The castaways of tanagar, p.15
The Castaways of Tanagar, page 15
“Yes,” said Talvar. “I know.”
“I didn’t do it for pleasure,” said Cheron. “That wasn’t the reason. I did it for a purpose. “I’m a different kind of man from Midas, and I always will be. I can’t change the abilities I have no matter how far I go in acquiring new ones. But I live in Midas’s world.”
“So do I,” the blond man said, “but if I lived in a cave I’d be a man living in a cave. I wouldn’t feel it incumbent upon me to hang upside down by my toes while I slept because the cave was inhabited by bats.”
“Nor would I,” said Cheron. “But we’re not living in a cave. We’re living in a society of men. There’s all the difference in the world.”
“Not to me,” said Vito Talvar. “Nothing in the world is going to turn me into something like that’’ Significantly, though, it was not at Midas that he pointed but another soldier at another table.
Cheron saw Sarid approaching then, and broke off the exchange by turning to face him. He noticed that another man was approaching too—the Khepran Baya-undi. Sarid’s path and that of the black man intersected a few strides from the table, and the two arrived together, though Sarid seemed slightly surprised to find himself so suddenly accompanied.
“What do you want?” he asked, a little more brusquely than was necessary.
Baya-undi ignored the impoliteness, and said: “It is necessary that I speak with you.”
Sarid shrugged, and indicated that Baya-undi should take the chair which he had previously used. He found himself another one and brought it to the table.
Once Sarid was seated Baya-undi assumed a conspiratorial air and said: “Tomorrow we set sail from the main harbor. It is likely that we will never return.”
“I don’t know,” said Sarid, reasonably. “Things in the Bela settlements can’t be as bad as rumor paints them. If they were; the Macarians would be in full retreat, not sending for a few thousand reinforcements.”
“You owe no more allegiance to Macaria than I do,” said Baya-undi, unperturbed by the contradiction.
‘True,” said Sarid.
“We do not have to take that ship,” said the black man. “There is another that will take us. To Kyad, and far along the coast. From Kyad, it would not be too difficult to reach Khepra.”
“Three things occur to me,” said Sarid levelly. “Firstly, the Macarians have a reputation for pursuing deserters, and their ships are far faster than any Kyadian vessel. Secondly, I have no good reason for putting my trust in Kyadian seamen, and have already encountered some who have made me suspicious of the species. Thirdly, I do not want to go to Khepra.”
“The Macarians cannot search every ship that leaves Asdar,” said Baya-undi. “It would be absurd of them to try. The men of Kyad are trustworthy enough, if you know how to deal with them, which I do. And Khepra, believe me, is the one place on Earth that is worth living in. It is the only truly civilized nation.”
“We’ve heard the last part before,” said Vito Talvar. “I think Sarid might be a little hasty. If the alternative is between the Bela and Khepra, I might want to go to Khepra. But 1 share his anxieties about those who might be our hosts for the voyage”
Sarid did not show his displeasure, and Baya-undi took this, incorrectly, as a sign of irresolution. He tried to move even closer, his elbows creeping across the table. “If it were only one man,” he said, “I would not trust them either. One deserter makes easy prey. But a vessel such as the one I have in mind does not carry a large crew. If their passengers were four strong men, armed with good weapons, the passengers would have little to fear”
“Except poison,” said Vito Talvar. “But aren’t you forgetting that we don’t have our weapons?”
“Wc must go back to the barracks this evening, and slip out over the wall—with our guns—before dawn. It can be done. I have studied the problem.”
Talvar opened his mouth to speak again, but Sarid Jerome silenced him with a gesture.
“I have studied the problem too,” he said. “We owe Ma-caria nothing, as you have suggested. If desertion offered us a way out of our predicament, we might take it. I do not think that we would need your help, even to act as a go-between to fix us a passage on a Kyadian ship. However, desertion seems to me to be a very poor risk. It offers a greater chance of getting killed than going to the Bela, and even if we got away, we would have to go somewhere like Khepra. I do not want to go to Khepra.”
“In Khepra you would not have to fight. Khepra is a nation where men may live peacefully.”
“I wonder why you ever left it,” said Sarid, amicably. “I wonder why a man such as you—obviously a man of means and intelligence—should leave the last outpost of civilization to visit a place like Dahra.”
Baya-undi shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said, “a man’s duty takes him far from home. Khepra knows that she is not alone in the world. She has her traders. It is necessary that she should acquaint herself with the way of things in the greater world.”
“To put it another way,” said Sarid, “you were a spy, collecting information on Macaria’s activities.”
The black man made a gesture of injured innocence. “I sought to know nothing that is secret. I wished to know only what any street-trader in Sau would know. The Macarians bad no possible cause to object to my investigations. They seized me illegally. They seized you also; 1 know it. We would all like to return home, but if you cannot return home, why not go to a place where you will be received as honored guests rather than a place where you are sent to fight savages for an alien power?”
“It all depends,” said Sarid, “on one’s long-range plans. We will not be in the army all our lives. And the army is one way by which a man—even a foreigner—might seek to advance himself in Macarian society. Ultimately, our destiny is to go to Macaria. I do not know which is the one authentic kind of civilization, but I know which kind I find most attractive. The future of this world belongs to Macaria and to no one else. I cannot see any way that desertion to Khepra would fit in with our plans. That is all there is to say.”
Baya-undi looked at Cheron, and then at Vito Talvar. “Does this man speak for you all?” he asked, with a contemptuous flick of the finger in Sand’s direction.
Talvar hesitated, but then said: “He does.”
The black man did not bother to get a second opinion from Cheron Felix. “Well then,” he said. “It is settled. We go to the Bela. I wish that I could find the prospect as inviting as you 9eem to do.”
“No one will interfere with your plans,” said Sarid quietly. “Go to Khepra, if that is what you want.”
Baya-undi arched an eyebrow. “Alone?” he said. “I would not be so foolish. Four men might do it. One cannot.”
“You might find other partners,” observed Cheron.
The Khepran laughed. “It would be dangerous enough to take ship with Kyadian cutthroats. It would be twice as dangerous to take Merkadian cutthroats as allies. You are the only men I would trust.”
“That seems very generous,” said Sarid, “considering that we are as different from you as any men in the world.”
“You may be white giants from the snowlands,” said Baya-undi, “but you are civilized men. In your hearts, that is. You do not act like barbarians and you do not think like barbarians. I have seen this. There is something in you that reminds me just a little of the men of my homeland. If your skins were black I would take you for members of a noble house. I could count you as friends, and that is something I could say to no other white man or brown man in the world.”
“That’s quite a compliment,” said Vito Talvar, breaking the silence which formed because Sarid appeared to be giving the statement very careful thought.
“Yes it is,” agreed Baya-undi. “It certainly is.”
20
Teresa Janeat unfolded the sketch map on the groundsheet and stabbed a finger at the region of wilderness to the west of the blot that was Naryn, the third city of Merkad.
“We’re on the southern fringe of it,” she said. “The desert to the north is virtually uninhabited, and won’t be easy to cross, but a straight route will bring us to the fishing ports on the bitter sea. The alternative is to skirt Naryn and head up toward the land bridge. The difficulty there is that the region between Naryn and Ophidion is densely populated and considerably richer than the regions we’ve traversed so far. If we could abandon our present identities, that’s the way I’d choose. That’s the way our followers want us to go in our present identities—either that or to the east. This is the moment of decision.”
“It shouldn’t be too hard for us to present our loyal followers with a reason for our going on into the desert—alone,” said Salvador.
“Suppose it doesn’t work?” asked Teresa.
“It will,” replied the Intellectual.
“You’d better put that to the test some time within the next twenty-four hours,” said Teresa dryly. “We’ve gathered too large a crowd here already. They’ve been coming from Naryn itself. That’s too much attention for us to attract. There’s likely to be trouble. We could try slipping away in the early hours instead.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Salvador.
“There’s a precedent, of course,” said the woman. “Not one that they know about, but one I’m sure you’ll have in mind. Christ went into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights.”
“We won’t be there for quite that long,” Salvador assured her.
“As long as we remember to beware of temptation,” she answered. He smiled, not bothering to retaliate, accepting the fact that it was a declaration of submission to his plans.
Teresa folded the map and slipped it into a goatskin wallet by the side of her pillow. She stepped outside into the gathering twilight, breathing deeply. The breeze, blowing from the south, was strong enough to feel cool on her skin. The disciples were stacking bundles of twigs, ready to start the fires that would burn all night, around which the faithful would lie down to sleep. Her gaze traveled past the crowd, most of whom were unfamiliar to her. Deliberately, she did not meet the hundreds of inquiring eyes that fixed upon her as she emerged from the tent She could not abide die eagerness of the miracle-hungry stares. Instead she looked out across derelict plain, toward Naryn, which sheltered several kilometers beyond the horizon. There were still travelers picking their way across country, in ones and twos. If they continued to arrive through the night—and she knew no reason why they should not—there might be a thousand people gathered around the campfires by morning.
It was too many; far too many.
Something far away on the horizon caught her eyes, and she squinted, trying to make it clearer.
It was a cloud of dust. She knew that it was not raised by sandaled feet.
She ducked quickly back into the tent. “Salvador!” she said urgently. “Mounted men—a good many of them.”
The Intellectual looked up, his face set like mahogany. “From Naryn?” he asked.
She frowned. “Not quite the right direction,” she said. “From the west, all right, but from somewhat south of Naryn, unless they’ve followed a curved route.”
He stood up, and came with her to the flap of the tent. He lifted it, and crouched to peer through, but did not step outside. The angle did not permit him to see anything. Teresa called Mihiel, and pointed out the approaching riders.
“Who are they?” she demanded.
The limping man shook his head. “Wait and see/* he said uneasily.
“Get our things together,’* murmured Salvador, in Tanagarian. “And get out the dark clothes you acquired. We may need them. Make them up into bundles.” To Mihiel, in Merkadian, he said: “If there is to be trouble, do not take too many risks. We may need help, but I want no one to be hurt on our account,”
Teresa had already gone past him into the tent, but when she heard what he said to Mihiel she turned.
“What’s the point of that?” she asked.
“I meant exactly what I said,” Salvador told her. “If the Macarians are coming, I don’t want a pitched battle—but we may need help to secure our escape. We can’t afford to be taken.’*
She said nothing, but got to work gathering together the things they would need if they had to run. Salvador made not the slightest sound, but stood by the tent flap waiting for the riders to come within sight.
When she joined him again, he said: “They’re not Macarians.”
Most of the riders halted beyond the limits of the area marked out by Salvador’s followers. Only three urged their mounts to thread a winding path through the silent crowd. The disciples watched the riders carefully. No one was asleep, and the signs of exhaustion were no longer evident on their faces.
Salvador finally emerged from the tent, to stand before it in the same bloodstained robe that he had worn when he carried Teresa Janeat into the small village near the border with the Kezula. The hem came only halfway down the thigh, leaving most of his long legs bare.
The leading rider dismounted twelve meters away, and held out his arms in greeting. His belt held both a dagger and a pistol, and around his shoulder was a bandolier filled with rifle cartridges, designed for the Macarian weapon that rested in a holster slung from his saddle. He was big by the standards of his people, but not nearly so tall as Salvador. His two companions, who remained on their horses, were also heavily armed.
“I greet you,” said the leader. “I am Daran, though my men call me by the name Machado. I am the most devoted of your followers. Perhaps you have heard of me?”
While he made this speech the man was approaching, and when he finished he was close enough to try to enfold Salvador in a fond embrace. Salvador, however, stayed this gesture of brotherly affection by extending his arm.
“I do not know you,’* said Salvador.
“No matter,” said the other. “1 have come to save your life, and help you in your holy work.”
The fires were being Lighted now as the twilight dwindled and darkness descended. The wind seemed to have become noticeably cooler.
’To save my life?” asked Salvador. His voice was confident, and he was projecting it well. Almost everyone in the camp could hear what was being said, but while Machado seemed to be shouting Salvador did not.
“There have been riots in Naryn,” said Machado. ’The people of Merkad took to the streets to demonstrate their feelings for the Macarian overlords and their traitorous collaborators. They called your name in every street of the city. There has been an assassination in Zedad, and there too your name is called. I have brought my men to guard you on the road to Naryn. Your followers await you there in their thousands. With God’s help, you and I might take the city this night.**
“How many men do you have?” asked Salvador evenly.
“I have forty here,” Machado announced, “but I have ten thousand or more in Naryn who will come to you if you ride beside me.”
“I think you are an outlaw,” said Salvador. “I think that you are the chief of an army of thieves. Why should I lead you to loot Naryn7”
Machado’s expression, which had been radiating good will, suddenly went bleak. “We are freedom fighters,” he declared, loudly. “Loyal soldiers of Merkad. Certainly we are outlaws, because Merkad is ruled by the forces of Macaria, and Ma-caria makes the law. Only traitors to Merkad hold to that law, and it is that law which has reduced the honest men gathered here to wretchedness and desperation. Yon love them, and so do I—we are one, though you are a holy man and I am a warrior. Your followers in Naryn are crying out for you. If you refuse to go to them, they will be lost. Will these men gathered here permit this? It is their will that demands that you should ride, and they will be proud to follow, no matter how tired they may be. Am I not right?”
His voice had risen in a crescendo, and as he spoke the final words he turned to the crowd, fully two-thirds of whom must have set out from Naryn during the day. Several voices made enthusiastic reply, and there was a ragged echo of assent. Many of those who remained silent must have felt themselves to be in a tiny minority.
“I am a healer and a holy man,” said Salvador. “I do not make war. I have no followers among men who carry guns.
It is nearly time for me to go away, to leave this land forever. My road does not lead to Naryn, and neither should yours. Go back to the hills in the southwest, and leave me to do my work.”
The trouble is, thought Teresa as she watched, that the prophets of Merkad are not noted for counsels of peace.
“You are a holy man,” replied Machado, “but I am also a holy man, in my way. I carry a gun, but a gun which does the work of the true God. Though many others have turned away, my faith remains strong, and 1 will fight for that faith against the false God of Macaria. No true holy man could do otherwise. You are a strong man, my friend, and I offer you the gun, to use against the false God and his armies. Will you do it?”
“I will not,” said Salvador flatly.
There was murmuring in the crowd now that would not die down.
“You fool,” muttered Teresa. “You’re losing them. He knows what he’s about better than you do.”
Salvador must have heard the words, but he ignored them. He stretched out a bony hand toward his challenger.
“I will not take your gun,” he said, “but will you give me your knife?”
Machado hesitated for a moment, and then took the dagger from his belt and handed it over. Its blade was some twenty centimeters long and three wide, though it tapered toward the point. It was sharpened along each edge, and was perhaps half a centimeter thick at the rib.
Salvador held it up, so that it caught the firelight. There was still enough light in the gathering dusk for the crowd to know what it was.
4T am a holy man.” said Salvador. “You say that you, too, are a man of God. I say that you are a liar. I think that we should put the matter to the test. We will see who can demonstrate his godliness.**
Salvador pulled back the tattered sleeve of his robe, exposing the length of his left arm. Slowly, he drew the point of the knife along it, from the wrist to the elbow, drawing a long trail of blood. Then he reversed the knife and retraced the cut with the hilt. He took a cloth from his pocket, and wiped away the blood. Then he extended the arm to Machado.
