Collected short fiction, p.550
Collected Short Fiction, page 550
His breath went on. For a moment the only thing in the world was the agony in his arm, but that faded slowly into a dull numbness. He got good air into his aching lungs again, and rubbed the mud out of his eyes and sat up stiffly, reaching for the belt.
It was gone.
He scrabbled desperately around him, searching for it in the weeds, and stopped when he heard the faint click of it against the hard clay bank behind it. He turned in time to see it, almost severed where the links were crushed, crawling away from him like a crippled snake.
The release key had failed to stop its damaged mechanisms. He swayed to his feet and stumbled after it. Before he was half across the gully, however, it had glided to the top of the bank. A sick dread of losing it had slowed him, when it struck a projecting root and dropped back to the bottom with a faint tinkle of the links. Sobbing with relief, he staggered on to seize it.
It rose before he could reach it, drifting straight up now as if the shock of its fall had brought some new signal from the broken servos. Its motion seemed quite slow at first, and he ran desperately. His bare toes struck something, with excruciating pain, but he hobbled on frantically.
He caught it.
He had it in his hand. His snatching fingers must have jarred the crushed servos again, however, for the free end of it whipped against his wrist like a snake striking. The sharp blow broke his hold. It slithered away, and darted upward. He saw it for an instant, a silver spark flying out toward interstellar space. Then it was gone.
He sat down weakly on a slab of driftwood, gasping painfully again for air and overwhelmed by his predicament. Down alone on a savage planet, crippled and unarmed, with no way to call for help and nothing to establish his position. With the belt, even here, he had still been a prince of the matriarchy. Without it, he was nothing. Civilization was a complex of countless worlds; cut off from it, he was as nakedly defenseless as some single cell dissected out of its body and exposed alone. Stripped of all those mechanisms that many million minds had helped to make, he couldn’t hope to do much with his own small smattering of neutrionics and psionics. He was suddenly robbed of place and class, reduced to a shuddering human zero.
“So you weren’t afraid of being late for the coronation?” he muttered harshly at himself. “You simply had to have a look for those lost men who came this way to look for liberty. Well, here you are!” He looked around him dully. “Now what are you going to do about it?”
He felt fairly certain that this was the third planet, because of the good air and the green leaves. The belt at least had brought him past the deadly cold and the poisonous atmospheres of the desert outer worlds before it failed.
Even here, the chill of the dawn had already set him to shivering. He huddled down in his thin night clothing, nursing his numb arm and watching the bright blood oozing from his bruised toes, wondering hopelessly how to save his life.
From where he sat on the damp driftwood, the whim that had brought him here appeared incredibly fatuous. The bite of the wind and the throb of his untended injuries gave a new luster to everything that he had thrown away. His stunned mind fled from this muddy gulch to the magnificent palaces and the quick psionic servants on his mother’s vast estates, that he might never see again.
The shrieking infant princess he had knelt to kiss was doubtless a handsome girl by now, and her own interstellar travels would be arranged to preserve her youth—and to protect her mother from any unfilial haste to take the throne. But she was lost, and all the empire he might have shared with her. His mother’s enemies would make the most of his fantastic indiscretion. Unless he got back on time, he would find some rival in his place. Disgraced, robbed of title and fighting rights, he would probably live out his broken life in some labor camp.
Unless he got back—he lurched to his feet in the mud. He had to get back, and civilization was less than two seconds away. If he could only reach the quarantine station on the satellite with any sort of message, he would be rescued at once and on his way to claim his princess and his throne.
If—but how? Without the belt, he had no way to call the station, or even to talk to the natives here. The meaning of the quarantine came home to him, with a crushing effect, when he thought of the lost translator. Protected under the Covenants, this backward planet knew nothing of the outside. He could hope for no help from these savages, not even if they turned out to be friendly.
But they wouldn’t be friendly. He saw with a sickening clarity what would happen to a stranger caught wandering on his own world without any weapon to prove and defend his social place. The best an unarmed and classless alien could expect was some sort of slavery.
Hunched and shrinking from the wind, he looked around him for any warning signs of men. He found only the red banks of the gully and the rank weeds along the rim, until his eyes fell abruptly back to the shattered timber where he had sat. It had been sawed square.
He started away from the broken beam, almost as if it had been some savage workman or warrior, and then paused to listen anxiously. All he could hear was the wind. After a moment, with a stiff little grin at his own alarm, he limped cautiously up the easier side of the gully, to see what lay beyond.
Sol was rising when his cautious head came above the ragged stand of weeds, a yellow disk larger than the sun at home. It lit a level green plain, scattered in the distance with clumps of trees around tiny wooden huts. A herd of spotted cattle were grazing near him, and a primitive motorcart crept along a road beyond them. The whole landscape had a comforting look of peace, and a wild hope shook him when he saw the ship.
It burst out of the sky above the low sun. The glint of its bright metal dazzled him, and for an instant he thought it was a neutrionic flier. He thought the belt had brought him to some civilized planet, after all. He thought that shining ship could take him home.
In another moment, however, as it lumbered slowly across above him, he saw the clumsy spread of its wings and heard the noise of its primitive engines—a crude atmospheric flier. This was Sol III, and he was still marooned.
Real spaceships must come here now and then, he knew, on the business of the station, but he would never see them. They would always slip down silently at night, to leave or to meet some undercover agent at a secret rendezvous on the desert or the ocean—he had no way to know when or where.
Those disguised outsiders—could he seek out one of them? Scowling after that vanishing aircraft, he shrugged helplessly. Such undercover experts would visit the planet only rarely, on important special missions. He might never encounter one of them, even in a lifetime here. Even if he should, he had no means of recognition.
Could he bring them to him? They were here to prevent culture-collisions. Suppose he learned some native dialect, and simply began telling the truth about himself? That ought to bring the inspectors fast enough—but it wouldn’t get him back home for the coronation.
Violators of the Covenants, he remembered the count saying, were usually carried to some distant headquarters of the service for trial, so that no matter what the verdict the bewildered offender found himself released so far away in time and distance from any world he knew that he had no choice except to atone for his crime by enlistment in the service. Time never turned; such exiles never got home.
No, he could expect no aid from anybody. He cradled his hurt arm with the other and turned to let the sun warm it, wondering desperately how to reach the station without some fatal breach of the Covenants. For a long time, sick with the ache of his arm and shivering even in the sun, he stood peering through the weeds, discarding hopeless schemes. His only real chance, he saw at last, was to try building a psionic transmitter.
Any large or spectacular application of civilized technology would certainly excite the wrath of the inspectors, but they themselves carried psionic equipment. A transmitter with the short range he needed would be a tiny thing, simple enough to conceal from people who knew nothing of psionics. One brief call would bring quick rescue.
To accumulate parts and materials for the instrument would take all his luck, however, and probably years of vital time. He would doubtless have to learn some native tongue, and try somehow to gain the respect or at least the sufferance of these savages. He was not at all a skilled psionic technician; although even the crudest kind of improvised device ought to reach the station on the satellite, he would have to allow for a good deal of experimental test and error. All those risks and difficulties promised to surround the undertaking with a desperate uncertainty, but he could think of nothing else that seemed to offer any hope at all.
The first step was to come to some sort of terms with the natives. Although some degree of hostility seemed certain, he couldn’t stay hidden forever. Even at the hazard of death or mistreatment, he must have food and shelter and whatever medical care they might give him.
Uneasily, careful to set his bruised bare feet where the ground looked smoothest, he climbed out of the gully. He hoped to reach the road beyond the pasture and wait there for another passing cart. Pretending to be the victim of some traffic accident, he could conceal his ignorance of any native dialect by appearing dazed or even unconscious. With any favorable turn of luck, he might obtain emergency care and knowledge enough of the tribal customs to help him plan another step.
Picking his tender-footed way across the unkind turf, he paused abruptly when the grazing cattle raised their heads to watch him. The fat beasts made no hostile movement, however, and he had started limping on again toward the narrow pavement when he saw the tower.
That sent him crouching back into the gully, careless of his naked feet. It stood implacably over a cluster of huts far in the distance, and the weeds around him had hidden it before—an armored turret on tall metal legs. A guard tower, precisely like those on his mother’s estates at home. Those huddled huts around it must be the barracks, and all this friendly-seeming plain an agricultural labor camp.
His first hopeful plan was shattered. In or near a prison camp, he would surely be taken for an escaping worker. His injuries would get him no consideration. The overseers would doubtless whip him to find out where he belonged, and kill him because he couldn’t speak their language.
Even if he managed to survive in the camp, he couldn’t hope to find materials or time for any sort of psionic experiment. Cowering down among the weeds, away from the watchers and the weapons in that frowning tower, he considered how to gain his liberty.
His first impulse was simply to follow down the gully, keeping out of sight. That might lead him to water that he could drink—thirst burned in his throat again, when he thought of water. And the gully should bring him, sooner or later, to the fence around the camp.
Yet that scheme was impossible, he saw at once. Hurt and half naked, he couldn’t travel far. Although he might tear up his pajamas to make some sort of wrapping for his feet, his dangling arm would hamper every movement. Cold and thirst and hunger would pursue him, relentless as the guards. His total ignorance of the camp’s geography would surely trap him in the end.
No, that wouldn’t do. Dependence on such devices as the belt had left him too little faith in his own limbs and senses, and his tutors had not trained him for any such slinking, animal effort. He knew how to fight, but only in the open, by the rules of honor. He had to play some bolder, more human game.
Searching for some sane first move, he dropped lower among the weeds and turned uneasily from that ominous tower to study the nearest little group of trees and huts, just across the pasture. The neat white buildings, too small to be barracks, had no stockade around them. The place was a dwelling, he decided; probably the home of some minor camp official.
If that were true, the inhabitants must own weapons that allowed them to move about unquestioned. Certainly there was food and water about the huts, and he could see a motorcart beside them. There, no doubt, was everything he needed to survive and escape.
Awkward with his arm, he clambered back to the muddy bottom of the gully and waded cautiously along it toward the little villa. When the gully turned, he climbed clumsily back to the rim, to look for some other cover. There was none.
The huts were still several hundred yards ahead, across the open pasture. An unpaved path came down to a rude wooden bridge near him. The tower commanded the path, but the bridge seemed to offer shelter of a sort, and he limped on to it, hoping that the traffic over it would bring him some kind of opportunity.
In preparation, he tried to arm himself. He looked for a stone, and found only crumbling clay. He found another driftwood slab beneath the bridge, but it was far too heavy for a club. He tugged at a smaller stick lodged beneath it, but the rotten wood snapped and let him stumble backward. His hurt arm struck the bank.
Pain blinded him. Sweat chilled him, and he sank down on the useless timber. For a moment he could only huddle there, crushed beneath all his handicaps, but then a dogged pride came back to stiffen him. He was still a prince of his mother’s. house, and he had learned long ago to withstand equably bitter frustration when his sisters used to mock him for being only a boy.
When he could move again, he ripped both sleeves from his pajamas. One, he split to make a clumsy sling for his arm. The other, tied at the end, he packed with all the wet clay he could readily swing. So meagerly equipped, he climbed back to his post at the end of the bridge.
As he settled himself in the screening weeds, a man came out of the dwelling. A vigorous-looking, darkhaired savage, outlandishly clad in jacket and trousers. That womanish garb was a badge, no doubt, of some superior position, for he got into the cart alone. It began to roll at once.
The prince crouched lower, breathlessly testing the weight of his weapon. There came all he needed to make his forlorn bid for freedom—the queer clothing, the wheeled machine, the superior weapon of an officer. But how take them?
Crippled as he was, he could hardly jump into the moving cart. He had to make it stop. Desperately, he dropped back into the gully and seized that decaying timber. It was too heavy for him to lift one-handed, and the effort hurt his arm and his damaged ribs. Yet he managed to drag it up the sloping bank and roll it out across the path.
Gasping and trembling, he snatched his heavy little bag of clay and turned to look for the cart. It had turned the other way, toward the road beyond the huts. Sick with disappointment, he watched it creep out of sight toward that staring tower.
Dully, then, still panting from his struggle with the driftwood beam, he groped for another plan. If he could slip into the huts unchallenged while the owner was away, he might at least find food and water—
He dropped flat when another native left the dwelling and came walking toward the bridge—a slighter savage than the first, in more masculine clothing. A guard, perhaps, left to’ watch the premises while the officer was away. He carried a heavy-seeming, black-cased device that must be a weapon.
The prince wrapped the top of the weighted bag around his quivering hand, and crouched down to wait among the weeds. He would let the man walk on by, and then rise up to strike from behind. Here, fighting these simple human beasts, he wouldn’t have to utter any challenge or warning—or would he?
A sudden cold uncertainty crumpled his first eager resolution. He knew that any honorable challenge would be fatal to him, but the code he had learned wasn’t easy to ignore. Though the ruling sex could take everything else, the old count used to tell him, men could always keep their honor.
Desperately, he tried to sweep his compunctions aside. He was fighting for his life and a throne, against wild men who had probably never heard of honor. Why worry about the rules? Anyhow, he didn’t mean to kill the fellow, but only to disable him long enough to claim his clothing and that odd weapon.
Panic swept away his indecision when the guard stopped halfway to him, and lifted that device. He thought he had been detected. The watchers in that tower must have seen him when he started across the pasture. They must have alerted the villa. The official had fled in the cart, and left this guard to dispose of him.
His bag of clay was suddenly absurd, and his whole scheme hopeless. He wanted to scramble back into the gully, to hide or run away, but things had gone too far for that. He could only flatten himself in the shallow ditch beside the road, waiting helplessly.
Nettles stung him, and pollen from a stinking little yellow bloom tickled his nostrils alarmingly. He jammed his finger against his upper lip to keep from sneezing, and watched the savage bending with an implacable deliberation to adjust the weapon.
That black device puzzled him. It looked too short to be any kind of accurate gun. Distance hid all its details, until sunlight flashed on a lens. He dropped his head among the nettles at that, and tried to shield it with his arm, waiting for the blaze of some primitive lethal ray.
Nothing happened. Nothing that he could detect. He felt no heat, heard no blast, saw no blue glow of ions. He lay flat as long as he could endure the nettles and the strain of waiting and the pressure on his damaged arm. When he looked again, he had to blink with astonishment.
The savage had turned away to point the weapon at the cattle. He looked fearfully to see its effect, but the beasts grazed on unharmed. To his growing perplexity, the man calmly replaced the ineffectual device in its case and came strolling on toward the bridge with no appearance of alertness or caution. Perhaps the gadget was no weapon, after all. Perhaps he had not yet been seen. Perhaps, if he lay very still—
A shock of terror shattered his returning hope. For the savage had come near enough for him to see the delicate fair face and the shocking shape beneath the deceptively masculine dress.
A woman!
A girl, really, soft-haired and graceful, tall with the pride of her sex. He froze, afraid even to breathe, trying to hope she might walk on by. He was baffled by her presence, as well as terrified. Even though these tribes might be barbarous enough, for all he knew, to imprison or enslave woman, she was obviously no forced worker. Yet she could hardly be a guard; certainly no woman he had ever known would have lowered herself to such man’s work. He tried for a moment to doubt that this was a prison farm at all, but the shadow of that brooding tower was still too ominous to be forgotten.
