Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol XII

by Various

  In a few minutes the hand-radio, forgotten on the stone floor behind him, flashed an intermittent light which caught his eye in the dusk. That would be Manning.

  Rynason slid the radio over to the head of the stairs and switched on there, keeping an eye on the stairway.

  "Lee, do you hear me?"

  "I hear you." His voice was low and bitter.

  "I’m coming in to talk. Hold your God damned fire."

  "Why should I?" said Rynason,

  "Because I’m bringing Mara with me. It’s too bad you don’t trust me, Lee, but if that’s the way you want it I won’t trust you either."

  "That’s a good idea," he said, and switched off.

  Almost immediately he saw them come out from behind the cover of a fallen wall across the dusty street. Mara walked in front of Manning; her head was high, her face almost expressionless. The cold wind threw dust against their legs as they crossed the open space to the base of the steps.

  Rynason stood motionless, watching them come up. Manning still had his two stunners, but they were in their holsters. He kept behind the girl all the way, pausing before pushing her up the open ramp at the top, then moving even more closely behind her. Rynason stood with the disintegrator hanging loosely in one hand at his side.

  On the colonnade Manning gripped the girl by her undamaged arm. He nodded to one of the doorways into the temple, and Rynason preceded him inside.

  As they entered Manning lit a handlight and set it on the floor. The room was thrown into stark relief, the shadows of the motionless aliens striking the walls and ceiling with an almost physical harshness. Manning paused a moment to look at the Hirlaji, and at the altar across the room.

  "We can hear each other in here," he said at last.

  "What do you want?" said Rynason. There was cool hatred in his voice, and the knife-scar on his forehead was a dark snake-line in the hard glare of the handlight.

  Manning shrugged, a bit too quickly. He was nervous. "I want you out of here, Lee, and I’m not accepting any argument this time."

  Rynason looked at Mara, standing helplessly in the older man’s grip. He glanced down at the disintegrator in his hand.

  Manning drew one of his stunners quickly, and trained it at Rynason’s face. "I said no arguments. Put the weapon down, Lee."

  Rynason couldn’t risk a shot at the man, with Mara in front of him. He carefully laid the disintegrator on the floor.

  "Slide it over here."

  Rynason kicked it across the floor. Manning bent and picked it up, returned the stunner to its holster and held the disintegrator on him.

  "That’s better. Now we can avoid arguments—right, Lee? You’ve always like peaceful settlements, haven’t you?"

  Rynason glared at him, but didn’t say anything. He walked slowly into the center of the room, among the Hirlaji. They paid no attention.

  "Lee, he’s going to kill them!" Mara burst out.

  Rynason was standing now next to the interpreter. The handlight which Manning had set on the floor across the room was trained upwards, and the interpreter was still in the darkness. He lowered his head as if in thought and switched on the machine with his foot.

  "Is that true, Manning? Are you going to kill them?" His voice was loud and it echoed from the walls.

  "I can’t trust them," Manning said, his voice automatically growing louder in response to Rynason’s own. He stepped forward, pushing Mara in front of him. "They’re not human, Lee—you keep forgetting that, for some reason. Think of it as clearing the area of hostile native animal life—that comes under the duties of a governor, now doesn’t it?"

  "And what about the men outside? Did you put it that way to them?"

  "They do what I say!" Manning snapped. "They don’t give a damn who they kill. There’s going to be fighting here whether it’s against the Hirlaji or between the townsmen. As governor, I’d rather they took it all out on the horses here. Domestic tranquillity, shall we say?" He was smiling now; he had everything in control.

  "So that’s your purpose?" Rynason said. There was anger in his voice, feigned or real—perhaps both. But his voice rose still higher. "Is butchery your only goal in life, Manning?"

  Manning stepped toward him again, his eyes narrowing. "Butchery? It’s better than no purpose at all, Lee! It’ll get me off of these damned outworlds eventually, if I’m a good enough butcher. And I mean to be, Lee … I mean to be."

  Rynason turned his back on the man in contempt, and walked past Horng to the base of the ancient altar. He looked up at the Eye of Kor, dim now when not in use. He turned.

  "Is it better, Manning?" he shouted. "Does it give you a right to live, while you slaughter the Hirlaji?"

  Manning cursed under his breath, and took a quick step toward Rynason; his hard, black shadow leaped up the wall.

  "Yes! It gives me any right I can take!"

  It happened quickly. Manning was now beside the massive figure of the alien, Horng; in his anger he had loosened his grip on Mara. He raised the disintegrator toward Rynason.

  And Horng’s huge fist smashed it from his hand.

  Manning never knew what hit him. Before he had even realized that the disintegrator was gone Horng had him. One heavy hand circled his throat; the other gripped his shoulder. The alien lifted him viciously and broke him like a stick; Rynason could almost hear the man’s neck break, so final was that twist of the alien’s hands.

  Horng lifted the lifeless body above his head and hurled it to the floor with such force that the man’s head was stoved in and his body lay twisted and motionless where it fell.

  Afterwards there was silence in the room, save for the distant sound of the wind against the building outside. Horng stood looking down at the broken body at his feet, his expression as unfathomable as it had ever been. Mara stared in shocked silence at the alien.

  Rynason walked slowly to the mike lying beside the interpreter. He raised it.

  "You can move quickly, old leather, when there’s a reason for it," he said.

  Horng turned his head to him and silently dipped it to one side.

  Rynason lifted the broken form of Manning’s body and carried it out to the top of the steps leading down from the temple. Mara went with him, carrying the handlight; it fell harshly on Manning’s crushed features as Rynason waited atop the huge, steep stairway. The wind tore at his hair, whipping it wildly around his head … but Manning’s head was caked with blood. In a moment, the men from the town came out from cover; they stood at the base of the steps, indecisive.

  They too were waiting for something.

  Rynason hefted the body up over one shoulder and drew a disintegrator with the hand he had freed. Slowly, then, he descended the steps.

  When he had neared the bottom the circle of men fell back. They were uneasy and sullen … but they had seen the power of the disintegrator, and now they saw Manning’s crushed body.

  Rynason bent and dropped the body to the ground. He looked up coldly at the ring of faces and said, "One of the Hirlaji did that with his hands. That’s all—just his hands."

  For a moment everyone was still … and then one of the men broke from the crowd, snarling, with a heavy knife in his hand. He stopped just outside the white circle of the handlight, the knife extended before him. Rynason raised the disintegrator and trained it on him, his face frozen into a cold mask.

  The man stood in indecision.

  And from the crowd behind him another figure stepped forward. It was Malhomme, and his lips were drawn back in disgust. He struck with an open hand, the side of his palm catching the man’s neck beneath his ear. The man fell sprawling to the ground, and lay still.

  Malhomme looked at him for a moment, then he turned to the men behind him. "That’s enough!" he shouted. "Enough!" Angrily, he looked down at the crumpled form of Manning’s body. "Bury him!" he said.

  There was still no movement from the men; Malhomme grabbed two of them roughly and shoved them out of the crowd. They hesitated, looking quickly
from Malhomme to the disintegrator in Rynason’s hand, then bent to pick up the body.

  "It’s a measure of man’s eternal mercy," said Malhomme acidly, "that at least we bury each other." He stared at the men in the mob, and the fury in his eyes broke them at last. Muttering, shrugging, shaking their heads, they dispersed, going off in two and threes to take cover from the wind-driven sand.

  Malhomme turned to Rynason and Mara, his face relaxing at last. The hard lines around his mouth softened into a rueful smile as he put his arm around Rynason’s shoulder. "We can all take shelter in the buildings here for the night. You could use some rest, Lee Rynason—you look like hell. And maybe I can put a temporary splint on your arm, woman."

  They found a nearby building where the roof had long ago fallen in, but the walls were still standing. While Malhomme ministered to Mara he did not stop talking for a moment; Rynason couldn’t tell whether he was trying to keep the girl’s mind off the pain or whether he was simply unwinding his emotions.

  "You know, I’ve preached at these men for so many years I’ve got callouses in my throat. And one of these days maybe they’ll know what I’m talking about, so that I won’t have to shout." He shrugged. "Well, it would be a dull world, where I didn’t have a good excuse to shout. Sometimes you might ask your alien friends up there, Lee … what did they get out of choosing peace?"

  "They didn’t choose it," said Rynason.

  Malhomme grimaced. "I wonder if anybody, anywhere, ever will. Maybe the Outsiders did, but they’re not around to tell us about it. It’s an intriguing question to think about, if you don’t have anything to drink … what do you do, when there’s nothing more to fight against, or even for?"

  He straightened up; the splint on Mara’s arm was set now. He settled her back in a drift of sand as comfortably as possible.

  "I’ve got another question," Rynason said. "What were you doing among those men who came at me on the steps earlier?"

  Malhomme’s face broke into a wide grin. "That was a suicidal rush on you, Lee. A damned stupid tactic … a rush like that is only as strong as the weakest coward in it. All it takes is one man to break and run, and everybody else will run too. So it was easy for me to break it up."

  Rynason couldn’t help chuckling at that; and once he had started, the tension that had gripped him for the past several hours found release in a full, stomach-shaking laugh.

  "Rene Malhomme," he gasped, "that’s the kind of leadership this planet needs!"

  Mara smiled up from where she lay. "You know," she said, "now that Manning is dead they’ll have to find someone else to be governor…."

  "Don’t be ridiculous," said Malhomme.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE PEACEMAKER

  By Alfred Coppel

  We humans are a strange breed, unique in the Universe. Of all the races met among the stars, only homo sapiens thrives on deliberate self-delusion. Perhaps this is the secret of our greatness, for we are great. In power, if not in supernal wisdom.

  Legends, I think, are our strength. If one day a man stands on the rim of the Galaxy and looks out across the gulfs toward the seetee suns of Andromeda, it will be legends that drove him there.

  They are odd things, these legends, peopled with unreal creatures, magnificent heroes and despicable villains. We stand for no nonsense where our mythology is concerned. A man becoming part of our folklore becomes a fey, one-dimensional, shadow-image of reality.

  Jaq Merril--the Jaq Merril of the history books--is such an image. History, folklore's jade, has daubed Merril with the rouge of myth, and it does not become him.

  The Peacemaker, the chronicles have named him, and that at least, is accurate in point of fact. But it was not through choice that he became the Peacemaker; and when his Peace descended over the worlds of space, Merril, the man, was finished. This I know, for I rode with him--his lieutenant in a dozen and more bloody fights that earned him his ironically pacific laurels.

  * * * * *

  Not many now living will remember the Wall Decade. History, ever pliable, is rewritten often, and facts are forgotten. When it was gone, the Wall Decade was remembered with shame and so was expunged from the record of time. But I remember it well. It was an era compounded of stupidity and grandeur, of brilliant discovery and grimy political maneuver. We, the greedy men of space--and that includes Jaq Merril--saw it end with sorrow in our hearts, knowing that we had killed it.

  If you will think back to the years immediately preceding the Age of Space, you may remember the Iron Curtain. Among the nations of the Earth a great schism had arisen, and a wall of ideas was built between east and west. Hydrogen bombs were stockpiled and armies marched and countermarched threateningly. Men lived with fear and hatred and distrust.

  Then, suddenly, came the years of spaceflight and the expanding frontiers. Luna was passed. Mars and Venus and the Jovian Moons felt the tread of living beings for the first time since the dawn of time. The larger asteroids were taken and even the cold moonlets of Saturn and Uranus trembled under the blast of Terran rockets. But the Iron Curtain still existed. It was extended out into the gulf of space, an intangible wall of fear and suspicion. Thus was born the Wall Decade.

  Jaq Merril was made for that epoch. Ever in human history there are those who profit from the stupidity of their fellows. Jaq Merril so profited. He dredged up the riches of space and took them for his own. And his weapon was man's fear of his brothers.

  * * * * *

  It was in Yakki, down-canal from the Terran settlement at Canalopolis, that Merril's plan was born. His ship, the Arrow, stood on the red sands of Syrtis Major, waiting for a payload to the Outer System. It stood among a good many like it: the Moonmaid, the Gay Lady, the Argonaut, and my own vessel, the Starhound.

  We, the captains, had gathered in the Spaceman's Rest--a tinkling gin-mill peopled with human wrecks and hungry-eyed, dusty-skinned women who had come out to Mars hoping for riches and had found only the same squalor they had left behind. I remember the look in Merril's eyes as he spoke of the treasures of space that would never be ours, of the gold and sapphires, the rubies and unearthly gems of fragile beauty and great price. All the riches of the worlds of space, passing through our hands and into the vaults of the stay-at-homes who owned our ships and our very lives. It seemed to me that Merril suffered as though from physical pain as he spoke of riches. He was nothing if not rapacious. Greedy, venal, ruthless. All of that.

  "Five of us," he said in a hard voice, "Captains all--with ships and men. We carry the riches of the universe and let it slip through our fingers. What greater fools could there be?"

  Oh, he was right enough. We had the power to command in our hands without the sense to grasp it firmly and take what we chose.

  "And mark you, my friends," Merril said, "A wall has been built around Mars. A wall that weakens rather than strengthens. A wonderful, stupid, wall...." He laughed and glanced around the table at our faces, flushed with wine and greed. "With all space full of walls," he said softly, "Who could unite against us?"

  The question struck home. I thought of the five ships standing out there on the rusty desert across the silted canal. Five tall ships--against the stars. We felt no kinship to those at home who clung to creature comforts while we bucketed among the stars risking our lives and more. We, the spacemen, had become a race apart from that of the home planet. And Merril saw this in our faces that night so long ago, and he knew that he had spoken our thoughts.

  Thus was born the Compact.

  Gods of space, but I must laugh when I read what history has recorded of the Compact.

  "Merril, filled with the wonder of his great dream, spoke his mind to the Captains. He told them of the sorrow in his heart for his divided fellow men, and his face grew stern when he urged them to put aside ideology and prejudice and join with him in the Compact."

  So speaks Quintus Bland, historian of the Age of Space. I imagine that I hear Merril's laughter even as I write. Oh, we put aside id
eology and prejudice, all right! That night in Yakki the five Captains clasped hands over the formation of the first and only compact of space-piracy in history!

  * * * * *

  It was an all or nothing venture. Our crews were told nothing, but their pockets were emptied and their pittances joined with ours. We loaded the five ships with supplies and thundered off into the cobalt Martian sky to seek a stronghold. We found one readily enough. The chronicles do not record it accurately. They say that the fleet of the Compact based itself on Eros. This is incorrect. We wanted no Base that would bring us so close to the home planet every year. The asteroid we chose was nameless, and remained so. We spoke of it seldom aspace, but it was ever in our minds. There was no space wall, there to divide us one from the other. It was a fortress against the rest of mankind, and in it we were brothers.

  When we struck for the first time, it was not at a Russian missile post as the histories say. It was at the Queen of Heaven, an undefended and unsuspecting merchantman. The records of Earth say the Queen was lost in space between Uranus and Mars, and this is so. But she was listed lost only because no Russian or American patrol found her gutted hulk. I imagine that at this very moment she hangs out beyond Pluto, rounding the bend of the long ellipse we sent her on that day we stripped her bones.

  She carried gold and precious stones--and more important yet, women being furloughed home after forced labor in the mines of Soviet Umbriel. The Starhound and the Arrow bracketed her a million miles above the plane of the ecliptic near Saturn's orbit, and killed her. We drew abreast of her and forced her valves. We boarded her and took what we chose. Then we slaughtered her men and sent them on their long voyage. That was the beginning.

  The attack against Corfu was our next move. This is the battle that Celia Witmar Day has described in verse. Very bad verse.

  "Corfu slumbered, gorged and proud-- While Arrow, Hound and Maid marshalled Freedom's might above the tyrant's ground, And rained down death--"

  There is much more, of course. Brave phrases of emotion and fanciful unreality written by one who never saw the night of space agleam with stars.