Complete Short Fiction, page 138
She saw that the brown eyes of the woman, that had been like violent pools a minute before, were changing—the change that was absolutely vital. Sardonically, nod, those eyes stared at her; the mocking voice of Ineznia the Zard came:
“Poor L’onee! As ever you are incapable of rising above your humanness. There is locked in your words, my sweet, and not very securely locked, an hysteria verging on the sentimental. Know, my dear, that a goddess must be like the wind, which transports the evil odors as impartially as it bears the fragrance of a field of flowers. I assure you I am not being willfully cruel. It is simply that alien peoples do not merge naturally, and I now decree that the days of separate nationalities are over. So it shall be.”
L’onee said drably: “This is what Ptath feared in the old days; it was what he saw growing within himself: a remorseless impatience with human weakness, a ruthless disregard of the race from which we, all three of us, were originally sprung.
“It was to prevent that beast god from appearing that he merged himself with the race. He—”
She stopped as she saw that the woman was not listening. The woman Zard, whose body Ineznia occupied, had turned, was staring out into the mass of humanity that milled sluggishly in the vast inclosure beyond the stone “hospital” fence. Ineznia said slowly: “So he’s out there, is he? Well, he can’t escape. No one ever has. I’ll have Ineznio’s portrait shown to all the guards at the chute, and when his turn comes I’ll be notified. I want personally to see him die. Meanwhile—”
She faced L’onee, a twisted smile on her lips: “You will be glad to know that this morning I gave the order for the attack on Gonwonlane. Nothing that anybody can do can stop the forces I have now set in motion, so ponderous are they. Even I couldn’t stop them.” Her smile grew savage. “We shall now see what happens when one general in two bodies plans the strategical position of both armies. Well, good-by, L’onee, darling. I’m saving your body for you. I want to destroy you and it together.”
She whirled away, climbed the bright steps to the back of the grimb. In ten minutes, masons were at work filling the gap in the wall.
L’onee couldn’t decide; not right away. She stood near one of the gates, fighting the impulse to rush into that human anthill.
The very idea was ridiculous. Even Ineznia with all her hard will to find Ptath had taken a single look out over that sea of heads and realized the utter impossibility of locating one man.
She mustn’t do anything foolish. She must go to Nushirvan, do what she had originally planned herself—and wait for Ptath.
Immensely important as was Ineznia’s announcement of the frightful war she had ordered, Ptath couldn’t be told until he came to the rendezvous.
Just what he would do when he did learn the truth, she couldn’t picture, couldn’t imagine. The attack seemed final, decisive, all-conquering, capable of utterly nullifying even a Ptath with prayer power behind him, which he didn’t have.
A wave of hopelessness surged through her, a numbing sense of events too big for anybody. The attack was ordered, the culminating crime of a goddess’ base scheming. By tonight the trained killer screers of the woman Zard would be flying across the narrow, old sea of Teths, and—
With a shudder, L’onee forced the dreadful image out of her brain, felt a brief pity for Niyi, whom she must leave behind, and then launched herself toward Nushirvan.
XIX.
In spite of intervening cots, Holroyd covered the distance from his own cot to the nearest gate in approximately five seconds. Reaching the gate, he pushed with relentless strength into the human mass that surged there at the edge of the “hospital” area.
One last brief glance he flung rearward. And saw that L’onee was still struggling with the man who had tried to put his brother in Holroyd’s cot.
No one else, particularly no woman, was moving. If Ineznia was there in some sick woman’s drab body, she was not revealing herself by the slightest untoward action.
It looked as if he was safe.
He pressed on with a grim will to make sure of it, and came after a little to more open ground. Instead of one human being to every square foot, there was one to every two feet.
The difference was perceptible, but that was all. It was still like moving in quicksand, or in a heavy sea; no strength seemed adequate in itself.
Nevertheless, the difference was there. It buoyed him up during the two fantastic hours that followed. Slowly, however, the shocked realization crept home that his plan, to find some place where he could safely leave his body, had no meaning in this restless ocean of human driftwood.
Noon came and passed. An hour later he was still struggling within a stone’s throw of the same long-stretching main wall that formed, farther back, one flank of the “hospital”—pushing, fighting, at times surging helplessly with the crowd.
The stark thought came finally: Surely, there were entrances or exits to this incredible concentration camp, gateways that would be guarded, naturally, but that didn’t matter. The thing was, where were they?
He came to a man who looked more intelligent than frightened. Holroyd shouted: “How are we taken out of here? And where?”
The man stared at him blankly. Ten other. men in succession gave him the same mindless look. It was like beating his head against the massive wall that loomed enormous to his right.
Briefly, Holroyd ceased his pressure against the drift of the crowd. He let himself sway along like a leaf in a slow current, an eddying movement assessing his position.
He had to find a place where he could be sure that his body would not be trampled. Physically, he was caught in this immense human trap, at least until he could find some guarded gate to the outside. His essence he could project, but bodily transport after the manner of Ineznia was not in his power.
Caught . . . caught in this monstrous mass of mindlessly moving human beings.
There must be some way; there must be. He was starting forward again, determinedly when he heard the bellowing voice.
It required a moment to locate the source of the voice. But abruptly he saw that a man was standing on top of the main wall fifty yards away, a man with a megaphone, through which he was bellowing.
Before that sound the babble of the nearby crowd faded a little. Farther away, there was no diminishment—but after a moment Holroyd was able to make out what the man was saying:
“—Carpenters and men with ideas for killing screers should go to the carpenters pit—over there beside the chute.”
The man pointed toward the far wall, then repeated his call. Beside Holroyd, a man said:
“It’s a trick to get us nearer the chute. I’m staying right here.”
The trick, Holroyd thought grimly as he pressed through the reluctantly yielding throng in the direction the man had indicated, the trick was much, much smarter than that. Victims thinking up methods to kill, or defend themselves from screers, so that the Accadistran general staff could devise training methods for the great birds under the most trying conditions.
The carpenter’s pit should be an ideal place from which, tonight, to launch his essence to Nushirvan. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt to learn a few things about killer screers in action.
It took less time than he expected to reach the far wall. The pack was not so tight during the last quarter kanb. A sprinkling of brave men and women loitered casually in the area around the chute, but the end result of their bravery was that they went first.
Swarms of tall, dark, handsome men rounded them up into groups of a hundred and herded each group toward a hole in the towering wall.
Always, it was the dark men who came back through that chute, never a blond.
If the victims screamed in their agony out there, the sound was not audible above the uproar here of the victims-to-be.
Holroyd could see finally what seemed to be the carpenter’s pit: an inclosure with high walls built against the main wall, and extending through or under the main wall, out to the far side.
Twice, as he headed for it, dark spearmen tried to include him in a hundred group. Shamelessly, and at a reckless speed, he sprinted aside, threading through the thinning crowd.
There was a mob in front of the pit gate, from beyond which came the sound of wood and stone hammers. Individual resentments flared as Holroyd pressed toward’ the gate. Sharp cries came:
“Get back in line!”
“Wait your turn!”
“I’ll punch you one!”
Punches came and violent countershoves, but his strength was like a machine-driven steel bar. In five minutes he was at the gate.
A dozen powerful men stood there, half of them armed with stone-tipped lances, half with bows that had arrows ready-thrust against the dark gut strings.
The men wore headbands with feathers in them; and the one with the most feathers—four, Holroyd counted meticulously—must be the chief officer.
In a flash of power tension he projected his essence at the commander. Possession of the brain was an instantaneous accomplishment.
There was a sense of a ferocious personality resisting—then:
“That man next!” he cried in a deep voice and pointed at his own body, which stood, tail, lean, tan-faced, skillfully propped among several other pressing bodies.
He waited’ till two spearmen caught the Ptath body; then—back inside it and into the carpenter’s pit.
The carpenter’s pit was about two hundred yards square. And, just as he had observed, it extended under the massive main wall, projecting about a hundred yards out into whatever was beyond.
Holroyd paused in a blaze of curiosity to let his mind absorb the overall picture. There were benches, rows of them, with one or two men working at each bench.
They seemed to have endless supplies of wood and stone, which was natural enough, if the Accadistran military organization was co-operating. Their tools were great pots of glue and wooden light-saws.
Holroyd watched, fascinated, as a man at the nearest bench touched one of the light-saws to a stone. The instrument had no effect at all on the wielder’s fingers, but it sheared through the stone like a hot knife cutting butter.
He had first seen the remarkable things in the service depots of the Gonwonlane army. But then he hadn’t dared show any special interest.
Now, he didn’t have time.
As he turned to move on, a thickset man hurried toward him. “You’re new, eh?” the man said briskly. “This way, please. We’ll show you what we’re fighting, then put you to work. Here’s your number, 347.”
The number was on an armband, which the man tied swiftly around Holroyd’s left arm above the elbow. He went on earnestly:
“Don’t lose that; don’t let anyone tear it off. Any person who won’t work, or who is found without a number at the moment when we’re called upon to provide a victim, goes first. Otherwise, it goes by number.”
He finished: “There’s two hundred of us in here. And, except for the boss up there, we make a complete turnover every two months. The difference between us and those others out there is that we get food three times a day;
they only get it in the morning, and they never last longer than a month. We do go, mind you; No. 147 was with the last batch. Any questions?”
Holroyd found himself liking the man. He saw with a startled glance that the fellow’s number was 153. Which meant that this was probably his last full day alive.
Yet he looked cool, eager, intense.
“Good man,” Holroyd said. “I like to see bravery in the face of hell. What’s your name?”
“Cred, sir,” the man said. He broke off roughly. “What in Nushirvan am I doing, calling you sir! Come along.”
Smiling thinly, Holroyd followed. Clearer and clearer it was becoming that he had made no mistake in pretending to unconsciousness from the first moment that the power of the god chair dissolved into his body.
He had been awake throughout the long process, intensely awake, like a beast with senses sharpened to an agonizing pitch.
Only there wasn’t, and hadn’t been, any agony.
And there was no beast. Just Peter Holroyd, captain, U.S. tank corps, acquiring the peculiar and curious ability to project his essence anywhere.
It was a tremendous power; his earlier analysis of the Nushir’s vulnerability to it had already convinced him of that. But by itself his own power of projection was inadequate to cope with Ineznia’s control of governments and with her ability to send her entire body through space.
And besides, in that first, flashing, tremendous instant he had recognized that his previous logic was also correct about the chair being only a reservoir of stored power which, once used up, could only be replaced from the very fount of god force, in his case the praying of devout women.
Instant realization that he must practice duplicity—The conversation between Ineznia and L’onee once in itself justified the entire deception. Never would the sealed lips of L’onee have been able to tell him so much.
Not till then did the vague, grim plan form: So she was going to attack, was she? If he could stop that attack short of success, then Ineznia was doomed.
Wizard she might be, but one thing about people she had forgotten. Or despised. Or perhaps never known: Human nature!
Human nature would defeat the goddess of earth IF—
“Here we are,” said Cred.
Holroyd saw that a tall, gray-faced, gray-eyed, gray-haired man stood at the parapet. The man turned as Cred finished:
“Commander, this is a new one. I’m showing him.”
“Good!” said the old man listlessly. “Let him see!”
At first, Holroyd saw only screers flying back and forth over a great arena. There was an immense grandstand in the near foreground, crowded with men watching the spectacle. But that was but an environment, which he scarcely noticed.
Swarms of screers, masses of screers. After a moment, Holroyd saw something else: only one out of every ten of the great bird beasts had a rider on its back; yet they flew in unison, like planes in formation.
Suddenly, as if they had received a signal, a group of ten broke off and dived toward the ground.
For the first time Holroyd saw that there were victims on the ground below the birds. A hundred men and women, mostly men, but the women were there.
Cold, his mind like a metal shaft, his eyes forced to pitiless observation, Holroyd watched the drama unfold.
The victims defended themselves. They had curious mushroom-shaped shields that they ducked under, and from which they poked at their voracious enemies with long lances.
The birds evaded the lances with a trained skill and plucked the defenders from under their hopeless shelters, like robins pulling worms out of the ground.
It was over in about four minutes. Instantly, hundreds of baby screers swarmed from series in a massive stone building far to the right and fell to feeding.
“They start them young on meat, don’t they?” Holroyd said in a voice that was rock steady.
The commander seemed not to have heard, but Cred looked at Holroyd, startled. Before the man could speak, Holroyd snapped savagely:
“Never mind! What I want to know is, who the devil devised those pitiful mushroom shields?”
Once more the astounded Cred parted his lips as if to say something; but this time it was the gray-haired man who cut him off, who said wearily:
“And may I ask what—”
He stopped. He had turned and now he seemed to see Holroyd for the first time.
His eyes widened. Then he shook his head in a gesture of terrible disbelief; then—
“Prince Ineznio!” he breathed. “Prince—Ineznio!”
He fell to his knees. Tears streaked down his leathery cheeks. He caught Holroyd’s hand and pressed rough lips to it.
“I knew it,” he whispered. “I knew the goddess would sooner or later send someone. I knew that this blasphemy could not go on forever. Oh, thank the goddess, thank the goddess!”
Holroyd forced himself to stand very still. It was hard because there was a rage gathering in him, a rage so awful that his body threatened to shatter.
Until this instant he had held himself almost as cold as the icy-volcanic mountains of Nushirvan, so cold outside, yet so blazing hot inside, that his whole being had trembled in a terrible, precarious balance of forces.
Now, that balance was breaking.
Thank the goddess! What a monstrous obscenity. Thank the goddess! Vile, lecherous, lascivious witch! Wretched, debauched, wanton, bloody, devil woman!
The mad fury faded, yielded to a great tenderness that had in it a bleak knowledge that this commander’s recognition of—Ineznio—and his faith in the goddess, would be helpful to his own plan.
Holroyd said gently: “Arise, marshal, and keep that faith alive during the still-hard days ahead. The goddess has indeed sent me”—he spoke the lie without a qualm—“and has granted me great powers to deal with the hideous evil that is here.”
He went on more urgently: “But surely, marshal, you have evolved better defenses against those man killers than the wooden umbrellas.”
The marshal was straightening. It was absolutely amazing how his face had changed. There were still tears, but he wiped them away with an angry gesture of his hand, and said in a ringing voice:
“I have, indeed, sir. I have, indeed. I’ve been here since the beginning of the kidnaping of Gonwonlanian citizens, seven years ago, and I have yet to let those out there”—he made a contemptuous gesture toward the grandstand across the arena—“see a single one of my good ideas in action.
“Look!” He raced down the steps into the pit, came up with a light-saw. “Here’s a simple, one-man defense I’ve developed.”
He sketched rapidly in the solid stone, casually cutting grooves with the point of the light-saw.
“It’s a long, light, strong pole of the common gand wood, forked at one end like a V. The defender jabs the V over the screer’s neck as it runs toward him, then instantly shoves the point of the stick into the ground.
