by John Brunner
“Nothing,” I said. “It is my guess that when the traitor Forrel ran out of his secret hoard of coffee your Over-ladyship’s son went down to the Acre in search of more. Unless Forrel told him where he obtained his supply, he will have been met with a refusal. Your Over-ladyship cannot have forgotten that I spent much time and money in the Acre insuring that no one reputable would provide coffee for your son/’
She was beginning to doubt. I piled on top of what I had already said the same half-truth I had already told Pwill—about Forrel coming to me yesterday and being turned away empty-handed.
“We will see,” she said at last. “Soldiers, take him and confine him to his quarters until Himself returns from the town. And further! Take my order to the duty officer of the guard and tell him to mobilize four companies with heavy weapons. If we have to, we shall take the houses of the Acre apart, stone by stone, to find my son!”
I was taken back to the morning reception chamber after Pwill returned, and was brought into the presence of something I had never expected to see on Qallavarra—a public argument between Pwill and Llaq. It was something the servants and soldiers present did not like; they shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, wishing they could go out of the room but unwilling to do so without an order.
Listening to the vicious insults being hurled, I pieced together what had happened. Pwill had been to see Olafsson, and the judge had refused to state one way or the other whether his son was in the Acre. Llaq would have commanded her men to hang Olafsson up by his ears until he did answer; Pwill had not done so, but had come home, and that was what Llaq was so angry about.
“Are we to let these defeated worms give us orders?” she screeched. “Are we to let them drug and poison the heir of a great house? That sore has festered long enough in the city—we must turn it out to find my son!”
Pwill shook his head heavily.
“What has become of us?” Llaq wailed. “You will not move a finger to avenge your heir! It was an Earthly drug bought of Earthly criminals that laid him low. How are men going to speak of the honor of this house if you will not avenge the filthy deed? You have said only ‘no’ to my importuning—if you had the seed of manhood in you, you’d have called up the four companies I have already alerted and marched straight to the Acre to demand satisfaction! Have you a single reason not to do so?”
I knew he had not. He only had the warning against it which Shavarri had planted in his mind while he was under the influence of credulin.
“Then we must march at dawn against the beasts in the Acre!” Llaq cried. “We must spit this crawling Earthman of ours on steel spikes and show what will become of his fellows if they defy us any longer!”
I knew she meant it. It was tune for me to speak up. I said in the boldest voice I could muster, “It was on the invitation of the Over-lady that I came to Qallavarra!”
She froze for an instant. Then she came across the room to stand in front of me, eyes full of hate. She said, “I will make you sorry for that word before you die.”
I said nothing. She rounded on her husband again.
“Well?” she demanded. “Shall your men march at dawn against the Acre? Or are the Vorra from now on forever to despise the name of this house?”
Pwill squared his shoulders. He said, “We will go through the Acre till we find my heir—and if we do not find him, we will leave not one of the Earthly grubs alive.”
That night I lay in darkness with a guard at my door and another at the end of the corridor. I was almost certain to die tomorrow. Somehow I had mastered my fear; it seemed that death was just an event. Why I was now so calm I could not decide. But I was calm, enough to sleep.
Once again I was awakened, this time by a thud in the passageway outside. I came to myself all in one piece, ears cocked. After the thud, I heard a dragging sound, and then the noise of the key turning in the padlock which had been fixed on the orders of Llaq to insure against my getting out and overpowering the guards. It seemed that even she now had a great respect for my abilities.
The door opened as I watched, and the narrow beam of an Earthly flashlight showed in the gap. A dim, familiar voice spoke my name. I sat bolt upright on the night couch, striking a light for my bedside torch.
“Marijane!” I said in a disbelieving whisper.
The rising flame of the torch showed her very pale, and a little unsteady on her feet. She closed her eyes against the sudden fight, swaying. I hurried to help her, bringing her to a chair. A thick stench bad come into the room with her. Looking down, I saw that her pants were wet to the knees with thin mud.
She opened her eyes and gave a wan cynical smile.
“So that’s what you did with him,” she said. A shudder went through her thin body.
Instantly I understood. “You—came up through the sewer?” I said.
“Of course. We spied out the land last time we were up here. Is it Pwill Jr. there—all eaten away?”
I nodded. “You aren’t alone!” I said, to change the subject. “Is Ken with you?”
“Ken and Gustav.” She pulled herself to her feet as though remembering where she was. “They got rid of the other guard—I wasn’t expecting this one. But he wasn’t expecting me, either. Is it going all right?”
“Pwill is marching on the Acre at dawn tomorrow with four companies of men and heavy weapons,” I answered. I wondered how I knew that that was what she wanted me to say.
“Good. The House of Shugurra will meet him on the road with six companies. Come on, we must get you out of here or your life won’t be worth a penny.”
She caught my hand. Over the prostrate body of the guard in the corridor I followed her towards my way of escape.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE CORRIDOR, poised watching and listening for signs of interference, I found Marijane’s brother Ken and with him Gustav. To my surprise they each shook my hand warmly, grinning in the light of Marijane’s flashlamp. But they said nothing—merely beckoned me to the open cover of the manhole down which I had hidden Pwill Jr. and the interfering guard.
It was not until the cover had been lowered behind us and we stood in nightmarish darkness except for the thin beam of the flashlamp, listening to the scuttering of the rats, that Ken Lee said, “You’d have been done for if anyone opened that hatch, Gareth.”
I felt pleased at his using my first name. But I didn’t get the point of his remark, and said so.
“What happened? My guess is that you had to take a drink to brace yourself—and then you threw up from the stink here.”
“More or less,” I confirmed. “But—I still don’t get you.”
“You can still, even now, smell the vomit,” Ken said. “Did the Vorra ever drink brandy? If someone had opened the hatch and found the body, and that too—a soldier who had served on Earth and recognized the smell—but skip that. Time’s wasting. Let’s go.”
We formed a line on the slippery walkway beside the sewer and followed the flashlamp into darkness. What Ken had just pointed out had not occurred to me. I was suddenly shaking with retroactive fear at the narrowness of my escape.
Yet somehow I’d faced the virtual certainty of being spiked to death on steel barbs earlier, and I’d been so undisturbed I’d managed to fall asleep normally.
How come?
And then I understood.
“Is it safe to talk?” I whispered.
“Wait till we’re a little further on,” Marijane answered equally softly. I did so, but it was hard. My mind was churning.
We came to the point at which the walkway ended, and we had to get down into the stream itself. We came out of a tunnel under a dark, clouded sky, moving with absolute silence. We followed a twisting pathway across fields where nothing moved except ourselves, We came to the edge of the highway through an unmended gap in a cattle fence.
Someone was waiting in the shadow of a shrubby bush, and rose like a ghost in front of us.
“Ken?” he said under his breath.
�
��George,” Ken answered. “We got him away safely. Let’s roll as quickly as we can. Where’s the car?”
I could barely see George. He was blacker than the night itself. In fact, when there was a muttered introduction and I heard him whisper something about good work on my part, I had difficulty seeing the dark hand he put out to shake mine. No wonder he had been able to hide on the edge of the highway in safety.
“Car?” I said, remembering.
There was a chuckle from all my companions. George answered for them all.
“Courtesy of the police department in the city,” he said. “Though they don’t know it yet. She’s down the road a piece, between a couple of clumps of tubers. Nobody came by to see her.”
We climbed into the car, our muddy feet and legs unpleasantly sticky and cold, and sank back into the deep upholstery. From somewhere about him George produced something I hadn’t ever expected to see on Qallavarra—a pack of Earthly cigarettes.
“Have one of these to celebrate,” he suggested.
The others refused, never having got the habit presumably, but I took one. I knew in a confused way that I deserved the treat. But I still wasn’t sure what I’d done.
I said, as George took the car humming on to the highway, “When was I—uh—instructed?”
“In Olafsson’s office, of course,” Marijane answered, as naturally as though she’d been expecting the question. “We all owe you an apology, by the way. We didn’t know about you. Judge Olafsson explained the situation to us—because Ken had got so angry he was talking too much—and to keep the news from spreading further than necessary they ordered us to take care of your escape when it fell due. Judge Olafsson said he thought you must have had to take oblivon just before leaving Earth. Do you know if that’s what happened?”
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “I got my memory back just the other day. The same day I last saw you, in fact.”
“The judge said it was like a miracle when you were brought to his office the first time,” Ken said. “Everyone had given up hope of you being any use ever again—you’d been in the House of Pwill for seven solid months and never tried to get in touch with anyone in the Acre. But when you did arrive he felt he dared not miss the chance to make some use of you. So he had Sessions organize a special emergency briefing for you. Did you notice nothing at all?”
“I remember feeling slightly dizzy for a moment,” I said. I also remembered I had taken a dislike to Sessions, the man with the hard eyes. I apologized to him mentally. To have given me all the instructions which had led up to my recent work in the House of Pwill and left no conscious memory with me at all—that was really impressive technique. “That was the second time I called?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head wonderingly. Glancing at the roadway ahead, I saw that we were already approaching the outskirts of the city. George reached up to the roof of the car and turned a little switch there. He saw me looking at him and grinned.
“Sign up there says POLICE,” he said. “It’s insurance. If I have to, I can sound a siren too, that sounds like a banshee in torment.”
“Something else that’s been puzzling me,” I went on after a pause. I turned to Marijane and Ken. “I take it that Cosra was the other half of the scheme, over in the House of Shugurra? Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Marijane answered. “As I understand it, the whole climax of the affair has always been what will now take place tomorrow morning—that’s to say, a fierce and bloody new civil war between the great houses. In the old days, as you probably know, the great houses sometimes attempted to seize cities of free people and add them to their domains. This kind of rivalry ceased when the Vorra got their spaceships—”
I made a note to mention the extraordinary episode in the shaman’s house, but let her continue.
“But some of the bitterest wars were fought when two or three small houses allied against an arrogant rival who had tried to swallow up a city which was nominally independent. It was clear that the Acre might now be made to seem such a prize that the same situation could occur again.”
“Someone—I don’t know who, but probably Kramer—got word of what you were doing at Pwill to Cosra at Shugurra. Shugurra Himself is well under Cosra’s thumb now.” It was Gustav who had picked up the story. “Shugurra is only just across the valley. News of the expedition Pwill plans for tomorrow has already reached him—but not the reason for it. He’s been allowed to think—and so have the other houses—that Pwill means to shift the entire population of the Acre to his own estate. He’ll stop at nothing to prevent this.”
“But,” Marijane cut in, her voice shaking with glee, “it doesn’t end there! According to what the other houses have been told, there was a conspiracy between Pwill and Shugurra to seize the Acre for themselves, which has only been held up by a petty quarrel, and ten of the other houses have heard that Pwill and Shugurra are mobilizing. As far as they know, this is for a joint coup. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. But what’s likely is that both sides will find themselves attacked from the rear.”
“Qallavarra will never be the same again,” Ken said in a somber voice. “I feel damned sorry for these poor silly fools.”
“Sorry for them?” I echoed incredulously. “After what they did to us? And not only to us, but to—”
I was on the point of telling how I had seen that mummy in a yellow spacesuit in the shaman’s house, when George’s soft voice interrupted me,
“End of the ride coming up,” he said. “Get ready to jump out when I tell you. Marijane, got that bomb?”
“Coming up,” Marijane said. She fumbled in the dark recess behind the rear seat where hand luggage was normally stowed, and produced something small but heavy in a shiny metal case. She handed this to George.
One hand steering, the other turning a knob on the metal case which clicked as it rotated, George swung the car down a narrow street.
“Acre dead ahead,” he called gaily. “Jump on the turn!”
Gustav, nearest the door, opened it and held it. The car swung; he rolled forward and out, turning head over heels on the muddy pavement. I followed unquestioning. I’d learnt how to jump from a moving vehicle without hurting myself many, many years ago. The others came after me. As I got to my feet and looked along the street after the car I saw that George also had flung himself clear, and that the twin blazing beams of the car’s lights were full on a tall, official-looking building in its path. I saw that there was a slight slope down towards this building, so that the car was gathering speed.
Out of darkness I heard Marijane say softly, “It’s one of the main city tax offices, you see.”
The car hit. One of its lights went out, the other slanted sharply upwards at the face of the building. There was the beginning of a noise like a man crunching into a crisp slice of toast. It had happened so quickly that the rear of the car still seemed to be moving forward.
Then the car vanished in a blinding white glare, and the entire city seemed to rock with the blast.
“Into the Acre,” Ken said beside me, catching at my arm, and like rabbits diving for cover we sought the safety of the forbidden zone. I glanced back once, and saw that huge tongues of yellow and orange flame had leaped up from the wreck of the car, and that the facade of the building had split and collapsed to reveal rooms beyond with their floors and ceilings tilted at drunken angles. A few pieces of furniture, tipped towards the open side of the rooms, had started to burn in the hot updraft from the blaze on the ground.
“What you might call combining business with pleasure,” a voice said from deep shadow. It was George; I had not seen him until his white teeth flashed in a grin.
I had never seen the Acre so alive when I visited it by day as it was now in the middle of the night when the rest of the city was asleep. Rare chinks of light showed between fast-closed shutters; if you strained your ears you caught the hum of machinery and talk also, as though a thousand people were whispering behind the
nearest walls. In every street we walked along at least someone besides us was walking, the same way or another way, hurrying on an urgent errand. You could have picked the excitement off the air and squeezed it in your hand like solid clay.
Stupidly, I had been expecting to be taken to Olafsson’s office at the Central Bank. Instead, my companions led me down a street I had not visited before. Between two dead-seeming buildings we halted. One of us—I could not tell in the darkness whether it was Ken or Gustav—moved forward and went on soft feet down a flight of steps to a basement door. There was a knock and a sound of voices. The door opened. I felt myself urged forward.
Beyond the door was a low ceilinged room, with many pillars improvised out of bricks to hold up a sagging ceiling. Here men, women and children—to my startled gaze there seemed to be hundreds of them—milled about between tables and desks. There were computers here. There was electric hghting. There was a group of six radio transceivers ranged against the far wall and messages were coming and going.
And there was a Vorrish subspace transmitter, too—for talking to ships between the stars.
I was so distracted by the sight of this unexpected operations room that I had to be prodded back to awareness by an elbow in my ribs. I found myself facing Olafsson, who was beaming and holding out his hand.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve short-circuited years of work for us. The poor silly Vorra are just about to start cutting their own throats.”
Poor, silly? Not in my book! I thought of the way the face of that mummy in the shamans house had kept, even in death, a noble expression.
But before I could speak there was already another claim on Olafsson’s attention. I found my way to a corner where I would not block anybody’s movements, and sank down on a chair to think of this extraordinary paradox.