by Jerry
The discarded costumes were gone when they emerged, feeling closer to human, twenty minutes later. In place of the animal hides were shorts, doublets and the calf-length boots of Base-centered personnel.
All were more than happy to be back in uniform.
Luke stopped outside wardrobe for a moment, then started towards Headquarters, a building distinguished from the dozen other prefabs of. Base only by the pennant flying from the peak. The buildings were arranged in an irregular circle around the copter field, nestled in the most hidden valley of the planet’s single range of hills high enough to be graced with the name of mountains. The highest peak in the range, visible over the one directly behind Headquarters, toward barely a thousand feet.
On a world less primitive, the range would never have served its present duty.
The world was primitive, however. Man had advanced but a few faltering steps beyond the level of the cave. Ecology had estimated the native human population not to exceed three million people over the entire globe, and cheerfully admitted that their estimate was made with every benefit of doubt given to the natives. Quite possibly not even half that number roamed the vast plains of the temperate zones, or breeded in the opulence of the equatorial jungles. As yet, population pressures had not driven men into the colder climes of the north and south. None had been spotted more than five hundred miles from the equator.
Luke checked in with the Orderly Room before reporting on to the debriefing room. He slumped onto a couch and propped his feet on a low coffee table. The other four team commanders were there ahead of him. One brought him a cup of coffee. He accepted it with thanks, and inhaled the bitter smell of the brew before draining half of it. The fiery liquid burned into his stomach and scorched away some of the tensions built up during the night.
“Rough night, Luke?” asked Andy Singer, sitting next to him.
“The roughest. We hit seventeen villages between sunset and sunrise.”
“That is a load. My team only hit seven. But you were working the big river stretch, weren’t you?” Luke nodded, as he sipped again at his coffee. “I thought so. We were lucky. We had the west plains. There isn’t too much water over there, couple little creeks and a few holes. These locals don’t stray too far from water.”
“WE hit half a dozen good-sized places,” said Luke. “One of them must have had thirty-five families. For a minute, I thought we were going to have to kill a few of them, but it ended up okay. Nobody hurt, except for one of my boys who stayed a second too long in a hut.” He chuckled. “Got the seat of his pants burned off—a new kid, just out from the Academy. The rest of the night, he was the fastest man I had.”
“Proves what I said about water. Biggest place I hit had seven houses, and most of them only had two or three.”
Luke started to say something more, but just then the door opened and the Base Commandant came in. The Team commanders stood up respectfully, but none had the energy to properly snap to attention. He smiled as he mounted the low platform to the front of the room.
“At ease, gentlemen.” Gratefully, the commanders sat back down and resumed their earlier positions of comfort. The Commandant poured himself a glass of water from a ready pitcher and drank it, then gave his full attention to the room.
“First, gentlemen, let me congratulate you on a successful night’s operation. I congratulate all of you, but particularly Commander Royceton and Team B. They rolled up the enviable total of seventeen villages destroyed.”
Luke flushed, feeling like a fresh-out-of-Academy Cadet as the others raised their coffee cups in his direction.
“None of you spent the evening slacking, of course,” continued the Commandant. He was a middle-aged man; the empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder told why he had been booted out of field duty while men twenty years his senior were still leading teams. “Total score for the night: fifty-seven villages. Commander Royceton merely had more fertile area to work in. As we move out from the Base I know you will all have equal opportunities to prove your prowess with the torch.” An appreciative murmur ran through the little group.
“Now I know you’re all tired, gentlemen, and anxious to hit the sack. I won’t keep you much longer. I just want to emphasize the importance of our mission on this world. Many of your men don’t like making these raids on the natives. They would rather be roaming the far starlanes, putting down pirates and other glorious deeds of derring-do. But you men are not cadets; there isn’t a one of you without twenty years field service time. You know the real glory comes from satisfaction in a job well done. It is up to you to transfer that feeling of satisfaction to the malcontents within your ranks. Tonight you go out again; and you will continue to do so until every single village on this planet has been razed to the ground! If so much as one single village is permitted to escape, then we have failed. I do not like failure; you do not like failure. Working together, we can see to it that failure as a word disappears from the language. I thank you, gentlemen. Dismissed.” He stepped down and strode rapidly from the room. Behind him the audience rose and burst into talk.
III
CARTER moaned silently. He tried for the hundredth time since the journey began to shift his legs into a position where the insides would not be rubbed raw by the rough hair of his horse-like mount. He resolved for the dozenth time that one of the “inventions” he would import from the southern provinces would be a good, comfortable saddle.
Another would be silk; the rough fabrics worn by Kahl’s subjects were a fair substitute for the mount’s hide.
“Ho, southerner!” Prince Kahl wheeled his mount back from the head of the column and waited until Sam had caught up, then he fell in beside him. “How goes it? Does my second favorite mount suit you well?”
“Very well indeed, graciousness,” said Sam. “I cannot in honesty recall when I’ve had a more—ouch!—instructive ride!”
“Good!” Kahl leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll be glad to know we’ve but three more hours to go before reaching the summer palaces.”
“Only, uh, three more hours?” The sinking sensation in Sam’s stomach had nothing at all to do with the undulating motion of his beast. “Ah, that is good news, your graciousness. We’ll be there almost before we know it.”
Sam wished Kahl would go away and leave him to his misery, but the prince seemed disposed to talk. “I. think there will be many surprised faces in my father’s court tonight. Eh, southerner?” He chuckled, and then burst into raucous laughter as he considered the idea further. “And to think, it will all be perfectly legal! You have the papers safe, my friend?”
“Yes, your graciousness,” said Sam, sighing and patting his saddlebags.
“Good! Don’t lose them—I’d hate to see you missing your head!” He laughed again, while Sam’s stomach turned several more flipflops. “The sight of blood always did make me sick.”
There were sixteen men in the mounted party, including a dozen of Kahl’s private guard, the captain of the troop and the High Priest of the Sun God, the nation’s officially sponsored religion. The High Priest was a little old man, bent over more from age than from the discomforts of the journey. Originally Sam had planned for one more member, but that had become unnecessary when he learned that the High Priest was also President of the Royal College of Chirurgeons. The latter role was even more important to his plans than the former. Now all that worried Sam was the possibility that the priest might not live to the end of the journey. He was inflicted with a hacking cough that sent chills racing up and down Sam’s spine every time he went into a fit.
Kahl grew weary of bantering small talk with a man really fit to come up with witty replies. He wheeled his horse again and dropped back to the end of the column for a moment, saying something to the High Priest, then he spurred his mount back to the head of the line, falling into his original position beside the Captain of the Guard. The two men were soon lost in reminiscences that had bored Sam to tears, every time he had been an unwilling audi
ence.
ANOTHER hour passed miserably, while the sun mounted to the zenith and began the long summer afternoon drop back down to the horizon. The members of the Guard and Kahl pulled short stubby loaves of bread and cheese from their saddle bags and munched as they road on, washing the food down with vigorous pulls at the wineskins that took the place of water canteens on the planet. Sam had first thought the constant imbibing of alcohol to be a national vice. Then he ran tests on half a dozen waterholes. Thereafter he drank wine himself.
Now, however, he was completely without an appetite. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the priest was in the same boat. Suddenly, without knowing why, he pulled his mount up and waited until the priest caught up with him, then fell in at the end of the column.
“How goes it, Reverence?”
The priest looked up, watery eyes registering surprise at his company. “Oh, southerner.” He broke into one of his coughing spasms. “Ahhh, not well, southerner. Not well at all. The Sun God does not ride with me this day—not that he’s deserted me, you understand: he never rides with me. The Sun God has more sense than a foolish old man who should be staying home in the comfort of his apartments, not galivanting around the countryside like a frisky kitten.”
“I wish he had imparted some of his wisdom to me,” said Sam. “I confess I feel as you look, Reverence. No disrespect intended, believe me. It’s just that the ardors of this journey have taken much toll from both of us. And I swear, by the Sun God himself, you are bearing up much better than I.”
“A man who has traveled as long and as far as you talking this, southerner?”
“It’s the way you travel, Reverence. The greatest part of my journey was by ship.” It had been; Sam merely neglected to specify that it was a spaceship. “Ocean travel has its own peculiar discomforts, but for myself, I’ll take it every time.”
“Tell me, southerner,” said the priest, “why do you make this trip?”
“Prince Kahl wished it,” he replied.
“Ah, but there is more to this than lies on the surface. Why should Kahl bring you, a stranger and a subject of another house, along on a venture that may well ’cast the future course of events for this entire nation?”
“Prince Kahl seems to feel that, ah, I might, because of my experiences in other lands, serve him in some minor capacity of usefulness.” Sam chose his words with care. The old man was entirely too observant for his liking.
“Kahl is an astute man,” said the priest. “However, he is also a hungry man, and such a man on the verge of starvation will eat things that in more normal circumstances he would pass up without so much as a first look. Ideas are much like food, southerner.”
“The philosophers of my country have a saying, Reverence. ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ ”
“Much wisdom is afloat in the world, disguised in strange ways.” With that, the priest went into another coughing spell, after which he refused to pick up the threads of the conversation. Carter gave up, and spurred his mount back to his original place in the column.
THE rest of the trip passed in, for Sam, self-commiseration. The lower the sun sank, the hotter the temperature seemed to climb. Several times he found himself with wineskin raised to lips. The native beverage was little stronger than the plain water he would have preferred, but even so he found himself more than a little tipsy by the time they crested a low range of hills and saw the summer palaces nestled by the side of a lake in the valley below.
The column dismounted in an inner courtyard, and Kahl, Carter and the High Priest strode past the protesting chamberlain into the King’s private apartments. The King was lying on a couch, eating fruits served by a manservant and listening to poetry being read to him. He looked up when the trio came in.
“My son! This is indeed an unexpected honor. What brings you from the city on a day so hot as this one?” He smiled, but his eyes were sharp.
“Greetings, Father,” said Kahl, bowing low. “I bring you important news from the Council of Priests. Reverence!”
“Y our Most Graciousness.” The old man was already nearly doubled over. When he bowed, Sam half expected to hear his forehead crack the tiles of the floor.
“Well, Reverence?” The king accepted another fruit and sucked on it, keeping a watchful eye on his son. He suspects something! Sam thought.
The High Priest produced a scroll from his robes and ceremoniously broke the seal. Unrolled, it was short for the dynamite it contained.
“Your Most Gracious Person,” he read. “The Council of Priests, meet and determined in the Holy Temple of the Sun God this fifth day of the seventh moon of the fifty-first year of the reign of Obar, King, announce to all and sundry within the domains of Obar, King, that he has incurred the wrath and displeasure of the Holy God, the Sun God, and henceforth from this day shall be no more be known as Obar, King, but as father of Kahl, King.”
He let the scroll snap back into its cylinder, bowed again, then handed the scroll to Obar.
“Your graciousness.” Then he turned to Kahl. “Your Most Graciousness.” One final return to Obar. “One more message from the Council, your graciousness. They hope you will accept their eternal pleasure and gratitude for the excellence of your reign.”
ALL during the reading, Obar had been staring at the High Priest, a ghost smile half-crinkling the corners of his mouth. The half-eaten fruit now fell to the pavement with a sodden plop! He licked his lips.
“This . . . This is some sort of a joke?”
“No joke, Father,” said Kahl, a little too heartily for Sam’s liking.
“But how?” Obar shook his head. “How dare you?”
“I’m merely exercising my duty to our subjects, Father. You’ve grown old. You’re no longer capable of carrying out the duties of king.”
“No.” He refused to believe. “You . . . you have no right. I am king! How can you . . . How can you just walk in here and tell me that I’m not? What gives you this right?”
“The same source that made you king in the first place,” said Kahl. “The Sun God.”
“Nonsense! There is no Sun God!”
The High Priest gasped and covered his eyes. “Blasphemy!”
“Guards!” Obar pried himself up. “Guards! Arrest these maniacs!”
Feet clumped outside, then turned into the chamber. Sam relaxed, unaware that he had been holding his breath, knowing that his plans were going through after all. The men who came in were the same who had escorted them from the city, Kahl’s own private guards.
The captain turned to Kahl and bowed low. “You called, Your Most Graciousness?”
“Yes. Take this blithering idiot away.”
The captain bowed again, and gestured. Two of his men grabbed the former king by the arms and carried him away, screaming.
“Ho, southerner!” Kahl sat down on his father’s couch and gestured. The manservants had been cowering in the background; they came forward now and touched their foreheads to the ground. Kahl took a fruit and bit into it, letting the juice trickle down his chin.
“It worked,” said Kahl, swallowing. “By the Sun God, it worked!” He slapped his knee. “I confess, southerner, when first I heard your plans, I thought you daft indeed. But it worked! I’m king!”
“I felt certain it would,” said Sam, carefully omitting the title of respect. It passed unnoticed. More sure of himself, he continued, “After all, the idea was inherent in the very structure and strictures of your government. Your divine position comes from the Sun God. He should be able to remove it as easily as he grants it.”
“True,” said Kahl. “Howsomever, there shall be some changes made in that respect, once I have consolidated my position. Oh, I delude myself not in thinking that the battle is over, my friend. But the hardest part has been won.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Sam, slowly.
“Well, keep it not to yourself!” said Kahl. “If any more of your ideas prove as useful to me as the last, then you have a glorious
future indeed.”
“My thoughts are, I’m afraid, roaming rather far afield. But take them for what they might be worth. You are king of this nation now, Kahl; and a very able king you shall be. Why limit the benefits of your rule to this one nation? Why not let the rest of the world know the joys of your rule?”
“Ummm?” He squinted, one eye closed. “You think it might work out?”
“Why not?” And the Sun God help us all! he added to himself.
IV
THE chambers were crowded as the delegates, alternates and just plain onlookers poured in for the afternoon session of the Central Worlds Conference. Two hours before the meeting was due to begin, an astute member of the press, long used to such functions, observed that there would undoubtedly be a record broken before the day was over. And it was easy to see why: all eyes were trained on the spot low in the tiers with the Ehrlan pennant floating overhead.
As yet, the central figure of all the interest had not arrived, although the rest of the Ehrlans were already in their seats and looking anxiously up the aisles towards the bank of elevators. An elevator would open from time to time, to disgorge a few late arrivals. But the man they expected was not yet among them. Below, on the chamber floor, the presiding secretary was mounting to the rostum and arranging his papers.
“Where the devil can he be!” said Citizen Evrett to Citizen Sterm, the second ranking member of the delegation.
“God only knows! You don’t suppose something has . . . happened?”
“How could it, here in the heart of the city? He only had to come one block from the hotel. You’ve been watching too many thrillers, Citizen—I hope!”