“Bella, you know we can’t afford that now. We’ll wait ’till we’re back on Granfont, like we planned.”
“We thought we’d have time, Raff. But we don’t. He’d never have sold so cheap if time hadn’t been short—awful short.”
“But we were going to use Len’s stock brooder. Where’d we ever find a mammal brooder here? And we’d have to stay nine months—”
“We won’t have to stay, Raff. I’ll have the baby implanted—in me.
Raff stared at her. “Bella—you sure? I mean, could you . . . could it . . .?”
She nodded. “I asked Doctor about it once, a long time ago. He said—first he took a lot of tests—and then he said I could.”
“But Bella, you’re . . . you’re not . . .”
“He said I could—even if I’m not human.” Her vertical-slitted eyes were bright in her still-piquant face. “I’ll be the mother of our son, Raff. He’ll be our human boy, born to me.”
Beside Bella, Raff raised his head suddenly. He moved closer to Bella, put a protective arm around her.
“What is it, Raff?”
“Bella—somebody’s following us.”
“Following . . . why?”
“I don’t know. Give me the boy. And stay close.”
They turned into a canyon with harsh lights, pushing through the jostling crowd. Alien hands plucked at their sleeves, alien eyes stared, alien voices implored, cursed, begged, threatened. The dust rose, hot and corrosive.
“Down here,” Raff gasped. In the shelter of a narrow way they clung together, coughing.
“We shouldn’t have left the main plaza,” Bella said. “Tourists don’t come here.”
“Come on.” Raff led the way, thirty feet back, when the twisted path ended between high walls in a cul-de-sac. They turned.
Two figures, one squat, one tall, bath wrapped in heavy, dun-colored togas, waited at the alley-mouth.
“Stay behind me.” Ruff tucked the cylinder in a harness pouch, put his hand inside his tunic to rest on the pistol butt, started forward; the short creature came to meet him, waddling on thick, bowed legs. Ten feet apart, they halted. Raff looked down into dead eyes like black opals in a face of bleached and pocked wood.
“We are stronger than you,” the alien grated. “Give us the royal slave and go in peace.”
Raff brought the gun into view.
There was blue stain across his throat where the cheap dye of the youth suit had dissolved in sweat.
“Get out of our way.” His dry mouth made his voice rasp.
There was a moment of silence. Then:
“We will pay,” the alien said. “How much?”
“I’ll sell you nothing. Just clear out of my way.” Raff licked sweat from his upper lip.
The tall alien had moved up behind his dwarf companion. Beyond them a heavy, lizard-bodied Minid with a scaled hide painted in garish colors moved into view, and behind him were others.
Raff took a step forward. The gun was almost touching the dusty folds of the other’s toga. “Out of my way or I’ll shoot sure as Hell!” A stumpy arm whipped out; Raff fired—a momentary flare of blue; then the gun was flying as the weight of the alien slammed against him, and he reeled back, grappling for a hold on horny hide. He caught a sinewy arm, twisted with all his strength, heard gristle creak, snap. He hurled the alien from him, leaped past him, swung at the tall one, missed as he leaned aside. The gun lay two yards away.
He dived for it—and a vast weight slammed against him, driving out his breath in an explosive grunt. He was aware of the roughness of the cobbles against his face, a fiery pain that rolled in waves from his shoulder. Far away, Bella’s voice wailed.
Raff rolled over and came to his knees. A wide foot in a ragged sandal smashed at his face. He caught at it, held on, dragged a kicking, fighting body down, hearing himself cry out at the agony in his shoulder; and then he found a grip on yielding flesh and clung, crushing, feeling cartilage crackle under his thumbs. He grunted, hunching his shoulders as talons raked across his face once, twice, then scrabbled and fell away. Then hard hands hauled at him, threw him on his back. He struck out blindly, rolling over to protect the cylinder with his body.
He tried to crawl toward the gun, but a boulder, falling from an immense height, had crushed his body and his lungs were charred pits in his chest. His arms and legs moved, though he had forgotten now why he must crawl. . . .
A last, brilliant light flared and died into bottomless darkness, and Raff felt himself fading, fading, winking out. . . .
He lay on his back, hearing their voices.
“This one fights like a scalded dire-beast!”
“. . . cartilage like rods of granite!”
“Break them . . .”
The blows were remote, like distant thunder. The beating went on for a long time. Raff didn’t notice when it stopped; he floated in a silence like a sea of molten lead. But voices penetrated the silence. There was the deep rumble of one who demanded, and a thin cry . . . Bella.
Raff moved an arm, groped over his face, wiped blood from his eyes, feeling broken flesh under his fingers. He blinked, and through a red blur saw Bella, held pinned against a wall by a cloaked figure. Its arm rose and fell, rose and fell again. . . .
Raff reached, groping. His hand fell on the power pistol. He tried to sit up, coiled away from agony like a worm on a hook. He dragged the gun around, leveled it on the yellow cloak and fired. The cloak crumpled. Another caught at Bella, whirled her around as a shield.
“You will kill your woman,” a thin voice said flatly. “Give us what we seek and go your way. We are stronger than you.”
Raff was watching Bella. She hung in the grip of the alien, small, limp. He saw her hand move—“Why do you struggle so, foolish one?” the alien grated.
“Leave . . . us . . . alone,” Raff managed. Bella’s hand was at her girdle. It fumbled, came away. Light glinted on steel. Raff saw the thin arm grope, finding the vulnerable spot between plates of scale-armor—then sudden movement—
There was a grunt from the creature who held Bella. He leaned, fell stiffly, the handle of Beta’s rat-tail poinard against his side. Behind her, a dark shape moved. Raff fired, a near miss. But the alien halted, called out in a strange tongue. Raff blinked gummed eyes, aiming.
“Wait, Raff,” Bella called. She spoke rapidly, incomprehensibly. The alien answered. Raff held the gun aimed at the voice.
Bella was beside him. “Raff, this one’s a Yill—like me. He gave me his parole.”
“Parole, hell!” Raff croaked.
“Raff, if we spare his life, he’ll be our slave. It’s true, Raff. It’s the Yill law. And we need him.”
The gun fell from Raff’s hand. He tried to reach for it, to curse the weakness, but only a thin moan came.
There was a babble of alien talk, Bella’s voice a thin thread against the rumble of the other. Raff tried again.
“. . . Bella . . .”
“Yes, Raff. It’ll be all right now. T’hoy hoy will take us to a place . . .”
“Use the gun,” Raff gasped out. “Make srure of the rest of ’em—all of ’em.”
“Raff—if we just go now—”
“No good, Bella. No law in this place. Taking no chances. There’ll be no wounded devils tracking us . . .”
Afterwards, there was a confused memory of strong arms that carried him, and pain like a blanket of fire, and the bite of the night wind, suddenly cold; and later, voices, die clink of keys, and at last a nest of smouldering furs, and Bella’s hands, and her warm breath against his face.
“Raff! Poor Raff”
He tried to speak, gasped, tried again. “Our boy,” he said. It was important to explain it to Bella, so she’d see how it. “Our boy. Bought with money and bought with blood. He’s our boy now, Bella.”
Leaning heavily on his cane, Raff looked down at his wife and his new born son while the slave T’hoy hoy washed out rags in the tin tub by the door.
“This ain’t the way I meant it to be,” Raff said. “Here in this fallen down shack in the ghetto. Gee, Bella—”
“When you get more able you can paint it pretty and white. And it’s on the other side of Tambool from the bazaar. They won’t look for him here. Roan.”
“My son,” Raff said, touching one tiny, curled fist. “In fifty years, maybe, he’ll be a full grown human man.”
I
Roan was bored watching his mother wash dishes.
“No,” she said. “I can’t take you outside now. After I do the dishes I got to grind the grits and then shell some snails and clean your daddy’s brushes so’s he can do some spring painting when he gets back from that job in town. And then . . . stop that!” Bella cried.
Roan tried to stick the paper back on the wall but it wouldn’t stay.
“Daddy fix,” he said. His nose was running and he wiped it on the end of the curtain.
“Not on the curtain,” Bella said. “I just washed them and I didn’t make no more soap yet.”
Roan reached for the salt cup. Salt was a nice thing to taste, a little at a time. Only it all came over on him.
“The salt!” Bella screeched. “Now that’s the end! Raff worked all day one day just to get that salt for you and there it’s all over the floor and how I’m going to wash salt?”
Roan began to wail again. Everything he did was bad.
“All right,” Bella said. “All right. I guess maybe you could go out in the back. You stay near the house. And don’t get into no trouble, and leave them chunck flowers alone. That juice don’t wash out.”
Roan ran out into the sunshine with a whoop of joy. He could taste the sun all over him except where his clothes were.
O, what lovely chunck flowers! Purpler than purple-fruit, redder than blood, greener than grass.
Musn’t pick the chunck flowers.
He wandered to the other side of the yard where it trailed off into a dust lot beyond the careful picket fence that Daddy was going to paint again soon.
Roan liked to pick the flakes of old paint off it, but today something more interesting was there.
On the other side of the fence were a bunch of wiry, leathery little gracyl children, and oh, what fun they were having!
“Hello!” Roan called. “Hey! Hi! Come play!”
Some of them looked up.
“You’re not a gracyl three,” one of them said.
“Here is where the three-year gracyls dig, not there.”
“I can help,” Roan said. “Help dig.”
He began to clamber over the fence. It was hard work and he tore a long strip off his shirt on the top of a picket.
Then, once over, he was suddenly shy and stood and watched the gracyl threes burrowing into the ground, their sharp claws working quickly.
“Me, too!” he cried then, and started in on a gracyl’s burrow. The gracyl kicked him disinterestedly and kept on burrowing, and Roan burst into tears and went to help another, and got kicked again.
“Dig your own burrow,” one of them finally said, not unkindly. Roan could see he was a little different from the others. One embryonic wing had failed to develop.
“You don’t got a wing bone,” Roan said. “Where you wing bone?”
The gracyl stretched out his one good wing into an infant fan. “They grow later,” he said. “You don’t have any wings.”
Roan tried to feel beneath his arms but he couldn’t find anything.
“I’m going to grow my wings later,” he said excitedly. “Then I’ll fly. I’m Roan.”
“I’m Clanth,” his new friend said, and then noticed the others had already burrowed ahead of him. “Shut up and dig.”
Roan began to dig and found out almost immediately it wasn’t as easy as it looked. The dirt at the top was loose, and came right out, but underneath the ground got damp and harder.
“Mama cutted my fingernails,” Roan said bitterly. He knew she shouldn’t have cut his fingernails and now look—he couldn’t dig like everybody else.
Roan went and found a sharp stick and began to do a little better. He hit hard with it and suddenly a hole opened up all by itself. A nice, big hole and Roan crawled into it and a gracyl came up and punched him and said, “Dig your own burrow, you freak.”
Roan took his stick and began digging down some more.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the gracyl said, and went on lengthening his burrow.
But as Roan gouged at the earth, it fell in again, and he was in another burrow and it was quite dark and a little cold, but Roan crawled fiyther along into the burrow and then he ran into something furry that he couldn’t see in the dark.
“That’s funny,” Roan said aloud and laughed, because something was tickling the inside of his mind.
“Here it is lovely and cool and dark and no winds blow. Here live we Seez and who are you?”
“I’m Roan,” Roan said aloud.
The See put out a soft claw and felt Roan. “You do not feel like you look in your mind” it said. “There are no wings and no digging claws. Tell me again what you are.”
“I’m Roan,” Roan said, and laughed again. And then there was a silence in Roan’s mind while the creature felt around in it, and he waited, feeling strange.
“There’s something amiss with you” the See said. Roan felt him backing off. “You can’t tell me who you are. And some terrible power lurks there in your mind. And such enormous puzzles, and things that are strange . . .”
Roan could feel a shudder from the creature’s mind and then it was gone and he was alone. Alone in the dark cold, with all those strange things die See said were in his mind. And the ground smelled dead and damp and wormy and there might be Gharons crawling through the burrows to eat dead things and suppose they thought he was dead?
Roan started to back out and found he was scared and all he wanted was Daddy or Mama and his own bed. He sat down and opened his mouth and howled.
The tears poured out of his eyes and he felt dirt in his mouth and he screamed with all his body and he was wet, now, too. and that made everything worse.
Then he felt Raffs strong hands on him and even though he knew it was Raff he had to go on screaming to show how scared he had been.
“Boy,” Raff said when he got him out and the screams quieted to sobs. “Boy, I been looking all over for you.” Daddy sounded funny. Daddy was scared, too.
“And I’m going to do something I never done before. I’m going to give you a good lickin’.”
And he turned Roan over his knee, but Roan didn’t mind the licking. By the time it was over he’d stopped crying altogether and he got up and looked solemnly at his father and Bella, who was hysterical and hollering for Raff to bring Roan in for a bath.
Roan wiped his nose on the back of his hand and said, “What am I?”
“You,” Raff said, “are a human boy. And some day you’ll be a human Man. Pure Terran you are, boy.”
“But I got funny ears,” Roan said, feeling one ear, because suddenly it seemed as though it was mostly his ears, his funny, rounded ears on the side of his head, that might be the cause of all his trouble and misery.
“What’s Terran?” Roan asked T’hoy hoy, as the Yill slave carefully washed him in a big wooden tub of hot water, while Bella hovered, checking.
“Terran?” T’hoy hoy echoed. “Well, a Terran is from Terra.”
“Uncle T’hoy hoy know a song about Terra?” Roan asked hopefully. Roan knew from his voice that he did. T’hoy hoy had a special way of pronouncing things he knew stories about. Sort of sing-song, like he said the stories, speaking the ancient, melodic language of the Yill.
“Yes. And if you stand still while I wash you and then eat all your dinner and go right to bed, I’ll be telling you the story.”
“Oh, yes!” Roan said. “Yes and yes and yes and yes!” And he made a big splash in the water, but then he really was still and T’hoy hoy began his story.
“Once upon a time, longer ago than the
oldest creature in the oldest world can remember now, there was a world called Terra.”
“Is it still there?”
“We’ll get to that later. A long time ago, and so far away you can’t even see its sun in the sky from Tambool, there lived people on the world named Terra, and these people all looked just like you.”
“Like me!” Roan’s eyes grew wide, and he stood even stiller than he needed to. “With funny ears?”
“Your ears aren’t funny,” T’hoy hoy said. “Not to a Terry. Now, one day these Terrans built the first spaceships that ever were. A whole new kind of thing that had never been built before. Only Terrans could do that. Then the Terrans went to other worlds in their spaceships and after thousands of years, creatures all over the universe learned that those twinkles in the sky were stars with worlds around them. Because previously each world had thought it was the only one. And each thought it had the only God, whereas there are actually nine Gods.
“And Terrans learned to live on those many worlds, but some of them changed, and on many worlds they met other beings, not human, but not too different.”
Roan sat down in the warm bath water because he was getting goose bumps standing in the cold air. “You not a Terran,” he said, touching T’hoy hoy’s Yill ear.
“No, I’m all Yill, as far as I know. But these people began to build things of their own and do many Terran things. And since these worlds sold things to one another, and visited each other, pretty soon they also began to have wars, because each wanted to be the strongest. So the men of Terra decided to rule the universe and keep the peace.”
“I got soap in my mouth,” Roan said. “Tase’s terrible.”
T’hoy hoy carefully wiped the inside of Roan’s mouth with a damp cloth.
“Then something very unhappy happened. Strange people came, from far away—on the other side of the Galaxy—or maybe even from another Galaxy—and their weapons were strange but powerful and they challenged Terra for the overlordship of the Universe. And they fought a great war that lasted for a thousand years.”
“Naughty,” Roan said. He could tell from the tone of Uncle T’hoy hoy’s voice. “Very naughty.”
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 31