Collected Short Fiction, page 551
Afraid to look at her, but more afraid to turn his head, he lay watching her go by. Whatever her business here, her sex was a fortress around her. The men of the matriarchy were expected to shed one another’s blood as freely as they could, so long as honor was observed, and he thought the customs here must be more or less the same. But women were taboo.
He couldn’t touch her. Even if the mysterious device in that black case had been another life belt, he couldn’t have swung his useless bag of clay to take it. That inhibition was his mother’s stern voice speaking in him, imperative and final.
The girl passed him, not three steps away. He thought for a moment that she would surely see him, but she held her head as high as any matriarch’s, her dark hair brushed with red by the sunlight, her lean face scrubbed pinkly clean. Her clear brown eyes looked over him to the red fingers of erosion reaching out from the gully, and her face turned sadly wistful.
“Wasted land,” she breathed softly to herself. “Lost like my own country and my people. Perhaps freedom also . . . what is the English word? Erodes, I think. For want of care, like the soil. Of course the doctor’s trying now to save this old farm. Perhaps that’s the difference. The land can be reclaimed.”
He strained to hear, but the murmured words meant nothing to him. The psionic translator in his belt would have brought him the sense of every syllable, and enabled even these psionic illiterates to understand him, but that device was just another atom now somewhere out in the interstellar drift.
Relaxing a little, as she went on by, he let his eyes follow. She looked surprisingly healthy and clean for a savage, and the sadness he sensed about her almost made him forget his own danger. Something made him feel that she was another troubled exile, as far from home as he was. Another outsider, perhaps, here on an undercover mission from the station?
Unhappily, he put out that brief spark of hope. He couldn’t hope to meet a civilized agent by accident. Certainly she wore no translator, or her words would have reached his mind in his own language. She was a native, a woman, and armed; three times an enemy.
She went on out of view, but he could follow the tap of her feet on the bridge, going on beyond him. He was breathing again, when her footfalls paused. He tried not to move, but he couldn’t keep his fearful eyes from her. He saw that she had stopped halfway across. She leaned over the wooden rail to study the footprints he had left in the gully, and turned back to look at the timber he had dragged into the path. Her frowning eyes lifted. She saw him.
He lay petrified, so still that he heard the startled intake of her breath. Whether she called the men from the tower, or decided to dispatch him now for her own amusement, there was nothing he could do. She was a woman, and he had no right or strength against her.
“How did you get here?” she gasped.
Though the words meant nothing, he heard the breathless shock in her voice. She stepped instantly backward, lifting that black-cased device defensively. He shrank from the bright threat of its lens, but nothing happened to him. She let it fall when she saw his blood-caked face and the sling around his arm, and called anxiously:
“Are you badly hurt?”
Her sympathetic tone astonished him, for the women he knew were usually amused by the duels and the wounds of men. He hoped for a moment that she might get help for him, but then he thought of the futile threat of his own clumsy weapon. He dropped the weighted sleeve and sat up hastily to hide it with his body.
“Who are you?” She bent over him. “Can’t you speak?”
He caught her interrogative inflections and saw her waiting anxiously for some reply, but he kept his mouth shut. Evidently she had taken him to be one of her own tribesmen in trouble, but any word he uttered might give his life away. He sat watching her apprehensively.
“You’re afraid,” she whispered suddenly. “I see you are. Because you don’t belong here—or why look at me that way? Are you another refugee? Did you parachute, perhaps? Great Plains County is a long way from the Iron Curtain, but not too far I think for bombers.”
She paused to peer at him, nodding slowly.
“If that’s the way you got here, I know how things must he with you—though I came out on foot, hiding in the woods and gnawing frozen turnips, until people who remembered freedom helped me cross the border. And I want to help you—if you really are a friend of freedom. Don’t you trust me? Or is it just that you don’t understand English?”
He made no effort to answer, and soon she spoke again in a tone of troubled urgency. From the sudden changes in the accent and rhythm of her words, he guessed that she must be trying different local dialects, all equally unknown to him, but he sat blinking at her blankly, not even shaking his head. Later, of course, if he contrived to keep alive, he would have to learn some native tongue, but now he was afraid to let her know he didn’t belong here.
“Can’t you walk?” She beckoned abruptly for him to stand up. “Come with me, if you can. You must be cold and hungry, even if you aren’t too badly hurt. I can find food for you, and call Dr. Stuben to do what he can. There were strangers beyond the frontier who did as much for me.”
She held out her hands to him—clean as his mother’s, though the nails were cut short as a man’s, not grown into twisted ornamental claws. Protestingly, he showed her the mud on his good hand. With a quick little shrug, and a smile that said the grime didn’t matter, she caught his hand and tugged him to his feet.
That uncovered his bag of clay. He tried to kick it back into the weeds, but in spite of him she saw it. And she must have understood the purpose of it, from the shaken way in which she dropped his hand and stepped back to study him.
“So you were that desperate?” She shook her head, her lean face darkly troubled. “Perhaps I understand. All one night I lay hiding from the frontier patrols, with a dagger made from an old file hidden in my clothing. I meant to kill the man who found me. But don’t you know this is America?”
He shifted his weight uncomfortably on his sore feet, listening mutely. He was not convinced, from her quiet self-assurance in the shadow of that grim tower and from the curious little side arm she carried so carelessly, that she herself must be an official of the camp. He had expected her to kill him, when his own worthless weapon betrayed his abject desperation, and now he couldn’t understand why she didn’t. Adjusting his arm in the sling, he set his face to hide the pain, waiting blankly.
“You’ve no cause for such alarm,” she said softly. “You can’t be in that much danger. Are the police after you? I don’t think so. You don’t look criminal. Anyhow, I won’t hurt you. I’ve seen too many informers, and I know what freedom is worth.”
Confused by the senseless words and her inexplicable behavior, he stood wishing hopelessly that the count had got here with him. He had come to depend on the count, who killed his men at home and won his women, too—the matriarch herself had sniffled when they left her to board the Royal Mother. The count would have known what to do with this enigmatic savage.
“Can’t you understand at all?” Her urgent voice was now clear and slow, as if she spoke to a troubled child. “I want you to come with me—and try not to be afraid. Even if your head is injured . . . I’m afraid it is . . . so that you can’t talk or can’t remember, my sister’s husband can surely help you. A kind man and a clever young doctor. Whatever’s wrong, I think he’ll understand. Won’t you come?”
The count would have known how to deal with this dangerous girl, but the prince felt helpless. He knew no world except the matriarchy, and far too little of that. Even on the interstellar cruise, he had never been able to escape the dull round of formal state affairs arranged for him on every planet or call, for all his envy of the way the count always contrived to disappear long enough to extend his own informal observations of the local rules of love and honor.
“Won’t you come?” the girl repeated anxiously. “Or can’t you walk?”
The old nobleman might have guessed what she wanted, but the prince could only stare and shake his head. Facing her and all her unknown tribe, he had no guide except his own confined experience. Whatever the ways of her world, he had been conditioned by his own.
He saw his peril clearly, but he could not escape it. He knew her people must live by other laws. and customs: no woman at home would ever debase herself by touching or even speaking to an unarmed and classless man. The count might have guided him around the deadly traps that must lie hidden in that cultural difference, but now he could only blunder on alone.
“If you simply won’t understand, I’m going to call the doctor.” She turned from him slowly. “He ought to know what to do.”
She started away from him, and swung abruptly back. He wondered with a stab of apprehension if she had decided to try that odd side arm again, but then he saw that she was only beckoning for him to follow. Although he still couldn’t guess what she wanted, he dared not disobey a woman. He limped hastily after her, toward the huts.
She adjusted her pace to fit his careful steps, with a confusingly masculine consideration. And when he blundered into a patch of sandburs and hopped painfully from one bare foot to the other, she didn’t laugh at him as a normal woman should, but bent instead to help him remove the thorned seeds with a quick solicitude that seemed almost indecent. He didn’t understand her, and he felt somewhat relieved when another native emerged from the larger hut ahead.
“Well, Eliska?”
An older woman, the other came out across the neat patch of clipped grass in front of the white-painted hut, and halted when she saw him. Her shocked eyes swept him, and he studied her hopefully. She looked akin to the girl, with the same wide forehead and wavy dark hair, though her chin and nose were bolder. A pale scar-line zigzagged down one thin cheek. The harsh lines around her mouth showed a really feminine severity, when she swung to rap at the girl:
“Where did you find that tramp?”
Even though he didn’t understand the words, her decisive air and her strident voice reassured him. He sensed something of his mother in her, and more of the matriarch. The girl’s masculine softness had baffled him, but this was the sort of woman, he knew.
“I walked down to that old wooden bridge with my camera,” the girl was answering. “I found him lying in the ditch by the road. But I don’t think he’s what you call a tramp.”
“Then what’s wrong with him? “
“He seems hurt. But I don’t really know, because he doesn’t speak.”
“Deaf, maybe?”
“I think he hears. Perhaps he’ll be able to talk, when he recovers a little. I want to bring him in and call Carl for him.”
“You want to bring that into my clean house?”
The girl flushed and bit her lip, as if choking back some angry outburst. The older woman stood planted with stringy hands on lean flanks, frowning at her sternly. The prince felt the clash between them, and saw that the older was the one in authority.
“If you don’t want him in the house,” the girl said at last, “I’ll put him out in the little room where the hired man used to stay. Do you object to that?”
“I didn’t mean to seem hard,” the woman answered more quietly. “Feed him in the kitchen, if you like. And find clothes for him—there’s an old suit of Carl’s, and a pair of shoes the hired man left under the cot, if he can wear them. But why keep him on the place?”
“He’s in trouble. Afraid, as well as hurt. He needs more than food and shoes. Maybe Carl can find out what’s wrong.”
“Why not just send him on to the hospital in Great Plains?”
“He can’t have money for the bill—not with him, anyhow. Besides, I don’t think he’d want to go. From the way he was hiding in the weeds, I think he must be some kind of refugee—”
“From jail!” the woman broke in harshly. “He looks like the sort to brain us all in our sleep, so that he can loot the house.”
“If he’s dangerous, Carl should know,” the girl said. “But I don’t think he is—except perhaps to those hunting him. He does seem desperate—but then I was desperate once, before people I had never seen took me in and risked their lives to help me cross the border.”
“He doesn’t look harmless to me.” The woman swung to study his slung arm and lacerated face with a visible suspicion. “And what could make him so desperate, if he wasn’t hurt holding up somebody or breaking out of prison? “
“I think he parachuted out of a plane,” the girl said. “He doesn’t seem to speak English, or any other language I tried, but perhaps he’s just too dazed to talk. I think he is a Soviet flier, who didn’t want to bomb the free world.”
“A likely notion!” the woman muttered scornfully. “The trouble with you, Eliska, is that you’re trying to look at this homicidal maniac—a fool could see that’s what he is—in the light of your own unfortunate experience.”
“I have no other light.”
“The horde of crooks and bums and convicts that come hitchhiking along the highway yonder have given me another kind of experience,” the woman said. “Though I admit I never saw quite the like of him. He does look foreign, with that queer haircut and those odd pajamas. Won’t he talk at all?”
She stalked to the prince and prodded his chest where the ribs were cracked so hard that he almost flinched. His breath sobbed out, and he had to blink.
“You?” Her harsh voice lifted. “What’s your name?”
Yes, she was clearly the one in command. Her loud assertiveness had already convinced him that she was some high official of the camp, and now her grimly imperative air made him fairly sure that she was demanding his class weapon, though she must see that he was unarmed. He tried not to think what might come next, but he had seen classless men whipped to death for little more reason than the matriarch’s amusement. Even though she was comprehensible, he began to prefer the enigma of the girl.
“Well?” She jabbed at his ribs again, so vigorously that he gasped and swayed backward in spite of himself. “Can’t you speak?”
Holding a manful silence, he looked at the girl.
“Please, Greta!” She spoke quickly, as if in answer to his mute appeal. “You hurt him—don’t you see how white he went?”
“I don’t intend to be cruel,” the woman muttered grudgingly. “You may go ahead and put him in the garage room if you like—hut just for now. Let him wash up if he’s able, and take him something to eat. I’ll call Carl.”
“Thank you, Greta,” the girl whispered. “He needs our help. You can see how desperate he is.”
“Too desperate to stay here,” the woman said. “Carl will tell you that.”
She stalked back toward the dwelling hut, with the air of an affronted matriarch. The girl beckoned again, and the prince followed her across the grass to another tiny building. He could see, from the concrete ramp and the wide doorway facing the road, that it must house the motorcart, but the girl took him to a little door at the side and motioned for him to enter.
Beyond the door, he saw a narrow little cell, that looked and smelled surprisingly clean. Furnished only with two wooden chairs and a metal bed covered with a faded but spotless blanket, it still looked inviting to him. The girl stood nodding for him to go inside, but he stopped to examine the lock, wondering if she meant to shut him up.
“You needn’t be afraid of me.” She smiled, and her quiet tone seemed disarming. “I’m sorry my sister’s so ungracious, hut she takes America for granted. Anyhow, you’ll get all the help you deserve—though I’d still like to know what you’re running away from.”
She entered ahead of him, as if to show that she meant him no harm, and he followed her doubtfully. While he stood waiting uneasily, she stepped inside a closet almost as wide as the room. Beyond her, he saw shelves cluttered with dusty oddments: the puzzling, clumsy paraphernalia of people without psionics or neutrionics; quaint artifacts that were probably worn out or broken and discarded now. Most of them he couldn’t identify, but leaning in one corner was a rusty iron tube—
He looked away from it with an apprehensive start, as the girl came out. Holding a towel and a frayed white garment, she nodded for him to follow into another room—a tiny bath, primitive but clean. She turned a valve to let water run, and he bent thirstily to drink.
“Wait.” She gave him water in a glass. After he had rinsed his mouth and drunk, she helped him wash himself and put on the clean bathrobe and a pair of woven slippers. When that was done, she opened the bed for him, but he still felt too apprehensive to lie down. He sat uncomfortably in a chair. She saw him flinch from an unexpected twinge of his arm and came quickly to help him move it in the sling. Her unwomanly tenderness embarrassed him, yet he couldn’t help feeling a baffled gratitude.
“Now,” she said, “aren’t you hungry?”
He started to follow again when he saw that she was leaving, but she shook her head and beckoned him back and showed him that she would leave the door ajar. When she was out of sight, he limped hastily into the closet to look at that iron tube.
Yes, it was obviously a discarded dueling piece. One made for long-range use. The tube was rifled, and mounted on a thick wooden stock. He bent anxiously beside it, to test the crude breech mechanism. The massive parts had been shaped with a surprising precision. Rusty and in need of oil, they still worked. He scrabbled hopefully among the stranger debris on the shelves above, and found a carton almost full of heavy little projectiles, sized to fit the chamber.
He was armed!
The mere possession of such a formidable piece might entitle him to leave the camp unquestioned, if a man’s weapon was the mark of his position here as at home. Even if he were challenged, a victory would give him the rights and weapons of the challenger—assuming that the customs of combat here were more or less like those he knew.
