His younger brother's judgment suited Donol for another reason, one he kept to himself, for he had come to realize during this brief fugitive period that at heart he was a bit like Morven himself. Without realizing it fully before now, he had always been envious, with some justification, of the advantages he felt the other two had over him. A middle brother always got the worst of everything. Now, among the myriad possible outcomes he saw before him, a goodly number pointed toward his someday becoming "the" Islay under circumstances which no observer could afterward claim to be his fault.
He held his fist up. Robret drew the middle twig. He would remain in hiding. This, too, his brothers asserted, was proper, as if blind chance were acting to confirm their judgment. Now himself become, however reluctantly, head of the family Islay—and, in a universe more just than this one appeared at present, rightful heir to the Skyan Drectorhood—who among them was likelier to win allegiances they needed to combat the evil Morven?
Only Robret harbored doubt of this blithe estimate. For his own reasons, although they would be obvious to anyone who thought about them, he had hoped to draw the long twig.
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He no longer recalled the exact words, shouted overshoulder in panic, haste, and flight, but knew what he had meant by them at the time. He had promised Lia he would return for her. He entertained no question in his otherwise troubled mind that she had misunderstood.
Donol and Arran—little Arran!—were mistaken. The eldest and heir was most valuable to Morven and belonged at the Holdings. In a sense, he had less to lose than they, for already he felt himself half tortured to death by uncertainty. However, and more like his middle brother than himself in this, he concealed his disappointment at the outcome of the draw. It was less difficult, under the circumstances, than it might have been. A thousand hideous probabilities assailed him. Not being Skyan, one of the lifelong Islay retainers, but an unbound Hanoverian employee, and upon this account either more or less than a family retainer, Lia was either more immune to official persecution, or less. Robret could not— dare not—calculate which.
Lia he knew well. Until persuaded he was dead, she would wait where he had seen her last while they both grew old and died, unless they dragged her from the planet. He ached to place himself beside her, touch her, feel her lips upon his, and to assure himself of her safety. Whereas his hereditary duty—and the foul luck of the draw—had now determined for him otherwise.
Lost in despair, it was some time before the eldest of the brothers Islay realized that, by elimination, the shortest twig, the final task, the long, dangerous journey to the equator, had fallen upon Arran.
Chapter XVII: The Shroom Crate
"'twas a trackless time she wallowed, And a timeless track she followed."
The melancholy lyric of the star-sailor's ancient lament left something resembling consciousness—unasked for and unwanted—in its wake.
Naked and befouled, bleeding from a dozen insults, Arran Islay, shattered inside and out by what had happened to him, sprawled where he had been thrown upon the flesh-cutting gundeck floor-mesh, hard against the heavy caliprette of one of the carrack Gyrfalcon's great kinergic projectibles. For the time being, he had been left to himself. What further, after all, could be done to him or taken from him? The injured boy had no way of knowing, although by now the knowledge would not have surprised him, that this place where he lay in pain and anguish was considered the least-comfortable, least-desirable spot in all the vessel to sleep. The weakling dregs among her crewbeings gravitated here, where he had been tossed as human garbage, used up and discarded—although too well he realized he would be used again, and soon.
Despite all that had happened to him and would doubtless happen again, it was a kind of sleep he slept, although it also bore resemblance to the drug-induced delirium he had suffered in his own warm, safe bed, what seemed to him centuries ago. In his pain-fringed and fitful periods of waking, the major effort his mind made was to blot out every memory it ever had contained, for not one remained among the lot, no matter how bright and colorful, no matter how inspiring and cheerful, no matter how filled with love and warmth, no matter how long ago, which had not been rent and soiled like himself.
Given what he considered the greater sufferings of his
dead father, his brothers, and his friends, it would have shamed him to be caught in the belief that he had been singled out for persecution. It was not within the compass of Arran's character to count his losses, yet they weighed upon him, wearing away his resistance to despair. Already half-orphaned with the loss of his mother, Glynnaughfem Briartonson Islay, he had, in a briefer and more recent span, been deprived of his hero-father, the legendary warrior Robret "the" Islay; also his two kindest friends, Mistress Lia Woodgate, tutor and sister-to-be, and Old Henry Martyn, mentor and partner-in-mischief. He had lost his lifelong home, the Holdings upon Skye, and his beloved pet Waenzi. His brothers, Robret and Donol, had been taken from him by the exigencies of what amounted to war. Moreover, through a heinous act of betrayal, he had lost his name and his inheritance. Had anyone demanded of him yesterday what else he had left to lose, he would have answered "nothing." Now he knew better.
Despite himself, he did remember. His clearest, cleanest memories were most recent, days spent in the wood which he had thought terrible to live. Casting lots with his brothers, he had come to an hour he had believed the beginning of adventure. Instead, it had been a doorway into hell.
Having decided upon their separate, complementary courses of action, Robret and Donol had helped him drain the remaining power from one of the exhausted §-riders into the other. The elder brothers would depart upon foot, one for the nearby rebel hills, the other for the Islay Holdings. He had bidden them farewell, waved with a reckless gaiety feigned only in part for the sake of their mutual and desperate resolve, and ridden out of the forest, leaving them to their own fates.
Evading Morven's Oplyte searching parties had proven easier than expected. Too few had been assigned for the task. He suspected, or at least hoped, that to some degree their energies were being occupied by his mother's people—the beginnings of violent persecution had been another tale told between the lines of the repeated, demanding lasercasts— now that the Great Bargain wrought by his father was abrogated. Neither the Oplytes nor their officers had seemed much gifted with intellectual acuity to begin with. Knowing
they had means of detecting the heat of his rider and his own body, Arran had risked traveling by day. For whatever reason, the risk had worked.
During the long, cold, lonely nights Arran forced himself to sleep under the soft light of the moonring in nightmare-ridden intervals while his machine soaked up the ambient radiation which powered it. The chief cleverness of its irreproducible design lay not in the energies it could absorb —infrared, ultraviolet, visible light, solar radio, cosmic rays, even stray neutrinos—but in the use to which it put such subtle fluxes and potentials, bending and altering them so that each particle somehow sought its metaphysical opposite and was consumed in annihilation which drove the craft's suspending and propelling fields. The §-field rider was neither as efficient nor as powerful as the larger draywherry. The latter could absorb as much power, each moment, as it used. In part, this was a measure of nothing more than the relative surface areas the two exposed. For each hour's travel, Arran was required to give his machine another of rest, which, in truth, he needed himself.
The climate changed by gradual increment. Temperatures rose and fell again. One sort of bird or animal was replaced by another better able to prosper in each area he entered and, with all possible rapidity, left behind. All about him, stage by imperceptible stage, the deep blues and greens of the temperate zone began to pale as he crossed invisible lines of latitude and began to climb into the equatorial mountains, retracing the earlier, eventful voyage of the draywherry until at last, and without incident, he passed through the roadcut in the highlands, still unrepaired after the dual avalanche which had oc
curred there, and emerged onto the bleak plateau beyond.
In all, it had required another week to reach the unmanned, isolated cluster of w/s/c-automated fabrications which he, at least, would never again refer to as Alysabethport. Having arrived, he discovered evidence that many starships had called here and departed. Each of the farflung comers of the landing pentagram, with its own heavy tackle, metal bright with unaccustomed wear, had been employed not once but often. The soulless townlet was left littered by the comings and goings of hundreds of wedding guests, their servants
134 HENRYMARTYN
and guards, invited to visit Skye to witness happier events than had proven the case. Now all that remained, aside from litter, was a single thrumming lubberlift cabelle, anchored to the center of the pentagram, as it had been when he and his brothers had first come to meet their father. Somehow, Arran must get aboard the starship it was connected with and see whether any help was to be found among its passengers.
The plain stretched endless before him. No bird sang. A chilled and arid prairie wind riffled the sea of gray-yellow mosses which, even in this sere, lifeless place, kept the naked soil of Skye from being seen. Examining, in the lucky absence of the lubberlift, each service shed in turn, Arran found one of the answers he sought. Morven had not been altogether preoccupied with consolidating his political and military position. This was a farm world, a working world, but not a rich one. Continuous, concentrated effort must be expended to wrest even a modest profit from it. Arran now knew how to get aboard whatever starship hung above his head and the equator at the end of the long cabelle which vanished into the zenith. The largest of the utility buildings had been stacked to its ribbed, translucent ceiling with huge crates of native Skyan shrooms. The lubberlift could not carry all this bulky cargo in one load. In probability it had been used watch-and-watch since the departure of the other starships, and might return at any moment.
It was the work of but a frantic few minutes, employing the toolkit from his §-rider, to prise open one of the sturdy plastic crates and hollow out a hiding place among the musty produce for himself. The rider he concealed—sore, in certain places, as constant riding had made him, he patted its mesh-metal flank in a gesture of regretted farewell—in a building which had been emptied already and might not be inspected when the lubberlift rode down again like a giant legless web-spinner. Securing the hinged top of the crate, once he had crawled deep inside, was a more difficult matter. Knowing it would be handled gently, he had no fear it would open by accident. The shrooms he lay among were perishable, fragile, an expensive delicacy offplanet.
Wrapped in the overpowering musky odors of his native world, drained in body and spirit by weeks of anger, effort,
and terror, Arran slept within the crate, not waking until, an uncalculated time later, he felt it being shuJBed and rocked toward the pentagram. Comments and curses, shouted orders, muffled by the crate and its contents, came to his ears without meaning. For a while after the movement stopped, he could not sleep, suspended as he was between the fear of being discovered and the excitement of traveling into the Deep as he had so long dreamed of doing. How he wished he could see out! No such provision had been made, however, and the smooth, cabelle-guided voyage in the lubberlift, prolonged and anticlimactic, the profound humming of the cabelle itself, lulled him back into a deep and healing state of unconsciousness.
"Well, well! What have we here?"
Arran leapt from dreamless stupor into panic and pain. The voice shouting into his upturned face was rough-timbred and raucous. Someone had him by the hair, prying his head backward against protesting muscles in his neck. He was blinded, or almost so, by the agony of it. The only light, an eerie shadow-flickering of blue, emanated from the §-field, playing at reduced power along the interlocking mesh which constituted the fabric of the vessel.
"Harhar!" Another ugly voice laughed at him, milder only by comparison, its source invisible, and with even less pity in its lower-class tone than the first. "Meguess somebody thoughtful has sent us a treat, Jimbeau!"
Arran's head swam. He felt like throwing up, a reaction to intoxicating vapors exuded by the fungus he had concealed himself in. He had fallen asleep with his walther-weapon in both hands, wrists locked between his knees. Now, hands tingling and limp, he tried to bring the pistol up, to point it at the first voice, but it was snatched away, tearing his fingers. Hearing it clatter, far away, against some meshed metallic surface, he reached for the hand entangled in his hair, prying at the fingers. The knuckles were like knots upon a tree limb.
"None athat, now, sweetie!" The first voice admonished him in a terrifying mockery of tenderness, ignoring his most energetic efforts to break free as insignificant. "Fry me, Paddy, if it ain't so!"
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The volume of the voice changed, as if the speaker's head turned aside. "Whaddya say, Stewie old pal, can me and Paddy take a rest-break here?"
From a far comer of whatever place they were in, a third voice called to the others. " Ton condition you'll share this unlooked-for bounty, Jimbeau. Finders keepers, share and share alike, I always say. Hmm . . . wait a moment while I square this list away. What have you and Paddy found for us?"
The sound of angry exhalation came now, carrying to Arran's outraged nostrils the smell of something rotted. Between the darkness and the pain the frightened boy still could not see, but he could hear. The banter was gone from Jimbeau's tone as he called back. "As you will. Mister Van Merrivine—field take your eyes!" The second phrase was spoken under the breath. "But y'better hurry 'fore I throw this here d'licious titbit to the gundeckers!"
Pain transcending anything which had preceded it seared through Arran's scalp as he was hauled from the crate by his hair and dashed to the deck. Something hot and heavy landed atop him, knocking the breath out of him. A weight upon him squirmed, settled itself, and the nightmare began in earnest.
Hurried, cruel hands stripped him of his clothing. Excepting the antique weapon taken from him and cast aside, Arran carried nothing valuable about his person. Upon Skye, currency was exchanged by village Skyans in market-trade. A Drector's son had no use for it. Nor, unlike inhabitants of other planets, in particular the capital world Hanover, had he ever worn jewelry. This angered the men, for their usage of him grew more violent with the discovery.
Things were done to him, the unlikeliest of outrages, obscene acts forced upon him which he had not known possible to human bodies. Afterward, had he been inclined to tell another of it, words would have failed him. It seemed to last forever.
When the three were through with him—at least for the moment, they kept telling him with laughter, threatening even as they used him to use him again—his body had no secrets left for them. No part, no square siemme, no fold of skin, no opening, remained to himself, unviolated. At the
time he thought it ludicrous, given the searing torment he suffered, the indignities they put him to, that the most objectionable thing about them were the noxious smells which told him they had not washed themselves for a long time, if ever. He had never known, had never been told, neither by Lia nor Old Henry, that men did these things to one another. Or did they reserve them to young boys?
Some analytical portion of his mind which had remained sane—or become more insane than the rest—was turning this question over when he lost consciousness at last.
It would be a different Arran Islay who awoke.
Part Three: The Gyrfalcon
Yearday 205, 3009 A.D. Mayye 34, 509 Hanoverian
QUINTUS 6, 1 567 OLDSKYAN
There was a lofty ship And she wandered wide and free,
'Til she saw that she was followed by the Jendyne enemy, And she feared the course she sailed upon was never meant to be,
As SHE CAME beneath THE JENDYNE.
Jendyne, Jendyne, She CAME beneath the Jendyne lee.
Chapter XVIIl: The Gundeck
" Ton deck, ye rapespawn — an' look lively!"
A savage kick to his
already-battered ribs awakened Arran from his stupor. Before he could so much as groan or turn over, a slashing blow from a whip or light club cut across his naked back. By the time he had climbed to his feet, hand over hand up the cold, hard side of the massive caliprette, or projectible mounting, where he had the previous night collapsed, whoever had struck him thus, the same one yelling at him—in fact, at all of the grimy, sleep-stupid denizens of the gundeck—had passed along to his next victim.
Grumbling, staggering, and scratching, the gundeck crew—a sorry lot of both genders, all colors, sizes, and ages—hunched beneath the low ceiling. Arran was lucky to be of so small a stature, else he would have struck his head upon it. As it was, he might as well have taken such a blow, even with all that had happened to him of late, for he was stunned and revolted at the sight of many women—gentle creatures he had been brought up to believe should be respected, sheltered, somehow set apart from the sordid, pragmatic, masculine world—who appeared as naked as himself, and every bit as dirty.
With the men, some hundred seventy-five or eighty altogether, the women filed without spirit toward a heavy-gasketed door set in an in-curved wall, pausing several at a time to further shock Arran's preadolescent sensibilities by relieving themselves before the others, no different in their demeanor than their male counterparts, into a pair of steaming troughs upon either side of the hatch. The air was already thick with the odors of sleep, the crowding of too many unwashed bodies, and a hundred exotic vices. Individuals in this time and place inhaled the weedsmoke, chewed or
brewed the leaves, seeds, roots, or stems, of plantlike species from a million planets. Now the place began to take upon itself yet another stench, emanating from the troughs, before Arran—gulping to control his stomach, retched dry the night before—had used one himself, whatever his reluctance, and passed in turn through the hatch which swung shut from the inside, closing with ear-popping pressure.
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