“There was considerable opposition within the guild to granting me Master status,” he-said, “But I demonstrated my mastery of the Seven Manipulations, and the Three Ways of Joining Material, and this in front of the full assembly of masters. So they had no choice. But they made me pay dearly for the honor.”
“How so?” I wanted to know.
Otaî told me that his home was about two hundred miles from here, in an area of steep little hills and boulder filled ravines, close to the Karnaian Wilderness. It was a favorite hiding place for the Khalian guerillas, who could not be run down in its sun-beaten stone labyrinths. The Khalian irregulars visited the Nedge from time to time, demanding food in the manner of guerillas throughout the universe. One day, however, one of the Khalian fighting bands came to the Nedge with a different request: they wanted a Master Tinker to accompany them to their camp and assist them in repairs.
“And you were chosen?” I guessed.
“Against my will.”
“But l thought guild members are free to accept or refuse any job that comes along?”
“That’s generally true. But in this case, the Khalia invoked the code of sinik-duty, and the Elders of the Guild had to comply. But they should have chosen by lot among the Masters, rather than merely ordering me to go because I was the youngest.”
“What is sinik-duty?” I asked.
“It is a period of labor which an overlord can demand from a guild. It is considered a sacred obligation.”
“But the Khalia aren’t your overlords,” I pointed out. “Not any longer.”
“True. But they were armed and desperate, and you Alliance people were far away, and all in all we decided not to argue the point.”
“So they took-you away with them?”
“They did indeed. To their hidden encampment. There I did the sort of simple tinkering of which the Khalia themselves seem incapable, fixing simple mechanical contrivances such as hinged doors; and all the time bearing with stoicism their rude and boisterous behavior and living for the day when I would be released.”
“That day seems to have arrived,” I said, “since here you are now in our camp.”
Woodpecker shook his head gloomily. “They granted me a week’s leave so that I could go home and put my affairs into order. But I must return to them, hateful though the prospect is to me.”
“Why return?” I asked him. “There’s nothing they can do to you here.”
“You don’t understand. The Guild stands surety for me. If I don’t return as I promised, they will have to send someone else. In that case, they would expel me from the Guild.”
“Why not take up some other line of work?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Even if I desired to do that—which I don’t—it is impossible. We Nedge are born into our Guilds. One without a Guild affiliation is considered dead. He would have to scratch out living alone, staying well away from the habitations of the people. No female would ever look upon me again. My children, if I had any, would curse my name.”
“Is there no way out?” I asked.
“Only one. The Khalia must themselves terminate my contract. But the contract is void if the Khalian chief who claimed my sinik-duty were to die.”
I pondered. “You couldn’t kill him yourself, could you?”
Woodpecker gave a short whooping laugh. “Me, kill Tostig Manslayer, leader of the war band to whom I am indentured? I wouldn’t be capable of it. Only members of The Guild Without a Nest are permitted to kill, and they have turned me down.”
“So you come to me with your request.”
“It is your business to kill the Khalia. You have told us so often enough.”
I thought about it, and my thoughts were not pleasant ones. I had no confidence in these bird-people, who helped us only grudgingly and seemed fonder of their murderous masters than they were of us. The possibility of treachery here could not be discounted. It was a long journey into the Karnaian Wilderness, through difficult country that afforded a determined enemy many chances to set up a devastating ambush. I really was not justified in leading my men so far afield, and on such a dubious enterprise.
I was about to turn Woodpecker down. But then he said one more thing, and this made me decide differently.
“I will also be able to show you,” he said, “the place where the Khalia fix their spaceships.”
That got my full attention. The location of the Khalian factories, their supply warehouses, and refitting yards was a mystery we had been trying to solve since landing on the planet. We had destroyed their spaceport, but still their ships appeared from time to time, to hit and run, dodging away before we could scramble a pursuit, going to ground somewhere in the wilderness that made up the greater part of Target.
“You have actually seen this place?” I asked him.
He cluck-rattled in the affirmative. “I have seen it. And it is vast, vast.”
“Tell me where,” I said, “We will call up the Fleet.”
“I could not tell you even if I wanted to,” Woodpecker said. “It is somewhere in the Karnaian Wilderness, and I can find it, but maps are beyond my capabilities. And besides, I must personally see Tostig Manslayer dead in order to Claim termination of the contract.”
I thought about it. If true, it would be a matter of the utmost importance. And the opportunity of wiping out a Khalian war band was nothing to be taken lightly, either. It could mean the beginning of the end of the difficult war on Target. And if I could locate their factories, find the places where they rearmed, that would be worth almost any risk.
It was nothing I would care to expose my men to. And anyhow, this called for a scouting mission-for stealth and secrecy, because the idea would be to find the location and then get back and direct the attack upon it. It was a job for one man, and, a guide.
And it was in my mind, too, that if I could kill this Khalian leader, this Tostig, that would be, a great blow as well.
“Wait for me here,” I told Woodpecker. “I’ll be back in an hour. Tell me, Otaî, do you believe in a supreme being?”
“Of course,” he told me, “The god of my guild is called Thalatak.”
”Not even Thalatak will save you if you have lied to me,” I said, in suitably impressive tones, I hoped.
VIII.
Four days later, Woodpecker and I were camped in a narrow dried-out riverbed just a few miles within the Karnaian Wilderness. We had taken a lightweight Scout skimmer as far as I dared to go, flying mostly at night at only a few feet above the ground in order to escape surveillance.
We had hidden the vehicle away on the edge of the Karnaian and proceeded on foot. We picked our way through a rocky wilderness, a high desert of tumbled stone and shale. The wind screamed and tore at us without letup, and I was thankful I had brought goggles when the quick, deadly dust storms came boiling up out of the south. I had left Gideon in charge of the squad, and had sworn him to secrecy as to my destination. When I told him about it, he was eager to come along, and put up several good arguments as to why he should be taken. When I turned him down he had accused me of trying to hog all the glory. But it wasn’t that at all. I had the fear that I was on a fool’s errand, and I wouldn’t risk the lives of any of my men on it.
We had been discussing the Khalia, Woodpecker and I. Although he purported to despise them, there was always an odd air of grudging reverence in his voice when he discussed them. Whereas when he talked about us humans, his tone was somewhere between bantering and scornful. I had noticed this in other of the Nedge, and had put it down to sheer cussedness. But now I was growing exasperated, and decided I’d really heard all I wanted to about the Khalia and their lordly qualities.
“Otaî,” I said, “it seems to me that you and all your people have a problem. On the one hand, you keep on talking about how you despise the Khalia. On the other hand, you talk about them as though they were something special. Okay, let’s get it out into the open. What, in your estimation, is so special about the race you r
efer to as ‘Dwarf Men with Too Many Teeth’?”
“Why, obviously,” Otaî said, “the Panya are despicable and hateful. But it is equally obvious that they have feii.”
“And what,” I demanded, “is feii?”
“Feii,” he told me, “is the quality that makes one person or being of higher or lower social rank than another. It emanates from a variety of factors.”
“I’ve never heard the expression before,” I told Otaî. “Is it much in use among your people?”
“It’s something we think about quite a lot, or rather, take into consideration. Probably nobody mentioned it to you humans because we didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that you humans have very little feii.”
I became immediately and irrationally angry. How dare this six-foot chicken with a silly red crest on top of his narrow foolish head say that we humans were deficient in feii! I controlled myself with an effort and asked him, “What about the Khalia? Do you mean to say they’ve got feii and we don’t?”
“Yes, precisely,” Otaî said. “But don’t get cross with me about it. It’s not my fault that things are that way. Anyhow, in the matter of feii the Khalia have one obvious advantage over you.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, tight-lipped.
“It’s just that they’ve been on our planet for fifty years,” Otaî said. “They’ve had time to learn about us, what we think proper, what we consider good form, and what we don’t like, too.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, for one thing, you expose your entire arms like a common horoji. None of us ever do, have you noticed? And the Khalia not only cover their elbows, but wear the blue anaraji elbow-covers of rank whenever they go out of doors.”
“And that really makes a difference?”
“A tremendous difference. Not just any single thing, but the cumulative effect of all of them. Not just the anaraji elbow-covers, but also the crimson eyelid paint which we call tauriang, and the other things; like heligo-dun, vastiis, molocatia, and there are more. The Khalia have learned them, and have adopted them. They’ve increased their feii so much that they’ve passed quite beyond the class of human creature, into the realm of the godlike. That’s why we continue to respect them even though they’re out of power. We Nedge of the Guilds do not like to betray godlike beings. It can bring very bad luck.”
With Woodpecker’s help I drew up a list of the things which conferred feii. All of them involved clothing or ornaments. The Khalia wore them, we did not. That was the explanation for our low status on Target, and for the continued prestige of the despised Khalia. Already my trip had proven of value. When I was able to tell Bar Kochba about this, I had no doubt he would make the wearing of these items obligatory for our troops.
One thing still puzzled me about feii. “If that’s all it takes, why don’t all the Nedge raise themselves in status? It seems simple enough. The orange achiki, for example, which confers rank in minor nobility. It’s just a piece of cloth and two strips of leather tied around the left foot.”
“We could never do that,” Woodpecker said. “Status is either hereditary, or conferred by services to the Guild, or sanctioned by na-aringi.”
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“Na-aringi refers to divine irresistible impulse. It’s impossible to fake.”
I didn’t correct him. The Khalians had made good use of the doctrine of na-aringi, and so would we. Here was the explanation for our low status on Target, and for the continued prestige of the Khalia. That would change as soon as I got back to headquarters.
Just now there were other things to think about. According to Woodpecker, we were within a half-day’s trek of the Khalian camp, and the secret spaceship factory, or whatever it was.
IX.
The night was dark, and a cold wind whipped over the desert floor. We had been climbing for several hours, steadily and without a stop. Little pebbles skittered and rolled under our feet as we negotiated a narrow pass between bulging boulders and came to a long sloping escarpment. We began our descent between knife-sharp ridges. I didn’t ask Woodpecker how much farther we had to go. By his nervousness, evident through a constant ruffling of his tailfeathers, I knew we were close. We came to a pass, went through it, and Woodpecker searched around for landmarks. I risked using a pencil-thin beam of light to help him orient himself. He seemed doubtful, unsure of himself. Then he said, “Here’s the entrance!”
It was through a maze of tumbled boulders. After passing through them, we found steps roughly hewn into the rock. They led downward.
We went down for a considerable distance. I estimated that we were some hundreds of feet below the surface. Woodpecker led me down a passageway, dimly lit with glow bulbs set into niches. We came to the end, and turned a corner, and I came to an abrupt halt, because the stone ledge ended abruptly.
I steadied myself, looked outward, and then I beheld it. I was in a cavern that seemed as vast as thought itself, bathed in an eerie green from natural luminescence in the rocks. It stretched as far as the eye could see, beneath a lowering vault of stone. It was a view of boundlessness rigorously framed—an oxymoron of stone and space.
And on that cavern floor, lying there with the dignity of industrial archeology, in an awesome iconization of technological power, lay a vast grouping of spaceships. At first, I could only make out their rounded steel hulls, gleaming blue or grey, reflections winking off their surfaces. Then I noticed their disarray, for they were piled one atop another in the familiar disorder of the junkyard.
I had no time to consider the shattering implications of this find, however. I noticed that Woodpecker had stepped back, and his movement set off a faint alarm in my mind. I turned, groping for my cluster pistol. Shadows were detaching themselves from the walls, coming toward me. In the gloom, I caught the gleam of pointed teeth, and I tried to swing my weapon into firing position. Too late. Something crashed against the side of my head. I knew that I was falling, but I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
X.
When I recovered consciousness, my first emotion was one of amazement that I was not dead. My gratitude gave way to darker emotions when I remembered that the Khalia take prisoners mainly for the purpose of providing themselves with a supply of fresh meat. They are pure carnivores, and their eating habits are said to resemble Terran leopards or hyenas. They were cannibals at one time in their history, until they developed a sense of racial identity. Now they feast on the flesh of others, as do we humans. They generally like their meat fresh and bloody, just killed, for then it still contains the mana that makes for strength. There are exceptions to this fresh meat rule, however: as the Khalians developed their rudimentary civilization, they also acquired a fondness for meat that is “high,” which is to say, rotten. They would appreciate the old Earth recipe for jugged hare, in which you keep the carcass in a jug until it comes apart at the touch, rottenness and tenderness being synonymous. I hoped that fate was not intended for me.
I was seated on the ground in a cavelike structure. A rope was tied around my ankle, the other end of which was affixed to an iron staple in the wall. Examining the knot, I saw that I could undo it without great difficulty. But I did not—I had heard that there was nothing the Khalia liked better than to find one of their animated food supplies trying to escape from the den. Our reports said that such attempts were invariably detected, and the unfortunate victim was turned over to the cubs to snack on, then tied up again half-dead from wounds, to await his fate as a living appetizer.
I sat on the ground, nursing my bruised head and silently lamenting my bad luck. After a while, three Khalian warriors came to inspect me. They were about four feet tall, and they wore short, multicolored garments that resembled kilts. The colors, I learned later, were a form of war-band identification. They wore a leather harness crossed around their narrow chests and cinched around their waists. From this harness depended a varie
ty of hand weapons—swords and short axes, knives of various sorts, whips, a lariat, and several kinds of small arms. They jabbered at me in their barking language, then, seeing I did not understand, howled in unison until Woodpecker came running up to translate for them.
“They want you to stand up. They will release your bonds, They want you to accompany them quietly. It would be best for you if you did so, because they haven’t had lunch yet and any show of resistance might set off in them a feeding frenzy. That is not a good thing to see, especially when you would be the object of their appetites.”
“Tell them they have nothing to fear from me,” I said bitterly. “You arranged this yourself, didn’t you, Otaî?”
”Yes, Judah. But do not think badly of me. I was forced to do it because of my Guild Pledge, which is the most sacred duty of any Nedge in his capacity as a Guild member.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. Before Otaî could tell me more the Khalian warriors had untied me and led me away by jerking on the rope they had tied around my neck and emitting sharp yapping cries.
My guards led me through winding underground passageways, all the time yapping and growling among themselves; discussing different ways of serving me up, no doubt. They brought me to a large chamber hewn out of the rock. One of them, who spoke a little English, pointed to a chair with a forepaw.
“Sit!” he said. “No move! Tostig, he come.”
I sat down. The guards left. I looked around, but saw nothing that could be used as a weapon. This seemed not the time to try anything. Later I hoped to have a better opportunity. If there was a later. Meanwhile, I waited for this Tostig to come. No doubt he wanted to sample me to see if I was suitable for one of their beastly feasts.
Various Fiction Page 301