IV
Von Schlichten and Blount entered the bar together. Going to abartending machine, von Schlichten dialed the cocktail they haddecided upon and inserted his key to charge the drinks to his account,filling a four-portion jug.
As they turned away, they almost collided with Hideyoshi O'Leary andPaula Quinton. The girl wore a long-sleeved gown to conceal a bandageon her right wrist, and her face was rather heavily powdered in spots;otherwise she looked none the worse for recent experiences. VonSchlichten invited her and her escort to join him and Blount. ColonelO'Leary was carrying a cocktail jug and a couple of glasses; finding atable out of the worst of the noise, they all sat down together.
"I suppose you think it's a joke, our being nearly murdered by thepeople we came to help," Paula began, a trifle defensively.
"Not a very funny joke," von Schlichten told her. "It's been played onus till it's lost its humor."
"Yes, geek ingratitude's an old story to all of us," Blount agreed."You stay on this planet very long and you'll see what I mean."
"You call them that, too?" she asked, as though disappointed in him."Maybe if you stopped calling them geeks, they wouldn't resent you theway they do. You know, that's a nasty name; in the First CenturyPre-Atomic, it designated a degraded person who performed some sort ofrevolting public exhibition...."
"As far as that goes, you know what the geek name for a Terran is?"Blount asked. "_Suddabit_."
She looked puzzled for a moment, then slipped in her enunciator. Evenin the absence of any native, she used her handkerchief to mask theact.
"Suddabit," she said, distinctly. "Sud-da-a-_bit_." Taking out thegeek-speaker, she put it away. "Why, that's exactly how they'dpronounce it!"
"And don't tell me you haven't heard it before," O'Leary said. "Thegeeks were screaming it at you, over on Seventy-second Street, thisafternoon. _Znidd suddabit_; kill the Terrans. That's Rakkeed theProphet's whole gospel."
"So you see," Eric Blount rammed home the moral, "this is just anothercase of nobody with any right to call anybody else's kettle black....Cigarette?"
* * * * *
"Thank you." She leaned toward the lighter-flame O'Leary had snappedinto being. "I suspect that of being a principle you'd like me to bearin mind at the Polar mines, when I see, let's say, some laborer beingbeaten by a couple of overseers with three foot lengths ofthree-quarter-inch steel cable."
"If you think the natives who work at the mines feel themselvesill-treated, you might propose closing them down entirely and see whatthe native reaction would be," von Schlichten told her."Independently-hired free workers can make themselves rich, by nativestandards, in a couple of seasons; many of the serfs pick up enoughmoney from us in incentive-pay to buy their freedom after one season."
"Well, if the Company's doing so much good on this planet, how is itthat this native, Rakkeed, the one you call the Mad Prophet, is ableto find such a following?" Paula demanded. "There must be somethingwrong somewhere."
"That's a fair question," Blount replied, inverting a cocktail jugover his glass to extract the last few drops. "When we came to Ullr,we found a culture roughly like that of Europe during the SeventhCentury Pre-Atomic. We initiated a technological and economicrevolution here, and such revolutions have their casualties, too. Anumber of classes and groups got squeezed pretty badly, like thehorse-breeders and harness-manufacturers on Terra by the invention ofthe automobile, or the coal and hydroelectric interests when directconversion of nuclear energy to electric current was developed, or therailroads and steamship lines at the time of the discovery of thecontragravity-field. Naturally, there's a lot of ill-feeling on thepart of merchants and artisans who weren't able or willing to adaptthemselves to changing conditions; they're all backing Rakkeed andyelling '_Znidd suddabit!_' now. But it is a fact, which not evenRakkeed can successfully deny, that we've raised the general livingstandard of this planet by about two hundred per cent."
* * * * *
Both jugs were empty. Colonel O'Leary, as befitted his junior rank,picked them up; after a good-natured wrangled with von Schlichten,Blount handed the colonel his credit-key.
"The merchants in the North don't like us; beside spoiling thecaravan-trade, we're spoiling their local business, because thelandowning barons, who used to deal with them, are now dealingdirectly with us. At Skilk, King Firkked's afraid his feudal nobilityis going to force a Runnymede on him, so he's been currying favor withthe urban merchants; that makes him as pro-Rakkeed and as anti-Terranas they are. At Krink, King Jonkvank has the support of his barons,but he's afraid of his urban bourgeoisie, and we pay him a handsomesubsidy, so he's pro-Terran and anti-Rakkeed. At Skilk, Rakkeed comesand goes openly; at Krink he has a price on his head."
"Jonkvank is not one of the assets we boast about too loudly,"Hideyoshi O'Leary said, pausing on his way from the table. "He's asbloody-minded an old murderer as you'd care not to meet in a darkalley."
"We can turn our backs on him and not expect a knife between ourshoulders, anyhow," von Schlichten said. "And we can believe, oh, upto eighty per cent of what he tells us, and that's sixty per centbetter than any of the other native princes, except King Kankad, ofcourse. The Kragans are the only real friends we have on this planet."He thought for a moment. "Miss Quinton, are you doing sociographicresearch-work here, in addition to your Ex-Rights work?" he asked."Well, let me advise you to pay some attention to the Kragans."
"Oh, but they're just a parasite-race on the Terrans," Dr. PaulaQuinton objected. "You find races like that all through the exploredGalaxy--pathetic cultural mongrels."
Both men laughed heartily. Colonel O'Leary, returning with the jugs,wanted to know what he'd missed. Blount told him.
"Ha! She's been reading that thing of Stanley-Browne's," he said.
"What's the matter with Stanley-Browne?" Paula demanded.
"Stanley-Browne is one author you can depend on," O'Leary assured her."If you read it in Stanley-Browne, it's wrong. You know, I don't thinkshe's run into many Kragans. We ought to take her over and introduceher to King Kankad."
* * * * *
Von Schlichten allowed himself to be smitten by an idea. "By Allah, sowe had!" he exclaimed. "Look, you're going to Skilk, in the next week,aren't you? Well, do you think you could get all your end-jobs clearedup here and be ready to leave by 0800 Tuesday? That's four days fromtoday."
"I'm sure I could. Why?"
"Well, I'm going to Skilk, myself, with the armed troopship_Aldebaran_. We're stopping at King Kankad's Town to pick up abattalion of Kragan Rifles for duty at the Polar mines, where you'regoing. Suppose we leave here in my command-car, go to Kankad's Town,and wait there till the _Aldebaran_ gets in. That would give us abouttwo to three hours. If you think the Kragans are 'pathetic culturalmongrels', what you'll see there will open your eyes. And I might addthat the nearest Stanley-Browne ever came to seeing Kankad's Town wasfrom the air, once, at a distance of more than four miles."
"Well, general, I'll take you up," she said. "But I warn you; if thisis some scheme to indoctrinate me with the Ullr Company's side of thecase and blind me to unjust exploitation of the natives here, I don'tpropagandize very easily."
"Fair enough, as long as you don't let fear of being propagandizedblind you to the good we're doing here, or impair your ability toobserve and draw accurate conclusions. Just stay scientific about itand I'll be satisfied. Now, let's take time out for lubrication," hesaid, filling her glass and passing the jug.
Two hours and five cocktails later, they were still at the table, andthey had taught Paula Quinton some twenty verses of _The HeathenGeeks, They Wear No Breeks_, including the four printable ones.
* * * * *
Four days later they stood together as the aircar passed over theKraggork Swamps--pleasantly close together, von Schlichten realized.For the moment, he could almost forget the queer, intangible tensionthat had been growing stea
dily, and the feeling that things werenearing a breaking point of some kind.
Von Schlichten was scanning the horizon ahead. He pulled over a pairof fifty-power binoculars on a swinging arm and put them where shecould use them.
"Right ahead, there; just a little to the left. See that brown-grayspot on the landward edge of the swamp? That's King Kankad's Town.It's been there for thousands of years, and it's always been Kankad'sTown. You might say, even the same Kankad. The Kragan kings havealways provided their own heirs, by self-fertilization. The offspringis an exact duplicate of the single parent. The present Kankad speaksof his heir as 'Little Me,' which is a fairly accurate way of puttingit."
He knew what she was seeing through the glasses--a massive butte offlint, jutting out into the swamp on the end of a sharp ridge, with acity on top of it. All the buildings were multi-storied, some pilingupward from the top and some clinging to the sides. The highwatchtower at the front now carried a telecast-director, aimed at anautomatic relay-station on an unmanned orbiter two thousand milesoff-planet.
"They're either swamp-people who moved up onto that rock, or they'remountaineers who came out that far along the ridges and stopped," shesaid. "Which?"
"Nobody's ever tried to find out. Maybe if you stay on Ullr longenough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten honorarydoctorates. And maybe a hundred sols a year in book royalties."
"Maybe I'll just do that, general.... What's that, on the littleisland over there?" she asked, shifting the glasses. "A clump offlat-roofed buildings. Under a red-and-yellow danger-flag."
"That's Dynamite Island; the Kragans have an explosives-plant there.They make nitroglycerine, like all the thalassic peoples; they alsomake TNT and propellants. Learned that from us, of course. They alsomanufacture most of their own firearms, some of them prettyextreme--up to 25-mm. for shoulder rifles. Don't ever fire one; it'dbreak every bone in your body."
"Are they that much stronger than us?"
He shook his head. "Just denser; heavier. They're about equal to us inweight-lifting. They can't run, or jump, as well as we can. We oftencome out here for games with the Kragans, where the geeks can't watchus. And that reminds me--you're right about that being a term ofderogation, because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of aKragan as a geek, and in fact they've picked up the word from us andapply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, our baseball teamhas to give theirs a handicap, but their football team can beat thedaylights out of ours. In a tug-of-war, we have to put two men on ourend for every one of theirs. But they don't even try to play tenniswith us."
"Don't the other natives make their own firearms?"
"No, and we're not going to teach them how!"
* * * * *
The aircar came in, circling slowly over the town on the big rock, andlet down on the roof of the castle-like building from which thewatchtower rose. There were a dozen or so individuals waiting forthem--the five Terrans, three men and two women, from the telecaststation, and the rest Kragans. One of these, dark-skinned but withspeckles no darker than light amber, armed only with a heavy dagger,came over and clapped von Schlichten on the shoulder, grinningopalescently.
"Greetings, Von!" he squawked in Kragan, then, seeing Paula, switchedover to the customary language of the Takkad Sea country. "It makeshappiness to see you. How long will you stay with us?"
"Till the _Aldebaran_ gets in from Konkrook, to pick up the Rifles,"von Schlichten replied, in Lingua Terra. He looked at his watch. "Twohours and a half.... Kankad, this is Paula Quinton; Paula, KingKankad."
He took out his geek-speaker and crammed it into his mouth. Before anyother race on Ullr, that would have been the most shocking sort of badmanners, without the token-concealment of the handkerchief. Kankadtook it as a matter of course. At some length, von Schlichtenexplained the nature of Paula's sociographic work, her connection withthe Extraterrestrials' Rights Association, and her intention of goingto the Arctic mines. Kankad nodded.
"You were right," he said. "I wouldn't have understood all that inyour language. If I had read it, maybe, but not if I heard it." He puthis upper right hand on Paula's shoulder and uttered a clickingapproximation of her name. He turned and introduced another Kragan,about his own age, who wore the equipment and insignia of a Companynative-major and was freshly painted with the Company emblem. "This isKormork. He and I have borne young to each other. Kormork, you watchover Paula Quinton." He managed, on the second try, to make it more orless recognizable. "Bring her back safe. Or else find yourself a goodplace to hide."
Kankad introduced the rest of his people, and von Schlichtenintroduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kankad lookedat the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist.
"We will have plenty of time, before the ship comes, to show Paula thetown," he suggested. "Von, you know better than I do what she wouldlike to see."
* * * * *
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm. guns to a stone stairway.Von Schlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of KingKankad's town were the only artillery above 75-mm. on Ullr innon-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier andstrapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankadshowed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, whereyoung Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied fromtextbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankadshowed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kraganriver-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under thesupervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife;the small-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran riflesand pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop;the physics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loadingplant; the battery of 155-mm. Long Toms, built in Kankad's own shops,which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; theprinting-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescopeand an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-powerplant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.
Half an hour before the ship from Konkrook was due, they had arrivedat the airport, where a gang of Kragans were clearing a berth for the_Aldebaran_. From somewhere, Kankad produced two cold bottles of CapeTown beer for Paula and von Schlichten, and a bowl of some boiling-hotblack liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes;between sips of his bubbling hell brew, Kankad gnawed on the stalk ofsome swamp-plant. Paula seemed as much surprised at Kankad's disregardfor the eating taboo as she had been at von Schlichten's open floutingof the convention of concealment when he had put in his geek-speaker.
"This is the only place on Ullr where this happens," von Schlichtentold her. "Here, or in the field when Terran and Kragan soldiers aretogether. There aren't any taboos between us and the Kragans."
"No," Kankad said. "We cannot eat each others' food, and because ourbodies are different, we cannot be the fathers of each others' young.But we have been battle-comrades, and work-sharers, and we havelearned from each other, my people more from yours than yours frommine. Before you came, my people were like children, shooting arrowsat little animals on the beach, and climbing among the rocks atdare-me-and-I-do, and playing war with toy weapons. But we are growingup, and it will not be long before we will stand beside you, as thegrown son stands beside his parent, and when that day comes, you willnot be ashamed of us."
* * * * *
It was easy to forget that Kankad had four arms and a rubbery,quartz-speckled skin, and a face like a lizard's.
"I want Little Me, when he's old enough to travel, to visit yourworld," Kankad said. "And some of the other young ones. And whenLittle Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people, I wouldlike to go to Terra, myself."
"You're going," von Schlichten assured him. "Some day, when I return,I'll see that you make the trip with me."
"Wonderful, Von!" Kankad was silent for a moment. Whe
n he spoke again,it was in Kragan, and quickly. "If we live so long, old friend. Thereis trouble coming, though even my spies cannot find what that troubleis. And two days ago in Keegark, two of my people died trying to learnit. I ask you--be careful!"
Then he switched hastily back to the language Paula could understand,apologizing. It gave von Schlichten time to wipe the worry from hisface before she turned back to him, though it was worse news than hehad expected. If Kankad thought things were bad enough to add his ownspies to those of the Company, things couldn't be much worse. In fact,anything that brought whatever it was out into the open would bebetter.
He was still fretting over it as they said their good-byes to Kankadand boarded the _Aldebaran_ for Skilk.
Ullr Uprising Page 4