“At least its teeth aren’t hurting him,” Roan said. “He’s all right. He’ll hold on until he tires of it, and then—”
“It won’t tire. Not in this light gravity.”
The chinazell stood, its ribbed sides heaving, its head on its long neck twisted to look at Iron Robert, who shifted his grip suddenly, leaped, caught a bony boss that adorned the dino’s withers and hauled himself across the creature’s back, his weight bearing it down. Its legs sprawled out. It plunged violently, striking with its yard-wide jaws as dust rose up in a dense cloud.
The chinazell came out of the dust cloud, wheeled and charged down on Iron Robert as he came to his feet. It bounded past him and struck with its immense tail, a blow like a falling tree. Iron Robert went down. The dino galloped away, circled, and Roan saw that its tail was broken, the hide torn, blood washing down across the scales, caking the dust. The head writhed on the long neck as the voiceless creature shuddered its pain. It came to a halt, the broken tail dragging now. Its head whipped from side to side as though seeking some escape from its torment. Fifty yards away, Iron Robert came slowly to his hands and knees.
“He’s hurt!” Stellaraire cried. “Oh, please, Iron Robert! Get up!”
The chinazell moved heavily, painfully. It walked to Iron Robert, stood over him. It maneuvered into position, raised a leg like an iron-wood log set with spikes, brought it down square on Iron Robert in a blow that shook the ground.
“Gom Bulj has got to stop it!” Stellaraire screamed. “It will kill him!”
“Wait!” Roan caught her arm. “He’s not finished yet! Look!”
The chinazell was moving awkwardly sideways, its head held low. Iron Robert’s mighty arms circled the lean neck. As it dragged him, he freed one arm, raised it, drove his stony fist into one small, lizard eye. The chinazell bucked and tried to shake free, but Iron Robert held on, twisted, struck at the other eye. The dino reared and plunged desperately, and Iron Robert dropped away, lay on his back. He raised his bloody fists, let them fall back.
The blinded chinazell stopped, squatted; thick blood ran down the triangular face; the primitive mouth opened in voiceless agony. It rose, ran a few yards, dragging its dead tail, then squatted again, its small cunning gone with its eyes. A murmuring ran through the silent crowd, and someone started a hissing, and at the sound the chinazell leaped up, crashed aimlessly against the thick fence. People scrambled back in fright, screaming, and the panicked beast lunged, brought down a section of the barrier, then turned and blundered back, struck the fence again. There was a blare of noise from the PA system, and Gom Bulj appeared, a vivid, bloated figure in scarlet capes, carrying a heavy power gun. He took aim, blew the head off the maimed beast. It fell over sideways like a mountain, kicked out once, twice, then lay still. The headless neck twitched as blood pumped out to puddle in the dust like black oil.
Gom Bulj walked over to Iron Robert, stood looking at him, still holding the gun in his hand, raising it now. . . .
“No!” Stellaraire was round the barrier, running toward the entrepreneur.
“You can’t!” Roan heard her voice, almost drowned now in the angry shouting of the crowd that had seen the two most deadly fighters in the Galaxy maim each other, and still felt cheated because there hadn’t been more blood and agony.
As Roan came up, Gom Bulj was holding up a many-fingered hand.
“As you wish, my dear,” he was rumbling. “I merely thought—”
“Iron Robert’s not just another wounded animal,” Stellaraire flared.
“But of course he is,” Gom Bulj boomed, lighting up a footlong cigar. “What else would you call him? But no matter. Say your farewells or whatever, and then back to work, eh?” He turned away.
“We’ll have to get a crew over here,” Roan said. “He’s too heavy to lift.”
“Leave him where he is,” Gom Bulj said. “Disposal is the local’s problem. And now I really must—”
“Aren’t you even going to try to help?” Roan demanded, standing in front of the bulky businessman.
Gom Bulj waved his cigar, blinking at Roan. “Ah, you Terries,” he chuckled. “So impractical . . .” He rippled quickly to one side and past Roan and the crowd of hurrying circus hands swallowed him up. The audience was melting away. Almost before they were clear the seats were going down, and the crews had started on striking the top. Stellaraire was bending over Iron Robert.
“Good by,” she said sadly. “You fought awfully well, Iron Robert. He was just too big for you.”
The stone giant opened his eyes. “Chinazell . . . tough fighter,” he said in a gritty, labored voice. “Dirty . . . trick . . . gouge . . . eyes.” His craggy face was contorted and his huge chest labored with the effort of his breathing.
“Do you think you could stand?” Roan asked. He gripped a massive arm and pulled, but it was like pulling on the trunk of a fallen tree. “We’ve got to get help,” he said, looking over toward the ship that was visible now where the tent had been peeled back. A crew was folding up the arena partitions, and a group of busy locals were setting to work to skin out the chinazell. There was no one else near.
“No one will help,” Stellaraire said. “They just . . . don’t help. And anyway—” She paused, looking at Iron Robert as he lay sprawled out on his back.
“Anyway . . . no use,” the giant growled. “Iron Robert bad hurt. Bone in back broken. Legs . . . not move. You go now, Gom Bulj not like you be late.”
A bald, thick-necked humanoid came up, cradling Gom Bulj’s power gun in his arm.
“Get moving, you two,” he ordered. “There’s work to be done. Gom Bulj said—”
“Don’t you give me orders, Bulugg,” Stellaraire snapped at him. “Anyway, we were just going.”
“I’m not leaving him here like this,” Roan said. He looked helplessly around. The skinners were lifting a sail-like flap of horny skin from the chinazell, exposing the bone-white flesh of the dino’s flank. No one was paying any attention to Iron Robert’s plight. No one cared. Beyond the busy throng folding canvas, the animals were moving up the aft gangplank into the ship. There was a holdup as a humped animal decided to sit crossways and someone yelled for the electric goad. Then Roan saw Jumbo heaving over the ‘zoo grounds like a ship in a slow sea.
“Get Jumbo,” he said to Stellaraire. “IH find same rope!”
“But, Roan—”
“Do as I tell you!” he snapped. He started away and the guard said, “Hey!” and brought the gun around.
“Shut up, Bulugg!” Stellaraire said. “And don’t get any ideas with that gun. You’re just supposed to hold it and scare people.”
XIII
Roan looped the thick, oily plastic cable under Iron Robert’s arms, tied it in a vast knot. Stellaraire was perched on Jumbo’s head with her legs hanging down over his gray, furrowed forehead. The pachyderm moved his trunk restlessly as Roan tied the cable to his leather-and-chain harness. Looking toward the ship, Roan saw that the animals were almost all aboard now. The last of the yard wagons were puffing away toward the greenish blaze of the setting sun with their loads. A shrill whistle sounded from the ship.
“Hey, shake it up!” Bulugg called. “That’s minus a quarter. Whatta, you wanna get left?”
“Pull, Jumbo!” Stellaraire cried. “Hurry! Pull!”
The elephant took a step and jolted to a stop. He looked back over his shoulder, puzzled, and flapped his ears.
“Pull, Jumbo,” Stellaraire called; and Jumbo leaned into his harness and pulled, sensing the necessity of something more than ordinary effort. Iron Robert budged, dragging a furrow in the ground and Jumbo strained, putting his back into it, placing his great feet and thrusting, hauling the dead weight of many tons across the dusty day of the empty arena.
At the gangplank, Bulugg jumped at the sound of the shrill lastwarning whistle. He waved the gun nervously. There were faces at the port above, looking down curiously.
“Five minutes to the Seal Ship bell,”
he blustered. “You can leave that hunk of rock right here and get aboard!”
Jumbo put a foot on the wide gangway, started up. A loudspeaker was chanting checklist orders. Gom Bulj appeared above, looking out from the cavernous’ hold.
“Here, here, what’s this?” he bellowed. He waved his arms, staring around as if outraged. Iron Robert’s vast inert weight dragged in the dust like a broken monument, reached the end of the gangplank—and jammed.
Jumbo heaved, the harness taut across his chest. A rivet popped from it and clattered against the hull. Roan ran to the fallen giant, caught up a long pole, levered at the stony shoulder. Jumbo rocked twice, then heaved again—and Iron Robert bumped up on the gangway, grinding along the incline with a noise like a wrecked ship being hauled off a launch pad.
Then they were in the hold and Gom Bulj was rippling his walking tentacles, muttering loudly, and the others were staring and then walking away, bored quickly with Terry foolishness. Stellaraire’s lavender powder was caked with sweat and two of her gold-painted, so-carefully tended fingernails were broken off.
But Roan looked at her and found her beautiful, with dust in her ochre eyes and streaks down her face, and her gold tights plastered against her body. The port clanged shut.
The ship’s lights came on, and they stood and looked down at the great body they had salvaged.
“Well, there went your chance to run away from the ’zoo,” Stellaraire sighed. “What are you going to do now? Just leave him here?”
“We’ll get the vet to look at him. He’ll know how to fix him. You and I will bring him food and scrape him. After a while he’ll be all right again.”
The girl looked into Roan’s face curiously. “Why?” she asked. “He was nothing special to you. You hardly knew him.”
“Nobody should be left alone to die because they’re hurt,” Roan said.
“You crazy, funny Terry,” Stellaraire said, and then she was crying, and he held her, wondering if it was because she was a Mule and not a real Terran that she was so hard to understand at times.
For two months Iron Robert lay in the canvas-hung compartment Roan and Stellaraire had arranged for him in the cargo hold, with his lower body encased in massive concrete casts to remind him not to try to move. Every day Roan or the girl went over him with a scraper, and assured him he was as handsome as ever. Now and then Gom Bulj came down to stare at the huge invalid, rap his nine knuckles against the casts and mutter about expense.
When the day came that the vet said the casts could come off, Nugg came down and helped Roan work carefully with a jack hammer, freeing him. When they finished, Iron Robert sat up, then got to his feet and stood, whole again.
“Terry customs strange,” he rumbled, looking down at Roan. “Not call you Terry now. Call you Roan. Iron Robert your friend, Roan. Not understand Terry ways, but maybe good ways. Maybe better ways than Iron Robert ever know before.” Gom Bulj appeared, puffing two cigars. He looked Iron Robert over, shaking his head.
“A remarkable thing, young Terry. It appears you were right. A valuable property, and good as new—I hope. I’m a fair being, young Terry, and I have decided to reward you. Henceforth, you may consider the Mule, Stellaraire, as your personal concubine, for your exclusive use—except when I have important Terry-type guests, of course.”
“She’s not yours to give away,” Roan said sharply.
“Eh? What’s that, not mine!” Gom Bulj blinked at Roan. “Why I paid—”
“No one owns Stellaraire.”
“See here, my lad, you’d best remember who it is you’re addressing! Are you forgetting I could have you trussed up in leathers and flogged for a week?”
““No,” Iron Robert rumbled. “No one lay hand on Roan, Gom Bulj. Iron Robert kill any being that try. Even you.”
“Here!” Gom Bulj back-pedaled, staring around wildly. “What’s the cosmos coming to? Am I to be threatened by my own property?”
“Iron Robert not property,” the giant rumbled. “Iron Robert of royal ferrous strain, and belong to no being. And Roan my friend. Tell all crew, Roan friend to Iron Robert.”
“And since you can’t give me away,” Stellaraire put in, “Roan still has a reward coming. I think it’s time you gave him full freak status and started paying him. And he should be freed from all duties except his high-wire act. And he should eat in the Owner’s Mess, with the other stars.”
“Why, why—” Gom Bulj stuttered. But in the end he agreed and hurried away, still muttering to himself.
XIV
There had been a party celebrating Iron Robert’s successful defense of his title against a Fire-saber from Deeb. Roan had drunk too much and not left Stellaraire until almost ship-dawn. Now he struggled out of a dream in which he fought against iron arms that closed on him, hearing the beloved voice that called by the arena gate.
His eyes were open now. He could hear his own breath rasping in his throat, and the voice was the wailing of a siren, but the crushing weight still held him, flat on his back with the edge of the bunk cutting into his arm, and a wrinkle in the blanket under him like a sword on edge. Far away, bells clanged, and a tiny glow grew behind the black glass disk above the cabin door, swelling into a baleful red that flashed on, off, on . . .
Roan moved, dragged an arm like an ironwood log across his body, turned under the massive pressure and fell with stunning violence to the floor from the bunk.
Lying on his face, he felt the deep vibration through the deck-plates. The engines were running—here in deep space, four parsecs from the nearest system!
He rose to his feet, his bones creaking under the massive acceleration—three gravities at least. Far away, over the bellow of the engines, the clang of bells, the whine of the siren, he thought he heard the sound of Jumbo’s trumpeting.
He made his way across the room, into the corridor, dragging feet like anchors, while the noise swelled, crimson lights screamed red alarm, far-away voices called. At the end of the corridor the lift door waited, open. Inside, he reached to the control panel, pressed the button for the menageries deck. For a moment, magically, the weight went away and he drew a breath. Then massive blackness damped down while tiny red lights whirled.
He was lying on the floor of the car, smelling the salty sea-smell of blood. Through the open door under the blue-white glare of the ceiling, he saw the long white corridor, the barred doors. Crawling again, he made his way along the passage, feeling the slickness underfoot, seeing how the pattern spread from under the doors, blackish red and harsh green mingling in a glistening film that trembled in a geometric resonance pattern.
All around him, over the mindfilling Niagara of the engines, there were bellows, groans, grunts of final agony. Roan went on, not looking into the cages as he passed them one by one, seeing the film of blood dance, spreading.
The high, barred door, of Jumbo’s stall was bulged outward, one two-inch steel rod sprung from its socket. Behind it, the elephant lay, blinded, ribs broken, one tusk snapped off short. Blood flowed from the open mouth, from under the closed eyelids. Roan could see the animal’s massive side rise in a tortured heave as it struggled to breathe.
“Jumbo!” he choked.
The heavy trunk groped toward him. The great legs stirred; a moan rumbled from the crushed chest Roan looked at the power rifle clamped in a bracket beside the stall door. He pulled it free, checked the charge, raised it against the relentless pull, aimed between the dosed and Moody eyes, and pressed the firing stud.
Alarms jangled monotonously in die carpeted corridor outside the quarters of Gom Bulj. Roan dragged leaden feet past the fallen body of an Ythcan, lying with one three-fingered hand outstretched toward the door of the patron’s apartment.
Inside, Gom Bulj lay sprawled, his body crushed against the floor, his eyes bulging from the pressure. He moved feebly as Roan came to him and went heavily down to hands and knees.
“Why are you . . . killing us all . . . Gom Bulj? Roan asked, then stopped to breathe.
“No . . .” the entreprenaur’s voice was a breathless wheeze. “Not me . . . at. . . . all . . . young Terry.” He drew a hoarse breath. “Old battle . . . reflex . . . circuits . . . triggered . . . somehow. Maximum acceleration . . . three . . . standard . . . gee.”
“Why?”
“Ah, why indeed . . . young Terry . . .”
“What . . . can we do?”
“It’s . . . too bad . . . too bad, young Terry. No help for us. The time has come . . . to terminate . . . the biological processes . . .”
“You mean . . . die?”
“When the . . . environment becomes . . . hostile . . . a quick demise . . . is greatly . . . to be desired.”
“I want to live. Tell . . . me what to do.”
Gom Bulj’s massive head seemed to sink even deeper into the compressed bulk of his body. “Selfpreservation . . . an interesting . . . concept. A pity . . . we won’t have . . . the opportunity . . . to discuss . . . it.”
“What can I do, Gom Bulj?” Roan reached to the bulbous body, gripped ” a thick arm. “I have . . . to try . . .”
“I suggest . . . you suspend . . . respiration. Five minutes . . . should do the trick . . . As for me . . . I may thresh a bit . . . but pay . . . no attention . . .”
“I’ll turn off the engines,” Roan choked. “How?”
“No use . . . young Terry. Too far. Even now . . . blood runs . . . from your nostrils.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“On the war deck . . .” Gom Bulj gasped. “Command . . . control panel. A lever—painted white . . . But . . . you can’t.”
“I’ll try,” Roan said.
It was an interminable time later, and Roan’s hands and knees left red marks against the gray decking as he pulled himself across the raised threshold of the door which a red glare-panel warned: BATTLE CONTROL—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Across the dusty room, the dead gray of the great screens had changed to vivid green-white on panels alive now with dancing jewel-lights. A dark shape moved on the master screen. Below, mass and proximity gauges trembled; numbers appeared and faded on the ground-glass dials. Roan pulled himself to the padded Fire Controller’s seat, spelled out the symbols flashing in blue: IFF NEGATIVE.
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 39