16

It was pain, but it was not unbearable. What was unendurable was the sure knowledge of death. The old man had killed him. It was all over. Almost without malice, Jason raised his shield and pushed it against the man, sending him stumbling backwards. The sword remained, slim shining death through his body.

“Leave it,” Jason said hoarsely to Ijale, who raised her chained hands to pull it out, her eyes numb with terror.

The battle was over, and through the blurring of pain Jason could see the Hertug before him, the awareness of death written also on his face. “Cloths,” Jason said, as clearly as he could. “Have them ready to press to the wounds when the sword is removed.”

Strong hands of the soldiers held him up and the cloths were ready. The Hertug stood before Jason, who merely nodded and closed his eyes. Once more the pain struck at him and he fell. He was lowered to the carpet, his clothes were torn open, the flow of blood compressed beneath the waiting bandages.

As he lost consciousness, grateful for this relief from agony, he wondered why he bothered. Why prolong the pain? He could only die here, light years from antiseptics and antibiotics, with destruction pushed through his guts. He could only die.

Jason struggled back to awareness just once to see Ijale kneeling over him with a needle and thread, sewing together the raw lips of the wound in his abdomen. The light went away again, and the next time he opened his eyes he was in his own bedroom looking at the sunlight flooding in through the broken windows. Something obscured the light, and first his forehead and his cheeks, then his lips, were moistened and cooled. It made him realize how dry his throat was and how strong the pain was.

“Water . . .“ he rasped, and was surprised at the weakness of his voice.

“It was told me that you should not drink—with a cut there,” Ijale said, pointing to his body, her lips taut.

“I don’t think it will matter. . . one way or the other,” he told her,

the knowledge of impending death more painful by far than the wound. The Hertug appeared beside Ijale, his drawn expression a mirror image of hers, and held a small box out to Jason.

“The sciuloj have obtained these, the roots of the bede that deaden pain and make it feel distant. You must chew on it, though not too much; there is great danger if too much of the bede is taken.”

Not for me, Jason thought, forcing his jaws to chew the dry, dusty root. A pain killer, a narcotic, a habit-forming drug . . . I’m going to have very little time to get the habit.

Whatever the drug was, it worked fine and Jason was grateful. The pain slipped away, as did his thirst, and though he felt a little lightheaded he was no longer exhausted. “How did the battle go?” he asked the Hertug, who was standing, arms folded, scowling at fate.

“Victory is ours. The only surviving Trozelligoj are our slaves; their clan has ceased to exist. Some soldiers fled, but they do not count. Their keep is ours, and the most secret chambers where they build their engines. If you could but see their machines. . .“ At the realization that Jason could not see them, and would see but little else, the Hertug fell to scowling again.

“Cheer up,” Jason told him. “Win one, win them all. There are no other mobs strong enough to stand up to you now. Keep moving before they can combine. Pick off the most unfriendly ones first. If possible, try not to kill all their technicians; you’ll want someone to explain their secrets after you have beaten them. Move fast, and by winter you’ll own Appsala.”

“We’ll give you the finest funeral Appsala has ever seen,” the Hertug burst out.

“I’m sure of it. Spare no expense.”

“There will be feasts and prayers, and your remains will be turned to ash in the electric furnace in the honor of the god Elektro.”

“Nothing could make me happier. . .“

“And afterwards they will be taken to sea at the head of a magnificent funeral procession, ship after ship, all of them heavily armed so that on the return voyage we can fall on the Mastreguloj and take them unawares.”

“That’s more like it, Hertug. I thought for a while there that you were getting too sentimental.”

A crashing at the door drew Jason’s attention and he turned his head, slowly, to see a group of slaves dragging heavily insulated cables into the room. Others carried boxes of equipment, and behind them came the slave overseer cracking his whip, driving Mikah’s tottering, chained figure before him. Mikah was booted into a corner, where he collapsed.

“I was going to kill the traitor,” the Hertug said, “until I thought how nice it would be for you to torture him to death yourself. You’ll enjoy that. The arc furnace will be hot soon and you can cook him bit by bit, send him ahead as a sacrifice to Elektro to smooth the way for your coming.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” Jason said, eying Mikah’s battered form. “Chain him to the wall, then leave us, so that I may think of the most ingenious and terrible tortures for him.”

“I shall do as you ask. But you must let me watch the ceremony. I am always interested in something new in torture.”

“I’m sure you are, Hertug.”

They left, and Jason saw Ijale stalking Mikah with the kitchen knife.

“Don’t do it,” Jason told her. “It’s no good, no good at all.”

She obediently put the knife down, and took up the sponge to wipe Jason’s face. Mikab lifted his head and looked at Jason. His face was bruised, and one eye was puffed shut.

“Would you tell me,” Jason asked, “just what in hell you thought you were doing by betraying us and trying to get me captured by the Trozelligoj?”

“Though you torture me, my lips are eternally shut.”

“Don’t be a bigger idiot than usual. No one’s going to torture you. I just wonder what you had in mind this time—what ever led you to pull this kind of stunt?”

“I did what I thought best,” Mikah answered, drawing himself up.

“You always do what you think best—only you usually think wrong. Didn’t you like the way I treated you?”

“There was nothing personal in what I did. It was for the good of suffering mankind.”

“I think you did it for the reward and a new job, and because you were angry at me,” Jason needled, knowing Mikah’s weaknesses.

“Never! If you must know . . . I did it to prevent war. . . .“

“Just what do you mean by that?”

Mikah scowled, looking ominous and judicial in spite of his battered eye. His chains rattled as he pointed an accusing finger at Jason.

“Deep in drink one day you did confess your crime to me, and did speak of your plans to wage deadly war among these innocent people, to embroil them in slaughter and to set cruel despotism about their necks. I knew then what I had to do. You had to be stopped. I forced my lips shut, not daring to say a word lest I reveal my thoughts, because I knew a way.

“I had been approached by a man in the hire of the Trozelligoj, a clan of honest laborers and mechanics, he assured me, who wished to

hire you away from the Perssonoj at a good wage. I did not answer him at the time, because any plan to free us would involve violence and kiss of life, and I could not consider this even though refusing meant my remaining in chains. Then, when I learned of your bloodthirsty intentions, I examined my conscience and saw what had to be done. We would all be removed from here, taken to the Trozelligoj, who promised that no harm would come to you, though you would be kept a prisoner. The war would be averted.”

“You are a simple fool,” Jason said, without passion. Mikah flushed. “I do not care what your opinion is of me. I would act the same again if there was the opportunity.”

“Even though you now know that the mob you were selling out to are no better than the ones here? Didn’t you stop one of them from killing Ijale during the fighting? I suppose I should thank you for that

—even though you are the one who got her into the spot.”

~‘I do not want your thanks. It was the passion of the moment that made them threate~i her. I cannot blame them. . . .“

“It doesn’t matter one way or the other. The war is over; they lost, and my plans for an industrial revolution will go through without a hitch, even without my personal attention. About the only thing you have accomplished is to bring about my death—which I find very hard to forgive.”

“What madness…?”

“Madness, you narrow-minded fool!” Jason pushed himself up on one arm, but bad to drop back as an arrow of pain shot through the muffling layers of the drug. “Do you think I’m lying here because I’m tired? Your kidnaping and intriguing led me a lot further into battle than I ever intended, and right onto a long, sharp, unsanitary sword. It stuck me like a pig.”

“I don’t understand what you are saying.”

“Then you are being very dim. I was run through, front to back. My knowledge of anatomy is not as good as it might be, but at a guess I would say no organ of vital importance was penetrated. If my liver or any major blood vessels had been punctured, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. But I don’t know of any way to make a hole through the abdomen without cutting a loop or two of intestine, slicing up the peritoneuin and bringing in a lot of nice hungry bacteria. In case you haven’t read the first-aid book lately, what happens next is an infection called peritonitis, which, considering the medical knowledge on this planet, is one hundred per cent fatal.”

This shut Mikah up nicely, but it didn’t cheer Jason very much, so he dosed his eyes for a little rest. When he opened them again it was

—I— dark and he dozed on and off until dawn, when he had towake hale to tell her to bring him the bowl of bede roots. She wiped his forehead and he noticed the expression on her face.

“Then it’s not getting hotter in here,” he said. “It’s me.”

“You were hurt because 0f me,” Ijale wailed, and she began to cry.

“Nonsense!” Jason told her. “No matter what way I die, it will be suicide. I settled that a long time ago. On the planet where I was born there was nothing but sunny days and endless peace and a long, long life. I decided to leave, preferring a short, full one to a long and empty one. Now let’s have a bit more of that root to chew on, because I would like to forget my troubles.”

The drug was powerful, and the infection was deep. Jason drifted along sinking into the reddish fog of the bede, then coming back up out of it to find nothing changed. Ijale was still there, tending him, Mikah in the far corner brooding in his chains. He wondered what would happen to them when he died, and the thought troubled him.

It was during one of these black, conscious moods that he heard the sound, a growing rumble that suddenly cracked the air outside, then died away. He levered himself up onto his elbows, heedless of the pain, and shouted.

“Ijale, where are you? Come here at once!”

She ran in from the other room, and he was conscious of shouts outside, voices on the canal, in the courtyard. Had he really heard it? Or was it a feverish hallucination? Ijale was trying to force him down, but he shrugged her away and called to Mikah. “Did you hear anything just then? Did you hear it?”

“I was asleep—I think I heard.

“A roar—it woke me up. It sounded like. . . but it is impossible — .

“Impossible? Why impossible? It was a rocket engine, wasn’t it? Here on this primitive planet.”

“But there are no rockets here.”

‘There are now, you idiot. Why do you think I built my radiobroadcasting prayer wheel?” He frowned in sudden thought, trying to cudgel his fogged and fevered brain into action.

“Ijale,” he called, rooting under his pillow for the purse concealed there. “Take this money—all of it—and get down to the Temple of Elektro and give it to the priests. Don’t let anyone stop you, because this is the most important thing you have ever done. They have probably stopped grinding the wheel and have all gone outside for a look at the excitement. That rocket will never find the right spot without a guide beam—and if it lands any place else in Appsala there could be trouble.

Tell them to crank, and not to stop cranking, because a ship of the gods is on the way here and it needs all the prayers it can get.”

She ran out and Jason sank back, breathing rapidly. Was it a spaceship out there that had picked up his S.O.S.? Would it have a doctor or a medical machine that could cure him at this advanced stage of infection? It must have, every ship carried some medical provision. For the first time since he had been wounded he allowed himself to believe that there might be a chance he could survive, and a black weight lifted from him. He even managed a smile at Mikah.

“I have a feeling, Mikah old son, that we have eaten our last kreno. Do you think you can bear up under that burden?”

“I will be forced to turn you in,” Mikah said gravely. “Your crimes are too serious to conceal; I cannot do otherwise. I must tell the captain to notify the police. . .“

“How did a man with your kind of mind live this long?” Jason asked coldly. “What’s to stop me from having you killed and buried right now so that you could make no charges?”

“I do not think you would do that. You are not without a certain kind of honor.”

“Certain kind of honor’! A word of praise from you! Can it be possible that there is the tiniest of chinks in the rock-ribbed fastness of your mind?”

Before Mikah could answer the roar of the rocket returned, coming lower and not dying away as before, but growing louder instead, becoming deafening, and a shadow moved across the sun.

“Chemical rockets!” Jason shouted over the noise. “A pinnace or landing boat from a spacer . . . it must be zeroing in on my spark radio— there’s no possibility of coincidence here.” At that moment Ijale ran into the room and hurled herself down by Jason’s bed.

‘The priests have fled,” she wailed; “everyone is in hiding. A great fire-breathing beast has come down to destroy us all!” Her voice was suddenly a shout as the roar in the courtyard outside stopped.

“It’s down safely,” Jason breathed, then pointed to his drawing materials on the table. “The paper and a pencil, Ijale. Let me have them. I’m going to write a note that I want you to take down to the ship that landed.” She recoiled, shivering.

“You mustn’t be afraid, Ijale, it’s just a ship like the ones that you have been in, only one made to sail in the air rather than on the water. It will have people in it who won’t harm you. Go out and show them this note, then bring them here.”

“I am afraid. . .“

“Don’t be; no harm will come of this. The people in the ship will help me, and I think they can make me well again.”

“Then I go,” she said simply, rising and forcing herself, still shaking, out of the door.

Jason watched her leave. ‘There are times, Mikah,” he said, “when I’m not looking at you, that I can be proud of the human race.”

The minutes stretched out and Jason found himself pulling at the blankets, twisting them with his fingers, wondering what was happening outside in the courtyard. He started as there was a sudden clanging on metal, followed immediately by a rapid series of explosions. Were the fools attacking the ship? He writhed and cursed at his own weakness when he tried to get up. All he could do was lie there and wait— while his existence lay in others’ hands.

More explosions sounded—inside the building this time—as well as shouts and a loud scream. Running footsteps came down the hail and Ijale hurried in and Meta, gun still smoking in her hand, entered behind her.

“It’s a long way from Pyrrus,” Jason said, resting his eyes on the troubled beauty of her face, on the familiar woman’s body in the harsh metalcloth suit. “But I can’t think of anyone I would rather see come through that door. . . .“

“You’re hurt!” She ran swiftly to him, kneeling on the far side of the bed so that she still faced the open door. When she took up his hand her eyes widened at the dry heat of his skin. She said nothing, but unclipped the medikit from her belt and pressed it against the skin of his forearm. The analyzing probe pushed down and it clicked busily, injecting him with one hypodermic needle, then with three more in rapid succession. It buzzed a bit more, then gave him a swift vaccination and switched on the “treatment completed” light.

Meta’s face was close above his; she bent a little nearer and kissed him on his cracked lips and a curl of golden hair fell forward onto his cheek. She was a woman, but a Pyrran woman, and she kissed him with her eyes open, and without even pulling away fired a shot that blew out a corner of the door frame and drove back the soldiers in the hall.

“Don’t shoot them,” Jason said, when she had reluctantly drawn away. “They’re supposed to be friends.”

“Not my friends. As soon as I left the lifeboat they fired on me with some sort of primitive projectile weapon, but I took care of that. They even fired at the girl who brought your message, until I blew one of the walls down. Are you feeling better?”

“Neither good nor bad, just dizzy from the shots you gave me. But we had better get to the ship. I’ll see if I can walk.” He threw his legs over the edge of the bed and collapsed, face down on the floor. Meta dragged him back onto the bed and arranged the blankets over him again.

“You must stay here until you are better. You are too sick to move now.”

“I’ll be a lot sicker if I stay. As soon as the Hertug—he’s the one in charge here—realizes that I may be leaving, he will do anything to keep me here, no matter how many men he loses doing it. We are going to have to move before his evil little mind reaches that conclusion.”

Meta was looking around the room, and her glance slid over Ijale— who was crouched down staring at her—as if she were part of the furnishings, then stopped at Mikah. “Is that creature chained to the wall dangerous?” she asked.

“At times he can be; you have to keep a close eye on him. He’s the one who seized me on Pyrrus.”

Meta’s hand flew to a pouch at her waist and she slipped an extra gun into Jason’s hand. “Here is a gun—you will want to kill him yourself.”

“See, Mikah,” Jason said, feeling the familiar weight of the weapon in his palm. “Everyone wants me to kill you. What is there about you that makes everyone loathe you so?”

“I am not afraid to die,” Mikah said, raising his head and squaring his shoulders, but not looking very impressive with his scraggly grey beard and the chains he wore.

“Well, you should be.” Jason lowered the gun. “It’s surprising that someone with your passion for doing the wrong thing has lasted this long.”

He turned to Meta. “I’ve had enough of killing for a while,” he told her; “this planet is steeped in it. And we’ll need him to help carry me downstairs, I don’t think I can make it on my own, and he’s probably the best stretcher bearer we can find.”

Meta turned towards Mikah and her gun shot from its power holster into her hand and fired. He recoiled, raising his arm before his eyes, then seemed shocked to find himself still alive. Meta had freed him by shooting his chains away. She slid over to him with the effortless grace of a stalking tiger and pushed the still smoking muzzle of her gun deep into his midsection.

“Jason doesn’t want me to kill you,” she purred, and twisted the gun a bit deeper, “but I don’t always do what he tells me. If you want to live a while you will do what I say. You will take the top off that table to make a stretcher. You will help carry Jason on it down to the rocket. Cause any kind 0f trouble, and you will be dead. Do you understand?”

Mikah opened his mouth for a protest, or perhaps for one of his speeches, but something in the icy bitterness of the girl stayed him. He merely nodded and turned to the table.

Ijale was crouched next to Jason’s bed now, holding tight to his hand. She had not understood a word of any of the off-world languages they had spoken.

‘What is happening, Jason?” she pleaded. “What was the shiny thing that bit your arm? This new one kissed you, so she must be your woman, but you are strong and can have two women. Do not leave me.”

“Who is the girl?” Meta asked coldly. Her power holster buzzed and the muzzle of her gun slipped in and out.

“One of the locals, a slave who helped me,” Jason said with an offhandedness he did not feel. “If we leave her here they will probably kill her. She’ll come with us. . . .“

“I don’t think that is wise.” Meta’s eyes were slitted, and her gun

seemed about to leap into her hand. A Pyrran woman in love was still

a woman—and still a Pyrran, a terribly dangerous combination. Luckily

a stir at the door distracted her and she blasted two shots in that direction before Jason could stop her.

“Hold it—that’s the Hertug. I recognized his heels as he dived for safety.”

A frightened voice quavered from the hail. “We did not know this one was your friend, Jason. Some soldiers, too enthusiastic, shot too soon. I have had them punished. We are friends, Jason. Tell the one from the ship not to make more of the blowings-up, so that I can enter and talk to you.”

“I do not understand his words,” Meta said, “but I don’t like the sound of his voice.”

“Your instincts are perfectly right, darling,” Jason told her. “He couldn’t be more two-faced if he had eyes, nose, and mouth on the back of his head.”

Jason chuckled, and realized he was getting light-headed with all the battling drugs and toxins in his system. Clear thinking was an effort, but it was an effort that had to be made. They still weren’t out of trouble and, as good a fighter as Meta was, she couldn’t be expected to beat an entire army. And that’s what would be called out to stop them if he didn’t watch his step.

“Come on in, Hertug,” he called out. “No one will hurt you—these mistakes happen.” And then to Meta: “Don’t shoot—but don’t relax either. I’ll try to talk him out of causing trouble, but I can’t guarantee it, so stand ready for anything.”

The Hertug took a quick look in the door and bobbed out of sight again. He finally rallied the remains of his nerve and shuffled in hesitantly.

“That’s a nice little weapon your friend has, Jason. Tell him”—he blinked nearsighted eyes at Meta’s uniform—”I mean her, that we’ll trade some slaves for one. Five slaves, that’s a good bargain.”

“Say seven.”

“Agreed. Hand it over.”

“Not this one; it has been in her family for years and she couldn’t bear to part with it. But there is another one in the ship she arrived in

—we’ll go down and get it.”

Mikah had finished dismembering the table and he laid the top of it next to Jason’s bed; then he and Meta slid Jason carefully onto it. The Hertug wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and his blinking red eyes took everything in.

“In the ship there are things that will make you well,” he said, showing more intelligence than Jason had given him credit for. “You will not die, and you will leave in the sky ship?”

Jason groaned and writhed on the stretcher, clutching at his side in agony. “I’m dying, Hertug! They take my ashes to the ship, a spacegoing funeral barge, to scatter them among the stars—”

The Hertug dived for the doorway, but Meta was on him in the same instant, swinging his arm up behind his back until he screamed, and digging her gun into his kidneys.

“What are your plans, Jason?” she asked calmly.

“Let Mikah carry the front of the stretcher, and the Hertug and Ijale can hold up the back Keep the old boy under your gun, and with a little luck we’ll get out of here with whole skins.”

They went out that way, slowly and carefully. The leaderless Perssonoj could not make up their minds what to do; the pained shouts from the Hertug only rattled them, as did Jason’s shots, which blasted chunks of masonry and blew out windows. He enjoyed the trip down the stairs and across the courtyard, and cheered himself by putting a shot near any head that appeared. They reached the rocket without difficulty.

“Now comes the hard part,” Jason said, wrapping an arm about Ijale’s shoulders and throwing most of his weight on the other arm, clutched tight on Mikah’s neck He couldn’t walk, but they could hold him up and drag him aboard. “Stay in the door, Meta, with a firm grip

on the old buzzard. Expect anything to happen, because there is no such thing as loyalty here, and if they have to kill the Hertug to get you they won’t hesitate for an instant.”

“That is logical,” Meta agreed. “After all, it is war.”

“Yes, I suppose a Pyrran would look at it that way. Stand ready. I’ll warm the engines, and when we’re ready to take off I’ll blow the siren. Drop the Hertug, close the lock, and get to the controls as fast as you can—I don’t think I could manage a takeoff. Understand?”

“Perfectly. Go—you are wasting time.”

Jason slumped in the co-pilot’s seat and ran through the starting cycle as fast as he could. He was just reaching for the siren button when there was a jarring thump and the whole ship shook, and—for one heartstopping second—it rocked and almost fell over. It slowly righted itself and he hit the alarm. Before it stopped echoing, Meta was in the pilot’s seat and the little rocket blasted skywards.

“They are more advanced than I thought they would be on this primitive world,” she said, as soon as the first thrust of acceleration eased. “There was a great, ugly machine in one of the buildings that suddenly smoked and threw a rock that took most of our port fin away. I blew it up, but the one you call the Hertug escaped.”

“In some ways they are very advanced,” Jason said, feeling too weak to admit that they had been almost finished off by his own invention.