Collected Short Fiction, page 713
“He appeared as a bodiless head. Larger than a man’s. It had two great eyes, ringed with red fire. Floating in the smoke above the sacred fire, Cru Creetha called to me with a voice like monsoon thunder. He gave me the message I bring to you.”
Snowfire tugged sharply to follow Clayman, but he swung her back to hear the speaker.
“Sunsdeath is coming—that was Cru Creetha’s warning. He gave us nine days—and that was nine days ago. Tomorrow, friends, the sun will die! It cannot shine with Nggongga in bondage. When we drive the otherworld exploiters out, it can be lit again. That is Cru Creetha’s promise—”
“Come!” Snowfire whispered fiercely. “Our enemy is the man who operates the remote manipulator, not the superstitious dupe.” Walking on with her, he began to see the impact of terror on Nggongga. Ugly new concrete guard boxes stood along the portal ramps, and the streets beyond had a gritty shabbiness he didn’t remember. Armed police rode the traffic ways, and the passengers looked hurried and grim.
Clayman asked the way to a cooler shop, where he bought suncreams and cloaks for Snowfire and himself. At a gunshop, he selected an expensive long-range mangun. While they waited for him, Snowfire played her game of young love so attentively that Blacklantern began to wish it had been real, Clayman kept silent about their destination, until he led them off at the Nggar terminal.
They crossed the ramp, and Clayman thumbed the keyplate at the gate. The portal system has brought many strange races to Nggongga, but Blacklantern was startled by the guards who opened a wicket.
Naked except for gun belts and short black kilts, they were hairless and darkly green. Even their bulging eyes were green. Half his height and twice his weight, they looked as monstrous as the dwarf he had fought on Xyr. Their evolution, he thought, must have been shaped by a singular environment.
Though they wore translators, they didn’t attempt to speak. One stood watching, mangun drawn. The other vanished and soon came back with a heavy, slow, light-brown man who dragged one leg.
“The Nggar,” Snowfire whispered. “Nggo of Nggar.”
He opened the bottom of the gate to let them in, and came limping to meet Blacklantern. His kilt was Sand clan red. Half his face was smiling, the other half scarred and frozen, hideous.
“Blackie!” His voice was a hollow whisper. “Lylik used to speak about you on the tapes he sent from Xyr. I’m glad you’re going to be with us.”
He held out his sound hand in the Nggonggan greeting, and they touched palms. Blacklantern tried not to look at his face. Lylik had seldom spoken of his father’s disabilities, but now he recalled a story he had heard long ago from an old tly handler—that the young Nggar, trying his courage in the arena, had been badly stung by an unmilked tly.
“I hope you aren’t alarmed at my people.” He waved at the froglike guards. “They look that way because they’re off a heavy planet, one with lots of copper and a hot blue sun. I’ve got them here because I can’t trust the blacks. They’re contract labor. Slaves, actually. Their masters don’t recognize the Benefactors. I get them through a barter deal. Their translators are set only to mine, to save from corruption.”
As he talked, he had led them into a wide brick-paved yard, walled with crowded and ill-matched buildings erected by three generations of Nggars. A bright new business tower overlooked the loading docks of a rust-streaked sheet-metal warehouse that exhaled a rich muskweed fragrance. The huge stone residential palace had been enlarged several times, in clashing styles. A squat green woman stood waiting at the door.
“My friends are coming later to meet with you,” Nggar said. “While we wait, Kopopo will show you your rooms.”
Mute, she beckoned with a green hand.
“Wait, please.” Blacklantern turned back to the lame man. “May I speak to your wife? About Lylik? My dagger-brother—”
“My wife is ill.” Pain clouded the live half of Nggar’s face. “She was hurt last year, when terrorists booby-trapped our flyer. Badly hurt. She has never recovered. We were afraid to tell her that Lylik is dead. She requires sedation, and she never leaves her room.”
“I’m sorry,” Blacklantern muttered uncomfortably. “I didn’t know.”
The green woman had waddled away, and he ran to overtake her. On an upper floor of the rambling palace, she gave him a key-strip and pointed at a door. Inside, he discovered that the room had been Lylik’s.
Brown images of him smiled out of a long stereo tank, standing with arena heroes or with glamorous girls. A crystal case held athletic awards he had earned. One whole wall was hung with family portraits, heavily framed. Of the grandparents, only one had been a lightskinned otherworlder. The rest were mixed or black.
Studying the portraits, Blacklantern felt a darkening shadow of mystery and tragedy. He looked longest at Lylik’s mother. No darker than Snowfire, she sat proudly, almost defiantly erect. Her dark eyes looked stricken, desolate.
Why? The pictures must have been made before the terror, before her own injury, long before her son’s death. What had she foreseen? Her ivory face became a tantalizing riddle.
He prowled the room, searching for clues to that sad puzzle. Beyond the bed, he found a heavy inner door. Somewhere beyond it must be the room that held that tragic prisoner. Suddenly he felt that he had to see her, in spite of Nggar.
With his ear against the door, he heard no sound at all. It was locked, but his hard childhood had taught him how to cope with locks. On impulse, without stopping to weigh the consequences, he masked and fingered his key-strip to open the door.
What he found was no sickroom. Rather, it must have been Lylik’s playroom and hobby room. Shelves along one wall held toys and games, long outgrown. Newer metal-working tools lined another wall. One long bench was cluttered with half-assembled electronic and transflection gear. Model spacecraft hung from the ceiling. Toward the end of the room, an old study desk had been rebuilt into a flight simulator, with viewscreens and controls.
A normal boy’s room, it told of Lylik’s boyhood but offered no clue to the mystery of the Nggars. He found another locked door behind the flight simulator. Listening again, he still heard nothing.
He froze a moment there, key-strip already against the contact plate, hesitant to go on. He knew he shouldn’t enjoy the risks of adventure as much as he did, but then, he reflected, he was violence prone. Though he shouldn’t be violating the house of a friend, he had his debt to Lylik. He listened again and opened the door.
A short dark stair led three steps down, to an older level of the rambling palace. He found himself in a huge wardrobe. One side was hung with kilts and cloaks and hats in Nggar’s Sand clan rust-color. A woman’s clothing hung along the other side, fragrant with rose-tempered musk.
Nothing stirred in the huge, high-beamed bedroom beyond. Anxiously, he crept around the big antique canopy bed. The curtains were lifted and the bed was empty. If Lylik’s invalid mother was confined anywhere—
He heard a gasp.
Whirling, he found a startled girl framed in the open bathroom door, still dripping from the tub, her long red hair dark with dampness. Her wide eyes as green as Snowfire’s, she was not Lylik’s mother.
3.
After one breath-taken moment, the woman laughed.
“No Name!” She made no move to cover herself. “I was expecting someone else.” She glanced swiftly at the other door. “What are you after?”
“I was looking for Lylik’s mother.”
“You won’t find her here.” Her cool green gaze came back to him. “I thought you were learning to be a Benefactor.”
“I was.” He eyed her again with unwilling admiration. “You were under arrest, the last time I saw you.”
“My luck is running better now.” She made a possessive nod at everything around her. “I have a friend—and a new name of my own. If we happen to meet, don’t call me Sapphire. Now I’m Diamond Dust.”
“Fitting.” He gave her a small ironic bow. “Your old friend Wheeler—where is he?”
“He too has discovered better luck. With another name to match. Squaremark. He’s a banker.”
“He’s a crook—”
“We’ve all had our troubles.” Her eyes narrowed, probing him. “I suppose you’re here with Counterkill. Even so, you have no business in my room. I’ll make a bargain with you.” She smiled in a way he remembered bitterly. “You’ll forget Sapphire and Wheeler. I’ll forget that you were here.”
With a painful grin, he shook his head.
“I know you too well. I couldn’t trust your promise. I’m afraid I couldn’t keep mine. Because I am with Counterkill.”
For an instant, her face looked dangerous.
“I can destroy you—” Suddenly, she smiled again, turning slowly in the doorway to display herself. “We’re old friends. Perhaps you’ll be back at a better time. If you survive the terror—”
Her head cocked to listen and her low voice died. Silently, she beckoned him into the closet. He returned to Lylik’s room, relocking the doors behind him. When he opened the corridor door, he found a squat green female planted outside, a silent sentry. He retreated, to reflect again upon the dark plight of the house of Nggar.
Nggongga’s rotation was slower than Xyr’s. No longer used to thirty-hour days, he had fallen into an uneasy sleep before Snowfire called him. She had changed into a clinging crimson sheath that accented her hair and eyes in a way that made him wonder if she had already met Nggar’s other greeneyed guest. His silent guardian was gone.
“You’ll be meeting the people who hired us.” She was guiding him down a great stair toward a lower floor. With no audience for her game of young love, she was now crisply impersonal. “Friends of Nggar’s, who have been threatened by the terrorists.
“Yava Yar comes from another rich foundation family. One brother owns mines. Another has airways and factories. He’s an astronomer—the one who found the cometary dust cloud. He showed it to us last night, with a little telescope Nggar’s son built.
“Longbridge is a churchman. An otherworlder, as you’d guess from the name. Head of the All Worlds Mission. The terrorists dislike him because his church is uprooting the native faiths. He doesn’t believe in Cru Creetha.
“The third man is Squaremark—”
He almost missed a step.
“Another otherworlder,” she went on. “A banker. He has made an enormous new fortune, speculating in muskweed and the exported perfume made from it. The terrorists seem to feel that he’s exploiting the native muskweed industry.”
He followed her into a huge dim room massively furnished with Nggonggan antiques. One gloomy alcove was filled with racked manguns and grinning trophy heads. Nggar came limping across the tly-wing patterns of a fine old Sand clan carpet, to escort them to the heavy table where Clayman sat facing three troubled men.
In his voiceless rasp, Nggar introduced them.
Yava Yar was a short brown man, evidently of mixed ancestry. His small dark eyes were darting everywhere, at Snowfire and Blacklantern, at Clayman, at the two men beside him, as if in tormented apprehension.
Longbridge looked too pale and lean and tall for Nggongga. He must have come, Blacklantern thought, from a world with a cooler sun and weaker gravity. His hollowed eyes had a remote, unseeing stare, as if fixed on unpleasant things beyond.
Squaremark—once called Wheeler—was flabby and shapeless and gray. His bulging, glassy eyes rested on Blacklantern with no hint of recognition.
Clayman sat bolt upright across the table from them, his hands and arms and hairless head all smeared white with suncream. Masked behind the opaque multiscopic lenses, he looked more mechanical than human.
“Blacklantern is a native Nggonggan.” Completing his introductions, Nggar smiled with half his face. “He has been trained for the arena and trained to be a Benefactor. Perhaps he can help us locate the hiding Sun Lighter.”
He waved Snowfire and Blacklantern to chairs beside Clayman. Bending painfully, he opened a safe hidden under the table and sat up to show a heavy little device the size of his fist.
“This was tossed through my bedroom window last night,” his strained whisper hissed. “As you see, it didn’t operate. In the light from the room, I glimpsed the thing that threw it. The god Cru Creetha, as the native fanatics describe him. A huge black head, with blazing red eyes and snaky metal tentacles.” Voiceless, his sardonic laugh rattled like dry gravel.
“Actually, a remote manipulator.”
“A proxy box,” Clayman agreed. “Common enough on advanced planets. Used for work too hazardous for men. I’m surprised to find one here.”
“Can you trace the control signals?” Nggar asked. “To locate the master station?”
“Probably not.” Clayman shook his white-plastered head. “The beam would be tight and shielded. In use only briefly. We couldn’t hope to intercept it.”
Nggar pushed the fist-sized device across the table to him. “Does this tell you anything?”
“A modified ejector circuit.” Clayman turned it in chalk-white hands, his blank lenses whining. “Modified to make an implosion bomb. Expertly done, by a workman who understands transflection technology. Fortunately the detonator jammed—damaged, probably, when the device struck the window.”
“That’s how close I’ve come.” The hoarse whisper quivered. “But we’re all in the same danger.”
Nggar looked along the table, at the restless little astronomer, the far-staring churchman, the impassive banker. None of them spoke.
“This terror is—intolerable!” His dry wheeze had a savage force. “With Sunsdeath upon us, we’re desperate.” With a pause to recover himself, he twisted painfully to give Clayman a stiff Nggonggan bow. “Counterkill is our one hope. We’ve met your terms—costly as you are. We’ll do anything you advise.”
“Before we start, we need information,” Clayman’s audible syllables clinked like coins. “We can’t act without facts.”
“You’ll have to find the facts,” Nggar whispered. “We’ve failed. Sun Lighter has too many friends. There are two hundred million blacks on the planet. Every one enjoys ten times more than the clan chiefs did, before the portal opened. Yet I suppose most of them feel they have been somehow robbed or wronged by otherworlders. There has always been a secret war against us. Just look at me.
A withered hand lifted to his blighted face.
“I was a whole man once. Being the heir of a foundation family, I had to try my luck in the arena. I was tly-stung. A tragic accident—but not entirely accidental. My tly had not been properly milked of its venom. The handler who failed to milk it was a black who didn’t love me.”
The live half of his face twitched with pain.
“I should have died—but I suppose there are blacks who enjoy each tormented breath I draw. When I was young, such events were rare. Year by year, the war has grown more open and more grim. Two years ago, I had to send my son away—to what I thought was safety. Last year my wife was crippled hopelessly.”
“Now, Sunsdeath!” Little Yava Yar was abruptly on his feet, too nervous to sit. “Something more than a silly superstition. I’ll show you the cometary dust cloud which obscures our star on some of its returns. Sun Lighter and his fanatics have made it a signal for the blacks to rise. The end of civilization on Nggongga. Unless—”
“Unless we defeat the terror.” Clayman looked up and down the table. “We expect to win, but we do require your aid.”
His whirring lenses settled on the anxious astronomer.
“Yava Yar, you can help deflate the panic.” Though the words were courteous, the audible tone was coldly commanding. “Invite the media to observe the dust cloud. Convince the people that this eclipse is a natural thing.”
“I—I tried to announce my discovery.” Yava Yar stammered fearfuly. “People won’t believe. The street fanatics threaten me with the wrath of Cru Creetha.”
“Speak out,” his hard tone rang. “You’re fighting for your life.”
Clayman’s blank stare moved on to the churchman.
“Respected Longbridge, you will join this effort. Instruct your clergymen to explain the eclipse. Ask them to pray for compassion and peace.”
“We have done so,” Longbridge said. “The terrorists have burned our missions.”
Clayman looked at the banker, who sat hunched in his chair, rubbing at his puffy jaw.
“Respected Squaremark, you will offer rewards for information. Generous rewards. For the taking of any terrorist. For any fact to help us find the hiding leader.”
The banker grunted and inclined his head. Blacklantern caught the stale salt taint on his breath, and knew that he had been triggering a narcotic implant.
“Respected Nggar—” Clayman swung again. “You will provide supplies and support, as the need arises.”
“Done.”
“That’s our part.” The gaunt churchman’s stare came suddenly back from nowhere, to rest darkly and briefly in turn upon Snowfire, Blacklantern, and Clayman. “What is yours?”
“To fight the terror, we must first find the terrorists.” Clayman glanced down at the glinting metal and yellow plexoid of the bomb. “This is the only clue you have given us. The missing Sun Lighter is the only suspect you have named. I understand he has been in hiding for years. If you want action, tell me how to hit him.”
Before his humming lenses, the table was silent. The banker massaged his jaw. Yava Yar bobbed up and sat down again. The churchman looked back into his own dark infinity. Nggar twitched and quivered, as if to a spasm of pain.
Blacklantern spoke. “I can look for him,” he offered. “I used to see him begging on the streets. He had a friend—a man who sometimes filled his bowl—who might know where he went.”
Hope rustled around the table. “Who?” Nggar bent painfully forward. “Who’s the friend?”
“I never knew his name. An old man, who had lost a leg in the tly arena. A tourist guide—”
“Old Champ!” Nggar wheezed. “I knew him around the arena long ago, though he’s no friend. It was his brother who should have milked the tly that stung me.”
