Fiction Complete, page 67
Richter and Kean were talking near the ladder to the exit port. To Myru, their voices had a sing-song quality, soaring upward on questions like a female’s and dropping to deep, chesty tones at other times. He waited respectfully to be noticed.
“Hullo, there!” said Kean. “It’s our pal, Mumble-Mumble.”
“I am Myru e Chib,” said the Vunorian, humoring them in case they really had not recognized them.
He had, he reminded himself, difficulty in telling them apart, except for two or three. Richter, who dealt with substances, had bright yellow hair atop his head; one of the five who drove the ship had reddish. Lombardi, who dealt with plants and was the thickest of the Terrans, had none. To identify others except Kean, Myru had to look twice.
“All ready to find us something new?” asked Kean.
“Yes,” said Myru.
Kean was the one who had told him he was glad to hear that there was no life—but for a few great fish—on Vunor larger than the planet’s dominant race.
“Come in,” he said, turning to the ladder, “and I’ll show you what I want.”
He climbed nimbly upward. They had told Myru that they came from a world where everything was slightly heavier; but the Vunorian thought he could have climbed faster than the Terran—were he not lacking two hands that Loyu had ordered chopped off.
Three years now, he thought, following Kean up the metal rungs. Some day, I will pay him back! May he suffer no mishap till that day!
He wondered about Komyll, remembering the beautiful purplish tints in her scales and the way she had cried out when the Kevin’s soldiers had dragged her to the palace. Yet, he also had to remember seeing her ride through the streets beside Loyu; she had seen Myru lurking furtively behind the glumly cheering crowd, and turned to the ruler with an amused “Hoh!”
Has she forgotten? he asked himself. But no—she only hid her feelings lest he revenge himself further upon me.
Kean entered the ship, and Myru gave his attention to recalling the little of the Terran language he had been taught. He was glad he had been outside the city when the spaceship had landed. With little time to spare from their research, the visitors had bothered to teach their speech only to Myru, so far, and he planned to profit by it if he could.
“I’ll show you a group of the rodents you brought in,” said Kean, leading the way up another, interior, ladder. “I’d like more if you can catch them. Also some of the river-fish to compare with the ones from the ocean you bought from your fishermen.”
If he knew how I “bought” them! Myru reflected.
2
KEAN SLID open a door and they entered his laboratory. Myru looked at the remains of three of the small animals he had caught for the Terran. The pori, which was as high as Kean’s knobby leg-joint, had been put together again—although its inner organs were to be seen on a shelf, floating in bottles of liquid. Perhaps it had been stuffed, Myru decided. The other specimens were still dismembered.
“These are the ones,” said Kean. “Can you get more?”
“I think yes,” said Myru.
“They appear to belong to the same family. In fact, if you will forgive my saying so, their structure—to judge from externals—resembles yours; it is also to be seen in a less-developed stage in the fish.”
“Your words have great interest,” Myru told him, “but why do you seek such knowing?”
Kean showed amusement by what the Terrans called laughing. “What else is worth having but knowledge?”
“Tower,” answered Myru promptly, thinking of Loyu e Huj.
“Knowledge is power,” argued Kean. “Could all your workers or soldiers make a ship like this? They have strength, yes; but we made it because we had knowledge.”
“By yourselves?”
“No, of course not. By ‘we’ I mean our civilization. What this expedition learns about Vunor will be only a small item in the information available to others in our culture. Yet, it would be a long time before another expedition visited here to report whether the planet might be good for a colony, or a repair-station, or for minerals.”
“As you say,” agreed Myru.
“But one never knows when having the facts on hand might save a lot of trouble. That shows you why it’s a good policy for everyone to observe what he can and to collect knowledge. If it isn’t exactly power, at least it creates power.”
Myru made a sound of assent, and looked thoughtfully at the dissected specimens.
“How about birds?” asked Kean. “We have seen some flying above the hills.”
“They are beyond me,” said Myru staring unhappily at the deck. “Perhaps I can find a more agile fellow to hunt them.”
“No matter,” said Kean. “You can take me through the hills with a shotgun, and I’ll get some myself.”
“Shotgun?”
“One of our minor weapons—like a rifle. We carry them for hunting, just as we carry grenades, bombs, and rocket-torpedoes in case of real trouble. How about going into the hills now?”
Myru hesitated.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t you say there wasn’t anything big enough to hurt us?”
“Well,” Myru answered, “in the hills I thought not to go. I do not like it with only a club. There might be a kuugh.”
“A kuugh? What’s that? Dangerous?”
“Not very high,” Myru told him, “but thick and very . . . very—”
“Vicious?”
“I think yes. Maybe I can show you where to look, since you have weapons.”
Kean laughed in the Terran manner. “We’ll have a look now. I’ll bring a shotgun and a rifle in case we meet anything like your kuugh.”
He sent Myru to wait on the ground below. In a little while, he came down the ladder with two strange objects, which Myru took to be the weapons mentioned.
“Hey, Richter,” called Kean. “I’m going out with Mumble to get some Dims. Want to come?”
The yellow-haired Terran declined, but suggested that some of the others might go. Kean spoke into a little machine connected to the ship by wires, and was soon joined by two more Terrans. One was Lombardi, the thick one.
THE PARTY started off. As Myru led them into the hills, he saw that Lombardi was more interested in shrubs, trees, and blossoms than in helping to find birds. The third, called Harris, continually scampered off to chip at rocks.
“Why does he do that?” Myru asked Kean.
“To see what your planet is made of. It is really very much like our own, enough to make an extremely convenient colony.”
“Colony?”
“A place for some of us to live in this part of the Galaxy so our starships would have a supply base.”
“As you say,” agreed Myru, but he was thinking hard.
He recalled the troubles that had followed the bearing of his own civilization to some of the outlying islands. It was told about the market-place that few of the island-people still survived, though Myru himself had once journeyed to the seacoast to see the great ships that sailed back with goods from the conquered lands.
By the middle of the day, he had led them through the narrow range of hills. He now carried a number of birds Kean had shot down, and no longer leaped into the air at the report of the Terran’s weapon. He was, in fact, wondering how he could manage to borrow the other—the rifle. He paused on the crest of the last hill, above the rolling dunes of the desert that lay beyond.
“Over that way,” he said, pointing with one of his unmaimed arms, “lies the road to the mountain-cities. There is much sand in between.”
“What was it, Harris?” Kean asked his companion.
“Hard to say just offhand,” murmured the other Terran. “Not a sea-bottom. Maybe over-cultivated once.”
“Did your people ever live out there?” Kean asked Myru.
“Long ago, I think. If you look that way . . . where the hills curve out . . .can maybe see old, old building sticking out of sand.”
The Terrans squinted against the brightness of the desert.
“By golly, he’s right!” exclaimed Harris. “What say we take a walk over there?”
“Not . . . like,” Myru demurred. “It’s too late. Be dark before we come back through hills. It is further than shows.”
He thought Kean was not displeased; it had been a long walk. He let the Terrans make him promise to show them the ruins the next day, and they started back.
Before they parted at the ship, he offered to try hunting a kuugh if Kean would lend him the rifle. The Terran leaped at the chance, although Myru thought the others were inclined to disapprove.
“What harm could it do?” demanded Kean. “It’s only a superslingshot!”
“Some . . . things . . . are good at copying,” muttered Harris.
“Aw, suppose they do. What good will it do them against fission-torpedoes or automatic-cannon? Not to mention the biological weapons we carry in case of mass hostilities!” Myru listened with interest, but the others yielded to Kean’s vehemence. Accepting the rifle and brief instruction in its use, the Vunorian withdrew. On the road again, he struck out for the city at a steady trot, pausing only once—to disguise the rifle in a bundle of dead branches such as he might openly carry home for kindling.
DUSK FELL, shortly after he had reached his hovel, and Myru crept forth to seek out certain individuals among the riff-raff of the city; some, sniffing profit to themselves, were eager to obtain what he wanted. A few were annoyed at being diverted from their own little coups, planned to net them a money pouch or two.
None, however, bluntly refused Myra’s request; for it was widely told that, though under the Kevin’s displeasure, he still had the ears of former comrades among the soldiery. A prudent thief avoided unnecessary grudges.
Myru arranged that they should meet him in the hills at dawn with what they could steal. Then he went unobtrusively to the guard-post of his cousin, Rawm e Deej, and waited till that officer came out to make his last round of the night.
Myru attracted his attention and moved cautiously up the road.
“What now?” demanded Rawm, as Myru drew him into the deeper shadows of a spreading bush.
“I have had an idea,” said Myru, and proceeded to describe it to his cousin . . .
l
Early the next day, Myru surveyed the sand-choked entrance to the old ruin. He held the Terran rifle in one hand. With his other uninjured hand, he beckoned the nearest of the score of ill-clad, shifty fellows behind him. “The old gate is still there,” he said. “See if you can push it open.”
Three of them moved forward with an ill grace, but the curiosity Myru had been careful to leave unsatisfied kept them from grumbling too openly. They heaved and panted, and the dried wood of the gate squeaked in protest.
Another of the band, a hulking fellow who had lost one of his front eyes, slogged through the sand to help. Myru recalled him as Yorn—a notorious robber who went by no name, but who cut throats efficiently nevertheless.
With the added weight, the gate rasped open reluctantly on its ancient hinges. When the others hesitated, Myru led the way inside. There was little rubble in the interior, which was a single chamber with bricked-up windows, such as might once have been a warehouse.
“Good,” he approved. “Not much sand got inside. All right—everybody come in! There’s nothing here to hurt. Bring the spades and brooms . . . and let me see what you have in your pouches!”
“You expect us to sweep out the sand?” demanded Yorn. “What ails your wits, Myru e Chib? Where’s the profit?”
“There will be enough profit for all, and yet more,” Myru retorted. “It is true I did not tell you how it is to be won. I will give you a hint—you will be shoveling more than sand!”
He glanced around at them, forced as usual to turn his head to accomplish it. They had gathered in a little group and were watching him uneasily.
But jar enough inside the gateway, he thought, slipping two of his thin fingers inside the loop of metal guarding the firing lever of the Terran weapon.
“You are really digging at the foundations of the Keviu’s throne!” he told them.
He saw that the idea scared them, and felt the old anger growing inside him, “Why not?” he shouted, “Are you afraid for your lives? Look at you! Do you live so well it matters? Why not take a chance on becoming the masters instead of the outcasts?”
“That’s all very well, Myru e Chib,” said an ugly fellow with dull, greenish scales, “but how is this wonder to be done?”
“By you—and some others I know of—doing what I tell you,” snapped Myru. “Believe me, I have planned carefully.”
“Hoh!” said the green-scaled one.
He turned toward the doorway, through which the heat and light of the desert reached in like a fiery hand.
“Wait,” suggested Yorn, the robber. “He may know something of value. No harm counting what is in his money-pouch before we pass him by.”
The other paused, as did two or three who had drifted after him.
“First,” said Myru quickly, “I have you; and there are more such as we in the city who will follow the glint of silver past the spear points of the Keviu’s guards.”
“But such long spears they have,” murmured Yorn.
“Secondly,” Myru continued, “though I will speak no names, I know a few soldiers, who in turn know others; they are nearly as hungry as we.”
There was a shuffling of feet at the reminder of his contacts, and other signs of awakening interest. He even heard a few admiring grunts of “Hoh!” His former position and the cause of his dismissal were common knowledge.
“And thirdly, I have the friendship of the Terrans, who are very knowing people and have in their ship such weapons as you have never imagined.”
The green-scaled one hesitated at that. “Have they promised you help?” he demanded.
“Not yet,” admitted Myru, “but I will arrange—Wait!”
But the other had turned to the exit once more. Yorn sidled forward with a worried expression, two of his hands groping at the rope-girdle of his faded blue tunic for the notorious knives he carried there. “He will tell,” he murmured.
“I warn you, wait!” called Myru, but not very loudly.
Something in his tone impelled the deserter to look around. Myru pointed the Terran rifle at the silhouette against the bright sand, and pulled the firing-lever.
The report echoed between the clay brick walls, freezing the group of thieves in their tracks. It was followed by 3, meaty thud as the body dropped to the sand-veiled flagging and rolled a little way into the chamber. The finger of light from outside illuminated a purple-oozing hole above the eyes.
Better than I thought I could do, Myru congratulated himself. How convenient of him to help me show the scum what power I hold!
“Stop carressing my weapon with your eyes, Yorn!” he said calmly. “Mine it will remain, though I have other means of doing what I plan. Do I still sound crazed?”
“I would not say so,” answered Yorn. “I think perhaps we will sweep out the sand now. The next I will leave to you.”
3
MYRU STOOD quietly aside as the robber served out brooms and spades, and pushed the others into a line across the hail to attack the layer of sand. Then he beckoned Yorn to join him beside the pouches brought by the thieves. “Open them,” he ordered, “and let us see what they found during their night-calls!”
Yorn looked surprised at the variety of statuettes of small animals or fish that had formerly decorated homes in the city, but he removed their protective-wrappings wordlessly and dusted off ledges about the hall at Myru’s bidding. The latter followed him, setting the statuettes wherever they would fit.
By late afternoon, the interior was clear of sand; the walls, and a few stone tables put together after being dug out the sand, were populated by carvings of Vunor’s fauna, Myru’s henchmen slumped upon the cool stone floor to rest.
“I must go now, Yorn,” said their leader. “Finish smoothing the sand outside so it will not look new, and have someone bury that before the heat makes it smell any worse!”
“Where are you going?” asked Yorn. with the assurance of the secondary command he had assumed.
“I must visit the Terrans,” Myru told him. “If all goes well, we will return for a short visit—so I want you to have everyone out of here before dark. Wait for me tonight along the road to the city.”
He paused outside, squinting in the glare.
If anyone watches from the hills, I would never see Mm, he decided, and set off toward them at a brisk trot.
l
Shadows were lengthening as he approached the Terran ship. Most of the aliens were sitting on the ground outside, about an open fire which they seemed to enjoy.
As would I—if I lived in a palace, thought Myru.
He edged into the circle of light and waited until he was noticed.
“Well, well, what brings you out here in the evening?” asked Kean.
“I think,” said Myru, “that maybe you like to see the temple in the sands now.”
“Now?”
“It is a good time. No one will dare go there at night, being afraid of spirits.”
Kean laughed before he could control himself in the interests of courtesy. The other Terrans exchanged glances in their head-turning fashion, and Myru knew that they were amused.
“All right!” said Kean. “I’ll go see what it’s like. Who else?”
The stone-chipper named Harris, and two others, decided that the tour might relieve their boredom; they went with Kean to get weapons. When they had made ready, Myru led them back the way he had come.
IT WAS DARK by now, and Myru had some difficulty until he reached to open expanse of the desert. In the light of the stars, his vision was at least as good as that of the Terrans, to judge by the number of times they stumbled. For the sake of impressing them, Myru cautioned them often to make no noise.
Finally, the party reached the ruined building. Warning the Terrans again to be quiet, Myru borrowed one of the mechanical-torches he had forbidden them to light in the open, and slipped inside. One flash of the cold-light showed him that all had been left as he desired.
