Collected Short Fiction, page 151
We bowed again, and turned off down a long aisle. My heart leaped as Andrews entered a room guarded by two aliens and said, “High Priest requests delivery of the sacrifice to the Hall of the God.”
One of the aliens nodded curtly and pointed toward an inner door. Andrews opened it and said quickly, “Prisoner, we have come to take you to the God.” He stepped inside and clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the cry than broke from her as she recognized me in the guise of a slave.
We closed the door, shutting out the alien guards.
“Karen,” I said.
Andrews turned away and I folded her in my arms. She was quivering from anxiety and terror, though I saw her making an effort to recover her nerves. She couldn’t. I didn’t blame her as she broke down and started to sob.
A gong sounded loudly.
Gently, Andrews said, “We’ll have to go.”
“Mike? Mike—are they going to do this thing to me?”
I looked at her. She was wearing what was probably the sacrificial gown, a clinging, translucent thing through which I could easily see her naked body beneath. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get us out of it.”
We led her along the hall, Andrews grasping one arm and I the other, while one of the alien guards walked before us and one behind. We walked for what seemed to be miles through the temple building, until we reached a door some twenty feet high. It swung open as we approached.
I gasped. We stood at the entrance to a great amphitheatre, with an immense dais and rows of seats stretching off into the misty distance. And—between the dais and the seats—there was an open pit that seemed to reach down into the bowels of the planet. I looked down and reeled dizzily at the sight of that bright lake of radiation hundreds of feet below—the lake into which Karen’s naked body was soon to be hurled.
“You lead her up there,” Andrews whispered to me. “Give her to the High Priest. From there it’s up to you. I’m going to go back and get an elevator ready in case you do get out of it alive. Move as fast as you can when you get away.”
I nodded imperceptibly and marched forward with Karen. The great hall was filled—packed with row on row of uncountable aliens, sitting in quiet anticipation of the sacrifice to be performed before their eyes. Television cameras blinked down like unmoving eyes, telling me that the rest of the aliens were undoubtedly watching too.
I saw the robed figure of the High Priest, stark and majestic on the dais. He was intoning prayers to which the aliens responded antiphonally. A gong sounded repeatedly somewhere in the distance, and flames licked up from the abyss below.
He gestured for the sacrifice to be brought forward. I tightened my grip on Karen’s arm and started to walk up the long row of steps that led to the dais. The chanting of the multitude rose to an agonizing volume, a savage beat of barbaric fury echoing round and round the great hall.
I was at the heart of it now—the center of life of the race that set itself against all mankind. I clenched and unclenched my fists in anticipation as I traversed the long span of steps.
I handed over Karen. The priest took her and in one swift motion ripped away her thin gown, revealing her naked to the crowd. She began to cry. I muttered a silent curse. Hatred was a red haze before my eyes.
He took her in his giant hands and grasped her around the waist with those two slimy tentacles. The gong sounded furiously, and he responded to it with booming incantations. He lifted Karen’s unprotesting body high over his head, prepared to hurl it into the open abyss—
And I charged forward and snatched her from him just as he was about to release her. We stood there, he and I, on the dais, while a shocked multitude waited for him to strike me dead.
I saw him lower his arm to his side and press a button in his robe—presumably the button that would activate the death-dealing device embedded in my body. Only I wore no such thing. He stared at me in an agony of exasperation as I unbelievably refused to die.
Then I advanced toward him. No one dared move. He bellowed something, and guards broke from their lethargy and started racing up the dais—but it was a long way to go.
He shouted and leaped at me. I felt his powerful hands encircling me and shoving me toward the abyss. I broke loose, hearing Karen’s screaming as a dim noise in the background, and shoved backward. He reeled and groped for the blaster at his side. Before he could use it, I dropkicked it from his hand and sent it flying in a gleaming arc up, out, and into the pit.
He turned in utter dismay and watched it disappear. His face was a mask of despair and sheer horror. The guards were drawing near us, now.
I moved in close and unleashed a barrage of punches. He countered with wild swipes of his tentacles. I could hear Karen yelling clearly now, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”
With coolness born of complete desperation, I reached out and seized him around the waist. I strained to lift the three-hundred pound body from the ground, pulled, yanked, and heaved him high out over the abyss, a pinwheeling figure of arms and legs and tentacles. He screamed all the way down.
I turned and saw Karen crouching behind me, scooped her up, and we began to run. “This way!” I heard a slave cry, and he pushed the guard nearest him down into the abyss as well. A moment later he had crumpled into death himself, but he had saved us—whoever he was. We plunged through the door and out into the corridor.
Everywhere we saw slaves battling with the alien masters. They were dying, of course—as fast as the aliens could kill them—but they were clearing a path to the elevator for us. Andrews was waiting there.
Tears were in his eyes. “Great,” he said, “Wonderful! But now get into your ship and get out of here fast!”
We made our way through a confused mob of aliens and slaves. The stunned aliens seemed helpless with their High Priest dead. We pushed through them, the three of us, and cut through to the ship. We paused for a moment at the base of the catwalk. I glanced at Andrews.
“I’m not coming,” he said, forestalling my question. “There’s no point to it. I’m a dead man the second I leave the Dome. Go on—get going.”
“We’ll never forget you,” I said. I boosted Karen up the catwalk and followed behind her. We made it inside safely, and the hatch clanged closed.
“Get into your acceleration cradle,” I shouted, and leaped for the control panel. I set up a manual pattern for blastoff.
Out the viewport I could see the aliens coming to life, moving toward us in a mighty horde. I finished fumbling with the controls and heaved downward on the blasting stud just as a couple of them began to scale the fins of the ship.
The ship leaped skyward in an instant. In three seconds, we burst through the dome and out into space. Acceleration hit me like a gigantic fist, and I slumped over and blacked out.
The next thing I knew Karen was bending over me and lifting me to my feet. “We’re safe,” she said.
I rubbed my head and nodded. “And we took them all with us. It must have been something down there when the ship broke through the dome and sent their atmosphere whipping out into space. It’s a lousy way to die—but they deserved it. All but those poor slaves. They were dead either way, though.”
“Come look out the port,” Karen said.
I did. I stared down at the bright, boiling radioactive fury that lit up the blackness of space where the dark planet should have been.
“It must have been that blaster,” I said after a long pause. “The one I kicked into the radiation lake. When it reached the reactor at the bottom, it must have blown the roof off.”
“They must have been destroyed in an instant.”
I looked at the beacon outside the viewport. “It’s the end of the dark planet,” I said slowly. “We’ve touched off a chain reaction that will last forever.”
“Forever,” she repeated. “It’s all over now.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever forget Lanargon,” I said. “But I’d like to know what the galaxy’s astronomers are going to say when they notice a brand-new sun in this part of the cosmos.”
“They’ll have all sorts of wild guesses. But we can tell them the right answer, can’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. I glanced once more at the fissioning hell that had been Lanargon, shuddered, and set our course for Earth. THE END
The Dawning Light
First of Three Parts. There are reasons for robbing a bank other than simple desire for money—and reasons for smashing a culture other than simple destruction. But Nidor, in general, didn’t know that . . . yet.
There was just one elderly Peaceman guarding the bank that held the wealth of the Province of Dimay. In the cold, rainy drizzle of the Nidorian night, Kris peKym Yorgen paced the deck of his ship, frowning uneasily as he watched the black shadows of his men slipping up on the square-hewn brick building.
Kris peKym turned to the man at his side—a small, wiry Bronze Islander named Dran peDran Gormek. “Is the longboat ready?” Dran peDran nodded.
“And the deests?”
Again the Bronze Islander nodded. “Good,” Kris said. “The bank’s surrounded. We’ll be in possession within three minutes, if all goes well.” His voice was incisive: “All we have to do is cut down the one old guard and the Keeper—not much protection for millions of weights, is it?”
Dran peDran shook his head. “They isn’t expecting any robberies, captain. You doesn’t guard against something you doesn’t expect.” Kris smiled. The little outlander’s bizarre inflection always amused him—besides, there was truth in what he said. Nidor’s banks were four thousand years old—and in four thousand years, no bank had ever been robbed. The idea would have been preposterous, once; Nidor’s carefully-balanced economy had seen to it that everyone had at least enough for himself, anyway.
Kris’ lips curled in a lopsided grin. “There’s always a first time, Dran peDran. There was a first time when the Earthmen came, when they first built their School and first started spreading lies and blasphemy among us. And there’ll be a first time for robbing the Bank of Dimay.” He squinted into the rainy darkness, then said, “Shove off and get into that longboat. They’re ready to enter the bank.”
“Right, captain.”
Dran peDran sprang over the side of the deckrail into the waiting longboat below, and there was the sound of oars creaking as he moved off toward the dock. Kris peKym continued to pace the deck anxiously. First mission for the Party, he thought. It has to be perfect.
He fidgeted impatiently, watching the dim silhouette of the Peaceman strolling placidly back and forth before the bank. The Peaceman was going to be surprised, Kris thought with a grim smile. His family had probably held that sinecure for four thousand years in unbroken succession.
No . . . no one had ever robbed a bank before . . . but it had to be done now. Robbing the bank would drive a wedge between the people and the Earthmen, would leave the Council of Elders in an awkward spot—would, in short, put Nidor one step closer to a return to the old ways.
It was a paradox, thought Kris: in order to return to the old ways, it was necessary to do startlingly new things, like—he chuckled softly—robbing the bank. But the world had changed, in the past century, and further change was needed to return it to the Way of the Ancestors.
He watched as a dark figure edged up quietly behind the unsuspecting Peaceman. Dimly seen behind him were the other crewmen who had gone ashore to make the assault on the bank.
Now, Kris thought. Now—hit him!
Kris saw an arm go up, saw the black bulk of a club hover in the air for a moment and then, traveling quickly and clearly across the water, there came the sound of the club striking the Peaceman’s skull.
He watched the shadowy form sag to its knees, and saw two other shadows appear out of the fog and truss the man thoroughly. So far, so good. The Peaceman would never know what hit him.
Nor would the Keeper of the bank. Kris smiled as he remembered the man—he had met him three days before, while he and Dran had been making preliminary investigations while ostensibly changing some large coins. The Keeper was a short, rotund man of the Clan Sesom, whose golden body hair had turned nearly silver; he was very fat, and waddled ludicrously around within his bank.
Straining his ears, Kris thought he heard a grunt from within the bank. So much for the Keeper, he thought.
His men, trained minutely for the job, were carrying the robbery off as if they were so many puppets. Only—
Yes, there it was. The faint clatter of doubly-cleft deest-hoofs, behind the bank. Three of his men were there, mounted. At the signal that the bank was taken, they were to ride up the marshy back road toward Holy Gelusar for a few miles—far enough for them to take the main-road turn-off, come back, and repeat the whole thing all over again. By the time they had made ten or twelve round trips, it would appear as if a good-sized party of marauders had come down from Gelusar to clean out the bank.
Meantime, the real unloading was proceeding. Kris watched approvingly as the ten men who had entered the vault formed themselves into a human chain stretching from the unseen interior of the bank to the dock that led from the bank to the waters of Tammulcor Bay. And then, the cobalt began to move.
It traveled arm-to-arm down the row of men, each heavy loop of coins passing from one to the next, until it reached the dock. The last man was bending and handing the coins through the hole that had been prepared—I hope those sons of deests didn’t hurt those planks, Kris swore; I want them to look as good as new when we’re done—and into the longboat that waited under the docks, ready to scuttle through the water under cover of darkness to the Krand.
After about fifteen minifies of loading, the chain dispersed. That told Kris that the longboat was full, and that the men were going back to take a breather while the boat was rowed to the Krand: Tensely, he listened as the oars creaked in the night, held his breath as the longboat approached.
Then Dran peDran was up on the deck again, looking sweaty and overheated. “We is got the first load, captain!”
“Fine work,” Kris said. “Get it below and go back for more.”
“Is going, captain.”
“Good.”
He watched as the perspiring crewmen swung the loops of cobalt out of the longboat and onto the deck, where other crewmen grabbed the coins and carried them below to stow them in the false bottom of the Krand. Then the longboat slid silently away in the night, heading back under the dock to receive the next load of coins.
It was long, hard, slow, sweaty work, and it took most of the night. But no one bothered them. Who would be out, late at night, down at the treacherous waterfront? And who would expect the bank to be robbed, anyway? Such things just didn’t happen.
At least they never used to, Kris thought pleasantly.
It was close to morning by the time they were finished and all the money was aboard the Krand. The bank had been thoroughly robbed, and the money was safely stowed in the ship’s false bottom.
The bank had been robbed. Strange words, Kris thought—words that never would have been conceived, had the Earthmen never come. But the Earthmen had come. It was not yet a hundred years since they had dropped from the skies, claiming to have come from the Great Light Himself. In not a hundred years, Kris thought, the balance of a world had been destroyed.
It was no exaggeration to say that tradition had been demolished and Nidor turned topsy-turvy since the coming of the Earthmen. The Elder Priests of Nidor’s Sixteen Clans had accepted them as emissaries from Heaven, had greeted them enthusiastically—and thereby, Kris thought bitterly, had paved the way for their own downfall. Today, the knife and the rifle ruled in a world that had known peace for thousands upon thousands of years—and it was the fault of the Earthmen.
And now, the Krand lay innocently at anchor in Tammulcor Bay, its valuable cargo far from sight; it was simply another merchantship resting between voyages.
Kris stood for a while on the deck, while the men went below. After a few moments, Dran approached hesitantly.
“We is done it, captain!”
Kris nodded. “Yes, Dran. “We is done it,” He paused. “There’s no trace of the money?”
“They’s never finding it,” the Bronze Islander said’. “Not without they takes the ship apart.”
“Good,” Kris said. He stared out over the rain-swept bay at the city sprawling on the mainland. “There will be fuss and fury in Tammulcor tomorrow,” he said wryly. “We’ll be able to hear the weeping and wailing from here, when they find out their money’s not worth anything any more!”
Dran peDran laughed merrily. “This is good, captain! We is successful!”
“I hope so,” Kris said. Somehow, he found it hard to muster the enthusiasm of his little First Officer, despite the smoothness with which the bank robbery had been carried out. Only time would tell whether they would be successful in their ultimate goal—the restoration of Nidor. Only time would reveal whether or not the Way of the Ancestors could be attained once again.
Earthmen! Kris thought fiercely and spat into the water of the Bay. Devils!
Two weeks before, Kris had been in the eastern seaport of Vashcor, sitting in the office of the Secretary of the Merchants’ Party, Norvis peKrin Dmorno, in the Party building—a small stone structure overlooking the sea.
From outside, the raucous cries of the fishmongers and the deep, melodious chanting of sailors killing time on the dock came drifting in, helping to build up a deceptive mood of security—deceptive because there was no security to be had on Nidor any longer.
On the walls around the office were posters which showed the intense, brooding face of Party Leader Del peFenn Vyless as reproduced in the blotchy pastels of a cheapjack printer. The Leader was off on a journey to the disturbed area around Elvisen, investigating conditions among the noisy bunch of discontented, landless ex-farmers clustered in the lowlands there. Kris was glad Del peFenn was elsewhere; he didn’t mind dealing with Norvis and the others, but both Kris and Del were strong men and there was inevitably conflict between, them—with Del, as the senior member of the organization, invariably coming out ahead.
