Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Rosel G Brown

  The pirate captain gave his orders as the boat dropped toward the gray world swelling on the forward repeater screen. The deck plates rumbled as the retro-rockets fired long bursts, correcting velocity. Atmosphere shrieked around the boat now.

  Roan saw the curve of the world swing up to become a horizon. A drab jungle continent swept under them, then an expanse of sparkling sea and a white surfed shoreline. There was a moment of vertigo as the vessel canted, coming in low over green hills; it righted sluggishly, and now the towers of a fantastic city came into view, brilliantly sparkling beyond the distant forest-clad hills.

  “Remind me to shoot that gyro maintenance chief,” Henry growled. Roan watched as tree-tops whipped past beneath the hurtling ship. Then it was past the wooded slopes, and the city was close, looming up, up, until the highest spires were hazy in the airy distances overhead.

  The ship braked, slowed, settled in heavily. A ponderous jar ran through the vessel. The torrent of sound washed away to utter silence. From below, a turbine started up, ran sputteringly, smoothed out. Henry looked at the panel chronometer.

  “If one of those slobs jumps the gun—”

  A light blinked to life on the panel.

  “Ramp doors open,” Henry murmured. “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty!” He whirled on Roan.

  “Here we go kid! With a little luck well be drinking old Terry wine out of Terry crystal before the star goes behind those hills.”

  Roan stood with Henry Dread at the foot of the ramp, looking out across a pitted and crumbling expanse of ancient pavement. Far across the field, four massive tracked vehicles aimed black gun muzzles at the silent administrative sheds. Nothing moved.

  “Empty emplacements,” Henry said. “Missile racks corroded out. It’s a walk-over.”

  “Iron Robert said the ’zoo played here once,” Roan said. “He said the natives have guns and bows, and know how to use them.”

  “The carny was here, eh? Who’d it play to, the rock lizards?”

  “People,” Roan said. “And they wouldn’t have to be very smart to be smart enough to stay out of sight when they see a shipload of scavengers coming.”

  “Corsairs!” Henry barked. “We don’t scavenge, boy! We fight for what we take. Nothing’s free in this Universe!” He thumbed his command mike angrily.

  “Czack! Wheel that tin can of yours over here!” He turned to Roan. “We’ll go take a look at the city.” He waved his rifle toward the towers beyond the port. “This was one of the last Terry capitals, five thousand years ago. Men built the place, boy—our kind of Man, back when we owned half the Galaxy. Come along, and I’ll show you what kind of people we came from.”

  There was a high golden gate before the city and at the top, worked in filigree, was the Terran Imperial symbol, a bird with a branch in its mouth, and a TER: IMP. above it.

  “I’ve seen it a million times, in my books back on Tambool,” Roan said. “That bird and the TER. IMP. above it. Why a bird, anyhow?”

  “Peace,” Henry Dread said. “Czack!” he barked into his command mike. “Bring that pile of tin up here and put it in High.” Then he turned back to Roan. “TER. IMP. means Terra ran the show. And any bird that didn’t keep the peace got his guts ripped out. That’s how Men operate, see?”

  Peace, Roan thought, turning it in his mind, trying to smooth off the sandpapery edge Henry Dread gave to the word, watching the massive combat unit rumbling up beside him.

  “Take it slow. Put it in Maximum now,” Henry Dread said to Czack. “That fence is made of Terralloy and nothing’ll tear it down but a Terry Bolo.”

  “But it’s stood for five thousand years and nobody can put up another one.” Roan said, wanting the TER. IMP. and the bird to stay there another five thousand years. “Why tear it down? Couldn’t you just blast the lock?”

  “Maybe. But this impresses the Geeks more, if they’re watching. Okay. Take it, Czack.”

  The gate screamed like a tom female, bent slowly and finally landed over the Bolo with a horrible clang and the Bolo, a crease along its top turret now, went on through. Czack traversed his guns, looking for natives.

  The quick silence from the fallen gate and the dead city was eerie.

  Czack appeared at the upper hatch and swore at the gate and the Bolo and Aldo Cerise in general. He spotted the dent in the Bolo turret and swore worse.

  “Maybe we’ll find more Bolos in the City,” Henry Dread said. “Never seen an Imperial city without ’em and this was a great one. Get you a nice, new Bolo and some nice, new guns. Now get back in the tin can and keep us covered while we do some ground reconnaissance. Shoot anybody you see.”

  Henry Dread tucked the mike under his tunic. His heavy boots rang on the mosaic of the path they took beside the road, and he gestured with his gun as they went along.

  “Those buildings,” he said. “Ever see anything that high for beings that don’t have wings?”

  The Terran buildings climbed high into the sunlight, incredibly straight and solid. From here it all looked perfect. But at Roan’s feet the tiles of the intricate mosaic were broken and missing in spots, and Henry Dread kicked at the loose ones as he walked along.

  Roan paused to watch a fountain throwing rainbows into the air, spinning shifting patterns of water and light.

  “They built things in those days,” Henry Dread said. “That fountain’s been running five thousand years. More, probably. Anything mechanical breaks in this city, fixes itself.” Roan was looking at the house beyond the fountain, with the TER. IMP. symbol on the door, and he gaped up at row on row of floors, windowed and balconied.

  “It looks as though that door might open,” Roan said. “People might walk out. My people.” He paused, wondering how he would feel if this were Home. “But it’s all so perfect. So wonderful. If they could build like this, how could anyone beat them?”

  “The Lost War,” Henry Dread A said, coming up to the fountain and drinking from a side jet. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “They call it the Lost War but we didn’t lose it. Terra never lost a war. A stalemate, maybe—we didn’t win it, either. Anybody can see that. But we broke the power of the Niss. The Niss don’t rule the Universe. There’s supposed to be the Niss blockade of Terra, and they say there’s still a few Niss cruisers operating at the far side of the Galaxy. But that’s probably just superstition. I’ve never run into a Niss. And never met anybody that did—Man, Gook or Geek.”

  Henry Dread got out his microphone. The men had come in through the ruined gate and were scrambling over the Bolo, perching on its armored flanks and hanging off the sides.

  “Fan out in skirmish order,” he barked. “Shoot anything that moves.”

  Roan followed Henry Dread. “Empty,” Roan said. “I don’t see anything that looks like natives might be living here. I wonder why not? With all this . . .”

  “Superstition. They’re afraid of it.” Henry Dread’s eyes were darting in all directions. “But that doesn’t mean there might not be a few natives inside the fence. And they may be right to be afraid of the City. Look over there.”

  There was a deep hole, blackened at the edges.

  “Booby-trapped,” Henry Dread said. “Don’t know how many might be around the city, or where. So watch out.”

  They came to a high wall, set with clay tiles, and between the tiles grew tiny, exquisite flowers.

  “Park,” said Henry Dread. “Full blown memento of Terran luxury. Maybe have time for it later.”

  “Tank here!” one of the men called from behind a nearby building. “Bolo Mark XXXV, factory fresh!”

  “Don’t touch her, you slat-headed ape!” Czack’s voice crackled from his Bolo. “I don’t want nobody’s filthy hands on her until I see her.”

  Henry Dread laughed. “It’s not a woman, you rackskull. And it’s my freaking tank and I’ll see it first.”

  “Look, I’m going in that park,” Roan said, “Call if you want me.”

  Henry Dread stopped, looked back at Roan, fro
wning.

  “I won’t desert,” Roan said. “Not as long as you’ve got Iron Robert back there in the hold.”

  “Maybe,” Henry Dread said. “Maybe if you go in that park you’ll find out the difference between Geeks and Men. Maybe you’ll understand what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

  “Boss!” Czack called. “Take a gander at this. Full fuel tanks and magazines and—”

  “Don’t touch anything!” Henry Dread called. “These damned Gooks have scrambled eggs for brains,” he added.

  “Okay,” Roan said, starting to climb up a gnarled old tree that looked over the garden wall. “Fire three shots when you want me to come out.”

  “Watch out, boy,” Henry Dread said, and stopped again. He took out his Mark XXX blaster and handed it over to Roan.

  “You’ll come back,” he said. “And you’ll know more than you do now.”

  Roan balanced the gun in his hand, sitting on a lower limb of the old tree. He felt the solid metal of it, the waiting, repressed power, the cold steel with the flaming soul. He looked up briefly at Henry Dread, who laughed, knowing what Roan felt with the gun.

  Then Henry Dread was striding away across the plaza and Roan clambered up the tree, thinking as he climbed of the gracyls and how he’d climbed to follow their flights, and of the circus and the tree he’d climbed to see it, the Never-never tree, little thinking it was his last day on Tambool. And at the height of the wall he thought of Stellaraire and the tightrope and his eyes stung, but then he looked over the wall toward the park.

  And there was no room for thought of the past. Here lay the Terran civilization that Henry Dread talked of rebuilding.

  Within the park green grass spread and flowers bloomed and Roan could see small automatic weeders moving along the paths where fountains rose and splashed untouched by time.

  And across the manicured precision of the lawn, a fallen statue lay—a vast statue with a tunic draped around its hips. It lay face up, one arm raised, pointing now to the high skies.

  It was a Terran. Pure Terra.

  And made just like Roan.

  Roan leapt down from the wall onto a bank of springy grass, and ran to the statue. Feature for feature—eyes, ears, nose, the connections of muscles—this was Roan. Terran.

  Did my father look like this? Roan wondered. Who was this Man? Where did he come from? He walked around to the base of the statue. TER. IMP., it said, with the dove and the branch. And then:

  ECCE HOMO

  July 28, 12780.

  “Ecce,” Roan said to the statue, touching it, wondering how the name was really pronounced.

  Then he became aware of sound scenting the air. The sound and scent seemed the same, both swirling faintly through the still air and he followed the melody. The scent was not the heavy perfume Stellaraire used, nor were the sounds the coarse sounds of the circus noise-makers. It was all something else. Something that stirred memories—hints, odors of memories—far in the deeps of Roan’s mind.

  Sunlight he’d never drowsed in, winds he’d never felt, peace he’d never known.

  Peace, he thought, knowing Henry Dread had said it wrong.

  The razored, spring-green turf came down to the edges of the pebbled path and ran between gardens of jewel-bright flowers. A wide-petaled blue blossom, with black markings like a scream in its throat, opened and closed rhythmically.

  The music stopped briefly and then changed, as though drawing out things in Roan’s mind. In the small pause, Roan heard the play of a fountain, a silver sound.

  Then, more silver still, came the faint call of horns rising and loudening and loosening old locks in Roan’s mind. A smoke-like drift of stringed music floated into the horn motif, countering it softly, and then running away and coming back a little different, so that the horn challenged it and took up the string song itself and then a further, tinkling sound joined the horn and string and built an infinite, convolute structure in Roan’s mind that spread through his whole being and finally broke into a thousand crystals, leaving Roan almost in tears for the old, old things that are lost and the beautiful, infinitely beautiful things that never existed.

  A fat bee droned past, bumbled inefficiently into a flower and hunted nearsightedly for a drop of honey. The flower folded a maternal petal over the bee and he emerged covered with yellow pollen and bumbled away looking triumphant and ridiculous.

  Roan laughed, his nostalgia broken.

  The music laughed, too. A little flute giggling and teasing and running away.

  Roan went after the sound.

  The park went on and on and the flower scents changed and interwove like their colors. Roan came to a still, blue lake, floated with flowers and enormous, long-necked birds that swam like boats and drifted up to him inquiringly when he came to the edge of the lake.

  Roan turned from the lake into a wood where the vines made bowers—thorned vines heavy with sweet berries—slim, curled vines blue with wide-faced flowers. He walked through sunny slopes where tall grasses rolled like water in the wind, and deep groves where the moss grew close and green in the still shade of warm-barked trees. Then the grove narrowed to a dark, arching tunnel of branches that ended suddenly in sunlight.

  Ahead of Roan was a wide, white flagstone walk that curved between fountains of flying water and led finally to a colonnaded terrace. From the terrace rose a fretted cliff of airy masonry. A house the wind blew through.

  Roan, thirsty now, scooped up a handful of smooth, cool water. It had a taste of bubbles, a smell of sunshine.

  But the water had not been put there for any purpose, even to drink. It showered into the air merely to fall back into the pool. It pleased Roan somehow to think the mighty Terrans made the water go up just so they could watch it coming down.

  He went up the wide, shallow steps, into the airy building that up close seemed as solid and lasting as time itself. The marble floor within was an intricate design of reds and blues that moved into purple and led the eye straight to a ramp slanting up to a gallery on the left.

  Roan listened for a moment to the ringing stillness, then started up the sloping way.

  XX

  The house was a maze of rooms within rooms, all neatly kept. The air filters whispered noiselessly, but Roan could feel the air they drew. Doors opened silently to his presence, lamps glowed on to greet him, off to bid him good-by. On polished tables were set objects of curious design, of wood and metal and glass. Roan picked each up and tried to imagine its use. One, of green jade, grew warm as he held it. But it did nothing else and there were no buttons to press. So he carefully replaced it and went on. Then Roan noticed the pictures. He stood in the middle of a thinly furnished room and his eye was caught by a picture in sinuosities of blue, as interwoven and complex as the music he’d heard. Every time he looked at the picture the lines caught his eye a different way, led them along a different trail, and he looked at the picture so long the blue disappeared and then the picture itself until finally he was left following tortuous convolutions in his own mind and it was a shaft of late afternoon sun, burning through a high window, that brought him to himself and made him blink hard to get the sun glimmers from his eyes.

  Some of the pictures were like the blue. Others seemed to project out from the walls, or were sheer patterns of light, hanging in empty air. And some—as Roan looked and noticed—some were pictures of Terran places and houses and . . . people? The figures were so tiny and distant. Hunt though he did, he couldn’t find any close-ups of Terran people. It didn’t really matter, though he really wanted to see it.

  Roan went on, walking right through a misty Light Picture in the middle of one of the rooms. All this. What was it for? Just to look at? Just to enjoy?

  It seemed a human way to be. A Terran way to do things. Roan felt a kinship with all this. He knew how to look at the paintings, how to enjoy the music.

  Then Roan walked into a room wide with windows, so that the sunshine shimmered clearly m it. Marble benches stood beneath the low w
indows and green plants hung over a scoop-shaped sunken pool. As Roan went over to stand on the edge of the empty pool there was a soft chick! and water began foaming into the pool.

  Roan laughed with pleasure. It was a bath! An enormously magnified version of one Stellaraire had had in her quarters with the ’zoo. He stripped off his shabby, ill-fitting tunic, realizing suddenly how dirty he was.

  He stood by a jet of soapy foam and scrubbed himself thoroughly. The pool carried off his dirt and dead skin cells in eddys of black and whirled in renewed, clean water. Roan luxuriated in die bath for an hour, watching the chasing clouds and the blue sky through the windows, and wondering at the delicate veining of the Terran plants that nodded over the water.

  And thought wistfully of Stellaraire and how if she were here they’d splash water at each other and be foolish and afterwards walk in the garden and make love with timeless joy in the deep grasses. And live here forever in this enchanted place where there was no violence, no raspy, alien voices, no ugly, misshapen faces, no one hating or despising or envying Roan his Terran ancestry, his Terran inheritance.

  But there was no Stellaraire. Only a memory that overfilled him now and then, like a bud with no room to open into a flower.

  Behind a colored glass panel Roan found simply designed but beautiful clothes, of some woven material that sprang to fit him as he put it on. There were silver tights that fitted from his ankles to his waist and were cool to the touch. Then a short, silk-lined scarlet jacket, soft to the skin but stiff outside with gold and jewel embroidery. He found boots that fitted softly like gloves, and protected his feet without heavy soles or heels. All this he put on, though there were other things. Thin white shorts and singlets and cloth short boots.