The Best of Leigh Brackett
Page 38
“Some. They are my eyes and ears, my hands and feet. But you object, Trevor.”
“What difference does that make?” said Trevor bitterly. “I’ll go look at the ship.”
“Come on,” said Galt, taking up an armful of torches. “I’ll show you the way.”
They went out through the tall door into the streets between the huge square empty houses. The streets and houses that Trevor had known in his dream, remembering when there were lights and voices in them. Trevor noticed only that Galt was leading him out on the opposite side of the city, toward the part of the valley he had never visited. And then his mind reverted to something that not even the shock of his awakening could drive out of his consciousness.
Jen.
A sudden panic sprang up in him. How long had it been since the darkness fell on him there in the catacomb? Long enough for almost anything to happen. He envisioned Jen being torn by hawks, of her body lying dead as Hugh’s had lain, and he started to reach out for Galt, who had owned them both. But abruptly Shannach spoke to him, in that eerie silent way he was getting used to.
“The woman is safe. Here, look for yourself.”
His mind was taken firmly and directed into a channel completely new to him. He felt a curious small shock of contact, and suddenly he was looking down from a point somewhere in the sky at a walled paddock with a number of tiny figures in it. His own eyes would have seen them as just that, but the eyes he was using now were keen as an eagle’s, though they saw no color but only black and white and the shadings in between. So he recognized one of the distant figures as Jen.
He wanted to get closer to her, much closer, and rather sulkily his point of vision began to circle down dropping lower and lower. Jen looked up. He saw the shadow of wide wings sweep across her and realized that of course he was using one of the hawks. He pulled it back so as not to frighten her, but not before he had seen her face. The frozen stoniness was gone, and in its place had come the look of a wounded tigress.
“I want her,” Trevor said to Shannach.
“She belongs to Galt. I do not interfere.”
Galt shrugged. “You’re welcome. But keep her chained. She’s too dangerous now for anything but hawk-meat.”
The ship was not far beyond the city. It lay canted over on its side, just clear of a low spur jutting out from the barrier cliff. It had hit hard, and some of the main plates were buckled, but from the outside the damage did not seem irreparable, if you had the knowledge and the tools to work with. Three hundred years ago it might have been made to fly again, only those who had the knowledge and the will were dead. And the convicts wanted to stay where they were.
The tough metal of the outer skin, alloyed to resist friction that could burn up a meteor, had stood up pretty well under three centuries of Mercurian climate. It was corroded, and where the breaks were the inner shells were eaten through with rust, but the hulk still retained the semblance of a ship.
“Will it fly?” asked Shannach eagerly.
“I don’t know yet,” Trevor answered.
Galt lighted a torch and gave it to him. “I’ll stay out here.”
Trevor laughed. “How are you ever going to fly over the mountains?”
“He’ll see to that when the time comes,” Galt muttered. “Take the rest of these torches. It’s dark in there.”
Trevor climbed in through the gaping lock, moving with great caution on the tilted, rust-red decks. Inside, the ship was a shambles. Everything had been stripped out of it that could be used, leaving only bare cubicles with the enamel peeling off the walls and a moldering litter of junk.
In a locker forward of the air lock he found a number of space-suits. The fabric was rotted away, but a few of the helmets were still good and some half score of the oxygen bottles had survived, the gas still in them.
Shannach urged him on impatiently. “Get to the essentials, Trevor!”
The bridge room was still intact, though the multiple thickness of glassite in the big ports showed patterns of spidery cracks. Trevor examined the controls. He was strictly a planetary spacer, used to flying his small craft within spitting distance of the world he was prospecting, and there were a few gadgets here he didn’t understand, but he could figure the board well enough.
“Not far, Trevor. Only over the mountains. I know from your mind—and I remember from the minds of those who died after the landing—that beyond the mountain wall there is a plain of dead rock, more than a hundred of your reckoning in miles, and then another ridge that seems solid but is not, and beyond that pass there is a fertile valley twenty times bigger than Korith, where Earthmen live.”
“Only partly fertile, and the mines that brought the Earthmen are pretty well worked out. But a few ships still land there, and a few Earthmen still hang on.”
“That is best. A small place, to begin…”
‘To begin what?”
“Who can tell? You don’t understand, Trevor. For centuries I have known exactly what I would do. There is a kind of rebirth in not knowing.”
Trevor shivered and went back to studying the controls. The wiring, protected by layers of imperviplast insulation and conduit, seemed to be in fair shape. The generator room below had been knocked about, but not too badly. There were spare batteries. Corroded, yes, but if they were charged, they could hold for a while.
“Will it fly?”
“I told you I don’t know yet. It would take a lot of work.”
“There are many slaves to do this work.”
“Yes. But without fuel it’s all useless.”
“See if there is fuel.”
The outlines of that hidden thing in Trevor’s secret mind were coming clearer now. He didn’t want to see them out in the full light where Shannach could see them too. He thought hard about generators, batteries, and the hooking up of leads.
He crept among the dark bowels of the dead ship, working toward the stern. The torch made a red and smoky glare that lit up deserted wardrooms and plundered holds. One large compartment had a heavy barred and bolted door that had bent like tin in the crash. “That’s where they came from,” Trevor thought, “like wolves out of a trap.”
In the lower holds that had taken the worst of the impact were quantities of mining equipment and farm machinery, all smashed beyond use but formidable looking none the less, with rusty blades and teeth and queer hulking shapes. They made him think of weapons, and he let the thought grow, adorning it with pictures of men going down under whirring reapers. Shannach caught it.
“Weapons?”
“They could be used as such. But the metal in them would repair the hull.”
He found the fuel bunkers. The main supply was used to the last grain of fissionable dust, but the emergency bunkers still showed some content on the mechanical gauges. Not much, but enough.
6
A hard excitement began to stir in Trevor, too big to be hidden in that secret corner of his mind. He didn’t try. He let it loose, and Shannach murmured.
“You are pleased. The ship will fly, and you are thinking that when you reach that other valley and are among your own people again, you will find means to destroy me. Perhaps, but we shall see.”
In the smoky torchlight, looking down from a sagging catwalk above the firing chambers and the rusty sealed-in tubes, Trevor smiled. A lie could be thought as well as spoken. And Shannach, in a manner of speaking, was only human.
“I’ll need help. All the help there is.”
“You’ll have it.”
“It’ll take time. Don’t hurry me and don’t distract me. Remember, I want to get over the mountains as bad as you do.”
Shannach laughed.
Trevor got more torches and went to work in the generator room. He felt that Shannach had withdrawn from him, occupied now with rounding up the Korins and the slaves. But he did not relax his caution. The open areas of his mind were filled with thoughts of vengeance to come when he reached that other valley.
Gradually the exige
ncies of wrestling with antiquated and partly ruined machinery drove everything else away. That day passed, and a night, and half another day before all the leads were hooked the way he wanted them, before one creaky generator was operating on one-quarter normal output, and the best of the spare batteries were charging.
He emerged from the torchlit obscurity into the bridge, blinking mole-like in the light, and found Galt sitting there.
“He trusts you,” the Korin said, “but not too far.”
Trevor scowled at him. Exhaustion, excitement, and a feeling of fate had combined to put him into an unreal state where his mind operated more or less independently. A hard protective shell had formed around that last little inner fortress so that it was hidden even from himself, and he had come almost to believe that he was going to fly this ship to another valley and battle Shannach there. So he was not surprised to hear Shannach say softly in his mind, “You might try to go away alone. I wouldn’t want that, Trevor.”
Trevor grunted. “I thought you controlled me so well I couldn’t spit if you forbade it.”
“I am dealing with much here that I don’t comprehend. We were never a mechanical people. Therefore some of your thoughts, while I read them clearly, have no real meaning for me. I can handle you, Trevor, but I’m taking no chances with the ship.”
“Don’t worry,” Trevor told him. “I can’t possibly take the ship up before the hull’s repaired. It would fall apart on me.” That was true, and he spoke it honestly.
“Nevertheless,” said Shannach, “Galt will be there, as my hands and feet, an extra guard over that object which you call a control-bank, and which your mind tells me is the key to the ship. You are forbidden to touch it until it is time to go.”
Trevor heard Shannach’s silent laughter.
“Treachery is implicit in your mind, Trevor. But I’ll have time. Impulses come swiftly and cannot be read beforehand. But there is an interval between the impulse and the realization of it. Only a fraction of a second, perhaps, but I’ll have time to stop you.”
Trevor did not argue. He was shaking a little with the effort of not giving up his last pitiful individuality, of fixing his thoughts firmly on the next step toward what Shannach wanted and looking neither to the right nor to the left of it. He ran a grimy hand over his face, shrinking from the touch of the alien disfigurement in his forehead, and said sullenly, “The holds have to be cleared. The ship won’t lift that weight any more, and we need the metal for repairs.” He thought again strongly of weapons. “Send the slaves.”
“No,” said Shannach firmly. “The Korins will do that. We won’t put any potential weapons in the hands of the slaves.”
Trevor allowed a wave of disappointment to cross his mind, and then he shrugged. “All right. But get them at it.”
He went and stood by the wide ports looking out over the plain toward the city. The slaves were gathered at a safe distance from the ship, waiting like a herd of cattle until they should be needed. Some mounted Korins guarded them while the hawks wheeled overhead.
Coming toward the ship, moving with a resentful slowness, was a little army of Korins. Trevor could sense the group thought quite clearly. In all their lives they had never soiled their hands with labor, and they were angry that they had now to do the work of slaves.
Digging his nails into his palms, Trevor went aft to show them what to do. He couldn’t keep it hidden much longer, this thing that he had so painfully concealed under layers of half-truths and deceptions. It had to come out soon, and Shannach would know.
In the smoky glare of many torches the Korins began to struggle with the rusting masses of machinery in the after holds.
“Send more down here,” Trevor said to Shannach. “These things are heavy.”
“They’re all there now except those that guard the slaves. They cannot leave.”
“All right,” said Trevor. “Make them work.”
He went back up along the canting decks, along the tilted passages, moving slowly at first, then swifter, swifter, his bare feet scraping on the flakes of rust, his face, with the third uncanny eye, gone white and strangely set. His mind was throwing off muddy streams of thought, confused and meaningless, desperate camouflage to hide until the last second what was underneath.
“Trevor!”
That was Shannach, alert, alarmed.
It was coming now, the purpose, out into the light. It had to come, it could not be hidden any longer. It burst up from its secret place, one strong red flare against the darkness, and Shannach saw it, and sent the full cold power of his mind to drown it out.
Trevor came into the bridge room, running.
The first black wave of power hit him, crushed him. The bridge room lengthened out into some weird dimension of delirium, with Galt waiting at the far end. Behind Galt the one small, little key that needed to be touched just once.
The towering might of Shannach beat him back, forbidding him to think, to move, to be. But down in that beleaguered part of Trevor’s mind the walls still held, with the bright brand of determination burning in them.
This was the moment, the time to fight. And he dug up that armament of fury he had buried there. He let it free, shouting at the alien force, “I beat you once! I beat you!”
The deck swam under his feet. The peeling bulkheads wavered past like veils of mist. He didn’t know whether he was moving or not, but he kept on while the enormous weight bore down on his quivering brain, a mountain tilting, falling, seeking to smother out the fury that was all he had to fight with.
Fury for himself, defiled and outraged. Fury for Jen, with the red scars on her shoulders. Fury for Hugh lying dead under an obscene killer, fury for all the generations of decent people who had lived and died in slavery so that Shannach’s time of waiting might be lightened.
He saw Galt’s face, curiously huge, close to his own. It was stricken and amazed. Trevor’s bared teeth glistened.
“I beat him once,” he said to the Korin.
Galt’s hands were raised. There was a knife in his girdle, but he had been bidden not to use it, not to kill. Only Trevor could make the ship to fly. Galt reached out and took him but there was an un-sureness in his grip, and his mind was crying out to Shannach, “You could not make him stop! You could not!”
Trevor, who was partly merged with Shannach now, heard that cry and laughed. Something in him had burst wide open at Galt’s physical touch. He had no control now, no sane thought left, but only a wild intense desire to do two things, one of which was to destroy this monster that had hold of him.
“Kill him,” said Shannach suddenly. “He’s mad, and no one can control an insane human.”
Galt did his best to obey. But Trevor’s hands were already around the Korin’s throat, the fingers sinking deep into the flesh. There was a sharp snapping of bone.
He dropped the body. He could see nothing now except one tiny point of light in a reeling darkness. That single point of light had a red key in the center of it. Trevor reached out and pushed it down. That was the other thing.
For a short second nothing happened. Trevor sagged down across Galt’s body. Shannach was somewhere else, crying warnings that came too late. Trevor had time to draw one harsh triumphant breath and brace himself.
The ship leaped under him. There was a dull roar, and then another, as the last fuel bunkers let go. The whole bridge room rolled and came to rest with a jarring shock that split the ports wide open, and the world was full of the shriek and crash of metal being torn and twisted and rent apart. Then it quieted. The ground stopped shaking and the deck settled under Trevor. There was silence.
Trevor crawled up the new slope of the bridge room floor, to the shattered lock and through it, into the pitiless sunlight. He could see now exactly what he had done. And it was good. It had worked. That last small measure of fuel had been enough.
The whole after part of the hulk was gone, and with it had gone all but a few of Shannach’s Korins, trapped in the lower holds.
“Do you see what’s happening to the last of them?” Trevor asked savagely. “Can you see?”
The last of the Korins who had been outside with the slaves seemed to have been stunned and bewildered by the collapse of their world. And with the spontaneity of a whirlwind, the slaves had risen against this last remnant of their hated masters. They had waited for a long, long time, and now the Korins and the hawks were being done to death.
“Can you see it, Shannach?”
“I can see, Trevor. And—they’re coming now for you!”
They were. They were coming, blood-mad against all who wore the sun-stone, and Jen was in the forefront of them, and Saul, whose hands were red.
Trevor knew that he had less than a half-minute to speak for his life. And he was aware that Shannach, still withdrawn, watched now with an edged amusement.
Trevor said harshly to Saul and all of them, “So I give you your freedom, and you want to kill me for it?”
Saul snarled, “You betrayed us in the cave, and now…”
“I betrayed you, but without intent. There was someone stronger than the Korins, that even you didn’t know about. So how should I have known?”
Trevor talked fast, then, talking for his life, telling them about Shannach and how the Korins themselves were enslaved.
“A lie,” spat Saul.
“Look for yourselves in the crypts underneath the city! But be careful.”
He looked at Jen, not at Saul. After a moment Jen said slowly, “Perhaps there is a—Shannach. Perhaps that’s why we were never allowed in the city, so the Korins could go on pretending that they were gods.”
“It’s another of his lies, I tell you!”
Jen turned to him. “Go and look, Saul. Well watch him.”
Saul hesitated. Finally, he and a half-dozen others went off toward the city.
Trevor sat down on the hot, scorched grass. He was very tired, and he didn’t like at all the way the withdrawn shadow of Shannach hovered just outside his mind.