“I said, as far as the village is concerned,” Anketam said. “I’ve got another man in mind for the field work.”
And no one was more surprised than Basom when Anketam said: “Basom, do you think you could handle the crew in the field?”
Basom couldn’t even find his tongue for several more paces. When he discovered at last that it was still in his mouth, where he’d left it, he said: “I…I’ll try, Ank. I sure will try, if you want me to. But…well…I mean, why pick me?”
Old Blejjo chuckled knowingly. Jacovik, who hardly knew the boy, just looked puzzled.
“Why not you?” Anketam countered.
“Well…you’ve always said I was lazy. And I am, I guess.”
“Sure you are,” said Anketam. “So am I. Always have been. But a smart lazy man can figure out things that a hard worker might overlook. He can find the easy, fast way to get a job done properly. And he doesn’t overwork his men because he knows that when he’s tired, the others are, too. You want to try it, Basom?”
“I’ll try,” said Basom earnestly. “I’ll try real hard.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation. “Just one thing, Anketam—”
“What’s that?”
“Kevenoe. I don’t want him coming around me. Not at all. If he ever said one word to me, I’d probably break his neck right there.”
Anketam nodded. The Chief had given Zillia to Kevenoe only two months before, and the only one who liked the situation was Kevenoe himself.
“I’ll deal with Kevenoe, Basom,” Anketam said. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“All right, then,” Basom said. “I’ll do my best, Anketam.”
“You’d better,” said Anketam. “If you don’t, I’ll just have to give the job to someone else. You hear?”
“I hear,” said Basom.
V
The war dragged on. In the spring of the following year, over a hundred thousand Invader troops landed on the seacoast a hundred miles from Chromdin and began a march on the capital. But somebody had forgotten to tell the Invader general that it rained in that area in the spring and that the mud was like glue. The Invader army bogged down, and, floundering their way toward Chromdin, they found themselves opposed by an army of nearly a hundred thousand Xedii troops under General Jojon, and the invasion came to a standstill at that point.
Farther to the west, another group of forty thousand Invader troops came down from the Frozen Country, and a Xedii general named Oljek trounced them with a mere seventeen thousand men.
All in all, the Invaders were getting nowhere, but they seemed determined to keep on plugging.
The news only filtered slowly into the areas which were situated well away from the front. A thousand miles to the west of Chief Samas’ barony, the Invaders began cutting deeply into Xedii territory, but they were nowhere near the capital, so no one was really worried.
Anketam worked hard at keeping the barony going during the absence of The Chief. Instead of cataca, he and Jacovik planted food crops, doing on a larger scale just what they had always done in the selected sections around the villages. They had always grown their own food, and now they were doing it on a grand scale.
No news came from off-planet, except for unreliable rumors. What the rest of the galaxy was doing about the war on Xedii, no one knew.
Young Basom proved to be a reasonably competent supervisor. He was nowhere near as good as Anketam or Jacovik, but there were worse supers in the barony.
Anketam found that the biggest worry was not in the handling of the farmers, but in obtaining manufactured goods. The staff physician complained to Kevenoe that drugs were getting scarce. Shoes and clothing were almost impossible to obtain. Rumor had it that arms and ammunition were running short in the Xedii armies. For two centuries, Xedii had depended on other planets to provide manufactured goods for her, and now those supplies were cut off, except for a miserably slow trickle that came in via the daring space officers who managed to evade the orbital forts that the Invaders had set up around the planet.
Even so, Anketam’s faith in the power of Xedii remained constant. The invading armies were still being held off from Chromdin, weren’t they? The capital would not fall, of that he was sure.
What Anketam did not and could not know was the fact that the Invaders were growing tired of pussy-footing around. Instead of fighting Xedii on Xedii’s terms, the Invaders decided to fight it on their own.
Everyone on Chief Samas’ barony and the others around it expected trouble to come from the north, from the Frozen Country, if and when it came. They didn’t look to the west, where the real trouble was brewing.
Anketam was shocked when he heard the news that the Invaders had reached Tana L’At, having cut down through the center of the continent, dividing the inhabited part of Xedii into two almost equal parts. They knocked out Tana L’At with a heavy shelling of paralysis gas, evacuated the inhabitants, and dusted the city with radioactive powder to make it uninhabitable for several years.
Then they began to march eastward.
VI
For the first time in his life, Anketam was feeling genuine fear. He had feared for his life before, yes. And he had feared for his family. But now he feared for his world, which was vaster by far.
He blinked at the tall, gangling Kevenoe, who was still out of breath from running. “Say that again.”
“I said that the Invader troops are crossing Benner Creek,” Kevenoe said angrily. “They’ll be at the castle within an hour. We’ve got to do something.”
“What?” Anketam asked dazedly.
“Fight them? With what? We have no weapons.”
“I don’t know,” Kevenoe admitted. “I just don’t know. I thought maybe you’d know. Maybe you could think of something. What about Lady Samas?”
“What about her?” Anketam still couldn’t force his mind to function.
“Haven’t you heard? The Invaders have been looting and burning every castle in their path! And the women—”
Lady Samas in danger! Something crystallized in Anketam’s mind. He pointed in the direction of the castle. “Get back there!” he snapped. “Get everyone out of the castle! Save all the valuables you can! Get everyone down to the river and tell them to hide in the brush at the Big Swamp. The Invaders won’t go there. Move!”
Kevenoe didn’t even pause to answer. He ran back toward the saddle animal he had tethered at the edge of the village.
Anketam was running in the opposite direction, toward Basom’s quarters.
He didn’t bother to knock. He flung open the door and yelled, “Basom!”
Basom, who had been relaxing on his bed, leaped to his feet. “What is it?”
Anketam told him rapidly. Then he said: “Get moving! You’re a fast runner. Spread the news. Tell everyone to get to the Swamp. We have less than an hour, so run for all you’re worth!”
Basom, like Kevenoe, didn’t bother to ask questions. He went outside and started running toward the south.
“That’s right!” Anketam called after him. “Tell Jacovik first! And get more runners to spread the word!”
And then Anketam headed for his own home. Memi had to be told. On the way, he pounded on the doors of the houses, shouting the news and telling the others to get to the Big Swamp.
By the time the Invader troops came, they found the entire Samas barony empty. Not a single soul opposed their march; there was no voice to object when they leveled their beam projectors and melted the castle and the villages into shapeless masses of blackened plastic.
VII
The wooden shelter wasn’t much of a home, but it was all Anketam could provide. It had been difficult to cut down the trees and make a shack of them, but at least there were four walls and a roof.
Anketam stood at the door of the rude hut, looking blindly at the ruins of the village a hundred yards away. In the past few months, weeds had grown up around the charred blobs that had once been the homes of Anketam’s crew. Anketam stared, not at, but past and
through them, seeing the ghosts of the houses that had once been there.
Behind him, Memi was speaking in soft tones to Lady Samas.
“Now you go ahead and eat, Lady. You can’t starve yourself to death. Things won’t always be this bad, you’ll see. When that oldest boy of yours comes back, he’ll fix the barony right back up like it was. Just you see. Now, here; try some of this soup.”
Lady Samas said nothing. She seemed to be entirely oblivious of her surroundings these days. Nothing mattered to her any more. Word had come back that Chief Samas had accompanied General Eeler in the fatal expedition towards the Invader base, and The Chief had been buried there in the Frozen Country.
Lady Samas had nowhere else to stay. Kevenoe was dead, his skull crushed by—by someone. Anketam refused, in his own mind, to see any connection between Kevenoe’s death and the fact that Basom and Zillia had disappeared the same day, probably to give themselves over to the Invader troops.
A movement at the corner of his eye caught Anketam’s attention. He turned his head to look. Then he spun on his heel and went into the hut.
“Lady Samas,” he said quickly, “they’re coming. There’s a ground-car coming down the road with four Invaders in it.”
Lady Samas looked up at him, her fine old face calm and emotionless. “Let them come,” she said. “We can’t stop them, Anketam. And we have nothing to lose.”
Three minutes later, the ground-car pulled up in front of the hut. Anketam watched silently as one of the men got out. The other three stayed in the car, their handguns ready.
The officer, very tall and straight in his blue uniform, strode up to the door of the hut. He stopped and addressed Anketam. “I understand Lady Samas is living here.”
“That’s right,” Anketam said.
“Would you tell her that Colonel Fayder would like to speak to her.”
Before Anketam could say anything, Lady Samas spoke. “Tell the colonel to come in, Anketam.”
Anketam stepped aside to let the officer enter.
“Lady Samas?” he asked.
She nodded. “I am.”
The colonel removed his hat. “Madam, I am Colonel Jamik Fayder, of the Union army. You are the owner of this land?”
“Until my son returns, yes,” said Lady Samas evenly.
“I understand.” The colonel licked his lips nervously. He was obviously ill at ease in the presence of the Lady Samas. “Madam,” he said, “it would be useless for me to apologize for the destructions of war. Apologies are mere words.”
“They are,” said Lady Samas. “None the less, I accept them.”
“Thank you. I have come to inform you that the Xedii armies formally surrendered near Chromdin early this morning. The war is over.”
“I’m glad,” said Lady Samas.
“So am I,” said the colonel. “It has not been a pleasant war. Xedii was—and still is—the most backward planet in the galaxy. Your Council of Chiefs steadfastly refused to allow the”—he glanced at Anketam—”workers of Xedii to govern their own lives. They have lived and died without proper education, without the medical care that would save and lengthen their lives, and without the comforts of life that any human being deserves. That situation will be changed now, but I am heartily sorry it took a war to do it.”
Anketam looked at the man. What was he talking about? He and his kind had burned and dusted cities and villages, and had smashed the lives of millions of human beings on the pretense that they were trying to help. What sort of insanity was that?
The colonel took a sheaf of papers from his pocket.
“I have been ordered to read to you the proclamation of the Union President.”
He looked down at the papers and began to read:
“Henceforth, all the peoples of Xedii shall be free and equal. They shall have the right to change their work at will, to be paid in lawful money instead of—”
Anketam just stood there, his mind glazed. He had worked hard all his life for the security of retirement, and now all that was gone. What was he to do? Where was he to go? If he had to be paid in money, who would do it? Lady Samas? She had nothing. Besides, Anketam knew nothing about the handling of money. He knew nothing about how to get along in a society like that.
He stood there in silence as his world dissolved around him. He could hear, dimly, the voice of the blue-clad Union officer as he read off the death warrant for Xedii. And for Anketam.
The Military Megapack Page 68