sweating is not so common on cold terrestroids,” Van Rijn remarked. “Always you find analogs to something you met before, if you look long enough. Evolution makes parallels.”

“And skew lines,” I added. “Uh—Brander got some corpses to dissect, then?”

“Well, not any Yildivans,” Per said. “But they sold him as many dead Lugals as he asked for, who’re obviously of the same genus.” He winced. “I hope to hell they didn’t kill the Lugals especially for that purpose.”

My attention had gone to the creature that cowered behind Shivaru. It was a squat, short-shanked, brown-furred version of the other Cainite. Forehead and chin were poorly developed and the muzzle had not yet become a nose. The being was nude except for a heavy pack, a quiver of arrows, a bow, and two spears piled on its muscular back. I could see that the skin was rubbed naked and calloused by such burdens. “This is a Lugal?” I pointed.

“Yes. You see, there are two related species on the planet, one farther along in evolution than the other. As if Australopithecus had survived till today on Earth. The Yildivans have made slaves of the Lugals—certainly in Ulash, and as far as we could find out by spot checks, everywhere on Cain.”

“Pretty roughly treated, aren’t they, the poor devils?”

Harry said. “I wouldn’t trust a slave with weapons.”

“But Lugals are completely trustworthy,” Per said. “Like dogs. They do the hard, monotonous work. The Yildivans—male and female—are the hunters, artists, magicians, everything that matters. That is, what culture exists is Yildivan.” He scowled into his drink. “Though I’m not sure how meaningful ‘culture’ is in this connection.”

“How so?” Van Rijn lifted brows far above his small black eyes.

“Well . . . they, the Yildivans, haven’t anything like a nation, a tribe, any sort of community. Family groups split up when the cubs are old enough to fend for themselves. A young male establishes himself somewhere, chases off all comers, and eventually one or more young females come join him. Their Lugals tag along, naturally—like dogs again. As near as I could learn, such families have only the most casual contact. Occasional barter, occasional temporary gangs formed to hunt extra-large animals, occasional clashes between individuals, and that’s about it.”

“But hold on,” I objected. “Intelligent races need more. Something to be the carrier of tradition, something to stimulate the evolution of brain, a way for individuals to communicate ideas to each other. Else intelligence hasn’t got any biological function.”

“I fretted over that too,” Per said. “Had long talks with Shivaru, Fereghir, and others who drifted into camp whenever they felt like it. We really tried hard to understand each other. They were as curious about us as we about them, and as quick to see the mutual advantage in trade relations. But what a job! A whole different planet—two or three billion years of separate evolution—and we had only pidgin Ulash to start with, the limited vocabulary Brander’s people had gotten. We couldn’t go far into the subtleties. Especially when they, of course, took everything about their own way of life for granted.

“Toward the end, though, I began to get a glimmering. It turns out that in spite of their oafish appearance, the Lugals are not stupid. Maybe even as bright as their masters, in a different fashion; at any rate, not too far behind them. And—in each of these family groups, these patriarchal settlements in a cave or hut, way off in the forest, there are several times as many Lugals as Yildivans. Every member of the family, even the kids, has a number of slaves. Thus you may not get Yildivan clans or tribes, but you do get the numerical equivalent among the Lugals.

“Then the Lugals are sent on errands to other Yildivan preserves, with messages or barter goods or whatever, and bring back news. And they get traded around; the Yildivans breed them deliberately, with a shrewd practical grasp of genetics. Apparently, too, the Lugals are often allowed to wander off by themselves when there’s no work for them to do—much as we let our dogs run loose—and hold powwows of their own.

“You mustn’t think of them as being mistreated. They are, by our standards, but Cain is a brutal place and Yildivans don’t exactly have an easy life either. An intelligent Lugal is valued. He’s made straw boss over the others, teaches the Yildivan young special skills and songs and such, is sometimes even asked by his owner what he thinks ought to be done in a given situation. Some families let him eat and sleep in their own dwelling, I’m told. And remember, his loyalty is strictly to the masters. What they may do to other Lugals is nothing to him. He’ll gladly help cull the weaklings, punish the lazy, anything.

“So, to get to the point, I think that’s your answer. The Yildivans do have a community life, a larger society—but indirectly, through their Lugals. The Yildivans are the creators and innovators, the Lugals the communicators and preservers. I daresay the relationship has existed for so long a time that the biological evolution of both species has been conditioned by it.”

“You speak rather well of them,” said Harry grimly, “considering what they did to you.”

“But they were very decent people at first.” I could hear in Per’s voice how hurt he was by that which had happened. “Proud as Satan, callous, but not cruel. Honest and generous. They brought gifts whenever they arrived, with no thought of payment. Two or three offered to assign us Lugal laborers. That wasn’t necessary or feasible when we had machinery along, but they didn’t realize it then. When they did, they were quick to grasp the idea, and mightily impressed. I think. Hard to tell, because they couldn’t or wouldn’t admit anyone else might be superior to them. That is, each individual thought of himself as being as good as anyone else anywhere in the world. But they seemed to regard us as their equals. I didn’t try to explain where we were really from. ‘Another country’ looked sufficient for practical purposes.

“Shivaru was especially interested in us. He was middle-aged, most of his children grown and moved away. Wealthy in local terms, progressive—he was experimenting with ranching as a supplement to hunting—and his advice was much sought after by the others. I took him for a ride in a flitter and he was happy and excited as any child; brought his three mates along next time so they could enjoy it too. We went hunting together occasionally. Lord, you should have seen him run down those great horned beasts, leap on their backs, and brain them with one blow of that tremendous ax! Then his Lugals would butcher the game and carry it home to camp. The meat tasted damn good, believe me. Cainite biochemistry lacks some of our vitamins, but otherwise a human can get along all right there.

“Mainly, though, I remember how we’d talk. I suppose it’s old hat to you freemen, but I had never before spent hour after hour with another being, both of us at work trying to build up a vocabulary and an understanding, both getting such a charge out of it that we’d forget even to eat until Manuel or Cherkez—that was his chief Lugal, a gnarly, droll old fellow, made me think of the friendly gnomes in my fairy tale books when I was a youngster—until one of them would tell us. Sometimes my mind wandered off and I’d come back to earth realizing that I’d just sat there admiring his beauty. Yildivans are as graceful as cats, as pleasing in shape as a good gun. And as deadly, when they want to be. I found that out!

“We had a favorite spot, in the lee of a cottage-sized boulder on the hillside above camp. The rock was warm against our backs; seemed even more so when I looked at that pale shrunken sun and my breath smoking out white across the purplish sky. Far, far overhead a bird of prey would wheel, then suddenly stoop—in the thick air I could hear the whistle through its wing feathers—and vanish into the treetops down in the valley. Those leaves had a million different shades of color, like an endless autumn.

“Shivaru squatted with his tail curled around his knees, ax on the ground beside him. Cherkez and one or two other Lugals hunkered at a respectful distance. Their eyes never left their Yildivan. Sometimes Manuel joined us, when he wasn’t busy bossing some phase of construction. Remember, Manuel? You really shouldn’t have kept so quiet.”

“Silence was fitting, Captain,” said the Nuevo Mexican.

“Well,” Per said, “Shivaru’s deep voice would go on and on. He was full of plans for the future. No question of a trade treaty—no organization for us to make a treaty with—but he foresaw his people bringing us what we wanted in exchange for what we offered. And he was bright enough to see how the existence of a central mart like this, a common meeting ground, would affect them. More joint undertakings would be started. The idea of close cooperation would take root. He looked forward to that, within the rather narrow limits he could conceive. For instance, many Yildivans working together could take real advantage of the annual spawning run up the Mukushyat River. Big canoes could venture across a strait he knew of, to open fresh hunting grounds. That sort of thing.

“But then in a watchtick his ears would perk, his whiskers vibrate, he’d lean forward and start to ask about my own people. What sort of country did we come from? How was the game there? What were our mating and childrearing practices? How did we ever produce such beautiful things? Oh, he had the whole cosmos to explore! Bit by bit, as my vocabulary grew, his questions got less practical and more abstract. So did mine, naturally. We were getting at each other’s psychological foundations now, and were equally fascinated.

“I was not too surprised to learn that his culture had no religion. In fact, he was hard put to understand my questions about it. They practiced magic, but looked on it simply as a kind of technology. There was no animism, no equivalent of anthropomorphism. A Yildivan knew too damn well he was superior to any plant or animal. I think, but I’m not sure, that they had some vague concept of reincarnation. But it didn’t interest them much, apparently, and the problem of origins hadn’t occurred. Life was what you had, here and now. The world was a set of phenomena, to live with or master or be defeated by as the case might be.

“Shivaru asked me why I’d asked him about such a self-evident thing.” Per shook his head. His glance went down to the blanket around his lap and quickly back again. “That may have been my first mistake.”

“No, Captain,” said Manuel most gently. “How could you know they lacked souls?”

“Do they?” Per mumbled.

“We leave that to the theologians,” Van Rijn said. “They get paid to decide. Go on, boy.”

I could see Per brace himself. “I tried to explain the idea of God,” he said tonelessly, “I’m pretty sure I failed. Shivaru acted puzzled and . . . troubled. He left soon after.

“The Yildivans of Ulash use drums for long-range communication, have I mentioned? All that night I heard the drums mutter in the valley and echo from the cliffs. We had no visitors for a week. But Manuel, scouting around in the area, said he’d found tracks and traces. We were being watched.

“I was relieved, at first, when Shivaru returned. He had a couple of others with him, Fereghir and Tulitur, important males like himself. They came straight across the hill toward me. I was supervising the final touches on our timber-cutting system. We were to use local lumber for most of our construction, you see. Cut and trim in the woods with power beams, load the logs on a gravsled for the sawmill, then snake them directly through the induration vats to the site, where the foundations had now been laid. The air was full of whine and crash, boom and chug, in a wind that cut like a laser. I could hardly see our ship or our sealtents through dust, tinged bloody in the sun.

“They came to me, those three tall hunters, with a dozen armed Lugals hovering behind. Shivaru beckoned. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘This is no place for a Yildivan.’ I looked him in the eyes and they were filmed over, as if he’d put a glass mask between me and himself. Frankly, my skin prickled. I was unarmed—everybody was except Manuel, you know what Nuevo Mexicans are—and I was afraid I’d precipitate something by going for a weapon. In fact, I even made a point of speaking Ulash as I ordered Tom Bullis to take over for me and told Manuel to come along uphill. If the autochthons had taken some notion into their heads that we were planning harm, it wouldn’t do for them to hear us use a language they didn’t know.

“Not another word was spoken till we were out of the dust and racket, at the old place by the boulder. It didn’t feel warm today. Nothing did. ‘I welcome you,’ I said to the Yildivans, ‘and bid you dine and sleep with us.’ That’s the polite formula when a visitor arrives. I didn’t get the regular answer.

“Tulitur hefted the spear he carried and asked—not rudely, understand, but with a kind of shiver in the tone—‘Why have you come to Ulash?’

“ ‘Why?’ I stuttered. ‘You know. To trade.’

“ ‘No, wait, Tulitur,’ Shivaru interrupted. ‘Your question is blind.’ He turned to me. ‘Were you sent?’ he asked. And what I would like to ask you sometime, freemen, is whether it makes sense to call a voice black.

“I couldn’t think of any way to hedge. Something had gone awry, but I’d no feeblest notion what. A lie or a stall was as likely, a priori, to make matters worse as the truth. I saw the sunlight glisten along that dark ax head and felt most infernally glad to have Manuel beside me. Even so, the noise from the camp sounded faint and distant. Or was it only that the wind was whittering louder?

“I made myself stare back at him. ‘You know we are here on behalf of others like us at home,’ I said. The muscles tightened still more under his fur. Also. . . . I can’t read nonhuman expressions especially well. But Fereghir’s lips were drawn off his teeth as if he confronted an enemy. Tulitur had grounded his spear, point down. Brander’s reports observed that a Yildivan never did that in the presence of a friend. Shivaru, though, was hardest to understand. I could have sworn he was grieved.

“ ‘Did God send you?’ he asked.

“That put the dunce’s cap on the whole lunatic business. I actually laughed, though I didn’t feel at all funny. Inside my head it went click-click-click. I recognized a semantic point. Ulash draws some fine distinctions between various kinds of imperative. A father’s command to his small child is entirely different—in word and concept both—from a command to another Yildivan beaten in a fight, which is different in turn from a command to a Lugal, and so on through a wider range than our psycholinguists have yet measured.

“Shivaru wanted to know if I was God’s slave.

“Well, this was no time to explain the history of religion, which I’m none too clear about anyway. I just said no, I wasn’t; God was a being in Whose existence some of us believed, but not everyone, and He had certainly not issued me any direct orders.

“That rocked them back! The breath hissed between Shivaru’s fangs, his ruff bristled aloft and his tail whipped his legs. ‘Then who did send you?’ he nearly screamed. I could translate as well by: ‘So who is your owner?’

“I heard a slither alongside me as Manuel loosened his gun in the holster. Behind the three Yildivans, the Lugals gripped their own axes and spears at the ready. You can imagine how carefully I picked my words. ‘We are here freely,’ I said, ‘as part of an association.’ Or maybe the word I had to use means ‘fellowship’—I wasn’t about to explain economics either. ‘In our home country,’ I said, ‘none of us is a Lugal. You have seen our devices that work for us. We have no need of Lugalhood.’

“ ‘Ah-h-h,’ Fereghir sighed, and poised his spear. Manuel’s gun clanked free. ‘I think best you go,’ he said to them, ‘before there is a fight. We do not wish to kill.’

“Brander had made a point of demonstrating guns, and so had we. No one stirred for a time that went on eternally, in that Fimbul wind. The hair stood straight on the Lugals. They were ready to rush us and die at a word. But it wasn’t forthcoming. Finally the three Yildivans exchanged glances. Shivaru said in a dead voice, ‘Let us consider this thing.’ They turned on their heels and walked off through the long, whispering grass, their pack close around them.

“The drums beat for days and nights.

“We considered the thing ourselves at great length. What was the matter, anyhow? The Yildivans were primitive and unsophisticated by Commonwealth standards, but not stupid. Shivaru had not been surprised at the ways we differed from his people. For instance, the fact that we lived in communities instead of isolated families had only been one more oddity about us, intriguing rather than shocking. And, as I’ve told you, while large-scale cooperation among Yildivans wasn’t common, it did happen once in a while; so what was wrong with our doing likewise?

“Igor Yuschenkoff, the captain of the Miriam, had a reasonable suggestion. ‘If they have gotten the idea that we are slaves, he said, ‘then our masters must be still more powerful. Can they think we are preparing a base for invasion?’ ”

“ ‘But I told them plainly we are not slaves,’ I said. ’No doubt.’ He laid a finger alongside his nose. ‘Do they believe you?’ ”

“You can imagine how I tossed awake in my sealtent. Should we haul gravs altogether, find a different area and start afresh? That would mean scrapping nearly everything we’d done. A whole new language to learn was the least of the problems. Nor would a move necessarily help. Scouting trips by flitter had indicated pretty strongly that the same basic pattern of life prevailed everywhere on Cain, as it did on Earth in the paleolithic era. If we’d run afoul, not of some local taboo, but of some fundamental. . . . I just didn’t know. I doubt if Manuel spent more then two hours a night in bed. He was too busy tightening our system of guards, drilling the men, prowling around to inspect and keep them alert.

“But our next contact was peaceful enough on the surface. One dawn a sentry roused me to say that a bunch of natives were here. Fog had arisen overnight, turned the world into wet gray smoke where you couldn’t see three meters. As I came outside I heard the drip off a trac parked close by, the only clear sound in the muffledness. Tulitur and another Yildivan stood at the edge of camp, with about fifty male Lugals behind. Their fur sheened with water, and their weapons were rime-coated. ‘They must have traveled by night, Captain,’ Manuel said, for the sake of cover. ‘Surely others wait beyond view.’ He led a squad with me.

“I made the Yildivans welcome, ritually, as if nothing had happened. I didn’t get any ritual back. Tulitur said only, ‘We are here to trade. For your goods we will return those furs and plants you desire.’

“That was rather jumping the gun, with our post still less than half built. But I couldn’t refuse what might be an olive branch. ‘That is well,’ I said. ‘Come, let us eat while we talk about it.’ Clever move, I thought. Accepting someone’s food puts you under the same sort of obligation in Ulash that it used to on Earth.

“Tulitur and his companion—Bokzahan, I remember the name now—didn’t offer thanks, but they did come into the ship and sit at the mess table. I figured this would be more ceremonious and impressive than a tent; also, it was out of that damned raw cold. I ordered stuff like bacon and eggs that the Cainites were known to like. They got right to business. ‘How much will you trade to us?’

“ ‘That depends on what you want, and on what you have to give in exchange,’ I said, to match their curtness.

“ ‘We have brought nothing with us,’ Bokzahan said, ‘for we knew not if you would be willing to bargain.’

“ ‘Why should I not be?’ I answered. ‘That is what I came for. There is no strife between us.’ And I shot at him: ‘Is there?’

“None of those ice-green eyes wavered. ‘No,’ Tulitur said, ‘there is not. Accordingly, we wish to buy guns.’ ‘Such things we may not sell,’ I answered. Best not to add that policy allowed us to as soon as we felt reasonably sure no harm would result. ‘However, we have knives to exchange, as well as many useful tools.’

“They sulked a bit, but didn’t argue. Instead, they went right to work, haggling over terms. They wanted as much of everything as we’d part with, and really didn’t try to bargain the price down far. Only they wanted the stuff on credit. They needed it now, they said, and it’d take time to gather the goods for payment.

“That put me in an obvious pickle. On the one hand, the Yildivans had always acted honorably and, as far as I could check, always spoken truth. Nor did I want to antagonize them. On the other hand—but you can fill that in for yourself. I flatter myself I gave them a diplomatic answer. We did not for an instant doubt their good intentions, I said. We knew the Yildivans were fine chaps. But accidents could happen, and if so, we’d be out of pocket by a galactic sum.

“Tulitur slapped the table and snorted, ‘Such fears might have been expected. Very well, we shall leave our Lugals here until payment is complete. Their value is great. But then you must carry the goods where we want them.’

“I decided that on those terms they could have half the agreed amount right away.”

Per fell silent and gnawed his lip. Harry leaned over to pat his hand. Van Rijn growled, “Ja, by damn, no one can foretell everything that goes wrong, only be sure that some bloody-be-plastered thing will. You did hokay, boy. . . . Abdul, more drink, you suppose maybe this is Mars?”

Per sighed. “We loaded the stuff on a gravsled,” he went on. “Manuel accompanied in an armed flitter, as a precaution. But nothing happened. Fifty kilometers or so from camp, the Yildivans told our men to land near a river. They had canoes drawn onto the bank there, with a few other Yildivans standing by. Clearly they intended to float the goods further by themselves, and Manuel called me to see if I had any objections. ‘No,’ I said. ‘What difference does it make? They must want to keep the destination secret. They don’t trust us any longer.’ Behind him, in the screen, I saw Bokzahan watching. Our communicators had fascinated visitors before now. But this time, was there some equivalent of a sneer on his face?

“I was busy arranging quarters and rations for the Lugals, though. And a guard or two, nothing obtrusive. Not that I really expected trouble. I’d heard their masters say, ‘Remain here and do as the Erziran direct until we come for you.’ But nevertheless it felt queasy, having that pack of dog-beings in camp.

“They settled down in their animal fashion. When the drums began again that night they got restless, shifted around in the pavilion we’d turned over to them and mewled in a language Brander hadn’t recorded. But they were quite meek next morning. One of them even asked if they couldn’t help in our work. I had to laugh at the thought of a Lugal behind the controls of a five hundred kilowatt trac, and told him no, thanks, they need only loaf and watch us. They were good at loafing.

“A few times, in the next three days, I tried to get them into conversation. But nothing came of that. They’d answer me, not in the deferential style they used to a Yildivan but not insolently either. However, the answers were meaningless. ‘Where do you live?’ I would say. ‘In the forest yonder,’ the slave replied, staring at his toes. ‘What sort of tasks do you have to do at home?’ ‘That which my Yildivan sets for me.’ I gave up.

“Yet they weren’t stupid. They had some sort of game they played, involving figures drawn in the dirt, that I never did unravel. Each sundown they formed ranks and crooned, an eerie minor-key chant, with improvisations that sometimes sent a chill along my nerves. Mostly they slept, or sat and stared at nothing, but once in a while several would squat in a circle, arms around their neighbors shoulders, and whisper together.

“Well. . . . I’m making the story too long. We were attacked shortly before dawn of the fourth day.

“Afterward I learned that something like a hundred male Yildivans were in that party, and heaven knows how many Lugals. They’d rendezvoused from everywhere in that tremendous territory called Ulash, called by the drums and, probably, by messengers who’d run day and night through the woods. Our pickets were known to their scouts, and they laid a hurricane of arrows over those spots, while the bulk of them rushed in between. Otherwise I can’t tell you much. I was a casualty.” Per grimaced.

“What a damn fool thing to happen. On my first command!”

“Go on,” Harry urged. “You haven’t told me any details.”

“There aren’t many,” Per shrugged. “The first screams and roars slammed me awake. I threw on a jacket and stuffed feet into boots while my free hand buckled on a gun belt. By then the sirens were in full cry. Even so, I heard a blaster beam sizzle past my tent.

“I stumbled out into the compound. Everything was one black, boiling hell-kettle. Blasters flashed and flashed, sirens howled and voices cried battle. The cold stabbed at me. Starlight sheened on snowbanks and hoarfrost over the hills. I had an instant to think how bright and many the stars were, out there and not giving a curse.

“Then Yuschenkoff switched on the floodlamps in the Miriam’s turret. Suddenly an aritficial sun stood overhead, too bright for us to look at. What must it have been to the Cainites? Blue-white incandescence, I suppose. They swarmed among our tents and machines, tall leopard-furred hunters, squat brown gnomes, axes, clubs, spears, bows, slings, our own daggers in their hands. I saw only one man—sprawled on the earth, gun still between his fingers, head a broken horror.

“I put the command mike to my mouth—always wore it on my wrist as per doctrine—and bawled out orders as I pelted toward the ship. We had the atom itself to fight for us, but we were twenty, no, nineteen or less, against Ulash.

“Now our dispositions were planned for defense. Two men slept in the ship, the others in seal tents ringed around her. The half dozen on guard duty had been cut off, but the rest had the ship for an impregnable retreat. What we must do, though, was rally to the rescue of those guards, and quick. If it wasn’t too late.

“I saw the boys emerge from their strong point under the landing jacks. Even now I remember how Zerkowsky hadn’t fastened his parka, and what a low-comedy way it flapped around his bottom. He didn’t use pajamas. You notice the damnedest small things at such times, don’t you? The Cainites had begun to mill about, dazzled by the light. They hadn’t expected that, or the siren, which is a terrifying thing to hear at close range. Quite a few of them were already strewn dead or dying.

“Then—but all I knew personally was a tide that bellowed and yelped and clawed. It rolled over me from behind. I went down under their legs. They pounded across me and left me in the grip of a Lugal. He lay on my chest and went for my throat with teeth and hands. Judas, but that creature was strong! Centimeter by centimeter he closed in against my pushing and gouging. Suddenly another one got into the act. Must have snatched a club from some fallen Cainite and attacked whatever part of me was handiest, which happened to be my left shin. It’s nothing but pain and rage after that, till the blessed darkness came.

“The fact was, of course, that our Lugal hostages had overrun their guards and broken free. I might have expected as much. Even without specific orders, they wouldn’t have stood idle while their masters fought. But doubtless they’d been given advance commands. Tulitur and Bokzahan diddled us very nicely. First they got a big consignment of our trade goods, free, and then they planted reinforcements for themselves right in our compound.

“Even so, the scheme didn’t work. The Yildivans hadn’t really comprehended our power. How could they have? Manuel himself dropped the two Lugals who were killing me. He needed exactly two shots for that. Our boys swept a ring of fire, and the enemy melted away.

“But they’d hurt us badly. When I came to, I was in the Miriam’s sick bay. Manuel hovered over me like an anxious raven. ‘How’d we do?’ I think I said.

“ ‘You should rest, señor,’ he said, ‘and God forgive me that I made the doctor rouse you with drugs. But we must have your decision quickly. Several men are wounded. Two are dead. Three are missing. The enemy is back in the wilderness, I believe with prisoners.’

“He lifted me into a carrier and took me outside. I felt no physical pain, but was lightheaded and half crazy. You know how it is when you’re filled to the cap with stimulol. Manuel told me straight out that my legbone was pretty well pulverized, but that didn’t seem to matter at the time. . . . What do I mean, seem? Of course it didn’t! Gower and Muramoto were dead. Bullis, Cheng, and Zerkowsky were gone.

“The camp was unnaturally quiet under the orange sun. My men had policed the grounds while I was unconscious. Enemy corpses were laid out in a row. Twenty-three Yildivans—that number’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life—and I’m not sure how many Lugals, a hundred perhaps. I had Manuel push me along while I peered into face after still, bloody face. But I didn’t recognize any.

“Our own prisoners were packed together in our main basement excavation. A couple of hundred Lugals, but only two wounded Yildivans. The rest who were hurt had been carried off by their friends. With so much construction and big machines standing around for cover, that hadn’t been too hard to do. Manuel explained that he’d stopped the attack of the hostages with stunbeams. Much the best weapon. You can’t prevent a Lugal fighting for his master with a mere threat to kill him.

“In a corner of the pit, glaring up at the armed men above, were the Yildivans. One I didn’t know. He had a nasty blaster bum, and our medics had given him sedation after patching it, so he was pretty much out of the picture anyway. But I recognized the other, who was intact. A stunbeam had taken him. It was Kochihir, an adult son of Shivaru, who’d visited us like his father a time or two.

“We stared at each other for a space, he and I. Finally, I asked him. ‘Why have you done this?’ Each word puffed white out of my mouth and the wind shredded it.

“ ‘Because they are traitors, murderers, and thieves by nature, that’s why,’ Yuschenkoff said, also in Ulash. Brander’s team had naturally been careful to find out whether there were words corresponding to concepts of honor and the reverse. I don’t imagine the League will ever forget the Darborian Semantics!

“Yuschenkoff spat at Kochihir. ‘Now we shall hunt down your breed like the animals they are,’ he said. Gower had been his brother-in-law.

“ ‘No,’ I said at once, in Ulash, because such a growl had risen from the Lugals that any insane thing might have happened next. ‘Speak thus no more.’ Yuschenkoff shut his mouth, and a kind of ripple went among those packed, hairy bodies, like wind dying out on ocean. ‘But Kochihir,’ I said, ‘your father was my good friend. Or so I believed. In what wise have we offended him and his people?’

“He raised his ruff, the tail lashed his ankles, and he snarled, ‘You must go and never come back. Else we shall harry you in the forests, roll the hillsides down on you, stampede horned beasts through your camps, poison the wells, and burn the grass about your feet. Go, and do not dare return!’

“My own temper flared—which made my head spin and throb, as if with fever—and I said, ‘We shall certainly not go unless our captive friends are returned to us. There are drums in camp that your father gave me before he betrayed us. Call your folk on those, Kochihir, and tell them to bring back our folk. After that, perhaps we can talk. Never before.’

“He fleered at me without replying.

“I beckoned to Manuel. ‘No sense in stalling unnecessarily,’ I said. ‘We’ll organize a tight defense here. Won’t get taken by surprise twice. But we’ve got to rescue those men. Send flitters aloft to search for them. The war party can’t have gone far.’

“You can best tell how you argued with me, Manuel. You said an airflit was an utter waste of energy which was badly needed elsewhere. Didn’t you?”

The Nuevo Mexican looked embarrassed. “I did not wish to contradict my captain,” he said. His oddly delicate fingers twisted together in his lap as he stared out into the night that had fallen. “But, indeed, I thought that aerial scouts would never find anyone in so many, many hectares of hill and ravine, water and woods. They could have dispersed; those devils. Surely, even if they traveled away in company, they would not be in such a clump that infrared detectors could see them through the forest roof. Yet I did not like to contradict my captain.”

“Oh, you did, you,” Per said. A comer of his mouth bent upward. “I was quite daft by then. Shouted and stormed at you, eh? Told you to jolly well obey orders and get those flitters in motion. You saluted and started off, and I called you back. You mustn’t go in person. Too damned valuable here. Yes, that meant I was keeping back the one man with enough wilderness experience that he might have stood a chance of identifying spoor, even from above. But my brain was spinning down and down the sides of a maelstrom. ‘See what you can do to make this furry bastard cooperate,’ I said.”

“It pained me a little that my captain should appoint me his torturer,” Manuel confessed mildly. “Although from time to time, on various planets, when there was great need—No matter.”

“I’d some notion of breaking down morale among our prisoners,” Per said. “In retrospect, I see that it wouldn’t have made any difference if they had cooperated, at least to the extent of drumming for us. The Cainites don’t have our kind of group solidarity. If Kochihir and his buddy came to grief at our hands, that was their hard luck. But Shivaru and some of the others had read our psychology shrewdly enough to know what a hold on us their three prisoners gave.

“I looked down at Kochihir: His teeth gleamed back. He hadn’t missed a syllable or a gesture, and even if he didn’t know any Anglic, he must have understood almost exactly what was going on. By now I was slurring my words as if drunk. So, also like a drunk, I picked them with uncommon care. ‘Kochihir,’ I said, ‘I have commanded our fliers out to hunt down your people and fetch our own whom they have captured. Can a Yildivan outrun a flying machine? Can he fight when its guns flame at him from above? Can he hide from its eyes that see from end to end to horizon? Your kinfolk will dearly pay if they do not return our men of their own accord. Take the drums, Kochihir, and tell them so. If you do not, it will cost you dearly. I have commanded my man here to do whatever may be needful to break your will.’

“Oh, that was a vicious speech. But Gower and Muramoto had been my friends. Bullis, Cheng, and Zerkowsky still were, if they lived. And I was on the point of passing out. I did, actually, on the way back to the ship. I heard Doc Leblanc mutter something about how could he be expected to treat a patient whose system was abused with enough drugs to bloat a camel, and then the words kind of trailed off in a long gibber that went on and on, rising and falling until I thought I’d been turned into an electron and was trapped in an oscilloscope . . . and the darkness turned green and . . . and they tell me I was unconscious for fifty hours.

“From there on it’s Manuel’s story.”

At this stage, Per was croaking. As he sank back in his lounger, I saw how white he had become. One hand picked at his blanket, and the vermouth slopped when he raised his glass. Harry watched him, with a helpless anger that smoldered at Van Rijn. The merchant said, “There, there, so soon after his operation and I make him lecture us, ha? But shortly comes dinner, no better medicine than a real rijstaffel, and so soon after that he can walk about, he comes to my place in Djakarta for a nice old-fashioned orgy.”

“Oh, hellfire!” Per exploded in a whisper. “Why’re you trying to make me feel good? I ruined the whole show!”

“Whoa, son,” I ventured to suggest. “You were in good spirits half an hour ago, and half an hour from now you’ll be the same. It’s only that reliving the bad moments is more punishment than Jehovah would inflict. I’ve been there too.” Blindly, the blue gaze sought mine. “Look, Per,” I said, “if Freeman Van Rijn thought you’d botched a mission through your own fault, you wouldn’t be lapping his booze tonight. You’d be selling meat to the cannibals.”

A ghost of a grin rewarded me.

“Well, Don Manuel,” Van Rijn said, “now we hear from you, nie?”

“By your favor, señor, I am no Don,” the Nuevo Mexican said, courteously, academically, and not the least humbly. “My father was a huntsman in the Sierra de los Bosques Secos, and I traveled in space as a mercenary with Rogers’ Rovers, becoming sergeant before I left them for your service. No more.” He hesitated. “Nor is there much I can relate of the happenings on Cain.”

“Don’t make foolishness,” Van Rijn said, finished his third or fourth liter of beer since I arrived, and signaled for more. My own glass had been kept filled too, so much so that the stars and the city lights had begun to dance in the dark outside. I stuffed my pipe to help me ease off. “I have read the official reports from your expeditioning,” Van Rijn continued. “They are scum-dreary. I need details—the little things nobody thinks to record, like Per has used up his lawrence in telling—I need to make a planet real for me before this cracked old pot of mine can maybe find a pattern. For it is my experience of many other planets, where I, even I, Nicholas van Rijn, got my nose rubbed in the dirt—which, ho, ho, takes a lot of dirt—it is on that I draw. Evolutions have parallels, but also skews, like somebody said tonight. Which lines is Cain’s evolution parallel to? Talk, Ensign Gómez y Palomaro. Brag. Pop jokes, sing songs, balance a chair on your head if you want—but talk!”

 

•   •   •

 

The brown man sat still a minute. His eyes were steady on us, save when they moved to Per and back. “As the señor wishes,” he began. Throughout, his tone was level, but the accent could not help singing. “When they bore my captain away I stood in thought, until Igor Yuschenkoff said, ‘Well, who is to take the flitters?’

“ ‘None,’ I said.

“ ‘But we have orders,’ he said.

“ ‘The captain was hurt and shaken. We should not have roused him,’ I answered, and asked of the men who stood near, ‘Is this not so?’

“They agreed, after small argument. I leaned over the edge of the pit and asked Kochihir if he would beat the drums for us. ‘No,’ he said, ‘whatever you do.’

“ ‘I shall do nothing, yet,’ I said. ‘We will bring you food presently.’ And that was done. For the rest of the short day I wandered about among the snows that lay in patches on the grass. Ay, this was a stark land, where it swooped down into the valley and then rose again at the end of sight in saw-toothed purple ranges. I thought of home and of one Dolores whom I had known, a long time ago. The men did no work; they huddled over their weapons, saying little, and toward evening the breath began to freeze on their parka hoods.

“One by one I spoke to them and chose them for those tasks I had in mind. They were all good men of their hands, but few had been hunters save in sport. I myself could not trail the Cainites far, because they had crossed a broad reach of naked rock on their way downward and once in the forest had covered their tracks. But Hamud ibn Rashid and Jacques Ngolo had been woodsmen in their day. We prepared what we needed. Then I entered the ship and looked on my captain—how still he lay!

“I ate lightly and slept briefly. Darkness had fallen when I returned to the pit. The four men we had on guard stood like deeper shadows against the stars which crowd that sky. ‘Go now,’ I said, and took out my own blaster. Their footfalls crunched away.

“The shapes that clotted the blackness of the pit stirred and mumbled. A voice hissed upward, ‘Oh, you are back. To torment me?’ Those Cainites have eyes that see in the night like owls. I had thought, before, that they snickered within themselves when they watched us blunder about after sunset.

“ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I am only taking my turn to guard you.’

“ ‘You alone?’ he scoffed.

“ ‘And this.‘ I slapped the blaster against my thigh.

“He fell silent. The cold gnawed deeper into me. I do not think the Cainites felt it much. As the stars wheeled slowly overhead, I began to despair of my plan. Whispers went among the captives, but otherwise I stood in a world where sound was frozen dead.

“When the thing happened, it went with devil’s haste. The Lugals had been shifting about a while, as if restless. Suddenly they were upon me. One had stood on another’s shoulders and leaped. To death, as they thought—but my shot missed, a quick flare and an amazed gasp from him that he was still alive. Had I not missed, several would have died to bring me down.

“As it was, two fell upon me. I went under, breaking hands loose from my throat with a judo release but held writhing by their mass. Hard fists beat me on head and belly. A palm over my mouth muffled my yells. Meanwhile the prisoners helped themselves out and fled.

“Finally I worked a leg free and gave one of them my knee. He rolled off with pain rattling in his throat. I twisted about on top of the other and struck him below the skull with the blade of my hand. When he went limp, I sprang up and shouted.

“Siren and floodlights came to life. The men swarmed from ship and tents. ‘Back!’ I cried. ‘Not into the dark!’ Many Lugals had not yet escaped, and those retreated snarling to the far side of the pit as our troop arrived. With their bodies they covered the wounded Yildivan from the guns. But we only fired, futilely, after those who were gone from sight.

“Guards posted themselves around the cellar. I scrabbled over the earth, seeking my blaster. It was gone. Someone had snatched it up: if not Kochihir, then a Lugal who would soon give it to him. Jacques Ngolo came to me and saw. ‘This is bad,’ he said.

“ ‘An evil turn of luck,’ I admitted, ‘but we must proceed anyhow.’ I rose and stripped off my parka. Below were the helmet and spacesuit torso which had protected me in the fight. I threw them down, for they would only hinder me now, and put the parka back on. Hamud ibn Rashid joined us. He had my pack and gear and another blaster for me. I took them, and we three started our pursuit.

“By the mercy of God, we had never found occasion to demonstrate night-seeing goggles here. They made the world clear, though with a sheen over it like dreams. Ngolo’s infrared tracker was our compass, the needle trembling toward the mass of Cainites that loped ahead of us. We saw them for a while, too, as they crossed the bare hillside, in and out among tumbled boulders; but we kept ourselves low lest they see us against the sky. The grass was rough in my face when I went all-fours, and the earth sucked heat out through boots and gloves. Somewhere a hunter beast screamed.

“We were panting by the time we reached the edge of trees. Yet in under their shadows we must go, before the Cainites fled farther than the compass would reach. Already it flickered, with so many dark trunks and so much brake to screen off radiation. But thus far the enemy had not stopped to hide his trail. I moved through the underbrush more carefully than him—legs brought forward to part the stems that my hands then guided to either side of my body—reading the book of trampled bush and snapped branch.

“After an hour we were well down in the valley. Tall trees gloomed everywhere about; the sky was hidden, and I must tune up the photomultiplier unit in my goggles. Now the book began to close. The Cainites were moving at a natural pace, confident of their escape, and even without special effort they left little spoor. And since they were now less frantic and more alert, we must follow so far behind that infrared detection was of no further use.

“At last we came to a meadow, whose beaten grass showed that they had paused here a while. And that was seen which I feared. The party had broken into three or four, each bound a different way. ‘Which do we choose?’ Ngolo asked.

“ ‘Three of us can follow three of them,’ I said.

“ ‘Bismillah!’ Hamud grunted. ‘Blaster or no, I would not care to face such a band alone. But what must be, must be.’

“We took so much time to ponder what clues the forest gave that the east was gray before we parted. Plainly, the Lugals had gone toward their masters’ homes, while Kochihir’s own slaves had accompanied him. And Kochihir was the one we desired. I could only guess that the largest party was his, because most likely the first break had been made under his orders by his own Lugals, whose capabilities he knew. That path I chose for myself. Hamud and Ngolo wanted it too, but I used my rank to seize the honor, that folk on Nuevo Mexico might never say a Gómez lacked courage.

“So great a distance was now between that there was no reason not to use our radios to talk with each other and with the men in camp. That was often consoling, in the long time which was upon me. For it was slow, slow, tracing those woods—wily hunters through their own land. I do not believe I could have done it, had they been only Yildivans and such Lugals as are regularly used in the chase. But plain to see, the attack had been strengthened by calling other Lugals from fields and mines and household tasks, and those were less adept.

“Late in the morning, Ngolo called. ‘My gang just reached a cave and a set of lean-tos,’ he said. ‘I sit in a tree and watch them met by some female and half-grown Yildivans. They shuffle off to their own shed. This is where they belong, I suppose, and they are not going farther. Shall I return to the meadow and pick up another trail?’

“ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it would be too cold by now. Backtrack to a spot out of view and have a flitter fetch you.’

“Some hours later, the heart leaped in my breast. For I came upon a tree charred by unmistakable blaster shots. Kochihir had been practicing.

“I called Hamud and asked where he was. ‘On the bank of a river,’ he said, ‘casting about the place where they crossed. That was a bitter stream to wade!’

“ ‘Go no farther,’ I said. ‘My path is the right one. Have yourself taken back to camp.’

“ ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Shall we not join you now?’

“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘It is uncertain how near I am to the end. Perhaps so near that a flitter would be seen by them as it came down and alarm them. Stand by.’ I confess it was a lonely order to give.

“A few times I stopped to eat and rest. But stimulants kept me going in a way that would have surprised my quarry who despised me. By evening his trail was again so fresh that I slacked my pace and went on with a snake’s caution. Down here, after sunset, the air was not so cold as on the heights; yet every leaf glistened hoar in what starlight pierced through.

“Not much into the night, my own infrared detector began to register a source, stronger than living bodies could account for. I whispered the news into my radio and then ordered no more communication until further notice, lest we be overheard. Onward I slipped. The forest rustled and creaked about me, somewhere far off a heavy animal broke brush in panic flight, wings whirred overhead, yet Santa Maria, how silent and alone it was!

“Until I came to the edge of a small clearing.

“A fire burned there, throwing unrestful shadows on the wall of a big, windowless log cabin which nestled under the trees beyond. Two Yildivans leaned on their spears. And light glimmered from the smoke hole in the roof.

“Most softly, I drew my stun gun. The bolt snicked twice, and they fell in heaps. At once I sped across the open ground, crouched in the shadow under that rough wall, and waited.

“But no one had heard. I glided to the doorway. Only a leather curtain blocked my view. I twitched it aside barely enough that I might peer within.

“The view was dimmed by smoke, but I could see that there was just one long room. It did not seem plain, so beautiful were the furs hung and draped everywhere about. A score or so of Yildivans, mostly grown males, squatted in a circle around the fire, which burned in a pit and picked their fierce flat countenances out of the dark. Also there were several Lugals hunched in a comer. I recognized old Cherkez among them, and was glad he had outlived the battle. The Lugals in Kochihir’s party must have been sent to barracks. He himself was telling his father Shivaru of his escape.

“As yet the time was unripe for happiness, but I vowed to light many candles for the saints. Because this was as I had hoped: Kochihir had not gone to his own home, but sought an agreed rendezvous. Zerkowsky, Cheng, and Bullis were here. They sat in another corner at the far end of the room, coughing from the smoke, skins drawn around them to ward off the cold.

“Kochihir finished his account and looked at his father for approval. Shivaru’s tail switched back and forth. ‘Strange that they were so careless about you,’ he said.

“ ‘They are like blind cubs,’ Kochihir scoffed.

“ ‘I am not so sure,’ the old Yildivan murmured. ‘Great are their powers. And . . . we know what they did in the past.’ Then suddenly he grew stiff, and his whisper struck out like a knife. ‘Or did they do it? Tell me again, Kochihir, how the master ordered one thing and the rest did another.’

“ ‘No, now, that means nothing,’ said a different Yildivan, scarred and grizzled. ‘What we must devise is a use for these captives. You have thought they might trade our Lugals and Gumush, whom Kochihir says they still hold, for three of their own. But I say, Why should they? Let us instead place the bodies where the Erziran can find them, in such condition that they will be warned away.’

“ ‘Just so,’ said Bokzahan, whom I now spied in the gloom. ‘Tulitur and I proved they are weak and foolish.’

“ ‘First we should try to bargain,’ said Shivaru. ‘If that fails. . . .’ His fangs gleamed in the firelight.

“ ‘Make an example of one, then, before we talk,’ Kochihir said angrily. ‘They threatened the same for me.’

“A rumble went among them, as from a beast’s cage in the zoo. I thought with terror of what might be done. For my captain has told you how no Yildivan is in authority over any other. Whatever his wishes, Shivaru could not stop them from doing what they would.

“I must decide my own course immediately. Blaster bolts could not destroy them all fast enough to keep them from hurling the weapons that lay to hand upon me—not unless I set the beam so wide that our men must also be killed. The stun gun was better, yet it would not overpower them either before. I went down under axes and clubs. By standing to one side I could pen them within, for they had only the single door. But Bullis, Cheng, and Zerkowsky would remain hostages.

“What I did was doubtless stupid, for I am not my captain. I sneaked back to the edge of the woods and called the men in camp. ‘Come as fast as may be,’ I said, and left the radio going for them to home on. Then I circled about and found a tree overhanging the cabin. Up I went, and down again from a branch to the sod roof, and so to the smoke hole. Goggles protected my eyes, but nostrils withered in the fumes that poured forth. I filled my lungs with clean air and leaned forward to see.

“Best would have been if they had gone to bed. Then I could have stunned them one by one as they slept, without risk. But they continued to sit about and quarrel over what to do with their captives. How hard those poor men tried to be brave, as that dreadful snarling broke around them, as slit eyes turned their way and hands went stroking across knives!

“The time felt long, but I had not completed the Rosary in my mind when thunder awoke. Our flitters came down the sky like hawks. The Yildivans roared. Two or three of them dashed out the door to see what was afoot. I dropped them with my stunner, but not before one had screamed, ‘The Erziran are here!’

“My face went back to the smoke hole. It was turmoil below. Kochihir screeched and pulled out his blaster. I fired but missed. Too many bodies in between, señores. There is no other excuse for me.

“I took the gun in my teeth, seized the edge of the smoke hole, and swung myself as best I could before letting go. Thus I struck the dirt floor barely outside the firepit, rolled over and bounced erect. Cherkez leaped for my throat. I sent him reeling with a kick to the belly, took my gun, and fired around me.

“Kochihir could not be seen in the mob which struggled from wall to wall. I fought my way toward the prisoners. Shivaru’s ax whistled down. By the grace of God, I dodged it, twisted about and stunned him point-blank. I squirmed between two others. A third got on my back. I snapped my head against his mouth and felt flesh give way. He let go. With my gun arm and my free hand I tossed a Lugal aside and saw Kochihir. He had reached the men. They shrank from him, too stupefied to fight. Hate was on his face, in his whole body, as he took unpracticed aim.

“He saw me at his sight’s edge and spun. The blaster crashed, blinding in that murk. But I had dropped to one knee as I pulled trigger. The beam scorched my parka hood. He toppled. I pounced, got the blaster, and whirled to stand before our people.

“Bokzahan raised his ax and threw it. I blasted it in mid air and then killed him. Otherwise I used the stunner. And in a minute or two more, the matter was finished. A grenade brought down the front wall of the cabin. The Cainites fell before a barrage of knockout beams. We left them to awaken and returned to camp.”

 

•   •   •

 

Again silence grew upon us. Manuel asked if he might smoke, politely declined Van Rijn’s cigars, and took a vicious-looking brown cigarette from his own case. That was a lovely, grotesque thing, wrought in silver on some planet I could not identify.

“Whoof!” Van Rijn gusted. “But this is not the whole story, from what you have written. They came to see you before you left.”

Per nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. A measure of strength had rearisen in him. “We’d about finished our preparations when Shivaru himself arrived, with ten other Yildivans and their Lugals. They walked slowly into the compound, ruffs erect and tails held stiff, looking neither to right nor left. I guess they wouldn’t have been surprised to be shot down. I ordered such of the boys as were covering them to holster guns and went out on my carrier to say hello with due formality.

“Shivaru responded just as gravely. Then he got almost tongue-tied. He couldn’t really apologize. Ulash doesn’t have the phrases for it. He beckoned to Cherkez. ‘You were good to release our people whom you held,’ he said.” Per chuckled. “Huh! What else were we supposed to do, keep feeding them? Cherkez gave him a leather bag. ‘I bring a gift,’ he told me, and pulled out Tulitur’s head. ‘We shall return as much of the goods he got from you as we can find,’ he promised, ‘and if you will give us time, we shall bring double payment for everything else.’

“I’m afraid that after so much blood had gone over the dam, I didn’t find the present as gruesome as I ought. I only sputtered that we didn’t require such tokens.

“ ‘But we do,’ he said, ‘to cleanse our honor.’

“I invited them to eat, but they declined. Shivaru made haste to explain that they didn’t feel right about accepting our hospitality until their debt was paid off. I told them we were pulling out. Though that was obvious from the state of the camp, they still looked rather dismayed. So I told them we, or others like us, would be back, but first it was necessary to get our injured people home.

“Another mistake of mine. Because being reminded of what they’d done to us upset them so badly that they only mumbled when I tried to find out why they’d done it. I decided best not press that issue—the situation being delicate yet—and they left with relief branded on them.

“We should have stuck around a while, maybe, because we’ve got to know what the trouble was before committing more men and equipment to Cain. Else it’s all too likely to flare up afresh. But between our being shorthanded, and having a couple of chaps who needed first-class medical treatment, I didn’t think we could linger. All the way home we wondered and argued. What had gone wrong? And what, later, had gone right? We still don’t know.”

Van Rijn’s eyes glittered at him. “What is your theory?” he demanded.

“Oh—” Per spread his hands. “Yuschenkoff’s, more or less. They were afraid we were the spearhead of an invasion. When we acted reasonably decently—refraining from mistreatment of prisoners, thanks to Manuel, and using stunners rather than blasters in the rescue operation—they decided they were mistaken.”

Manuel had not shifted a muscle in face or body, as far as I could see. But Van Rijn’s battleship prow of a nose swung toward him and the merchant laughed, “You have maybe a little different notion, ha? Come, spew it out.”

“My place is not to contradict my captain,” said the Nuevo Mexican.

“So why you make fumblydiddles against orders, that day on Cain? When you know better, then you got a duty, by damn, to tell us where to stuff our heads.”

“If the señor commands. But I am no learned man. I have no book knowledge of studies made on the psychonomy. It is only that . . . that I think I know those Yildivans. They seem not so unlike men of the barranca country on my home world, and again among the Rovers.”

“How so?”

“They live very near death, their whole lives. Courage and skill in fighting, those are what they most need to survive, and so are what they most treasure. They thought, seeing us use machines and weapons that kill from afar, seeing us blinded by night and most of us clumsy in the woods, hearing us talk about what our life is like at home—they thought we lacked cojones. So they scorned us. They owed us nothing, since we were spiritless and could never understand their own spirit. We were only fit to be the prey, first of their wits and then of their weapons.”

Manuel’s shoulders drew straight. His voice belled out so that I jumped in my seat. “When they found how terrible men are, that they themselves are the weak ones, we changed in their eyes from peasants to kings!”

Van Rijn sucked noisily on his cigar. “Any other shipboard notions?” he asked.

“No, sir, those were our two schools of thought,” Per said.

Van Rijn gaffawed. “So! Take comfort, freemen. No need for angelometrics on pinheads. Relax and drink. You are both wrong.”

“I beg your pardon,” Harry rapped. “You were not there, may I say.”

“No, not in the flesh.” Van Rijn slapped his paunch. “Too much flesh for that. But tonight I have been on Cain up here, in this old brain, and it is rusty and afloat in alcohol but it has stored away more information about the universe than maybe the universe gets credit for holding. I see now what the parallels are. Xanadu, Dunbar, Tametha, Disaster Landing . . . oh, the analogue is never exact and on Cain the thing I am thinking of has gone far and far . . . but still I see the pattern, and what happened makes sense.

“Not that we have got to have an analogue. You gave us so many clues here that I could solve the puzzle by logic alone. But analogues help, and also they show my conclusion is not only correct but possible.”

Van Rijn paused. He was so blatantly waiting to be coaxed that Harry and I made a long performance out of refreshing our drinks. Van Rijn turned purple, wheezed a while, decided to keep his temper for a better occasion, and chortled.

“Hokay, you win,” he said. “I tell you short and fast, because very soon we eat if the cook has not fallen in the curry. Later you can study the formal psychologics.

“The key to this problem is the Lugals. You have been calling them slaves, and there is your mistake. They are not. They are domestic animals.”

Per sat bolt upright. “Can’t be!” he exclaimed. “Sir, I mean, they have language and—”

Ja, ja, ja, for all I care they do mattress algebra in their heads. They are still tame animals. What is a slave, anyhows? A man who has got to do what another man says, willy-billy. Right? Harry said he would not trust a slave with weapons, and I would not either, because history is too pocked up with slave revolts and slaves running away and slaves dragging their feet and every such foolishness. But your big fierce expensive-dogs, Harry, you trust them with their teeth, nie? When your kids was little and wet, you left them alone in rooms with a dog to keep watches. There is the difference. A slave may or not obey. But a domestic animal has got to obey. His genes won’t let him do anything different.

“Well, you yourselves figured the Yildivans had kept Lugals so long, breeding them for what traits they wanted, that this had changed the Lugal nature. Must be so. Otherwise the Lugals would be slaves, not animals, and could not always be trusted the way you saw they were. You also guessed the Yildivans themselves must have been affected, and this is very sleek thinking only you did not carry it so far you ought. Because everything you tell about the Yildivans goes to prove by nature they are wild animals.

“I mean wild, like tigers and buffalos. They have no genes for obediences, except to their parents when they are little. So long have they kept Lugals to do the dirty work—before they really became intelligent, I bet, like ants keeping aphids; for remember, you found no Lugals that was not kept—any gregarious-making genes in the Yildivans, any inborn will to be led, has gone foof. This must be so. Otherwise, from normal variation in ability, some form of Yildivan ranks would come to exist, nie?

“This pops your fear-of-invasion theory, Per Stenvik. With no concept of a tribe or army, they can’t have any notions about conquest. And wild animals don’t turn humble when they are beat, Manuel Gómez y Palomares, the way you imagine. A man with a superiority complexion may lick your boots when you prove you are his better; but an untamed carnivore hasn’t got any such pride in the first place. He is plain and simple independent of you.

“Well, then, what did actual go on in their heads?

“Recapitalize. Humans land and settle down to deal. Yildivans have no experience of races outside their own planet. They natural assume you think like them. In puncture of fact, I believe they could not possible imagine anything else, even if they was told. Your findings about their culture structure shows their half-symbiosis with the Lugals is psychological too; they are specialized in the brains, not near so complicated as man.

“But as they get better acquaintanced, what do they see? People taking orders. How can this be? No Yildivan ever took orders, unless to save his life when an enemy stood over him with a sharp thing. Ah, ha! So some of the strangers is Lugal type. Pretty soon, I bet, old Shivaru decides all of you is Lugal except young Stenvik, because in the end all orders come from him. Some others, like Manuel, is straw bosses maybe, but no more. Tame animals.

“And then Per mentions the idea of God.”

Van Rijn crossed himself with a somewhat irritating piety. “I make no blasfuming,” he said. “But everybody knows our picture of God comes in part from our kings. If you want to know how Oriental kings in ancient days was spoken to, look in your prayer book. Even now, we admit He is the Lord, and we is supposed to do His will, hoping He will not take too serious a few things that happen to anybody like anger, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, and the rest what makes life fun.

“Per said this. So Per admitted he had a master. But then he must also be a Lugal—an animal. No Yildivan could possible confess to having even a mythical master, as shown by the fact they have no religion themselves though their Lugals seem to.

“Give old boy Shivaru his credits, he came again with some friends to ask further. What did he learn? He already knew everybody else was a Lugal, because of obeying. Now Per said he was no better than the rest. This confirmed Per was also a Lugal. And what blew the cork out of the bottle was when Per said he nor none of them had any owners at home!

“Whup, whup, slow down, youngster. You could not have known. Always we make discoveries the hard way. Like those poor Yildivans.

“They was real worried, you can imagine. Even dogs turn on people now and then, and surely some Lugals go bad once in a while on Cain and make big trouble before they can get killed. The Yildivans had seen some of your powers, knew you was dangerous . . . and your breed of Lugal must have gone mad and killed off its own Yildivans. How else could you be Lugals and yet have no masters?

“So. What would you and I do, friends, if we lived in lonely country houses and a pack of wild dogs what had killed people set up shop in our neighborhood?”

Van Rijn gurgled beer down his throat. We pondered for a while. “Seems pretty farfetched,” Harry said.

“No.” Per’s cheeks burned with excitement. “It fits. Freeman Van Rijn put into words what I always felt as I got to know Shivaru. A—a single-mindedness about him. As if he was incapable of seeing certain things, grasping certain ideas, though his reasoning faculties were intrinsically as good as mine. Yes. . . .”

I nodded at my pipe, which had been with me when I clashed against stranger beings than that.

“So two of them first took advantage of you,” Van Rijn said, “to swindle away what they could before the attack because they wasn’t sure the attack would work. No shame there. You was outside the honor concept, being animals. Animals whose ancestors must have murdered a whole race of true humans, in their views. Then the alarmed males tried to scrub you out. They failed, but hoped maybe to use their prisoners for a lever to pry you off their country. Only Manuel fooled them.”

“But why’d they change their minds about us?” Per asked.

Van Rijn wagged his finger. “Ja, there you was lucky. You gave a very clear and important order. Your men disobeyed every bit of it. Now Lugals might go crazy and kill off Yildivans, but they are so bred to being bossed that they can’t stand long against a leader. Or if they do, it’s because they is too crazy to think straight. Manuel, though, was thinking straight like a plumber line. His strategy worked five-four-three-two-one-zero. Also, your people did not kill more Yildivans than was needful, which crazy Lugals would do.

“So you could not be domestic animals after all, gone bad or not. Therefore you had to be wild animals. The Cainite mind—a narrow mind like you said—can’t imagine any third horn on that special bull. If you had proved you was not Lugal type, you must be Yildivan type. Indications to the contrariwise, the way you seemed to take orders or acknowledge a Lord, those must have been misunderstandings on the Cainites’ part.

“Once he had time to reason this out, Shivaru saw his people had done yours dirty. Partway he felt bad about it in his soul, if he has one stowed somewhere; Yildivans do have some notion about upright behavior to other Yildivans. And besides, he did not want to lose a chance at your fine trade goods. He convinced his friends. They did what best they could think about to make amendments.”

Van Rijn rubbed his palms together in glee. “Oh, ho, ho, what customers they will be for us!” he roared.

We sat still for another time, digesting the idea, until the butler announced dinner. Manuel helped Per rise.

“We’ll have to instruct everybody who goes to Cain,” the young man said. “I mean, not to let on that we aren’t wild animals, we humans.”

“But, Captain,” Manuel said, and his head lifted high, “we are.”

Van Rijn stopped and looked at us a while. Then he shook his own head violently and shambled bearlike to the viewer wall. “No,” he growled. “Some of us are.”

“How’s that?” Harry wondered.

“We here in this room are wild,” Van Rijn said. “We do what we do because we want to or because it is right. No other motivations, nie? If you made slaves of us, you would for sure not be wise to let us near a weapon.

“But how many slaves has there been, in Earth’s long history, that their masters could trust? Quite some! There was even armies of slaves, like the Janissaries. And how many people today is domestic animals at heart? Wanting somebody else should tell them what to do, and take care of their needfuls, and protect them not just against their fellow men but against themselves? Why has every free human society been so short-lived? Is this not because the wild-animal men are born so heartbreaking seldom?”

He glared out across the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet.

“Do you think they yonder is free?” he shouted. His hand chopped downward in scorn.

 

« ^

 

 

 

“Day of Burning”  —  Index  —  Satan’s World