Mutiny in Space

by Avram Davidson

  Nevertheless, despite Marton’s warnings and advice, Darnley had come up with an answer. This planet, what the hell was it called? G-27.33S gamma 5, yeah, Valentine — This planet was soft enough, wasn’t it? Looked rich enough, didn’t it? Okay, then. What did they want Blaise to do, draw them pictures? Fan out, get around, see what’s there. And take it….

  “He had ‘em believing,” Marton said, oleaginous and confidential, “he had ‘em believing they could load up Persephone with jewels and gold and rare earths and who knows what. And then — and then — off to the Cluster. See, his line was, that way they could hold out for a big price for her. See? Only …” Marton shrugged, winked, leered. He knew a thing or two about all that, his whole air implied.

  Jory swallowed a strong impulse to wipe the greasy smile from the man’s face. He even forced himself to smile a little.

  “Blaise had them believing it, sure. But what about you? Don’t tell me you fell for it. What? Come on. I can see that you figured him out. What tipped you off?”

  Marton’s grin slipped a bit for a second. But the bland assumption and the gross flattery did their work. The man looked around, came closer, winked. “Well, listen, First. I can put two and two together as well as the next guy. Better than those other meat-heads. You know what kind of crazy set-up they got here: bunch o’ midgets, women, and old ladies with swords? It figures, First, it really figures. When I heard what Blaise let out that one time, the whole picture came into focus. That’s when I knew, see? That’s when I knew! He wasn’t going to go back and sell the ship. He wasn’t just figuring on holding a treasure-hunt. Uh-uh. Right?”

  “Right,” said Jory. And, “How did he put it, when he let it out that time? I mean, what were his exact words?”

  Marton’s eyes gleamed with pure pleasure. He swallowed, as if having tasted something rare and good. “ ‘Every man a king’,” he said. “Don’t it figure?”

  Slowly, Jory nodded. His reply was quite sincere. “It does figure.”

  Marton gave him a quick calculating glance. “Why not? Who’s to stop us? With what? You can be a king here, Captain Rond can be a king here, I can be a king here — huh? Why not? Easy as slicing butter. Right?”

  “Right. Easier.”

  “Okay, then. How about it? You with us?”

  All pretense was gone. The man’s mouth was open, his tufty eye-brows raised, his nostrils quivering. Jory said, “No.” It took a moment for the notion to get through, but Marton wasted no time in complaining. His heavy body lunged at Jory, his heavy fist swung up. Jory, on his back, saw Rond go to the floor. Marton had a knife in his hand. Jory started to rise, the man kicked at him, missed, rushed past him to the door. There was one equerry standing there, a solid little man with a quiet face. He moved to one side, then, as Marton came charging up, moved back and struck once, hard and low. Marton gave a shrill squeal, dropped the knife. The equerry leaned forward, took hold of one finger on each of the man’s hands, and bent them back with one swift, sure motion. They heard the bones crack before Marton screamed again — and again.

  • • •

  “What will you do with him?” Jory asked, after Marton was removed.

  Mukanahan said, “Nothing at all. We will not even expel him. But I do not think he will wish to stay and we shall not prevent his leaving. As to what may happen after that, I neither know nor care.”

  Rond apologized. He felt personally disgraced by the fact that anyone who had been under his command should attempt to use a weapon in the Holy Court. His apology was sincere, but distracted, and suddenly developed into a brief exposition of the geologic history of oil formation. Did the annals of the Holy Court, he inquired, have any record of a dark oil seeping from the ground, or of natural gases? The King assured him that he would have the annals searched.

  “Much as I appreciate the Great Father’s offer,” Jory said, suddenly feeling the ceiling pressing down on him, “I believe that some quick action has to be taken.”

  Mukanahan said, “ ‘Action’ is not a word often heard in this court. Indeed, the very concept has been eroded through the centuries. I am aware that we may be capable of action. Sire Nahan just demonstrated it. Still, in general, we require assistance in formulating such a picture. What do you mean, in this case, by ‘action,’ and what do you mean, also, by ‘quick’?”

  He placed his hands together. Jory, restless, said, “Is the Dame aware that these other men plan to carve up the land for themselves?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Then should we not make at least one more attempt to contact her and urge that we cooperate?”

  Mukanahan nodded. “I see part of the picture. I cannot see it all. This message,” he held it up, “which I received a short while back, tends to obscure part of your picture. The Dame, it seems, had decided to attack. In fact, she did attack.” He sighed. “And was captured.”

  eight

  IT HAD BEEN CLOSE TO THREE CENTURIES SINCE A High Keeper had been captured, and the result had been the passing of the office from the White Moiety of Sept Larn to Sept Sartissa. The Red Moiety had contested the succession for another generation before capitulating. It had not been contested since. All power rested, theoretically, in the Holy King; but it had been for over a thousand years part of the theory that this power was exercised by the Keeper of his Castles — whoever that keeper might be. Now, with Dame Hanna’s capture as she crossed into the Dales of Lan, a sort of paralysis set down upon the Land.

  The septs met in council, could come to agreement only on one thing: let all remain for now as it was. Each sept wondered if it might not wrest from the situation something to its own advantage; no sept trusted the others. A kind of quiver had passed through the social structure with the arrival of Rond, Jory, and their men. The arrival of the main ship had caused something like a tremor. Facing — they scarcely could guess what — the Great Ladies drew closer together. Mutual suspicion could not be overcome, but it did not necessarily have to prove mutually destructive.

  The sun still rose and set, the River Lin still coiled its slow way into the Sea of Silence, the arptors called in the thickets, and every growing thing continued to burgeon on the ground. From Dame Hanna, hidden away somewhere inside the Persephone, no word came — and none came either from Bosun Blaise Darnley. Men continued to issue in and out of the ship, but there were no more attacks mounted from her. Nor did any other corps or sept venture to repeat the Dame’s ill-fated attempt, and even Saramanth concentrated on binding up its people’s wounds without making a gesture of revenge.

  In this atmosphere of uneasy calm Rond and Jory called upon the King with a request. He was in audience at the time, and they waited in the antechamber. Rond seemed to have aged a decade since his arrival on Valentine’s planet. The events themselves on this new world should not have worked the change.

  “He has altered even since I have known him,” O’Narra commented when Jory mentioned this to her. “Perhaps it took him that long to realize what had happened.”

  Jory wondered if she might not be right. First, the swift-moving events of the mutiny … then the long, long voyage under double-slow narcohypnosis, with its infinitely taxing effects on the metabolism … and then, and only then, the unfamiliar situations of Valentine’s world. The blight had not hit him before, he had not felt it until then. “Delayed reaction,” in the old phrase, “to cumulative shock.”

  Whatever it was, he looked old and he looked ill. But still in his mind the ever-present question of fuel remained supreme.

  “I am sorry to see, Mr. Cane,” he said, as they walked to and fro in the anteroom, its walls hung with dim, blue tapestries of dim, blue kings doing dim, blue things, “that the question of fuel does not animate all the men as I am sure it does you.” He glanced at his First Officer, got no reply, resumed his trend of talk. “I was astonished to overhear some of them even saying that, if conditions here were only better, they might not mind staying. It passes my understanding. But only some of them, o
f course. Lockharn, I know, is as anxious as I am.”

  The door opened. In filed the chamberlains and equerries. Jory got a quick, flashing glimpse of scarlet and black, then the King entered, followed by more courtiers, and the door shut.

  “I have held over my audience,” Mukanahan said, seating himself on the small throne, “until I have had time to attend to your wishes.” He looked at them, inquiringly, and Rond explained that he wished the King’s gift of the contents of the borax warehouse — and also the King’s consent to depart back to their boat, on the island near the coast.

  Mukanahan lifted his little hands, let them drop. “The desert salt you may certainly have. My leave to go is automatic — I never prevent anyone from leaving. But … the decision of the septs was, as you know, to let all things remain as before. That includes your own status. Inside, you are pilgrims and guests of the Holy Court. Outside … you are once again under the Dame’s proscription. Most of the Great Ladies have already taken the oaths for your heads.” He sighed. “I do not know, I really do not know. Well. Let us inquire.”

  He gestured to the courtiers. The door was opened. A moment passed, and then the members of the other audience came in. The scarlet and black of their armor was as glossy as ever, but no swords lay in their scabbards, only sprigs of leaves. Jory had already learned to identify the emblems on their shoulders — the tan head of Larnissa, the three grass blades of Verdanth, the red and white arptors of the two Moieties of Larn, the war-rattle of Tula — emblems encircled in gold to indicate sept leadership.

  “Prayers have reached the Holy Presence,” said Lakanahan, “that the Great Men here be returned to their vessel together with the bitter salt of the desert which they require for its fires. The Holy Presence will listen to other prayers on that subject.”

  Larnissa, a tall and gaunt woman, with sunken, sea-colored eyes, swung around to face the Captain. “You came to prepare the way for the murderers in the great vessel,” she charged. “You bear blame.”

  Courteously, Rond said, “No, Madame.”

  Verdanth, a mountain of a woman, face as red as her hair, said, “The murderers came here in pursuit of you.”

  “This … this may be so …”

  Then, doggedly, she repeated, “You bear blame.”

  White Larn, a slender slip of a girl, said, “There are prophecies concerning you, and they have not been fulfilled. You cannot go.”

  Red Larn, grief written on her lovely face, asked, “How can you go when these great wrongs remain unpunished?”

  And Tula, like a burning brand, cried, “You must fight at our side, or all the land will die!”

  The echoes of her voice sounded, died away. The King spoke very softly. “Our High Keeper required an oath of you concerning these Great Men. We will hold that oath to be in abeyance during her absence. To the Great Men still at their boat, the Holy Court sends bitter desert salt, and with it, the oldest of them. May it not be that the others will consult with you on further necessary measures?”

  To this oblique decision, which did not and could not satisfy everybody, nobody could object. The Holy King did not often voice a decision, but, once voiced, it had to be obeyed.

  Rond and Lockharn, provided with the black scarves which made them pro forma members of the priesthood, and thus safe from molestation, departed with an escort and a train of sixty tans — three of them carrying supplies and the other fifty-seven bearing loads of borax. The Captain was almost feverish to get away.

  “I place you in charge, Mr. First,” he said — said it, in fact, repeatedly. “It will be no easy effort for Crammer, Lockharn, and me to prepare the boron by ourselves. But we will manage it. Once that is done, the rest is easy — back, by stages if necessary, to the nearest Guild installation. Assure these Valentine people that the Guild will see to it that Darnley and his rogues are punished.”

  Lockharn’s comment was briefer. “All’s I want, I want to pension out and buy that farm. See you soon, shipmates.”

  And they were off. Jory, following the procession with his eyes, felt oddly relieved to see them go.

  • • •

  White Larn lifted her chin. “It is impossible,” she said. The other sept leaders echoed her statement. “Lead us in battle, share your warlock’s skills with us, and we will crush the murderers as one crushes eggs. But — retreat?”

  Jory pleaded with her, not for the first time, “It’s only a strategic retreat — a military tactic. It doesn’t involve any less valor than an advance or attack. There is no other way!”

  “White Larn cannot retreat!”

  “Nor Red Larn, either!”

  Gaunt Larnissa, massy Verdanth, and fiery Tula, confirmed their words. In despair, Jory strode from the council room.

  Levvis, Storm, Duston, Mars, O-Narra, and Rahan-Joe were waiting for him. “What did they say, Mr. Cane?” asked Levvis.

  Jory told him.

  The tall Guildsman shook his head.

  “I don’t know … I don’t knew exactly what’s holding Darnley up, either. Maybe he’s on a super-drunk. But he won’t stay on greensleeve forever. And when he sobers up …”

  O-Narra shook back impatiently the hood of the blue-green robe she now wore. “Fools,” she said. “They still think they are involved in some silly feud … a point of etiquette or honor between Fief-Lanna and the Heiress of Menna, about who sits first to dine, or nonsense like that.”

  Jory, looking at her, found it hard to believe that this woman, speaking now so rationally, was the same who — clad in scarlet and black armor, waving her glittering sword — had charged at them, leaping and howling, intent on their death or hers, that first day which seemed so long ago.

  She looked at him, she took him by the hand, she smiled.

  “Go to Nelsa,” she said.

  He looked at her, astonished. “I … I don’t even know where she is.”

  Storm cleared his throat. He seemed a trifle shy, but it took him only a moment to say what he had to. “Uh … Mr. First … we know where she is. Like us to take you over there?”

  Jory nodded. He had almost forgotten about the men since arriving in the shady, peaceful, park-like enclosure of the Holy Court. But they didn’t give him time to reproach himself, nor did they seem to feel neglected. They seemed, in fact, as they walked across the smooth grass, to be quite cheerful. That this might be due to the quickened prospect of escape from planet Valentine — but then he remembered Rond’s words.

  He had no time to reflect on them. They passed through one of the innumerable gates into one of the innumerable courtyards. Here was a sort of caravansery, a pilgrims’ quarters. That was somthing else he had forgotten — and embarrassment burned his cheeks — the mixed multitude who had risked life to follow him and his Captain, whom he had manipulated (there was no other word for it) in such way as to provide for his own safe entrance into the sanctuary of the Holy Court. There, at peace, with O’Narra, still concerned with his own affairs, it was easy to forget.

  But it seemed he was not so easily forgotten.

  “Ah, Giant!”

  Nelsa …

  A pleased buzz went up from all the runaways, the little men, the peasant-women and servitors. Nelsa was there, and all her band, including the ancient old priestess who stroked his hand with her withered paw. He saw Storm take hold of one of the outlaws and give her a hearty kiss. Two of them took Mars by the hand, and even Duston seemed awaited … welcomed … and domesticated.

  “When are the questions to be answered, Giant?” Nelsa asked. “We have been waiting. Your men, true, have answered certain questions for some of my women. But meanwhile other questions have come up. I have been strongly tempted, Giant, in these times of upset and commotion, to go outside the walls again, and see if I could not provide answers of my own.”

  She was a vigorous woman, with a considerable robust charm quite different from O-Narra’s. With some small effort he saw her now as a woman, only, and not as a possible ally. And he saw that s
he had a fine, full figure, and a pleasant face. “Well, Giant?” Her words got him out of his revery. She listened to him. She nodded, thoughtfully. Then she said, “So you came to us, the outlaws, the people of the forest, to play the tricks the Great Ladies are too proud to play?”

  Nettled, he said, “No! I came to you in hopes you had more sense than those gaudy fools, who are frozen into a mold which they haven’t yet realized is going to be broken into little pieces any day now! I hoped you’d place the survival of your race over your damn-fool pride. I — ” He broke off, and turned to go.

  She seized his arm and, woman or not, her grip held firm. He swung back. “Giant,” she said; “Great Man; don’t shout. My ear is not lower than your mouth, and I can hear every word you say. Say more.”

  • • •

  Rama was a good-sized town which lay in that part of the Border Marches nearest to Persephone that had not yet been ravaged. Its population had fled with the others into the Hills of Night. Jory led his newly recruited forces into it quite early one morning after a long march through the blackness. Nelsa and her women were with him, as were many of the runaways; Levvis, Storm, Mars, and Duston were not, though they had protested loudly and vigorously. He had been obliged to pull rank, had observed that rank didn’t pull as far or as easily as it used to, had been glad (though a little chagrined) when the men at last allowed Nelsa and her band to persuade them to stay behind.

  All day long, while part slept, part carried out the daily tasks as if no threat existed; then they changed watches and some slept while others cooked food, walked about the streets, or pretended to buy or sell merchandise in the abandoned shops. As night fell, preparations were made as though it were a festive occasion. Great lamps were lit and hung up in the streets, tables were set out for the food being prepared in big caldrons in the yards. There was much music, song, rejoicing, and the dance …

  The trap had been set.

  “Do you think they will notice there are no children?” Nelsa asked.