Rhapsody in Black

by Brian Stableford

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I imagined you had. What goes wrong?’

  ‘The ships that come here from outside come to deal with the Churchmen. And that isn’t easy. They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have to. But from time to time, Attalus wants something and only our prices are low enough. The Church wouldn’t deal either, but they have to, as well. We couldn’t live here without support. Things break. Things have to be repaired and replaced. But the Church has a choice and Attalus doesn’t. Attalus needs the Church more than the Church needs Attalus. We can always trade with the companies, because we have metal we don’t want, and can pay their prices.

  ‘So do you really think that any ship from Attalus would dare to carry back renegades from Rhapsody or any other of the Splinters? They take the exiles, sure, because that’s where the Church reckons its exiles ought to go. But we’re dead. We don’t exist, but we can’t be allowed to escape from our non-existence. If we could get back our existence, the threat of excommunication would be only a tenth of what it is. The Churchmen would kill us, whether we exist or not. And the ships from Attalus wouldn’t carry us. They wouldn’t dare.’

  I could see his point. Attalus did need its tenuous connection with the Splinters more than the Splinters did. It was apparent nonsense to think of Attalus being poorer than the Splinters, but that was the reality. Rhapsody had a minimum of wealth, but what it had was surplus to requirements. It could be used, in time of need. But all the wealth which Attalus possessed was tied up in maintaining a reasonable standard of living. They had much more in the way of resources, but they needed every last gram. Wealth and poverty are both determined by what is enough. The standard of everyday life on Rhapsody would be intolerable by the standards of Attalus.

  There must be company ships as well—few and far between but I knew better than to ask Tob about that. Company men were company men. If you couldn’t pay the fare, you didn’t get the ride. That had been brought home to me so hard that I’d never ever forget it. Bayon, Tob and the rest were trapped—caught in the Church’s web and condemned to the Church’s version of hell. A living hell, where they served as terrible reminders to the faithful. The imaginary non-existence was cruel and brilliant. The people knew, but they could not admit that they knew. They lived alongside their hell, and it was an act of faith not to see it. It was even an act of faith not to be a part of it, for life on Rhapsody couldn’t be objectively much different for the faithful and the condemned. I never found out what kind of Exclusive Reward the people were promised for their suffering—in all probability they weren’t allowed to know the details, but had to take it on trust that it would be good—but they earned every bit of it.

  They deserved it all. Their life, their heaven, and their hell. The only ones who didn’t deserve it were the ones who had to suffer most—the hellbound themselves.

  I meant to get them out. I really was absolutely determined. How much could I blame them for a lack of trust? Not at all, then. Later events cast a different shadow, though.

  And what are you going to get out of it? demanded the wind.

  I didn’t bother with the question. His speaking had just reminded me of something.

  ‘Last night,’ I subvocalised, ‘did you knock me out?’

  How could I do that?

  ‘I didn’t ask how.’

  You went to sleep.

  ‘I don’t usually go to sleep like somebody handed me a piledriver on the back of the head.’

  You said yourself that you were tired.

  He was taunting me deliberately. So many times before, he’d assured me that he couldn’t take command of my body unless I let him. But how much control did he really have? Was he really unable to act, or was he simply trying to attain his ends by guile instead of force? After all, he had to live with me. Diplomacy made a lot of sense.

  I didn’t knock you out, he said suddenly.

  I couldn’t tell whether it was because the joke was over, or whether it was because he didn’t like the way my train of thought was taking me.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.

  It’s true. I cannot render you unconscious by any direct action. I cannot subvert any voluntary control which you have over your body. I did not knock you unconscious last night.

  There was nothing to be gained by further argument. I had to accept what he said, or else reject it outright without any real evidence. I accepted it, but retained my doubts. I returned my attention to Tob.

  ‘What happens when they get back? And when is that likely to be?’

  ‘Pretty soon,’ he said. ‘You slept most of the day anyway. And when they come back we’ll be eating. After that, I guess we’ll be moving. Bayon won’t want to waste any more time. Once we’ve laid in the supplies, we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘Revolution time,’ I said. ‘All sixteen of you.’

  ‘Ain’t no law against it,’ he said.

  ‘True,’ I conceded. And it was true, in more than a metaphorical sense. Fomenting revolution was against the Law of New Rome. If I had been on any planet other than an LWA I’d be risking twenty years (despite the fact that I wasn’t actually fomenting anything—you know what the Law’s like).

  The prospect of action gladdened me. I wasn’t really in favour of the tough line, although I admitted its potential, but I really did need something to do. Another time, another place, I could maybe have sat down and waited forever, lying in a hammock drowsing in the sunlight. But Rhapsody dressed exclusively in black, and sitting here was far too much like sitting in a coffin. Lying down was a declaration of intent to die. I needed something to occupy me, body and soul.

  Something other than the wind.

  A life of my own. I’d already had a taste of eternal death two years of it on Lapthorn’s Grave, where there was nothing to do except stand that bloody cross up two or three times a day. Well, the cross was down now, no doubt, and it would stay down forever.

  And that’s how and why I became Rhapsody’s public enemy number one.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Right from the start I was plagued by the suspicion that the boss wasn’t cut out for his job. It all seemed horribly familiar. Nick delArco was a good guy but he was no starship captain. Bayon Alpart was the natural leader of his band, but he was operating on a scale that he couldn’t handle. You can’t just be a hero, or a gangster, or a revolutionary, or a tough guy. You have to have the qualifications. They don’t hand out bits of paper for those things even in the weirdest of academies. But the bits of paper are all fakes anyhow. The qualifications are inside you, but they don’t just grow there—they have to be put there.

  Bayon didn’t really know what he was doing or how he was going to do it. But he couldn’t admit that, because he was the boss and bosses can’t doubt. Maybe I shouldn’t cry too loudly, because I probably couldn’t have done any better. I didn’t have the qualifications either. But that still didn’t make me happy. I couldn’t question his strategy, his intentions, his methods or his chances. There was no obvious road to where we wanted to go. And it was his party. I was only along for the ride. An extra card in his hand, an extra weapon for his fight. The fact that he was a local boy who knew only the Rhapsody angle and I was a worldly-wise citizen of the galaxy was only a fact, not an argument. He had the greater subjectivity; I had the greater objectivity. There was no way of knowing which talent might solve the problem. I had no real kick. I was one of the gang and that was it. No hero, no war leader, no expert. I had to play my role from behind.

  Frankly, I was scared. Things could go wrong. And when things go wrong during gun-toting operations, people can get hurt. Very hurt. Personally, I don’t like guns. I volunteered not to carry one (we had more men than guns). But I didn’t imagine that would make it any less likely that I’d get shot if the bullets and the beams actually started to fly.

  The first difficulty we had to cope with, of course, was gaining access to the grotto without giving advance warning or having to cope with any extra bother en ro
ute. Naturally enough, we didn’t have a map. Most civilisations are flat and can be mapped flat. Rhapsody wasn’t and couldn’t. The problem of approach and access was a problem in three-dimensional geometry and dispersion. The grotto, of course, was only a single point on a single line. It was the intersections of the other lines which disobeyed good two-dimensional sense.

  The problem was simple. We wanted to preserve a way out without conceding the opposition a way in. The disposition of sixteen men to achieve this end required very difficult thinking. I couldn’t get near it. All that had to be trusted to Bayon’s judgement. He did try to explain, but it was pointless, and I had to tell him so. I knew a bit about arterial and venous shafts, about towers and showers, and about the anatomy of alveolar systems. But only a bit. The pattern of tunnelling imposed by the necessity for supporting the rock was beyond me, and I didn’t know the territory involved.

  The outcasts had spent the whole day in stockpiling food and water. Their raiding expedition must itself have been a strategic masterpiece. They had stolen enough gruel to last sixteen of us a week. There was less water than would last us half that long, but the area we intended to command included several sources—and there was always the additional chance that the cave we intended to take contained water.

  I wondered what was going on back at the capital, in the meantime. Had the council made a decision? If so, then we might be sticking our heads in the lion’s mouth. If the booty was already committed to Sampson, he and his crew would be quite prepared to shoot their way in to claim it, and the Churchmen would be prepared to let them. If Charlot had acquired title, which was more likely, the prospects were a lot better. We’d hand it over and help him load it up in exchange for a ride out and—dare I hold out for it?—a small payment to save time and guarantee exclusive rights.

  On the other hand, if the council had not yet handed on their hot potato, they might be prepared to attach conditions about dealing with outcasts—like, for instance, Charlot would only get the goods if he guaranteed to leave the hellbound in hell. That possibility would almost certainly lead to trouble.

  And, in further complication, there was also the awkward little fact that Charlot had yet to pay me back for the Lost Star doublecross. How that was going to affect matters, Charlot alone could tell.

  The outcasts were quite relaxed, considering the importance of the operation. When Bayon detailed his plans and handed out the jobs, they nodded calmly and the questions they asked were confined to matters of importance. There was no sign of doubt or frayed nerves. Nobody was looking for trouble; everybody would be ready for it if it came. They all gave the appearance of being strong, capable men. But then, they had been selected by the rigorous process of survival.

  We moved off just as soon as we had finished talking. There was no zero hour set for dramatic purposes. We got ready, and when we were ready, we went. We split into groups as men peeled away from the main group in order to adopt their specific positions defending our potential escape route from any surrounding operation mounted by the enemy.

  The eventual assault party was just five strong. There was Bayon, Tob, two men named Harl and Ezra, and myself. Bayon carried the best of his group’s weapons—their solitary power rifle. It was only about half charged, but you can cause an awful lot of mayhem with a half charged beam gun. At a reasonable rate of power-release it could burn a hole through a couple of hundred men, if they were obliging enough to stand in a straight line so that no power splashed astray. Tob, Harl and Ezra were all armed with ordinary projectile weapons. The main advantage of a standard gun over a beamer is range, and so we were ill-armed for our purposes. The three rifles were by no means primitive—they were good, efficient pieces of machinery, whose design had been perfected centuries before. But their presence on Rhapsody was a little incongruous, let alone their prevalence over the beam guns which the inhabitants would have found much more functional in the general run of their affairs. But the people of Rhapsody were far from immune from the small illogicalities which invariably plague dogmatically maintained cultures. The Church of the Exclusive Reward had armed itself only to answer the possibility that they might be called upon to defend their isolation and alienation. They were not an armed society by nature. Possibly, they had chosen to employ so few beamers because the power of such weapons was so immoderate and ubiquitous.

  We made our approach via a network of bleak, difficult passages, which seemed to bend about themselves tortuously. To my (admittedly uneducated) eye they did not look to be alveolar vessels at all, but faults caused at some distant time past by stress within the alveolar architecture. My flashlight had not yet been exhausted, but I used it very sparingly, saving as much light as I could for the indeterminate future. Bayon and his men, as was usual, showed no dislike for the darkness, and moved with ample confidence therein. Occasionally, though—when it was necessary to avoid deep pits or pass by loose structures of rock which threatened disaster if disturbed—even Bayon expressed gratitude for the availability of light. He had his own lanterns, of course, but he was as jealous of these as I was with the light of my flash. Conservation was always his first priority. I had to be given frequent help in the tunnels, but Tob was ever-present and discreet, so that I did not make too much of a fool of myself.

  The worst part of the journey by far was the ascent of a slanting hotshaft which was only ten or fifteen degrees from the vertical.

  Here, fortunately, we had light in plenty—not just from the flash and Bayon’s lamps, but from the walls themselves, where luminous life-forms clung to the scattered crevices which we used for handholds. Thus, not only was our way lighted but we knew where to reach for with both hands and toes by the brightness of the light. The climb was rendered practical by virtue of this coincidence. Without the organisms, the danger of slipping down the shaft while we manipulated our own lights to our convenience would have been considerable, and we would probably have had to choose another way to the grotto. And there was no other way available which offered us such a close approach without the danger of interception.

  The shaft disgorged us into a corridor about four feet tall and three across, through which we had to crawl for a hundred metres before emerging into a vertical slit, where we paused for the first time. The slit opened directly into the blind mine-shaft where the grotto was situated.

  We had presumed that there would be no guards beyond the opening of the slit, since they would only be covering limited access. This implied that we had only to contend with those who were now between ourselves and our objective.

  Harl and Tob went on, easing themselves out into the shaft. Tob went right, to check our hypothesis that there were no guards that way. Harl went left, to find out how many we had to deal with at the mouth of the grotto.

  We waited anxiously, wooing the silence and dreading the sound of shots from either direction.

  Three minutes elapsed before Harl came back.

  ‘Two,’ he said, and Bayon heaved a sigh of relief. Had there been more, the likelihood of a battle would have increased greatly. Two men are a partnership, and may be expected to behave sensibly. Three make a crowd, and cannot.

  We had to wait a further three minutes for Tob. His task had taken longer, because he was looking for something which was (as we had hoped) not there.

  ‘What’s the light like at the cave-mouth?’ Bayon asked.

  ‘Two masked lanterns. Purely a formality. They can’t do much,’ supplied Harl.

  ‘Good. Take it dead slow. No noise. Wait until we’re all in a firing position—we’ll have to feel our way.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tob.

  ‘You know what to say?’ Bayon addressed me.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. It had to be me who did the talking. We didn’t want any silliness about problems of existence and recognition of same.

  The muted lanterns were all in our favour. It might be expected that if they were bothering to guard something, the miners would also have made provision for the guards to g
et a clear sight down the tunnel for a few metres, at least. But that wasn’t Rhapsody’s way. Tunnel creatures shun the light.

  And so we were allowed to make our approach in deep shadow, unseen and unsuspected.

  We had expected the guards to be at ease—off their guard, in fact—since their presence there was largely symbolical, and they were prevented by lack of light from doing any effective guarding. But we were wrong. This pair were taking it seriously, without realising the incongruity. They were standing straight, rifles at the ready, alert for any sound. The light of masked lamps made them easy targets, but I don’t think they realised that fact. Unless, of course, they were merely putting on a show.

  Which was entirely possible, because as we arranged ourselves into a line preparatory to attack, we realised that somebody else was inside the grotto. If there were more guards, with more guns, the situation was much worse than we had thought.

  We could hear voices, but we couldn’t hear what was being said, so they didn’t give us any clue to the identity of the people inside.

  We all knew what was going on, but we couldn’t start a discussion about it. We were far too close for a whisper not to carry. I didn’t dare start my spiel, ordering the guards to drop their guns, in case there were more guns inside and the people holding them were alerted. For the same reason, I hoped Bayon would decide against shooting down the sentries. That narrow entrance could be defended from the inside for a considerable time. Lives would be lost in taking the grotto on those terms.

  The only course left open to us, it seemed to me, was to try stealth and speed simultaneously, and hope to succeed by surprise. I couldn’t tell Bayon so, and I couldn’t act myself, because I didn’t have a gun. So I just stood there, and waited for our noble leader to do his stuff.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bayon was in no hurry. He elected to wait and watch. In this case, his judgement proved superior to mine. Within a few minutes, they came out of the grotto.