Half Past Human (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by T. J. Bass

  Hip looked out over the plains to the north. What he saw unnerved him a little. An Agromeck approached carrying a number of ragged bowmen. Two columns of armed men filed along behind. Farther back, to the right and left, were four more Agromecks with similar troop arrangements.

  ‘Seer?’ asked a husky spearchucker. ‘Who approaches?’

  ‘We shall see,’ said Hip confidently. ‘We are a peaceful people. Perhaps they will talk.’ He waved a small band of his followers to lay down their weapons and approach the first Agromeck. Hip himself climbed up onto a high rock to give courage to his men – and to let the approaching strangers know that they were dealing with a powerful wizard who did not fear them.

  Moses stiffened when he saw the disorganized band tumble down from the rocks and scamper towards him. He relaxed when he realized that they had left their weapons behind.

  ‘It is Hip from Mount Tabulum,’ said Toothpick finally. ‘Ball is here too.’

  Moses had heard of Hip and the villagers from old man Moon.

  ‘Buckeyes – organized into an army like ours?’ said Hugh. ‘I find that hard to believe, after what you told me about them.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Moses, shaking his head slowly. ‘I’ll be very interested in finding out what brought them together.’

  Moses faced the Hip over a campfire in the neutral zone between the armies.

  ‘What brought you here?’

  ‘Olga,’ said Hip. ‘There is to be a great coming together. Olga will see that we have food. She will protect us from hunters.’

  ‘Food brought us,’ explained Moses. ‘If your Olga is going to supply you with food, she brought you to the wrong place. Fifty-oh-oh has been harvested to the north. How are the crops to the south?’

  ‘Harvested too. The hive has been harassing us with starvation and foam.’

  ‘Harvested below 50:00?’ asked Moses surprised. Old Hip nodded. Toothpick squeaked.

  Both Moses and Hip glanced around at the circle of anxious faces – their followers were hungry. They had reached The River. Where was the bounty?

  ‘When will Olga provide?’ began Moses.

  ‘The prophesy will be fulfilled when the signs are right,’ said the old wizard firmly.

  ‘When will we know?’

  ‘I will consult my crystal tonite – under the stars.’

  At the end of their meeting, Moses stood up to take the meager words of encouragement back to his restless troops.

  ‘By the way,’ said Hip in parting. ‘Keep an eye on those shaft caps in your area. Bowmen have been appearing in the garage doors. They take a lot of casualties among our people whenever they attack. Tinker has been doing something about them on our side.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  Three swarthy buckeyes leaned against the shaft cap admiring Tinker’s blades – gleaming short swords – wrinkled but sharp. Around them the camp slept – little family units bundled up for the night. Stars winked overhead.

  Abruptly the wall opened up behind them. Two fell in. One stood open-mouthed and took a fusilade of arrows in the chest. Behind him wounded buckeyes screamed and shouted. He couldn’t breathe. Looking down at the cluster of feathered shafts in his chest, he knew he was dead. A warrior doesn’t just die, he takes his enemy with him! He strode stiffly into the garage as Door closed. His right arm and shoulder had a life of their own for three and a half minutes. Tinker’s new blade sang against the ribs and skulls of Nebishes. Rose-water blood flowed thin and watery across the garage floor. More arrows flew into his trunk – lung and belly shots. None penetrated his thick skull. Cerebral anoxia finally toppled him.

  Tinker arrived on the scene with six more blademen. He paused to cut the arrow head from a shaft so an old coweye could pull it out and bandage her leg. A tiny jungle bunny twitched out its life pinned to its cooling mother’s breast.

  ‘Arrows. Damn! Where were the three men I left guarding this door?’

  ‘Inside,’ moaned one of the wounded.

  ‘Bring up something to break down this door,’ shouted Tinker. He pressed his ear against it. Nothing. Too thick. ‘Hurry up.’ He pounded with the hilt of his sword.

  Four burly buckeyes approached the door with heavy stones. Unexpectedly the door opened. Everyone hit the dirt. No arrows. Inside, the garage looked like a slaughter house. Two buckeyes lay pin-cushioned by over a dozen arrows. Around each lay over thirty hunters in various stages of dismemberment. A third buckeye leaned on Door’s manual controls. He had taken five arrows himself. Smiling at the sight of his people, he slumped to the floor.

  Tinker rushed to him.

  ‘Check the spiral,’ he shouted to the blademen.

  The two pin-cushioned buckeyes were gone. The third smiled through his blood-loss anemia. His pulse was fast and thready. The arrows were all stuck in the gristle and muscle of his shoulders, neck and face. Tinker worked fast, digging out the arrows while the adrenal surge protected him from pain.

  The Security guard stood with his back to the crawlway while the hunters filed out of the tubeway and double-timed it upspiral. A Nebish on the crawlway watched the hunters pass.

  ‘They carry weapons in the hive,’ said the Nebish.

  ‘They go up to fight buckeyes in the gardens,’ explained the guard.

  ‘But weapons – sharp weapons – are not allowed in the hive.’

  ‘The Sharps Committee has been consulted. Crawl back into your cubicle. We can’t have you blocking the spiral.’

  Later, after the troops had passed, the Nebish came out onto the spiral with his complacent neighbors – mildly curious about the battle. Two turns up, on the spiral across the shaft, they could see a conflict. It was a little over a hundred yards away, but they could make out an arrow’s flight and slashing short swords. A buckeye, shaggy and mauve in the dim light, ran downspiral. He thrust his sword into the white belly of a round hunter and moved on in a crouch. The spiral was crowed with dull-witted citizens who paid little attention to the bloodletting. They had seen Security drag off more than one kicking and screaming infant to the chute. The sight of a hunter struggling with a buckeye was mildly interesting, but they soon grew bored with the conflict and wandered on about their little activities – dispenser-shopping, meld-coming, refresher-going.

  Of the six blademen that started out, only three made it to shaft base. The hundred hunters all lay dead. Three wounded blademen returned to the cap to have their wounds attended. Spearchucker reinforcements jogged downspiral to support the blademen.

  ‘This city is secured,’ said the proud blademan as Tinker trimmed back a badly mangled ear. A broken ulna had to be splinted. It was only the left arm. With a heavy bandage he’d be back fighting the next day – using the bulky bandage as a shield.

  ‘Good work,’ said Tinker. ‘At least we have one shaft cap. We can sleep well tonite.’

  ‘Call out your men,’ said Hip.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Tinker. ‘We’ve just cleaned out this nest of rats, and you want to give it back?’

  ‘All Followers of Olga must be at The River tonite. The signs are right.’

  Tinker raised his finger and opened his mouth to argue, but he saw the reverence and instant obedience of the buckeyes around him. He held his tongue. The blademen withdrew from shaft base.

  ‘Giving the city back . . .’ mumbled Tinker. He returned to the forges. Coweyes had sewn more bellows and gathered wood from the orchards. Tinker instructed. They built ten more. Burly buckeyes swung stone hammers and quenched. Blademen increased.

  Tinker squinted into the orange coals at the yellow glowing blade.

  ‘Making teeth again?’ asked a familiar voice.

  Tinker turned and saw a sinewy old man with a wry smile – old man Moon. Beside him was a three-legged dog – Dan-with-the-golden-teeth. New scars had been added to their bodies, but they appeared otherwise little changed from the days on Mount Tabulum.

  ‘Moon— Dan—’ said Tinker, waving the glowing blade. He que
nched it in a pot of water. Steam jumped. He walked over to his old friends.

  ‘Making teeth again?’ repeated Moon.

  Tinker nodded. ‘Teeth for an army, this time.’

  Old Moon glanced around, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

  ‘So you finally decided to strike back at the Big ES? Looks like you have a good start,’ said Moon, glancing at the shaft cap with disabled doors. ‘Need a couple of good men?’

  Dan detected the fighting blood rising in his master’s voice. The beast squinted about, ears down – but saw no danger.

  What Tinker saw was not a soldier – just an old man – a very old man – and his dog.

  ‘Sure, Moon,’ he said smiling. ‘We can use you. Come, meet Mu Ren. We can talk while we eat.’ He didn’t say – ‘and rest.’ It would have offended Moon; just because he had walked 2,000 miles . . .

  The broth was thin. The baby was hungry. Moon noticed.

  ‘Here, add these to the soup. Some little nibblers I carry when I travel. Cut them off a hunter who mistook me for an easy trophy.’

  He dropped some stringy brown fragments into the soup. It immediately darkened and tasted like food. Tinker Junior stopped fretting after two bowls.

  After Tinker filled Moon in on their quasi-superstitious reasons for being there, Moon asked about Toothpick.

  ‘Toothpick and Moses are commanding the forces to the north. They have about a hundred Agromecks – and seem to have the skills to repair them. I’ve never seen so many technical caste members before.’

  Moon got to his feet, Dan perked up.

  ‘You’re not staying the night?’

  ‘No,’ said Moon. ‘I’ve got Toothpick’s butt in my pocket. I’ve got to return it to him. He might be needing it.’

  He pulled out a short cylinder. It had an optic and several color indicators.

  Tinker escorted Moon and Dan to the edge of their camp.

  ‘Where did Dan get that star on his chest?’

  ‘An arrow. Went clean through the posterior mediastinum and stuck into the third lumbar vertibra. Got the anterior spinal artery. Motor out to tail and left leg. Autonomies and sensory OK. The toes on his left foot finally fell off, but he gets along fine. I was really worried about his bladder and bowel for a long time. But they came back. The supply area for the anterior spinal artery doesn’t supply the sacral autonomies, you know.’

  Tinker nodded. As they talked he absently drew a cross section of the spinal cord showing the three horns of gray matter: posterior, sensory; lateral, autonomic; and anterior, motor. Only Dan’s anterior horns were gone below the third lumbar, and even that wasn’t complete, for his right leg worked pretty good.

  ‘Shaft came out easily in about three weeks,’ said old man Moon. ‘Arrow head is still in there. Tail hasn’t wagged since.’ He took the twig Tinker was drawing with and sketched a double-bladed axe.

  ‘If you’re going into those shaft cities again, you might try making a bipennis at the forge. About six or seven pounds of metal – whatever feels right when you swing it on a handle as long as your forearm. Those two-headed axes are handy if you have to cut through a lot of – things. Keep one blade keen for the fancy stuff, you know,’ he laughed.

  Moon was older than Tinker and had seen a lot. The battle that was shaping up seemed to be more than just a struggle for calories. Two hundred years of walking the Earth gave him perspective.

  Josephson glanced up at the screen. His troops had retaken the shaft city without a fight. Buckeyes were barricaded in the garage behind heaps of junk. They had a supply of bows and arrows, but the little fifteen-pound bows snapped in the enthusiasm of battle. Frustrated buckeyes leaped the barricades and rushed down two turns of the spiral to drive back any curious Nebish troops. Hip had ordered them to stay on the surface, so their sorties were brief.

  ‘Don’t bother to retake the garage,’ Josephson ordered. ‘Lay down a tanglefoot web of netting, and hold your positions behind it. Try holding on the fourth turn of the spiral.’

  The troop leader nodded. Netting was strung.

  Josephson tuned in on Huntercraft from White Country. EM interference was heavy.

  ‘We’re coming, Josephson. Six craft due in three days. Twelve more about a week later. Only lost two so far.’

  ‘How’s the neurocircuitry handling the magnetic storms?’

  ‘Fine. We’re on manual, of course. But during the lulls the mecks carry on a very lucid conversation.’

  ‘Manual? Where did you get all the pilots?’

  ‘We’re learning on the job— Oh-oh. Number three is in trouble again. I’d better change that prediction to five craft in three days – thirteen a week later. We’re trying.’

  Josephson checked with other hunter teams. The story was the same – ETA about a week, give or take a couple of days. Craft limped, stopped over for repairs, balked at the EM headaches – and squinted through a variety of cataracts.

  Dusk was settling on the camps. Toothpick was restless. Moses carried the little cyberspear to the southwest corner of their camp and climbed the long rock pile.

  ‘My butt is near.’

  ‘The one you left with – Moon?’ said Moses excitedly. ‘Is he alive? Where—?’ He glanced over the rambling camp of buckeyes to the south. For three miles the ground was packed with busy troops and their families. Shelters were up. Small cooking fires smoked. Babies cried.

  ‘There he is,’ said Toothpick, flexing his surface membrane and steering his point toward the hunched old man and the long-snouted, three-legged dog in the distance.

  Moses shouted and waved.

  Old Moon didn’t say much. He was glad to see them, of course, but he wasn’t much for words.

  ‘Here’s your butt,’ he said, handing Toothpick the ten-centimeter section of tubing from his thicker, base end.

  Toothpick accepted it – locking it on with a click.

  ‘Old man with dog – welcome. How is your wound?’

  Old Moon scratched the puckered scar in the left upper quadrant of his abdomen. ‘It tells me when it’s going to rain. Otherwise it is fine. Drained a helluva long time though. Must have gotten my colon and my lungs because I was spitting up feces for about three months.’

  Toothpick consulted his scanty anatomy charts.

  ‘Unlikely,’ said the cyber. ‘Colon, yes – lungs no. But the coliform organisms from the bowel could have spread to your pleural space giving your sputum a purulent-fecal odor.’

  Old Moon lifted his left shoulder, demonstrating how much mobility was left.

  ‘Still as good a man as I ever was,’ he growled. His golden teeth glinted in the sunset. His frame carried a bit more meat – he had been eating well. Dan looked well enough too. With the left leg ending at the tarsus, his trunk and right leg had added muscle for the three-legged gait.

  ‘I just came from Hip’s camp. Talked with Tinker and his mate. Their big problem seems to be food,’ said Moon.

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘But you’ve cracked a couple of shaft caps. You’ve got troops and mecks . . .’

  ‘The Big ES has cut off supplies to these cities. Their own citizens starve,’ explained Moses.

  ‘Let’s attack the Big ES.’

  Moses recoiled at old man Moon’s suggestion.

  ‘You don’t mean invade the hive?’

  ‘Yes, dammit! Invade the hive. Take troops into the spirals and tubeways – rout out those little white grubs who have taken away our planet – rout them out and barbecue ’em,’ said the old man with gusto.

  Young, sensitive Moses winced at the harsh words.

  ‘But the Hip doesn’t want to make war. His reason for being here is tied to his religion – planetary conjunctions, and all that.’

  ‘The Hip!’ sneered old Moon. ‘He may be the Hip to you, but he’s just the Ass at Tabulum to me. Anyone who would take advantage of a poor, simple people with tricks of magic and start a religion so he doesn’t have to get out and scratch for his own c
alories – he’s just an ass.’

  Moses soothed – ‘Now, now. Looking after thousands of hungry people is no easy task. I know. I’ve got a lot of hungry followers myself. And right now we all could use a little food.’

  Moon cursed, ‘Hell, there is always plenty of food around. Lend me a squad of bowmen and I’ll get you all you can eat.’

  ‘But I told you – there is no food in these shaft cities. The Nebishes themselves are starving.’

  Old Moon smiled the same wicked smile Moses had seen in the cave after his Climb.

  ‘Of course it won’t be properly aged.’

  Moses felt a little limp. Well, if matters had come to that – he would still try to survive. He waved at the bowmen resting against Tiller’s chassis. The sun had set. Only a pale blue glow marked the western horizon.

  ‘Men,’ he said. ‘Old Moon and his dog Dan are going to take you on a little hunting expedition – for Nebishes.’ They nodded. Night or day, it made little difference in the hive.

  Moon walked to the head of the squad. ‘We’ll be bringing the meat back, so pick the young healthy-looking ones,’ he said callously.

  One of the bowmen – young, with a few whiskers and a granular white scar on his scalp where some skin tumor had been erased at Dundas – spoke hesitantly.

  ‘Meat, sir? We’ll be eating – them?’

  ‘Look, sonny, you don’t have to come,’ said Moon. ‘But I’d like to remind you that those protein bars you’ve been eating on the trek were from the patient in the next coffin who didn’t make it. Ever since you’ve awoke you’ve been a cannibal. Everyone on this fool planet is. There’s no other meat.’

  The piebald youngster took a half a protein bar out of his pocket and looked questioningly at Moses. Moses nodded sadly.

  ‘Just processed a little – but still human protein.’

  The squad marched off behind Dan and Moon.

  Hip checked his beads and charts by the firelight. Then he carried his crystal ball up onto the tallest rock he could find between the armies. Bright stars winked out of a coal-black sky. The lunar disc had not yet risen. Hip began his chants and prayers. They spread through both camps. Soon ten square miles reverberated with praise to Olga.