The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

  These were degenerate days. She had poisoned her own mother to become the vessel of power.

  The spearmen to her right and left shifted uneasily. She heard a faint mumble of the two smithymen talking. Let them talk! Doubtless they were cursing the goddess obscenely; doubtless that was what the smithymen all did when their mouths were not stuffed with food.

  She thought of the man called Kennedy who forged spearheads and arrowpoints for her people—he was a strange one, touched by the goddess, which proved her infinite power. She could touch and turn the head of even a smithyman. He was a strange one. Well now, to get on with it. She wished the power were working stronger in her; she was tired and could hardly see. But by the grace of the goddess there would be two new heads over her holy hut come dawn. She could hardly see, but the goddess wouldn’t fail her.…

  She quavered like a screech-owl, and the spearmen began to slip forward through the brush. She was not allowed to eat honey lest its sweetness clash with the power in her, but the taste of power was sweeter than the taste of honey.

  * * * *

  With frightful suddenness there was an ear-splitting shriek and a trampling rush of feet. By sheer reflex, Orsino clamped down on the trigger of his fifty, and his brain rocked at its thunder. Shadowy figures were blotted out by the orange muzzle-flash. You’re supposed to fire neat, spaced bursts of eight he told himself. I wonder what old Gilby would say if he could see his star pupil burning out a barrel and swinging his gun like a fire hose?

  The gun stopped firing; end of the belt. Twenty, fifty or a hundred rounds? He didn’t remember. He clawed for another belt and smoothly, in the dark, loaded again and listened.

  “You all right, gangster?” the jaygee said behind him, making him jump.

  “Yes,” he said. “Will they come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You filthy swine,” an agonized voice wheezed from the darkness. “Me back is broke, you stinking lice.” The voice began to sob.

  They listened to it in silence for perhaps a minute. At last he said to the jaygee: “If the rest are gone maybe we can at least—make him comfortable.”

  “Too risky,” the jaygee said after a long pause.

  The sobbing went on. As the excitement of the attack drained from Orsino, he felt deathly tired, cramped and thirsty. The thirst he could do something about. He scooped water from the muddy runnel by his knee and sucked it from his palms twice. The third time, he thought of the thirst that the sobbing creature out in the dark must be feeling, and his hand wouldn’t go to his mouth.

  “I’m going to get him,” he whispered to the jaygee.

  “Stay where you are! That’s an order!”

  He didn’t answer, but began to work his cramped and aching body from under the jeep. The jaygee, a couple of years younger and lither than he, slid out first from his own side. Orsino sighed and relaxed as he heard his footsteps cautiously circle the jeep.

  “Finish me off!” the wounded man was sobbing. “For the love of the goddess, finish me off, you bitches’ bastards! You’ve broke me back—ah!” That was a cry of savage delight.

  There was a strangled noise from the jaygee and then only a soft, deadly thrashing noise from the dark. Hell, Orsino thought bitterly. It was my idea. He snaked out from under the jeep and raced through wet brush.

  The two of them were a tangled knot of darkness rolling on the ground. A naked back came uppermost; Orsino fell on it and clawed at its head. He felt a huge beard, took two hand-fulls of it and pulled as hard as he could. There was a wild screech and a flailing of arms. The jaygee broke away and stood up, panting hoarsely. Charles heard a sharp crunch and a snap, and the flailing sweaty figure, beneath him lay still.

  “Back to the guns,” the jaygee choked. He swayed, and Orsino took him by the arm.… On the way back to the jeep, they stumbled over something that was certainly a body.

  Orsino’s flesh shrank from lying down again in the mud behind his gun, but he did, shivering. He heard the jaygee thud wearily into position. “What did you do to him?” he asked. “Is he dead?”

  “Kicked him,” the jaygee choked. “His head snapped back and there was that crack. I guess he’s dead. I never heard of that broken-wing trick before. I guess he wanted to take one more with him. They have a kind of religion.”

  The jaygee sounded as though he was teetering on the edge of breakdown. Make him mad, intuition said to Orsino. He might go howling off among the trees unless he snaps out of it.

  “It’s a hell of way to run an island,” he said nastily. “You beggars were chased out of North America because you couldn’t run it right and now you can’t even control a lousy little island for more than five miles inland.” He added with deliberate, superior amusement: “Of course, they’ve got witches.”

  “Shut your mouth, gangster—I’m warning you.” The note of hysteria was still there. And then the jaygee said dully: “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. You did come out and help me after all.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yes. Twice. First time when you wanted to go out yourself. I suppose you can’t help being born where you were. Maybe if you came over to us all the way, the Government would forgive and forget. But no—I suppose not.” He paused, obviously casting about for a change of subject. He still seemed sublimely confident that they’d get back to the naval base with him in charge of the detail. “What ship did you cross in?”

  “Atom sub Taft,” Orsino said. He could have bitten his tongue out.

  “Taft? That’s my father’s pigboat! Captain Van Dellen. How is he? I was going down to the dock when—”

  “He’s dead,” Orsino said flatly. “He was caught on deck during an emergency dive.”

  The jaygee said nothing for a while and then uttered an unconvincing laugh of disbelief. “You’re lying,” he said. “His crew’d never let that happen. They’d let the ship be blown to hell before they took her down without the skipper.”

  “Grinnel had the con. He ordered the dive and roared down the crew when they wanted to get your father inboard. I’m sorry.”

  “Grinnel,” the jaygee whispered. “Grinnel. Yes, I know Commander Grinnel. He’s—he’s a good officer. He must have done it because he had to. Tell me about it, please.”

  It was more than Orsino could bear. “Your father was murdered,” he said harshly. “I know because Grinnel put me on radar watch—and I don’t know a God-damned thing about reading a radarscope. He told me to sing out ‘enemy planes’ and I did because I didn’t know what the hell was going on. He used that as an excuse to crash-dive while your father was sleeping on deck. Your good officer murdered him.”

  He heard the jaygee sobbing hoarsely. At last he asked Orsino in a dry, choked voice: “Politics?”

  “Politics,” Orsino said.

  Orsino jumped wildly as the jaygee’s machine gun began to roar a long burst of twenty, but he didn’t fire himself. He knew that there was no enemy out there in the dark, and that the bullets were aimed only at an absent phantom.

  “We’ve got to get to Iceland,” the jaygee said at last, soberly. “It’s our only chance.”

  “Iceland?”

  “This is one for the C.C. of the Constitutionists. The Central Committee. It’s a breach of the Freiberg Compromise. It means we call the Sociocrats, and if they don’t make full restitution—war.”

  “What do you mean, we?”

  “You and I. You’re the source of the story; you’re the one who’d be lie-tested.”

  You’ve got him, Orsino told himself, but don’t be fool enough to count on it. He’s been light-headed from hunger and no sleep and the shock of his father’s death. You helped him in a death struggle and there’s team spirit working on him. The guy covering my back, how can I fail to trust him, how could I dare not to trust him? But don’t be fool enough to count on it after he’s slept. M
eanwhile, push it for all it’s worth.

  “What are your plans?” he asked gravely.

  “We’ve got to slip out of Ireland by sub or plane,” the jaygee brooded. “We can’t go to the New Portsmouth or Com-Surf organizations; they’re Sociocrat, and Grinnel will have passed the word to the Sociocrats that you’re out of control.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Death,” the jaygee said.

  CHAPTER XII

  Commander Grinnel, after reporting formally, had gone straight to a joint. It wasn’t until midnight that he got The Word, from a friendly O.N.I. lieutenant who had dropped into the house.

  “What?” Grinnel roared. “Who is this woman? Where is she? Take me to her at once!”

  “Commander!” the lieutenant said aghast. “I just got here!”

  “You heard me, mister! At once!”

  While Grinnel dressed he demanded particulars. The lieutenant dutifully scoured his memory. “Brought in on some cloak-and-dagger deal, Commander. The kind you usually run. Lieutenant-Commander Jacobi was in Syndic Territory on a recruiting, sabotage and reconnaissance mission and one of the D.A.R. passed the girl on him. A real Syndic member. Priceless. And, as I said, she identified this fellow as Charles Orsino, another Syndic. Why are you so interested, if I may ask?”

  The Commander dearly wanted to give him a grim: “You may not,” but didn’t dare. Now was the time to be frank and open. One hint that he had anything to hide or cover up would put his throat to the knife. “The man’s my baby, lieutenant,” he said. “Either your girl’s mistaken or Van Dellen and his polygraph tech and I were taken in by a brand-new technique.” That was nice work, he congratulated himself. Got in Van Dellen and the tech.… Maybe, come to think of it, the tech was crooked? No; there was the way Wyman had responded perfectly under scop.

  O.N.I.’s building was two stories and an attic, wood-framed, beginning to rot already in the eternal Irish damp.

  “We’ve got her on the third floor, Commander,” the lieutenant said. “You get there by a ladder.”

  “In God’s name, why?” They walked past the Charge of Quarters, who snapped to a guilty and belated attention, and through the deserted offices of the first and second floors.

  “Frankly, we’ve had a little trouble hanging on to her.”

  “She runs away?”

  “No, nothing like that—not yet, at least. Marine G-2 and Guard Intelligence School have both tried to snatch her from us. First with requisitions, then with muscle. We hope to keep her until the word gets to Iceland. Then, naturally, we’ll be out in the cold.”

  The lieutenant laughed. Grinnel, puffing up the ladder, did not.

  The door and lock on Lee Bennet’s quarters were impressive. The lieutenant rapped. “Are you awake, Lee? There’s an officer here who wants to talk to you.”

  “Come in,” she said.

  The lieutenant’s hands flew over the lock and the door sprang open. The girl was sitting in the dark.

  “I’m Commander Grinnel, my dear,” he said. After eight hours in the joint, he could feel authentically fatherly to her. “If the time isn’t quite convenient—”

  “It’s all right,” she said listlessly. “What do you want to know?”

  “The man you identify as Orsino—it was quite a shock to me. Commander Van Dellen, who died a hero’s death only days ago accepted him as authentic and so, I must admit, did I. He passed both scop and polygraph.”

  “I can’t help that,” she said. “He came right up to me and told me who he was. I recognized him, of course. He’s a polo player. I’ve seen him play on Long Island often enough, the damned snob. He’s not much in the Syndic, but he’s close to F. W. Taylor. Orsino’s an orphan. I don’t know whether Taylor’s actually adopted him or not. I think not.”

  “No—possible—mistake?”

  “No possible mistake.” She began to tremble. “My God, Commander Whoever-You-Are, do you think I could forget one of those damned sneering faces. Or what those people did to me? Get the lie detector again! Strap me into the lie detector! I insist on it! I won’t be called a liar! Do you hear me? Get the lie detector!”

  “Please,” the Commander soothed. “I do believe you, my dear. Nobody could doubt your sincerity. Thank you for helping us, and good night.” He backed out of the room with the lieutenant. As the door closed he snapped at him: “Well, mister?”

  The lieutenant shrugged. “The lie detector always bears her out. We’ve stopped using it on her. We’re convinced that she’s on our side. Almost deserving of citizenship.”

  “Come, now,” the Commander said. “You know better than that.”

  Behind the locked door, Lee Bennet had thrown herself on the bed, dry-eyed. She wished she could cry, but tears never came. Not since those three roistering drunkards had demonstrated their virility as males and their immunity as Syndics on her… she couldn’t cry any more.

  Charles Orsino—another one of them. She hoped they caught him and killed him, slowly. She knew all this was true. Then why did she feel like a murderess? Why did she think incessantly of suicide? Why, why, why?

  * * * *

  Dawn came imperceptibly. First Charles could discern the outline of treetops against the sky and then a little of the terrain before him and at last two twisted shadows that slowly became sprawling half-naked bodies. One of them was a woman’s, mangled by fifty-caliber slugs. The other was the body of a bearded giant—the one with whom they had struggled in the dark.

  Charles crawled out stiffly. The woman was—had been—a stringy, white haired crone. Some animal’s skull was tied to her pate with sinews as a head-dress, and she was tattooed with blue crescents. The jaygee joined him standing over her and said: “One of their witches. Part of the religion, if you can call it that.”

  “A brand-new religion?” Charles asked dubiously. “Made up out of whole cloth?”

  “No,” the jaygee said. “I understand it’s an old religion—pre-Christian. It kept going underground until the Troubles. Then it flared up again all over Europe. A filthy business. Animal sacrifices every new moon. Human sacrifices twice a year. What can you expect from people like that?”

  Charles reminded himself that the jaygee’s fellow-citizens boiled recalcitrant slaves. “I’ll see what I can do about the jeep,” he said.

  The jaygee sat down on the wet grass. “What the hell’s the use?” he mumbled wearily. “Even if you get it running again. Even if we get back to the base. They’ll be gunning for you. Maybe they’ll be gunning for me if they killed my father.” He tried to smile. “You got any aces in the hole, gangster?”

  “Maybe,” Orsino said slowly. “What do you know about a woman named Lee—Bennet? Works with O.N.I.?”

  “Smuggled over here by the D.A.R. A goldmine of information. She’s a little nuts, too. What have you got on her?”

  “Does she swing any weight? Is she a citizen?”

  “No weight. They’re just using her over at Intelligence to fill out the picture of the Syndic. And she couldn’t be a citizen. A woman has to marry a citizen to be naturalized. What have you got to do with her, for God’s sake? Did you know her on the other side? She’s death to the Syndic; she can’t do anything for you.”

  Charles barely heard him. That had to be it. The trigger on Lee Falcaro’s conditioning had to be the oath of citizenship as it was for his. And it hadn’t been tripped because this pirate gang didn’t particularly want or need women as first-class, all-privileges citizens. A small part of the Government’s cultural complex—but one that could trap Lee Falcaro forever in the shell of her synthetic substitute for a personality. Lie-tests, yes. Scopolamine, yes. But for a woman, no subsequent oath.

  “I ran into her in New Portsmouth. She knew me from the other side. She turned me in.…” He knelt at a puddle and drank thirstily; the water eased hunger cramps a little. “I�
�ll see what I can do with the jeep.”

  He lifted the hood and stole a look at the jaygee. Van Dellen was dropping off to sleep on the wet grass. Charles pried a shear pin from the jeep’s winch, punched out the shear pin that had given way in the transmission and replaced it. It involved some hammering. Cracked block, he thought contemptuously. An officer and he couldn’t tell whether the block was cracked or not. If I ever get out of this we’ll sweep them from the face of the earth—or more likely just get rid of their tom-fool Sociocrats and Constitutionists. The rest are probably all right. Except maybe for those bastards of Guardsmen. A bad lot. Let’s hope they get killed in the fighting.

  The small of his back tickled; he reached around to scratch it and felt cold metal.

  “Turn slowly or you’ll be spitted like a pig,” a bass voice growled.

  He turned slowly. The cold metal now at his chest, was the leaf-shaped blade of a spear. It was wielded by a red-haired, red-bearded, barrel-chested giant whose blue-green eyes were as cold as death.

  “Tie that one,” somebody said. Another half-naked man jerked his wrists behind him and lashed them together with cords.

  “Hobble his feet.” It was a woman’s voice. A length of cord or sinew was knotted to his ankles with a foot or two of play. He could walk but not run. The giant lowered his spear and stepped aside.

  The first thing Charles saw was that Lieutenant (j.g.) Van Dellen of the North American Navy had escaped forever from his doubts and confusions. They had skewered him to the turf while he slept. Charles hoped he had not felt the blow.

  The second thing he saw was a supple and coltish girl of perhaps 20 tenderly removing the animal skull from the head of the slain witch and knotting it to her own red-tressed head. Even to Orsino’s numbed understanding, it was clearly an act of the highest significance. It subtly changed the composition of the six-men group in the little glade. They had been a small mob until she put on the skull, but the moment she did they moved instinctively—one a step or two, the other merely turning a bit, perhaps—to orient on her. There was no doubt that she was in charge.