Next of Kin

by Eric Frank Russell

  Thundering dawn the valley road, the truck took a wide bend, raced for the spaceport’s main gates. These were partly closed, leaving a yard-wide gap in the middle. An armed sentry stood at one side, behind him a hut containing others of the guard.

  As the truck shot into view and roared toward him the sentry gaped at it in dumb amazement, showed the typical reaction of one far from the area of combat. Instead of pointing his automatic weapon in readiness to challenge he jumped into the road and tugged frantically to open the gates. The half at which he was pulling swung wide just in time for the truck to bullet through with a few inches to spare on either side. Now the sentry resented the driver’s failure to say, “Good morning!” or “Drop dead!” or anything equally courteous. Brandishing his gun, he performed a clumsy war-dance and screamed vitriolic remarks.

  Concentrating on his driving to the exclusion of all else, Leeming went full tilt around the spaceport’s concrete perimeter toward where the ships were parked. A bunch of lizard-skinned characters strolling along his path scattered and ran for their lives. Farther on a long, low motorised trolley loaded with fuel cylinders slid out of a shed, stopped in the middle of the road. Its driver threw himself off his seat and tried to dig himself out of sight as the truck wildly swerved around him and threatened to overturn.

  Picking the most distant ship as the one it would take the foe longest to reach, Leeming braked by its tail-fins, jumped out of the cab, looked up. No ladder. Sprinting around the base he found the ladder on the other side, went up it like a frightened monkey.

  It was like climbing the side of a factory chimney. Halfway up he paused for breath, looked around. Diminished by distance and depth, a hundred figures were racing toward him. So also were four trucks and a thing resembling an armoured car. He resumed his climb, going as fast as he could but using great care because he was now so high that one slip would be fatal.

  Anxiety increased as he neared the airlock at top. A few more seconds and he’d be out of shooting range. But they’d know that too, and were liable to start popping at him while yet there was time. As he tried to make more speed his belly quirked at the thought of a last-moment bullet ploughing through him. His hands grabbed half a dozen rungs in quick succession, reached the airlock rim at which point he rammed his head against an unexpected metal rod. Surprised, he raised his gaze, found himself looking into the muzzle of a gun not as big as a cannon.

  “Shatsi!” ordered the owner of the gun, making a downward motion with it. “Amash!”

  For a mad moment Leeming thought of holding on with one hand while he snatched his opponent’s feet with the other. He raised himself in readiness to grab. Either the fellow was impatient or read his intention because he hammered Leeming’s fingers with the gun-barrel.

  “Amash! Shatsi-amash!” Leeming went slowly and reluctantly down the ladder. Black despair grew blacker with every step he descended. To be caught at the start of a chase was one thing; to be grabbed near the end of it, within reach of success, was something else. Hell’s bells, he’d almost got away with it and that’s what made the situation so bitter.

  Hereafter they’d fasten him up twice as tightly and keep a doubly close watch upon him. Even if in spite of these precautions he broke free a second time his chance of total escape would be too small to be worth considering; with an armed guard aboard every ship he’d be sticking his head in the trap whenever he shoved it into an airlock. By the looks of it he was stuck with this stinking world until such time as a Terran task-force captured it or the war ended, either of which events might take place a couple of centuries hence.

  Reaching the bottom, he stepped onto concrete and turned around expecting to be given a kick in the stomach or a bust on the nose. Instead he found himself faced by a muttering but blank-faced group containing an officer whose attitude suggested that he was more baffled than enraged. Favouring Leeming with an unwinking stare, the officer let go a stream of incomprehensib1e gabble that ended on a note of query. Leeming spread his hands and shrugged.

  The officer tried again. Leeming responded with another shrug and did his best to look contrite. Accepting this lack of understanding as something that proved nothing one way or the other, the officer bawled at the crowd. Four armed guards emerged from the mob, hustled the prisoner into the armoured car, slammed and locked the door and took him away.

  At the end of the ride they shoved him into the back room of a rock house with two guards as company, the other two outside the door. Sitting on a low, hard chair, he sighed, gazed blankly at the wall for two hours. The guards also squatted, watched him as expressionlessly as a pair of snakes and said not a word.

  At the end of that time a trooper brought food and water. Leeming gulped it down in silence, studied the wall for another two hours. Meanwhile his thoughts milled around. It seemed pretty obvious, he decided, that the local gang had not realised that they’d caught a Terran. All their reactions showed that they were far from certain what they’d got.

  To a certain extent this was excusable. On the Allied side of the battle was a federation of thirteen lifeforms, four of them human and three more very humanlike: The Combine consisted of an uneasy, precarious union of at least twenty lifeforms three of which also were rather humanlike. Pending getting the answers from higher authority this particular bunch of quasi-reptilians couldn’t tell enemy from ally.

  All the same, they were taking no chances and he could imagine what was going on while they kept him sitting on his butt. The officer would grab the telephone-or whatever they used in lieu-and call the nearest garrison town. The highest ranker there would promptly transfer responsibility, to military headquarters. There, Klavith’s alarm would have been filed and forgotten and a ten-star panjandrum would pass the query to the main beam-station. An operator would transmit a message asking the three human-like allies whether they had lost track of a scout in this region.

  When back came a signal saying, “No!” the local gang would realise that a rare bird had been caught deep within the spatial empire. They wouldn’t like it. Holding-troops far behind the lines share all the glory and none of the grief and they’re happy to let things stay that way. A sudden intrusion of the enemy where he’s no right to be is an event disturbing to the even tenor of life and not to be greeted with cries of martial joy. Besides, from their viewpoint where one can sneak in an army can follow and it is disconcerting to be taken in force from the rear.

  Then when the news got around Klavith would arrive at full gallop to remind everyone that this was not the first time Leeming has been captured, but the second. What would they do to him eventually? He was far from sure to the job. It was most unlikely that they’d shoot him out of hand. If sufficiently civilised they’d cross-examine him and then imprison him for the duration. If uncivilised they’d dig up Klavith or maybe, an ally able to talk Terran and milk the prisoner of every item of information he possessed by methods ruthless and bloody.

  Back toward the dawn of history when conflict had been confined to one planet there had existed a protective device known as the Geneva Convention. It had organised neutral inspection of prison camps, brought occasional letters from home, provided food parcels that had kept alive many a captive who otherwise might have died.

  There was nothing like that today. A prisoner had only two forms of protection, those being his own resources and the power of his side to retaliate against the prisoners they’d got. And the latter was a threat more potential than real. There cannot be retaliation without actual knowledge of maltreatment.

  The day dragged on. The guards were changed twice. More food and water came. Eventually the one window showed that darkness was approaching. Eyeing the window furtively, Leeming decided that it would be suicidal to take a running jump at it under two guns. It was small and high, difficult to scramble through in a hurry. How he wished he had his own stink-gun now!

  A prisoner’s first duty is to escape. That means biding one’s time with appalling patience until occurs an oppor
tunity that may be seized and exploited to the utmost. He’d done it once and he must do it again. If no way of total escape existed he’d have to invent one.

  The prospect before him was tough indeed; before long it was likely to become a good deal tougher. If only he’d been able to talk the local language, or any Combine language, he might have been able to convince even the linguistic Klavith that black was white. Sheer impudence can pay dividends. Maybe he could have landed his ship, persuaded them with smooth words, unlimited self-assurance and just the right touch of arrogance to repair and reline his propulsors and cheer him on his way never suspecting that they had been talked into providing aid and comfort for the enemy.

  It was a beautiful dream but an idle one. Lack of ability to communicate in any Combine tongue had balled up such a scheme at the start. You can’t chivvy a sucker into donating his pants merely by making noises at him. Some other chance must now be watched for and grabbed, swiftly and with both hands-providing that they were fools, enough to permit a chance.

  Weighing up his guards in the same way as he had estimated the officer, his earlier captors and Klavith, he didn’t think that this species was numbered among the Combine’s brightest brains. All the same they were broad in the back, sour in the puss and plenty good enough to put someone in the pokey and keep him there for a long, long time.

  In fact they were naturals as prison wardens.

  He remained in the house four days, eating and drinking at regular intervals, sleeping halfway through the lengthy nights, cogitating for hours and often glowering at his impassive guards. Mentally he concocted, examined and rejected a thousand ways of regaining his liberty, most of them spectacular, fantastic and impossible.

  At one time he went so far as to try to stare the guards into a hypnotic trance, gazing intently at them until his own eyeballs felt locked for keeps. It did not bother them in the least. They had the reptilian ability to remain motion-less and outstare him until kingdom come.

  Mid-morning of the fourth day the officer strutted in, yelled, “Amash! Amash!” and gestured toward the door. His tone and manner were decidedly unfriendly. Evidently someone had identified the prisoner as an Allied space-louse.

  Getting off his seat Leeming walked out, two guards ahead, two behind, the officer in the rear. A box-bodied car sheathed in steel waited on the road. They urged him into it, locked it. A pair of guards stood on the rear platform hard against the doors and clung to handrails. A third joined the driver at the front. The journey took thirteen hours the whole of which the inmate spent jouncing around in complete darkness.

  By the time the car halted Leeming had invented one new and exceedingly repulsive word. He used it immediately the rear doors opened.

  “Quilpole-enk?” he growled. “Enk?”

  “Amash!” bawled the guard, unappreciative of alien contributions to the vocabulary of invective. He gave the other a powerful shove.

  With poor grace Leeming amashed. He glimpsed great walls rearing against the night and a zone of brilliant light high up before he was pushed through a metal portal and into a large room. Here a reception committee of six thug-like samples awaited him. One of the six signed a paper presented by the escort. The guards withdrew, the door closed, the six eyed the arrival with complete lack of amiability.

  One of them said something in an authoritative voice and made motions indicative of undressing.

  Leeming called him a smelly quilpole conceived in an alien marsh.

  It did him no good. The six grabbed him, stripped him naked, searched every vestige of his clothing, paying special attention to seams and linings. They displayed the expert technique of ones who’d done this job countless times already, knew exactly where to look and what to look for. None showed the slightest interest in his alien physique despite that he was posing fully revealed in the raw.

  Everything he possessed was put on one side and his clothes shied back at him. He dressed himself while they pawed through the loot and gabbled together. Satisfied that the captive now owned nothing more than was necessary to hide his shame, they led him through the farther door, up a flight of thick stone stairs, along a stone corridor and into a cell. The door slammed with a sound like that of the crack of doom.

  In the dark of night eight small stars and one tiny moon shone through a heavily barred opening high up in one wall. Along the bottom of the gap shone a faint yellow glow from some outside illumination.

  Fumbling around in the gloom he found a wooden bench against one wall. It moved when he lugged it. Dragging it beneath the opening he stood upon it but found himself a couple of feet too low to get a view outside. Though heavy, he struggled with it until he had it propped at an angle against the wall, then he crawled carefully up it and had a look between the bars.

  Forty feet below lay a bare stone-floored space fifty yards wide and extending to the limited distance he could see rightward and leftward. Beyond the space a smooth-surfaced stone wall rising to his own level. The top of the wall angled at about sixty degrees to form a sharp apex, ten inches above which ran a single line of taut wire, without barbs.

  From unseeable sources to right and left poured powerful beams of light that flooded the entire area between cell-block and outer wall as well as a similarly wide space beyond the wall. There was no sign of life. There was only the wall, the flares of light, the overhanging night and the distant stars.

  “So I’m in the jug,” he said. “That’s torn it!”

  He jumped to the invisible floor and the slight thrust made the bench fall with a resounding crash. It sounded as if he had produced a rocket and let himself be whisked through the roof. Feet raced along the outside passage, light poured through a suddenly opened spyhole in the heavy metal door. An eye appeared in the hole.

  “Sach invigia, faplap!” shouted the guard.

  Leeming called him a flatfooted, duck-assed quilpole and added six more words, older, timeworn but still potent. He lay on the hard bench and tried to sleep.

  An hour later he kicked hell out of the door and when the spyhole opened he said, “Faplap yourself!”

  After that he did sleep.

  Breakfast consisted of one lukewarm bowl of stewed grain resembling millet and a mug of water. Both were served with disdain and eaten with disgust. It wasn’t as good as the alien muck on which he had lived in the forest. But of course he hadn’t been on convict’s rations then; he’d been eating the meals of some unlucky helicopter crew.

  Sometime later a thin-lipped specimen arrived in company with two guards. With a long series of complicated gestures this character explained that the prisoner was to learn a civilized language and, what was more, would learn it fast-by order. Education would commence forthwith.

  Puzzled by the necessity; Leeming asked, “What about Major Klavith?”

  “Snapnose?”

  “Why can’t Klavith do the talking? Has he been struck dumb or something?”

  A light dawned upon the other. Making stabbing motions with his forefinger; he said, “Klavith-fat, fat, fat!”

  “Huh?”

  “Klavith-fat, fat, fat!” He tapped his chest several times, pretended to crumple to the floor and succeeded in conveying that Klavith had expired with official assistance.

  “Holy cow!” said Leeming.

  In businesslike manner the tutor produced a stack of juvenile picture books and started the imparting process while the guards lounged against the wall and looked bored. Leeming co-operated as one does with the enemy, namely, by misunderstanding everything, mispronouncing everything and overlooking nothing that would prove him a linguistic moron.

  The lesson ended at noon and was celebrated by the arrival of another bowl of gruel containing a hunk of stringy, rubbery substance resembling the hind end of a rat. He drank the gruel, sucked the portion of animal, shoved the bowl aside.

  Then he pondered the significance of their decision to teach him how to talk. In bumping off the unfortunate Klavith they had become the victims of their own
ruthlessness. They’d deprived themselves of the world’s only speaker of Cosmoglotta. Probably they had a few others who could speak it stationed on allied worlds but it would take time and trouble to bring one of those back here. Someone had blundered by ordering Klavith’s execution; he was going to cover up the mistake by teaching the prisoner to squeal.

  Evidently they’d got nothing resembling Earth’s electronic brain-pryers and could extract information only by question-and-answer methods aided by unknown forms of persuasion. They wanted to know things and intended to learn them if possible. The slower he was to gain fluency the longer it would be before they put him on the rack, if that was their intention.

  His speculations ended when the guards opened the door and ordered him out. Leading him along the corridor, down the stairs, they released him into a great yard filled with figures mooching aimlessly around under a bright sun. He halted in surprise.

  Rigellians! About two thousand of them. These were allies, fighting friends of Terra. He looked them over with mounting excitement, seeking a few more familiar shapes amid the mob. Perhaps an Earthman or two. Or even a few humanlike Centaurians.

  But there were none. Only rubber-limbed, pop-eyed Rigellians shuffling around in the dreary manner of those confronted with many wasted years and no conceivable future.

  Even as he gazed at them. he sensed something peculiar. They could see him as clearly as he could see them and, being the only Earthman, he was a legitimate object of attention, a friend from another star. They should have been crowding up to him, full of talk, seeking the latest news of the war, asking questions and offering information.

  It wasn’t like that at all. They took no notice of him, behaved as if the arrival of a Terran were of no consequence whatever. Slowly and deliberately he walked across the yard, inviting some sort of fraternal reaction. They got out of his way. A few eyed him furtively, the majority pretended to be unaware of his existence. Nobody offered a word of comfort. Obviously they were giving him the conspicuous brush-off.