Rise of the Terran Empire Page 28

  "Calories, at least," Ayan reminded him. "Though I have feathers to keep me warmer than your skin would, last night burned most of what energy I had left."

  Jack obliged. "Next," he proposed, "I'll start a fire and cut enough wood to last you till morning."

  Was Ayan startled? That alien face wasn't readable. It looked as if the Ythrian was about to say something and then changed his mind. The boy went on: "What sort of preliminary care do you yourself need?"

  "Considerable, I fear," said Ayan. Jack's heart sank. "Infection is setting in, and I doubt you carry an antibiotic safe for use on me; so my injuries must be thoroughly cleansed. The bone must be set and splinted, however roughly. Otherwise—I do not wish to complain, but the pain at every slightest movement is becoming quite literally unendurable. I barely managed to keep the good wing flapping, thus myself halfway warm, last night. Without support for the broken one, I could not stay conscious to tend the fire."

  Jack forgot that he hated this being. "Oh, gosh, no! I wasn't thinking straight. You take my bag. I can, uh, sort of fold you into it."

  "Let us see. Best we continue planning and preparations."

  Jack nodded jerkily. The time soon came when he must take a breath, hold it as long as possible, and go to the Ythrian.

  It was worse than his worst imagining.

  At the end, he lay half-strangled, eyes puffed nearly shut, skin one great burning and itch, wheezed, wept, and shuddered. Crouched near the blaze, Ayan looked at him across the meters of cold, thickening dusk which again separated them. He barely heard the nonhuman voice:

  "You need that bedroll more than I do, especially so when you must have strength back by dawn to make the return trip. Take your rest."

  Jack crept to obey. He was too wretched to realize what the past hour must have been like for Ayan.

  * * *

  First light stole bleak between trees. The boy wakened to a ragged call: "Khrraah, khrraah, khrraah, human—" For a long while, it seemed, he fought his way through mists and cobwebs. Suddenly, with a gasp, he came to full awareness.

  The icy air went into his lungs through a throat much less swollen than before. Bleariness and ache still possessed his head, but he could think, he could see . . . .

  Ayan lay by the ashes of the fire. He had raised himself on his hands to croak aloud. His crest drooped, his eyes were glazed. "Khrraah—"

  Jack writhed from his bag and stumbled to his feet. "What happened?" he cried in horror.

  "I . . . fainted . . . only recovered this moment—Pain, weariness, and . . . lack of nourishment—I feared I might collapse but hoped I would not—"

  It stabbed through Jack: Why didn't I stop to think? Night before last, pumping that wing—the biological supercharger kindling his metabolism beyond anything a human can experience—burning not just what fuel his body had left, but vitamins that weren't in the rations I could give him—

  "Why didn't you insist on the bedding?" the human cried in anguish of his own. "I could've stayed awake all right!"

  "I was not certain you could," said the harsh whisper. "You appeared terribly ill, and . . . it would have been wrong, that the young die for the old . . . . I know too little about your kind—" The Ythrian crumpled.

  "And I about yours." Jack sped to him, took him in his arms, brought him to the warm bag and tucked him in with enormous care. Presently Ayan's eyes fluttered open, and Jack could feed him.

  The asthma and eruptions weren't nearly as bad as earlier. Jack hardly noticed, anyway. When he had made sure Ayan was resting comfortably, supplies in easy reach, he himself gulped a bite to eat and started off.

  It would be a stiff fight, in his miserable shape, to get past the ironleaf before dark. He'd do it, though. He knew he would.

  * * *

  The doctors kept him one day in the hospital. Recovered, he borrowed protective garments and a respirator, and went to the Ythrian ward to say goodbye.

  Ayan lay in one of the frames designed for his race. He was alone in his room. Its window stood open to a lawn and tall trees—Avalonian king's-crown, Ythrian windnest, Earthly oak—and a distant view of snowpeaks. Light spilled from heaven. The air sang. Ayan looked wistfully outward.

  But he turned his head and, yes, smiled as Jack entered, recognizing him no matter how muffled up he was. "Greeting, galemate," he said.

  The boy had spent his own time abed studying usages of Stormgate. He flushed; for he could have been called nothing more tender and honoring than "galemate."

  "How are you?" he inquired awkwardly.

  "I shall get well, because of you." Ayan grew grave. "Jack," he murmured, "can you come near me?"

  "Sure, as long's I'm wearing this." The human approached. Talons reached out to clasp his gloved hand.

  "I have been talking with Ivar Holm and others," Ayan said very low. "You resent me, my whole people, do you not?"

  "Aw, well—"

  "I understand. We were taking from you a place you hold dear. Jack, you, and any guests of yours, will forever be welcome there, to roam as you choose. Indeed, the time is over-past for our two kinds to intermingle freely."

  "But . . . I mean, thank you, sir," Jack stammered, "but I can't."

  "Your weakness? Yes-s-s." Ayan uttered the musical Ythrian equivalent of a chuckle. "I suspect it is of largely psychosomatic origin, and might fade of itself when your anger does. But naturally, my choth will send you off-planet for a complete cure."

  Jack could only stare and stutter.

  Ayan lifted his free hand. "Thank us not. We need the closeness of persons like you, who would not abandon even an enemy."

  "But you aren't!" burst from Jack. "I'll be proud to call you my friend!"

  AFTERWORD

  To those who have traveled with him this far, Hloch gives thanks. It is his hope that he has aided you to a little deeper sight, and thereby done what honor he was able to his choth and to the memory of his mother, Rennhi the wise.

  Countless are the currents which streamed together at Avalon. Here we have flown upon only a few. Of these, some might well have been better chosen. Yet it seems to Hloch that all, in one way or another, raise a little higher than erstwhile his knowledge of that race with which ours is to share this world until God the Hunter descends upon both. May this be true for you as well, O people.

  Now The Earth Book of Stormgate is ended. From my tower I see the great white sweep of the snows upon Mount Anrovil. I feel the air blow in and caress my feathers. Yonder sky is calling. I will go.

  Fair winds forever.

  —Hloch of the Stormgate Choth

  The Earthbook of Stormgate

  THE STAR PLUNDERER

  INTRODUCTION

  The following is a part, modernized but otherwise authentic, of that curious book found by excavators of the ruins of Sol City, Terra—the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy. Whether or not the script, obviously never published or intended for publication, is a genuine record left by a man with a taste for dramatized reporting, or whether it is pure fiction, remains an open question; but it was undoubtedly written in the early period of the First Empire and as such gives a remarkable picture of the times and especially of the Founder. Actual events may or may not have been exactly as Reeves described, but we cannot doubt that in any case they were closely similar. Read this fifth chapter of the Memoirs as historical fiction if you will, but remember that the author must himself have lived through that great and tragic and triumphant age and that he must have been trying throughout the book to give a true picture of the man who even in his own time had become a legend.

  Donvar Ayeghen, President of

  the Galactic Archeological Society

  They were closing in now. The leader was a gray bulk filling my sight scope, and every time I glanced over the wall a spanging sleet of bullets brought my head jerking down again. I had some shelter from behind which to shoot in a fragment of wall looming higher than the rest, like a single tooth left in a dead m
an's jaw, but I had to squeeze the trigger and then duck fast. Once in awhile one of their slugs would burst on my helmet and the gas would be sickly-sweet in my nostrils. I felt ill and dizzy with it.

  Kathryn was reloading her own rifle, I heard her swearing as the cartridge clip jammed in the rusty old weapon. I'd have given her my own, except that it wasn't much better. It's no fun fighting with arms that are likely to blow up in your face but it was all we had—all that poor devastated Terra had after the Baldics had sacked her twice in fifteen years.

  I fired a burst and saw the big gray barbarian spin on his heels, stagger and scream with all four hands clutching his belly, and sink slowly to his knees. The creatures behind him howled, but he only let out a deep-throated curse. He'd be a long time dying. I'd blown a hole clear through him, but those Gorzuni were tough.

  The slugs wailed around us as I got myself down under the wall, hugging the long grass which had grown up around the shattered fragments of the house. There was a fresh wind blowing, rustling the grass and the big war-scarred trees, sailing clouds across a sunny summer sky, so the gas concentration was never enough to put us out. But Jonsson and Hokusai were sprawled like corpses there against the broken wall. They'd taken direct hits and they'd sleep for hours.

  Kathryn knelt beside me, the ragged, dirty coverall like a queen's robe on her tall young form, a few dark curls falling from under her helmet for the wind to play with. "If we get them mad enough," she said, "they'll call for the artillery or send a boat overhead to blow us to the Black Planet."

  "Maybe," I grunted. "Though they're usually pretty eager for slaves."

  "John—" She crouched there a moment, the tiny frown I knew so well darkening her blue eyes. I watched the way leaf-shadows played across her thin brown face. There was a grease smudge on the snub nose, hiding the little freckles. But she still looked good, really good, she and green Terra and life and freedom and all that I'd never have again.

  "John," she said at last, "maybe we should save them the trouble. Maybe we should make our own exit."

  "It's a thought," I muttered, risking a glance above the wall.

  The Gorzuni were more cautious now, creeping through the trampled gardens toward the shattered outbuilding we defended. Behind them, the main estate, last knot of our unit's resistance, lay smashed and burning. Gorzuni were swarming around us, dragging out such humans as survived and looting whatever treasure was left. I was tempted to shoot at those big furry bodies but I had to save ammunition for the detail closing in on us.

  "I don't fancy life as the slave of a barbarian outworlder," I said. "Though humans with technical training are much in demand and usually fairly well treated. But for a woman—" The words trailed off. I couldn't say them.

  "I might trade on my own mechanical knowledge," she said. "And then again, I might not. Is it worth the risk, John, my dearest?"

  We were both conditioned against suicide, of course. Everyone in the broken Commonwealth navy was, except bearers of secret information. The idea was to sell our lives or liberty as exorbitantly as possible, fighting to the last moment. It was a stupid policy, typical of the blundering leadership that had helped lose us our wars. A human slave with knowledge of science and machinery was worth more to the barbarians than the few extra soldiers he could kill out of their hordes by staying alive till captured.

  But the implanted inhibition could be broken by a person of strong will. I looked at Kathryn for a moment, there in the tumbled ruins of the house, and her eyes sought mine and rested, deep-blue and grave with a tremble of tears behind the long silky lashes.

  "Well—" I said helplessly, and then I kissed her.

  That was our big mistake. The Gorzuni had moved closer than I realized and in Terra's gravity—about half of their home planet's—they could move like a sunbound comet.

  One of them came soaring over the wall behind me, landing on his clawed splay feet with a crash that shivered in the ground.

  A wild "Whoo-oo-oo-oo!" was hardly out of his mouth before I'd blown the horned head off his shoulders. But there was a gray mass swarming behind him, and Kathryn yelled and fired into the thick of another attack from our rear.

  Something stung me, a bright sharp pain and then a bomb exploding in my head and a whirling sick spiral down into blackness. The next thing I saw was Kathryn, caught in the hairy arms of a soldier. He was half again as tall as she, he'd twisted the barrel off her weapon as he wrenched it from her hands, but she was giving him a good fight. A hell of good fight. Then I didn't see anything else for some time.

  They herded us aboard a tender after dark. It was like a scene from some ancient hell—night overhead and around, lit by many score of burning houses like uneasy torches out there in the dark, and the long, weary line of humans stumbling toward the tender with kicks and blows from the guards to hurry them along.

  One house was aflame not far off, soaring blue and yellow fire glancing off the metal of the ship, picking a haggard face from below, glimmering in human tears and in unhuman eyes. The shadows wove in and out, hiding us from each other save when a gust of wind blew up the fire. Then we felt a puff of heat and looked away from each other's misery.

  Kathryn was not to be seen in that weaving line. I groped along with my wrists tied behind me, now and then jarred by a gunbutt as one of the looming figures grew impatient. I could hear the sobbing of women and the groaning of men in the dark, before me, behind me, around me as they forced us into the boat.

  "Jimmy. Where are you. Jimmy?"

  "They killed him. He's lying there dead in the ruins."

  "O God, what have we done?"

  "My baby. Has anyone seen my baby? I had a baby and they took him away from me."

  "Help, help, help, help, help—"

  A mumbled and bitter curse, a scream, a whine, a rattling gasp of breath, and always the slow shuffle of feet and the sobbing of the women and the children.

  We were the conquered. They had scattered our armies. They had ravaged our cities. They had hunted us through the streets and the hills and the great deeps of space, and we could only snarl and snap at them and hope that the remnants of our navy might pull a miracle. But miracles are hard to come by.

  So far the Baldic League had actually occupied only the outer planets. The inner worlds were nominally under Commonwealth rule but the government was hiding or nonexistent. Only fragments of the navy fought on without authority or plan or hope, and Terra was the happy hunting ground of looters and slave raiders. Before long, I supposed bitterly, the outworlders would come in force, break the last resistance, and incorporate all the Solar System into their savage empire. Then the only free humans would be the extrasolar colonists, and a lot of them were barbaric themselves and had joined the Baldic League against the mother world.

  The captives were herded into cells aboard the tender, crammed together till there was barely room to stand. Kathryn wasn't in my cell either. I lapsed into dull apathy.

  When everyone was aboard, the deckplates quivered under our feet and acceleration jammed us cruelly against each other. Several humans died in that press. I had all I could do to keep the surging mass from crushing in my chest but of course the Gorzuni didn't care. There were plenty more where we came from.

  The boat was an antiquated and rust-eaten wreck, with half its archaic gadgetry broken and useless. They weren't technicians, those Baldics. They were barbarians who had learned too soon how to build and handle spaceships and firearms, and a score of their planets united by a military genius had gone forth to overrun the civilized Commonwealth.

  But their knowledge was usually by rote; I have known many a Baldic "engineer" who made sacrifices to his converter, many a general who depended on astrologers or haruspices for major decisions. So trained humans were in considerable demand as slaves. Having a degree in nuclear engineering myself, I could look for a halfway decent berth, though of course there was always the possibility of my being sold to someone who would flay me or blind me or let me break my
heart in his mines.

  Untrained humans hadn't much chance. They were just flesh-and-blood machines doing work that the barbarians didn't have automatics for, rarely surviving ten years of slavery. Women were the luxury trade, sold at high prices to the human renegades and rebels. I groaned at that thought and tried desperately to assure myself that Kathryn's technical knowledge would keep her in the possession of a nonhuman.

  We were taken up to a ship orbiting just above the atmosphere. Airlocks were joined, so I didn't get a look at her from outside, but as soon as we entered I saw that she was a big interstellar transport of the Thurnogan class, used primarily for carrying troops to Sol and slaves back, but armed for bear. A formidable fighting ship when properly handled.

  Guards were leaning on their rifles, all of Gorzuni race, their harness worn any way they pleased and no formality between officers and men. The barbarian armies' sloppy discipline had blinded our spit-and-polish command to their reckless courage and their savage gunnery. Now the fine-feathered Commonwealth navy was a ragged handful of hunted, desperate men and the despised outworlders were harrying them through the Galaxy.