He greeted the newcomer effusively. “My dear Torcred! We came very near giving you up! And from the look of your machine, you must have had a narrow squeak.”
Torcred frowned imperceptibly. It seemed an evil omen that he should be met by the only one among his fellow-terrapins whom he actively disliked—Helsed, the talker, who was always close to the chief’s ear in council, but far from his side in the battle.
“That’s right,” admitted Torcred curtly, and started to brush past the other and his brimming questions. But he found himself face to face with another terrapin who had risen from the shadow, a taller man whose hair shaded from the usual black into gray, and whose face was permanently lined in a stern expression of command. He was Vazcled, the chief. Torcred fell back a step and inclined his head in salute.
“What happened to you?” inquired Vazcled quietly.
“I was attacked,” said the younger man with reluctance.
“By what?”
“An aero.”
Even the chief’s face showed surprise, and the listening Helsed’s eyebrows went up steeply. Vazcled said, “You are lucky to have escaped so easily.”
“I didn’t escape. I shot it down.” Helsed exclaimed aloud and stared at his brother-terrapin enviously. The chief’s withered lips smiled. “Such victories are rare,” he said approvingly. “I know of only two or three in the past fifty years. You must tell us the story tonight, and Hiyik can make a song of it . . . Did you bring any trophy from the wreck?” Torcred licked his lips nervously. “No,” he said. “It fell a long way off . . .”
“Well, no matter,” the chief shrugged. “We will find the spot on the back trail.” Already—Helsed, the eager newsbearer, had dashed off without waiting for details—they were surrounded by a growing audience, afire to know more about Torcred’s almost unheard-of exploit.
TORCRED, dazed, found himself sitting atop someone else’s machine, relating his battle with the aero to an enthusiastic mob of his fellow-warriors. The terrapins lost their customary reserved poise and grew festive; while Torcred almost choked on the lies with which he ended his narrative, they pressed food and drink on him and made him go back over the most stirring parts. Then Hiyik the poet had his turn, and retold the story in improvised verses, his chanting voice mingling with the hiss and clangor of the workshop in the midst of the circle on whose rim the warriors were gathered.
But the hero of it all sat moody, well-nigh oblivious, his brow wrinkling painfully from time to time. The thoughts he was thinking hurt. For what he was planning was treason, what he had already done was treason—more than that, sacrilege, abomination, a trampling of the laws that kept the diverse races of Earth eternally apart . . . Lesser breeds might hold such laws lightly—but not the proud terrapins. For them all other peoples were enemies, or prey, or vermin beneath contempt.
The bird-folk were enemies. And the crime of giving aid and comfort to an enemy deserved the ultimate in punishment.
Torcred’s mouth tightened grimly at the thought, and the logically following reflection that he, Torcred the Terrapin, must have gone quite insane. But even here, in the midst of his noisy comrades, he could not forget the glimpse of a strange beauty that had fallen out of the sky to destroy him—if not by the swift vengeance of outraged tradition, then by returning and returning to haunt him all his days.
With a chill he realized that the chief was watching him thoughtfully, and he strove to give his features a dignified impassivity appropriate to the modesty of the feted hero.
The face of Helsed, hugging the spotlight as always, was at his elbow, wearing a vapid smile which Torcred’s hypersensitized suspicions saw as a knowing smirk. And in reality, he knew, the fat terrapin’s air of loud thickheadedness masked a sharp scheming brain—and Helsed hated him. Helsed had talked and toadied his way into the graces of the council of elders and the chief, and he had hopes—the latter’s successor must be chosen soon from among the younger men. And in the taciturn Torcred he saw his most dangerous rival, for the young warrior’s deeds spoke for him.
Sunk in thought, Torcred hardly realized the passage of time or that the gathering was breaking up. Hiyik had ceased his recitative. One by one the terrapins yawned, stretched, and moved off toward their own vehicles; it was late, and tomorrow, first full day of the great hunt, would be hard. The noisy labor in the camp’s center went on unabated.
Torcred forced himself to yawn and stretch as elaborately as the others, to rise unhurriedly to his feet. His plans, such as they were, were complete; during the next day’s farflung maneuvers and attacks on the trailer herd, he should be able to slip off unnoticed and, traveling fast, reach the vicinity of the aeros’ nearest eyrie. There he would leave the bird-girl. Whatever her fate then, she would be alive among her own kind; and perhaps later she would be grateful to the terrapin who had befriended her. Beyond that his thoughts did not go . . .
As he started to walk away, the chief’s voice rooted him to the spot.
“Wait a moment. I understand your machine was damaged; perhaps it needs immediate repairs.”
TORCRED turned swiftly toward him.
“No!” he exclaimed hastily. “There’s not much damage—a few bullet holes, a dent. No use bothering with it now.”
“You never can tell.” Vazcled rose; despite the hour’s lateness the wiry old man seemed untouched by fatigue. The bright eyes that dwelt on Torcred’s face held only friendly concern. “You are confident now; but a failure of mechanism can betray the bravest. Let me look your terrapin over and judge for myself.”
The chief’s wish was a command. Torcred’s spirit quailed as, walking like an automaton, he led the way. He derived a little comfort from noting that Helsed had already disappeared; when worst came to worst, he would at least be spared, in the moment of disaster, the sight of his enemy’s triumph . . . And he could still hope that the chief would content himself with an outside examination.
Vazcled studied without speaking the stove-in nose of the terrapin. His experienced hands felt out the damage that was invisible in the uncertain light; he clicked his tongue.
“That’s no dent,” he said at last. “You ran headon into a shell. I’d better look at it from inside; open the door.”
With wooden fingers Torcred produced the key. Silently he handed it to the chief; he did not think, in that whirling moment, of the symbolism of the action, but Vazcled stared at him curiously before turning to the door. For a terrapin to surrender the key of his vehicle was a gesture of abject self-humiliation.
The simple lock clicked. Torcred fell back a step, his shoulders hunched tensely and his hand convulsively closing on the haft of his dagger.
The door swung open. The chief fumbled and switched on the inside light; he grunted softly, squinting up at the fore part of the roof. Past him Torcred could see the whole cramped interior of the armored car; it was empty.
Across the chaos of his mind fluttered one clear thought; the girl had escaped. And he was at once limp with relief and taut with a new and formless fear, mixed with an odd empty sense of loss.
Vazcled grunted again, emerging. Pressing the key into Torcred’s damp palm, he said pointedly, “Keep that.”
Matter-of-factly he added. “You need repairs. Drive into the center, then look up somebody with room for an extra sleeper. You won’t be called for guard duty; you’ve earned a good night’s rest.” The chief’s wrinkled hand rested affectionately on the young man’s shoulder, but to Torcred’s imagination it burned like fire.
His mumbled response was swallowed by a sudden burst of noise from the outer periphery. A voice and then voices cried out confusedly, and then a light blazed, silhouetting the parked terrapins. And Torcred was already running among them, but even as he ran his world was crashing and crumbling about his ears, and he knew he had been most cruelly mocked by fate.
ON the edge of the encampment a space of sand was white in the glare of lights. White too was the face of the girl who swayed, fast in the grip of
two men. Others pressed round with flashing knives, and more warriors, half-dressed and sleepy-eyed, appeared to reinforce them. They looked questioningly at one another; somehow the appearance of a lone alien being, with no machine in evidence, was more sinisterly alarming than would have been the onslaught of a horde of armed and armored juggernauts.
Torcred halted and stood rigid, his gaze stabbing into the knot of men. And before him they opened out, pushing the girl to the fore, as if in accusation. The next moment he realized that that was because the chief stood beside him. And he saw that one of the bird-girl’s arms was pinioned by a sentry, and that Helsed, puffing himself with menace grasped the other.
“Silence!” roared Vazcled’s voice of command. “Bring her nearer. Where did she come from? What is she?”
No one answered at once. Torcred’s eyes were on the bird-girl. For a moment her gaze met his, then she looked past him. On her pale face was written the fierce pride he had seen before, and he knew she could never betray him.
“Shall we make her answer?” Helsed grinned ingratiatingly at the chief, and as if in demonstration of the methods he proposed, his grip tightened on the girl’s arm, twisting. She winced and closed her eyes, making no sound.
And Torcred, his remnants of caution whirled away like chips on a flood tide of fury, was on the torturer in one catlike spring. He would have used his knife, but he had forgotten it; his fist, with all his weight behind it, crashed squarely into Helsed’s hateful grin. Helsed was hurled backward and rolled over limply on the sand.
Torcred stood watching him, poised to renew the attack. The other man who had been holding the girl involuntarily released her and stepped back, leaving her standing alone beside Torcred—but she too shrank away from him; his berserk rage had made him terrible. The surrounding warriors hesitated, and behind them, from among the cars or from vantages atop them, the women and children stared open-mouthed.
In the stunned silence, Torcred could hear the whisper of night wind, and from far away the faint mutter of gunfire as nocturnal machines of prey still took their toll of the trailer herd. He had other random impressions: the feel of the soft sand underfoot, the hard brightness of the stars overhead, the odor of fuel and heated metal that hung about the camp.
Then he turned, straightening: his eyes sought out Vazcled beyond the ring of men who were warily beginning to close on him. And he laughed, having cast away his world.
“See, chief!” he shouted. “See, terrapins! I brought home a trophy, after all!”
IV
IT WAS A RED DAWN, FOR THE sun rose behind the dust that still hovered over the track of the southbound herd. In the west the sky was dark blue above the flatly shimmering water of the great dead sea.
The whole terrapin tribe, save for the indispensable lookouts, was assembled in the open space of the ringed camp. A hush lay on them as they gazed on the prisoner in their midst—honored last night among his peers, this morning guilty of hideous treason. There was no need for trial; it only remained to condemn him.
A cool, salt breeze blew from over the lake and stirred Torcred’s tousled black hair. His gray eyes were bloodshot and staring.
Helsed was there, insinuating himself into the council of elders at the chief’s elbow, and mumbling implacable hatred past swollen lips and missing teeth. His clearest and oftenest-repeated word was “Death!”
Vazcled’s face was set in sorrowful lines; there was regret and a hopeless question in the old man’s eyes as they met Torcred’s.
A small voice beside Torcred asked, “What are they going to do, terrapin?”
He half turned and really saw the girl for the first time that morning. She was composed, her blue eyes unafraid.
“I don’t know,” muttered Torcred. “This has never happened before—not in anyone’s memory.” In his mind were horrific legends heard in childhood, but he tried not to repeat those even to himself.
Vazcled’s first words were to the girl. He asked, “Who are you, stranger? What is your race?”
She returned his gaze, decided to answer. “My name is Ladna, and I am of the race of birds.” Torcred realized that he had not known her name before; it had not occurred to him that such remote beings used names . . .
“Who brought you to this place?”
The girl’s lips tightened; deliberately she turned her back on the chief and stared away over the lake. She seemed oblivious of all the hostile eyes around—in particular the swarthy faces of the terrapin women reflected unpleasant ideas as they greedily ogled this creature of the air.
“No matter,” Vazcled said heavily. “The criminal stands self-accused . . . Have you any explanation of your conduct, Torcred the Terrapin?”
Torcred shook his head dumbly.
“Then—” the chief turned to the elders, “there is question only of the punishment.” Helsed thrust himself forward eagerly. “Death!” he mouthed. “Such a crime deserves no less!”
The chief looked at him coldly. “Did I ask your advice?” he inquired bitingly.
Helsed beat a retreat. “I am sorry . . . But it is true that I have a special grievance in this matter . . .”
“Be quiet!” snapped Vazcled.
The oldest member of the council spoke, and the rest listened respectfully. “Everyone knows the story of Fuwu, who took to himself a dragon woman. He was cast out of the tribe according to the ritual, and left to die in the desert with his seductress—a sentence lighter and heavier than mere death, and one which did not stain the hands of the tribe with the blood of a terrapin.”
The other judges nodded in token of their remembrance and approval of the precedent. The chief saw their decision, and faced the prisoners again. At this curt command the guards seized Torcred and thrust him forward unresisting. Vazcled, knife in hand, looked him in the eyes, his face a stern formal mask. He intoned: “Torcred the Terrapin, your sin is past forgiveness. I pronounce you outcast and abhorred; none shall take notice of you any more, either to help or hurt. You are no longer one of us; we give you to the wilderness. Torcred, no longer Terrapin, I mark you as such!”
The knife point rose and made two quick motions. Torcred did not flinch; on his forehead was a tau cross in oozing drops of blood. The chief bent, took a pinch of sand, and rubbed it into the wound to make sure that it would scar—if the victim lived that long.
Vazcled turned away. “Cast them out!” he ordered over his shoulder, to the guarding warriors.
“The girl too?” Helsed asked hastily; his eyes lingered.
“Of course!” rasped the chief. “It is the tradition—and what else should we do?”
Helsed licked his battered lips nervously. “Of course,” he agreed. “What else?”
V
TORCRED SAT, HEAD SUNK limply in his hands, on the white salt beach facing the lifeless sea. The throb of motors and swirl of dust behind the departing terrapins had died down in the south; instead of hunting today as planned from this camp, they had left the spot become accursed. And Torcred sat numb with despair, passively waiting for the end.
Near him Ladna, the bird-girl rose to her feet. She looked in the other direction, out over the lifeless waste of sand, and then at the man’s slumped, motionless figure.
Her voice was hard and scorn-edged. “So—a terrapin shorn of his armor is less than a bird clipped of her wings?” Torcred raised his head and looked at her glassy-eyed. “You heard,” he growled. “I’m not a terrapin any more.”
“You’ll always be a terrapin to me,” she said. “A miserable, beaten crawler.” He stared without understanding. Around them was the thirsty, deadly desert; the sun was hot already, his mouth was dry, and the poisonous sea lapped mockingly at its flat shore. The girl had been ready to die when her aero crashed—but now her slender body was vibrant with the will to live.
But her bitter words could not fail of effect. Torcred stumbled erect and snapped, “I’m not beaten until I’m dead! But—what chance do we have?”
She accepted
the lute with a faint smile, and said in a softer tone, “There is an aero eyrie—not my own, but one with which we have friendly relations—about seventy miles east of here, in those blue mountains you can see. Perhaps we can make it there on foot.”
“That’s all very well for you,” said Torcred somberly. “But for me—what could I expect from your people?”
“We are not so narrow-minded as the terrapins. We see more and tolerate more. You can be taken in and given tasks to perform in return for your keep.” She frowned at his doubt, and explained further, “Some day—soon—we birds will rule all the Earth. And we do not want to wipe out all the other races; we’ll preserve them to do the jobs that must be done on the ground, and all of our people will be free to fly.”
The picture of conquest she painted so naively repelled Torcred, reared in the terrapin tradition of a barbaric individualistic freedom. “You offer me slavery,” he said harshly.
“No, no,” protested Ladna. “According to our law, you will be free to leave if you wish.” He snorted. “And—” she hesitated, “I will be in the same condition, now that I have lost my wings.”
Torcred stared at the ground, shrugged. “It’s better than dying here—perhaps. And we may not make it. How fast can one travel on foot?”
“Ten miles an hour?” the girl hazarded.
“Less than that, I think. It will be a long way—and I know of no water holes.” Ladna shook her head at the question in his glance. “It may be impossible to walk that far without water; I never heard of anyone’s doing it. But we can try.”
THE blue flat-topped mountains still shimmered unreally, far away as ever, across the heated plain. The sun was at its height and the sand was blistering. The two huddled in the scant shadow of a dune. Both were sunburned, maddeningly thirsty, and discouraged. They could not have covered more than a dozen miles before the heat had driven them to seek shelter.
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 27