Three Worlds to Conquer Page 3

  That was the basic function of the Reeve and his kin-tree. Only incidentally and occasionally were they priests, magicians, judges, military leaders. Always and forever they were the master engineers. Without their skills, in an environment so riven by elemental forces, Nyarr would soon return to barbarism.

  As could happen anyhow, Theor reflected grimly. We can stand off the raiders from Rollarik with little effort, for we are more than they, and more cunning and better armed; and then they have to cross the Wilderwall in the first instance. But these newcomers—! Who brought so huge a force the whole way across the ocean!

  That shook him at least as much as their fighting prowess. Nyarran ships coasted south to trade with the Foresters; they harvested the sea near Orgover; a few expeditions had gone as far west as the Bright Islands. But how was it possible to cross the thousands of miles of storm-swept liquid ammonia that reached beyond? Theor knew the distance was that much to the next piece of land big enough to hatch a host like Ulunt-Khazul. The Earthlings on Ganymede had learned it from their probes and passed the information on.

  His eyes went heavenward. He had never seen the moons, or even the sun. Strange if Nyarr should be saved by help from a place invisible and unreachable. Though to be sure, Mark had told him that those moons raised air tides and thus controlled the Four Lesser Cycles . . .

  “Ulloala!” The voice came from below, traveling fast and far in the dense medium. “Theor, I see you. Descend for discourse!”

  “Ush?” Startled, he drew on the reins of his forgar. The mantis-like beast slowed its flying—or swimming—and slanted downward. The rider stood on its broad back, feet braced in four stirrups.

  He was still some ways from the city, able to see both the wide bright curve of the River Brantor and the red-tinged smoke from Ath. Those villagers must be hard at work now, forging weapons by smelting water over their volcanic outlets—the only kind of fire known on Jupiter. He peered ahead. A slender form in a blanket dyed pirell and onsy stood waving a plume-tipped staff. Theor recognized his demi-father Norlak. What was he doing out here?

  The Reeveling landed and jumped off. His forgar settled to cropping the spongy-leafed bushes roundabout. The soil in which they grew was ice powder, intermingled with organic matter and minerals that were chiefly sodium and ammonium compounds. Theor felt it crunch under his feet as he advanced.

  “May the Powers be serene within you,” he greeted formally, then went over to the patois of practical affairs. “We’ve small time. The enemy delegation must be in town.”

  “They are,” Norlak said. “In fact they arrived late yesterday. But I thought I’d best talk matters over with you beforehand, so I came out to intercept you.”

  “Why aren’t you at the meeting? It may already have commenced.”

  “They said that by their law only males could attend councils. If we insisted on having any others present, they’d break off negotiations at once. Elkor and I decided to swallow the insult.”

  Theor nictitated in surprise. The three sexes were substantially equal in Nyarr, though the placid temperament of the females, and their normal preoccupation with the young, kept them from desiring much voice in affairs. The wild folk of Rollarik had a somewhat different arrangement, and the Foresters still another; but this was extreme.

  “Indeed,” Norlak went on, “the Ulunt-Khazul chief remarked that their females are kept as property, and most of their demimales are killed at birth—only a few spared for reproduction. Their host is entirely male. After they’ve conquered us, he said, they’ll bring their other sexes from the Floating Islands, where they’re waiting.”

  Theor grimaced. “Now I know they’re another species, not just a different race of ours.” He tugged thoughtfully at his antennae. “This might work to our advantage, though. You demimales may be more excitable than males, but you’re also quicker-witted.”

  “True,” Norlak said with a touch of smugness. “Was it not my idea that we get by your sky-dwelling friend to frighten them? I wish I could be present, to observe the enemy reactions and guide their emotions. Males don’t have any real sensitivity to such things. Most of your wits are in your hands.”

  In past arguments, Theor had maintained that this was libelous exaggeration. After all, he was the one who had established communication with Mark. Norlak always retorted that that was more through male doggedness than male intellect. But only a light-minded demimale would indulge in banter at a time like this. Theor shook his head, which meant what a shrug does to a human, and asked, “What did you want to tell me?”

  “My recommendations for your behavior, since I must be absent myself. Also, what I’ve been able to learn about the Ulunt-Khazul. You should not meet them for the first time without some background information. Our mistake was in assuming them to be a mere barbarian horde. It cost us the initial engagement. They’re something much more formidable.”

  Theor composed himself to listen.

  A man seeing those two Jovians would doubtless have thought, Centaur. But that was too crude. Theor’s hairless red body, stub-tailed and tiger-striped, did stand upon four stout legs; but each foot had three prehensile toes. His long arms, fourfingered hands, and blocky torso might be considered anthropoid, if one overlooked innumerable details. But his round head lacked external ears and bore a roosterlike comb, fifty inches above the ground. The mouth sat close below the great eyes, and was only for eating and drinking. Speech came by vibrating muscle tissue in a pouch under the jaws.

  He had no nose or lungs in any terrestrial sense. Half of a dozen slits on either side of this thorax, with lips to close them at need, let hydrogen diffuse inward, where his metabolism employed it to obtain energy by reducing organic compounds whose ultimate source was vegetation. The methane and ammonia given off by this process came out through abdominal vents. At Jovian air pressure, the system was efficient enough to support a large, active animal.

  Except for a tool belt and the communicator disc hung from his neck, he was nude, being homeothermic, and living on a planet whose slight axial tilt makes for less temperature variation than on Earth, Jovians rarely had any practical need to dress.

  However, Norlak’s sex went in for gaudy clothes. The demimale was short and slim. He lacked a comb, his antennae were longer and more acute—an interminable list of differences might have been compiled. Male and demimale must both impregnate a female within a few hours of each other, for conception to result. With genetic diversity thus increased, evolution had proceeded about as fast as it does on Earth, despite the lower mutation rate in this cold and weakly irradiated environment. A mother gave live birth and fed her infant by regurgitation. In Nyarr, a three-way marriage was considered permanent and exclusive. Other societies had various other ideas.

  Including the Ulunt-Khazul arrangement. Theor was shocked by that concept. And such creatures meant to swarm across Medalon? He was less combative by nature than a man, but the thought made him clench a hand on his hammer.

  “I’ve been piecing together what scouts and survivors of the battle can tell, besides my own observations of the embassy,” Norlak said. “The Ulunt-Khazul homeland seems to be low and swampy, scattering off into the ocean as island clusters. You’ll see for yourself how the people are built to be swimmers. Evidently they became master shipwrights. We know they can cast ice. They found their way clear across the ocean, which means they’re better navigators than us. In fact, they invented the compass by themselves, while we had to get the idea from Ganymede.” There was some lodestone, like other metal, on the Jovian surface, of meteoritic origin and more rare than diamond on Earth.

  Norlak voiced the equivalent of a sigh. “We must face the fact,” he said. “They aren’t barbarians. Their civilization is radically different from ours, but almost as complex and sophisticated.”

  “Hurgh,” said Theor. “Then they may be hard to scare with the Oracle.”

  “At least, you’ll be wiser to threaten supernormal rather than supernatural vengeance.�
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  “Which will make certain passages in the warning difficult to rationalize. Yes. I wish you could be. there, demi-father.”

  “Well, being only males, they may not be impossibly hard to bluff. But I think you should stay closer to the facts, treat the sky-folk as carnate beings rather than Powers . . . though of course you’ll omit the fact that they can’t come here themselves.”

  “Mark said—” Theor broke off. That was no use at present. “What made the enemy leave home?”

  “A weather belt shifted to their country. Storms caused famines.”

  “Yes, Mark explained that to me once. Where two bands of the upper air meet, rotating at different speeds, they breed a region which—”

  “Spare me. I’m hardly the Reeve type. To continue, the Ulunt-Khazul have scouted us out in some detail. People caught glimpses of their spies—now I know why so many rumors were flying a cycle or two ago, about the Hidden Folk faring abroad. But in a land as big and thinly settled as ours, the glimpses were few. They must also have interrogated elsewhere. Altogether, they have a good idea of what we and our country are like. Their bluntly announced intention is to dispossess us. Now at the meeting today, you should—”

  Norlak went into a long speech.

  Theor listened with an impatience that grew. The ideas were good, no doubt, but time was shrinking.

  In the end he said only: “Yes, yes, I’ll do what I can. The need is for action, though more than planning. So I’ll be on my way. Peace abide with you.”

  He swung himself onto the forgar and lifted skyward before Norlak had a chance to respond.

  Several minutes later, he descended at Nyarr. From above, the city looked more like a scattered stand of copses than anything else. Houses were pits, with thin interior walls that wouldn’t crush the dwellers in an earthquake. Their roofs were living plants, so densely interwoven as to be weatherproof while yielding enough that the winds could not tear them off. A similarly thick hedge of thornbush grew tall around the town. Ships lay empty at the riverside docks, and the paths between, houses had an omnious lack of their usual bustle. Most folks were indoors, waiting.

  He landed in the square between the House of Council and the House of the Oracle, and hastened toward the former. Three troopers guarded the entrance. They wore armor of scaly kannik hide and carried spears whose heads were alloyed ice—a dense, hard mineral at this pressure and a temperature of minus 100 degrees. “Halt,” barked one. Then: “Ah, you, Reeveling. Go on in. We wondered what had become of you.”

  “How goes the meeting?” Theor asked in formal-phase words.

  “111. They have only scorned Elkor’s threats, and jeered at his proposal that they settle in Rollarik.”

  “Here’s my son now,” came Elkor’s voice from within.

  “Hungn!” said a deeper, harsher, thickly accented tone. “So even common spearwielders may listen to us talk.”

  Theor went down the ramp and through an antechamber to the main room. It was lit in the common way, by phosphorescent blossoms growing among the leaves overhead. But it was bigger than most, a circle bounded by tiers on which stood the male elders of the country: ranchers, artisans, merchants, as well as philosophers. The sense of tension was an almost physical thing.

  Elkor the Reeve stood alone on the floor with the half-dozen Ulunt-Khazul. He was still erect and powerful in middle age; but they dwarfed him.

  Theor’s gaze went to them and rebounded. He had heard them described, but the actual sight was jarring.

  A human would have seen little difference: about as much as a Jovian would have seen between a man and a gorilla. The Ulunt-Khazul stood a foot taller than the Nyarrans. Small tusks grew down over their chins. Their feet were broad and webbed, they had long thick tails, their skins were shining gray. But every angle and every proportion was alien, some subtly, some grossly. And the smell from them was acrid—animal, Theor thought in disgust. Then he wondered how he smelled to them.

  They wore hooded mantles, and two of their group sported bracelets that must have been looted off Nyarran dead. Worse, they had brought their weapons along, into a peace-holy place. Theor’s hearts contracted with anger.

  “We had nigh despaired of you, my son,” Elkor said. “I was about to show them the Oracle myself.” His own radio disc protruded from a pouch in his tool belt. “But now—Chalkhiz, warmaster of Ulunt-Khazul, know that this is Theor, the most intimate of us with those Powers that dwell beyond the sky.”

  Norlak had mentioned that the enemy chief had come in person. It argued both fearlessness in him and a horde so well organized that his death would not be a serious blow. Theor met the chill eyes and said:

  “Knowing so much else about us, you must have at least some inkling of our alliance with them. I don’t pretend that we enjoy this because of any special merits of our own. But I do say that we are useful to them, and therefore favored by them, and that they won’t stand idle and let us be destroyed.” Chalkhiz widened his mouth in a carnivore’s grin. “Then why have they let us invade you?”

  “We did not ask for their help erenow.”

  “We’ve heard many old females’ tales in our wanderings—about spirits, and hobgoblins, and Hidden Folk, and these prophet voices of yours. The Ulunt-Khazul believe what they see. And little else.”

  “Then came and see,” Theor retorted.

  Following Norlak’s advice, he turned on his heels and walked unceremoniously from the room. A buzz of surprise went along the tiers, and even the foreigners must have been taken aback. But they followed him after a brief hesitation, up the ramp and across the square and down into the House of the Oracle.

  Two of them stopped short and barked something in their own language. A neutrino transmitter is an impressive sight even if one belongs to a society that builds such things. And then the long dim chamber was crammed with relics, fragments of disintegrated carrier vehicles, telemetric instruments they had brought down, pictures of space and Earth and humanity formed in perdurable crystals. The gray warriors gripped their weapons and moved closer together.

  Chalkhiz rapped a command. They put on an air of defiance. He himself paced restlessly about, picked up an object, set it down, crumbled a bit of metal between his fingers and held it to his antennae, stared for many minutes at the control panels. His face was unreadable.

  “Well?” said Theor.

  “I see some curiosities that might overawe a savage,” Chalkhiz grunted.

  “You will see more. One of the sky-dwellers has agreed to appear and warn you.” Theor reeled off the account of them which he had prepared, as revised by Norlak. Chalkhiz’s visage remained impassive.

  Having finished, Theor went to the visual transceiver. It was not a conventional Earthside 3V, of course. It was a solid-state device, as nearly everything sent down to Jupiter must be, and it had rather poor definition. Today that might enhance the effect . . . He activated it with fingers that were not quite steady.

  “I assure you most solemly that to challenge the sky-dwellers is to invite destruction,” Theor said. “I shall ask this one to show you living pictures of what he can wreak. Attend in silence while I invoke him.”

  Chalkhiz poised rigid. But did his fellows shudder, ever so slightly? Hope jumped in Theor.

  He pressed the button on his disc. “Mark,” he chanted in the mutual language, “this is the moment. They are here and horrible. Are you ready?”

  The screen stood blank.

  “Mark, are you ready for me?”

  The ground rumbled and shivered. A soughing went through the roof leaves.

  “Mark, they are waiting. This is Theor! Is anyone there? Hurry, I beg you!

  “—M ark—anyone—”

  “—Mark—”

  Presently Chalkhiz began to utter those bass purrs that were Jovian laughter. When he left with his warriors, Theor was still shouting into emptiness: “Where are you, out there? Why do you not answer? What has happened?”

  IV

  Thi
s:

  “You’re crazy,” said Fraser’s reflexes.

  “No.” Mahoney leaned on a workbench and struggled for air. A red lock was plastered to his forehead with sweat. “I saw . . . I was in South Hall B, headed for the main entry lock . . . to watch ’em come in . . . oh, they did! A squad up the ramp, pistols in their hands, Clem and Tom and Manuel and two or three others with arms raised, walking between ’em. They saw me as they came onto the landing. Manuel . . . yelled at me, ‘Get out,’ he yelled, ‘they’re taking over for the old gov’ment—and one of ‘em clipped him on the side of the head. And . . . the leader . . . aimed at me and said, ‘Halt! In the name of . . . the law. I was near the corner, so I says, ‘Whose law?’ while backing away a little . . . and he says, The gover’ment o’ the United States’ . . . and I backs up some more and says, ‘We got no trouble with it,’ and he says, ‘I mean the lawful gover’ment, not the rebels—’ And then he sees what I’m doing and yells, ‘Halt or I shoot!’ But I’m so close to the corner then, I swung myself around. Heard the bullet smash into the wall as I started running. Sounded like a fist. I ducked into the nearest crosstube and—We gotta jet, Mark!”

  Fraser sagged back down into a chair.

  It wasn’t real, he thought dimly through the hammering. Couldn’t be. Such things happened only on the 3V. No such crude melodrama, in his quiet life.

  Although there was the time in Calcutta. During his military service. His unit had been flown to help put down the anti-American riots. Yes, that had been crude enough to make him vomit, when flamethrowers were turned on the mob.

  Or Professor Hawthorne, back when he, Mark Fraser, was in college. The professor was too old and famous, apparently, for the secret police to cart off. At least, the game wasn’t worth the candle, since he confined himself to teaching his own version of history—but he did assign passages from Jefferson and Hamilton and Lincoln in preference to Garward. And what was more annoying, he made his students tell him what those writings implied in practice. Oh, yes, the young toughs who burned books and worked him over were entirely unofficial, and the police promised to investigate; but Professor Hawthorne died of internal ruptures anyway. That was fairly melodramatic, wasn’t it?