J. F. Bone, page 4
“Well, what’s down there?” I asked.
“Gravity 80 percent Earth normal. Atmosphere: Oxygen 20 percent, the rest helium, chlorine, nitrogen and rare gases. Carbon-based ecology. The other data indicate it’s livable for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen-type life.”
“Well, that’s good enough tor me. What do you think?”
“What do I think. I think if you want to go down there, I’ll have to go with you. Where you go, I go. I think I must play Ruth to your Naomi, even though you are the wrong sex for the part.” She laughed and added “Thank Heaven!”
“What’s so funny?” I asked. I had the feeling that I was being obtuse.
“You wouldn’t appreciate what I was thinking.” She looked at me, veiled her eyelids and regarded me with such a naked expression of lust that I flushed. “I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve seen that siren look before. And anyway I meant what did you think of the planet.”
“Oh that. It’s all right. However, it would be nice to know if the dominant race is humanoid.”
“There’s no way of checking,” I said. “We don’t have the equipment. We’ll just have to take our chances. After landing the few kilograms of wire left won’t be enough for much more than a blast-off, we’d need a thousand times that if we want to go somewnere.”
“The boat will hit as high as the yellow component on copper fuel,” she added, “about four hundred lumes— which might take us where we want to go in a few dozen years. Chances are we’d be dead of old age long before that time.”
“Oh stop it! It wouldn’t be over five. You know the difference between subjective and objective time as well as I do.”
“I don’t think I’d care to live five years in this boat with you. Two months has been plenty.”
“I’m going to orbit for a while and find the best landing spot,” I said. “I don’t think we should put down close to one of those larger towns. You really can’t tell what sort of life inhabits this world.”
“The odds’ll be a hundred to one they’re bipedal and about the same they’re not humanoid,” Martha insisted. “Town ecology is characteristic of a primitive type of civilization.”
“Let’s hope there’s more than an architectural resemblance. I think I’ll land on the edge of that northern forest.” I pointed. “The one below us now—and we’ll come down at night when it’s quiet. Now stand still a moment.” I took the webcor from the control board, pulled the loop of duralloy away from her skin and severed it with a high intensity beam. “It’s time you were free. I’ll need you to help me land.”
Martha rubbed the hot spot where the blast had singed her, stretched and dropped into the bunk beside the control chair. “It’s about time.”
Martha changed her clothing. The tight pants were appreciably tighter. She smiled. She had gotten fat from the confining life aboard the lifeboat, where there once were planes and angles, now there were curves.
As I tilted the gyros, the lifeboat spun on its long axis and presently was orbiting stern first. “All right, we’re ready to go down,” I said, “what sort of an approach do you recommend?”
“Dad designed these for either a straight-in curve, or a skip approach. It’s harder on the boat to come straight in. The heat shield won’t protect the wings, and we’ll lose aerodynamic stability. Straight-in is only for emergencies. So we do it primitive—like back in the rocket days. We calculate an approach corridor, decelerate and then glide down to a landing. Actually it shouldn’t be too hard, although this boat’ll probably stall out at 200 kph.”
I shrugged. “We can only die once. I’ve never landed a lifeboat.”
“I have, and walked away from it,” Martha said.
“Then you’d better land this one.”
“Why not?” Martha slipped into the pilot’s chair. “I might as well earn my passage.” She checked the instruments.
“You pick the exact site,” I suggested. “One is about as bad as another.”
“We’ll skip in the upper atmosphere to kill speed,” Martha said, as she rotated the ship on its gyro to bring the bow forward. The air will do a better job of slowing us than the jets could ever do. I’ve noticed a good spot-— a shallow bay, a level beach and a salt marsh that ultiCautiousmately becomes dry land. We should be able to put this job on the ground without a bit of trouble.”
“Okay, you’re flying. Take her down.”
Martha did, and the landing went precisely as it should, a glass-smooth approach, a delicate touchdown that killed residual heat and speed in clouds of spray and steam, a crushing deceleration as we hit the marsh, a series of bumps and a final grating jar as we slid onto dry soil. Martha grinned as she closed the control board. “That was a good landing, if I do say so myself.”
“I agree,” I said. “You really brought her down like an expert.”
“I’ve had years of experience. Incidentally, we’d better run a check and find out what biological adaptations we’ll have to simulate in order to live here.”
“I hope there aren’t too many.” I frowned. “Adaptation is always a mess.” I opened sampler ports, took air and soil samples, passed them into the analyzer and waited. The writer hummed, clicked and began extruding tape. “Hey! look at this—four plus coordination with Earth. Well, what do you know?”
“How many major adaptations?” Martha asked practically.
“One. The whole place is high in chlorides. We’ll need a greater salt tolerance; either an increased renal efficiency or sweat gland modifications.”
“Would we be hurt if we went outside as we are?” Martha asked.
“Of course not. The chloride is a long term thing.”
“Then let’s go out.”
I shrugged. “If I were you, I’d wait until morning.”
“Well, open the port at least.”
“Uh-uh. I want to be able to see what’s outside.”
“Cautious?”
“Cowardly. It won’t be impossible to wait until morning, just uncomfortable.”
It was.
Dawn came with startling abruptness, and with it a yellow sun, slightly larger than Earth’s, shining uncompromisingly from a cloudless, greenish sky.
“Want to explore?” I asked, ‘it’s going to be some time before the survival box’ll be able to cook us up what we want.”
She nodded. “I want to get out of here and breathe some unregenerated air, and get a bath. To put it frankly, this place stinks!”
“Okay, let’s go. I pushed the hatch control to “open.”
“But first, let’s attend to our defenses.” I opened the arms locker and took out two kellys—heavy military models— and the webcor. I clipped a charge belt and holster around my waist and handed her the second kelly.
We climbed down to the ground and stood still for a moment, letting our bodies accustom themselves to gravity, sunlight, and fresh air.
“Deserted place,” Martha murmured as she scanned the dark trees and the empty clearing. “Could we have frightened the denizens off?”
“Could be, but I doubt it. Probably they sleep in the daytime. There was plenty of noise early this morning.”
“I didn’t hear it.”
“You couldn’t; not over the noise you were making. Or do you know you snore now that you’re under gravity?”
“I do not.”
“Next time I’ll make a recording and prove it to you.”
Martha looked at me with mock anger, then spoiled the effect by giggling. “Come to think of it, what can I do except stop sleeping in the same room with you?”
“You could keep your mouth closed,” I said, “even though that’s asking a lot—Oh! Oh!” My head turned sharply to the right toward the beach. “We’ve got company.”
Martha looked along the direction of my eyes. A startled expression crossed her face. “Well, for Heaven’s sake!” she gasped. “I don’t believe it!”
CHAPTER 7
I couldn’t believe it either. It was a robot riding an animal, a huge splayfooted beast whose long legs argued a certain amount of speed. Behind the robot was a cluster of stumpy-legged, cylindrical beasts with roughly tetra-hedral heads bearing horns above each eye and at the end of their muzzles. They milled about uneasily and made querulous noises.
The robot regarded us fixedly.
“What’s that about low technology?” I asked. “See how that thing moves, hardly any jerkiness at all. It’s as good as a Mark Ten.”
“I don’t think—” Martha began, but what she thought was not said, because the robot uttered a hollow shriek and came racing across the meadow toward us. I noticed then that it was carrying a spear, and the thing was pointed at us.
“On max,” I ordered, drawing my kelly. “Robots are hard to stop.”
“Minimum,” Martha replied, drawing her blaster and putting a low intensity charge into the rider, while I was still setting the charge knob. It stiffened and fell off the animal with a clatter of metal, and didn’t move. “I thought so,” she said, “That’s no robot. It’s an armored humanoid. We had people like that once. They were called knights.”
“When was that?”
“Back in the Dark Ages—several thousand years ago.”’
“Was that why they were called knights?” I asked.
She ignored me.
The humanoid’s mount eyed us suspiciously as we approached, sniffed, emitted a whistling screech, before tleeing toward the semicircle of horned animals, its splay-feet spattering mud as it ran.
“We’ve been too long without a bath,” Martha said.
I ignored her and turned the prone figure on its back. Instantly an iron fist gripped my arm.
“Look out!” Martha screamed. A sizzling streak from her kelly cut through the blade of a knife driving at me. The shock of the discharge tore me out of the thing’s grasp as the blast slammed it back to the ground.
I shook my head, half dazed by the shock.
She came closer, her kelly ready, as I unlaced and removed the headpiece to reveal a face startlingly human with only minor differences. Only high heavy cheekbones that gave the face a triangular shape, tiny ears, and a complete lack of facial hair except for long thick eyelashes indicated a different species. The eyes were open and the face held a fixed, inanimate expression.
Martha placed fingers on the figure’s neck. “Pulse rate’s slow for something this size, eyes are glassy, breathing is slow. I’d say it’s in shock.”
“Why not?” I asked. “How would you like to have a knife melted out of your hand?”
“I’m not wearing iron gloves. Frankly, I doubt if the fellow’s burned.”
“Let’s get him down to the ship.”
“Him? Are you sure it’s a him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s a they, but I can’t see calling him it. You can call him her if you wish.”
“Thanks, I’ll withhold judgement. Probably you’re right. Warriors in primitive societies are usually male.”
“Do we have a translator aboard?”
“We should have a Hunt-Winslow semiportable multipurpose.”
“Hope it’s not broken.”
“She shrugged. “It’s probably all right. Those things are rugged.”
“Well, how about finding it while I get this fellow over to the boat.”
By the time Martha located the Hunt-Winslow, the native’s eyes had lost their empty look and he was making noises—guttural sounds, followed by liquid sounds, tongue clicks and glottal stops. It was obviously a language, but equally obviously it was unrelated to any I knew.
“The translator, dummy,” Martha muttered impatiently.
I shook the fog out of my brain, put a helmet on the native, and turned the thing on. The native froze in mid-speech and remained that way while the cyborg ransacked his brain and filled a section of memory banks. Finally recognizable sounds came from the translator’s speaker, a little metallic, because something is always lost in translation, but the meaning was perfectly clear despite the archaic construction. I took the helmet off his head and packed it in its case while the translator changed his odd sounds into Fedspeech.
“Prithee, fair sir,” the translator crackled, “with what fell thing didst thou unjesset me?” the translator paused, waiting for an answer.
It’s called a blaster,” Martha explained. “It’s one of our weapons.” The translator dutifully translated into guttural gurgles and glottals. I noticed with some surprise that it managed to retain her tonal qualities.
“Is it that thy lord is dumb that thou bee’st so forward?” the cyborg translated.
Martha boggled and I grinned. “Nay, fair sir,” I said. “Tis this way in my land. The ladies speak often, first and longest.”
He shrugged—a peculiarly familiar gesture that made me smile. It said so much without words.
Martha flipped the translator switch. “I don’t think I’m going to like this fellow,” she said. “He’s a male sex chauvinist.”
“And what’s so bad about that? You’ve been living with one. Now turn that machine back on.”
“Hight I Sar Malthor, lord of this demesne. ‘Twas a peasant, Garlan by name, who apprized me of thy presence. As suzerain I did arm myself and ride out to see if he spoke truly, and he had indeed for your great wedge of metal does indeed lie in the zocca pasture. And the zoccas refuse to pasture with that metal before them. They are shy beasts and betimes stubborn.”
I noticed that the translator was beginning to do a better job with the native’s tongue, and I was grateful. I have no knack for archaic forms.
“As justice of the peace, and chief magistrate, it is my duty to investigate all strange occurrences and crimes in my demesne. You are an occurrence, and your metal keeps our beasts from their pasture.” He had risen to a sitting position and was eyeing the evidence before his eyes with disbelief. The plowed trail trailing back to the sea had destroyed a fair bit of pasture as well as making a record of our speed when we had hit the beach. It wasn’t hard to follow his train of thought. Sorovkin technique worked quite well on him, which surprised me.
“This metal,” the translator said, “it is very strange. Not even Maestro Calli, the greatest smith in Tharn, could fashion such a thing, or cast so great a form in one piece. And it gleams like a new-struck coin despite its scraping over the ground.”
I brightened. Coinage—ah! Where there is coinage there must be copper. I looked at Martha and she nodded. She was better at Sorovkin than I.
“Well, where do we go from here?” I asked.
“I would suggest…” he let it dangle.
“Yes?”
“You could set me free after you have exacted an oath. I would then, perforce, be sworn to aid you. And if I am not mistaken you need aid. For never have I seen such strangely attired folk as you. Your woman is without modesty, displaying her limbs like a foolish page, and you wear such garments as we hide beneath our armor or our robes.”
“Different lands, different customs.”
“You must be from a different land indeed.”
“My land is quite a distance from here,” I admitted. “And I agree we should conform to your customs.”
“My race is long on conformity,” he explained, “and we have strong traditions.”
“Okay, we’ll take a chance on your traditions and hope that honoring your word is one of them. Swear the oath.”
“I’d be delighted,” he said. His voice changed and became oddly formal. “I pledge the honor of my family and my honor as a warrior that I shall bear thee true faith and allegiance and shall not forswear myself without giving fair warning. I will fight in thy defense. I will share my wealth and property with thee and I shall honor thee as a friend.”
“That’s a lot.” I was impressed.
“Now give me something, a bracelet, a ring, a chain to signify you accept my fealty.”
I slipped off my wrist chronometer and handed it to him.
” Tis a strange, rare gem,” he breathed. “I have never seen its like. These figures that flash upon its surface. What do they mean?”
“They tell time—the time on my world, and mean Galactic time.”
“It is truly a king’s gift,” he said as he slipped it on his wrist and admired the fit. “Now help me into my harness, and I shall return to Lothain for conveyance and proper clothing. You would do well to remain hidden until I return.”
CHAPTER 8
Martha was unhappy with Tharn. She was an active woman who had been involved in major social and political affairs for most of her life, and to live in a circumscribed static society run by and for males was hard on her. She was effectively separated from the mainstream, not because she was incompetent but because she was female.
I had it made. I was the boon companion of the Lord of the Manor. I taught him karate and the military arts and he taught me the techniques of sword and spear, axe and mace. Sar Malthor and I respected each other and got along famously. I could suggest things that Sar Malthor often implemented. I was free to come and go as I pleased. I was respected and envied, held a certain amount of real power, and was recognized as an important individual.
All this was denied to Martha. She was confined to the manor and to household tasks. Her companions were cultural morons whose activities were almost entirely domestic, and her only access to power was through me. And what was worse, she wasn’t an individual, she was Warren Robertshaw’s woman. It galled her independent soul, and since she wasn’t used to operating through a man who was her political if not her personal enemy, she was continually frustrated. I sympathized, but that didn’t help matters. It came to a head several tennites after we had settled in at the manor. A tennite is the Tharn week, a ten-day period ending with a holy day at the temple, which combined the functions of religious services, a town meeting and a justice court.
