Nelly Udall waddled into view. “Morning, dearie,” she boomed. “Not seasick, I hope? No? Good—kind of hard to believe in a seasick Man, eh? Haw, haw, haw!” She slapped his back so he staggered. Then, seriously: “Come into my cabin. We got to talk.”
They sat on her bunk. She took out a pipe and stuffed it with greenish flakes from a jar. “We can’t go on to Holy River now, that’s for sure, chick. That Father-damned legate’s been preaching hellfire to ‘em back at Shield. The boats must already be headed for the Ship to bring the glad tidings. With a wind like this, a yawl can sail rings around us. Time we get to Bow Island, even, all the country will be up in arms.”
“Glutch!” strangled Davis.
Nelly kindled her pipe with a fire piston and blew nauseous clouds. “Sure you aren’t seasick, duck? All of a sudden you don’t look so good.”
“We’ve got to raise help,” mumbled Davis. “Somewhere, somehow.”
Nelly nodded. “Figgered as much. I’m bound for Farewell, my home port. Got plenty of friends there, and nobody to conterdick whatever you say.”
“But when they hear the Ship’s against us—”
“I know a lot who’ll still stick by us, dearie. Girls like our present crew. We’ve gotten almighty sick of the Doctors. We see more of ’em than the uplanders do, the—” Nelly went into a rich catalogue of the greed, arrogance, and general snottiness of the Doctors. Davis guessed that a mercantile culture like this would naturally resent paying tribute . . . and then, generations of sexual frustration had to be vented somehow.
The Doctors could not all be villains. Doubtless many were quite sincere. But Davis knew enough Union law to be sure that anything he did to them would be all right with the Coordination Service. It was they who stood between Atlantis and civilization—more important, a normal family life.
The idea grew slowly within him as the Udall rumbled on:
“I reckon we can raise quite a few shiploads, then go far up the coast and strike inland toward your boat.”
“No! said Davis. Words poured from him. “Too risky. It’ll be guarded too heavily; and they may have tools enough left in the Ship to demolish it. We’ve got to act fast. If you think your friends are willing to hazard their lives to be free—”
Nelly smiled. “Chick, with that beard and that voice you can talk ’em into storming hell gate.”
“It won’t be quite that bad,” said Davis. “I hope. What we’re going to do is storm the Ship.”
The rebel fleet lay to at Ship city at high tide, just after B-rise.
Davis stood on the Fishbird‘s deck and watched his forces move in. There were about forty vessels, their windmills and sails like gull wings across waters muddy-blue, rippled and streaked by an early breeze. At their sterns flew the new flag he had designed. His girls were quite taken with the Jolly Roger.
The rebels numbered some 2,000 women from the Farewell archipelago. There were more than that to guard the Ship, but less tough, less experienced in fighting—the seafolk were not above occasional piracy. The odds didn’t look too bad.
Valeria stamped her feet so the deck thudded. “I’m going ashore,” she said mutinously.
“No, you don’t, chicakabiddy.” Nelly Udall twirled a belaying pin. “Got to keep some guard over the Man. What’s the bloody-be-damned use of it all if he gets himself skewered?”
Barbara nodded coldly. “She’s right, as anyone but you could see,” she added. “Not that I wouldn’t rather guard a muck-bird!”
Davis sighed. In the three Atlantean weeks since they left Shield Skerry, neither of the cousins had spoken to him, or to each other without a curse. After the hundredth rebuff, he had given up. Evil take all women anyway! He just wanted to go home, go back and get roaring drunk and have the psych machine numb the pain which went with red hair and green eyes.
He twisted his mind elsewhere. The Ship must have been badly crippled, to land here; probably it had come down where it could, on the last gasp of broken engines. The walls which now enclosed it had been built on a hill that just barely stuck out over high tide. Eastward lay the marches, a dreary gray land where a stone causeway slashed through to the distance-blued peaks of the Ridge.
There must have been heavy construction equipment in the Ship’s cargo. A few thousand women could not have raised this place by hand. The machines were long ago worn out, but then-work remained.
The city was ringed by white concrete walls five meters high, with a square watchtower at each corner. The walls fell to the water of high tide or the mud of ebb: inaccessible save by the causeway entering the eastern gate or the wide quay built out from the west side. Against this dock the rebel boats were lying to. Gangplanks shot forth and armored women stormed onto the wharf.
Davis let his eyes wander back to the city. He could see the tops of buildings above the walls, the dome-roofed architecture of three centuries ago. And he could see the great whaleback of the Ship itself, 300 meters long from north wall to south wall, metal still bright but a buckled spot at the waist to show how hard it had landed.
Barbara looked wistfully at the yelling seafolk. She was clad like them: visored helmet on her ruddy hair, tunic of steely-scaled orcfish hide, trousers, spike-toed boots. The accessories included lasso, knife, ax, crossbow and quiver, she had become a walking meat grinder.
Davis, likewise armored, felt the same sense of uselessness. Not that he wanted to face edged metal, the thought dried out his mouth. But when women were ready to die for his sake—
Bee struck long rays into his eyes. Ay was so close as to be hidden by the glare of the nearer sun. Minos brooded overhead in the gigantic last quarter. There was a storm on the king planet—he could see how the bands and blotches writhed.
Horns blew on the walls, under the Red Cross flag. Women, lithe tough legates and acolytes, were appearing in cuirass, greaves, and masking helmet, all of burnished metal. Crossbows began to shoot.
There was no attempt to batter down the iron door at the end of the quay. A howling mass of sailors raised ladders and swarmed skyward.
“Cosmos!” choked Davis.
A Doctor shoved at one of the ladders, but there was a grapnel on its end. Davis saw her unlimber a long rapier. The first rebel up got it through the throat and tumbled, knocking off the woman below her, they fell hideously to the ground.
“Let me go!” yelled Valeria.
“Hold still,” rapped Nelly. Her worried eyes went to Davis. “I didn’t think they’d have so good a defense, chick. We’d better get them licked fast.”
He nodded. They had only a couple of hours before the tide dropped so far that any ship which remained would be stranded, in mud or the harbor locks, till the next high.
“So we stay,” growled Barbara. “Isn’t that the idea?”
“Yeh,” said Davis. He drew hard on a borrowed pipe. “Only the Doctors must have called in a lot of upland warriors, to patrol between here and Freetoon. Now they’ll send for their help. If things go badly, I’d like a way to retreat.”
“You would,” she agreed, and turned her back on him.
Axes, spears, swords clashed up on the wall, bolts and darts gleamed in the cool early light. The Doctor fighters were rapidly being outnumbered. One of them, in a red cloak of leadership, winded a horn. Her women fought their way toward her.
Davis gulped. It couldn’t be that simple! Yes, by all creation, the Doctor forces were streaming down a stairway into their town. A slim young Burke cried triumph, he could hear the hawk-shriek above all the racket and see how her dark hair flew in the wind as she planted the Jolly Roger on the city wall.
Now down the stairs! There was a red flash of axes. The last legate backed out of view, thrusting and slicing at sailor shields.
Nelly grabbed Davis and whirled him in a wild stomp around the dock. “We got ’em, we got ’em, we got ’em!” she caroled. Planks shuddered beneath her.
The man felt sick. His whole culture was conditioned against war, it remembered its pa
st too well. If he could have been in the action, himself, taking his own chances, it wouldn’t have been so gruesome. But he was the only one on Atlantis who could bring the Men. He had to hold himself back—
“Scared?” jeered Valeria. “If it looks like you might get hurt after all, we’ll take you away where it’s safe.”
“I’m not going to retreat!” he said in a raw voice.
“Yes, you will, duck, if we got to,” said Nelly. “If you get killed, what’s for us?” Her seamed face turned grimly inland. “We’ve got to win . . . no choice . . . if the Doctors win, there’ll never be another baby on the islands.”
That was what drove them, thought Davis. Below all the old grudges and the glamor of his cause, there was the primeval mother urge. The seafolk had not told it to themselves in so many words, but their instincts knew: a machine was too unsafe a way of bringing life into the world.
The iron harbor doors were flung open. So the west end of town was firmly held by his side. The noise of battle was receding, the Doctors being driven back . . . So what? A victory where you yourself did nothing was no victory for a man.
Damn! His pipe had gone out.
“I think we’ll have the mucking place before ebb,” said Nelly. “But then what do we do?”
“We’ll have the parthenogenetic apparatus,” Davis reminded her. “Not to mention the prestige of victory. Well own the planet.”
“Oh . . . yeh. Keep forgetting. I’m growing old, dearie—huh?”
There was a shriek through the gateway.
Sailors poured out of it, falling over each other, hurling their weapons from them in blind panic. A couple of hundred women made for the ships.
“What’s happened?” bawled Nelly. “Avast, you hootinanies! Stop that!” She went into a weeping tirade of profanity.
Barbara snatched her megaphone from the captain. “Pull in!” she cried. “We’re going ashore now!”
The helmswoman looked ill, but yanked a signal cord. The ship moved across a narrow stretch of open water and bumped against one of the docked schooners.
“Let’s go,” snapped Valeria. She leaped onto the schooner deck.
Barbara saw Davis follow. “No!” she yelled.
“Yes,” he answered harshly. “I’ve stood enough.” Blind with fury, he dashed to the wharf.
The mob was still coming out of the door and over the quay to mill on the ships. Davis grabbed a Craig and whirled her around.
“What’s the matter?” he shouted. She gave him an unseeing look. lie slapped her. “What happened in there?”
“We . . . street fighting . . . Doctor troop . . . flame, white flame and it burned our forward line—” The Craig collapsed.
“It’s Father himself!” gasped a Macklin.
“Shut up!” rapped Davis. He felt sick. “I know what it is. They must have found my blaster up by Freetoon, and the legate took it back here. Maybe records in the Ship describe blasters.” He shook his head numbly. “Chilluns, this is not a good thing.”
“What are we going to do?” breathed Barbara.
Davis thought, in a remote part of his mind, that later on he would break out in the cold shakes. If he lived! But for now he had to keep calm—
“We’re going to get that blaster,” he said. “There’s nothing supernatural about an ion stream. And there’s only one of them.”
“You’ll be killed,” said Valeria. “Wait here, Bert—”
“Follow me,” he said. “If you dare!”
They trotted after him, a dozen from the Fishbird and as many more from the retreat whose morale had picked up. He went through the doorway and saw an ordered gridiron of paved streets between tall concrete houses. The Ship rose huge at the end of all avenues. From two other streets came the noise of fighting. The battle had spread out, and few had yet seen the fire gun. They would, though, if he didn’t hurry, and that would be the end of the rebellion.
“We went down this way,” pointed a Latvala.
Davis jogged between closed doors and broad glass windows. Looking in, he saw that the inhabitants did themselves well, no doubt luxury existed elsewhere on Atlantis. He could understand their reluctance to abandon such a way of life for the untried mythic civilization of Men.
He skidded to a halt. The Doctors were rounding the corner ahead.
There were about twenty. A line of legates, their helmets facelessly blank, spread from wall to wall with interlocked shields. Behind them lifted swords and halbreds.
“Get them!” shouted Nelly.
Three girls sprang ahead of Davis. One of them was a Whitley, he thought for a moment she was one of his Whitleys and then saw Barbara and Valeria still flanking him.
Over the shield tops lifted a Burke face. It was an old face, toothless and wrinkled below a tall bejeweled crown, and the body was stooped in white robes. But his blaster gleamed in a skinny hand.
Davis flung out his arms and dove to the ground, carrying Barbara and Valeria with him. Blue-white fire sizzled overhead.
The three young girls fell, blasted through. It could have been Val or Barbara lying there dead and mutilated on the pavement, thought Davis wildly. He remembered how he loved them.
He rolled over, into a doorway. His gang were already stampeded. Nelly stood firm in the street, Barbara and Valeria were beside him. Nelly threw her ax, it glanced off a shield, the legate stumbled against the old Doctor. Her next shot missed, and Nelly pumped thick legs across the street.
She hit the door with one massive shoulder. It went down in splinters. Davis sprang into a sybarite’s parlor.
Two legates appeared in the doorframe. Barbara’s crossbow snapped twice. Valeria and Nelly led the way through another door.
Davis followed and saw a stair. “Uncoil me your lasso, Babs,” he said. “I have an idea.” They pounded up after him.
A bedroom overlooked the street. Davis shoved up the window. The blaster party was just underneath. Barbara nodded, leaned out—her lariat closed around the chief Doctor.
“Help!” screamed the Burke. “I’ve been roped!”
Davis sprang into the street. He landed on an armored legate and both went down with a rattle and a gong. She didn’t move. Davis jumped up and sent a left hook to the nearest jaw. Valeria’s rope snaked from the window, fastened to something. She came sliding down it with her ax busy. Valeria and Nelly followed.
The old Burke snarled. She fought free and reached for the blaster. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Davis put his foot on it. A rapier struck his scaly coat and bent upward, raking his cheek. He kicked, and the woman reeled off to trip somebody else.
Nelly had picked up an ax. “Whoopee!” she bawled, and started chopping. Barbara and Valeria stood back to back, their weapons a blur in front of them. Davis was still too inhibited to use whetted steel on women, but every blow his fist dealt shocked loose some of his guiltiness.
The fight was over in a few minutes. Male size and female skill had outweighed numbers. Davis stooped for his blaster. “Let’s go,” he panted.
XIII
They went on down the street. There was a narrow passage between the Ship and the wall. On the other side lay a broad open square, lined with impressive temples . . . No more sound of fighting. Odd!
A sailor troop emerged from behind one of the columned sanctuaries. “It’s the Man!” squealed somebody. They ran toward him and drew up, flushed. The leader gave a sketchy salute.
“I think we just about have the town, sir,” she puffed. “I was patrolling on the east end. Didn’t see anyone.”
“Good!” Davis shuddered his relief. He could not have used a blaster on women, the memory of the dead Whitley girl was burned too deeply in him.
“Get our people together here,” he said. “Post guards. Round up all the Doctors left, herd ‘em into one of these chapels . . . and don’t use them for target practice! Set up a sickbay for the wounded, and that means enemy wounded too. Nelly, you take charge, I want a look around.”
He walk
ed through empty avenues. Behind him he could hear cheers and trumpets, the tramp of feet and triumphal clang of arms, but he was in no mood for it.
Minos was a thin sliver, with Bee sliding close. Nearly eclipse time . . . had all this only taken three hours?
The Whitleys trailed him. He heard: “I take a lot back, Val. You fought pretty good.”
“Hell, Babs, you’re no slouch yourself. After all, darling, you are identical with me.”
The street opened on a narrow space running the length of the east wall. There was a doorway in the center, with wrought-iron gates. Davis looked through the bars to the causeway and the marshes. Mud gleamed on the ridge which the road followed, birds screamed down after stranded fish. The tide was ebbing, the ships already trapped . . . but what the Evil, they had won, hadn’t they?
Hold on there.
The highway bent around a clump of saltwater trees three kilometers from the city. Davis saw what approached from the other side and grabbed the bars with both hands.
“An army!” he croaked.
Rank after rank poured into view, with war-cries and haughty banners; now he saw leather corselets, iron morions, boots and spurs and streaming cloaks. They were the hill people and they were riding to the relief of the Doctors.
“A couple of thousand, at least,” muttered Barbara. “The legates must have gone after them as soon as we attacked. They’ve been waiting around to kill you, my dearest—” She whirled on him, her visored face pressed against his side. “And it’s too late to retreat, were boxed in!”
“Not too late to fight!” shouted Valeria. Sea women on the walls lifted horns to lips and wailed an alarm.
Davis looked at the gate. It was locked, but it could be broken apart. His hand went to the blaster. Before Cosmos, that would stop them. No!
The rebel army pelted into the open space. Right and left, arbalestiers swarmed up the staircases to the walls. Hasn’t there been enough killing? thought Davis.
Behind him, Nelly Udall scurried along the ranks, pushing them into a semblance of order. Davis regarded them. Tired faces, hurt faces, lips that tried to be firm and failed; they would fight bravely, but they hadn’t a chance against fresh troops.
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