Terry Gene Carr - Warlord of Kor
T >>
Terry Gene Carr >> Warlord of Kor
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8
So the Local Autonomy System had been sanctioned. The colonists would
always support their own men, who at least knew conditions in the areas
they were to govern. But since this necessarily limited the choice of
Edge governorships to the roustabouts and drifters who wandered the
outworlds, the resulting administrations were probably even more corrupt
than they had been under the old system of what had amounted to
centralized graft. The Cluster Councils retained the power of appointing
the local governors, but aside from that the newly-opened worlds of the
Edge were completely under their own rule. Some of the more vocal
critics of the Local Autonomy System had dubbed it instead the
Indigenous Corruption System; it was by now a fairly standard nickname
in the outworlds.
The system made for a wide-open frontier--bustling, wild, hectic, and
rich. For the worlds of the Edge were untamed worlds, raw and
forbidding, and the policy of the Councils was calculated to attract the
kind of men who not only could but would open these frontiers. The
roustabouts, the low drifters of the spaceways ... men who were hard and
strong from repeated knocks, who were looking for a way to work or fight
their way up. The lean and hungry of the outworlds.
Rynason glanced across the table at Manning. He was neither lean nor
hungry, but he had that look in his eyes. Rynason had been around the
Edge for years--his father had travelled the spacers in the commercial
lines--and he had seen that look on many men, in the fields and mines,
in the spaceports, in the quickly-tarnished prefab towns that sprang up
almost overnight when a planetfall was made. He could recognize it on
Manning despite the man's casual, self-satisfied expression.
"You don't have to worry about the colonists here," Manning was saying
to the girl. "I'll treat 'em decently. There'll be money to be made
here, and I can make it without stepping on too many toes."
Mara seemed amused. "And what would happen if you _had_ to step on them
to make your money? What if Hirlaj doesn't turn out to have any natural
resources worth exploiting--a whole civilization has been here for
thousands of years? What if the colony here starts to falter, and the
men move on?"
Manning frowned at her for a moment, then gave a grunting laugh. "No
chance of that. It's like Lee was just saying--this planet is an
important discovery--we've got tame aliens here, intelligent horsefaces
that you can lead around with a rope on their necks. That alone will
draw tourists. Maybe well set up an official Restricted Ground, a sort
of reservation."
"A zoo, you mean," Rynason interrupted.
Manning raised an amused eyebrow at him. "A reservation, I said. You
know what reservations are like, Lee."
Rynason glared at the heavier man, then subsided. There was no point in
getting into a fight over if's and maybe's; in the outworlds you learned
quickly to confine your clashes to tangibles. "Why did you want to see
me?" he said.
"I want your preliminary report completed," Manning said. "I've got to
have my complete report collated and transmitted within the week, if
it's to have any effect on the Council. Most of the boys have got them
in already; Breune and Larsborg have promised theirs within four days.
But you're still holding me up."
Rynason took a long swallow of his drink and put it down empty. The
noise and smell of the bar seemed to grow around him, washing over him.
It might have been the effects of the tarpaq in the drink, but he felt
his stomach tighten and turn slightly when he thought of how Earth's
culture presented itself, warped itself, here on the frontier Edge. Was
this land of mercenary, slipshod rush really what had carried Earthmen
to the stars?
"I don't know if I'll have much to report for at least a week," he said
shortly.
"Then give me a report on what you've got!" Manning snapped. "If nothing
else, turn in your transcripts and I'll do the report myself; I can
handle it. What the hell do you mean, you won't have much to report?"
"Larsborg said the same thing," Mara interjected.
"Larsborg said he'd have his report ready in a couple of days anyway!"
"I'll give you what I've got as soon as I can," Rynason said. "But
things are just beginning to break for me--did you see my note this
afternoon?"
"Yes, of course. The part about this Tedron or whatever his name was?"
"Tebron Marl. He's the link between their barbaric and civilized
periods. I've only begun to get into it."
Manning was waving for more drinks; he caught a waiter's eye and then
turned back to Rynason. "What's this nonsense about some damned block
you ran into? Have you got a crazy horse on your hands?"
"There's something strange there," Rynason said. "He tells me this
Tebron was actually supposed to have communicated with their god, or
whatever he was. It sounds crazy, all right. But there's more to it than
that, I'm sure of it. I wanted time to go into it further before I made
my report."
"I think you've got a nut alien there, boy. Don't let him foul you up;
you're one of my best men."
Rynason almost sneered, but he managed to bring it out as a grin. The
role of protective father did not sit well on Manning's shoulders.
"We're dealing here with a remarkably sane race," he pointed out. "The
very fact that they have total recall argues against any insanity in
them. There've been experiments on the inner worlds for over a century
now, trying to bring out total recall in us, and not much luck so far.
We're a sick, hung-up race."
Manning slapped his hand down on the table. "What the hell are you
trying to do, Lee? Are you trying to measure these aliens by our
standards? I thought you had better sense. Total recall doesn't
necessarily mean a damn thing in them--but when they start telling you
straightforward and cold that they've talked with some god, and then
they throw what sounds like an anxiety fit right in front of you....
Well, what does it sound like to you?"
Rynason accepted one of the drinks that the waiter banged down on the
table and took a sip. He felt lightheaded. "It would have been an
anxiety fit if Horng had been human," he said. "But you're right, I do
know better than to judge him by our standards. No, it was something
else."
"What, then?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. That's the point--I can't give you a
decent report until I find out."
"Then, dammit, give me an _indecent_ report! Fill it out with some very
learned speculations, you know the type...." Manning stopped, and
grinned. "Speaking of indecent reports, what have we turned up on their
sex lives?"
"Marc Stoworth covered that in his report yesterday," Mara said.
"They're unisexual, and their sex life is singularly boring, if you'll
pardon the expression. At least, Stoworth says so. If it weren't I'm
sure he'd tell us all about it."
Manning chuckled. "Yes, I imagine you're right; Marc is a good boy. Well
look, Lee, I've told you the position I'm in. Now I'm counting on you to
get me out of this spot. I've _got to_ transmit my report to Council
within a week. I don't want to pressure you, but you know I'm in a
position to do it if I have to. Dammit, give me a report."
"I'll turn something in in a few days," Rynason said vaguely. His brain
was definitely fuzzy now from the tarpaq.
Manning stood up. "All right, don't forget it. Trick it out with some
high-sounding guesses if you have to, like I said. Right now I've got to
see a man about a woman." He paused, glancing at Mara. "You're busy?"
"I'm busy, yes." Her face was studiedly expressionless.
He shrugged briefly and went out, pushing and weaving his way through
the hubbub that filled the bar. It was dark outside; Rynason caught a
glimpse of the dark street as Manning went through the door. Night fell
quickly on Hirlaj, with the suddenness of age.
Rynason turned back to the table, and Mara. He looked at her curiously.
"What were you doing with him, anyway? You usually keep to yourself."
The girl smiled wryly. She had deep black hair which fell to her
shoulders in soft waves. Most of the women here grew their hair down to
their waists, in exaggerated imitation of inner-world styles, but Mara
had more taste than that. Her eyes were a clear brown, and they met his
directly. "He was in a sharp mood, so I came along as peacemaker. You
don't seem to have needed me."
"You helped, at that; thanks. Was that true about the governorship?"
"Of course. Manning seldom brags, you should know that. He's a very
capable man, in some ways."
Rynason frowned. "He could be a lot more useful on this survey if he'd
use his talents on tightening up the survey itself. He's forcing a
premature report, and it isn't going to be worth much."
"Is that what's really bothering you?" she asked.
He tried to focus on her through the haze of the noisy bar. "Of course
it is. That, and his whole attitude toward these people."
"The Hirlaji? Are they people to you?"
He shrugged. "What are people? Humans? Or reasoning beings you can talk
to, communicate with?"
"I should think people would be reasoning beings you could relate to,"
she said softly. "Not just intellectually, but emotionally too. You have
to be able to understand them to communicate that way--that's what makes
people."
Rynason was silent, trying to integrate that into the fog in his head.
The raucous noise of the bar had faded into an underwater murmur around
him, lost somewhere where he could not see.
Finally, he said, "That's the trouble with them, the Hirlaji. I can't
really understand them. It's like there's really no contact, not even
through the interpreter." He stared into his drink. "I wish to hell we
had some straight telepathers here; they might work with the Hirlaji,
since they're telepathic anyway. I'd like to make a direct link myself."
After a moment he felt Mara's hand on his arm, and realized that he had
almost fallen asleep on the table.
"You'd better go on back to your quarters," she said.
He sat up, shaking his head to clear it. "No, but really--what do you
think of that idea? What if I had a telepather, and I could link minds
with Horng? Straight linkage, no interpreter in the middle. I could get
right at that race memory myself!"
"I think you need some sleep," she said. She seemed worried. "You're
getting too wrapped up in this thing. And forget about the telepathers."
Rynason looked at her and grinned. "Why?" he said quietly. "There's no
harm in wishing."
"Because," she said, "we've got three telepathers coming in the day
after tomorrow."
THREE
Rynason continued to smile at her for several seconds, until her words
penetrated. Then he abruptly sat up and steadied himself with one hand
against the edge of the table.
"Can you get one for me?"
She gave a reluctant shrug. "If you insist, and if Manning okays it. But
is it a good idea? Direct contact with a mind so alien?"
As a matter of fact, now that he was faced with the actual possibility
of it, he wasn't so sure. But he said, "We'll only know once we've tried
it."
Mara dropped her eyes and swirled her drink, watching the tiny red spots
form inside the glass and rise to the surface. There was a brief silence
between them.
"_Repent_, Lee Rynason!" The words burst upon his ears over the waves of
sound that filled the room. He turned, half-rising, to find Rene
Malhomme hovering over him, his wide grin showing a tooth missing in the
bottom row.
Rynason settled back into his chair. "Don't shout. I'm going to have a
headache soon enough."
Malhomme took the chair which Manning had vacated and sat in it heavily.
He set his hand-lettered placard against the edge of the table and
leaned forward, waving a thick finger.
"You consort with men who would enslave the pure in heart!" he rumbled,
but Rynason didn't miss the laughter in his eye.
"Manning?" he nodded. "He'd enslave every pure heart on this planet, if
he could find one. As a matter of fact, I think he's already working on
Mara here."
Malhomme turned to her and sat back, appraising her boldly. Mara met his
gaze calmly, raising her eyebrows slightly as she waited for his
verdict.
Malhomme shook his head. "If she's pure, then it's a sin," he said. "A
thrice-damned sin, Lee. Have I ever expostulated to you upon the
Janus-coin that is good and evil?"
"Often," Rynason said.
Malhomme shrugged and turned again to the girl. "Nevertheless," he said,
"I greet you with pleasure."
"Mara, this is Rene Malhomme," Rynason said wearily. "He imagines that
we're friends, and I'm afraid he's right."
Malhomme dipped his shaggy head. "The name is from the Old French of
Earth--badman. I have a long and dishonorable family history, but the
earliest of my ancestors whom I've been able to trace had the same name.
Apparently there were too many Smiths, Carpenters, Bakers and Priests on
that world--the time was ripe for a Malhomme. My first name would have
been pronounced Reh-_nay_ before the language reform dropped all accent
marks from Earth tongues."
"Considering your background," Mara smiled, "you're in good company out
here."
"Good company!" Malhomme cried. "I'm not looking for good company! My
work, my mission calls me to where men's hearts are the blackest, where
repentance and redemption are needed--and so I come to the Edge."
"You're religious?" she asked.
"Who _is_ religious in these days?" Malhomme asked, shrugging. "Religion
is of the past; it is dead. It is nearly forgotten, and one hears God's
name spoken now in anger. God damn you, cry the masses! _That_ is our
modern religion!"
"Rene wanders around shouting about sin," Rynason explained, "so that he
can take up collections to buy himself more to drink."
Malhomme chuckled. "Ah, Lee, you're shortsighted. I'm an unbeliever, and
a black rogue, but at least I have a mission. Our scientific advance has
destroyed religion; we've penetrated to the heavens, and found no God.
But science has not _dis_proved Him, either, and people forget that. I
speak with the voice of the forgotten; I remind people of God, to even
the scales." He stopped talking long enough to grab the arm of a passing
waiter and order a drink. Then he turned back to them. "Nothing says I
have to _believe_ in religion. If that were necessary, no one would
preach it."
"Have you been preaching to the Hirlaji?" Rynason asked.
"An admirable idea!" Malhomme said. "Do they have souls?"
"They have a god, at least. Or used to, anyway. Fellow named Kor, who
was god, essence, knowledge, and several other things all rolled into
one."
"Return to Kor!" Malhomme said. "Perhaps it will be my next mission."
"What's your mission now?" Mara asked, smiling in spite of herself.
"Besides your apparently lifelong study and participation in sin, I
mean."
Malhomme sighed and sat back as his drink arrived. He dug into the pouch
strung from his waist and flipped a coin to the waiter. "Believe it or
not, I have one," he said, and his voice was now low and serious. "I'm
not just a lounger, a drifter."
"What are you?"
"I am a spy," he said, and raised his glass to drain half of it with one
swallow.
Mara smiled again, but he didn't return it. He sat forward and turned to
Rynason. "Manning has been busily wrapping up the appointment for the
governorship here," he said. "You probably know that."
Rynason nodded. The headache he had been expecting was already starting.
"Did you also know that he's been buying men here to stand with him in
case someone else is appointed?" He glanced at Mara. "I go among the men
every day, talking, and I hear a lot. Manning will end up in control
here, one way or another, unless he's stopped."
"Buying men is nothing new," Rynason said. "In any case, is there a
better man on the planet?"
Malhomme shook his head. "I don't know; sometimes I give up on the human
race. Manning at least has a little culture in him--but he's more
vicious than he seems, nevertheless. If he gets control here...."
"It will be no worse than any of the other planets out here," Rynason
concluded for him.
"Except for one thing, perhaps--the Hirlaji. I don't have much against
men killing each other ... that's their own business. But unless we get
somebody better than Manning governing here, the Hirlaji will be wiped
out. The men here are already talking ... they're afraid of them."
"Why? The Hirlaji are harmless."
"Because of their size, and because we don't know anything about them.
Because they're intelligent--any uneducated man is afraid of
intelligence, and when it's an alien...." He shook his head. "Manning
isn't helping the situation."
"What do you mean by that?" Mara asked.
Malhomme's frown deepened, creasing the dark lines of his forehead into
furrows. "He's using the Hirlaji as bogey-men. Says he's the only man on
the planet who knows how to deal with them safely. Oh, you should hear
him when he moves among his people.... I envy his ability to control
them with words. A little backslapping, a joke or two--most of them I
was telling last year--and he talks to them man to man, very friendly."
He shook his head again. "Manning is so friendly with this scum that his
attitude is nothing short of patronizing."
Rynason smiled wearily at Malhomme; for all the man's wildness, he
couldn't help liking him. It had been like this every time he had run
into him, on a dozen of the Edge-worlds. Malhomme, dirty and cynical,
moved among the dregs of the stars preaching religion and fighting the
corporations, the opportunists, the phony rebels who wanted nothing for
anyone but themselves. He had been known to break heads together with
his huge fists, and he had no qualms about stealing or even killing when
his anger was aroused. Yet there was a peculiar honesty about him.
"You always have to have a cause, don't you, Rene?"
The greying giant shrugged. "It makes life interesting, and it makes me
feel good sometimes. But I don't overestimate myself: I'm scum, like the
rest of them. The only difference is that I know it; I'm just one man,
with no more rights than anyone else, except those I can take." He held
up his large knuckled hands and turned them in front of his face. "I've
got broken bones in both of them. I wonder if the Buddha or the Christ
ever hit a man. The books on religion that are left in the repositories
don't say."
"Would it make any difference if they hadn't?" Rynason asked.
"Hell, no! I'm just curious." Malhomme stood up, hefting his repentance
sign in the crook of one big arm. His face again took on its arched look
as he said, "My duty calls me elsewhere. But I leave you with a message
from the scriptures, and it has been my guiding light. 'Resist not
evil,' my children. Resist not evil."
"Who said that?" Rynason asked.
Malhomme shook his head. "Damned if I know," he muttered, and went away.
After a moment Rynason turned back to the girl; she was still watching
Malhomme thread his way through the men on his way to the door.
"So now you've met my spiritual father," he said.
Her deep brown eyes flickered back to his. "I wish I could use a
telepather on him. I'd like to know how he really thinks."
"He thinks exactly as he speaks," Rynason said. "At least, at the moment
he says something, he believes in it."
She smiled. "I suppose that's the only possible explanation for him."
She was silent for a moment, her face thoughtful. Then she said, "He
didn't finish his drink."
* * * * *
"You're all hooked up," the girl said. "Nod or something when you're
ready." She was bent over the telepather, double checking the
connectives and the blinking meters. Rynason and Horng sat opposite each
other, the huge dark mound of the alien looming silently over the
Earthman.
He never seemed upset, Rynason thought, looking up at him. Except for
that one time when they'd run into the stone wall of the block on
Tebron, Horng had displayed a completely even temperament--unruffled,
calm, almost disinterested. But of course if the aliens had been
completely uninterested in the Earthmen's probings at their history they
would never have cooperated so readily; the Hirlaji were not animals to
be ordered about by the Earthmen. Probably the codification of their
history would prove useful to the aliens too; they had never arranged
the race memory into a very coherent order themselves.
Not that that was surprising, Rynason decided. The Hirlaji had no
written language--their telepathic abilities had made that
unnecessary--and organization of material into neatly outlined form was
a characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality.
Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not now
in the twilight of their civilization. The huge aliens lived dimly
through these centuries, dreaming in their own way of the past ... and
their way was not the Earthmen's.
So if they cooperated with the survey team on codifying and recording
their history, who was the servant?
Well, with the direct linkage of minds the work should go faster.
Rynason looked up at Mara and nodded, and she flicked the connection on
the telepather.
Suddenly, like being overwhelmed by a breaking wave of seawater, Rynason
felt Horng's mind envelope him. A torrent of thoughts, memories,
pictures and concepts poured over him in a jumble; the sensory
sensations of the alien came to him sharply, and memories that were
strange, ideas that were incomprehensible, all in a sudden rush upon his
mind. He fought down the fear that had leapt in him, gritted his teeth
and waited for the wave to subside.
It did not subside; it settled. As the two minds, Earthman and Hirlaji,
met in direct linkage they became almost one. Gradually Rynason could
begin to see some pattern to the impressions of the alien. The picture
of himself came first: he was small and angular, sitting several feet
below Horng's--or his own--eyes; but more than that, he was not merely
light, but pallid, not merely small, but fragile. The alien's view of
reality, even through his direct sensations, was not merely visual or
tactile but interpreted automatically in his own terms.
The odor of the hall in which they sat was different, the very
temperature warmer. Rynason could see himself reeling on the stone bench
where he sat, and Mara, strangely distorted, put out a hand to steady
him. At the same time he was seeing through his own eyes, feeling her
hand on his shoulder. But the alien sensations were stronger; their very
strangeness commanded the attention of his mind.
He righted himself, physically and mentally, and began to probe
tentatively in this new part of his mind. He could feel Horng too
reaching slowly for contact; his presence was comfortable, mild,
confused but unworried. As his thoughts blended with Horng's the present
faded perceptibly; this confusion was merely a moment in centuries, and
soon too it would pass. Rynason could feel himself relaxing.
Now he could reach out and touch the strange areas of this mind: the
concepts and attitudes of an alien race and culture and experience.
Everything became dim and dream-like: the Earthmen possibly didn't
exist, the dry wastes of Hirlaj had always been here or perhaps once
they had been green but through four generations the Large Hall had
stood thus and the animals changed by the day too fast to distinguish
them even under Kor if he should be reached ... why? there was no
reason. There was no purpose, no goal, no necessity, no wishing,
questing, hoping ... no curiosity. All would pass. All was passing even
now; perhaps already it was gone.
Rynason shifted where he sat, reaching for the feeling of the stone
bench beneath him for equilibrium, pulling out of Horng's thoughts and
going back in almost immediately.
A chaos of mind enveloped him, but he was beginning to familiarize
himself with it now. He probed slowly for the memories, down through
Horng's own personal memories of three centuries, dry feet on the dust
and low winds, down to the racial pool. And he found it.
Even knowing the outlines of the race's history did not help Rynason to
place and correlate those impressions which came to him one on top of
another, overlapping, merging, blending. He saw buildings which towered
over him, masses of his people moving quietly around him, and thoughts
came to him from their minds. He was Norhib, artisan, working slowly day
by ... he was Rashanah, approaching the Gate of the Wall and looking ...
he was Lohreen discussing the site where ... he was digging the ground,
pushing the heavy cart, lying on the pelt of animals, demolishing the
building which would soon fall, instructing a child in balance.
A dirt-caked street stretched before him by night, the stones
individually cut and smooth with the passage of heavy feet. "Tomorrow we
will set out for the Region of Chalk while there is still time." A
mind-voice from a Hirlaji hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old, dead
but alive in the race-memory. Rynason could feel the whole personality
there, in the memories, but he passed on.
"Murba has said that the priests will take him."
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8
