Collected Short Fiction, page 553
“Your highness—please!”
The words paralyzed him. Because he understood them. Because he almost recognized the breathless voice that shouted them. His finger slackened on the trigger. He let the rifle drop across the chair and stumbled to his feet, staring at the door.
“All right, brother,” rasped the nearer savage. “Just stay where you are.”
The sound of that was a senseless echo. He had forgotten the two crouching guards and their guns. He scarcely saw the pale girl shrunk back against the wall, her face lax with shock. He stood dazedly watching the door, and the three others entering: The bewildered native doctor. The scarred woman, twisting nervously at a lock of her hair, her manner of womanly dominion shattered by the shot. The fourth man, who had looked unaccountably familiar, walking from the carts. A man he must have known—where?
The prince stared at him. A rough-hewn and weather-beaten savage, taller than the lean doctor even in spite of the forward stoop of readiness that marked him for a man of honor. He was unarmed now, however, though he carried a flat brown leather case; and he looked somehow uncomfortable, as if the thick fabric of his clumsy native coat and trousers got in his way. He paused in the doorway to listen for an instant with one hand cupped to his ear, glanced down to adjust his hearing aid, and then drawled softly:
“Don’t you know me?”
The deep hearty voice and the hardbitten grin at last disclosed the man inside that fantastic native garb. The noble aide he had last seen staggering away to his stateroom on the Royal Mother, just before the collision.
“I . . . I didn’t. Not without that monstrous mustache.” The prince groped weakly with his good hand for the back of the chair. “I was blown out of the wreck before I could reach you. I didn’t expect to see you again. Not here, anyhow.”
“I missed it all.” The old count shrugged regretfully. “Perhaps I had taken a drop too much of your good whisky. The first I knew about the disaster was when I woke up in a strange bed at Sol Station. It seems my belt had brought me there, without much help from me.”
“The yacht?”
“She went on into the sun,” the tall outsider said. “The men at the station picked up our distress signals too late to salvage her.”
“The crew?”
“All safe.” Anxiety lined the count’s hollowed visage. “All except yourself, sir. You were reported lost.” He laughed nervously. “It looks as if that report was nearly true.”
“That your old deer rifle, Doc?” the nearer guard was rasping. “Won’t you pick it up, before we have an accident?”
“You got here at a good time.” Grinning wanly at the old nobleman, the prince paused to watch the native doctor uneasily recovering the dueling piece he had dropped. “This trial of honor—against these savages who probably never heard of honor—had begun to look like my last. How did you find me?”
“That’s better.” The guard relaxed a little, wiping at his forehead, turning to the count. “Think you can calm him down?”
“A moment, your highness.”
Once more the count stopped to set his hearing aid, frowning as if it didn’t work to suit him, and then he swung to face the watchful natives.
“He’s my man.” His bluff old voice thinned and lifted, in the way of deafness. “My missing client. I can see that he has been quite a problem for you, but I understand him. I’m sure he’ll be all right now, and I’ll gladly take him off your hands. All I need is a little time to talk to him alone.”
The doctor and the guards retreated toward the door, nodding in a relieved way as if they understood. But how? The prince caught his breath, and stared at that apparent hearing aid—of course it was a psionic translator, disguised to meet the Covenants.
“You really know this man?” His startled glance went to the girl, who stood peering oddly at the count. She spoke the language of the matriarchy—but that was impossible. In an instant he realized that the sense of her words had come to his mind through that tiny instrument, so clearly that his ears could scarcely hear the strangeness of the sounds even when he tried.
“If you do, won’t you tell me who he is?”
“Surely, Miss Machar.” The old duelist smiled at her appreciatively, and replied with the enviable ease he must have learned on worlds where women were not supreme. “Dr. Stuben was telling me about your kindness to my client, and I’m deeply grateful. He’s Mr. King. Mr. Jim King.” He gestured at the door. “Now, if you don’t mind giving us a, few minutes alone—”
The other natives had gone, but the girl still hesitated, looking from the prince to the count again with an air of puzzled unease.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “But . . . if you don’t mind . . . who are you?”
“His attorney,” the count rumbled heartily. “And his friend. Here’s my card. John W. Pottle, of Pottle and Swickley.” He beamed ingratiatingly. “If you’re still concerned about Jim’s predicament, you needn’t be. He’s in good hands now.”
She shook her head slightly, as if unsure of that.
“He seemed so terribly afraid,” she said impulsively. “If you don’t mind—what is his predicament?”
“Nothing alarming.” The old man smiled at her anxiety. “He’s all right now.”
“Something dreadful must have happened to him.”
“A highway accident, apparently,” the count murmured easily. “But Dr. Stuben says he isn’t hurt too badly.”
“When was it?” She watched them both. “Where?”
“Sometime last night,” he said. “Somewhere near here. Jim and I were driving through on business, you see. The car went dead, at the bridge this way from town. It was already dark, and nobody would stop to help us. Jim finally started walking down the road, to find a phone and call a wrecker. He never came back. I’ve been looking for him ever since daylight, but I couldn’t find a trace anywhere until I called Dr. Stuben’s office, and he told me you had found him. He must have been struck by a hit-run driver.”
“If that was all, what made him so desperate?” Eliska Machar looked back at the prince, her eyes still dark with doubt. “Why was he hiding in that gully like some hunted animal?”
“Nothing strange about it.” The count’s rawboned features straightened soberly. “You see, Jim was a fighter pilot. In the last winter of the war, he had a pretty grim experience. His airplane was shot to pieces over Germany. Jim bailed out and got down alive with a splinter of flack in his leg. For three weeks of cruel winter weather, he lived in hiding among enemies whose language he didn’t understand. The wound got infected, and he was half out of his head when he got back across the American lines. A thing like that is hard to forget. Dr. Stuben agrees with me that his accident on the road last night must have brought it all back to him. He was hurt and hiding again. As you put it, like a hunted animal. And he thought he couldn’t speak the language.”
“I see.” Her dark eyes went back to the prince, concerned again. “Then his head injury is bad?”
“Only a slight concussion, Dr. Stuben says.” The old man smiled cheerfully. “You can see that he knows me, and I’m sure his speech difficulty will clear up as he recuperates. Mostly, I think he’s just shaken up and nervous.”
“Then I’ll go and let him rest.” She started toward the door, but turned abruptly back. “When you spoke to him and he answered—what language was that?”
“An Indian dialect,” the count said smoothly. “One we learned from the guides on our vacation trips, when he and my own son were boys together. Jim was calling for my son in that dialect, before he came back to himself in the army hospital. When I used it to speak to him just now, I was hoping that the link with his boyhood would help him.”
“I think it did.” The girl nodded gravely. “Please forgive the questions, but I had to be sure you really were his friend. I’ll go now.”
The old man let her out and closed the door.
“She had me going.” He grinned with relief. “But that ought to satisfy her, long enough at least to get us started home.”
“Everything seems so simple when you do it.” The prince smiled at him with a tired gratitude. “But I was done for. At first I had a crazy notion I could throw together some kind of psionic gadget that would reach the station, but this planet turned out to be too savage for me.”
“Never underrate the natives—that was the first lesson I learned in the service.” The count came briskly to inspect the bandages. “Looks like a competent emergency job.” He nodded approvingly. “Do you feel able to travel?”
The prince nodded eagerly, although his splinted arm was throbbing again from the heavy recoil of the rifle.
“Then we had better be on our way. There’s only one ship a year to this dismal little outpost, but luckily she’s here unloading now. If we get aboard, we ought to reach her next planet of call just in time to catch one of Her Majesty’s liners. I looked up the interstellar schedules before I left the station, and I believe we can still get back in time for your coronation.”
“Excellent.” The prince nodded brightly and settled back to ease his arm. Suddenly, he felt curiously reluctant to leave the hard comforts of the bare little hut. “I’m glad you got here,” he murmured. “But how did you ever find me?”
“The psionic detectors at the station traced the automatic signals from our belts,” the count said. “The rest of us were picked up quickly, but your belt was moving erratically and it stopped transmitting before the rescue craft could run it down. It seemed hardly possible that you had survived the collision, but when the commandant called off the search I got permission to make an undercover visit to this sector of Sol III—because your belt had been moving this way when the signal stopped.”
The prince looked up gratefully. The count’s weatherworn visage had blurred and suddenly he didn’t trust his voice, but he reached impulsively with his undamaged hand to squeeze the gnarled fingers of the loyal old veteran.
“So don’t you worry, sir,” the count rumbled softly. “We can work out everything. With good luck, perhaps we can keep Her Majesty from learning that we ever left the route she arranged for us. Even if she finds out the truth, we can probably keep her favor. Just so we’re back for the coronation.”
The prince sat silent for a few moments, gazing absently at the little folding table where Eliska Machar had left her clumsy pre-psionic writing implements. He aroused himself, almost with a start.
“I’m fit to travel,” he said slowly. “And I suppose you are safe enough, as a service agent. But what I don’t understand is how we are going to explain my own sudden arrival and departure, without some violation of the Covenants.”
“That’s all arranged.” The count snapped open the brown brief case to dig out a bundle of quaint native documents. “Even though I hardly hoped to find you alive—nobody else expected me to find you at all—I brought papers from the undercover office to account for you properly as Mr. James A. King.”
“Did you bring me any side arms?” The prince leaned toward him eagerly.
“Or any sort of passport?”
“We’ll have to do without arms.” Frowning, the count was thumbing through the coarse fiber sheets. “Here’s your birth certificate. Social security card. Army discharge. Bank book, with two thousand dollars on deposit. Four hundred in currency. But no passport.”
The prince sank uneasily back in his chair, but the gaunt old fighting man was grinning at him as if unaware of his disappointment.
“We just continue our business trip,” the count went on confidently. “My car is to be picked up late tonight, from a lonely side road three hundred miles west of here, by a patrol craft from the station. We ought to get there with just time enough to let the station surgeon attend to your injuries, before we have to go aboard the interstellar ship.”
The prince sat wondering how far they could go unarmed, trying to encourage himself with the old man’s brisk assurance.
“These papers won’t cause you any trouble.” The count swept them back into the brief case. “The currency is good. The bank deposit actually exists. The other documents were really issued at one time or another to agents using that name. The service understands such work.”
The prince nodded wearily, trying not to worry.
“I’ll take care of everything.” The count swung toward the door. “Now I’m going to call the natives back. I’ll do the talking—under the Covenants, you can’t recover too rapidly. I’ll pay the doctor and the girl for all they’ve done, and we’ll be getting on to meet the flier.”
The battered old duelist went to open the door, and the prince sat nursing his arm. He had nothing to worry about, because the count would take care of everything. Rescue him from these enigmatic savages, repair his arm and rush him home, appease the matriarch and see him through the coronation. After that, his new consort would do the talking.
He shrugged, and tried to be content. The count had warned him, he recalled, that freedom was a dangerous drink. But he had seized and sipped that moment of his own, and now he had been rescued from the natural consequences, almost intact. That ought to be enough for any man, he tried to tell himself, but still he wasn’t quite content.
He sat silent, while the count called the waiting natives back from the dwelling hut and drew the doctor aside. The guards and the woman stopped cautiously at the door, but Eliska Machar came to straighten the sling on his arm, where the rifle kick had twisted it.
“Only five dollars?” the count was saying. “Since you’ve been so kind, let’s call it ten.” He paid the doctor and came smiling to the girl, with another ten in his fingers. “Miss Machar, you’ve been very good to Jim. As a little token of my own gratitude—”
“You don’t owe me anything.” She flushed and stiffened, as if offended. “I helped Mr. King because I thought he was a refugee, who had given up everything to strike out for freedom. I’m glad to know he’s not in danger, but I don’t want your money.” Something shone in her dark eyes. “Because I know the worth of freedom,” she added softly. “Since my free people have been captured and enslaved.”
The prince saw her sadness, and suddenly he wanted to help her out of her own captivity. If he and the count could smuggle her past that dark tower in the motorcart—but that was impossible. The Covenants prohibited such meddling with native affairs, and he knew the count would never allow it.
“Jim and I are both deeply grateful, anyhow, Miss Machar.” The count smiled and bowed. “Your generosity is a thing we won’t forget, but we’ve a long way to drive tonight. We must go.”
“Tonight?” Urgency hushed her voice again. “Don’t forget that Jim needs medical attention at once. Dr. Stuben says he ought to have X rays taken right away, and I’m afraid his head injury may turn out to be worse than it looks.”
“I’ll attend to that,” the count assured her blandly. “I’ll take care of everything. Now, Jim, do you feel like walking to the car?”
The prince stood up uncertainly. The girl saw his momentary weakness and reached quickly to steady him, and he clung to her fingers for an instant, feeling sick and grim in spite of himself because he knew his future consort would never sink to any such show of unwomanly sympathy.
Suddenly, he wanted to say something to her, some little word of parting that she might recall when he was gone. He caught his breath, but before he could speak he saw the count’s stern frown, reminding him that his moment of freedom was spent. A dangerous habit, and difficult to break, but he checked that rash impulse obediently. He smiled at her wistfully and dropped her hand and turned to go.
“Wait.” She turned quickly to the count. “He needs clothing before he goes out, and we can find him something—”
“That’s all right,” the count broke in firmly. “Very kind of you, but I have his bag at the Great Plains hotel, and we’ll leave the robe and slippers there at the desk for you. I’ll take care of him.”
The prince was hesitating, still somehow reluctant to leave, but the count took his arm and led him firmly on ahead of the natives toward the waiting carts. He went silently, until he saw the long warning finger of the tower beyond.
“You’re certain?” he whispered suddenly. “Certain we can get out?”
“Why not?” The count snapped off the translator and dropped his voice. “What’s in the way?”
“For one thing, the watch tower yonder. How am I to pass the guards, without some weapon of position?”
“What guards?” The count stared at him, and then grinned faintly. “This isn’t our world, you remember. These savages haven’t yet invented any civilized social order—not in this tribe, anyhow. These simple children of nature are still free to go about pretty much as they please. We don’t need any arms of identification.”
“Huh?” The prince blinked again at that frowning tower. “Isn’t this a forced labor camp? Or some sort of prison?”
“So that tower worries you?” The count’s lean grin widened. “It does look amazingly like the guard turrets on Her Majesty’s farms. I admit that it rather upset me at first glance, before I knew what it was.”
“You mean it isn’t—”
“We’re in another culture, remember. Actually, in spite of its grim appearance, that turret wasn’t built to house spy screens or neutrionic guns. You’ll be relieved to know that it’s really only a harmless part of the Great Plains municipal water works.”
“But those fighting men I challenged?” The prince peered unbelievingly after the two armed natives departing in their own cart. “Aren’t they tower guards?”
“State cops,” the count said. “And I’m afraid they misunderstood your challenge. We aren’t at home, remember. There’s no code of honor here—not as we know honor. These timid folk have no heart for civilized combat, and no decent respect for good killers. Instead of fighting as men should, they bribe these cops to defend their rights and lives. And even the cops—if you can imagine such an outlandish culture—even the cops disapprove of killing.”
