Collected short fiction, p.706
Collected Short Fiction, page 706
XV
ORG RIDER was too full of mourning for the loss of Babe to feel any great concern about the dying stranger’s excitement—until Redlaw translated some of that queer speech.
“I do not understand all,” said Redlaw. “But it is a woman of his people and she is captive of the watchers. I expect they will eat her,” he added, moodily stroking his cleaver. “He wishes us to save her. And he says, too, that if we do this a great ship of his people will come to battle the watchers for us.” Redlaw paused, uncertain. “I do not know if he is telling the truth,” he said. “He is a dying man. Perhaps he has the madness of the dying?”
Org Rider shrugged, but he was thinking about what Redlaw had said. With Babe gone, he was not happy enough to care much about danger. And the woman the stranger spoke about. If she were the one he had seen so briefly as she had dashed herself into the tree-tops—but was that possible? Could she have survived that nightmare plunge? No matter; if it were she, there had been something about her that had appealed powerfully to him.
He said mournfully, “What does it matter? Let us do as he asks. Where is this woman?”
Redlaw scowled, gestured toward the slopes of Knife-in-the-Sky. “He says he knows precisely and will show us. But how can he travel? I have seen men before, eaten alive by that blue slime. They do not travel through the jungle! But he is doing it. It is something in those cloths he puts on his ulcers, perhaps, or in those small things he eats and drinks from the metal box. I wish I knew—” Redlaw gazed doubtfully at Ben Yale Pertin, still shouting and gesticulating at them to hurry. “And there is so much more he says that I cannot understand.”
“No matter,” said Org Rider. “Let us save the woman. For him,” he added politely, as an afterthought.
Even so, they were far too slow for Ben Yale’s liking; and then the trek through the jungle was longer and harder than they had expected, more than two thousand breaths, because Ben Yale insisted that they wait for him. He chose to carry some great metal thing from the ship that he called “bazooka.” It was a wonder he could move at all, even without that weight. Beneath the stained bandages—though he had replaced them just before they had left—the blue slime oozed out, always spreading, always etching new ulcers into his flesh. And it was a constant peril to be near him during his clumsy lunging through the trees. A single accidental touch of the blue slime might mean death for either of the others.
But the two thousand breaths elapsed, and they had reached a point from which they could see the distant black gleam of the tiny lake. There on the far shore loomed the mottled hulk of the watcher vessel.
Org Rider wished for the farseeing glasses, but of course they were no longer safe to use: Ben Yale had touched them. He squinted across the lake. With mounting excitement he saw—yes, there she was!—the very girl who had dropped from the sky. Wrapped like the prey of a cord-spinner in the golden coils of the watchers’ device, lying helpless on the blinding white sands of the little beach.
Even so, even at this distance, she was beautiful. Disordered as her hair was, it held the reddish glint of far lightning. Something about her made him think of his brother’s wife. Yet this girl was more beautiful in spite of the drained pale cast of her face and the terror in her expression.
He glanced at Redlaw, and started to move toward the lake.
The giant stopped him.
“Wait!” he rumbled. “Ben Yale says he has a plan. He says that this ‘bazooka’ is a weapon. He wishes us to go around the lake, to be ready to attack the watchers from the forest. He says from here, with this weapon that he has carried, he will destroy the watcher ship. When he has done that, we are to kill those who survive with his hand-weapon and—” he patted his cleaver—“this one.”
“What weapon does he have that will destroy the ship?” Org Rider demanded suspiciously. “You told me he had no such weapon.”
“He lied,” growled the giant moodily. “I knew he lied. And perhaps he is lying now, how can I tell? I can understand so little of what he says.”
“What does it matter?” repeated Org Rider, quelling the surge of feeling in himself. “Let us do as he asks.”
THEY left Ben Yale just inside the undergrowth, lying on the scarlet moss, peering over the sights of his treetrunk-like weapon, chuckling and muttering to himself in his strange language. And they moved like ghosts through the vegetation, circling.
They paused fifty yards from the beach. The foul death weed stench of the watchers reeked in their nostrils as Org Rider whispered savagely, “How do we know when he will destroy the ship? We should have arranged a signal.”
“Should have, should have,” rumbled Redlaw. “But we didn’t, boy.” He scowled toward the beach. “If only I were sure of him! I hate like poison to get closer. Those golden ropes of theirs can smell a man, and they never sleep. Still—” He sighed. “I’ll try to get them with this thing—” he patted the laser weapon—“and you go after them with your bow. With any luck they’ll be disorganized . . .”
He broke off. There was a sharp, flat crack from across the lake and a puff of grayish smoke. Out of the smoke emerged a needlelike metal object lancing across the lake toward the watcher vessel. It struck, and opened into a bright flower of flame.
Blam . . .
The sound of the explosion was far louder than they had expected. The mottled vessel of the watchers seemed to lift off the sand and fall slowly. Flames spouted from the new hole that the stranger’s weapon had made in its side.
“Curse him,” howled Redlaw. “We should have been closer. Do the best you can, boy.” He loped toward the watchers, firing the laser weapon. Sounds like the tearing of paper came from it, and watchers fell before it.
Org Rider ran to the side of the lake, dropped to one knee and began launching arrows toward the watchers. While one was still in the air he was notching and aiming the next. He did not wait to see how successful any released arrow was, but out of the corner of an eye he saw one watcher leap high with a startled squeal, a shaft clear through him. Another, squawling and hooting, lay on the ground, tugging at an arrow protruding from his throat.
“They’ve broken!” exulted Redlaw over his shoulder. “Come on, boy. Let’s go in and finish them off!” As he spoke his laser weapon sliced through the golden coils, and another blast from it burned a crisply sizzling hole through a watcher skull. Now the giant flung the laser to the winds and, screaming as he leaped, bowled in on the watchers, hacking at them with his cleaver. Org Rider was just behind. The two of them drove the watchers back like avenging angels. With every stroke of Redlaw’s cleaver and the boy’s knife a watcher squealed and fell from their paths.
Zzzzzzat!
The noise was louder than anything Org Rider had ever heard, and for a moment he did not understand what it was.
Then he saw that the watcher vessel was not, after all, quite dead.
From a round bulge on its top something flashed like lightning, and the great ripping sound lashed at his ears again. The watcher ship was firing its main armament. Not at them, Org Rider realized—no question about that; if the laser cannon had been aimed at them they would never have known what hit them. The big laser was probing across the lake for the bazooka. Zzzzzzat. and a beetree went up in smoke, smitten by a lightning bolt. Zzzzzzat. and a sudden corridor opened up in a stand of deathweeds.
“Grab the girl,” bawled Redlaw. “Let’s get out of here before they finish Pertin and start on us.”
THERE were still watchers alive and Org Rider yearned to catch and kill every one. But he knew Redlaw was right. He bounded to the side of the girl. She was just beginning to sit up, numbed and tottering, after the blood had been squeezed out of her limbs for so long.
Org Rider felt as dizzy as she was. All this was so terribly new and confusing. The needle-bright light of the laser, the harsh explosions and lightning-bolt sizzling of the long-range battle across the lake, were entirely out of his experience, wholly foreign to a life lived in the perpetual pink-gray dawn of Cuckoo. He was not afraid, but he was disoriented.
Still he had to act. He grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She did not resist, except to break free for a moment and pick up a piece of metallic equipment. Then she was with him, bounding as fast as he into the shelter of the woods, Redlaw close behind. The last watcher on his feet outside the ship challenged Redlaw, but lost his head and half his trunk to the keen-edged cleaver. Then the giant was beside them, shouting, “Hurry! We must get out of sight.” The girl could not have understood his words but she did not have to—the need was clear.
At last came another bazooka shot from across the lake. This one arrived clean and true on the bulge at the top of the watcher ship. The bulge blew up in a gout of flame.
All three cheered.
“We did it, boy!” the giant bellowed. “Beat the watchers in fair fight! It’s the first time that ever happened in all the time of the world.”
Org Rider crowed in pleasure, pummeling the girl’s back as though she were another man. Exultant, laughing, as delighted as he, she clapped him on the shoulder with a force that sent him spinning.
He picked himself off the ground and looked at her with new respect. She was no timid frail maiden. She was as strong as he. And yet she seemed more feminine than any woman he had ever seen. More so even than the girl who had married his brother. A glow of color began to light her death-pale face, and he found himself staring into her widening eyes. They were a bright-flecked brown, like the wild flowers that colored the grassworld after a rain. Even with the hated reek of the watchers still fouling his nostrils he could smell the faint scent that came from her, a clean sweetness that swept away the watchers’ fetor and left him with the fragrance of the rain itself after the flatworld had been brown and dry.
“Stop mooning, boy,” Redlaw ordered, laughing as he said it. “We’ve beaten one shipload of watchers, but they’re not through yet. There will be more. They’ll send another to look for it. If it managed to send off a distress report, that ship is on its way now!” Org Rider tore his eyes from the girl. “All right. You lead.”
The giant gazed about. “We’ll have to go back around the lake,” he decided. “First place, we’d best try to find Ben Yale, if he’s still alive. Second, I don’t think we can get out this side. That’s bare rock up there. We’d be easy targets on it—and I see blue on those rocks, boy; I think it’s the slime. We don’t want to go near that.”
Org Rider nodded and turned to the girl. Speaking as clearly as he could, gesturing to make his meaning plain, he said: “Come. We leave here. Now.”
She laughed. She touched the metallic thing she had picked up, and she spoke, and from the thing came a flat dead voice that said: “I understand. I agree. And—” even the lifeless metallic tone of the I’mal translator could not keep all feeling out of the words—“with all my heart I thank you both.”
The boy was enraptured. He recognized the speaking machine; it was the same as Ben Yale’s but whole and working properly. During Ben Yale’s conversations with Redlaw, the boy had become accustomed to being excluded; it had not occurred to him that an undamaged machine would make it possible for him to be in one-to-one contact with this wondrous person.
He caught the girl’s hand, and they followed Redlaw back toward the lake margin—
And from behind the wrecked watcher vessel a lance of green fire spat out at them.
Redlaw shrieked in agony and spun away, clutching his arm. “Run!” he bawled, setting them as example, they blundered after him, and at every leap Org Rider expected that green fire to burn through their backs.
They stopped at the bare rock wall cupping that edge of the lake.
“There was one still alive,” Redlaw gasped, holding the place on his upper arm that had blossomed into a blood-red blister of pain. “It’s lucky he fired when he did! If he’d waited he would have had me clean, and you two as well.” He scowled up at the mountain. “We can’t go up that way,” he muttered. “And we can’t go back to the lake, because he’s waiting there.”
Org Rider risked raising himself to peer around the multiple boles of a flame-tree. He could see the watcher, broad yellow wings slowly stirring. One was damaged, and dragged; the watcher had been hurt, too. But he held the thing that looked like a black stick, and spat green flame, without faltering.
“If we can’t go forward,” Org Rider said, “and can’t go back—and can’t stay here because there’ll be another watcher ship before long—then what do we do?”
THEY waited and watched, but the creature remained steadfastly alert.
“We have no choice,” Redlaw groaned at last. “We have to kill him. His gun outranges our weapons, and his bug-eyes can see us in every direction. It won’t be easy.” Redlaw scowled at his cleaver. “The only way I see to take him is to rush from all sides. He might kill us all, but I don’t think so. One of us will get him. But the other two—”
He hesitated, then he finished: “At least one of the other two will be dead.”
“No!” shouted the boy. “Not her. She has suffered enough from the watchers. You and I can do it, Redlaw.”
The girl, listening, shook her head. She spoke in that pretty, singing voice, and the metal voice from her arm echoed, “I can do my share. I thank you for your good heart.”
Org Rider stared at her and said, “Please don’t. I don’t know your name—”
She said in her own voice, not through the translator, “Zara.”
It sounded like music to him as he rehearsed it several times, tasting its flavor.
“Zara. Please, Zara, don’t do this. You are not a warrior. Redlaw and I can handle the watcher.” The giant thundered, “Idiot boy, we can’t. Our only hope is three attacks at once. That is a faint enough hope—two is suicide!”
The girl spoke, and the I’mal rattled flatly. “It is decided, Org Rider. I again thank you, but now let us act. Tell me what I must do.” The giant rasped, “Come in from behind the ship. Get close to him. The beast has a hard shell but there are soft joints. One is where his neck would be, if he had a neck. There’s a pale stripe above his black hump. Stab him deep in the middle of that, if you can.”
Org Rider watched the girl start on her roundabout trip with his breath caught in his throat. She would not die! He would see to it. The first one to display himself to the watcher surely would be the first one fired on; the other two would have a chance at least minutely better. Org Rider determined to be that first one.
But it would be foolish, would even endanger them, for his break to come much before their own. It would simply mean that the watcher would pick him off quickly and then have only two foes to confront. So he squirmed to his place and waited, watching the faint ripples in the underbrush that marked the movements of Redlaw and the girl. Could the watcher see and understand those same ripples? The boy did not know. He could only hope not.
Something was tugging at the back of his mind. What was it?
Then he recognized the growing sound from the sky, and looked up. Down at him dived a great org.
Org Rider froze. It was his death he saw coming. With only the knife left—the bow was long since cast away—he could not prevail against talon and fang. All he could do was stare at its savage splendor. He crouched numbly, waiting for the hooked black talons to strike.
Even in that moment he saw the blue beauty of the org’s huge hooded eyes, the bright flow of its form, the even sheen of bronze scales shading into the silver flash of its narrowed wings. Wonder at its clean sleek power made his throat ache. Orgs were better and greater than men! Surely they were more beautiful. It was his death . . . but if he had to perish, here on Knife-in-the-Sky, it was better to be killed by this mighty org than by the waiting watcher.
But dying that way would not serve Zara . . .
Org Rider leaped to his feet, yelling and bounding toward the watcher ship.
As he had expected, the watcher was staring up with his great eyes, distracted by the org. Perhaps after the org finished with him it would go for the watcher next! Org Rider glanced toward the watcher, husbanding his charges as he nervously waited under the shelter of the ship, then back toward the org.
It screamed again.
The bright wings opened a little, flaring the creature toward him out of the bottom of the dive, and he saw the scars that marred its lean perfection. A long, dark wound, not fully healed, where the scales had been ripped from its flank. A break in the brightness of one wide wing.
The screaming changed . . . and queerly, became words.
“Babe!” blared the mighty voice of the org, repeating the boy’s own words like a tape under maximum gain. “Babe come back!”
The boy heard his own voice thunder down at him from the sky and could hardly understand. But what the words did not explain the actions did. The org dipped down over him. Its golden-scaled trunk snatched him up into the air, squeezed him almost too hard, flexed to set him on its back above the widened wings.
Then recognition hit him.
It was Babe! Changed—older—hurt, but Babe! Scales had replaced the infant fur. The healing scars told of combat. But it was Babe.
A laser scream spat past the boy’s ear and brought him out of his dreaming. He kicked the org strongly and shouted, “Fast, Babe. Over the trees.”
The beast responded instantly, putting the loom of the ship between them and the watcher. And Org Rider sobbed, “Babe! I’m so glad.” He stroked the bronze scales. Yards below he could see the top of the trees. He caught a glimpse of Zara’s terrified pale face staring up at them. What could she be thinking? Had she ever seen an org before? Did she understand that Org Rider was master, not prey?
But looking at her brought him back to the needs of that moment. He wheeled Babe around, low over the treetops, and shouted down: “Now! Let’s get him!”
And as he saw the mighty form of Redlaw leap free and begin to run toward the watcher, he gouged his heels into Babe’s scaled side and commanded, “Kill, Babe. The watcher. Kill him!”
