Iroedh told about Antis, adding: “And don’t think to make away with me, because I’ve written an account of the fight and arranged for it to be shown Subbarau should anything befall me.”
“Bless my soul! And I thought you Ormazdians were too primitive and innocent to think of angles like that! You do not really mean this?”
“I certainly do.”
There followed a long argument. Bloch appealed to all Iroedh’s sentiments—honor, friendship, and so on—without budging her. When she felt herself weakening she thought of Antis being speared like a fish at the next Cleanup.
“One would think,” said Bloch bitterly, “you were in love with this Antis, in our Terran sense.”
“What a revolting idea! Love between workers and other beings has nothing to do with sex.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“Are you on guard tonight?”
“Until midnight,” he said.
“Then I wish you to take me in the flying machine to Elham and rescue the imprisoned drones by means of that rope ladder. If the machine is as fast as it’s said to be we can be back by midnight.”
“How am I supposed to deliver them if they’re in some subterranean prison cell?”
“Ah, but they’re not! The cell where imprisoned drones are kept is in the top of the queen’s dome, with a walkway running around it for the guard.”
“How do you gain access to the cell from there?”
“There’s a window, small, but big enough to squeeze through, covered by bronze bars. I’ve hauled my spear and buckler around the walkway often enough to know it.”
“Well, that settles it. You could not expect me to gnaw through the bars with my teeth, could you?”
“You men have magical cutting devices that cut through metal as though it were water. I saw the men using them today.”
“You seem to think of everything. How can we locate the place at night? It will not look at all familiar.”
“We shall follow the coast of the Scarlet Sea to Khinad Point. I know that coast well.”
“How about the guard?”
“Leave her to me. In another hour everybody will be asleep and it will be dark. I’ll meet you here, and you shall have with you one of those magical cutting devices. Farewell for the nonce, Daktablak.”
“Damn you, Iroedh,” he muttered at her retreating back.
V. The Queen’s Dome
As the helicopter soared over Khinad Point, Iroedh pointed inland to where the pale domes of Elham, like a cluster of eggs, showed among the fields and woods.
“That’s where we go,” she said.
“You have remarkable night vision,” said Bloch. “I cannot see the thing at all. It must be those split pupils.”
He swung the machine toward their objective. After a few minutes Iroedh could make out the wall of the Community, like the rim of a wheel whose hub was the cluster of domes.
Under Iroedh’s guidance he spiraled down upon the domes. She pointed:
“That big one in the middle is the queen’s dome. Do you see that circle near its top? That’s the guard’s walkway. That dark spot just above the circle is the window of the condemned drones’ cell. Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Then lower your ladder and I’ll climb down it.”
“Get your legs out of the way. There, up on the crossbar. And watch your landing; it’s a windy night.”
Bloch pushed a knob. There was a mechanical sound beneath them, audible over the purr of the motor and the swish of the blades, and a trap door dropped open where Iroedh had been resting her feet. Leaning forward she could see down through the trap door into empty space, in which the top two or three rungs of the rope ladder could be perceived jerking about in the air stream.
With a prayer to Gwyyr, Iroedh thrust a leg down into the opening and felt for the fixed rung; then the other leg. At last she located the topmost ladder rung and lowered her weight down upon it. Before she knew it she was altogether below the helicopter, clutching the swaying support, her cloak whipping and swirling about her as the helicopter rocked in the gusts.
Fear of falling gripped her so that she could hardly make herself look down, or let go a rung to shift her grip to the next. As she mastered her feelings she saw that the machine was descending rapidly toward the top of the queen’s dome, at such an angle that the path of the lower end of the ladder would be tangent to the circular walkway.
Iroedh quickly lowered herself the rest of the length of the ladder. Over the noise of the helicopter she heard the tweedle of flute music and a voice:
“Ho there! Who are you?”
The guard was standing on the walkway a few feet from where Iroedh would strike it, her spear at ready, her helmeted head tilted back. Although it was too dark to recognize her by starlight, Iroedh knew that the guard’s face must wear an astonished expression.
While reason told her it was but a matter of seconds, it seemed a year before the hovering helicopter brought her into position. She swung off the ladder, fell a couple of feet, and landed lightly in a crouch. Her hands flew to her throat to untie the cord that held her cloak in place.
For this cloak was her only weapon. Not wishing Bloch to know she possessed O’Mara’s machete, and not wishing to add murder to her other offenses against the Community, she intended to attack the guard by the rumdrekh. As the spear darted out, one whipped one’s cloak around it and jerked it out of the hands of the foe, dropped the cloak, reversed the spear, and went into action in the normal manner.
“Who goes there?” cried the guard over the sound of the wind.
As Iroedh rose to her feet without answering, holding her cloak in her hands, the guard’s spear fist went up and back for the overhand stabbing thrust. The spearhead shot out. Iroedh whirled her cloak and felt the point of the spear foul itself in the folds. She tried to give that extra flip and jerk that guaranteed success, at the same time reaching with her free hand for the spear shaft…
But this guard was no tyro, and one of the biggest workers of the whole Community of Elham. With dismay Iroedh felt the cloak jerked entirely from her grasp as the guard pulled her spear back. Another jerk sent the cloak flying away on the wind. The guard took a long step forward, her burnished greaves glistening faintly in the starlight, and drew back her arm for another thrust. This one would not miss.
In theory an agile worker, so attacked, had a remote chance of seizing the spear shaft and wresting it from her assailant. Iroedh, now entirely unencumbered except for the magical cutting device strapped to her side, had whatever meager advantage that fact gave her. In practice, however, she realized that her luck had now run out. If one snatched the spear too soon, one caught the head and severed the tendons of one’s fingers on its edges; if too late, the spear point would already have reached one’s vitals.
At least, she thought in the last flash, once you were dead nothing hurt anymore. And since her mission had obviously failed, Antis would die, and life without him would hardly be worth the bother. She winced, closing her eyes, as the spear head darted forward.
But no point tore into her viscera. When she opened her eyes it was to see the guard drop her spear with a clatter and turn to run. The noise and wind of the helicopter had greatly increased, so that the down-wash tore at Iroedh’s bare body as if it would hurl her from the walkway down the slippery slope of the dome.
Gwyyr must have heard; Bloch, bless his alien hearts, had brought his machine around in a tight circle and swooped so close to the dome that the alighting gear almost touched the combatants.
Clang! went the shield of the guard on the stones: one of the big bronze bucklers used for guard mount, ornamental, but too heavy for field use. The guard headed for the stair that spiraled down the lower half of the dome from the walkway.
“Hurry up!” called Bloch from the open window of his aircraft.
Iroedh sprinted around the walkway, her bare feet making no sound against the noise of the helicopter and the clatter of the g
uard descending the stairs. Meanwhile her hand sought the cutting device at her waist.
A quarter of the way around she came to the window of the drones’ cell.
“Antis!” she called softly.
“For the love of Dhiis, is that you, Iroedh?” came the familiar voice. “What on Niond is going on, and how did you get here? I thought you were at Gliid!”
“No time to explain. Are you and the others ready to escape?”
“We should love to—but how?”
“Leave that to me. Stand back!”
Iroedh felt the cutting device until she found the stud that actuated it. She pressed the button and a thin line of light appeared along the edge near the end. She touched this edge to one of the bars at its upper end. With a shower of sparks the instrument sheared through the thick bronze as if it had been tarhail mush.
Bloch had warned her not to touch the edge to her own person, lest she be similarly sectioned. An “electronic knife,” he had called it, which meant nothing to her.
Below, she could hear the voice of the guard shouting the alarm. Zzip! went another bar, and then the third. Iroedh withdrew the instrument and applied it to the lower ends of the bars. Zzip! Zzip! Zzip! Two of the bars tumbled in through the slanting window to fall with a clatter to the floor of the cell. The third struck with a soft thump, followed by an outburst of dronish bad language: “…the fertilizing thing landed on my toe!”
Iroedh put the instrument back in its case and said: “Can you climb out now?”
“Don’t know,” said Antis. “One of us will have to boost another up.”
With much male grunting, Antis’s head and shoulders appeared in the opening.
“Give me a hand, beautiful,” he said.
Iroedh pulled, and out he came asprawl on the walkway. As he rose to his feet, the forepart of Kutanas appeared, to be helped out likewise.
Below in the courts Iroedh could hear the clink of arms and the voice of the guard talking excitedly with unseen persons. Any minute a party would come storming up the stair.
Kutanas and Antis reached back into the darkness of the cell to seize the wrists of Dyos and pull him up. When he was half out of the window he got stuck.
“The stumps of those bars are disemboweling me!” he complained.
“Shall we leave him?” said Iroedh, who did not care much what happened to Dyos so long as Antis was saved.
“I should say not!” said Antis. “We drones have to stick together. Brace your foot, Kutanas, and heave!”
“I told him not to eat so much,” grunted Kutanas. “Ready?”
They heaved, and Dyos came like a tooth being plucked from its socket.
“Ow! Ow!” lamented Dyos, rubbing the scraped parts. “I shan’t be able to sit for days.”
From below came the unmistakable sound of a party of armed workers, and their officer’s voice: “One at a time, and hold your spears at ready…”
“Daktablak!” called Iroedh loudly into the darkness.
“Here,” said Bloch, swinging the helicopter back toward the window.
Dyos flinched as the machine swooped close, and seemed about to run. Antis exclaimed:
“What in the name of Tiwinos is that?”
“Never mind. When I climb the rope ladder that hangs down from it, you do likewise. I shall climb into the machine, but you three hold your places on the ladder while the machine lifts you over the wall and sets you down outside.”
“I’m afraid!” wailed Dyos.
“Stay behind and be butchered then,” snapped Iroedh. She caught the lashing ladder on the third try and began her climb.
The clatter of the guards came clearly over the sounds of the wind and the helicopter. From her height Iroedh could see them coming up the stair, spears ready. Directly below her, Antis scrambled up, and below him the other two. She reached the machine, too excited to feel fear, and swung into the swaying cabin.
“Go!” she said to Bloch.
Bloch did things with his levers and the aircraft rose. A chorus of exclamations came up from the guards as they rushed to the spot from which Dyos had just been lifted. A couple threw their spears at him, but he was already too high. The spears fell back upon the stonework and went rolling and rattling down the sides of the dome.
As Iroedh settled into her seat, Antis thrust his crest up through the trap door. “What now?”
She replied: “Well drop you in the tarhail field outside the wall. When you get to the woods north of this field, you’ll have cover almost all the way to the Lhanwaed Hills. Watch the road from Thidhem, and when I get back from Gliid I’ll meet you at Khinam. I shall make this sound—”
She whistled a bar of the refrain of the Song of Geyliad.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
“I’ll teach you when we have time. We’re past the wall; get ready to drop.”
Antis spoke to Kutanas below him as the helicopter sank toward the field. It occurred to Iroedh that the agricultural officer would have a fit when she found that a great swath had been trampled in her ripe grain.
Dyos dropped off, but stupidly failed to get out from under Kutanas, so that the latter came down on top of him and both rolled in the dirt. Antis landed on his feet, called up: “Farewell, beautiful!” and ran for the woods at the north side of the field, crying for the others to follow.
“Now,” said Iroedh, “take me home.…Oh, prutha!”
“What is it?”
“I left my cloak on the dome where the guards will surely find it.”
“Has it got your name on it?”
“No, though I should know it anywhere by the tears I’ve mended. But when I return to the camp without a cloak, and the word gets around that an unclaimed one was found at the scene of the rescue, some busybody will put the facts together. Still, we dare not go back for it; that would be pressing our luck too far.”
“Tell them you gave it to Barbe in exchange for one of her feminine doodads. I will see that she gives you one.”
Rhodh asked: “Last night I am sure I heard the flying machine of the men go up and come down again later. Do you know anything about it, Iroedh?”
“Not a thing, Leader,” said Iroedh, patting her biscuits into shape.
“Well, I am not satisfied with the situation. You are all confined to the camp for the day; I do not wish you to become involved with these dangerous and immoral creatures.”
Iroedh and the three juniors exchanged wordless looks. Rhodh strapped on her kilt and cuirass, wriggled her head into her helmet, took up her spear, and walked off toward the Paris.
Iroedh went back to her chores, but presently looked up to see Barbe Dulac bearing down upon her. The female man held a small gold-colored box in her extended hand, and said in a voice evidently meant for all within earshot:
“Here you are, Iroedh dear. And thank you again for the lovely cloak.”
“What’s that?” said Vardh.
“Oh,” said Barbe, “Iroedh and I are exchanging gifts, products of our respective worlds.”
“That little thing for a cloak?” said Iinoedh in wonderment. “What does it do?”
“We Terran females use it to give ourselves the beauty,” said Barbe.
“How?” inquired Avpandh.
Barbe opened the little box. “First, here is a—how would you say mirror?”
While this was being cleared up the Avtini crowded around to look at their reflections. Iroedh, though familiar with the mirror of polished brass used by the queen to prepare herself for the visits of her drones, was astonished by the fidelity of the image in the compact. It was like looking through a tiny window into another world.
“Now there is this,” said Barbe, pulling out a small furry disk. “It is called a powder puff. Among us a shiny nose is considered ugly. Hold still, Iroedh.”
Barbe applied the furry disk with small dabs to Iroedh’s nose. Iroedh inhaled a breath of powder and sneezed.
Barbe said: “Now comes the lipstick. Make
your mouth like so…You really need a darker shade, because your skins are almost as red as this already.”
Barbe stood back from her handiwork. The three juniors looked at Iroedh and whooped with mirth.
Barbe screwed up her face at the sound and asked: “What is that noise? It sounds like a Terran creature called an owl.”
The young Avtini explained that the hooting sound was merely their version of laughter, and insisted that Barbe do likewise by them. Vardh said:
“What’s it supposed to do, to color our faces like this? Do you prepare for some ceremonial in this manner?”
“You might say so,” said Barbe. “This is how one catches a male.”
“You mean as when we round up surplus drones to kill them at the Cleanups?”
“No; a much more agreeable ceremony.”
As the juniors straggled off to resume their tasks, Barbe said to Iroedh in a lower voice: “Winston told me about your expedition last night. That was naughty of you, Iroedh.”
“I know, but what could I do? Is he still angry with me?”
“He was at first, that you should have made him risk his life on something that was none of his affair. But I thought I should do the same if he were in prison, and that he should have had enough romance in his soul to take the risk without having to be blackmailed into it. I told him he was a spineless old rabbit with no sentiment, caring nothing for anything but his scientific records and the good opinions of his superiors in the government department he works for. So now he is all subdued, that one.”
“What is this ‘romance’ and ‘sentiment’ you talk about? Has it something to do with your special Terran kind of love?”
“A great deal. It is hard to explain, but—I know; can you read English?”
“A little. I know what sounds the letters stand for, and I can puzzle out simple passages.”
“It is good the English speakers reformed their spelling not many years ago, because before then it was so irregular you could never have mastered it. What I am getting at is that I will give you a Terran book I brought to Ormazd.”
“You’re much too kind!” cried Iroedh.
“No, no, I have finished it. They do not like one to take bound books on the ship anyway, because of the weight. Their library is all photographed down small on little cards that one reads with an enlarging machine, but I like to read in bed and one cannot hold the machine on one’s lap in the bunk, so I brought a real book.”
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