Slow Train to Arcturus

by Eric Flint

  "They're never going to make the hundred or more years until they get to their sun. And it doesn't look as if, when they get there, they'll have the technological ability to build the habitats they need," said Amber, grimly. "They're worse off than anyone else, so far."

  Howard shook his head. "The amazing part is that they've survived this long without famine."

  "They may not have. There are states in the history of old Earth that had serial famines," said Amber. "I wish I hadn't remembered that."

  "Our priority now is to rescue Kretz's imprisoned companion," said Howard, "but I cannot just leave these people in such wretchedness. When that is done we need to do something for them."

  "Yeah, well, how do you intend to get to that first priority?"

  Howard shrugged. "They are farmers. They work hard. Tonight they will sleep. It is not like your automated civilizations. People are tired. While they sleep we can walk through their midst."

  The thinkers of high strategy blinked at him.

  "It's so simple that it could just work," said Lani.

  "Just like me," said Howard with a quiet smile.

  "Huh," she said tucking her arm in his. "Dead simple."

  "And how will we find our way in the dark?"

  "We could take a shuttered lantern," said Howard, doubtfully.

  "Or better still, use the gear we used for night-traps for perps," said Lani. "If the flyboys have anything like that. Infrared and special goggles."

  "We do have some portable emergency lights," said Kretz. "Hand-held lights."

  "What about programming your computer to guide us like… you know… one of those games? Beep if we go off track," said Lani.

  "That's… within the realms of possibility," said Amber.

  "Could you not just have a maintenance 'bot guide us? Or carry us, as the wild men in Diana had them do?" asked Howard.

  "Yes!" said Amber, brightening. "And that way I don't have to walk. Let's see if there are any water arterials."

  There were. A short walk would take them to one that led right through the grounds of the huge complex that housed both the prisoner and the alien who had-according to Kretz-gone mad. The exits might be secured, but Kretz had found a tool in the ship that he said had dealt with the other human electronic locks. It had dealt with the one on the hollow central cable, anyway. Now all they had to do was prepare and wait. It was never easy. Not even when Lani offered to distract him with further lessons in this "making out."

  When the lights were dimmed in the habitat, they were ready. Despite not having master-flier status, they all had black lycra-even Kretz had an outsize set pulled over his suit, and they had all blackened their faces.

  "I saw it in a picture of old-time soldiers, " said Lani, when Howard protested. "And it makes sense. Your faces would show up."

  Howard had learned one thing of great value in his relationship already. When she used that tone, he just did what she wanted. Besides, all over black hardly counted as "painted." He was sure that that was not what they'd meant in the Bible anyway. As for weapons.. .

  Kretz offered laser pistols. While the alien put one on his belt, he kept hold of the automatic shotgun. Lani settled for extra clips for the pistol. Amber accepted a strap for her shotgun, Zoe had a short broad-barreled weapon from a secure stockpile in Icarus, as did the other two fliers. The uThani, after consideration, kept to bows and machetes. Howard stuck to his hands. "You either have enough weapons-or far too few," he said quietly. "At need I will carry and kill. But I think my hands are going to be needed. So let me keep them free."

  Zoe grinned. "Not so, big 'un. We want you to take this pry-bar. We may need it, and it's heavy."

  It probably was to light-boned fliers. And, in need, it made a weapon.

  An hour after full darkness had fallen in the habitat, the portable showed only one person anywhere near the airlock. So they cracked it and went in. If the person was a guard, apparently he had settled down some distance away. They didn't even have to disturb him on their way to the arterial tunnel… although it was a close thing. Howard stumbled over something in the dark. He managed not to fall, and felt for the object to move it before anyone else fell. It was roundish and heavy and he ended up taking it with him, as they crept on through the dark.

  The door to the arterial was securely locked. And it did not respond to Kretz's electronic tickling either. Kretz used his laser-pistol on the lock eventually, and Howard finished the job with the pry-bar. He set the round object down to do it, but being a neat worker by habit, he picked up again. It was only later, hunching down on the running board behind the pipe-checker that he took a proper look at it. And screamed before he could help himself. It leered at him. For a brief irrational moment he had thought that it was a real human head, instead of one severed from a statue.

  "What did you bring that for?" asked Lani, looking at it. "That was what was used to jam the airlock."

  "I tripped over it," explained Howard. "Then I picked it up before anyone else fell over it. What should I do with it?"

  Lani shrugged. "Bring it along. You can always throw it at someone. If you leave it here it'll fall off and block the pipe-checker's tracks, probably."

  So, when the pipe-checker was inside the sprawling complex that they were to discover was the beloved leader's palace, Howard had a head under his arm. Following Amber's instructions they walked through the vast place, avoiding people, moving closer to Abret.

  The patrolling guard's torch was an unwelcome surprise. They were halfway across the square and there was nowhere to run to. Howard and the rest stood dead still. Howard hunched his shoulders and tried to pretend that he wasn't there. The torch-light swung across them… and stopped. On the head. The patrolling guard gasped. And the torch toppled to the floor.

  "Howard, you nearly frightened me to death with that thing," said Dandani quietly, lowering the guard's body. "How you stop this light?"

  "Put it under him," said Howard, not wanting to ask if the man was dead.

  "Hokay. We go on?"

  So they did. In the shadows between two buildings on the far side of the square they stopped to consult the portable again.

  Amber pointed to the screen. "He's moving. Somehow he must have gotten out that cell."

  "Where is he going?" asked Kretz.

  In the dim glow from the screen Amber's frown was ferocious. "Towards the other alien."

  "We have trouble. Serious trouble," said Lani.

  34

  The spark of revolution is more likely to come from ordinary things, like family or food, than it is to come from deep philosophical thought. That is the tinder, not the spark.

  From: Elementary Societal Psychodynamics.

  2089. James R. Grey (ed).

  New Harvard Library (Pub.)

  It was dark, and Ji was dressed all in black. He'd moved so quietly that Abret hardly heard him. It was obvious that the night jailor hadn't heard him at all. Ji had his keys. He opened the cell as quietly as possible.

  "Are you ready, foreign devil?" he asked quietly.

  Abret stood up. "As I'll ever be."

  Abret knew he'd agreed to this. Now he was determined to try. How close they might get to Derfel was another matter. At least Abret knew he could die free and fighting.

  Naked and cold, he walked out of his cell and down the passage, stepping over the fallen body of the jailor, and following his human guide up the passages. Ji at least knew where they had to go. Abret knew what he had to do if they got there. He played all the possibilities in his mind. Escape after that might not be possible, but at least he would not go mad behind the bars. After all, death was inevitable. It might as well be quick. And what had these humans-be they ever so vile at times-done to deserve Derfel?

  They rounded the corner. There, coming towards them, were a group of the brown-uniformed guards. Already, it seemed, they had lost! He half-turned, only to hear voices behind him. And then he realized that the brown-uniformed ones were not aiming those w
eapons at him. They had stepped aside and were standing rigidly, weapons shouldered, a hand across the weapon in what was plainly some ritual gesture.

  Feeling as if his legs might suddenly fail him, Abret walked on past, waving vaguely at them.

  "What happened?" he asked, once they were around the next corner.

  "They believe you to be the Great Leader," said Ji. "I did when I first saw you. The Great Leader does as he wishes."

  For a moment Abret was insulted. He didn't look a bit like Derfel! Did all aliens look alike to them? Well, he'd struggled with telling the humans apart at first. On the positive side, they were still free. There was a remote-very remote-chance, that he could recover his suit and win free to the lifecraft. It could only go better… if he took brave steps.

  "Where are those who command?" he said, amazing himself with own audacity.

  Ji looked him in puzzlement. "Those who command?"

  "Those who command the ones in brown," explained Abret.

  "The officers? General Su-Jin commands the night-staff of the presidential guard."

  "Let us go and see him."

  "Are you mad too?"

  "No. I want us to succeed. I will tell him to put his guards on the outside."

  The black-clad Ji smiled. It was the first smile that Abret had ever seen from the grim-faced man. "You must say 'send all the guards to defensive positions in Perimeter One.' The Great Leader speaks our language better."

  It suddenly occurred to Abret to be suspicious. "How do you know all of this? How do you do all of this?"

  Ji shrugged. "Because I am a senior agent in the secret police. I have worked for the Great Leader for many years… until I brought my daughter to see the new Great Leader. She begged."

  His face set hard again. "They are used to seeing me in these clothes here. I come to report my work at night."

  The general, in his brown uniform spattered with red braid, did not seem surprised at the instruction, or Abret's company, or his state of undress. "It will be done immediately, Beloved Leader," he said holding his one hand rigidly, flat palm out from his odd headgear.

  Abret did not risk saying any more. He just nodded and turned and left. He allowed Ji to lead him to an empty room a little farther up the passage. "We will give them five minutes," said Ji.

  In the narrow gap between the two buildings Lani watched as the briskly trotting squads of brown uniformed soldiery headed past. "Something has stirred them up," she said.

  "Us, I imagine," said Howard quietly, at her shoulder.

  Lani smiled. "If it is us, they're going the wrong way."

  "Lucky that," said one of the uThani with a flash of teeth in the darkness. "We would never get through all of this lot. Not without a whole tribe."

  "Many. Lot of beads and trinkets to sell," said the other with a chuckle.

  They moved out, a little later, down deserted passages, until they came to an ornate, heavily carved door… with two dead men beside it.

  Ji and Abret had proceeded down the empty corridors to the guarded double door. The guards blinked at Abret, one stopping in mid-salute. Ji kept walking and then, just as the guard on the left started to raise his weapon, lashed out.

  To Abret it seemed impossible. You could not kick one man in the throat and knock the weapon from the other's hand that fast. And the blow that Ji followed that up with-an upward strike with the heel of his hand at the man's nose, dropped him. Ji leapt on the fallen throat-kick victim. The gasping man gave a half strangled shriek.

  Abret tugged at the door handle, and the huge doors swung open. He and Ji bundled inside.

  But they had not been quick or quiet enough.

  Derfel was on the far side of the room. He held a terrified looking little human in front of him, his arm around her throat. He held a laser-pistol in the other hand. "You! How did you get here?" he demanded. "My guards will be here any moment."

  The small human squirmed, "Papa?" Her voice was full of fear… and hope.

  "Yes, little flower. It is me," said Ji. "Let her go, foreign devil."

  "Come any closer and I'll shoot her."

  The door pushed open. "Just in time," said Derfel.

  "Actually," said the black-faced entrant, in Miran: "a little late."

  Others came in behind him. Humans. Black from head to toe, except that one carried a bronze head under his arm. A head that Derfel had so boldly severed.

  "Kretz?" said Abret, incredulously.

  The blackened face smiled. "Nice to see Miran faces, even if it is not good to see you pointing weapons at each other. I've come to take you back to our spacecraft. Selna is getting a little anxious to go home."

  Kretz took in the scene, and read the situation as best as he could. Derfel could still kill them. By the look in his eyes he was definitely off the edge of sanity.

  He stepped forward as confidently as he could.

  "Keep back or I'll shoot!" said Derfel. "I mean it."

  Kretz looked at Derfel. Then at the wide-eyed little human female he held and the other humans. "He is threatening to kill."

  "Can he?" asked Howard.

  For an answer Kretz said: "Spread out."

  "Stand still!" snarled Derfel-in Miranese, which no one but Abret and Kretz understood.

  "I mean you no harm," said Kretz, as calmly as he could, while slowly raising the barrel of the automatic shotgun. "If you don't want to go, we'll just take Abret."

  "And the human you're holding, and my suit," said Abret.

  Derfel showed no sign of moving or cooperation. "My people will be here soon. You are right in the middle of my kingdom. You can't get away."

  "I sent them away. They thought I was you," said Abret. "Now, let that little human go, Derfel. She's done you no harm."

  The man who had been there with Abret said something in a foreign language.

  Derfel looked at him and answered in the same tongue.

  "What did he say?" asked Kretz, warily, wondering if he should be covering this man as well.

  "Ji told him to let his child go. Derfel said he'd let the child go if Ji dealt with us," said Abret.

  While Derfel's attention had been on the black-clad Ji, Nama-ti had been sidling farther around the room. He was very close to Derfel and the girl now. He said, very quietly in uThani, "Distract him, Dandani. I'll get the girl-child."

  Kretz found it an odd way for learning their language to pay dividends. A quick glance showed him the scar-faced uThani had an arrow on the string and was nearly at the opposite flank. "Hey, you with ugly face," said Dandani loudly-in English-"why you no come fight me, one-one? You have face like Carpincho's ass." It was a huge pity that Derfel's translator couldn't do English, thought Kretz.

  As Derfel turned, Nama-ti dived, grabbing the girl and wrenching her down. Forewarned, Kretz fired first. He barely beat Lani.

  An arrow… A flung bronze head, and a screaming man called Ji.

  It happened fast.

  But not fast enough for Nama-ti. The brief dying convulsion of Derfel's hand sent a lightbolt to strike his forearm. The uThani's hand was half severed. He screamed.

  One of the flyboys, slow to react to the violence, was quick enough now. He had a tourniquet on Nama-ti's arm, and a syringe in his hand, while the others were still almost stock still.

  Ji held his daughter. The child stared not at him, but at the bronze head. She kept saying something over and over.

  Lani was the first to come to terms with the situation. They were all a bit shocked. Amber looked as if she'd faint any moment and that flygirl of hers was not looking much better. Someone had to take charge.

  "We need to move out," she said. "I can hear them coming."

  "No," said Kretz, decisively. "We need to buy more time. Hide. Pull the bodies in from outside too. There is a room in there. Cover Derfel with that bedding." He turned to the other Miran and said something in a foreign language.

  The other alien gaped at him.

  Abret was shocked by the suddenness,
by the violence. By Kretz. Mild mannered Kretz, what he'd done and what he now said. "Abret, you will meet them at the door and tell them to leave you alone. I hope that your Transcomp has that much of the language."

  "Me?" Abret knew that was a stupid thing to say. But right now, with aliens pulling dead bodies past him in the aftermath of the killing, he felt stupid.

  Kretz shook him. Hard. "Others thought that you were him earlier. To them we probably all look alike," said Kretz, hauling bedclothes over the dead Miran. "I found humans hard to tell apart at first. You owe them, Abret. They've risked their lives to rescue you."

  Ji had sat up, still holding his daughter to his chest. She was still saying over and over again that the ancestor himself had come to save her. "What is happening?" he asked. "Who are these people?"

  "These are friends who have come to rescue me. I am going to pretend to be the Great Leader." Without knowing why he did so, Abret patted the man on his shoulder. "We will get you and your daughter away too, if we can."

  Ji nodded, spoke in the rapid-fire local language to the girl child, and gave her the bronze head. "Lie down, child. The ancestor is with you. Hide him under the bedclothes too." He turned to Abret. "She must be here. Tell them they interrupt your pleasure. Tell them to go back to the first perimeter."

  The palatial bathroom was big but it had never been intended for this many people. Nama-ti was in the huge empty bath itself, having his partially severed hand attended to. He was not really conscious, after whatever it was that they'd injected him with. Amber had her head between her knees and was being patted by her flygirl. Lani stood with the others, including the grim-faced local, at the door. Waiting.

  Then she heard the sound of the doors being opened. The other alien said something. The girl said something that sounded hysterical. The alien kept repeating himself.

  There was the sound of the door closing.

  The local man, Ji, was first out. It was just as well, because the girl was trying to brain Kretz's alien friend with the bronze head, and screaming at him.