Planet of Adventure Page 17

  Half an hour later the scouts emerged from the city, herding before them those folk who, from obstreperousness or simple inertia, had elected to remain in Pera.

  Another fifteen minutes passed while these persons were interrogated. There was a period of indecision as the Blue Chasch leadership took counsel among themselves. Clearly the empty city was an unexpected development, and posed a perplexing dilemma.

  The companies which had circled the city returned to the main force; presently all started back toward Dadiche, disconsolate and grim.

  Reith searched the northern waste for movement. If there was validity in the theory of telepathic communication between the Green Chasch, if they hated the Blue Chasch as furiously as reported, they should now be appearing on the scene.

  But the steppe spread away into the northern murk empty and devoid of movement.

  Back toward Belbal Gap moved the Blue Chasch war-force. From the dark green gart-furze, from copses of laggard bush, from salt-grass clumps, apparently from nowhere, erupted a horde of Green Chasch. Reith could not comprehend how so many warriors, riding gigantic leap-horses, had approached so inconspicuously. They hurled themselves upon the column, striking ten-foot arcs with their swords. The heavy weapons on the drays could not be brought to bear; the Green Chasch raged up and down the line doing carnage.

  Reith turned away, half-sickened. He climbed aboard the raft. "Back across the mountains, to our own men."

  The raft joined the militia at the agreed rendezvous, a gully half a mile south of Belbal Gap. The militia set off down the hill, keeping to the cover of trees and moss-hedge. Reith remained with the raft, searching the sky through the scanscope, apprehensive of Blue Chasch reconnaissance rafts. As he watched, a score of rafts rose from Dadiche to fly at full speed to the east: apparently reinforcement for the beleaguered war-party. Reith watched them disappear over Belbal Gap. Turning the scanscope back toward Dadiche, he glimpsed a sparkle of white uniforms up under the walls. "Now," he told Anacho. "As good a time as any."

  The raft slid down toward the main portal into Dadiche: closer and closer. The guards, conceiving the raft to be one of their own, craned their necks in perplexity. Reith, steeling himself, pulled the trigger of the forward sand-blast. The way into Dadiche was open. The Pera militia surged into the city.

  Jumping down from the raft, Reith sent two platoons to seize the raft depot.

  Another platoon remained at the portal with the greater part of the sand-blasts and energetics. Two platoons were sent to patrol the city and enforce the occupation.

  These last two platoons, as fierce and unrelenting as any other inhabitants of Tschai, ranged through the half-deserted avenues, killing Blue Chasch and Chaschmen, and any Chaschwomen who offered resistance. The discipline of two days swiftly evaporated; a thousand generations of resentment exploded into blood-lust and massacre.

  Reith, with Anacho, Traz and six others, rode the raft to the District Technical Center. The doors were closed; the building seemed vacant. The raft dropped beside the center portal; sandblasts broke down the doors. Reith, unable to contain his anxiety, ran into the building.

  There, as before: the familiar shape of the space-boat.

  Reith approached with heart thumping in his throat. The hull was cut open; the drive-mechanisms, the accumulators, the converter: all had been removed. The boat was a hulk.

  The prospect of finding the boat in near-operative condition had been an impossible dream. Reith had known as much. But irrational optimism had persisted.

  Now, irrational optimism and all hope of return to Earth must be put aside. The boat had been gutted. The engines had been dismantled, the drive-tank opened, the exquisite balance of forces disrupted.

  Reith became aware of Anacho standing at his shoulder. "This is not a Blue Chasch space-boat," said Anacho reflectively. "Nor is it Dirdir, nor Wankh."

  Reith leaned back against a bench, his mind drained of vigor. "True."

  "It is built with great skill; it shows refined design," mused Anacho. "Where was it built?"

  "On Earth," said Reith.

  "'Earth'?"

  "The planet of men."

  Anacho turned away, his bald harlequin-face pinched and drawn, the axioms of his own existence shattered. "An interesting concept," he murmured over his shoulder.

  Reith looked somberly through the space-boat but found little to interest him.

  Presently he returned outside, where he received a report from the platoon guarding the portal. Remnants of the Blue Chasch army had been sighted coming down the mountainside, in sufficient numbers to suggest that they had finally beaten off the Green Chasch.

  Those platoons which had been sent to patrol the city were completely out of control and could not be recalled. Two platoons held the landing field, leaving only a single platoon at the portal-something over a hundred men.

  An ambush was prepared. The portal was returned to the similitude of normalcy.

  Three men disguised as Chaschmen stood inside the wicket.

  The remnants of the war-force approached the portal. They noticed nothing amiss and started to enter the city. Sand-blasts and energetics opened fire; the column withered, dissipated. The survivors were too stunned to resist. A few tottered wildly back into the parkland, pursued by yelling men in white uniforms; others stood in a stupid huddle to be passively slaughtered.

  The battle-rafts were luckier. Observing the debacle, they swooped back up into the sky. The militia-men, unfamiliar with the Blue Chasch ground guns, fired as best they could and, more by luck than by skill, destroyed four rafts. The others swung in high bewildered circles for five minutes, then bore south, toward Saaba, Dkekme, Audsch.

  Spasms of fighting occurred throughout the rest of the afternoon, wherever the Peran militia encountered Blue Chasch who sought to defend themselves. The remainder-aged, females, imps alike-were slaughtered. Reith interceded with some success on behalf of the Chaschmen and Chaschwomen, saving all but the purple and gray-clad security guards, who shared the fate of their masters.

  The remaining Chaschmen and Chaschwomen, throwing aside their false crania, gathered in a sullen crowd on the main avenue.

  At sunset the militia, sated with killing, burdened with loot and unwilling to prowl the dead city after dark, assembled near the portal. Fires were built, food prepared and eaten.

  Reith, taking pity on the miserable Chaschmen, whose world had suddenly collapsed, went to where they sat in a dispirited group, the women keening softly for those who were dead.

  One burly individual spoke up truculently. "What do you propose to do with us?"

  "Nothing," said Reith. "We destroyed the Blue Chasch because they attacked us.

  You are men; so long as you do us no harm, we shall do you none."

  The Chaschman grunted. "Already you have harmed many of us."

  "Because you chose to fight with the Chasch against men, which is unnatural."

  The Chaschman scowled. "What is unnatural about that? We are Chaschmen, the first phase of the great cycle."

  "Utter nonsense," said Reith. "You are no more Chasch than the Dirdirman yonder is Dirdir. Both of you are men. The Chasch and the Dirdir have enslaved you, plundered your lives. High time that you knew the truth!"

  The Chaschwomen halted their keening, the Chaschmen turned blank faces toward Reith.

  "So far as I am concerned," said Reith, "you can live as you like. The city of Dadiche is yours-so long as the Blue Chasch do not return."

  "What do you mean by that?" quavered the Chaschmen

  "Precisely what I said. Tomorrow we return to Pera. Dadiche is yours."

  "All very well-but what if the Blue Chasch come back, from Saaba, from Dkekme, from the Lizizaudre, as they surely will?"

  "Kill them, chase them away! Dadiche is now a city of men! And if you don't believe that the Blue Chasch victimized you, go look into the death-house under the wall. You are told that you are larva, that the imp germinates in your brain. Go examine the brain
s of dead Chaschmen. You will find no imps, only the brains of men.

  "So far as we are concerned, you can return to your homes. The only proscription I put upon you are the false heads. If you wear them we will consider you not men but Blue Chasch and deal with you accordingly."

  Reith returned to his own camp; diffidently, as if they could not believe Reith's statement, the erstwhile Chaschmen slipped off through the dusk for their homes.

  Anacho spoke to Reith. "I listened to what you said. You know nothing about the Dirdir and the Dirdirmen! Even were your theories valid, we would still remain Dirdirmen! We recognize excellence, superlativity; we aspire to emulate the ineffable-an impossible ideal, since Shade can never out-glow Sun, and men can never surpass Dirdir."

  "For an intelligent man," snapped Reith, "you are extremely obstinate and unimaginative. Someday I am sure you will recognize your error; until then, believe whatever you care to believe."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BEFORE DAWN THE camp was astir. Drays laden with loot moved off westward, black against the ale-colored sky.

  In Dadiche, the Chaschmen, peculiarly bald and gnomish without their false skulls, collected corpses, carried them to a great pit and buried them. A score of Blue Chasch had been flushed from hiding. The killing lust of the Perans having subsided, they were confined in a stockade, from which they stared in stone-eyed bewilderment at the coming and going of the men.

  Reith was concerned over the possibility of counterattack from the Blue Chasch cities to the south. Anacho made light of the matter. "They have no stomach for fighting. They menace the Dirdir cities with torpedoes, but only to avoid war.

  They never challenge, they are content to live in their gardens. They might send Chaschmen to harass us, but I suspect they will do nothing whatever, unless we threaten them directly."

  "Perhaps so." Reith released the captive Blue Chasch. "Go to the cities of the south," he told them. "Inform the Blue Chasch of Saaba and Dkekme that if they molest us we will destroy them."

  "It is a long march," croaked the Blue Chasch. "Must we go on foot? Give us one of the rafts!"

  "Walk! We owe you nothing!"

  The Blue Chasch departed.

  Still not wholly convinced that the Blue Chasch would refrain from seeking vengeance, Reith ordered weapons mounted on those nine rafts captured at the Dadiche depot and flew them to secluded areas on the hills.

  On the following day, in the company of Traz, Anacho and Derl, he explored Dadiche in a more leisurely fashion. At the Technical Center he once more examined the hulk of his spaceboat, with an eye to its ultimate repair. "If I had the full use of this workshop," he said, "and if I had the help of twenty expert technicians, I might be able to build a new drive system. It might be more practical to try to adapt the Chasch drive to the boat but then there would be control problems ... Better to build a whole new boat."

  Derl frowned at the quiet space-boat. "You are so intent, then, on departing Tschai? You have not yet visited Cath. You might wish never to depart."

  "Possibly," said Reith. "But you have never visited Earth. You might not want to return to Tschai."

  "It must be a very strange world," mused the Flower of Cath. "Are the women of Earth beautiful?"

  "Some of them," Reith replied. He took her hand. "There are beautiful women on Tschai, as well. The name of one of them is-" And he whispered a name in her ear.

  Blushing, she put her hand to his mouth. "The others might hear!"

  SERVANTS OF THE WANKH

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two THOUSAND MILES east of Pera, over the heart of the Dead Steppe, the sky-raft faltered, flew smoothly for a moment, then jerked and bucked in a most ominous fashion. Adam Reith looked aft in dismay, then ran to the control belvedere.

  Lifting the voluted bronze housing, he peered here and there among the scrolls, floral hatchings, grinning imp faces which almost mischievously camouflaged the engine.* He was joined by the Dirdirman Ankhe at afram Anacho.

  Reith asked, "Do you know what's wrong?"

  Anacho pinched up his pale nostrils, muttered something about an "antiquated Chasch farrago" and "insane expedition to begin with." Reith, accustomed to the Dirdirman's foibles, realized that he was too vain to admit ignorance, too disdainful to avow knowledge so crass.

  The raft shuddered again. Simultaneously from a four-pronged case of black wood to the side of the engine compartment came small rasping noises. Anacho gave it a lordly rap with his knuckles. The groaning and shuddering ceased. "Corrosion," said Anacho. "Electromorphic action across a hundred years or longer. I believe this to be a copy of the unsuccessful Heizakim Bursa, which the Dirdir abandoned two hundred years ago."

  "Can we make repairs?"

  "How should I know such things? I would hardly dare touch it.

  They stood listening. The engine sighed on without further pause. At last Reith lowered the housing. The two returned forward.

  Traz lay curled on a settee after standing a night watch. On the green crush-cushioned seat under the ornate bow lantern sat the Flower of Cath, one leg tucked beneath the other, head on her forearms, staring eastward toward Cath. So had she huddled for hours, hair blowing in the wind, speaking no word to anyone. Reith found her conduct perplexing. At Pera she had yearned for Cath; she could talk of nothing else but the ease and grace of Blue Jade Palace, of her father's gratitude if Reith would only bring her home. She had described wonderful balls, extravaganzas, water-parties, masques according to the turn of the "round." ("Round? What did she mean by 'round'?" asked Reith. Ylin-Ylan, the Flower of Cath, laughed excitedly. "It's just the way things are, and how they become! Everybody must know and the clever ones anticipate; that's why they're clever! It's all such fun!") Now that the journey to Cath was actually underway the Flower's mood had altered. She had become pensive, remote, and evaded all questions as to the source of her abstraction. Reith shrugged and turned away.

  Their intimacy was at an end: all for the best, or so he told himself. Still, the question nagged at him: why? His purpose in flying to Cath was twofold: first, to fulfill his promise to the girl; secondly, to find, or so he hoped, a technical basis to permit the construction of a spaceboat, no matter how small or crude. If he could rely upon the cooperation of the Blue Jade Lord, so much the better. Indeed, such sponsorship was a necessity.

  The route to Cath lay across the Dead Steppe, south under the Ojzanalai Mountains, northeast along the Lok Lu Steppe, across the Zhaarken or the Wild Waste, over Achenkin Strait to the city Nerv, then south down the coast of Charchan to Cath. For the raft to fail at any stage of the journey short of Nerv meant disaster. As if to emphasize the point, the raft gave a single small jerk, then once more flew smoothly.

  The day passed. Below rolled the Dead Steppe, dun and gray in the wan light of Carina 4269. At sunset they crossed the great Yatl River and all night flew under the pink moon Az and the blue moon Braz. In the morning low hills showed to the north, which ultimately would swell and thrust high to become the Ojzanalais.

  At midmorning they landed at a small lake to refill water tanks. Traz was uneasy. "Green Chasch are near." He pointed to a forest a mile south. "They hide there, watching us."

  Before the tanks were full, a band of forty Green Chasch on leap-horses lunged from the forest. Ylin-Ylan was perversely slow in boarding the raft. Reith hustled her aboard; Anacho thrust over the lift-arm-perhaps too hurriedly. The engine sputtered; the raft pitched and lurched.

  Reith ran aft, flung up the housing, pounded the black case. The sputtering stopped; the raft lifted only yards ahead of the bounding warriors and their ten-foot swords. The leap-horses slid to a halt, the warriors aimed catapults and the air streamed with long iron bolts. But the raft was five hundred feet high; one or two of the bolts bumped into the hull at the height of their trajectory and fell away.

  The raft, shuddering spasmodically, moved off to the east. The Green Chasch set off in pursuit; the raft, sputtering, pitching, yawing, and occasionally dropp
ing its bow in a sickening fashion gradually left them behind.

  The motion became intolerable. Reith jarred the black case again and again without significant effect. "We've got to make repairs," he told Anacho.

  "We can try. First we must land."

  "On the steppe? With the Green Chasch behind us?"

  "We can't stay aloft."

  Traz pointed north, to a spine of hills terminating in a set of isolated buttes.

  "Best that we land on one of those flat-topped peaks."

  Anacho nudged the raft around to the north, provoking an even more alarming wobble; the bow began to gyrate like an eccentric toy.

  "Hang on!" Reith cried out.

  "I doubt if we can reach that first hill," muttered Anacho.

  "Try for the next one!" yelled Traz. Reith saw that the second of the buttes, with sheer vertical walls, was clearly superior to the first-if the raft would stay in the air that long.

  Anacho cut speed to a mere drift. The raft wallowed across the intervening space to the second butte, and grounded. The absence of motion was like silence after noise.

  The travelers descended from the raft, muscles stiff from tension. Reith looked around the horizon in disgust: hard to imagine a more desolate spot than this, four hundred feet above the center of the Dead Steppe. So much for his hope of an easy passage to Cath.

  Traz, going to the edge of the butte, peered over the cliff. "We may not even be able to get down."

  The survival kit which Reith had salvaged from the wrecked scout boat included a pellet gun, an energy cell, an electronic telescope, a knife, antiseptics, a mirror, a thousand feet of strong cord. "We can get down," said Reith. "I'd prefer to fly." He turned to Anacho, who stood glumly considering the sky-raft.