Collected short fiction, p.734
Collected Short Fiction, page 734
Silently, they looked at each other.
“Do come!” Beaming at them, Yeva clung to Lek. “To the chapel, first. You’ve never seen such flowers. You’ve never lived, till you learn the joys of Bel.”
“Thanks,” the boy muttered. “But not tonight.”
“We’re students, remember,” the girl added. “With too much to learn.” Almost frowning, she showed no hint of Bel’s ecstasy in the annointed flesh their garlands revealed. “Our god was Crethor,” she said. “His rituals are different.”
“Perhaps.” Lek shrugged impatiently at the shimmering screen. “But now you’re students here. I’m afraid you aren’t learning what you should.”
Uncomfortably, the boy stopped the lecture.
“Aren’t you happy here?” Suddenly serious, Yeva left Lek’s arms to sit beside them. “Can’t you settle into our ways?”
“We try,” the boy said.
“It isn’t easy.” The girl dropped her eyes to avoid Lek’s eager gaze. “Please . . . please give us time.”
Yeva felt hurt. “Haven’t we been good to you?”
“Too good.” The girl smiled uncertainly. “Maybe that’s the trouble. Everybody is just too nice. Life is too simple, too easy. The land is generous and you are kind. We are used to something else, back . . . back on Kroong IV. We always had the unexpected, and generally it was bad. Disasters, injuries, illness, disappointments, quarrels—”
“If you’re bored, we have a beautiful cure.” With a wide brown grin at Yeva, Lek freed a rope of woven flowers from his waist and flung it around the girl. “I think you need the blessing of Bel.” He tugged her toward him. “We have always suspected that, and Yeva has been hoping we might exchange soon—”
With a startled gasp, the girl broke the rope and twisted out of his reaching arm.
“Don’t you touch her.” The boy sprang between them, pale and trembling. “Don’t—”
“We want to be friends,” the girl whispered. “But not . . . not lovers.”
Half vexed and half apologetic, Lek made them sit again while he explained the customs of Belseve, when the god ordained the open sharing of love and the free exchange of partners. Awkwardly, the boy confessed that they were still virgins.
“We want to marry,” the girl added. “We want children, when we have a safe home for them.”
“Marry?” Lek frowned. “Isn’t that a preman term?”
“Marriage was a tradition of our people,” she insisted quickly. “Out on Kroong IV.”
“Not here,” Lek said. “If your colony had genetic damage, I can see a reason for rejecting partners. But we’ve none here. Thanks to the Creators, our truman genes carry no defects. When the Thearchy allows us another birth, the women gather in the chapel to let Bel select the mother. Though we thus honor the mother, the child belongs to all the tithing.”
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. “But we aren’t used to that.”
“I want his child.” Their hands clung hard together. “No other.”
Lek scowled with outraged piety.
“You have no quota for a child,” he warned them sternly. “With such ideas, you’ll never get one.”
“I hope you see what fools you are.” Impulsively, Yeva flung her arms around the boy. “You’re missing too much!”
“Please.” Awkwardly, he pulled away. “We have each other.”
Giggling at him, she whirled back into Lek’s embrace and they hurried off to the chapel.
BEFORE THE NEXT BELSEVE, a large church skimmer dropped into the square. The district bishop came down the gangway, with his personal curate and a compact man in secular gray who identified himself as an inspector from the tithe office. The rector rushed out to meet them and found they had no time for ceremony.
Without saying why, the inspector wanted to visit the information center. The flustered rector escorted him into the dome and watched him scan the bulleting screens and dig through the documentary files and question the frightened librarians. He failed to find what he was looking for.
“This should have been here.” He produced a holographic notice. “Please post it at once.”
The notice pictured and described two young premen, fugitives from the Redrock reservation and the justice of Belthar, who were now under penalty of death.
“They’re here.” Peering at the holograms, the rector turned pale. “Our student probationers.” His nose lifted righteously. “They have been claiming that they learned their strange ways on some outlandish planet they call Kroong IV, but I always suspected that they were secret infidels.” Davey and Buglet were helping run the new canal across the north mesa on that hot Huxday, she carrying a flag to guide the ditcher, he breaking rocks ahead of its cleats with a heat-gun. The work was heavy, but they had volunteered in hope of keeping their welcome in Utopia Holy.
Sweating from the sun and the radiation from fragments of incandescent rock, Davey was in a downcast mood. Try as they would to conform, he knew they would never be trumen. Even if they were somehow allowed to stay on at the tithing, they would never get permission for a child.
All their study had failed to unlock the latent powers Buglet hoped for. The physics of the multiverse remained a baffling mystery, the symbols for its transvolutionary forces no more than perplexing riddles. With all his groping effort, he had found no way to sense or seize even a single atomic particle beyond the narrow limits of their own narrow space and time.
With Brother Lek in the air-conditioned cab, the huge machine kept too close behind him, gulping brush and soil and stone, excreting smoking yellow concrete to line the channel. Davey was clumsy in the stiff safety suit, half-blind with the sweat in his eyes. A little light-headed from fatigue and the hot sulphur-reek that drifted from the roaring mass-converter, he was longing for water and lunch and rest, and he couldn’t help feeling a crushing sense that nothing mattered.
Sooner or later, they would be expelled from the tithing, with nowhere else to go. Some church official, searching the sacred data banks for records of Threll Bluesea and Ven Hillstone, would find that no such students had ever arrived from Kroong IV.
A shadow flickered across him. He shut off the laser and pushed up his thick goggles in time to see a big skimmer overhead. Sunlight glanced on the linked triangles of Thearchy as it slid down into a juniper clump beside the ditcher.
A short gangway dropped, a giant muman fighter bounding down it. Another followed, then a third. An agile man in secular gray darted after them. Two of the red-scaled warriors plunged at Davey, crest lenses burning. The third went leaping after Buglet, pale pathseeker shafts hissing out of its killer eye.
Trying to see, Davey blinked at the stinging sweat and wiped his face with the back of a heavy glove. The great steel cleats of the ditcher loomed over him and abruptly froze, as Lek stopped the machine. In the ringing stillness, Davey heard a sharp report, saw an exploding firebolt shatter the staff of Buglet’s flag.
He started toward her.
“Stop!” Moving with unbelievable speed, the gray man was already before him. “In Belthar’s name, you are under restraint.”
He stood clutching the heavy laser, shivering to a nightmare sense of disaster too sudden and too vast to be escaped.
“You’re a preman?” The gray man’s voice was sternly chilling, oddly quiet. “A fugitive from the Redrock reservation and the laws of the Thearchy? Known as Davey Dunahoo?”
“I—” He tried to get his breath. “I am.”
“Your companion with the flag? The fugitive female preman known as Jondarc?”
Helpless, he could only nod.
Sister Yeva came dashing toward him out of the skimmer. He watched with a faint spark of hope until she recoiled from him with a gasp of terror and ran wildly past him toward the ditcher, screeching something at Lek.
“Drop that tool,” the quiet man commanded. “Stand where you are.”
Davey was trying to think. The safety suit might shield him briefly, and the laser’s ray was almost as deadly as the mumen’s hissing firebolts. He tossed his head to snap the goggles back into place and crouched to grip the gun.
Almost too fast for Davey to see, the gray man came at him. The instant flash of the nearest muman’s lens flickered faintly through the goggles. Near thunder cracked, and a stunning shock hit him through the heavy fabric. Dazed with pain, he lurched forward and tried to lift the laser, to slice at the gray man’s belly.
But the gun was gone, torn out of his stinging fingers before Davey could move it, his gloves and goggles torn off as well. Hot rock fragments showered him, shattered by his own heat-ray. He stood breathless and blinking in the sunlight, watching the gray man’s hands. They were twisting the heavy laser into a metal knot as if it had been something shaped from soft clay.
“I am Clone General Ironlaw.” Almost absently, the gray man tossed the bent metal back into the canal. “Acting as a special agent for our Lord Belthar. My orders are to recapture you two premen. I prefer to take you alive—if you can display some degree of reason.”
Choking in the bitter smoke from the rock and brush his ray had struck, Davey stood still. The two mumen moved closer, one on either side, towering tall above him, sunlight glancing on ruby armor and long black talons.
“Won’t you bargain?” Ironlaw might have been a shrewd truman trader back on the reservation, offering to barter some glittering trinket for an ancient piece of preman art. “Will you name your accomplices? The criminals who forged your false documents and kept the news of your escape from reaching—”
“Tell him!” Lek came stumbling from the ditcher, hoarse and pale with terror. “For Bel’s sake, tell him we are innocent. Tell him we were tricked—”
“Quiet!”
Though Ironlaw had not raised his voice, Lek staggered back to Yeva.
“They are innocent.” Davey wet his sweat-salted lips. “They were our first friends here, but they had no reason to think we were premen.”
“I was hoping you could be human.” Ironlaw nodded with emotionless approval. “Now, the names of those who did assist you. In return. I’ll try to save your lives. That may not be possible, but at least I can help you avoid an unpleasant inquisition.”
He stepped closer abruptly, shattering a rock beneath his boot.
“Now I need names.”
“Nobody helped us.” Only half aware that he was lying, Davey felt astonished at his own readiness. “I think you underestimate our abilities.”
The words weren’t quite his own, and somehow he thought of Pipkin as he spoke them. In his oddly vivid image of bright fur and doll’s feet and giant fists, the botched god was dancing in the air, grinning gleefully. That fleeting recollection brought Davey an instant of good cheer, but then he could not recall its cause. Dark despair fell back upon him, as cruel as the muman’s bolt. The savage sun felt hotter, and the safety suit weighed him down.
“Don’t stall,” Ironlaw was urging. “Don’t try any stupid preman tricks. My bargain is your only chance—”
Twigs crackled, and he turned his head enough to see Buglet beside him, the third muman loomed behind her.
Strangely, her face reflected none of his dismay.
“We’re okay, Davey!” Somehow, she was smiling. “This could be just what we need—”
“Silence.” Ironlaw’s voice lifted slightly. “Or name your allies.”
“We don’t need allies.” Her eyes flashed golden. “You can’t touch us. Remember what happened to that muman at the lake.”
Listening to the ring of her untroubled tone, seeing the unquenchable light in her eyes, Davey found an unexpected resolution. A tremor of astonishment washed over him, and left him with something of her supernal calm.
“Let’s go!” he whispered to her. “Let’s take the skimmer.”
“Go!”
They ducked and plunged. One on either side of Ironlaw, they dashed between the mumen toward the skimmer. Davey had no plan, but he thought they should have at least an instant of safety, until the mumen could fire their bolts without striking one another. Though he had no hope, they had nothing left to lose.
Time slowed. Hampered by the safety suit, his limbs seemed frozen. He caught one long breath and took three laborious steps. His back tingled as if he could feel the pathseekers stabbing him.
“Kill!”
Ironlaw’s short command hung in the motionless air, stretched by his altered sense of time, fading as slowly as the tone of a temple gong. Buglet had edged a little ahead of Davey now, and he saw the pathseekers probing past her, thin streaks of violet rain. Their sharp lighting-scent edged the air.
The firebolts followed, their thunder strangely muted. Somehow, they failed to follow the ionized violet tracks. Something caught the firebolts, curved them, hurled them back at the mumen. The far crashing ceased. He heard a gasp, a curse, a moan. Suddenly, stillness.
Swinging his heavy boot another slow step forward, he twisted against the cramping fabric to glance back. He saw the three mumen, almost frozen, sagging visibly toward the rocks like red wax figures too long in the sun.
Ironlaw burst from among them, oddly unslowed. His gray cape was whipped back by the wind of his motion, his boots digging deep pits in the soil, raising lazy puffs of yellow dust. His strength and speed were more than muman, and Davey thought that he and Buglet could never evade him.
But Buglet, too, was looking back. For one unending instant, she didn’t move at all. The sun’s blaze grew brighter around her, as if caught by smoke or dust, bathing her in a momentary halo. A sudden tongue of bright haze licked out of that, wavered, thickened, struck like a shining snake at Ironlaw.
In an instant that glow was gone, as fleeting as something imagined. Alive again. Buglet ran on toward the gangway. Following, Davey fought like a swimmer in some thick fluid to take each step. He heard Ironlaw’s breath rush out behind him, the gasp thinning and stretching into a dying sigh.
Glancing back, he saw the clone’s stern scowl relaxing, saw him leaning low, legs folding deliberately. A long time falling, like some toppled tower, he came down at last face first into the sharp-scented juniper.
Time was crawling faster before they reached the skimmer. Buglet paused on the gangway, looking back at him, yellow eyes wide and bright with elation. Her serene smile chilled him.
For she was a goddess—greater than a goddess. That golden halo had been a holy nimbus. She had struck Ironlaw down with some transvolutionary power, something even more appalling than the unseen force she had used to turn those burning firebolts back against the mumen.
“Come on, Davey!” she was calling. “Quick!”
But he stood frozen. She was the ultiman, he a frightened preman. She had found command of energies from the greater multiverse that he could never hope to grasp or understand. All their love could never bridge the gulf he felt between them. When she reached the fullness of her power, she wouldn’t need him—
“Bug!”
He gasped his warning, pointed at the door behind her. A fourth huge muman was lurching out of the skimmer, crest lens bright. Its hot pathseekers ranged around her. One struck his arm, stinging through the suit. Yet she kept on smiling, as if—as if she didn’t care.
Dazed, he watched the muman strike. The bolt made a streak of deadly fire, aimed at her unprotected back. Yet, though she seemed unaware, it arched upward, hissed above her head, hooked back, exploded like ball lighting against the muman’s scales.
With a bubbling wheeze, it swayed backward. Black talons ripped the air. Great fangs grinning, it toppled off the gangway to mingle its musky scent with the odor of broken juniper.
“It was the last.” Buglet beckoned him on. “We’re safe—at least for now.”
He stumbled past her into the skimmer. Dazzled from the glare outside, he peered around the gloomy cabin at the racks of unfamiliar weapons, the huge seats the mumen had used, the barred cage behind them.
When he could see, he rushed to the controls. Bafflement checked him. He had watched Yeva fly her smaller craft, had even been allowed to sit at the instruments while it lifted and landed itself, but here were too many knobs and dials and shifting gestalts that he didn’t understand.
“What now, Davey?” Buglet had paused behind him. “Where can we go?”
Trying to grapple with all his own perplexities, he sat looking out at Lek and Yeva, who were moving like two agitated ants. They had darted to the fallen mumen, darted back to bend over Ironlaw. Now they were dashing back to the ditcher. They would call the information center, and soon all the might of the angry Thearchy would be descending here.
“I don’t know.” He looked back at Buglet. “There must be—somewhere!”
“Belthar owns the planet.” Her elation had begun to fade. “His people will know we’re something more than premen now. They will hunt us everywhere.”
“If we can fly the skimmer—” He caught his breath and groped for hope. “Let’s—let’s go back to Pipkin’s island. Maybe sink the skimmer off the beach, to get it out of sight. Swim back to the rocks. If he’s still watching, maybe he’ll help—”
Her grave look stopped him.
“Once is all.” For a few seconds she stood silent, and he saw something change her. Her lemon eyes lit, and she smiled again. She seemed taller, strong and proud and lovely. A chill of dread caught him again, because she was suddenly unearthly.
“Do you know—” His dry throat caught. “Do you know a place where we can hide?”
She shook her head.
“Listen, Davey!” Her low voice rang with a timbre he had never heard. “We’ve been acting like idiots—or premen, maybe. That won’t do. Even if we could find another tithing where we could hide among the trumen—or even if we really could persuade Pipkin to open up his rock and take us in again—that’s not what we need.”
Listening, he shivered a little.
“We’re still premen,” she said. “At least until we know what we really are. We’re all through with hiding and trying to be trumen. We belong with our own people, out on Andoranda V. We must give up, Davey, and let them take us there.”
