Slaves of The Klau Read online

Under the raft hung a dark mass, like a bundle of clothes; as the raft slid forward it unfolded, lowered arms like lengths of black hose. They coiled around the fugitive's chest, his legs, his ankles. He stumbled, fell into the thorn-bushes where he lay kicking, thrashing, screaming like a horse.

  The raft moved slowly on, dragged him through the bushes, across the mud, into the lake. He sank out of sight. The surface of the lake rippled and boiled. The raft rose; the fat man now hung limp. He was covered with round brown cups. One by one they dropped away, splashed back into the lake. Barch recognized the stinger-mollusks which had jarred his arm. He squeezed himself even flatter into the ground.

  The black arms contracted, the fat man was hoisted up; a black mantle dropped in limp folds around him, pinched in at the bottom, became a tight bag.

  The raft rose, slid quietly down the valley. Barch turned to look for the Podruods. They had vanished.

  He lay flaccid for a moment, then nudged Komeitk Lelianr. In a husky whisper he said, "Let's run for the trees."

  They hurriedly climbed the hill. Long red-veined black fronds fell around them like weeping willows. They could not see, they could not be seen. On the heavy humus their feet made no sound. Every moment or so Barch stopped to listen. Silence.

  Light punctured the wall of fronds. The hillside leveled off, dipped into a basin. The humus thinned, revealing chalky white marl underneath.

  Barch heard a quick breath; he spun on his heel. Behind stood a grinning Podruod with a shaved head, wearing a black breechclout and black boots. Slowly, with a fanciful flourish he extended his arm; a sliver of bright steel nearly touched Barch's chest. Barch's eyes shifted behind to a second man, slender, yellowish-white of skin, who had seized Komeitk Lelianr's arms from behind.

  Barch hesitated. The Podruod's metallic voice rang out peremptorily. Barch made no reply. He spoke again, this time with harsh emphasis. Barch saw the muscles tense to stab; dimly heard Komeitk Lelianr answering in the same tongue. The Podruod relaxed, sheathed his rapier; death moved back a pace.

  The Podruod turned to Komeitk Lelianr, looked her over, up and down. He spoke again; Komeitk Lelianr replied.

  "What's he saying?" Barch demanded.

  Komeitk Lelianr said in a distant voice, "They want to know if there are any more of us. They're escaped slaves too. The Podruod must be a criminal of some sort."

  "Oh." Barch relaxed. "Is that all?"

  Komeitk Lelianr said noncommittally, "Most of it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There seems to be a kind of tribe living up here." She nodded at the Podruod. "He's the chief."

  The Podruod's inspection of Komeitk Lelianr suddenly aroused Barch's apprehension. He said in a hurried monotone, "Throw on the power in your shoes. He's not holding you tightly; you can break away. I'll take off down hill."

  Before Komeitk Lelianr had a chance to answer, the Podruod, with a quick motion, unsheathed his blade. He motioned on ahead, pushed Barch's shoulder with a heavy hand.

  Rage overcame Barch; he swung a punch. The Podruod grinned, ducked back. The sliver of steel gleamed in the air; he lunged playfully; a quarter inch of steel stabbed Barch's shoulder. Pale with anger and frustration Barch jerked back.

  " Roy," cried Komeitk Lelianr, "be sensible! Obey him, or you'll be killed!"

  "He's got his eyes on you," panted Barch. "Once we get in that cave-"

  The steel menaced again; the Podruod barked out roughly. With an agonizing sickness in the pit of his stomach, Barch stumbled forward.

  They crossed an open flat, climbed a little slope to the wall of a sheer limestone cliff. The yellowish-white man motioned Komeitk Lelianr into a shadowed indentation. At the far end Barch saw a narrow crevice. The first man and Komeitk Lelianr slid into the crevice. Barch followed, groped along a short irregular passage, stumbled into a low-ceilinged hall close after the girl.

  Smoky yellow lamps and a blazing fire gave off warm light; there were two rough tables, benches, the smell of food and bodies. Twenty or thirty men and women were visible; others came blinking curiously out of dark corners.

  Barch stood tensely, his eyes on Komeitk Lelianr. The chief was giving directions to a pair of men in gray; he turned, called across the cave to where a pot bubbled on the fire. He stood three inches more than six feet: a magnificent creature, wide, thick, without a spare ounce of flesh. His head was shaved; he had hard bony features, and walked in his heavy black boots as lightly as Lekthwans walked on air-sandals. Barch looked anxiously back to Komeitk Lelianr. She watched the chief; the lamplight reflected flickering in her eyes.

  The chief walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders. Barch charged forward, stopped a great open-handed slap. He punched, felt the numb jar of blows. Lamps, walls, fires, faces became a meaningless backdrop. The red face was intent, the nostrils flared. Barch twisted the face askew with a haymaker; the face twisted back without change of expression. Barch felt his wind going, his legs felt like logs, he could hardly raise his arms. "Ellen," he croaked, "grab a rock, brain him…"

  Komeitk Lelianr pressed back against the wall, turned her face away. Three great blows hit Barch. The first was like a lead hammer and the lights faded. The second was like a dark surf washing over him, the third was a rumble of distant thunder.

  Barch awoke on a pile of skins. He sat up, feeling his face. It was puffy and ached dully. At a long table across the room three or four women pounded meal in stone mortars.

  At the end sat Komeitk Lelianr. She rose to her feet, bent over a pot, came to Barch with a crockery bowl. "Drink this and you'll feel better."

  Barch started to speak, but the words choked in his throat. He took the bowl, drank. Komeitk Lelianr stood watching. Barch stared at her coldly. "How're you making out with the chief?"

  "Clet?" She shrugged.

  "You speak his same language I notice."

  "It's a common tongue that everyone knows."

  Barch handed back the bowl, turned his head to the wall. A few minutes later he rose to his feet, staggered outside, leaned against the cliff, vomited.

  Raising his head again, he saw a pair of gray men skirting the hillside, carrying a basket between them. Behind came Clet, the Podruod chief, a beast the size of a boar slung over his shoulder. His eyes fixed impassively on Barch, he strode inside the cave.

  Barch settled himself upon a rock, rubbed his aching head. After a moment he raised his eyes, studied the expanse of the valley. It was shaped roughly like the Mediterranean Sea, with the cave at a position comparable to Libya. High mountains ringed the Levantine end; at Gibraltar the river cut through a narrow steep-walled notch; along the Cote d'Azur he noticed the entrance to a second valley. Directly opposite the cave, in the position of Italy, a great round-knobbed bluff reared up to dominate the valley. Strange, thought Barch, that the Klau maintain no fort up there. Looking closely he thought to see the outline of ruins.

  Overcast scudded low over the mountains; a few drops of rain fell. Barch rose to his feet, shivered as a cold blast of wind penetrated the threadbare Modok garment.

  He looked tentatively toward the entrance into the cave. The two men with the basket now sat beside it husking a kind of nut. One of them snapped his fingers at Barch, motioned.

  Barch glowered, half-turned away. But, he decided, he would look less of a fool working than refusing to work. He could always leave the cave-but why should he? He was free; he was fed and sheltered; there was no reason for him to go. Barch sat down, began hulling nuts.

  Weeks passed, two, three, a month. Barch mastered the simple routines of the tribe, gained a smattering of the common tongue. On several occasions he went hunting, and once killed a large, brown, two-legged creature like a hybrid of kangaroo and lizard, for which we was warmly congratulated.

  He explored the cave. Four different passages opened out of the community hall. Two struck off more or less horizontally, winding through small chambers, nooks, niches and alcoves wherein the tribesmen slept. A third led down past
Clet's chamber, dropping into the depths under the mountain. The fourth served as a flue for the fire, led up into an enormous space over the hall called Big Hole. At one end, where the wall was barely a shell, daylight seeped in through a fissure. Stalactites hung, stalagmites rose, occasionally joining to form spindly columns of fascinating height. In Big Hole, Barch arranged his bed of humus and rudely cured hides.

  The tribe numbered thirty-four: twenty-one men, ten women, three doubtfuls. These last were the Calbyssinians: Armian, Ardl, Arn, whose sex was a frantically guarded secret. They were slight, pretty creatines with melting blue eyes and purple-gold hair. They bundled themselves in loose cloaks, and spent all their leisure time trying to probe out each other's secret. Their hints, wiles, sly strategies provided Barch with almost his only amusement.

  In addition to the Calbyssinians, there were four Byathids: three tall pink men with foxy eyes, droopy noses, silky cinnamon-colored hair; one pink raw-boned woman with a voice like a sheep.

  There was Kerbol and his dour woman, stocky and gray-green, with pointed heads and frog-like faces.

  There were three hatchet-faced Splangs with skins like Cordovan leather: Chevrr, Skurr and a thin beetle-faced woman that they shared.

  There were two Griffits, cat-like men with watchful, sidelong eyes, stiff mustaches and an air of vindictive truculence that never quite manifested itself.

  There was a large brown man who had lost his nose; his name was Flatface. He controlled two bald and bad-tempered women of unguessable race.

  There was Pedratz, taffy-colored and smelling of musk, with eyebrows that rose into fantastic horns. There was Moranko, a sullenly handsome youth who hated Clet and presently Barch. There was the dwarf, Moses, with a punchinello face and skin like a piebald horse.

  There were six of the bulldog-faced Modoks; four men and two women. They crouched by themselves at the back of the hall, watching everything with wide, suspicious eyes.

  There was Sl, a white-skinned man with white bifurcated beard and split nose who did everything double; there was the musician, Lkandeli Szet. There was Barch; there was Komeitk Lelianr; there was Clet and his two women: a pair of young nondescripts who had been the original property of Lkandeli Szet.

  Making a mental inventory, Barch estimated that at least fifteen races from as many worlds occupied the cave. Sitting quietly at the back bench, he considered the melange with wry amusement. Never would it be said that his life had been uneventful or drab.

  On Earth no one even suspected the existence of Magarak. And yet by this time… With a queasiness in his stomach, he speculated on the Klau raid. What had been their purpose?

  Across the hall the voices of Flatface's two bald women rose in acrimony. Clet, at the big table in front of the fire, raised his bony red head; the bickering quieted. Clet disliked noise. Here was one reason, thought Barch, for the fact that the tribe so widely disparate in background could live in comparative amity. Another lay in the fundamental nature of their existence, a kind of cultural least-common-denominator, a stage through which each of the races had passed. For Barch, that stage had been only three or four thousand years in the past. He glanced at Komeitk Lelianr, who sat drawing aimless patterns on the table with her fingers. How long had it been since her ancestors lived in caves? A hundred thousand years? A million?

  She looked clean and fresh, Barch noticed. Her face was thinner; her mouth had lost something of its girlish curve. Her expression was abstracted, distant, the result of a stoic or fatalistic characterization, no doubt.

  Barch rose to his feet, went outside into the darkness. Mist that was not quite drizzle dampened his face. Against the blurred gray of the limestone cliff he noticed a dark shape. His heart stopped for an instant, then started again. It was Kerbol, whom nature had endowed with a skin the color of wet rock, pop-eyes, a mouth like a flap. Barch remembered that Kerbol grumbled about the heat in the hall and seemed to enjoy the cool dampness of the valley.

  Barch went to stand beside him; any man that preferred the solitude of the valley to the hall seemed an ally.

  Kerbol grunted, and after a moment said in a deep rumbling voice, "The mist falls, the wind blows backwards down Palkwarkz Ztvo. Tomorrow the sky will be high and then the Klau come hunting. Tomorrow will be a good day to stay close by the cave."

  Barch remembered the bugling Podruods, the frantic fat man, the Klau raft with the black arms dangling below. "How often do the Klau hunt?"

  "Every eight, ten days, if the weather suits. They are the Quodaras District Klau; Parkwarkz Ztvo is their region. The Xolboar Klau hunt in Poriflammes." He pointed to the valley entering the Palkwarkz Ztvo near the mouth.

  Sudden enlightenment came to Barch. "So-we live in a hunting preserve; we're tolerated in order to provide the Klau with sport!"

  "The Klau planet is a week distant; the Klau must amuse themselves."

  Barch said thoughtfully, "I could certainly amuse myself hunting Podruods and Klau."

  Kerbol digested the idea. "You think in strange directions. Very strange."

  Barch laughed sourly. "I don't see anything strange about it. If the Klau hunt me, it's only fair that I hunt them."

  "That is not the theory of the hunt." Kerbol spoke politely.

  "It's not the Klau theory; it is my theory. Do we have to live by Klau theory?"

  Kerbol said thoughtfully, "It was too hot at the quarry."

  A dull explosion from over Kebali Ridge jarred the air of the valley. "There they shoot now," said Kerbol. "Notice the double shock?"

  "No."

  "The charge was ten cans of abiloid, a twentieth cut of the super. The super smashes the rock; the abiloid pushes it down."

  "You seem to know a great deal about explosives."

  Kerbol nodded gloomily. "Five years I drilled and charged, drilled and charged. And always in the heat. I ran into the forest and came over Mount Kebali to Palkwarkz Ztvo, where I must take my chances with the hunters."

  Barch asked curiously, "What is that black thing that hangs under the Klau raft?"

  "Those are"-Kerbol stopped, grasped for a word-"pulling things. In factories they lift loads. The Klau grow them; they are half-alive."

  "The Klau carry other weapons?"

  "Yes. They shoot across long distances; a little splinter enters a man's belly, explodes. The man is dead."

  Barch looked up and down the dark valley. The mist had risen, a current of air smelling of rotting vegetation blew on his face. From the far distance sounded a harsh clanking, a screech. Barch muttered, "At night a whole regiment of Podruods could come up here."

  Kerbol moved uneasily. "That has never happened."

  "But it might," said Barch.

  "You think strange, uncomfortable thoughts," said Kerbol.

  On the following day the overcast was high, the wind light. The tribesmen hung close to the cave. But no bugling cries were heard and the Klau did not appear.

  The next day was the same, with a near calm across the valley. Again the men of the tribe ventured only a few hundred yards from the cliff, and at the evening meal there was only a few scrapings of gruel in the pot.

  The third day dawned blustery, with ragged gray clouds breaking over Mount Kebali like surf over a sea-wall.

  Clet ordered Flatface, Barch, the Modoks and the Calbyssinians out to grub for meal-nuts, while the remaining men filed into the forest to hunt meat.

  The bugling of the Podruods sounded an hour later. Barch and the Calbyssinians jumped up, seized the half-filled bags, hurried back around the hillside.

  Across the valley rang the hunting cries, converging near the dominating bluff; looking over his shoulder Barch glimpsed the ominous dark shadow of the Klau raft.

  The hunters came filing back to the cave one at a time, wide-eyed with exhaustion.

  Across the valley the bugle calls suddenly ceased. Standing in the crevice Barch saw the black raft slipping down the valley toward the notch.

  Four hunters had not yet returned: Clet,
Moranko, the two Splangs, Chevrr and Skurr.

  Clet slipped in first, his bony red face impassive. Then came Moranko carrying a dead creature that looked like a wooly caterpillar. Minutes passed. Chevrr crossed the flat. He muttered a few words to Clet, jerked his thumb across the valley.

  Skurr, the Splang, had been hunted down and killed.

  On sudden impulse Barch dropped into the seat opposite to where Clet sat whetting his knife. "I think we should do something about these hunts."

  Clet turned him a brief cool glance, returned to his work. Steel rasped on stone, lamplight flickered and winked on the metal as the big red hands methodically stroked. Barch raised his voice: "We don't necessarily need to skulk around this valley." He paused; Clet showed no interest.

  Trying to keep anger out of his voice, Barch said, "Every week somebody else gets killed."

  "More always come," said Clet. "Too many in the cave is not good."

  "Next time the Klau hunt, they might get you-or me." Clet shrugged. "We should hunt them instead-kill the Podruods, kill the Klau."

  "No, no," said Clet impatiently. "Then a warship comes down to kill us all. We live good now, hey?" He laughed complacently. "Food, women, hey? Same way for many, many years. Best not to change."

  Barch rose slowly to his feet, staring in frustration down at Clet, who glanced up impassively, then returned to his whetstone.

  CHAPTER VI

  Five days passed, low angry days full of rain and stormy gusts that tilled Big Hole with eery whistling sounds.

  The sixth day was quiet, with a high overcast rippled with fish-scale black. Barch found Clet eating his breakfast of toasted meat and gruel cake. "Today the Klau might come again. If we went down to the notch, and hid where they enter the valley-"

  Clet shook his head stubbornly, at the same time gnawing a bone.

  Komeitk Lelianr knelt by the fire, tending the gruel cakes which baked on a hot rock. She turned her head, spoke shortly. "Don't argue with him, Roy; he's very single-minded."

  Clet looked up. "What does she say?" He dropped the bone, put his wide red hands on the table.