Temuchin twisted about, got his hand in the back of his belt and pulled out a dagger.
“Kerk! He has a knife!” Rhes shouted, as Temuchin whipped it around and plunged it full into Kerk’s side under the lower edge of his breastplate.
His hand came away and the hilt of the dagger remained there.
Kerk bellowed in anger—but he did not release his grip. Instead he moved his thumbs up under Temuchin’s chin and pushed back. For a long moment the warlord writhed, his boot tips almost free of the ground and his eyes starting from their sockets.
Then there was a sharp snap and his body went limp.
Kerk released his grip and the great Temuchin, First Lord of the high plateau and of the lowlands, fell in a dead huddle at his feet.
Meta rushed up to him, to the spreading red stain on his side.
“Leave it,” Kerk ordered. “It plugs the hole. Mostly in the muscle, and, if it has punctured some guts, we can sew it up later. Get Jason down.”
The guards made no motion to interfere when Rhes pulled away one of their halberds and, hooking it in the bottom of the cage, pulled it crashing to the ground. Jason rolled limply with the impact. His eyes were set in black hollows and his skin was drawn tautly over the bone of his face. Through his rags of clothing red burns and scars could be seen on his skin.
“Is he—” Meta said, but could not go on. Rhes clutched two of the bars, tensed his muscles, and slowly bent apart the thick metal to make an opening.
Jason opened one bloodshot eye and looked up at them.
“Took your time about getting here,” he said, and let it drop shut again.
XXII
“No more right now,” Jason said, waving away the glass and straw that Meta held out to him. He sat up on his bunk aboard the Pugnacious, washed, medicated, his wounds dressed, and with a glucose drip plugged into his arm. Kerk sat across from him, a bulge on one side where he had been bandaged. Teca had taken out a bit of punctured intestine and tied up a few blood vessels. Kerk preferred to ignore it completely.
“Tell us,” he said. “I’ve plugged this microphone into the annunciator system, and everyone is waiting to hear. To be frank, we still don’t know what happened. Other than the fact that both you and Temuchin think that he lost by winning. It is very strange.”
Meta leaned over and touched Jason’s forehead with a folded cloth. He smiled and put his fingers against her wrist before he spoke.
“It was history. I went to the library to find out the answer, later than I should have—but not too late after all. The library read a lot of books to me and very quickly convinced me that a culture cannot be changed from the outside. It can be suppressed or destroyed—but it cannot be changed. And that’s just what we were trying to do. Have you ever heard of the Goths and the Hunnish tribes of Old Earth?”
They shook their heads no and this time he accepted the drink to dampen his throat.
“These were a bunch of back-woods barbarians who lived in the forest, enjoyed drinking, killing and their own brand of independence, and fought the Roman legions every time they came along. The tribes were always beaten—and do you think they learned a lesson from it? Of course not. They just gathered up the survivors and went deeper in the woods to fight another day, their culture and their hatred intact. Their culture was changed only when they won. Eventually they moved in on the Romans, captured Rome and learned all the joys of civilized life. They weren’t barbarians any more. The ancient Chinese used to work the same trick, for centuries. They weren’t very good fighters, but they were great absorbers. They were overrun and licked time and time again—and sucked the victors down into their own culture and life.
“I learned this lesson and just arranged things so that it would happen here as well. Temuchin was an ambitious man and could not resist the temptation of new worlds to conquer. So he invaded the lowlands when I showed him the way.”
“By winning he lost,” Kerk said.
“Exactly. The world is his now. He has captured the cities and he wants their wealth. So he has to occupy them to obtain it. His best officers become administrators of the new realm and wallow in unaccustomed luxury. They like it here. They might even stay. They are still nomads at heart—but what about the next generation? If Temuchin and his chiefs are living in cities and enjoying the sybaritic pleasures thereof—how can he expect to enforce the no-cities law back on the plateau? It begins to look sort of foolish after a while. Any decent barbarian isn’t going to stay up there in the cold when he can come down here and share the loot. Wine is stronger than achadh and they even have some distilleries here. The nomad way of life is doomed. Temuchin realized that, though he could not put it into words. He just knew that by winning he had left behind and destroyed the way of life that had enabled him to win in the first place. That’s why he called me a demon and strung me up.”
“Poor Temuchin,” Meta said, with sudden insight. “His ambition doomed him and he finally realized it. Though he was the conqueror he was the one who lost the most.”
“His way of life and his life itself,” Jason said. “He was a great man.”
Kerk grunted. “Don’t tell me that you’re sorry I killed him?”
“Not at all. He attained everything he ever wanted, then he died. Not many men can say that.”
“Turn off the communicator,” Meta said. “And you may go, Kerk.” The big Pyrran opened his mouth to protest, then smiled instead, turned and went out.
“What are you going to do now?” Meta asked, as soon as the door was closed.
“Sleep for a month, eat steaks, and grow strong.”
“I do not mean that. I mean where will you go? Will you stay here with us?”
She was working hard to express her emotions using a vocabulary that was not equipped for this form of communication.
“Does that matter to you?”
“It matters, in a way that is very new.” Her forehead creased and she almost stammered with the effort to put her feelings into words. “When I am with you, I want to tell you different things. Do you know what is the nicest thing that we can say in Pyrran?” He shook his head. “We say ‘you fight very well.’ That is not what I want to say to you.”
Jason spoke nine languages and he knew exactly what it was he wanted to say, but he would not. Or could not. He turned away instead.
“No, look at me,” Meta said, taking his head in both hands and gently turning his face towards hers.
“I have looked up the word love, just as you told me to do. At first it was not clear because it was only words. But, when I thought about you, the meaning became clear at once.”
Their faces were close, her wide clear eyes looking unflinchingly into his.
“I love you,” she said. “I think that I will always love you. You must never leave me.”
The direct simplicity of her emotions rose like a flooded river against the shored up dikes and levees of his conditioned defenses, the mechanisms that he had built up through the years. He was a loner. The universe helps those who help themselves. I can take care of myself and . . . I . . . don’t . . . need . . . anyone—
“Dear stars above, how I do love you, too,” he said, pulling her to him, his face pressing into her neck and hair.
“You will never leave me again,” she said. A statement, not a question.
“And you will never leave me again. There, the shortest and best marriage ceremony on record. May you break my arm if I ever look at another girl.”
“Please. Do not talk about violence now.”
“I apologize. That was the old unreconstructed me talking. I think that we must both bring gentleness into our lives. That is what you, I, and our pack of growling Pyrrans need the most. That’s what we all need. Not humility, no one needs that. Just a little civilizing. I think that we can survive with it now. The mines should be opening here soon, and the way the tribes are moving to the lowlands it looks like you Pyrrans will have the plateau to yourselves.”
�
�Yes, that will be good. It can be our new world.” She hesitated a moment as she weighed his words. “We Pyrrans will stay here—but what about you? I would not like to leave my people again, but I will go if you go.”
“You won’t have to. I’m staying right here. I’m a member of the tribe—remember? Pyrrans are rude, opinionated and irascible, we know that. But I am, too. So perhaps I’ve found a home at last.”
“With me, always with me.”
“Of course.”
They kissed, laughed, embraced, while the wall speaker blared unheard above them.
“Three volunteers with shovels wanted at once for morope stable duty. Their names are—”
“THE MOTHBALLED SPACESHIP”
I began writing Deathworld in 1956 in Mexico, continued it in England and Italy, and finally finished it in New York in 1957. All along the way it was a collaboration with John Campbell. Since I had already sold him a short story or two, I felt bold enough to ask him to comment on an outline of a novel—my first—that I was struggling with. His answering letter was longer than my outline. He suggested ideas I had never considered, permutations never thought of—and all within the structure of my outline. Emboldened, I wrote 10,000 words and sent them to him and received comment afresh. Still fearful of the novel length, I sent him 30,000 words when I had done them, only to receive an irate grumble that he thought this was the whole thing and was put out he couldn't finish reading it. With this firm kick I finally finished the thing and took it to the post office and received, practically by return mail, a check for $2,100. I had sold my first serial to Astounding.
The Deathworld trilogy appeared in ASF, after the first serial, as The Ethical Engineer and The Horse Barbarians. It is the continuing story of real supermen, people who live on a high-gravity planet where the deadly life forms continually war on them. Eventually they leave this world to settle on an equally deadly planet named Felicity. “The Mothballed Spaceship” takes place after this last conquest, and is the only Deathworld story written without the aid, advice, comment, criticism and good-humored assistance of John Campbell.
I wish it could have been otherwise.
“I’LL JUST swing a bit closer,” Meta said, touching the controls of the Pyrran spacer.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Jason said resignedly, knowing that a note of caution was close to a challenge to a Pyrran.
“Let us not be afraid this far away,” Kerk said, as Jason had predicted. Kerk leaned close to look at the viewscreen. “It is big, I’ll admit, three kilometers long at least, and probably the last space battleship existing. But it is over five thousand years old, and we are two hundred kilometers away from it . . .”
A tiny orange glow winked into brief existence on the distant battleship, and at the same instant the Pyrran ship lurched heavily. Red panic lights flared on the control panel.
“How old did you say it was?” Jason asked innocently, and received in return a sizzling look from the now-silent Kerk.
Meta sent the ship turning away in a wide curve and checked the warning circuitry. “Port fin severely damaged, hull units out in three areas. Repairs will have to be made in null-G before we can make a planetfall again.”
“Very good. I’m glad we were hit,” Jason dinAlt said. “Perhaps now we will exercise enough caution to come out of this alive with the promised five million credits. So set us on a course to the fleet commander so we can find out all the grisly details they forgot to tell us when we arranged this job by jump-space communication.”
Admiral Djukich, the commander of the Earth forces, was a small man who appeared even smaller before the glowering strength of the Pyran personality. He shrank back when Kerk leaned over his desk toward him and spoke coldly. “We can leave and the Rim Hordes will sweep through this system and that will be the end of you.”
“No, it will not happen. We have the resources. We can build a fleet, buy ships, but it will be a long and tedious task. Far easier to use this Empire battleship.”
“Easy?” Jason asked, raising one eyebrow. “How many have been killed attempting to enter it?”
“Well, easy is not perhaps the correct word. There are difficulties, certain problems . . . forty-seven people in all.”
“Is that why you sent the message to Felicity?” Jason asked.
“Yes, assuredly. Our heavy-metals industry has been purchasing from your planet; they heard of the Pyrrans: how less than a hundred of you conquered an entire world. We thought we would ask you to undertake this task of entering the ship.”
“You were a little unclear as to who was aboard the ship and preventing any one else from coming near.”
“Yes, well, that is what you might call the heart of our little problem. There’s no one aboard . . .” His smile had a definite artificial quality as the Pyrrans leaned close. “Please, let me explain. This planet was once one of the most important under the old Empire. Although at least eleven other worlds claim themselves as the first home of mankind, we of Earth are much more certain that we are the original. This battleship seems proof enough. When the Fourth War of Galactic Expansion was over, it was mothballed here and has remained so ever since, unneeded until this moment.”
Kerk snorted with disbelief. “I will not believe that an unmanned, mothballed ship five millennia old has killed forty-seven people.”
“Well, I will,” Jason said. “And so will you as soon as you give it a little thought. Three kilometers of almost indestructible fighting ship propelled by the largest engines ever manufactured—which means the largest spaceship atomic generators as well. And of course the largest guns, the most advanced defensive and offensive weaponry ever conceived with secondary batteries, parallel fail-safe circuitry, battle computers—ahh, you’re smiling at last. A Pyrran dream of heaven—the most destructive single weapon ever conceived. What a pleasure to board a thing like this, to enter the control room, to be in control.”
Kerk and Meta were grinning happily, eyes misty, nodding their heads in total agreement. Then the smiles faded as he went on. “But this ship has now been mothballed. Everything shut down and preserved for an emergency—everything, that is, except the power plant and the ship’s armament. Part of the mothballing was obviously provision for the ship’s computer to be alert and to guard the ship against meteorites and any other chance encounters in space. In particular against anyone who felt he needed a spare battleship. We were warned off with a single shot. I don’t doubt that it could have blasted us out of space just as easily. If this ship were manned and on the defensive, then nothing could be done about getting near it, much less entering. But this is not the case. We must outthink a computer, a machine, and while it won’t be easy, it should be possible.” He turned and smiled at Admiral Djukich. “We’ll take the job. The price has doubled. It will be one billion credits.”
“Impossible! The sum is too great; the budget won’t allow . . .”
“Rim Hordes, coming closer, bent on rapine and destruction. To stop them you order some spacers from the shipyard; schedules are late; they don’t arrive on time; the Horde fleet descends. They break down this door and here, right in this office, blood . . .”
“Stop!” the Admiral gasped weakly, his face blanched white. A desk commander who had never seen action— as Jason had guessed. “The contract is yours, but you have a deadline, thirty days. One minute after that you don’t get a deci of a credit. Do you agree?”
Jason looked up at Kerk and Meta who, with instant warrior’s decision, made their minds up, nodding at the same time.
“Done,” he said. “But the billion is free and clear. We’ll need supplies, aid from your space navy, material and perhaps men as well to back us up. You will supply what we need.”
“It could be expensive,” Admiral Djukich groaned, chewing at his lower lip. “Blood . . .” Jason whispered, and the Admiral broke into a fine sweat as he reluctantly agreed. “I’ll have the papers drawn up. When can you begin?”
“We’ve begun. Shake ha
nds on it and we’ll sign later.” He pumped the Admiral’s weak hand enthusiastically. “Now, I don’t suppose you have anything like a manual that tells us how to get into the ship?”
“If we had that we wouldn’t have called you here. We have gone to the archives and found nothing. All the facts we did discover are on record and available to you for what they are worth.”
“Not much if you killed forty-seven volunteers. Five thousand years is a long time, and even the most efficient bureaucracy loses things over that kind of distance. And, of course, the one thing you cannot mothball are instructions how to un-mothball a ship. But we will find a way, Pyrrans never quit, never. If you will have the records sent to our quarters, my colleagues and I will now withdraw and make our plans for the job. We shall beat your deadline.”
“How?” Kerk asked as soon as the door of their apartment had closed behind them.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Jason admitted, smiling happily at their cold scowls. “Now, let us pour some drinks and put our thinking caps on. This is a job that may end up needing brute force, but it will have to begin with man’s intellectual superiority over the machines he has invented. I’ll take a large one with ice if you are pouring, darling.”
“Serve yourself,” Meta snapped. “If you had no idea how we were to proceed, why did you accept?”
Glass rattled against glass and strong beverage gurgled. Jason sighed. “I accepted because it is a chance for us to get some ready cash, which the budget is badly in need of. If we can’t crack into the damn thing, then all we have lost is thirty days of our time.” He drank and remembered the hard-learned lesson that reasoned argument was usually a waste of time with Pyrrans and that there were better ways to quickly resolve a situation. “You people aren’t scared of this ship, are you?”
Deathworld: The Complete Saga Page 52