The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

“Lie still,” he said, “you may have broken something, Lady.”

  Her face was scornful. “Stand back, miner,” she said, recognizing his trade from the distinctive clothing he wore “Death to you if you touch me.”

  * * * *

  A confusion of emotions was rioting in him. So much had happened today—too much for sanity. He surrendered to madness gladly. This was the most perfect wench he had ever seen. “Shut up,” he said, and ran his fingers over her body. “We of the ruck are expert at mending things, Lady: bones, pots, and lives. Orbs know, you gentry have busted enough of ‘em for us. That hurt?”

  She sat up, brushing her gown to her ankles as Revel took a last wistful look at her legs. Evidently she was quite unhurt. “You’ll play fox for my father’s hunt,” she said coldly. “What made you do it?”

  “You took a bad fall,” he said lightly, wondering at his lack of fear. Never before had he touched a squire’s woman. She felt as all women feel, her high caste couldn’t be sensed in her body. “I’d sit still a moment, if I were you.” It must be the killing of the globe, he thought; after that, any crime is possible.

  “Who are you?”

  “A miner,” he mocked, standing. His pick was in his hand, as ever. He thought, Should I kill her too? No sense to that, when I was only trying to help. Or was it her body I wanted to touch? “Who’s your father?”

  “Ewyo of Dolfya, and his hounds will eat you for breakfast tomorrow.”

  Ewyo was one of the richest squires in this part of the world, and Jerran’s cousin served him. “You’re Lady Nirea, then. A fine-looking wench.”

  “My Orbs,” she gasped, her scorn rattled by his incredible insolence. “My Orbs above, who are you?”

  “A dirty miner, who puts coal into your father’s hearth but must warm himself over smoldering peat. Why would you report me?”

  “You scum,” she said, the snarling hiss of a zanph in her voice. “Do you remember when a brewer fell over a dog in Dolfya last year and bumped my sister Jann? He was hunted over twelve miles before the pack tore him to blood and rags! What do you think you deserve, who dares address me in that way, and—and fondle me?”

  “Lady Nirea, if I fondled you, you’d know it,” Revel said. Then, seeing the hint of a smile on her sensuous lips, he looked up, for she seemed to be staring over his shoulder.

  From the button above them a line of globes dropped, golden globules radiating bright energy.

  Whom the gods destroy, they first madden. That was part of the Globate Credo, wasn’t it? Well, Revel had been gradually made mad that day, and now, by Orbs, he’d show them something before he was destroyed!

  As the first descended past him, and wrapped two tentacles under the girl’s armpits to lift her, he lifted his pick to smack it as he had the supervising deity in the mine. He felt a tug; another globe had a whiplash arm around his pick. Gritting teeth, he threw his tremendous brawn into a swing, and the pick tore loose from the tentacle and sprayed the guts out of the sphere before him. It fell on the grass beside Nirea, an emptying sack. He slashed a second and a third, laughing between set lips. What a way to go down—killing gods!

  Then he felt a searing pain, a sudden spasm of the flesh, as though a sword had been heated in a bonfire and laid alongside his ear. Reflectively he ducked to earth, sprang two steps forward and spun, rising to his full height again. One of the bulbous brutes had touched the side of his head, its energy aura so strong at that close contact that the hair was burned to a char and the flesh scorched.

  So they could really hurt a man! He grinned with pain and defiance. If his pick wasn’t as fast as any damned floating ball, let them kill him! He waited, crouched, keeping his eyes on them; and then they were rising again, leaving him there in the valley with a screaming girl in a silver gown.

  * * * *

  Jerran, who had just started his own rest space, evidently, appeared on the rock shelf and came down, walking faster than Revel had ever seen him go. The little man came to him and, hardly glancing at Lady Nirea, said, “Were you attacked, lad?”

  “I did the attacking, when they objected to my touching this wench.”

  Jerran gazed up. “They’re spreading out. The gentry will soon be on you, Revel. You’ve got to hide.”

  “Where can you hide from a god?” It wasn’t a hopeless tone he used, but a kind of laughing, bantering acceptance of his doom.

  “Come off it,” said Jerran urgently. “You’re still thinking like a rucker.”

  “I am of the ruck.”

  “You’re a rebel now, you fool! Think like one! Listen: a man cannot kill a god.”

  “The Globate Credo,” grunted Revel. “Our Orbs are everlasting, untouchable. Crud! I’ve killed four today.”

  “Right. So stop fearing them and thinking they’re omnipotent. Our Orbs see all we do. More crud, lad! They’re telepathic, adept at hypnosis, but rock stops ‘em. Get rock above you and you are safe for a while, till I can think this over and get you some help.”

  “The mine!” Revel barked; to his madness, his exhilaration, was added hope. “The secret cave, Jerran!”

  “And of course,” said Jerran wryly, “you have to take the woman.”

  Revel’s jaw dropped. “Why?”

  “You idiot, she just heard you say about six words too many. She’d lead her father’s pack straight to us!” Jerran evidently knew the Lady Nirea by sight. “She knows our names, too. It’s either take her or kill her.” His flinty eyes creased up. “Better kill her, at that. Less danger.”

  Revel looked at her. The talk of murder didn’t turn a hair of that flawlessly-wrought coiffure: she was either too sure of the gentry’s power, or too stunned by the gods’ death, to be consciously frightened.

  She was not stunned, for now she said, “You rabbit-brains, you filthy grubbers, you must have lost whatever wits a rucker has. My father will really think up something f—”

  “Damn your father,” said Jerran. “He eats dandelions.”

  “He doesn’t!”

  “My cousin gathers them for the old hellion,” nodded Jerran. “I ought to know. Revel, have any of those bulbous bubbles gone into the mine, that you noticed?”

  “Not yet, I’ve been watching.”

  “Good. Then get going. I’ll take care of the wench.”

  Revel saw her lips curl slightly; she didn’t believe she could be hurt, even though she had a moment before been screaming at the death of her gods. She was brave, or stupid, or very confident of her untouchability. He glanced down over her body, squeezed tight by the silver gown. Her breasts were fuller and higher than a ruck girl’s, her limbs unbunched with muscles, smooth and lovely.

  “No, she doesn’t die,” he said. “Not unless I do.” He bent and picked her up and ran with her toward the entrance of the mine.

  CHAPTER III

  The Mink he couches underground,

  Beneath the earth he lies;

  He hears the fox’s mournful yell,

  And knows he must arise.

  “Too many lads have hunted been,

  Too many women slain!”

  The Mink he takes his pick in hand

  To end the gentry’s reign.

  —Ruck’s Ballad of the Mink

  * * * *

  The Lady Nirea thought a moment—she never attacked any new problem without thinking beforehand—and then she began to struggle. This rucker who had her over his shoulder, with a death-grip on her legs and her head hanging down his back, was plainly insane. No man of his low position was ever insane enough to actually harm a squire’s daughter; so if she kicked and bit, he would either drop her or—

  Well, it was the “or.” He reached up and slapped her on the rear. Hard. She opened her eyes wide. No one had ever before dared to touch her there. She thought again, and bit him on the side.

  He was carrying her up the rocks toward the mine now. Surely there would be a god-guard on duty there? She had often seen one in place at the entrance, as she rode through the valle
y. Yes, peering upside-down under his arm, she saw the golden glow. Then he was shifting her a little, setting his muscles, and—great Orbs! He struck the god full in the middle with his miner’s pick. This man, this astounding brute with chocolate-colored hair and a body like a wild woods lion, had dared kill four gods in as many minutes. Perhaps she shouldn’t be as certain of her inviolability as she’d been till now.

  “You triple-damn fool,” she said, making her voice husky so it wouldn’t squeak, “the globes are watching.”

  “They always are.” What a strong voice the beast had.

  “They see you going into the mine. D’you think you’re safe here?”

  “Where I’m going, there’s a chance,” he said. His body moved lithely beneath her. She clutched him around the ribs as they began to descend a ladder. Blackness, tinged with blue, lay below. She felt her scalp prickle with terror.

  The little man, Jerran, said from somewhere above, “Kill all the gods we meet, lad; I’ll hide or bring the bodies. And keep your emotions controlled, or they’ll follow our scent like zanphs on the trail of a runaway.”

  “Did the globes follow us?” asked the big man, whose name was Rebel or something like it.

  “They were coming down again as I ducked in. Hurry it up.”

  The swift plunge into the mine speeded. She deliberately worked herself up to silent panic, giving the gods a spoor to chase.

  Now they were traveling on the level, and from the reflection of yellow, the brisk jerk of his arm, and the pulpy squish, she knew he had met and slain another globe. Was he inhuman, a visitor from beyond the world, such as were told of in the ancient ballads? Certainly no man was ever this bold!

  “Here’s the end,” said Jerran. “Set the wench down, she can’t get away. Hurry!”

  She was rudely plumped onto a pile of coal. She looked at her silver gown and shuddered. Her flailing legs had ripped it from hem to midthigh; the coal was staining it irrevocably.

  “When I catch that horse,” she thought, half aloud, “I’ll beat him. Tossing me into all this!”

  * * * *

  They were pulling down rocks from the wall; now a black hole appeared. The small man jumped up to a boulder and snatched down a blue mine lantern. “Take this, Revel.” That was it, Revel. An odd name, a rather nice one. The ruck ordinarily had such awful names, Jark and Dack and Orp. Revel. Not bad. It fitted the big lusty-looking brute.

  He came over. “Never mind picking me up,” she said icily. “I can walk.” She peered into the hole, winced, and clambering over the rocks, losing a heel from one of her slippers, she entered their secret cavern.

  Revel climbed in after her. Jerran was already piling rocks back into the breach. The lantern looked faint and incapable of lighting a chimney corner, but its blue radiance was deceptive, for the farthest reaches of the place were cast into a moonlight sort of glow. She gazed around, unable to take it in, seeing nothing at first but giant shapes of mystery, unknown things in stacks and in tumbled heaps, figures like grotesque statues, all lined in rows the length and breadth of the giant cavern.

  The cave itself was square, perhaps a hundred feet to a side. It must have taken scores of miners months of work to hew it out of the rock. Unwilling to show interest, she still had to ask, “When did you make this?”

  “We didn’t make it, Lady. We found it. No man alive made this place.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The miners would know it. We broke through the wall only yesterday.”

  “What are these things?”

  “You know as much as I do.” He was looking at her in the way her father sometimes looked at rucker serving women, as though she had no clothes on at all. She had little modesty, society was lax when it came to such things as clothing, and frequently she had ridden the streets of Dolfya Town in a suit of transparent silk that made the ruck gape and blush; but this very personal scrutiny made her shield her breasts with one arm as she stared back at him.

  “I’ve changed my mind about you,” she said pleasantly.

  “Yes?” Did the swine look eager?

  “I have ... you won’t be hunted by the pack. You’ll be flayed alive, inch by inch, with white-hot needles of iron, starting with your feet and working upward. And I’ll watch.”

  He laughed. “You are a wench,” he said admiringly. Then he turned and appeared to forget her as he began to inspect the contents of the cavern. After a moment she wandered off to look at them herself.

  Nearest lay a long wooden chest, on which were arranged certain contrivances that looked like guns, except that they were short, no more than a foot long; they had triggers and barrels and small curved stocks, so they must be guns! No one had ever seen a gun under four feet long. She looked for the ramrods, but there were none on the chest. Possibly they were cached inside it.

  Over the chest in an arch that covered the entire top was a sheet of almost invisible stuff that she touched fearfully. She had never seen anything like it—like frozen water! Hard and cold ... She thought of the oiled paper in her father’s windows. A sheet of this substance in a window would be a magnificent possession, the envy of every squire in Dolfya. Oiled paper was semi-transparent, while this stuff was like a piece of air.

  * * * *

  There was a white square lying beside the tiny guns, with black printing on it. She was deciphering it, painfully, for not only did she read very slowly, even in the priceless old books of her father’s library, but this print was in a language slightly different from Orbish, when she felt two hard hands on her waist.

  “Get your stinking paws off me,” she said, without moving.

  She was picked up and set down gently on one side. Revel bent over the chest.

  “What are they?”

  She thought fast. She had deciphered enough of the card to know they were guns: American handguns of 1940-1975 period, it said. She couldn’t let him know it. The rucker must not get hold of a gun, or he’d attack the gentry themselves, for hadn’t he slain innumerable gods already?

  “They are children’s toys,” she said. “I don’t know what sort of children would be interested in such weird-looking things.”

  “Did you ever hear of the Ancient Kingdom?”

  She shook her head; the term was new to her.

  “The ruck knows of it; the ballad-singers have many sagas of the Ancient Kingdom, but I imagine the gentry have forgotten. It was the world and people of a long time ago. I think these things were walled up here then.” His face, really a handsome face if you forgot he was a rucker, screwed up in thought. Then he started to chant something.

  “The people of that far-off time,

  They carried little guns;

  They had so much more freedom

  Than we who are their sons.”

  He stared at the weapons. She thought fast. “These are toy guns, yes. The writing says they are guns for children.”

  “Maybe the toys of those children worked,” he said looking at her.

  “You talk nonsense.”

  He felt the transparent stuff over the chest, pushed on it hard, then raised his pick and struck the stuff a heavy blow. It shattered into bright daggers and fell on the guns and on the floor. Picking one of the small things from its place, he examined it closely.

  “No toy, Lady Nirea,” he grunted. “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t! Can you read the writing?” she asked sourly.

  “No rucker reads, as you know. But this is no toy, and you knew it.” He tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, took three more. “You can show me how to use them later.”

  She laughed in his face and was given a rough slap on the cheek. Skin tingling, she said, “Play the squire, miner, you don’t have long to do it!”

  “They won’t find this hole.”

  “I left a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!” she told him.

  * * * *

  Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but ver
y hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern.

  A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. “What is it?” he said. “Read for me.”

  She looked at the printing on the front. Dynamo she spelt out, and shrugged. “A name I don’t know.”

  “If you lie to me again, I’ll rip that gown off and strangle you with it.” He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, “I’m not lying.”

  “I know you aren’t, now. I have an instinct for lies.” He dragged her on. “What’s this?”

  The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, “Man of the 21st century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and—”

  “Never mind.” He left the big shining case, which was oblong and featureless and seemed made of metal, to pass to something else. Her gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away: Held in suspended animation. What could the words mean?

  They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand. Here and there were ordinary objects—plates, hides of animals under the near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles—but in the main it was a place of mystery.

  “The people of the Ancient Kingdom,” he said, rubbing his square chin, “put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don’t know what it could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He’s got any number of keen brains.”

  “Nobody has more than one brain,” she snapped.

  He grinned. “I have six or eight myself,” he said. The creature was totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal, that he was a god-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.

  His brown eyes lit up. His arm was around her waist, and his lips came near her own. Deep-bred habit made her draw back, but she could not fight the instinct that racked her.