Mayday Orbit Read online

  Kazar shrugged. “You earn you keep and her keep, we feed both. Or you feed us,” he added with a bark of laughter.

  “Well need our sleeping bags back, and a tent”

  Kazar nodded impatiently. “So, so. Your bags good for only babies. You try run away, we track. Good trackers, us.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Flandry said. The thought of being hunted across the steppe by leaping, baying trolls brought the sweat to his skin. Yes, he was effectively jailed.

  “So what you do for Voiskoye?”

  “Good Lord, let me think! I’ve got sand in my synapses,” Flandry muttered in Anglic.

  His dulled gaze went around and around the camp. Could he only get at a radio—the Mangu Tuman were half an hour from here by airboat. If he called them, they’d surely send a scout, at least, to investigate. And one scout craft with a blaster cannon would have this whole gang at its mercy....

  Half a bloody hour!

  “I can make you some Terran zoporo,” he said thickly. “Good zaporo. Full bellies, warm weather, many children, beer and skittles. But I need Terran type equipment to do it.”

  Kazar's grin was doubly wolfish; the Voiskoye were starting to evolve carnivore teeth. “I know what gun look like,” he said. “Also radio. You not come near stuff.”

  “I didn’t mean that. But I must have—”

  “You get stuff you need,” the chief said. “But only for what I understand. You not make something I not understand first. You tell me what you need and why. If I understand, I give.”

  Flandry stared into the deep-set eyes. Not for the first time, he realized that technological backwardness did not imply stupidity. Kazar had picked up more sophistication among the nomads than one might have expected.

  “I’m too tired to think,” Flandry protested. “Let me sleep a while.”

  “Like little baby. Izgnannild worms.” Kazar spoke a command. “You have food, then sleep, so? After sleep, tell me what you do for us.”

  The prospect of becoming food himself if he didn’t propose something acceptable was no immediate worry to Flandry. He was too exhausted. He was hardly in the bag with Bourtai, under a pup tent assigned them, than unconsciousness hit him. The noisy revels outside never touched his dreams.

  But he had a well-trained subconscious. When he awoke, hours later, it was with a shout. Bourtai blinked her bewilderment. He leaned over and planted a kiss on her mouth.

  “Kid, I do believe I’ve got an ideal”

  “W-will it serve us?”

  “Diabolically.”

  VI

  Krasna stood at late afternoon, a fire coal in the pale sky. The camp looked nearly deserted. Gnawed bones and pits filled with white ashes told of the feast, which most tribes-people were now sleeping off in their tents. A few children and older females moved sullenly about, cleaning up the mess, or carrying on the endless chores of the primitive. Several males were also awake, crosslegged on the ground, chipping flints or shaping wood. They followed Flandry and Bourtai with incurious gaze. The average I. Q. here couldn’t amount to much; Kazar was exceptional.

  His tepee stood open on stacks of woven fabrics, glassware, plunder and salvage of civilization. Metal predominated—broken tools and firearms, utensils, ornaments, scraps of this and that piled in a junk heap for reclaiming by Voiskoye smiths. Flandry saw die two varyaks on top. One was already half dismasted.

  The chief squatted before it, plying wrench and chisel with skill as well as strength. His shaggy head jerked as Flandry blocked the doorway. Mates and children slunk outside. “You come,” he invited. “You tell what you got for us.”

  Flandry accepted. Bourtai crouched near the flap, increasingly ill at ease. Well, the man thought, being a potential fricasee isn’t any too relaxing for her. The notion didn’t bother him. After he was through with his body, it might as well make payment in kind for all the filets and chops it had enjoyed. Not that he didn’t want to remain alive. There were so many recipes he had never even tasted. . . .

  “Well?” growled Kazar.

  Flandry reached for the varyak. With the control panel off, its innards looked forlornly out at him. Kazar knocked his hand aside. “Not touch!”

  “Look," said Flandry, as aggrieved as possible, “if you don’t want my Terran zaporo, tell me. I must have some apparatus. Like your carved bones, or those pictures on your tent, or the signs scarred onto your breast. You will simply have to trust me with a few wires and such."

  “First you tell me how work.”

  “Very well.” Flandry rubbed his chin and stared solemnly upward. “We have a number of things on Terra that could be valuable to you. You probably have trouble finding water, don’t you? What do you do on a dry plain like this?”

  “Waterhole one day off. Send women with bags."

  “Why not camp closer?”

  “Animals come drink. We camp near, animals go drink someplace else. Better we stay far, send men to hunt, women to carry water. Not so?”

  “Yes. But handiest yet would be to dig a well. You know, a hole in the ground.”

  Kazar nodded. “We do that sometimes. Cannot dig deep. Not have tools. Loose dirt cave in if we dig deep. When we think water not deep below, we dig. If not sure water not deep, we not dig.”

  “Ah-ha! I figured as much. Well, friend, your troubles are over. I can build you a thing that shows where water lies no deeper than two man-heights. Good pure water too, not the bitter stuff you must often come upon.”

  Something like enthusiasm touched the hairy face. “You not tell true, you die for sure,” Kazar promised. “How you zaporo work? I try make zaporo for find water, long ago. Not work. You tell how.”

  “Well,” Flandry drawled, “I suspect you didn’t have quite the right concept. We Terrans have made the dowsing rod obsolete. Let’s just consider the laws governing magic. That’s what we call zaporo on Terra: magic. You know there are many different magics, for hunting, for good luck and good health, to harm enemies, and so on. But there are really only two kinds, aren’t there? One( you use a thing which has once touched, or been part of, another thing. For instance, you use a man’s name, part of himself, to make magic on him. Or better yet, some of his hair or nails or blood—”

  “Not speak!” Kazar exclaimed. “Woman listen!”

  “No matter. I assure you, Terran magic is too strong to be bothered by a woman’s presence. In fact, some of our feared magicians are women. Well, that’s one sort of magic: what at home we call the contagious kind. The other sort is working on a thing by using a likeness of that thing. For instance, you help your hunters catch game by sticking spears in a clay image of the kind of animal they’re after. Correct? That’s what we Terrans call sympathetic magic.”

  Much impressed, Kazar nodded. “You know much zaporo. Me learn many ways, many . . . what word? . . . many secrets. But me never think ’bout zaporo being two kinds.”

  “Not your fault,” said the other condescendingly. “You never had a scientific education. Very well, how shall we find water? Since we have no part of the spring we want to locate, we can’t use contagious magic. So we must use sympathetic magic. We must make a symbol—a sign, you understand?—of water, and of a man finding it. The apparatus I shall have to construct is the symbol on which we operate. Savvy?

  “Here’s how it works.” With his forefinger, he sketched in the dust. “First we construct a picture of the territory in which we are. We can do that with wires attached to a plank, forming more or less of a square. But where ground water exists near the surface, there will be plant growth, so we must symbolize that.” He drew a series of loops with an arrow through it. “Thus, brush and twigs.” Pointing to a variable inductance from the varyak’s radio: "That will serve in the actual model. Do you see how it is changed in shape by turning a dial? In using this model, one adjusts the shape of the brush symbol until it is close to the actual shape of any growth in the area.”

  “That belong radio,” Kazar said suspiciously.


  “Yes, I know. But you know what a radio looks like. How could a single part of it serve the same function? Can a bone be the whole animal? Use your common sense.” Flan-dry drew in two pairs of parallel lines, also pierced, at separate points. “These are pictures of the water covered by the earth, as seen through two eyes. In the model those will be used.” He indicated a pair of variable condensers. “You can see how they are adjustable to local contours.” He had to stop often to explain his reasoning in Kazar’s more limited vocabulary and to prove this or that lemma to the chiefs satisfaction. But in synopsis, he rolled on: "What, however, is land without the sun? The omnipotent, life-giving sun, ah, yes, we must include that in our hookup. You know that energy cells power a varyak, so I will take one. It isn’t quite exhausted yet. With the help of a coil it’ll make a spark across this gap when this key is closed. The creation of the spark stands for the rising of the sun, life and hope and rebirth and so forth. As the sun draws water from the earth, so will our model seek water lying within the earth.

  “One more thing. We must symbolize the act of seeking view, so must our machine. Therefore we will run a short wire into the earth, thus, and a long one heavenward, thus. The long one, which imitates a man surveying the whole world, can best be raised by a kite. D’you know what a kite is? No? Well, give Bourtai some light sticks and cord, and some of that cloth, and I’m sure she can make one for us.

  “As for the operation of the machine, that’s an easy matter. I shall let the woman there tap the key which controls the spark. You see what that means, of course. A female operating the sunsymbols stands for the union of the two elemental life forces. The woman has to control the spark, rather than the other way around, because we wish to get a kindly result, water flowing from the ground like milk from a mother’s breast. I myself shall do the most difficult job, adjusting the various parts of the machine to symbolic conformity. You may go fly the kite. Attached to the kite string, besides the seeking-wire, there will be a flat slab. Yonder one will do.” He indicated a plastic chunk broken off the varyak panel. “You must stroke the plate with your free hand while thinking hard about ground water. When the plate feels sticky, then everything is in adjustment and I can read the location of the spring off my dials.”

  After many more circumlocutions, Kazar got the idea and agreed that the hydrophilic machine was no hoax but constructed according to sound principles of zaporo. Then he was eager to begin at once. But not so anxious that he did not watch Flandry’s every motion, and inspect each item requested before he handed it over.

  The job did not take many hours. As they went outside with the clumsy breadboard circuit, Bourtai murmured, “Do you really think we can—”

  “I assume you know whatever telegraphic code your people employ,” he answered as softly. “The nomads must have one; voice radio can’t always be practical.”

  She nodded, took a long breath, and ran with the kite till it was aloft. Flandry thought how graceful she was. But damn, he had to concentrate on another sort of oscillations, getting this haywired rig to function. . . . “Give me some room there!” he snapped at the giants crowding about. The spectacle had drawn the whole camp to gape and gabble. Even Kazar couldn’t make them stand very far off, and they jammed together on every side. Flandry would rather have been surrounded by bears.

  Bourtai gave the kite string to the chief and sat down at the improvised key. When the spark leaped and crackled, blue among long evening shadows, the Voiskoye rumbled their uneasiness. Hair stirred on male scalps; unfairly big muscles grew tense. Kazar traced protective signs in the air.

  The key rattled. "Ya-u-la, freemen aid a freeman!" in dots and dashes in the hope that someone not of the Khan’s party was tuned in. There should be a receiver open to the distress band in every ordu, at all times. But the energy cell was feeble, nearly drained by the varyak’s long flight. And there would be atmospherics. Flandry swung his control dials through slow circles. He didn’t know closely enough the electronic properties of his neo-Hertzian set. He must try every combination, trusting he would strike the frequency he wanted among them.

  Stillness descended on the tribe. Only the thin, frying noise of the spark, the clattering key, and the breeze in long grass were heard. Kazar held the kite string in one hand, crouched over the plastic plate on the ground and stroked it with the other. Suddenly, a roar: “Tulyansk! Me stick!”

  “Ah so,” Flandry nodded. If you run your fingers over any smooth surface for a while, you will get a sensation of tackiness. He hoped the sweat that sprang out on him didn’t show too much. “Well, one is never certain the first time. We must continue trying. If the dials read the same repeatedly at the sticky point, then we’ll know the machine is working.”

  After our signal is picked up, they’ll have to get a directional fix on it. And then get here themselves. If they are coming.

  He stretched the process out for minutes longer. But there came the time when Kazar snorted, “Too long. Get feeling over and over. You tell where dig.” The tribe sensed their leader’s mood and rumbled.

  “Very well,” Flandry yielded. “I daresay we do have a reading. Now I must interpret it. Addissababa Constantinople walla walla kalamazoo woomera saskatoon Saskatchewan rhine and out goes he. Follow me—no, best keep the kite in the air. Bourtai can take it along. You may carry the rest of the apparatus.”

  Kazar spoke an order. A male went into the tepee and came back with a regular steel-bladed shovel. Oh, oh, Flan-dry thought. That well would get dug sooner than he had figured on.

  He led them out across the steppe. Most of the tribe followed at his heels. Their silence was more ominous than their previous grunts had been. He could virtually feel their stares drilling holes in his back. As slowly and with many pauses to survey the land as he dared, he proceeded northward.

  After a kilometer or two, Kazar gruffed, "You say zaporozka find water near. Not good if water far.”

  “I can’t find what isn’t there,” Flandry protested. “The nearest spring is a little distance off. In the future you can choose your campsites according to what the machine tells.” But no one seemed very convinced. After several more minutes, he decided he had about exhausted their scanty patience. He stopped and stamped his feet. “Here.”

  "Here?” Kazar stooped, crumbled the soil between his fingers and held a pinch to his nose. “Dry. Much dry. Look there, khru grass, grow on driest ground.”

  “You’d never have thought of looking here,” the Terran argued blandly. “Which proves how valuable my machine is.”

  Kazar gave him a hard look, rose, and signaled his shovel-man. That giant got busy. Clods stormed loose. The others edged close. Their bodies were huge and black against the yellow sunset sky, their smell sharp in the nose. Bourtai seemed fragile in their midst. She held her kite like a doomed banner.

  After considerable pant and thud, the shovelman spoke to Kazar. The chief said loweringly, “Ground very hard. No wetter.”

  “He hasn’t gone deep enough,” Flandry said. “I told you it might be as many as four man-heights, remember? That’s Voiskoye men, naturally.”

  “You say two,” Kazar corrected. The bristles rose on his head and shoulders. Eyes under cavernous brow ridges caught the fading light and glittered. “Me think you not tell true.”

  “Well, there’s always the possibility that some rival magician has cast a spell on my machine.” Flandry wasted more seconds explaining his words. “I’d better make a fresh magic to find out if that’s the case.”

  “We not find water quick, you dead,” Kazar stated flatly.

  Flandry looked heavenward.

  His pious gesture was rewarded with a spark in the northern sky. Metal glared, far and far above the steppe. Oh Lord, he thought, let them see the kite and understand!

  Outrunning its own noise, the airboat was almost on top of them before a Voisko yelled and pointed. Then the wake came over the plain in a ' prolonged thunderclap. Bourtai released the kite, jumped wildly, tore o
ff her jacket and waved it.

  The savages bawled and scattered. Kazar threw the transmitter circuit to earth. It smashed. He whirled on Flandry. “You lie!" he roared, loud as the boom from the north. One hand snatched after the Terran.

  Flandry ducked. Kazar dashed at him. Flandry dodged past. The giant snarled, tried to turn as swiftly, but failed.

  Bourtai was still waving her coat at the sky. Kazar leaped and caught her. She yelled, twisted in his grasp, and tried to gouge his eyes. He gave her a shake, and she hung dazed. He lifted her with one hand and reached for her neck with the other.

  Flandry snatched the shovel from the hole where it lay abandoned. He ran full tilt against the Voisko. The blade struck that looming belly with his weight behind. Kazar yammered ear-rippingly and let Bourtai fall. The gash in him was deep but not serious. Faster than expected, his fist smote the shovel from Flandry’s grasp. It spun through the air for meters.

  Flandry turned and ran. Anything to draw Kazar from Bourtai. She was sitting up, but semi-conscious. A dim part of his mind wondered what the hell ailed him, getting chivalrous at his age. The footfalls that shook the ground drew closer. He heard a bestial bellow.

  There came a crack. The thud that followed jolted through Flandry’s shinbones. Turning, he saw Kazar’s bulk stretched monstrously in the grass. A hole was burned from shoulder blade to breast. The airboat hovered a few meters above. A nomad stood in the open door. One hand gripped a blaster.

  “Did I get him?” he called.

  Flandry bent over Kazar. “Yes,” he answered. “He’s dead. Poor bastard. I didn’t mean that to happen.” He stopped and closed the staring eyes.

  “Did you send that call for help?” the nomad asked.

  “Yes.” Flandry helped Bourtai rise. “Here we are. But who are you?”

  “From the Mangu Tuman. Stand aside. Ill land and take you aboard. Best we hurry. These parts are crawling with Khanist ordus. If we’re caught—” The man’s grin was as harsh as the noise he made while drawing a finger across his throat