Gording hit ground and came at him again, face calm, hands outstretched for murder. He wasn"t quick enough. Corbell swung the cat-tail into his face. The beast"s teeth closed in Gording"s neck. In that moment of distraction Corbell swung a haymaker at his jaw.
Gording jerked aside. The cat-tail was a tight fur collar, its teeth were still in his neck, but he hadn"t been as distracted as Corbell had thought. Hopelessly off balance himself, Corbell watched the old man set himself and lash out.
The hard fist sank into his solar plexus. Corbell doubled over. Lightning exploded at the nape of his neck.
His belly hurt... his neck hurt... he was curled on his side in crushed strawberries. He tried to uncurl.
They were standing around him, a lot of Boys looking down. Skatholtz was shaking his head and smiling. "Magnificent, Corbell!"
"Then," said Corbell, "why am I lying on the ground hurting? Never mind." He uncurled a little more. Gording stood relaxed, his hand covering the flesh torn by cat-tail teeth. He showed no inclination to resume hostilities.
Corbell said, "I"m sorry. I shouldn"t have said that. Maybe it"s jealousy. You"re all like . you"re all smarter than I am, and it shows."
There was blood beneath the hand Gording held to his neck. He breathed heavily. He said, "I understand. You were careless with an unfamiliar language. I should not have taken offense. It will be best if I rejoin the dikta for tonight." He turned away and took two stumbling steps before hands closed on his arms.
Krayhayft was smiling. His hands made a wiping motion. "That won"t serve. You can"t go back to them, Gording. What would they think when your hair changed color?"
Cording laughed. "It was worth trying."
Corbell said, "s.h.i.t!"
"No, no, Corbell, you did a fine job of acting. It was the set of your muscles that betrayed you everywhere. I couldn"t know why you wanted me to attack you, and I had to find out."
"I"m sorry. I couldn"t think of any other way. I still don"t know..."
Krayhayft said, "We"ll know soon enough. The logic holds. A cat-tail bit you some days before we found you. We saw the mark. Our tradition is that the dikta may not enjoy the company of cat-tails. We know that long ago it was possible to change the nature of a living thing, and we know that it was done to cat-tails. Why should they not make dikta immortality as Boys make spit? But we"ll watch you as we go, Gording, to see if you grow young.
"And as we go, Corbell, we will think of some useful punishment for your deception. Already I have an idea.
"And we go now." now."
IV.
By dead of night the tribe moved along the sh.o.r.e. They carried neither food nor water. Jupiter showed a bright gibbous disk above the dark sea. The mystery planet showed too, near Jupiter. Corbell picked out other moons, and a moon shadow on Jupiter"s banded face.
One of the children had gone to sleep and was being carried. The others asked a thousand questions of laughing Boys. Corbell listened to the answers. Details of the march ahead... other bands of Boys wondrous machines... the gathering in Sarash-Zillish, nothing he hadn"t heard or guessed.
He waited his chance to talk to Gording alone. It never came. Gording marched at the head of the line, under escort. When Corbell tried to catch up he was barred with spear b.u.t.ts.
By morning they were thirsty.
By noon they were very thirsty, and loud were the complaints of the boy-children. Gording was showing the strain of unaccustomed hiking, but he showed it silently, in the slight weave to his walk and the occasional stumble.
In the afternoon they reached a river. The splashing was loud as Boys and boys drank and then swam. Here they camped. Corbell and others caught fish with makeshift hooks and lines of thread that might have come from Dikta City. Corbell was not allowed to clean his fish; he was not allowed a knife.
And this was the thread that would make wonderful strangler"s cord, if it didn"t cut the strangler"s fingers. As he considered his fishline he caught Krayhayft grinning at him. Krayhayft held out his hand. Corbell put the fishline in it.
The river had cut a deep gorge into the former sea bottom, leaving high, sheer cliffs of layered sandstone. All day they followed the twisting, beautifully colored walls. At sunset, where the cliffs constricted and took a sharp turn, they came on a hidden village. The village occupied both sides of the river, joined by a wide bridge. Beyond the village the desolation continued to the horizon.
The villagers made them welcome and fed them. Corbell entertained with a medley of advertising jingles. Afterward Krayhayft began a tale while Corbell made himself comfortable against a convenient boulder.
It seemed to him that the village was a well-placed trap.
If dikta followed a band of Boys from Dikta City, they would have to go around the village, climbing cliffs to do it and leaving traces of themselves, and into more desolation. Unless they wanted to risk raiding the village.
There was a "phone booth" at one end of the bridge. The bridge was a wide arch of prestressed concrete or something better, its lines singularly beautiful. It was the only sign of advanced technology among basic and primitive structures.
There had been bread and corn with tonight"s fish. There must be a working "phone booth" here to bring them. But was that a working booth? was that a working booth? It was too blatant. It might be a trap. It was too blatant. It might be a trap.
A voice behind Corbel"s ear whispered, "We will not let you use the prilatsil."
Corbell turned to stare rudely at the intruder. He had not not been watching the booth. been watching the booth.
The Boy was of the village: a pink-eyed, golden-haired albino with a narrow ferret face. He almost lost his footing as he squatted next to Corbell. His loincloth was animal skin.
He was young, then. Corbell had learned to tell. The older Boys were never awkward, and they did not brag of their kills by wearing the skins. He grinned and said, "Try it if you like. We would bruise you."
"I think they"ll bruise me anyway," Corbell said. He"d been wondering about Krayhayft"s "punishment." d.a.m.n Krayhayft. Corbell would be a bag of nerve ends before the blade fell.
"Yes. You lied," said the golden Boy. "I am to be there when punishment comes."
"s.a.d.i.s.t," Corbell said in English.
"I can guess the meaning. No. We do not make pain for pleasure, only for instruction. Your pain will be instructive to you and to us." The Boy chuckled gloatingly, making a liar of himself, and got up.
Now, what was that all about? Corbell expected to die as soon as Gording began to grow young. He knew too much. Or would they only wipe his memory? He shivered. It would still be death, though it would let them use the ancient felon"s genes.
They left carrying provisions. One of the boy-children stayed behind. Half a dozen villagers came with them, including the young albino.
The continental shelf had been wider in this area. It was still barren. The day was nearly over before they reached, first fruit trees, then cornfields. They camped in the corn.
They pa.s.sed a larger tribe on the third day. For a time Krayhayft"s tribe mingled with Tsilliwheep"s tribe, exchanging news. Tsilliwheep was a strange one: large, pudgy, sullen-faced, a cla.s.sic schoolyard bully with pure white hair. He issued no orders and he mingled with n.o.body. When his tribe veered away it took two of Krayhayft"s tribe and two boy-children.
They pa.s.sed single human beings at a distance. "Loners," Skatholtz told Corbell. "They tire of others around them. For a time they go alone. Krayhayft has done it six times."
"Why?"
"Maybe to know if they still love themselves. Maybe to know that they can live without help. Maybe they want to give up talking. Tsilliwheep will be a loner soon, I think. He had the look. Corbell, it is very bad manners to speak to a loner, or interfere with him, or offer him help."
Through waist-high corn they marched. In early afternoon a herd of dwarf buffalo pa.s.sed, tens of thousands of them, blackening the land and raising continuous rolling thunder. The trampled path was a quarter hour"s march across: corn churned into the dirt along with the corpses of aged buffalo unable to keep up. For the first time Corbell saw vultures. Vultures had survived unchanged.
Skatholtz bent their path to take them through a ruined city. An earthquake, or Girl weaponry, had shattered most of the buildings, and time had weathered all the sharp edges. Corbell saw sandblasted public prilatsil; he ignored them. He"d seen no evidence that power was still coming to this ruin.
Boys had made a semi-permanent camp at the far edge of the ruined city. Krayhayft"s tribe joined them, and contributed ears of corn to their dinner. Corbell saw what they were using for cooking.
What the locals had mounted on rocks above their fireplace was a piece of clear gla.s.s seven feet across, curved like an enormous wok: a good enough frying pan except for the dangerous jagged edges. It had had to be a piece of a bubble-car. to be a piece of a bubble-car.
On the fourth day they pa.s.sed two tribes, and joined with them for a time, and left them behind. With the second of these groups went the last two boy-children. Corbell couldn"t help wondering if that related to his his situation. There are things you don"t do in front of children. situation. There are things you don"t do in front of children.
Gording was having less trouble keeping up. If the chance came, the old man would be able to run... but running wouldn"t do it. The Boys were faster. Corbell wanted transportation.
"Phone booths" didn"t send far enough. Useful for hiding in a city, but not for reaching safety; not unless he could get into the emergency-transport network Skatholtz had diagrammed for him. A car would be better. Or... what did the Boys use to lower a dozen bedrooms onto the roof of Dikta City? A giant helicopter? Some big flying thing, anyway.
He wouldn"t find any of those things outside a city. Maybe they existed in Sarash-Zillish alone. He would reach Sarash-Zillish too late; Gording"s hair would be showing black by then.
Past noon on the fifth day. Far across the corn they watched a loner hunting. Sprint, walk a bit, sprint, walk: The loner must be tired. But the kangaroo was exhausted. Hop and waddle, hop and waddle, look back at the closing loner, hop hop hop! Until at last it waited for the loner to walk up and kill it.
Krayhayft"s tribe veered to give the loner room, but the loner had other plans. He did a fast butchering job on the kangaroo, slung the meat over his shoulder and loped to join the tribe at an angle.
He was dirty. He bled where the kangaroo had snapped at his forearm. He had lost his loincloth somewhere. But he grinned, white flashing through the dirt, and he talked at electric-typewriter speed. Corbell caught some of it. He"d been out a year and a half, since the end of long night the previous year... had gone places, done things, seen wonders... had studied the kchint herds from hiding, knew more of them than any Boy... his rapid speech ran down as his eyes locked on Corbell.
Corbell tried to listen to what the Boys were telling the loner about him. Unfamiliar words, and the sudden drumming of the afternoon rain, made understanding impossible. But the wanderer derived much amus.e.m.e.nt from what he was hearing.
When the afternoon rain ended, the clearing sky disclosed reaching towers whose tops sketched a dome shape.
They camped a mere hour"s distance from what seemed an intact city. The loner had cleaned the mud out of his hair, revealing it as brown streaked with white, and had found a loincloth. He did all the talking that night. Was that why Boys turned loner? Nothing to talk about anymore?
Corbell slept badly. The towers made a broken arc against the stars. If he could break loose, to reach the city alone... But every time he looked around him someone was watching him. As if they could read his mind.
V.
Parhalding was bigger than Sarash-Zillish. Moth and rust had done their work... and invading soil and gra.s.s and trees and vines. The buildings still stood, most of them. Their flat roofs sprouted green heads. Grapevines and blackberry vines swathed their waists. Corn and wheat grew mixed where soil was shallow. Where soil and water could pool, there were gnarled old trees bearing varied fruit and walnuts.
Corbell picked what looked like a puffy lemon. (The limbs of the tree were thick and low-its green head touched vines swarming to the second story of a building with empty windows-but Boys climbed like monkeys, and they were too close, and watching.) The fruit tasted like lemonade, like lemon with sugar.
Parhalding was what an abandoned city looked like. In Sarash-Zillish he had taken the state of preservation for granted. Foolish. He should have been looking for caretakers.
The vines bulged oddly near the corner, and something glinted within the bulge. Light shifted as he walked... and Corbell became certain that there was a bubble-car under the bulge. How badly damaged? Corbell caught Gording"s fraction-of-a-second glance. Had anyone else caught it? The Boys couldn"t know everything...
But the tribe had clumped inward as they walked. He might have thought they were afraid of ancient ghosts. They converged to a corn-New file pact ma.s.s with Corbell in the middle, and it was Corbell who was afraid.
That building ahead: no vines, no green top. Someone had maintained it. Corbell knew it by its shape: a hospital.
The hospital"s big double doors opened for them. Now the dozen Boys around Corbell were close enough to trip over one another, though they didn"t. Indirect lighting came alive slowly, showing an admissions desk, a shattered picture window with a few curved transparent teeth still in it, cloud-rug and sofas cleaned of slivers; and a wall covered by twin polar-projection maps with the polar ice caps prominent.
A panicky choking sound pulled his eyes around. Corbell saw yesterday"s loner fall to his knees in the doorway. His head was gone. His neck jetted bright blood.
Gording was at bay. The albino stood bent-legged and snarling between Gording and the double doors. As the young albino came at him, Gording threw a rock, sidearm, to miss. Corbell tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The rock pa.s.sed behind the albino"s neck, turned sharply and circled his throat. Gording jerked hard on the other rock still in his hand.
Then it made sense. The albino screamed without sound and clawed at the air between them. His neck parted cleanly. The doors opened for the headless corpse as it stumbled backward. Gording brushed past it and was gone.
Corbell became aware that two Boys were holding his arms. And the rest were charging after Gording.
Corbell"s military training was far in the past, but he remembered. Stamp down along the shin; the enemy doubles up, you twist and bring your elbow up- His captors faded like ghosts from his blows, and a swinging arm caught him precisely across the eyes. He was dizzy and half blind as they led him up flights of stairs.
"They"ll have him soon," he heard Skatholtz say.
"He"s got thread. We"ll have to test every doorway," said Krayhayft. "Thread is too near invisible, and if it caught a Boy across the throat-come, Corbell."
They had climbed four flights of stairs and gone down a corridor. Corbell looked into an operating room. Four tables, and spidery metal arms above them.
"Nooo!" Corbell thrashed. Your pain will be instructive to you and to us. Your pain will be instructive to you and to us. They were going to dissect him! They pulled him to an operating table and fastened him spread-eagled, face up. They were going to dissect him! They pulled him to an operating table and fastened him spread-eagled, face up.
"You can"t be sure you know everything I know," he called to Krayhayft"s receding back. Nuts, he was gone. But Skatholtz hoisted himself to sitting position on another table.
"Skatholtz, if you destroy my brain, you lose the only viewpoint that isn"t just like your own! Now think about that!"
"We"re not going to ruin your brain. At least I think we"re not. There is that risk."
"What are you going to do?"
"We"re going to entertain each other."
Then Krayhayft came jogging back with a flask of... blood plasma? Clear fluid, anyway. He reached over Corbell"s head and nested it somehow among the tool-tipped steel arms.
Corbell thought, Tell them about the car! Tell them about the car! He swallowed the idea. If his sympathy lay with anyone besides himself, it was with the dikta. Let Gording escape if he could. He swallowed the idea. If his sympathy lay with anyone besides himself, it was with the dikta. Let Gording escape if he could.
A spidery steel arm descended. Its hypodermic tip hesitated above him, then dipped into his neck. Krayhayft"s strong hands held his head immobile for an endless time. Then the hypo withdrew and the arm retracted into its nest.
Corbell waited. Would the stuff put him to sleep? Or only paralyze him?
But Skatholtz was releasing his arms and ankles and pulling him to his feet. Corbell swayed. The stuff was doing something to him.
They took him up three more flights of stairs and down a corridor and into a small theater. They dropped him into a cloud-rug chair. Dust puffed up around him. He sneezed and tried to get up, but he was too dizzy. Something was happening to his mind.
Krayhayft was at work behind him somewhere.
The theater went dark.
Lights glowed in the dark, infinitely far away. Stars: the black sky of interstellar s.p.a.ce. Corbell found familiar constellations, distorted and then something something told him where he was. told him where he was.
"RNA! You shot memory RNA into me! You dirty sons of b.i.t.c.hes," he cried in English. "You did it again!"
"Corbell-"
"What"ll I be this time? What have you made me into?"
"You"ll keep your memory," said Skatholtz, also in English. "You"ll remember things you never lived through. You"ll tell us. Watch the show."
He was nearly sixty light-years from Sol, viewing what had been the State. A voice spoke in a language Corbell had never heard. He didn"t try to understand it. He watched with a familiar fascination. Good-bye Good-bye, CORBELL Mark II Mark II, he thought in the back of his mind. In thin defiance, But I"m still a lousy loser. But I"m still a lousy loser.