Collected fiction, p.731
Collected Fiction, page 731
“Major Dodd!” the man from Venus was calling. “Major Dodd, step over here!”
Morgan went rigid on the dusty ground, not daring to turn his head. He remembered the scattering of the Jetborne before the Harvesters’ charge, and knew that Rufe Dodd would not have run far—Relief for an instant made him weak. Then he knew it made no real difference whether Valley killed him with a knife or the Jetborne hanged him for murder. He was technically guilty of it and he had no defense the law would accept. Rufe wouldn’t have any choice. But still—
Footsteps made the ground vibrate a little under him. Morgan did not turn, even when a familiar voice spoke just above him.
“Morgan,” Rufe said with formality and in anger, “you’re under arrest. Lieutenant, have him taken in charge.”
Morgan regarded his own knees steadily, not looking up even when he saw brown-uniformed legs step up on both sides and felt a stranger’s firm grip touch his shoulder. At the last moment Shining Valley spoke.
“Just a minute, major! You have no jurisdiction here. Stand back, you men! Morgan belongs to us.”
“I’m arresting him for murder,” Dodd’s crisp voice said. “Lieutenant—”
“You’re exceeding your authority, major,” Valley interrupted smoothly. “I didn’t call you over here to violate orders. You’ve had your instructions from headquarters, haven’t you?”
Dodd’s breathing was noisy in the quiet for a moment. Without looking up Morgan knew his jaw was set and his breath whistled through his nostrils. After a long pause, he spoke.
“I have, Valley.”
“And what are they?”
Silence again. After another long pause Dodd said tightly, “I am not to interfere in local matters between you and civilians.”
“Very well, then. I called you over chiefly to set Morgan’s mind at rest.” Valley smiled down at Morgan’s set and averted face. “He was under the impression you might . . . ah . . . cause a disturbance if he should die as a result of an armed robbery he committed against me earlier today. He was mistaken, wasn’t he, major? You couldn’t interfere, could you?”
There was dead silence for a long time.
“You couldn’t interfere,” Valley repeated, “between me and civilians, could you, Dodd? Those are your orders? And you never violate orders, do you, major?”
Still. Dodd did not speak. Morgan, without looking up, was the one who finally broke the silence.
“Forget it, Rufe,” he said. “Nothing you can do. I asked for it. Just like you to know they tricked me into that Harvester stampede. I never meant to ride ’em through the town. You heard their Barkers, didn’t you? That was what—”
“All right, Morgan.” Valley’s voice was suddenly cold. “I haven’t much time to waste here. Major, you can go now. This is a matter between me and the civilian population. You’ve had your orders.” He lifted a tentative hand toward his knife-hilt again. Morgan gathered himself taut, one palm flat on the ground for the leap. His thumb made a small, anticipatory circle in the dust.
“Get out, Rufe,” he said, not looking up. “Go on—git!”
“Be quiet, Morgan,” Shining Valley said. “I give the orders on-Loki now. Dodd, take your men and go.” He smiled. “You might prepare to leave Loki while you’re about it,” he added. “Your orders will come through from headquarters as soon as this shipment gets there. Money in the right places gives very persuasive advice, major, and this is heading for the Tightest possible place. In the meantime you may as well get used to taking my orders. Get out, Dodd. Get out of my sight.”
Still Rufus Dodd did not speak or move. It struck Morgan suddenly how strange that was. Not like Rufe Dodd. Was something funny up? He was almost impelled to turn and look, though he had no wish to meet Rufe’s eyes. He was not forgetting that he’d kicked Rufe in the face the last time they met, and he was perfectly content to look at the ground now. Rufe wouldn’t have taken that too kindly.
But something about Rufe’s motionless silence warned Jim not to turn. He had a curious notion that Rufe was listening to something, he himself couldn’t hear. It didn’t seem likely, but he caught a faint hint of command from somewhere and wondered if Rufe had some plan in mind he wouldn’t want interrupted. When you have known a man as long as Morgan had known Rufe Dodd, and shared with him spots as tight as this often before now, you can catch the vibration of a silent command when there is one in the air. Morgan sat motionless, ready for anything.
Valley’s opaque eyes watched Dodd. Presently the man from Venus shrugged. “Stay if you like,” he said. “I would have spared you. The impulse to meddle may be very strong, major, but you’re outnumbered even if you were rash enough to disobey orders. By all means, watch if it amuses you. Morgan—” His gaze dropped. “Skalla!” he said.
His hand swept upward in a swift, dipping arc and flashed high with the blade in his hand already glinting red with firelight. Morgan gathered himself together against the hard ground, threw his weight forward on one knee, gauged his timing, and—
A thin, high shrilling wailed like a banshee out of the dark, and Valley’s lifted hand jerked convulsively. The boneless fingers spread and the red-glinting knife fell flashing out of it. A round crimson spot the size of a quarter-credit appeared by sheer magic upon the center of the lifted wrist.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Slowly Valley turned his head to stare at his own hand. It took that long for the blood to begin pumping from his pierced wrist. The first sight of it broke the spell and everything dissolved into sudden, intensely rapid motion, most of it without purpose.
Valley snapped his wrist forward and seized it hard with his other hand, his face going gray as all color drained out of it. He chattered in incoherent Venusian to his men. There was tremendous scurry and confusion, in the midst of which Major Dodd’s calm voice spoke. Pie had not stirred an inch, and he did not now except to say quietly:
“They’re coming, Valley. Over the hill. Listen. I’ve been hearing them for about five minutes now. If you’ll look, you’ll see what I mean.”
Everyone turned, as if on a single pivot. The brow of the hill between the spaceport and the town was outlined suddenly in a crown of winking lights. As they stared, the lights poured forward downhill, merged and blended and were a spreading river that jogged onward at the pace of striding men.
Under the torches light burned bright upon the dust-whitened heads and the angry, determined faces of the men from ruined Ancibel.
Shining Valley took the situation in with a quick, incredulous glance. He shouted orders in rapidly cadenced speech and the men from Venus redoubled their swarming pace around the ship they were loading. The last carboys went rapidly up the ladders and the rest of the workers began to deploy cautiously around the ship, unslinging their weapons.
Again the banshee wailed out of Astounding science-fiction the darkness just beyond the reach of the firelight, and one of the riflemen under the ship reeled in a circle and fell heavily across his gun. A voice called from the darkness.
“I’ll nail the next man who moves! We mean business.”
Morgan breathed softly, “Joe! Joe Warburg.” He knew that shooting as well as he knew the voice.
The merging river of lights streamed forward at a rapid stride. Now you could see the separate faces and the dusty, disheveled clothing of the mob. Not all of them were armed. Some carried Barkers, and some had old-fashioned projectile-rifles, and some carried the immemorial weapons of the embattled farmer on every world where farmers have been called upon to fight. Morgan saw pitchforks gleam and here and there the flash of light down the blade of an ancient, outmoded scythe, which was a wicked weapon at Flodden and Poictiers, and has not grown kindlier since.
Morgan knew some of the faces. The young settler he had quarreled with in Warburg’s store strode in the front rank, his ultrasonic balanced across his heavy forearm and his flat Ganymedan face crimson with anger and firelight. A whitehaired farmer walked beside him, pitchfork in hand, and on his other side the parson’s eyeglass lenses caught red light. The parson’s palms were raw from pulling the bellrope in the church tower, and he carried a coil of orlon rope across his arm.
When they came to the place where the banshee had wailed and the voice spoken out of darkness, a figure stood up and took familiar shape in the light. Warburg stepped out and fell into stride beside the parson, his Barker balanced lightly in his big hands, set for a killing beam.
Shining Valley spoke very rapidly in a soft, slurring voice to his men, who put their loads down and then straightened up with carefully slow motions, facing the oncoming mob. At the back, under the shadow of the ships, a few of them sank into crouches, lifting their guns and moving carefully into deeper shelter.
“Speak to them, major,” Valley said. He was clutching his wrist tightly, and blood spattered the dust with light, splashing sounds. “Tell them the stampede was Morgan’s fault. You saw him lead it. Speak to them—quick!”
Rufe Dodd laughed, a quick, harsh bark of sound.
“How can I interfere,” Dodd asked, “between you and civilians on Loki? I have my orders, Valley!”
Shining Valley swung round toward the mob.
“Stop right there!” he shouted. “I’ve got men deployed around you under the ships. Stand still and nobody else will get hurt. Start something, and—”
“It’s no use, Valley,” Warburg said. “There’s eight dead men back there in Ancibel, and two dead women. Our boys aren’t in any bargaining mood. We know what happened. We saw who started this. Now get ready to finish it!”
“I call on the Jetborne!” Shining Valley shouted. “We had nothing to do with that stampede! This is mob rule!”
“These are vigilantes,” the young settler with the ultrasonic said. “The Jetborne’s out of it. Stand by, major, if you don’t want to get your men hilled. We’re going to string up the killers who did this, and we won’t take interference.” His red cheeks flushed a deeper color and his flat Ganymedan face hardened as his eyes met Morgan’s on the ground.
“We’ll start,” the settler said in a hard voice, “with the fellow who led the herd. Stand up, mister! You rode over ten people in Ancibel tonight. If the law won’t deal with you, the vigilantes will!”
Morgan got up slowly and stiffly, he did not speak a word, but his gaze sought Warburg’s with a silent inquiry. Warburg shook his gray head.
“We all saw you, Jaime,” he said. “We know what happened. You didn’t do it alone—but you rode the herd. There’s ten people dead. And the crops are ruined. There isn’t a man in Ancibel who isn’t ruined right along with ’em. They sank a year’s work and all the money they could borrow in those crops, Jaime. The lucky guys are the dead ones—anyhow, that’s the way we feel tonight. We can’t bring the dead back to life, but we can sure take care of the men who killed ’em. You’re in bad company, Jaime.” His dust-streaked face was grim. “I wouldn’t do a thing to stop the boys,” he said, “even if I could.”
Morgan nodded briefly.
“I figured you might feel that way, Joe,” he said. “All right, boys. Let’s go.”
He stepped forward. The young settler reached for the rope the parson carried, making a long forward stride toward Morgan. Morgan braced himself, not sure what he would do next.
That was when the first shots wailed out from the shadow of the ships where Valley’s men were hidden. The red-cheeked Ganymedan halted in the middle of a stride, dropped his gun, spun halfway around and grabbed futilely with both hands at his chest.
A boy jumped forward past him out of the crowd behind. It was the Mars-tanned Tim, Warburg’s clerk. He seized the falling gun and went down with it, reaching expertly for the controls, his body braced and ready for the jar of his fall. The gun began to whine toward the ships in a flicker of violet fire three seconds after he hit the ground.
There was a great deal of confusion after that.
It could have but one ending, of course. The men from Venus were far outnumbered. Morgan didn’t take much interest. That was because of the stunning burn across the side of the head which one faction or the other succeeded in placing on him before he prudently hit the ground a very short instant after Tim did.
He lay there curled tight against the surging of the struggle above him, dizzy and knowing he hadn’t a chance no matter who won. He was too tired to run and too dazed to fight.
He was too old.
He had some idea that the battlefield roar of Rufe Dodd’s voice bellowed for a while above the tumult, demanding Jaime Morgan as his prisoner. But Rufe didn’t get very far. The settlers had little patience with the Jetborne just now. Rufe’s shouting grew muffled and farther and farther away.
Somebody kicked Morgan in the head after that and he saw a burst of the stars that line Paradise Street, and relaxed into total darkness.
The next thing Morgan remembered was the reek of trampled ground and trampled growing things. Rough, moist soil was soft under him and he heard a great deal of uneasy motion and the low, purposeful rumbling sounds of determined men around him in the night. His hands seemed to be tied behind him, and he opened his eyes to discover that he was leaning against a tree. He looked up.
The tree was a serith and the stars regarded him through its leaves. Head-downward over the horizon the stag-bison lurched, and blue-white Sirius at the Jet-Ship’s nose pointed toward Loki’s pole-star. In their light he could see the ruined fields east of Ancibel, the jagged fragments of orchards black against the stars. So the men of Ancibel had brought him back to the scene of his crime to die. He whistled soundlessly through his teeth and sat up straighter to see what was going on.
This was the row of seriths that marked the far end of the fields. It was even a little funny, he thought, that a few short hours ago he’d actually been trying to swing onto one of these trees.
Ten feet to the right he saw a pale figure lying bound against the bole of the nearest serith. Ten feet to the left lay another. Each assigned to his own gallows, Morgan thought. Was that Shining Valley, at his right, fawn-colored fringes fluttering in the night breeze? He craned futilely. He thought it was, but he couldn’t be sure.
Farther down the line the grim business of the vigilantes was already under way. Morgan wondered what Warburg really thought about it. It wasn’t like Joe. Still, Joe had changed. Taken on settlers’ ways. They were dirty ways, Morgan thought. This was no proper sort of death to inflict even on proved killers. Maybe settlers had to do it, though. No understanding how their cloddish minds. worked. After all, you could hardly blame them. He’d taken his chance and lost, and when you play a stranger’s game you abide by the stranger’s rules. Still, it was no way to die.
They were working up the line toward him, grim, businesslike men performing their job resolutely. Somebody dropped a rope over a limb and a muttering rose like low thunder from the crowd as the loop fell over the neck of the man below.
Morgan watched critically.
He felt tired and not particularly unhappy, after all, now that the moment had almost come which he had faced and escaped so often before, on so many worlds. He whistled gently to himself and was glad he wasn’t wearing a long fringed robe like the Venusians. It fluttered so ludicrously, when a man was swinging by the neck under a serith tree.
The prisoner beneath the neighboring tree turned his head, catching Morgan’s eye.
“Skalla,” Morgan said. It was Shining Valley. Morgan grinned.
But then he looked away. He didn’t particularly care for the thought of the company he had to keep on this final journey. It probably didn’t matter. He whistled quietly to himself.
Something rustled very gently in the dark behind him. He tightened all over, listening. Then a cold touch slid like metal against his wrist and the rope that tied him gave slightly.
“Hold still, you fool,” Joe Warburg’s voice muttered.
Morgan picked his way carefully along the backs of Ancibel’s houses, keeping to the darkest shadows. There were more people in town than he would have thought, considering the crowd out there in the fields.
He didn’t feel very good. His head still buzzed from the beating he had taken, and he wasn’t sure in his own mind that he’d really held that quick, muttered talk with Warburg in the shadows behind the serith tree while the vigilantes worked their way grimly nearer and nearer. It seemed now more like a dream a man might have, waking after a knockout blow.
“Hit for town,” Warburg had urged him in the dream. “Make for the alley behind the last saloon facing the spaceport. Keep under cover. You old fool, did you really think I’d let you hang?”
Maybe it had really happened. Maybe it hadn’t. Anyhow, here was the alley. Morgan flattened himself against its wall, darting quick glances up and down the street beyond. Ruined buildings, ruined pavement, a huge dead Harvester bull lying on its side, a nervous settler or two picking his way along toward the center of town. Why was Morgan here? What had Joe had in mind?
“Maybe my ship’s at the port?” Morgan wondered. “Maybe old Joe filled her up? I wish I knew what—” Then he heard the beat of marching feet, and flattened himself harder into the shadows as a detachment of the Jetborne went by, brown legs moving in unison, brown arms swinging. Morgan stood motionless, letting them pass perilously near.
Last of the Jetborne came two officers, walking side by side. One of them was Rufe Dodd.
Rufe passed just beyond the mouth of the alley. Morgan could see his shadow on the trampled street, hear his crisp voice speaking.
“You can start searching from the east edge of town,” he said. “Spread out fast. He escaped only ten minutes ago. He hasn’t had time to get far yet. On the double!”
The footsteps of the Jetborne went on, double-time down the street. Dodd said, more quietly, “What are you waiting for, lieutenant?”
“Your orders, sir. You said—take him alive?” The other voice was puzzled.
“Certainly. I want Morgan. He’s got charges facing him.”
“But he’s dangerous, major. He’s tasted blood now. Should I risk my men unnecess—”
