David Falkayn: Star Trader (Technic Civlization) Page 15

  Oh, well. Adzel could set that right. Chee started off. Before long she was loping parallel to the Haijakata road, hidden by the farm crops that lined it, all pursuit shaken. The air was like mummy dust—thin mummy dust—and she grew thirstier by the minute. She managed to suppress most symptoms by concentrating on how best to refute a paper she'd seen in the Journal of Xenobiology before they left Earth. The author obviously had hash for brains and fried eggs for eyes. Even so, eventually she had to get a drink and a rest. She slanted across the fields toward a canebrake that must mark a spring. There she glided cautiously, a shadow among shadows, until she peered out at the farmstead it enclosed.

  Adzel was there. He stood with a pig-sized animal, from a pen of similar beasts, hooting in his arms, and said plaintively to the barred and shuttered central keep: "But my good fellow, you must give me your name."

  "For you to work magic on?" said a hoarse male voice from within.

  "No, I promise you. I only wish to give you a receipt. Or, at least, know whom to repay when I am able. I require food, but I do not intend to steal."

  A dart whined from an arrow slot. He sighed. "Well, if you feel that way—" Chee came forth. "Where's some water?" she husked.

  Adzel started. "You! Dear friend, what in the universe has happened to you?"

  "Don't 'dear friend' me, you klong. Can't you see I'm about to dry up and blow away?" Adzel tried to bristle. Having no hair, he failed. "You might keep a civil tongue in your head. You would be astonished at how much less detested that can make you. Here I have been traveling day and night—"

  "What, clear around the planet?" Chee gibed. Adzel surrendered and showed her the spring. The water was scant and muddy, but she drank with some understanding of what Falkayn meant by vintage champagne. Afterward she sat and groomed herself. "Let's catch up on our news," she proposed. Adzel butchered the animal while she talked. He had no tools for the job, but didn't need them either. In the end, he looked forlorn and said: "Now what shall we do?"

  "Call the ship, of course."

  "How?"

  Chee noticed for the first time that his transceiver was also broken. They stared at each other.

  Gujgengi adjusted his spare glasses. They didn't fit as well as the old ones had. The view was fuzzy to his eyes. This might be preferable, though, he thought. The thing is so huge. And so full of sorcery. Yes, I do believe that under present circumstances I am quite satisfied not to see it too clearly. He gulped, mustered his whole courage, and tottered a step closer. At his back, the soldiers watched him with frightened expressions. That nerved him a trifle. Must show them we Deodaka are uniformly fearless and so forth. Though he would never have come except for Lalnakh. Really, the Commandant had behaved like a desert savage. One knew the Tiruts weren't quite one's equals—who was?—but one had at least taken them for a civilized phratry. Yet Lalnakh had stormed and raved so about the prisoner escaping that . . . well, from a practical standpoint, too, it would not help Gujgengi's reputation. But chiefly for the honor of the bloodline, one must answer the Tirut's unbridled tirade with stiff dignity and an offer to go consult the flying house. Would the Commandant care to be along? No? Excellent. One did not say so immediately, for fear of provoking him into changing his mind, but when one returned, one might perhaps drop a hint or two that most noble Lalnakh had not dared come. Yes, one must maintain a proper moral superiority, even at the risk of one's life.

  Gujgengi swallowed hard. "Most noble," he called. His voice sounded strange in his ears.

  "Are you addressing me?" asked the flat tones from overhead.

  "Ak-krrr, yes." Gujgengi had already had demonstrated to him, before the present wretched contretemps, that the flying house (no, the word was shi', with some unpronounceable consonant at the end, was it not?) could speak and think. Unless, to be sure, the strangers had deceived him, and there was really just someone else inside. If so, however, the someone had a peculiar personality, with little or no will of its own.

  "Well?" said Gujgengi when the silence had stretched too far.

  "I wait for you to proceed," said the shi'.

  "I wish, most noble, to ask your intentions."

  "I have not yet been told what to intend."

  "Until then you do nothing?"

  "I store away whatever data I observe, in case these are required at a later time." Gujgengi let out a hard-held breath. He'd hoped for something like this. Greatly daring, he asked:

  "Suppose you observed one of your crew in difficulties. What would you do?"

  "What I was ordered to do, within the limits of capability."

  "Nothing else? I mean, krrr-ek, would you take no action on your own initiative?"

  "None, without verbal or code orders. Otherwise there are too many possibilities for error." Still more relieved, Gujgengi felt a sudden eagerness to explore. One had one's intellectual curiosity. And, of course, whatever was learned might conceivably find practical application. If the newly come Ershokh and his two eldritch companions were killed, well, the shi' would still be here. Gujgengi turned to the nearest officer. "Withdraw all personnel a distance," he said. "I have secrets to discuss." The Tirut gave him a suspicious glance but obeyed. Gujgengi turned back to the shi'. "You are not totally passive," he pointed out. "You answer me in some detail."

  "I am so constructed. A faculty of logical judgment is needed."

  "Ak-krrr, do you not get, shall we say, bored sitting here?"

  "I am not constructed to feel tedium. The rational faculty of me remains automatically active, analyzing data. When no fresh data are on hand, I rehearse the logical implications of the rules of poker."

  "What?"

  "Poker is a game played aboard my hull."

  "I see. Uk-k-k, your responsiveness to me is most pleasing."

  "I have been instructed to be nonhostile to your people. 'Instructed' is the closest word I can find in my Katandaran vocabulary. I have not been instructed not to reply to questions and statements. The corollary is that I should reply."

  Excitement coursed high in Gujgengi. "Do you mean—do I understand you rightly, most noble—you will answer any question I ask?"

  "No. Since I am instructed to serve the interests of my crew, and since the armed force around me implies that this may have come into conflict with your interests, I will release no information which might enhance your strength."

  The calmness was chilling. And Gujgengi felt disappointed that the shi' was not going to tell him how to make blasters. Still, a shrewd interrogator might learn something. "Would you advise me about harmless matters, then?"

  The wind blew shrill, casting whirls of grit and tossing the bushes, while the hidden one considered. Finally: "This is a problem at the very limits of my faculty of judgment. I can see no reason not to do so. At the same time, this expedition is for the purpose of gaining wealth. The best conclusion I can draw is that I should charge you for advice."

  "But, but how?"

  "You may bring furs, drugs, and other valuables, and lay them in that open doorway you presumably see. What do you wish me to compute?"

  Taken aback, Gujgengi stuttered. He had a potential fortune to make, he knew, if only he could think. . . . Wait. He remembered a remark Chee Lan had made in Lalnakh's house before her arrest.

  "We play a game called akritel, " he said slowly. "Can you tell me how to win at it?"

  "Explain the rules."

  Gujgengi did so. "Yes," the shi' said, "this is simple. There is no way to win every time without cheating. But by knowing the odds on various configurations that may be achieved, you can bet according to those odds and therefore be ahead in the long run, assuming your opponents do not. Evidently they do not, since you ask, and since Drunkard's Walk computations involve comparatively sophisticated mathematics. Bring writing materials and I will dictate a table of odds." Gujgengi restrained himself from too much eagerness. "What do you want for this, most noble?"

  "I cannot be entirely certain. Let me weigh what information I ha
ve, in order to estimate what the traffic will bear." The shi' pondered awhile, then named what it said was a fair amount of trade goods. Gujgengi screamed that this would impoverish him. The shi' pointed out that in that case he need not buy the information. It did not wish to haggle. Doubtless there were others who would not find the fee excessive. Gujgengi yielded. He'd have to borrow a sum to pay for that much stuff; still, with the market depressed by the quarantine, the cost wouldn't be unmanageable. Once he left this miserable hamlet and returned to Katandara, where they gambled for real stakes—

  "Did you learn anything, most noble?" asked the officer as Gujgengi started uphill again.

  "Yes," he said. "Most potent information. I will have to pay a substantial bribe, but this I will do out of my own pocket, in the interests of the Emperor. Ak-krrr . . . see to it that no one else discourses with the shi'. The magic involved could so easily get out of hand."

  "Indeed, most noble!" shuddered the officer.

  IX

  The heroes of adventure fiction can go through any harrowing experience and—without psychochemicals, usually without sleep, always without attending to bodily needs—are at once ready to be harrowed all over again. Real people are built otherwise. Even after a possible twelve hours in the sack, Falkayn felt tired and sore. He hadn't been hurt during that wild ride through the Katandaran lines, but bolts zipped nastily close, and Stepha sabered an enemy rider seconds before he reached the Hermetian. Then Bobert Thorn's people sallied, beat off the opposition, and brought the newcomers into Rangakora. Falkayn wasn't used to coming that near death. His nerves were still tied in knots. It didn't help that Stepha was utterly cheerful as she showed him around the palace. But he must admit that the building fascinated him. Not only was it more light and airy than anything in Katandara, not only did it often startle him with beauty; it held the accumulated wealth of millennia less violent than farther west. There were even interior doors such as he knew at home, of bronze cast in bas-reliefs; reasonably clear glass windows; steam heating.

  They left the electroplating shop, a royal monopoly operated in the palace, and strolled to a balcony. Falkayn was surprised at how far the grave philosophers had progressed: lead-acid batteries, copper wire, early experimentation with a sort of Leyden jar. He could understand why this was a more congenial society for humans than Katandara.

  "Jeroo, there's Thorn himself, and the King," Stepha exclaimed. She led Falkayn to the rail where they stood. His two guards tramped behind. They were friendly young chaps, but they never left him and their weapons were loose in the scabbards.

  Thorn put down the brass telescope through which he had been looking and nodded. "That camp gets sloppier every watch," he said. "They're demoralized, right enough." Falkayn glanced the same way. The palace was a single unit, many-windowed, several stories high. He was near the top. No wall surrounded it, simply a garden, and beyond that the city. Like Katandara, Rangakora was so old as to be almost entirely stone-built. But the houses here were a symphony of soft whites, yellows, and reds. Facing outward rather than inward, with peaked tile roofs and graceful lines, they reminded him somewhat of First Renaissance architecture on Earth. Traffic moved on comparatively wide, paved avenues, distance-dwarfed figures, a faint rumble of wheels and clatter of feet. Smoke drifted into a Tyrian sky where a few clouds wandered. Behind, the heights soared gray-blue to Mount Gundra, whose snowcap glowed gold with perpetual sunset. The falls tumbled on his right, white and green and misted with rainbows, querning their way down to a Chakora which here was brilliant with fertility.

  His gaze stopped short, at the besiegers. Beyond the city ramparts, their tents and campfires dotted the plateau, their animals grazed in herds and metal flashed where the soldiers squatted. Jadhadi must have sent powerful reinforcements when he learned of the rebellion. "I'd still not like to take them on, the way they outnumber your effectiveness," he said.

  Bobert Thorn laughed. He was a stocky, grizzle-bearded man with fierce blue eyes. Old battle scars and well-worn saber stood out against his embroidered scarlet tunic and silky trousers. "No hurry," he said.

  "We've ample supplies, more than they're able to strip off the country. Let 'em sit for a while. Maybe the rest of the Ershoka will arrive. If not, come next twilight they'll be so hungry and diseased, and half blinded to boot, we can rout 'em. They know that themselves, too. They haven't much guts left." He turned to the slim red-pelted young Ikranankan in saffron robe and gilt chaplet. "King Ursala, this here's the man from Beyond-the-World I told you about."

  The monarch inclined his avian head. "Greeting," he said, in a dialect not too thick to follow. "I have been most anxious to meet you. Would the circumstances had been friendlier."

  "They might be yet," Falkayn hinted.

  "Not so, if your comrades carry out their threat to bring us under Katandara," said Ursala. His mild tone softened the import.

  Falkayn felt ashamed. "Well, uh, there we were, strangers with no real knowledge. And what's so bad about joining the Empire? Nobody there seemed to be ill treated."

  Ursala tossed his ruff and answered haughtily: "Rangakora was ancient when Katandara was a village. The Deodaka were desert barbarians a few generations ago. Their ways are not ours. We do not set phratry against phratry, nor decree that a son is necessarily born into his father's profession."

  "That so?" Falkayn was taken aback.

  Stepha nodded. "Phratries here're just family associations," she said. "Guilds cut right across them."

  "That's what I keep telling you, most noble," said Thorn self-righteously. "Once under the protection of the Ershoka—"

  "Which we did not ask for," Ursala interrupted.

  "No, but if I hadn't decided to take over, Jadhadi's viceroy would be here now."

  "I suppose you are the best of a hard bargain," sighed the King. "The Irshari may have favored us too long; we seem to have lost skill in war. But let us be honest. You will exact a price for your protection, in land, treasure, and power."

  "Of course," said Thorn.

  To break an uncomfortable silence, Falkayn asked who or what the Irshari might be. "Why, the makers and rulers of the universe," said Ursala. "Are you as superstitious in Beyond-the-World as they are in the Westlands?"

  "Huh?" Falkayn clenched his fists. A shiver ran through him. He burst into questions. The responses upset every preconception. Rangakora had a perfectly standard polytheistic religion, with gods that wanted sacrifices and flattery but were essentially benevolent. The only major figure of evil was he who had slain Zuriat the Bright, and Zuriat was reborn annually while the other gods kept the bad one at bay.

  But then the Ikranankans were not paranoid by instinct!

  What, then, had made the western cultures think that the cosmos was hostile?

  Falkayn's mind leaped: not at a conclusion, he felt sure, but at a solution that had been staring him in the face for weeks. Ikrananka's dayside had no seasons. There was no rhythm to life, only an endless struggle to survive in a slowly worsening environment. Any change in nature was a disaster, a sandstorm, a plague, a murrain, a drying well. No wonder the natives were suspicious of everything new, and so by extension of each other. No wonder that they only felt at ease with fully initiated members of their own phratries. No wonder that civilizations were unstable and the barbarians free to come in so often. Those poor devils!

  Rangakora, on the edge of the Twilight Zone, knew rain and snow and quickening, in the alternation of day and dusk. It knew, not just a few isolated stars, but constellations; after its people had ventured into the night land, it knew them well. In short, Falkayn thought, while the local citizens might be S.O.B.s, they were Earth's kind of S.O.B.s.

  But then—

  No. Rangakora was small and isolated. It simply hadn't the capability of empire. And, with the factions and wild raiders on this planet, van Rijn would deal with nothing less than an empire. Turning coat and helping out this city might be a quixotic gesture, but the Polesotechnic League didn't go in f
or tilting at windmills. A liberated Rangakora would be gobbled up again as soon as the spaceship left; for there would be no further visits.

  Yet its steadying influence could prove invaluable to outworld traders. Wasn't some compromise possible?

  Falkayn glanced despairingly heavenward. When in hell was Muddlin' Through going to arrive? Surely Chee and Adzel would look first for him here. Unless something dreadful had happened to them. He grew aware that Ursala had spoken to him and climbed out of his daze. "Beg pardon, most noble?"

  "We use no honorifics," the King said. "Only an enemy needs to be placated. I asked you to tell me about your home. It must be a marvelous place, and the Irshari know I could use some distraction."

  "Well—uh—"

  "I'm interested, too," said Thorn. "After all, if we Ershoka are to leave Ikrananka, that throws everything off the wagon. We might as well pull out of Rangakora now." He didn't look too happy about it. Falkayn gulped. When the humans were evacuated to Earth, he himself would be a public hero, but van Rijn would take him off trade pioneering. No doubt he'd still have a job: a nice, safe position as third officer on some milk run, with a master's berth when he was fifty and compulsory retirement on a measured pension ten years later.

  "Uh, the sun is more bright," he said. "You saw how our quarters were lit, Stepha."

  "Damn near blinded me," the girl grumbled.

  "You'd get used to that. You'd have to be careful at first anyway, going outdoors. The sun could burn your skin."

  "The plague you say!" exploded one of Falkayn's guards.

  The Hermetian decided he was giving a poor impression. "Only for a while," he stumbled. "Then you're safe. Your skin turns tough and brown."