Collected Short Fiction, page 690
“Nggonggong-Nggongga smiles on you today,” he resumed. “You are about to see a veteran champion risking his title and his life to an unknown challenger. Most of you on your own far worlds have heard of tly-binding—or you wouldn’t be here. If you know anything, you know that it is more than a very dangerous game. It is a traditional ritual that reflects the history and the spirit of Nggongga.”
Drums began to throb.
“The challenger!” The yellow crutch pointed. “A young man brave enough—or fool enough—to risk his life for glory . . . What’s his name? Madam, he has no name. He was born outside the Nggonggan clan system, by which we are named. If he upsets the champion today, he’ll be asked to join . . . Yes, sir, you could say he’s fighting for his name.”
Marching to the measured drumbeat, he came out of a dark archway. A lean youth, quick and supple, head held high, sweat bright on sleek black skin. He wore a flat black hat, a brief black kilt, a short jeweled dagger in a jeweled belt. Two black attendants marched behind, one trailing a black banner from a gilded lance, the other with a white pack rolled on his back.
“His weapon bearer,” the guide boomed. “And his surgeon.”
The three marched in single file to a wide circle of smooth black sand spread over the glaring white at the center of the arena, knelt before it while the drums paused, marched on toward the flag-wreathed stand where the judges sat.
“I know the boy.” The guide’s voice rose against the drum throb. “He used to clean my boots. An abandoned bastard. Grew up on the streets. An independent sort. He asks no favors and takes no orders. He’s got brains and guts. He’s coming up on his own, and I wish him luck. . . . See that, sir?” He chuckled suddenly, waving the crutch. “He has found at least one friend, I see. He’ll be fighting for more than fortune and a name.”
The crutch picked out a striking red-haired girl leaning from a box near the judges. She screamed and waved until the challenger turned, screamed again and blew him a kiss. Nodding very slightly, he knelt to the judges again and turned with his attendants to face the black circle.
“You have a good guide today.” The crutch tapped the floor, accenting the rhythm of the drums. “I know tly-binding, because in my own youth I was once a tly-binder. That’s the way I lost my leg.” He hopped and bent to listen to a sun-broiled woman, grinned and shook his head. “Another story, madam. Too painful to retell. But I do know tly-binding.”
He waved away a grimy black urchin offering a basket of spiny native fruit.
“The last living relic of our historic . . .” He leaned again into the drifting condensation. “No, madam. He won’t use the dagger. Or any modern weapon. Everything will be authentic. The costumes and the code have not changed in seven thousand years.”
He hopped back to face his flock and raised his bugle voice.
“Respected voyagers of the eye, here you will find the real Nggongga. We’ve been touring our metropolis—Nggonggamba means Eye of Nggongga—but the city is not our world at all. These hotels and shops and tourist traps—they’re an ugly scab, grown around the eye.”
He scowled back into the fog. “No, sir. I’m not speaking as a Nggonggan diplomat. Not even as a courier for Universal Travel. I’m only a native Nggonggan, saying what I feel. Nggonggamba, to me, is a rank thorn weed, planted by the traders who come through the eye for our rich metals and the richer scents distilled from our desert musk weed. But it is not Nggongga. . . . You say the eyes bring progress, sir? What I call the eyes will not translate.”
Listening, he fanned himself with the wide flat yellow cone of his Nggonggan hat.
“The machines of the eye, sir? . . . Yes, of course they are clever beyond imagination. Every man of reason must bow to those who understand how to fold our space through other spaces, to bring a doorway on one world against another doorway a hundred or ten thousand light-years off. I know it takes brave and able people to carry a new transflection station on a twenty-year flight or a fifty-year flight to open another new eye on another new world. But progress—for that new world?”
Swaying on his single leg, he flailed the yellow crutch as if to sweep aside the clinging cloud wisps.
“As you say, sir . . . But I don’t speak of such new planets. I’m sure the eyes are fine for new worlds, where men have never been before. The colonists can step out into virgin lands, with all the gear they need. They can step back again, if they don’t like what they find. But things were different, sir, when my own forefathers reached Nggongga, twelve thousand years ago. Space had not been folded then. Their starship had been in flight for forty years, and its fusion fuel was gone. Most of them were killed by what they found, but they had to stay. They could not refit or refuel their ship. Four thousand years had passed before the next one arrived.”
He stabbed the crutch toward a fat man masked with white suncreams and harnessed with multiplex recorders.
“I speak of worlds like this one, sir. Worlds already old, rich with seasoned cultures of their own, when the eyes are opened on them . . . Yes, sir, I’ve seen others. Couriers travel, too . . . On every settled world it is the same. But look around you at Nggongga.”
He whirled the crutch above his head.
“We Nggonggans had been evolving here for many thousand years. We are black because our sun is hot. We live in communal clans because our deserts are too harsh for men alone. We had shaped a way of life to fit our world. A harsh life, you may think, but it was good for us. I am sad to see it lost. We used to know what was true, what was just, what was good. Now nobody knows.”
A quaver broke his mellow voice.
“Now, since those first galactic strangers in their starship brought machines to open the eye, our old world is sick. Hordes of sneering strangers came pushing through the eye, bartering bright new gadgets we never needed and spreading doubt of all we used to live by. They drained off our portable wealth and left such broken men as I am, grieving for the spirit of old Nggongga. When those first greedy robbers and desecrators went on to loot newer worlds, another waver of strangers came, like yourselves, to explore the wreckage they had left. To stereograph the ruins of our holy places. To record the relics of our lost culture. To toss a few coins at the broken human beings—”
The fat man’s muttering checked him.
“No, sir, I’m not an anthropologist. I’m just an old Nggonggan. As poor as the boy yonder, except that I do have a name . . . No, sir, it’s nothing you could pronounce, but people call me Champ . . . Till I lost my leg, I was a binder of tlys. Since, I’ve been escorting tourists for Universal Travel. Sometimes I long for my youth.”
The drumbeat had changed, and he glanced into the arena.
“Here come the egg bearers.”
They were two slim young black girls in crimson hats and crimson aprons, marching proudly to the drum, bearing the tly’s egg between them on a cushioned litter. It was an ash-white globe, the size of a child’s head.
“Listen.” He held up the crutch. “You hear it screaming.”
The faint shrieks rose fife-like above the drums as the girls reached the black-sand circle. Moving to the rhythm of the drums, they placed the egg at the center of that circle and drew back from it. Gliding through a ceremonial dance, they swept out their footprints with green-wreathed brooms from the litter. They stood facing the young challenger, who now marched slowly back with his two attendants to face them across the black circle and the screaming egg.
“Our most ancient history is represented here,” the guide was chanting, in time to the drums. “Our pioneer forefathers came near failing to survive. The sun was too hot, the whole planet too hostile. The ultraviolet wilted their crops, and the native predators killed their animals. Some wanted to refit their starship, which was still out in orbit. But they could not reach it. Their shuttles had both crashed. They were desperate—until they found a hero.”
He waved the crutch at the young contender, who was kneeling now, facing the girls and the wailing egg.
“The stinging things they called tlys had been their most savage enemy. These winged predators had been spoiling their fields and killing their cattle and even carrying children off to dens in cliffs that men could not climb. Now a young hero caught and tamed the first tly.
“The domesticated tly kept the wild ones off. More useful than the legendary falcons of old Earth, it caught edible game creatures on the uplands and brought edible fish from the sea. Others were tamed, and they kept the pioneers alive. In gratitude, they gave the young tamer a new name. They called him Ngugong—which means Skyman.”
Down in the arena, the kneeling challenger had risen. Removing the belted dagger, he buckled it on his weapons bearer, who tossed him in return a short length of rope.
“Yes, madam,” the guide said. “Skyman used only a rope. The dagger is not for the tly at all, but for the binder. The tlys disable their game, you see, with a paralyzing venom which causes unending agony. No antidote is known. If the binder should be badly stung, it is the surgeon’s duty to give him comfort with the dag—”
The drums abruptly stopped. With ritual shrieks, the two girls fled into the archway. The surgeon and the bearer retreated hastily toward the judges’ box. The young contender stood outside the black circle, swinging the short rope and facing the whining egg.
“He is not allowed to step into the black,” the guide whispered hoarsely. “Or to use any weapons save the rope and his own body. However, tradition does allow him one advantage over the old hero whose role he plays.
“The keeper of the tlys is allowed to milk the venom from the sacs, so that the sting is not always disabling. In these days the daggers are rarely required. My own leg was lost because my tly had not been milked with care enough. The amputation saved my life.”
The drums rolled briefly.
“Watch! The tly!”
An iron gate clanged open. Sunlight burned on crimson armor, and the whole arena rang with a howling that seemed to have no source. On dead-black wings, the tly climbed and wheeled above the whimpering egg and the waiting man. Wings arrowed back, it dived.
The other-worlders gasped at its sleek deadliness. Burning scales flowed in graceful lines from five-eyed head to tapered tail. Its five-angled mouth yawned black to bellow, showing five flashing fangs spaced around a pentagon of jaws.
“The binder has a choice of several strategies,” the guide was whispering. “He can try to mount the tly at a point above the wings, where the sting cannot quite reach. He can try to catch the sting itself, to break it off the tail. With clever footwork, he can evade the jaws. His aim is to tie the wings flat and disable the sting, so that he can carry the creature out of the arena.”
He grinned into the condensation cloud.
“No, madam. The tly is not exactly a mother. The female tly is a helpless slug-shaped thing that never leaves the burrow. The males watch the eggs and feed the young. This creature is male enough—the sting is also a penis. Yet it’s fighting for its egg, as you can see.
The black challenger bounded nimbly on the balls of his feet and waited almost casually. The egg chirred behind him. The diving tly came level, sting reaching for him. The rope flicked upward—and a roar of triumph rolled across the hot arena from the packed sunlit seats.”
The challenger was still easily erect, twirling the rope. The egg still squalled on the sand. The tly had flown on past. With a hollow yell that seemed to fill the hot sky, it climbed and wheeled to dive again.
“A cool man.” The guide glanced briefly back at his staring flock. “He knows that the tlys strike instinctively at motion. He led its sting from his body to the moving rope.”
As the tly came back from a new direction, the challenger danced and paused to wait between it and the egg. Again it came at him on black wings, a flashing red projectile. Again the rope flicked upward. Again it stung the air and hurtled on. The bright-kilted blacks were on their feet across the arena, roaring their approval. Thrown like boomerangs, flat bright conical hats began sailing out toward the wheeling tly and sliding back into the stands.
“No!” the guide breathed suddenly. “No—”
The roar of the crowd fell into a hush of taut alarm. The returning tly had dived lower. Now it came at the man not with its sting but with scarlet-armored bulge of its fiveeyed head.
The encounter was a blur of motion, half obscured by furious black wings. In fragmentary glimpses, the other-worlders saw the lithe challenger in midleap over that crested head, saw him astride the tapered body, saw his rope whipping against the searching sting. Man and beast rolled on the sand, hidden in white dust rising.
The arena lay hushed, till a drum throbbed once. The contender stumbled out of the dust, bent with the weight of the hissing tly slung over his shoulder, black wings bound against its armor, broken sting dragging crookedly. The drums were thundering now, and many-colored hats sailed like strange birds above the staggering man.
“I think we have a new champion,” the guide was murmuring. “The boy has earned his name—”
The drums stopped. Silence froze the crowd. The contender had stumbled again, reeling backward into the forbidden circle around the wailing egg. He slipped to his knees, and the tly flopped on the black sand. The last bright hats rained out of the air. In the stillness, the egg uttered a shrill little crow.
“The boy was stung!” the guide gasped. “The venom sacs of his tly had not been fully milked.”
2
He stood swaying with pain from the venomed scratch along his upper arm. It hashed him in unbearable fire, choked him with dry nausea, bathed the whole arena with murky red. It howled in his ears like a desert khamsin. It spun him into a tight cocoon of raw agony, and nothing outside mattered.
Yet he knew what was happening. He heard the egg chittering happily, heard the tly slithering out of the loosened rope, glimpsed it soaring away with the pipped egg safely wrapped in its quick prehensile tongue.
He watched the girl whose name-symbol was Sapphire. She had been halfway to him when he began to stumble. Red hair flying, white arms wide, green eyes smiling for him. Now she had stopped. Her bright eagerness faded into shock and pity and aversion. Suddenly she shrugged, bent to pick up a jeweled hat that someone else had thrown, scurried back toward her box.
His two attendants bustled past her. The bearer waved his lance foolishly after the tly, which was already gone. The surgeon swabbed at his wound, peered into his face, and reached for the mercy dagger.
No! I don’t need that—not yet
He thought the words, but his dry throat made no sound. Desperately, he tried to shake his head. The effort made the whole arena rock and pitch beneath him, but he could not be sure his head had moved.
“. . . wait.” Fragmentary words broke through the gusts of pain, “. . . relatively superficial . . . survival . . . amputation . . . a crime the venom had not been milked . . .”
They took his arms, tried to walk him out of the arena. He resisted. Still he couldn’t talk, but he tried to pull back toward the benches. He had to see what happened next. If the champion had to take the dagger, he thought the judges might still be forced to declare him the winner.
“Come on, kid.” The surgeon tugged at him. “If you want to keep your arm—”
But now he could hear the drums again, beyond the walls of pain. They were a faint, far rattle, like footsteps in dry grass. The two men muttered and helped him to the benches. Swaying between them there, blinking across the barrier, he watched the champion strutting in.
A man of the Wind clan, the champion had a name. It meant Storm Stalker. Perhaps he had once been as noble as that title, but time had begun to overtake him now. His belly bulged too far above his dun-colored kilt, and his massive muscles shone with too much sweat.
Yet the black stands screamed a welcome, and thrown hats swarmed like bright moths above a light. He knelt to the judges, knelt to the egg. The drums paused, and the handlers released his tly. It looked smaller than the boy’s had been, its flight erratic and slow.
“A sick one!” he heard his surgeon muttering. “Or perhaps underfed.”
Through a dull haze of pain, he watched the contest. Three times the tly dived at the black sand circle. Three times the Stalker led it by with an easy flirt of his rope. Three times the hats sailed out from the roaring stands.
On the fourth slow dive, the tly seemed to waver. The champion flicked the rope to lead it down and sprang heavily upon it. The thin red tail struck and struck, but the stings had no effect. Man and tly toppled into blinding dust. Though what happened was hard to see, the boy thought the black wings had stopped flapping before they were bound.
His fat blackness splotched with wet white sand, the champion knelt to the judges, knelt to his shrieking fans. Panting through a gaptoothed mouth, he bent to hoist his lifeless tly.
“Stalker!” Sapphire was screaming. “Stalker—you promised the egg to me.”
The boy turned his throbbing head enough to see her scrambling down from her box. The champion nodded to his men. The bearer picked up the egg and brought it to meet her. She brushed it aside and ran on to seize the Stalker’s sweaty arm. In a final hail of hats, he stumbled out of the arena with the clinging girl and his limp-tailed tly.
As the cheering died, the boy limped stiffly after them. Dirty urchins were picking up the hats, but they paused to mimic his painful gait. His bearer had to push them aside with the black-bannered lance.
The sun was suddenly too hot, the air too thick to breathe. His feet began to drag the sand. The jeering of the urchins became a senseless howling. The walls of pain turned dark around him, and he knew that he was falling.
He waited for the dagger.
But then the sun was gone.
Dimly, he recognized the low gray walls of the dying room—the surgery beneath the stands. Vaguely, he wondered how much time had passed. Faintly, he could remember the tiny his of red-hot needles thrust into his wound and the choking reek of burnt tly scales that was supposed to drive away the venom.
