by Tanith Lee
“If,” said Casrus quietly, “the induction computer had registered that I was not, then you’d hardly be here.”
“Ah, true. Perceptive of you, your elegance. However, you know, I never trust a machine to think a thing all the way through. How should I? Did you hear, there’s another piece to the Klave? I mean, apart from the Subterior? A lovely location, by all accounts, full of warmth and light and entertainment. And princes live there. They live in palaces. They eat sweets and lie on silk and fight simply for pleasure. Would you believe it? It’s so. And that being the case, and the machines keeping it the case, us here, them there, you’ll comprehend, your elegance, why I don’t trust a machine always to be right.”
Casrus was an aristocrat, looked one, and knew he did, and he did not attempt to alter his inbred demeanor. That it would provoke, that it could enrage, he grasped perfectly. That he made no effort to avoid such provocation and such rage was not arrogance, but an understanding of himself, and others. He did not scorn to hide, but to hide would be useless—still, they would find him out. It had to be. The soonest faced, the soonest done with.
“Well,” said Dorte the Upperling. “Too proud to talk to me, eh?”
“What would you wish to discuss?”
Obviously, it sounded of sarcasm, even in Casrus’ level quiet voice. But Dorte did not react, or seemed not to.
“Nothing, now. You’re to come out with me. I’ve my own ways of testing your mettle, if you’re worth taking on my gangs. After all, we wouldn’t want the work on the surface skimped by a weakling. The princes might suffer. Couldn’t have that.”
Outside, beyond Aita, a bell was faintly clanking. Four bells were rung from the various mechanical centers of the Subterior, to mark the first and mid hours of both Jate and Maram.
Casrus reckoned on probable trouble in the alley. When none came, he knew it was just trouble deferred.
Dorte led the erstwhile prince, now and then making courteous remarks, like a guide. Those things which the Upperling indicated—a mechanical transport rail high overhead, torches ablaze at intervals along slim uneven streets and main concourses, vaporine towers, the distant bulk of a center, cold-gleaming its metal—all these things or their twins, Casrus had seen often. They walked for perhaps half an hour after the mid-Maram bell, Dorte taking them via deserted byways, or crossing through thin crowds in open spaces, here and there stepping over those pathetics forced, by loss of their dwelling, to curl together on the bare rock to sleep, potential prey of any who passed. At one point, a knot of three or four little girls sleeping, crammed into a crevice, having tried to warm themselves at a low torch there, drew Casrus’ attention. Few children were born in the Subterior, and mostly of computerized selection, a sought-after function for the parents, since it entailed a brief stay at a center with all its facilities. The occasional natural birth generally died, uncared for by the machines which nursed only programmed infants into their sixth year. After the sixth year, they were sent to labor in any event, and again, frequently perished, from the industry itself or the hardship of their world. On the whole, a percentage of forty survived each hundred, more than sufficient to power the Subterior.
The little girls, exhausted, asleep, did not notice when Casrus, shrugging off his shawl-cloak, left it to them to wake up under at the Jate bell. His act caused predictable obscenity from Dorte.
“You oaf of an aristo. Now they’ll part kill each other for it, while you freeze.”
“Don’t be concerned for me,” said Casrus. This time his tone was not absolutely devoid of shadings. “I’m hardier than those children. And it gives them some chance, where they had none.”
“Always ready to help us,” sneered Dorte, “even when you’re brow-deep in the muck with us. Noble Klarn.”
Above, the Stare-Eyes watched. At the ends of streets, smoky red and flimsy yellow, fires burned on rods, in iron tubs or scoops of stone. They gave off small heat, being maintained for light rather than warmth on the minimum of scraps, coals, driblets of gas.
Somewhere, streets away, a pair of dogga barked and fell silent. Breasts of burden this side of the Klave. whipping posts for the frustrations of humanity, they had slight incentive to make a noise.
The two men had left Aita by now, and the domestic huddle about the mine and vaporines. An irregular square spread out, sprawled across by erections of haphazard and negligent building; the barter shops and taverns that lay about the Subterior. Dorte made for the nearest, a one-story windowless shack some sixty yards long, put together of hardened muds, slushes and rubbish slapped over a frame of rusted iron mine joists.
Dorte pushed through the patched curtain, its metal weights jangling, his hand suddenly firmly clapped on Casrus’ sleeve.
Visibility inside was murky. One intensifier lamp had been rigged in the asymmetrical ceiling, other light soaked out from a central firescoop. Customers sat around the floor on frayed dogga hides that lent the enclosure an extra stink. A brew bubbled in a pot over the fire, alchafax, a potion of pure alcohol mixed with various dregs, primarily the ice-diluted lubricants the machines used on themselves, and which the workers stole to intoxicate, slowly to rot their bellies. Three toughs kept watch over this precious liquor and the boy who ladled it. Everything here must be paid for, even poison.
The room was not crowded, however, not even full. Nor did the Stare-Eyes of the Law reach into it.
“My friends,” Dorte announced to the place at large. “Here is a being from a story, come to enthrall us. Have you ever heard of Klarn? Prince Klarn? Have you heard how he came here and learned our ways and tried to act them out in the princes’ city?” There was some vague, automatic, yet quite malign laughter. “Well, Klarn’s back among us now. Without a robot or a machine to help him. It’s all up to us, at the last, to make him feel at home.”
Men were getting up, three of them. They were big men, though not quite as tall or as fully fleshed as Dorte. Doubtless members of his surface-working gangs. Their employment offered better food, more water, sturdier accommodation, and more credit chips, even after they had paid their dues to Dorte. Also, danger, and dread—even though subconscious, probably, by this time—of the large and appalling sky of space.
They came over and stood, smiling at Dorte, and at Casrus, exiled prince of Klarn.
“Now then,” said Dorte, “I was just saying to our lord, here, since he’s been allocated to our line of work, that I like to be sure that my gangers have the muscle for the job. A weak link in the chain would be detrimental to all. So I brought him along to see what my boys thought.”
This was illegal, naturally, but the Law might wink. Indeed, literally did so, since it could not see into the tavern. To report the beating afterward would be to incur other beatings, besides which, brawls were a Jately happening, as were rape, robbery, crime of every sort and nuance. Only inexcusable murder was rewarded by death. And besides, punishment and death were already inherent in the Subterior; while those who dealt on the surface, close as a skin to annihilation—such men could be accustomed to dreams of mortality.
Dorte stood aside, grinning, disdaining a ladle of the poison drink as he went; he could afford better. The other occupants of the tavern, perhaps hand-picked by Dorte to be privileged spectators, and maybe even for a fee, settled themselves, unblinking. The theater waited.
“Well, Klarn,” said the shortest of Dorte’s gangers. “What will we do now?”
“Let’s,” said another, “play a game.”
“The game is harmless,” said the first.
“To us,” added the second.
The third did not speak. He flung himself forward, his arms flailing. His knife remained undrawn. It seemed he thought his hands and feet, and the great bound that propelled them, would do.
His boots should have caught Casrus in the ribs, the arms descending, the gloved fists hammering shoulders and neck. But as the man soare
d, Casrus dipped one knee, only very slightly. He took hold of the man, who, rather than colliding, abruptly found himself passing over. In the smooth dance rhythm of the trained fighter, Casrus threw the man on the way he was already going. It was faultless, so much an ideal union between what the man had begun, what Casrus finished, that it appeared almost as if they had planned and rehearsed the moves together.
With a rush and a thud, the unspeaking man fell to ground among the hides on the floor. His padded clothing cushioned him, all but his uncovered head, which met one of the naked, rusting iron joists that formed the frame of the walls. Bruised and articulate at last, though beyond curses, into an animal growling, he rolled up again, and in that moment the other two ran for Casrus.
One aimed a blow at his face, which Casrus deflected with no hesitation; while he was so engaged, the second crashed against his legs. As Casrus rocked back, riding the impact, the first man swung in again. But Casrus’ fist to the side of the jaw sent him staggering, even as the third ganger, yet growling, landed on Casrus’ back.
They had him now at all vital angles, the legs, the throat, and one man to come reeling in to try again for torso or head. But Casrus was as strong as they, stronger. And now they realized that what a prince practiced for exercise could make him a better fighter than they, who tussled in earnest. Schooled, the prince was ahead of them. The long-instilled trick was not to register or accede to those points where the enemy had attached himself, but to note and respond to those areas of the enemy’s own person left unprotected by that adherence.
So Casrus, noting everything instantly and spontaneously, allowed himself to plunge forward almost bonelessly. As he dropped, both his fists smashed down on the vulnerable skull of the man who kneeled, jailer of his legs. The blow was sufficiently accurate that the man toppled aside, soundless and senseless, out of the contest. Meantime, the sideways attacker, who had trusted to the hands of the man on the floor and the man whose fingers were locked on Casrus’ throat to keep the quarry static, staggered into the tumbling mass Casrus had engineered, and went down with it.
The third ganger was still firmly fixed to Casrus’ back and windpipe. Only the powerful muscles of the prince’s throat had kept strangulation at bay through this maneuver. Now the muscles of his arms came into play. Reaching around even as he tilted floorward, he had secured his own hold. Next, bowing to the ground, Casrus heaved the ganger up for the second time, and for the second time cast him irresistibly overhead. The locked stranglehold disengaged voluntarily as the man found himself once more in flight. His roar of fury altered to a continuous shriek as he saw where his flight would take him, and that he could not prevent it. His impetus bore him straight through the scattering ring of toughs, and against the pot of boiling alcohol above the fire scoop. The pot tipped sideways on the coals. There was a big whuf of ignition and the light in the room grew very bright.
The man who had aimed from the side and consequently gone down was striving to drag Casrus over from behind. Casrus moved, almost as if in courtesy not to omit him, and slammed the battle’s ultimate blow against his mouth.
Freed, Casrus was on his feet, turning about now to confront the new light which brightened the tavern—the light of a burning man.
The third ganger, himself drenched in the inflammable liquid, had attracted the explosion of alchafax in the scoop. Writhing and floundering, cries ripped from him, a meaningless cacophony of fear and maddened agony, he dominated the room with his wings of flame. In such a place, fire, so unavoidably essential, was dreaded once uncaged.
Casrus was across the intervening space in seconds. He threw the man down as if he finally intended to murder him, and flung the stinking floor hides upon him. In a pall of smoke, the human lamp was extinguished and lay whimpering.
The rest of the room stayed voiceless. Even Dorte, his jest ruined, had nothing to say, and stared vacuously.
Klarn had proved himself a surprise. What would he surprise them with next?
The surprise came when he stooped, again hoisted the man he seemed to have been casting hither and yon more or less at will, like a great doll, and slung him over his shoulder. The ganger gave a pitiful, imbecilic wail of pain, beyond all argument, virtually beyond sanity.
Casrus went toward the door.
“You, Klarn!” Dorte bawled. “Where are you taking my ganger?”
“To the nearest center,” Casrus replied. “Medicine is free, even here. You’ll agree, this man needs it.”
There was a mutter.
“He’ll kill him,” one or two said audibly, “in some cranny out of sight. Law or no Law.”
One of the toughs bellowed: “This spilled alchafax—you pay for it.”
But Casrus and his burden were gone.
Flinging a couple of chips ungraciously to the guards of the cauldron, Dorte lurched out into the street, in the prince’s wake.
* * *
• • •
The Mechanized Center of Kaa was alike to all the rest, gray, gleaming, faceless, lit by white glares floating in the atmosphere. Within, ramps and moving corridors led to various chambers. There were also amenities which several centers possessed, but which hardly any but Upperlings could afford—baths, gymnasiums, halls of food, drink and sport. There was, however, at Kaa, one of those recreation areas that contained a Fabulism screen. The Fabulism, though not gratis, demanded fewer credit chips, and was therefore available to the masses of the Subterior. Even as Casrus approached, Dorte a stride or two behind, a crowd of would-be dreamers was squatting on the rock outside the blank wall, waiting for admittance when a previous crowd would file out. It would be a recorded replaying they attended. No aristocrat kept J’ara at a Fabulast’s duties during Maram.
The crowd peered at Casrus, less interested in real life than in the illusion they had saved their credit for.
Within, the ramp deposited the three men in a chamber. This asked them what they required, then checked them with gadgets before passing them into a cubicle.
The burned man Casrus set face down on a padded bench. He had lost consciousness. Dorte, glowering, having remained silent during the walk, now spoke: “Don’t think you’ll earn my favor by acting nurse to Hejerdi, there. If you’re trying to prove your strength, I’ve seen it. I grant you the job.”
Casrus said nothing, but watched a red glow which flickered in the wall.
Presently, a medical apparatus slid from below the light, examining the prone man, Hejerdi, soon stripping him and attending to his atrocious hurt. Implacable, Casrus stood by. Dorte. with a fastidious grimace, turned away.
“He won’t love you for that,” said Dorte. “Either for inflicting the injury, or for striving to amend it. You’ll be employed, and you’ll be paid in rations and chips. He’ll get nothing till he’s mended.”
Hejerdi came to with a sudden cry and began to struggle in panic. Casrus reached out and pressed his head gently back to the bench.
“The machines are attending to you,” said Casrus.
Hejerdi lay still, and only cried as the steel delicately probed him. No anesthetic was supplied. The treatment was basic, yet efficient, despite its sparsity. No human had charge here, which was perhaps as well. Human sadism and desire to exert power were obvious enough elsewhere in creatures such as Dorte.
Dorte now thrust his face nearer to the sick man’s.
“See, Klarn’s reputation is well-founded. Throws you in the fire, then tends you, sweet as a girl with credit chips to make. But don’t you forget, your wage is going to be his. And you won’t see the surface again for five Jates or more. If ever.”
Hejerdi rolled his eyes, one cheek stuck to the padding, tears running in spasms, keeping pace with his pain.
“You set me on to it, Dorte,” he croaked.
“If you’d been as much a champion as your mouth is, you wouldn’t be lying there in your own baked blood.”
“The others?”
“Sore heads, no more. They didn’t let my lord chuck them in the alchafax. Rot on the princes. And you—you deserve nothing.”
Dorte smiled. He produced from his layered clothing a string of ten white chips on a metal ring and handed it to Casrus in full sight of Hejerdi.
“That’s yours. Advance on next four Jates’ labor, as the Law specifies. I reckon you’re fit for my gangs. Be at Kaa exit point at the second hour.”
Dorte swung about.
“Dorte,” said the burned man, as the steel apparatus sliced through his upper flesh, “I’ve been a good—a good man to you. I’ve nothing saved. I’ll starve.”
“Ah, what a tragedy,” said Dorte. “Oh, what a piquant story. Like the theater in the Residencia is it, my prince? Don’t put blame on me,” Dorte said to the man, from the doorway. “I can’t afford to keep you. Blame that one, that fallen star there, with the pretty manners.”
The door slid shut.
A fine frost was poured upon Hejerdi from the machine, and he let out a mild sigh at its abrupt soothing. Something touched his face. Opening his eyes, he beheld five of the white chips, still clasped on the ring.
“Take it,” said Casrus, “it’s yours. I think you’ve earned it.”
Hejerdi snarled.
“And have you say I stole it from you?”
“The mechanisms in this room will witness half my wage was given you freely.”
Hejerdi’s face was clotted with hate, but he moved his lips, seizing the ring of chips between his teeth, dogga-like. No one could get it from him now.
He watched Casrus out of the opening door, as an end of his pain began temporarily for him like a huge pale silence.