American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  He glanced at her, once. “But what of the folk we led hither?” he asked.

  “Nay, I cannot risk taking them with us.” Sir Owain shrugged. “They’re lowborn anyway.”

  Sir Roger nodded. “Ah,” he said. “So.”

  Once more he looked at his wife. Then he kicked backward. The spur of knighthood struck into the belly of the Wersgor behind him. He ripped downward.

  Falling with the same motion, he rolled across the deck. Sir Owain yelled and leaped up. His fire gun blasted the air. It missed. The baron was too quick, reached upward, seized the other stupefied Wersgor and pulled him down on top. The second fire blast struck that living shield.

  Sir Roger heaved the corpse before him, rising and advancing in one gigantic surge of motion. Owain had time for a last shot, which charred the dead flesh. Then Roger threw the body across the table, into the other man’s face.

  Owain went down beneath it. Sir Roger snatched for his sword. Branithar had already put a hand on it. Sir Roger got the dagger instead. It flared from the sheath. I heard the thunk as he drove it through Branithar’s hand, into the table, to the very hilt.

  “Wait there for me!” snarled Sir Roger. He drew the sword. “Haro! God send the right!”

  Sir Owain had scrambled free and risen, still clutching the gun. I found myself a-pant just across the table from him. He aimed squarely at the baron’s midriff. I promised the saints many candles and smacked my rosary across the traitor’s wrist. He howled. The gun fell from his hand and skidded across the table. Sir Roger’s great glaive whistled. Owain was barely fast enough to dodge. The edged steel crashed into the wood. A moment Sir Roger must struggle to free it. The fire gun lay on the deck. I dove for it. So did Lady Catherine, who had dashed around the table. Our brows met. When my wits came back, I was sitting up and Roger was chasing Owain out the door.

  Catherine screamed.

  Roger stopped as if noosed. She rose in a swirl of garments. “The children, my lord! They’re aft, in the bedchamber—where the extra weapons are—”

  He cursed and sped out. She followed. I picked myself up, a trifle groggily, the gun which they had both forgotten in my grasp. Branithar bared teeth at me. He tugged against the knife that pinioned him, but only made the blood run faster. I judged him safely held. My attention was elsewhere. The Wersgor whom my master had disemboweled was still alive, but would not remain so for long. A moment I hesitated . . . where did my duty lie, to my lord and his lady or to a dying heathen? . . . I bent above the contorted blue face. “Father,” he gasped. I know not who, or Who, he called upon, but I led him through such poor rites as the circumstances allowed and held him while he died. I pray he may at least have won to Limbo.

  Sir Roger came back, wiping his sword. He grinned all over, I have rarely seen such joy in a man. “The little wolf!” he whooped. “Aye, Norman blood is ever easy to tell!”

  “What happened?” I asked, rising in my soiled raiment.

  “Owain didn’t make for the arms chest after all,” Sir Roger told me. “He must have turned forward instead, to the control turret. But the other crewmen, the gunners, had heard the fight. Judging the chance ripe and the need clear, they went to equip themselves. I saw one of them pass through the boudoir door. The other was at his heels, armed with a long wrench. I fell upon him with my sword, but he fought well and it took a while to get him slain. Meantime Catherine pursued the first and fought him barehanded till he struck her down. Those chicken-headed maidservants did naught but cower and scream, as expected. But then! Listen, Brother Parvus! My son Robert opened the weapon chest, took forth a gun and plugged that Wersgor as neatly as Red John could have. Oh, the little devil-cub!”

  My lady entered. Her braids hung loose, and one fair cheek was purpled with a bruise. But she said as impersonally as any sergeant reporting an assignment of pickets: “I quieted the children down.”

  “Poor tiny Matilda,” murmured her husband. “Was she very much frightened?”

  Lady Catherine looked indignant. “They both wanted to come fight!”

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll go deal with Owain and the pilot.”

  She drew a shaken breath. “Must I forever hide away when my lord goes into peril?”

  He stopped still and looked upon her. “But I thought—” he began, oddly helpless.

  “That I betrayed you merely to win home again? Aye.” She stared at the deck. “I think you’ll forgive me for that long ere I can ever forgive myself. Yet I did what seemed best . . . for you, too. . . . I was confused. ’Twas like a fever dream. You should not have left me alone so long, my lord. I missed you too much.”

  Very slowly he nodded. “’Tis I who must beg pardon,” he said. “God grant me years enough to become worthy of you.”

  Clasping her shoulders: “But remain here. ’Tis needful you guard yon blueface. If I should kill Owain and the pilot—”

  “Do that!” she cried in upsurging fury.

  “I’d liefer not,” he said with the same gentleness as he used toward her. “Looking upon you, I can understand him so well. But—if worst come to worst—Branithar can guide us home. So watch him.”

  She took the gun from me and sat down. The nailed captive stood rigid with defiance.

  “Come, Brother Parvus,” said Sir Roger. “I may need your skill with words.”

  He carried his sword and had thrust a fire gun from the weapon chest into his belt. We made our way along a corridor, up a ramp, and so to the entrance of the control turret. Its door was shut, locked from within.

  Sir Roger beat upon it with the pommel of his glaive. “You two in there!” he shouted. “Yield yourselves!”

  “And if we do not?” Owain’s voice drifted faintly through the panels.

  “If naught else,” said Roger starkly, “I’ll wreck the engines and depart in my boat, leaving you adrift. But see here: I’ve rid myself of anger. Everything has ended for the best, and we shall indeed go home—after these stars have been made safe for Englishmen. You and I were friends once, Owain. Give me your hand again. I swear no harm shall come to you.”

  Silence lay heavy.

  Until the man behind the door said: “Aye. You were never one to break an oath, were you? Very well, come on through, Roger.”

  I heard the bolt click down. The baron put his hand to the door. I know not what impelled me to say, “Wait, sire,” and shove myself before him with unheard-of ill manners.

  “What is it?” He blinked, bemused in his gladness.

  I opened the door and stepped over the threshold. Two iron bars smashed down on my head.

  The rest of this adventure must needs be told from hearsay, for I was not to come to my senses for a week. I toppled in blood, and Sir Roger thought me slain.

  The moment they saw it was not the baron they had gotten, Owain and the pilot attacked him. They were armed with two unscrewed stanchions, as long and heavy as swords. Sir Roger’s blade flashed. The pilot threw up his club. The blade glanced off in a shower of sparks. Sir Roger howled so the walls echoed. “You murderers of innocence—” His second blow knocked the bar out of a numbed hand. At his third, the blue head sprang from its shoulders and bounced down the ramp.

  Catherine heard the uproar. She went to the door of the salon and looked forward, as if terror could sharpen her eyes to pierce the walls between. Branithar set his teeth together. He seized the misericord with his free hand. Muscles jumped forth in his shoulders. Few men could have drawn that blade, but Branithar did.

  My lady heard the noise and whirled. Branithar was rounding the table. His right hand hung torn, astream with blood, but the knife gleamed in his left.

  She raised her gun. “Back!” she yelled.

  “Put that down,” he said scornfully. “You’d never use it. You never saw enough stars at Terra, with wise enough vision. If anything goes wrong in the bows, I am your only
way home.”

  She looked into the eyes of her husband’s enemy, and shot him dead. Then she ran toward the turret.

  Sir Owain Montbelle had scampered back into that chamber. He could not fend off the sheer fury of Sir Roger’s assault. The baron drew his gun. Owain snatched up a book and held it before his breast.

  “Have a care!” he panted. “This is the ship’s log. It has the notes on Terra’s position. There are no others.”

  “You lie. There’s Branithar’s mind.” Nonetheless, Sir Roger thrust the gun back in his belt as he stalked forward. “I’m sorry to outrage clean steel with your blood. For you killed Brother Parvus and you’re going to die.”

  Owain poised. His stanchion was a clumsy weapon. But he raised his arm and hurled it. Struck across the brow, Sir Roger lurched backward. Owain sprang, snatched the gun from the stunned man’s belt, and dodged a feeble sword-slash. He scuttled clear, yelling his triumph. Roger stumbled toward him. Owain took aim.

  Catherine appeared in the door. Her gun flamed. The book of her journey vanished in smoke and ash. Owain screamed in anguish. Coldly, she fired again, and he fell.

  She flung herself into Roger’s arms and wept. He comforted her. Yet I wonder which of them gave the most strength to the other.

  Afterward he said ruefully: “I fear we’ve managed ill. Now the way home is indeed lost.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Where you are, there is England.”

  Epilogue

  * * *

  A NOISE of trumpets and cloven air broke loose. The captain laid the typescript down and pressed an intercom button. “What’s going on?” he snapped.

  “That eight-legged seneschal up at the castle finally got hold of his boss, sir,” answered the voice of the sociotech. “As near as I can make out, the planetary duke was out on safari, and it took all this while to locate him. He uses a whole continent for his hunting preserve. Anyhow, he’s just now arriving. Come see the show. A hundred antigrav aircraft—good Lord!—the ones that’ve landed are disgorging horsemen!”

  “Ceremonial, no doubt. Just a minute and I’ll be there.” The captain glared at the typescript. He had read about halfway through it. How could he talk intelligently to this fantastic overlord without some inkling of what had really developed out here?

  He skimmed hastily, page after page. The chronicle of the Wersgor Crusade was long and thunderous. Suffice it to read the conclusion, how King Roger I was crowned by the Archbishop of New Canterbury, and reigned for many fruitful years.

  But what had happened? Oh, sure, one way or another the English won their battles. Eventually they acquired enough actual strength to be independent of their leader’s luck and cunning. But their society! How could even their language, let alone their institutions, have survived contact with old and sophisticated civilizations? Hang it, why had the sociotech translated this long-winded Brother Parvus at all, unless some significant data were included? . . . Wait. Yes. A passage near the end caught the captain’s eye. He read:

  “. . . I have remarked that Sir Roger de Tourneville established the feudal system on newly conquered worlds given into his care by the allies. Some latter-day mockers of my noble master have implied he did this only because he knew nothing better to do. I refute this. As I said before, the collapse of Wersgorixan was not unlike the collapse of Rome, and similar problems found a similar answer. His advantage lay in having that answer ready to hand, the experience of many Terrestrial centuries.

  “To be sure, each planet was a separate case requiring separate treatment. However, most of them had certain important things in common. The native populations were eager to follow the behest of us, their liberators. Quite apart from gratitude, they were poor ignorant folk, their own civilizations long ago obliterated; they needed guidance in all things. By embracing the Faith, they proved they had souls. This forced our English clergy to ordain converts in great haste. Father Simon found texts of Scripture and the Church Fathers to support this practical necessity—indeed, while he himself never claimed so, it would seem that the veritable God consecrated him a bishop by sending him so far out in partibus infidelium. Once this is granted, it follows that he did not exceed his authority in planting the seed of our own Catholic church. Of course, in his day we were always careful to speak of the Archbishop of New Canterbury as ‘our’ Pope, or the ‘Popelet,’ to remind us that this was a mere agent of the true Holy Father, whom we could not find. I deplore the carelessness of the younger generations in this matter of titles.

  “Oddly enough, no few Wersgorix soon came to accept the new order. Their central government had always been a distant thing to them, a mere collector of taxes and enforcer of arbitrary laws. Many a blueskin found his imagination captured by our rich ceremonial and by a government of individual nobles whom he could meet face to face. Moreover, by loyally serving these overlords, he might hope to regain an estate, or even a title. Of the Wersgorix who have repented their sins and become valuable Christian Englishmen, I need only mention our one-time foe Huruga, whom all this world of Yorkshire honors as Archbishop William.

  “But there was nothing disingenuous in Sir Roger’s proceedings. He never betrayed his allies, as some have charged. He dealt with them shrewdly, but except for the necessary concealment of our true origin (which mask he dropped as soon as we had waxed strong enough not to fear exposure) he was aboveboard. It was not his fault that God always favors the English.

  “Jairs, Ashenkoghli, and Pr?*tans fell in with his proposals readily enough. They had no real concept of empire. If they could have whatever planets without natives we seized, they were quite happy to leave us humans the immensely troublesome task of governing that larger number where a slave population existed. They turned hypocritical eyes away from the often bloody necessities of such government. I am sure that many of their politicians secretly rejoiced that each new responsibility of this sort thinned out the force of their enigmatic associate; for he must create a duke and lesser gentility for it, then leave that small garrison to train the aborigines. Uprisings, internecine war, Wersgor counterattacks, reduced these tiny cadres still further. Having little military tradition of their own, the Jairs, Ashenkoghli, and Pr?*tans did not realize how those cruel years welded bonds of loyalty between native peasants and English aristocrats. Also, being somewhat effete, they did not foresee how lustily humans would breed.

  “So in the end, when all these facts were pikestaff plain, it was too late. Our allies were still only three nations, each with its own language and way of life. Springing up around them were a hundred races, united in Christendom, the English tongue, and the English crown. Even if we humans had wished, we could not have changed this. Indeed, we were about as surprised as anyone.

  “As proof that Sir Roger never plotted against his allies, consider how easily he could have overrun them in his old age, when he ruled the mightiest nation ever seen among these stars. But he leaned backward to be generous. It was not his doing that their own younger generation, awestruck by our successes, began more and more to imitate our ways. . . .”

  The captain put the pages aside and hurried out to the main airlock entrance. The ramp had been let down, and a red-haired human giant was striding up to greet him. Fantastically clad, bearing a florid ornamental sword, he also carried a businesslike blast gun. Behind him an honor guard of riflemen in Lincoln green stood at attention. Over their heads fluttered a banner with the arms of a cadet branch of the great Hameward family.

  The captain’s hand was engulfed in a hairy ducal paw. The sociotech translated a distorted English: “At last! God be praised, they’ve finally learned to build spaceships on Old Earth! Welcome, good sir!”

  “But why did you never find us . . . er . . . your grace?” stammered the captain. When it had been translated, the duke shrugged and answered:

  “Oh, we searched. For generations every young knight went looking for Earth, unless
he chose to look for the Holy Grail. But you know how bloody many suns there are. And even more toward the center of the galaxy—where we encountered still other starfaring peoples. Commerce, exploration, war, everything drew us inward, away from this thinly starred spiral arm. You realize this is only a poor outlying province you’ve come upon. The King and the Pope dwell away off in the Seventh Heaven. . . . Finally the quest petered out. In past centuries, Old Earth has become little more than a tradition.” His big face beamed. “But now it’s all turned topsy-turvy. You found us! Most wonderful! Tell me at once, has the Holy Land been liberated from the paynim?”

  “Well,” said Captain Yeshu haLevy, who was a loyal citizen of the Israeli Empire, “yes.”

  “Too bad. I’d have loved a fresh crusade. Life’s been dull since we conquered the Dragons ten years ago. They say, however, that the royal expeditions to the Sagittarian star clouds have turned up some very promising planets— But see here! You must come over to the castle. I’ll entertain you as best as I can, and outfit you for the trip to the King. That’s tricky navigation, but I’ll furnish you with an astrologer who knows the way.”

  “Now what did he say?” asked Captain haLevy, when the bass burble had stopped.

  The sociotech explained.

  Captain haLevy turned fire color. “No astrologer is going to touch my ship!”

  The sociotech sighed. He’d have a lot of work to do in the coming years.

  WAY STATION

  Clifford D. Simak

  1

  * * *

  THE NOISE was ended now. The smoke drifted like thin, gray wisps of fog above the tortured earth and the shattered fences and the peach trees that had been whittled into toothpicks by the cannon fire. For a moment silence, if not peace, fell upon those few square miles of ground where just a while before men had screamed and torn at one another in the frenzy of old hate and had contended in an ancient striving and then had fallen apart, exhausted.